Thistle

Pyloric stenosis. 

It's a condition that occurs within the first few months of a newborn's life that causes muscle spasms to the intestines, making a newborn projectile vomit. The constant vomiting is troublesome because the baby will starve and dehydrate all at the same time. As if babies didn't have enough to deal with. 

So why am I changing subject and bringing this up? Because my newborn developed pyloric stenosis just four weeks of being on this planet. On Memorial Day, at 7am, she went in for surgery to correct the problem. An incision is made to the muscle and when healed, the vomiting stops. 

The surgery was a success and she is back home with us. Before having her I never realized how I could love something so much. No parent wants to see their child go through something like that. But she's good and so am I. 

The surgery is yet one more thing that we have in common. We were both born two weeks late, on our parents anniversary, via emergency c-section, and both developed pyloric stenosis at four weeks of age. 

So that was our Memorial Day weekend in a nutshell. Not a lot of time for blogging, so I made another one of Babbo's drinks. They are pretty easy to assemble, no cooking or long sourcing trips required, and I could use a stiff drink after our baby scare. 

This recipe features Cynar, a liqueur from Italy made from 13 different herbs and plants, the main ingredient being artichoke. 

Yeah. I'm scared too. 

I take out my wife's drink shaker from college and add ice, orange vodka, Cointreau, Cynar, and orange juice. 

This gets mixed well and poured into a martini glass. Not being one for mixed drinks, I used a different glass as I still have not bought anything for martinis. 

The drink gets garnished with a dash of bitters and a twist of orange. 

My wife and I both had the same reaction...ugh. Orange flavored paint thinner is still paint thinner. I'm sorry Mario I'm more of a wine guy. If you like martinis you would probably dig this drink. But we didn't. 

Oh well. 

There are just two more drinks left in this book to make and I can be done with this chapter once and for all. I promise there will be more cooking very soon. I have a three-day weekend coming up and I plan to make the most of it. Until next time...

Capocollo with Dandelions and Fiddlehead Pickles

In the last post I talked about how I made it to the market just in time for rhubarb season. Well I had another close encounter for this post as well. There were some fiddleheads that showed up at my local farmers market that just had to come home with me. 

If you thought that rhubarb season moves fast, fiddlehead season goes by much quicker. The ones at the farmers market were foraged and had a sale window of about 2 weeks. When products like these become available you have to be flexible enough to get them and use them in the best way possible and quickly. Otherwise, as I found out with the rhubarb, the harvest is over and you have to wait another year to try them. 

Rhubarb really signals the end of winter and the wonderful transition to much warmer climates for me. I love a good strawberry rhubarb pie with whipped cream. Even the last post's dessert could become one of my new traditions. 

Fiddleheads are different, however. They don't yet give me the same seasonal emotional content. I've seen them plenty of times growing up, just never thought to give them a try. They are the fronds of a young fern that are treated as a vegetable. What do they taste like? Imagine asparagus and spinach had an illegitimate love child and you get the picture. Getting to try new things is one of the major perks of doing this project, so I'm eager to jump in. 

In this antipasto preparation, Mario has us pickling the fiddleheads for use in a salad with capocollo, a rich cold cut meat, from the Italian capo or head and collo or neck.  

Babbo makes their own capocollo, the recipe for which was not included in this cookbook. I'm sure that I could have searched for one online and waited the six months or so for it to fully cure, but I didn't want to wait that long. The fiddleheads are ready now. Maybe I'll try to cure some capocollo some day. For now, I just wanted to try this dish. 

Here were the fiddleheads that I found:

Nice huh? I start by pickling the fiddleheads. In a non-reactive sauce pan I boil white wine vinegar, water, sea salt, peppercorns, garlic, fennel seeds, and sugar. I pour this mixture over the fiddleheads and let them cool to room temperature. 

At the same market, I found the dandelion greens for this recipe and I combined them with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. 

The capocollo was fairly easy to find so long as you have a good deli locally to rely on. 

This very simple salad is ready to plate. The thin capocollo slices get arranged around the plate. The greens get placed in the center along with a few of the pickles. 

It was good. Not the best thing ever. But good. 

It's a simple plate, but pickling is a great technique to learn even for the home cook. Pickling adds a much needed acid element to a rich fatty dish, which is why you'll see it popping up in many restaurant menus lately. It's also a great way to preserve food. Don't want to use fiddleheads? Try this recipe with cucumbers fresh from the garden. 

