Mouthing Off

Not long ago, I discovered that pecans and walnuts (two very fatty and delicate nuts) toast beautifully in the microwave. This morning, with no time to preheat the oven for a meager handful of hazelnuts, I decided to put the microwave method to the test. Well, it worked like a charm—mostly. For 1/2 cup of raw, unblanched hazelnuts, I set the timer for two minutes, which was a tiny bit long. A few of the nuts were too dark to use, but most were perfect. The nuts cooled more quickly, the skins blistered and were magically easier to remove. In the future, I think I'll do 30-second intervals (which is good for all nuts) to control the toasting.

 Recently I planted a few large gardening pots with a heavy dose of mixed lettuce seeds. I thin out the sprouts every five days or so, gleaning enough to make a crisp, sweet lettuce-sprout salad that's not only precious and pretty but also much more nutritious than one made with mature lettuces.  

 I call these gardening pots Salad Bowls (actually my sister, Susie, coined the term). If you'd like to make your own Salad Bowls, fill a few wide, shallow pots with as many seeds as possible (lettuce sprouts don't really mind crowded living conditions).  A single seed packet holds tons of the tiniest seeds, so it’s easy to scatter a heavy dose of them into each pot.  The more seedlings, the more thinning, the longer the sprout season. You can grow Salad Bowls all spring on a sunny windowsill or on a porch. Get one going, there is still plenty of time!

 Susie likes making Salad Bowls as spring garden gifts.  She nurtures the sprouts until they are a showy 4-inches high, then gives them away in the pot.

We tasted lots of smoky foods for our June roundup—so many, in fact, that they couldn’t all fit in the magazine. Here are three bonus extras, and some delicious ideas for how to serve them.

1. Salvatore Bklyn Smoked Ricotta: About six months ago Betsy Devine and Rachel Mark started smoking their ultra-rich ricotta, made with milk from Hudson Valley Fresh, an upstate New York co-op. Thirty minutes over cherry wood imparts an amazing toasted marshmallow flavor that complements the cheese’s creaminess. Devine and Mark say: “Fold it into pasta with plenty of black pepper and chile pepper or smear it on ciabatta with slices of speck and apples. For dessert, try stirring in a little sugar and use it as a dip for chocolate-covered graham crackers for fire-less s’mores.”

2. Snake River Farms Gourmet Franks: Made from American Wagyu raised outside Boise, Idaho, these dogs spend some time over hickory and alder wood and have an all-natural beef casing. They’re only mildly smoky but have pure beef flavor and a gentle, pleasing spiciness with a super snap. They’d be great grilled, topped with a quick relish.

3. Vanns Smoked Rice: This long-grain white rice, smoked mostly over red and white oak, smells like a fire pit, but when cooked becomes more nuanced and subtle, especially prepared pilaf-style with onions and chicken stock. It would add a fabulous depth to dishes like red beans and rice, jambalaya and gumbo.  

Easter is this Sunday. This means that my mother has started baking her annual batch of pizza rustica using a recipe from her aunt, a stubborn woman who, because of a lamp, did not speak to her sister (my grandmother) for six years. Per this aunt's instructions, my mother will whisk six eggs and some flat-leaf parsley with half a pound each of fontina and Parmesan cheeses before adding six pounds of ricotta and half a pound each of cubed salami, soppressata, prosciutto and ham. This will make three to four double-crust pies. Clearly, we’re not light eaters.

Curious about its origins, I discovered that pizza rustica is an Easter staple in Naples. Nancy Harmon Jenkins, author of Cucina del Sole, has heard of it among the Pugliese and the Abruzzi and confirmed that it’s pretty widely eaten in the whole southern Italian boot. In my house we actually call it “pizza gain”, a phrase that’s an Italian-American corruption derived from pizza ripiena or piena, meaning “stuffed” or “full” in Italian. In short, piena, or chiena in certain dialects, became chien', then “gain” as it got passed down across generations (and an ocean). These pies, most made from some combination of cheese, meats and eggs in a sweet crust, are meant to break the Lenten fast by offering many of the rich treats given up as a sacrifice.

