Splendid Table: Earnest Summation

Fat, gorgeous, generous, erudite.

I was a little intimidated when I first opened Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Splendid Table because it is so crammed with historical discursions and antique illustrations that you suspect this might be a book for the library (doesn't everyone have one?) rather than the kitchen. Not so. Kasper writes clear, detailed and elegant recipes for some extremely complicated dishes. Each recipe includes useful advice for working ahead, buying ingredients, and fitting the dish into a larger menu. Kasper anticipates every question and potential glitch. Do you know how rare this is? 

Looking through the book just now I was tempted to give it another month as there are dozens more dishes I want to try -- the chestnut tortelli, the risotto of baby artichokes and peas, the wine-basted rabbit.

I made 38 recipes from The Splendid Table:

Worth the Price of the book: 5 

Great: 10

Good: 14

So-so: 6

Flat-out bad: 3

I probably would have put the three "bad" recipes in the "so-so" category if these hadn't been three dishes (dry-yet-damp pork loin, soggy green beans, overpoweringly rich potatoes) that I cooked on Christmas Eve when I wanted to show off. I'm still holding a grudge, but may eventually relent.

There were so many more gems: espresso mascarpone semifreddo, the spectacular oven-roasted radicchio, garlic soup Brisighella. 

Hard act to follow.

Splendid Table: Good soup, evil vodka

They're hard to please those 6th grade girls, especially when they're together. I don't even try anymore because I know that after Isabel and J. poke at their dinner and look wan and grim and ask to be excused, they go get out their secret stash of crappy candy which they eat all night while watching Grease on the portable player. I know, because I find the wrappers on the floor of Isabel's room every Monday morning. When they don't have any candy, they have been known to pull out the baking chocolate. You can see the toothmarks. Why even try? 

But of course, when you stop trying -- when you stop caring -- that's when you succeed. The girls were unexpectedly enthusiastic about Friday night's little tile-baked hearth breads and garlic soup Brisighella. Also, I served dinner late because I was sitting around drinking martinis with J's mother and everyone was sort of shocked and worried that hot food wasn't on the table at 7 o'clock sharp for them to disdain. 

Let's start with the little tile-baked hearth breads. You make a basic yeast dough, let it rise all afternoon, roll it into twenty little pancakes and cook slowly in a hot skillet. Lynne Rossetto Kasper includes a recipe for a "condimento" made of finally chopped raw pancetta, Parmesan, garlic, and rosemary to put atop your bread.  Some of us ate the hearth breads with the ravishing condimento (you can guess who), others ate them plain. The next morning when I got up looking forward to leftover hearth bread toast, I discovered they had all been consumed.

That is unusual and a mark of great success hereabouts.

The soup was one of the best recipes I've tried from The Splendid Table. "This cross between a soup and a creamy puree is as healthful as it is delicious," Kasper writes. "An old Romagna cure for colds, the soup has been fed to babies and the elderly for generations." 

I can see why.  You poach two whole heads of garlic in water, peel, add them to a pot of homemade stock along with some onions, olive oil and sage leaves. Cook a bit, puree, and you have a rich, and  soothing elixir unlike anything I have ever made before.

I am still on a frozen dessert kick  after the recent success with semi-freddo. Kasper says her recipe for frozen chocolate pistachio cream comes from Eletta Violi, who owns a trattoria in the Parma hills: "A blooming rose of a woman, Eletta is as generous as her food."

Wouldn't it be nice to be described as a "blooming rose of a woman," live in the Parma hills, and invent recipes like this amazing, airy mousse?

Alas, after the martinis I was an old, wilted carnation. Evil, chilly vodka. I hate you vodka. Yesterday, I never got dressed and lay on the bed all day drinking water, complaining about my headache, and reading a book. Fortunately, it was a really good book. I'm going to finish it right now and then get dressed because today I might actually be a blooming rose of a woman.

Splendid Table: I am never cooking tuna again

Listen, I know tuna is expensive. I know it should be expensive. But who are the people I live and walk among who are buying ahi at $24.99/lb?

