Caçolet Paisan

Cousin Sasha is in town and to take advantage of the beautiful weekend weather we visited a certain public park on the bank of the Potomac to have ourselves un asado tipico Argentino. Only, this being Gringolandia, we grilled pork ribs along with our morcilla.

Ms Vidal and I made a careful study of Argentine barbecue during our residence in Buenos Aires. The principal differences between ours and theirs are these:

1. Argentina is a superlatively carnivorous society. During a recent government-mandated increase in beef prices one woman lamented to the press, "My 31 year old son Rodrigo lives with me. I fear that he will starve. What am I supposed to feed him, chicken?" Truly, chicken, pork, fish and anything else that doesn't have magenta colored flesh are all considered a separate class of flowering plants. The reason for this is simple: Argentina's vast, unpopulated countryside is home to the world's largest migratory population of prime-grade free-range beef, though rampant soy-speculation and an unprecedented drought have severally denigrated the living conditions of the bos felix argentinus. Despite this, Argentines still cling tightly to their traditional bovicentric way of life. Although prices fluctuate, the value of Argentine beef as measured in quality/cost remains among the very highest in the world. What would be sold in Chicago as extraordinarily fine prime-grade sirloin is a relatively common piece of meat to Argentines. Argentine beef cuts vary enormously from those practiced by American or British butchers, and contrary to the Northern predilection for aged beef, the Argentines try to keep the time between slaughter and grill to a minimum.

2. While Ms Vidal and I cherish the regional and even county-to-county varieties of American barbecue, which Lo Paisan considers to be the first, if not finest, American culinary invention, the parameters of our consciences were shattered by the revolutionary aspect of Argentine barbecue. The asado is typically a private affair, done on a (relatively) small scale in parks, back yards, campgrounds, or the grassy median between directions of traffic on the highway. The method requires absolute simplicity. Meat, salt and wood are the only requirements. Wood is burned into coals in a separate fire and a few, small, smoking embers are arranged beneath the grill. The meat, often accompanied by a variety of sausages and offal, is adorned with nothing more than coarse salt, if salt is used at all. The fire is kept going and new embers are continually added as the old ones grow cold, until the flesh, self-basted in its own slowly rendered fat, reaches a tender, smoky medium rare. It is a method dependent on time, which necessitates time together, which necessitates close and amiable relationships built on patience, trust, and a love of food. Perhaps in a country with as unstable a political history as Argentina's the asado has become so deeply embedded in society because it produces clans -- groups of trusted friends outside the sweep of politics, like moonshiners or fishing buddies -- unified over the shared consumption of blood, smoke and salt.

Sasha and I stopped at Eastern Market for a slab of pork ribs, bought at around $2.00 a pound from the geniuses at Union Meat Company, a couple of morcillas from Canales Quality Meats, and a baguette. With a magnum of Georges Duboeuf's cuvée rouge safely stowed in the bota bag, a jar of kosher salt and a bundle of split pine, we made our merry way to our paradisaical riverine asado. The ribs turned out wonderfully. The morcipan, the first I've had in nearly two years, were delicious, but had a tangy, tannin-like, granulated taste like no morci I ever et in Argentina. Sated, we returned with several smoky flame-browned ribs.

The following night, unsure what to prepare for a starving Ms Vidal, I decided to try my hand at caçolet paisan -- the left over ribs stewed in white beans. I fried two minced onions and two minced carrots in the cast iron while the great northern beans came to boil, then added the ribs to the skillet with the penultimate tablespoons of the fresh garden thyme that came in the mail last Christmas, along with some whole peppercorns. I let these cook slowly while the beans, once at a boil, rested with the burner off their proscribed thirty minutes. Once that time had passed, I scooped the contents of the skillet into the beans, along with some ketchup, mustard and red wine vinegar and brought the lot back to a boil. An hour later Ms Vidal's hunger had overcome her patience so, the beans being just tender enough to be palatable, we ate a nice pork and white bean soup. I continued to cook the remaining beans, however, as I wanted to carry my experiment in caçolet paisan to its enviable conclusion.

The following evening, I removed the rib bones and stray pieces of cartilage from the beans and poured the still soupy mixture into the cast iron skillet, brought it to a boil over a flame, then coated the top with a generous application of paprika and olive oil, and put the skillet in the broiler. Four times I let the surface brown and develop a membranous, paprika flavored crust. Four times I broke the crust with gentle admonitions of a wooden spoon, gently separating the beans from the sides of the skillet, until, after the fifth browning, the beans possessed a lovely brown crust under which the beans still sopped in the concentrated juices of the soup.

