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My grandmother Loretta Herman’s spaghetti sauce:
Brown 2 lbs. of ground beef in a large, hot, pot.
Begin to slowly cook diced salt-back pork off to the side in a seperate pan.
When the ground beef is well browned, season with salt and pepper, and add 1 chopped onion. Cook until onion becomes shimmery, then add 2 cloves chopped or well crushed garlic. Cook for another minute or two. Add 2 big cans of crushed tomatoes and one regular sized (14.5 oz.) can of chopped tomatoes in their tomato juice. Bring to a boil. Add any pork ‘juice’ that has accumulated in the slow-cooking fat pork pan. Lower the meat sauce to a simmer, and continue to cook that pork off to the side over low heat to extract liquid. Continually strain the pork’s liquid into the slow-simmering meat sauce for about 40 minutes.
Simmer the tomato sauce for another 20 minutes to an hour, partially covered. Season with salt and pepper to taste before serving.
Put into 450′-500′ oven after pouring plenty of cider over top of pears in a baking dish. Add a cinnamon stick, and roast 1-1 1/4 hours, basting four times. Add more liquid if it looks like it is going to dry out. Serve with the thickened cider ladeled over each pear.
Roast for an hour, basting halfway through.
“Do it four times, and avoid pouring the liquid over the stems each time,” Artemio tells me once she is gone.
“Just on the sides…” he says as he smoothly drizzles thin ribbons of red wine over just the sides of a pear or two where they sit, piled in, buried in, white sugar.
I know Jody would never subscribe to an exercise that contrived. I’ve only been working for her 1 week but I’m catching on fast. Her ‘recipe’ for the roasted pears would be sort of like an athelete’s recipe for winning. Step one, have talent, step two, be relentless, step three, don’t let up. For the pears, step one: dump a bottle of red wine or so over a dozen clean pears, step two: dump a bunch of sugar over that and add a cinnamon stick, and three: burn burn burn them in a hot oven til they smell so crazy you’ve got to get them into the dining room and onto people’s plates. Sensationally caramelized, roasted pears.
Still, I follow Artemio’s lead. I think he should know what he’s talking about.
Otherwise he generally stays quiet.
Then again, there are those times when (out of mischeviosness, wisdom, or love) he knows something, or everything, and stays quiet anyway. Artemio preps Jody’s food. Everyone knows, that he knows, absolutely all that there is to know, and possibly everything, that’s going on in the kitchen. He’s the prep guy in the mets cap in the basement at Giorgione, and then again at Gusto when Jody moves there. My career moves involve following Jody too. Artemio is the most fantastic cook I’ve ever watched make veal stock three times a week.
Jody has told me, pointing her finger at me, “make sure the syrup thickens as they cook, but add more wine if you need to so all that syrup and juice doesn’t burn off entirely. And don’t let it get bitter. Once they’re out of the oven just let ‘em be at room temperature. Put ‘em on there.” She’d pointed to a colossal empty oval platter.
When she came back she saw me basting the pears, three quarters of the way through their cooking.
”Hey,” pointing a serious finger at me now, “those aren’t done. Why are those out of the oven?” She’s jabbing one of the pears with her knuckle.
“It’s how Artemio does it….” I told her.
Artemio pretended he didn’t hear. Looked as if I’d spilled fish guts on his shoes. Later on I learned not to respond by naming others in a direct-inquiry such as this. It wasn’t quiet professional. Or macho. But I tended toward truthfulness in situations where I thought I was about to get fired for not following instructions. Jody is downright scary when she points.
”Oh, ok, fine,” she’d said, putting the finger away. “He should know…..he runs this place.”
To see why Jody is still my kitchen hero check out www.ilovegottino.com, or better yet, go have some toast at Gottino.
