Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow

Susan over at The Well-Seasoned Cook, my absolute favourite blog, is hosting an event for which one is to cook a dish from a film: Food in Film. For those of you who have read my previous post, one can see that the difference between the two food events is that this one is more specific insofar as a strong connection must exist between the dish one is making and the film that inspired the dish. I sought the advice of my angelheart Eric, my constant soundboard, because I was stumped.

I thought of making Chinese takeout, perhaps to eat in bed out of wire-handled cardboard-containers à la Woody Allen's Manhattan. My angelheart Eric pulled out every DVD we had and recounted directly a dish eaten in the film or a dish that is referred to in an important scene. Our hearts melted as soon as he pulled out The Apartment.

In this Hollywood classic from 1960, Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, career guy with a conscience. On account of making available his apartment to his superiors for their conjugal extra-marital relations, he climbs the ladder rather quickly - no one seriously climbs the ladder through actually working hard, do they? After getting pneumonia from sleeping in Central Park one night, Baxter decides enough is enough and no longer wants to loan out his apartment. Unbeknownst to him, his rapid rise through the ranks catches the attention of philandering chief executive, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), who inquires about using the apartment. Baxter's career aspirations win out over his conscience, which, as Hollywood movies often tell us, leads to a life lesson for him to learn about selling out.

One night during the Christmas season, he returns to his apartment and finds one of the sassy yet sweet elevator girls, Fran (Shirley Maclaine), has attempted suicide. After having her stomach pumped, she is ordered to stay with Baxter for 24 hours until she is given the all-clear. As far as Baxter is concerned, they are 24 magical hours, in which he redeems himself, made tangible by doting on the adorable Fran, whose heart is badly broken by Sheldrake.

During these 24 hours, Fran cleans Baxter's socks (only finding 3.5 pairs), his apartment, and comes across a tennis racquet in the kitchen. She asks him about this unusual piece amongst the batterie de cuisine, and it turns out he uses it as a pasta strainer. With the hope of winning Fran's heart, Baxter sets about making his specialty, meatballs served with spagehtti and meat sauce.

Meatballs and spaghetti are a Neapolitan classic. I have, however, made my ragù according to a Bolognese recipe, for it is less spicy and, for me, more aromatic. It is meat overkill to make both ragù and meatballs, but it is was Baxter served to Fran. The ragù seems a little fiddly for only one pound of pasta, so feel free to multiply the given quantities for a larger yeild. I only made one change in the recipe and that was to substitute bison for beef with 15% fat content. Depending on the size of your palms, Mario Batali's Polpette alla Napoletana recipe yields 12-15 meatballs.

Ragù alla Bolognese, Ricetta Antica
(From Lidia Matticchio Bastianich's Lidia's Family Table)

For one pound of spaghetti, use:
5oz ground bison
5oz ground pork
1/3 cup white wine
1oz bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 fat clove garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 medium onion, finely chopped
1/3 stalk celery, finely chopped
1/6 carrot, shredded
salt
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2/3 cup milk
nutmeg
1/3 cup hot water (you could use turkey broth) - may not be required
black pepper, freshly ground

1) In a large mixing bowl, crumble up and loosen the meats with your fingers.
2) Pour white wine over the meat, combine until evently moistened.
3) Make a pestata: in a food processor, mince together the bacon and garlic until a paste in formed.
4) Put 1/3 tablespoon olive oil in heavy-bottomed saucepan that will be wide enough to accomodate your meat. Over medium-high heat, add the pestata and cook until aromatic and the fat has been rendered.
5) Add another 1/3 tablespoon of olive oil, then throw in the onion and leave to sweat, approximately 4 minutes.
6) Add final 1/3 tablespoon of olive oil, and add carrot and celery. Cook until they have broken down/wilted and are golden in colour.
7) Turn heat up to high, move vegetables to a cool spot in the pan, and add the meat and liquid. Brown the beat and evaporate all of the liquid. This took me approximately 15 minutes. Add salt for seasoning.
8) In a separate pan, scald the milk, then shut off the heat, move off the element, and cover to keep warm.
9) On a hot spot in the pan with the meat, toast the tablespoon of tomato paste, before stirring it into the meat and aromatics.
10) Ladle 1/3 of the milk into the saucepan, mostly covering the meat. Grate nutmeg of preferred quantity (for me, half a teaspoon) into the pan and stir into the meat. When an active simmer is reached, put heat on low and cover.
11) From here the ragù should cook for approximately one hour (if using more meat, say 4 pounds total, this could take as long as three hours). Check every 20 minutes, ladle more milk to cover the meat. If you find more instead of less additions of liquid are required, not only prepare to heat water (or turkey broth), but think to reduce heat further also. If you find no liquid is required after every twenty minute interval, turn the heat up. Stir well after every addition of liquid.
12) The final result should be just a hint of liquid pooling around the meat. Crank one tablespoon of black pepper over the meat and cook for a couple of minutes.
13) If using immediately, spoon out the fat or stir it into the meat (which is the traditional way). If you are not using it immediately, let it cool before chilling it, after which you can remove the solidified fat and store the ragu in the fridge for several days or in the freezer for a few months.

