i made a fair few things new year’s eve, but two of them in particular were really wonderful. this, a bruschetta made from a whole wheat la brea baguette with a gremolata of parsley, lemon zest, tuscan olive oil and garlic, topped with two paper thin slightly pan warmed slices of guanciale – was quite simply, delicious.

alas, the idea was once again gently borrowed from ‘city house‘ here in nashville. chef tandy wilson’s version was slightly different, but the basic elements were much the same.

nearly every dish has a story, and this one begins at lazzaroli’s here in the germantown neighborhood of nashville. tom is my savior in this town, a purveyor of all good things italian. i cannot stress highly enough how excellent his shop is. if you live in the nashville area and haven’t yet been, add it to your list of resolutions to go and check out this alluring little market. the guanciale he carries is from the renowned salumi in seattle. nashville may be culturally backwards and lacking in way too many things food related, but let me ask you this? can you get artisan cured meats in your little corner of the universe? because hey, guess what? I CAN!

(i’ve tried la quercia numerous times via mail order, but salumi gets my vote – hands down and for half the price.)

so i bought a piece of the guanciale but then had to deal with the business of getting it sliced paper thin. luckily, my local deli counter at ‘the fresh market’ was willing to do it for me in exchange for a taste – the quintessential win/win.

the fresh bread options in this town are at best, ok. i find myself prefering the ‘la brea’ offerings from the harris teeter grocery store. i like it better than most any of the other local options. it’s made in california and then baked in store. i probably wouldn’t have chosen the whole wheat version, but it’s all that was left at 6 pm on new year’s eve and somehow it was just right. the carbon footprint? major fail. i’m sorry planet earth. love you, mean it.

i got a bit lazy and didn’t even bother to toast the bread slices. i just schmeared on some of the gremolata, quasi-artfully placed the pork – and, ecco!

happy new year… it’s a brand new decade. i’m ready.

heirloom tomato, zucchini, grilled louisiana shrimp, guanciale and torn basil with sauteed arugula

global cooling. or at least it feels that way. the weather here in nashville is struggling to hit 80, and that pretty much means that it’s just plain glorious. temperate and sunny, this including the days just past and the rest of the week to come. since on any other given year it could easily be 90+, this is what you wish – no, pray for – to the god of all things good.

and even though it’s the last days of august here in the deep south, the tomatoes are still extraordinary – and the zucchini is as overly prolific as usual. so i threw together a simple summer dinner using gulf shrimp and just a touch of la quercia guanciale, because i am a very enthusiastic fan of the jowl, choosing it over pancetta time and time again. it’s just well, porkier. AND WHEN HAS THAT EVER BEEN A BAD THING?

but there was a crisis… a culinary disaster of the very worst kind…

you know how when you decide to sprinkle a touch of red crushed chile peppers from the bottle and you’re talking to your friends and not paying close attention to what you’re doing and you unscrew the cap and shake… AND THE ENTIRE CONTENTS EMPTIES INTO YOUR PAN? well, i did that. but thankfully, my friend rick heard me scream and came flying to the rescue and was on it. we quickly removed as much of the pepper as we could. he carefully rinsed off the dangerously smothered zucchini and tomatoes while i chopped more vegetables to try and spread out the heat a bit… and really? perhaps in the end it was slightly warmer than i’d have wished for – but it wasn’t too bad at all – it was even kinda verydamngood. plus it was a cool evening, so, PERFECT!

i got lucky.

this is my kind of cooking. just winging it, using the best of what’s available. i thought about adding roasted peppers but it was just one more flavor that although would have worked, was unnecessary and i believe in the end would have detracted from the dish.

and so i am forever learning this… that if you have what is already perfect, do the least amount to it and then appreciate it for what it is. for awhile now the food i enjoy the most is an interesting combination of a small number of high quality ingredients.

amen.

poached egg sitting on a caesar salad with bottarga…

grilled fresh mozzarella with crisped speck and basil…

and for the foundation of this fine dinner, may i introduce to you the 3 seeded bohemian loaf – courtesy of twin fork farms artisan bread.

it’s a dense – but not too dense, chewy slice of bread made from: whole wheat flour, unbleached flour, natural sourdough leaven, sunflower, sesame and flax seeds and salt. all the bread undergoes a long fermentation process which supposedly has a list of advantages, none of which i fully understand, but all sound positively healthful. i had read that for awhile these beautiful orbs were baked in a little beehive oven in david tannen’s backyard, just four at a time but that a bigger oven has since been built, and he’s now churning out about 300 loaves a day. i’m usually not much of a sourdough fan, but this is wonderful bread and i always try and keep a loaf in my freezer.

