smitten kitchen » Italian

baked rigatoni with tiny meatballs

deb — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:14:54 +0000

Did you hear a resounding whine/sigh/moan the volume of the entire Eastern seaboard? Because there’s a fresh foot of snow outside for the 200th time this year and friends, I love snow. I get so excited when it is going to snow. But this? Lacks charm, likely because the first day of this anticipated four day storm was three to four inches of mucky slush.

Anyway, I still maintain that complaining about the weather is dull, thus if any one good thing can come of this, it is that pasta, meatball and cream sauce season just got extended by at least another weekend. After the excitement over Marcella Hazan last month, I wanted to share a recipe from her on the opposite end of the spectrum, sort of the Italian version of Italian-American baked ziti. Except, the ziti is rigatoni, which she insists holds up better to being cooked twice (plus has large hollows that nicely slurp up their surroundings). The red sauce is a white sauce. The cheese is subtle and oh, there are wee meatballs scattered everywhere.

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spaghetti with cheese + black pepper

deb — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:09:01 +0000

Alex and I had an accidental date a few weeks ago, accidental in that we set out to take a walk but the conversation quickly turned to “I wonder if we could get a table at Lupa.” The answer, by the way, should be no. One can never get a table at Lupa. They don’t take many reservations, they’re not very big and just about everyone in New York City loves to drop in there for a meal. It is for this pile of reasons that we’ve never been. Or we never had been. Because that evening, there was exactly one eensy little table free and there we were, having an impromptu dinner out on a weekday night, something that would have been nothing out of the ordinary, say, five months ago but as parents to a young dough ball, it was nothing short of earth shattering.

I ordered a beer and the spaghetti, well, the bavette or linguini fini, but for the purpose of this story, it will be spaghetti because it was just that humble. When I trust that a place won’t disappoint, I have a tendency to order the plainest thing on the menu, hearkening back to my deep-seated belief that great chefs make you wonder why you’ve wasting so much time with gimmicky sea salts and foie anything when you could be eating a perfect bowl of spaghetti. And this cacio e pepe? It sang to me. Well, sang and then admonished, as food often does in my presence, “seriously, lady, why haven’t you made this yet?”

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tomato sauce with onion and butter

deb — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:36:23 +0000

I could no longer resist this sauce, and frankly, I don’t know why I even tried to: food bloggers obsess over it, and they’re not a bad lot to base a recipe selection upon. Adam of Amateur Gourmet fell for it five years ago. Molly at Orangette raved about it over two years ago, with a bonus approval marking from Luisa at Wednesday Chef. Then Rachel Eats fawned over it too, and Rachel, you see, she lives in Rome right now — I want to be in Rome right now — Rome, where you can get authentic, perfect tomato sauce a zillion places every single day. And yet she stayed in and made this one. That sealed the deal.

So what is it with this sauce that it moves people to essays over it, tossing about exclamations like “brilliant!” and “va-va-voom” and promises that “something almost magical happens”? Is it garlic, a slip of red pepper flakes, a glug of red wine or a base of mulched carrots, onion and celery, as so many of us swear by in our best sauce efforts? Is it a spoonful of tomato paste or a pinch of sugar? Is it the best olive oil money can buy? It is none of these things, not a single one: It is butter. And an halved onion, cooked slowly as the sauce plops and glurps on the stove, then discarded when it is done.

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mushroom marsala pasta with artichokes

deb — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:16:51 +0000

People, I’m about at the end of my ordered-in dinner rope. It’s not that — as the front page of this site might suggest — I haven’t cooked anything since the baby arrived, it’s just that I’ve largely cooked things that could be assembled during naptimes, and most of Alex and my conversations about meals go, “What should we do for dinner?” “I made mushroom toasts and a bowl of butterscotch sauce today!” “Right, so what should we order?” And so on with the pho, cracker-thin pizza and hummusiot dinner deliveries. For three months. At 93 days, even shakshuka broiled with haloumi gets tiresome.

Now, I don’t expect any violins, especially from folks without the East Village’s globe of food delivery options at their fingertips, but I am sure you all understand what it means to desperately crave a homecooked meal. And I don’t mean a 5-hour braise or hand-sheeted pasta (though, ahem, I wouldn’t push either away); even a simple sautéed chicken, which I managed to eek out a few weeks ago, stands out as one of the best things we’ve eaten in a month.

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artichoke-olive crostini

deb — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:44:33 +0000

My husband and I have different packing personalities. First, I need a clean apartment, you know, before I wreck sections of it at a time. Then I need to go through every single thing we own before any of it gets packed and determine whether it should stay or does it need to go. I cannot stand the thought of moving, well, useless baggage to a new and supposedly clean slate of an apartment. Then each box has to have a separate topic; if desk stuff gets in with book stuff, I get itchy and start pacing the floor. How does Alex pack? Oh, he puts stuff in boxes until everything's packed. I probably don't need to tell you who is better at getting the job done.

My method doesn't just apply to boxes. I need to feel like my life is, like, totally in order before breaking it down and taping it up. I realized when I talked about braising artichokes last week that I hadn't even told you about revisiting my favorite quick party food starring them and people, I cannot pack another box until I get this off my obviously very disorganized plate. (Like I said, good thing I'm married to someone with no such packing hang-ups.)

I briefly mentioned these crostini over two years ago, in what I swear up and down is the worst photo on this entire site. I can't even look at it. I had no choice but to make it again -- also because it is delicious -- when we had people over in January. You can make it from things in a well-stocked pantry: a can of artichoke hearts, some capers, a jar or can of good green olives, a clove of garlic and olive oil. It couldn't be easier and although the hideous shade of green has taunted me in these photos too, it's so not the point. This stuff is addictive and when you put it out with toasted slices of baguette that have been rubbed with a halved garlic clove, people will ignore almost anything else on the table. You know, until you bust out the gougeres.

