because it's Italy

When I think about the Olive Garden I always remember this awesome story about my college roommate’s dad. Her family was real deal New York Italian. I loved listening to them talk because they had the BEST New York accents. My other roommate and I would roll on the floor if she said the word “dog” and “chocolate” in the same sentence. I miss that accent. One time our shared friend was visiting her family, with a pal from Australia named Emily. They were all gathered together for a barbecue and my roommate’s dad started asking Emily about what it was like to be from Australia. “So you eat at Outback?” he asked sincerely. His son Phil was like “Dad? Are you serious? That’s like asking an Italian person if they eat at Olive Garden.” His dad looked at him incredulous; his brow crinkled, and said “No it isn’t.” “Why Pop?” “Because it’s Italy.” Period. End of sentence. I love his stance that Italian food needs no explanation, introduction or excuses. I loved his assurance, like: no. questions. asked. Food= Italy, don’t be stupid, son.



I’ve never actually been to an Olive Garden. Not because I’m a real Italian or anything (puh, I wish), and not because I’m a food snob who’s above chain restaurants (I have been known on occasion to delight in the culinary artistry of a Chili’s Southwest Eggroll if you know what I’m saying) simply because I’ve never been close to one at meal time. I’ve heard good things though. I’m not here to hate on OG. “Real” Italian or not many people seem to like it. Or maybe they just go nuts for anything “unlimited” like the soup, salad and breadsticks combo. We, as Americans, tend to not like “limits” on things, especially if there’s breadsticks involved. It’s our god given right. Plus, Paul told me one time when he ate there he had a sauce there that tasted exactly as though they had made it with the orange cheese dust from a bag of Doritos. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve checked lately but Doritos taste good, sooooo, I was somewhat intrigued. He said it was delicious but he wanted to die afterwards. Anyways, the reason I was thinking of Olive Garden, and hence the above story, is that this week I decided to make pasta fagioli soup, and according to the world wide web, the Olive Garden recipe is the most sought after out there. I did not go with their recipe simply because I didn’t really use a recipe when making this; I just looked over a couple, got the general idea and made up my own. Soup is very forgiving in this sense.



PASTA FAGIOLI

Olive oil
2-3 slices prosciutto, diced
1 onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. each dried basil and oregano
½ cup red wine
1 lg. can plum tomatoes in sauce (pref: San Marzano)
1 can each of white beans and kidney beans
1 32 oz. container vegetable or chicken stock

Pasta

Pesto
Grated parmesan cheese



Heat a large Dutch oven or heavy bottom stock pot over medium heat. Brown prosciutto in a few tablespoons olive oil; add onions and sauté, stirring often for about 10 minutes. Add garlic and cook for an additional 3-4 minutes, until fragrant and golden. Add your dried herbs (fresh would be even better- I simply didn’t have any handy). Turn heat up and pour in wine, using a wooden spoon or spatula to scrape all the burnt er- um, bronzed- bits off the bottom of your pot, allowing the wine to reduce until it is mostly evaporated. This will turn your onions purple; fear not, you’re headed in the right direction. You can also skip this step altogether, but I thought it would add a little depth of flavor.





Reduce your heat back down to medium and add your tomatoes. As I added each tomato I squished it and broke it apart with my hand. If you’re not into getting your hands dirty you could take them out of the can and coarsely chop them, but I mean, grow up, squishing tomatoes is fun. Let this mixture simmer for a few minutes while you drain and rinse both cans of beans, then proceed to add them to your pot. Pour the vegetable or chicken stock in and let simmer. I let mine simmer for about 40 minutes and then turned it down to low and let it hang while I prepped the pasta.



Cook pasta separately, according to package directions. Be sure to cook it al dente, since it will continue to cook in the soup. Use any shape you would like, although I have to say the smaller the better. I used full sized penne and it pretty much took over the whole show. Such an attention whore that penne. When you’re ready to serve. Scoop a dollop of pesto (store bought fine by me) and some freshly grated parmesan cheese into the bottom of your bowl before ladling your soup in. THEN, add another little scoop of pesto and a few more passes of grated parmesan over the top. Serve immediately.