we’d planned on dinner out last night but the heat has set in to the tune of intolerable. high 90′s + the heat index = over 100 degrees. and really, i’m just not an extreme weather kinda gal. so with a house full of odds and ends and little need for much in the way of imagination, this was dinner. a caesar – of sorts, along with a – kind of, grilled ham and cheese…

it always amazes me what you can come up with just by poking around…

i realize the name of this dish probably sounds a bit random and that the picture is not helping. but let me explain…

this past week there have been 2 cooking classes held in my home with 16 students in total. the topic was handmade pasta and well, it really was a lot of fun. we made 3 dishes – a sweet potato tortellini, batali’s fettuccine capricciose and the roman classic, amatraciana with an extruded bucatini.

next month we’re holding a bruschetta and biscotti class. we’ll make a few wonderful bruschettas, we’ll drink some chianti and we’ll bake and bake, everyone going home with a big bunch of cookies for the holidays. be there.

anyway, we had leftovers of the tortellini filling, so last night i invited a friend over with no real thoughts on what i might make for dinner, but somewhere between washing my face and putting on my fuzzy lined merrell’s, it came to me in a flash… i had somehow once again channeled my inner ‘gabrielle hamilton’ and came up with this dish.

i realize it doesn’t look like much. thank god for parsley. but here’s exactly what’s going on. ok. ready? the tortellini filling contained mashed sweet potatoes, egg, parmigiano, nutmeg, parsley and finely diced prosciutto. i formed it into 2 patties and rolled them in panko crumbs. i had bought a couple of king oyster mushrooms to use in my fettuccine dish, but the second night of class used only the regular oyster mushrooms. so i had this beauty sitting in my fridge. phallic? perhaps… i sliced the mushroom into long rectangular strips and grilled them until crisp. my friend had recently been to seattle and stopped into salumi, batali’s dad’s charcuterie shop and brought over some guanciale. we sliced 4 pieces thinly and grilled them as well.

 
think 8 inches long at the very least…. (image swiped from wiki)

so, king oyster mushrooms. who knew? i’m now totally in love with this cultivated funghi. i saw them at the asian market and had to check them out. they only run about $5 a lb and are fleshy, dense and meaty – almost like abalone in texture. just slice them in long vertical strips and they grill up nice and crispy on the edges. huge surprise. which only goes to prove that i need to get out more…

so class, to review:

• pan fried sweet potato cakes filled with prosciutto and parmigiano
• king oyster mushrooms sliced and grilled
• guanciale sliced and grilled
• with a poached egg on top
• a drizzle of balsamic syrup
• and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

remarkable.

this post is dedicated to these 3 bloggers who inspire me to try and be a better cook: jennifer from last night’s dinner. peter from cookblog. and heather from gild the (voodoo)lily.

…and a pork chop. 

but in this instance, who cares?  not me, that’s who.  it was a run-of-the-mill chop from ‘the fresh market’, and personally, i can always take or leave these kind of pork chops.  cary’s a fan, so i pick some up on occasion.  but those beans?  you’d have to fight me for those beans..  rancho gordo – all the way… yellow eyes cooked with sweet potatoes, fresh thyme and a solid lb. of tennessee’s finest – salty, smoky ‘benton’s bacon’.  it is the burgundy of bacon’s…  a straight forward cure of brown sugar, salt and pepper - with a heavy-handed hickory smoke.  on a BLT it would be sheer perfection.  i’m keeping a package in the freezer in anticipation of summer tomatoes.  so don’t even waste your time trying to sweet talk me out of it…

the yellow eyes are a creamy, dense bean.  and totally cool looking.  if this bean were a man, i’d do him in a ny minute. 

not that i like dense men… because i don’t.

(from rg’s site, i present to you the pulchritudinous and dense-in-a-good-way, yellow eye bean…)

the salad was on another plate.  sorry to deprive you of the much needed greenness.  i kinda wasn’t thinking.  it happens.  a lot.  but so you know, it was a simple toss of romaine and radicchio with toasted walnut oil and guerande salt. 

just close your eyes and pretend…

i know… i’ve been going on and on about this slab-o-pork for awhile now, haven’t i? but really, it all began just 2 weeks ago. well, that was the day the pork belly arrived. but by the time it landed at my door i had already spent some time deciding on how i would go about handling this pristine 8 lb. belly, and the bottom line was that i weighed some varying options and chose to go down the dan barber – of famed ‘blue hill/blue hill at stone barns restaurants‘ – path and use his cure recipe.