Ordinarily, Whole Foods has a cheaper tuna option. I tried this once and the fishmonger warned me it was not to be "seared" but cooked all the way through. I hate to think why, but that was the plan, so no problem. That was the plan again yesterday, except when I got to the fish counter there was only the fancy "searing-grade" ahi. Rather than change the menu (uh, rigid?) I bought it. From the moment I was handed that tiny piece of fish wrapped in brown paper, I felt like a sucker.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper's recipe for tuna Adriatic style is fine, a basic formula for a quick saute of fish with tomatoes, onions, and olives. The tuna, however, was awful, fishy in the bad way. A friend told me I could have soaked it in rice vinegar to take care of this problem, but should you really have to doctor such expensive seafood? It would be interesting to return to Whole Foods today and see if I could get my money back. But what if there's a scene, or even just an embarrassing exchange, and I can never shop there again?  

Here's the happy news. I also made Kasper's oven-roasted radicchio, for which I had the lowest of expectations. (I'm scraping the barrel, as we're coming to the end of the vegetable recipes in The Splendid Table.) You toss radicchio with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roast for an hour, which magically turns a tough, bitter, and crimson vegetable into a crispy golden delicacy. The outer leaves acquire the papery texture of a wasp's nest while the cores become meltingly soft and the flavor is that of a fried artichoke. It was quite incredible and almost made up for the tuna fiasco.

Splendid Table: If I cooked this every night they would be happy

"I don't like this, Mama, I'm just eating it because I'm hungry," Owen told me at dinner.

Lovely. The child will not admit to liking something I cook even when he so clearly likes it. How did we come to this?

 

Everyone loved Lynne Rossetto Kasper's chicken cacciatora, a homey and tender braised bird with red peppers and tomatoes. Some polenta to soak up the juices would have been nice, but polenta. . . so much stirring and then there's the pot to scrub and my children do not eat polenta, which is crazy.

Here's a question: Reading at the dinner table. Do we allow it? Doesn't often come up around here, but last night Owen was engrossed in his latest MAD and sometimes at the end of the day peace seems to matter more than principle. Not exactly the Alice Waters vision of the family dinner, but at least there was no yelling.

Splendid Table: Espresso and Mascarpone Semi-freddo

What a hit!

I've almost exhausted all the foolproof rustic cakes and tarts in Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Splendid Table, so what to make for a sweet? I was essentially forced to tackle one of the trickier desserts. Because Mark loves anything coffee-flavored, I chose the espresso and mascarpone semi-freddo and when Justine threw a pizza-making birthday party for Michael last night, I contributed semi-freddo.

First of all, it turns out that semi-freddo (at least this one) isn't tricky at all. You make a simple coffee custard that you enrich with mascarpone, then lighten with Italian meringue. The whole operation takes about 20 minutes. Freeze, then thaw just a little before you serve. 

The resulting dessert was like nothing I've ever made before. Like an ambrosial ice cream that generates its own opulent sauce, the icy cold bits cloaked in a velvety cream. 

Worth the price of the book.

Splendid Table: Artusi's Delight

I admit that I'm partial to the clean shave, but ponder for a moment all the creative opportunities lost with the disappearance of the mutton chop, the fu manchu, the walrus. Such lemmings we are.

Pictured above is Pellegrino Artusi, author of a legendary 19th-century Italian cookbook from which Lynne Rossetto Kasper borrowed the very fine meatball recipe I made last night. I always cook meatballs (and patties, which is technically what these are, but I love the word "meatball") too fast and they acquire a rough, dark crust. (It's a temperament problem.) But even with their unfortunate crust, Artusi's Delight were tender and rich inside -- full of pancetta, pine nuts, spices. Kasper suggests finishing them with a quick sauce of broth and balsamic vinegar, and so I did. The excellent dish was consumed with enthusiasm and pleasure by all.

