Comfort Food

The weather has been unseasonably warm here for the past two weeks. Warm temperatures throughout much of the state, however, contributed to strong winds on the coast - so strong that this week's Walking Fish delivery had to be postponed. It was the first time in the community supported fishery's history that the weather did not allow fishermen to gather the week's fresh catch.

We planned to cook the seafood on Friday, so when it did not make it we turned to an old reliable. Originating near my great grandfather's hometown of Lanciano, bucatini (or spaghetti) amatriciana takes everything good about pasta and adds to it extra bacon and cheese. The result is something unhealthy yet empowering. This is one of Shefali's favorites, so I make more often than our doctor would recommend.

Pasta Amatriciana

olive oil
1 pound pasta (usually a long, thin noodle like bucatini or spaghetti)
1 onion
crushed red pepper, to taste
8-12 oz bacon (I usually use an entire packet)
3.5 cups Christopher Sauce
1/2 cup or more of grated pecorino Romano cheese

put a pot of water on to boil, then chop the bacon into 1/2 inch squares. Heat the olive oil, then saute the bacon in a saucepan. When the bacon is crisp, move it with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towel. In the now-empty pan, saute the onion until brown, then add the crushed red pepper. Let the pepper's flavors release for about 30 seconds, then add the Christopher Sauce. Stir the sauce vigorously at first to deglaze the pan, then simmer for 10-15 minutes. When the pasta is ready, return the bacon to the sauce, then add the cheese and pasta. Toss well and serve.

Walking Fish Delivery 3

A day or two before my Walking Fish delivery arrives, I receive an email update that announces the week's fresh catch. That evening, I break out the cookbooks and begin brainstorming the next epic meal.

Last week, I received three fillets of triggerfish, steamer clams and pasta clams. Triggerfish is a flaky white fish with a mild flavor. It has large rib and pin bones, so Shef and I decided it would be best baked.

We laid each fillet on a sheet of aluminum foil, placed a tablespoon of butter and pinches of salt, pepper and parsley on top of each fillet, then wrapped the foil and broiled them for about 20 minutes.

As for the clams, we opted for a pasta with a red sauce, since we ate our last batch of clams in a simple white sauce. Growing up, my dad and brother loved spicy food, but my mom couldn't stand it. She wasn't out of the house during dinnertime very often, but when she was, Dad would make a diavolo sauce. He's also prepared it as part of the feast of the seven fishes.

Having married a woman who loves spicy food, we eat shrimp fra diavolo often. This time, we decided to use clams instead.

Clams fra diavolo

olive oil
6 cloves garlic, diced
3.5 cups Christopher Sauce
1-2 pounds of clams, washed and scrubbed
1/2 cup dry red wine (we use chianti)*
crushed red pepper, to taste ("fra diavolo" means "the devil's brother in Italian, so use lots)
1 tsp dried parsley or 1 tbs fresh, chopped

*Note: during the summer, we sometimes substitute white wine (sauvignon blanc).

Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan. When hot, add the clams. As the clams heat, they will release a liquid. Shake the pan frequently so the shells do not stick. Remove the clams as soon as they open (our steamer clams opened earlier than the pasta clams). After about 15 minutes, remove the clams that did not open (if they are fresh and of good quality, like the ones we receive from Walking Fish, there should not be many that do not open) and set the open clams aside. In the same pan, add more olive oil and saute the diced garlic until fragrant but not brown. Add the crushed red pepper and let the flavors release for about 30 seconds. Add the Christopher Sauce and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the red wine, stir and simmer for an additional 5-10 minutes, until the alcohol has cooked off. Once the flavors of the garlic, red pepper and wine have incorporated into the sauce (taste it), return the clams to the sauce, add the parsley and simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

This sauce works well with linguine or fettuccine, and the clams were a nice change of pace.

Two Discoveries

I got to the farmer's market late on Saturday and found it pretty picked over, but I did walk away with butternut squash, a bag of turnips and a sweet potato. Shefali was out of town for the weekend and I had a couple hours free that afternoon, so I went exploring, hoping to uncover another hidden gem in the foodiest small town in America.

I'd heard about a fresh fish market in Carborro, just west of Chapel Hill. After driving up and down Main Street three times I finally saw the sign for Tom Robinson's Carolina Seafood Market. It's a tiny place, stuck between two restaurants, but an array of local music concerts and interest group fliers taped on both sides of a squeaky screen door keeps the shop's decor consistent with the rest of the town.

Each Wednesday, the store owner drives to the coast every, picks up the fresh catch and then sells it to customers in Carrboro Thursday through Saturday. What they don't sell on Saturday they offer to local restaurants.

When I got there Saturday afternoon the store's display case was about half full. I bought two Spanish mackerel, and the owner gutted them for me on the spot.

