Awesome Home Fries and Eggs

What can make humble home fries and eggs awesome... and fill you home with a wonderful aroma at the same time?  Check this out - 

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

4 medium russet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1 inch chunks and parboiled in salted water until just done but still firm

1/2 sweet onion cut into strips

1 teaspoon sumac * (or sub with garam masala)

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon lime juice

Kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 Fresno chile, chopped or thinly sliced

1/4 cup coarsely chopped mixed herbs - an equal combination of cilantro and parsley

4 large eggs

* Sumac is a widely used, essential spice in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cooking. It has a tangy lemony flavor, although more balanced and less tart than lemon juice. It's used in everything from dry rubs, marinades, and dressing. But its best use is sprinkled over food before serving. It's great over vegetables, grilled lamb, chicken and fish. Not readily available in supermarkets, but it is available easily on line and worth having some in your spice cabinet. When mixed with thyme and sesame seeds, it is called za'atar.

For the Home Fries: 

Heat the butter in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat until it begins to shimmer. Add onion and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.

Add the potatoes, garam masala, paprika, turmeric and a very generous amount of salt and toss to coat the potatoes and onions. 

Use a spatula to press and crush the potatoes against the bottom of the pan. Cook until golden brown and crisp on the bottom, about 5 - 7 minutes. 

Turn over in large chunks and press again to crisp the other side. 

Cook until browned on the bottom, another 5 - 7 minutes.

Taste and add salt as needed.

While the potatoes crisp, heat the vegetable oil in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Add the chiles and cook, stirring, until warmed and very slightly softened, about 1 minute. Add the herbs.

Spoon the chile herb mixture over the potatoes and drizzle with the lime juice. 

Serve straight from the pan. Leave a little of the oil and herbs in the pan.

For the eggs: 

Cook the eggs as you like in the pan you made the herb chili sauce.

Roasting Figs in Fig Leaves

If you like figs, you will really enjoy this post. I found the pic below of roasted figs wrapped in fig leaves that chef Alex Guarnaschelli posted on her Facebook page recently. She described them this way - "These are baked figs from Italy.They are wonderfully chewy and seedy and sweet and taste like candy and dirt and earth and diamonds and emeralds and cake." 

Besides the taste description, what a cool look they have wrapped up in fig leaves! I knew immediately that I had to try to duplicate them at home. We love figs, and in fact, have three fig trees in our backyard. Fig season is winding down but there were enough ripe ones to pick to make this experiment do-able.

There is not much information available on the exact process but basically fresh figs are baked in a warm oven (170 - 200 degrees) for 12 hours where their flavor is concentrated and they become very sticky. Then they are pressed together into a ball and wrapped in fresh fig leaves to be baked again for several hours in a warm oven. I figured the fig leaves would add to the unique taste but was unsure if any herbs, spices, flavorings were added. And maybe wine or a liqueur of some kind? Since there is no information available on these kinds of details, I decided to add a few that made sense - a pinch of ground fennel seeds, a drizzle of honey, orange zest and a splash of red wine.

I also found this interesting video that shows a commercially made fig ball being opened - 

Here are our figs after being roasted overnight in a covered ceramic crock with the fennel, honey, orange zest and wine. They shrunk quite a bit but they did not dry out and become hard. The kitchen smelled great by the way -

I picked and washed 9 good looking fig leaves, fanned them out in a circle and piled the figs in the middle with their juices. 

Wrapped the leaves around the figs and tied with some cotton yarn (thanks Lisa). And placed the "ball" back into the crock for the second low and slow roast. 

Here is the fig ball back out of the oven after a 5 hour bake. 

Here is the fig ball being opened. The figs were plump,moist and chewy. The taste was everything I had hoped for - earthy, sweet, figgy with hints of orange and anise, maybe not the "diamonds, emeralds and cake" that chef Alex described but that's OK, because I'm glad they didn't taste like cake. Really very nice and will definitely make more next year.

Stuffed Acorn Squash

It's the first day of Fall and locally grown summer vegetables are played out, but seasonal fall/winter produce has started arriving in grocery stores.This includes a variety of hard squash like acorn, kabocha, sweet dumpling, delicata, carnival and pie pumpkins. 

Here is a link to a guide to fall/winter hard squash from Epicurious:

Visual Guide to Winter Squash

We like to make roasted acorn squash brushed inside with brown sugar butter and filled with chickpeas, couscous, onion, carrot, celery and dried fruit. It is perfect served alongside chicken or pork, or all by itself. The filling without the squash is a good side dish on it's own.

Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main
Ingredients

2 large acorn squash, halved and seeded

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon butter, melted

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 stalks celery, sliced on the bias

2 carrots, chopped

1/2 large sweet onion chopped

1 cup garbanzo beans, drained

1/2 cup golden raisins, chopped dried apricots or other dried fruit bits

1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 (14 ounce) can chicken broth

1 cup uncooked couscous

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.

Cut the squash in half lenthwise and remove the seeds.

Arrange squash halves cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake 30 minutes, or until tender. 

Dissolve the brown sugar in the melted butter. Brush the inside of the squash with the butter mixture, and keep warm while preparing the stuffing.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the garlic, celery, and carrots, and cook 5 minutes. Mix in the garbanzo beans and raisins. Season with cumin, salt, and pepper, and continue to cook and stir until vegetables are tender.

Pour the chicken broth into the skillet, and mix in the couscous. Cover skillet, and turn off heat. 

Allow couscous to absorb liquid for 5 minutes. Stuff squash halves with the skillet mixture. 