Speaking of garden, I built a raised bed for my vegetables. Everything is planted, including the cardoons that I hope sprout well because I need them badly. Next year I plan on expanding and building more beds, but what I have will work for now. 

I have a good plan for the next few posts, one of which I didn't think that I would be able to make because of how hard the main ingredient is to find. But I'll wash the baby bottles, rock my newborn to sleep, and head back into the kitchen to keep the momentum going. Until next time...

Semolina Budino with Rhubarb and Mint Marmellata

The baby wait is finally over! Our daughter, Dublin Rose, was born on May 3 at 1:10 in the afternoon after a very long labor. She's beautiful, healthy, and making sure that her parents aren't getting much sleep. She also managed to be two weeks late and ended up being born on my wife and I's anniversary. Its a very nice surprise considering that I too was born two weeks late and on my parents anniversary back in 1979! What are the astronomical odds of that?

I planned to post a picture of her sooner but as you can imagine there was a lot going on. Regardless, she's settled in at home and I'm back with cookbook in hand and ready to cook. 

It's a great time to be cooking here in Holyoke as we have finally entered rhubarb season. I missed it by just a few weeks last year, so I wanted to make sure that some stalks came home with me this time around. I've been wanting to try this next recipe since I bought the book. 

Budino is the Italian word for custard or pudding. They are popping up more often on trendy Italian restaurant menus across the country. Mario adds semolina to this one, a type of flour, which I think will change the texture slightly and firm it up to where the budino can free stand on its own. Let's get started. 

There is an omission as to what the oven should be preheated to so we have to assume 350°. I take some more of those handy foil ramekins, butter them, and dust them with sugar. 

In a small sauce pan I add sliced rhubarb, sugar, and a vanilla bean and cook it over medium heat until the rhubarb is tender. 

This mixture needs to cool and as it does I start the budino batter. I use the kitchen aid mixer and beat egg yolks and sugar until they are a very pale yellow. 

Vanilla extract, melted butted, and milk are then added. 

Next up, semolina and cake flour is added. 

The cooled rhubarb is ready to be folded into the batter along with whipped egg whites. 

The batter can now be portioned into the ramekins and put into a baking dish with water that goes up to about 2/3 of the height of the ramekins. The pan gets covered in foil and the budini are baked for about 25 minutes, and additionally up to 10 minutes uncovered until they are set in the middle. I found that 25 minutes was plenty of time in my oven but you making this at home may need the additional time that Mario suggests. 

While the budini are baking, I use the rest of the rhubarb to make the marmellata. In a sauce pan I add finely diced rhubarb, sugar, vanilla bean, and mint, and cook it down slowly for about 10 minutes until tender yet still able to maintain its shape. This too gets cooled completely. 

Finally I'm ready to plate. I wanna try this like right now! The smell in my kitchen is intoxicating. I run a pairing knife around the edge of the budino and put it on the plate, along with a copious amount of the marmellata and some whipped cream. 

The plating is classic Babbo. Simple yet elegant. My wife and I dove into these hardcore! This dessert really lets you know that spring is here. My wife declared this to be her favorite dessert so far. We took some over to my in-laws, because it's hard for us to eat all of the yield, and they too thought that this was a home run. It's just sweet enough without over doing it. I'm glad that I got to make this it was worth the wait. 

The local farmers market has just opened and I'll be checking it out weekly to see what is special that I can bring home. They usually have some great stuff to choose from. It's even on my day off. 

I still haven't quite got around to tilling out my space for my garden yet but I plan to tackle that next Monday. As you can see below, my seedlings are ready for a bigger home. This year I plan on building raised beds to keep everything more organized and looking better, but I'll keep you posted. 

Well the break is over. Back to bottle making, laundry, and holding my precious newborn. Until next time...

Warm Mussel Salad with Gaeta Olives and Oranges

Still no baby so it's back to the kitchen with The Babbo Cookbook in hand. The weather has been beautiful this past week with a few days even making it near 80° so a light salad out of the book will be my dinner for the night. 

The warm weather also prompted me to head to my local Home Depot to buy garden supplies. I bought some seeds and a few seed starter kits along with soil to get things going. Last year my work schedule from my previous job made it impossible to have a garden, but this year will be different. 