Storage note, keep your cooked pasta separate from your soup. I knew to do this but alas, did not. I got overzealous and dumped all of the pasta I had cooked into the soup. The pasta never really stops absorbing the liquid, so it morphed into a sort of deconstructed, overcooked pasta dish. Still tasted aight, but learn from my mistakes, k? You will also note that I did simmer the soup with a sprig of fresh rosemary. Which is completely an option for you. However, it was a little overpowering for me, so I don't wholeheartedly endorse it, which is why I left it out of the recipe.

mental fruit

There is this Dead Prez song that’s about being vegetarian and one of the lines goes “lentil soup is mental fruit.” Now I’m not vegetarian, or even particularly familiar with the rest of that song; however, try to get that sentence out of your head when you’re making lentil soup. I found myself really wishing I knew more of the lyrics to that song.



I was at the grocery store and I felt like I should buy lentils, despite the fact that my experience with them is extremely limited and I had no particular idea what I would do with them once I got them home. I just decided I want to be the kind of person that has lentils in their pantry. Just like I want to be the kind of woman who puts her keys/phone/chapstick in the same compartment in her purse every time and doesn’t stand there rummaging for 35 minutes every time she needs something. You know, an organized person. I want to be that kind of person. The desire is there, it’s just the execution upon which I falter.

So I found myself in the grocery store thinking “ah yes, lentils.” And then I was like “oooh cute red ones!” I would figure out what to do with them eventually. So last Thursday I went to the Google and I asked the Great and Powerful One for all of its knowledge on red lentil soup recipes. It’s turned a bit chilly and decidedly fall-like here so soup seemed like a fitting choice. I adapted this recipe very slightly from one I found in the New York Times (or on? The New York Times? Can it be “in” if you didn’t actually open up a physical newspaper?). Long story short I made this soup and it was, as my mom would (embarrassingly) say, the bomb diggity. I will be making this again and again for the duration of soup season. Not only is it cheap, cheap, cheap. It’s also really not bad for you at all. There’s only 3 tablespoons of oil in the whole pot and lentils are a whole grain (I think) and everything else is just spices and everybody knows cooking with spices makes you thin. For me, after a summer filled with indulgence and (way, way, way too much) white wine, this soup fits right in to my “rediscovering healthy food” fall agenda.

RED LENTIL SOUP

One package red lentils, picked over for stones, etc.
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tsp. garam masala
2-3 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. coriander
1-2 tsp. turmeric
2 healthy pinches of cayenne

Chicken (or vegetable) stock
Salt
Pepper
Siracha
Juice from half a lemon



Heat oil in a large heavy bottom sauce pan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions and sweat until golden. The original recipe suggests 4 minutes, but I went the extra step and cooked mine for about 15 minutes, almost caramelizing them. I think it added a little something. Add garlic and sauté for another few minutes, until fragrant, stirring often so as not to scorch. Add tomato pasta and all of the spices (through the cayenne). Stir together for a minute or two to meld the flavors. Pour in lentils and toss everything together, top with chicken stock to cover (about 2 quarts I would guess). At this point the recipe told me to simmer it for about 30 minutes until the lentils were tender but I did not read that, assumed that the lentils would need to be boiled, cranked it up and walked away. About 5-10 minutes later I turned the heat down and let it simmer. You can take either route. Even though it was a mistake for me to boil them, the soup turned out great and it sort of made my lentils mushy and fall apart, which I thought was fine and saved me the step or pureeing half the soup as the directions told me to do.