While a proper cassoulet, containing at least one duck, several pounds of meat and various sausages, is indubitably superior to caçolet paisan, yesteray's version, prepared off the cuff with leftover ribs, two onions, two carrots and a bag of beans, made for a delicious and satisfying meal.

Porcine Canticle No. 1

Then a bit of money appears and one can do a little shopping. Never before had I understood the third-world vision of the American grocery store, the Allen Ginsberg vision of its technicolored, lysergic acid plenty until last week when we visited the emporium of detritus and rediscovered the cornucopia of American food distribution. So many shapes and colors! So many textures! Butter leaf lettuce! Gala apples! White button mushrooms! Just looking at the food arrayed under the lights was a filling meal.

After a careful appraisal of the rising costs of food (generic brand pasta at $1.25 per pound, a 25% increase in price from six months ago) we opted for russet potatoes, yellow onions, carrots, dried beans, pearl barley, green cabbage, eggs, and milk. From the shelves of the meat department I managed to scrounge remaindered beef chuck roast, beef spare ribs and pork loin -- none of which was more than $2.99 per pound. Compared to the usurious cost of bacon these days ($5/lb) one would be a fool to pass up a nicely marbled chuck roast or svelte pork loin for nearly half the price.

After a bit of inquiry, it was decided that Ms Vidal preferred a roast pork loin over beef. The next night, after returning from a day of manual labor, tired from my efforts, yet wanting to pour love into my woman's life in the form of food, I prepared the old standby -- Roast Pork Loin in Herbed Salt.

This is a variation on a dish I learned years ago from my mother. It's quick and easy and almost fool proof. In essence, you rub a pork loin in chopped herbs and salt and cook it at 400° for an hour. I believe the original recipe called for sage. I use whatever is handy. Given the enormous rosemary bush in our neighbor's yard, I crushed rosemary with garlic, a bit of lemon juice, butter and kosher salt in a mortar and pestle. As an experiment, I jammed the knife sharpener down the length of the two loins and stuffed the herbed and salted butter into the loin -- envisioning some specie of pork Kiev. That didn't work. The butter melted out and left the herb stuffing a little trop vegetal, but delicious none the less.

The basic recipe is to grind sage, kosher salt and olive oil into a rudimentary pesto and spread that over the loin. Copious amounts of olive oil are a very nice touch if you can afford it. Then fire it into a heated 400° oven for one hour.

For our dinner, I mixed potatoes with garlic, butter and rosemary and cooked them in the same dish as the pork loins. The potatoes came out a little underdone and the water they released accumulated in the casserole, submerging the lower portions of the loins. While it didn't quite have the usual color, the pork was extremely tender and enough of the potatoes were crispy to fill two plates. In the future I'll cook the pork and the potatoes separately.

Normally I serve the roast plain, but to experiment I made a quick sauce for the pork. I mixed Kelchner's hot mustard with added horseradish, James Keller and Son Dundeee Three Fruits Marmalade, and some cheap apricot jam in equal doses and spooned a little glob onto each slice of pork. Hot, sweet, fruity, delicious.

Roti

I first learned of roti in the halal restaurants of Kota Bharu. There they were served hot from the oven with rich South Asian gravy. Growing up in the States, my understanding of South Asian breads was limited to naan, often garlic naan. While naan are pillowy and delicious, roti, in comparison, seemed a more practical and utilitarian component to a curry, sort of like the workhorse white breads of Italy. Anyway, I thought the roti were delicious and continued to order them in cheap outdoor Indian restaurants around Malaysia, where, in 2003 at any rate, one could eat a delicious, handmade, filling meal for a very fair price.

As part of our ongoing non-voluntary participation in the experiment called Global Economic Collapse, Ms Vidal and I have used up nearly every single ingestible item in the house. Minus condiments, pickles, capers and the like, as of this morning our larder contained: half a pound of corn meal, 2 pounds of whole wheat flour, 3 pounds of white flour, and one pound of sugar. Plus a quart of yellow split-pea dhal leftover from a few days back idling in a pot in the fridge.

