Pantry Pasta

You may not have tomatoes in your empty fridge, but if you did, you’d want these za’atar roasted bad boys alongside this pasta.

You know how when you’re leaving for a long trip somewhere you have to clean out you fridge of all the stuff that will go south in a big way while you’re gone? Or if you’re like me, you forget to, and come back to unrecognizable primordial slime on the bottom of your vegetable drawer?

And now it’s dark and you’re hungry and all the stores are closed and the night vultures are circling?

I keep my pantry stocked for just such occasions. Capers and lemons last for ages in the refrigerator, and then you open your pantry for some pasta and this one…little…magical ingredient.

Tuna.

“The fuck you say?” you exclaim.

Not just any tuna. Tuna Ventresca - tuna belly packed in olive oil by Italians who give a rip about food. Yes, my friends. This is fancy-schmancy in a can. Or as my daughter says, “This is The Shit.”

All you need for a fine meal after a long day of travel.

You crack that can or jar, boil your pasta, add to a pan of warming garlic and olive oil, throw in capers, lemon zest, and that tuna. You can riff on this all day long, too. Some onion. The last shallot left from the fuck-ton you bought that one time because I made you. (Not sorry.) Or take out the capers and throw in some sun-dried tomatoes or roasted red pepper. Or something else languishing at the back of your pantry. Why not? You may have misses as well as hits, but you’re hungry, so who the fuck cares?

You’ve got food in your belly and you are safe from the night vultures. You live happily ever after, The End.

I used fresh parsley, which would be absent form your post-vacation fridge. Full disclosure: I make this recipe all the time, even when I have a full produce drawer. It’s that good.

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Shit You Need

1. 375 grams of dried linguini or non-metric equivalent

2. 2 tablespoons olive oil

3. 7 ounces tuna ventresca in olive oil

4. 3 cloves of garlic, sliced

5. 2 tablespoons salted capers, salt brushed or briefly rinsed off, or 3 tablespoons capers in brine, drained.

   Salted capers are a bit more strongly flavored, and very salty, so you need less. You will also need to shake off as much salt as possible before adding them to the dish or it will be over-seasoned. Or you can use capers in brine - just add a bit more and drain the brine first.

6. the juice and zest of one lemon

7. 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

8. 3 tablespoons minced fresh Italian parsley, if you have it

9. kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

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Keep Calm and justeffingcook

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

2. While the water is heating, add olive oil, garlic and capers to a large skillet and let warm on low heat. Add a few cracks of black pepper, and if using brined capers, a bit of salt.

3. Boil the pasta 2 minutes less than the directions specify. It will finish cooking in the skillet.

4. Transfer the pasta to the skillet using tongs - don’t drain it, let plenty of pasta water come along for the ride! Turn up the heat and bring to a simmer for 2 minutes - add extra pasta water if necessary.

5. Add lemon juice and zest and stir to combine. Add cold butter and stir in to thicken sauce.

6. Taste and adjust seasonings, then add chopped parsley and serve.

Santa Fe Chicken Soup

It may not cure Covid-19, but it sure as shit tastes great.

This dish is based on a Southwestern soup known as a cocido. Cocido means “boiled”, so as you can imagine there are countless versions of “cocido” across the Spanish-speaking countries of the Old and New worlds.

In New Mexico, it means green chile stew.

My usual version of green chile stew includes no potatoes, just onion, chiles, pork and spices. There really is no reason to fuck with it. I mean, it’s so damned delicious!

But, just hypothetically, let’s say someone you know and love has a bad virus and feels like 5 pounds of shit in a 2-pound bag. And you think, “I need to make some chicken soup for him.” Let’s say you don’t have those thick egg noodles you would want to use. But you do have potatoes. And some green chiles in your freezer. And you remember that comforting bowl of green chile stew, and you think, “Why not green chile chicken soup?”

And what if, hypothetically speaking, right next to those green chiles in your freezer was a bag of bacon ends?

Hot damn and hold the phone. Now you’re on to something. Hypothetically speaking.

