A Christmas Feast at The Brooklyn Kitchen

Like many an Italian-reared-child, I grew up learning to cook on the heels of my grandparents and parents. Every year, in honor of my grandparents, a razor, a shiny knife prepares two meals around the holidays. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day feasts mark the pinnacle of traditional Italian cookery — even for those of us who are not pious or religious. Tradition dictates strict rules for appropriate ingredients, preparations and recipes. This in turn creates greatly anticipated dishes with a similarity of desire to smell pies baking and to eat turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy at thanksgiving. So distinctly defined by each side of my family were these meals that I have done my best to incorporate elements of both sets of regional influences while adding a modern flavor and elegant execution to tradition.

These two separate meals are defined by the stringent set of rules governing their possible ingredients. La Vigilia is the feast on Christmas Eve most recognized as the Feast of the Seven Fishes (The 10 dishes represent the ten stations of the cross). Christmas Eve, like Good Friday, is a vigilia di magro, or a lean day during which meat is prohibited. Il Pranzo (the Lunch) on Christmas day is a celebration of meat, cheese and sweets.

Both meals are decadent and extravagant in their own ways, but the real beauty of these traditional events is the social interaction around the preparation and service of the meal. You would never simply show up at your Italian family’s house to eat. Rather, you engage with each other in the kitchen. This type of participation is one of our founding tenets and a clear example of the most enjoyable functions of the social aspect of cooking and food.

We were also proud to host the meal at the Brooklyn Kitchen with our good friend Jonny Cigar, who, in addition to using a beautiful electric knife to slice the goose, also performed his adaptation of the Charles Dickens masterpiece, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas with a slight tinge of ginzano.

These meals are hosted early in December so we can donate the proceeds from these events in memory of my grandparents to their a favorite charity Feeding America. www.feedingamerica.org

Here are the menus from both meals as well as a collection of photos, a short audio story of the evening by Food Thinkers as well (Listen Here) and a time lapse of the evening prepared by Michael Lee from Studiofeast.

From this point on we will try our best to speak Italian where possible

Menus:
Christmas Eve – La Vigilia
Antipasto di Mare – Baccalà, Arsella, Ostrica, Gambero, Capesante, Scungilli
Antipasto di Mare – Salt cod, clams, oyster, shrimp, scallops, whelks

Zuppetta di cozze con funghi
Mussel soup with mushrooms

Tagliolini di Bottarga
Tagliolini of Mullet Roe

Anguilla Fritte con cavolo croccante
Fried eel with crispy kale

Branzino al sale con una quantità oscena di piattini
Bass in salt with many side dishes

Granita di Aperol

La collana del prete e una selezione di tradizionali pasticcerie italiane
Dried and fresh fruit and a selection of traditional Italian pastries

Christmas Day – Il Pranzo
Antipasto –Formaggio, Salumi, Sottaceti, Fegatini, Lepre
Appetizer-Cheese, Salami, pickles, chicken livers, hare

Fagottini di manzo in brodo
Beef dumplings in broth

Ravioli alla ricotta freschi con ragu di carne – Braciole, Salsiccia, Cappone, Polpetta
Fresh ricotta ravioli with meat sauce – Pork, Sausage, Capon, Meatballs

Zampone con mostarda
Stuffed pork knuckle with fruit mostarda

Arrosto d’oca con una quantità oscena di  piattini
Roast goose with many side dishes

Amara insalata verde
Bitter Green Salad

Granita di Aperol

Struffoli e una selezione di tradizionali pasticcerie italiane
Struffoli and a selection of traditional Italian pastries

Menu was written with Daniel Castaño, Laura and Joseph Cirino, Gilda and Gerald Contento, Mike Lee and Andrew Rosenberg

Sunday Dinner July 13th, 2008 – Pasta

I would like to make something clear for those of you who do not know me personally yet; I am Italian. This is not a crucial or super interesting fact about me, but it does lend reasoning and purpose to some of my more eccentric actions. It explains things like; my predilection for serious, non-ironic facial hair, driving manual transmission cars ludicrously fast when I am alone on dark roads at night, having my friends in the kitchen with me getting dirty while telling lies and giggling. Most importantly I think that it might make explaining why we attempted to make seven courses of pasts in the middle of July a little easier.

As with most of these Sunday meal pretty much everything we set out to accomplish we had never done before and that seemed to lend an interesting sense of accomplishment to each course and each non-failure that was well received by those of you who didn’t have to leave early to see an amazing hip hop show. At the end of the whole day we managed an amazing six of the seven courses, letting the Cantaloupe linguine die quickly after the mid meal smoke break and people were mentioning a bit of a sated feeling that was overcoming them.

