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!

Spaghetti à la Los Angeles Times

The following is a recipe that my family knows as “Spaghetti à la Los Angeles Times” because at some point around 40 years ago—if not longer—my uncles’ godparents, who were subscribers to the Los Angeles Times and who apparently found this recipe there, gave it to my grandmother, who then passed it on to my mother, who then passed it on to me. Really, I don’t remember a time without this recipe. In recent weeks, I’ve been preparing this recipe quite frequently, so I’ve taken an interest in looking through the culinary section of the Los Angeles Times to see if I can find it. I haven't found the culinary section of the paper in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the paper's archives online, and, unfortunately, as far as I have been able to tell, I haven’t found this recipe anywhere else. If anyone has more complete access to the Times’ old issues (or if this somehow makes it to someone who works there), I’d love to know if, looking back as far as you can, you can find this recipe that I haven’t been able to locate anywhere except within our family tradition. 

This recipe comes together at lightning speed, so mise en place is as important as ever. First, set a pot of cold water over high heat to bring it to a boil. While this is happening. Finely mince one whole bunch of parsley. You can either do this with a food processor or by hand. If you do it by hand, place your parsley in one bunch on your cutting board in lengthwise orientation. Run your knife through the bunch of parsley once, making cuts perpendicular to the direction it lays on the board. Rotate the board 90 degrees and run the knife through again. Place in a bowl. Repeat this process in a similar manner with 4 cloves of garlic.  To prepare half a pound of ham: stack it, and then cut a grid, so you end up with squares of ham about an inch on each side. Place the ham in the same bowl where the parsley is.  Coarsely chop ¾ to 1 cup of walnuts, just running the knife through the nuts. Hold the knife with one hand at the handle and use another hand on top of the blade (on the side opposite the cutting edge) to stabilize it, and rock the knife through the nuts a few times. Uniformity isn’t really important, and neither is the size of the nuts. Set this too into the bowl where the parsley and the ham are. Stream in about ⅓ cup of olive oil and season to taste with freshly ground black pepper. You’ve now made what essentially amounts to a gremolata, a traditional Italian herb-oil “sauce,” if one can call it that. This, and not a traditional liquid sauce, like a bechamel or marinara, is what will accompany the pasta. The longer the gremolata sits, the better it tastes, so prepare it up to an hour before use (if you want to keep it out) or overnight (if you are willing to refrigerate it).

Cook a long pasta—we typically use spaghetti—to one minute short of “al dente” according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Drain, and reserve in the strainer. In the same pan where the pasta was cooked, heat a thin film of olive oil over medium heat (just enough to coat the bottom of the pan) until shimmering, then heat the gremolata. Stir continuously so as not to burn the garlic or the nuts. Once they are aromatic, place the pasta into the gremolata, stir to combine, and finish cooking for another minute.

Serve, garnishing with parmesan.  

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

Pan-seared salmon in lemon-garlic-brown butter sauce

The following recipe was developed (as were most of the others I've posted so far) in the middle of the quarantine of 2020-21, due to the coronavirus. Unintentionally, this recipe also happened to be perfectly suitable to the dietary constraints of the season of Lent-- though I first came up with it months after Lent 2020 had ended.

Catholics 14 and older are required to fast from the meat of warm-blooded animals (i.e., no beef, pork, turkey, chicken, etc.-- but fish is OK, and so are broths and stocks, even made from otherwise-impermissible meats) on at least 7 days of the year. These days are Ash Wednesday (the day on which Lent begins, which is 40 days, not including Sundays, before Easter) and every Friday of Lent (between Ash Wednesday and Easter, six in total). Only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (the last Friday before Easter), Catholics who have already turned 18 but who have not yet turned 60 must also fast-- that is, limit themselves to one large meal and two smaller ones which together don't equal or exceed the "large" meal. This recipe satisfies both the fasting and abstinence requirements, so it's perfect for Lent!

Remove salmon filets from packaging and be sure to dry as thoroughly as possible. I recommend that skin-on, deboned salmon fillet pieces or steaks be used for the best presentation (whether you like to eat the skin or not, leaving it on while this fish cooks helps the structure stay intact). If you must use skinless fillets or steaks, do so, but be particularly careful to follow this step; surface moisture is the enemy of the structural integrity of fish cuts, especially those without skins holding them together. 

Zest, then juice, one lemon. Combine zest, juice, and 1/2 tsp water. Reserve.

Coat salmon fillets in seasoned flour (salt, pepper, dry dill, garlic powder), shaking off excess as necessary. Coat the whole piece of fish, but don't leave too much excess on the fish. If too much excess exists, it will burn and thus damage the flavor of the fish and its accompanying sauce. 

Brown about 2-3 Tbsp unsalted butter in a saute pan. This should smell nutty, but not burned. If the butter burns, throw it away, clean your pan, and start over. The butter will form the foundation of the sauce which will flavor the fish and it will be the fat in which the fish will be cooked, so it is important that the flavor of the butter not be burned. If the butter burns, the burned flavor will overpower anything else that flavors the fish. This motion will also begin the emulsifying process. 

