Charcutepalooza: Whole Wheat Pasta with Braised Cabbage & Duck Prosciutto

Trying something new here, since I don't have time to pull together full recipes for you right now, but this dish was so good that I had to share. The hazelnut breadcrumbs are gilding of this lily, but they are quick to make and really add a great textural contrast to this dish.

This was good people, really really good. The whole time we ate we made yummy noises. (There may have been some grunting.)

If you don't have duck prosciutto at hand, sub in a great ham (country ham would be fabulous), cooked bacon, or traditional prosciutto (domestic would ok).

So here you go, step-by-step:

Brown one large onion, sliced thin, in a large skillet.

Add about 1/2 of a savoy cabbage, sliced thin, and about 1/2 cup of water. Cook over medium heat until cabbage is softened.

Add two large dollops of creme fraiche and a sprinkle of salt.

Stir once or twice and cook until it looks like this. Add a little water if the skillet gets too dry; you want things to stay semi-soupy. When it's done to your liking, grind in a crap-ton of black pepper and turn off the heat until the pasta is ready.

Meanwhile, cook up about half a pound of whole wheat spaghetti.

When the pasta is cooked to your taste (I like whole wheat pasta to be just this side of underdone, because it will finish cooking in the skillet *and* because when it overcooks, it gets soggy), reserve a cup of the cooking water (that's the mug is for: to remind me to save some water) and drain the pasta.

Toss the pasta into the skillet and turn the heat back on. Stir and toss the pasta together with the cabbage, adding some cooking water if it's too dry.

Fold in about 1/2 cup of duck prosciutto, slivered.

Serve in warmed soup plates, topped with hazelnut breadcrumbs.

To make the breadcrumbs:

Put a handful of hazelnuts into a mortar.

Crush them and toss them into a small pan with an equal portion of panko or fresh breadcrumbs. Drizzle in some olive oil and toast over medium high heat until browned and crispy.

Charcutepalooza: Month One

So, over New Year's my friend Mrs. Wheelbarrow and new friend Yummy Mummy had a spark that grew into a massive meaty conflagration: Charcutepalooza! We're going to take on various charcuterie projects over the course a year. With my major project on deck: y'know, opening a restaurant, I'm going to do my best keeping up but don't think I'll be able to do every project.

You can get on board too! Check out the Charcutepalooza page for information on how to get started.

In month one we made duck prosciutto. I purchased whole ducks and broke them down for the breast meat (oh yes, on Twitter the breast jokes were never-ending). I made confit from the legs with the fat rendered from the carcasses.

The prosciutto making was the easy part: you bury the breasts in salt night, then rub them with spices, then hang them for 7 days. Done!

For me the biggest challenge was finding a spot in the house that had the right combination of temperature (50-60 degrees) and humidity (70% ish). My prosciutto ended up a little dry and I'm sure it's because of the humidity level (too low).

I rubbed two of my breasts with white pepper and the other with a fennel-black pepper-coriander mixture. To be honest, I didn't taste much of a difference between the two. Next time I might try heavily crusting it with black pepper for a more pastrami-esque experience.

So far, we've eaten our prosciutto alongside a citrusy fennel salad and over the top of a chickpea soup. For the soup, I tried crisping the prosciutto, and for me this wasn't super successful: the prosciutto got saltier and lost a lot of its nuanced flavors.

Next month: Pancetta!

So it's been a while ....

Sorry folks, vacation, family and business have taken my attention for the last few months. But I am so excited to tell you about why I haven't been posting: My husband and I are opening a restaurant!

Enzo Restaurant & Bar is something we've been planning for a long time. We'll be sharing our passion for great food with our community. We'll be serving dishes inspired by Northern Italy but interpreted back through New England's seasons and ingredients. Imagine if your grandmother came to Massachusetts from Genoa and had to prepare meals for her family. She'd use what she had available to her locally to make the dishes of her homeland.

Ciao for now!

Use Your Booty: Barley Salad with Burrata

I meant to to get this post up before this holiday weekend started. This salad is a great healthy, vegetarian, colorful side dish that goes well alongside grilled meat. It also improves with age - so you can make it a day or two ahead. I fancied it up with a large chunk of burrata cheese - feel free to omit it if you prefer.

