I’ve assembled this dish once before. That will happen sometimes, even consciously.  I remembered liking it a lot. It was as good last night as it was the first time; maybe even better, since there were no leftovers this time. We skipped a cheese course, to savor the pasta more.

It’s a rich-tasting primi or secondo, very Italian, and very simple to prepare.  As I wrote the last time, the concept of cooking a dry pasta without a pot of water seems somewhat counterintuitive (I forgot the process myself this time, and had started boiling a large pot of water before I realized my mistake), but once you’ve gone through the process, it makes perfect sense.

• inside a large non-reactive pot, briefly sautéed in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 medium cloves of chopped garlic from Keith’s Farm, 2 generously-sized rosemary sprigs from Stokes Farm, and 4 rinsed and filleted salted anchovies from Buon Italia, until the anchovies had broken up, then a 16-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes (already-chopped or whole, and ideally without basil), with the juices, added and cooked for 10 or 15 minutes, crushing with a wooden spoon if the tomatoes are whole, salt added to taste, the heat increased and a can of good chick peas, with the liquid, poured in, along with about 2 cups of good chicken broth or water, and a third sprig of rosemary, everything brought to a soft boil before half a pound of dry Afeltra Pasta di Gragnolo ‘Vesuvio’ was added (alternatively, use some other small pasta, like farfalle or a small penne or rigatoni), the heat now reduced to a healthy simmer until the pasta was cooked al dente and the broth thick, stirring frequently (this may take half an hour), adding more liquid if necessary, spooning it into bowls, drizzled with a little olive oil, and sprinkled with good grated Parmesan cheese from Buon Italia [the basic recipe for the pasta comes from food52.com, but I have annotated it here, mostly to reflect my own experience]
• the wine was a very interesting Italian (Piedmont) red, La Casaccia Monfiorenza Freisa 2012 [NOTE: appellation now only shows the 2014 on its site], which was entirely new to us
• the music was by David Matthews, “September Music” and “Symphony No.4”, from this 1991 album, streaming on Spotify; later, lingering at the table, we listened to an absolutely beautiful new (2016) piece, ‘Let Me Tell You’, by Hans Abrahamsen, sung with incredible intensity and brilliance by the amazing soprano Barbara Hannigan (here, talking about the piece with the composer and Paul Griffiths, the author of the text)

(it looks a bit askew, but I wanted to save the piece of parsley)

 

I really love this dish, and please don’t tell the Italians, but nothing else works as well as a sort of mental ‘palate cleanser’ following a day or a sequence of days which had featured fairly rich meals.

• Italian-grain Afeltra spaghettetone from Eataly, cooked al dente, then tossed in a large, enameled cast iron pot in which two garlic cloves from Keith’s Farm, minced, and one crushed peperoncino had been heated in some olive oil before they were joined by cooked little neck clams from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, along with their cooking juices (the clams had been steamed open with a little water in a separate pot), the entire mix sprinkled with a bunch of parsley from Eataly, chopped, then served in shallow bowls
• slices of excellent sourdough bread from Rock Hill Bakehouse, in Gansevoort, NY, which is sold on Saturdays at the Union Square Greenmarket
• the wine was an Italian (Sicily) white, Corvo Insolia 2014
• the music was a number of classical-era symphonies by contemporaries of Haydn and Mozart; all of these works area seriously underappreciated today, Gossec, Vanhal, Manhaut, and Kraus, performed by Capella Coloniensis

maybe my best Rognons de Mouton outing; thinking it was the sorrel

 

Every so often I think about offal, and then I have to do something about it.

Yeah. Well, this time I started by asking one of the sheep farmers I regularly see at the Union Square Greenmarket whether they had any lamb kidneys.  To anyone unfamiliar with this delicacy it might be a surprise to learn that I was actually surprised that the answer was yes. To explain, there appears to be a number of local offal fans who often sweep up any of these and the other types of innards which most people might not even be aware existed. This happens before I manage to get to Union Square; apparently innards people are early risers.

