Struffoli

Whether you call them struffoli or honey balls, they’re just plain deliciousness and fun to eat.  You have heard of struffoli, right?

Well, in case you haven’t had struffoli before, I’ll explain.  They’re something that Italian people love to have, especially around Christmas.  And, at least based on my own experiences, they seem to take forever to make (for me, about 4 hours).  They’re tiny fried dough balls in honey.  I blend together my eggs, shortening, lemon zest, salt, sugar, and baking powder, and form a well in my pile of flour on the baking mat.  I keep on forming the dough ball with my hands until there’s a nice, moist dough ball with just a hint of lemon aroma.

Separately, I heat some honey with orange zest in a small pot.  And at some point, I’ll heat some vegetable oil in a somewhat larger pot.  For the honey, I’ll be using a slotted spoon, and when frying the dough balls, I’ll use a spider spoon, one of my favorite kitchen tools.

Anyway, I form tiny dough balls the size of ceci (chick peas) and keep them on a cookie sheet underneath a damp paper towel.  I’ve never counted how many dough balls the recipe makes, but a reasonable guess would be somewhere between 400 and 500.  I fry them in groups of about 10, until they’re golden brown, and then remove them to the honey, make sure they’re coated, and form a conical sort of mound on a plate, and sprinkle with multicolored nonpareils.

And that’s struffoli!

Christmas Cookies - Italian Style

It’s that wonderful time of the year again, when I start making a ridiculous amount of cookies for Christmas.  Usually, I make cookies for my family and friends.  This year I did an extra batch - to give to the people I sell wine to all year.  I wanted to know with a small gesture as homemade cookies that I very much appreciate working with them all year.

I did opt for a few American traditional cookies (chocolate chip and peanut butter) but most of the cookies were Italian recipes.  The biscotti I had never made before - the other two are on the menu every time I make cookies.

Hazelnut and Chocolate Biscotti

So, about the biscotti - I love hazelnut.  Unfortunately, stores like Stop & Shop (for some very strange reason I suppose) rarely have in stock products that Italian-American families might need.  At least, that’s been my observation over the past few years, without going into too much detail.  Anyway, they didn’t have any hazelnuts that were all ready for baking.  So I cracked open quite a lot of hazelnut shells, but I guess it was worth it, because the biscotti turned out amazingly good!  (And they’re perfect for breakfast, for dipping in coffee.)  I changed the recipe slightly that I had found online - I added some chocolate to it.  Frangelico, vanilla, almond all went into the flavoring of the biscotti, plus a whole lot of flour, eggs, sugar, and other basic baking ingredients.  And while the dough is a little annoying and difficult to work with due to its very sticky nature, it’s a relatively easy recipe in the end, and once the cookies are baked in loaves, sliced, and baked again, that’s really all there is to it.

Cuccidati

Next up were the cuccidati.  Cuccidati are a distinctly Sicilian recipe, but they’re pretty similar to rugelach.  The dough is simple - flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking powder, and salt.  Into the food processor until it becomes a nice ball of dough, and that’s it.  The food processor needs to be cleaned again though, because you’ll need it for the filling.  What’s in the filling?  Mission figs, raisins, rum, orange juice, black coffee, chocolate, candied lemon peel, black pepper, walnut, almond, apricot jam, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and a touch of ginger.  I think that’s all.  If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is, but the depth and complexity of the aromas and flavors of the cookies are amazing.  So here’s what I do (because lots of people think they’re really hard to make, and that’s just not true) - I cover my entire work surface in flour, as well as my hands and forearms.  I used to use a rolling pin but the dough needs to be so thin that the rolling pin kept on ruining it.  So I flatten it completely with my hands and arms, and anyway I like the more natural feel of the dough that way anyway.  So once I make medium sized rectangles of dough about 12 inches long by about 4 inches tall, I spread the fig paste along it, and then roll it to make a long roll (carefully!), pinching it at the ends to seal it.  I then cut it into bite sized pieces, score the pieces, brush them with an egg wash, and sprinkle them with nonpareils.  Into the oven on parchment paper lined cookie sheets, and that’s it.

Rainbow Cookies

The most stressful recipe I ever make are the rainbow cookies.  I think it’s because I’ve been doing it for 10 years and yet I still lack my usual kitchen confidence when making them.  For me, they’re a lot more difficult than the cuccidati could ever be.  They’re almond flavored and the batter is on the dry side so it makes it a little difficult to spread into the bottoms of the 3 pans, especially since they have to be so thin (remember, they’re made in 3 cake layers), and in between the colored layers, we have raspberry jam and apricot jam.  And on top, it’s melted chocolate.  Everything about them seems to be a challenge for me - getting the right consistency, getting them to spread evenly and correctly, baking them just the right amount of time, getting them out of the pans without cracking the very thin and delicate layers, and getting them cut and separated safely.  But they’re completely worth it.

