Rafetto's Fresh Linguine: Is Good!

Those of you who are regular readers of this site know that I am a fan of Rafetto's products. Their pesto is one of best packaged products I have had, and I am a fan of their ravioli. While suffering on Grand Jury duty last year, I would occasionally trudge up to the store at 144 W. Houston Street, NY NY 10012, and buy stuff.

Having said all of that, I had never had their pasta. I bought their prepacked linguine from Zabar's a few days ago, and made it with both their pesto sauce as well as Zabar's meatballs (for the kids...and maybe I helped a bit). It was fantastic!!! It wasn't sticky in the package, or in the pot of water. It also has a distinct flavor, which I often find lacking in pasta, even of the "gourmet" variety. More important, boy 2 could taste the difference as well! If you have pasta that multiple generations can tell the quality of you should buy it!

Linguine with White Clam Sauce: Actually Easy

I've always been a red sauce kind of guy...me and tomatoes go way back. The Lovely Wife, however, really likes white clam sauce, and marriage is sometimes founded on compromise. So after watching our children play baseball, we Vespa'd up to Morningside Heights, where we purchased clams and some other stuff. I have made white clam sauce a few times in my life, but, after forgetting to buy clam juice this time, I had to adjust my recipe. The results: delicious! And rather easy as well. It looked good, too, but my camera is in bad shape: I must get a new one.

INGREDIENTS

18 Fresh clams (we really like clams) /rinsed and ready
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium sized "sweet" onion (example Vidalia): finely chopped
4 cloves garlic /sliced thin
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/2 of a bottle moderately dry white wine plus ( we used Goldwater Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2006, FYI)
salt (have a teaspoon ready)
Fresh thyme (~1 1/2 teaspoons)
Linguine (1/2 pound for this much is fine, 3/4 of a pound for bigger eaters.)

EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED

Covered large pan for sauce and clams
pot for pasta
colander

INSTRUCTIONS:

Heat a large pot with salted water to boiling for linguine. Cook as per package instructions.

Add 2 1/2 tablespoons oil to pan, heat and add the onions. After they have started to cook for a few minutes, add in the garlic. Keep stirring, and when the onions begin to brown, add the wine, half the salt, red peppers and thyme. Cook down on a low flame for about 10 minutes. Add the clams, and cover tightly. Cook until the clams are open, about 8 minutes. By this time the pasta should be ready and drained. Reserve a little pasta liquid. Add a few tablespoons, as well as the remaining oil, and cook down a bit. Salt to taste. Serve in bowls.

Parmesan Spaghetti: How Good is This

As I promised yesterday, my new recipe for Parmesan Spaghetti. Perhaps the easiest, most caloric pasta dish ever, this dish was a hit with all age groups. Just remember to renew your gym membership prior to eating. This recipe is a variation of one I saw in "Adventures of an Italian Food Lover: With Recipes from 254 of My Very Best Friends," by Faith Heller Willinger. I added garlic, cranked up the amount of Parmesan, and a bit of salt. I also adjusted the recipe a bit for American Spaghetti boxes.

INGREDIENTS

8 ounces spaghetti
1 1/3 cups shredded (or 1 cup grated) Parmesan cheese. You can substitute Pecorino Romano for a zingy taste, but it will not be as universally loved.
salt to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon to one teaspoon depending on the type of Parm used)
3 garlic cloves, sliced thin
3 tablespoon olive oil

EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED

colander
Pasta pot
4 quart pot to finish off pasta
serving bowl

INSTRUCTIONS:
Boil the pasta "al dente:" about minutes less than recommended cooking time. Remove 1 1/2 cups of the liquid and drain. Do not rinse, or the pasta will stay a little too al dente'.

Put the oil in the 4 quart pot and saute the garlic until brown. Add (carefully!!) 3/4 of a cup of the liquid and then the pasta, cheese, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Stir around on medium heat, making a white sauce. You can add some more liquid if necessary. Serve immediately.

Gadempt Meat Sauce Bolognese with Fusilli

One day, the family went to the Transit Museum in Brooklyn. The kids had a great time, but what I really remember is ending up, after an endless walk, at a small Italian restaurant that clearly was not used to serving children (and we had 4 as we were with another family). The only thing that kept everyone calm was a really good meat sauce made from whole chunks of meat cooked until the meat fell apart. The kids liked, I liked the lovely wife liked it, and our friend liked it (you know who you are). So I set about to recreate it. At this point, I have a number of variations. This one is a great recipe for large numbers of people if you are going to be in and around the house all day. It generally takes more than four hours to cook, but after the initial prep, you just stir occasionally and do a lot of tasting to see if its ready. I like this sauce with fusilli, as the twisty pasta mixes well with the strings of meat.

