I’ve been contemplating escarole lately, lettuce’s slightly more bitter, significantly more tasty cousin. (Its siblings, apparently, are chicory, endive and radicchio.)
Escarole used to be a once a year thing in my family. Every Easter Saturday it’s time for Sunday Soup (I know, just go with me here) a soup so delicious, so amazing, it feels a little sacriligious to have it at any other time of year. To me, at least. My sister makes it on a regular basis. Life is too short, she says. She’s got a point. Sunday Soup is an example of that kind of Italian cooking that takes a few intense, simple, perfect, perfectly complementary ingredients, and allows them to become even more than the sum of their parts.
Sunday Soup starts with a very simple but strong beef broth. Take about a 5 or 6 pound brisket or chuck roast, sear it on all sides, and cover it with water. Keep it on a very low simmer until the broth is delicious, then salt and pepper to taste. Remove the meat and serve it separately with mustard. (Or make Marcella Hazan’s delicious boiled beef salad, sliced thin, and dressed with –in its simplest version—salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar. Another version adds mustard, anchovies, cornichons, capers, onions and herbs. Both are excellent excuses to make and freeze lots of extra beef broth.)
Then come the tiny meatballs, made with 2-3 pounds of ground beef (or some combination of beef, pork and veal), 3-4 eggs, freshly chopped parsley, generous salt and pepper, and maybe a couple of cups of bread crumbs. The meatballs are usually rolled about ¾ of an inch in diameter. If you’re good, you can roll them 2 or even 3 at a time. We long ago stopped frying them, since this required so many batches that the task of standing in front of the stove and dealing with them tended to artificially, unacceptably, limit the number of meatballs. Instead, we found they’re just as good if you bake them at high heat. They usually fill about 2 half-sheet pans, and bake at about 400 degrees. Turn them over once. (Don’t pack them so tightly on the sheet that you don’t have room to turn them.) Once they’re done, put them in with the finished beef broth. Refrigerate the meatballs and broth overnight and remove the fat from the top the next morning.
All that’s left to do is heat up the de-fatted soup and add a couple of heads of chopped up escarole. (Save some back to add at the last minute, so it’s still a little crunchy.) Something amazing happens to the beef broth with the addition of the escarole. The broth was rich and delicious before. But the little bitter, fresh kick from the escarole cuts the richness a bit, and adds a whole new dimension.
The fourth and final element is not added to the soup pot but to the bowls. A handful of small cubes of hard mozarella (fresh mozarella works, too, but I prefer the way the hard stuff melts) goes into each bowl just before the piping hot soup. By the time you take your first bite, the cheese has melted enough to give you an appreciable string from your bowl, and adds a counterpoint of richness to the broth, still perfectly offset by the escarole. The still-slightly-crunchy escarole wraps in and around the little meatballs in each spoonful. It’s one of the most perfect things I’ve ever eaten.
So, how close to Sunday Soup can I come without anticipating and spoiling this once-a-year ritual? One soup experiment with turkey meatballs and no mozarella flirted with danger, but ultimately did no harm, I think. But I’ve also been making various other, non-soup things with escarole.
Turning first to Marcella Hazan (of course) I found, in Marcella Cucina, a recipe for Apulian-style bitter greens, blanched and then sauteed with olive oil, garlic, anchovies, a bit of chili pepper, and finished with homemade croutons. The crutons, made with a few slices of homemade bread, and fried in canola oil added the rich note that so nicely offsets the slight bitterness of the escarole. There was just a touch of garlic—whole cloves cooked just to golden and then removed from the scented oil, and then the magic deliciousness of the anchovies. I had a bit of an uh-oh moment as I added the finely chopped anchovies. They gave off the last of their fishiness as they hit the oil, but that was the end of it. Once the blanched escarole was added, the fishiness was gone. The result was incredibly good. I might actually use a few fewer croutons next time. And—I confess to an occasional difference of taste with the great Marcella on the subject of vegetable doneness—I might not blanch the escarole first. I think I might just wilt it in the pan. (Though greens with more bitterness would probably still benefit from blanching.)
