Mouthing Off

Photo © John Kernick

F&W’s Grace Parisi reinvents her Calabrian grandmother’s favorite recipes so they’re lighter and speedier.

Creating recipes that hit all the high points of southern Italian cooking is a no-brainer for me—one set of my grandparents came to this country from Palermo, the other from Messina and a town in Calabria. My maternal grandfather was a baker, pizzaiolo and restaurateur, and my paternal grandmother (my namesake) was an amazing home cook who taught me that not every southern Italian dish comes with a red sauce. My recipes here are a tribute to her. Southern Italians love their raisins, pine nuts and capers, all of which I mix into meatballs simmered in a sweet-and-sour braising sauce: agrodolce. Our beloved raisins and capers appear again with stewed peppers in a luscious side dish, peperonata, that I serve with grilled baby lamb chops. Aside from the chops, which may have been a bit fancy for my grandma, I think everything here would have been quite at home on her table.

Recipes

Grilled Eggplant Parmesan This grilled-vegetable version of eggplant Parmesan, like the one Grace Parisi's Calabrian grandmother used to make, is much lighter than the fried kind.

Grilled Lamb Chops with Peperonata A hearty mix of stewed peppers, onions, raisins and anchovies makes this peperonata more of a side dish than a condiment.

Agrodolce Meatballs Even in southern Italy, not every meatball is drenched in tomato sauce. These are cooked in a sweet-and-tart mixture of balsamic vinegar and chicken broth.

Oil-Poached Tuna with Fennel and Orange In this clever one-pot dish, Grace Parisi poaches fennel, shallots and orange zest in extra-virgin olive oil. She then cooks a tuna steak in that oil, making the fish incredibly moist and flavorful.

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Fast Italian Recipes
Italian-American Classics

In this succulent recipe, lamb shoulder is braised in Syrah with kalamata
olives and dried sour cherries that have been soaked in red wine. The unusual
combination makes the sauce deliciously sweet and savory. © Tina Rupp

F&W food editors apply their incredible cooking knowledge to explaining what to do with a variety of interesting ingredients.

Lamb shanks find themselves all over restaurant menus this time of year. Cooked low and slow, the luscious meat pulls effortlessly from the bone. When I’m craving something meaty and warming, I’ve recently turned to lamb shoulder chops, because they’re often even less expensive than shanks. Good butcher shops almost always have lamb shoulder and I’ve started to see it around supermarkets as well. The entire thing can be cooked whole—like in this Syrah-Braised Lamb Shoulder—but 1-inch thick chops will braise in a fraction of the time and they can even be grilled if you don’t mind a little bit of chew. When you can, buy the chops with the round bones in the center. They’re occasionally more expensive but they come with a little bonus: luscious marrow to flavor your sauce or spread on toast.

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Photo © Johnny Miller

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of F&W’s Best New Chef awards, one of our biggest stars shares one of his most requested recipes.

Marc Vetri was named an F&W Best New Chef 1999 at Vetri Ristorante in Philadelphia. His restaurant empire now includes Amis Trattoria, Osteria and Alla Spina.

Carrot gnocchi. Squash gnocchi. Beet gnocchi. Eating in restaurants around Italy in the mid 1990s, Marc Vetri discovered these vegetable-based versions of one of his favorite pastas. They inspired him to create a recipe for spinach gnocchi using eggs, bread crumbs, Grana Padano cheese and a little flour; they’re more intensely flavorful than the traditional ricotta kind. Vetri finishes the dish with brown butter and ricotta salata shavings. The gnocchi have been on Vetri Ristorante’s menu since the place opened in 1998, and the only thing that’s changed is the size. “We first made one that looked like a big spinach meatball,” says Vetri. “But guests thought the other pastas were small in comparison. Since then, we’ve served the gnocchi in all sizes, from three large ones to 12 very small ones.” SEE RECIPE »

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In this easy one-pot braise, you get the best possible combination:
crisp-skinned chicken and a luscious wine sauce.
© Lucy Schaeffer

Food & Wine's senior recipe developer, Grace Parisi, is a Test Kitchen superstar. In this series, she shares some of her favorite recipes to make right now.

One of the great perks of working at Food & Wine is that my kitchen is conveniently located about 15 feet from the wine tasting room. When Ray Isle and Megan Krigbaum, our wine gurus, have finished tasting a few wines, they often give us the nearly full bottles to cook with (uh, yeah, cook).

