Posted on

A dish with Alice Waters

Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp
There’s something so wonderful about cooking from a recipe. By following the directions, ingredient for ingredient, you are, in a sense, channeling the culinary spirit of the chef that created the dish. When the dish is complete and you sample the flavors, you are able to take an objective view of the dish. You can marvel at the ideas that brought those singular flavors together. You may note the subtlety of flavor or the unexpected abundance of it. By cooking dishes created by the masters, you begin to understand the inspirations of a Chef from the inside out.

Last night, in preparation of returning my many Alice Water’s cookbooks to the library, I made simple dessert—based on an amalgam of two recipes and what ingredients I had on hand. Some of the adjustments were mine, but the style of the dish is all Alice.

My first bite of this semi-sweet, rustic crisp made me feel like I was enjoying a dessert that Alice Waters and Lindsay Shere had made especially for me.

Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp
Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp
Adapted from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook and Chez Panisse Fruit

½ cup almonds
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter

5 ripe nectarines, pitted and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup blueberries
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons unbleached flour
zest of one lemon, chopped fine
1 tablespoon aged rum

For the Topping

Preheat oven to 375 F. Toast the almonds until they smell nutty and are slightly more brown, about 7 or 8 minutes. Chop the almonds to a medium to fine consistency. Combine the flour, the sugars, the salt and spice in a mixing bowl. Add the chilled butter in pieces and mix with your fingers until it becomes mealy. Add the nuts and mix until the flour mixture holds together when squeezed. Put aside. (The topping can be prepared up to a week in advance and refrigerated).

For the Crisp
Mix the fruit in a medium-sized bowl and then add the sugar. Taste and adjust for sweetness. (*Note, don’t over sugar the fruit—there’s something quite beautiful about a semi-sweet crisp. Don’t be afraid to let the fruit express itself in its truest form.) Dust the flour over the mixture and stir gently. Spoon the topping into a small cooking dish is just big enough to hold the fruit. Mound a small amount in the center of the dish. Then, gently add the crisp mixture on top. Lightly push the crumble on top of the fruit mixture.

Place a cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven (to catch any overflow juices) and put the crisp dish on top. Bake in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned and the fruit juices are thickened and bubbling. The delicious smell of baked fruit will help you know when it’s close to being ready.

Serve with rum flavored whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. Finish the ice cream with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt.

Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp

Posted on

Don't fear the egg


The beauty of an egg is its simplicity–simplicity embodied in its elegant shape and intelligent design. Inside the egg, there is a delicate liquid dance of light and dark—a golden orb of yolk suspended in a viscous, protective fluid. Combined, these elements are powerful enough to support a life. In the hands of skilled chef, the egg is the center point of a meal or the central ingredient behind rich sauces or a delicate soufflé.

Up until recently, I feared the egg.

My fear wasn’t based on science, agricultural politics, or some kind of bizarre food phobia. No, my fear was based on the power of one single cooked egg to confirm (or disprove, in my case) my level of skill in the kitchen.

If I can conquer all sorts of culinary challenges, my thought process would go, how is it an EGG can thwart me?

It an embarrassing thing for a food writer to admit, being afraid of cooking eggs. I mean, after years of cooking, brining, roasting, fish gutting and baking, I should have long ago gotten over this fear of an egg-centered breakfast. Granted, I kept my fear in the closet for years after mastering egg poaching, just so I could continue on living like a perfectly normal, food-obsessed woman in the kitchen. And now, after years of quiet observing and coaching (Thanks husband!), I am now happy to report I can now cook scrambled and sunny-side up eggs as well as fluffy omelets without breaking into a sort of culinary panic attack.

But for anyone like me that still may secretly fear they might undo any culinary status they’ve built up with friends and family by making a terrible egg dish, I offer the following fool proof dish that will wow any breakfast guest. This, by the way, also makes a great lunch when the cabinets and fridge are nearly bare. Oh, and feel free to increase the recipe, depending on how many guests you plan to impress!