The next experiment, from Food and Wine, while delicious, was, well, almost cheating. It’s an example of what I think of as lazy cooking—relying on cream and pork fat, not to mention a spike of homemade veal stock, to make its point. I mean, yes. It was yummy and comforting. But it’s the exact opposite of the magic that happens with the few perfectly balanced ingredients in Sunday Soup. And the escarole almost gets lost in this dish. I would up the quantity by at least 50 percent.
Not sure what awaits the head of escarole remaining in my crisper, but it may be another shot at soup while it’s still Winter.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Farrotto
The blog... It's alive! After almost two years, the blog is back. So yeah. Um, anyway, farrotto, or, farro, prepared like risotto...
Farro is a very trendy grain lately, despite the fact that no one seems to be totally sure what it is. I got mine in a package thoughtfully marked "FARRO" at Whole Foods so I didn't have to do too much thinking on my own. Farro is apparently an "ancient grain" (I don't know, either) often used in the Veneto region of northern Italy, where they work risotto-like magic upon it. (Speaking of risotto magic, anyone who has not seen the episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations from Venice (season 6) should hurry up and stream it from Netflix to watch what the expert risotto chefs on Murano do instead of stirring. It will blow your mind. OK, it blew my mind. Maybe your mind is not quite as susceptible to blowout-by-risotto as mine seems to be. But it makes spectacularly clear what is meant by the Venetian preference for risotto "all'onda" or wavy.)
The interest in farro seems to stem from the idea that farro is capable of making a sort of wholeier-grainier type of Italian comfort food than the (I guess now passe) Arborio rice. Comparing the labels, farro did, indeed, appear to have approximately twice the protein per 50g as the Arborio in my cupboard, and approximately 3g of dietary fiber, which is 3g more than Arborio has. And there are probably other nutritional goodies hiding out in the little farro kernels that were not apparent from the limited info on the label. So, I see the appeal from that angle.
I made my farrotto more or less the way I would have made a risotto. I initially turned to the internet for guidance. I wasn't sure whether it was going to need overnight soaking or something. (It didn't.) The only real difference was, based on a suggestion I found here, I whizzed the farro around in the Cuisinart for a few pulses before starting, to crack some of the grains and make them cook more easily. This didn't seem to have much effect on the hard little grains, and I have absolutely no idea whether it made any kind of difference at all to the final product. On this particular day, I had a small head of radicchio in the fridge, so I shredded that, and sauteed it down thoroughly (it was pretty bitter starting out) with some caramelized shallots (I had forgotten I'd used my last onion... I don't know how that happened... but it was OK, because the radicchio really needed the extra sweetness from the shallots). The total cooking time might have been a little longer than it would have been for risotto, but I definitely didn't cook it for anything like the 1 1/2 hours suggested in the link above.
How did it stack up against risotto? As a more nutritious alternative to risotto (which I lately tend to prefer over pasta for weeknight what-do-I-want-to-do-with-what's-in-the-fridge? type meals) it's very, very promising. I'd definitely say it's an alternative, rather than a substitute. That's a good thing... it's a thing in its own right, not a nutritionally spruced-up version of something else you'd rather be eating, like, say, whole wheat pasta (which I'm still having a hard time getting behind, frankly).
First, the flavor. It's somewhere in the barley family. It's more assertive than risotto. I've seen it referred to as "nutty" but I think "earthy" might be more apt. I didn't happen to use any mushrooms, but there was a definite mushroom-y note. I used beef broth, and I'm glad I did. Basically, think anything that would work well with a hearty beef barley soup would be welcome. Mushrooms, absolutely. Maybe a little anchovy. Red wine or vermouth. Squash. Rosemary and/ or sage. Pancetta. Smoky flavors would work. This is not to limit things, really, but more to say that I bet subtle flavors could get lost if you didn't think it out carefully. Risotto is a base for the flavors you add to it (and serve with it). With farotto, you'll need to consider the farro flavor as a partner for the other flavors.
