Granita di Primitivo (Or Sorbet, Or Even Gelato).

You can turn almost anything into a sorbet, granita or gelato, providing you add enough sugar. The sugar content also aids in forming crystals, the textural difference between a sorbet and a granita. Add dairy and this quickly becomes gelato, or ice cream. Many upon reading this will cite the differences between the three desserts in texture, but the more you have of these in Italy, you see that it's about tendency versus a hard and fast rule. Some gelato has no dairy. Many sorbets do. About the only thing that is steadfast is that gelato is gelato because of the paddle with which it's served. Sorbet usually involves a melon baller. Granita tends to be more scaley in texture, and rarely has any dairy in it, but often, on it.
But put good, natural, cold things into an ice cream machine and no matter what, you'll love what comes out.


200 grams of sugar
1/8 litre of blood orange juice
Half a bottle of primitivo del salento, or other heavy, fruity red wine.
A cup of water.

Special equipment, ice cream maker.

Heat water to a boil and dissolve the sugar. Chill. Add blood orange juice and red wine and chill in freezer until a cap forms. Place in ice cream machine and follow manufacturers instructions.

Variations:
This is unlimited. Try straight fruit juice with a shot of Campari, vermouth or grappa. Or your lemons the next time you make limoncello. You can also add jelly or preserves instead of same amount of sugar, changing the texture and really bumping up the flavour. Providing everything is cold enough when going into the machine, it’s virtually impossible to botch. Even if it doesn’t set up completely, it’ll still be great. Just don’t tell anyone what your goal was. They’ll love it just the same.

Torta di pere. (Moist Cake with Pears Mixed Right in).

This is very, very simple farmer’s cake, where the fruit, in this case, pears, are mixed right into the batter, keeping everything moist. It’s also a great way to use less than perfect fruit, as you need to peel and cut up the fruit anyway. If it occurs to you that you could make this with just about any fruit, you’re ahead of the game. This has been adapted from Hazen’s recipe.

2 eggs.
A small glass of milk
200 grams of sugar
A pinch of salt
A good shake of cinnamon
200 grams of cake flour
Olive oil
breadcrumbs
4 pears, peeled and cut into 8 pieces, roughly.

Variation, vincotto and/or powered sugar.

Pre-heat oven ¾ as hot as it will go. Oil a non-stick bundt pan and coat with bread crumbs. Shake and discard extra. In a big bowl, hand-beat the eggs and milk together, add the flour and cinnamon. Add the pears. Mix well. Place in oven for 50 minutes or until tooth pick pulls out smoothly. Cool.

Variations include cutting cake in slices, dusting half of them with powered sugar and putting them back in a spoke pattern (not traditional but still pretty cool). Or serving with a tiny drizzle of vincotto, either purchased, or sweetened red wine reduced down, 10 times.

Rosolio (Limoncello, and then Some)

Rosolio

This is a master recipe, capable of going in many, many directions, although it’s likely that most foreigners know only Limoncello, a single variant. Precise amounts aren’t given because it depends on the size of your batch, and the strength of your alcohol. But make this once and you’ll never refer to this page again.

Flavour agent, Fruit essence, in this case organic lemon peels, minus the pith (the white just under the peel). Organic is even more important here, as growers never intend for you to consume the peel and tend to blast them with chemicals. Peeled stone fruits work well, orange peel, cinnamon sticks, prunes, cherries and basil leaves, all thrive under the same treatment.
Alcohol, preferably derived from fruit. The stronger the better. If vodka is the purest form of alcohol available, your simple syrup will need to be much sweeter.
Sugar, don’t be alarmed by how much. Like all things consumed cold, you need to up the sugar just to taste it. And portions tend to be small.
Water
Spices, optional. Here the addition of a spice (a clove or two, a few peppercorns) should never be more than a subtle, more complex aftertaste. Less is more.

Place flavour agent in a large tight-lidded jar. For a litre of pure alcohol, 24 lemons are ideal (save the juice for pickling, for making icy granita or to make fresh-squeezed lemonade (limonata)).

Cover with alcohol and add spice, if using. Seal and place in a dark place.

