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11/09/2007 Archived Entry: "Home at Last"

Whew!

I haven’t stopped since I got home last Tuesday night at 1 a.m., later than I would have liked because of airline problems. So what else is new? I did, however, get home a day earlier than expected. The Seabourn Pride was about to cross paths with hurricane Noel, which was heading for the Bahamas, as were we, so Port Canaveral, Florida, was the Pride’s last port of the cruise.

Last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, besides unpacking and taking care of mundane household chores, I had quite a bit of mail, bill-paying, and desk work to catch up on. Then Saturday, I taught at the Loaves and Fishes cooking school in Garden City, Long Island. That was a wonderful experience. School manager Gerard Molloy was perfectly organized for me, except that he couldn’t find paccheri, huge pasta tubes that are a special Neapolitan shape.

I went across the street to the Kings supermarket on Franklin Ave. to buy a substitute shape – rigatoni was my choice to go with a sauce of pumpkin and sausage-- and discovered something very interesting. DeCecco, an excellent brand of pasta from Abruzzo, was $2 and a few cents a pound –fair enough -- Rao’s rigatoni, without any indication on the label about where it was made, was something like $4.59 a pound, and Colavita, a brand made in Molise, which is what I bought, was $1.59 a pound. I have to say that the Rao’s pasta is a total rip-off. Without even tasting it I can tell you it could in no way be three times superior to Colavita; not even twice, not even equal. The rigatoni tubes were all different lengths, an indication of lesser quality, of careless manufacture. I’d bet they were made in Turkey, where they make good pasta by the way, but not these.

Molise, I would like you to know, is the region that is just north of Puglia and northeast of Campania. It has an Adriatic coastline, behind which is a mountainous and rather under-populated interior. Campobasso and Isernia are the two main inland cities. Termoli, on the coast, is the most prosperous town. I have been exploring Molise over the last two years because I am deeming it southern Italy for the purposes of my next book. Some people will tell you that Molise is central Italy. It did, indeed, used to be one big region with Abruzzo, which is definitely central. But they were separated in 1963, and I think one reason that the separation works is that Molise has a more southern attitude – well, ask the Molisani as I have, and you’ll find they think of themselves as southern. Whatever … the Colavita pasta from Molise, a region famous for its pasta and from whence the famous olive oil comes, too, was excellent, as well as the best priced.

My assistants at Loaves and Fishes in Garden City, Joan, Michael, and Hillary, actually assisted, not hindered, as sometimes happens. In fact, there was no way I could have gotten the food out to 44 people without the help of these dedicated people, especially Joan, who has professional culinary skills, and seems to keep calm under all circumstances, while I tend to get hysterical.

The audience – well, what can I say about my audience. They are loving and attentive and so complimentary it is embarrassing, and very gratifying. In addition, Loaves and Fishes is a gorgeous place to work, and, I think, a dream place to attend a class. The demonstration classes, like mine, are in an amphitheater with the seats all graded down to the demo kitchen. These days they call this stadium seating. I like to feel it is more ancient Roman than Cineplex.

On Saturday, I cooked and talked southern Italian food – crostini with sausage and herbs, onion frittata, pasta with pumpkin; the pumpkin with sausage for the aforementioned rigatoni, plus stracetti, which are “rags” of briefly sautéed thin-sliced beef, in this case on a bed of arugula with “scales” of Parmigiano-Reggiano. For dessert, we had a ricotta and almond Bavarian cream cake. I demonstrated the making of it, but fortunately, Gerard, who is a professional pastry chef as well as the cooking school manager, made individual Bavarians for everyone.

These classes are really catering. With 44 people to feed, even small tasting portions, I prepped from 11:30 a.m. until 2, then talked and cooked until 6, although we had a 40-minute shopping break during which I sat (fortunately) and signed copies of Naples at Table and New York City Food

I got home at 8, ate a salami sandwich (on whole-grain bread with deli mustard, if you have to know) and went to bed with Law & Order. My next session at Loaves and Fishes in Garden City will be Saturday, April 12, at which time Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited will be out. The class will be based on that.

On Sunday, I felt a serious need for down time. I tried to do nothing, but I have trouble doing nothing. I read the New York Times for as long as I could, but the news, even the feature stories, were either too distressing/depressing or too annoying. I tried cleaning the house. It is in need of major attention after my being away for so long, but cleaning felt too much like work. Finally, the day was almost over and some friends came by to reconnect and to eat my endless Baltimore salami.

I didn’t have the energy for any real entertaining. These were my nearest and dearest so I didn’t feel I even needed to set the dining room table. We ate on our laps in the living room. I put a tablecloth on the coffee table and just plopped everything down. Besides the salami, I bought Karl Ehmer’s natural skin bologna at the fancy food store, Blue Apron, on Union St. near Seventh Ave. (that’s Park Slope, in case you forgot where I live). This is the best bologna ever. If you have a Karl Ehmer pork store near you, try it. I love Blue Apron. They have a great cheese selection, a great selection of salumi – that’s Italian for cured meats – and shelves full of fancy groceries, most of which I don’t buy but I like to look at. Best of all, they have a great collection of breads from some of the best bakeries in New York City – Royal Crown, Sullivan Street, Amy’s, and many more.

I am not eating out much these days. I have a lot of southern Italian cooking to do for the book I am working on. I baked several items and made a lamb stew this week. Plus, for diet reasons, it is so much better to eat at home than to eat in restaurants. Still, twice this week I went to Shelly’s Tradizionale at 41 W. 57th St. I hosted a dinner at Shelly’s on Wednesday, then returned on Thursday with an old friend. My favorite dishes are the composed salad of crab and shrimp with frisé, now only on the lunch menu, and the Kamachi Sicilian style, which is the Yellowtail that is mainly featured in sushi bars, although I think it is much better cooked than raw. At Shelly’s, it is sautéed and served with a very crisp skin, on two slices of deliciously olive-oily grilled eggplant, with sautéed sweet peppers, bits of black olive, and dabs of basil oil. At the bar at the front of the house, they serve homemade potato chips, breaded and fried olives (another favorite item), fried shrimp balls (yet another favorite), which are actually fried béchamel dotted with shrimp, and other “cicchetti,” as they are calling them. That’s a Venetian word for bar snacks. For the price of a drink, you can sample some of these. If you have dinner, don’t miss the heap of chocolate mousse for dessert, or, if you are not a fish lover, Shelly’s restaurants always have excellent beef. The sliced flat-iron steak on gorgonzola crostini with sautéed onions would be my choice at La Tradizionale. And, red wine lovers, look at the back of the menu. It has a “cheat sheet” to help you pair red wines with the featured fish dishes.