Monkfish Piccata with Caperberries and Preserved Lemons

I needed a fast dinner for Halloween night just before all of the festivities began, and I found the solution with this next post. 

I have made chicken and veal piccata probably hundreds of times in my professional career, and in western Massachusetts, as far as most restaurants go, those meals are pretty much identically the same. You pan sear your chicken or veal medallions, add some garlic and capers, deglaze with some white wine, reduce until the pan is almost dry and add a copious amount of butter to thicken the sauce. 

According to Mario, this is contrary to the lessons that he learned while he was in Italy. 'What I observed was a looser, less reduced sauce on the plate that was closer to a pan juice, maybe broken with some rivulets of olive oil at the last minute and certainly not thickened with a roux or any other liaison.' So I was intrigued and excited to try Mario's version of this classic Italian dish. 

The ingredient list is relatively short, as is the total cooking time. The recipe does require a little bit of keen grocery shopping though.

We will need caper berries, not capers, which I had to source out on Amazon.com. Turmeric, which I've never seen put in a piccata sauce before, but that is available in almost every run of the mill grocery store. Lastly, we need monkfish, which of course was available at Whole Foods. If you follow along with me at home and can't find monkfish, or are scared to try it, then any other white fish will do. Bear in mind that Mario correctly states in the recipe notes that monkfish is a great way to introduce fish to those that may otherwise prefer chicken. This recipe will also give me an opportunity to use up those preserved lemons from a previous post that I have sitting on my counter.

The best way to approach this recipe is to make sure that our ingredients are prepped ahead of time so that once we start cooking everything will flow nicely. First I cut a lemon into pitiless segments. 

Next, is to shred a bunch of parsley. 

Then, I take two of the preserved lemon quarters and slice them paper thin.

Last up for the prep is the monkfish. It needs to be cut into medallions. 

Now its time to start cooking. The monkfish gets seasoned with salt and pepper, and dredged in seasoned flour, the excess flour being shook off. The monkfish medallions then go in a sauté pan with extra virgin olive oil that's smoking hot. 

The monkfish get turned after about four minutes and golden brown. 

Once the other side of the medallions are cooked, they get placed on a plate lined with paper towels to drain the excess oil. 

Now it's time to start building the pan sauce. To the sauté pan we add wine, tumeric, lemon juice, and caper berries, swirling over high heat for several minutes as the sauce reduces. Two things struck me as odd here: The adding of a pinch of tumeric, and not adding any garlic to the sauce. I have never built my piccata sauce in this manner before, but intrigued I continue. 

At this point the sauce has reduced down as much as I wish to take it, so I turn off the heat and season with salt and pepper, and add the lemon segments, preserved lemon slices, and parsley to the pan. The monkfish also goes back in the pan and it all gets swirled with a little bit more of extra-virgin olive oil off the heat, creating what we in the kitchen would call a 'broken sauce'.  Again, this is different because there is no addition of butter, roux, or buerre-manie that I would normally use to thicken a sauce. 

I'm now ready to plate the monkfish. 

Flavor wise, there was a lot going on here. The brine from the caper berries came through, the lemon flavor was intense, and the tumeric gave the pan sauce a beautiful golden sheen. Overall, this was a really progressive take on a classic. If you hate lemon, then this isn't the dish for you. But eating this makes me feel like I am on the Italian coast overlooking the beautiful sea. I am totally stealing this recipe!

There's so much left to do before the end of the year so keep reading. Until next time...

Acorn Squash Sformatto

God I love my wife. 

I really do!

Between the last post and what you see here, she organized and threw me an epic surprise birthday party. I had no idea, no clue that she could be so sneaky. 

The house was filled with family and friends while I was brought to the mall, which I later found out was to kill time for the set-up. I come home, she leads me in the door, and I think I actually jumped when I heard them scream, 'Happy Birthday'. It was an amazing way to start my 35th year of life on this planet. 

Speaking of surprises, she also got me my dream chef's knife for a present, the Japanese Shun classic pictured below. I decided to switch over to Japanese steel a while ago as I became more dissatisfied with my Wustof. The Shun fits in my hand so much better, it's lighter, and holds an edge longer. Getting one of these babies means that now I can finally leave the clerk at Williams & Sonoma alone and stop stalking those knives in the display case. I was eager to try out my new knife and what a better way to do so than to use it on some acorn squash. 

Sformato in Italian comes from the verb sformare and means 'to unmold'. It's hard to pinpoint what it is exactly, more like a custard than anything, but it looked good in the book and there's plenty of acorn squash to go around this time of year, so why not? 

Little did I know from the looks of it that this was such an involved recipe with many parts, so I really had my work cut out for me. Let's dive into this. 

First, I heat the oven to 325°.  I cut some acorn squash down the equator to create three pieces. Two parts gets tossed with olive oil and wrapped in foil, and the other piece gets set aside for the salad garnish. 