I plan on having quite a few tomato plants, tons of lettuce, a separate herb garden, and a few miscellaneous veggies that I'll try growing including some Babbo specific varieties that just never seem to be in my local Whole Foods. Opal basil? Never. Cardoons? They've never head of it. Making salami was one thing but how many people would grow their own produce for a cookbook? It's certainly a first for me but I'll do what what it takes to finish the book. 

But back to my meal. Mario mentions in the recipe liner notes that he loves warm seafood salads. This one was simple to make and has all of the components to be a great dish so I'm going to get right into it. 

The star of the meal, the mussels, were fresh and of the Prince Edward Island variety. I scrubbed them clean and de-bearded them before starting. 

In a sauté pan I boil chopped onion, thyme sprigs, and white wine. I add the mussels, cover them with a lid to trap in the steam, and cook them until they open. This takes about five minutes. 

Once cooked I set the mussels aside to cool and remove them from the shell. 

While the mussels were cooking I brought orange juice to a boil and reduced it by half. When reduced I cooled it and whisked in olive oil and more orange juice to make a citronette. The citronette gets seasoned with salt and pepper to finish. 

Now it's time to make the salad. In a mixing bowl I add frisée, radicchio, scallions, orange segments, olives, and sherry vinegar. 

The warm mussels get added, are seasoned, and tossed to coat. 

I plate the salad, drizzle some of the citronette around the greens and plate, and top with freshly grated orange zest. 

It looks like I was right. The salad was amazing. One of my favorites so far. 

Quality of ingredients plays a key role in this salad again but everything works. It's simple enough for anyone to replicate. My wife and I finished off the rather large serving that this recipe yielded. 

Baby watch continues. I promise to post pictures as soon as she is born. She's a little late, and we are more than ready to welcome her into the world, but it's really just a waiting game at this point. Meanwhile I will keep cooking Babbo. Until next time...

Date and Walnut Delizie with Orange Fiore Di Latte

Well here I am back from a brief early spring break. My wife and I didn't travel anywhere or even take any time off from work, we just had a lot of baby prep going on and my weekends have been spoken for lately (nope, no baby yet). She has officially hit the 9-month mark and we're ready to give birth at any minute. So while I have the opportunity to get back into my home kitchen and dive into The Babbo Cookbook, I am going to take full advantage. 

It's starting to get harder to find recipes to cook now that most of the simple ones are finished. This is also a tough time of year weather wise to source the produce that I need to complete these recipes. Many of these recipes are what I like to call 'restaurant recipes' in that they have everything but the kitchen sink added to them. This is fine for a restaurant in NYC that has access to anything imaginable, but to the home cook it involves longer trips to the market or several markets with the cookbook in hand to make sure that they have everything. 

The recipes are detailed and complex I get it. But as a forewarning for anyone who is attempting to cook heavily from this cookbook, some recipes require a lot of produce and specialty items, some of which only becomes available at certain times of the year. This is why at this stage I bring the book with me to the market because I often find myself one or two ingredients shy of any particular recipe. This was one of the common complaints for those that did gripe about the cookbook on review sites. But the positive side is that you learn more about the seasonality of your food and you become like a modern day hunter and gatherer. 

This next recipe is a dessert that I have passed over many times while flipping through the book. It's not that anything in the recipe sounds off putting and its not like something that I wouldn't try, but it was never on my 'OMG I have to eat this' list. As I have discovered many times when making something from this cookbook I am usually pleasantly surprised by the recipes that I don't think that I will be into. 

Delizie means 'delight' in Italian and it was quite a delightful dessert to make in its ease of preparation and overall great taste. By now with the amount of desserts that I've made for this blog, you should have a pretty clear picture of how Mario approaches his dessert making at Babbo. It closely mirrors my preferences on desserts as well. I tend to like a dessert that's a little smaller of a portion, that's not overly sweet but yet at the same time I want to feel like I'm eating a dessert. 

This little date cake could easily pass as a midday snack or a sweet little muffin like breakfast on the go. It almost has this "grandmas banana bread" quality to it without the addition of the sweet cream on the side. Add in the orange scented cream on the side and now you've kicked it up to full desert status. Let's get started with the preparation. 

