So simple, Thoreau would have liked it: Spaghetti with Pecorino Romano and Pepper

With only four ingredients, Spaghetti with Pecorino Romano and Pepper is a lively, rustic Roman favorite quick enough for even the busiest weeknight dinner. Recipe below.

Henry David Thoreau liked things simple. So much so that he spent two years in a 10×15 cabin near Walden Pond, contemplating life. His most famous takeaway from his adventure? “Simplify, simplify.”

That’s often my approach in the kitchen. I gravitate to recipes with a handful of well chosen ingredients prepared in a fairly straightforward way. Not out of laziness (well, not completely out of laziness), but more in keeping with my generally minimalist approach to life. Simple is good. Still, when I stumbled across a recipe for Spaghetti a Cacio e Pepe (Spaghetti with Pecorino Romano and Pepper), it seemed almost too simple, even for me. Continue reading “So simple, Thoreau would have liked it: Spaghetti with Pecorino Romano and Pepper” →

Mascarpone: Italian for easy, elegant desserts

Delicate, creamy mascarpone cheese is the starting point for countless impressive, easy-to-make desserts. Recipes below.

The holiday season is upon us, which means parties galore. Which means it’s also the season of the little black dress. Women know little black dresses as the simple little tricks in their closets that—with a few accessories—make them look elegant, festive and very, very lovely. Men know them as the things that make us lose our train of thought at parties, because they’re just that good. Marion has one that works like a charm, every time.

Well, when it comes to dinner parties, this is the little black dress of desserts. Simple, sophisticated, infinitely accessorizable. At its heart is mascarpone, a buttery rich double-cream or triple-cream dessert cheese from Italy. Made from cow’s milk and typically containing 60% to 75% milk fat, it is most often known as that intoxicatingly silky cream found in tiramisù.

A quick search on epicurious.com turns up more than 120 recipes for this versatile cheese. Still, they’re the first to admit that “this delicately flavored cheese needs little embellishment other than being topped with fruit.”

The recipe below is almost that simple. A half dozen ingredients thrown into a bowl and beaten with an electric mixer into mascarpone cream. And then a little fruit, nuts, chocolate or what have you to accessorize it. That’s it—no double boilers, no baking, no fuss. So easy for something that tastes so over-the-top decadent and dresses up so beautifully in the right setting. We used smallish vintage martini glasses. Teacups, mismatched or otherwise, could work just as well—especially with a couple of small, plainish, lemony cookies on each saucer. Obviously, the key here is scale. These desserts are served in small portions—serving dishes should be scaled appropriately.

An unexpected bonus for something so delicate tasting is how surprisingly sturdy mascarpone cream is. I mixed up a batch and then started experimenting with the fruit I was adding for one version. Then I fussed over one photo set-up until I decided it wouldn’t work and created a completely different one at the opposite end of the apartment. After the first shot, I decided it would be good to show two variations, and Marion helped me put together the second dessert. The whole time, the mascarpone cream was sitting out on the kitchen counter, no wilting, no running, no collapsing. And the first prepared dessert looked just as good in the last shot as it did in the first. In fact, we even had the remaining cream the next night with more fresh berries, and spending the night in the fridge [covered, of course] hadn’t affected it in the slightest. To me, this says you can whip up the mascarpone cream before company shows up and dress it up when you’re ready to serve dessert. If the kitchen’s particularly hot, you may want to keep it in the fridge.

This recipe is based on one found in Tastes of Italia, the same issue of the magazine that led to last week’s Rosemary Sage Chops. If I get a couple/few recipes out of an entire cookbook, I feel that I’ve gotten my money’s worth. Well, so far I’ve gotten two from one issue of a magazine—and I don’t think I’m done yet.

Continue reading “Mascarpone: Italian for easy, elegant desserts” →

Tomato-free Italian: Rosemary sage chops

Fresh herbs and garlic give these pan-roasted chops a satisfying depth. Recipe below.

Italian chefs and home cooks are rightly renowned for their way with tomatoes. Others may well use the tomato—the French even dubbed it the pomme d’amour, or love apple, for its supposed aphrodisiacal powers—but the Italians own it.

Unfortunately, as a result, we sometimes forget that there’s a whole world of Italian cooking beyond insalate caprese and bolognese sauce. At least I do. So I was happy to stumble upon Tastes of Italia magazine recently. A number of recipes caught my eye in this issue. I’m sure my takes on more than a few of them will turn up here sooner or later. I’ll start with this one that had me thinking outside the tomato.

This recipe for juicy, quickly prepared chops calls on three other stalwarts of the Italian kitchen—garlic, sage and rosemary. I’ve already pronounced rosemary my favorite of the herb world, and as far as I’m concerned, just about any savory dish can be improved with the addition of garlic. Sage falls more into the category of good intentions for me, though. I always feel I should explore its pungent flavor more, but never quite get around to it. So when I saw this recipe that married it with garlic, rosemary and pork, I had to try it.

The chops are pan roasted, cooked in a covered skillet with the herbs, garlic and some olive oil. Covering the pan holds in moisture, keeping the chops from becoming too dry or tough. This is especially important with today’s pork production methods that create leaner meat; the reduction in fat may be good for our waistlines, but it also makes the meat more prone to drying out. Sometimes when I’m searing chops, I’ll add a little vermouth to the pan when I turn them and cover it to finish the cooking. This also introduces some moisture to the meat, along with a very subtle flavor note, thanks to vermouth’s fairly neutral taste. I may try that the next time I fix these chops as well. Continue reading “Tomato-free Italian: Rosemary sage chops” →