Easy Homemade Pesto alla Genovese

Pesto alla Genovese is a summertime classic that anyone can prepare with the most minimal set of ingredients and tools, and which every cook should know. Most primitively, anyone with something to apply crushing pressure, something to crush, and something to hold the thing that is being crushed (like a mortar and pestle and their contents) can prepare a pesto. In fact, the name of this sauce comes from the fact that Ligurian chefs in the city of Genova used to prepare this sauce strictly with this most ancient of cooking utensils. However, now that we are in the 21^st century, having a mortar and pestle at the ready is quite rare, so this recipe will instead make use of more modern equipment: a blender or a food processor. This recipe might be the simplest I’ve ever posted, so, in all likelihood, it’ll also be the shortest.

The defining characteristic of the best pesto sauces is the freshness of the ingredients. Ideally, you should buy a fresh basil plant and have extra virgin olive oil on hand for this recipe. In addition, you will need 2-3 cloves of fresh garlic (throw it away if it's sprouting) and some kind of nut. This recipe will use walnuts, but pine is most traditional, and I've heard of recipes that use almonds.

Before the nuts can be processed, they should be roasted to maximize their flavor. Be careful: nuts go from “not done” to “done” to “overdone” in seconds. Some people roast nuts and seeds on sheet trays in the oven, but I get too scared, so, for maximum control, I roast my nuts or seeds in a dry (no oil, butter, etc.) sauté pan or frying pan over a conservative medium-low heat. This allows me to constantly move the nuts, so they don’t stick, and constantly evaluate their doneness by how they look and smell. If the nuts burn, start over.

Now, process the roasted nuts and the garlic until a rough paste forms. Add a little bit of salt now—but not as much as you want to season the final product—to take advantage of the abrasive qualities of salt’s crystalline structure. 

              Tear off the leaves and stems from your basil plant and place them in the food processor with the zest and juice of one citrus fruit (ideally a lime or lemon). This will both give the sauce some freshness (by cutting through the richness of the olive oil still to come) and stop the basil from oxidizing. Process again.

Leave the blades of the food processor running and slowly stream in olive oil until a cohesive emulsion forms and there is enough sauce in the processor.

Continue processing while sprinkling in (ideally freshly-grated) Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano Reggiano, or another hard, grated, Italian cheese.

The cardinal sin against pesto is to cook it for a long time. Basil is especially sensitive to heat in its fresh form, and applying any kind of heat to it drastically changes the flavor profile. Cook the pasta to al dente doneness, and then, together with a few tablespoons of starchy pasta cooking water, toss the (hot) pasta and the (room temperature) sauce together. Never make the sauce and let it simmer in a pan on the side, especially not as one would do for several hours in a Bolognese or Pomodoro. 

 

Coq au Vin

Coq au Vin is one of the great classic French braises. True to form as the “poor man’s food” of peasantry-era France, this was not a dish made with a young chicken found everywhere in modern American grocery stores—that dish would be called “poulet au vin,” but this is “coq au vin”—but with an old rooster. To accommodate changing modern tastes, techniques, and ingredient availability, this recipe will cater to the American consumer, but will still maintain all of the core elements of what makes the classic coq au vin the classic coq au vin.

Coq au vin is a braise, which means there are three indispensable classes of ingredients. 1) The thing being braised. 2) The liquid in which that thing is being cooked and 3) The stuff being cooked with the main ingredient in the braising liquid. For coq au vin, those three elements are as follows: 1) chicken (thighs); 2) water, red wine, and brown chicken stock; 3) mushrooms, bacon, and onions.

 Before we get into how to prepare this dish, let’s first talk about where to prepare it. A number of the recipes I’ve already posted on here use an 8-quart stove-save and oven-safe Dutch oven. That’s perfect for this recipe.

 Another thing I’ve been very adamant about in the recipes posted here is the importance of the classical French practice of “mise en place”—“[putting] everything in its proper place [before you start cooking]:” washing, chopping, peeling, etc. Coq au vin will be no exception.

The mise en place for coq au vin itself is rather straightforward and not too demanding. First, separate out a quart of chicken stock (ideally fresh, for which you can find a recipe by clicking here)—if you live in the metric world, go with a liter—and about a cup and a half (350 mL, give or take) of good red wine. Then, clean 1 pound (1/2 kg) of baby bella mushrooms. The “white button,” “baby bello,” and “portobello” mushrooms, the three most commonly consumed mushrooms in the United States, are exactly the same organism, but at different levels of maturity/development, so if you cannot find the baby bella, either of the others I suggested will be fine. Wash and then quarter the mushrooms. Slice 4 ounces of bacon into lardons by cutting them across the length of the bacon strips. Peel 3 onions and remove both the stem and root ends. Then, with your knife parallel to your cutting surface, cut each onion into thirds or quarters and separate out the rings from within each cut. There may be some membrane between the layers/rings of the onions. As you separate the rings, if you find any membrane, remove it.

              This recipe makes use of both the English-language culinary definition of “fond” and the French-language culinary definition of “fond.” We need to develop the first before we can engage the latter. The English word refers to “tasty, caramelized bits stuck to the bottom of the pan that most chefs accidentally waste,” while the French word is the word for “stock.”  Creating a good chicken stock is a very long process, so it will get its own post.  

