Eggplant Parm

Things are quiet here at La Cucina Castano currently.  A busy travel weekend for hockey means no cooking, drinking or dancing.  We did have a bit of fun last weekend, however.  A little Friday night gathering with some of the crew.  Troy and Mick, Kristen, Janene, Mick and Jeff, Anita and Matt all stopped by.  Amy and Pat made their first appearance at La Cucina too.  Always glad to have them on board.  Kathi and Michael were sadly missed.  

Your host was drinking martinis (of course) and probably had one, or maybe a few, too many.  But with two days to recover, what the hell.  I was kicking it old school with brother-in-law Jeff.  Belvedere Intense vodka, Noilly Prat vermouth and blue cheese stuffed olives for garnish.  

The big hit seemed to be the eggplant parm.  I wanted to make something ahead of time that could just be popped in the oven or crockpot to minimize time spent slaving over the stove wihle guest were here.  This was more of a happy hour, certainly not a dinner party, but you gotta have food, right?  Eggplant parm, while easy as hell to make, is just a wee bit labor intensive.  You have to start with some nice firm eggplant.  Nothing soft.  Nice and firm.  Color should be a nice dark purple.  You rinse off the eggplant and then slice into thin slices - short way, not length wise, though I guess you could do length wise if so inspired.  Hopefully the eggplant won’t have a ton of seeds.  Most don’t these days.  Seeds are being bred out of eggplants and many today have hardly any.  Not like they will hurt you or anything.  It’s just that less seeds equal more eggplant flesh.  

After slicing the eggplant you dip each piece in an egg wash (beat some eggs in a bowl) - you should at least salt the egg wash but you can add other seasoning too.  After you take each piece out of the eggs let the excess egg drip off because the next step is coating the eggplant slice in seasoned bread crumbs.  Too much egg still on the eggplant slice will result in clumps of breadcrumb burning in the oil you will fry this in.  After coating the slice in breadcrumbs drop into a big pan of hot oil.  If you are lucky enough to have a deep fryer more power to you.  If not (and that’s most of us) fill a deep pan with oil and get as hot as you can.  I used Canola oil for this batch.

Drop each piece in the hot oil and fry until brown.  You will flip at least once to make sure each side gets fried evenly.  After each piece is fried - and you should be frying multiple slices at a time or it would take forever - drain on paper towels or a rock.  Eggplant’s soft flesh will absorb a lot of oil.  

Once you get it all fried let it cool for a bit.  You can even fry the eggplant a day or so ahead of time and keep in the fridge.  Now you get a pan, some tomato sauce (whatever kind floats your boat) and lots of mozzarella cheese.  Then you start layering from the bottom up - sauce, eggplant, sauce, cheese, eggplant, sauce, cheese, etc, etc, etc.  I prefer less sauce and more cheese, but that’s just me.  With each layer add some seasoning - whatever tickles you fancy - garlic powder, onion slat, garlic salt, italian blend mix, whatever you like.  After all the layering the top should be a ton of cheese.  I mean a ton.  Cover with foil and pop in the oven.  Temp isn’t that critical, you just want it heated all the way through and all the cheese melted.  Take the foil off when it’s almost done to get the cheese on top a little brown, but not too much.  

Of course I had to make a little pasta to go along with this so I ended up cooking while the guests were here.  Just something simple, though.  Penne pasta, a lot of extra virgin olive oil, a ton of garlic, a little bit of crushed red pepper, some plum tomatoes (crushed by hand), a little bit of clam stock and some chopped black olives.  Super simple and easy.  

Well, it will be a few weeks before the next shindig here in the Brown Kitchen.  So until then, eat and drink well, sing and laugh often, dance the night away and have fun!

Cheers!

Proper Proportions, Please

As I sit here and enjoy a Bombay Sapphire East martini I am thinking of the currently outdated concept of the ‘Three Martini Lunch’.  This was something that was in vogue for a long time but fell out of favor in the 1970’s and is pretty much unheard of today.  The idea was that business lunches between executives would be leisurely affairs that would take the better part of an afternoon while consuming at least three martinis.  This time would allow deals to be made while executives could have indulgent lunches they could write off as business expenses.  

My question is how could any person, let alone a business executive, have three martinis and still function in a professional manner.  One answer is maybe they didn’t act in a professional manner.  However, I think the answer may lie in a different direction.  

I have quite a large collection of martini glasses.  Most of them are similar to what you might find in any bar or store.  They are big.  We’re talking glasses that hold about 6 -8 oz of martini.  Mind you, a martini is pure booze.  No mixer, no juice, no ice in that glass.  Just booze.  Three martinis at 6 - 8 oz each is a pretty hefty haul of alcohol.  You have a tiny bit of lower proof vermouth and then the rest is all high octane alcohol - I’m not talking about frou frou martinis here, by the way, I’m talking about a real martini.    If you’re drinking a traditional gin martini, you’re most likely looking at 96 proof.  Over 20 ounces of 96 proof alcohol over the course of a lunch, even a leisurely lunch, and you’re going to be feeling no pain.  

