When you’re making pasta… please, please, please make sure to mix your pasta sauce (not gravy… you turkey) with your pasta before serving it!  Don’t serve pasta with sauce just plopped on top.

Italians don't do this... mix your sauce with your pasta!

Escarole is a favorite green in many Italian families.  Some of the more popular ways to prepare escarole are in soup, with beans, and as a simple salad.   The escarole in our garden has been ready for a few weeks now and we have been enjoying it to the fullest!  One of my favorite ways to prepare escarole is cooked with bread.

Here’s what you need:

• Fresh escarole
• Extra virgin olive oil
• garlic
• day old bread or stuffing bread
• salt and pepper

Here’s what you need to do:

Add a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to a pot with some chopped garlic and let it simmer for a few minutes.  Wash your escarole and chop it into pieces, then add it to your pot making sure the escarole is still wet as the water will help steam the escarole.  Cover and stir occasionally until your escarole becomes tender, then add your bread or stuffing bread, salt and pepper (crushed red pepper if you like) and let it simmer for several minutes until the bread becomes soft.  Simple and delicious!  Drizzle a little fresh olive oil on top if you like. It makes a great side dish or main course with some fresh bread.

If you haven’t entered to win the $50 Venetian Mask gift certificate, you still have time (see post below.)  I have extended the deadline until tomorrow at 5pm EST.  Here’s what you need to do to win:

• You need to leave a comment on the Venetian Masks post
• And either retweet the post (upper right corner of the post) or mention the giveaway with a link on your blog or facebook page.

Do you ever have those days where you think: What are we going to cook for dinner?  You need to go grocery shopping, you didn’t take anything out of the freezer and you really don’t want to make anything that takes too much effort.  Spaghetti alla Carbonara is the perfect dish for such an occasion!

I haven’t made Spaghetti alla Carbonara in a long time but a few weeks ago I was visiting Chef Chuck and noticed the great new videos on his blog.  I watched him cook a Carbonara and told myself I had to make it again soon, so last night – I did.  It’s a great tasting, easy to cook recipe that the whole family will love!

Here’s what you need (serves 2):

• 1/2 pound of spaghetti (I like Spaghetti #12 because it’s a bit thicker)
• 1 onion
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• diced sopressata, bacon or pancetta
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup of grated parmigiano or romano cheese
• salt and pepper

Here’s what you need to do:

• Add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to a large saucepan and simmer your onions, garlic and sopressata for 10-15 minutes over low heat until your onions are caramelized.
• Beat your egg and grated parmigiano cheese together in a bowl and set it aside.
• Cook your spaghetti separately and then add it to the saucepan with your onions, garlic and sopressata.
• Pour the egg and parmigiano over your spaghetti and mix it all together. The hot spaghetti will cook the egg as you mix it all together.  If it’s too thick you can add a splash of pasta water (the water you cooked the past in.)
• Add salt and pepper to taste… remember that the sopressata (bacon or pancetta) is already pretty salty, so you probably won’t need to add much salt.

Pretty simple right?  Make sure to visit Chef Chuck and see him cook it on video.

Oh, did I mention that the Sopressata is ready?? We won first prize AGAIN! Do you want to try it? I’m giving one away so this is what you have to do to participate.  Comment on this post by Friday at 5pm EST and retweet this post by clicking on the retweet button in the upper right hand corner (you’re not on twitter?!!? Get it together! you’ll need to sing-up now won’t you?)  I’ll choose a winner at random… for US participants only (sorry but sending meats internationally isn’t easy or cheap!)

PS – Chuck gets a sopressata for the inspiration. Thanks Chef!

In my last post on curing black olives I mentioned that I was making them 2 ways: sott’acqua (in a simple brine of salt and water) and al forno (oven dried black olives.)  The black olives “sott’acqua” don’t take much maintenance… once you make your brine and drop them in it’s a waiting game.  The dried black olives however, are more involved.

The olives we had were late season olives and were a little banged up so I separated the ones that were really bruised to use for drying.

Here’s what you need to do: Take your olives and place them in a large bowl with a lid.  Sprinkle salt over the olives (I used an entire 26 oz pack of salt) and cover them.  You do not need to refrigerate them.   Mix your olives twice a day for 2-3 weeks.  Water from the olives will start to collect at the bottom of your bowl but don’t remove it… just keep mixing them twice a day.  After a few weeks, you will have mushy looking olives in water and you’ll know they’re ready (I kept them in the bowl for 3 weeks.) Drain the water from your bowl and rinse your olives several times to remove the excess salt (otherwise they will be too salty.)  Once you have rinsed your olives, lay them on paper towel in a baking tray or cookie sheet and turn your oven on to 125 degrees F (50 C)  Place your olives in the oven for several hours and check them periodically until your satisfied with how dry your olives are.  This method can take up to 12 hours to dry them out, so you might want to consider leaving them in your oven overnight.   The key is to expose your olives to low heat over time so that they can dry out slowly.  Another variation is to preheat your oven to 200 degrees F (95 C) and once your oven is preheated, turn it off and put your olives in… that way you can leave the house and not have to worry about the oven being on.  You can repeat this process over several days as I did.