I nearly broke down and ordered a pepperoni pizza. After a week of subsistence living (both of us were terribly ill for a week), a pepperoni pizza seemed talismanic of the kind of regenerative bourgeois craving-slaying food every cell in my body was calling out for. Just thinking about the phone call sent me into a reverie. Those simple words, "I'd like a large pepperoni pizza" were themselves nearly a meal after the privations of the previous week. But in the end we opted to drag out our penury one more day and I was inspired to make roti for the first time.

I am happy to report that they are delicious, though humble, and very easy to make.

Roti, like tortillas, are one of the simple unleavened breads of the world, hearkening back to culinary cultures unfamiliar with the magic of yeast. Roti, also, are traditionally made with a blend of flours -- whole wheat and chickpea being the most common -- rather than the leavened naan, which is typically made with white flour. This represents more than style. The more substantial, unleavened roti are part and parcel of the meal they accompany, rather than naan, which is almost a frivolity, something to be served in spite of, not because.

Quite simply, mix flour with water at a 2.5 : 1 ratio. Form into little balls. Roll them out on a generously floured surface. Give them a quick, two-sided roasting in a hot pan. Then finish them over an open flame. For cooks unused to handling food over fire, this is great practice, and the sight of fresh, hand-rolled whole-wheat roti bubbling and blistering in your hands should convert the most cautious of food handlers.



Recipes for traditional, blended-flour roti abound on the internet. I simply used whole wheat flour. There is a shallow, slightly bevelled pan used in India for making roti, but my cast iron worked fine. It is not only the right size, but, as always, the only truly reliable nonstick surface in my kitchen. Simply toast the roti on both sides then transfer it to an open burner. I used a small roasting rack as a grill, but I think anything would work. It only takes a moment for the gas burner to bubble and blister the exposed roti. Turn it in your finger tips, give it a flip, and deposit it in a vessel nearby. Several online sources recommend slathering them with ghee as they come off the fire, and I can think of no reason, in all the universe, why you shouldn't do so, provided you have a jar of ghee standing by.

Part of the fun of making roti is getting into the rhythm of plucking off a ball of dough, rolling it out, putting it into the skillet, plucking the next ball of dough, rolling it out, transferring dough from skillet to flame, dough to skillet, dough from flame to pan, plucking the next ball of dough, rolling it out, etc. It is one of the ancient human rhythms that has marked time in kitchens from the epochs before written language.

Ideally, serve roti with a goat korma or some other delightful Mughal dish, but if you too find yourself a participant in the experiment called Global Economic Collapse, take heart in the thought that with half a pound of split yellow peas, two ounces of tomato paste, some old garlic cloves, a few chilies, some salt, a tablespoon of garam masala, three cups of flour and tap water you can make a reasonably authentic dhal accompanied by fresh hot roti. A delicious and filling meal.

King Carbonara

Long a perpetrator of bad carbonara, last night I finally realized my recent carbonara epiphany and made CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED.

In these lean times, Ms Vidal and I have learned to make do on the barest of staples. As vegetables cost more than pork here in DC, even during the winter months when said vegetables are little other than limp, pale fibers cleverly assembled into the simulacra of vegetables, bacon makes up a crucial part of our daily life.

Luckily for us, the geniuses over at Union Meat Company at Eastern Market sell thick-cut skin-on bacon for $3.50 / lb. Compare this to the packed detritus selling at our local chino for $4.99 / lb and stand in awe at the altar of usury.

Union Meat's bacon is so thick it comes off the skillet like fried ham, with a crisp run of pork rind along the edge. Not exactly lean, it still packs enough meat on the slice to amount to more than just the ashen grease you get from most bacon.

Times being lean, I pour off all bacon fat into a mug I keep in the fridge. Nevermind the trouble of filtering the stuff. If you're subsisting on bacon, grit (and cancer) are the least of your worries.

After months of sadly gnawing the ersatz produce foisted on we the peasantry by the agents of simulacra, I've come to regard Union Meat's bacon as fruit of the pig. It sits side by side with Ken's Kash's bacon in heaven.

Carbonara has long floated about the periphery of my scant, bastard knowledge of Italian food. While never a workhorse in my stable, I always admired the application of a raw egg to recently cooked noodles, as that simple gesture struck me as a ray of unrepentant peasant sunshine shining through the codified and twice-inspected tedium of bullshit that reigns over the earth. But I never grasped the idea of the dish, I never got carbonara until earlier this week, when I was once again making it badly and had what I can only describe as a vision.