And that is where the modern martini glass and idea of portion control comes in.  I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but I’m pretty sure the martini glasses in days of yore were not the behemoths they are today.  They are probably more similar to what I am drinking my martinis out of tonight - a glass that comfortably holds about 3 - 4 oz of cocktail.  There are several positives to having this size of a glass.   One is that the drink is small enough that it should stay cold and not get all warm and room temperature on you by the time you are swilling the last drops.   Secondly, you can have two martinis and still function in a somewhat responsible manner.   I have always believed that two martinis is just about right - it means relaxing and unwinding, either after a hard day or before a good meal.  Three or more martinis means you just want to get really drunk - not that there is anything wrong with that.  Just sayin’.

People tend eat whatever is on their plate.  The brain is hardwired to finish the meal.  That is why portion control helps in weight loss.  Big plates, big bellies.  Small plates, healthy people.  I think the same applies to cocktails.  Can I have three 4 oz martinis and feel as satisfied as if I had three 8 oz martinis?  I think so.   

So what’s the motto of this story?  In the words of the immortal Steve Martin - Let’s Get Small.  Keep the drinks reasonably sized and cold.  You’ll feel better in the morning.  And if you really, really want to get shit-faced, just make twice as many.  

Cheers!

When God Give You Lemons, Enjoy!

Things have been quiet here in The Brown Kitchen lately.  Between post holiday recuperation and a busy travel schedule for hockey this month there hasn’t been any entertaining, or kitchen dancing, going on.  Things will get cranking back up here in the next few months but in the meantime here’s a simple dish I love making that you may want to try - Lemon Puttanesca.  

I love pasta and I love simple sauces, the kind I can make while the water is boiling and the pasta is cooking.  Puttanesca fits the bill perfectly.  Spaghetti alla Puttanesca (which translate’s as ‘Whore’s Spaghetti’) is an earthy, salty dish that is hearty and easy to make.  It’s made with olives, capers, anchovies and crushed tomatoes.  Here’s a recipe if you want to try it the traditional way (which I whole heartedly encourage you to do) - 

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/recipe-of-the-day-pasta-puttanesca/ 

While I have made puttanesca many times and love it for it’s taste and simplicity, I often make it with lemons instead of tomatoes.  I’m crazy about lemons and will use any excuse I can to cook with them.  I love the bright flavor and acidity they bring to dishes.  I also use linguine or fettucine instead of spaghetti.  Pasta is all about texture and shape.  I’ve never been a big fan of spaghetti, preferring the flatter shape of linguine to the rounder shape of spaghetti, but use whatever pasta you prefer!

LEMON PUTTANESCA

While you’re water is boiling and cooking pour yourself a glass of wine and make the sauce - 

Saute chopped or crushed garlic and some crushed red pepper in some good olive oil.  In the meantime drain some capers and chop up some kalamata olives - you can use other types of black olives if you want, I just prefer the taste and saltiness of the kalamatas.  Once the oil gets hot and the garlic starts to simmer add some flat anchovy fillets.  You want to add them well before the garlic gets going good - the key is to have them break up and dissolve in the hot oil, but you want them to do so before the garlic would burn.  Once the garlic is going good and the anchovies are dissolving add the capers and chopped olives.  Let this go for a bit.  Normally you would season here but with this dish I don’t - between the anchovies, capers and olives there are so many salty ingredients I often don’t add any salt at all.  If I do it’s at the very end.  Once everything in the pan is cooking away nicely add some fresh squeezed lemon juice and a splash of dry white wine (which you hopefully are already enjoying as you stand at the stove cooking).  You also want to take some of the lemon and grate lemon zest from the rind into the dish.  Let this bubble away and simmer down as the pasta finishes cooking.  When the pasta is done drain it, pour the sauce over, add some freshly chopped basil, season if needed and serve with lots of freshly grated cheese and some good crusty bread.  Wash it all down with the dry white wine you have been drinking - I prefer a sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio.

Cheers!  

PS - Forgive me if I don’t give you any measurements of how much of each ingredient to add.  I don’t ever measure when cooking unless absolutely necessary.  I almost never make a dish exactly the same way twice as a result, but I find it’s more fun to go with the flow and wing it each time, maybe change things up as the feeling strikes me during the cooking process.  

The Best Laid Plans

The best laid schemes of mice and men often go astray.  

That’s a translation of the opening lines of the Robert Burns poem ‘To A Mouse’.  

