Happy Easter

Happy Easter from Rogue Cooking

Rigatoni With Baby Meatballs

This meal was a combined effort. Donna made her tomato sauce while I made the baby meatballs.

Baby Meatballs
Place 1 pound of ground beef in a large bowl (big enough for both hands) and crack in one egg. Add about 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs (I used Progresso Italian Flavored). Salt and pepper to taste and add any spices you want. I usee 1 teaspoon of oregano.

Then pulp one clove of garlic and finely chop 1/4 of an onion and throw that into the bowl.

Using your hands, mix and squish until all the ingredients become one with the meat. Cover the bowl with some cling film and place in the refrigerator for about 1/2 hour to allow the ingredients to congeal a bit. It makes the meat mixture easier to shape.

Then be patient and pinch off tiny bits of meat and roll into a small ball about the size of a marble. You will be surprised how many baby meatballs you end up with.

Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan and place the meatballs in the pan and swirl them around until coated in the oil. Keep an eye on them as they fry so they don’t burn on any one side. They cook quickly because they are so tiny.

When the meatballs seem done (more than browned, but not dried out), remove them from the pan, onto a paper towel to absorb any excess olive oil. Then add them to the tomato sauce. Let the meatballs finish cooking in the sauce for about 1 hour.

But Wait, There’s More
To add a little zing to the sauce mixture, I crumbed one Italian sausage out of its skin and into a small frying pan. I cooked the sausage in a little red wine until cooked through. Then I drained it and added the meat to the tomato sauce as well.

After the sauce cooked for a good hour, I put some salted water on to boil. Than Donna took over again. She cooked one pound of small rigatoni until al dente. She brushed some olive oil in the bottom of a large rectangular Pyrex casserole dish. Then added some tomato sauce, poured in the drained rigatoni, coated them with the sauce and baby meatballs. Shredded an Italian cheese blend on top, sprinkled it with parmagiana and put into a 450-degree oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese.

Keep an eye on it. All of the ingredients have already been cooked, so all you are doing is melting the cheese.

Remove from the oven, let rest for a few minutes. Then scoop into pasta bowls. Put some of the extra sauce into a bowl for dipping in wonderful Italian bread.

Music to cook by: The Runaways

Bolognese Sauce (Italian Meat Sauce)

Bolognese sauce or traditional Italian meat sauce with pasta was not something we ate when growing up. Our Mom would make a pot of meatballs and a small pot of pepperoni. Sometimes, a leftover pork chop or Italian sausage from a previous meal would end up on the table.

It wasn’t until later that I started ordering Bolognese sauce in Italian restaurants. I began noticing the subtle differences in recipes as I ordered this meal from various places.

I searched for a recipe, found many, and finally settled on one that I think makes a perfect Bolognese sauce, but it takes a little work. Preparing this sauce is therapeutic for me and I enjoy letting it take over most of my day. The preparation includes sipping a little red wine along the way, so that helps.

There are three main chapters to this recipe and you keep building and blending in the next group of ingredients as you move through the recipe.

First, I prepare a base for the sauce by putting an onion, a carrot and a celery stalk in the food processor and blitz them together. Then I heat up some olive oil in a large, deep frying pan (or if I am double-batching, a deep pot) and sauté the veggie mixture until golden yellow. It does change color and that is when you are ready to move on. Crush a clove of garlic or two and blend that into the veggie base. (Now is a good time to clean your food processor for part two.)

Take about 1 pound of steak (bottom round or something not too expensive) and put that in the food processor and turn it into what looks like ground beef. Take one hot Italian sausage, remove the skin and add that to the food processor with the steak. I like the spices that are already in a nice hot Italian sausage. Now add this ground meat mixture into the veggie base and stir until they are well combined. You’ll see that the veggies seem to disappear and combine with the meat. Heat and stir until the meat is browned. This when you add salt and pepper to your meat mixture. Stir the pot a bit and add 2/3 a cup of red wine.  Bring this to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer until the wine has cooked away and the mixture has reduced a bit.

Add 1/2 cup of milk and three pinches of nutmeg and stir. Let cook until the milk absorbs into the meat. You will know when this happens because the milk will suddenly seem to have disappeared. (Now is a good time to clean your food processor again.)

Add a can of crushed tomatoes. Then put one can of whole tomatoes into the food processor and pulse two or three times, leaving the tomatoes pulpy and chunky. Add this to you sauce. Add a 1/2 can of tomato paste and stir this all together.

Now you can add your favorite Italian spices: oregano, basil, crushed hot pepper flakes, marjoram, etc. I add lots of each and give the sauce a good final stir.

Let cook until the sauce begins to boil, then lower the heat to a simmer, put a lid on it and let it cook for about two hours, stirring about every 1/2 hour or so. For the last half hour, take the lid off the pot and let any excess liquid burn off and the sauce will thicken.

