Our Christmas Eve menu is always the same. The main course is lobsters fra diavolo, made according to a recipe I developed from watching my Neapolitan aunt make them every Christmas eve and only on that vigil. If I requested them on any other occasion, she refused. For her, as they are for me, they were special; something to be anticipated and then consumed with great relish. I still remember my diminutive aunt slaughtering the live lobsters; a task that as she got older she relegated to me. “Center the cleaver right between their eyes,” she said. “And press down hard; don’t hesitate.” And this memory brings me such great joy.
Despite growing up in an Italian-American household, I never heard of the “Feast of the Seven Fishes” until much later in my life. For us, Christmas Eve meant one thing: lobsters fra diavolo. They were the focal point of an elaborate dinner that started with appetizers, which included an insalata frutta di mare, a seafood salad with calamari, shrimp, and celery dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. Occasionally there was also a plate of white-fish salad. After the cold appetizers, came a platter of baked clams, which concluded the antipasto portion of the meal.
We then went on to the pasta, which was always linguine alle vongole, linguine with clam sauce, always white, which was then followed by the main course: lobsters fra diavolo. Each of us was served an individual lobster. Even as a child, I had my own. Of course, my dad had to help me battle with it to extract its sweet meat napped with my aunt’s spicy tomato sauce. But as a child, it was the lobster’s savory bread stuffing that I enjoyed the most.
I really started cooking seriously in the late 70s, always inspired by my Neapolitan aunt’s and Sicilian mother’s cooking, but sparked even more so by the not yet celebrated Julia Child on my local PBS channel. I read and read books by chefs like Elizabeth David and later on Alice Waters who focused on seasonal cuisine; on fundamental cookbooks like the Grammar of Cooking by Carol Braider or The Saucier’s Apprentice by Raymond Sokolov; on the standard cookbooks like The James Beard Cookbook, The Joy of Cooking, The New York Times Cookbook. I consulted huge tomes like the Larousse Gastronomique and the two-volume Gourmet Cookbook as well as tiny books like The Omelette Cookbook by Narcissa Chamberlain. And at the same time subscribed to almost every food magazine there was. I read and experimented; often failing but sometimes blissfully successful.
Perhaps I’m growing nostalgic (I just turned 70), but I think there was a golden age of cookbooks between the mid 80s and early 90s when I saw more serious and scholarly writers like Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Lynn Rosetto Kasper, Fred Plotkin, to name a few, and Paula Wolfert, who introduced today’s recipe in her 1985 cookbook Mediterranean Cooking.
Before I knew it, I had amassed quite a collection of cookbooks, somewhere between two and three hundred. Disaster struck, however, and I lost 90% of my collection in 2012 to a flood caused by Hurricane Sandy.
Finding Wolfert’s recipe online started me thinking about cookbooks and motivated me to make it once again.
For a side dish, I served orzo sprinkled with olive oil and seasoned with fresh mint and lemon zest
Shrimp and Feta Cheese a la Tourkolimano
Ingredients
Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 cups fresh or canned tomato sauce
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Freshly ground pepper and a dash of salt
Pinch of cayenne
1 1/2 to 2 pounds raw shrimp (about 50)
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
Preparation
1.- Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Peel and de-vein the shrimp.
2.- In a skillet cook the onions in olive oil until translucent.
Sweating the onions
3.- Add the garlic, tomato sauce, wine, half the parsley, salt, pepper and cayenne. Simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes, stirring often. The tomato sauce should be rather thick.
Prepared Sauce
4.- Add the shrimp to the sauce and cook 5 minutes.
Adding shrimp to sauce
5.- Place the cheese in the baking dish.
The cheese
6.- Cover with the shrimp and tomato sauce and set in the oven to bake 10 minutes.
The cooked shrimp
7.- Sprinkle with remaining parsley and serve very hot.
The other night when plans to dine out fell through at the last minute, I had to whip up something fast for dinner at home. Earlier in the day, I caught Giada De Laurentiis on the Food Network preparing a quick and easy shrimp sauté with pesto and thought why not make that tonight. Here’s a link to the recipe with a video.