Once you have your olives at a level of dryness that you like and they have cooled, place them in a bowl, add a splash of olive oil, oregano, crushed red pepper and mix.  They’re ready to serve.  They also freeze very well. Enjoy and buon appetito!

I’ve made lots of friends through sopressata… I really have.  My father has been offered money, a friend wants to feature it in a future restaurant he is opening and one of my Irish buddies has somehow gotten “in” and now chips in financially and helps make them in order to get a share… in turn, he has friends that work on his motorcycle in exchange for a sopressata!  It’s comedy but it’s also delicious and one of southern Italy’s culinary delights. (Click here for more details on the process)

My father is a sopressata connoisseur of sorts.  In his own way, he studies the art of making it.  He tries different techniques, tinkers with the process, adds new ingredients/levels of ingredients and over the years it seems to have worked out well as we have managed to take home First Place at the “World Sopressata Championship” for the last 5 years running! (I’m kidding.. there’s no such thing.)

My brother and I have our own opinions on how and how much of course, so they have also been getting more and more “piccante” (spicy hot!) over the years.  This year we have a very controversial NEW process that the professore introduced : dry packing them instead of sotto olio (submerged/preserved in oil) Go figure?!  So far so good… they are ready to eat and the verdict is in: FIRST PRIZE once again!!

Once a month Italyville.com will post “Homemade” – authentic homemade Italian recipes. Since this is the first homemade post, well….. we’re going to have to start at the beginning; one of the foundations of the Italian culinary experience, something Italians simply CAN NOT eat without. Pane = Bread. If I had a lira for every time my father asked “where’s the bread?” when I was growing up, I would have a whole lot of worthless lire… but if they were Euros, I’d be a rich man! and half as rich if they were dollars…. damn the dollar!! sorry.

We were very lucky that my mother made homemade bread once a week when we were growing up… and still does. I can remember talking about “American bread” which was pretty much every other variety but mostly sliced sandwich bread. It was comical to us when we saw our friends bring sandwiches to school and their bread had the crust cut off. You cut off the crust? Isn’t that the best part? It is to Italians! We still fight over the end piece of bread….. even if you’re successful at securing it, take your eyes off it for a second and it might disappear!

So here it is, the recipe for the bread we grew up on.

Pane di casa

What you’ll need – (all these amounts are guestimated):

• 3-4 ounces of fresh yeast
• 5 lb bag of bread flour
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1/8 of a cup of canola oil
• water

We start by cutting about a 1/2 inch slice from a block of fresh yeast. Fresh yeast is becoming more difficult to find at grocery stores but you should have better luck at a local bakery (we have a local baker in the family…. so it helps.) Place your yeast in a bowl with 1.5 cups of warm water and mix the yeast and water with your hands until it feels like the yeast has completely dissolved.

Take a small amount of bread flour (a few handfuls) and put it aside, then take the rest of the bread flower and put it in an extra large bowl. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and pour your yeast water in. Add the canola oil, 2 cups of warm water and salt (sprinkle it over the flour.) and mix the ingredients with your hands. Once you start mixing, check the dough consistency and add small amounts of flour or water as needed. Make sure to knead the dough well so that all the ingredients are mixed together properly.

Once your dough is ready, place it on a flat surface and cut it in half, then in half again so that you have 4 pieces of dough that are approximately the same size. It sounds funny to explain it like that but if you try to cut off 1/4 at a time…… well, the last piece probably won’t be the same as the first piece. get it? got it? good.

Now that you have your four equal size pieces, knead them individually again and then form each piece of dough into a small ball. We like to make a few small slices in the dough with a knife for decoration but you don’t have to. Place 2 pieces of dough side by side on a cookie sheet or baking tray that has been lined with tin foil and sprinkled with flour. Set your 2 trays aside and let the the dough rise. We put the trays on a table or bed and cover them with 2-3 blankets so that the dough rises quicker. It usually takes about 1.5-2 hours for the dough to rise when we do this…. it should rise to about double the size once it’s ready.

When the dough has risen, place it in the oven preheated at 350 degrees and cook until golden brown. It should take about 1 hour and 20 minutes, depending on your oven. Make sure to turn your trays around and switch them from the top/bottom rack after 40 minutes so that each bread is evenly cooked.

This bread is great for sandwiches, toast, bruschetta and much more.

To think, we used to feel embarrassed pulling out a sandwich like this at the lunch table at school when everyone else had white sandwich bread! Thanks Mom!

One of my favorite smells:) mmmmm…..