Abbachio alla Cacciatora

N

ow that Easter is part of our recent past, mega-stores have begun offering significant bargains on lamb. And in the case of one mega-store in Groton, CT., the butchers were offering half portions of leg of lamb. For me, this created the perfect opportunity to make Abbacchio alla Cacciatora, Hunter’s-style Lamb.

I don’t know how or when a lamb dish became associated with hunters. I can’t imagine a bunch of guys in day-glo orange vests stalking around a pasture with lupari, shotguns. I’m more inclined to think that this was the meal a group of hunters found waiting them one day when they returned from a morning of wild boar hunting.

Italians prepare Abbacchio alla Cacciatora with acidulous wine; that is, wine that has begun turning to vinegar. My recipe combines white wine and vinegar to simulate the effect. To serve, you'll need no more than a good crusty loaf of bread and a green vegetable to make a rustic, soul-satisfying supper.

Abbacchio alla Cacciatora
Hunter's-style Lamb

Ingredients:

2 Tbs. Olive Oil
2-4 Cloves of garlic, peeled, crushed and finely chopped
1 1/2 Lb. lamb, (either shoulder, leg, or a combination) cut into bite-sized pieces, all visible fat removed
2 Tbs. fresh Rosemary, leaves only
1/2 Cup dry white wine
1/2 Cup white wine vinegar
Salt & Freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Flat-leafed Italian Parsley, finely chopped.

Preparation:

Heat a sauté pan over high heat, and then add the olive oil. Lower the heat to medium-high and add the garlic, shaking the pan all the while so the garlic doesn't burn.

Add the lamb to the pan and brown thoroughly on all sides, continuing to shake the pan occasionally. Don't crowd the pan, though. If the lamb doesn't fit comfortably in one batch, divide it and brown it in batches.

When the lamb has browned, return it to the pan, if you’ve cooked it in batches. Raise the heat to high, add the Rosemary, then the wine, scraping the bottom and sides of the sauté pan to loosen any caramelized particles. Boil off the wine for a couple of minutes to evaporate the alcohol, and then add the vinegar. Taste for salt and pepper and simmer, uncovered, for about fifteen minutes or slightly longer until the lamb is tender.

To Serve:

Divide equally among four plates, and garnish with the parsley.

Serves four

Low Carb = Whole Grain?

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casionally, I see something so astonishing, it forces me to digress from my usual cheerleading about eating seasonal foods, locally grown, where the retail price doesn't include a factor for the amount of diesel fuel needed to get the food from the producer to your market.

This mind-numbing blurb from the California Farm Bureau Federation came across my RSS newsreader today.

If I understand it correctly—and I probably could use some help on this—"Low Carb" will morph into "Whole Grain." Sheesh, I thought we got past that in the eighties with the bran muffin thing. And would any self-respecting Italian even think about eating a "whole grain" pizza?

A Proper Sicilian Feast

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t must have happened the last time I saw Goodfellas. Or perhaps it was the last time I saw The Godfather. Whatever the source, I've had a serious Jones for Spaghetti with Meatballs. Apparently, I haven't been alone. Shortly after I told a couple of friends about it, I discovered that I had a "guest list" for Sunday dinner.

For Sicilians—and for southern Italians as well—Spaghetti with Meatballs has a different meaning than it does for anyone who's had a meal at a typical Italian American restaurant. Remember the ill-fated Rocco's on 22^nd where he served a dish of spaghetti with two or three of Mamma's meatballs on top? That's not the way Italians do it, although in the interest of full disclosure, the last time I was in Rome, I saw a couple of trattoria menus that offered just such a dish on the menu touristica, tourist menu. But it's rare.

When Sicilians (and again, southern Italians) talk about Spaghetti with Meatballs, it's code for a first course of spaghetti with tomato sauce, followed by an entrée of meatballs, spare ribs (or pork chops), and sausages braised in tomato sauce, and accompanied by salad and bread. And that was the way my Sicilian grandparents served the dish as I was growing up.

I can only theorize that things changed—perhaps sometime in the fifties—when an enterprising restaurateur discovered that if the chef served the meatballs with the spaghetti, the restaurant could turn over the tables faster. Whatever the reason, we've come to think of Spaghetti with Meatballs as a single dish rather than separate courses.

Meatballs are the subject of endless debate among Italians, even today. The primary topic of the debate is meat. All beef? Beef and pork? Beef, pork, and veal? And what proportions? And then there's the filler. Breadcrumbs, or fresh bread ripped into small pieces? And Rocco's Mamma had a trick I had never seen before: she put onion and garlic in the Cuisinart, and pureed it with some chicken stock, then added it to the meat mixture.

Over time, I've settled on beef, pork, and veal in equal amounts for my meatballs. I also use prepared bread crumbs. This may get me some flack from foodie purists, but I'm unrepentant.

Regarding the other meats, I'm fortunate that here in this little piece of heaven in southeastern Connecticut, I can walk one block to Universal Market of Noank. A walk into Universal is a walk back in time. It's a store with an actual butcher ready to discuss and to serve your needs. You'll see no shrink-wrapped meat, and in all likelihood, your new friend behind the counter will hand cut your order from a larger, primal cut. So 'country-style' spare ribs are not a problem.

As for the sausages, my new friend at Universal is happy to describe their lineage in detail. They were made last Thursday by Frank and Sam Bruno at Westerly Meat Packing Co., about ten miles down Route 1 in Westerly, Rhode Island. Perhaps this is a bigger piece of heaven than, say, just the view of Fisher's Island Sound.