Polpette alla Napoletana
(From Mario Batali's Molto Italiano)

3 cups of 1-inch cubes of day-old bread
1 1/4 pounds ground beef
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 pecorino romano, freshly grated
1/4 cup parsley, finely chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper, freshly ground
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1) In a shallow bowl, soak bread cubes in water to cover for 20 minutes. Drain the cubes and squeeze out excess water.
2) In a large bowl, combine soaked bread cubes with the rest of the ingredients, except the olive oil. Form meatballs with wet hands to prevent sticking.
3) In a heavy-bottom frying pan/skillet, heat olive oil over high, almost to smoking point, and cook meatballs until deep golden brown. Cook in batches to prevent overcrowding, which will result in steaming the meatballs and which won't allow for crust to form on the exterior of the meatballs. It should take approximately 10 minutes to brown each meatball.

Served with one pound of pasta, the ragù and the meatballs definitely were too much. The ragù in fact was a little dry once it had been worked into the spaghetti, which I think is on account of using meat with a low percentage of fat. Furthermore, though it smelled great when simmering, the ragù was spread quite thin, and I think it would have been best to use the Ricetta Tradizionale, which incorporates tomatoes. The polpette, on the other hand, were richly flavoured - the combination of pecorino romano and pine nuts is earthy and nutty.

Sadly, Baxter and Fran never get around to eating the meatballs and spaghetti, but I won't spoil the end of the film for you. Watch The Apartment for yourself to see if they end up together.

Post script See the round-up of Susan's food blog event, Food In Film.

Labels: Beef, Bison, Italian, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Mario Batali, Meatballs, Pasta

Between the ages of 11 and 22, I could not eat fish, or any seafood for that matter. I was suddenly allergic to it during the onset of puberty and couldn't tolerate it in any form, though I happily ate fish as a younger kid, being from the island nation of New Zealand. My angelheart Eric has tried over the years to get me to eat seafood, from sweet and properly cooked shrimp (until coral-coloured) to the mildest of most fish, cod, battered and fried or steamed en papillote with rice wine, vegetable greens of some variety, and citrus. I've come leaps and bounds in the last year or so, handling most mild fish, including their skin (though some species are still too fishy and just about make me gag at the mere inhalation of them miles away - only a slight exaggeration) and loving jumbo shrimp, crab, and lobster.

Now that I love lobster, I am reminded of an episode of Lidia's Family Table on PBS that I saw last year. I took note of this episode because Lidia Matticchio Bastianich called monkfish an ugly fish with a tail that tastes like lobster. Back then, I wasn't thinking of it as something I would like as I had not yet entered the world of lobster, but as something Eric might want to try - he did and loved it. Before following this recipe, I had not yet tried monkfish, and I was keen to compare its taste and texture to lobster. Also, brodetto, which is to say a savory, brothy preparation, is a perfect way to serve fish, for it is usually applied to accent it.

Monkfish Brodetto
(From Lidia Mattichio Bastianich's Lidia's Family Table)

8 cloves of garlic, peeled
3 cups and 3/4 cup water
1 3/4 pounds monkfish, membrane removed if the fishmonger hasn't done it
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
3/4-1 1/2 cups canola oil
2 tablespoons butter, cubed
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/4 cup white wine
1/8 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/8 cup basil leaves, shredded

1) Put the garlic in 1 1/2 cups water and boil for 15 minutes. Drain, then boil again in another 1 1/2 cups water for 30 minutes.
2) Puree the garlic cloves with a few drops of the liquid in which the cloves boiled. I actually used all of the liquid to make more of a garlic liquid as opposed to a garlic puree, preferring to dilute the flavour a little as I didn't want it to overpower the monkfish on account of it being my first taste of monkfish. If you want to make the puree, you want about 1/6 cup for this quantity of monkfish.
3) Cut the monkfish into 2"/5cm-wide chunks.
4) Sprinkle salt over the chunks of monkfish.
5) Roll the monkfish in flour and shake off the excess.
6) Pour enough oil into a pan to come about halfway up the monkfish chunks. Heat oil until it bubbles rapidly for a couple of minutes.
7) Fry the breaded monkfish pieces in batches and until golden, approximately 6 minutes in all, but keep an eye on them should your chunks be irregular. My angelheart and I wanted them less than golden brown - just golden suited us.
8) Drain on a paper towel and sprinkle with salt.
9) Pour the oil out of the skillet, then place it back on the oven over medium heat.
10) Melt the cubes of butter and return the fried monkfish pieces to the skillet.
11) Turn the pieces on all sides in the butter until there is a sizzle.
12) Scrape in the garlic puree, and once it is sizzling, toss amongst the monkfish pieces. As we had more a light sauce than a puree, we just turned the monkfish pieces in it.
13) Add the lemon juice, followed by 3/4 cups water (or vegetable broth), and the wine.
14) Bring the sauce to boil, turning the monkfish pieces in it.
15) As the sauce thickens, add the toasted pine nuts (we used slivered almonds instead).
16) Once the sauce has your preferred consistency, toss in the basil and serve immediately.

Ms. Mattichio Bastianich suggests serving the monkfish with either grilled country bread, polenta, or boiled rice. As you can see, we served ours with noodles that were tossed in sesame oil and finely chopped garlic. The monkfish stands up to the entire process, staying quite meaty. The lemon, basil, and broth complement the fried monkfish pieces really well and do not overpower its mild sweetness.

It must be noted that one should only buy fresh monkfish, for some frozen monkfish imported into the US appears to have been mislabelled and was actually pufferfish, which contains life-threatening tetrodotoxin! Information on the FDA website can be found here. Also, it is the tail of the monkfish that is supposed to have the "properties" of lobster.

Labels: Fish, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Monkfish