In Time

The first time I tried to make Bolognese I nearly broke into tears. I was cooking for six: a few of them I knew well but the others weren't close friends of mine and the whole day at work I was going through ideas of what to cook in my head. By the time I left work I had gone through at least ten ideas in my mind, ruling out each for a different reason: this one would take too long, that one would make the whole apartment smell like fish, another needed so much cooling and assembling, and what if they didn't like sharp cheese? Then I got this lovely image in my head of serving a beautiful fresh pasta with one simple and gorgeous sauce, a bowl of arugula and crusty bread. Everyone would drink lots of red wine and we'd have cheese for dessert and it would be like one of those underexposed rustic Bon Appetit editorial spreads called Rustico Italiano. Two hours later, my whole life covered in flour, I realized I had no wine at home. My Bolognese, which I started making way too late, because I was compulsively changing outfits for a half hour while everything sat in grocery bags on my kitchen table, was runny and not deep red and fragrant and effortlessly brilliant like I had  imagined. to say I was flustered would be an understatement. I turned the burner way down and jumped in my car to go to the liquor store and when I got back I smelled the gas and realized that the wind had blown the flame out; ergo, sauce was soupy and apartment smelled like... gas. I frantically tried to get the gas smell out and i turned up the burner to help my godforsaken sauce along and while I emptied the dishwasher and tried to think of a record to put on, there was another smell: Burnt sauce.

This happened years ago.

Now I know that when sauce starts to burn you turn off the heat and transfer the sauce as swiftly as you can, and whatever you do, you do not stir the pot. Now I also know not to entertain people I don't really like. That night when I smelled the burning meat i quickly stirred, in disbelief, and mixed the black burnt meat into the sauce rendering it completely unsalvageable. I also overcooked my pasta and broke two wine glasses.

I didn't give up on bolognese, though. I tried again and again and I'm not exactly sure at what point over the years this happened, but I can do it now. Here is the thing with repetition: while you repeat that dish, time passes, and as time passes you learn so many things. I now know how to tell good meat from bad, I prefer smaller onions, I know when meat has browned enough, and I know exactly who to share my food with. These days I don't try to stage romantic magazine dinners anymore, but I do make big bowls of pasta and pots of Bolognese that I eat with my favorite person and we soak up the extra sauce with chunks of bread and do the crossword at the dinner table. We even dip right into the pot sometimes. I don't know if you have a Bolognese recipe that you like, I hope you do and I hope it took you many years to get to it, but if you need a little help along the way, here is mine. 

Bolognese Sauce

1 Pound ground beef (my butcher gives me what he calls lean but he winks when he says lean so It's probably medium)
2 smallish medium onions- chopped finely or grated 
2 cloves garlic (minced)
1 can best tomatoes (pulverized)
1/3 c tomato paste 
1/3 c red wine
1 c stock
dry basil and oregano
salt and pepper

Brown the meat in a few tablespoons of oil and season with salt, pepper, and herbs. Add onion and cook together until onion is translucent and everything is mixing up. Add tomato paste and cook for another few minutes. In go tomatoes with juice, garlic and wine.

Finally, add a cup of stock and one cup water and simmer covered for one hour. Taste and season as you go. Uncover and cook on low until you like the consistency. Serve to your favorite person, with your favorite pasta and grated parmigiana, and if it's terrible... try again.  

In Praise of Uncertainty

In quantum mechanics there is an assertion that the more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice-versa. Then there is the "observer effect", which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made, without affecting the systems. Now I know we don't live at the quantum level, we are bigger; but here in my tiny kitchen tonight, with the permeating smell of the yeasty dough that is fermenting in the corner, I find comfort in equations.

I know this will not be an easy topic to agree on. Some things exist in such an array of variations that it is almost futile to even aspire to agree, but in this case that may in fact be totally apropos. By "this case", of course, I mean the case of uncertainty. So much of what we do seems to be in an effort to eliminate as much uncertainty from our lives as possible. We have been taught to find comfort in knowing, in mastering the possibilities, in making informed and secure decisions. We have entire careers dedicated to managing risk, maximizing efficiency, narrowing possibilities. We have formulas, weapons, armies, guarantees. This particular result, or your money back. But here from my little kitchen in my little town I'm writing to you in defense of something that we may have over-antagonized.