Black Barley Salad with Burrata

Serves about 8-10 as a side dish, makes a generous 4-6 main course servings.

I liked the richness added by the burrata - if you don't have any at hand, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese or ricotta salata would be great. Or go dairy-free and toss on slices of hard-boiled egg.

• 1 cup uncooked black barley or 4 cups cooked barley (or pearl barley or "regular" barley - this salad would also work with farro or wheatberries)
• 2-3 small zucchini, diced
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 2 handfuls purslane leaves
• 1 small onion, sliced into thin rounds
• red wine vinegar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 8 ounces burrata, left whole (preferred) or torn into shreds

Cook the barley, if needed: pick through the uncooked grains to remove any stones or bits of twig or chaff. Place in saucepan and cover with water by two inches and bring to boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, add a healthy pinch of salt and cook until the grains are tender. This will take from 45 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the grain you're cooking and how old it is. Add more water as needed to keep the barley covered.

When the barley is cooked, drain it in a colander and set aside to cool.

Toss half of the cooked barley with the vegetables. Add more barley until you have the vegetable/grain ratio you like. (You may not use all of the barley. Any leftovers can be frozen for future use.)

Sprinkle the salad with red wine vinegar and a healthy glug or two of olive oil. Season to taste with more vinegar and oil and salt and pepper. Top the salad with burrata and serve.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog. I paid for my livestock share. A full set of all the photos I've taken of this share is here.

The Porchetta Project

I have been dreaming of porchetta lately: a big roast of pork, redolent of rosemary and garlic and wrapped in crispy, crackly pork skin. This is a dish that's easy to get if you live in Italy, or near the eponymous shop in NYC, but up in my neck of the woods, not so much.

So what's a girl to do but take this porky problem into her own hands? Technically I needed what's called a "long middle" (a pork loin with the belly still attached), but my favorite pork supplier Tim Rocha at Kellie Brook Farm let me know that might be a tough cut for him to get. So, I decided to cobble together Frankenpig from a loin, some fatback and a skin-on belly.

I made a rub of rosemary, garlic, black pepper and salt to use for seasoning the roast and got to work assembling the beast: I laid the belly out and rubbed it liberally with half of the seasoning. I laid the loin over it and rubbed on the other half of the seasoning. I took the fatback (I did trim it down as it was really thick, so it ended up with a piece that was about 1/3 inch thick ) and laid it over the top.

I then did a ridiculously poor job of trussing this amalgam into a cylinder. I put it onto a rack on a sheet pan and left it in the fridge for for a day, to let the rub's herbiness perfume the meat.

Since the roast was so thick (almost 10 inches) I took it out of the fridge an hour before I started roasting it. I followed the basic instructions that Molly Stevens used in her porchetta project. I put the roast into a 475-degree oven on a roasting rack on a sheet pan and let it crackle away for 30 minutes (this will create A LOT of smoke; turn off the smoke detectors first). Then the oven went down to 325-degrees and the porchetta roasted away for another 3 hours.

I popped into the oven every now and then and basted the skin with the fat that was accumulating in the pan. I also siphoned off a lot of this fat as it rendered. This was a necessary chore as a lot of fat rendered off: nearly 2 cups.

While this wasn't my perfect porchetta: it was a little too fatty, the loin on the ends was a little dry and the skin wasn't crispy all the way around. But, holy moly, it was a delicious. The skin that was crisped up was super crunchy and toothsome. The rosemary and garlic flavor permeated the meat and made for a great flavor. While the roast was resting, I roasted potatoes on a sheet pan with some of the rendered fat. We enjoyed our porchetta and potatoes with a fennel salad.

Two days later, we had an amazing sandwiches of gently-warmed porchetta, tomatoes and Swiss chard salad for dinner. Nom nom.

Changes for next time:

• Remember to score the skin before you truss the roast - very very hard to score skin without cutting through the trussing twine.
• Don't put the rub on the outside of the roast. I did and it started scorching up right off the bat.
• Trim back a little more fat from the roast: a had a double layer of fat on the top (the loin fat against the back fat was too thick a layer).
• Roll the roast during the skin-crisping stage to make sure that all the skin gets exposed to the heat.