Carbonara and Cured Eggs
There's new fun food at our house!!
I know, I know... How unusual... but the cured egg yolks really did come out good! My stomach is smiling, as my sister, Eileen, used to say.
I had already thawed the lamb rack, otherwise I probably would have made the carbonara the main dish, but, a bit of culture-mixing is nothing new in our house, either. We're eclectic from head to toe.
The eggs came out pretty much as I thought. They have a creamy/salty/eggy taste that really went well atop the carbonara. I can see these being used with asparagus, on garlic toast or bruschetta, or shaved onto salad. The possibilities really are endless.
Carbonara is traditionally made with spaghetti, but Nonna no longer likes spaghetti noodles, so I went for a short rigatoni that's easier for her to eat. I do believe that pasta shapes make a difference, but in this case, it came out just fine.
The basic carbonara recipe is:
Pasta alla Carbonara
- 1 lb spaghetti
- 4 oz pancetta, diced
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup grated pecorino romano
- fresh black pepper
- pasta cooking water
Start with a cold skillet and add the diced pancetta. Slowly heat the pancetta until it renders its fat and crisps.
Mix the eggs with the cheese and set aside.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta. Drain, and reserve a bit of the cooking water.
Add the cooked pasta to the pancetta pan and swirl to coat all of the pasta with the rendered fat and pancetta, and garlic. Remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in the egg and cheese mixture, tossing it quickly to coat the pasta and cook the egg without scrambling it. Add a bit of hot pasta water, if needed to thin.
Place on plates and add several hefty twists of black pepper and then garnish with a grated cured egg yolk, if desired.
There are a few different takes on making a carbonara. I've heard of it being made with just egg yolks, but I really can't picture an Italian woman separating eggs and saving the whites for something else. Really. And the cheese is pecorino romano. Locatelli to the uninitiated - hand-crafted from 100% pure sheep’s milk. You can taste the difference.
And no cream and most definitely no peas! Just a couple of really good-quality ingredients.
Guanciale would be the meat of choice, but it's impossible to find out here in 'burbia. If you can get it, use it in place of the pancetta.
Cured Egg Yolks
Victor was perusing the internet last week and ran across a dish using cured egg yolks. I vaguely remember seeing these years ago on some show or another and quickly forgot about them. Victor didn't. He decided to make some!
The premise is quite simple - eggs, sugar, and salt - and they really could not be easier to make. It's what to do with them after that's the fun of it all...
I see a pasta carbonara in our very near future - as in probably tonight along with lamb racks that I took out of the freezer a couple days ago - forgetting we weren't going to be home for dinner last night. I'll post about that when it happens.
In the meantime, here's how to make them:
Cured Egg Yolks
- 1 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 1/4 cups kosher salt
Combine sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. Line the bottom of a pie plate or other container with a thick layer of the salt mixture. Make small indentations in the mixture and slide the yolks into them. Cover the yolks completely with the salt mixture, cover with plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator.
They should be ready in 4 or 5 days.
Take them out of the salt mixture and brush off as much as possible.
Gently rinse under cold water and blot dry with paper towels. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until ready to use.
Grate over pasta or anything where you want a boost of slightly-salty, rich egg.
Tomatoes
We have not had a bumper-crop of tomatoes, this year. I had visions of canning tomatoes, Victor making sauce with fresh tomatoes from the yard...
Ain't gonna happen.
I think part of the problem is the bed where we've been planting them. It's not getting the sun it used to... Too many big bushes and trees in the neighbor's yards are encroaching. One of those double-edged swords... They're perfect for privacy, but Mr Sunbeam is being blocked, as well. I've had to augment with store-bought heirlooms. At least they're local Pennsylvania, but it's just not the same.
Methinks that next year we'll be doing a raised bed in a different part of the yard and expanding the offerings...
In the meantime, we have had a few good peppers that I canned and set aside for possible Christmas offerings - if we don't eat them all, first...
We've had a few lush years and hope to see a few more while we're here.
Tonight I baked chicken breasts with cherry tomatoes and fresh herbs from the yard and did a tomato salad with the store-bought's. I mixed the tomatoes and juices from the chicken with some really big, fat pasta noodles, hit it all with some cheese, and called it dinner.
Not bad, at all...