Lets shrink back to the quantum level again, for the sake of argument. The observer's presence effects the system being observed, and therefore the system's parameters become impossible to determine with exactitude. Is this not lovely? The system is marked by its observer, and by extension, the observer by his system. Am I the only one who finds poetry in that? I see this everywhere. I water the seeds I've planted in my little herb box and notice the chives peaking out and not the sage. I kneed the same dough that refused to rise last week, and which today is elastic and fecund. I write pages of a thesis that may never be completed or defended, edit poems that may never be read by anyone, daydream about a life which I may never find, and amid all this uncertainty I find a hazy kind of comfort. If my life were to turn into an instructional manual, I would like the bi-line to read: how not to know and like it.

nota bene: this time someone dismisses the "watched kettle doesn't boil" theory as superstition, play the quantum card and cite Heisenberg's "observer effect." Here is an equation: ψ = Σa_nψ_n

An Elaborate Ciabatta Recipe that may or may not yield good results

1/2 tsp active dry yeast (not instant)

3tbsp warm milk

3/4 C Water (room temp please)

250g starter (at least 12 hours old)

300g flour (maybe more)

1/2 tbsp salt

cornmeal

This will take a while.

Stir the yeast into the milk in a mixer bowl, and let stand about 10 minutes. Add the water, oil, and biga (starter) and mix with a wooden spoon until blended. Mix the flour and salt, add to the bowl, and mix for 2 to 3 minutes with spoon, then flour your hand and knead for 4 minutes. Rest, have a sip of wine, and knead again (in the bowl or on a floured surface) for a few minutes adding as little flour as possible, until the dough is velvety, springy, and moist. This is an important step. This is where you get strength and porosity for your dough, so try to do this part well.

Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled, about 1 1/4 hours. The dough will be full of awesome big bubbles, very supple, and kind of sticky.

Cut the dough into 2 equal pieces on a well-floured surface. Roll each piece into a cylinder, then stretch each cylinder into a rectangle, pulling with your fingers to get each piece is longish and wideish.

Generously flour 2 pieces of parchment paper placed on upside-down baking sheets. Place each loaf, on a piece of parchment. Dimple the loaves vigorously with your fingertips or knuckles so that they won’t rise too much. The dough will look heavily pockmarked, but it is very resilient, so don’t worry your little heart. It will all be alright. Cover the loaves loosely with damp towels and let rise until puffy but not doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The loaves will look flat and stupid and unpromising, but don’t give up; they will become beautiful swans in the oven.

About 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 425ºF (218ºC) and slide your baking stones on the center rack to heat. If you have no stones, buy some. If you don’t want to, use a griddle, or… maybe something cast iron. I like cast iron for bread.

Before baking the ciabatta, sprinkle the stones with cornmeal. Carefully invert each loaf onto a stone. If the dough sticks a bit to the parchment, just gently work it free from the paper. If you need to, you can leave the paper and remove it 10 minutes later. Bake for a total of 20 to 25 minutes, spraying the oven with water in the first 10 minutes. Transfer the loaves to wire racks to cool.

Let me know how it went. Ciabatta is just as hard to bake as baguette, if you ask me… so if you pull this off I’m really proud of you.

Tired Hands. Open Heart. Monk.

I wish I could capture it in one sentence, but I'm afraid I'm not a skilled enough writer to depict the thoroughness of my exhaustion with just one string of words. I'd have to describe, for instance, my eyes' finding no help even in the carefully polished lenses of my glasses, my feet wanting only to be bare, my spine begging to opt out of the resistance game it has played against gravity for so many consecutive hours... and maybe if I went on like this for one more paragraph, detailing every inch of my tired self, you would understand why even after polishing a bowl of pasta, a block of gorgonzola, and and a glass of Malbec, I still lie awake now writing. There is a degree of hunger that brings the loss of appetite, and a kind of tired that knows no sleep.

So I listen to piano and think about the many trips on foot and bike that I made between home, university, office, library, studio, and bank today to do what needed to be done. The pile of undergraduate literature essays that I only made a bit smaller, the many e-mails that still need to be sorted and answered. Allison's attendance mark has to be changed. My thesis adviser needs his book back. I need to buy a red pen. Did I leave my office window open?

My mom called me when I was making dinner tonight and I put her on speaker, explaining that I needed both hands to roll out the pasta dough that I had just cut into pieces and floured on both sides. She told me she likes that I never complain about being tired. I had to wrap that conversation up, clean my flour-dusted kitchen, and heat up some of the tomato sauce I still had left over from two nights ago. But as set the table for one, facing the open window of my kitchen, and poured myself a glass of wine I realized something. Maybe things like a fresh bowl of pasta, an open window, and a glass of wine after a day like this are why I find no need to complain. Sure, I can think of a few things that could improve, but for now I've got Thelonious Monk on, and I'm gonna reread Rilke's Orpheus poems and see what happens...