After 21 days, strain liquor into bottles, filling ¼ full, for pure alcohol (for diluted alcohol such as vodka, calculate overall content for 25%, to avoid freezing). Seal jars. Keep flavouring agent in jar and seal, apart. (You can use the flavouring agent as a chemical-free fire starter, rather than charcoal lighter or newspapers, such as throwing some lemons peels on the grill to start the fire, without any chemical starters, and for free).

Calculate difference in water ( i.e. if using pure alcohol, you’d need 3 litres of water, of 75% of total). Heat in pot and add sugar. A rule of thumb is that it needs to be sweeter than you’d think, and that a kilo of sugar for four litres is a good starting point). Generally speaking, the more ‘savoury’ your flavouring agent, the less sugar is preferred. Chill syrup completely once dissolved.

Top of litre bottles with chilled syrup. Return three bottles to dark closet and place one bottle in freezer, with a set of services glasses. Many say that the final mix needs time to mellow so you can compare tonight’s bottles against those from the closet.

Resist seconds. The sugar and alcohol produce wicked hangovers.

Quaresimali (Toasty, Little Almond Nuggets)

So buy a kitchen scale already. Or pull it out and use it. No scam against cooks has been as wide-spread as the need for measuring cups. And weight is much more accurate. These are great little cookies or biscuits. They could not be easier to make, but they also keep remarkably well in a hermetic jar. Originally baked only for lent, as the name, quaresima, ‘lent’ in Italian, suggests, you can now find these all year long. And try that favourite cantucci practice too, dipping these little dream boats in some sweet liquor.

250 grams of cake flour
200 grams of sugar
300 grams of shelled but not peeled almonds
4 eggs
25 grams, ground cinnamon
Some liqueur, such as Frangelico. Or Strega
Dash of salt.
Olive oil


Mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl, by hand or with mixer. Mix well. Oil a very shallow, wide oven pan and pour the mixture in. Place in hot oven (200 c or 350 F) and bake until a cake-like surface begins to take shape, or around 15 or 20 minutes. Grab your favourite fork and slip some Nirvana into the stereo, turn it up and just really go crazy with the fork, tearing up the cake into as many pieces as possible. Scramble the pieces, breaking it as much as possible. Place back into oven and bake until tooth-crack stage. Pull and cool. Sweet dipping wine and Nirvana optional when serving.

Lu Stuffatu (Sexy,Sexy Stewed Vegetables)

Hit your favourite market and grab a couple of anything that looks good: courgettes, aubergenes, waxy potatoes, cherry tomatoes, onions, leeks, carrots, bell peppers. Cut everything into logical pieces, smaller the longer each takes to cook (you do this already anyway, whenever you make soup, whether you realise it or not). Take a heavy,heavy bottomed pot with a tight-fitting lid and get the puppy hot for a few minutes. Coat the bottom with a drizzle of your best olive oil. Toss everything in, minus anything really soft, such as the tomatoes, and keep it moving for a few minutes, browning everything. Salt it, add the tomatoes, cover and simmer until tender. Toss in the bay leaves or thyme, and a good glug of raw oil. Stir. Set the table. Plate nicely and dust it with a good spicy pecorino, or even a well-aged parmiggiano, if you are really in a pinch. I like a high acid red with it, something with lots of mineral flavours to mimic those in the vegetables....although I'm naturally prone towards Southern Italian wine anyway.

Ciceri e Tria (Kick-Ass Bean and Pasta Stew)

Ciceri e Tria

Although far less famous abroad than le orecchiette, this is actually the most beloved dish of the Salento. It’s a brothy, rib-sticker of dish, more like a hearty stew than your average pasta soup. You’d never put cheese on this. Nor would you want to add any meat whatsoever, the fried pasta was originally meant to mimic the texture of meat, back when there was so little of it going around in our neck of the woods.