I didn’t plan to write this recipe up until I tasted the final product, so I only have the one photo of the finished dish. My one reservation was using Parmigiano with seafood, but it worked. Having a plethora of basil on hand and not being able to find fresh mint, I omitted it and just used basil. I also substituted on-sale large shrimp rather than the jumbo. Finally, rather than adding my pesto to the pan, I chose to add the cooked shrimp to my pesto and tossed them with it in the bowl.
Served with steamed rice and a chilled Sauvignon Blanc, this was a perfect dish for a warm spring evening on the terrace.
Giada de Laurentiis’s Jumbo Shrimp with Basil and Mint Pesto
Ingredients 3/4 cups lightly packed fresh mint leaves 1/2 cup lightly packed fresh basil leaves 1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted 1 garlic clove 1/4 cup olive oil 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan Salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 pounds uncooked jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Directions Blend the mint, basil, pine nuts, and garlic in a food processor until finely chopped. With the machine running, gradually add 1/4 cup of olive oil, processing until well blended. Transfer the pesto to a medium bowl. Stir in the Parmesan. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.
Toss the shrimp with the extra-virgin olive oil in a large bowl to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and toss again.
Heat a heavy large skillet over high heat. Working in 2 batches, add the shrimp and sauté until just cooked through, about 3 minutes.
For some reason, I really don’t know why, I’ve always been afraid to cook calamari. As I was growing up, it was always one of my favorite meals on a Friday, when meatless meals were still mandatory for Catholics. More often than not, my aunt would prepare them stewed in a simple marinara sauce. They were either whole, stuffed with softened white bread that she combined with the chopped tentacles, eggs, and parsley, or cut up into rings. The stuffed version were usually served with pasta; the rings, with friselle, which might best be described as thick, rectangular, twice-baked bread biscuits, which were used to sop up the sauce. Once in a while, my aunt would also serve them cut into rings, lightly battered, and deep-fried, accompanied only by lemon wedges—but never with tomato sauce.
Wanting to recreate these dishes at home, I eventually confronted my fear of cooking these delectable creatures and started to deep fry calamari with, I might add, considerable success. Cooking them in sauce, however, continued to remain a challenge—until last Friday. That morning, I had intended to buy some Manila clams, which I intended to cook with Sardinian fregola. But when I got to the fish market, I spotted some beautiful calamari, glistening a lustrous white interlaced with light purple from the tentacles. I decided that it was time to take the plunge and stew them in tomato sauce.
Although I was confident about the sauce, I wasn’t quite sure how long I needed to cook the calamari. Almost every source I consulted warned against overcooking them, which would make them rubbery. Indeed, I knew this from my experience with frying. In fact, the majority of recipes I read suggested preparing the sauce separately and then adding the squid and cooking them for two minutes. Somehow, I wasn’t comfortable with this method, as I really wanted my sauce to be deeply flavored with the calamari and vice versa. I was certain that my aunt simmered her calamari slowly, but I wasn’t sure for how long.
Finally, I turned to one of my go-to books on Neapolitan cooking, Naples at Tableby Arthur Schwartz. It was here that I found a recipe that resembled closely my aunt’s preparation. It called for preparing a classic marinara and adding the calamari to the sauce after the first five minutes of cooking. The fish and the sauce are then gently simmered uncovered for about 30 minutes or until the sauce has thickened and the calamari are tender.
This was the recipe I used, and with some only minor variations (adding some salt and increasing the amount of tomatoes), I came very close to replicating my aunt’s stewed calamari. I served them over pasta. Next time, however, I’ll stuff them.
Calamari In Cassuola (Squid Stewed with Tomatoes) adapted from Naples at Table by Arthur Schwartz
The ingredients
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 large cloves garlic, lightly smashed
¼ teaspoon or more hot red pepper flakes
1 28-ounce can imported whole peeled tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, with their juices
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
Salt to taste
1½ fresh, cleaned calamari cut into ¼-inch rings, tentacles cut in half
¼ cup finely cut flat-leaf parsley
The cut calamari
1. In a 2½ – to 3-quart saucepan or stovetop casserole, over low heat, combine the olive oil, the garlic, and the hot pepper. Cook until the garlic is soft and beginning to color on all sides, pressing the garlic into the oil a few times to release its flavor. Remove the garlic.
The cooked garlic
2. Add the tomatoes, the oregano, and the salt to taste and, with a wooden spoon, break up and coarsely crush the tomatoes. Increase the heat to medium high and simmer briskly, uncovered, for 5 minutes.