              Building a good fond (in the English sense) takes time and planning. Begin with the flame off and place the bacon lardons into the cold pan in a single layer. Fat melts at a much lower temperature than bacon becomes crispy, so once the lardons are in the pan, bring the flame up to medium-low, or even low, without any additional fat at first. This low flame will heat the bacon gently and allow the fat a head-start when rendering, so that the bacon can, in a few minutes’ time, fry in its own fat. Once the bacon is crispy enough, remove it with tongs or a slotted spoon, leaving behind the rendered fat. Depending on how fatty your bacon was, you may want to add a few more tablespoons of fat—olive oil is ideal. Now, raise the heat to medium or medium-high  Then, place the onion rings into the Dutch oven, and let them caramelize. This process will not begin immediately. Onions have a significant amount of moisture in them, and that moisture needs to evaporate before the onions can start caramelizing. The onions will need to let go of their moisture before they start frying in the bacon fat and olive oil, and there will be an audible difference between the two processes. Do not allow the onions to burn. This will burn the fond, and you’ll need to start over. Once the onions are in the caramelizing phase, they will have lost a significant amount of volume. When this happens, add 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar to the Dutch oven and add the mushrooms. The mushrooms will go through the same process the onions did: losing moisture first, then frying. Once the onions and the mushrooms are sufficiently browned, remove them from the Dutch oven and set them aside with the bacon.

              Lightly coat the chicken thighs in flour, passing the chicken thighs from one hand to the other to shake off any excess flour. Brown the chicken thighs in the bacon fat/olive oil. This will leave behind the third layer of fond. The goal is not to cook the chicken through, just to give it some color and set a crust so that it doesn’t fall apart in the braising process. Reserve the chicken.

              Build a roux in the pan with the fond over low heat by melting 3 tablespoons of butter and an equal amount of flour. This will create a paste, called a roux. Raw flour is incredibly unpleasant, but cooked flour coated in butterfat turns quite nutty and pleasant. Whisk constantly while the roux is being prepared, and while the stock and wine are being incorporated. If the roux burns, so does the fond, which would require starting over from scratch. Once the raw flour smell in the roux has cooked out, whisk in the chicken stock and wine. This does two things: it emulsifies and thickens the sauce, and it deglazes the pan, dissolving the fond into the sauce. Raise the heat to high for 5 minutes to allow the chemical reactions to take place by which the sauce will begin to be thickened.

              Replace the chicken, mushrooms, onions, and bacon. Allow the chicken to braise uncovered in a 250-degree oven for 3 hours. Depending on the size and strength of your oven, and the depth and surface area of your Dutch oven, you may need to add more water or stock to the sauce throughout the cooking process, or you may need to reduce the sauce on the stovetop over high heat after the three hours.

              Serve with over a starch: mashed potatoes, pasta, roasted potatoes, or spaetzle, for example.

Chef-Essential Homemade Chicken Stock

Chicken stock is, perhaps, the most universal of the classic stocks, and so it is the most versatile in its applications. Stocks, in general, can be deceptively simple: take a bunch of bones, roast them (or omit this step for a different kind of chicken stock), throw a bunch of chopped vegetables into a stockpot, submerge all of that in water, and let it simmer for several hours. Easy, right? Actually, stocks can be quite complex—much more complex than that deliberately dramatic way I just presented them. It is often said that you can rank a lineup of chefs in order from best to worst based purely on a blind test of a sampling of their stocks. For that reason, and because stocks are such basic building blocks of so many dishes in the kitchen, it is vital that every home cook know the best techniques.

The largest pot we have here at home, by capacity, is an 8-quart Dutch Oven, which I have featured in a few recipes before. That is not nearly large enough, nor is it the right shape for making stock. I have regularly used my Dutch oven to make ragù Bolognese, especially if and when the grocery store substituted our order for more meat than we ordered during the quarantine. That Dutch oven made enough ragù for 8 meals if the pasta was particularly saucy, and for 12 meals if the sauce was rationed. Followed exactly, this recipe would double the capacity if the Dutch oven. Capacity aside, there is another problem with my Dutch oven: it is quite short, and it is rather wide. This geometry creates a problem. Wider surface areas lend to quicker evaporation, and, again, this is a basic stock, not a demiglace reduction, so we want to minimize evaporation. Some evaporation is bound to happen, and water can and should be added to counteract that throughout the simmering process. The ideal pot has a very large volume but is very tall and very narrow, especially in proportion to its height.  

The pot that is needed for these stocks as the recipe is written is at least twice as voluminous as the biggest one I have (so I can only ever make half a batch at a time at home). The requisite stock-making vessel is whatever the largest available stockpot which is suitable for your kitchen and which you can easily find is; they’re widely available at hardware or big-box stores (i.e., Ace, Walmart, Target, Costco, etc.), and they usually run about $20 to $40. The absolute minimum size for this recipe (if not proportionally reduced) is 18 quarts—4.5 gallons (almost exactly 17L). Bigger is better, but for a non-industrial kitchen, the biggest I recommend is 32 quarts—8 gallons (30.3L). Be sure you have found a good stockpot in the recommended volume range before proceeding, especially if you have decided to use a smaller pot for smaller batches.