On the side, I served Parma-style asparagus (blanched, sauteed, topped with Parmesan, pretty good) and  oven-roasted potatoes. which were too crispy to absorb the delicious Artusi's Delight gravy. Didn't strategize properly on the always-crucial food pairing.

Dessert: Nonna's jam tart, in which a sweet shortbread crust is filled with an exceedingly tangy apricot "jam" that you make with dried apricots and wine. 

My latticework could use some help. 

I used to wonder why all crusts weren't sweet. Why make a pie crust when you could make a cookie crust? With age comes wisdom, though apparently not to Nonna. I now understand that you (generally*) want a bland crust to serve as a noncompetitive foil to your filling. Nonna's crust was too delicious, and it was tempting to scrape off the distracting jam and eat only shortbread, which is precisely what some of us did.

 

This unusually grand meal was cooked in honor of Mark's aunt, Nancy Smoyer, who is visiting from Fairbanks, Alaska, making a quick stop on her way to Bolivia. 

Having spent a week in Fairbanks last February, I understand why she chose the southern hemisphere for her winter holiday. 

*Cookie crumb crusts work because they are usually paired with super-sweet, creamy fillings (chocolate, key lime.) But I have started wondering within the last few minutes if a graham cracker crust might not be amazing with a baked peach filling. Or apple. Much to think about. I might be wrong about all of this. 

Splendid Table: The "Keeping Cakes" of Winter

I'm sorry I have been neglectful. Of course, I'm even sorrier that no one seems to have noticed, but I shall assume my small, loyal readership has been too busy shopping the crazy sales and seeing lumbering holiday movies (like Grand Torino, what a lemon!)  to complain.

I never got around to writing about the Christmas Eve cakes, but having just eaten a sliver of the leftover Certosino, I'm newly inspired. 

In The Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper writes a two page essay on the "keeping cakes" of winter. According to Kasper, all regions of Italy and many throughout Europe boast traditional holiday fruit cakes into which are baked "the preserved treasures of the autumn harvest." I would like to taste every single such cake as I am somewhat obsessed with fruitcakes and the versions I baked over the last few weeks were so extraordinarily delicious.

I made all three recipes included in The Splendid Table and served them on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure everyone was as wild about them as I was, but at least one of us was deliriously happy. 

We had:

1. Spongata di Berceto (far left in photograph.) This is the cake of Parma and Reggio, and is actually more of a tart. The cookie crust enrobes a nutty, nubbly filling reminiscent of baklava. Some people pronounced this the "best" cake, but I think they were basically fruitcake-haters and were gravitating to the least fruity option.

2. Certosino (middle). The Christmas pastry of Bologna, and my hands-down favorite. A dense, incredibly complex melange of fruits, chocolate, almonds, pine nuts and spices that you glaze with melted honey and festoon with large chunks of jewel-like candied fruit. A bit like panforte.

3. Pampepato (right). The Ferrara cake, sealed by "a full cloak of chocolate." Much like Certosino, but blacker, more intensely chocolate.

I love these cakes and their layered flavors -- of citron, fruit, chocolate, spice, nut, honey -- more than I can say. I honestly do not understand why there was so much left over.

Splendid Table: Christmas Eve

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house

People were wrapping, not presents but tortellini

Tortellini that were truly and maddeningly teeny. . . 

Ok, forget it. On Christmas Eve we hosted a lovely family dinner with all the usual suspects (Justine, Michael & Stella, my mother) plus Marina and Philippe. The fire was poked, wine drunk, holiday traditions in France and Guatemala discussed, marzipan fish exchanged, and everyone eventually enlisted in the laborious tortellini-making project. Approximately 140 rounds of very thin pasta had to be wrapped around the most petite dabs of meat paste, a process that tested the patience of even skilled pasta artisans like my mother. But the resulting tortellini in brodo -- made, like everything else, out of Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Splendid Table -- was worth it.