Here was the menu we attempted:

1. Pea and Carrot Raviolo in consommé freddo
2. Maguro with soy glaze and toasted sesame seeds
3. Smoked Avocado and crab pansotti, Lime beurre blanc
4. Pesto trenette nest with slow poached egg and hot savory whipped cream
5. Mole pappardelle with duck ragu
6. Cantaloupe linguine with white chocolate ganache (abandoned in favor of Mark’s dangerously good whisky sauce, {see below})
7. Whisky and hazelnut manicotti

Menu written with Daniel and Mark
Cooked with Daniel, Mark and Cathy
Without Kristen it would have been impossible.
Thank you all so much.

All photos by: Cathy Erway © 2008 http://noteatingoutinny.com/

Pea and Carrot Raviolo in Consommé Freddo
This dish started, as most on this menu did, at Roberta’s Pizzeria in Flatbush, while Carlo brought out plate after plate of deliciousness and we struggled to obtain beverages. The idea here was to take a standard dish that had absolutely nothing to do with pasta and make it into, well I guess make it into pasta. As obvious as that sounds for this meal it was not as simple as it would seem because most people smarter and more creative than we had already done amazing things with this concept.

So we forgot about it and wrote the rest of the menu and go painfully stuck on this idea of making a cold consommé, and the words ROAST BEEF. Not sure how or why but those two things yielded a desire to make roast beef with peas and carrots. To realize this dream we made carrot ravioli by juice pounds of carrots and reducing the fragrant juice to a syrup and added that to the pasta. Stuffed them with a very soft and fluffy sweet pea and ricotta filling and cooked them very quickly in beef stock. Mark made a shallot and beef stock and we clarified it properly first thing and then dropped it into a salt ice bath to get it super cold. The warm ravioli were then served in the cold broth with a chilled pea greens salad, seen here in great quantity.

Maguro with Soy Glaze and Toasted Sesame Seeds
I am on of those people who firmly believe that marco polo stole pasta when he returned from china in 15th century and that we should appreciate Asian noodles in the same light as Italian noodles.  Here we tried to build a dish that would in flavor resemble just a Maguro sushi presentation but instead of sticky sushi rice we opted for hand rolled wasabi udon noodles. The soy glaze was reduced, sweetened and then thickened and it was amazingly clingy.

Smoked Avocado and Crab Pansotti, Lime Beurre Blanc
Pansotti is a name for triangle shaped stuff pasta from the northern part of Italy. I happen to think the word would sound better with an A or E in the middle of it (ie panasotti or panesotti) but that is not my decision to make, as I no longer invent words for the Italian language.

The smoked avocado and crab stuffing was amazing polarizing, clearly defining the people in the room who enjoyed smoked food and those who didn’t. I happen to enjoy smoked foods, which is a very good reason why this dish made it on to the menu in this form, so I was delighted by the earthy fattiness of the avocado played against the sweet crab meat.

Lime juice was reduce into a syrup and mounted with a delicious amount of butter with a handful of shallots and jalapeños to really brighten up the density that was added by the pasta shell. All and all, if you don’t like smoked food you wouldn’t order this; if you do then it was, from most accounts a pretty strong success.

Pesto Trenette Nest with Slow Poached Egg and Hot Savory Whipped Cream
Trenette is another very specific type of long thin pasta that is traditionally served with a pesto sauce. Instead of serving it with a pesto sauce here with added the pesto directly to the pasta and fried them into little nests. Slow poached a quail egg to 63C topped them with a touch of hot whipped cream that was flavored with mushrooms and sweet onions. The idea was that the runny yolk and the cream would form a sauce and the tasty pasta bits would lend texture to the egg and the whole dish. Hot whipped cream being technically impossible without help from science we progress through this batch of sauce with varied results as we attempted a few different hydrocolloids to get us a nice set of soft peaks. End results were sufficient and the sauce was tasty and had a light but slightly dense mouth feel, but more work needs to be done and maybe a little bit of proper research.

Mole Pappardelle with Duck Ragu
Here we infused the mole sauce directly into the pasta so that the dish could be served dry with just a nice clean pile of braised duck on top. The duck was braised in a broth with the full list of ingredients that would be found in a typical mole sauce. Once painfully soft and delicate it was shredded and the braising liquid was reduced into a glaze and the duck was tossed with this.

A mole sauce was made and then chilled and folded directly in with the eggs when making the pasta, which was then kneaded with a combination of mole powder and flour until it was nice and smooth. Topped with a touch of crema and some cilantro, allowed the light spice of the dried peppers to be felt in both the noodle and the meat and allowed the sauce less dish to stay soft and prevent it from sticking.

I am very proud of the flavors of this dish and of the mole duck in general.