This recipe can be adjusted, so if you are making much more or much less stock—I only made 6 quarts at a time—use a larger or smaller but correctly proportional pan (i.e., one that is taller than it is wide and has more than enough volume for the amount of stock you want to make) and it will work just as well. Whatever style or capacity is used, even if it has a lid, do not use it.

The first question about actual food we need to address, naturally, is what cut of chicken to use in chicken stock. My recommendation is to use wings. At least here in the US, it is relatively easy to find wings in trays that weigh 4 to 7 pounds (1.8 to 3.2 kg), and they are typically sold either cut up into two parts when only the meatier drumette is sold, or they’re sold whole. For this stock, the best option would be to buy 2 of those trays of whole wings. Whole wings contain lots of collagen, which will be most beneficial in the preparation of the best stock. If you have leftover carcasses (as we did a few days before this was written, since we'd just bought a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store a few days before), they work just as well.

The French call the combination of onions, celery, and carrots (to which I recommend the technically non-traditional addition of garlic) “mirepoix.”  Other recipes for more exacting dishes might call for precise cuts in the mirepoix, but I’ll only recommend that the onions, carrots, and celery be about the same size within each vegetable, and that they are cut in the following way: 2 pounds of onions (4-6 onions), roughly cut into quarters; 1 stalk of celery (that includes multiple ribs connected at one point), cut into thirds after the root has been cut off; and 1 pound of carrots, peeled, and with the very top and very bottom of each carrot cut off. This 2:1:1 ratio is standard in any restaurant kitchen that prepares anything requiring mirepoix, and, even if you do not cook professionally, is a great flavor base to add to almost any savory Western dish. You can either not peel the onions and just quarter them, or peel them, quarter them, and put the skins back in the stock. (Italians call this combination of vegetables "soffrito" and Spaniards call it "refogado.") Further, slice 2 heads of garlic across their equators. This opens up all of the cloves at once and allows them to release their flavorful oils into the stock. Roasted garlic becomes very umami-sweet and much less bitter and pungent than fresh raw garlic. You can add other hearty vegetables like leeks and parsnips, to your stock, if you like them and/or they are in season. Don't worry about being too pretty with any of the cuts here-- all the solids will be eventually strained out.  

I have mentioned another French term, “mise en place,” before, and a number of my previous recipes, like this one, are just fancy exercises in mise en place. Each stock will require a substantial amount of mise en place. The tasks will not be particularly complex, but they will be time-consuming and repetitive, namely, in chopping the vegetables and organizing the vegetables and the wings on roasting trays.

Some stocks are brown, and others are white. Brown stocks are stocks for which the protein is roasted. In general, for these applications, 400 Fahrenheit for an hour and a half should work quite well. A chicken stock that uses wings needs about an hour to develop the deep flavor and caramelization typical of brown stock, and for evenness in this effect, I recommend flipping the wings every 20 minutes.

White stocks, on the other hand, are stocks where the protein is first blanched and shocked in cold water before being introduced to the stockpot. To blanch, cover the protein in cold water in a pan large enough to contain it, and, as quickly as possible, bring that liquid to a boil. Once the water boils, keep the protein there no less than 10, but no more than 30 seconds. Immediately kill the heat, drain the water, and move the protein to an ice bath. The ice stops the cooking process as quickly as possible. This will remove any mineral impurities from the surface of the bones. This is the defining difference between brown stock and white stock. Brown is roasted, white is blanched. Whatever protein is used, brown will be significantly richer, the flavor of the meat that was used will be more pronounced, and the color will be much lighter in the white stock as compared to the brown. Knowing now the difference between brown and white, the rest of this recipe will proceed along the brown path. 

Chicken is the easiest to burn among the proteins typically used to make stock, so adjust these times according to the power of your oven and err on the side of slightly under-roasting. Arrange the chicken wings, celery, garlic, onions, carrots, and other vegetables on roasting pans and place them in a preheated (400 F) oven. Every 15 minutes rotate the roasting trays a half-turn. Once 45 minutes have passed, squeeze 1 tube of tomato paste onto the chicken and vegetables, and toss to coat. Even coating prevents burning and promotes equal browning at the same rate. As before, every 15 minutes rotate the trays a half-turn, but now, in addition, also flip the contents of those trays. This will ensure deep, even caramelization and will prevent burning. If anything burns, throw everything away and start over. (You can skip the rotation if you drop the temperature to 350 and activate convection mode on your oven if it exists.)

After the 75-minute roast, the chicken will have released some fat, and both it and the vegetables will have released some water. Some of what was released will still be liquid, while some of what was released will have gotten stuck to the tray, solidified, and caramelized. Transfer all the solids and what you can of the liquids into the stockpot. Then, using some water and a spatula, scrape the surface of the pans to dissolve what is stuck to them into the water. How much flavor is contained in these solid bits, and what proportional yield of these solid bits a chef can get from their pans, more than anything else, will be the key to differentiating “okay” stock from “great” stock.  This process is known as “deglazing,” and doing this (as opposed to writing off those solids) maximizes flavor. The chicken stock itself is a popular deglazing liquid in making sauces, stews, soups, gravies, and the like, but for now, since we are just now building the stock, use water, or if you are feeling adventurous and want to add fruity notes to your stock, some white wine.