Pumpkin Pie I learned in cooking school:
24 oz. all purpose flour, 8 oz. sugar, 1 ½ t. baking powder, 1 t. salt, 8 oz. butter worked throughout until it disappears, and 5 eggs to bring it all together into a mass of dough and chill it 1 hour. If you are in a really dry place, like L.A., it may take some cold water to bring it all the way together into a workable dough.
Roll the dough out and flute the edges along the top of the pie pan. Allow it to rest again in the refrigerator while you make the filling.
15 oz. pumpkin puree – whisk in 2 eggs and 2 yolks, then 6 oz. sugar, ½ t. salt, 1 t. cinnamon, ¼ t. ginger, ¼ t. nutmeg, and 10 fl. oz. half and half.
Pour into crust and bake, 350’, for 1 hour. Allow it to cool. Serve with whipped cream.
Apple (pie) Anonymous
This particular pie (above) is decorated with a sophisticated, ‘falling leaves’ pattern, but my mom has been known to decorate the tops of pies with strange, free form, cut-out blobs of dough she says are turkeys, and little blobs of dough she claims are ’turkey poops’….I know. Whacky enough to share, right. Moral is, feel free to decorate the crust however you would like for your very own unique finishing touch. Dessert is supposed to be fun.
If you are an avoider of booze-bomb desserts, step away from this article now.
Because what follows is full of liquor (as well as apples.)
From December ’07 Cook’s Illustrated
This crust is engineered using vodka, to be the ultimate in flaky:
2 ½ c. all purpose flour
1 t. salt
2 T. sugar
12 T. cold butter, chopped (1 ½ sticks)
1/4 c. cold vodka
1/4 c. cold water (in case your vodka gets thirsty)
Prepare pie crust using your food processor and the technique known to cuisinarters as ‘pulsing.’
Otherwise, use cold hands, or pastry cutters or knives, or a ricer even, to distribute the butter throughout the flour mixture, and then bring it into a ball by adding the vodka and water and smooshing it together with a spatula.
Refrigerate the dough in two discs, wrapped in plastic wrap until you are ready to make the pie.
Once you are ready, roll it out into a thin layer on a lightly floured countertop, and line a pie plate with it. Fill the pie crust with my mom’s favorite apple filling, which she makes using my dad’s favorite rum.
4 granny smith, 4 braeburn. Peel and slice the apples and toss with the rest-
1 c. sugar, ½ c. all purpose flour, 2 T. Dark Rum (solera, appleton estates, or meyers, in that order, favorites), 1 t. cinnamon
½ t. salt,
Grated nutmeg
(From October ’04 Cuisine at Home)
Bake at 425’ for 20 minutes then 375’ until golden brown (about 30 minutes).
Cheers!
Pablove In the LA Times
So Honored to have cooked for Pablove Across America http://www.pablove.org/:
Feeding Jeff Castelaz and crew as they bicycled across the nation, Oct. 8 – Nov. 21
(photo by chad contreras, thanks chad!)
On the way from St. Augustine, Florida to California the gentleman riders ate about 4,000 calories a day. They ate (more or less) 80% carbs, and mainly wheat free. This worked well to fight inflammation, congestion, and, to fuel the pedaling and recovery (which was followed by more pedaling and recovery, more pedaling and recovery, and so on til we got back to LA.)
They lived off home-made snacks while riding, plus lots of coffee and green tea as well as fluid replacing fruit juice mixtures.
(3/4 c. apple juice with 1 1/2 c. black cherry or grape juice mixed with 2 c. water and a pinch of salt – or just equal parts juice and water with a pinch of salt.) These particularly useful drink mixes were provided by endurance nutrition expert and friend, Jan Babington).
I’m pleased to share some road food highlights. Thank you to everyone who ate with Pablove. xo
Raw Food Cookies, Energy Bites for the Bike, a.k.a. Magic Balls
1 cup dates, 1 cup almonds, 1 cup dried pineapple, 1/2 scraped vanilla bean, pinch of salt, 1/2 c. dried blueberries, 1 Tablespoon of maca powder, 1 1/2 Tablespoon cacao, grind as much as possible in a food processor. Roll bite sized balls through shredded coconut or oats.