The sauce after 5 minutes
3. Reduce the heat to low, stir the calamari into the sauce and continue to simmer steadily, uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened and the calamari are tender. Some calamari may take longer to cook, in which case you may need to add a tablespoon or as many as a few tablespoons of water so the sauce doesn’t become too reduced.
The cooked calamari
4. Add the parsley and cook for another 15 seconds.
Cooked calamari with the parsley
Note: I added the parsley after transferring the calamari to a skillet for tossing with the pasta.
5. Serve very hot, as is, with bread, or over freselle, or, as I did, tossed with pasta.
Growing up, the only mussels I ate were served southern-Italian style, sauced with a hot marinara and accompanied by a thick bread biscotto to sop up the condiment. Today, it’s a dish I make quite often at home.
In the summer of my junior year in high school, however, I spent 14 weeks in France with a group of classmates, studying the language and serendipitously broadening my culinary horizons.
During that time, we were forbidden to speak English or to consume anything that wasn’t French. In fact, near the beginning of our stay, on a day trip through the Loire valley, our teacher and guide, a true Francophile Jesuit, went apoplectic at lunch when the restaurant, seeing us as tourists, brought out bottles of ketchup with our steak frites. “Enlever le ketchup!” (Remove the ketchup!) he demanded. The ketchup disappeared—alas.
We were studying at the University of Grenoble and took most of our meals in the school’s cafeteria. But when we were on our own, a few friends and I would venture into local bistros. It was on one of these days that I discovered a dish that would become one of my French favorites: moules au Pernod, mussels napped in a light sauce of cream, onions, and Pernod. The smooth anise-scented sauce provided the perfect counterpart to briny mussels.
It’s the perfect summer’s night entree, especially paired with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, preferably a Sancerre, and a crusty baguette to get the last bit of sauce.
MUSSELS WITH PERNOD AND CREAMAdapted from Epicurious.com
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups leeks sliced 1/4-inch thick using only the white and pale green portion
1 1/2 cups Sauvignon Blanc or other dry white wine
1/4 cup finely diced red bell pepper
2 pounds mussels, scrubbed, debearded
1/2 cup heavy cream
Kosher salt
Fresh ground black pepper
4 tablespoons Pernod or other anise liqueur
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
Combine the sliced leeks, wine, and bell pepper in large heavy-bottomed non-reactive pot. Bring to boil over high heat.
Leeks, peppers, wine
Add the mussels. Cover the pot and cook until mussels open, about 5 minutes, shaking the past once or twice.
With a slotted spoon, transfer the mussels to a bowl (discard any mussels that do not open).
The opened mussels
To the pot, add the cream, salt and pepper to taste, and Pernod. Boil until liquid is slightly reduced, about 4 minutes. Mix in chopped parsley.
Making the sauce
Return the mussels and any accumulated juices to pot. Simmer until mussels are warmed through, about 1 minute; adjust the seasoning. Serve mussels with the sauce.
All too often, when dining out, I find myself ordering seared scallops and I wind up being dismayed at how much such a simple dish costs. Granted, sea scallops in the market are quite expensive, but why pay so much in a restaurant for something that is so simple and quick to prepare at home.
Last Friday, I made them for the first time at home and thought they were as good as almost any I had ever had out. The key to searing them correctly is patience: leave them alone after they hit the pan. Don’t move them or shake the pan. Just let them take on a nice sear, which they will after approximately 3 minutes. Then flip them and do the same: nothing, but wait maybe another 2 or 3 minutes.
Sautéed Sea Scallops
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
8 large sea scallops (about 1 pound), abductor muscle removed
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup dry vermouth
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
zest of 1 small lemon
Season the scallops with salt and pepper.
The ingredients
Make sure to dry the scallops thoroughly with paper towels. If they are wet, they will not brown.
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil and 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan over medium high. When the butter stops sizzling, place the scallops vertically in the pan, leaving some space between each one. Use a 10” or 12” skillet to avoid overcrowding. As scallops have a tendency to stick, this is one time I recommend using a non-stick pan.
Scallops seared first side
When the first side has seared and browned, after about 3 minutes, turn them over to the other side and cook for an additional 2 to 3 minutes, until nicely browned. The scallops should be firm to the touch.