I also take some Cipollini onions, toss them with olive oil, wrap them in foil, and bake them in the oven with the squash until tender, which took about 45 minutes in my oven. Before I went on my ingredient quest for this cooking mission, I called around to all of the local grocery stores to see if any of them had cipollini onions for sale, and it should be noted that the only one that did was...you guessed it...Whole Foods. Is there any reason to shop anywhere else?

Once the squash cooled, I scooped the flesh out into a mixing bowl and gave it a good mashing. To this, I add egg yolk, whole eggs, fresh Parmesano-Reggiano, mascarpone cheese, nutmeg, and salt and pepper. 

I took the reserved egg white and whipped it to a stiff peak. 

I then added it to the custard and gently folded it in, being careful not to deflate the whites. 

This mixture was put into buttered mold cups and put in a deep roasting pan, where warm water was added to come about halfway up the sides of the cups. 

This pan then gets wrapped in foil and put in a 400° oven for about 35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the center of the custards. 

While these are baking, I remove the stems from shittake mushrooms and put them in a small baking pan with a hefty amount of extra-virgin olive oil, chopped sage, and garlic. The mushrooms get roasted until tender, or about 15 minutes. 

When finished, the mushrooms need to cool slightly and the oil gets strained and reserved. 

While all of that is working, (told you there was a lot going on here), I get a small sauce pan and heat some more extra-virgin olive oil to 300° and deep-fry some sage leaves for the garnish. They take about 30 seconds to fry. I removed them from the oil with a slotted spoon and put them on a plate lined with paper towels to help remove the extra grease. The kitchen smells amazing so far but with all of this going on I'm running around a little ragged to get all of the components ready. 

The finish line is in sight, just a little more prep to go. I take the reserved acorn squash, give it a julienne, and toss it with some olive oil and seasoning. This is then set aside. 

Next, I have to make a mushroom vinaigrette. OMG! Will I ever get to the end of this recipe??

I pour some sherry vinegar into a small bowl and whisk in the reserved strained mushroom cooking oil and season with salt and pepper. The vinaigrette gets set aside. 

Okay....finally....I'm ready to plate this thing! I spoon the shiitakes in the center of the plate. The sformato gets unmolded on top of the mushrooms. I place one of the cipollini onions next to the sformato. The raw, julienned squash goes on top of the sformato as a garnish, along with the fried sage leaves. I then spoon some of the mushroom vinaigrette on top of everything and around the plate. The whole thing gets a healthy shaving of fresh Parmesano-Reggiano. 

My wife and I both used the same word to describe this dish...underwhelming. I loved the taste of the shiitakes, (my wife won't touch any kind of mushrooms). I was at first hesitant about the addition of the julienne of raw squash, but later loved the texture that it gave the dish. But unfortunately, even with everything that was going on in the plate, the main component, the sformato, didn't really wow me. 

I didn't hate this dish mind you. I just feel that I wouldn't go through all of the trouble to make it again anytime soon. This one took a lot out of me and it probably would scare the shit out of most home cooks.  But then again, this isn't a cookbook for kindergarten either. Good food takes time, preparation, and attention to detail. This is why I am here. I want to learn and be challenged like never before, pushing my boundaries as far as they will go. And from the looks of things, they are about to be pushed even further. 

Until next time...

Pumpkin Lune with Butter and Sage

What would October be without one of these guys? 

The pumpkin is truly a New England fall ambassador that's everywhere this time of year, and luckily for us, The Babbo Cookbook has a few recipes that feature this fall icon. People around here put almost as much thought into picking their pumpkins as they do to choosing their Christmas tree. 

Our recipe notes tell us that this dish is native to Mantova, in northern Lombardy. It's sandwiched between Bologna and Parma, two of the most influential culinary hubs not just in Italy, but of the world. Mario, according to his bio, spent an intense few years training in and around this area. It really must have had a huge impact on him because Mario even named one of his first restaurants after the nearby Po river. I can only imagine what cooking here would have been like. 

Lune refers to the shape of the ravioli and it means 'little moons' in Italian. I've had ravioli filled with pumpkin and various other squash in my day, but what makes this dish unique is that he grates an amaretti cookie over the plated ravioli, along with Parmesan cheese. In Mantova, the amaretti are crushed and found inside the filling. How you go about incorporating the amaretti in the dish is personal preference I believe, but I wanted to see what impact it had on the overall taste. Texture wouldn't really be a concern, after all, many times I'll see the use of breadcrumbs in a pasta recipe. 

Checking the ingredients list, we already know that we'll need to make a batch of the amaretti cookies. I saved a few from what we made in the last blog post, so that saves a little time. You could leave that step out, but on this blog we are replicating all of the recipes as close as humanly possible, so no short cuts!

The oven gets heated to 350°. The pumpkin is then halved and seeded, it gets drizzled with olive oil and placed on a baking sheet in the oven until very soft. 

Once it's finished roasting and cools slightly, I scoop the flesh into a bowl and add fresh grated Parmesan cheese, nutmeg, balsamic vinegar, and season with salt and pepper. 