I learned recipes like this and more by following Los Angeles author/raw food chef Ani Phyo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gvrEj2H36w and
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1600940005/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=3657510985&ref=pd_sl_73kru1xt2n_e
View of the Pablove RV kitchen:
Roasted Salmon, Potatoes ‘alla Nonna’, Spinach Salad
2 pcs wild salmon , about 1 ¼ inches thick, 4 lbs. Place skin side down on parchment paper and let rest at room temp. 15 min. Preheat oven to 450’, place salmon on parchment paper on a sheet tray. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, chopped rosemary, and olive oil. Roast 11-13 minutes, or up to 15 minutes if you like it well-done. Serve with sour cream or some tasty mustard.
Have on hand 12 boiled, peeled Idaho potatoes. Add the boiled potatoes to 4 onions that have been minced and caramelized in a large pot along with chopped rosemary and ½ lb. butter. Add salt to taste, and smash some on the stove top while they heat. Add a drizzle of olive oil to serve.
Toss baby spinach with goat cheese, sliced apple, currants, toasted pine nuts, and vinaigrette (1/4 c. balsamic, 1/3 c. olive oil, pinch of salt, drizzle of honey, shaken in a mason jar ’til thickened).
View from outside the Pablove RV kitchen:
RV Beef Stew, Kabocha Squash and Greens
Brown 4 lbs. towel-dried chuck pieces in a large, really hot pan. If it gets too hot, turn it down, but try to get as much color onto the meat as possible. Set well browned pieces of meat aside. Add 1 or 2 chopped carrots, 1 or 2 chopped celery stalks, a half a head of garlic – chopped down the middle, and some bay leaf to the hot pan. Sauté for a couple of minutes, then add about a cup and a half of white wine. Let the wine bubble and cook until it has reduced by half. Then add the meat pieces back into the pot. Add beef, chicken, or veggie stock, and chopped thyme, canned diced tomatoes in their juice or a cup of tomato sauce to cover the beef and veggies. Bring it to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a low simmer, cover snugly, and cook for 2-3 hours. When meat is fork-tender, pour cooking liquid through a strainer. Push all veggies through strainer as much as possible to extract their maximum flavor. Set cooked meat aside while you reduce some of the strained cooking liquid by boiling over high heat. Taste and season with salt if it needs it. Pour over cooked meat. Serve warm.
Peel and dice a kabocha squash while the oven preheats to 425′. Toss squash pieces with olive oil, place on parchment lined baking sheet or in an oiled baking dish, and place in the oven. Cook until tender and well browned, 40 minutes or so, stirring once in a while. Add well roasted squash pieces to wilted beet, mustard, or turnip greens.
 A mash, thick soup with parmesan on top, or baby food, adapted from Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ Italian Easy.
Saute in a pot:
1 small chopped onion and about 4 chopped zucchini for a few minutes in olive oil – just until the onion is translucent and the zucchini is somewhat softened. Add 2 cups of green peas and veggie or chicken broth to cover, then let cook about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and puree roughly with a veggie masher or immersion blender. Add 1 more cup of green peas, and a bunch of torn basil. Topping with grated parmesan is always an option.
A dip or spread for crackers or veggies – recipe snagged from the Los Angeles Times -
Food process 2 c. edamame (peeled defrosted), 2 c. chickpeas (drained rinsed), 1 c. cooked squeezed dry spinach, 3 T. chopped shallot, ½ lemon’s juice, 2 T. tahini, 1-2 t. kosher salt, 1 T. gr. Ginger, and with processor running, add 1 c. o.o.
Keeps 4 days.
Break clean cauliflower (or romanesco) into bite sizes, then toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread pieces on a sheet tray lined with paper and roast, 425′ for 15 minutes. Turn each pieces over, and roast for another 15 minutes. Top with grated parmesan.
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