Remove the scallops from the pan and keep warm.
Add the vermouth to the pan scraping up any brown bits that may have stuck to the bottom of the pan. Let the alcohol evaporate, about 1 minute.
The pan sauce
Add the remaining two tablespoons of butter and the chopped onion. Sauté over medium heat until the onions have softened, about 1 or 2 minutes.
Turn the heat to low and return the scallops and any of their juices to the pan, along with the parsley and lemon zest. Turn the scallops to coat them with the sauce in the pan and serve.
For a professional recipe and instructional video, you may want to follow this link to the Fine Cooking website.
As of late, quick-fix dishes seem to be dominating our weeknight meals. More often than not, they’re dictated, not only by my schedule, but by what’s in the market and how many extra ingredients I’ll need to pick up. Having over five items kicks me off the express check-out line, so 4 is my maximum number of secondary ingredients.
Last night’s supper is a case in point. Peeled and deveined shrimp caught my eye at the market. I knew I already had half a can of chopped tomatoes sitting in our fridge, so I thought: shrimp marinara with some pasta. The shopping list evolved from there: parsley and spaghetti were the only other ingredients I needed to purchase as I already had plenty of olive oil, garlic, herbs and spices at home. I was out of the market in 10 minutes. (Pity anyone who stands in my way as I race through the aisles.)
If you start with putting up the water for your pasta and prep and cook as it comes to a boil, you can have shrimp marinara on the table in about 30 minutes. Here’s my recipe:
Shrimp Marinara with Spaghetti
2 small garlic cloves, sliced thin
1/4 cup extra-vigin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon Calabrian red-pepper flakes (Calabrian red pepper flakes have a lot of heat; you may need to use more or less depending on the type of pepper flakes you have and how spicy you like your sauce.)
16-ounce can chopped Italian tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup chopped parsley
8 ounces spaghetti (I recommend a spaghetti that has flavor and texture. Rustichella d’Abruzzo is my favorite.)
Prepped ingredients
1. Put up the water for the pasta.
2. In a large skillet, over medium low heat sauté the garlic with the red-pepper flakes in olive oil. When they become fragrant and the garlic turns just a very pale gold, add the tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper.
The garlic and red-pepper flakes
3. Continue to cook on medium low and after the tomatoes come to a slow simmer, cook for 15 minutes, string occasionally.
4. At this point, the water for the pasta should be at a boil. Add a handful of salt to the water and add the spaghetti. Cook, following package direction for al dente.
5. While the pasta is cooking, add the shrimp to the sauce, raise the heat to medium and cook until the first side turns pinks, around 3 minutes. Turn the shrimp and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Shrimp cookiing
6. One minute before the prescribed time for al dente, using tongs, transfer the spaghetti to the skillet with the shrimp, reduce the flame to low, and toss the spaghetti to coat with the sauce. Off the heat, sprinkle with the chopped parsley and serve.
The spaghetti coated with the sauce
Wine Pairing: Pecorino, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Sauvignon Blanc
After a week of indulging in more mundane fare like grilled steaks and summer corn, hot dogs with baked beans, and roast chicken, I thought it was time to get back into the kitchen and cook something new. We both wanted that something to be light and and my new schedule required it to be quick to prepare. Looking for a recipe to meet these requirements, I turned to one of Marcella Hazan’s lesser known books, Marcella’s Italian Kitchen. Still widely available online, I find it a more personal book than her better known and widely acclaimed Classic Italian Cooking volumes.
The recipe I chose for dinner last night was one of two in the book for scallops, “Sautéed Scallops with Rosemary and Lemon.” Hazan describes her dish as “simple and very fragrant,” which, in my opinion, is an understatement. The recipe calls for a minimum of ingredients and, including prep time, can be on the table in fewer than thirty minutes That’s simple. But what makes this dish a keeper is its unctuous sauce, redolent with fresh rosemary, pale-gold garlic, and fresh lemon juice. It makes a perfect first course for a more formal dinner or, served with plain rice or crusty bread, an elegant entree for a weekday supper.
If you choose to make this dish for two, you can reduce the amount of scallops. However, I would not cut back on the recipe’s other ingredients, as they yield a sauce so delicious you may find yourselves, like we did, licking your plates to savor every last drop.
