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06/22/2006 Archived Entry: "A Mess of Spring Vegetables, Free Workshops"

“Italian food is all about ingredients, not technique,” an Italian friend said the other day. I would disagree. Technique – cutting, slicing, frying, sautéing, knowing when to simmer and when to boil, or when the oil needs to be hot or just warm. You name the technique. You need to know them all, as in French or Chinese cooking. You name the cuisine. Italian food does, however, honor ingredients by not manipulating them as much as in some other cuisines. It’s not about sauce or embellishment as much as it is about finding a way to cook the food so it tastes like its best self. This only means that shopping for good ingredients is imperative.

A short story:

Many years ago – could it be 25 already? – Alice Waters came to New York for the Citymeals on Wheels gala at Rockefeller Center. She cooked tiny new potatoes with rosemary and garlic. That was it. Some of the other chefs gathered around her station to see what the great Alice Waters was doing. When they saw how simple the dish was, one said “That’s not cooking. That’s shopping.”

“So you get it,” Alice said.

I am reminded of this every time I go to a cooking school or other event where I have to cook food that someone else has shopped for. Recently, for instance, I was faced with asparagus that could have been older than I am. How did I know by looking at them? Most of the stems were wrinkled (dehydrated), as much a sign of age in asparagus as in people. The remainder had soggy, soft stems, most likely from being kept in water for too long, and/or from the stupid rubber bands that they wrap bunches of asparagus in and that, in essence, cut off their circulation. Of course, once cooked, they tasted like nothing, what little of the spears I could salvage.

I know what very fresh asparagus taste like because I have harvested them myself, eaten them raw, straight from the ground, and cooked them minutes later. Cooked even hours later, or the next day, they are vastly superior to anything you can buy in the supermarket, even when those supermarket asparagus have vivid color and full, firm bottoms. At best, supermarket asparagus arrive in the store when they are several days old, and then who knows for how long and with what care they were stored in the supermarket.

For the last two weeks, I have been buying New Jersey asparagus at my local Greenmarket. They are sensational, although they require thorough washing and soaking in cold water to remove the sand that gets caught in their tips. I have also been buying truly sweet, sweet peas. And last week I found fresh fava beans.

Another story:

While in Italy last month, I went with Cecilia, La Baronessa, to check out a property she owns in the Cilento, the mountainous region just behind the Sele plain where her farms are. She was meeting with a water expert to see if she could bring water into the property so she could build … well, it doesn’t matter. A local farmer who watches after this property for her met with the water man, too, and his wife came along with what I can only call “tribute” to “la signora.” It was a big bag of freshly picked fava beans. We took them home and Anna, the head cook at Seliano, Cecilia’s agriturismo, made us zuppa di fave for supper. This is nothing but fava beans cooked with olive oil, pancetta, onion, and water. We poured it over whole wheat hard-tack, called pane biscotato, to soak up the juices and they were the best fava beans I have ever had. They were sweet, not bitter, even with their outside skins still on. I always dread cooking fava (well, not actually dread, but resign myself) because peeling the skin off each individual bean is such tedious work. Anna and I talked about them. She said that when the beans aren’t absolutely fresh, you need to peel them, but when they are as fresh as these were, they are sweet even with their skins.

So Tuesday night I cooked the fava beans I bought on Saturday. I was wondering if that was fresh enough. But even bought three days before cooking, they were as sweet as could be. Of course, even at three days old they were much fresher than any beans I could buy in a store. They were picked the night before the morning I bought them, according to the farmer I bought them from. In the supermarket, the pods are invariably flabby, spotted with black, and obviously not very fresh. Could they be a week or even weeks old? My Greenmarket fava had, like the ones we ate at Seliano, firm, still-crisp pods, with no blemishes.

With peas, fava, and a bunch of freshly dug white onions in the refrigerator (spring onions, we sometimes call them), I couldn’t resist making vignarola, which is the Roman name for this mess of spring vegetables. In Sicily, the dish may be called frittedda, and have a typically exotic Sicilian edge – for instance, seasoning of fresh mint and ground nutmeg, and/or it might be made sweet and sour with vinegar and sugar. In Campania --Naples and Salerno, Avellino, Caserta and Benevento -- it is made more simply (as below and in Rome) and it might be called minestra di stagione, minestra of the season, or minestra primavera, spring minestra. Minestra are a category of dishes that are eaten as light meals unto themselves, or as a first course, instead of a first course of a soupier soup or a sauced pasta or risotto. I know this is confusing, but there is more: the category of minestra also covers pasta and bean dishes, and minestra can be dry or brothy. When brothy and poured over bread, they become zuppe. And, I need to add, there are probably a zillion dialectical names for the dish. (Minestrone, by the way, means big minestra.)