(for scale…) and here’s the deal. well, my deal anyway. if i am overnighting a pork belly all the way to nashville, tn from ‘niman ranchland‘ – i’m going to be using the best ingredients that i can get my hands on. so i ordered my spices from ‘penzeys‘ and got grinding. i’m including a recipe – of sorts, but there can be so very many variables, like the size of your belly (hehe) or your particular level of neurosis when it comes to following directions – or not, therefore bringing in to play any and all opinionated, albeit highly creative input you might have. but the good news is that through all of this i have now found out first hand that it is pretty much impossible to actually destroy a pork belly. and that this cure mix is so damn right - and then there’s all that fat which as it turns out is pretty forgiving – that is, on everything except perhaps your very own belly… anyway, use this as a guideline, check out amy’s recent post on her experience with ‘The Belly’ – and then if you’re so inclined, and i believe you are – get intuitive. but i’m telling you – this ‘dan barber pork belly cure mix’ – i can vouch that it is absolutely spot-on…

dan barber’s pork belly (as told by me)
heavily adapted from a 2005 epicurious recipe

(to grind – use your whirly bird coffee grinder and when you’re finished just add some white rice and run it for 30 seconds or so and it will clean it completely – otherwise you’ll need to get out the mortar and pestle and have at it)

1/4 cup fennel seed
1/4 cup cumin seed
1/4 cup plus 2 T coriander seed
3 T black peppercorns
1 T white peppercorns
4 star anise
4 pieces of cinnamon
4 teaspoons whole clove
1 cup salt
2/3 cup sugar

grind the spices in a coffee grinder in batches. combine ground spices with the salt and sugar. heavily coat the belly, cover with foil and let it sit in the refrigerator, undisturbed for 3 days. on the third day rinse the belly well, dry it thoroughly and wrap tightly in plastic, placing it back into the refrigerator. the meat will hold for a few days at the very least now that it’s been cured. you’ll need a baking pan that will fit the belly comfortably but without too much extra room. place it in the pan skin up add about 2 quarts of rich chicken stock (i used a mix of my stock and water) so that it comes about 3/4 of the way up the meat braise at 200F for 8 – 10 hours (as in overnight) remove from the oven, draining the braising liquid into another pot and let the belly rest in the refrigerator for at least a day to allow for the flavors to really develop. put the liquid into the freezer for about 90 minutes so that the fat comes to the surface and solidifies without freezing the rest of the liquid break off the fat (i saved mine in a freezer bag for future sausage making) and reserve about 3 cups. then a few hours before your dinner, place the meat along with the ‘caramel vinegar sauce’ (recipe below) into the oven for roughly an hour right before you serve – lightly score the skin (i overdid it and went too deep – live and learn), cut into serving pieces and sear skin-side down in a hot pan. to serve, spoon the caramel vinegar sauce over the meat and lentils.

(it’s difficult to see the depth of the fat here but it’s quite a big pot and the fat is at about 1/3" at center and at least 1/2" on the edges)

i decided early on that i’d be serving this over ‘lentils de puy‘ a much loved variety, grown in the volcanic soil of the auvergne region of southern france. why? because they are some esoteric little suckers, and well – i obviously get off on that. but, even after all the thought and consideration as to my plan of attack – right in the eleventh hour, i decided that i needed to make a sauce. and i found my inspiration from this recipe and then kinda riffed off of that.

caramel vinegar sauce

1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/3 cup sherry vinegar
1 cup light brown sugar
4 star anise
1 cinnamon stick – broken
juice of 2 oranges and their zest
2 cups of the reserved defatted braising liquid
veal demi-glace – i used a 1.5 ounce pre-made package

put the sugar, vinegar, star anise and cinnamon in a small saucepan and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes, or until syrupy. stir in the braising liquid and simmer for another 5 minutes, or until slightly reduced. add the orange juice, zest and the demi glace and reduce the heat to low and simmer gently until once again syrupy. salt to taste

