A few weeks before Christmas, I found a recipe for caffe con correto con panna in La Cucina Italiana, one of my favorite food magazines. Basically, this translates to liquor-spiked coffee with chocolate and sweetened cream. I bought a bottle of Frangelico, which I had hitherto assumed was for people who liked drinks involving lots of props, and Kory and I tried it out before the Christmas Eve dinner, at which I thought I might like to serve it. A few days later, the bottle was empty. In our defense, it was a small bottle.
We are now happily making our way through a second bottle, and we call this grown-up treat The Coffee Drink, because we can’t be bothered to write in Italian every night on the board.
The original recipe is linked above. Our version has adjusted the amounts a bit, and we often substitute a really strong, dark chocolate sauce, which we just have around in the refrigerator, for the chopped chocolate, because it’s a big time saver when the urge comes over you.
For each drink:
Pour 4-6 oz of espresso (or very dark roast coffee) over
1 tsp very good quality, very dark chocolate sauce.
Stir to mix.
Add 1-2 oz Frangelico (to taste, we like it strong)
Top with a generous spoonful of fresh, sweetened whipped cream. (
Halloween and Thanksgiving are long past, but today, some beast grabbed me and urged me to cut into the Galeux d’Eysines pumpkin I purchased in October. It was a gorgeous pale pink, and covered in sugar warts. It was gnarly, ugly and completely fascinating.
It was easy to cut, as far as pumpkins go but inside, it was shocking orange.
Finn and I scooped the seeds, and because Caroline has just leant me Little Heathens, I decided to slice it, peel it, chop it into two-inch pieces, and slow cook it per Milly’s strict instructions, with just enough water to see through the pumpkin.
It cooked all day, very slowly, from about 9 am until 6 pm. I had a beautiful, rich, perfectly smooth and perfectly pumpkin puree.
I kept tasting, and while the flavor did get richer and sweeter as the day went on, It’s a mild, sweet pumpkin, and tastes like a pumpkin wants to taste if it’s very refined.
The question was–what to do with all of it. Ravioli on a weeknight was out of the question. I’ll make pie tomorrow, but wasn’t up for baking today. I settled on Pumpkin Risotto, substituting a hard apple cider for the classic white wine, adding grana padano, nutmeg, and butter to finish. It was glorious. My daughter, after her first bite, declared, “This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.” Her friend, Cassie, who had a taste on the way home from her playdate also declared it delicious. Finn was not as big a fan, but he’ll grow into it.
Pumpkin Risotto
1 medium onion, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 c arborio or–better–carnaroli rice
3/4 c hard apple cider
about 6 cups chicken broth
Fresh pumpkin puree, about 1-1/12 cups
fresh grated nutmeg, to taste
about 1 cup fresh grated Grana Padano (available at Trader Joes)
Heat broth in a separate pan until medium hot.
In a heavy bottomed pot or large sauce pan, sautee garlic and onion until soft.
Add rice and stir until well coated.
Add cider and stir until most of liquid is evaporated.
Add stock, about one cup at a time, stirring after each cup until broth is absorbed. Continue adding warm broth until the rice is cooked through. It should be tender, but each grain separate.
Add enough pumpkin to brightly color and flavor and risotto, to your taste.
Add butter, a grating of nutmeg (to taste), and cheese. Stir until absorbed.
Serve immediately, with an extra grating of cheese. And some fresh or fried sage leaves if have them.
One of our family staples, especially when it’s high pepper season, is dish of roasted red peppers bathed in olive oil, with capers, garlic, and anchovies.
Before you stop reading at “anchovy,” please consider this: a mysterious alchemy occurs when the peppers meet anchovies and garlic in a bath of olive oil. The peppers mellow and deepen in flavor, the anchovies sweeten and lose some of their bite. You can choose not to eat the anchovies. Or if you are still squeamish, you can, if you must, leave them out altogether, though you will be missing something.
I have served this dish many, many times at parties, to unsuspecting friends, and it disappears quickly. I have served it to children, at dinner parties–not just my own–who have devoured it. I have served it to my father-in-law, who hates anchovies, but still loves the peppers.
Truly, this is a dish that is more than the sum of its parts.
Every Sunday, all summer long, I made a large dish of these peppers and stashed it away in the refrigerator to marinate. I am not exaggerating when I write that this dish came out nearly every night, as appetizer or side dish. Ella tucked into it with abandon, piling her bread high with peppers, sprinkling a caper or two, then soaking the whole thing in a spoon or two of the marinating oil. By the end of the summer, even Finn, who is a more cautious eater, was fighting her for a pass at the olive oil, which is liquid gold in its own right. At parties and barbecues, Ella’s self-appointed job was to make the plate of the pepper-crostini. They’re bright and pretty on the plate, and they go just as well with beer as with prosecco. We never got tired of them.
In the winter time, or for big parties, I make the same dish from jarred roasted peppers. In summer, when peppers are in season, I bring home my weekly stash of red, yellow, chocolate peppers, and roast them on the grill. If I’m really pressed for time, I can throw the peppers in the convection oven, but they aren’t quite as good this way. It will keep easily for a week, covered in the refrigerator.