And break the fast it does. David Greco, who runs the Arthur Avenue Café and Mike’s Deli in the Bronx, makes a Neapolitan-style rustica based on his maternal grandmother’s recipe that’s very similar to my mother’s – and one that weighs in at a little over three pounds a pie. He’s been selling 200 a day for the past week. His secret is a touch of lemon zest in the crust. He also makes a Calabrian version from his father’s family with chunks of soppressata and thinly-sliced prosciutto baked into an eggy focaccia. Frank Generoso of the Royal Crown Pastry Shop in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn says the key to his rustica is using the best quality ricotta that’s firm but still creamy. A thick ricotta, he says, will hold up and not run all over the place.

My mother's is still the best, especially a couple of hours out of the oven. I should start fasting now to heighten the enjoyment of that first bite.

Sadly, F&W's Test Kitchen is temporarily relocating to another space while our offices undergo renovations. Unfortunately, that means packing and moving equipment, pantry items and all sorts of nonperishable necessities. What it also means is clearing out and cleaning out our fridges of all fresh ingredients. We filled our "give-away table" with cheese, eggs, broccoli, half-full jars (optimist that I am) of jam, mayo, mustard, pickles, chutney, hot sauce and various and sundry condiments for the staff to take home. Of course, I kept a few things for myself—a few slices of pancetta, some moldy pecorino  (which I cleaned up), a slightly wilted endive and a lemon, all of which went into my clearing-house salad. I cleaned out my fridge at home to complete the meal, and it was a huge success, not to mention a pleasant surprise.

4 servings

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 slices pancetta
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 pocketless pita
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 garlic clove, minced
1 Romaine lettuce heart, coarsely shredded
1 red endive (traviso), sliced
1/2 can drained chickpeas
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 ounces sliced young pecorino (Sardinian pecorino)
2 slices turkey breast, shredded
4 hard cooked eggs, quartered

1.    In a large skillet, heat 1 teaspoon of the oil. Add the pancetta and cook over moderate heat until crisp, about 6 minutes. Drain on paper towels. Add the pine nuts to the skillet and toast, stirring, until golden. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a plate. Add the pita to the skillet and toast until golden, about 2 minutes, turning once or twice.  Cut into quarters.
2.    In a large bowl, whisk the lemon juice, mayonnaise and garlic with the remaining oil. Add the lettuce, endive and chickpeas, season with salt and pepper and toss. Arrange the pancetta, pine nuts, pecorino, turkey and eggs on top and serve with the pita.

--------------------------------

Last Friday, the seventh-floor conference room at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square could have been the Kodak theater at this Sunday's Oscars, for all the excitement generated by the 3rd Annual Simply Manischewitz Cook-Off. Six finalists chosen from nearly 2,000 entrants each had passionate partisans cheering them on as they competed for serious prizes: $25,000 in GE appliances—and Manischewitz products. Myra Smolev was cracking jokes as she assembled her delicious Sloppy Moses potato pancakes stuffed with ground beef and mushrooms; Deborah Leebove from Denver nearly lost it but managed a miraculous recovery when she realized her oven wasn't on to bake her superfluffy Mani Meatloaves. They each hoped to make the tastiest dish in under an hour using at least one Manischewitz product; I got to be a judge. I had no idea, but the New Jersey–based company, founded in 1888, today makes over 400 items, everything from matzo to kosher pasta sauces. Only about a dozen were used, particularly the borscht (which turned out to be great flavorer for Shana Schuman's Meaty Manischtroni), and the Tam Tam crackers (Leebove's meatloaf secret weapon). The winner used the falafel mix: Calm, collected Amy Siegel from Clifton, NJ, came through with her Marvelous Mediterranean Falafel Sliders—juicy mini burgers made with ground turkey and topped with caramelized onions that I'd readily make myself. Congratulations, Amy. But watch your back—I may have to enter next year.

