On Sunday

Sunday is a great day to cook. In most parts of Italy, Sunday is when the extended family gathers early and starts preparing a meal together - a ritual generations of Italians have passed on to their kids. Sauces like Bolognese can take 5 hours, and making the fresh pasta for tortellini can take almost as long, so you really need a whole day like Sunday to get it all done.

I choose Sunday to be experimental. Why not try my hand at some of the odder and potentially more challenging recipes in the book. I guess "challenging" is relative. To many, Eggplant Parm is a staple that any deli can toss up. Street food-style fried pasta isn't technically difficult. So what do I mean by challenging? To do a melanzane parmigiano right, you need a perfect tomato sauce, prime eggplants, nice mozz, and good parm. It shouldn't be overly chewy, or suggest bland flavors of canned tomato sauce. In fact, you should be able to taste every distinct layer - like a lasagna - but still enjoy the perfect blend of the

ingredients. That's the challenge.

And with the street food, authenticity is key. It doesn't take much to batter up some spaghetti and saute it, but it is more of a challenge to get that outer-crispy gooey-inside parsley & parm laden taste that Romans would expect for a euro or two. So how did I do? (and I apologize for the bad pics, I'm still getting the hang of using the camera in the kitchen)

Melanzane alla parmigiana

Jamie says the mozzarella is optional? Then again, he suggests using buffalo mozzarella. This is a joke. You MUST use fresh mozzarella, but don't waste your money on imported buffalo mozz (the stuff is only at its best when made day of, which doesn't work if you get it imported from your grocery).

The tomato sauce is key too. Good canned tomatoes, lots of fresh basil, a drip of wine vinegar, and some sugar at the very end made for one of the best I've made. Then, if you've grilled your eggplants right, it's just a matter of layering.

I think I messed up on the cheese. I might have put too much, or not shredded it enough, or whatnot, but it was fresh and unsalted (which is the best way to do mozz when you're cooking it). Amazing. Find the recipe and use it.

Fritelle di spaghetti

I had mixed feelings about the pasta from the start. Fried pasta? Washing it? So many different things that didn't seem right. Basically, you make pasta and prepare a batter (sans flour) with egg, parsley, and parm. When the pasta is done cooking, you toss it with the mixture, then put it in the saute pan in little batches.

It took me a few tries to get the heat and timing right. As Jamie suggests, you want a nice crisp outside with a soft, tender inside. Who doesn't want this? What it means is high heat, olive oil (not the extra virgin type which would burn at these temps), and practice. By the last few ones I tried, they were nicely browned, crisp, and soft on the inside. I might even undercook the pasta a little in the future by 30 seconds. Great as a snack, but must be eaten hot hot hot.

1 out of 21

A good friend of mine decided to start a project - 1 out of 21 - that encourages us to be proud of what we do in the kitchen, and perhaps more importantly, take more ownership of what we eat. The premise is really simple, but brilliant: out of the 21 or so meals you cook each week, make (and share) one you're proud of.

To me, this clicked instantly. As much as I love cooking, I've recently found myself in a bit of a rut. Whether out of habit, ease, or fright I set into a standard resume of basic Italian dishes. Most of them had been improvised, but once I had it down, I just kept making it.

In an effort to spice things up a bit, I joined a CSA to eat more veggies and force myself to be more creative. It has definitely helped, but as I kept turning back to epicurious and various cookbooks for advice with beets, kale, and the like, I figured it was time to embark on a real adventure.

The results so far have been great. My "1" I'm guessing will be quite different from many. Ironically, I'm afraid to cook from a cookbook. I'd rather conjure up ideas and add spices along the way. It's a fun way to cook, but, unless you really get adventurous, it actually has been holding me back. So I joined teams with Jamie (read earlier posts) to expand my repetoire. For the next while, my "1" will involve the oven - an item I have used almost exclusively for mac and cheese, baked ziti, and chicken marsala.

Caponata

By now most people don't confuse tomatoes as Italian, but that doesn't mean they didn't figure out how to use them best early on. The Sicilians probably deserve credit for this, although it is surely impossible to say who made the first tomato sauce. That said, when you combine some splendid sicilian produce (tomatoes and eggplant) with a local farm's zucchini, you get one mean caponata.

I decided to venture a little bit from the recipe once I had the basics down. Jamie's recipe calls for adding tomatoes, eggplant, and onion. I cooked the eggplant and squash together, set them aside. Cooked up some mixed mushrooms, set them aside. Put everything back in the pot, added the garlic, parsley, and onion, and when it started to blend, mixed in some balsamic vinegar. Once the vinegar dissolved, I tossed in the tomatoes and an extra splash of extra virgin olive oil. I let that simmer for about 15-20 minutes (oh, and I had doubled the amount of garlic he put in).

The end result was amazing. I tried it in a few forms: on some pasta I cooked up, finished off with a little chili and parm, by itself (nothing added), on a piece of bread once room temp. I have a feeling this is one of those "better the next day" meals and am very excited to have bundled 2 lunches (kept with the over pasta method for those).