The baking isn’t over yet.  I’m making these 3 recipes again, and I’m making something else fun that I do at Christmas, called struffoli - the Italian honey balls.  And the cooking?  It’ll be the Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve, and lasagne for Christmas Day.  Fun!

My 1983-Themed 30th Birthday

http://champagne-taste.blogspot.com/2013/11/my-1983-themed-30th-birthday.html

Posted to my other blog, Champagne Taste - my 30th birthday dinner party - all 1983 wines!

Pumpkin Lasagne, Pinot Noir, & Banana Cream Pie

I can’t think of any better way to work on my food blog than to have Jacques Pepin and Julia Child on dvd in the background - and I’m sipping on a fun Carmenere from Chile.  I’ve never been much of a Carmenere fan, but this one doesn’t have that excessive green bell pepper that happens sometimes (which I don’t like, because it masks the fruit and earthiness).  This one has some pepper but plenty of fruit, and I’m enjoying it.

Anyway, I made something awesome last week - well, two awesome things, but one was from a popular recipe, and the other I hatched from my own imagination.

For dinner, I created a pumpkin lasagne.  And if it sounds delicious, it is.  I boiled 12 pieces of lasagne and laid them out on wax paper.  In the Emile Henry baking dish, I built the lasagne.  In a bowl, I mixed pure pumpkin puree with a pinch each of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and ginger.  In another bowl, I mixed ricotta with finely chopped sage and walnuts.  (Ricotta isn’t the only cheese I used - I also used grated parmigiano reggiano, crumbled fresh goat cheese, and small pieces of fontina - how is it that whenever I start creating a dish like this, I end up with four completely different cheeses?)  And finally, I sauteed some chopped crimini mushrooms seasoned with black pepper.  Now it’s time to build the lasagne.  I placed four lasagne pieces, slightly overlapped, at the bottom of the pan.  I then spread 1/3 of the pumpkin over it, topped it with dollops of ricotta, and added goat cheese, fontina, and mushrooms (each I used 1/2 of what I had).  Then I laid another four pieces of lasagne, and again topped with more pumpkin, plus the remainder of the cheeses and mushroom, and then topped with the last four pieces of lasagne, the remainder of the pumpkin, and then sprinkled with the parmigiano reggiano.  Into the oven at 350F for about 40 minutes or until the top is crisp and golden, and the sides are bubbling.  It’s so good (and I was even a little surprised at how good it was, considering there was no recipe).

With it, the pairing was a Pinot Noir from Switzerland, which was excellent and a really good pairing.  I love Pinot Noir, especially the bright, clean feel that cuts through some rich ingredients, and this one also had some complexity heading toward the finish, with dark fruit showing through, followed by mineral, and just delicious overall, especially with the dinner.

One of my favorite pies is banana cream pie, and ever since I was a kid, I wanted to make my own, so I have no idea why I never attempted it until now.  Anyway, I used my sister’s pie crust recipe, except I added about 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, and that gave it another dimension in terms of flavor.  The pie filling consisted of 4 bananas plus a homemade sort of pudding made from scratch which was quite simple, and then baking it and chilling it, and making fresh homemade whipped cream to top the pie.  It was everything I remembered from when I was a child, only better somehow.

That was a fantastic dinner.  Lots of calories, yes, but completely worth it!

