Fresh Tomatoes for Sauce

Adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

A lot of Marcella's recipes call for tomatoes that are ready for sauce. Last summer when the tomatoes were glorious, I accidentally stumbled on how good it was to get them "ready" and have them on hand. I swear next year when the tomatoes are glorious I am going to do a ton and put them up for the winter because they were so delicious, and if any of you haven't read the blog Cream Puffs in Venice, now is the moment to read about doing the tomatoes.

I want to mention a fabulous product at this point. Bella Cucina Artful Food's Organic Passata al Pomodoro. When I first wrote this post, December 31, 2007, Bella Cucina had a stand in the Market at Grand Central, which I discovered one day when I was stopping at Murray's to get some fresh ricotta. The week before last I shuttled over to Grand Central specifically to get a jar, and the stand was gone! These tomatoes are truly wonderful, surpassing anything I have found in a jar or a can. They are, however, smooth so if you want texture, they aren't for you. Other than that, they are fabulous.

They are so good that I gave Amy a case for Christmas. That was easy. Their main HQ is in Virginia Highlands in Atlanta, and Wright went to pick them up for me. I hope she likes them as much as I do. So I don't know if anyone in New York carries these tomatoes; I'm going to try to find out; otherwise, I guess they would have to be shipped from Atlanta. Bummer.

The solution, of course, is to do your own.


Fresh Tomatoes for Sauce
Adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

A lot of Marcella's recipes call for tomatoes that are ready for sauce.  Of course you can always use canned tomatoes.  A lot of tomatoes from Italy are excellent as are the brands Muir Glen and Bionaturae, but if it's summer, and the tomatoes are glorious, the solution, of course, is to do your own.

There are two ways to prepare fresh, ripe tomatoes for sauce. First, you can blanch them by plunging the tomatoes in boiling water for a little less than a minute. Drain, skin, and cut into coarse pieces.

Next, is the food mill method, which produces a smooth sauce, and it is the one I use.

Wash the tomatoes, cut them length-wise in half, and put them in a saucepan. (At this point, I add a little salt to taste, but you don't have to; you can add salt to the recipe you will use them in.)

Turn on the heat to medium, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how thick you want the tomatoes to get.

When done to my liking, I use my food mill fitted with the disk with the smallest holes to puree the tomatoes and all their juices into a bowl.  You can use the disc with the largest holes if you want a coarser sauce.

I put the tomatoes I am not using immediately away in one-cup increments in a small Ziplock bag made for freezing.

 If you like, you can add some fresh basil before you put them away, but I don't do this because I rarely use basil in my tomato sauce.

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Marcella's Miracle Tomato Sauce - For Bill

Another one for Bill.

It's New Year's Eve morning. I'm in the country, and there are about 8 inches of freshly fallen snow outside.

It's still snowing; the fire is stoked; Walter has headed off to ski, and I'm sitting here with the new kitten, Sylvano,

writing, drinking tea, listening to Trio Mediaeval, and loading music into my new MacBook. Friends are coming over for dinner, and I'm going to make chicken paprikash. The only thing that would make it better would be if I had a larder filled with my own jarred tomatoes. Next summer, which seems so far away, no matter what, I am going to"do the tomatoes."

The next summer - a promise kept

I have a new email friend. Her name is Erin, and her blog is Spice Dish - Life is Delicious in San Francisco, where Erin lives. I've been thinking about her as I sit looking out the window at the trees and the field and the birds.

There is no place I would rather be right now. I wonder if Erin would enjoy spending this morning here with me, having a nice breakfast before heading home to celebrate New Year's Eve in San Fran.

If we could only apparate.

I have already written about Giulian0 Hazan's recipe in which he adapted his mother's original recipe, slicing the onion instead of cutting it in half, and it is very good. But it's high time I mentioned the original because it's a miracle recipe - so much more than the sum of its simple parts.

And if you use fabulous butter,

beautiful tomatoes,

(but high-quality canned will do), and Maldon Salt,

it is so delicious you will find yourself just wanting to eat it straight out of the pan.

Believe it or not, it's the first tomato sauce Molly ever made from scratch.