Birthday on the Boardwak
I think the last time we were at the Jersey Shore was a couple of years before Hurricane Sandy. Our vacations have either been Europe or West Coast - either of which is generally less expensive than renting a house at the shore for a week. I like going down to the ocean, but my Irish complexion is just not conducive to sitting on the beach hours at a time. I've had some pretty horrendous sunburns in my 63 years - I don't plan on ever having another.
So... when Victor asked if I wanted to head to Atlantic City for a few days for my birthday, I jumped at it! Walking the boards, eating salt water taffy, and pulling a few slots sounded like a lot of fun - and there's plenty to do besides sitting in the sand. The second thing I said after saying a resounding YES was we needed to drive home on the Black Horse Pike and hit some Farm Stands.
New Jersey is called The Garden State for a reason. The produce coming out of South Jersey is pretty spectacular and the Black Horse Pike runs through what was once some pretty intensive farming. Much of it has been sold off for shopping malls and sub-divisions, but there's still farmers out there growing some awesome stuff.
The farm stands - numerous even in the '90s when we would come back to visit family - have dwindled to a small handful. But what they lack in number they more than make up for in price and quality. We stopped at one quiet roadside stand and spent 30 minutes talking with the woman who ran the place. She was apologizing for not having things but giving a rundown of when different things would be coming in and lamenting the finicky customers who want perfect-looking produce over stuff that actually tastes good. We had a great time sharing stories and cooking ideas and tips.
We bought raw, unheated, unfiltered local honey.
And tomatoes, corn, blueberries, blackberries, potatoes, lots of hot peppers, plums, blackberry jelly, fig preserves, melons... And spent less than $30 for everything.
We could have easily brought home more, but reality struck. We need to be able to eat this stuff up in just a couple of days. It's fresh!
Hammonton - where Victor's cousin lives and his mom used to live - is the Blueberry Capital of the east and the blueberries are outstanding.
We bought a couple of pints and the minute we got home Victor made a huge fruit salad and a tomato salad. I fried peppers and we had them on top of pork chops for dinner - along with tomato salad. Nonna absolutely loves tomato salad and Jersey tomatoes are her favorite - after the ones we get out of the yard.
Speaking of yard... they're not producing as we had hoped so we may be heading back down towards the end of the tomato season and pick up a bushel of tomatoes and make sauce for canning. It would be fun.
In the meantime... we're enjoying the few things we did get and contemplating another trek down September 26th for the Miss'd America Pageant. We saw the reigning Miss'd America - Honey Davenport and her first two runners-up, Holly Dae and Fifi DuBois on the boardwalk for a fun show and I'd love to see the whole pageant.
It was a great birthday, indeed...
Oatmeal Cookies
I needed a cookie tonight. Several cookies.
It's been a rough couple of days and I needed to get into the kitchen and dirty things up a bit. I knew right away that I wanted Oatmeal cookies and was quite relieved to find that I actually had a bit of oats up in the cabinet. Just enough to get me through today - and they're added to Monday's shopping list for the next emergency baking need. It's work keeping the larder stocked all of the time, but it really pays off when ya just have to make something - now.
This is an easy recipe I got from my Mom and I've made for years. I will often play with the recipe and add different things, but today I made them really simple. They take no time at all to pull together. They're pretty much dump and bake.
They didn't disappoint - they came out perfect.
Oatmeal Cookies
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 heaping tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- scant 2 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup walnut pieces
- 1/2 cup butter, melted
- 1/2 cup shortening, melted
- 1 tbsp molasses
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1 egg
Mix dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients and mix well.
Drop by tablespoon onto parchment-lined cookie sheets - or ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 350° for 12 minutes.
Makes about 4 dozen cookies.
Really simple but they pack a wallop of flavor. They remain chewy - not crispy. Just the way I like 'em.
Clean-Out-The-'Fridge-Ravioli
I did inventory of the 'fridge this morning before doing the weekly shopping and found lots of bits of things that needed using up. Time to make a pasta sauce!
The beauty of Italian cooking is it lends itself to anything and everything. Rustic cooking is really nothing more than cooking what's on hand at the moment. I did some rustic cooking, today!
I had an eggplant, stalk of broccoli, some cauliflower, a bunch of tomatoes from the yard, most of a green bell pepper, onion, garlic, portobello mushrooms, and some frozen crab meat I had bought a while ago thinking I'd make crab cakes. Well... I didn't make the crab cakes and the crab was just taking up valuable real estate. Time to eat it up. And the fresh herbs out back are going bonkers. I can't use them fast enough.