Braised Lamb Shanks, Brunello, & Orange Spice Butter Cookies

I think I’m finally all caught up on blog posts!  The wine blog is a little different these days as it’s less about just tasting notes and more about wine philosophy and new discoveries made by me and cool things that are happening lately with wine and me.  But that’s one of the things I’m enjoying about having this food blog as my secondary blog - it requires a lot less thought as I rarely follow recipes and technicalities (unless I’m working on one of the “classics” like the French mother sauces, those need real recipes as I will not tamper with a classic, and so they take more thought) - everything else I kind of do by the seat of my pants, which is my favorite way to cook.  I think I learn the most that way, and that way no one can say, “oh Jac, you didn’t follow the recipe correctly,” because there is no recipe involved.  That’s why those who know me well, know that I usually refer to my creations as “concepts” - and this is a total run-on sentence.  Anyway, now that it’s a new sentence, I call my creations and experiments “concepts” because that’s exactly what they are to me - ideas that I hatch out of my own imagination, sometimes based on something I’ve had before, sometimes based on something I’ve seen or heard about, and sometimes just because the ingredients seem to make sense to me and so I imagine how they’d be when they’re together, and test it out.  After all, what’s the worst that can happen?  Sometimes the ingredients are already good friends, like pumpkin/goat cheese/walnuts/sage (so yes, that’ll be incorporated into a recipe possibly as early as next week and it’ll be something really awesome so stay tuned please!), or venison and juniper, or things like that.  And sometimes, the ingredients are complete strangers and need to be introduced formally, and then we see how well they work together, sometimes with the help of other ingredients.  An example of this happened several years ago - I had an Australian Pinot Noir open and I was enjoying it on a snowy night alone in my kitchen.  I was making something with chocolate for dessert, and I was making a steak with a bleu cheese sauce for dinner.  Now, I’m not generally an advocate for pairing dry style wines with chocolate, but there was something I simply couldn’t resist - I put the bleu cheese and dark chocolate into my mouth at the same time.  To this day, it’s still one of the most incredible, delicious, and eye-opening things I’ve ever tasted.  And then I had a sip of the Pinot Noir and BOOM - I became a lot more radical in the kitchen from then on.  And if you’ve never tried bleu cheese with dark chocolate, consider this a strong suggestion to do so.  I think the bleu cheese allowed the Pinot to work with the chocolate, and without it, I think the wine and chocolate would have offended each other, but instead, they all worked harmoniously.  So like I said, what’s the worst that can happen?  If two ingredients don’t work well together, there won’t be a costly divorce or nuclear war to remedy the situation.  You just learn from it and try again.

That said, this blog post will describe ingredients that I already knew would work well together.

I love lamb.  I love the flavor, aroma, and texture.  And I’ve loved lamb dishes for as long as I can remember.  I usually make lamb chops, often the small ones, at home.  (I always include rosemary and garlic and lemon, as to me, those are perfect with lamb.)  But this time I wanted to try a more autumnal variation on lamb by braising it, so I went to the local butcher and bought lamb shanks.  In the Le Creuset dutch oven, I heated some extra virgin olive oil until it was smoking, and then added the lamb shanks.  I seasoned them with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, and turned them a few times to allow them to brown a bit until they had somewhat of a golden color.  I then deglazed the pan with a good red wine (I’ll tell you about that in a moment because I deviated a little on the wine), and scraped the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, lowered the heat, added about a cup or so of beef stock, and some rosemary and finely chopped garlic.  Into the oven for 2 hours at 350F until the meat was pretty much falling off the bone.

Most people love to serve that kind of lamb over potatoes or rice.  I’m sorry but I don’t care much for potatoes unless they’re very seasoned and mashed or they’re turned into gnocchi, and I really don’t like rice unless it’s a good risotto.  So I went into the pantry and voila, there was half a box of orzo left!  I was so happy, because I LOVE orzo.  I cooked and drained the orzo, placed it at the bottom of a fairly deep square Apilco dish, and seasoned the orzo with lemon juice and garlic.  And then I topped it with the lamb shank.  WOW.  It smelled amazing, the texture was perfect, and the flavors?  Well, I was astounded at how well it turned out!

Ok, so about the wine - usually with lamb, depending on how it’s cooked, I usually recommend one of the French reds from Bordeaux (Cabernet/Merlot), Burgundy (generally a Pinot Noir from Cotes de Nuit), or Rhone (either a Chateauneuf-du-Pape of mostly Grenache from Southern Rhone or a Saint-Joseph made of Syrah from Northern Rhone) - those are my favorites with lamb.  This time, I chose a Brunello di Montalcino.  What’s that?  Well, it’s a really good dry red made from Sangiovese in Tuscany.  So I chose a nice Italian wine instead.  And it was a perfect pairing.  The wine had notes of dry earthiness with cherry, rose petals, savory herbs, and barrel, and that’s what I was looking for on an autumn evening.

With it, I made a light salad of baby greens and almonds, with a lemon/wildflower honey/balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing.  Very clean and simple - I like clean side dishes when the main dish is complex.

On a whim after dinner, I decided I was in the mood for a light and not overly sweet dessert - so I decided within seconds on butter cookies, but I wanted to make something fun with them.  Basically, the recipe called for flour, sugar, salt, butter, egg, and maybe some other ingredients, I don’t remember (because I was ever so slightly tipsy - read SLIGHTLY [oops] - and I picked up my iphone and went online and found a quick butter cookie recipe from scratch so I didn’t save it) - and I added to it some fresh orange zest, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  The dough was soft and dry and easy to work with - I formed it into small balls and pressed them a bit into the cookie sheets, and criss-crossed them with a fork.  Into the oven at 350F for about 10 minutes, and there I had them - perfect orange spice butter cookies.

