Veal Ricotta Polpottone

Veal ricotta meatballs from Molly Stevens' All About Braising, served with roasted fingerling potatoes:

Tom Colicchio's Braised Pork Belly

I thought that the best way to show my appreciation for Tom Colicchio after he kindly answered my questions was to cook one of his signature recipes. His recipe for braised fresh "bacon" in Think Like a Chef helped bring the pork belly craze into home kitchens. As simple as the dish is to prepare, it is certainly restaurant-quality. I served it with Chef Colicchio's lentils, celebrating the beginning of autumn in New York.


Braised Pork Belly
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 lbs. pork belly, preferably with skin on
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 leek, white part only, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
• 3 cups chicken stock

Directions:

1. Heat of to 350F.
2. Pat dry the pork belly with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper.
3. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add pork, skin side down, and cook until well browned, about 15 minutes. Set pork aside.
4. Pour off all but 2 tbsp fat and add onion, carrots, celery, leek, and garlic. Stir to coat the vegetables with oil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are soft, about 20 minutes.
5. Add pork belly to the pan along with 2 cups of chicken stock. Bring to a simmer, then transfer the skillet to the oven. Cook, uncovered, for 1 hour.
6. Add the rest of the stock and cook until pork is tender, approximately 1 hour.
7. Remove the skillet from the oven and let the pork cool. Once cooled, remove the skin with your fingers and discard or eat it. Score the fat, then cut the pork into 4 pieces.
8. Increase the oven heat to 400F.
9. Strain the braising liquid, discarding the solids, and return the liquid to the skillet. Bring the liquid to a simmer and skim off any fat.
10. Return the pork, fat-side up, to the skillet. Transfer the skillet to the oven and cook until the fat is browned, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Three Questions for Tom Colicchio

I recently had the opportunity to ask Tom Colicchio a few questions. Although his fame is attributed to being co-host of Bravo's Top Chef and co-owner of the Craft restaurant empire, his cookbook, Think Like a Chef, is something that every amateur cook should own. It is a personal favorite of mine, teaching how to break away from the confines of recipes and make the most of your ingredients. He provided some valuable tips for getting through the fall cooking season with your sanity in check and some delicious meals on your plate.

When you’re living in NYC, you have a very limited kitchen and very limited space. What cooking advice can you give us New Yorkers?

I have a small kitchen myself. Keep yourself organized. When you’re actually cooking a meal, you shouldn’t have to use a knife anymore. All the prep work should be done. You can buy small containers and put your prep in it, so when you start cooking, everything is right there for you. You can just add things to the pan when you need it. You shouldn’t be chopping and cooking at the same time—you make a mess. Especially if you have limited space, you need to keep really organized. I cook on Christmas Eve for 16 people and I make 8 or 9 dishes and I have a little stove. You can do it.

What are some great ingredients for fall dishes?

For fall, we take duck, root vegetables and apples and we combine those three things in different ways. You can make duck ham, duck confit, cold duck terrine with roasted vegetables, roasted duck, duck with apples, applesauce… And, you can do a soup with pureed vegetables with apple and duck confit. There are always different ways to combine food. If you tell someone to be creative with unlimited options, it’s sometimes hard to come up with something. If you say be creative with these three ingredients, you can do it in many different ways. Just learn how to cook—there are five basic cooking methods. And after that, it’s about just learning technique. If you can cook one green vegetable, you can cook them all. Don’t overcomplicate things.

What one piece of Thanksgiving advice would you give to someone cooking the meal?

Don’t overcook that turkey! People think it takes a lot longer than it takes. If you’re going to cook your turkey breast to the point where it’s nice and juicy, the legs will be undercooked. So what I do is take it out at that point and let it rest for a good half an hour before you carve it. Then, get the roasting pan, clean it out, keep it hot, take the legs off, put the legs back on the roasting pan and back in the oven. Cook the legs separately.

When carving the breast—I don’t know why people think carving the breast on the bird is a good thing—take the breast right off. Cut right down the breast bone and take the whole breast off and put it in on the cutting board and slice it. Every time I tell people that, they can’t believe it.

A Preview of Fatty 'Cue at Epicurious Entertains

On October 4, I attended Fatty Sunday, an event from "Epicurious Entertains" catered by Zak Pelaccio and the rest of his crew to taste dishes from the long-delayed and much-anticipated Fatty 'Cue. Set in a Union Square loft and offering attendees the opportunity to sample Chef Pelaccio's food while watching the day's football games, the 7-hour event brought out an interesting mix of foodies and jocks. With several flat screen TVs on each wall, an open bar, and a never-ending supply of smoked meats, no one could leave disappointed.

The event began with a gracious welcome from Epicurious Editor-in-Chief Tanya Wenman, who proclaimed that of all the week's "Epicurious Entertains" events, which included a multi-course event cooked by Daniel Boulud, Fatty Sunday's food was going to be the best. She then encouraged everyone to get in line to the kitchen, where Chef Pelaccio and his staff were serving the food buffet style.

Here is the menu of what we ate:

Smoked Brisket Bao with Sweet Cilantro Sauce
House Smoked Bacon and Clams with Dragon Pullman Bread
BBQ Lamb Shoulder with Goat Yogurt
Pork Spare Ribs with Palm Sugar Fish Sauce
Charred Turnips and Bitter Greens with Red Curry
Cucumber Salad
Nasi Ulam
Banh Mi

The lamb shoulder was the standout. Smoked for 14 hours by the Fatty 'Cue crew with a smoker on loan from Wildwood Barbeque (the Fatty 'Cue smokers are not yet ready), the meat was brimming with woodsy (applewood?) flavor. The goat yogurt, spicy and cool at the same time, was the perfect match for the intense smoke of the meat.

