Real spaghetti carbonara

In Virginia, you can find pork jowl bacon in the stores, and this is a great use for it. This has been one of my favorite dishes for years, because I usually have most of the ingredients on hand (although sometimes I cheat and use cooked bacon crumbles, which I keep in the freezer after opening).

If anyone can point me to a source for pork jowl in Sacramento, I'd be most appreciative.

The good eggplant

Video capture of the New York Times'
Melissa Clark eating the messy sandwich.

I made this with a regular local eggplant (one was plenty for two sandwiches), some leftover spaghetti sauce and the focaccia squares from Trader Joe's. Jim has never liked eggplant, but he loved this. Neither one of us could finish our sandwiches; it made quite the big dinner.

I just went off the video, but later saw the recipe from this past week's New York Times' food section. I was pretty close, actually, but the extra fresh garlic and some red chili flakes would have been awesome. I may even try to grill the eggplant first the next time I make this, because the raw eggplant just sucked up a bunch of oil. The egg and dry cheese coating, however, was inspired.


Frankies Spuntino’s Fried Eggplant Sandwich

Time: 3 hours 20 minutes (if you use prepared spaghetti sauce, it takes less than an hour)

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups extra-virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, peeled
Pinch red chile flakes
2 (28-ounce) cans whole, peeled tomatoes
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt, more as needed
5 small Italian eggplants (2 pounds)
4 large eggs
6 tablespoons ground Parmigiano-Reggiano, more as needed
6 tablespoons ground pecorino Romano, more as needed
1 very large or 2 medium ciabatta loaves, for serving

Instructions
In a large deep saucepan over medium low heat, combine 1/4 cup oil and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic is golden and fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in chile flakes; cook 30 seconds.

While garlic cooks, place tomatoes and juices in a large bowl and crush with clean hands. Remove tomatoes’ firm stem ends and any basil leaves packed into the can. Stir crushed tomatoes and salt into pot. Simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently, until tomatoes and garlic have completely broken down and sauce is thick, about 2 hours. Cool.

Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment or paper towels. Trim stem end from eggplants; peel and discard skin. Using a knife or a Japanese mandolin, slice lengthwise into 3/16-inch-thick slabs. Arrange eggplant in a single layer on prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle both sides of eggplant slices with salt. Let stand 10 minutes. Pat eggplant dry with paper towels.

Line another rimmed baking sheet with paper towel and place a wire rack on top. In a large, deep skillet, heat 1/2 cup oil until a drop of water flicked into pan sizzles. Working in batches, fry eggplant until just tender, 20 to 30 seconds per side. Transfer fried eggplant to rack to drain. Remove skillet from heat.

In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, 2 tablespoons Parmigiano-Reggiano and 2 tablespoons pecorino. Add 3/4 cup oil to the skillet and return to medium-high heat until oil is sizzling.

Working in batches, dip drained eggplant into egg batter; fry in oil until lightly golden and cooked through, 2 to 4 minutes per batch. You will know oil is hot enough if batter puffs and sticks to eggplant on contact with oil. If it falls off, the oil isn’t hot enough.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spread 1/2 cup tomato sauce in the bottom of a 9-inch square baking pan. Arrange eggplant over the bottom of pan in a tight, even layer. Top with 1/3 of the remaining combined cheeses. Repeat layer of sauce, eggplant and 1/3 of cheese. Finish with a final layer of sauce and cheese (reserve any remaining sauce for serving). Transfer pan to oven and bake until cheese is melted and golden, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven; Spoon additional sauce over top, and garnish with additional cheese. Cool for at least 20 minutes.

Cut eggplant into six equal pieces. Cut ciabatta into six pieces equal to the size of the eggplant servings. Split each portion of the ciabatta horizontally and toast. Sandwich eggplant portions between bread and serve.

Postscript to this post: If you are wondering why I wrote "chili" and the New York Times wrote "chile," "chili" is AP style for the vegetable and food dish; Chile is the country.

Best summer salad ever - insalata caprese

Photograph © 2013 Lori Korleski Richardson

One salad defines summer, and that's the Italian insalata caprese (salad in the style of Capri).

Simply, it's a ball of buffalo mozzarella, sliced thinly; fresh, very ripe tomatoes, also sliced thinly; fresh basil leaves, cut horizontally into tiny ribbons; salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil to taste.

