Crispy Black Bass with Endive Marmelatta and Saffron Vinaigrette

For this next post, I decided to stretch out a little bit and pick a more composed entrée from the cookbook to make. The decision to make this dish featuring black bass was a no-brainer after walking around my local Whole Foods store. They really have an excellent selection of products, and as Mario states in the introduction to this chapter, 'bass is truly a seasonal delicacy much like strawberries and quince that are perfect only for a short time each year.'

In the brief chapter introduction, Mario outlines how he chooses his fish, whether he would be found in his New York City restaurant or Italy. While it may be a little difficult to choose from the range of specimen that he gets in New York City from your neck of the woods, there are some standard guidelines as to choosing your fish wisely. 

Mario notes that when he is eating seafood in Italy that it is generally caught that day. You may not have the ability to find fish as fresh as that, but it should be very fresh nonetheless. For example, the fish that you choose from your fishmonger should be stored properly on ice, odor free, with clear eyes that are not sunken in and flesh that springs back when touched. 

It's also important to note that Mario speaks about how minimally prepared the fish is in Italy, often being served with just a little drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice or nothing at all. By now after reading my posts on this blog, you will have picked up on his recurring theme of letting the quality of the product shine through. 

There needed to be some preparation on the ingredients before I started making the recipe. I started by halving and coring some Belgian endive. 

Next was to fillet the Seabass. This one was about a 1 pounder. A good fishmonger would be more than happy to fillet the fish for you ahead of time. Considering that as a chef this is something that I do quite often, I decided to do that part myself. But I should have left my chef ego at the door and let my fishmonger scale and clean the fish! Way too messy for home. 

Having completed that, my next step is to prepare the endive marmelatta. In a shallow pan the endive gets combined with orange juice, raisins, and honey. This gets simmered until the orange juice is reduced by half which would take about half an hour. 

Some orange pulp gets heated to release its juice and then saffron is added and is allowed to steep for about 15 minutes. 

Once steeped, the mixture gets combined with champagne vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper. This vinaigrette needs to be whisked well in order to emulsify. 

At this point, my next step is to sear the Seabass fillets. Because it is such a thin fish, it will only need about three minutes per side to be fully cooked. The fillet gets patted dry with a paper towel, seasoned well, with the skin being scored lightly before being added to a very hot pan skin side down with some olive oil. For some reason I did not get a picture of this step. Hey relax it has been a long week. 

Next it was ready for plating. The endive mixture gets spooned onto the plate, the bass plated on top, and the saffron vinaigrette gets spooned around both. 

The bass tasted great, the vinaigrette was okay, but I was not sweating the endive at all. It was a little too overpowering on the orange. I feel like it completely over-trumped the delicate taste of the Seabass. 

Would I make this dish again? No. But there are some other bass preparations in this book that look promising. If you can find it, bass is certainly worth picking up for dinner. And I can't wait to pick up bass again. I just will not be making this endive preparation in the future. 

I have some really interesting dishes coming up for this blog in the near future. This dish, while not my favorite, was just the kickstart that I needed to delve into some of the deep cuts of this cookbook. There is some really interesting ingredients and technique amongst these pages and I can't wait to share it with you. Until next time...

Pork Chop Milanese with Arugula and Teardrop Tomatoes

As I mentioned in the previous post, I had decided to whip up a couple of plates from the cookbook when I found myself alone for dinner one evening. This recipe was so quick and easy that there is no excuse as to why all of you cannot make this. Even if you find yourself alone one night for dinner such as I did. 

First I had to prep the pork chops. The bones were removed and then I used a meat mallet to pound out the pork chips to a thickness of about 1/4 inch. The chops then get seasoned real well. 

I then beat a few eggs and dip each pork chop in them, then dredge each chop into breadcrumbs. Typically when you're breading something, the sequence goes flour, egg wash, then breadcrumbs. It did manage to work out well though. 

Some extra virgin olive oil gets heated in a sauté pan until almost smoking. Add some butter to the oil then the pork gets dropped in. 

It takes just a few minutes per side at that thickness for the chops to be fully cooked. 

