Barbequed Octopus with Yukon Golds and Spicy Tangerine Citronette

This next post was finished last week with the two drink recipes, but I seemed to have had a struggle in finding any time to be able to write it out (Damn you Netflix and your Full House reunion!). I didn't want to rush through the writing either. I wanted to take my time in the explanations seeing how I ventured into new territory here with the cooking of this post. 

I've never cooked octopus before, much less ever tasted it. How many red-blooded Americans can say that they have? So I was excited at the opportunity to learn something new through the indirect guidance of our master chef Mario. 

As I've written about before, NYC is a tough crowd to please. With so many people and so many options everyday, a chef really has his or her work cut out to draw in new diners and to keep turning the tables in their restaurant. Mario talks about this in the opening preface of the book when he states 'I like using offbeat ingredients because NYC's voracious eaters want the intellectual stimulation of trying something few of of them will cook at home'. Octopus is probably not something that will make it to the table anytime soon in your neighborhood so I think it fits the bill.  

Yet, it is a sea creature, which if caught, would not have been discarded when food is scarce. It was relatively cheap to buy, only $3.19 a pound at my local butcher. And to be able to make a great dish using a scary looking or 'offbeat' ingredient palatable that few have ever come across is what, in my opinion, separates the chefs from the cooks. The bravado in saying 'Yup, we've got the only octopus in town and its on our menu, beat that!' may also have a little part to play in the growing popularity of obscure ingredients. 

This was the five-pound specimen that I brought home from my local butcher. 

Cute, I know. And plenty to feed a big family if you can find anyone brave enough to come over and try it. (I was not that lucky so it was just my wife and I)

The octopus was the most 'out there' ingredient in the recipe list as all of the other ingredients were readily available to me at my local Whole Foods. I know that I needed a wine cork to cook with the octopus to create 'some magical chemical reaction to make the octopus tender while retaining its leathery mouth feel' as Mario outlines in the recipe notes. Wine cork, hmm shouldn't be too hard to find one of those hanging around here. 

I start by preheating the oven to 300°. I take out my Dutch oven and heat some olive oil until almost smoking and add garlic and red pepper flakes. 

Next, I add the octopus to the pan and cook it on all sides over high heat until it has released its liquids, which was more that I was expecting, and has changed in color. I put in the wine cork, cover the pan with aluminum foil, and cook the octopus in the oven for about two hours. 

While that's cooking, I bring some salted water up to a boil. Diced Yukon gold potatoes get added to the pot with thinly sliced red onion. These are cooked until tender but still firm and then plunged into an ice bath to halt further cooking. 

I still have a little time before the octopus is ready so I make the tangerine citronette. I use a small saucepan to boil tangerine juice down with some red pepper flakes. It should be reduced by half. Now, you could juice the tangerines or do what I did and buy a bottle of fresh tangerine juice which is much easier. Your choice. 

Once reduced and cooled, I add champagne vinegar to the juice with salt and pepper. I whisk olive oil into this mixture, but Mario emphasizes not to try and make it a perfectly emulsified vinaigrette, that it should be slightly 'broken'. 

The octopus is finished cooking. I must admit it did make the house smell nice so let's see how it came out. 

The sliced onions and potatoes get tossed with diced raw red onion, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper. 

The potato mixture gets put on the plate. The octopus tentacles get cut and placed on the potatoes, and the citronette gets spooned around the center. Chives are the garnish here as per the recipe but aren't in the dish at all. They do go with the potatoes but if you wanted to leave them out it wouldn't be a huge loss. 

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for. The tasting. 

Hmmm.

Well.

The potatoes were good.

I love the citronette.

But I'm sorry the texture was just...wrong. I gave it a chance, and I can at least say that I tried it. But I won't ever eat octopus again in my life. My wife came to the same conclusion. That poor woman. I'm really shocked that she agree to try it. I give her props, but it was quickly spit out. Sorry Mario but I just think this one was over my head. 

It's not the end of the world. At least I have the guanciale to look forward to which will be officially ready tomorrow. There's a few recipes that use it in the cookbook and my goal is to try and do them both simultaneously. It will require some speciality ingredients that I'll have to look for online. But I'm dying to see how it came out. Until next time...

Anna 'Sta Notte

This next recipe is the last Prosecco based cocktail in the beginning chapter of the cookbook. I wasn't a big fan of the last drink so I'm hoping that this one will be slightly better. Limoncello is also featured in this recipe along with grappa. 

Grappa is a distilled spirit that is high in alcohol content and is made from the leftover grape skins from the final pressings when making wine. You have to hand it to the Italians in coming up with a crafty way to do something with leftover product. To me, on its own it's quite harsh, so hopefully adding it to the Prosecco will smooth it out a little bit. 

In an almost identical preparation as the last recipe, some grappa gets placed in a large spoon and a sugar cube is added. 

Once the sugar cube has absorbed the grappa, it gets added to the champagne flute. The sugar cube gets topped with limoncello and Prosecco just as in the last recipe. 

