foodie nyc

It's All About the Brodo

  I went to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy a few years ago.  One of the best dishes I had was in a small town outside of Modena - a traditional dish of sausage tortellini floating in a clear chicken broth known as brodo.  The simple, clear broth was made with capon and exploded with chicken flavor.  It was invigorating - I must of had bowls and bowls of it during the trip.  The brodo made me feel amazing - full of life and energy. 

I have been making this style of brodo frequently at home - it's easy and makes everyone feel better on a cold day.  While having a beer together after a long night of work in his Tuscan restaurant, I told Chef Claudio that this brodo from Emilia-Romagna was the best I ever had.  He snapped to life with excitement.  He believed the Tuscan brodo was even better.  He promised to make it for me the next day.

He had some stiff competition.  While in Umbria a few days earlier, Uncle Beef and I made a chicken broth from the local chickens.  As you can see by the photo of the chicken, the chickens all over Tuscany and Umbria were yellow and skinny, not pale and full of hormones. The taste of the local chicken exploded with flavor - it became clear to me why the brodo in Italy is so great.  We made a big pot of it in Umbria, which was phenominal.

As the Tuscan chef made his brodo for me, I was surpised when he took me through the ingredients he'd be using.  He not only used chicken bones, but also beef bones from the shoulder cut, as well as a whole tongue.  Yow.  The chef simmered his brodo for about 1.5 hours then strained it carefully.  The combination of meats created a rich brodo that had deep, meaty qualities -very nice indeed.   But what I tend to enjoy about brodo is the burst of a dominant flavor that comes through from the broth.  What can I say - I guess I prefer the pure expression of chicken rather than a mix of meats.

So what did I do when the first chill hit NYC? You guessed it.  But I decided to make the Emilia-style brodo as I think it's flawless.  I usually make a huge pot of brodo and use it in any dish that would call for stock, but I especially like it as part of a simple meal after work or as a homey treat for football Sundays. 

My favorite preparation features pastina - small pasta like grains - and little meatballs.  I hope I can entice you to make brodo with this shot of a juicy meatball swimming in the brodo.  If that doesn't work, I can tempt you with my recipe, which follows the jump....

A Tale of Tegamaccio

I'm going to be doing a few posts about some of the dishes that have inspired me while touring Umbria and Tuscany this summer.  I had always meant to write about these dishes before my tasting event celebrating these flavors, but oh well....better late than never.

Our villa in Umbria was right on Lake Trasimeno, which is the second largest fresh water lake in Italy.  The cuisine around the lake area is, naturally, fresh water fish focused.  But drive thirty minutes either direction and the cuisine of Lake Trasimeno is nothing but an anomoly in the Tuscany and Umbria area. I mentioned this to the chef I cooked with in Tuscany.  His eyes lit up when I mentioned this cuisine.  He was familiar with this area and also marveled at the fact that Lake Trasimeno has its own distinct cuisine within Umbria and the entire region on the whole.

We were in search of a local, high quality freshwater fish restaurant one night and after deciding to avoid a pizza place that served salt water fish on a fresh water lake (?), we were guided to the local standard for high quality fresh water specialties, Restaurant Da Settimio. Being the subpar, untrendy blogger that I am, I will not post photos of the dishes I took at the restaurant.  Instead, I will reminisce and recreate a special dish that my Uncle Beef and Renee marveled over.  It was a dish called tegamaccio - a fish stew made from local carp, eel, and possibly other fish that I cannot remember.  The fish was lightly simmered in a rich, stewy tomato sauce that had a nice punch of vinegar and a spike of chili flavor.  The tomato fish stew was given substance with a slice of bread that was placed at the bottom of the stew to absorb the liquid.   

The only point of contention for me was the consistency of the tomato stew.  In the restaurant, we had it a bit on the soupier side.  However, Renee order the tegamaccio on a separate excursion and reported back that it was a bit chunkier and less soupy.  I could only make sense of this by thinking of tegamaccio as ribollita in concept - some of these bread stews are runnier or chunky than others.  I chose chunky vs. soupy, but to each their own.