Chick peas, dried
Carrots, onions and celery
Barley flour
Hard durum wheat flour
Salt
Chilli peppers
Parsley, diced
oil


Soak the chick peas overnight. Change the water. Rinse. Add the vegetables, and salt and simmer until tender, from 2 to 10 hours, depending on the date of harvest (you won’t like know that, so plan to cook ahead a few hours). Meanwhile, make the pasta, by adding roughly 30% barley flour to the 70% hard durum wheat flour and water until you reach pasta consistency. Roll out into thin ribbons, several times thicker than egg pasta allows. Think bandage shapes, like 3 inch snips of parppadelle. Or Narrow little sticks of gum. Dry a few hours.

Take a third of the pasta and fry in small batches, in extra virgin olive oil. Regulate water and bring the chick peas to a boil again and add the raw pasta. Cook until tender, around 3 minutes. Decide whether or not to fish out the vegetables from the broth. Add fried pasta, the diced parsley and a good glug of raw oil. Serve in bowls. Supply helmets if the Salentini start to swoon.

Wine:
Nothing says ‘lovin’’ like negroamaro with this recipe.

Sughetto al Pomodoro con la Rughetta.

Fresh tomato sauce

Divorce yourself from the fact that you’ll eat this most of the year, or even a big part of it. There are really just two forms of tomato sauce: the barely cooked using fresh tomatoes at their peak (a related fact) and that using cooking, peeled tomatoes, whether you were the one that jarred them or not. This here is the first one. If you only have access to hothouse tomatoes, or tomatoes that are out of season, this sauce will be so wimpy as to be pathetic and not worth your time. What’s known inside of Italy but apparently not outside, is that the fresh sauce is not better than the cooked one, just different.

Ripe tomatoes
Salt
Olive oil
Chilli
Rocket (arugula)

Cut the tomatoes into postage stamp size pieces and just heat through in the olive oil. Add a pinch of chilli, again for balance as opposed to full-on heat. Salt as you remove from the heat. Start to finish should be 90 seconds or so. Toss in the rocket if using, so that it just wilts in the heat of the pan. Toss with pasta and bring together with a cup or two of the pasta water until emulsified.

Wine:
You can go with either. A red would play to the almost-blood like qualities of the salty tomato, but a high-acid would clean the palate between bites, making each mouthful seem that much fresher.

Patate al forno

Oven roasted potatoes

In my opinion, the difference between really good roasted potatoes and okay ones are the roasting time. You want toasty brown, crunchy little nuggets of potato, sweet with olive oil and herbs, the kind of dish that makes you call it your ‘home’ rather than just your ‘house’. Also, think beyond rosemary. Fresh sage is great, but try adding it at the beginning, the middle or even the end of cooking time. Tarragon as well. Thyme works wonders. And a little parsley and red chilli at the end makes you look like a great cook, when all you did is threw some herbs at it. And stack them tall too. Everyone loves that.

Potatoes
Salt
Herbs
Oil
Garlic
Bread crumbs (optional)

Prep your potatoes as see fit, leaving the skins on or off, etc. Be certain that the pieces are more or less even, for cooking time. Toss with lots of salt, some oil, the bread crumbs, if using, and place in a hot oven. Stir every ten minutes or so, until you’re convinced that they won’t stick anymore (this is largely based on whether you’re playing with waxy or starchy potatoes. Assuming you have a choice, go ‘starchy’ if you want crispy exteriors and fluffy interiors, waxy if you want waxy).

At 40 minutes or so, depending on how you cut them, starting checking them. You want crunchy bits, browned bits, bits that beg to be crunch on, the steam causing you to bite into them with your mouth open. If you can resist burning your mouth on them, they are probably not roasted enough.

Check for salt, toss with lots of parsley, some chilli flakes, maybe even a shot of raw oil. Place on a nice plate and marvel how simple the dish, yet ultimately profoundly satisfying to so much of the world.

Wine:
Serve with anything. I used served this with a bottle of expensive champagne and the potatoes seemed right at home.

Fae e Fogghie (Purè of Dried Fave Bean (Broad Beans) with Assorted 'Leaves'.

Fae e Fogghie (dialect) Fave e Foglie (Italian)
Dried fava bean pure with vegetables.