Marcella's Miracle Tomato Sauce

Adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

Serves 6

2 cups of ripe tomatoes that have already been made ready for sauce or 2 cups canned Italian plum tomatoes cut up with their juice (a 14-1/2 ounce can of diced tomatoes will be fine here)
5 tablespoons butter (don't have a fit - this is sauce for a lot of pasta)
1 medium onion, peeled (did I really have to tell this this?) and cut in half
Salt
1 to 1-1/2 pounds pasta
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Put the tomatoes in a saucepan, add the butter, onion halves, and some salt, and cook uncovered at a slow simmer for 30 to 45 minutes until the fat floats free from the tomato. I find it usually takes closer to 30 minutes.

Stir occasionally, mashing any large piece of tomato in the pan, if there are any, with a wooden spoon. Taste and add more salt, if necessary, keeping in mind that you will add some parmigiano-reggiano cheese at the end. Discard the onion, and toss the sauce with pasta. Then add some parmigiano cheese and toss again or put the cheese on the table so the diners can add their own.

Because you want to sauce the pasta lightly, this is enough sauce for 1 to 1-1/2 pounds. If you're making less pasta than that, you can freeze the leftover sauce. If you do this, do it without the onion and without any cheese.

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Pegu

I was going to say that at this festive time of year, I love to have a good cocktail, but truth be told, I love a good cocktail any time of the year! This drink may be better to have in the summer when you're looking to cool down, but let's fact it, most of it live lives where we are not hanging around in the scorching summer sun and need a cool-down at the end of the day. So since we are inundated with air-conditioning and don't find ourselves in a room at sunset where fans overhead are trying to tame the sweltering heat, and I just became aware of this cocktail, I tried it and am passing it along to you now - even though it's December. Don't drink one again until the middle of June if you like, but do try it immediately. Immediately means go collect what you need for the drink right this minute, make it, and sip. The worst that can happen is you'll add it to your repertoire for next summer; the best that can happen is you'll have an extra drink to enjoy between now and June. I have to pass this along to Mary because her brother Ken is quite the bartender.

I got this drink, which is called the Pegu, from Vintage Cocktails. It has an interesting history. Apparently, it was the drink of choice at a men's club called - not surprisingly - Pegu in Burma, either in Rangoon proper or the outlying town of Pegu, during the 1920's, where, I am sure, ceiling fans were actually required to cool bodies and tempers at the end of the day. Walter doesn't like it as much as I do. Maybe my new-found affection for it has to do with the fact that we are watching Jewel in the Crown these days (thanks to Netflix), and I can imagine British officers in India putting a few of these away at the end of the day. Anyway, give it a go, and see what you think. I'm interested in your opinion.

1-1/2 oz. gin (I say use Plymouth!)
1/2 oz. triple sec* (Bols, if you can find it)
3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters (I suspect that orange bitters would be perfect here, but they are much harder to find)

Put everything in a metal cocktail shaker and shake until the towel you are holding the shaker with sticks. You want this icy, icy, icy.

*I NEVER use Cointreau (or Grand Marnier) as the orange-flavored liqueur in a cocktail. This one originally calls for orange curacao, and I think Bols triple sec is the best of the bunch.
Pour into martini glasses and imbibe. Ummmm.......

The Subject of Dessert

The subject of dessert is very personal. I don’t eat dessert every day, but if I did and could eat anything I wanted, it would be two small (very small - in fact, cookie-scoop size) "dots" of ice cream with either fruit or a cookie. I love ice cream and think the Italians who, apparently, eat gelato for breakfast on scorching days in the summer are brilliant. Nevertheless, I do enjoy eating dessert once a week, usually on Saturday nights, and I do serve dessert any time I have company, so I have gathered a number of dessert recipes that I particularly enjoy to make, to serve, and even sometimes to eat. They are posted on this blog, and I hope you will enjoy them too.

I always have individually wrapped pieces of dark chocolate around, often Dove Dark, which is supposed to be good for you since it has high levels of anti-oxidants. (Amanda Hesser once wrote that a bar of chocolate and a glass of cognac was her favorite dessert.) Walker’s Shortbread in its many forms is delicious and has no fake ingredients – just lots of butter to make it "sandy" and taste great. I also love Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux Cookies and like them most served with Haagen Dazs Coffee Ice Cream. This is especially good with a few whole blueberries tossed over the ice cream. I don’t eat Bordeaux Cookies often - it's too easy to eat a lot of them, but they are hard to beat in terms of taste and crunch if you're talking store-bought cookies. And may I please stick in a plug here for McVities Hob Nobs, a "nobbly" British "biscuit" made from oats. Another great dessert for company is to hand out Haagen Dazs Ice Cream Bars since people tend to eat at someone else’s house what they would not eat at their own. They taste great and are packaged ready to open and hand out. Everyone is like a little kid getting something from the ice cream truck. Just don’t offer choices, or you will have too many to buy and too many hanging around the freezer after your company goes home. Get your favorite bar. I go for vanilla ice cream covered in dark chocolate. (In fact, I could go for one right now despite the fact that it’s before noon, and the winter weather outside is nasty.) The other day I actually saw a Haagen Dazs miniature vanilla ice cream bar covered with almond-studded milk chocolate at the food store - so keep your eyes peeled!