I searched the internets for tegamaccio recipes but came up with very little, other than a recipe from Mary Ann Esposito from her cookbook Caio Italia.  I remember watching some of Mary Ann's cooking shows on PBS a while back.  While not riveting TV, she cooked authentic Italian food that I remember appreciating.  Anyway, her recipe confirmed the method upon which I made this dish.  I did not follow her directions (I don't follow directions well) but followed her method.  I used all the ingredients (did not pay attention to proportions), as I agreed with virtually all of the ingredients she lists in the tegamaccio.  She did not provide the vinegar-like punchiness that I recall, so if you decide to make this dish, I recommend adding a few tablespoons of white wine vinegar a few minutes before serving. 

As far as the fish is concerned, do as the Italians do - get whatever is best and freshest at the market, provided the fish is thick enough to keep its integrity while simmering in the stew.  I chose large shrimp and cod for this dish.  The above picture is from a shot I took of my version of tegamaccio.  I decided to choose this picture because I wanted you to notice the layers upon layers of flavor in this dish. 

As you can see, I liked tegamaccio so much that I made it for our Tuscany/Umbria tasting event last October 15.

Music in the Kitchen: October 2006

I haven't posted a Music in the Kitchen for a while, but I've had a few recent requests for a new cooking mix, so here you go. 

If you've forgotten, I occasionally post a few of my favorite songs that I like to listen to while cooking many of the dishes you see on this site. I'm more of a rocker, so most of my favorite cooking music tends to be relatively high energy.  For those of you interested, I post all of my Music in the Kitchen mixes on iTunes as an iMix.  Here's the October 2006 mix on iTunes.  Enjoy!

Menu from Tuscany/Umbria Tasting

Sorry for the lack of stimuli around here lately.  I've been preoccupied with many things, but mostly preparing for the Tuscany/Umbria tasting event we held on October 15.  Here's a look at the menu.  Thanks to all of you for coming!

Inspirations from Tuscany and Umbria

October 15, 2006      

tomato water with mussels and fried mint

pecorino truffle honey crostini

                        

zucchini sformato

arugula juice, tuscan olive oil,  country bread

                        

tegamaccio

cod, shrimp, tomato bread stew

                        

braised rabbit

with porcini gnudi and fried sage

                         

tuscan brodo

lamb, creamy white beans, glazed carrots

                        

polenta cake

basil sorbet

Cravings: The Modern's Squab and Foie Croustillant

I can't stop thinking about a dish I had at Danny Meyer's latest restaurant,  The Modern.  We spontaneously called for a reservation in the dining room on a Saturday night and were seated only twenty minutes later.  While I enjoyed many of the dishes I tasted, I can only remember one thing  - layers of silky foie gras and medium rare squab wrapped in cabbage and then a thin, buttery, flaky crust.  The croustillant is sliced in half, showing off layers of the decadent squab and foie. Underneath it all (and not pictured in the above photo featured on the Modern's website) was a truffle sauce.  Earthy, silky, creamy, buttery - it was a classic French dish executed utterly perfectly. 

The irony of enjoying this dish at a restaurant called The Modern did not go unnoticed by me. While most of the food I tasted featured modern ingredient combinations presented on cutting edge dinnerware, the dish that continues to inspire me a month after eating at The Modern was an old school, traditional French preparation with history behind it.   Quite refreshing, actually.

Ginger Steamed Sole, Jicama, Basil Juice

Yo ,Yo.

There is a person in my life who freakishly loves lemon sole.  I've pan seared lemon sole before, but since the fish is so delicate and flaky, it often presents presentation problems for me.  I decided to cook the sole en papillote - wrapped inside a sealed parchment paper with only a splash of olive oil, squeeze of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and plenty of large chunks of fresh ginger.  The sealed packet, which cooks in the oven for  roughly 15 minutes, allows the fish to pick up the flavors of the ginger while steaming to a tender juiciness in the packet.

I sliced jicama and tossed it with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and a bit of chopped basil for a crunchy accompaniment.  The big decision for me was how to add a burst of flavor to the dish while keeping it light.  As I've been mentioning, my new juicer has been a revelation to me.  I had a ton of basil, so I juiced a couple of bunches to create a vibrant, clear basil juice.  The juice exploded with basil flavor, yet would act as a simple condiment to the fish by simply whisking it with just a bit of olive oil, lemon juice and salt.

I have been making herb juices frequently.  In the above photo, I did not blanch the herbs before juicing, which created a darker basil juice.  I now run the herbs under very hot water for a few seconds before juicing , allowing for a brighter,  vibrantly green herb juice.  Hey - you juice, you learn.