Anyone that reads this as a dogmatic shopping list has failed to grasp both the spirit and expansive-nature of this dish. Only two things are really pivotal, the dried fava beans, and a lot of different vegetables, cooked in a bunch of different ways, all of them simple. This isn’t the place to sneak in a little pancetta or goat cheese. Keep it simple and make the dish sing through variety and interplay, rather than complex cookery. Rare for an Italian dish, this is a one-course meal. It also happens to be perfect for the evening after your next trip to a farmer’s market.

Dried fava beans (perhaps 100 grams per person, but the paste reheats well and can be used a zillion different ways)
Vegetables.

Soak the fava beans in cold water over night. Change out the water a few times and rinse the beans, careful to check them over for small stones or other foreign objects. Morning of, boil the favas in plenty of salted water until soft. This could be from 2 to 6 hours, depending the age of the beans. Best do it long in advance rather than keeping your guests waiting for undercooked beans. When soft, drain and refridgerate until ready.

Put a pot of water on to boil (good advice no matter what, as no matter what you cook you’ll probably need some boiling water at some point).

Size up your vegetables. If you have some onions, slice them and boil them until soft in simple vinegar until soft and sweet. If you have some potatoes, boil them in highly-salted water and allow to cool. If you have some bitter greens, boil them in salted water until tender. Saute some green beans if available. Toast some bread under the broiler. Saute some zucchini.

All of this is easier than it sounds. All of us know that zucchini is better grilled or sautéed, as opposed to boiled. Potatoes tend to be better boiled than grilled. Chicory needs lots of water to remove some of its bitterness. Fennel tastes best raw. And on and on. As a vegetable becomes ready, pull from the pot or pan, plate and add a dash of salt and oil. Place on table. When you have 5, 6, 8 or even 12 different vegetables, add a lot of good quality oil to the fava beans hit them with a stick blender until smooth and hummus -like. Taste. Should be rich and salty. When all your vegetables are on the table, reheat the fava been pure and place on table in a nice bowl or pot.

Each diner begins by spooning himself a large dollop of fava bean pure, then surrounding it with vegetables from the array. Mix things together. Taste them apart. Notice the raw alongside the boiled the vinegary next to the oily.

Drink a young red, something simple and perhaps unoaked. We drink a simple farmer’s wine, fermented in concrete. To learn more about the wines of the Salento, visit www.awaitingtable.com.

'Mpepata (Spicy, Lightning-Quick Mussels)

‘Mpepata

This is one of those instinctual dishes that sprang up from using what’s on hand: it’s more a theme than a recipe, but the reference to ‘pepata’ reveals that it should have a kick. Regarding the cooking time, a mussel is cooked when it opens: every second after that is overcooking.

Fresh mussels.
Garlic
White wine
Parsley, or fresh herbs, such as mint and basle.
Red pepper
Oil
Bread

Clean the mussels thoroughly, scraping the shells with the BACK of a heavy knife. Mussels are cheap so discard any that you are questionable about, for any reason: cracked, open, funky, etc. Remove beards, which kills the mussel, and so time is now is now ticking.
In a pot big enough for all the mussels, add a glog of oil, the garlic, and sauté until it starts to make some noise, but before it takes on any colour. Dump in the drained mussels, and a generous amount of red pepper. Add a half a cup of white wine per portion of mussels, and stir constantly, careful to pull the open ones to the top of the pot, while pushing the unopened to the bottom. If you are using mussels from the Mediterranean, DO NOT add salt, as the sea is already so salty, and thus, so is the liquor from the mussels. Add the parsley, stir well and ladle into heated bowls. Remember to provide large bowls for the dead soldiers but also to implore guests that eating like a Viking is not only acceptable but preferred.

Variant.
Toast good-quality bread and place a slice in the bottle of the bowls before ladling on the mussels and broth. In either case, good quality bread is needed to mop, soak and dunk.

This is really a master recipe. You could vary the flavour-agents and take the dish in a thousand ways. Cream and curry. Hard cider and leek. Beer and caraway seeds. Vermouth and butter. Any place in the world that eats mussels has some variation of this dish. Do it once and you’ll never consult the recipe again.