I started off sauteing onion, green pepper, and eggplant.
In another lifetime I would have added the peppers much later, but Nonna needs her vegetables well... overcooked is one way of describing it. We make our sacrifices...
Meanwhile, I had broccoli, cauliflower, peas, garlic, mushrooms... all waiting to be added to the party in the pan.
After the onions and eggplant cooked down quite a bit, I doused the pan with lots of red wine and let it all simmer a bit before adding everything else.
I had a couple small bottles of clam juice - also taking up space - and in they went, as well. I covered the pan, let everything simmer, added some S&P and fresh herbs and then the crab.
It ended up being a cioppino-like stew that went great over cheese and arugula ravioli.
Clean-out-the-'fridge dinners usually make for a large pot, and this was definitely no exception. I had sauce for 12, easily! The leftover sauce is going into the freezer - something out, something in - and I'm thinking it would be really good in a crepe - crespelle, in Italian - with an Italiany-cheesy sauce over it.
Another meal for another time...
The 'fridge is cleaned out, the vegetable bins are sparkling, and everything is fresh and ready to go. The freezer actually has room, and the cupboards and basement overflow are getting cleared out, slowly, as well.
Life is good...
Fish on the Fourth
Anyone can barbecue or grill on the Fourth of July, in fact, I think we usually do. Then, again, we grill year-round, so it's not like we're lacking in our carcinogens. But every once in a while, we have to buck tradition - and Victor did it, today!
Holiday or not, it was a normal Saturday around here. I worked and Victor did his Saturday chores - laundry, vacuuming, that sort of stuff. And, as an added bonus - for me - he cooked dinner!
Poached white fish in a white wine butter sauce, roasted sweet potatoes, and tomato salad.
Totally yum!
We totally eschewed the whole Independence Day theme. Weird, because it's actually been a pretty good week to be a Liberal in this country and I'm feeling a tad more patriotic than I normally do. Marriage Equality was definitely grand - we're now just 'married' everywhere instead of gay-married in some states and not married at all in others. Something I honestly never thought I'd see in my lifetime. And then the upholding of the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare. I especially love that the right wing pundits started calling the AFC Obamacare early on as a slur. After surviving two Supreme Court challenges, it is the law of the land - and their slur has turned into his legacy. It will always be called Obamacare. That must totally annoy some folks to no end. Personally, I love it. And see ya later, Confederate Battle Flag. As I said - a great week to be a Liberal.
But back to dinner... Not a strawberry or blueberry in the house. No red, white, and blueberry cake, shortcake... We do have watermelon, but we always have watermelon. It almost doesn't count. Normal, everyday food. I do see some grilling in our very near future, and another peach pie/cobbler/something is in the works, as well. Tomorrow is another day...
So Happy 239th Birthday, America! And here's to Bernie for the 240th!
Tagliatelle alla Victor
What a way to end a wild and crazy week - homemade Pasta alla Victor!
It's been a great week to be a Liberal, but life continues on and dinners have to be made. Part of our Gay Agenda is getting his Mom fed and her medications in her on schedule.
Victor bought me a pasta roller years ago and then proceeded to master the art of perfect pasta-making. I don't go near it - I don't think I could do it justice after the light as a cloud pasta Victor continually makes. Besides... I ain't no fool. The man is cooking me dinner - I'm ready fork in hand.
Making pasta isn't difficult, but it does take time and a feel for the dough that only comes through practice. As in bread-making, where I can just tell when it's right, Victor just knows when the pasta dough has reached the perfect consistency. It is an art, for sure.
A silken, edible art.
Victor’s Pasta
- 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- up to 1 teaspoon water, if necessary
Instructions
On a clean work surface, mound flour and form a well in the center. Add egg and egg yolk to the well. Using a fork, gently break up yolks and slowly incorporate flour from inside rim of well. Add drops of water, if necessary. Continue until liquid is absorbed, then knead for 10 minutes. Wrap dough tightly in plastic and let rest for 30 minutes.
Divide dough into 3 pieces. Cover 2 pieces with plastic wrap. Flatten remaining dough piece so that it will fit through the rollers of a pasta machine.
Set rollers of pasta machine at the widest setting, then feed pasta through rollers 3 or 4 times, folding and turning pasta until it is smooth and the width of the machine.