I learned today that there’s even a subgroup whose thing is consuming offal totally raw. Why am I not surprised?

Before I moved to New York in 1985 I traded with traditional butchers who still offered traditional, if not universally popular, fare in the form of kidneys, sweetbreads, tongue, tripe, brains, and of course liver, which is less exotic than most. Oddly, these shops were not located in communities where there were unusually large numbers of recent immigrants, but in middle class mostly-white communities.

I think that since then American middle class white communities may have lost interest in diversity, at least when it comes to animal protein.

I’ve always been interested in what is out of the mainstream, and living with the two volumes of Julia Child recipes for more than a few years, increased my curiosity and also gave me the means to satisfy it. I’ve cooked veal and lamb kidneys, sweetbreads, tripe, veal and lamb tongue, and both veal and lamb liver, but, so fat at least, I’ve skipped brains.

Last night I enjoyed the best lamb kidneys I’ve ever prepared.

The recipe I used was mostly my own invention, a conflation of the Julia Childs recipes which had introduced me to kidneys half a century ago, what I have learned about Italian cooking over the years since I had moved away from Julia, and my imagining how a Mediterranean tradition might prepare kidneys in an age which generally appreciates a simpler cooking style across the board.

Someone please correct me if I;m wrong, but I think I get the Italian right by calling it, ‘rognone di agnello trifolati’ finished with a sauce of garlic, white wine, butter, parsley, and sorrel.  Whatever it’s called, it’s delicious.

Note: Do not wash the kidneys before cooking, as they will absorb water, and be very careful not to overcook them or the dish will lose more than its magic.

• four lamb kidneys (8 ounces total) from Catskill Merino Sheep Farm, sautéed in butter (in this case in a tin-lined copper au gratin pan) until brown all over on the outside but still very rare in the center, removed and kept warm while introducing into the pan one large sliced Rocambole garlic clove from from Keith’s Farm, cooking it for one minute, adding white wine and reducing the liquid by half over high heat, quickly slicing the kidneys in the meantime, removing the pan from the burner and slowly swirling into it 2 tablespoons of chilled butter, salt and pepper, returning the sliced kidneys and all of their juices to the pan and briefly warming them in the sauce, sprinkling sauce and kidneys with a combination of chopped parsley from Eataly and some micro sorrel greens from Windfall Farms, then carefully warming the sauce over very low heat for a minute or two
• some quite small La Ratte potatoes from Berried Treasures Farm, halved lengthwise, tossed with oil, chopped rosemary from Stoke’s Farm and sage from Keith’s Farm, seasoned, and roasted on a ceramic pan in the oven
• two Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, cut horizontally into four slices, added to the pan with the potatoes a few minutes before they were removed from the onion, seasoned with salt and pepper
• a handful of ‘French Breakfast’ radish greens from Eckerton Hill Farm, wilted in olive oil in which a small garlic clove from Berried Treasures had been allowed to sweat for a bit, then seasoned with salt, pepper and a bit more olive oil
• the wine was a California (Napa Valley) red, Ken Deis Napa Valley Merlot 2014
• the music was Marek Janowski‘s magnificent Dresden ‘Götterdämmerung‘ (so sorry there’s no sequel)

Pollock is a favorite with both of us, and the micro sorrel which I found at the Greenmarket a few minutes after walking away with the fillet became a star when I combined the two.  My sighting the little greens was especially lucky because I did not have any chives at home, and it was that fine little allium which I had worked with in preparing this dish before.