Il Pollo alla Brutta Cafona. (Dinner Party Chicken, Salento-Style)

Pollo alla Brutta Cafona

Think beyond breasts. And really consider brining the bird (place chicken in enough water to cover and add 20 grams of salt, please in refrigerator for at least 4 hours. Few kitchen steps are as rewarding as brining). Remove. Pat dry. You’re ready.

Assorted chicken or rabbit pieces.
Tomato paste
Chilli flakes
Fennel seeds
White wine
Fresh herbs, finely diced.
Parsley, treated the same way.
Salt packed cappers
An organic orange or lemon
Olives, large and green is ideal but any will work, as long as you are the one that pits them.
Olive oil


Heat your heaviest enamel Dutch oven for a good 5 minutes, add a glug of oil and then loosely cover the bottom with the biggest chicken parts. Jerk pot as not to stick, but then don’t touch for at least another five minutes. If you find yourself moving the chicken around, you’re doing it wrong. Go to your inner sanctuary and become one with the chicken. If, after 5 minutes, you turn a piece and it looks black and burnt, you’re ready to flip. Repeat, and remove. You’re looking for some real colour here, so don’t rush it. And you’re only browning, not cooking all the way through. Remove browned pieces and start again until all your chicken is browned. Watch the pot. If the oil is smoking it’s breaking down, turn down the heat. If it’s not popping, turn up the heat. Be careful. There will be spattering.

Defat the pan.

Add the chicken back, add all the other ingredients minus the fruit and herbs. Cover and gentle simmer, for at least half an hour. The brining will keep the chicken juicy. If you use salt packed cappers, then avoid adding further salt. If this is a dinner party, simmer chicken for half an hour, then remove from heat and chill. Reheat all the way through, place on large platter and cover with herbs and fruit peel. Wonder why you used to prefer the breasts.

Wine:
A zippy young red would perfect with this dish, such as a fresh primitivo.

Il Coniglio del Salento (The Great Salentine Rabbit).

The Great Salentine Rabbit.

If your rabbit tends toward dryness, consider brining it, that is, soaking it in salted water to retain moisture. As little 20 minutes under salt water can achieve miracles. This is a master recipe, what used to be called a fricase in English. Once you grasp the browning, then slow simmering you can really run with this one. A careful cook will notice that the short list of ingredients means that each must be at its best.

One rabbit, broken down into 8, 10 or 12 pieces, depending on the nationality of your butcher, discarding head and probably too, internal organs.
Olives (We crack ours with a heavy water glass, to remove the stone)
Thyme
Olive oil
White wine

In a heavy-bottom pot big enough to hold all the pieces, radically brown the rabbit in a little high quality olive oil, careful not to over-crowd the pan. Browning demands high heat, no lid or crowding the pan, all the things that promote condensation on the bottom, which is actually boiling. Go for black. Or even dark brown. Once all the pieces are radically browned, add the entire rabbit back to the pan, deglaze with white wine and add half the thyme and all the olives. Cover and move to the smallest burner you have. Simmer gently until done. This will likely be about half an hour, but it depends on the age and bred of rabbit. Toss with a good glug of raw oil and the remaining thyme and serve it forth.

La Verza e Pancetta (A Pasta Sauce of Cabbage and Pork Belly).

Un sugo con la verza e pancetta
Cabbage and pancetta as a pasta sauce


This is a sleeper, a dark horse, a pasta sauce that you’d have to try it to believe how good it is, especially on the barley-based pastas of the Salento. Like so much of the food from the region, each ingredient has to be at its best. If you are able to read any of the dialects of Southern Puglia, you'll find this dish in many cook books, although it will call for 'lard' rather than pancetta. I simply switched it to pancetta, if for no other reason than you're a whole lot more likely to approach a dish with pancetta, than with lard. Shoot me an email if I'm wrong about this.


Cabbage, cut into postage stamps
Pancetta
Oil
Chilli flakes

Put on a pot of water for the pasta. Take second sauté pan and render out 1/3 of the fat from the pancetta, starting it with a few drops of oil. Add the fresh pasta to the water and the cabbage to the pancetta. Sautè the cabbage, stirring frequently. When the pasta is still a shade under cooked, ladle a few ladles of pasta water into the cabbage and drain the pasta. Mix cabbage, pancetta, and the pasta together, spicing slightly with a touch of chilli. Add a glug of raw oil. Simmer together until the water evaporates and the pasta is just starting to stick to the bottom of the pan. Pass a grating cheese or toasted breadcrumbs at the table.