In true quid pro quo fashion, they eat what we produce and we drink what they discard (which is fine by me). Everybody’s happy! This quickly braised chicken dish calls for a bold, fruity white wine with a nice balance of sweetness and acidity, which is why a California Chardonnay, not too oaky, works extremely well. The acidity mellows the buttery richness of the chicken while toning down some of the sweetness of the parsnips. The recipe serves 4—in my case, my husband and I and our two kids, which works out nicely since it calls for an entire cup of wine, leaving just enough for my husband and I to enjoy with the meal. SEE RECIPE »

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Warning: Test Kitchen Tease snapshots may cause cravings, lip-smacking and an unshakeable desire to cook.

Justin Chapple

Despite cuteness concerns, rabbit is one of the most sustainable meats available today. It’s surprisingly healthy and leaner than chicken, but still exceptionally flavorful and just as versatile. If you're still thinking rabbit isn’t your thing, just imagine it fried. This week, F&W’s Test Kitchen made this crazy-good chicken-fried rabbit. Like traditional recipes, the rabbit pieces were tenderized in buttermilk, then coated with a combination of all-purpose flour, stone-ground cornmeal, sage, cayenne pepper and salt. The pieces cooked to a golden brown with an extremely crunchy crust in less than ten minutes. A sprinkle of salt and a dash of Tabasco made them even better. This recipe will be revealed in our January issue, but in the meantime, practice with this Crispy Buttermilk Fried Chicken from F&W’s Grace Parisi.

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Photo by John Kernick

To make the Ethiopian bread injera, you have to ferment the batter. But how do you know it has fermented long enough? Read about how I found out the hard way >

© Stephanie Meyer

I am happy to share my favorite simple dessert, a classic that every cook should learn to make. The process is simple: You essentially boil a broken caramel and it re-emulsifies, thanks to all of the juice that comes from the apples during cooking. The pectin in the fruit binds it all together, so by the time the pan is nearly dry, the apples are cooked through and the caramel has thickened.

Read more >

Justin Chapple

Warning: Test Kitchen Tease snapshots may cause cravings, lip-smacking and an unshakeable desire to cook.

There’s nothing better than testing a burger recipe to bring back a whisper of summer. This week, F&W’s Test Kitchen made these fantastic lemongrass pork patties with quick cucumber kimchi from Chicago chef Bill Kim of Urban Belly. The patties are super-thin, but powerfully flavored with minced fresh lemongrass, ginger, citrus and Thai sweet chile sauce, which added a bit of sweetness and helped produce a nicely charred crust while grilling. They cooked in only a few minutes and each sandwich was piled high with three patties. But the best part was topping them with the spicy kimchi, which came together in only two hours (traditional kimchi can take days or even weeks to prepare). After salting and rinsing the cucumbers, we simply marinated them with garlic, onion, ginger, sesame and gochugaru—coarse red pepper powder from Korea. These recipes will be available in a few months, but for now, try these panko-coated Crunchy Pork Kimchi Burgers from F&W’s Grace Parisi.

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© Stephanie Meyer

Scallops are so delicious this time of year and this Thai green curry is a superb way to do something a little special with them. This is Saturday night food in my house, not Tuesday night fare.

Read more >

Warning: Test Kitchen Tease snapshots may cause cravings, lip-smacking and an unshakeable desire to cook.

Justin Chapple

Citrus zest packs a big punch, so you usually only need a small amount to lend lots of flavor. We test hundreds of recipes for the magazine, books and our website, which has taught us that chefs, bakers and cooks often call for way too much of it in their recipes. That’s why we were a smidge skeptical when testing this lemon bundt cake from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito (co-founders of Baked in New York City). Their recipe called for the zest of ten lemons, which sounded absurd! But, because these boys haven’t led us down the wrong path before—their cookbooks are F&W staff favorites and they're part of our Masters Series—we elected to trust them. Ten lemons and one dulled Microplane later, this cake was exactly what we’d hoped: tender, moist and incredibly lemony. A good amount of sugar creates a lovely caramel-colored crust, and the cake is drizzled with a tangy lemon glaze before being sprinkled with toasted almonds. Look for the recipe in our December issue, but in the meantime, try this grapefruit-spiked Lemon-Glazed Citrus-Yogurt Pound Cake. For more recipes from Matt and Renato, click here or check out their latest cookbook: Baked Elements.  

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