Braised Short Ribs with Horseradish Gremolata (Bresato al Barolo)

'To understand meat cookery is to understand the science of heat transfer.'

That's quite deep isn't it? I mean, just reading that statement from the opening paragraph of the meat chapter in The Babbo Cookbook, and I feel like a Zen student, shaven head and all, sitting at the foot of Master Batali, on the path to culinary enlightenment. 

But what Mario is trying to say is that when the home-cook becomes familiar with the different cuts, grades, and the anatomy of meat, the different ways of injecting flavor into those cuts, and how to properly handle them, meat cookery then becomes a cinch. With a little bit of practice and perhaps even a Google search or two, the novice cook can then take a fearless gander into any grocery store and find a myriad of possibilities for dinner, without the need to buy the most expensive cuts of steak because of the fear of what to do with what cut of meat. 

So far the recipes in every chapter have kept with Mario's food philosophy as to why Babbo does what they do, and this chapter is no different. For example, Mario points out and rightfully so that the tougher or fattier cuts of meat tend to have more flavor because they come from well used muscles. It is because of this reason that cuts of meat like osso bucco or short ribs have so much more flavor then a filet mignon, which Mario states will never show up on a menu in one of his restaurants. 

He seems to celebrate the alternative cuts of meat mostly because this is the tradition found in Italy. In America we tend to eat the boneless skinless chicken breast or the beef tenderloin and throw the rest of the animal out because we don't quite know what to do with it. In Italian culture nothing goes to waste. 

It is after all understandable how we became to eat the way that we do. We are blessed in this country with just tons of open space and farmland. Through the use of farming ingenuity, we are able to produce of lot of cheap agriculture and meat. So because of that, it's affordable to put the 16 ounce ribeye or fillet mignon on our plates almost every single night for dinner and throw away the rest of the animal. It is important to remember though that other countries don't have the ability to grow as much livestock as we do, and all of this cheap meat comes at a price for our health. (Can you tell that I have been reading a lot of Michael Pollan lately?)

So considering that the weather has been getting a little colder here and we're celebrating alternative cuts of meat, I chose this next post which made a wonderful dinner the other night when I needed a hearty meal to fill my tub. 

Braising is a moist heat cooking method that takes a tough cut of meat, and over the course of several hours, tenderizes it in a way that will bring a tear to your eye. The smell from the combination of the ingredients in this recipe that we will soon go over will turn your house into a magnet for anyone who is hungry. 

I start by preheating the oven to 375°  I take out my heavy bottomed Dutch oven and heat some extra-virgin olive oil until smoking. Then, I heavily season these sweet short ribs that I found at the market, and brown them over high heat on all sides. The browning here is a key point because as Mario notes the final braise will not be as intensely flavored or colored if you give the ribs a light sear. This step should take about a total of 15 minutes. 

Once properly browned,  I remove the ribs on to a dinner plate and set them aside and start sweating my mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery) and garlic in the pan until softened. 

The veggies get seasoned, then I deglaze with Barolo wine, scraping up the brown bits called fond. Here is also where I add whole peeled tomatoes crushed by hand, and brown stock that we made in a previous post. 

Ohh forgot to mention that I also throw in a bunch of whole thyme, rosemary, and oregano. These herbs are just to flavor the pan juices so they don't need to be chopped. The short ribs go back to the pan and the mixture is brought to a boil. 

At this point Mario said to cover the Dutch oven with aluminum foil and put it in the oven, but I covered the pan with a vented parchment paper lid. I learned this technique from The French Laundry Cookbook and the gradual slow cooking allows for a little loss of liquid, creating more of a sauce as opposed to a broth. The ribs get cooked for at least two hours or until they are fork tender. 

This is really all there is to do to make the ribs, but upon inspecting the ingredient list, I see that Mario pairs the ribs with a pumpkin orzo. The recipe is in the contorno or side dish chapter. I could have highlighted that in another blog post, but I'll just include it in this one and give you two recipes for the price of one. It only takes about 20 minutes to make so we can time it for when the ribs are about ready to pull from the oven. 