Wine:
A crisp verdeca would do beautifully, as would a dry red, such as a salice salentino.

La Cupeta (Salentine Almond Brittle).

La cupeta
Almond brittle

Every once in a while a recipe comes along that seems easier than it should be, so easy in fact that you almost feel cheated that anything that good could be that simple: this is that recipe. Humidity is the enemy of la cupeta so store any leftovers in an airtight jar. This also makes a great gift. And you can use other nuts as well, most famously, hazelnuts.

Almonds
Same amount of sugar, plus 30% more
A lemon.

Most recipes call for equal amounts sugar and nuts but I find the coverage lacking. Pour nuts onto single layer on parchment paper. Gentle heat the sugar until caramelised, keeping it as blonde as possible. Pour the lava-like liquid onto the nuts, covering as best as possible. Cut the lemon in half and use it as you would a spatula, not squeezing but just smearing the hot liquid down into any remaining holes. Allow to cool. Break with hammer, handle of a knife or any other heavy object, remembering that you are aiming to crack, not pulverize.

• A word of warning. This liquid sugar will be very hot and any spills will not only burn through you but head straight to the core of the earth. Be careful.

A variation. You can pour out a third of the sugar at the blonde stage, then go up to red head and finally to brunette, assuming you like your sweets with a bitter edge. Breaking up the cupeta, you’ll have all three flavours together.

Le Salsicce Fresche (Fresh, Home-made Sausages).

Fresh Sausages.

You’ve heard the phrase, eating high on the hog. It’s a reference to the fact that the most tender and lean cuts are on the back of the animal, the part of the animal least appreciated by sausage makers and those interested in both fat and flavour, two things lacking in pork loin. You only need to think of the difference between a duck’s red breast and a chicken’s white to understand how use darkens, but also flavours, a muscle. We’re going to need to split the difference on this one. Ask your butcher for 60 % ground pork belly and 40 % shoulder, which should give you the right amount of fat to lean meat, the right balance between the unctuous richness and robust and macho flavour we expect from freshly-made sausages.

Sausage meat
Casings (hog or mutton, depending on size of funnel)
Fennel seeds
Anisette (sambuca will work)
Salt, 18 grams per kilo of meat.
Ground chilli flakes
Dried herbs, either a Provence blend or straight dried oregano.


Speciality machine, a sausage stuffer.

The morning of, soak the fennel seeds in anisette, preferably uncovered as to allow the alcohol to evaporate.

Keep everything as cold as possible, even the machine itself. There is a reason that warm zones produce little sausage. Place meat in a large bowl, and add salt as evenly as possible, in one kilo batches. Mix in herbs, fennel seeds and chilli peppers to taste (see note). Mix thoroughly, say, for 25 seconds but not more.
Thread casings on front of machine and follow manufactures instructions. Grill or sauté. Don’t overcook. Turn with tongs, NOT a fork, as you’ll only pierce the meat and try it out. We usually serve with sautéed peppers.

Note. When seasoning, form a tiny patty and sauté until cooked through. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Wine:
This is picnic food so you don’t want to go too fancy with the wine. A simple rough-and-tumble red, perhaps slightly chilled would be perfect. We serve Annalisa’s wine with these sausages.

Spaghetti With Clams.

Gli spaghetti con le vongole.

I’m almost embarrassed to include this recipe but I’m asked for it so often that it clearly belongs here, all the same. It’s actually a master recipe again, able to be adapted to so many dishes that it tears at the walls of being a recipe at all.

But it’s also a lesson in producing a factory pasta dish as good as any you’ll find in Italy. First, start with excellent base ingredients: good oil, plenty of water for the pasta, fresh parsley, freshly dried chillis (as opposed to your spice rack left over from college). Then just follow basic Pan-Italian principles. Don’t break the pasta. Don’t add oil. Stir it a lot the first minute. Use plenty of water. Really, really salt it. Pull the pasta early, add it to the ‘rue’. Pull it when it’s properly cooked. If it has fish or shell fish in the sauce, don’t add cheese. Keep it simple, think ‘perfect and less’, versus ‘confused but more’.