dear readers, it was really good. like really really good. and i was pretty damn pleased with myself. pork belly has totally got the double whammy of culinary "u" words goin on. umami and unctuous. this dish was part of a wonderful dinner that was held at my best friend angela‘s home. in attendance were 2 of nashville’s most talented chefs, john david crowe of ‘360 bistro‘ and laura wilson from ‘ombi restaurant‘, as well as the incredibly cool carrington fox – food critic for the ‘nashville scene‘. oh – and then a few of us foodie plebeians. there were many wonderful dishes served as in the sweetbreads and mache fennel salad with blood orange – brought over by john and prepared on the premises, and a caramel chestnut torte from laura, along with her amazing fennel and anise meringues that i could not stop eating. but regarding the final plated pic – there’s a blaring lack of the desired ‘money shot’ that would do the belly justice, especially after all we’d been through together. but please note that by the time this dish rolled around, we’d been feasting and drinking quite nicely. cary whipped out his ‘point and shoot’ and luckily saved the day – or the moment would have been consumed as quickly as the fast disappearing pork on our plates. please know that we tried, but these shots are off the cuff and are just from around the table. so instead of quality photography, i will just have to plow you with quantity…

(a few bites in…)

for our gathering i also made two other dishes that i’ll tell you about later.

but (you ask) – was there any more pork involved?

but (i say) – of course…

i swear this dish started out as a vegetarian dinner. and it was. twice. until it just couldn’t be anymore. and really, there is so very little meat on this plate. just 2 measly strips of: "MY-VERY-OWN-UNFREAKINREAL-CURED-BACONY-STUFF". i mean, who the hell knew you could do this? next thing you know i’ll be baking my own baguettes… not. but hey, first let’s talk about the beans. which are not just any beans. they are rancho gordo’s scarlet runner beans. and i love them. truly and with feeling. here’s a fact: if you’re buying the beans on the shelf of your supermarket, just know that they can easily be up to 12 years old. and even if you think that those beans are "just fine", it’s only because you’ve never tried rancho gordo’s beans. and when you do, i believe you’ll be a convert, just like me. so there ya go.

when i looked on RG’s site, they say that they like to make the scarlet runners with wild mushrooms. so i got to thinking… and after a good long soak, i added the beans to a pot of onions that had been caramelizing for about 30 minutes. then i added some reconstituted wild mushrooms – a good mix of porcini, morel, shitake, oyster and portabella, – along with its (strained) soaking water. towards the end of the cooking i added a large amount of chopped mustard greens, fresh thyme and some salt and pepper – and let the dish simmer until i felt the beans were done. for planning purposes, please note that these beans are of the extra large variety and take a long time to cook – 3 hours or so.

so after eating the hell out of this damn fine pot-o-beans, i began to yearn for something more. something well, meaty. so i channeled my inner gabrielle hamilton from the AMAZING – but AMAZING – restaurant ‘prune’ in nyc’s east village, and i wacked a coupla slices off my beautifully cured belly, trimmed the skin off the edges and fried those porky strips right up. and then, because it’s what i do – i poached an egg.

and you think that’s it, right? like what more could i possibly do to improve on this, right? well the next night when i gave cary the last of it for dinner, i added some leftover polenta as the bottom layer. and i set that bowl down before him and said "of all the things i’ve made in quite some time – i am the proudest of this dish". i really think that gabrielle would be just fine offering this on the ‘prune’ menu. no really. i do.

delusional? perhaps.

and the parsley sprig? that’s so totally for you…

no, no – not the cola. we’re talkin’ rob cox. a professional cook here in town. i love this guy for too many reasons to list. but if i were to make a list, on there somewhere would be both his exuberant passion for food, and that he’s a fun friend to have around because we get to talk about tongues and testicles – that is, of the lamb and pig persuasion. yes, he’s a huge fergus henderson fan. fergus of the restaurant ‘st. john‘ – the very restaurant that my tony bourdain and my mario batali go on and on about. i once read somewhere that if you want to get a chef all hot and bothered, just whisper pork belly in his ear. although this was not my MO with rob – cause as great as he is i’m like really old compared to him and not single (hi baby!) – our conversation led us to the belly of the pig and i found myself ordering an 8 lb skin-on slab from niman ranch and well, when rob stopped in over the weekend, said belly was 24 hours into it’s 72 hour cure.