Serve with fettuccine or thick ribbons of pasta.

Ingredients:
* 4 tablespoons of olive oil
* 1 onion
* 1 carrot
* 1 celery stalk
* 1-2 garlic cloves
* 1 pound steak (bottom of the round) (about 4 small steaks)
* 1 hot Italian sausage (or sweet sausage if you’re Protestant)
* salt and pepper to taste
* 2/3 cup of red wine
* 1/2 cup of milk
* 3 pinches of nutmeg
* 1/2 can (6 ounces) of tomato paste
* 1 can (28 ounces) of crushed tomatoes
* 1 can (28 ounces) of whole tomatoes

Music to cook by: Rosemary Clooney’s Girl Singer

St. Joseph’s Day Pie

Saint Joseph’s Day, March 19th, was always a big deal in my family. We gathered at the house of one of my Italian relatives and ate and ate. Saint Joseph’s pie for the adults, pizza for the kids.

St. Joseph’s pie is onion pie. My Aunt Mary would make several versions of it. The true version contained anchovies, or what she referred to as fish. “This one has the fish, this one has the olives,” etc. Only the older folks would eat the one with the anchovies. I liked the plain or the one with raisins. But anchovies, no way, at least not when I was young.

Actually, it wasn’t really a pie. It was more like a stromboli or calzone filled with carmelized onions. It’s not a taste you can appreciate as a kid. But when I got older, I learned to like it.

Sadly, this recipe has disappeared with the Italian Aunts. No one from my generation actually remembers the specifics of this onion pie anymore, but Jim took a crack at it. After researching online, he found what seems to be the closest recipe.

Saint Joseph’s Day Pie (Onion Pie)

Filling:
* 1/4 cup olive oil
* 2 lbs. onions sliced very thin
* 3 tbsp. milk
* 16 anchovy fillets, cleaned and chopped
* cup pitted black olives, chopped
* 1/4 cup Italian parsley
* 3 small tomatoes chopped
* dash of garlic salt, salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the onions and saute for 15-20 minutes until the onions are caramelized. Add the milk and cook for 5 more minutes. Add the anchovies, parsley, tomatoes and black olives. Mix well, continue stirring, cook until the sauce is thick and all the liquid has been evaporated.

Pastry: (Please bless me father, for I have sinned. I bought a ready-made pie crust)
* 2 cups flour
* 2-3 eggs (as needed)
* 1/2 cup butter
* pinch of salt

Combine flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut in butter, add eggs as needed and blend making dough. Divide the dough in half and roll out to the size to fill a pie pan. Lightly sprinkle corn meal at the bottom of the pan before lining with dough. Pour in filling. Roll out the remaining dough to fit on the top like a pie.  Poke holes in the top crust to allow the steam to escape and glaze with an egg wash.

Cook in a 350° oven for 1 hour.

Pie can be frozen and thawed and warmed to serve later.

More Memories of DeRosa’s Sandwich Shop

This isn’t my memory. I wasn’t born yet. But it’s a story our parents used to tell us.

My father was recovering from a heart attack. The stress from his job had gotten the best of him. He no longer wanted to work for anyone else. He wanted to be his own boss. So, my parents bought a newer, bigger house that had a store on the first floor. It was a little sandwich shop. I don’t remember what it was called then, but they knew the woman who sold it to them. She was a neighbor. She spent a few days teaching them how to make the sandwiches that she sold. Then my father expanded the menu.

On opening day my mother and father turned over the “open” sign at 11 a.m. and waited. They stood behind the counter wondering if anyone would come into their new shop. What if they didn’t get any customers? This was how they planned to make a living.

Nearby there were several factories within walking distance. At noon people started pouring in. Dozens and dozens of them, all happy to have a new lunch spot so close. My parents were so busy they could barely keep up with the orders. Finally, lunchtime ended and things quieted down. They were both so flustered.

They just looked at each other and burst out laughing.

I love that story.

Our store stayed busy like that for over twenty years. They had to hire two people to help them at lunch hour. My father would close from 1:30-3:30 and take a nap. Then reopen from 3:30-11:00 at night for the dinner and late-night snack crowd.

Owning your own business is very time consuming. You end up putting in more hours than if you had a regular job. But they were working for themselves, not answering to any boss. And making all of the profits.

And because the store was attached to our house, they were always home for their kids.

Pastina: Not Just for Babies

This is one of my comfort foods. Italians feed this to their babies but my sister Rose and I used to make this as a late-night snack. The key ingredient is pastina. It’s a tiny star-shaped pasta. Don’t be tempted to use other tiny pastas like orzo or ancini di pepe. They are wonderful in soups but they do not work for this treat. It must be the stars. My favorite brand is Ronzoni.