Previously, I had always thought of the dish as essentially fettucini alfredo with a raw egg tossed in for sport. I very rarely make the stuff, as alfredo sauce always reminds me of a story I once heard about a girl who got herpes on her face after eating fettucine alfredo at Olive Garden. Besides, white sauces always struck me as as the kind of Italian food mediocre French chefs serve to tourists in the Piémont. But the crucial error, the central carbonara error, lies not in the relative whiteness of the sauce, but in thinking of it as a sauce at all.

Apart from the cool trick of throwing a raw egg into everyone's dinner, carbonara always appealed to me because of its curious name. Because I am stupid and rush to judgment and always think I'm right and know positively jack shit about Italian, I long assumed carbonara referred to gli carabinieri who fought in World War One, as in pasta agli carabonieri, or some such pidgin nonsense. I'm sure attributing carbonara to desperately inventive soldiers scavenging in the ruins of North Italy is the fault of reading too much Hemingway.

Turns out the origin of the term is a mystery. The root of the term, "carbon", means exactly that -- carbon, as in carbon scoring, as in charcoal, as in coal. Is it coal miner's pasta, hearty enough to propel an Italian laborer through a grueling day's work in the tunnels? Does carbon refer to the copious amounts of black pepper flecked like bits of coal, or char, throughout the dish? Judgment is still out, but one thing for certain is that carbon does not a carabin be.

According to wikipedia, however, the dish did not become widely popular until after WW2, when the Italian citizenry subsisted on rations handed out by occupying American forces. In those rations? Bacon and eggs.

The fundamental principal at the heart of Lo Paisan philosophy is that good food is always a product of inspired improvisation using ingredients at hand. While you will never see Ms Vidal or me turning up our noses at ossetra caviar and chilled champagne, the fact remains that, even for the wealthy, cooking is nearly always done with ingredients at hand.

We the peasantry, who live in a post-industrial culinary wasteland where one in three Americans contracts diabetes from the corn syrup and gristle slopped in our troughs by global conglomerates, will seldom if ever have access to luxury ingredients. But we can take solace in the thought that all peasantry, throughout history, have been presented with the same dilemma -- making food with what there is. This dilemma, a daily issue for most of the people who ever lived, is the catalyst for inspiration and innovation. Who would have thought at the time that Grandma Samangiare's improvised paste of mashed basil leaves, olive oil, pine nuts and garlic would turn out the way it did?

For the post-war Italians, American rations could have been a bone in the throat, an aberration against the purity of Italian culinary heritage, against its native nobility, but faced with hungry children and whining husbands Grandma Samangiare took to Uncle Sam's bacon and eggs with the same gusto she showed corn, the tomato, and the noodle before that.

In the course of our lifelong quest to live up to Grandma Samangiare's example, Ms Vidal and I have learned that there is no room for purity or native nobility in the hungry life of Lo Paisan. That is the second principal of Lo Paisan philosophy: in the beginning, there was hunger, the ingredients at hand and inspired improvisation; there are no ur-recipes.

So, CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED is, essentially, bacon and eggs thrown on top of pasta. The central carbonara error is to view the bacon and eggs as ingredients in a sauce. Instead, think of carbonara as breakfast served with noodles in the place of bread or potatoes.

The raw egg tossed into the freshly drained, still steaming noodles is not an empty gesture. Stirred quickly into the naked noodles, the egg quickly develops into the delicate and delicious curds of slowly scrambled eggs.

The bacon, cooked apart, cut up into bits, and put into the noodles still hot and glazed with melted fat, stays crisp this way, as it should. When it is fried and then braised in an uninspired white sauce the finest bacon develops a chewy cat-gut sinuousness that takes all the bacon out of bacon.

Of course, Italians having their proclivities, fresh herbs and hard cheeses might be added, but not because Grandma Samangiare read about it in Gourmet Magazine, but because a hard wedge of pecorino tucked under the saddle blanket was to a post-war Italian peasant in the hills outside of Rome what a tube of Scrapple was to his contemporaneous Baltimorean brother-peasant, ie: ingredients at hand.

This carbonara epiphany led to one of the finest Italianate meals I've ever cooked; surpassed, if at all, only by MS VIDAL'S BIRTHDAY LASAGNA and AUGUST PESTO.