Take all the liquid you have deglazed into the stockpot, together with the easily accessible liquid you poured out and the solids from the roasting pan. Start filling the 18-quart stockpot with 12 quarts (3 gallons, 11.3 liters) of water. (This can, of course, be adjusted proportionally if you need more or less stock, so long as the amounts of chicken and vegetables are adjusted as well.) Flavor the stock with a bay leaf, fresh dill, parsley, oregano, and thyme bound in a bouquet garni with butcher's twine for easy removal in a few hours. After all the water and solids are in the stockpot, make sure you have at least 2 inches of clearance from the lip. 

Turn on the burner to its lowest setting possible while still maintaining a flame. Especially in the beginning, monitor the stock and skim it as foam rises to the top. While the foam is not dangerous per se, it makes the stock look cloudy at the end, so you are doing this purely for aesthetics. If the water line ever crosses below the solids in the pot, add more water until the solids are submerged by an inch and a half of water, but maintain proper clearance so the liquid never boils over.  

If you are in a hurry, leave the stock on the stove for no less than 2 hours before cooling, portioning, and storing (in the fridge for up to a week, in the freezer for up to 6 months). Ideally, though, a chicken stock should be left on the stove for 4 to 24 hours on as low heat as possible. Skim early and often; the later you wait to skim, the more flavor you will remove in addition to the scum.

At the end of the cooking time, discard the solids in the stock, strain it, and transfer it into a container large enough to hold all of it which has been placed in a plugged-up sink filled with ice water. Strain the stock carefully: the more clear the stock, generally, the better the quality. The ice water surrounding the stock’s new container will cool it quickly and safely.

Place some (clean) ice into the stock in its cooling container. Leave the ice-stock out to cool until it is cold enough to go into the refrigerator. The ice in the stock will melt into the stock, diluting it slightly, but, more importantly, will cause all the fat in the stock to rise to the top of that container in a giant disk of fat when left in the fridge for a long time, and it will chill it safely. Discard the fat. Collagen in the bones will have leached out and dissolved into the water; when heat is applied, collagen chemically changes into gelatin. If your stock looks like “meaty Jell-O” at this point in the process, until now, you have done everything well. Portion out your stock however you need to (in gallon/half-gallon/quart/pint/cup containers), and freeze what you do not need in resealable, airtight containers. Put what you will use immediately in the fridge, and use it within 3 days. Kept in a freezer in an airtight container, this stock will keep for up to 6 months.

Whenever you need your homemade stock, pull out a container and thaw and reheat its contents, most ideally in an appropriately sized saucepan. Once reheated, the gelatin in the stock will dissolve and the familiar liquid consistency will return. Only when you need the stock, add salt to the quantity of stock you are using immediately.

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

Setting the Mass to Music: A Creative Project Years in the Making

A few months ago, I had what was, by all accounts, a normal night. But there was, in fact, something very different about that night. A melody came into my head that night as I was going to sleep and returned as I was waking up. Disoriented as I might have been, right about to fall asleep or just having woken up, I was still able to clearly tell that that melody was a perfect candidate for a setting of the Sanctus, one of the parts of the Mass which can be sung, and which thus is one of the components of what a musician calls “a Mass.” In my case, that means writing a Kyrie, Gloria, Alleluia, Credo, Sanctus, Amen, and Agnus Dei. Each of these parts is fixed from day to day, week to week, and, if one were to use my setting or any other setting in the original Latin/Greek/Hebrew, it would be possible for this to happen anywhere in the world, and a Catholic attending a Mass anywhere would still understand it: no translation required.

Music has always been a part of my life, and since middle school, I have been trying (with varying degrees of success) not just to play well what has already been written but even to go beyond that and write original work well. It turns out that, after scribbling something in a weird notation system I came up with years ago on a notepad in my bedroom and then bringing said notepad down to my computer the following morning several months ago, I had a pretty good starting point for the Sanctus: the song of praise to God of all the angels into which all Catholics join our voices before the Eucharistic Prayer.

It did not take long at all to write the Sanctus—certainly not as long as I thought it would take—and, judging by the standards of a few months ago, it was the best thing I had ever written given the time it took to write it: a week or so, maybe 10 days max. I then recorded my notation software playing it back to me, and I posted that screen recording to Twitter. Some friends there quickly but kindly drew my attention to what were, in retrospect, glaringly obvious errors. But most of the feedback from other people, even people who were very technically minded like I am, was positive, so I kept the Tweet with the recording up. I did not release another Tweet showing that I had done this, but behind the scenes, I did consider what my followers had pointed out, and I fixed some of those mistakes.

And that’s where things stood for a few weeks. A Sanctus on my computer with nothing else to go with it. It was pretty obvious to me at the time that I was going through what I had gone through many times in the past: a period where I just did not have any ideas—at least, none good enough that I kept thinking about them long enough to write them down. But that changed a few weeks ago, and I very quickly came up with another idea, for a Kyrie. The Kyrie is short (“Kyrie, eleison” twice, then “Christe, eleison” twice, and then “Kyrie eleison” twice more), so that took only an afternoon to write much less time than the Sanctus, for two reasons. First, as I already mentioned, the Kyrie is much shorter, and writing less music, in general, takes less time than writing more music. But perhaps more importantly, the creative process had already started with the Sanctus, so I knew what I liked and what I hated, what worked and what did not work. And because I did not have to repeat that process of discovery again, the Kyrie was all done in maybe an hour.