INGREDIENTS

8 pounds cubed stew meat
2 cans whole, peeled tomatoes (crush the tomatoes a bit with your hands)
1/2 bottle red wine + another cup or so (I used a Pinot Grigio that you never heard of. It worked fine)
3 chopped onions
6 sliced cloves garlic
salt: enough to cover meat and then to taste (probably 1/2 teaspoon)
1 1/2 teaspoons white or wine vinegar (because vinegar is good)
one teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon thyme
olive oil for cooking

EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED

Large skillet to brown onions and meat
Large pot to cook everything in
Slotted spoons

INSTRUCTIONS:

Brown the onions to a pale yellow and set aside in large cooking pot. Dry meat with paper towels and salt liberally (This is an Upper West Side Blog, after all!). Brown the meat in batches. Don't worry if its not perfect, it will all cook eventually. Using a slotted spoon, move the meat into large pot. Add the sliced garlic, wine and tomatoes. Also add one teaspoon of the vinegar. Allow the mixture to come to a boil, and then place on very low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally and skimming off oil and foam that develop. Make sure the stuff on the bottom of the pot does not burn.

Keep feeling the meat with the spoon as you turn the sauce. At some point, it will start falling apart. Encourage it with the spoon, but don't force it or crush the meat. At this time, add the rest of the vinegar (1/2 teaspoon), pepper, thyme and up to one more cup of wine. Keep cooking. The sauce is cooked when the vast majority of the meat has fallen apart and the sauce is quite thick. Salt to taste prior to serving. The sauce tastes best if its allowed to sit for at least 20 minutes after cooking.

Rafetto's Mushroom Ravioli and Pesto Sauce

More positive news on the Rafetto's front. After reviewing their excellent walnut and gorgonzola ravioli, I felt compelled to try any new flavors I could get my hands on without hiking down to 144 West Houston Street. So when Zabar's had a box of Mushroom with Whole Wheat Dough Jumbo Ravioli, I jumped on it. I also bought Rafetto's brand pesto sauce, which is sold in the refrigerator section. I was not misktaken on either account. The ravioli are superb, and I am not a fan of whole wheat anything. The filling is distinctly mushroom flavored, with just enough cheese and garlic to not make it overpowering.

More impressive was the pesto. In general, I have been unhappy with tub or jar pesto. This pesto was different. You could taste that it was made with pure olive oil, and not a mix of olive and vegetable oils. There are ample Parmesan cheese and pine nuts, too. It may have been the best store bought pesto I have ever had. It costs a little bit more, but not much, and is clearly worth it.

Raffetto's Gorgonzola and Walnut Ravioli

I have been on a ravioli kick recently. The boys like it, the wife tolerates it, its to hot to cook and it doesn't require a lot of clean up. Zabar's has a decent selection, so I can pick it up on the way home. If I remember to get an onion, some garlic and a can of tomatoes, I can make homemade sauce. Although I enjoy many types of ravioli, I have been on something of a kick with Rafetto's jumbo Gorgonzola and walnut ravioli.

Rafetto's is located on 144 West Houston Street ((212) 777-1261. Cash only and closed Sunday and Monday). It has been around since 1906, and makes excellent pasta and ravioli. I came upon the Gorgonzola and walnut almost by accident (there was no cheese or spinach available at Zabar's). If you can't make it down to the store, they sell it at a variety of specialty shops in addition to Zabar's. There are several things that differentiates this ravioli from its more pedestrian brethren. The first is the pasta itself, easy to cook yet quit chewable and flavorful. the second is the filling: the Gorgonzola cheese really stands out and are well balanced by the walnuts. It really tastes different from your traditional ravioli. Having said that, it doesn't taste so different that you wish you weren't eating it: it tastes good!

Raffetto's Links

NYU Portfolio
NY Daily Photo Blog

Is There a True Tuscan?

Heck if I know. However, Cesare Casella, the proprietor of Beppe and Maremma, thinks he does. And he has put it in print, in a book aptly titled True Tuscan: Flavors and Memories from the Countryside of Tuscany. I would like to thank one of our "school friends" for giving me this book as a gift. As I a man who both loves cookbooks and am to cheap to buy them, I always appreciate getting them. So I took this one for a spin.

A few comments. First of all, Mr. Casella is more opinionated than I am, and that takes some work. Despite his little "we Italians do what we want, so variations are great" introduction you sort of get the feeling that its Cesares way or else. Purists for regional Italian cooking will not like this book. The author's view is that, since he is Tuscan, anything he makes, even if it is fried chicken and ribs, is Tuscan, too. A better title for the book might have been "True Cesare." There are a tremendous amount of fish and seafood recipes, which would have been great if I had any desire to make them.