The oven gets heated to 350°. I then take walnuts and toast them lightly in the oven. This should take about 15 minutes, then once they are cooled I give them a rough chop. 

While the nuts are in the oven, I grease foil cake molds for the batter that I am about to make. 

Dates get put into a food processor with milk and pulsed to make a chunky purée. 

In a separate bowl I sift flour, baking powder and soda, and salt and set it aside. 

Using the kitchen aid I'm ready to make the batter. Eggs, granulated sugar, and brown sugar get beaten together until light and airy. 

Vanilla extract and melted unsalted butter get added next. 

Next the dry ingredients get added, and I scrape down the sides of the bowl. 

Lastly I add the date purée, the walnuts, and heavy cream and mix until combined. I fill the molds about 2/3 of the way with batter and bake until brown and set. This took about half an hour in my kitchen. 

The sweet cream that accompanies these cakes is really simple. I take creme fraiche, sugar, orange zest, and ricotta and whip it together until stiff peaks form. 

The cakes are plated very simply with the orange cream. 

As I've eluded to in the beginning of this post, this was a winner. The cake was flavorful on its own, but the cream really turned this into a more composed dessert. The recipe serves 12 but I was able to get 14 when using the handy disposable foil baking cups that Mario recommends. My wife and I brought over the extras to the family and our Aunt Lynnie, a long-time subscriber to the blog and occasional taste-tester, confiscated most of what was left. 

For the next post I'm going back to the savory side with a salad that features mussels. Until next time...

Bucatini All'Amatriciana

There's one more recipe in the cookbook that utilizes the guanciale that I labored over and I decided to do it on the same night as the last post and make it my main meal for the evening. 

Bucatini all'amatriciana is a classic Italian pasta dish from the region of Lazio. There are some minor ingredient differences around Lazio where you'll find it, but it always includes guanciale, tomatoes, and pecorino cheese. 

Bucatini is a hard durum wheat pasta, thick and shaped like spaghetti, but with a hollow center. The name comes from the Italian word 'buca' meaning hole. I had to use my trusty Amazon.com to find it seeing how it was absent from any of my local shops. The special UPS delivery is really not necessary because there is nothing wrong with substituting spaghetti for the bucatini. I wanted to stay true to the ingredients in the cookbook, and having never cooked or eaten bucatini, I figured it was worth it to order it at least once for the sake of trying it.  

The ingredient list is a short one, but there is a little prep work that will need to be done in order to make this dish come together. I already have the guanciale so that's taken care of. I will need to make another batch of Mario's basic tomato sauce, though. I'm not going to go into details about how it's made as it was the subject of a previous post, but I will show you my pot of sauce. 

I made a double batch in order to freeze some for future recipes, which reminds me that my basic chicken stock is getting low too. Better put that on the list soon. 

Now I'm ready to dive in. Once you're at this point, the dish comes together super fast. First I bring a pot of salted water to a rapid boil. 

I then add the guanciale to a sauté pan over medium heat, cooking until most of the fat has rendered out. The meat then goes on to a paper towel to drain off the extra fat while I discard half of the fat from the sauté pan. 

I turn the heat up on the sauté pan slightly and cook garlic, sliced red onion, and red pepper flakes. 

The guanciale gets added back to the sauté pan once the garlic and onions are cooked. Some of the basic tomato sauce is added and simmered for about ten minutes. 

While this is happening I drop the bucatini into the boiling water. It'll take a good nine minutes to cook, bucatini is a big pasta. 

Once cooked, the bucatini is added to the sauté pan and tossed with the sauce. It is finished with parsley and fresh grated pecorino Romano, the traditional sheep's milk cheese for this recipe. 

I plate a dish for myself and my wife. 

We had leftover peasant bread from the last post and gorged until our plates were licked clean. It's amazing how some of the simplest recipes are often the best. Babbo still has this on their menu and it's easy to see why. Do yourself a favor if you make it though, get real guanciale. Or better yet, make it like I did. Regardless, this is one of the easiest pasta recipes in the book. Until next time...

Duck Eggs Sunny-Side Up with Guanciale and Truffle Vinaigrette

I had the great fortune to attend a wedding this past weekend for my wife's sister Ashley in old Sturbridge Massachusetts. The ceremony was touching and we had a great time without any hangovers or food comas. Her new husband, Andrew, was my source for the duck eggs that I am going to be using in this next post. 