Chicken soup, yes. But spicy, and smoky, and creamy.

Just what the doctor (me!) ordered.

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Shit You Need

For the chicken:

1. One whole roasting chicken, spatchcocked. Why spatchcocked? Easier to cook, for one, but mostly it gives you the opportunity to say “spatchcocked” a lot. Another option is to roast a regular chicken like this or this. Yet a third option is to pick up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store - and it’ll be our little secret, okay?

2. Bacon ends from below

3. Two shallots and three cloves garlic, roughly chopped

4. 1/2 cup white wine

5. Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

He got spatchcocked. That poor, delicious bastard.

For the soup:

1. 4 slices thick-cut bacon, one inch cut from each end and reserved, the rest chopped

2. 1 medium onion, diced

3. 3 cloves garlic, minced

4. 1 teaspoon dried oregano ( if you have fresh, use it! You’ll need about a tablespoon of it, minced)

5. 1 teaspoon ground coriander. Extra points if you have whole coriander: toast it in a small pan, then get your mortar and pestle out and grind the shit out of it. Very therapeutic.

6. 4 cups chicken stock

7. 3 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and sliced

8. 1 cup roasted green chiles, chopped

9. 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

10. 1/4 cup heavy cream, creme fraîche, sour cream, or Mexican crema. Yay for options!

11. Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

12. Optional garnishes: minced onion, more fresh cilantro, and/or a wedge of lime to squeeze on top.

Grinding toasted coriander seeds.

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Keep Calm and justeffingcook

Make the chicken:

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Dry the chicken all over. Lift the skin overlying the breasts and lay the bacon ends between the skin and meat

3. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper

4. Scatter garlic and shallots in the bottom of a baking dish just large enough to fit the chicken. Place the chicken on top.

5. Roast for 30 min, uncovered. Halfway through, pour the wine in the pan (not over the chicken) and roast another 10 to 15 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast registers 155 degrees.

6. Remove from oven, let rest under foil until cool enough to handle, remove the meat, shred, and set aside.

While the chicken is cooling, start the soup:

1. In a Dutch oven over medium heat, cook the bacon until most of the fat renders and the bacon begins to brown.

2. Add the onion, garlic, oregano and coriander. Add a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper. Cook until the onion and garlic soften and become translucent, 5-10 min. People driving by your house will stop and ask what you are cooking and if they can please have some.

3. Add the stock, green chile, and potatoes and simmer 45 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender but not falling apart. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

4. Stir in the chicken and heat through.

5. Remove from the heat, add the creamy compound of choice and combine. Stir in the cilantro.

6. Serve in a comfy bowl with optional garnishes alongside. Eat while wearing pajamas or a bathrobe. Extra points for bunny slippers.

Gianduja

You got hazelnuts in my chocolate! You got chocolate in my hazelnuts! Hmmm… Two great tastes that taste great together.

If you know nothing about this historical confection, then you clearly haven’t read my post on gianduja ice cream. Go check it out. I’ll wait.

Back already? Great.

You can buy gianduja from specialty stores online. But you’ll typically only find large quantities, and maybe you don’t want 5 pounds of it. Maybe you just need a little to make some slammin’ ice cream. It’s only chocolate and sugar and hazelnuts, after all. Can’t you just make it yourself right in the comfort of your own chef’s kitchen? You sure can.

And in the interest of scientific exploration and completeness, I shall.

There are two methods described by Greweling in Chocolates and Confections. One involving commercially available praline paste and the other involving simple hazelnuts and sugar.

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Method one: Praline paste plus chocolate

Commercial praline paste.

Praline paste is typically 50% roasted hazelnuts and 50% sugar. It’s roasty and toasty and caramel-ly. Add two parts praline paste to one part melted chocolate, and you have 1:1:1 gianduja.

I found a place that sold Callebaut praline paste in 8 ounce portions. So all I needed to do was melt 4 ounces of the chocolate of my choice (I used bittersweet) and combine them. Very, very easy.

Except then I attempted to temper that mixture. Not so easy. How about I talk about that later? For now let’s pretend that I didn’t have to do that and move on.