Having said that, the recipes that I reviewed are quite doable and the three that I made (focaccia, hammin alla Toscana and Stewed Beans) quite edible, even as a first effort. The hammin, a very unkosher version of a traditional Jewish Shabbat dish is pictured here. It was actually easy to make and looks like "something" when it was finished. Tonight we ate the leftovers with the foccacia and they tasted great.

The focaccia, which, according to the author, is not the bastardized version we usually eat here in the United States, but the real Tuscan deal, was very easy to bake and tasted great with the hammin. I will list the recipe tomorrow, including some comments that I think will improve preparation.

"True Tuscan" has many interesting looking dishes, many of which look easy to prepare. The recipes are the type of food I like to prepare, and I am happy its on my shelf.

Rao's Marinara Loses to Jerry's in Taste Test!

I would like to thank our reader Lisa for her suggestion about Rao's Marinara sauce. At her suggestion I bought a bottle of Rao's Marinara Sauce at Zabar's. As opposed to Jerry's where it is available), , which does not appear to be readily available in New York (post if you know anyplace besides Zabar's where Jerry's is available). Rao's is available everywhere anything is sold. Given that you buy jar sauce because you don't have time to make your own, convenience is very important.

Tonight, in addition to burgers, I made pasta and meatballs (the recipe is easy and almost ready for posting) and heated up both the Rao's as well as the Jerry's sauce. The sauces were tried by me, the lovely wife, and both sons.

The sauces look similar, a somewhat liquid red sauce with small chunks of tomatoes and basil leaves. And the winner is....Jerry's. Rao's sauce is quite tasty, but it is much too sweet. Jerry's also has more "non-tomato" flavor, such as onions, basil and garlic. Having said all that, the Number 1 son liked the sweetness of Rao's sauce, so there is clearly room for disagreement. Either way, if you need to jar, you can't go wrong with either brand.

Chicken Fingers Plus, AKA the Cutlet

Chicken Fingers only go so far in life. They are easy to make, but if you remember the eighties (or, gulp, even the nineties) you probably feel a little silly eating them for dinner. This is where the cutlet comes in. Same stuff, different appearance. And you get to bang the heck out of them with a hammer! Once you have made the cutlet, it can be used a variety of ways. Today I will describe the basic chicken cutlet recipe. I will also reveal the secret of Male Martha's "instant parm" recipe, which only adds two more ingredients and one more pot. If you time it well, you can make the whole recipe, including the parm, in about one hour, which includes 1/2 hour of actual work. The only ingredient thats not normally sitting around the house is Panko, which is available many places (see below).

INGREDIENTS

Chicken breasts, skinless, boneless and whole (one to two packages; 6-8 breasts)
Milk (enough to have the chicken sit in)
1 egg, beaten
Kosher salt
Pepper (optional)
Panko (Japanese bread crumbs: available throughout NYC and likely everywhere else, too)
Parmesan cheese
Corn meal (white or yellow)
Canola oil
Olive oil
Ball of mozzarella cheese

Pasta to serve with meal (thinner pasta cooks faster, so linguine is always good)
32 ounces of simple tomato sauce (I like Jerry's if I have no homemade available)


KITCHEN EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED

Large skillet for frying
Plate covered in paper towels
2 bowls: one for holding chicken, milk, egg and salt mixture and the other for breading
Tongs (not necessary but they really help)
Metal Spatula
Large pot for boiling pasta
Good Knife
Roasting or baking pan to hold chicken for baking.

INSTRUCTIONS

Fill the large pot halfway up with water and set on the back burner to boil. Add one teaspoon of salt or so for each quart of water. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil to keep pasta from sticking. If it starts to boil before you are ready change heat to low and cover. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Chicken breasts should be whole. Flip them over and you will see a small membrane. Cut the membrane (not the meat) and separate. It almost looks like a mitt. Then flip the breast back so that the shiny end (skin side) is on top. Take the meat tenderizer, and pound the meat with the flat side until it is all about 1/3" thick. The evenness is important. Don't be shy.

Mix egg in bowl. Add milk and mix together. Add about 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper to taste (I would not add more than 1/4 teaspoon). Add pounded chicken breasts to cover (add more milk as necessary) and set aside in refrigerator.

Mix together approximately equal parts of panko and cornmeal. If you want "Parm" add 1/2 of a part of grated parmesan cheese (it helps to use the good stuff and not Kraft). Add enough salt that you can taste it a bit. Add a drop of pepper. Add about 1/4" of oil (half olive and half canola) to the skillet and heat on high. When its hot, you're ready to go.