Once the lentils are cooked, THEN you add salt and pepper. Apparently if you add salt before the lentils cook, they get a little chewy. This needed a LOT of additional zest and spice at this point in the game. I added a very generous amount of salt, cracked black pepper and then two big squeezes of Siracha (Thai chili sauce, available everywhere in the hot sauce or ethnic food section). Then I would taste, add a touch more salt, a little more pepper, another small squeeze of Siracha. At the end, you finish the soup with the juice from half and lemon. Both the chili sauce and the lemon juice really brightened this soup up. I did not expect it to be so good but (not to toot my own horn *toot* *toot*) it WAS, in the words of my No. 1 Taster “unreal.” I ate it for lunch the next day and we had it again for dinner on Sunday night. This recipe is one to put on regular rotation for sure.



So yeah…tis the time of year when it starts getting dark before dinner is done and my photos start to suck again. I don’t really have a solution for this yet. Well, I do but it would involve quitting my day job and last time I checked “food blogger” was pretty much synonymous with “unemployed” and offered nil benefits; so, until Publisher’s Clearing House shows up we’ll all just have to deal with the seasonal shifts in aesthetics here at Porky D.

clam baked

some images from my aunt and uncle's Labor Day Weekend Clambake.



they're pretty much experts at this by now since they've been baking clams since Regan was president and my dad wore short shorts.



clambakes are exciting because FIRE!





and TEAMWORK!





(I had a better picture of Team Clam on scrubbing duty but you could see my buttcrack and I'm just not sure we're *there* yet)



and all of the sudden everyone has to pitch in and help!









and it's quite the show. Everyone gathers round and either assists, takes photos of the action, or simply stands back and admires. It's like a rock concert that you can eat.

...and there's DRAWN BUTTER!



I've said it before, I'll say it again, any food that acts as a vessel for golden, melted butter is alright by me.

It was a delicious way to close out the summer.



I look mega awkward here because I'm leaning forward to showcase my plate. I don't actually have a one foot torso and legs that stick out to the right side only. I'm actually of adequate proportions, thanks for your concern.

I'd also like to give a photo credit to my sister in law, Renee, because she's the family historian and I poached a bunch of her photos for this post. Because they were much, much better than mine.

WHITE BEAN VEGGIE BURGERS

2 cans white beans, drained and rinsed

2-3 shallots or one medium onion, chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 scallion

1 egg

¼ cup breadcrumbs

1 tsp. dried sage or 6 fresh sage leaves, chopped

Olive Oil (2-3 tbs. to caramelize onions; ¼ cup for frying patties)

Canola Oil (¼ cup to fry the patties in)

Caramelize onion (or shallots) in a skillet over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, until deeply browned. Stir occasionally and be careful not to burn. Add garlic and sauté on low for an additional five minutes. Take half of your beans and half of the cooked onions and transfer to a food processor; add egg, breadcrumbs, scallion and sage. Salt and pepper generously. Pulse until combined (be careful not to overdo it, my patties were a little soupy because I was a little heavy handed with the old Cuisinart). Mash the remaining beans and cooked onion mixture with a fork in a medium sized bowl. Add mixture from processor to onions and mashed beans; form into 4 patties. To try and maintain a little bit of order I opted on giving my hands a little spritz of oil so they wouldn’t be too sticky during this step, but even with this precaution, making these patties is a mess. I started to get stressed out that I had done something wrong. I placed the patties on a lightly greased cookie sheet and popped it in the freezer for a few minutes in an attempt to try and solidify the patties a little bit. This worked well.

I was still pretty much convinced that this was a slow moving disaster in the works because I felt there was no way something that sticky and gooey was going to work itself into a “burger” that we would be capable of eating without a fork and knife. Once your patties have chilled for a couple minutes, heat a good amount of oil (I mean a good amount) in a large oven safe skillet over medium to medium-high heat (I used a combination of olive oil and canola). Brown patties in pan (about 5 minutes a side) until they are golden brown on both sides. Once again, I have to warn you they are awkward and tough to turn over, but with a little finesse you can do it. Once both sides of the patties are browned transfer the whole skillet to a 375 degree oven for another 10-15 to cook through.