The recipe comes from the pages of Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cooking, one of my go-to books when I have a fresh, local, seasonal ingredient and want inspiration.
Below is the basic recipe, with my notes & variations. Once the peppers are roasted, there’s nothing simpler. Consider it insurance for those pre-dinner hunger attacks.
Roasted Peppers with Garlic, Capers, and Anchovies
Ingredients:
Roasted peppers
Whole smashed garlic cloves
Capers
Anchovies
Oregano
Olive oil
Slice peppers. Smash garlic cloves with the flat edge of the knife, peel and discard skin.
Layer peppers in a shallow, flat bottomed dish. On top, place a smashed garlic clove, 2-3 anchovies (or more or less to taste), a sprinkling of capers, a sprig or dash of dried oregano. If you roast the peppers yourself, you might sprinkle a very little coarse salt on them. Do not do this if the peppers are jarred.
Repeat the layering process until your peppers are gone.
Bathe the entire dish in olive oil.
Refrigerate overnight.
Serve with sliced Italian bread
Ingredient notes:
Peppers: Red are traditional and the sweetest, but try different varieties as accent colors and flavors if you’re so inclined.
Anchovies: Only buy anchovies packaged in glass (not tins). My experience has been that the more you pay, the better product you get. There is a vast difference in quality between cheaper and more expensive brands.
Oregano: Dried is just fine. Fresh sprigs are fine. My favorite is to dry sprigs from my bush, and use these. They’re pretty and flavor is best. If you use dried sprigs, you’ll likley need only 3 or so for a large dish.
Capers: If you use salt-packed, rinse them well.
Olive oil: Just a good, decent extra-virgin is fine. Nothing fancy. You need a lot of it, so I just pour from whatever big tin I’ve got on hand that week: Sagra, Whole Foods, etc.
In the case of this recipe, for me, omissions are very often accidents. I’ve forgotten to add: capers, oregano, salt. I’ve run out of anchovies before I started, then it was too late to get to the store. You can assemble it meticulously, so it looks like a beautiful strata of color, or you can throw it together in a haphazard flash. The dish may be best with all of the ingredients, but it’s still delicious in whatever configuration you and your family prefer. Just don’t leave out the garlic.
Most of the time, we want our kids to eat what we eat, right? And most of the time, we work really hard to get them to eat what we put on the table, right?
It’s been our general philosophy that the kids eat what we eat. End of story. In our home, this has happened pretty much since birth. Both were breast fed, so they quite literally ate what I ate. Both had fewer jars of baby food than I can count on my hands. I steamed, mashed, pureed, froze. And now both eat what I cook or they don’t eat at all. Evidence the new chalkboard door as Exhibit A.
This has generally made for a happy and stress-free family food life.
However, there are some things that Kory and I jealously keep to ourselves. Things we don’t want the kids to eat because that means, well, less for us. And while we want our kids to have good taste, and to taste good things, some things we just don’t want to share.
One of these things is pimientos de padrones, grown by Happy Quail Farms.
Padrones are small green peppers, flash fried in olive oil, sprinkled with coarse salt, some are hot, some are sweet, all are addictively delicious.
They’re eaten tapas style. We eat them every week in the summer. We serve them at every party we give. We bring them as hostess gifts. They never fail to please.
Kory and I discovered padrones nearly the moment they were introduced to Happy Quail’s gorgeous kaleidoscopic stand of peppers nearly ten years ago, and like the rest of the fanatic cabal, we spoil ourselves on the bags of green gold weekly ($6) when they’re in season . As far as we know, Happy Quail is the only producer of true padrones in the area, and they supply markets and restaurants throughout the Bay Area. The legend I remember of their local origin, told to me by the farmer more than half a decade ago, is that a faithful Happy Quail customer, dining in Spain on padrones, decided that Happy Quail needed to culitvate them and smuggled back the seeds….
And so, for many years, Ella and Finn have seen the padrones on our table week after summer week after summer week. We haven’t offered them to the kids, or have done so only half-heartedly, in jest.
But the moral of this story is that it is absolutely true, that boring, old-fashioned truism that your mother and grandmother and all those expert books tell you: expose a child to something for long enough and she will eventually eat. Just leave it there on the table, within reach, within eyesight, eat it yourself. Just wait and see. I dare you.
Because one very sad-happy day, Ella ate a padrone. And there was no turning back.
And from that day on until the end of padrone season, If Kory & I didn’t get to the table fast enough, they’d be gone. Plucked from the plate like so many pieces of candy in the hands of a more normal child, they’d disappear down her gullet faster than she could say “Polly-Piper picked a peck of pickled….” The only good thing to come out of it (for me and Kory) was that our lovely pepper farmer presented Ella with her very own bag of padrones the next week at the market, with the benediction, “Welcome to the Club!”
Of course, this kind of growth is what one wants for one’s child isn’t it? A life full of education and opportunity and new experiences?
It’s wrong to hoard, I know. One is supposed to overflow with goodness, selflesslessness, and generosity for one’s children. One is supposed to share.
Whoever thought that one up probably never had a padrone.