Dredge breasts in bread crumb mix and coat well. Place in oil and leave room. If you don't, you'll get greasy chicken. Let fry till cooked on the sides (see photo) and then flip using tongs. Cook on other side till brown (you can pick up corner with the tongs to see how its doing). Place on paper towels. The cutlets are now done.

To make easy parm, place the cutlets in the baking pan. Cover the cutlets completely with sauce. Add mozzarella slices to the top and place, uncovered in oven. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook. It usually takes 15 to 20 minutes to heat up the sauce and dry it out a little and melt the cheese. To be extra fancy, you can broil the cheese and brown it. Serve with the pasta.

Ode to a Jar of Tomato Sauce

Male Martha usually makes his own tomato sauce. However, the day job sometimes cuts into my ability to cook, and although homemade tomato sauce freezes well, I've used it all up. There are a variety of "fresh" tomato sauces available in the refrigirator section, but these expensive sauces often come in tiny little 16 ounce containers that couldn't feed two people unless they were both on diets. I like Jerry's Homemade Marinara Sauce ($6.99 at Zabar's for a 32 ounce bottle) which has a real tomato flavor, without being too sweet. For a little more than a jar of Ragu you can taste the onions and garlic in the sauce, and there is a nice olive oil scent that you usually don't associate with bottled sauce. Jerry's must be a very tiny company, as I could not find a single other post about him and there is no website! I assume he is spending all that time he should have been marketing time actually making a really good tomato sauce!

Sausage Pasta. Easy and Always Successful

One of the things I learned when I was dating was that a foolproof meal is a good way to a girl's heart (and some other places). There are a variety of dishes that work. The trick is to find things that are easy to make, don't take a lot of kitchen implements, and easy to clean. This last one took me a while, but if your apartment looks good when they arrive, the better your chances. When your married, easy to clean as you go at least helps you not have to "help" clean up after making dinner in the first place. Sausage Pasta requires almost no additional seasoning, is hard to overcook, and tastes good cold out of the fridge the next day. All ingredients can be bought at any supermarket. If your girlfriend is a vegetarian and you are not, my advice is to move on before you go any further. Mixed marriages are difficult.

SAUSAGE PASTA
recipe (c) 2006

INGREDIENTS TO BUY

One can peeled whole Italian Tomatoes (35 oz)
One Onion, peeled and cut up into 1/4" dice (pieces about that size)
Three garlic cloves, cut into thin slices
Olive oil for frying
6 Hot Italian Sausages (the raw kind in the butcher's section). You can use 8 for meatier sauce.
Salt to Taste
One pound pasta such as penne

KITCHEN EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEED

Large pot for pasta
Bowl for holding sausage after it is removed from its casing
Skillet for browning onions, garlic and sausage
4 quart pot or so for cooking pasta (you can do it in a large enough skillet, but its a mess)
Good knife for chopping onions and garlic (more on knives in a later blog)
colander for pasta
Various spoons for stirring etc.

INSTRUCTIONS
Fill pasta pot 1/2 way or so with water. Add ~1 teaspoon salt for each 2 quarts of water and some oil (I don't know, lets say two tablespoons). Place on stove covered and place water to boil. Do this first so you won't have to sit around seeing if a watched pot will boil later.

Take the sausage, and make a slit across the casing the long way. Push the meat out of the casing into a bowl. Discard the casings. You may want to mash it up a bit with your fingers. Put aside until you are done with the onions and garlic.

Chop onions and garlic. Place olive oil in the bottom of skillet (it should coat the skillet easily). Place on high heat and when oil just begins to smoke add onions and about a minute later add garlic. You should be stirring constantly to prevent burning. Onions always take longer than you think to saute, and it usually takes about 5 minutes for the onions to soften somewhat and begin to turn brown. Remove from heat and pour onions into the pot you will cook the sauce in.

Use a paper towel to clean off anything that may be left in the pan. Put in a bit more oil. Add the sausage. Use a spoon or metal spatula to mash up the meat as much as possible. Brown the sausage. It should look cooked. Pour off excess fat and add to the pot for the sauce.

Open the tomato can. Pour some of the liquid into the pot for the sauce. Mash up the rest with your hands, so that the tomatoes are all somewhat smashed. Place them in the pot. Bring the pot to a boil and then reduce heat to the lowest you can. The sauce will simmer slightly. Cook for at least 1/2 hour and up to one hour. Stir occasionally. This will give you plenty of time to prepare the table, etc.

Cook the Pasta: Add the pasta to the boiling water about 1/2 hour before you want to eat. This will give you a chance to drain it etc. Before draining, add a little bit of the liquid (two tablespoons or so) to the sausage sauce.

Turn the heat off the sauce about 10 minutes before you want to serve it. This will allow it to set. Taste it. Add salt if needed. Place on pasta. Buy some pre-made salad. Wa-laa.