Whisky and Hazelnut Manicotti
Manicotti is a specialty of mine, in so much as it is the first pasta I learned how to make and it is only one from which my recipe originates directly in my family and not a combination of family and professional interactions.

The crepes were made neutral and stuffed with a sweet mascarpone cream. The plate had a touch of dulce de leche on it and the crepe was place on top, covered with Mexican chocolate, toasted hazelnuts and amazing whisky syrup that was unbelievably amazing.

This dish turned out to be small enough to be thought of a light way to end a meal and very well balanced between sweet and savory and was favored by most everyone.

Sunday June 22^nd, 2008

This adventure into displaced products came together in very little time thanks to the amazing amount of traffic that day. Most of this meal was and exploration of infusing flavors into water and condensing that flavor into the service.

Menu

Savory Coconut Fritters

Housemade Tortellini in Brodo

Cauliflower Steak, Sweet Pea Puree

Smoked Lamb and Tagliatelle Salad

Meringues

This menu was written & executed with Mark Low and we were very excited and blessed to have the amazing Betsy Balog from Osteria La Spiga working with us and captaining the pastry duties for the evening. Special thanks would also like to be paid Sunny Bang, the new executive chef at The Williamsburg Café and good friend, who was one of the inspirations for the Cauliflower Steak that we cooked this night. Please try his version of this dish when the restaurant opens on July 4^th.

These beautiful photos were taken by Cassidy DuHon

Savory Coconut Fritters

The rice fritters were made risotto style, softened with a lemongrass and ginger stock and folded with diced shrimp. They were rolled into balls and coated with panko and coconut before being fried. The whole shrimp were dusted with a Thai spice blend and served with rocket. The rocket was dressed with a yuzu and sriracha and was thickened a little and left for people to dip the balls in.

Housemade Tortellini in Brodo

Saying house made is a little unnecessary and redundant, but everyone in the house chipped in a helped with this.

This was my attempt at try to recreate a classic Italian dish with a different flavor structure.

The tortellini were made with smoked flour and eggs and stuffed with a black eyed pea and sheep’s milk cheese puree. The broth was a sweetened Serrano ham stock and it was topped with sautéed chiffonade of collard greens that had been spiced with hot sauce. I think that the bent flavor structure was very successful and it remind some of the people at dinner and I that black eyed peas are fantastic.

Cauliflower Steak, Sweet Pea Puree

I believe this dish was originated with Charlie Trotter, but that is just hersay because I have never seen his recipe or really know anything about how he prepared, or served dish other to say that peas were originally broccoli.

That being said the dish was further filtered through the mind of my friend Sunny Bang as accompaniment for Brook Trout at The Williamsburg Café. To me though the idea of having the cauliflower be the center of attention and main purpose of the dish really was missing from both preparations.

To give the cauliflower a soft center texture it was  sous vided in with some seasoning and then give it a crisp outer texture it was finished in a pan with clarified oregano butter. The Pea puree was made with frozen (their density and flavor is perfect for pureeing and reducing) and fresh sugar snap peas, onion and cooked in a sweet basil stock. The little bit of red pepper was give as color contrast and to give  fresh crisp taste and texture to the dish.

Smoked Lamb and Tagliatelle Salad

This although it doesn’t seem like with the lamb chop was not the entrée, it was a salad course for after the cauliflower.

The lamb was smoked with apple wood and oregano and then sous vided with butter and herbs to 52C. It was then finished with the same Oregano butted to lightly caramelize the outside.

The Tagliatelle was not pasta but actually long strips of cucumber, daikon and omelet noodles cut into thin strips. I unpeeled the vegetables in the Japanese style of Katsuramuki and then cut them into long noodles. The omelets were made with a touch of cream and smoked salt and cooked super thin and then chilled. The salad was dressed with a cherry tomato and oregano vinaigrette.

Meringues

Here Betsy presents her hazelnut and chocolate meringue topped with fresh whip cream and strawberries. It was light, fluffy and amazingly simple to make but difficult to eat without getting at least a little messy. Thank you again for coming buy on your vacation to cook in my kitchen.

A start at perfecting the richest types of raviolo.

These larger ravioli were stuffed with homemade ricotta, spinach and pecorino with a slow poached pheasant egg placed in the center. Sautéed ramps in raw cream butter and then crisped the raviolo before glazing them with a duck buerre blanc. Pheasant yolk invading the buerre blanc was the end goal of this whole sauce and shaved Locatelli on top was specifically to add a touch of salt.

This seems to be getting pretty close to the most decadent pasta I can make. I guess I need to preface that by saying that, it is the most decadent  pasta I can make without proper cream, bacon or duck fat. I guess.