You can tell by this familiar mound what my next step is. I swear I'm going to be an expert in pasta by the end of this endeavor. One word of caution when following his pasta dough recipe, it does tend to be a little bit dry. I believe that this is so because when he has us add squid ink, mint purée, or spinach purée to the egg/oil mix for other recipes, we're adding more liquid by nature to the flour, so those doughs would have the necessary extra moisture that's needed to incorporate all of the flour he advises to use. Otherwise if the basic pasta recipe had more egg or oil with the combination of those purées, it would make the dough too liquidy. It took some experimentation and contemplating to really get this. If you're just making the basic pasta dough recipe on page 102, I'd either add one egg or use a half cup less flour to avoid a really dry dough. And even though I have a sweet KitchenAid mixer, I still prefer to get my hands dirty and use the well method to make the pasta. 

Once mixed and rested, I roll the pasta out on the thinnest setting of a pasta machine, and place a tablespoon of the pumpkin filling on the pasta sheet about every few inches. 

I then roll out another sheet in the same manner and place it over the top of the pumpkin. You need to press around the filling to get the air out and seal the two sheets together. 

This brings me to another interesting point that I thought I would bring up. In cooking school and working in other professional kitchens, many chefs are taught that the ravioli need to be sealed with either an egg wash, or a brushing of water with a pastry brush. The 'purists' would have you believe that water is the best option to use to seal the ravioli together because the egg wash would make the pasta too tough. But upon reading Mario's instructions, I noted that he doesn't use either to make his ravioli. It's not really mentioned in any of his fresh pasta recipes, it's just something that I discovered by reading in between the lines. So I tried it his way and it actually worked perfectly. 

I then used a round ravioli cutter to shape the lune. But, after looking at my cuts, I see that because the ravioli cutter is flutted, the lune's edges looked more like rays of the sun than a round moon. So I cut the rest with a biscuit cutter and it looked better. (Hey I've got to get this right) Once they are shaped, I give each one a checking to ensure they are fully sealed. Otherwise, they will explode open when dropped in water to cook. 

I then bring salted water to a boil and drop in the pasta. 

As that cooks I heat butter until melted and foamy and toss in some fresh sage leaves. 

When the lune are done, I add to the butter/sage, toss, and grate Parmesan cheese over them. 

The lune are ready to plate, where they get more cheese and a grating of the amaretti cookie. 

Wow. My wife and I both were impressed with this meal. Simple yet elegant, it was definitely worth all of the prep work. It really helped us celebrate and bring in fall in a proper way.

The pasta was tender and the filling was so flavorful. I love the flavor that the sage brought to the plate. Everything work in such a harmonious way. If there was anything that I would do differently, I would probably choose to peel and then dice the pumpkin before roasting and then purée the mixture in a food processor. Otherwise if you follow the recipe this way by scooping out the flesh of the pumpkin from the skin, the flesh itself sometimes tends to become a little stringy almost like a spaghetti squash. Again, it wasn't off-putting to either of us. It's just that most ravioli fillings that we are used to are often puréed to a smoother consistency. 

I'm going to keep this fall theme going for a little while. As I said in the last post, there are so many really great fall recipes in here to make. Until next time...

Amaretti

October is finally here! I love October. The foliage is at it's peak in Holyoke and looking beautiful. Pumpkins are ripe for picking. You can smell the wood stoves in the neighborhood. And with the chilly nights that we've been having I decided to bake something. 

This recipe is also needed for the next blog post soon to come which will be probably the most quintessential October pasta ever. Even if you don't follow along with me to the end of that one, this cookie alone is a quick, tasty, and simple treat to enjoy in October or any month of the year for that matter. 

I started by putting almonds, cornstarch, and confectioners sugar in a food processor. It gets pulsed until it's ground into a fine powder. 

Then I put some egg whites in my kitchen aid mixer and beat the whites until foamy. 

I then gradually add granulated sugar, almond extract, and amaretto while the mixer is running. The egg whites should be somewhat stiff at this point. 

Next I use a rubber spatula and carefully fold in the almond/sugar mixture to the egg whites. 

At this point, Mario recommends either putting the batter into a piping bag or spooning out the batter onto a sheet pan to bake. I opted for the spoon, although the piping bag would make the end product look prettier. Each cookie gets sprinkled generously with sugar before baking. 

The cookies get baked at 300° for 15 minutes, then the heat is lowered to 200° for another half hour. 

When they're completely dry and crisp in the middle the cookies are done. 

This was the second cookie recipe that I made out of the book and so far I'm impressed. These tasted amazing! Wonderful almond flavor. These are the kind of cookie your grandmother would give you. I enjoyed mine with tea in front of my first fire of the year. 

I am eager to see how this will fit into the next recipe. Do you want to know what it is?

Okay, well for the next post I am making Mario's pumpkin ravioli, (see I told you it's a a great October recipe), and in addition to grating Parmesan cheese over the top, Mario grates one of these cookies over the ravioli to give them a breadcrumb like texture. I can't wait. Until next time...