Roots in the Boot

This blog post is a little departure from food and gardening but I wanted to give you all a little background. Vazzano, Italy is our family's ancestral home. It is a small rural agricultural village of about 1,100 in Calabria, the southernmost region of Italy, the "toe" of the boot. The town dates back to the Roman Empire when it was called Subsicium. My great grandfather, Bruno Fuscà, came over in 1895 with his brother and two friends. He worked on the Pennsylvania railroad doing grunt labor for the next three years and saved his money. In 1898 he sent for the rest of the family - my great grandmother Marianna Nicolina DePalma,and my grandfather Domenico Antonio and his two brothers,Giuseppe and Francesco. They settled in Pittsburgh where Bruno bought a building which he converted into a combination grocery store and home. The store was on the ground floor and the family lived upstairs. At some point early on, due to an error in some important paperwork, our last name was mistranscribed from from Fuscà to Fusia. They decided to keep the new American name.

 

Vazzano, Italy

Panoramic video of the olive tree filled countryside around Vazzano

Out on a walk around Vazzano by Micuccio Caloiero

Just in case, some day, someone might want to visit Vazzano by flying to Naples and driving to Vazzano, here is a link to the directions - 
                                           

Driving Directions from Naples to Vazzano

Liquore di Fichi d'India - Cactus Pear Liqueur

Southern Italians use the fruit of the prickly pear cactus in sweets and desserts where they are called fichi d'india - literally, India figs. They also make (typically at home) a liqueur with them by infusing the fruit in alcohol, similar to how limoncello is made. In Calabria it is called liquore di fichi d'india. The original home of the prickly pear cactus, by the way, is the desert states of the United States and Mexico! They were brought to Italy by the Spanish explorers in the New World and found a perfect new home in southern Italy which, at the time, was ruled by Spain. The explorers also brought tomatoes and peppers and potatoes. 
Mille grazie, Cristoforo Colombo!!!

Liquore di fichi d'india recipe

15 ripe cactus pears
4 cups 151 proof grain alcohol 
2 cups sugar syrup

Use the amounts above as a base. They can be adjusted for different quantities of cactus pears.

Procedure -  

Peel cactus pears and cut in half. I wear rubber gloves when doing this because sometimes there are hair-like almost invisible thorns left on the surface of the pear that can get into the skin on your fingers and drive you crazy with itching. 

Let the cut fruit steep in the grain alcohol in a large sealable glass container for 10 days. The solution will turn a dark orange to red color. 

After 10 days, remove fruit and add sugar syrup. Age for 20 days.

For the sugar syrup

2 cups water
2 cups sugar

Bring the water to a boil in a pot and add the sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar and take off the heat to let cool. Pour into the glass container with the liqueur and reseal.

After 20 days, pour the liqueur into sanitized bottles through a fine mesh sieve and funnel to remove any remaining bits of fruit. Seal or cork. Keep in the freezer or in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

My family's ancestral home, the town of  Vazzano, in Calabria, Italy, holds an annual Fichi D'India Festival. Here are some videos of the event.  

Stuffed Shells

Stuffed jumbo pasta shells with roasted cherry tomatoes and an Italian sausage link. So freakin' good! Take a look. Nothing else needs to be said.

Oven roast the cherry tomatoes in a parchment paper lined cast iron skillet with olive oil, garlic and herbes de provence at 475 for 20 minutes.

The filling for the shells is ricotta cheese, sauteed garlic, parsley, lemon zest and red pepper flakes.

Boil the shells until they are just pliable enough to work with about 4 - 5 minutes.  Drain in a colander.

Make a simple tomato sauce with chopped tomatoes and onion. We used a combination of red and yellow tomatoes. Put half the sauce in a casserole dish.                          

Stuff the shells with the ricotta mixture and place on top of the tomato sauce.

Top the shells with the rest of the tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and fresh oregano - not dried. Drizzle with olive oil.

Bake covered at 375 for 20 minutes, then take the foil off and bake for 10 more minutes or until the cheese looks nice and golden.

Serve with the roasted cherry tomatoes and a side of grilled Italian sausage. 

Mediterranean Chicken with Tagliatelle

"Beautifully juicy chicken basted in a thyme and basil oil and layered over fresh pasta in a roasted tomato and garlic sauce. Simple ingredients that are bursting with flavor", is how Jamie Oliver describes this wonderful dish. I watched his video below and knew at once we had to make it and share with you all. The video may sound a little complicated at first look, but after thinking it through and watching it again, it's not that difficult and I'll give you some tips that will make this easier without affecting the end result and I will list out the ingredients and amounts. This is so worth making. 

Tip #1 - It would be great if you can find cherry tomatoes on the vine, but don't worry about that. If you can't get them/find them, use off the vine cherry tomatoes. 

Tip # 2 - If you don't have the time or inclination to make homemade pasta, use a good brand of dried - DeCecco brand is very good and you can use their linguine or fettucine.

Tip #3 - Use fresh herbs, just like in in video. Don't use dried herbs. We are fortunate in that we grow a lot of different cooking herbs in our garden. 

Getting The Most Out Of A Humble Backyard Vineyard - 2015

Our little vineyard - 2015

In February of 2012 we planted four one year old Norton wine grape vines. They grew well but didn't produce any grapes that year, we didn't expect any. 

2013 produced enough grapes for us to be able to make almost a gallon of wine. 

The 2014 vintage gave us 2 gallons - a good rich red and a rose'. The rose' was a second wine or a second run wine made by reusing the grape must - the left over grape skins and pulp from the first pressing.

This year, 2015, the vines produced a bumper crop of grapes but they ripened inconsistently - some grape bunches were ripe enough to crush but others still green. So we divided things up and made Norton grape marmalade and grape liqueur with the early ripeners and later when they were ready,made wine with the late ripeners. Maybe we'll get just a gallon, but having fun and it's damn rewarding.

Norton Grape Marmalade 

Norton Grape Liqueur

Norton Grape Wine