Ideas came quickly for the Gloria and the Credo, and soon after that, the Amen and the Alleluia. At this point, I was not really working on just one movement and trying my hardest to get it done before moving on to the next one. I would write a few measures of new melody or fill in a few measures of harmony each day, wherever I had new ideas. Day-to-day, I did not have goals measuring how much I wanted to write, or which movements I wanted to get done by certain deadlines. I just let the creative process happen organically; some days were incredibly productive, and others, not so much.

As I continued working on the Gloria and the Credo—by far the longest texts, so also the longest compositions—I came into a rhythm, a style I found to be uniquely mine. Interestingly, setting a comprehensive list of what we believe to music revealed in myself a sense of compositional identity I hadn't felt before, that blossomed through this project. And as I discovered the existence of and familiarized myself with my own style, I became comfortable in it, and so too in the creative process that that style was generating. Writing a summary of everything we believe and then writing out the song of praise of the shepherds was supposed to be a daunting task, but because of this comfort, it was not, or if it was, it was much less than I expected it would be. Good creative work is a positively reinforcing feedback loop: you do good work, so you want to do more, after which your work gets better, so you produce even more, and so on. The existence of such a loop became evident quite quickly, and I relished in it. Ideas came to me at all hours of the day, and, as soon as I could, I would jot them down in my software. I did not know at the time if those ideas would make it to the final draft of the Mass I was writing, but, honestly, I did not care. I just wrote because I liked writing, and I did not want any of the ideas I had to slip away into the void never to be picked up again.

After several weeks of writing, and especially after going through hot streaks and dry spells within the project, I realized very late, in fact—on the first day I was thinking about getting a group of people together to sing the parts live—that one of the movements that was essential was missing. Somehow, perhaps because of just how organically I had let the creative process develop, I had not yet written an Agnus Dei, which accompanies the Rite of Fraction of the Host and the commingling of a tiny piece from that Host into the Chalice, after both have been consecrated. Just thinking about that absence was enough. Not even five minutes later, I had found a theme I liked, and, half an hour later—the fastest-written movement yet—the Agnus Dei was done.

Throughout that journey of discovery of a personal style, I found that that style included dropping a number of “Easter eggs” as we say in the computing world: hidden stuff that is technically from somewhere else that in context feels like it should be exactly where it is. I will briefly give a few examples. I wrote the section in the Credo referring to Christ’s resurrection and ascension right after Easter, so the hymn melody Llanfair was in my mind at the time (because either “Llanfair” or “Lyra Davidica” is most often used to set Wesley’s text of “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” to music, and “Llanfair” is easier to sing, so I chose it over “Lyra”). Immediately thereafter, I thought the most logical way to refer to the Ascension after quoting “Lyra” for the Resurrection was to turn the melodic line into an ascending scale. When the Credo refers to the fact that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son,  for no reason than that I come up with an original melody good enough and that I realized this quotation would work, I lifted the “Ode to Joy” to use in context. Several movements in the Mass quote each other; the first phrases of the Kyrie and the Gloria are deliberately identical.

That idea to connect movements by either making them wholly or partially identical was not mine but rather, in the context of liturgical music, came from one of my heroes: Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was not a Catholic, but rather a Lutheran, and yet he wrote the greatest “Missa Tota” setting ever. I, like many composers before me, wrote a “Missa Brevis:” All the parts of the Mass are there, but each part is its own movement. There is one Kyrie, one Gloria, and so on. If I had written a Missa Tota as Bach did in his masterwork Mass in B minor, I am sure I would still be working until well after my 30th birthday—and I just turned 20 this year. This dramatic increase in length is due to the fact that Missas Totas contain all the parts, as does mine, but instead of giving each prayer a single movement, each word or phrase gets a single movement. (I will provide the translation instead of the original Latin or Greek so that this point will be more easily understood.) So in the longer form of writing a Mass, “Lord, have mercy” is two movements in the Kyrie, separate from “Christ, have mercy,” which is its own. “Glory to God in the highest” is separate from “and peace to people of God will,” which, again, is separate from “We praise you,” “We bless you,” “We adore you,” and “We glorify you.” Just in this short list of examples, I have already mentioned the existence of at least 9 movements in only the Kyrie and the beginning of the Gloria. Going through the entire Mass in this manner would yield dozens of movements and hours of music, but writing as I did yielded a complete Mass in only 7 movements and 12 or so minutes of music.   

