Beans 'N Greens

One of my favorite comfort foods. "Beans 'n Greens" is another example of simple but delicious southern Italian peasant cooking. Cannellini beans, escarole, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil and basil over grilled crusty bread rubbed with garlic and topped with shredded pecorino cheese. This is my aunt Janet and uncle Joe's recipe.

Totally satisfying any time of year but especially during the fall and winter. You will love this!

Ingredients: - for 4 but increase ingredients in this ratio for more

3 cans cannellini beans rinsed and drained

1 head of escarole stub end cut off and the leaves roughly chopped

4 cloves of garlic divided - three minced for the soup and one whole for the bread

1 handful of fresh basil

5 whole canned San Marzano tomatoes, chopped or torn apart with your hands

2 cups chicken stock

2 tablespoons olive oil plus more at the table

Locatelli Pecorino cheese - grated

Thick sliced crusty bread like ciabatta - grilled or toasted
Crushed red pepper flakes to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

How to -

Bring a pot of water to a boil (a Dutch oven works well), add a pinch of salt and the escarole. Blanch for 2 - 3 minutes. Drain and set aside in a bowl.

Add olive oil to the same pot along with the beans and the minced garlic and sauté for 3 - 5 minutes

Add the chicken stock and tomatoes

Add the blanched escarole to the pot with the beans and tomatoes, heat on medium high for a couple minutes. Add a little water if it seems too thick.

Grill or toast a few slices of good crusty bread, rub both sides with a clove of garlic.

Put a slice of the garlic bread in the bottom of each soup bowl.

Ladle the beans and greens over the grilled bread, toss on some fresh basil and top with a sprinkle of grated pecorino cheese, a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes and a drizzle of good olive oil. 

ENJOY!

Sicilian Pot Roast

Now that Fall is here, it's time for some hearty fare. So, here you go. While pot roast is not something you would find on a Sicilian table, it is our take on a pot roast that includes some wonderfully flavorful ingredients that are found in Sicilian/Southern Italian cuisine - fennel, tomatoes, garlic, olives, rosemary, red wine, orange zest. We even added a few fresh figs. Why not!

Ingredients - serves 4 or 2 with great leftovers

Chuck roast - 2 - 3 lb

1 can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes - crush them with your hands

4 - 5 shallots chopped

1 fennel bulb cut into slices lengthwise, reserve the fronds

1/2 cup dry red wine - we used Valpolicella

3 sprigs of rosemary - leave whole

7 - 9 thin pieces of orange zest about 1/2 inch wide by 3 inches long, reserve the rest of the orange

1 cup pitted green Italian olives, NOT those Spanish ones in brine - we used Catelvetrano but you could use Kalamata olives in a pinch

6 fresh figs cut in half. Or you could use dried if fresh are not in season

1 head of garlic - roasted and the cloves separated and squeezed from their paper shells

1 tablespoon ground fennel seeds - we have an electric coffee bean grinder we use just for this kind of thing

Salt and pepper

Water

Directions 

Salt and pepper the roast and brown in a Dutch oven in two tablespoons of olive oil

Remove to a plate

Season and saute the fennel and shallots in the roast juices and a little olive oil

Add the wine

Add  the meat back in

Orange zest slices

Add the orange zest, rosemary, tomatoes, a cup of water. Stir everything together 

Add the roasted garlic and and figs. Put in oven at 325. Roast covered for 4 hours, checking regularly and adding water if needed. 

When done, pull the meat apart, add the olives and ground fennel and stir through

Serve over mashed potatoes with an orange wedge and add the fennel fronds. Serve the same type of wine you used cooking the roast. Squeeze some orange juice over the meat.

  

Pumpkin Ravioloni with Sage Butter

Pumpkin Ravioloni is something that we make a couple times every fall. Ravioloni are rustic oversize ravioli about 3 1/2 " square. They are great to take to family gatherings around the Holidays. Not quick and easy, they take a little bit of work, and having a pasta machine, while not a necessity, makes rolling out the dough simple. As long as you are at it, you might as well go ahead and make a lot of these and keep in the freezer. By the way, their sweet honey pumpkin flavor profile along with the earthiness of the sage pairs perfectly with salty savory grilled Italian sausages. You know that's right!

If you are strapped for time, you could cheat and use canned pumpkin puree and won ton wrappers in this recipe, but at some point you have to try doing them with real pumpkins and homemade pasta dough. You will be glad you did. 

*** And, OK, you could use butternut squash instead of the pumpkin. Treat it the same way cutting it onto pieces and roasting.

This recipe will make 15 - 17 ravioloni 

For the filling
   

Ingredients 

1 Medium pie pumpkin 

1 small head of garlic

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

2 Tbs. grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or grana padano cheese

1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp. fine sea salt

2-3 Tbs. anise cookie crumbs  (Use Stella D’Oro anise biscotti)

Procedure

Cut the pumpkin in half and pull out the seeds and strings. Then cut the halves into eight pieces.