(rob in action and yes, that IS a wind up mario batali doll)

so rob comes into my kitchen with about 4 books (one of which was an imported and rare ‘marco pierre white’ book just for me!) under one arm and a big red metal tool box in his other hand. the guy’s tool box is filled with knives, whisks, truffle shavers – you name it. i mean is that cool or what? by cool i mean sexy, but let’s just call it cool and then call it a day. but rob came for a purpose and that was to cook. and so while opening my pantry and fridge, perusing the possibilities, i proudly showed him my belly. (this post has way too much excellent potential for sexual innuendo)… so first thing rob does is he takes the pork and cuts off about a 2 inch strip from one side. then that goes back in the refrigerator to continue doing what a pork belly does when it’s been heavily coated with some serious spices, salt and sugar (much more on all that coming up next week). and then he was off and running and i was just trying to pretend that i could be of some earthly assistance. what you see at the top is an oven roasted pork belly square with an apple walnut salad and puree of bread and arugula. the pretty purple stuff is some of my leftover blueberry gastrique that i kept forcing rob to use. (thanks rob.) the walnut apple salad was made using orange blossom water, shallots, garlic, verjus and blis maple syrup. we finished the dish off with a really wonderful smoked salt that i crushed using the side of my little ‘point and shoot’ cannon. i am so awesome.

we actually did the pork three ways, two for this dish. one in the oven and the second on my super-duper-turbo-kick-ass-infrared-ceramic plated grill. the grilled piece tasted better, but the meat didn’t look as attractive, so in the name of visuals it got second billing below – but it had the better skin crunch going on by far. i just wanted to impress you right off with the better pic.

next up rob decided to do oeufs en cocotte – or baked eggs. so he took some of the raw pork belly and diced it into lardons and then we placed that in a pan and began to render out the fat, adding water to aid the process. a ramekin was coated with some black truffle butter and then the lardons went in next followed by 2 carefully cracked eggs and a generous grating of parmigiano, being it was the only cheese in the house – and breadcrumbs. the ramekin went into a water bath and as we were about to place it in the oven…

we realized what was missing!

more truffle butter! what could we have been thinking? more butter + more truffles = more better!

eggs how i love thee. but then to surround you by truffled up butter, pork belly and parmigiano, i am just in awe…

i will say that a little pork belly goes a very long way. kind of like foie gras. but damn if it isn’t just an amazing cut of meat.

pork belly… it’s not just what’s for bacon anymore…

about a month ago i bought some tuscan wild fennel pollen and it’s been on my mind to break it out.  last night it premiered in my kitchen.  did you hear about it?  because it was very exciting – if one is so inclined to feel that way about such things…

like my spanish smokey pimenton, the fennel pollen was quite the find.  for me, these spices fall into the ‘totally transforming’ category.  and as couples go, wild fennel pollen and pork are just the perfect match.  they were meant to be together.  they bring out the best in one another.  it’s sheer harmony and a beautiful thing – all at once.  hard to top that.

so listen up because i’m only going to tell you once.  3 ingredients.  fennel pollen.  salt.  pepper.  you’re done.  and some pork and olive oil.  i bought a 1 lb. tenderloin and asked the butcher to butterfly it for me.  just take the 3 spices using equal amounts and rub the mixture into both sides of the meat and let it sit for about an hour.  then i rolled it up the short way and tied it with butcher string. 

for the vegetable sides i decided upon some roasted brussel sprouts and csa butternut squash, along with eggplant chips – my latest greatest way to use my seemingly never ending supply of these.  i used the pale purple chinese eggplants (from the csa), slicing them on the diagonal.  the 3 vegetables were all treated lightly with nothing but olive oil, salt and pepper.  just enough to bring out who they really were – and probably would continue to be were you to decide to replicate this down to earth vegetable vibe. 

the pork sliced in a cool kinda spirally way that can’t help but lull you into a false sense of momentary chefdom.  and then you wake up and plate the rest and delight in your rustic, simple dinner.

metaphor’s for life, they’re everywhere…

eating down the house.  continued…

i read a fair few blogs and am constantly inspired by these people who understand food so well.  it certainly makes cooking easier on me.  tonight i riffed off one of my all-time fave blogs, smitten kitchen and enlisted a touch of help from minimally invasive (orange zest/pimenton = wow).

i bought one large yellow onion along with 3 organic valencia oranges for zest.  everything else was in the house.

i sauteed the one big onion and the last of my small ones in some olive oil.  when they were about to brown i added the chopped sweet potatoes, the last of my fresh sage, the zest of 3 oranges, niman ranch chorizo sausage, and a mixture of turnip, red russian kale and collard greens along with a litre of chicken broth – in no particular order.  i salt and peppered to taste and then added some (magic) sweet smoked pimenton.

the sweet potatoes and greens were all from my csa.  i used quite a bit of both.  but somehow, i still have more…  they are reproducing overnight.  like rabbits.

it was a one pot meal.  and really, this was so good.  but so very, very good.  in fact, surprisingly excellent.  a bonafide winner!