Roll pasta through machine, decreasing the setting, one notch at a time (do not fold or turn pasta), until pasta sheet is scant 1/16 inch thick.
Cut sheet in half width-wise; dust both sides of sheets with flour. Layer sheets between floured pieces of parchment or wax paper. Cover with paper and repeat with remaining dough.
With the short end of 1 pasta sheet facing you, loosely fold up sheet, folding sheet over two or three times from short ends toward the center. With a large chefs knife, cut folded sheet into ribbons, a scant 1/4 inch wide. Unroll strips and lightly dust with flour; spread on a lightly floured baking sheet. Repeat with remaining pasta sheets.
To cook the tagliatelle, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain pasta, transfer to a large serving bowl and toss with sauce.
The sauce was his sauce we made and jarred a few months ago, along with a few hot Italian sausages.
Sauce made in small batches with real ingredients and no fillers, chemicals, or extraneous ingredients placed solely to trick the mind into thinking it's eating real food.
It is good.
The final plate was rich sauce with silken pasta and a just-spicy-enough sausage. I ate more than I should have and loved every bite.
Real good.
Marriage Equality and French Champagne
At 10 o'clock this morning, I really really wanted to call my mother. She would have been so happy. Very honestly really happy.
I remember the day 40-whatever years ago when I told her I was gay. She cried. Not because I was gay, but because she knew what a rough life I was going to have - and she feared I would be alone. I lived all over the USofA chasing rainbows of one sort or another but true love always eluded me. I hid the rough spots over the years, but she always hoped I would settle down.
And then I - and she - met Victor. It was love at first sight.
She adored him and knew from Day One that I had finally met my life-mate. She was a proud mama and so happy that her little boy had finally found the happiness she had always hoped and prayed for.
She died way too soon, but she left us knowing we were happy.
And today, I just wanted to call her and say We Did It! Legal everywhere! She would have beamed with pride.
What a difference from that little boy 50 years ago - several lifetimes ago - who at 13 actually thought about killing himself. I knew I was different, I thought something was wrong with me. I kinda knew what it was, but it was something I had to keep secreted in the deepest depths of my being. The love that dare not speak its name...
It was a very frightening time. I think it's one of the reasons I'm very publicly out today. I want other 13 year old kids to see a [reasonably] well-adjusted adult gay male out there and just kinda pass on the "it's okay" message.
When I told my father I was gay, his reply was "I know. I was wondering how long it would be before you finally mentioned it."
And then I CAME OUT. In a blaze of Rainbow Glory. I was so out my brother finally told me he liked me better when I was in the closet. I got the message and toned things down a bit. It was such a relief, though, not to have to hide. Of course, it opened up a whole new can of worms... I got to experience fear - not of being found out - but of getting my ass kicked for being in the wrong place or coming out of the wrong bar. And then there was the hotel GM who told me I wasn't going any further up the Corporate Ladder because I didn't have - emphasis his - a wife.
So many years of open and blatant discrimination. So many years of being called a sodomite and a sinner, that I was going to hell. Laws enacted to deny me my basic human rights.
Hell - I couldn't even get out of the draft by saying I was gay. In those pre-Don't Ask Don't Tell days, I would have been inducted, and then dishonorably discharged. With a probably prison sentence. Really. I lied like hell and then hoped to hell no one found out.
When we moved back here from California in 2001, I - naturally - had to quit my job. California denied me unemployment because we weren't married. I filed an appeal and a judge wrote a scathing opinion denouncing California, stating that we had done everything we legally could to validate our relationship and they couldn't deny my unemployment based on a legality they refused to give me. It was great.
When California finally enacted Marriage Equality we finally decided to get married at home in San Francisco in 2008. The wedding was planned for November 23rd. Prop 8 passed on November 8th. So much for our non-wedding.
We were finally married in October 2010 by a dear friend in New Hampshire. And then parts of DoMA were repealed. In May 2014 - while we were in Sicily - Pennsylvania recognized our New Hampshire marriage.
And today, June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court announced we are married. Period.
What a long, strange trip it has been. I don't think that little boy 50 years ago ever dreamed this day would come.
Hell - in 1995, Victor and I marched as honor guards in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade for Hawai'i defendants Ninia Baehr and Genora Dancel - two of the women who sued Hawai'i for the right to marry and really started the firestorm. I didn't think we had a snowballs chance in hell of ever seeing marriage equality in our lifetimes.