With little notice, we are moving our Test Kitchen to temporary digs across town. Not only do we have to pack up equipment and tools, we have to empty our freezers—freezers that (in my case) have housed long-since-forgotten items, held on to for some future use. (I've had this fridge since 2002...) It's sort of liberating to get rid of things, but I must say, I'm very sad at tossing my two quarts of rendered duck fat. Yes, I could take it home to fry potatoes, but I'd like to someday meet my grandkids....
I did find several packages of frozen sweet cherries that I couldn't bear to toss (remember how thrifty/cheap I am). I didn't feel like baking them into a clafouti or pastry, so I threw them into a food processor with some honey and lemon juice and made a superfast sorbet. Since I can't eat it all in one sitting, it will have to go back into the freezer, but with a few more days until the move, I'm sure it won't get lost in there.

QUICK CHERRY SORBET
MAKES 4 CUPS

Two 10-ounce bags frozen sweet cherries
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup honey or agave nectar

Put all the ingredients into a food processor and puree until smooth. Transfer to a shallow bowl and freeze until firm, about 1 hour. Scoop and serve!

I like to think of myself as resourceful and clever  and not just cheap, especially when it comes to scraps  ("orts" if you do crosswords...). But this new use of broccoli stems is SO resourceful and clever, it makes me angry I didn't think of it first.

There's no lack of great small-batch pickles —ramps, beans, okra, watermelon rind, you name it-and no lack of great recipes, but I am definitely looking forward to trying these pickled broccoli stems, published in yesterday's New York Times Health section. Most of the nutrients in broccoli are contained in the crown, or the florets. But there is loads of much-needed fiber in those stems, and all it takes is a clever and resourceful cook to find ways to use them.

I just got a package of new Japanese salts and one sugar from Chris Cosentino of San Francisco’s Incanto, whose wife, Tatiana, spotted them when the two checked out the San Francisco Fancy Food Show this month. The Japan Salt Corporation would love to import them to the States if they can find a distributor. Chris and his pal Ravi Kapur of Boulevard are doing what they can to help, so that they can start cooking with them.

 ° Hokkaido salt
Japanese regional sea salts, anyone? Along with this crunchy, assertive sea salt from Hokkaido, Chris says the company also has salts from other Japanese port towns like Okinawa, each with their own distinctive textures, grain sizes and flavors.

° Cherry blossom salt
An extraordinary pale pink color, with a very gentle saltiness, for a salt. From the limited conversation Chris was able to muster with the importers, the low-sodium grains are used to dehydrate the blossoms, which give them their color.

°Cane sugar powder
Similar to brown sugar but with a much richer flavor and a surprising creaminess from its very fine grains, “it’s [extremely] mind-blowing,” Chris says, using a different word not for publication. “It has this rich, deep complex flavor, almost like bourbon. It’s like they’ve aged it in an oak barrel for 10 years. I can’t wait to marinate pork belly in it, or use it to finish brûlées.”

I'd buy Country Life butter—for no other reason than because I can't imagine a bigger disconnect between product and spokesperson. In this spot on British TV , John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, is seen in a stuffy private-club reading room, at a cricket match, driving through the countryside in a vintage Bentley and on a country estate running from cows. All silly, indeed, but the biggest disconnect is the twee suburban kitchen where he breakfasts on tea and toast in a boring plaid bathrobe. (Probably not that far from the truth.)

There are more widely available (and less hawked by notorious D-list celebs) butters, like Meyenberg  (pale white) goat-milk butter, which is so delightfully goaty that I find it irresistible. Organic Valley cultured unsalted butter is another one of my favorites, with a slightly tangy flavor and lovely yellow hue. Both are great with steamed fish, which allows the sweetness and silkiness to come through.