Unfortunately, the best laid plans to bring in the 2013 along with ‘the crew’ here at La Cucina Castano were waylaid by a nasty little stomach virus that swept through our household and caused us to cancel the New Year’s Eve festivities last night.  Therefore I cannot regale you with tales of food, cocktails and kitchen dancing on this first day of January.  

But while 2013 didn’t get off to the start we had hoped for, there will be plenty of good times ahead in the coming year, which will be documented here on these pages so check back often.  

Have a healthy and happy new year and try to follow these simples rules:

Always eat and drink well

Sing like no one is listening

Dance like no one is watching

Life is too short, enjoy it while you can.

Ciao,

Glenn

Bloody Good

There’s nothing like the comfort of home and a delicious cocktail to end a week from hell at work.  My friend Steve had told me about the blood orange martinis he made so I decided to try his recipe this past Friday.  Two parts orange vodka, one part blood orange juice, 1/2 part Grand Marnier and some blood orange bitters.  Not half bad.  I’ll have to fiddle with the proportions a bit, I think, but a promising start to the weekend.  

Of course I worked late Friday and missed the annual Christmas week get together with the crew at Theo’s, but Kathi, Michael and Kristen came over to La Cucina afterwards and kept the party going.  Needless to say some very loud kitchen singing ensued.   We had the Ion cranking.  Michael, the technical advisor to La Cucina Castano, bought a late Christmas gift - a set of two wireless omnidirectional microphones to replace the one corded microphone that came with the Ion speaker.  Tested them out today and they work like a charm.  They will be put to good use Monday night as we host the first New Year’s Eve party in The Brown Kitchen.  La Cucina Castano will be rocking with the crew all here.  It’s going to be a fun time!  

A Little Something From The Past

The Brown Kitchen has been rocking through the holidays, with lots of food, fun and friends.  I just haven’t had time to get it all down yet to share with you so here’s one of my blog posts from saxophotography.com (yeah, I know, it has nothing to do with photography) to get you through the holidays.  

Cooking is like photography in a lot of ways, and very different in at least one important way.  I’ll explain that in more detail in my next blog post.  Let’s just say I like to cook.  I love to cook pasta.  I LOVE linguine with clam sauce.  White clam sauce.  Not the red version.  Don’t know who ever  thought that up but ..... never mind.  I give Italian restaurants the Clam Sauce Test.  Whenever I try a new Italian restaurant I order linguine with clam sauce (if they have it on the menu - most do).  If it’s good, I might go back and try other dishes (maybe ... maybe I just keep on ordering the clam sauce).  If they can’t make something as simple as linguine with clam sauce properly, well, no use going back and trying anything else.  Worst I ever had was at Original Joe’s in San Jose California.  Best I ever had - in a restaurant - was at Mama Riso’s in Lake George NY.  I had to clarify that last statement a bit because the absolute best clam sauce I ever tasted was cooked in my own kitchen by my own hands.  I don’t mean to be immodest but I’ve got this down cold.  People who wouldn’t touch a clam with a ten foot pole rave about my clam sauce.  The picture above is the stove at the beach house in OBX we go to each year.  I cook Lw/CS every year.  This past year it was “only” six pounds.  Didn’t want too many leftovers!  Many have asked for the recipe so here goes:

I base this on 1 lb of pasta.  If you need more or less, you can do the math.  Also, I don’t really measure anything when I cook so you’ll have to experiment a bit to get it to your own individual liking.    

Ingredients

1 lb linguine - my favorite for this dish is Barilla Linguine Fini, if I can find it.  

Garlic, lots and lots of garlic, chopped up

Olive Oil - use extra virgin, always

Crushed red pepper

Fresh Basil (I use a whole bunch) - see step 7

Butter

Lemon juice - please squeeze it fresh, don’t use the stuff from concentrate

White wine, something dry - Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc.  

Sea Salt.  

4 6-7 oz cans of minced or chopped clams, unless you can find a big can of them - open them, drain and save the clam juice in a bowl before you start cooking.  

1 bottle of clam juice.

Fresh Clams - I prefer Golden Necks.  They are a little bigger and beefier than little necks and add a little color to the dish, but any are fine as long as they are not too big and chewy.  Rinse them before adding to the sauce at the end.  

