Holiday Grandeur

The Shop
apple cider
pane bello sliced bread
fingerling potoes
baby carrots
baby turnips
eggs
1 whole duck

First Recipe

French Toast with Maple Cider Syrup
4 slices of pane bello
2 eggs
milk
1 tsp vanilla
maple syrup
apple cider

Whisk eggs, milk and vanilla in a shallow dish. Soak bread in custard until saturated. Heat a pat of butter and a tsp of vegetable oil* in a large frying pan. When hot, place bread in pan and cook over medium low heat until firm and golden brown.

At the same time, put equal parts maple syrup and apple cider in a small saucepan and simmer/boil until mixture reduces to the syrup's original consistency.

Plate the french toast and drizzle with the cidered-syrup.

The pane bello bread is a rustic white which, when pre-sliced, tends to dry out quickly, yielding a perfect texture/absorbency for making french toast. I keep additional slices in the freezer for whenever I have a brunch emergency.

*Using oil and butter together will enable you to get the flavor of butter while the oil raises the burn temperature so your french toast won't scorch.

Silly Names...

Following is one of my favorite recipes, based on a dish that Greg had at Taralucci e Vino on East 18th Street. This time around only one of the five ingredients is from the market, but it packs such a punch that the dish wouldn't exist without it.

Pasta with Grilled Raddiccio and Speck

three small heads of raddiccio - Northshire Farms
Egg Fettucine (can be any pasta really, but we like something heartier than plain old spaghetti)
.25 lbs of speck (smoked, cured northern Italian ham)
olive oil
locatelli romano

Put water on to boil for pasta. Heat a stovetop grill pan lightly brushed with olive oil until not quite smoking. Wash, dry and quarter the raddiccio, leaving core in bottom so the head retains it shape. Place the quarters on the grill pan cut side down. Once browned, turn to other cut side and leave until browned as well and leaves are fork tender. Remove from grill and allow to cool on a chopping board. Place slices of speck on the grill pan and cook on each side until desired firmness is achieved. I like mine quite crisp. Remove to cutting board as well.

Put pasta in to boil. In the meantime, core the raddiccio and cut into bitesize (1/2 to 1 inch) pieces and place in a large pasta bowl to catch the juices. Chop the speck and add to raddiccio. Shave curls of locatelli romano onto the herb/ham mixture. By now, the pasta should be finished. Drain, return to cooking pot, add the toppings (reserving about 1/4 cup) and toss until well mixed. If the pasta seems too dry, drizzle with a bit of olive oil. Odds are, the speck will have enough seasoning to flavor the entire dish, but if necessary add salt and pepper as needed. Return to pasta bowl for serving and garnish with reserved r/s and shavings of cheese.

It's a fantastic dish! The bitterness of the raddiccio is balanced by the richness of the ham and cheese. The peppery smokiness of the speck vs. regular prosciutto adds another level of flavor. Pair this with a red from the Alto Aldige region of Italy and you can't go wrong.

Like most dishes, this has infinite variations: The Taralucci e Vino version had tiny pieces of raddiccio and speck scattered throughout and included some heavy cream--the overall effect being more refined and the really strong flavors subdued. I prefer the more robust version with larger pieces and without the mellowing aspect of the cream so that each bite has a new and distinct flavor combination. I've also made this dish adding grilled onions, however in this instance, my speck was incredible so I felt another ingredient would only detract.

A Brisk Shop

The weather finally started turning to fall, let alone winter, on Saturday and my shop reflected a bit of holiday prep:

The Shop
Unsweetened strawberry spread - Beth's Farm Kitchen
2 Dozen Eggs - Quatros Game Farm
Mixed mustard greens - Gorzynski Farms
Mixed apples - Terhune orchards
Radicchio - Northshire Farms (boar sausage guy)
Mixed chiles and Rye flour- Oak Grove Plantation
White mushrooms - ??

Most of these are the bases for standard fall and holiday fare.

First preserve of the season

Frozen Diced Chiles

A mixture of different chiles brings a lot of depth to the flavor of spicy, especially Mexican or Tex-Mex, fare. However, one generally doesn't need much of each variety to provide sufficient heat to a dish--so either one uses a single type (striking only one flavor note) or uses several types and wastes a lot of time in preparation and/or flesh.

There's a way around this. Chiles freeze incredibly well. If you're willing to invest a couple of hours and a little freezer space, you can have chiles for seasoning throughout the year.

I generally buy about a pound of mixed chiles. This year I went with fairly mild fruits: pasilla, jalapeno, hungarian wax, poblano and added about a dozen super hots from my own plants, Peter and Fish. After washing and drying them well, I stemmed and seeded them, cut them into tiny dice (think confetti) and mixed them together in a large bowl.

*Prep for this is very important, especially if using really hot varietals such as thai, fatalis or habaneros. Wearing rubber or latex gloves is a must. Plastic food prep shields will not work. Just as important is good ventilation. I've learned that it's best to do the dicing outside because the capsaicin fumes can be choking when dealing with a large number of fruits. If serranos, habaneros and fatalis are the mainstays of your mixture, you may want to go a step further and use a bandana or dust mask over your nose and mouth. Whatever you do, once you start working, do NOT touch your face nor anything else that comes in contact with it. (E.g., don't answer the phone unless you can do it completely hands free.) You will be unbelievably sorry. Oh, and don't touch anyone else either.

Once they're mixed, they can be put into mason jars (no salt, sugar or any other preservative is necessary) and frozen. Each time you want a little chile flavor in a dish, you just chip out some of the mixed dice and add it in. My pound or so of peppers resulted in 2 quarts of very fine dice which should last until next fall.