For Christmas my friends Barbecue Bob and his wife Bert gave me Lidia Matticchio Bastianich’s cookbook Lidia’s Italy. I’ve seen Lidia on television a few times but I really didn’t know that much about her. After reading through the introduction of Lidia’s Italy and her comments about the various regional cuisines throughout Italy, I’m becoming a big fan.

The cookbook is filled with incredible recipes that home cooks like us can take on and be successful.  The other night I was looking for something easy with ingredients I had on hand since I didn’t want to make a special trip for dinner stuff. Glancing through Lidia’s Italy I came across her Salsicce con Finocchi e Olive or Sausages with Fennel and Olives.

I had to adapt it a little because I only had black Kalamata olives and the recipe calls for green olives. The recipe also calls for peperoncino or red pepper flakes, which I’m sure, give the dish a little heat but I wouldn’t be able to serve it to my girls. I also adjusted the amounts because I was only serving two adult and two kids and Lidia’s recipe is for 6.

This is a very easy dish to put together on a weeknight and essentially a one-pot meal. I did serve it with some orzo and my wife and I enjoyed a glass of  Planeta’s 1999 Santa Cecilia , a Sicilian red wine with a lively nose and a rich, herby complex taste.

Sausages with Fennel and Olives

adapted from Lidia Matticchio Bastianich’s cookbook Lidia’s Italy

Ingredients

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
6 sweet Italian sausages (about 1 pound)
¾ cup dry white wine
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
½ cup large pitted Kalamata olives (Lidia uses pitted green olives)
1 large fennel bulb, trimmed of its stalk and tough base
coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon of peperoncino flakes (optional)

How to Prepare Sausages with Fennel and Olives

Start by getting all your ingredients prepped. Cut the fennel into 1-inch pieces, measure out your wine, smash or chop the olives… have all the ingredients ready to cook with.

Heat a large fry or sauté pan over medium heat until a drop of water evaporates immediately when hitting the surface of the pan. Add 2 tablespoons of oil and then the sausages. Add the sausages to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes being sure to turn so they don’t burn.

When the sausages are brown on all sides, add the wine and bring to a boil. Cook until the wine is reduced by half.  Transfer the sausages to a plate and pour the remaining wine over them. Reserve for later.

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan and then the garlic. Cook for about a minute until the garlic begins to sizzle. If you are using the peperoncino flakes, now’s the time to add them. Now it’s time to add the smashed olives and cook for a minute or two.

Toss in the chopped fennel and combine with the garlic and olives. Season with a little salt, cover the pan and cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes until the fennel softens and starts to turn golden. Be sure to stir the ingredients every once in a while so the y don’t burn.

Lidia suggests to add a little water to the pan if the fennel is still hard after 20 minutes. I didn’t find this to be the case.

When the fennel is ready, add the sausages back to the pan along with the wine and any accumulated juices. Gently mix everything together to combine flavors and continue to cook uncovered until the fennel caramelizes. This should take about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve along or with pasta, rice, couscous or orzo like we did.

Christmas In Italy

I asked my friend “Lola” Baldwin how she celebrates Christmas with her family in Italy where she lives with her son.  She was kind enough to share her family tradition with us in great detail and I thank her for doing so. She also shares with us a secret family recipe for Pasta al Tonno or Pasta with Tuna.  I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do. Merry Christmas Ele.

Natale - The Italian Christmas, where families join hands in the kitchen and at the table
By Eleonora Baldwin

As tradition has it, in my family we all participate in the preparation of the Christmas meals. Yes plural. Each of us helps out in building a monumental glorification of food and togetherness by cooking lovely typical foods, getting the family around the table and eating ourselves silly.

The Christmas celebrations usually involve gathering members of the family not commonly frequented during the rest of the year. And so table extensions seat far removed cousins, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, acquired siblings, second marriage spouses, uncles and aunts, parents-inlaw, plus boyfriends, girlfriends, nannies, single friends and more.

La Vigilia

Let me explain when I say Christmas meals using the plural form. In the less wealthy yet exuberant southern regions of Italy where part of my roots are the Louis IV Christmas banquet lasts two full days. Christmas Eve dinner should respect the Christian observing rule of fasting, so the menu is therefore solely based of fish.

But the bare minimum standard dinner includes: pasta with a spicy tuna sauce, steamed or baked Moby Dick-size salmon or sea bass, fresh baby sardines in lemon marinade, capitone eel, octopus casserole, and raw shell fish of every size shape and form.

A stronghold of Neapolitan Christmas cuisine is the bizarre Insalata di Rinforzo. Literally ‘reinforcement salad’, a mixture of tossed boiled cauliflower, anchovies, olives and mixed pickled giardiniera, dressed in vinegar and olive oil. The name suggests the need for support should the meal be poor, but this is rarely the case.Perhaps it dates back to an ancient tradition when Napoli’s bien être was for royalty and very few others, unlike today.

Beverages always include spumante for the antipasto, barrels of wine and dessert shots of home made Limoncello, or its winter cousin, the aromatic Nocino. An after dinner liqueur made with green, unripe walnuts, which despite antioxidant and digestive qualities and moderate alcohol content (30% proof), knocks you out cold after one sip.

Pranzo di Natale

The following day for lunch, on December 25th, the Peninsula’s pantagruelic orgy continues with an array of deep fried vegetable antipasti, lasagna or crespelle baked in the oven with some sort of interesting meat sauce; lamb, goose or turkey; glazed onions; eggplant, zucchini, pumpkin and tomatoes au gratin, and of course desserts.