While that's cooking I made the light arugula salad. Just take some arugula and halved teardrop tomatoes and toss with a little olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Simple. No emulsifying a vinaigrette. 

It all gets plated with a lemon wedge. 

This was by far the easiest recipe yet. While it tasted okay, it didn't blow me away. Maybe it was too simple. I find it hard to believe that this recipe was ever on Babbo's menu unless it was a lunch feature. Again, I liked it and would probably make it again. Just not very soon. 

I need something a little harder for my next recipe. I've seen so many great products at Whole Foods that I think it's time to venture out a bit. 

Until next time...

Cool Roasted Shiitakes with Barbecued Onions and Basil Oil

So what's a married guy to do when he finds himself all alone at home while his wife is off at a college reunion? If you guessed 'make himself a five-star meal at home', then you would be correct. 

Making a wonderful and composed meal doesn't have to be saved just for when a large dinner party pops up. Often times I hear those who need to cook only for themselves or for one other person say that they don't feel like going through the trouble or bother of making something for dinner from scratch. While it is more convenient to just go out and grab something from a local restaurant, there's something to be said about going to the market,  finding something unique, and then taking it home with you and transforming it into an amazing meal. This is something that should be done on any night of the week regardless of the number of occupied seats at the dinner table. 

Perhaps this week you leave the familiar and venture into trying a new ingredient or two. Something out of the ordinary. Maybe you shut out the voice in your head that says 'oh you will never like that' and let it be okay that there is something different looking on your dinner plate. 

This is what, I think, will be one of the biggest benefits for me in completing this project. It's the ability to work with ingredients that are a little unconventional or out of my normal culinary comfort zone. This next dish was a prime example. 

My wife hates mushrooms and I am not the biggest fan of them either. So I went into the making of this dish with a strong prejudice against it. But after going to the market and seeing that the prep for this recipe was looking really nice, I decided to bring home the ingredients and give it a try. 

Upon looking through the ingredients list, I noticed that I will need to start off by making basil oil which will act as a sauce for this appetizer. The recipe for the oil is on page 50 of the Babbo Cookbook, along with several other recipes for flavored oils. Flavored oils work well as a quick sauce because they are creative, light, and can provide an intense flavor. 

To make the oil, I took some basil leaves and put them into a food processor.

I then slowly drizzled in some extra-virgin olive oil and added a pinch of salt. Very simple

Next up was to remove the stems from the shiitake mushrooms. 

Once the stems were removed from the shittakes, they get placed in a bowl with some olive oil, sage, rosemary, and chopped garlic. They get seasoned and roasted for approximately 20 minutes. 

Once the shiitake mushrooms are finished cooking, the oil that they were cooked in gets strained and reserved for later, and the mushrooms get set aside in a different bowl to cool. 

The next step is to make a marinade for the mushrooms. The marinade ingredients include sliced garlic, anchovy paste, balsamic vinegar, and salt-and-pepper. A little bit of olive oil is then slowly whisked in to this marinade, making a vinaigrette. Once it's made it can be poured over the mushrooms which have been allowed to cool to room temperature. 

The grill then gets fired up. When hot, drizzle some sliced red onions with a little bit of olive oil and salt-and-pepper, and cook them for several minutes per side making sure to get nice grill marks. 

It's now time to plate. Spoon some of the barbecued onions on the plate, remove the shiitake mushrooms from the marinade and place on top of the onions, then drizzle some of the basil oil around both. 

I love surprises. Even more, I love food surprises. As I said earlier, I was never a big fan of mushrooms. However, I completely devoured this dish. The marinade combined with the oil and the onions gave those mushrooms so much flavor. It was a perfect light appetizer. It was quite the flavor bomb for not having a ton of components on the plate. 

Mario notes that shiitake mushrooms are not an Italian staple, but what he tries to do at Babbo is to combine offbeat ingredients with a 'trattoria-style simplicity' that meets the needs of New York City eaters who are not afraid to venture out and try something new. His antipasti not only contain some of the finest of sliced meats, cheeses, and homemade salumi, but as we see here, they also pay a wonderful homage to the local farmers and farmers markets. 

Coming up I will post what else I made out of this cookbook for dinner that night. Until next time...