Preheat oven to 375º. Place the pumpkin pieces on a cookie sheet or a roasting pan with the head of garlic nestled in the middle. Roast until slightly caramelized and tender when pierced with the tip of a knife, 45 to 50 minutes. The head of garlic is there just season the pumpkin aromatically. After the pumpkin is done, you can squeeze the now soft cloves onto some nice grilled crusty bread to have with the ravioloni. 

When the pumpkin is cool enough to handle, scrape the flesh from the peel, and transfer to the bowl of a food processor. Process until smooth. Remove to a mixing bowl. Add the egg yolk, cheese, nutmeg and sea salt. Mix well, adding the anise cookie crumbs as needed to bind the ingredients into a tight mixture. Cover the filling and set aside.

Add the Parmigiano 

Stella D'Oro Anise biscotti  crumbled

For the Ravioloni - 

Ingredients

2 cups semolina or unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup water plus 1 - 2 tablespoons

Procedure

Put the flour in a bowl. Make a well in the center and pour the water in a little at a time incorporating the water a flour together using your fingers until you get a kind of shaggy dough. Then turn the dough out on to a work surface. Knead with both hands until you get a smooth, firm ball that is not sticky. If the dough is too wet add a little flour and continue to knead. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Now if you have a pasta rolling machine, I'm assuming you know how to use it so put it to use and roll out the pasta in sheets close to the thinnest setting but not too thin. If you don't have a pasta machine, your going to use a rolling pin to roll the pasta out 1/4 of the ball at a time keeping it in sheets about 4 " wide and maybe 1/16" thick or use your own sense of what seems a usable thickness. Use our photos as a guide. If you are a food nerd like us, you'll get it right. Cover the pasta sheets with damp paper towels so they don't dry out.

Square up and trim the sheets of pasta and cut into 3 1/2 inch squares

Place a tablespoon of the filling in the center of a square of pasta. Add the top and press the edges closed. 

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add a tablespoon of salt to the water then gently add the ravioloni. They will not take long to cook - about 5 minutes after the water comes back to a boil.

Meanwhile on medium heat melt the butter in a pan and add the sage leaves. Watch carefully and cook until the butter starts to brown and the sage crisps up. Then take off the heat.

Option - You could add a cup or so of Half & Half to the sage butter and make it into a cream sauce. That is nice too.

When the ravioloni are done, remove them with a skimmer or slotted spoon and place on a large serving platter. Spoon the sage butter over them. Serve 3-4 to a plate with a sausage and sprinkle with a little parmigiano. 

 

What Are We Going To Do With All These Cucuzze?

A cucuzza (cucuzze, pl) - in dialect, pronounced: "goo-GOOTS-ah" or just "goo-GOOTS") is a southern Italian long squash that has a special spot in our backyard garden and in our hearts.

This is a most amazing and vigorous plant with some peculiar characteristics that make it look like it could have been designed by Dr Seuss. They have long twisting vines and intricate corkscrew tendrils that reach out in every direction as you can see in the video above. The pale green squash (actually gourds) are delicious and versatile. They have a light sweet lemony taste and can grow up to 4 ft long. The big umbrella-like leaves and tender tops (tenerumi) are edible and great as sauteed greens or in soups. The plant has both male and female flowers that are short lived and bloom in the evening typically at different times. Male flowers bloom in abundance but there are much fewer female squash producing flowers. This is probably a self regulating mechanism for the plant. So in order to get a good harvest you might need to step in and pollinate them yourself by picking a lucky male flower and rubbing it onto the center of a blooming female flower to transfer the pollen.  Aside from this, they need little maintenance, just water and fertilizer. Because they are such vigorous growers, they should be trained on a trellis. 

Here are photos from our garden and some recipe ideas - 

In the beginning...

Female flower about to bloom

Male flower

A Hawk Moth on night time pollination duty!

Lisa holding one of our squash

So, what to do with all this cucuzza?  Here you go -  

Linguine with fried cucuzza and basil oil

You want to pick them this size or smaller. They are more tender and  have fewer seeds

Peeled and cut into disks

Basil

Basil, garlic and olive oil sauce

Fried in olive oil

Fried Cucuzza Sticks as Stuzzichini (finger food)

Sauteed tenerumi (leaves and tops) with pasta

Sauteed Cucuzza with onion and ground fennel, coriander and cumin seeds

Stuffed Cucuzza

Cut the cucuzza in half lengthwise and scrape out all but about 1/2 inch on the sides and reserve. 

Stuffing made of the cucuzza flesh cut from the halves, onion, garlic,chopped sweet pepper, currents, fresh parsley, hot pepper flakes sauteed in olive oil. Then mixed with coarse breadcrumbs. Salt and pepper to taste.

When cool, pack into the halves in a casserole dish

Topping is coarse breadcrumbs, pecorino cheese and olive oil

Add a little water to the casserole dish, cover with foil and bake at 375 for 20 min. Uncover and bake for another 10 minutes at 400.

Soon - Cucuzza Fritters