Keep in mind that pasta is a textural thing, so anything that changes that will destroy the dish. 30 seconds too long in the water produces sadness as certain as humid crackers or overly-cooked fresh tuna.

Do any of that wrong and you’ll soon have the crime and punishment conveniently located in the same dish. But do it right and you’ll have the world’s most perfect food, a dish so transcendent as to make you feel the height of cleverness each time you sit down to a plate of it.

A good quality pasta, such as spaghetti. I buy mine with the longest cooking time available. (Don’t assume anything : Barilla might be Italy’s number one brand but the stuff sold in the States is made in Wisconsin and it always comes out mushy, etc. Pasta in England and Ireland also cooks up mushy. Spain is the worst. Also, before you trust any of the consumer-based test kitchens, really, really read what they were testing for: often they fixate on the opposite qualities sought after here in Italy, such a ‘bite’ and firmness.

Salt. Don’t use expensive sea salt. Use the cheapest, so that you won’t skimp. Most of it goes down the drain all the same.
Fresh garlic.
Best olive oil possible
Dry white wine.
Dried chilli flakes (more to pass at table, and/or your homemade chilli oil)
Fresh clams (or shrimp, mussels, cockles, sea snails, scampi, etc).


Place covered large pot of water over biggest hob (burner) and bring to a boil. Decide how much garlic flavour you’d like, keeping in mind that shellfish tends towards the delicate (and isn’t cheap, either) so you don’t want to cover up the subtler flavours. Put large sauté pan over hob and coat bottom with oil. Add 10, whole peeled garlic cloves (remembering that counterintuitive nugget that the larger the piece, the subtler the flavour), and bring up to a sizzle and turn off (You want to flavour the oil, not cook the garlic, so ‘sauteing’ isn’t really the case here).
Place a large handful of salt into the pasta water, drop the pasta (when in doubt, have the person who dunks the pasta also salt the water, to avoid any confusion).

Relight the sauté pan’s burner. Drop in the pasta and stir every 10 seconds or so for the first minute. Add the clams and giggle the pan every so often. Add some chilli peppers, less versus more. The clams should take about 4 minutes to open, depending on size and species. Test pasta. You’re looking to see that the white core just starts to fade, or about two minutes less than the package says. Add a cup of white wine, to the clams, it should sizzle. Dump pasta water, but don’t turn off hob and return pasta to pot. Pour clam mixture over pasta, add a glug of raw oil and keep stirring until the pasta tastes perfect, careful not to let it stick to the bottom of the pan. Should be about a minute total. Make sure everyone is at the table, waiting for the pasta (never the other way around). Remove from heat and add a generous handful of parsley and then add some more (it disappears over the pasta). Using tongs, pile pasta onto serving plate, followed by the clams at the end. You want the seafood to be on top and obvious. Do not add cheese. Serve immediately.

Serve with a high-acid white, the colder the better.


Ps. If you prefer cappelletti or ‘Angel’s hair’ pasta, disregard this recipe completely. You’d hate the outcome.

Pesce al Cartuccio (Fish baked in Parchment).

Fish in Parchment

Again, this is a master recipe that will work with just about any fish, either whole, in steaks or fillets- even shellfish- providing you think of the paper as a non-magical cooking vessel: the paper will allow you to fudge it a bit, but it won’t atone for all your sins.

Also, get creative with the vegetables. Everything inside the ‘envelope’ needs to cook at the same speed, but you can overcompensate by par-boiling the heartier vegetables, such as carrots, snap peas, green beans, etc.


Parchment paper (not wax paper)
Fish, even-sized pieces.
Salt
Chilli peppers
Herbs
Oil
lemon
Perhaps vegetables, prepped according to cooking time.