The spare ribs, smoked for a paltry four hours, were not far behind. Beautifully caramelized and cut into bite-size riblets, I could not resist helping myself to two platefuls. The fish sauce and palm sugar mixture that had been rubbed onto the succulent ribs was all the succulent meat needed.

The other foods were delicious in their own rite. What I love about Zak Pelaccio's cooking is that his riffs on Southeast Asian cuisine bring out the authentic flavors of the region without dumbing them down with sweet, gloppy sauces that seem to go hand in hand with the Asian-fusion moniker. The curry sauce on the turnips was properly spicy and the clams and bacon dish contained enough fish sauce to make P.F. Chang run back to the suburbs. The only disappointment of the night was the brisket bao, or steamed bun; the brisket was fatty and not very flavorful and the bun was much too dense.

For $50 a person, all of which went to the Taste of the NFL Charity for hunger, the full day event was a wonderful value. While I ate more smoked meat than I have eaten in the last year, I left excited for Fatty 'Cue to finally open. When would that be, I asked Chef Pelaccio. "By the end of the year?" He replied somewhat hopelessly. Oh well, I guess "Epicurious Entertains" has only added to the anticipation.
Pictures of the event

Chef Pelaccio with Epicurious Editor-in-Chief Tanya Wenman:
The beautiful smoked lamb shoulder:
Red curry turnips and bitter greens:
Clams with house-smoked bacon:


My first plate of food (don't judge):

Spare ribs with palm sugar fish sauce:


Chef Zak Pelaccio:

Corn Pudding

New York's corn has not been very sweet this summer, so I have largely forgone eating the grain in its purest form, roasted on the cob. Luckily, Andrew Carmellini's pappardelle with corn and this wonderful recipe for corn pudding from The Spamwise Chronicles have helped pull me through this bummer of a corn harvest.

Gazpacho

I couldn't let summer pass by without making a batch of gazpacho. This past Labor Day weekend, I used a recipe from Anya von Bremzen's The New Spanish Table to make the Spanish tomato-based soup that is a celebration of summer's bounty. I was slightly dismayed when my soup turned out pink in color, as every other gazpacho I've eaten is bright red, but fortunately the flavor profile was every bit as bright as any gazpacho I've had.

Gazpacho
Serves 8

Ingredients:

• 2 cups cubed day-old country bread, crust removed
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/8 tsp cumin seeds
• 3 lbs. ripe tomatoes, cored, seeded, and chopped
• 1 small red onion, minced
• 1 Italian frying pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
• 2 kirby cucumbers, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup chilled water
• 3 tbsp sherry vinegar

Directions:

1. Place salt, garlic, and cumin in a mortar and pestle and mash to a smooth paste.
2. Place bread in a bowl and cover with cold water. Let sit for 10 minutes. Drain and squeeze lightly to extract excess water.
3. Place bread, tomatoes, peppers, onion, cucumbers, and salt mixture in a large bowl. Let sit for ten minutes.
4. Place half of tomato mixture in the bowl of a food processor. Add 1/4 cup of olive oil and process until smooth, approximately one minute. Pour the mixture into a large bowl.
5. Place remaining tomato mixture in the bowl of the food processor along with 1/4 cup olive oil. Process until smooth and pour it into the bowl containing the rest of the soup.
6. Add sherry vinegar and water to the soup. Pour into a blender, or using an emulsion blender, blend until the mixture is completely smooth. Taste soup for salt and vinegar.
7. Place soup in the refrigerator and chill for at least two hours before serving.

Rigatoni with Sausage, Chickpeas, Broccoli Rabe and Tomato Sauce

This hearty pasta dish is from Andrew Carmellini's Urban Italian. The ingenious ingredient here is the chickpea puree, which gives the sauce a wonderful creaminess. The method might seem like a lot of dishes to dirty for just one pasta dish, but this pasta is plenty rich to stand on its own without any side dishes. It is well worth the dish cleaning effort it requires.

Rigatoni Pugliese
Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 15 oz. can chickpeas
• 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 lb. spicy Italian Sausage
• 3 cups of your favorite homemade tomato sauce (a simple preparation containing only tomatoes, salt, basil, and oil is all that is necessary. Do not use a store bought sauce.)
• 1/2 tsp fennel seed, ground
• 1 bunch broccoli rabe, cleaned and trimmed
• 1 lb. rigatoni
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 cup pecorino romano cheese, grated

Directions:

1. Drain the chickpeas, reserving the liquid. Place half of the chickpeas and all of the liquid in the bowl of a food processor and puree.
2. Heat 1/4 cup olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
3. Remove the sausage from its casing and place in sauce pan. Cook until well browned, using the back of the spoon to break up the meat.
4. Add the tomato sauce, chickpea puree, and fennel seed to the pan. Simmer until the thickened slightly, about fifteen minutes (the sauce should still have a liquid quality to it).
5. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
6. Add the broccoli rabe to the boiling water and blanch for about 90 seconds. Immediately remove with a slotted spoon and place in ice water.
7. Add the rigatoni to the boiling water and cook until al dente.
8. Meanwhile, heat two tbsp. olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.
9. Add the broccoli rabe, garlic, red pepper flakes, and remaining chickpeas to the skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for a minute or two. Remove all ingredients with a slotted spoon and add to sausage and tomato mixture.
10. Once pasta is cooked, drain the water and place the pasta back into the pot. Add the sausage and tomato mixture and stir to coat the pasta.
11. Add the butter and cheese and stir until butter is melted. Serve immediately.