Even though I like dark chocolate and eschew milk chocolate, the exception is a Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar, but only one that is actually produced in the U.K. It is really delicious with the most wonderful mouth-feel. Perhaps I like it because I spent so much time in England as a child; I don't know. I can tell you that the Saturday after Deathly Hallows was published, I snagged my favorite British candies, Rowntree Fruit Gums, Rowntree Pastilles, and Smarties, in addition to the aforemention Cadbury bar, at Fairway as I headed out of town, and sat in the backyard upstate reading and eating sweets. It was truly wonderful; a gorgeous weekend, a fabulous book, and eating candy just like a little kid (a little kid whose mother doesn't care about tooth decay). So sometime you should try a Cadbury chocolate bar. You might just like it.

By the way, if you live in or happen to be in New York City, I would recommend that you eat dinner at Pearl Oyster Bar. The only problem is unless you are prepared to wait, you have to get there early. By early I mean be standing outside at 6:00 p.m. when the door opens so you can mill about with all the other people waiting to get in. Eat whatever you like for dinner, it will be good, and – this is why this is in the dessert section - if you want dessert (and I recommend it), go straight for the chocolate mousse, which is the best – the absolute, total, and very best – chocolate mousse I have ever had. Unfortunately, Rebecca Charles, the owner of Pearl, did not put the recipe for this mousse in her lovely cookbook.) However, if it’s summer, skip dessert at Pearl and wander down to Bleecker Street, turn left, and go into Rocco’s Pastry Shop (Rocco’s, NOT the shop next door to Rocco’s, or you will be mad at me) and get a large lemon ice, which will refresh your palate as you wander around the Village walking off your dinner. (Let me admit here that one summer evening Olivia and I ate dinner at Pearl, had the chocolate mousse, and still went to Rocco’s for the lemon ice.) While you’re at Rocco’s, you might as well get some pignoli nut cookies (like macaroons studded with pine nuts), some biscotti regina (sesame seed cookies), and some quaresimale (Lenten almond cookies available here all the time) for when you get home and for when you get up the next morning. I wouldn’t steer you wrong.

Eve, an Apple Vermouth Cocktail

dapted from Paul Clarke via Supper in Stereo Blog

Lately I've been reading a fine blog called Supper in Stereo, where I found this recipe, which Paul Clarke had posted on Serious Eats. The best word to describe this cocktail, originally concocted by Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Club on West Houston Street (formerly of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle), is lovely. It is a delightful aperitif, very light and appetite-stimulating, which is, of course, the point of a preprandial drink. It would also make a nice gift for those of you who wants to go handmade for Christmas or who wants to bring an unusual host or hostess gift.

With my Benriner mandolin , I sliced the Macintosh apples very thin. Since I didn't have organic specimens, I peeled them, but I would probably leave the peels on organic apples to color the infusion a light pink. I had to use two jars because I didn't have one large enough to hold eight sliced apples and one liter of vermouth. By doing that, I was able to use all eight apples.

Definitely try this.

1 liter Noilly Prat Extra Dry vermouth (make sure it’s a fresh, unopened bottle)
8 Macintosh apples

Cut the apples into v-e-r-y thin slices. Put the slices in a large jar and completely cover the apples with the vermouth. (Save the bottle the vermouth was in, and wash it to use later. ) If you have to use two jars because you don't have one that's big enough, divide the apples between the jars.

Put a top on the jar, and refrigerate it for five days, shaking the jar carefully once a day.

Strain the liquid from the jar through a fine sieve. Put the strained liquid in the washed vermouth bottle, and put the cap on the bottle. Refrigerate.

To serve, pour four ounces of the flavored vermouth into a saucer champagne glass or a martini glass.

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