I liked this drink much better than the Amarina from the last post. However, it was a bit too sweet for me to have on any regular basis. It's really a perfect chick drink. I had to go solo with trying this recipe considering that my wife is pregnant and she couldn't have any booze. 

There are three more drink recipes left in this cookbook. There will probably be some time before you catch me mixing my next cocktail for this blog. The rest of the drinks are similar to each other as well, and they involve buying some specialty bottles of liquor that are quite costly to purchase all at the same time so I will be buying them a little at a time. If I had more dinner parties at my house on days off with drinkers that would appreciate them, then I can understand expanding my liquor cabinet stock. But that is not happening and I don't need to get them all right away. Instead I choose to tackle some more of the recipes in the book with obscure ingredients. 

Next up I'm going to be cooking with a fish that I've never cooked before in my life. Octopus. Until next time...

Amarina

These next two posts will be coming from the drink chapter of the cookbook. Both feature Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine, as the main ingredient base of the cocktail. 

Both are very simple to put together, especially in a pinch when company comes over at the last minute, and will infuse some flavor into your Prosecco. 

This first recipe features limoncello, which is a spirit that is made in southern Italy from the peels of a lemon. Trying the limoncello on its own, I found it to be quite smooth, even for someone such as myself who tends to not like any hard liquor. As a sipped it, I felt as if I were in a villa overlooking the southern Italian coast on a warm summer day. 

To start, I place some Angostura bitters any large spoon and add a sugar cube. When the sugar cube has absorbed the bitters I put it into a champagne flute. 

The lemon cube then gets topped with the limoncello and Prosecco and it is ready to serve. 

I had to use the champagne flutes that my wife and I received as a gift at our wedding. I don't have my own champagne flute collection because I tend to drink the same type of wine at home, usually red. Hey, you like what you like.  

Overall, to me this drink was a little bit too bitter from my personal taste. I can't imagine having this drink without something to eat to go along with it, but maybe that's just me and my preference. I think the drink is a little bit too 'Real Housewives of Orange County' and I am a little bit too 'Duck Dynasty' for me to get into it. 

In the next post, I will make the other Prosecco based cocktail. Until next time...

Proscuitto San Daniele with Black Pepper Fett'unta and Winesap Apple Marmellata

The Super Bowl is finally over and done with. It was a busy one at the restaurant. Like 1200 pounds of wings busy! And I didn't even count the number of pizzas that we sold. Factor in that there are lots of restaurants in the town, and lots of towns per state and we Americans must have easily took out 3/4 of the entire chicken population all in one night. 

A food holiday like that basically involves a week's worth of prep for four insanely busy hours of work. I've often wondered if people realize just what goes into making their meals come together at their favorite restaurant. Babbo, although they aren't of the chicken wing caliber, must still have their struggles in feeding the huge NYC populace and keeping up with their changing food demands. 

Some of the dishes that Babbo puts out are truly unique works of food art, while others are timeless classics with a twist, kind of like the recipe that is the focus of this post. Mario is in the position to constantly be creative and new to keep relevant while staying true to his style which is rooted in rustic, no frills food. Rustic and no frills couldn't better describe this next recipe. 

The shopping for this post was as easy as was the assembly so I'm going to get right into it. Not much really needs to be cooked for this dish. In a heavy sauce pan I add sugar and water and bring it to a boil. Once boiling I add apples that have been cut into quarter inch half moon slices. Mario recommends using Winesap apples which go perfect for this type of dish, however I had to choose a very close alternative as they were not available yet at my Whole Foods store. 

The apples get cooked for about 10 minutes until slightly tender. While that is cooking I put dry mustard into a small bowl and add just enough water to form a thin paste. I then add mustard oil, black mustard seeds, and salt-and-pepper. 

I add this to the apple mixture and continue cooking it for about another 20 minutes. Then it gets removed from the heat it is allowed to cool. 

Spinach then gets placed in a large salad bowl it is tossed with some fresh lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil and salt and pepper to make a very simple dressed salad. 

Then in a separate bowl I add more extra-virgin olive oil and some freshly cracked black prepper and make my own black pepper oil. 

At this point everything on the dish is completed and it's ready to plate. The prosciutto, which is a variety called San Danielle, gets plated with a mound of the spinach salad, a generous portion of the Apple marmalade, some grilled crusty bread, and a drizzle of the pepper oil. 

This is probably one of the simplest antipasto's that you will find in the cookbook. It would even count as a great alternative upscale finger food snack for your Super Bowl party. Again, quality of ingredients is key but everything in this dish works so well together. I loved it, my wife loved it. She thought that perhaps some sliced Parmesan cheese would be perfect to add to this as well and I agree. But overall you can't go wrong here. 

Valentine's Day is coming up at the end of the week. I have to work at the restaurant so my wife and I are celebrating it on the Monday after. I'm going to try and get another post in but I can't make any promises as I will be doing a good amount of cooking for her, my valentine. Until next time... 

