Sugo

I want to start getting my family's recipes out into the world--why not start with one of the first ones that I ever learned, our recipe for sugo, otherwise known as red sauce, spaghetti sauce, or just sauce.  No one in my family, that I know of, ever wrote it down, and we learned it by being shown the amounts of the ingredients as we made it--spices in the palm of a hand, numbers of tomatoes on the counter, etc.

I learned this from my mother, her sister (my aunt), and their mother (my grandmother) who was born in San Francisco in 1906, and who learned it from her mother, from Ferbicaro, Calabria, Italy, the Papa/Ludovici family.

My initial notes:

You can make this with or without meat, and with or without many of the ingredients, and all amounts are approximate--use what you have, use up what you need to, and make it to taste.  No ingredient is totally essential, although without any tomatoes or tomato product, it's a different sauce, but if you are out of onions, or garlic, or particular herbs or spices, don't worry about it--just leave those out.  Need to use up a head of garlic that's sprouting?  Use it up--put the whole thing in.  Experiment!

Apologies for the US-centric measurements, since it took a lot of work to get this far--if anyone converts to metric, please let me know so I can post a link!

The recipe:

Read the recipe through first--trust me.  You can make this in the morning and have it ready in the evening, or make it days ahead--it keeps in the fridge for at least a week, and freezes beautifully.

Meat (optional):

• About 1 lb. lean hamburger, or Italian sausage (or just about any sausage), or lamb, or veal, or chicken, or a mixture of any of those.  You can also use leftover meats.

Mushrooms (optional):

• Dried:  If you're using dried mushrooms, reconstitute them in water that has just boiled:  add the water, cover, and let sit.  (Boiling water makes some, like porcini, bitter.)  Slice or chop if desired.  If using porcini, reserve about 1 c. of the "broth" from the top, not the sandy bit at the bottom.
• Fresh:  1-2 lbs. of fresh mushrooms, chopped if desired (e.g., crimini, portabello, oyster, lobster, chanterelles, etc.)

Other ingredients:

• 3 tbsps. or more very good extra virgin olive oil (I like an unfiltered, cold pressed) or oil that you like, or butter, or a combination of butter and olive oil
• 1-2 medium yellow onions or 1 large onion, or a mixture of onion and shallot, chopped finely.  Look for a rather flat onion, since they can be sweeter.
• 3-6 or more big cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced, chopped or crushed/pressed, depending on your taste.
• 10 or so roma tomatoes or equivalent amount of whatever tomatoes you have on hand--really--you can even use cherry tomatoes, seeded and roughly chopped.  (I usually get "heirloom" tomatoes at the farmers' market.)  You can use way more tomatoes if you don't have any prepared tomato sauce, strained or pureed tomatoes.
• Carrot: have one handy, because if your sauce is too acidic after simmering for a few hours, toss in the carrot and simmer for another couple of hours to cut the acidity

Liquids:  Use one of these choices:

• 1-2 cups or more good, dry, full-bodied red wine (e.g., cabernet)--it doesn't haven't to be expensive, just drinkable.
• 1-2 cups of stock (meat or vegetable--your choice)
• Or a mixture of wine and stock--if you only have white wine on hand, then do use some stock with it.
• If using canned tomato sauce, about 60 oz. cans of good quality organic tomato sauce, or pureed or strained tomatoes

 Herbs and/or spices:

• 3-6 fresh sprigs of marjoram (or more to taste) or about 1 tbsp. dried, crushed
• 1-2 sprigs of fresh rosemary (or more to taste) or about 1 tbsp. dried, crushed
• 3-4 sprigs of fresh oregano (or more to taste) or about 1 tbsp. dried, crushed
• 3-4 bushy stems of fresh basil or up to one bunch (to taste) with the leaves removed, and the larger ones sliced roughly, or about 1 tbsp. dried, crushed
• dash of white pepper (or black if you prefer)
• dash of salt or dash of honey (or agave syrup) if you avoid salt

Directions:

Use your heaviest bottomed pot, 4 quarts or larger.

Open cans, get out the wine, have the liquids ready to go.

If you're using raw meat, brown the meat, then turn off the heat and drain the fat--all the fat.  Really.  Trust me.  If using fatty sausage, take the meat all the way out, and wipe out the pot a bit with a rag or paper towel.  Put the meat back in the pot.

Chop your onions.

If you're not using meat, then heat up the pot (a bit above medium heat) and add your olive oil or butter.  If you're using butter, add the butter first then the olive oil.  If you are using meat, still add your olive oil and/or butter, but you may want a little less.

Add onions to the pot and sautee on high enough heat to brown them well without burning.  Meanwhile, slice and/or chop your mushrooms.  If you're onion is burning too quickly, just turn the heat down or turn the heat off until your mushrooms are ready.