Andrew hooks me up with duck eggs every year once his prized flock at his farm starts to produce in the early spring. I tried them a few years ago and have been hooked ever since. They're obviously bigger than chicken eggs and have a slightly better flavor to my palette, although I wouldn't recommend baking with them. 

This appetizer is Babbo's version of the classic combo of bacon and eggs. It features homemade guanciale that I've been curing over the past month. Guanciale is kind of like an Italian bacon that is made from the jowl, or cheek, of the pig. Mario writes that it has a depth of flavor that is missing from traditional American bacon. 

This marks my first attempt at curing my own meat at home. It's a very Italian practice, delis and restaurants all over Italy always have meat curing and hanging from the ceiling. And it certainly fits the theme of nothing goes to waste. Curing preserves the meat, which was needed at a time when refrigeration was simply non-existent. But, if this goes well, I can totally see myself doing more of it in the future. Many modern restaurants in America are curing their own meat now. It's cheap, you can control what is and isn't in your salumi, and the opportunity to create something unique that no one else is doing is a great motivator to try it out. Plus, it's a great way to utilize those left-over less popular and miscellaneous parts of the animal.  

The hardest part though, like the preserved lemon recipe or making your own wine, is the long wait for the guanciale to be ready. In the recipe liner notes, Mario tells us that he makes fifty pounds of guanciale a week at Babbo. That's a lot considering the size of their kitchen. I'm not going to get that hog wild but I am eager to get started. 

Here are the pork cheeks:

My butcher had a lot of them and for $0.99/pound it's a steal!

To make the cure rub I mix sugar, salt, peppercorns, and thyme in a bowl. 

The jowls get coated very liberally with the rub. 

The jowls are then place in a non-reactive pan, covered with plastic wrap, and refrigerated for seven days. 

After a week the jowls are tied with butchers twine around their middle and are hung in a dry cool place for an additional three weeks. The area that you hang these should not be warmer than 60°. I have a mud room in the back of my house that isn't heated and has a door that I left the screen in to make sure the meat stayed cold enough. I also hung a garbage bag underneath them to catch any potential drippings that may have occurred. I have to thank my wife for being okay with my experiment and having to be greeted by pork every time she came home through the door from work. Once fully cured the jowls are ready to be sliced and used. 

Next on the ingredient list is the truffle vinaigrette that I need to make. It calls for canned truffle which I was able to find on Amazon.com (let's be honest don't they have everything?) by a company called Truffle Hunter. They're affordable and have a perfect pungent truffle aroma once opened. The black truffles and sherry vinegar are mixed in a bowl. 

Extra-virgin olive oil is slowly whisked in to finish the vinaigrette along with salt and pepper to taste. I'm following Mario's wishes and nonchalantly whisking the oil in to create a slightly 'broken' emulsion. 

The rest of the recipe is very easy and straightforward. I sliced the guanciale at work on the meat slicer to get thin, bacon-like pieces. I heat the guanciale in a sauté pan over medium heat until most of the fat has been rendered. When finished cooking, the guanciale is placed on a paper towel and the fat is discarded from the pan. 

In a large bowl, I add frisée, some olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and salt and pepper and make a quick salad. 

Then, using a nonstick pan, I melt butter over high heat until it stops foaming and crack a duck egg, cooking them sunny-side up. They take about four minutes to cook and then are seasoned with salt and pepper. In heat of the moment I forgot to take a picture of this step and I do apologize. 

I got some nice 'peasant' bread at the market that I will slice, cut on the bias, and use as toast points. 

I'm ready to plate. The salad gets plated in the center and topped with a duck egg, the guanciale gets placed around the center, and the truffle vinaigrette gets spooned around the plate. 

Wow. 

What a perfect appetizer. The duck egg was huge and paired perfectly with the truffle and guanciale, while the lemon juice that dressed the frisée cut through the fat in this dish to help balance things out. I mean, come on, homemade bacon, how could you not like it?

I kept this as an appetizer the night that I made this because I wanted to go guanciale-crazy, although there's nothing wrong with serving this for brunch. There's one more recipe in the cookbook the uses guanciale and while it was in my kitchen, I couldn't lose the chance to make that as well. Until next time...