Secondly, there are big, significant differences in texture. Here's the really important thing to know about farro: unlike Arborio rice, FARRO WILL NOT GIVE OFF STARCH AS IT COOKS AND IS STIRRED. As you stir risotto, the grains of rice release starch. This is what gives risotto its lovely creamy texture, even before you've added cream or butter or cheese. For farrotto, on the other hand, this means several things:
--It means there's not much point in stirring it as often as you would risotto. So, that means somewhat less effort for those anti-stirrers among you (of whom, people who have cooked with me will know-- I can hear them snickering now-- I am not one).
--BUT it also means that the texture of your farrotto will not be thickened by starch the way risotto's is. So-- important point-- as you get toward the end of adding your broth, YOU'LL WANT TO SLOW DOWN and add it a very little at a time. When you're making risotto, if you add a little bit too much broth, it sort of absorbs into the rice and into the starchy/creamy "sauce" that makes up the risotto. If you add a little too much broth to farrotto, you'll have barley soup. The liquid isn't going anywhere unless you cook it off, and it won't be thickened by starch, because there isn't any.
--BUT BUT that means that your farrotto is ultimately a little more forgiving. If you don't serve it instantly, it's not as much of a big deal. It's not going to get gummy and sticky like risotto. It also means you can heat it up the next day for lunch a little more successfully. Though that also means if you tried to make farrotto arancini (the fried risotto balls that are the traditional Italian solution to the lousy sticky risotto leftovers problem) they'd just fall apart in the pan since there'd be nothing holding them together.
--BUT BUT BUT that means if you want your farrotto to be creamy, you're going to need to impose the creaminess from without. I added about a tablespoon of creme fraiche (not strictly traditional I realize) and that made the texture very nice. The whole pot (1 cup of farro) made about about 4 servings, so I figured... eh... a quarter of a dollop of creme fraiche (ok, plus the Parmigiano I grated over it) wasn't going to completely wipe out the nutritional advantage of the farro (especially since I probably would have added it to risotto as well). But it's something you'll want to be aware of. It would, for example, make a vegan farrotto less texturally appealing than a vegan risotto.
As for the texture of the individual grains, farro retains more bite than risotto rice. Again, it's definitely more forgiving. Risotto has a fairly brief perfection point, where the grain is no longer hard in the middle, but it's not yet too soft to have any bite at all. If you pass the ideal point with risotto, the grains get too soft, and the whole thing is just kind of mushy. Farrotto retains a nice almost elastic bite that didn't seem to be hurt by a little extra cooking (I was trying to get rid of the extra liquid I'd mistakenly added) or even by microwaving the next day. I'm sure it's theoretically possible to cook it to the point of mush, but the danger certainly didn't seem imminent.
So, I guess I'm on the farrotto bandwagon. Whatever. It was delicious. There's plenty of scope for having fun with. Definitely something to explore in more depth, even at the risk of foodie hipness.
Farro is a very trendy grain lately, despite the fact that no one seems to be totally sure what it is. I got mine in a package thoughtfully marked "FARRO" at Whole Foods so I didn't have to do too much thinking on my own. Farro is apparently an "ancient grain" (I don't know, either) often used in the Veneto region of northern Italy, where they work risotto-like magic upon it. (Speaking of risotto magic, anyone who has not seen the episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations from Venice (season 6) should hurry up and stream it from Netflix to watch what the expert risotto chefs on Murano do instead of stirring. It will blow your mind. OK, it blew my mind. Maybe your mind is not quite as susceptible to blowout-by-risotto as mine seems to be. But it makes spectacularly clear what is meant by the Venetian preference for risotto "all'onda" or wavy.)
The interest in farro seems to stem from the idea that farro is capable of making a sort of wholeier-grainier type of Italian comfort food than the (I guess now passe) Arborio rice. Comparing the labels, farro did, indeed, appear to have approximately twice the protein per 50g as the Arborio in my cupboard, and approximately 3g of dietary fiber, which is 3g more than Arborio has. And there are probably other nutritional goodies hiding out in the little farro kernels that were not apparent from the limited info on the label. So, I see the appeal from that angle.