Some notes and variations that I have tried this summer and enjoyed:

• Many cooks don't have the technique needed to thinly slice a whole ripe tomato, especially a large heirloom, and don't even think of slicing a tomato without sharpening your knife first. To make it easier on yourself, core the top stem area, cut the tomato in half, put the cut sides down, then slice. This makes cutting up the mozzarella easier, too.
• Replace the salt with finely ground sel gris or other gray sea salt, or smoked salt crystals.
• Buffalo mozzarella too dear? Skip the commercial varieties (too bland and bad texture) and try some goat cheese, provolone, or even a triple cream that's somewhat on the firm side (Cowgirl Creamery on the West Coast and Caromont on the East have good ones). 
• A mixture of colored tomatoes are great for a party platter.
• Don't like vinegar? Don't want the extra calories of olive oil? Allergic to pepper? Can't tolerate salt? Fine. As long as the tomato is fresh and ripe, it can stand on its own.

As my husband can tell you, I'm rather harsh in my judgment of tomatoes, grilling waitstaff on whether the tomatoes in the salad are ripe (I do this only in season; out of season, I don't bother ordering salads with tomatoes in them) and sending the salad back if they aren't. I know why a restaurant may have food-service tomatoes even in August and September, but I don't have to pay for their lack of awareness or bad business practices.

Rubbing lamb the right way

Most of the time, I just brush those cute little lamb loin chops with olive oil, salt and pepper, then grill them quickly over a hot fire. Crunchy on the outside and oh-so-tender on the inside.

But yes, I do mess with perfection, and this time, I'm very happy I did. The advantage to broiling the chops instead of grilling them is that you can keep the spicy crust on them and it won't flake off into the fire. So try these on a cold night when you don't feel like freezing outside to grill your chops.

Lori K's lamb rub
Makes enough coating for 6-8 loin chops

Ingredients
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon crushed fennel seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds or 1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil

Instructions

In a spice mill, grind everything but the last three items until blended, but not too fine. In a large mortar bowl, grind the rosemary and garlic. Add the other spices and mix well. Add enough olive oil to make a thick paste.

Spread on the lamb chops, both sides, pressing in the rub. Let stand for 15 minutes, then preheat the broiler for 15 minutes.

Grill close to the heat, 3-4 minutes each side (3 minutes for very rare, 4 minutes for medium rare). Very good with a sauce of sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions.

California tried to come here...

... but didn't quite make it. A friend made a special effort to ship my favorite olive oil to me, even going to the Sunday farmers market under the freeway in Sacramento to buy it from the grower, but the box arrived yesterday minus its bottle. There's a reason "Thou shalt not steal" made it into the top 10 of the commandments, and I'm sure the oil won't completely calm the waters of its thief''s roiling conscience. To read a review of the missing oil, click here.

And for those of you in or visiting Southern California soon, be sure to check out a very interesting exhibit at Heath Ceramics in Los Angeles. Clare Crespo has created an entire Mardi Gras feast with yarn versions of seafood gumbo, beignets and café au lait, king cake, catfish po’ boy, and more. Her oysters are pictured here.

The show’s opening is on Feb. 6 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Heath, featuring complimentary Abita beer and other pre-Fat Tuesday offerings.

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Baby lettuces: Best (almost) naked

One of the joys of the home garden is fall lettuce. As the nights get colder, the tomatoes and peppers wane, but perky little leaf lettuces keep chugging right along, except when a warm spell comes along and causes them to bolt (that's gardening speak for sending up a stalk and going to seed).

And picking off the leaves before they get too big ensures a tender, sweet salad. You don't need to do much to them; unlike lettuce that has spent too much time in the garden and then the refrigerator, they still have their delicate flavor. I'm sure you have a favorite dressing for salad, but now's not the time to show it off. Dress the tender leaves with a drizzle of good olive oil, then sprinkle with a grind of dried oregano, basil, red pepper, black pepper and sea salt.

The vinegar that adds so much flavor to most of your salads just overwhelms the fresh, baby lettuces. Save it for later, when your imported lettuces will need all the help they can get.

A ravioli to rave about

My friend Bambi Nicklin, a fine page designer I worked with in Orange County, California, years ago, likes to post her dinner menu as her status report at least several times a week. And we, her Facebook friends, are better for having such creative ideas plop onto our virtual plates.

She included this recipe (scanty, yes, but enough to get you to experiment), so I'm reposting it here.

Bambi's Butternut Squash Ravioli

Boil salted water. Fry the bacon, remove to dish, dump the grease. Put olive oil in the pan, toast the nuts, remove to same dish. Cook ravioli in the water, drain thoroughly. Heat olive oil and saute ravioli, add fresh spinach and cook just to barely wilt the spinach. Add nuts, bacon and Gorgonzola cheese. Toss and serve.

Spring sprung from the earth

I've written how I've come to view fava beans, with their short growing season, as the herald of spring. And they almost are exclusively a home cook's dish, since their preparation time precludes most restaurants from offering them.

Another lovely springtime offering, which also is best fresh, is morels. Even in season, they are very pricey, but the good news is that you don't need but a few ounces to make an impact in a dish. The photograph is of a black morel, courtesy of The Great Morel Picture Page.