Writing a Mass—and even having the potential that this project might be known to the world—certainly has been an interesting process. Now that the writing phase is done, the project has now moved into the “let the world know this thing exists” phase. The first step in this process, undertaken over the last 24 hours was contacting a few musician friends and Catholic Centers at universities near me, and a choir of recent graduates to ask if they would work with me. The current step is this blog post and just a general “wait-and-see-what-happens” attitude. Hopefully, after this phase will come another one in which some subset of the people and groups I contacted will like my work enough that, assuming it’s safe to do so, we can get together and actually sing and play through the Mass, either in a concert outside the celebration of the Mass but nevertheless at the parish, or, in a perfect world, singing and playing through this within the celebration of the liturgy, and even possibly recording such a performance. I have no idea if or when any of this will happen, but if anything does come of my attempts to perform/record this, I’ll be sure to update this post with where to find them. 

Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala is an Italian classic with relatively few ingredients, but that can instantly be elevated by using good ingredients and superior care and technique.

First, let us answer the question of what wines to use, given the importance of wine in the dish as evidenced by its name. There are two general categories of Marsala wine: dry and sweet. Both have sweet and fruity flavor profiles, but the "sweet" variation is much sweeter. Drink that with dessert. For this recipe, use the other kind-- dry marsala. It'll still be sweet, but not so aggressively as its counterpart. Like a lot of things in Italian cuisine named after locations, it's only the real deal if you can verify that it comes from wherever it's named after-- in this case, from a region of Sicily. Imported Marsalas can be significantly more expensive, but if at all possible, find them. In any case, whether you use a domestic wine or an imported one, look for the oldest, darkest Marsala available. They don't sponsor me, so I won't say explicitly who, but for as long as I've been cooking with Marsala, I've been using a high-quality domestic wine from upstate New York; I already have had great success with this recipe as it is, and I'm sure it would be even better after the pandemic ends if I could prepare this with imported wine.

As I've said in nearly every other recipe I've published so far, mise en place (that is "[setting] everything in its proper place" in French-- doing the washing, peeling, cutting, measuring, etc. ahead of time) is of paramount importance for the success of this recipe. You need several things set up for this recipe. Separately, measure out a cup each of Marsala (a third of the bottle-- a "cup" is 8 ounces, which is significantly more than the "glass" one would pour to drink the wine; a cup is 8oz/235mL, while a “glass” is about 5oz/150mL) and some sort of animal stock. Chicken, beef, veal, or any combination of the three are acceptable. However, I do recommend that if you're preparing steak marsala, you use primarily beef stock; veal marsala uses primarily veal stock, and chicken marsala uses primarily chicken stock. I find that cooking animal protein in its own fat or using the same stock to form a sauce to accompany the protein being prepared lends the best flavor, but Marsala wine pairs well with all three, so you can use whatever stock you have.

In a perfect world, the stock would match the protein and be homemade, but store-bought stock that doesn't necessarily match is fine. My only cautions are to avoid fish stock and vegetable stock. The former is far less intense than the wine, so the flavor of the wine would immediately and completely overpower it; especially if it's low-quality, it may also be far too salty. The latter is not only less intense and thus immediately overpowered like the former, but more often than not, its most predominant flavor (especially if it's store-bought) is salt, not the flavor of any of its components.

Additionally, wash and slice half a pound of portobello, baby bella, or button mushrooms. Ideally, introduce as little moisture to the mushrooms as possible, so dampen a paper towel and individually clean the mushrooms with it, rather than under running water. Using the latter method, the mushrooms will saturate; if they do, they'll burn before they release all their moisture, or they won't develop any color and will instead become soggy. Clean the mushrooms well but introduce as little water as possible to them in doing so. Once washed, slice the mushrooms along their length.

Preparation is also required for the chicken itself and the flour that will eventually coat it. Place several heaping tablespoons of flour on a plate, and season the flour with salt, pepper, dry thyme, dry oregano, dry basil, paprika, and garlic powder. Mix by hand until homogenous. On a clean cutting board with a long, clean, sharp knife, butterfly your chicken breasts. That is, make a long cut parallel to the cutting surface along the long edge of the piece of chicken, cutting all the way through to produce two pieces of identical shape but half the thickness of the original. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again because no amount of repetition of food safety information will ever be enough. DO NOT WASH YOUR CHICKEN BEFORE PREPARING IT. DOING SO WILL ONLY CREATE MORE CROSS CONTAMINATION. Once the chicken has been properly cut and butterflied, dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour. Coat the chicken in the flour completely but shake off any excess by tossing each piece of chicken. Any excess flour beyond exactly what is needed to coat and season the chicken will become gummy. Keep the chicken cutlets on a single layer with lateral space between them so they do not stick to any neighbors.

Preheat a thin film of oil (I prefer extra virgin olive or extra virgin avocado)—enough to entirely coat the bottom of the pan, but not any more than is absolutely necessary to do that. The oil will be hot enough when ¼ teaspoon of water dropped into it sizzles and evaporates in 3 seconds. If the evaporation takes longer, your pan is not hot enough; if it happens sooner, back off the heat because your chicken will burn on the outside long before it is cooked on the inside. When the oil is at the right temperature, place the cutlets in the pan in such a way to not overcrowd it. Overcrowding will steam the chicken rather than shallowly frying it; steaming the chicken rather than frying will give the flour-based dredge a very unpleasantly gummy texture; the same effect will occur if the frying oil is too cold`. After 2 minutes, turn the chicken over and brown the other side another 90 seconds. These chicken breast cutlets are thin and cook quickly, but they’re not quite done yet—by design. Reserve the chicken on a separate plate off the heat. You’ll need to come back to it later.