I piped it into little bars using a silicone mold and let it set at room temperature.

Yay! Little bars of gianduja!

Piping into silicone molds. Handy hint: place the mold on a cookie sheet, and then tap it on the counter to level the candy and work out the air.

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Method two: Hazelnuts plus sugar plus chocolate

Start with oven toasted hazelnuts - rub off the skins (or buy them already skinned!) and throw in a food processor with 25% the final weight of confectioner’s sugar until the nuts release their oil and become a smooth liquid the consistency of heavy cream. Add melted chocolate and confectioner’s sugar so that the final mix is 1:1:1 hazelnuts:sugar:chocolate by weight.

I used 4 ounces toasted hazelnuts, 4 ounces confectioner’s sugar, and 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate. I ground the hazelnuts with one ounce of sugar. The remaining 3 ounces were added at the end along with the melted chocolate.

As you grind the nuts, they will go through various stages. You will need to stop several times along the way to scrape the bottom of the mixing bowl. That way, you ensure that everything is going along for the ride.

After 2 minutes of processing

Nut butter stage

Thinking about stopping here? Don’t.

This is what you need. Truly liquefied hazelnuts.

Once you release all the oils in the hazelnuts and achieve the final liquidy texture, add the melted chocolate and the rest of the sugar and pulse to combine.

Then you can pipe it into those little silicone molds, or into one big block, or directly into your mouth. Don’t pretend like you’ve never done that. We all know better.

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What was that bullshit about tempering? And WTF is tempering anyway?

If you don’t what to get deep in the weeds, you can skip this part. If you’re into a little off-road adventure, follow me.

When chocolate solidifies, its fats crystallize. Those crystals can take several forms - six to be exact - and only two of them are stable. If you have unstable crystals in your solid chocolate, the chocolate looks dull, doesn’t have the same “snap”, and is subject to bloom, which is sort of like psoriasis for chocolate.

Tempering is the process that encourages the right crystals to seed themselves. It usually involves cooling the chocolate while agitating it so that the larger crystals don’t have a chance to form.

Gianduja for confections typically goes through a tempering process. Not necessary if you are only going to use it for ice cream or, say, shoveling directly into your face. Which is what I hope you are going to do with it, because tempering it is a lot more difficult than tempering plain chocolate.

Why? Because gianduja is a mix of both cocoa butter and hazelnut fats. Which is a eutectic mixture. Meaning that it crystalizes and melts at a lower temperature. Meaning close to room temperature. Meaning pain in the ass.

I did my best to temper both my batches. I did all the sliding and scooping over a marble slab - which isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds. And I probably helped it set, but in the end it wasn’t about to win any beauty contests.

What does this all mean for you? Hopefully nothing. Like I said, for ice cream (or face shoveling) slap that shit together and Bob’s your uncle!

But if you want to make gorgeous artisan confections: 1. Start with tempered chocolate and don’t overheat it during the melting process 2. Crack an actual book on the subject, because I am not the expert you need. Bitch, please.

The Comparison:

Once my mixtures were finished and pseudo tempered and hardened into little bricks, I compared them side by side.

On the left, gianduja made with commercial praline paste. On the right, the homemade version.

The gianduja made from commercial praline paste was very smooth, sweet, and caramelly. The one I made with home-roasted hazelnuts was a little less sweet and had a very fresh roasted-nut aroma and taste. It had just the teensiest grittiness in the texture, which wasn’t at all unpleasant. Both were great, but I actually preferred the taste of the homemade version, as did my taster-dude.

The Bottom Line:

You don’t need to buy praline paste. If you have it anyway, great. Use it. But otherwise, get some high-quality blanched hazelnuts and roast them at home and use the food processor method. You can control everything - make it a little less sweet, change up the chocolate - milk, dark, bittersweet, and even change the type of nuts you use. Almonds, pistachios, just about all the nuts you can name.

It will be delicious.

And please, please, please…let me know how it turns out. I get lonely all by myself here in Blog Land.