If you go hunting for morels yourself, the good news is that the only similar poisonous mushroom is the false morel, and even that one can be tolerated by most people if cooked (but even in Finland, where the false morel is a cherished delicacy, there are deaths from eating them). Here's a bit more information on identifying the difference:

The early false morels can be told apart from the true morels by careful study of how the cap is attached to the stalk. The edge of true morels' (morchella) caps are intergrown with the stalk, but early morels' (verpas) caps hang over like a thimble, for which they are sometimes referred to as "thimble morel." Early false morels are the first morels to fruit in the spring, shortly after leaves begin to form on deciduous trees. Narrow-head morels (morchella angusticeps) fruit next, around May. The last morels to fruit are the yellow or white morels (Morchella esculenta), then crassipes.
Cap: the cap of false morels is wrinkled and irregular, bell shaped or cone shaped, attached only at apex (top) of cap not like true morels which have caps that are attached at the bottom, the color yellow brown to olive yellow or tan, darkens with age.
Stalk: 6-16 cm high, white to creamy or tan, hollow, often stuffed with white cottony pith. Spores when seen under a microscope are elliptical and have large oil droplets; true morels have no oil droplets.

Here's how we used a few fresh morels (purchased from Foods of All Nations) last night.

Twice-as-nice-a-roni with fava beans and morels

Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients

1 pound fava beans

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided use

1/2 cup angel hair pasta, broken into 1/2 inch pieces

1/2 cup basmati or other long grain rice

2 cups non-fat chicken or turkey broth

1 teaspoon butter

4 ounces fresh morels, sliced

Fresh ground pepper

Instructions

Prepare fava beans: Remove the beans from the spongy pods (the pods and the bean casings make great additions to your compost pile). Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the raw beans in their casings. Fill a bowl with water and ice. When the beans have returned to a boil, remove them from the boiling water and put in the bowl of ice water. When cool, remove the beans from their casings. Set aside.

In a saucepan that has a tight fitting lid, saute the pasta bits and the rice in a tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat until the rice turns white and the pasta browns. Add the broth and bring to a true boil (the liquid will look like it's boiling when you add it to the hot grains, but will then subside), then cover and turn down the heat to simmer. Set a timer for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, saute the mushrooms in the butter and teaspoon of olive oil. Add a generous grinding of pepper. When they are almost softened, add the fava beans, and heat until they are just warm.

When the rice/pasta is done, add the morels/favas and stir gently to mix. Serve hot.

Note: If you want more vegetables, a half-pound of crisp-tender asparagus cut in 1/2 slices would be a good addition.

A spring salad

Here's an unbeatable mixture: Fresh English peas, asparagus, new onions, shaved fennel, frisee, roasted pistachios, Virginia ham sliced thin and crisped with a little garlic. Toss with a little high quality olive oil, sprinkle with a little kosher or sea salt and pepper to taste. Mmmmm, spring!

Tangerine dreams

Reading the poetry on my husband's blog this morning, I recalled my tangerine tree in my backyard in Sacramento. It's grown huge (so much for the dwarf designation on its lable). The tangerines this year were a bit tart, but still very tasty, I thought. They had seeds, so they weren't that easy to eat out of hand (unless you had just picked them and you could just spit out the seeds in the yard). Jim squeezed a whole quart of juice from them once; he said it was much harder than any orange juice he had ever made. I guess that's why you don't see much tangerine juice offered commercially.

Lori K's tangerine asparagus

Ingredients
1 pound asparagus, trimmed (see note)
Olive oil (preferably extra-virgin, in a spray bottle)
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt
2 tangerines or a large can of Mandarin oranges
1/3 cup fresh tangerine juice or orange juice
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoons roasted sesame oil
1 teaspoons grated tangerine peel or orange peel
1 garlic clove, pressed or a 1/2 teaspoon garlic juice
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
4 tablespoons pine nuts

Instructions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spread asparagus in 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan or on a broiler pan; spray with oil and season with pepper. Roast asparagus until crisp-tender, 8 minutes. Transfer asparagus to a platter and season with sea salt to taste; cool.
Using sharp knife, cut peel and white pith from tangerines. Cut between membranes to release segments and remove seeds, if any. Arrange tangerine segments atop asparagus. Whisk juice, vinegar, sesame oil, peel, garlic and ginger in small bowl to blend. Season dressing to taste with salt and pepper. Drizzle over asparagus. Sprinkle with pine nuts and serve.
Note: The best way to trim asparagus ends, although it may result in uneven spears, is to bend the stalk as near to the end as possible until it snaps. The stalk above the snap will be tender. The remaining stalk is woody and tough. They should go in the compost pile.