Sadly, the rest of the meal was kind of bad. I have no explanation for this, since Kasper's book has never let me down before. The January roast pork was dry yet damp. Yes, this is possible. Just imagine a dry piece of meat covered in a thin, watery sauce. It was almost as if the pork steamed in the oven rather than roasted. A mystery.

 

The green beans Bolognese were overcooked and soggy, the mashed potatoes with Parmesan and basil a heavy, exceedingly rich mistake. 

I sound crabby, but I'm not. The desserts were fascinating so I'm leaving them for a subsequent post. And, really, the only thing wrong with the evening was the food. It was otherwise a very sweet and merry Christmas celebration.

Splendid Table: Impromptu Party

Impromptu party the other night. Justine and Michael brought over their majestic jamon serrano and a shaker full of bourbon cocktails. The jamon is always a treat, but I was not delighted by the latter contribution. For me, bourbon is a roguish old sweetheart whom I no longer let in the door. But when he tags along with people like my sister, well, who wants a scene? And once he crossed the threshold it was like a Dolly Parton song. Couldn't resist.

But I am happy to report that while I may occasionally backslide, bourbon doesn't fool me anymore. I don't expect him to be anything but dark, fascinating, and basically evil. Yes, bourbon, you are EVIL!!! I've since had similar epiphanies about vodka, who is also banned, but he's the cold, silent type and was much easier to dump.

No, I'm not blogging drunk. I'm blogging exhausted/manic because we just got back from a day at the mall (there are some crazy bargains out there), at the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker, at Safeway, and now we are transitioning into our annual holiday "baking night." 

But I was writing about a party wasn't I. 

Along with the jamon and bourbon, Justine, Stella, and I made this exotic pasta dish from Lynne Rosetto Kasper. Official name: Thumb pasta and tomato braised beans Piacenza style. It's a thick bean soup into which you toss small discs of homemade pasta (see little brown items in photograph at top) that contain breadcrumbs and are hence slightly crunchy. A lot of manual labor, hearty, nourishing, will probably never make again.

 

Dessert: ciambelle, another dry, lemony Mediterranean pastry, this one filled with apricot jam. Simply lovely.

Must now go bake.

Splendid Table: Risotto

Stir, stir, stir, stir. That is risotto. I never order it in restaurants because, however tasty, it is not exciting to eat. Every bite is the same as the last, like porridge. 

While stirring and stirring Lynne Rossetto Kasper's classic white risotto last night, I was mentally preparing a crabby essay about risotto, how it's overrated, not as good as pasta, gruel with a pretty Italian name. And so on. 

Except this risotto was (of course) beyond delicious. Beyond beyond. Credit goes to the broth I simmered for 14 hours, plus the mountain of Parmesan cheese that I grated by hand. One of the most hateful kitchen tasks, hand-grating a mountain of Parmesan cheese.

But worth it. It doesn't matter if every bite of risotto is just like the last if you can taste, in every bite, meat broth, butter, onions, and Parmesan cheese, enormous flavors all somehow contained within each plump little grain of rice.

Miracle dish.

Also, in case anyone was worrying, I found candied citron. Cal-Mart the supermarket of my childhood, had some stocked high on a remote shelf. I had to ask a surly grocery clerk to bring a ladder and get it down for me. He seemed very put out. At this time of year, shouldn't the glaceed fruits be prominently displayed? Cal-Mart is where the preppy seventysomething matrons of Pacific Heights all shop and if even ladies who wear plaid skirts and headbands in their graying bobs have given up on fruitcake, is there any hope at all? 

Splendid Table: Citron Shortage

I've never had trouble finding candied citron before, especially around the holidays. But I've now visited all five of the markets in town and none is carrying citron this year. The closest I came was a display of green cherries (um, disgusting) at Safeway.

This bodes ill for the fruitcake, which saddens me. I understand why fruitcake fell into disfavor, but think it has more to do with the pitiful quality of candied fruit in this country than the cake itself. A few years ago I discovered some juicy, gorgeous Australian candied fruit at a shop in New York City and am convinced that if we baked fruitcakes with THAT there would be no more jokes. Plus: panforte? Why is no one laughing? Perhaps because it contains no green cherries and is delicious?