Once the butter is browned successfully, add about an equal amount of olive oil to the pan, and gradually increase the heat. This step is necessary because the olive oil is much colder than the butter or the pan, so its addition will lower the temperature of both of those things. However, especially at high heats, the milk solids in already-browned butter can go from aromatic to burned in seconds, so be sure to keep the butter and oil moving (but do so safely) so as to not scorch anything. 

When the pan is back to its original temperature (after dropping and coming back up when the cold oil went in), add the fillets skin down. Do not touch them for four minutes. Leaving the fish undisturbed for the entire period is crucial; it allows the fish to cook evenly, it allows the Maillard browning reaction to take place, and it guarantees the best presentation because the fish will not be broken apart. 

After four minutes, using tongs and/or a fish spatula, turn each fillet, doing everything possible to keep the fillet in one piece. Again, this is done to ensure the best presentation and to ensure even doneness. 

Add the reserved lemon juice-water-zest to the pan, initially pouring into a part of the pan not contacted by the fish. Cook for another four minutes, basting the fish with the sauce now formed in the pan (lemon juice, lemon zest, water, oil, butter) continuously over that period. Take the fish off the heat and flip it over, back to skin-down orientation. Rest for 2 minutes, then serve. I typically serve the fish on top of a bed of couscous prepared to the manufacturer's instructions.  


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

 

Farofa

 Unlike American steakhouses, where you’re given one big piece of meat and a limited number of sides ordered ahead of time, Brazilian establishments serve you much smaller quantities of meat per portion, but there are many more options, and the selection is virtually unlimited. The salad bar is open, and depending on the set-up of the restaurant, you either form a line at a grill and select meats from spits being rotisseried on a coal or wood fire, or waiters come with those spits from table to table and you, the customer, indicate with a card if you want the next meat rotation or not. In any case, farofa is found at every Brazilian steakhouse and is an integral part of not only the traditional Brazilian barbeque experience but also a staple of home cooking and a regular accompaniment to red meat or chicken.

The concept of “farofa” is a rather difficult one to explain to an American audience because no true analog exists. Perhaps the best approximation of the dish lies in what we Americans call “stuffing” or “dressing,” although I’ve never seen farofa presented as “stuffing” is here in America, that is, inside of a whole bird or roast of meat. However, it is my hope that using “stuffing” as an analog in the American culinary vernacular will make this dish substantially more accessible to even the most novice cook. 

Whether someone can make good farofa might well be a good litmus test for how well any given chef has mastered Brazilian home cooking: everyone has their own family recipe, there exists an enormous variety of interpretations of the dish. 

Every farofa has a few common elements: eggs that are somehow scrambled, some sort of flour, and an assortment of mix-ins. The following is my immediate family’s recipe—my mom and I use this, but, just for the sake of showing how much variation there is in this dish, I’ll point out that my aunt does something totally different from what my mom does, which is probably totally different from what my grandmother would do—and that’s just on one side of the family. This immense variability will definitely play to the advantage of any American home cook wanting to try farofa: whatever your tastes, you can adapt your farofa to include those ingredients prepared exactly as you like them. 

Farofa is a quick dish, so I strongly recommend two technical points: first, put your phone away. You cannot afford to be distracted while preparing farofa. I’ve learned this from experience; they burn very quickly if you’re on your phone and not giving them the attention they need by stirring pretty much constantly. Second, reach and maintain a state of what the French call “mise en place.” This term, French for “everything in its proper place” means cutting, washing, seeding, etc. anything you need well in advance of when you actually need it, and even before you start properly cooking. Do all your washing, chopping, and other prep work early; this dish comes together quickly enough that a few seconds cutting an onion might mean the difference between good farofa (if you had already cut the onion) and a bad, burned one (if you waited until you needed the onion to cut it). If you learn nothing else from farofa, learn to always maintain mise en place, even in your home kitchen. 

I like to start my farofa by sweating out any alliums—relatives of garlic, like garlic itself, yellow or white onions, shallots, scallions, or leeks— I might have in my fridge. The objective when sweating vegetables out, especially alliums, is to minimize browning. That’s a different technique, caramelization. When sweating, cook the alliums gently until they are translucent, but don’t really pick up any color.  

Once the alliums are sweated out, place 3 beaten, seasoned (just salt and pepper) eggs in the pan, and keep the eggs moving until cooked through. Your objective is not to form an omelet here, but to fully cook and scramble the eggs without burning them, and without integrating the alliums into the eggs either. (This is the main difference within my family—some people cook the eggs with everything else and break them up in the same pan, while others cook the eggs separately, break them up, and then introduce them to the other ingredients.)