Preheat oven to maximum temperature. Lay an arm’s length of parchment paper vertically on a work service in front of you, curl-side down (a drop of water will keep the paper from moving around). Drizzle a glug of oil as a barrier. Place vegetables if using, then fish on the lower half of the page, keeping in mind that the top half of the page will be the cover. Season accordingly, using chilli as if it were black pepper (very conservatively), another shot of oil, lemon, herbs, etc., anything at all that will infuse into the fish. Seal it a half moon using tiny, overlapping folds, sealing flush with a water glass if need be. Place on cookie sheet.

The so-called ‘Canadian rule’ dictates that a fish should cook ten minute for every inch of thickness at its thickest part, but I suggest a little longer as the air inside will have to come to temperature first. For an inch-think fillet, I’d look to check the fattest filet at around 18 minutes. As will all steamed fish, you’re looking to see the centre just start to move from translucent to opaque.

Wine depends on the richness of fish used. A subtle Mediterranean fish cries out for a bone-dry white, such as verdeca. Heavier fish, like mackerel seem cut out for a fruity but dry pink, such as a rosato from the Salento. See more recipes at www.awaitingtable.com.

Brodetto (Fish Soup) Master recipe

Brodetto di Pesce (Fish Soup).
For some reason fish soup gets European folks afightin’ more than most dishes. It exists in some form in every Mediterranean city I’ve ever visited, and it’s always more alike than different, so what’s all the fuss? Like most of my recipes, this is a strategy versus a real recipe, so open a bottle of dry pink, pull down the big pot and leave the fighting to the others.

Non-oily fish.
Shell-fish
Tomatoes
White or pink wine
Onions
Garlic
Local variants. Fennel heads. Orange peels. Cinnamon sticks. Potatoes.
Good bread
Fresh herbs

You’re really building two soups here, a flavour-base (1), and then the final soup (2), which is another way of saying the best bits cooked in the flavour-base. The flavour base (1), is where you want to cook all the things you don’t intend to eat but still want to taste. If you have shrimp, peel them, and use the shells for (1) and then entire bodies, head on, for (2). Fresh herbs? Stems in (1), leaves in (2). Fennel? Diced bulb into (1), fronds with the other herbs into (2) And on.

Take your biggest, meanest and heaviest Dutch oven and get it smoking hot over your biggest hob or burner. Cut up a few onions a head, peel and crush the garlic (as always with the garlic, the smaller you cut it, the more you taste it in the end), the herbs, a little chilli peppers, the shrimp shells, all the spines and heads from the fish, etc, and glug in some oil and toss it all in. Cook it dark. It should be intoxicating right away. Keep it moving. When a good fond forms (those brown and black bits on the bottom of the pan, after about ten minutes), add some wine both to the pan, say a few cups, and to your glass, you’re going to need to stay hydrated for this one. Add a little water, until it looks like you have, say, a modest bowl of soup for everyone. This entire process should take about 15 minutes. Keep the fire high, you’re trying to get the olive oil and water to amalgamate. Stir hard and often. Carefully drain or filter out everything but the liquid. You don’t need cheese cloth or panty hose. Use your pasta strained and keep that glass full.

Bring back to a boil. Make sure your fish is all cut into bite-size pieces. But really look at your fish and shell-fish. Think about them, consider each. Clams take a long time to cook. Say 6 minutes. Mussels, say 2 or 3. Your flaky fish, maybe one. Shrimp? A minute as well. Set the table with big bowls for the dead soldiers and call everyone to the table. It won’t be long now. Eyeball which pieces will take the longest to cook, and then start tossing in the slowest ones. Build your soup conceptually in cooking times, so that each ingredient will be at its peak when you place the pot on the table. Lastly, add the mussels, and as they open, starting tasting for salt (mussels’ salinity mirror that of their sea or ocean, and can vary widely. They will provide a lot of the broth, and if it needs salt, or more chilli, add it now. Mediterranean mussels are often too salty as it is). When your mussels have opened and your shrimp has turned opaque, or even a few seconds before, toss in the herbs, add another good glug of raw oil, stir and place on the table. Instruct guests that they can lay toast slices on the bottom of the bowl as well, then ladle the rich stew over the top. Sip some wine and wonder why in hell you always thought fish stew took longer than 20 minutes?