I made my farrotto more or less the way I would have made a risotto. I initially turned to the internet for guidance. I wasn't sure whether it was going to need overnight soaking or something. (It didn't.) The only real difference was, based on a suggestion I found here, I whizzed the farro around in the Cuisinart for a few pulses before starting, to crack some of the grains and make them cook more easily. This didn't seem to have much effect on the hard little grains, and I have absolutely no idea whether it made any kind of difference at all to the final product. On this particular day, I had a small head of radicchio in the fridge, so I shredded that, and sauteed it down thoroughly (it was pretty bitter starting out) with some caramelized shallots (I had forgotten I'd used my last onion... I don't know how that happened... but it was OK, because the radicchio really needed the extra sweetness from the shallots). The total cooking time might have been a little longer than it would have been for risotto, but I definitely didn't cook it for anything like the 1 1/2 hours suggested in the link above.
How did it stack up against risotto? As a more nutritious alternative to risotto (which I lately tend to prefer over pasta for weeknight what-do-I-want-to-do-with-what's-in-the-fridge? type meals) it's very, very promising. I'd definitely say it's an alternative, rather than a substitute. That's a good thing... it's a thing in its own right, not a nutritionally spruced-up version of something else you'd rather be eating, like, say, whole wheat pasta (which I'm still having a hard time getting behind, frankly).
First, the flavor. It's somewhere in the barley family. It's more assertive than risotto. I've seen it referred to as "nutty" but I think "earthy" might be more apt. I didn't happen to use any mushrooms, but there was a definite mushroom-y note. I used beef broth, and I'm glad I did. Basically, think anything that would work well with a hearty beef barley soup would be welcome. Mushrooms, absolutely. Maybe a little anchovy. Red wine or vermouth. Squash. Rosemary and/ or sage. Pancetta. Smoky flavors would work. This is not to limit things, really, but more to say that I bet subtle flavors could get lost if you didn't think it out carefully. Risotto is a base for the flavors you add to it (and serve with it). With farotto, you'll need to consider the farro flavor as a partner for the other flavors.
Secondly, there are big, significant differences in texture. Here's the really important thing to know about farro: unlike Arborio rice, FARRO WILL NOT GIVE OFF STARCH AS IT COOKS AND IS STIRRED. As you stir risotto, the grains of rice release starch. This is what gives risotto its lovely creamy texture, even before you've added cream or butter or cheese. For farrotto, on the other hand, this means several things:
--It means there's not much point in stirring it as often as you would risotto. So, that means somewhat less effort for those anti-stirrers among you (of whom, people who have cooked with me will know-- I can hear them snickering now-- I am not one).
--BUT it also means that the texture of your farrotto will not be thickened by starch the way risotto's is. So-- important point-- as you get toward the end of adding your broth, YOU'LL WANT TO SLOW DOWN and add it a very little at a time. When you're making risotto, if you add a little bit too much broth, it sort of absorbs into the rice and into the starchy/creamy "sauce" that makes up the risotto. If you add a little too much broth to farrotto, you'll have barley soup. The liquid isn't going anywhere unless you cook it off, and it won't be thickened by starch, because there isn't any.
--BUT BUT that means that your farrotto is ultimately a little more forgiving. If you don't serve it instantly, it's not as much of a big deal. It's not going to get gummy and sticky like risotto. It also means you can heat it up the next day for lunch a little more successfully. Though that also means if you tried to make farrotto arancini (the fried risotto balls that are the traditional Italian solution to the lousy sticky risotto leftovers problem) they'd just fall apart in the pan since there'd be nothing holding them together.
--BUT BUT BUT that means if you want your farrotto to be creamy, you're going to need to impose the creaminess from without. I added about a tablespoon of creme fraiche (not strictly traditional I realize) and that made the texture very nice. The whole pot (1 cup of farro) made about about 4 servings, so I figured... eh... a quarter of a dollop of creme fraiche (ok, plus the Parmigiano I grated over it) wasn't going to completely wipe out the nutritional advantage of the farro (especially since I probably would have added it to risotto as well). But it's something you'll want to be aware of. It would, for example, make a vegan farrotto less texturally appealing than a vegan risotto.