Once the eggs are fully cooked, add in some sort of flour or meal. Cassava or yucca flour is traditional, but, probably because of the quarantine associated with the coronavirus and the shortages that have resulted, I can’t recall the last time we’ve had cassava-based farofa; instead, we’ve been using cornmeal, which has been much more readily accessible, and, I’d argue, produces an even better flavor profile than with the cassava. Keep everything moving so as not to scorch either the now-fully-cooked eggs or the (yucca or cornmeal) flour. Your only objective at this point is to lightly toast the flour until aromatic and to introduce the other flavors in the pan to the flour. 

Once enough flour has been incorporated, the dish should resemble an American stuffing with small particles, not a batter. At this point, if desired, fold in whatever accouterments you wish to add. Remember, to an American home cook, you’re assembling something similar to stuffing. By this point, you’ve already taken care of your starch base (flour here, bread in stuffing) and your binder (eggs in both dishes). Feel free to add in whatever you like, exactly as you would when assembling a stuffing with your favorite mix-ins. We normally add white raisins and/or black olives, just keeping the pan on the heat—and stirring constantly—until incorporated and heated through. Once all your flavorings are incorporated, turn off the heat and taste the farofa for seasoning. 

As mentioned before, farofa is traditionally served as an accompaniment to red meat or chicken, also accompanied by rice, beans, and the vegetable side of your choice. 

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

Ragù Bolognese alla Quarantena

Ragù Bolognese is a true comfort food, a welcome quasi-nostalgia in this time of uncertainty as we deal with the worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus. Because of this new virus, I’ve had to make some changes to how I prepare Ragù, so this is not a traditional recipe as would be seen in Italy by any means, but it’s similar enough that I’ve coopted the name and adapted a few elements of this classic to make it my own, in part to leave my individual mark on the dish as a home chef, in part because I had to since supplies were limited because of the virus-related lockdowns.

Technically, I’ve only made a proper Ragù Bolognese once or twice since coming home from campus back in March, while we still had wine at home. We haven’t had wine since our only bottle finished very early in the pandemic, and because wine requires handing over an ID for age verification in Georgia, to limit contact with others when we go out, we haven’t bought any in months. Technically, Ragù Bolognese is a simple meat, wine, and stock sauce with a proportionately very small amount of a tomato product (usually highly concentrated tomamto paste, which is just a tomato sauce left over the heat for hours and hours). But since we’ve been out of wine for months now—and we probably won’t get more wine until well into 2021—I’ve made several changes to Ragù Bolognese to fit what we have at home during the quarantines imposed because of the Coronavirus. And while Ragù Bolognese is typically made with ground beef and/or ground pork and/or ground veal, we’ve been using ground turkey since the pandemic broke out. 

My variation on the sauce, in common with the traditional version, starts with browning ground meat: in my case, turkey (traditionally, any combination of beef, pork, and veal). I start with enough olive oil to coat the bottom of my 3-quart sauté pan (or my 9-quart Dutch oven, if the grocery store’s substitutions give me much more meat than I asked for), and I leave it over high heat for several minutes. The oil should be hot enough that a quarter of a teaspoon of water evaporates almost instantly—3 seconds or less—before any meat ever touches the pan. Once the pan is hot enough, the ground meat can go in. When it goes in, it’s okay if the entire block of ground meat goes in as one piece. You will need to stir pretty constantly until it’s broken up into individual grounds of meat. Ground meat doesn’t immediately brown. Before it can do that, it needs to release some moisture which then needs to evaporate. (Don’t worry, this won’t be dry or gummy.) Once the moisture is released and evaporated, the meat will begin to fry in the oil and in its own rendered fat. It takes some time to learn to tell the difference, but the two parts of the browning process sound different.

As with many of the recipes I’ll share, mise en place (“putting everything in its proper place” by having everything chopped, washed, processed, etc. ahead of time) is critical. Part of mise en place here is to process 5 tomatoes, 2 red bell peppers, and one yellow onion until smooth and emulsified (to where you cannot distinguish pieces of tomato from pepper from onion, and you are left with a relatively thick, red liquid in your blender). Once the meat has been browned, this mixture (about 32 ounces of liquid) should go into the pan with the browned meat. Further, add one cup of cartooned, homemade, or reconstituted chicken stock (stock from a powder or bouillon cube is fine). Season with dried oregano, thyme, bay, and dill. Grind in fresh black pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover, and let simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring every 7 minutes or so. If the sauce starts to evaporate too quickly, add in more stock. When the sauce is otherwise complete, taste for salt—you added chicken stock, which may have a considerable amount of salt in it already, so taste the sauce before you add any more salt. 

Cook one pound of long pasta (fettucine, spaghetti, pappardelle, etc.) to one minute short of what the manufacturer lists as the time for al dente pasta. At that point, drain the pasta, and finish the last 60 seconds folding the pasta into the ragù. Serve garnished with parmesan and or pecorino romano. 

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