If you're using dried spices, turn the heat down on the pot and add them to the pot right before adding the mushrooms--put them into the palm of your hand, and rub your hands together to crush them into the pot.  Stir them in so they don't burn.  

Add the mushrooms to the pot on high enough heat and sautee.  While they're sauteing, prepare your garlic.  You want to sautee fresh mushrooms until they release their liquid--if they do this and you're still preparing your garlic, just turn the heat off under the pot.  Dried and reconstituted mushrooms don't need very long, or can sautee for a while.  You don't want to prepare your garlic ahead of time--it will lose and turn flavor.  The longer you cook your garlic, the milder it will be, so cook it to taste.

If using fresh tomatoes, add them now and saute until they're all squishy and saucy.

Add your liquids.  If using mushroom "broth" from dried mushrooms, add that now, too.

If using fresh herbs, tie them all except the basil together in a bundle with 100% cotton string and drop them into the pot and stir them in.  (If I have a lot of time, or it's a special occasion, I'll remove the leaves from the thyme and marjoram and put those into the pot, and remove the leaves from the rosemary and chop them finely, and then just leave the oregano in as sprigs to be removed later--the oregano in my garden can be a bit bitter to eat.)  Prepare basil leaves, and add to the pot.

If you're using cooked meats, add them to the pot now.

Bring back up to a simmer and simmer covered for as long as 8 hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so to prevent sticking.

Georgian dinner

We've long been fans of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's cookbook Seductions of Rice, but we just got their Flatbreads and Flavors--I'm so glad we did!  The first recipe we tried was fenugreek and corn bread, and it was delicious--we were having a busy weekend, and we followed the recipe almost exactly and they were fantastic.  The only thing we did different from the recipe was baking the breads on a stone in our oven rather than on an oiled baking sheet.

So last weekend, when we had more time, Paul closed his eyes and wiggled a finger into the cookbook to choose a recipe at random: potato and herb filled bread (khachapuri ossetinski) from Georgia.  We decided to make walnut and eggplant roll-ups (badrigiani, also from Georgia) to go with it.  It was an incredible meal--absolutely delicious:

It was our first time making these breads, and I've never seen any person, so we kind of winged it:

We also cooked these breads directly on our baking stone in the oven, rather than on oiled cookie sheets, and they were great!

We did have leftover potato and herb filling, which we had for breakfast the next day; we mixed it up with a beaten egg into a patty, fried it, and had it with egg on top--delicious!

Favorite pancakes

These are our new favorite pancakes. Made with freshly ground whole wheat flour, they have a nutty taste, complemented by the slight tang of their long, cool, overnight rest:

They're "Pittsburgh's Finest Diner Pancakes," from the King Arthur Flour website.  And, as you can see, they're big pancakes, which fill the pan when cooked:

We've altered the recipe slightly:

• We use 100% freshly ground flour, which we grind from wheat berries.
• We don't cover the bowl with plastic wrap while the batter rests; we simply place a dinner plate on top of the bowl.
• We cook the pancakes in clarified butter.

They have crispy edges, and are very thin, so can be filled and rolled like a crepe.  My favorite filling so far is Straus Creamery's organic yogurt mixed with fresh fruit.

Berber onion and kabocha squash pasties

We recently made the Berber Pizza from David Tanis' cookbook, A Platter of Figs--it's wonderful! Absolutely delicious, and we found it really easy to make.

If you're making it, be sure to cook up more of the onion mixture than you will need. We mixed up the extra onion mixture with baked kabocha squash, and used it for filling in pasties:

I made up some pie dough, divided it up into twelve or fifteen balls, and rolled them out pretty thin, filled them with this filling and sealed them up.  Then cut little holes in their tops, and baked them a little less than an hour at 425F--pretty standard pastie baking.  The combination of the squash and the Berber onion filling was fantastic!

I forgot to get photos of the pasties.  We were too distracted by the deliciousness.

We'll be making all these dishes again, though!

Cedric's holidays so far

Cedric is loving his holidays!  He was King of the Thanksgiving Turkey!

And he loved the table setting, and eagerly awaited all the guests' arriving.

After all the guests arrived, he was too busy socializing to take pictures--everyone had so much fun!

Cook for Julia: Omelettes

I'm delighted to celebrate Julia Child's 100th birthday by making something that I had never made before learning how to do it from the egg episode of the French Chef, and from her cookbook, From Julia Child's Kitchen: omelettes.