Gianduja Ice Cream

Gianduja is Italian for “Holy Mother of God this tastes so amazing it has to be immoral.”

The real meaning isn’t actually that far off.

Gianduja is the name of a character originally created by a Genovese puppeteer, that subsequently became widely used in the Italian Commedia del’arte. This form of theater was popular from the 16th to 18th centuries, and featured stock characters in various scenarios, sort of like an old-timey sit-com. Gianduja means “John of the jug”. Fitting, as he loved his drinking. And eating. And pretty women.

Damn-the-consequences hedonism. Just like this ice cream.

Gianduja became the official carnival mask of Turin, the same city where an enterprising chocolatier mixed ground hazelnuts into his chocolate to extend his stock when cocoa supplies were short (Thanks, Napoleon!) and discovered it was fucking delicious. He named this confection Gianduja in honor of his city.

Two hundred years later, despite millions of dollars of research, scientists have been unable to determine just why it is so damn delicious. Some things are best left as mysteries, no?

John of the Jug. And Johnny of the Jug? And… their dog, I guess?

In any case, I love this stuff, so I made it into ice cream.

I will pause here for a cookbook recommendation. Chocolates and Confections by Peter Greweling, CMB, published by The Culinary Institute of America. This book is 1. gorgeous, 2. comprehensive as pertains to all things candy-like, 3. filled with actual science.

Perfect. Buy it.

I bring it up because it explains many things about gianduja - the home food processor method, the praline paste method, and what a commercially-produced gianduja gets you: namely, an already tempered, silky-smooth product.

For my first batch, I elected to go with the commercially available stuff. After a quick search online, I found some dark chocolate gianduja from Valrhona. Sold.

In the interest of full disclosure, my first batch was an utter fail. I tried for eggless gelato that wound up tasty, but icy and grainy. Blah. I am becoming more convinced that even my fancy-pants Italian ice cream machine doesn’t churn fast enough to make a truly smooth eggless, low-butterfat gelato.

My next attempt simply tweaked the standard ice cream custard (2 cups cream : 1 cup milk : 6 egg yolks). Because of the fats I was adding in the gianduja, I reversed the cream/milk ratio and backed off on the egg yolks by one. The custard was gorgeous, and I knew the ice cream would be smooth, creamy, and amazing.

It was.

Custard, thickening.

Shit You Need

1. 8 ounces gianduja, commercially made, or otherwise.

2. 5 large egg yolks

3. 2 cups whole milk

4. 1 cup heavy cream

5. 1/2 cup sugar

6. 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

7. 1 tsp vanilla extract

This is what “thick enough to coat the back of a spoon” actually means. You’re welcome.

Keep Calm and justeffingcook

1. Separate egg yolks into a medium-sized mixing bowl and set aside.

2. Cut gianduja into chunks, just small enough to help it melt. It’s a surface area to volume thing, says Dr. Science.

3. Heat milk, cream, sugar and salt in a medium saucepan (a saucier, if you have one) until steaming. Whisk the gianduja into the cream mixture, and continue whisking at a low simmer until it is fully melted and the mixture is uniform.

4. Whisk the egg yolks, and while whisking, pour the cream mixture in a steady stream until about 1/3 has been transferred, then reverse, pouring the egg mixture back into the cream while whisking the cream.

5. Return the pan to medium-low heat and cook gently until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (see helpful photo) - or about 180 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. It will be glossy and silky and fucking gorgeous.

6. Strain the custard through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl.

7. If you don’t plan on churning the custard until tomorrow, you can carefully place a piece of cling film right on top of the liquid (preventing a skin from forming, thereby fucking up your carefully strained mixture). Let cool at room temperature, then refrigerate overnight.

8. If you are jonesing for some ice cream later today, then put that bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice, and stir as it rapidly cools. This is the “stir over an ice bath step” you see in various recipes. Once cold, add the piece of cling film and refrigerate for 4 hours.

9. Churn in your ice cream machine per the manufacturer’s directions.

10. If you happen to have some Nougat de Montelimar, chop the shit out of it and sprinkle over the top when serving.