For the orzo, some pumpkin gets cubed, tossed with olive oil, seasoned, and roasted until tender. When finished and taken out of the oven, it needs to cool then go into the bowl of a food processor, along with honey, balsamic vinegar, and salt pepper. This mixture gets blitzed to form a relatively smooth purée. 

Next some salted water is brought to a boil and orzo is dropped in to blanch. With an ice bath nearby, the orzo gets drained after three minutes and plunged into the ice bath to stop the cooking. This is not enough time to fully cook the orzo, but it's okay because the orzo will cook more later on. I should note here that orzo is a rice shaped pasta. It can be a little confusing to people but it is pasta. 

Some more of the homemade brown chicken stock is brought up to a boil along with the pumpkin purée, and the orzo is added in. The orzo is done when the stock is fully absorbed. This then gets seasoned. 

Okay so there is one more component to the short rib dish after all. It's quick and it's something that I didn't want to do too far ahead of time for quality purposes. I have to make the gremolata garnish. It's super simple. You take a handful of fresh parsley and grate in some fresh horseradish and lemon zest and toss to combine. That's it. 

The suspense is killing me because it smells so damn good in my house right now, so I'm ready to start plating. I spoon some of the pumpkin orzo onto the plate, place a couple of the short ribs on the orzo, spoon some of the pan juices over the short ribs, and top with the fresh gremolata. 

Was it tasty? I'll let you be the judge of that...

Without a doubt this has to be my favorite recipe in this book so far. While I wasn't a big fan of the pumpkin orzo, I would continue to make short ribs in this manner for many years to come. This after all is real cooking. Anyone can take a tenderloin and cook it for a little while and produce a somewhat tender cut of meat. It takes skill to take a tough piece of meat and turn it into something as soft as butter with a rich flavor. For the people who are following along with me at home, this technique of braising is something that you really must master. 

I'm not really sure which chapter my next blog post will come from. After completing this short rib dish, I feel like I just completed my magnum opus, like I have made it to the top of the mountain. But there's more to do and more to learn. Until next time...

Pumpkin Cake with Toasted Pine Nuts and Olive Oil Gelato

I seem to be knocking out a lot of the dessert recipes in this cookbook. I don't want to give you the impression that this is just a literary work of sugary confections, there's certainly way more to Babbo than that. But if you had to ask most chefs what their weak points are in the kitchen, 8 out of 10 would probably say making a strong dessert. And I am one of those 8, which makes this project all the more purposeful. Plus, I have a nagging sweet tooth that constantly needs attention. 

Most chefs treat savory cooking a little bit like the way your grandmother used to do it, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, bam you have dinner. Desserts are an entirely different animal. Desserts require finesse and exact precision. Which is probably why most chefs treat them with disdain, because in a fast paced, understaffed, busy kitchen who has the time for extra finesse and precision. So chefs tend to lump dessert making right up there with monthly inventory.....ugh. 

But desserts are a necessary component to any celebratory or special meal dined out. From a business perspective, they are usually almost always very cheap to make, making it a profitable no-brainer for any restaurant owner. And if you manage to score a reservation at a Michelin starred restaurant such as Babbo, the general consensus, at least for me would be, 'we're here, we're spending the money, fuck it we're trying everything!'

I mean, if you've gone to the trouble to travel to New York City, score a reservation at one of the city's finest restaurants, and have prepared your palette for a culinary adventure of a lifetime, wouldn't you want to try something a little off the wall? Something different than the molten chocolate lava cake that you get at your favorite local chain? 

That's why I can really appreciate this cookbook. You can get a glimpse into the Michelin-starred world, brought into your home, with recipes that are creative yet accessible. You're challenged, but in a way that's still doable. For example, in this post I make a pumpkin cake, not a real challenge per se, but Mario pairs it with a homemade olive-oil gelato. So we have something fairly common paired with the off-the-wall.

Olive oil gelato, to me, at least at first, sounded not so appetizing. But it presents a way to practice technique, a cool one at that, and Mario does promise in the liner notes that 'while perplexing at first, it will only take one bite to be slayed.' 