To heighten the citrus factor, I used the zest of one lemon, which I added to the pan along with the juice.
Sautéed Scallops with Rosemary and Lemon Adapted from Marcella’s Italian Kitchen
1.5 pounds small bay scallops
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (Use the best quality you have available.)
2 medium garlic cloves, peeled and sliced very thin
1.5 teaspoons fresh rosemary, roughly chopped
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon (optional)
The ingredients, prepped
Wash and, using a towel, thoroughly pat dry the scallops.
Choose a skillet large enough to eventually accommodate the scallops in a single layer. Start by adding the olive oil and sliced garlic to the empty skillet and place over medium heat.
As soon as the garlic turns a pale gold, add the rosemary and stir quickly. (Do not let the garlic turn brown or it will overwhelm the delicate flavor of the scallops.)
The garlic, lightly gold
Add the scallops, and season with salt and ground pepper to taste. Raise the heat to high and cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes, until the scallops change from translucent to a flat white.
The final sauté
Add the lemon juice and zest, turn up the heat as high as possible, stir once or twice, then transfer to warm plates and coat with the sauce. Serve immediately.
Yesterday, I was challenged to to prepare the following recipe from Weight Watchers. At first glance, it looked fine.
Shrimp with Zucchini and Tomatoes
Ingredients
1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 cup of grape tomatoes, cut in half
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 cup water
Instructions
Heat 2 teaspoons of oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
Add zucchini in a single layer; increase heat to high and cook until bottoms are golden, about 2 minutes. Flip zucchini and cook until golden on the other side, about 2 minutes or more. Remove zucchini to plate with a slotted spoon. Heat remaining oil in the same skillet. Add shrimp; sauté 1 to 2 minutes. Add tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper; sauté until shrimp are almost cooked through, about 1 minute. Stir in garlic and water; sauté, stirring to loosen bits from the bottom of the land, until shrimp are cooked through and tomatoes are softened, about 1 to 2 minutes more. Return zucchini to skillet; toss and serve.
However, when I brought the ingredients home and re-read the recipe I couldn’t resist making some changes for the following reasons., which would unfortunately slightly increase the number of Weight Watcher points.
First off, I don’t like to sauté in nonstick pans. I have two, but use them exclusively for eggs and omelets. I opted to use stainless steel, which necessitated using an extra tablespoon of olive oil.
Second, I thought that sautéing the tomatoes for 1 minute really wouldn’t extract their flavor or change their texture.
Finally, I thought combining water and raw garlic to “deglaze” the pan wasn’t going to add much flavor.
So, keeping most of the ingredients except for substituting wine for the water as well as adding an additional tablespoon of olive oil for sautéing and a quarter cup of chopped parsley for garnishing, I prepared the recipe with a few changes to the instructions.
I added all the olive oil (2 Tablespoons) up front and sautéed the zucchini along with the garlic for about 3 minutes; I kept my eye on the garlic making sure it remained light gold and not brown. As a a result, the zucchini were only lightly colored but nonetheless perfectly cooked.
I transferred the zucchini, garlic, and oil to a bowl, making sure there was no garlic left in the pan. I then carefully poured off most of the oil from the bowl, without any of the garlic, back into the sauté pan. I then seasoned the grape tomatoes with the salt and oregano and sautéed them until they started to break down and create a sauce.
At this point, I added the shrimp and cooked on one side until they turned pink, about 2 minutes. I then turned the shrimp and cooked for about 1 more minute. Then I added the wine and returned the zucchini, garlic, and any remaining oil in the bowl to the pan. I cooked everything for about about 2 more minutes. I then plated onto heated plates, sprinkling the shrimp with some chopped parsley and served with couscous.
I know the final dish had a few more Weight Watcher points than the original, but I think the extra flavor and texture of my version may have been worth them. However, if you are following their program religiously, I think you’ll be more than happy with the original recipe at the beginning of this post.
by Arthur Schwartz. It was here that I found a recipe that resembled closely my aunt’s preparation. It called for preparing a classic marinara and adding the calamari to the sauce after the first five minutes of cooking. The fish and the sauce are then gently simmered uncovered for about 30 minutes or until the sauce has thickened and the calamari are tender.
Cooking from Books 