Worth it? Actually, yes, they were very, very good. By expecting the worst I ended up being delighted with the end result. We topped ours with arugula, sliced tomato and hot sauce. Although, mayo or cheese would have been a welcome addition as well. I would definitely make these again. Even though they aren’t that healthy (because they’re essentially fried in oil before baked) and they are messy (I would definitely only pulse the beans in the food processor a fraction of as many times I did) I would make these again in a hot second.

Sorry for the truncated post and disgusting photos. Not my best work, I know. I’m in a bit of a pre-vacation scramble. It was dark in my kitchen when I was making dinner last night and I was so stinking hungry by the time I was done I quickly snapped a blurry photo of the end result with my left hand. Smart. So I decided to go all the way with the image, tweak it in Picture Manager and give you a veggie burger picture that looks like a forgotten still from the Beastie Boys’ Whatcha Want video. You’re welcome.

So I’m off on vacation and I am PUMPED about it. I finally get to see my sister’s new baby, as her and her family are headed in to town today (chair dance of excitement); we are headed down the Cape for a family vacay! I will be spending the next week drinking cocktails in the afternoon (woo!), eating fried sea creatures (fist pump!) and going to Sundae School (pelvic thrust!).

I'll take it

WHOLE GRAIN SALAD with SUMMER VEGGIES and FRESH HERBS

1 c. wheatberries*
4 c. water
1 tsp. salt

½ pint cherry tomatoes, quartered or halved
1 yellow pepper, diced
½ large cucumber or one small, diced
3-4 scallions, chopped
Handful basil leaves, chopped (approx. ½ c.)
Approx. ¼ cup mint leaves, chopped

¼ c. red wine vinegar
½ c. extra virgin olive oil
½ tsp. Dijon mustard
salt, pepper
pinch sugar
1 tsp. lemon zest
½ package crumbled feta

*Que pasa wheatberries, Jess? Well, glad you asked. Wheatberries are a dense whole grain that kind of look like farro (“wheatberries” is also, according to Spell Check, not a word and neither is “farro”. Whatever Spell Check, they are Google search terms and hence, exist). So I accidentally bought some wheatberries because I was convinced that they were farro, even though the label on the package clearly read “wheatberries.” I wrongly assumed “pssh, same thing!” It turns out that they were actually wheatberries, which are a whole grain not totally unlike farro, but aren’t in fact, farro. Now, I certainly don’t hate ‘em, but these suckers take like 2 hours to cook.





Since wheatberries are a weird random ingredient, I had to turn to the internet to find instructions on how to prepare them. The internet will tell you that you will need to cook one cup of wheatberries in 3-4 cups of a water with a little salt. The internet will tell you that this takes an hour. This is a vicious lie. I cooked my wheatberries for closer to two, continually adding a little more water here and there, and they still ended up, well, toothsome. Toothsome is a word used by fancy chefs to describe food that is undercooked. So the resulting salad was delicious in flavor, but moderately crunchy in texture. Next time, make this salad with quinoa, cous cous, bulgur wheat OR drained, rinsed chickpeas. Any and all of these substitutions are tasty, super healthy and take less than 20 minutes.



Personally, I really don’t mind a time commitment in the kitchen. I got a lot of other things done: did a load of laundry, drank some wine, poached some chicken, made chicken salad, baked up some tofu, talked on the phone, etc. Eventually however, as the wheatberry cooking process edged toward the 2 hour mark, I found myself drunk and impatient eager to taste the finished result. And the finished result? Actually still very good, despite the fact that the main ingredient was still a little denser than anticipated. The flavor was really good. I'll take it.



Remove your (semi)cooked wheatberries from heat, let cool for a bit. Meanwhile whisk mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper and sugar in a large bowl. Drizzle in olive oil to make dressing. Toss in diced veggies, followed by your grain, the herbs, lemon zest and feta. Toss several times. Keep refrigerated. Great as a healthy side dish, salad topper or as a snack with hummus and pita.



And don't say I didn't warn you that wheatberries might get you drunk.

Now Is the Time on Sprockets When We Dance.

Am I dating myself with this reference? I just sat down to tap out this post and it’s all I could think of. Because: Now Is the Time on Porky Dickens When We Eat Tomatoes.