This is one of the omelettes I made this morning (photo by Paul), a two-egg omelette with grated mozzarella in the center, and early girl dry-farmed tomatoes on top:

A while ago I made a short video of me making omelettes to demonstrate my new skill, to get points for Guild Wars (in the Ravelry Ankh-Morpork Knitters' Guild).

Thank you, Julia, for teaching me to make something so delicious, so quick, and when made with Riverdog Farm organic pastured eggs, so very tasty!

The Lentil Soup

I've been working on a lentil soup that I liked for a long time. I started with Martha Rose Shulman's "Pureed Lentil Soup" from Mediterranean Light, since it's one of my favorite cookbooks. Her soups are great, and this is one of my favorite cookbooks, but I find that I often start by making her soup recipes exactly as written, then increasing the amount of spices and sometimes adding more spices as I make them in the future, developing a soup that's just more to my taste.

This is actually a very fast soup once you get the hang of it. I can come home, and an hour later have this soup and a batch of biscuits on the table.

I'm assuming a basic familiarity with toasting and grinding spices--you can substitute ground spices for the whole ones that I toast and grind--it's just that my market sells those particular ones whole, so that's what I have in my cabinet!

The Lentil Soup

1 tbsp. or so olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
8 garlic cloves, minced
3 stalks of celery, chopped, if using water
2 cups lentils (green or brown)
2 quarts water or stock (I prefer stock)
1 bay leaf
1 parmesan rind (optional)

juice of one lemon

2 tsp. coriander
2 tsp. fenugreek
2 tsp. black mustard seed

3/4 tsp. ground white pepper
1 tbsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. agave syrup, honey, or sugar
1 tbsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. turmeric
3/4 tsp. paprika
dash of sesame oil

salt to taste (if using water or unsalted stock, about 2 tsp. salt)


Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pot and sauté the onion until starting to brown. If you're using celery, add the celery and sauté another few minutes. Add the garlic and sauté briefly, then add the water or stock and the lentils, the bay leaf, and the parmesan rind. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and cook about 30 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Stir often, since the soup may get pretty thick.

Meanwhile:
Juice the lemon, and add to the pot.

Then: put the coriander, fenugreek, and black mustard seed in a small pan and toast on the stove. (You'll toast them over low to medium heat until they become very aromatic.) Then grind the spices in a mortar and pestle. Add to the pot.

Add all the rest of the ingredients to the pot, except for the salt--wait until the lentils are tender to add the salt.

If you like, you can puree the soup--we usually do--then taste and correct the spices if needed. You can also puree only some of it, or skip pureeing it.

Crab ravioli

I was surprised at how delicious these are. We came up with the recipe out of thin air, because our darling goddaughter, when discussing Christmas dinner possibilities, said, "Ravioli," and "I like crab--how about crab ravioli?"

Out of the mouths of babes. Or, nine-year-olds:

Crab ravioli (ravioli di granchio, would that be?)

Grind together in a meat grinder:
1/2 lb. onion
1/2 lb. crab (or, "crab"--we use imitation crab because Paul can't eat real crab)

Stir in:
1 egg
1/2 c. breadcrumbs (plain--not with any spices or herbs)
1 tbsp. melted butter
1/4 c. ricotta cheese
dash of white pepper

6 sheets of fresh pasta (our pasta shop, Phoenix, has sheets that are about 10" x 13")

I got our ravioli mold from Sur La Table to assemble them, and fill each rav with 1-2 tsp. of filling--about 1-1/2 tsp. of filling is perfect. (Be sure to wet the areas of the pasta that will be the edges of the ravs for a good seal!) This recipe made about 70 ravs, enough for a main course for 3 people.

We put them on wax-paper lined cookie sheets to freeze them, and when they were frozen hard, put them into containers, and ate them a week later. We did this test, because when making them for a large group, we wanted to know if they'd do well made ahead of time and frozen--they did!

When cooking them frozen, we boiled them for ca. 10 min.--it may take 11 min., depending on how hot your water is, and how long it takes to return to a rapid boil after adding the frozen ravs. (Of course, if cooking them fresh, it will just take a few minutes.) To see if they're done, I always just take one out, blow on it a bit, and eat it to see of the pasta is cooked all the way.

We ate them with a plain tomato sauce (2 onions sauteed in about 1 tbsp. organic canola oil until lightly browned, 2 large cans organic diced tomatoes, then added 6 cloves chopped organic garlic, 2 fresh tomatoes 'cause we had them, 1 bunch fresh organic basil, 1 tsp. dried thyme, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. white pepper). We added freshly grated parmesan on top (also from Phoenix) and a Cline Ancient Vines Carignane (although they'd be delicious with white--we just adore reds, and have a serious devotion to the always outstanding Cline wines).

We'll be making dozens of these for Christmas dinner! Can't wait!