i’d love to go on about it some more but i am tired and have to wake up early…

(yawn)

ps – i can’t say it was a stoup.  i just can’t…  way too rachel ray on the lingo for me.

in keeping with my ‘eating down the house‘ challenge, the only ingredient that i needed for last night’s dinner was some cream, something that i rarely if ever buy or cook with - if only out of a healthy dose of fear.  but i had perused my freezer, fridge and pantry and had a pretty solid idea of what direction i’d be heading.  i reached for the frozen niman ranch sweet italian sausage, the opened can of tomato paste and the leftover fresh thyme from last weekend. 

but the plan was sealed when i spotted the small but coveted bag of dried morels and another of porcinis tucked away in a corner top shelf of my freezer, leftovers from a bulk buy i’d made from earthy’s.  i hesitate to say it, but i figured i’d been hanging on to them for at least three years now and their well overdo time had finally come.  i’m sure their three frigid trips around the sun wasn’t working in their favor but i was hopeful that they’d still pack that smoky rich and fragrant punch that i love so much.  (later, when i checked the current price of dried morel’s my jaw literally dropped.) 

so then i’m at the store facing this wall of orderly bottles and cartons.  the assorted dairy soldiers are all lined up in colorful uniform, standing at attention armed with various counts of deadly fat grams. and i come to the sober realization after reading the nutritional labels and doing the math that the very small box of fat laden heavy cream was just not going to pass through either my front door - or my lips.  there had to be a line drawn.  and by god, this was it.  i grabbed the organic half and half and feeling only vaguely better about my choice, headed for the checkout line with a nagging suspicion that no one ever cooks with half and half.  half and half, it’s what’s in your coffee.  half and half, the name itself feels so non-committal. 

(the dried morel and porcini mushrooms)

early in the evening when i began to assemble all the elements, i knew a red wine would be in order, most of it to be sacrificed to the sauce.  the only thing i currently had in stock that was sacrificable was an ’03 clos du bois cabernet.  a bit nicer than my usual cooking wine, but i salvaged one big glass for me and offered up the rest to the bolognese gods.  (note to self: buy wine for cooking.)

(the mushrooms rehydrated)

i began by soaking the mushrooms in warm water.  then i sauteed onions in some olive oil and added the sausage meat.  next i poured in the wine and cooked it down to perhaps a half cup of liquid.  then i added the chopped rehydrated mushrooms along with most of a can of tomato paste.  the fresh thyme was de-stemmed and a big fistful was added to the pan along with salt and a generous helping of coarsely ground black pepper.  finally in went some half and half and while i carefully brought the heat back up and the sauce began to thicken, i thinned it all down with the reserved and carefully strained mushroom soaking water.

at about that time, angela called and i offered for her to come by and pick up some dinner for her and bruce.  they got the half unused bag of strozzapreti (literal translation: priest choker) and a tupperware of the just finished sauce.  i was thrilled to not have leftovers – and to be able to feed my friends.

it was a heavy meal, no doubt.  but the fat content was considerably lower than it might have been had i not had the sane concept of substituting for what was the ‘better, richer’ ingredient.  heavy cream, we did not miss you.

eating down the house – to be continued…

tonight
amongst many true culinary crowd pleasing delights
i ate
pig
testicles

and they were kinda really ok
seriously…

fyi: nothing like chicken…

enough said.

saw it.  had to do it.  and it’s so not about me except to say that i followed directions, barely veering – and if i may say, i did a bang up job.

for any and all info please go and visit the woman who once again made it all possible – jennifer of ‘last night’s dinner‘. 

i used the niman ranch sweet italian sausage which are to my delight readily available at my local supermarket, albeit already cooked.  skinned and chopped, they worked just beautifully.  i also used a pretty good pile of regular finely minced garlic, as scapes down south were (sadly) so two months ago…  for the wine i used a really nice sancerre which was almost a sin, but it’s what i was drinking that evening and i recently ran out of my bottle of noilly prat.  i drink so infrequently these days that if i’m pouring a glass, it’s got to blow my mind.  i’m on a sancerre kick which is somewhat unfortunate as it appears the price of these wines have recently escalated.  $25 at the very minimum for a decent bottle.  damnittohell.  cary bought me two excellent bottles a few weeks back and i’ve been hoarding them.  one almost down, one to go…

this dish is a huge shot of flavor.  the richness of the sausage, the bitterness of the rapini, the sharp bite yet smooth texture of the pecorino and the deep tomato flavor all add up to a major taste sensation. 

and the testament of how superb this pasta dish is was that the two kids cleaned their plates.

green stuff and all.