1. boil your water and cook your pasta however you like it.  I’m not a huge fan of al dente - I like my pasta a little softer.  Just bear in mind that as the pasta sits in the sauce after it’s cooked it will absorb the sauce and become softer.  Okay, that’s the easy part.
2. While all that is going on, or even prior, in a big pan saute garlic in olive oil with some crushed red pepper (use your judgement there, just a few flakes or a lot more, depends on how much heat you like, I like a little kick in mine).  Here’s a little trick I use - I buy peeled garlic, but not that shit you get in the supermarket.  I get it at the farmer’s market and then freeze it.  When I need it, I take out some frozen cloves and chop them up with a nut chopper - the kind with the zig-zag blade that you pound on the handle.  Since the garlic is frozen before cooking it takes a lot longer to burn and gives you a little leeway there. Add a little butter after a few minutes.   
3. Once the garlic is nice and sautéed (in other words, before it burns) add lemon juice (about one lemon’s worth) and some white wine - maybe the equivalent of what you would pour for a glass.  Preferably the wine you’re drinking while you cook, unless you are like me and have a martini while slaving over the stove.  
4. Let that simmer down and reduce for a bit.  Once it starts to get a little thicker add the minced clams, which you should have already drained all the clam juice from.  At this point add some salt to the dish - preferably sea salt from a grinder (you never want to add all your salt at the finish of cooking - add some salt at each step and taste to make sure you don’t over salt.  You know why restaurant food from great chefs usually tastes better then your food?  Because they know how to use salt.  It’s a skill worth learning).  Cover and let it go for a while.  Have a drink.  
5. After about 5 minutes or so, add the bottle of clam juice and all the juice you drained from the cans of minced clams. Let that bubble away.  Maybe add a little more salt (taste, always taste while you’re cooking).   Drink some more.  
6. So now you’re pasta is cooking and your sauce is bubbling away.  You now want to add your rinsed clams to your sauce and cover.  Eventually the clams will open and all the wonderful liquor from the clams will mix in with the sauce.  Once the clams all open your sauce is done.  Hopefully this is about the time your pasta is cooked.  Timing is key is here.  You don’t want the pasta to get too soft waiting for all the clams to open so you are better off starting the sauce first, get that going and then start cooking the linguine.  You can add the clams when there us about 5 minutes left for the pasta to cook.  
7. Once your sauce is done and the clams have all opened and your pasta is done we’re almost there.  Drain the pasta and pour into a big bowl.  At this point you want to add the basil.  I haven’t talked about the basil yet but it is the one ingredient that will make the dish.  You want to use fresh basil.  You can rough chop it or julienne it.  What I like to do is get a fresh bunch - you can find it in just about any supermarket these days or at your local farmer’s market.  I pick all the leaves and put them in a ziploc baggie, squeeze the air out and then throw it in the freezer.  After the basil leaves have frozen, take the bag and mash it up with your hands.  The frozen basil leaves will break into a million little pieces, which when added to a dish will diffuse throughout your dish.  Put it back into the freezer until you’re ready to use.  After you dump the pasta into a bowl add the fresh basil (it’s okay if it is still frozen if you’ve taken my advice) then pour the sauce on top.  Mix good and you’re ready to go.    

Good white wine and fresh baguette bread are essential accompaniments.  Don’t forget to drink some wine or have a cocktail while you’re cooking.  Too many people stress about cooking, especially when cooking for friends or a dinner party.  Don’t be that person.  Cooking should be fun and relaxing.  Always have some music paying when you cook too.  It relaxes and sets the tone.  I prefer either Tony Bennett or John Coltrane but play whatever gets you in a creative groove.      

Well, now you’e done.  Enjoy you’re meal with family or friends.  Relax and have fun .... and enjoy the compliments on you’re fabulous cooking!

Bon Apetit!

Christmas Party

Today is the Winter Solstice.  And if the Mayans were wrong and the world doesn’t end some time today it will also be the first Christmas Party here at La Cucina Castano.   Our annual party started as a small gathering of friends on Christmas Eve and hasn’t changed all that much through the years except it’s not on Christmas Eve anymore, a few more friends have been added along the way along with a few more kids.  Always a great time.   

The idea with hosting a party is to not jump through too many culinary hoops.  Keep it simple, have plenty of food and have dishes you can prepare ahead of time so you can kick back and relax when the guests arrive.  This is a different philosophy than having a few guests over for a dinner party, where you want to experiment and stretch your culinary skills and are often cooking away as your guests enjoy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails.

The menu tonight will be Italian Mac ‘n Cheese (I’ll give out that recipe one of these days soon), gumbo and sausage & peppers.  Plenty of fun hors d’oeuvres, too, along with sandwiches and pretzels and such.  The fridge is stocked with beer and the bar is filled with all the necessary cocktail ingredients. I haven’t decided what my beverage of choice will be tonight, though after my friend Steve told me about the Blood Orange martinis he made last weekend I found some blood orange juice while shopping so I may have to give that a try.

Well, time to start prepping so I can get all this food preparation out of the way and get ready to spend a fun evening with friends.  Enjoy all your holiday festivities and let’s hope those Mayans were wrong and we make it through the day so we can party tonight.

Cheers!