Every year I plan to throw a fruitcake-tasting party, but every year, flake. Mark your calendars: December 2009. 

Back to citron: How are you supposed to make German Christmas cookies without citron?Moreover, there are three Christmas cakes in The Splendid Table, all of which call for citron, all of which I want to bake.

I'm going in to San Francisco today so this means I'll be making the rounds of the supermarkets there. Such a wise use of my time. 

Splendid Table: You Really Do Need a Pasta Machine

Lynne Rossetto Kasper believes that rolling out pasta with a pin is better than using a machine. She's a purist, and I wouldn't want her any other way.  "The pebbly texture of hand-rolled pasta combines beautifully with sauces," Kasper writes in The Splendid Table. "For example, a juicy ragu melts into and joins with hand-rolled tagliatelle but slips off the slicker surface of machine-thinned noodles." 

I'm sure she's right. But unless you're an elderly Italian peasant in a black dress, rolling out pasta by hand is maddening.

 

We didn't choose to hand-roll our tagliatelle last night, but the pasta-attachment to the mixer expired. My mother and Isabel spent 45 minutes rolling and rolling and rolling out the dough and then cutting out long ribbon-like noodles which they then tried to roll some more. 

The resulting tagliatelle with Prosciutto di Parma was tasty, thanks mostly to the rich sauce. The thick, chewy noodles themselves -- the pasta-makers were the first to admit this -- left something to be desired. Buying a new pasta machine today.

We also made sweet cornmeal biscuits (gialetti di Romagna) which you should file under WHY ITALIAN WOMEN ARE SKINNY. Gialetti are severe and gritty cookies full of raisins and pine nuts, very delicious but you really don't want to eat a dozen of them all at once. One or two, a tiny espresso, you're done. Ready to go boot-shopping or meet your lover, or whatever it is that chic Bolognese ladies do with their afternoons. I doubt many of them are hand-rolling tagliatelle.

Gialetti aren't the kind of cookie kids usually appreciate, but Isabel loved them. It makes me a little wistful to admit this, but she is no longer exactly a kid. 

Splendid Table: We Like It!

Haven't been keeping up with the dinner diaries, but for the record, Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Splendid Table has been feeding us magnificently. Three dishes to call out.

Green beans with balsamic pesto were fantastic. Rich pesto deliciousness coupled with the virtue and crispiness of vegetable. 

Also amazing: brodetto -- "the king of Romagna's seafood stews." I've always been unnerved by recipes for bouillabaisse and cioppino that call for making a stock with bones and heads of fish to which you add pounds and pounds of expensive crustaceans. Kasper's brodetto was affordable and super-easy. You start by simmering chopped onions in red wine vinegar until "rosy" and soft, then add olive oil and fry. In go canned tomatoes, a bottle of white wine, garlic, and a few pounds of whatever seafood you like. I used calamari, shrimp, rock cod, and clams -- all in the sub $6.99/pound range from Whole Foods. A kingly seafood stew that can be enjoyed by the bourgeoisie.

Must also mention the popular Torta Barozzi, a cake whose innate elegance is not captured by my photography.

Here's Kasper: "Torta Barozzi is to chocolate cake what a diamond is to zircon. It looks like yet another flourless chocolate cake, but one mouthful banishes any sense of the mundane. This is a chocolate essence, moist and fudgy, with secret ingredients known only to the baker. "

Secret ingredient: peanut butter. Probably better to tell this secret.

I don't share Kasper's unbridled enthusiasm for Torta Barozzi, but I am notoriously unreliable on the subject of chocolate. Everyone else went completely crazy over it.

Splendid Table: Flour v. Flour, part 2

We have a clear bakeoff winner. Wasn't even close.

As I wrote the other day, I decided to bake two batches of Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Modena Mountain Bread, one using  organic flour, the other using conventional. Kasper is quite the nag on the subject of organic, stone-ground flour and I wanted to decide for myself.