Mint Tagliatelle with Lamb and Olives

My favorite part of winter is when you get the chance to break out those classic hearty braised dishes that fill and warm you up until the cold winter's chill is out of your bones. I let it be known to anyone who asks that overall I hate winter. I would much rather have it be summer all year round. But the trade-off is that here in New England we are blessed with having four distinct seasons, each of which brings it's own opportunity to showcase not only what is available but what is appropriate for the time that you are having it. 

These meals often involve utilizing parts of the animal that are tougher, which would require longer,slower, moist heat cooking methods. These cuts of meat are tougher because they are the most worked part of the animal, and because of that they tend to have the most flavor. 

Don't get me wrong, I am not knocking a good quality grilled ribeye or New York strip steak, but there is not really much that needs to be done with those cuts. It's hard to screw up a fillet mignon on the grill, so long as you don't overcook it to death. But the real skill of a quality cook is when they can take some of the less desirable parts of the animal, the tougher cuts, the throwaway pieces, and make a delicious meal out of them. This is perhaps why Mario states in the cookbook that you will never see a filet mignon on the menu at Babbo. 

It's not that he has anything personal against beef tenderloin. And I'm sure that back in Italy they wouldn't have thrown that cut out either. The idea is to come up with ways to utilize the rest of the animal once those prized cuts are used up. In this way you stretch out the meals while honoring the life of the animal by utilizing everything in it. And in doing so, one will quickly realize that most of these alternative cuts taste better than some of the "prime cuts". 

This is one of the central themes that are prevalent throughout this cookbook which is why I feel that The Babbo Cookbook is an important one in any serious cook's library. This next recipe is a prime example of what I've just been talking about. 

As promised last week, this recipe is a little bit involved. We have to braise lamb shoulder and make a hearty Ragu, and also make fresh pasta. It's been cold enough lately for me to finally try this recipe out so I'll get right into it. 

It really doesn't matter if you make the pasta first or start with the Ragu. I started with the Ragu first because it takes a couple of hours to braise and become really tender, which will give me plenty of time to knock out a batch of pasta dough. 

I take out my Dutch oven and heat olive oil over high heat until it is just about smoking. I have some lamb shoulder meat that I have cut into 1 inch chunks, seasoned, and thrown into the Dutch oven to start browning. You have to be careful and avoid overcrowding the pan as it will lower the temperature and you won't get a good sear. 

Once I have browned the meat I remove it onto a plate and add carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and thyme. I sweat these vegetables until they are tender. 

Next I add red wine and canned, whole San Marzano tomatoes that I have crushed by hand. I use a wooden spoon to dislodge any of the brown bits on the bottom of the pan called fond. 

This mixture gets brought to a boil and then I return the meat to the pan and reduce it to a simmer. I let this go for about two hours until the meat is extremely tender. The wonderful smell quickly fills my kitchen. 

While that's going I start making my fresh pasta dough. I bring some water up to a boil and throw in some mint leaves to blanch them. Once they are cooled off from the water bath I squeeze them in a paper towel to dry the mint leaves out. 

The mint leaves then go into the food processor and are puréed to form a very fine paste. The eggs and olive oil are also added, and from here I just use the familiar well method and finish making the pasta dough by hand. I can see specks of the mint in my pasta dough but I don't have that pure green color that Mario shows in the picture in the book. Not really sure what happened here but I will go back at some point and mess around with it again. 

The pasta dough has to rest for a half an hour before I can roll it out and cut the tagliatelle shape. I have plenty of time as my lamb still needs to continue it's cooking. It gets cut into 1/4 inch wide strips. 

Once the lamb is tender enough I take the pan off the heat and remove the meat from the pan. It gets shredded with a fork and returned to the pan. 

I then add olives that are pitted and simmer this for an additional 30 minutes. Mario recommends using arbequina olives but I was unable to find any at Whole Foods, so I selected a very close alternative. 

At this point the mixture is a thick Ragu so it needs to be seasoned with salt and pepper and I remove the sprigs of thyme. 

I bring my pasta cooking water up to boil in season it with salt and drop in my tagliatelle. It only takes a few minutes to get to al dente at which point I combine it with the lamb Ragu. 

The pasta is plated and I shave a generous amount of Parmigiano-reggiano cheese over-the-top.  

Wow. All I can say is wow. 

This pasta tastes as good…no better than it looks in the cookbook! Because it is lamb my wife was too squeamish about even trying it. Well that was her loss, that means more for me. 

The flavor of the mint in the pasta was kind of overshadowed by the hearty Ragu. But overall it was still an extremely tasty dish and perfect for this time of year. Lamb is kind of a treat for me and I do not get to have it that often. But I had enough left over to enjoy it twice during the week. 

I have another simple antipasto dish coming up next but I'm also excited that after calling my local butcher I was able to get my hands on some pork jowls. My local butcher is a few towns over from where I live which is not that far but I don't get a chance to walk around there as often as I would like. They are starting to sell a lot more of the alternative cuts that Mario features in this book which is really cool. So as soon as I finish writing this I am going to start curing them to make the guanciale used in the cookbook. Until next time...