Of course, before we start, you should know that you will need an ice-cream maker to make the gelato. Is it worth buying one? I think so. Each one that you buy is a little quirky, and it takes practice to master your maker, but once you fiddle around with it, you can make any flavor you want fairly easily. And you can rest assured that there won't be any artificial ingredients, preservatives, or funky commercial stabilizers in the batch that you make at home. 

To get started, the oven gets preheated to 325°  I spray a cake mold with cooking spray, then spread some pine nuts on a baking sheet to toast to a golden brown. 

While the pine nuts cool, I put some golden raisins in a bowl and pour a little bit of boiling water spiked with brandy over them to plump. 

Next I can start making the cake. I use my KitchenAid to beat some eggs and brown sugar until very light. 

I add some chopped fresh rosemary, (yes, rosemary) which I clipped from my garden. 

With the mixer running, I slowly drizzle in the extra-virgin olive oil. 

Once incorporated, the dry ingredients get mixed in, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. 

Lastly, pumpkin purée, pine nuts, and golden raisins get added to the mix. 

The batter is put in the mold and baked for around 40 minutes. The baking time will be shortened if you use the smaller, individual cake molds for the recipe. 

Next is to make the gelato. I'm a little nervous at this point because I haven't always had the best of luck making ice cream in my maker, (told you they're quirky). But here goes nothing. Using the KitchenAid again, I beat egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale and they form a ribbon when the whip is lifted. 

While the machine is running, I slowly drizzle in the extra-virgin olive oil. Yeah, I used a shit-ton of olive oil in this recipe. 

Milk and heavy cream are then added and mixed until incorporated. 

The mixture is then ready to be added to an ice cream maker to be churned and frozen according to your machine's instructions. Here's some advice to have your ice cream making adventures more successful. The mixture needs to be really cold before going into the ice cream maker. Most ice cream bases are custards that get cooked a little before hand, and if you want yours to set properly you'll need to chill your base for at least a few hours or overnight which would be better. Luckily, this gelato requires no cooking, so all of the ingredients will be cold enough. The cylinder and paddle that churn the mixture also need to be very cold. I put mine in the freezer overnight to ensure that they're super cold. So it does require some planning ahead of time on your part, but it can be a successful and worthwhile feat to make your own frozen treats at home. 

Once fully churned, I put the gelato into a Tupperware container to freeze a little more, because at this point it has kind of a soft-serve ice cream consistency. 

Okay, the cake has cooled and the gelato is frozen, so I'm ready to plate this thing. I place a slice of cake on the plate, a quenelle of the gelato next to it, and garnish with the pine nuts and golden raisins. The picture in the cookbook has a drizzle of some orange looking sauce around the cake, but there's no mention of it in the recipe, so I followed the recipe and left it out. 

Wow, another complex dish. What my wife and I both appreciated about this dessert was that overall it wasn't very sweet. More mildly sweet than anything, which fit into Mario's vision for his desserts at Babbo as described in the chapter outline. The pumpkin and the rosemary really battle each other for dominance, but equally win out as major flavor enhancers. And the olive oil gelato wasn't bad. I don't see it becoming one of Baskin-Robbins' 53 flavors anytime soon, but the gelato was enjoyable enough to not warrant spitting it out and shuddering. 

'When I first sat down with (then) pastry chef Gina Depalma, one of the first things she stressed about her approach to dessert making was her hope that we could bypass the ooey-gooey school of desserts, which was exactly what I wanted to hear', states Mario in the chapter outline. This dessert does just that, providing a sweet end to a meal, without a sugar overkill, while at the same time utilizing seasonal ingredients in an Italian theme. 

I have so much bulk of the book left to work through, but I feel like I'm finally hitting my stride. So far, I've completed over 30 recipes in this book, the most I have ever tackled from any one cookbook. Already I have added a lot to my repertoire. It may take a while to finish, but I'm going to finish. To help motivate me, my wife promised me a pilgrimage to Babbo once this blog is completed. That's right honey, it's in writing now so you have to take me!

Coming up, I'll be digging through the book to find some more of the fall recipes while preparing for the winter grind, where slow-cooked hearty meals win out. Until next time...

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...