You now need to take advantage of some fond built up in your pan—that is, some of the brown stuff full of flavor that shallow-frying the chicken left behind in the pan. This fond will burn if not covered with stuff, so be sure to do all the chopping you need to do for this next step well before it’s time to execute it—this demonstrates the importance of mise en place, even in home cooking. Add a finely chopped onion, the sliced mushrooms, and 2 minced garlic cloves to the pan, in that order. Stir; minced garlic burns quickly if left unattended. Allow the onions and the mushrooms to caramelize, helping them gain more color and flavor by deglazing the pan with some balsamic vinegar—just a few dashes. The better the balsamic vinegar, the stronger the flavor, so since the balsamic vinegar isn’t the star of the show, I’d say no more than a teaspoon. “Deglazing” simply means “using a cooking-grade acid [citrus juices, vinegar, wine, etc.] to chemically loosen flavorful stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan.” Once the onions are caramelized, pour in the stock first. Then, MOVE THE PAN OFF THE HEAT before adding the Marsala wine to be as safe as possible. Two things make Marsala Marsala. The first is the kind of grape used to make the wine, only found in one area of Sicily. The second is the fact that Marsala wine is not pure wine, but wine “spiked” with brandy. Whereas 10% alcohol might be normal for a white wine (although I’ve cooked with as low as 7%) and 13% might be about right for a red wine (I’ve seen anywhere between 10 and 15), Marsala wines, because of the Brandy, average anywhere between 17% and 22%. (Pure brandy is anywhere from 35 to 65% alcohol, and the presence of the brandy fortifying this wine raises its alcohol content above almost any other wine, like averaging an outlier will do to any statistical set). Cooking with it thus requires the same amount of care as cooking with the pure liquor.

Cooking with any kind of liquor or liquor-fortified wine will produce a colored flame, in a showy cooking technique called “flambé” in which liquor is added to food in a previously-heated pan that has been moved away from a heat source and then returned to then momentarily set the alcohol on fire to burn off the alcohol but leave the desirable flavor compounds that flavor the liquor. White wines, and even normal red wines with “high” alcohol content (by red standards, so around 14%) don’t flambé because even being 1/7 alcohol, that’s not enough to make the alcohol combust. But Marsala does have enough alcohol by volume (20% plus-or-minus a few percentage points depending on who made it) because it contains brandy. The brandy’s alcohol content is so much higher than the content of the wine without it that it brings up the overall average alcohol content by volume of the wine enough that Marsala, but not other wines, will almost certainly flambé. Of course, if you were to cook directly with the liquor, you would need to be extremely careful: pure liquors will certainly flambé because they have enough alcohol in them—in many cases, more alcohol than other things.

Flambé cooking can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Just remember to wear safe clothing (nothing too baggy or dangling) and add the flambé liquid off the heat. If you do, when you put it back on the heat, your pan will catch fire, and you’ll get to enjoy the show (people pay top-dollar to flambé cheese and other foods just to have the fun visual experience of watching the flames, because they look nice and the colors change depending on which spirit was used) for a few seconds. The fire will die down naturally once the alcohol burns off. If you have family around, I strongly suggest that you warn them before you prepare a Chicken Marsala or any other dish that involves flambé so as not to startle them. Once the alcohol has burned off, gently simmer the sauce for a few minutes to intensify color and flavor.

Emulsify 1 tablespoon of cold butter per person into the sauce by cutting pieces of butter straight from the fridge into the sauce and whisking constantly until it melts and is indistinguishable from the rest of the sauce. Return the chicken to the pan. Maintain at a quiet simmer. The chicken is almost cooked through, having gone most of the way in the pan when it was fried and another part in carryover cooking from its own residual heat on the separate plate. Now, lay the cutlets into the finished sauce and spoon it over the cutlets. Let the cutlets meld with the sauce. Leave the chicken in the sauce for another 10 minutes over low heat; after 10 minutes, the chicken will be cooked completely. Some of the coating will—deliberately—come off the chicken. The small bits of the seasoned flour coating that do come off of the cutlet will finish most of what the emulsion of the butter and the burning off of the alcohol has already done: thickening the sauce.

Prepare 1 pound of pasta per 3 people being served (about 5 ounces per person, or about 140 grams per person) according to the manufacturer’s instructions to al dente. For final presentation, once again separate the chicken from the sauce, combine the pasta and the sauce, and present the chicken served on top of the pasta. Garnish as desired with Parmesan and/or Romano cheese.  

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

(Chicken) Cacciatore

        “Cacciatore” is not, unlike most of the other Italian dishes I have posted or will post in the future, a dish specific to one city or region in Italy, but rather, a style of cooking found throughout the whole country. “Cacciatore” simply means “hunter.” The typical way to prepare a “cacciatore” dish in the Italian American sense is to braise chicken in a spicy tomato sauce. But the Italian way is more varied and is usually much less spicy. Any meats that can be braised (certain cuts of beef, pork, chicken, and, especially traditionally, rabbit) works well. This particular recipe will use chicken thighs. 