My favorite, besides Panettone and Pandoro, are the delightful Campanian Struffoli, toothsome honey glazed fried dough morsels decorated with colored sprinkles. I also love the Roccocò biscuits whose onomatopoeic name matches their jaw-breaking hardness. Or the Sicilian Buccellati, moist golden, soft and chewy biscuits stuffed with dried fruits, almonds, pine nuts and seasoned with spices and Marsala wine.

Another Natale essential is Torrone. A nougat confection, typically made of honey, sugar, and egg whites, with toasted almonds or other nuts mixed in, and usually shaped into a rectangular tablet. Two varieties exist: the hard compact block of whole almonds in a brittle granite mass, defining the torrone duro kind; and the soft (torrone morbido) which is similar but where the almonds are reduced to a soft paste.

The quality (and price) of the product is determined by the quantity of almond in the mixture. Chocolate covered kinds exist, and newer ones like the pistacchio and lemon icing variations. A popular candy manufacturer made a fortune years ago with the invention of bite size soft Torroncini, a highly addictive drug.

Buon Natale a tutti!

Pasta al Tonno

Christmas Eve dinner staple, summer surprise, and delicious assortment of Mediterranean flavors. Pasta with tuna and tomato sauce is my stepfather’s signature recipe. I have carefully watched him make it over the years, observing how it has become an unwavering family heritage.

Here is the recipe, Nonno Sergio’s famous pasta contribution to the Christmas Eve all-fish meal. I have asked permission to publish it, and–after a little bit of resistance–he kindly agreed to divulge it.

While a big pot with 1 gallon of water is happily getting to boiling point, Sergio pours 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large, wide high-rimmed pan over very low heat. He adds three peeled cloves of garlic and 2 potent peperoncino chili peppers and lets the oil absorb the flavors for a couple of minutes. The cloves will darken in color, but must not burn (if that happens both Sergio and I recommend you start again from scratch). Then my stepfather adds half a tablespoon of anchovy paste and stirs it into the oil.

He then pours a 14-oz can of unseasoned tomato sauce to the oil, cooks the sauce gently and lets it simmer, covered, for five minutes. In the meantime he opens a 2-cup can (or glass jar) of oil-packed tuna. Sergio squeezes the excess oil from the can and forks out the fish, flaking it with a fork. He adds it to the simmering tomatoes along with a few salted capers. Stirring well, he then covers the pan and lets the sauce cook over low heat for another 10 minutes.

By this time the water has reached a rolling boil. Sergio tosses in 300gr (1 1/2 cups) spaghetti and cooks it for the amount of time printed on the package minus 2 minutes. He drains the pasta saving some cooking water and pours it all in the tuna saucepan, amalgamates it over vivacious heat and serves his droolworthy seasoned tuna spaghetti sprinkled with (very little) chopped parsley.

Grazie
Sergio!

On Saturdays, I go to the Ardmore Farmer’s Market to shop with my buddy, Barbecue Bob. I typically pick up some pork product at Stoltzfus Meats because they have the freshest pork around. This weekend I picked up some Country Style ribs that were described to me as “big pork chops that have been cut in half so they look like ribs.” They were meaty, about 1 pound each.

I noticed from the cover of my June/July edition of Fine Cooking they were talking about a new way of grilling called “Sear, Braise & Glaze”. I’ve been reading about this technique lately in some other cooking articles. Basically you sear the meat on the grill, braise it in a Dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot and finish it on the grill as a barbecue.

There are many advantages to this somewhat new cooking technique and a couple of disadvantages but I’ll write about all of them another time. For now I want to tell you how I used their recipe to braise the country style ribs in my outdoor wood burning oven for some pretty good ribs and show you how you can braise them in your oven.

Country Style Ribs - What Are They?

These ribs are really not ribs at all but pork chops cut from the blade (think shoulder) end of the loin that are then butterflied so they look like a big, meaty ribs. There is enough fat on them so they can be braised or slow cooked barbecue style on the grill. Cuts with less fat would just get tough during a braise and are better suited to shorter, higher heat dry cooking methods.

These aren’t your pick up with your fingers type of ribs that you may be used to. You more or less need a knife and fork, and if you braise them, be sure to have your spoon ready. The sauce from the braising liquids is incredible.

Did I mention they are not that expensive? I think I paid under $5.00 per pound.

Dry Rub & Braising Liquid

Basically I followed Fine Cooking’s recipe for the rub, and it was very tasty. I encourage you, however, to come up with your own brand of rubs by experimenting with different ingredients. If you look at 100 cookbooks that have rib rub recipes, you are going to find many with similar ingredients, but they will all be a little differently. I typically go with what I like and what I have on hand.

One of the key ingredients for the braise is beer. You may remember my post called Bert’s Barbecue Baby Back Ribs. This is one of my favorite and quickest ways to make barbecued ribs in a hurry by starting them in the oven and finishing them on the grill. Bert’s recipe also calls for a bottle of beer.

Braised Country Style Ribs with Orzo & Sauteed Broccoli Rabe

Dry Rub Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons dry sage
Salt & Pepper, to taste

Braising Liquid Ingredients

4 strips of bacon, cut into pieces
2 medium yellow onions, cut into thin slices
4 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1 bottle of beer, stout or dark lager if possible
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon caraway seeds

I also added a few drops of Asian hot sauce to give it a little kick.

Meat
6 Country Style Ribs

How to Prepare

Start by preparing the rub for the ribs. You’ll want to cover the ribs with the rub and let sit for a minimum of a couple of hours up to overnight. I used a large stainless steel utility bowl to mix all the rub ingredients and one at a time added a rib to cover. Be sure to knock off any excess rub off the rib before starting the next. After each one was covered, I placed them into a large Ziploc bag and stuck the bag in the refrigerator.

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