And soon thereafter, I was really full.

Limoncello

Preparation

Apparently I had a lot of catching up to do on the food blog, posting a few times this week should catch me up to where I am right now.  I’ve experimented with a lot of things that I’d been wanting to try and finally got to a lot of them.  Hopefully later this week or next week I’ll cover a cool lamb dinner I made a couple of weeks ago because it was fantastic and because I’ve got more things I’ll be making in the coming weeks and don’t want to fall so far behind again!  So the next post will definitely be the lamb dish I made (especially since I’ve been asked by a lot of people for the recipe).

5 weeks in the jar

So here’s a brief post on something I make at the onset of the cooler months - which for us here in New York, is around October.  Citrus fruits are good in the cooler months.  And I love limoncello.  Not that stuff you find in liquor stores that’s bright yellow and gooey and thick - personally I think that’s gross.  To me, a proper limoncello is the kind you make at home.  And everyone always sounds so impressed when I saw I make it at home, but the truth is, it’s really easy to do.

I have a large jar, I’m not exactly sure how large it is but it’s very large.  To make the limoncello, I peel 12 lemons - and I only use the peel, no pith (the white part - it tastes bitter).  I place the peels in the jar and then add 2 liters of vodka.  It doesn’t have to be expensive vodka - Absolut or Iceberg will do.  I seal the jar and let it sit for 5 weeks.  I shake it once a day and keep it out of the sunlight.

The finished product!

At the end of the 5 weeks, I decant it (and it smells amazing) into a large bowl or pot, and in a medium sized pan, I make a simple syrup of 6 cups sugar and 3 cups water.  Simple syrup is easy to make - swirl the pan around but don’t stir it - that might make it grainy instead of clear and smooth.  Once the syrup cools, I add it to the lemon infused vodka, stir it, and put it in bottles (usually a few empty vodka bottles) and it’ll last in the freezer for about a year (if you can prevent yourself from drinking it all in under a year!).

Sounds really easy, right?  That’s because it is.

There are also 2 variations on limoncello, which I’ve made a bunch of times as well.  One is mandarino - I peel 9 mandarin oranges (I’ve used tangerines instead) and use the same amount of vodka and simple syrup.  The other is zenzerino - that’s the peels of 7 naval oranges and 1/2 lb fresh grated ginger and the same amount of vodka and simple syrup.  (At least that’s what the recipe calls for - I prefer finely chopped ginger as it doesn’t just turn to sediment instead and the drink remains clear once decanted.)

Enjoy limoncello after dinner, or use it as an ingredient in some really fun cocktails!

Venison, More Homemade Bread, and Madiran

Here’s something interesting I had been wanting to work on for quite some time - venison.  I enjoyed it in restaurants and I just really wanted to attempt it at home.  And my first observation is that venison apparently is far easier to find in a market than quail is.  Go figure.

Anyway, I heard that juniper pairs particularly well with venison.  It kind of does, except that I like the flavors of meats, especially game type meats.  So both gin marinade and crushed juniper berries for a crust were recommended to me, and I did try both.  It worked of course but next time I’d go without so much juniper.  The meat certainly is delicious though.  So all I really did was buy venison tenderloin (d’Artagnan product) and marinate it briefly in some Tanqueray (just a very small amount), and then crust it with crushed dry juniper berries.  I cooked it at probably around 350F.

The sauce on the venison was a drizzle of cooked blackberries with wildflower honey, sugar, and apple cider vinegar (with a sprig of rosemary) which after it cooked and cooled, I put it through a sieve.  It was good.

The side dish I made was another homemade loaf of bread which was fun and it seemed so much easier than the first time.  (See my quail dinner post for the first loaf of bread.)  This time I sauteed a small amount of finely chopped onion and added it to the bread dough, along with finely chopped fresh sage from my rooftop garden, and the crust was topped with grated Swiss cheese.  The bread, I think, was amazing.  I’d do that one again in a heartbeat, and of course I’ll keep learning new flavors too.

The wine I chose to pair was a Madiran - the 2008 Chateau Peyros Vieilles Vignes.  I love Madiran - they’re so wonderfully dry and rustic and expressive, and made of mostly Tannat, often with some Cabernet Franc.  It’s a very honest wine (with nutritional benefits - read up on Tannat and resveratrol!) - and it’s a great pairing with something gamey like venison.  (I like Tannat paired with lots of things actually, and regularly make excuses to do so.)

Anyway it was quite a learning experience and delicious.