As for the texture of the individual grains, farro retains more bite than risotto rice. Again, it's definitely more forgiving. Risotto has a fairly brief perfection point, where the grain is no longer hard in the middle, but it's not yet too soft to have any bite at all. If you pass the ideal point with risotto, the grains get too soft, and the whole thing is just kind of mushy. Farrotto retains a nice almost elastic bite that didn't seem to be hurt by a little extra cooking (I was trying to get rid of the extra liquid I'd mistakenly added) or even by microwaving the next day. I'm sure it's theoretically possible to cook it to the point of mush, but the danger certainly didn't seem imminent.
So, I guess I'm on the farrotto bandwagon. Whatever. It was delicious. There's plenty of scope for having fun with. Definitely something to explore in more depth, even at the risk of foodie hipness.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Colomba di Pasqua
(or, Panettone by any other name would taste as good)
Susan's BreadBakingDay #8, on celebration breads, kept me from just wimping out on this one despite my work schedule the week before Easter. This was really just an excuse to resurrect (no seasonal pun in questionable taste intended, I swear) my Christmastime panettone obsession. Easter gave me the opportunity for further "research," using the Italian tradition of dove-shaped Colomba di Pasqua as my excuse to present panettone again in dove's clothing. I used Peter Reinhart's panettone recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice this time. It's a bit drier than the panettone I made at Christmas from Susan's recipe, and starts with a milk-based wild yeast sponge. The process is a bit abbreviated, as well. But the butter/egg bakers percentages are not too far off.
I followed the recipe even more faithfully than I had planned to. It calls for all-purpose flour, and I was planning to use the King Arthur High Protein (14%) flour that had been so successful at Christmas, but by Saturday morning (Easter Eve) I was practically brain-dead, and, well, I _think_ I used all purpose. I definitely didn't use the High Protein. And there wasn't enough bread flour gone. So, yeah, I think it must have been the all-purpose. But it didn't seem to affect the outcome.
Fortunately. Because there was a point after I added the rum, fruit and butter, when I would have put the chances of this dough ever passing the windowpane test close to nil, but it was ok. I did add just enough (definitely high-protein this time) flour to get it to clean the sides and bottom of the bowl (probably about 1/4 cup). And I also didn't add much of the 4 tbsp of water the recipe instructs you to add to get it to form a dough. I think total kneading time (in the mixer... I definitely didn't do this by hand) wasn't really much more than 10-12 mins, and the gluten ultimately developed just fine.
It ended up being softer and tackier than, say, Reinhart's cinnamon roll dough, but not quite as soft and wet as the panettone dough from Christmas.
Shaping was sort of seat-of-the-pants. I was happy just to get it to kind of look like a bird of some kind. It definitely didn't have any kind of surface tension.
I definitely needed a larger pan, though. After transporting it (during fermentation) to my parents', and picking up my sister and her fiancee on the way (and discovering that my sister had, not entirely unreasonably, mistaken the box on the back seat for just another of the random pieces of junk that tend to decorate the interior of my car and put her purse down on top of it... :) ) it needed a little poking back into shape. It was just kind of a big, puffy mass by that point (with a bit of an... indentation... in the middle from the purse) and would not really have been recognizably avian without the strategically applied almond "feathers". I just kind of re-shaped the head, dug the cherry "eye" out of the middle of the dough and put it back where it belonged, and stuck it in the oven (where it puffed up even more).
It was pretty delicious. Comparing it to the Christmas panettones, the results were closer to the panettone from Settepani in Brooklyn than the panettone I made, which was much softer and more ethereal. This had a more distinct chew and rope to it, but it met with the Mom Seal of Approval. So I think this is what I'll go with. It did dry out more quickly, however (and definitely picked up an odd metallic taste when stored in aluminum foil, which I think is kind of a Bad Idea anyway). But I guess that just means we'll have to be sure to eat it right away, which, let's face it, shouldn't be a problem.
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