Besides peas, fava beans, and spring onions, vignarola usually has artichokes. But I didn’t have any. I did, however, have asparagus, so I used them. And although this dish doesn’t usually have potato, I had one I wanted to use up, also from the Greenmarket, and I felt it bulked up the dish a bit, making it more a whole meal. I was out of pancetta, which was just as well – I am trying to reduce – so I used olive oil only. Here’s the recipe, but don’t take it literally. This is a very flexible dish, and you can use more or less of anything in it. I didn’t have to say “this is fabulous” myself. My dinner companion did.

NOTE: I just got to the new Fairway supermarket in Redhook, here in Brooklyn. I have mixed feelings about the store (that’s another story), but one thing I love about Fairway is its own brand of Pugliese extra virgin olive oil. I have bought it before and I bought it again. The store carries other regional olive oils, but the Pugliese is particularly pleasing to my palate, and quite inexpensive at $12.95 a liter. It has a buttery quality – a soft fruitiness – when you cook with it. Raw, however, it has a slight peppery bite at the end, a peppery “finish,” a wine lover would say. It’s a quality I appreciate when I use it to dress vegetables or salad, or to drizzle over fish or soup, or toasted bread (bruschetta). I used it in the following recipe, and it definitely added its warm and comforting flavor.

Vignarola alla Schwartz

Serves 4 to 6

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 or 3 (depending on size) spring onions, thinly sliced (about 1½ cups or so)
2 cups shelled fava beans (about 2 pounds in the pod)
1 large (10-ounce) potato (not russet), cut into 1-inch cubes
3/4 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2½ cups shelled peas (about 2 pounds)
3 cups asparagus that have been cut into 1½ -inch pieces (about 1 pound whole stalks)

In a 10-inch wide, deep sauté pan or stove-top casserole, combine the oil and onion over medium heat. Cover the pan and let cook for about 8 minutes, until the onions are well wilted, but not browned or even golden.

Uncover the pan and add the fava beans and potato with enough water to cover them well. Season with salt and pepper. Let simmer briskly for 10 minutes.

Add the peas and enough additional water to keep them covered. Bring back to a simmer and simmer briskly another 10 minutes.

Add the asparagus and enough more water to cover them – barely or well: It is up to you how soupy you want the dish. Bring back to a simmer and simmer another 8 minutes, or until the fattest asparagus pieces are fully cooked but not altogether soft. None of the vegetables should be undercooked.

Taste for salt and pepper and correct seasoning if necessary. You can still add more water if you want a soupier dish, but it should be much more vegetables than broth.

Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

If you make it a little brothy, you can pour it over some pane biscotato, hard-tack bread. I buy mine at D. Collucio & Sons on 60th Street and 12th Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. But you can find this product – either white or whole wheat -- in many Italian markets, as well as in many Italian delicatessens, pork stores, etc. The type with a hole in the middle is usually called freselle. You can also serve the vegetables fleshed out with separately cooked macaroni, such as ditali or shells, ziti or penne, or any other small tubular or fanciful shape. Pasta mista, which is mixed pasta shapes, is another excellent choice – and very Neapolitan. Serve with or without grated pecorino, Parmigiano-Reggiano, or Grana Padano. I usually prefer it without cheese, but sometimes I am in a cheese mood and I use it.

HEADS UP
On July 6, 7, and 8 – Thursday, Friday and Saturday – I will be conducting one-hour workshops on Neapolitan and Campanian food at the offices of Regione Campania (Region of Campania) in Manhattan, 4 East 54th Street, off Fifth Avenue (enter through the Kiton store). There will be one session on Thursday at 3 p.m., and one session on Friday at noon. There will be two sessions on Saturday, the first at 10 a.m., the second at noon.

The workshops are absolutely free, but seating is limited. If you would like to attend, you must register with me, simply by giving me your name and email address, and how many people you will be. Please send that information to mavensmail@aol.com. Your name will be on a list at the door. No tickets are necessary. Copies of my book, "Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania" will be available for purchase and an autograph. I will post the entire event schedule soon. The theme of the workshops, in conjunction with the Fancy Food Show, the trade fair at the Javits Center, will be pasta, olive oil, and tomatoes. Of course, you’ll be able to taste some of the wonderful products imported from Campania.