Another ongoing debate in the Spaghetti with Meatballs story is the sauce. Perhaps you'll recall Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas, sitting in his jail cell using a razor blade as if it were a microtome, cutting microscopically thin slices of garlic for the "gravy," with Henry Hill providing voice-over play-by-play commentary. Or Clemenza in The Godfather, lecturing Michael Corleone about the virtue of garlic in sauce.

I use my grandmother's recipe, which calls for two cans of tomatoes, 4 - 6 cloves of garlic, a couple of carrots, some red pepper flakes and some basil. I try to use San Marzano tomatoes, but if my local mega-store doesn't have them, I use Muir Glen organic. I also use plain old Bertolli olive oil. As I said in my second cookcook, Almost Italian, when Italian immigrants first got to America, producers made no distinction among pure, virgin, extra-virgin, or even single estate extra-virgin. Olive oil was olive oil.

Once the sauce is going, it's a simple matter to brown the spare ribs, and the meatballs. The spare ribs go into the sauce for about an hour and a half, the meatballs and sausages for about an hour.

Of course, any self-respecting Sicilian feast requires an antipasto. For this one, I fudged my feelings about locally-grown vegetables, and roasted several red and green bell peppers, and served them with some sopressata, and ciabatta.

Alas, it is wonderful, but not perfect here: I have no local supplier for Cassatta alla Siciliana, or Cannoli. So we had to forgo the dolci portion of this feast. It was okay, though. By then, I was seated among eight or nine WASPS enthusiastically waving wine glasses or shards of bread in the air, and saying, "aaaayyyyyyy, fuggedaboudit." Who knows what would have happened if I did have dessert?

Marinara: Cornerstone of Southern Italian Cuisine

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'm surprised that once again—with this incarnation of Skip's Italian Food Blog—the most common question readers ask is, "Do you have a good recipe for tomato sauce?" I've been answering this question since 1994, when I started my first Web site: northend.com. The answer is, "Yes I do."

What I've found to be more surprising, though, is the tone of the e-mails. The writers suggest that marinara, tomato sauce, is some kind of elusive holy grail. In my opinion, this couldn't be further from the truth. And in Emeril Lagasse's words, "It ain't rocket science."

But thinking further, it occured to me that in addition to being a fine sauce in its own right, marinara forms the basis for a significant portion of the southern Italian and Sicilian cuisines. So it's worthwhile to develop a recipe you really like. When you've done that, you'll have the wherewithal to turn it into a panoply of Italian dishes, and save approximately thirty minutes of cooking time for each of them.

I wrote in my first cookbook, La Cucina dei Poveri, that my grandmother always seemed to have some tomato sauce on hand that she used for a variety of recipes having nothing to do with pasta. For example, a judicious ladleful over some sautéed zucchini; or "just enough to color" some cannellini; or a dollop of sauce over some of her superb rice cakes. And even when she served marinara over pasta, she would poach three or four eggs in the sauce, and serve them atop the pasta.

Italian restaurant chefs always have a pot of marinara bubbling gently on the back burner, ready to become any one of a myriad of Italian sauces. If the restaurant has an open kitchen, you might be able to watch the chef sauté some garlic in olive oil, add a handful of calamari, perhaps some red pepper flakes, then a ladleful of marinara, and voilà: pasta with calamari. And in only about four minutes.

When I make marinara, I make at least double my original recipe. It keeps perfectly well in the refrigerator for a week or ten days. Given a week to think about it, you can always find a reason to use the leftover. And while I don't advocate freezing anything, I'm told that it keeps well in the freezer for up to six months.

Here then, are a very few dishes that become available when you've mastered basic marinara sauce:

♦ Pasta all' Amatriciana
Pasta with guanciale and onion. Note: Guanciale is air-cured hog jowl. If you can't find it at your local Italian deli, you can substitute salt pork. If you're a real purist, though, you can order it from the great folks at Niman Ranch.

♦ Pasta al' Arrabiata
Pasta with spicy tomato sauce. (Literally, "angry" pasta).

♦ Pasta con Calamare
Pasta with squid in tomato sauce.

♦ Pasta alla Boscaiolo
Pasta with mushrooms and tomato sauce (Literally, Woodsman's-style pasta).

♦ Canelloni
Rolled, stuffed pasta.

♦ Pasta Ripieno
Stuffed shells.

♦ Melanzane alla Parmigiana
Eggplant Parmesan.

Of course, these few dishes barely suggest the possibilities for using marinara in your kitchen. Once you've tried a few, I'm sure you'll find dozens more you'll want to cook.

And in nearly every recipe, it's simply a matter of sautéeing some ingredients, adding the marinara and heating it through, and you're done. While I'm not averse to spending two or three hours fussing over recipes, this is my kind of day-to-day cooking.

Buon appetito!

My Grandmother's Marinara

Ingredients:

Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and thinly sliced
2 28 oz. Cans peeled tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1 Small carrot, finely shredded
1/2 tsp. Red pepper flakes
2 Tbs. Fresh oregano, finely chopped
2 Tbs. Fresh basil, finely chopped
1/4 Cup Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper

Preparation:

Heat a three or four quart pot over medium heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Add the garlic, and sauté, shaking the pot for about one minute, until the garlic begins to give up its aroma.

Remove the pot from the heat and add the tomatoes. Return the pot to the heat and begin to break the tomatoes with either the back of a fork, or a wooden spoon. Simmer the tomatoes to evaporate some of the liquid, then add the carrot, the red pepper flakes and the oregano.

Simmer gently for about twenty minutes, or until the sauce has thickened and the clear liquid from the tomatoes has evaporated.

Add the basil and parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

Makes approximately 1 1/2 Quarts.