Tomato and Sheep's Milk Cheese Bruschetta

This post should really be entitled Bruschetta Part Deux. As you can tell from the pictures from my last post, there were two different bruschetta that I made for a recent dinner party. The Babbo Cookbook actually has three bruschetta recipes, the third of which featuring roasted beets and Parmesan cheese. I opted to save that recipe for a later date. Not only do I feel that beets would be best reserved for the fall when I can, hopefully, harvest them fresh from my garden, but I also knew that my dinner guests would most likely not be touching anything having to do with beets. And as the good host that I am, I opted to choose this bruschetta recipe. 

During the wedding reception, we had passed hors d'oeuvres which also included a tomato and garlic bruschetta. With the excitement, picture taking, and everything going on, I was only able to get one. So I made sure to make extra of this batch which I knew was going to be popular. 

The preparation was so simple. I mixed chopped fresh tomatoes with basil, black pepper, and some very thinly sliced garlic cloves. Yup that's really all that there is to it. 

You will need to slice some crusty bread and toast it with a little olive oil and rubbed garlic just as with the Ceci Bruschetta. 

Just spoon the mixture on the bread and grate some Cacio de Roma over the top of each bruschetta. Mario notes that if you couldn't find the Cacio in your local market, which I wasn't able to do, that any other semi-soft sheep's milk cheese would work. I found a nice Pecorino. 

This was another one of those 'few ingredients but every ingredient needs to be superb' recipes. Everyone raved about them. I even got to eat more than one this time. I would probably recommend doubling the recipe because this is so good that you will want to eat a lot of it.  

There are still so many enticing dishes left to make from this cookbook. It's almost overwhelming. 

Until next time...

Ceci Bruschetta

I have a small confession to make. I have never eaten at Babbo. 

There I said it.

It's like number one on my bucket list, though. 

I have, however, eaten at Mario's B&B Ristorante in Las Vegas. Its menu is very similar to Babbo. They share quite a few dishes, although B&B is geared more towards the Vegas palate and pace.  

I remember the experience as if it were yesterday, even though it has been probably close to 8 years since my meal there. It was a Wednesday night. Even though I made reservations a month in advance, there were plenty of open seats, something you would never see in NYC.  I smiled through the entire plate of Gnocchi with Oxtail Ragu, swirled my perfectly paired wine, and finished it all off with a smooth panna cotta. But before it all started, the waiter brought out a little something to tease my appetite, and as I reminisced about that meal, I thought it would be great for my next post. 

Bruschetta comes from the Italian word bruscare', which means to cook over open coals. It is basically just some good quality sliced crusty peasant bread, grilled or slightly charred, with a topping on it. It makes for perfect passed hors d'oeuvres, or a light starter. In fact, Mario writes that there are restaurants in Italy that treat bruschetta as the main event, with toppings that rival most pizzerias. Sign me up for that!

The Babbo Cookbook has three bruschetta recipes, all variations on a theme, all really simple.  

This recipe calls for black olive paste. You can easily find it on Amazon.com, but I decided to make my own. It's really easy to make and there are plenty of decent recipes online, just make sure that you get good quality olives. My recipe called for pureeing black olives with olive oil and a touch of vinegar. 

The olive paste gets added to a bowl with cooked ceci beans (garbanzo), olive oil, balsamic vinegar, red pepper flakes, fresh rosemary and basil, garlic, and some salt and pepper. Give it a quick mix and there you go. 

Next, I sliced some good crusty bread, and drizzled some olive oil over the slices. I then took a clove of garlic and rubbed it over each slice. I put them in the oven and toasted until crisp. A grill would work just as well for this step too. 

The ceci bean mixture gets spooned on the bread and served. 

It tasted just as good as I remember and is really easy to make. This is the first plate that is given to you at Babbo and this is my first post as a married man. Our wedding was magical and everything that I hoped it would be. Married life suits me well. Perhaps I can score a reservation for our anniversary. 

My next post will be another one of the bruschetta recipes. We recently had my parents over for dinner and as you can see from the pictures, I offered a couple of these gems as an appetizer. They were quickly scoffed up. 

Until next time...