We were talking about tomatoes at dinner the other night and musing how tomatoes probably have the widest spanning good-to-bad range of any food out there. The good are weak in the knees, eyes roll back in your head, change the whole scope of your taste bud spectrum good and the bad are, well, gag inducingly bad, right? So this is the time of year I wait for. When Good Tomatoes are finally plentiful. Tomatoes so good I do karate chops and small dances when I eat them. Yes, that good. So I guess, now is the time when we Dance, or rather, our taste buds dance.

So this is essentially a repeat recipe. Lo siento. In all fairness the one gripe I’ve got about seasonally delightful ingredients such as tomatoes and corn is that the recipes for preparation of same are simple, easy and basic. Because when you’ve got something this good going on the last thing you want to do is jack it up by messing with it. But I will say that a “recipe” that reads: slice tomato, salt, pepper, eat. Doesn’t exactly make for a riveting blog post but whatever.

CORN and TOMATO SALAD with SHALLOT VINAIGRETTE

A word about vinaigrettes: the first thing I ever perfected in the kitchen was basic balsamic vinaigrette. A wise sage once told me that the key to any good vinaigrette is one part vinegar to two parts oil. I can’t remember who said sage was; it might have been my mom, or Martha Stewart, or Rachael Ray. No wait, if it was Big Rach she would have said “two parts EVOO” and then I would have tuned out. So anyways, it doesn’t matter who I learned it from, now you can learn this from me. The first secret to good vinaigrette is this: Every. Single. Good. Salad. Dressing. You. Make. Will. Subscribe. To. This. Ratio. (You can tell I’m serious because of all the periods): 2 parts oil, 1 part acid. For a long time whenever I made vinaigrette I would use a shot glass. One shot vinegar, or lemon juice, two shots oil. But this made a LOT of dressing. I have since scaled it down a bit and thrown measuring at all out the window. I simply eye out my two-to-one ratio.

The second secret to good vinaigrette is emulsification. Formerly, I would blend my vinaigrette with an immersion blender, which works wonderfully if you, like me, aren’t all that handy with whisking and pouring oil evenly at the same time. These days, I combine all my dressing ingredients in a jar, clamp the lid on and shake the ever-loving life out of the thing. This works as well. I find you don’t need the strength of a good whisking wrist or the steady hand for a delicate oil pour. You CAN beat the ingredients into emulsification if you shake the jar hard enough. I call it the “shock and awe” emulsification method (patent pending).

The third secret to a good vinaigrette is twofold: Dijon mustard and sugar. Not too much of either, just a touch. About a quarter to a half teaspoon of mustard, and just one generous pinch of sugar will do. The sugar cuts the acidity of the vinegar or lemon juice and the mustard adds a little tang, a little depth of flavor and helps to thicken the dressing a bit.

Wow, you’ll notice above I said “a word about vinaigrettes” and then I yammered on for three, extremely detailed paragraphs with a lot of unnecessary punctuation. Can you tell I eat a lot of salads? And I feel very strongly about salads being appropriately dressed. And I happen to know a thing or three about vinaigrettes. I could make one in my sleep. So…with that being said, back to the salad:

SALAD

2-3 ripe tomatoes

1-2 ear(s) of corn, kernels stripped off

Handful of basil leaves, coarsely chopped

DRESSING

1 shallot, peeled and minced

¼ tsp. Dijon mustard

1 part Red Wine Vinegar

Pinch of sugar

Salt and cracked black pepper

2 parts extra virgin olive oil

In a bowl large enough for your salad combine shallot, mustard, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper. Whisk together ingredients. While whisking drizzle in olive oil slowly to emulsify. (this is the standard means of achieving emulsification, if you would rather skip, use one of the methods above I just didn’t feel like dirtying an extra dish or jar). Add corn to bowl and toss to coat; add tomatoes and chopped basil. Serve immediately with crusty bread for sopping up the extra dressing and tomato juice.