The champagne came back with us from Paris about 10 years ago. It's been sitting in the 'fridge waiting the right moment to come out, so to speak. Today seemed like the perfect day to drink champagne and spread some cheer.
So cent’ anni - a hundred years!
Oh... and that 10 year old champagne was outstanding! We need to go back and get another bottle!
Tortellini and Cod
I had it in my mind to make pasta when I got home, today. Victor had the same idea - except his idea was even better than mine!
Victor cooks a lot on Saturday. It's his day of domesticity - laundry, vacuuming, that sort of thing - and more often than not, a great dinner. I love it! It is great pulling into the driveway on my last day of work for the week and seeing Victor in the kitchen. Really great!
Tonight was no exception... I saw him through the window and I knew something good was afloat.
We had some Alaskan cod in the freezer and Victor simmered it in a jar of his homemade sauce. Simplicity. And totally delicious. Nice-sized chunks of cod gave the sauce a delicate hint of seafood and fresh pecorino romano and basil on top brought it right over the top. I hate to keep harping on it, but it really is so easy to cook decent meals at home on a regular basis. You just have to do it. And the more you do it the better you become and the better you become the easier it is... Really. It's like canning 14 quarts of sauce at one time... Yes, it takes a bit of time to do it, but the payoff is fresh sauce without crap in it.
I'm getting a bit nervous, though... I think we're down to only 2 quarts of sauce left. It was my hope that we could get through until our (in my dreams) bumper-crop of tomatoes was here and we could make a vat using fresh tomatoes. Methinks we may have to make a batch using the last of the San Marzano tomatoes downstairs in the very near future. Oh well. The things we have to suffer through...
Tomorrow is my day in the kitchen. I'm planning on making a vat of Peach Sriracha BBQ Sauce. I have the peaches, the onions, the red peppers, the tomatoes, and the sriracha... I've been kinda formulating a recipe in my head for the past few days. We'll see how it comes about tomorrow. It's supposed to rain for the next 36 or so hours, so making a few gallons of BBQ sauce sounds like a fun thing to do.
And in the meantime... my tummy is smiling and I am one happy and content guy...
Slow-Cooked Pork Shoulder
I was at the store looking for some baby back ribs for dinner and the racks were all in the $13-$14 range - pretty normal for where we live. I went to pick one up and glanced down and there were whole pork shoulders for the same price. One meal or five meals... Guess which one won?!?
The beauty of our kitchen - and especially the spice cabinet - is that we can cook just about whatever we want whenever we want, because we have most of the necessary ingredients hanging about. It didn't take much to figure out a dry rub and get this onto the grill.
Salt and pepper were automatic, as was smoked paprika, chipotle powder, ancho chile powder, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, Mexican oregano, and sweet basil. I wanted lots of smoky stuff since I was using a gas grill.
After getting the grill nice and hot, I turned off the middle burners and let it cook with indirect heat for about three hours. It was pull-apart perfect.
I let it cool and split it up into 5 batches - 4 for the freezer and one for the stove-top.
I looooove my FoodSaver! We bought it years ago and it has paid for itself many times over.
Batch 5 went into a skillet with some spicy sriracha BBQ sauce and dinner was born!
It was a great East Meets West flavor combination!
I added sliced pickles - homemade by our dear friend Ann and her daughter Melinda - to my sandwich. There's something about pickles and BBQ that just works. Grilled corn and a baked sweet potato finished things off. The corn was spread with a bit of mayonnaise and then sprinkled with some Kansas City BBQ seasonings compliments of our friend Luigi. Wrapped in foil and cooked on the shelf rack of the grill.
The perfect summer dinner!
Sriracha Hot Dogs
I have been dreaming about this since Friday's burgers...
It's no secret that my favorite food - after ice cream - is a hot dog. It is the ultimate in versatile comfort food. From beanie-weenies to chili dogs, bacon-wrapped to jalapeño pepper topped - and everything in between - I loves me some hot dogs. Fried, grilled, boiled, steamed, dipped in corn batter - they're all good.
And I knew when I tasted the Sriracha Cole Slaw, that I would be putting it atop a hot dog really soon. Two hot dogs, in fact.
Sweet, hot, crunchy... My stomach is smiling...