• one 15-ounce pollock fillet from P.E. & D.D. Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, split into two pieces, seasoned on both sides with salt and pepper, placed in a buttered copper au gratin pan, spread with a mixture of soft butter, zest from what may have been a Frost Lisbon Lemon, grown locally by Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, and some micro sorrel greens from Windfall Farms, baked 12 to 15 minutes at 350º, removed to 2 plates, spread with the cooking juices, sprinkled with a small number of salted capers which had been rinsed, drained, dried, and briefly heated in a little hot olive oil, the fillets finished with additional, fresh sorrel
• purple winter kale from Tamarack Hollow Farm, wilted with olive oil in which one slightly-crushed Calabrian Rocambole garlic clove from Keith’s Farm had been allowed to heat until pungent
• half a dozen Maine cherry ‘cocktail’ tomatoes from Whole Foods, slow-roasted along with a generous amount of dried Italian oregano from Buon Italia, olive oil, and two more garlic cloves, halved, from Keith Farm
• the wine was an Oregon (Willamette Valley) white, Ponzi Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2014
• the music was several of quartets by David Matthews

it was breakfast, but then pretty soon we realized it had also been lunch

 

It was 2:45 when I started to write this post (my computer then acted up, delaying its completion). I’d finished washing the dishes and was sitting with my first coffee of the day.  While at first we had been thinking of this as a breakfast meal, we had gotten a late start, late even by our Sunday standards. Now it will be called lunch, and even a late lunch, by the standards of most decent folks.

I love bacon and eggs, and I’ve loved both from the days I was first able to eat grownup food.  In our house, for my robust father, but not for my equally vigorous mother, grownup food at breakfast meant very fresh raw eggs carefully whipped on a plate with salt & pepper, the mix of whites and yolks soaked up with some good toasted bread.* This was also my own favorite breakfast (I think that my brother joined my dad and I in this idiosyncratic indulgence for at least a few years, but my sister definitely gave it a pass). Visiting relatives and guests may have remarked about it, but not until I was 17, and had arrived at college, did I learn just how weird most people thought my favorite breakfast was.

My father had died earlier that year.

Once I had my own small kitchen, in graduate school in Providence, I revisited my raw egg breakfast treat a few times, but, alone in my Benefit Street studio, the pleasure I had enjoyed in our breakfast room on Haverhill was gone.

I’ve run through much of the enormous range of egg treatments since then, and enjoyed all, but I always come back to some version of the eggs we enjoyed today, simply fried, with toast, and sometimes bacon.  Spiegelei.

• the eggs were from Millport Dairy Farm, the thick bacon (4 slices altogether, or about 6-and-a-half ounces) was also from Millport, the small amount of chopped fresh hot ‘cloud peppers’ were from Norwich Meadows Farm, the fresh tarragon was from Eataly, and the toast in the picture above was from slices of a Blue Ribbon Bakery Market rustic sesame seed bread (when that ran out, we had toast from a loaf of Rockhill Bakehouse sourdough bread)
• the happy music was Giovanni Gabrieli: Symphoniae Sacrae, Book 2

Speaking of personal idiosyncrasies, my own alone this time, while finishing the bacon and cooking the eggs today I was juggling with the business of toasting the bread, but this time not with our trusty 1934 art deco Toastmaster, but using a device whose functions were somewhat more primitive, but no less effective.  I think I can also say they were more ‘toasty’, in a primitive, or ‘country’ way.

On the top of the burners of my 1931 Magic Chef, immediately next to the big 13″ cast iron pan I was using, I had placed a shiny new range-top, no-moving-parts, metal toaster box I had recently located on line. From a family-made manufacturer in Barrington, Rhode Island, it was identical to one I had purchased in a Newport ship chandlery in the late 60s and had used for decades before acquiring the Toastmaster at a Manhattan street fair. The ‘Camp-A-Toaster‘ has the natural advantage over most more elaborate devices of being able to toast slices of any thickness, but, for the survival of the toast, requires fairly close monitoring.

Still, it’s totally brilliant.  Thank you Fred (Fred Solomon was the inventor of the Camp-A-Toaster).

 

* Dad grew up with 17 brothers and sisters, on his Wisconsin family’s large ancestral dairy farm; while we always imagined the raw egg thing was about getting in a morning meal when there was little time and so much competition, it might have been about not wanting to ask too much of whoever was cooking, or part of an early 20th-century health vogue, and then it could also have been just personal taste.