To whit:

CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED

Make fresh pasta.*

I like to make a quadruple batch, as the kneeding is the hardest part, and kneeding is just as easy with a quadruple dose as a single. For CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED I lifted a move from Batali I saw on Iron Chef America and sifted unsweetened cocoa into the flour. Batali says it was common during the Renaissance. A note on flour: I use regular all purpose flour, and I bet you 2000 lira that if Grandma Samangiare lived in DC today she would too. Cut the pasta into tagliatelle about 1/4 in wide. I use an old Amish rolling pin cum pasta cutter. Set water onto boil.

In a mortar and pestle combine herbs (I used a tablespoon of dried garden thyme and the leaves from one six inch stalk of fresh rosemary), a teaspoon of black pepper, five cloves of garlic, a dash of salt and olive oil. Mash into a pesto.

Fry up half a pound of thick-sliced bacon in a skillet. I used Union Meat Company's ridiculously good thick-sliced skin-on bacon. Set aside. Pour off most of the hot grease into a coffee mug and save for later. Add one chopped onion to hot skillet and stir, adding olive oil. Moderate the heat so that you kill the onions but do not blacken them. When the onions are very soft, stir in the pesto and remove from heat.

Add fresh pasta to boiling water. Fresh pasta cooks very quickly. Do not overcook it.

Add a few spoonfuls of pasta water to the onions/pesto in the skillet.

Add a dash of milk to onion/pesto mixture.

When the pasta is done, drain quickly and return to pot. Crack one egg into the noodles and stir quickly, but gently, until the egg forms solid curds.

Add onion/pesto mixture.

Cut the bacon into small pieces into the noodles. I used a pair of scissors.

Stir and serve in a large bowl.

In the event that you have a hard, sharp Italian cheese such as pecarino or parmesan by all means incorporate this into the dish. If, like Ms Vidal and I, you can't afford to pay 16$ a pound for anything, least of all cheese, do as the Italian peasants of yore did and sprinkle the carbonara with crumbs from stale white bread.

In the event you have a bottle of red wine around, but all means drink it with CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED. If you do not, water is a delicious accompaniment.

*It is imperative to use fresh pasta with carbonara, as the interplay of textures between the crisp bacon and pillow-soft noodle is one of the dish's foremost qualities.

Carbonara as God Intended

Make fresh pasta.*
I like to make a quadruple batch, as the kneeding is the hardest part, and kneeding is just as easy with a quadruple dose as a single.
For CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED I lifted a move from Batali I saw on Iron Chef America: Battle Chocolate and Coconut and sifted unsweetened cocoa into the flour.
A note on flour: I use regular all purpose flour, and I bet you 2000 lira that if Grandma Samangiare lived in DC today she would too.
Cut the pasta into tagliatelle about 1/4 in wide. I use an old Amish rolling pin cum pasta cutter.
Set water onto boil.

In a mortar and pestle combine herbs (I used a tablespoon of dried garden thyme and the leaves from one six inch stalk of fresh rosemary), a teaspoon of black pepper, five cloves of garlic, a dash of salt and olive oil. Mash into a pesto.

Fry up half a pound of thick-sliced bacon in a skillet. I used Union Meat Company's ridiculously good thick-sliced skin-on bacon. Set aside. Pour off most of the hot grease into a coffee mug and save for later.
Add one chopped onion to hot skillet and stir, adding olive oil.
Moderate the heat so the onions cook until very soft but do not blacken.
When the onions are very soft, stir in the pesto and remove from heat.

Add fresh pasta to boiling water.
Fresh pasta cooks very quickly. Do not overcook it.
Add a few spoonfuls of pasta water to the onions/pesto in the skillet.
Add a dash of milk to onion/pesto mixture.

When the pasta is done, drain quickly and return to pot.
Crack one egg into the noodles and stir quickly, but gently, until the egg forms solid curds.
Add onion/pesto mixture.
Cut the bacon into small pieces into the noodles. I used a pair of scissors.
Stir and serve in a large bowl.

In the event that you have a hard, sharp Italian cheese such as pecarino or parmesan by all means incorporate this into the dish. If, like Ms Vidal and I, you can't afford to pay 16$ a pound for anything, least of all cheese, do as the Italian peasants of yore did and sprinkle the carbonara with crumbs from stale white bread.

In the event you have a bottle of red wine around, but all means drink it with CARBONARA AS GOD INTENDED. If you do not, water is a delicious accompaniment.

*It is imperative to use fresh pasta with carbonara, as the interplay of textures between the crisp bacon and pillow-soft noodle is one of the dish's foremost qualities.