One year ago: Spring Panzanella

Two years ago: Artichoke, Cranberry Bean and Arugula Salad

chicken milanese + an escarole salad

deb — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:16:33 +0000

I have a new, colossal Food Network crush on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and the first time I saw the show, I completely forgot every food personal crush that had come before. “Ina Garten who?” “Michael Chiarello? I never heard of him.” Because seriously, Anne Burell trumps all that came before. She’s got the kind of real cooking and fresh ideas you’d hope for from a television show, but too rarely get. I immediately want to make everything she does.

And if I saw chicken milanese on a restaurant menu, I wouldn’t order it. If you told me you were breading and frying chicken cutlets for dinner, I’d feign excitement but inwardly groan. Because if there are two foods in the world that will never hold my interest, they’d be chicken cutlets and anything that has been dredged in breadcrumbs and fried. I find the former bland and the latter makes everything taste the same, not that I need to learn how to form an opinion or anything. Yet, when Ms. Burell made it, I counted down the days until I could find an excuse to make it, which brings us to Tuesday night’s inauguration dinner party (where the caramel sauce was homemade, ahem, but that story for a different day).

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bittersweet chocolate and pear cake

deb — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:32:37 +0000

Almost two years ago, Alex and I met friends for dinner at Al Di La, an always-packed, funky mom-and-pop Italian restaurant in Park Slope that not only doesn’t take reservations, it has no room for you to stand around while you wait for one (unless you go to the adjacent wine bar). It helps to know someone who works there.

Before we went, Alex dug up their menu online (does anyone remember life back when you actually had to arrive at a restaurant to find out what they served? Probably less tripe and rabbits feet on the menu, eh?) and decided at that very moment that we must order the torta di pere, a bittersweet chocolate and pear cake. “Fruit and chocolate together?” I said, “Why is this necessary?” as I had always insisted that they were better apart.

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fig and walnut biscotti

deb — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:49:24 +0000

Lest you think my running of at the mouth about the evils of dieting meant that I was going to spend this month in the pursuit of only earnest foods, let me set that straight right now: all weekend, I craved a cookie and by Sunday, I’d had enough. No, I wasn’t going to break out the piping bags or the heavy cream ganaches, but when I need something sweet, I have learned that it’s better to have one and move on than to snack on twent-five other odd ends instead, oh, and still crave a cookie.

As far as my cookie demands went, biscotti seemed a perfect compromise. A little less rich, sweet and heavy than most cookies, they go better with tea, coffee or your morning yogurt (guilty as charged) than they do wtih a platter of even more indulgent desserts. I’d had this recipe from Gina DePalma, pastry chef at Babbo, bookmarked for years, and seeing as I am still wading through pounds of nuts and had some sorry-looking figs in the pantry, it seemed like perfect timing.

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meatballs and spaghetti

deb — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:00:34 +0000

[Guest photography by Elizabeth Bick] A few weeks ago, over a couple ~~bottles~~ glasses of wine, my friend Liz, a photographer, and I got to discussing the photography in the smittenkitchen, and she said she was dying to come in and take some pictures of me at “work” one day. We started fantasizing about doing a 1950s Mad Men-style shoot, rollers in the hair, a frilly but perfectly tailored apron and classic home cooking. In reality, the rollers and the silly apron didn’t quite happen, but Liz came over earlier this week (and then our other friends, a couple hours later for dinner) and we had a blast. So please welcome here today our very first smittenkitchen guest photographer, Elizabeth Bick. I suspect you’ll be as wowed by her photos as I am. [Oh, and in case you're wondering, I do cook everyday in full lip gloss and an apron coordinated with my potholders. I can't believe you even had to ask!]

Living in New York City, a place where you barely have to walk 10 blocks to find shaved black truffles over artisanal french fries or a fois-stuffed date by a chef with their name on that door, the one a few doors down and several products in the frozen food aisle, I couldn’t honestly give a damn about making futsy food like that at home. By the time I climb my 51 stairs to my apartment in two-inch heels with three heavy bags and, a dripping umbrella and a box of books our house guest has forwarded here, all I am thinking about is the kind of meal that will cancel it all out, and that meal involves not a single ingredient cooked sous-vide.

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chocolate hazelnut biscotti

deb — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:38:24 +0000

Last week I stumbled into my new favorite coffee shop for The Latest Morning Coffee, Ever because I am still adjusting to this new schedule of having “everything” but also “anything” to do at any given time.

[One of these days I'll get into all of these changes--the way that I stomp on the grave of business casual attire; the fact that, yes, I still get up early each day and shower and put on mascara; oh, and more relevantly to this site, the breakfasts and lunches I put together (that is, once I get past the yogurt and PB&J sandwich phase, though no promises that will be be happening any time soon)--but for now, suffice it to say that I am still in the Adjustment Phase... Hence the 12:30 p.m. "morning coffee."]

As it was obviously time for lunch–but still, my internal screams for delicious, bitter, cold coffee demanded to be placated–my stomach was grumbling as I walked in, and I had zero resistance when my hand literally bumped into the jar of chocolate-hazelnut biscotti while going to order a much-more-earnest skim latte. And while that wee biscotti was quite delicious, especially once dunked* in my coffee, it served to remind me that I am so overdue to make a batch of real biscotti.

... Read the rest of chocolate hazelnut biscotti on smittenkitchen.com