If you only take away one thing from these recipes, let it be this: The practice chefs refer to as “mise en place,” that is “[setting] everything in its [proper] place” is a very valuable skill for any cook with any amount of experience. This dish, like all braises, is not a particularly fast-paced dish (unlike, say, a stir-fry, when there are mere seconds between the addition of ingredients, and for which mise en place is absolutely essential), but practicing mise en place is nevertheless still a good idea. While making the necessary preparations, don’t worry about making anything too small or being too exact with relative sizes. As long as the pieces are roughly the same size (so they’ll cook evenly), they don’t need to be really precise or look pretty. This dish, after all, is prepared the way a hunter would make it—that is, in a very rustic way. There are times when precise cuts are essential, and this absolutely is not one of them.

As with almost any braised dish, there is one thing that makes or breaks the success of the execution of the recipe: time. Four things need to be considered.

1.    It takes time to brown off the meat of choice so that it does not simply boil in the liquid.

2.    It takes time to develop the flavor of the braising liquid before the meat being braised can be returned to it to actually cook in earnest

3.    Braising meat means cooking it for a long time over low heat in a flavorful liquid, so expect to spend at least an hour with the poultry in the braising liquid (other braises, like short ribs in wine can take anywhere up to 4 hours).

4.    The flavor of any braised dish will always be better and more intense 24 hours after it was prepared; cooling the meat once fully cooked and let it sit in its braising liquid for a day before reheating and finally serving for the first time will provide the best flavor. 

 

I like to start by seasoning flour simply with salt, pepper, and some dried herbs, mixing well to incorporate the seasonings evenly, and then dredge the chicken in the flour. Preheat a thin film of olive oil in your pan of choice—for me, that’s a 9-quart Dutch oven.   Once the chicken has been dredged, split it into batches to be browned. Browning the chicken in batches prevents overcrowding. If the pan is overcrowded, the chicken will steam rather than brown. Leave the chicken on that side for about 2 minutes or until it releases easily from the surface of the pan. At that point, it has browned on one side. Flip the chicken, and let it cook on the other side until that side releases from the pan. This chicken is not cooked all the way through—not by a long shot—but that’s by design. Reserve the chicken onto a separate plate off the heat. This process will have created fond, the technical name for the brown, flavorful bits at the bottom of the pan. Drop a whole sliced onion, three minced garlic cloves, and two julienned red bell peppers (julienning is cutting into long, thin vertical strips) into the pan over medium heat. Drizzle in 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and 2 teaspoons of red wine vinegar. This will deglaze the pan—that is, lift the fond off the surface of the pan and onto the onions and peppers by the chemical action of the acid in the vinegars. Once the vinegars have been added, stir, and lower the heat if necessary. Sauté the onions, pepper, and garlic until the onions have caramelized, the peppers have softened. Then, add 48 ounces of homemade tomato sauce or passata to the pan, and season as needed with salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil, and oregano. Let this sauce—which will become the braising liquid—come to a boil, then immediately reduce it to a simmer. Hold it there for 5 to 7 minutes, then reintroduce the chicken. Simmer uncovered for an hour on medium-low heat. Stir every 8-10 minutes. Serve as desired. 

Several options exist.

1.    Eating this on its own as a stew—as was originally intended

2.    Serving over rice

3.    Turning the braising liquid into a sauce for pasta prepared to the manufacturer’s instructions until al dente, mixing pasta into the sauce, them topping emulsified pasta and sauce with pieces of chicken  

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

Signature Potatoes

This recipe, especially in light of another one I’ve already published, is a little strange, to be honest. Why? Well, this recipe has been in my family since I was 2, maybe 3, and that’s when I developed, tasted, and named it—and yet, it took until I was almost 20 for me to realize that almost this same exact flavor combination could be put into oil, vinegar, and vinegar; used as a marinade for chicken; reduced; and finally thickened with cream and milk before being served with pasta. That, in one sentence, is my signature dish. I’d been calling it that and I’d been so confident in the fact that these flavor profiles would work well together—because they do—before I’d even tasted the chicken dish the first time. It was only after several months of preparing the chicken dish that I realized its connection to this recipe, my family’s go-to for roasted potatoes.

This recipe is really simple—literally, a toddler (me) was the primary tester (but the primary chef and developer certainly was my mom), and the reason that we call this what we do in my family, “Batata Sucesso” [“success[ful] potatoes”]— because it takes a fraction of the time it takes to prepare the dish that it inspired. The reduction in time mainly comes from the fact that it is not necessary to let the potatoes sit in any kind of solution for any amount of time at all before roasting them. They can be cut, tossed, and roasted right away.

Prepare a rub for the potatoes but be aware that this will be significantly less liquid volume compared to the marinade for the Signature Chicken, but it will taste quite similar. For the marinade, use olive oil, (don’t use any acids, and you can skip the zest), salt, pepper, paprika, dill, basil, oregano, and garlic powder.

Simply peel, rinse, and cube, 2 to 3 pounds of potatoes—for this recipe, use Yukon Golds. Toss the potatoes in the spice-oil mixture to thoroughly season them, then roast them in an oven at 350 Fahrenheit until cooked through—anywhere between 40 minutes and an hour, depending on the strength and size of your oven.

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!