Monday, March 25, 2019

Cooking for a Holiday - Christmas, Part IV - The Sauce

I make this sauce once a year.  Mainly because it has pork in it and I very seldom eat pork because pigs are nice animals.  Actually, ALL animals are nice and I promise that someday I'm going to stop eating them.  Probably when people stop asking me to cook them.

In a perfect world, you should make this sauce WEEKS in advance, and freeze it.  Once again (are you listening, Anthony?) my lack of freezer space forced me to wait until two days before Christmas last year, and it almost killed me.  Listen up, Italian girls:  The next time some jamoke tells you he loves you and promises you the moon, look deep into his eyes and say in a husky voice, "I want a freezer.  Size matters."

It's not that the sauce is hard to make.  In fact, it's easy.  It's just that on Christmas, I'm making a triple recipe because it's for the Christmas lasagna (with extra sauce on the side) AND Christmas Eve dinner, per the request of my children, who - so far - don't know what it's like to "do" Christmas.  (You know what, Nikki and Nino?  All those nice gifts and the decorations and the cookies and the meals and the nice clean sheets on the beds?  They didn't get here courtesy of the shoemaker's elves.)

This recipe is loosely based on one from "The Italian Cookbook" by the Culinary Arts Institute, which was in Chicago.  Even though it's out of print, you can get it on Amazon.  If you can't find a copy, write to me and I'll Xerox it for you.  Really.  That's how much I want you to eat good food.

Tomato Meat Sauce
Put six big cans of peeled Italian tomatoes (pelati) in the blender, one can at a time.  Pour the pureed tomatoes into a REALLY big pot.  Brown a couple of chopped onions in olive oil and add to the pot.  Now brown a chuck roast and a pork shoulder (you could do this in the oven, I suppose).  How big should the chuck roast and the pork shoulder be?  How much are your guests going to eat on Christmas Eve?  You don't use the meat to make the lasagna (the lasagna uses different meat), only the sauce.

Put the chuck roast and the pork shoulder into the pot.  Add a couple of bay leaves and a tablespoon of salt.  If you need more salt, add it later after you taste the sauce.  Bring to a simmer, turn down the heat, and cover the pot.  Let simmer over very low heat for at least a couple of hours.  Stir it once in a while.

Take the cover off the pot.  Add three small cans of tomato paste.  You can add some water if the sauce gets too thick.  Now simmer uncovered for another couple of hours, and don't forget to stir so it doesn't scorch on the bottom.  When the sauce is done (that's when the meat starts falling apart), take out the bay leaves, if you can find them.

Serve the sauce over the pasta of your choice.  My pasta of choice is usually leftover noodles from making the lasagna.  It looks fancy.  Have some fresh ricotta and some grated pecorino-romano cheese on the side for toppings.  Serve the meat on a platter and make sure you put it in the middle of the table, because it's impressive.


Of course, you're going to make your Christmas lasagna before Christmas Eve dinner, so the sauce you're serving is what's left over.  Make sure you set aside extra sauce for the Christmas lasagna.  You GOTTA have extra sauce with lasagna, because sauce junkies exist in every Italian family, and they will never let you forget the one time you didn't have extra sauce.  And by Christmas Eve dinnertime, when that lasagna is resting comfortably in the fridge, your job is DONE for the holiday, because the kids are gonna eat store-bought panettone for breakfast and like it.

So now you can pour yourself another glass of red.  And wait for Santa to drop a freezer down your chimney.






Listen Up

Ciao tutti!

My dulcet tones will once again be on Fest Italiana through Thursday at 5:00 pm:


So have fun and listen up.  It'll help you get over the Mueller report.

Love,

Connie

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Cooking for a Holiday - Christmas, Part III - The Cookie

The cookie.  The.  Cookie.  One cookie.  Singular.

I used to make a lot of cookies.  A lot of cookies, all different kinds.  I did it because my children loved it, or maybe I was just imagining that.  Maybe I was looking to give them some memories that didn't involve me yelling at them for not doing their homework.

Then, one day, I got The Message.  It came to me suddenly, while I was meditating on the cruel fate that gave us Thanksgiving and Christmas only a month apart from each other.  It was the voice of the Blessed Mother, speaking deep in my heart.  "My child," she said, "that's why God gave us Italian bakeries."  

And she's right.  Think about it.  As happy as you were when Grandma baked cookies, you went totally bonkers when she walked through the door with a box from the bakery.

I will cite two examples from my life that carry the Mother of God's point:
  1. My daughter Nikki was little and I was heavily pregnant with her brother Nino.  I had my husband's whole entire extended family over for Christmas dinner.  I was just bringing out the coffee and the Galliano and my ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY GORGEOUS platter of Homemade Christmas Cookies.  And my father-in-law took ONE look at it and said, "I loathe cookies."  Really?  Really?  In the dictionary of my mind, next to the word "buzzkill", will forever reside a picture of my father-in-law.  He's in heaven now.  The part where there aren't any cookies.  
  2. My children have become adults.  A couple of years ago I went to a bakery and brought home some cuccidati, which are ground zero of Sicilian Christmas cookies.  My son ate one, and said, "Mom.  I don't want to hurt your feelings.  But these are pretty close to yours."  And all those wasted years, all that time and money that I could have spent on shoes, flashed in front of my eyes.  I must have had a look on my face, because he said, real fast, "I think your filling is a little better!"  Nice save, Nino.  I was SO glad to see the look on your face when you discovered that the cuccidati from the bakery this year had chocolate chips in them. 
Not being stupid, I currently have it down to one cookie.  But this is one heck of a good cookie.  Trust me.  Everybody (which is my husband Anthony and my cousin Vita) says it's the only cookie they care about.  And I've never had one from a bakery that even came close.

The recipe is from my husband's Aunt Geraldine:

Honey Nut Cookies
Take two sticks of butter and set them out to get soft in a big bowl.  Once they're soft, beat in a quarter cup of honey and 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla.  In another big bowl, stir together 1/8 teaspoon of salt and two cups of flour (sift together, if you've got that gene).  Blend the flour with the butter mixture.  Then blend in 1 1/2 cups of pecan pieces (this is the only part of the recipe that's a pain in the ass).  Now you can bake the cookies, or you can put the dough in the fridge.  You've got at least a week to do something with it.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.  Pinch off pieces of dough about the size of a half-dollar, roll them into balls, and put them on a baking sheet.  Roll and shape the balls into crescents.  They won't spread much in the oven, so you can get around 20 of them on the sheet.  Bake about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.  (After 15 minutes, watch carefully because they can get too brown in a hurry.)

Take the cookies out of the oven and let them cool just a little bit until you can slide them off the baking sheet with a spatula without breaking them.  Carefully, put them on a plate and sift copious amounts of powdered sugar on them.  The more, the better.  And you GOTTA do this part when the cookies are still warm.


I make one exception to the cookie austerity program.  I will always, happily, host or attend a cookie-baking party (I will happily host or attend any party, actually).  Done right, a cookie-baking party will include Christmas carols, White Christmas, and lots of wine.  And of course you'll decorate the house before the company comes over.  And you can give them their presents, too.  That covers a lot of bases, plus you get your cookies done.

Just make sure you invite one adult who doesn't drink.  Somebody needs to watch the oven.

Or drive to the bakery.