On my way home I also picked up The Silver Spoon Cookbook. According to the publisher, it's "Italy's best-selling cookbook for over 50 years." Filled with over 2,000 recipes, the self-proclaimed "bible of authentic Italian cooking" is different in many ways from the other self-proclaimed "number-one cookbook in America since 1930" sitting on my bookshelf. The Silver Spoon organizes its recipes by ingredient instead of courses. Its first 24 pages offer no recipes, only cooking terms, definitions and diagrams. The recipe instructions, regardless of length, are all one paragraph. It's an Italian cookbook but more specifically a cookbook for Italians, because not all recipes (like "Carrots in French Sauce," "Creole Rice" and "American Chicken Salad") come from Italy. The final 75 pages feature recipes from prominent Italian chefs from all over the world, such as Mario Batali (US), Giorgio Locatelli (London), and Gianluigi Morini (Italy).

The Silver Spoon is a textbook - something I'll reference when cooking with specific ingredients, but not a book I'll sit down and read. It's a great resource when I buy veggies at the farmer's market that I've never cooked or eaten before, and it has recipes for virtually anything Walking Fish can offer. For example, it has six different recipes for turnips bulbs and five for mackerel.

That night, I ended up boiling the turnips, seasoning them with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, and dusting the whole mackerel with flour, pan-searing it in butter and topping it with lemon juice.

A Family Meal

My in-laws and I descended upon Cleveland last weekend to watch Shefali's brother, Manek, play in the Tavern Club Invitational. My parents saw the weekend as a special occasion and a reason to have everyone over for family meals.

Manek won the Pro-Am championship, and Saturday was also his birthday, so we had reason to celebrate. Nine of us sat at the table and enjoyed salad, spaghetti and meatballs with Christopher Sauce, stuffed hot peppers and great wine. For dessert, my mom presented Manek a massive tub of banana pudding, complete with candles.

In all, there were nine of us, and we made short work of the meal. The weather in Cleveland this time of year makes it all the more satisfying to eat well among family. We hope to make the Tavern Club Invitational an annual event.

My dad gets full credit for the meal, as he cooked everything himself.

Meatballs:

1 pound ground beef
1-3 eggs**
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 tbs parsley or oregano
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 onion, chopped or 1-2 tbs of onion powder

**My dad remembers watching his grandmother and Aunt Lucy make meatballs by mixing as many as three eggs into each pound of beef. He prefers one egg per pound of meat. Looking back, he believes it was their way of stretching the pound of meat (and the budget) so that it could feed more people.

Mix the eggs into the meat, then add the dry ingredients, adjusting the quantities until the meat has the right consistency (similar to burgers). Roll the meat into balls slightly larger than golf balls and arrange on a baking sheet. Brown the meatballs in the oven, then remove before they are fully cooked. Simmer them in Christopher Sauce to finish.

Stuffed Peppers:

12 hot banana peppers

3/4 pound hot italian sausage

3/4 pound mild italian sausage

1 egg

grated parmesan cheese

bread crumbs

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp salt

Pecorino Romano Cheese

About 1 quart of Christopher Sauce

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the top off the peppers and put the tops aside for later. Clean out the inside of the peppers.

Bring a pot of water to a boil and put the peppers in the boiling water for about 5 minutes (they should stay firm). Remove and let them cool.

In a sauce pan, add 1-2 cups of Christopher Sauce. Chop the top of the peppers you had set aside and add it to the sauce. You should make the sauce spicy to your taste. Hot peppers' heat can vary significantly. Let the sauce simmer for a while stuffing peppers.

In a bowl, combine the sausage (hot and mild), egg, salt and pepper, and 1/2 cup of the spiced-up Christopher sauce. Add parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs in equal parts until you like the consistency. It should be somewhat firm but not too much, as it will have to flow in a piping bag to fill the peppers. If you don't want to try to fill them whole you can cut the peppers in half lengthwise and fill them laying flat in a baking dish.

Put the sausage mixture in a piping bag and fill the peppers (or fill them laying flat in a baking dish). Put the peppers in a baking dish and cover with the spiced-up sauce. Cover the peppers and sauce in grated Pecorino Romano cheese. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the peppers.

You should alter the recipe based on how hot you want the dish. I found the dish is highly dependent on the hotness of the peppers. If they're pretty hot, then you don't need to spice up the stuffing and sauce too much. If they are milder and you want some more spice you can add some heat to the sausage filling (crushed red pepper , etc.) or the sauce.

Walking Fish Delivery 2

The weather was not cooperative for fishermen during the last week in January, but that didn't stop Walking Fish from handing me a bag of clams and oysters last Thursday.

Shef's not a fan of raw oysters, so I steamed them in white wine. With the pound of clams, I tried a recipe for linguine alla vongole from Toni Lydecker's Seafood alla Siciliana.

After heating olive oil in a pan large enough to hold the clams and pasta, we dropped the clams in over medium high heat and shook them occasionally. I added a bit of white wine to the pan after to help them open. As soon as they started to open, I removed them from the pan and discarded a few that remained closed. With the pan off the heat, I added a couple anchovies, lemon juice and zest, and black and crushed red pepper. Once the anchovy fillets dissolved, I returned the clams to the pan and added parsley leaves and the pasta.

When I boiled the pasta, I removed it from the water a few minutes early, while it was still very al dente. After joining the clams and sauce in the pan it softened over low heat and soaked up the flavor of the lemon, pepper and seafood.

In all, the pasta was more dry than what I'm used to in a linguine alla vongole, but the flavor was excellent. The oysters were terrific.