Pour about 7 tablespoons of pastina into a small sauce pan. Cover with water. Add salt. Pastina is too tiny to drain, so you cook this until the water disappears. Keep adding water and boiling off until the pastina is soft. When you get the right consistency, add a pad or two of butter. Stir until butter is melted. Salt to taste. Divide into two bowls.

Serves two sisters.

Americano and Negroni

Campari cocktails make refreshing aperitifs. Here are two popular recipes, perfect for a pre-dinner appetizer or a summer relaxer.

Americano
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Cinzano Rosso Vermouth (Italian Sweet Vermouth)
Splash of Club Soda

Pour Campari and vermouth over ice in a rocks or highball glass. Add a splash of club soda. Garnish with an orange twist.

The Americano was first served in Gaspare Campari’s bar in the 1860s. In the 1900s frequent patron Count Camillo Negroni thought this drink needed more of a kick, so he asked the bartender to put some gin in it. And so, the next drink was born.

Negroni
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Cinzano Rosso Vermouth
1 oz Gin
Orange Peel for garnish

Pour ingredients over ice into a shaker. Shake and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Music to mix by: The interesting soundtrack found on the Campari Web site.

Grandmom’s Potatoes and Eggs

I never knew my Italian grandmother. She died long before I was born. My father was only 14 at the time. But he remembered many of the meals she used to cook. This was one of his favorites.

Being poor Italian immigrants, they used to spend their summers working as pickers on a farm in New Jersey. My father was just a little boy so he thought it was fun. But he was wise enough to realize it was back-breaking labor for his mamma. So he would try to fill his baskets as quickly as possible so he could pick her share, too, and let her rest.

She would try hard to cook meals that would be filling for the family. This was one of my father’s favorites. He used to make this for us as a weekend supper. It would also make a hearty breakfast.

* 8 eggs
* 2 large potatoes
* 1 large onion
* 2 tablespoons of olive oil
* splash of milk
* salt and black pepper
* Italian roll or white bread toast

Peel, slice and wash the potatoes. Chop the onion. Put oil, onion and potato in a large frying pan. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until potatoes are soft. Drain any excess oil. Most of the oil will be absorbed into the potatoes. Whisk eggs in a mixing bowl with a splash of milk. Add egg mixture to frying pan. Cook until eggs are scrambled. Divide into sections with a spatula. Serve on an Italian hoagie roll or white bread toast.

This is the only picture I have of my grandmother. I want to give her a hug.

Swiss Steak For Two Or Ten

Swiss Steak is a recipe my mother used to make to feed ten or more people.  She would buy an inexpensive cut of beef and make almost the entire dinner in one large pan. You can adjust the amount of meat and tomato sauce to your dinner plans, but you need to plan in some cooking time. This may be a meal that prepares quickly and simply, but you need about 4 hours of cooking time to get it to taste right.

Beef Bottom Round cut into small portions. The amount of meat is based on how many you are serving. The more steak in the pan, the more meat juices are created for the gravy.

Heavily salt and pepper the red meat.

Dredge the meat in flour and brown in a large pan using olive oil.

I remove the browned meat onto a warm plate while I cooked the onions (one large onion thinly sliced) in some more olive oil and pad of butter. Salt and pepper the onions to taste. When the onions are sautéed (about five minutes on high heat) return the meat and mix the onions and meat together. Cover the pan and let cook for about ten minutes on a medium heat.

Add one small 15-ounce can of tomato sauce to the pan, covering the meat and onions. At this point you can add some other spices to your taste. I added a small amount of red pepper flakes, marjoram and oregano. (If you want to add some crushed garlic to the dish, do that back when sautéing the onions.)

That is it, except for some patience. Cover the pan and let this mixture cook slowly over very low heat for 4 hours.

Serve it with your favorite vegetable and mashed potatoes. The brownish-red sauce is a tangy combination of the beef gravy juices, onions and tomato sauce. Spoon the sauce over your potatoes and have some bread for dipping and cleaning the plates.

Music to cook by:  This supper always reminds me of the 1970s so Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

Italian Coffee

I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my late 20s. Growing up I remember my mother always made strong black coffee in an old-fashioned percolator. She has since moved on to the electric drip like everyone else in America.

When I first discovered I had acquired the taste for coffee I found a small percolator that made 2 cups at a time. It was fantastic and made coffee so much hotter than any electric maker could. I also found that I like my coffee the same way as my mother. She adds just enough sugar to take any bitterness away and not be sweet. And she drinks it black, no milk.

Since the latte/cappuccino/frappe/mocha explosion in America, I’ve grown to really appreciate a simple cup of coffee.

Here are some of my current favorites:

Illy Coffee
Wonderful flavor, convenient packaging, but very pricey.

Segafredo Zanetti
Smooth flavor, best decaf I’ve ever tried, half the price of Illy.

What is your favorite coffee?