While the organic starter sponge was livelier than the conventional, it soon lost its edge. And when I mixed the two batches of dough, the results were indistinguishable. Both doughs rose magnificently -- broad and fat and tall.

Baked them simultaneously in steamy oven and two beautiful, golden-brown loaves emerged. The organic loaf (see top left) kept its shape a bit better. I can't attribute that to the flour with complete confidence. 

Isabel served as blind taster. I sliced the loaves and after taking a bite of both, she immediately picked the organic bread for its flavor. She couldn't put it into words, but was very definite. Mark also chose the organic, but when I told him, he immediately recanted. (Mocking organic food is a point of pride with him. Long story.) 

 

The organic bread has a lovely, assertive flavor I've never tasted in a bread baked by me. The best adjective I can think of is "grassy." Or maybe "flowery" -- not perfumey like a rose or a jonquil, but fresh, like a daisy. Subtle and delicious. I felt sorry for the poor conventional bread, which, when tasted side by side, had no flavor whatsoever. I mean, it's homemade bread and therefore pretty great, but there is really no comparison. Organic flour = much, much better bread.

So now we have two mountainous loafs of Italian bread and just now, as I type, Isabel walked in eating a piece of toast made from store-bought sandwich bread. "WHY AREN'T YOU EATING THE HOMEMADE BREAD?" I cried.

"Ask Daddy," she replied.

"MARK WHY AREN'T YOU USING THE HOMEMADE BREAD?????"

"It's too hard to cut into toast-sized pieces."

Am hyperventilating. Please email recommendations for marriage counselors, asap.

Splendid Table: Stock-making

I hate making broth and always have. But a super-rich meat broth is integral to Lynne Rossetto Kasper's recipes in The Splendid Table so I dutifully rounded up 3 pounds of beef bones, 8 pounds of turkey wings (so cheap!), added water and vegetables, let it bubble gently in a giant pot on the stove for fourteen hours, filling the house with the fragrance of dog food.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. That was a repulsive thing to say. But true. I have just strained the broth and now have all these slippery wet bones. What to do with them? Can't dump them in the blackberry bushes (meat=vermin) and if I leave them in the kitchen they will reek by tomorrow and if I put them in the outdoor garbage pail the raccoons will go berserk. And there are too many bones to fit in the freezer for storage until garbage day.

Dilemma. 

Meanwhile, the Modena Mountain Bread experiment proceeds. This morning I mixed the two doughs (one with organic flour, one with conventional) and at this point can see no difference between them. Both doughs have risen mightily and will be ready to bake in a couple of hours. 

Splendid Table: Flour vs. Flour, Part 1

Reading Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Splendid Table over the weekend I became increasingly irked by her repeated calls for "organic, stone-ground" flour. Instead of mentioning her preference once in the introduction and then letting it go, she specifies "organic, stone-ground" every time a recipe includes flour. This struck me as preachy and pushy. But Kasper insists that the "vitality" of organic flour "adds much" to breads.

Well, I thought, we'll just see about that. 

I decided to perform a test and bought specialty flour to pit against my Gold Medal standard. I couldn't find stone-ground white flour, but decided Bob's Red Mill would do the job, as it is both organic and unbromated. Unbromated? I have since learned that this means the flour has not been treated with potassium bromate, a carcinogenic additive illegal in many countries, but not this one. I know. Sorry to darken your day with grim factoid.

In any case, this morning I made two versions of the starter sponge for the Modena Mountain Bread, which I will bake tomorrow.

Three hours in, some interesting results. The bowl of organic sponge has risen measurably higher than the slothful nonorganic. I'd give it a good two inches, plus there are dozens more bubbles. I was sort of rooting for the Gold Medal because I'm cranky, but now I'm just thrilled that there's any difference at all. This counts for high drama in my world.

Hope you're all suitably impressed by how productively I'm using my time during this first day of official unemployment.