Basic Pasta (from Gennaro Contaldo's Passione)
makes pasta for one or two

75g 00 Flour (I buy mine from the Italian supermarket)
25g semolina
1 good egg (really. I mean it.)

Mix flour and semolina on a clean work surface or in a big bowl, and make a well in the middle. Break eggs in the well. With a fork or with your hands, gradually mix the flour with the egg until everything is mixed and lumpy. Knead until you get a smooth, soft dough. Form into a ball, wrap and leave for about 30 minutes or until you are ready to use.

Divide dough into 2 portions and put through pasta machine starting at the highest setting. As the pasta gets thinner, turn down the settings until you get to the thickness you desire. Depending on the sauce you may want thinner or thicker pasta. I like 2 or 3 on the setting scale. Use as much flour as you need to keep your pasta from sticking. The flour will wash off when you cook the pasta.

Dress your pasta with whatever you've got handy. Wine. Eat.

Parkas and Pasta

How many times have we endured the Canadian winter, and it's still the hottest topic of conversation between November and April. Whether we're surprised that the cold has taken longer to set in, or how long it's lasted this year, or just talking about the bone-chilling, teeth-chattering, skin-cracking cold, we persist. So naturally the first thing I want to tell you about (and the next handful of posts are likely going to start similarly) is that it's freezing here! Now since carbohydrates and fat keep our bodies (and hearts) happy, I propose we eat pasta until April. Think about the variations of pasta and sauce that are available to amuse ourselves with while we wait for the blossoms to grace our snow covered trees...


Casarecco with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

(If you have a really good jar of roasted peppers, feel free to substitute)

250g dry Casarecco (or pasta of your choice)
2 Sweet Red Bell Peppers
1 clove Garlic
1 shallot
small bunch of fresh basil
olive oil
good pinch of salt
cracked black pepper
Parmigiano Regiano

Roast the red peppers, garlic, and Shallots (skin on) in the oven and peal when cool enough to handle. Blend/food process peppers, shallot, garlic, and basil with a pinch of good course salt and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Taste the sauce and tweak seasoning to taste, then transfer the sauce to a medium pan on medium-low heat.

In the mean time, boil the pasta in plenty of well-salted water (salt the water after it comes to a boil, as salty water takes longer to boil) until al dente and drain, keeping about 1/4c of the starchy pasta liquid.

Toss the pasta and 1/4c liquid in the pepper purée and mix gently until it all comes together and the pasta is well coated with sauce. Grate some Parmigiano right into the pan and move around gently to enrich the sauce.

Serve with additional grated cheese and a glass of hearty red wine and count down the days until picnic season with us!

Like Milk (only better)

One of the great things about coffee is how well it goes with cookies. It's so amazing to see how many of coffee's subtle undertones become apparent with a good pairing. Chocolate brings out the nuttiness of a medium-bodied brew that you never thought had so many layers in it. Biscotti is maybe the best cookies for dipping. It's not too sweet, so it won't compete with the rich taste of your coffee, its long and narrow shape is ideal for multiple-dipping, and it can be flavoured using a variety of nuts, dried fruits, and pantry staples like chocolate or toffee. Feel free to substitute almond syrup for vanilla to get a more bitter, grown-up biscotti. And remember, you can enjoy these with your evening liquor of preference as well.



Cherry Almond Biscotti

2 c all purpose flour
3/4c granulated sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
Pinch salt
1 c whole almonds
1/2 c dried cherries (or cranberries)
1 tbsp lemon/orange rind
3 eggs
1/2 c olive oil (use half canola if you'd like)
1/4 c orange juice

Preheat the oven to 325 and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, almonds and cherries in a large bowl and set aside.
In a medium bowl whisk together eggs and oil. Stir in the juice and rind, then mix.

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour the egg mixture in. Work the liquid into the dry ingredients slowly to form a dough. Knead for a minute or two (grease your hands if they're too sticky).

Divide the dough in half and form two logs no more than an inch in thickness. Brush with a beaten egg and sprinkle with salt and sugar. Bake for 30min or until dough is golden coloured. Don't worry if the logs cracks on top.

Cool for 10-20min. Take a sharp bread knife and cut the logs into 1/2inch slices (if you cut on an angle, you get taller biscotti). Now, bake your biscotti for another 10-15min on each side until golden. Cool before storing. Watch closely during the rebaking, because each oven is a little different.