Cooking eggplant had, for a long time, given me some major trouble. If you too suffer, try this:

1) use small, firm italian eggplants. Once you see seeds, too late.

2) cook on high heat with olive oil (not extra virgin!). The extra virgin variety has too low a burning point and can make for some funky cooking at these high temps. This is a good rule in general. Save the good stuff for salads and finish off dishes.

3) add oregano (and a fair amount of it). You don't need fresh stuff, and in fact, it might be better to use the dried as you're cooking it at pretty high heat. This makes it taste vunderbar.

Why Jamie?

When i was looking at my cookbooks and trying to decide which one to begin my journey, I really didn't expect this one to make the cut. I knew I wanted to start Italian because of both its simplicity, availability of ingredients, and my own taste preferences. I've got this great "cucina rustica" book as well as a few by some other better known chefs, but in the end, after revisiting a few recipes from each I decided Jamie was closest to both my style and attitude.

While Jamie covers many different regions and their local foods, he focuses primarily on Roman and Sicilian cuisine. Although my time in Bologna made me rather biased toward the Emiglia Romana cuisine, it's not easy and often heavy.

Additionally, Jamie likes veggies. Not just to use as a side here and there, but, in his own words, "cook them nicely, dress them with care and you'll be laughing." That was pretty much the experience I had when I was in Italy, and while I do use a lot of vegetables in my cooking, I'm always looking for ways to expand. I got caught in a bit of a tomato/pepper/onion thing for a while.

Stay tuned.

Ricotta Fritta

Romans like to fry lots of things, including cheese. When I say fry I don't mean like the deep oil dip - I mean more like a pan sear, but they have the same word for it - fritto. I read the recipe for "ricotta fritta" and thought this would be a perfect dish. In a lot of ways it was, except perhaps in looks.

Jamie's got this lovely picture of an omlette like thing next to a pile of quartered and marinated mixed tomatoes. Yum. This is one of those recipes where I feel like the folks from chef's illustrated would have been a little more helpful. How did he get it to look so pretty?

I tried it in several batches, lowering and increasing the heat, with and without olive oil, a minute here or there, but by the end of my batch I had come up with something that tasted amazing, but didn't have the 'crisp' consistency he bragged about at the end of his recipe. Something to work on in the future.

Squid

After last night's success with bruschette (I ended up doing: roasted eggplant w/goat cheese, tomato w/basil & mint, pesto and goat cheese) I decided to continue my journey through Jamie's Italy.

You ever have really chewy calamari or octopus, whether fried, in a salad, or some other form? I've had amazing stuff, and I've had unedible stuff. What I discovered tonight is that the difference isn't so much in the quality of the squidy, but in how it's prepared. It's incredibly cheap (about 4-5 dollars a pound) and full of flavor.

First, flavor some olive oil with some garlic, lemon, and parsley stem in a pan. Then, toss on the squid (whole) and let simmer for about 15 minutes until you can run a fork tenderly through it. This doesn't actually fully prepare your squid. Jamie offers several options, and I vied for the kebab method - lightly grilling (or in my case, pan searing) with a little extra parsley, lemon juice, and hot pepper. If I had more squid, I'd try marinating it (after the tenderizing process) to make a salad.

Bruschette

Traditional Italian food is often not particularly creative. Unlike their French friends across the pond, the Italians never resorted to stewing rats and using eggs and butter in ever possible permutation to create what we now call Haute Cuisine. Instead, the Italians have almost always relied on the vegetables (and occasionally animals) that were around them. There are a few notable exceptions (osso bucco), but Italian cuisine is at its purest when the ingredients are fresh, simple, and perfectly balanced.

Jamie starts off with bruschette (little toasts) and so will I. While there's no wrong way to make these bite size yummies, I've decided to lean heavily on the vegetable side of things having come back from the pork, sausage, and cheese world of Spain. Don't get me wrong, modern Spanish tapas has evolved into a near art form of the perfect bite, but for now I'll do it like the nonna I never had: tomato & basil, eggplant & mint, ricotta & olive.

A New Start

Four months have passed since my last post. I'm sure the suspense was slowly burning your brain cells. The good news is that I'm back, and with a purpose. Here's what you can expect:

1) Josh's Jamie's Italy - in my quest to become a better chef, I've decided to cook through several of my cookbooks, one in each of the major cuisines: Italian, French, Spanish, American. Why Jamie's Italy? You'll have to read the next post (more suspense, ah).

2) Meals my way - a good friend of mine came upon a brilliant idea. I'd share it, but its hers and until she gets her blog up and rolling I don't want to steal any thunder. Just look forward to it.

By now the suspense has probably made its way down to your brainstem. If the hormones that make you hungry have also decided to get an early start, then you're probably in for a big dinner as by now all you're probably thinking about is that warm bowl of saffron risotto with bacalao you didn't have... yet. So eat, come back tomorrow, and enjoy.