EGGS AL FORNO
Serves one

One monkey dish (small, 5 to 6” cassarole dish with “ears”)
One egg (or two if you like)
1 piece of bread from a rustic loaf (or baguette), cut to fit the dish
1 handful of a good cheese (fontina, perrano, or any medium bodied cheese), cubed
1 generous sprinkling of freshly grated parmesean (1/3 cup)
a healthy pinch of chopped sweet onion (or green onion, or chives)
a touch of olive oil (1 teaspoon)
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to piping hot 500 degrees. Put the piece of bread into the dish. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Surround the bread with the cheese cubes and parmesean. Add a healthy pinch of sweet onion around the bread. Crack the egg and lay it on top of the bread. Season with salt and pepper. Grate a tiny bit more parmesan over the egg. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 7 minutes, or until done.

Be very careful taking the baking dish from the oven! Place a folded cloth napkin on your plate before serving. For bacon lovers, a piece of fried bacon on top would be a perfect way to garnish the dish!

Posted on

The taste of Spring: Ramps


In New England, Spring is a colorful and dramatic turning point to a long and blistery tale about the hardships brought on by snow. When Spring arrives in the east, states that spend most of the year draped in snow are suddenly part of delightful show of color. Yellow daffodils and triumphant purple crocuses make a cameo. Green buds, sprouting from tree limbs, steal the scene.

But here in southern California, where temperatures linger in the 70’s for most of the year and flowers bloom year round, the shifting of seasons is so subtle, it takes more than just the eyes to observe the nuanced shift to Spring. Beyond the obvious wardrobe changes of its inhabitants—shoes are shelved for flip flops, shorts replace pants, miniscule dresses take over for floor length skirts—the real signs of spring in southern California can only be tasted.

One of the first flavors of Spring–sweet, pungent and earthy– is offered by the short lived ramp. This leafy, wild green closely related to onions (and lilies!) offers robust flavors akin to garlic and sweet onion, for a brief handful of weeks at the beginning of Spring.

The tear drop-sized bulb of the ramp is sweet while the delicate leafy greens hold intensely pungent flavors of sweet onion and garlic. It’s a perfect vegetable for a fast sautée in olive oil or a brief flash of heat from grill. At the Santa Monica farmer’s market, the “ramp man” suggested pickling the bulbs and grilling the greens on the BBQ.

My good friend Leah of Spicy Salty Sweet described a delicious bruschetta, she once had at a Lower East Side restaurant that had nothing but “prosciutto butter and sautéed ramps”. Anxious to recreate this recipe, I hurried home and prepared this recipe.

Sauteed Ramp bruschetta with prosciutto butter
Serves four

5 slices of proscuitto. (I used just two slices short of a full package of sliced proscuitto from Trader Joes.)
1 teaspoon butter
1/4 pound of ramps (about 12 ramps)
1 small baguette
a splash of olive oil
Maldon sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Delicately wash the ramps. Dry on paper towels. Remove the roots of the ramps from the bulbs. Sautee the ramps in a tiny amount of olive oil for about 2-3 minutes or just until the leaves have wilted. Turn off heat and lightly drizzle with salt and a quick turn of the pepper mill. Leave the ramps in the pan to keep warm while you throw the sliced prosciutto into a food processor with a pat of butter. Blend until you have the consistency of a creamy, pâté-like spread.

Slice, then lightly toast the bread. Spread a thin layer of prosciutto butter on the warm bread and then top with the ramps. Note, you may want to cut the ramps into quarters or bite sized pieces before putting them on the bread, in order to make the bruschetta easier to eat.

Serve immediately.

Posted on

Pesciolini in Scapece


How could something this simple taste so good? Typical Roman home cooking, this is a simple, rustic and incredibly savory dish that’s great on bread. It takes a day to marinade, but when if you make it the night before you’ll have yourself one AMAZING lunch!

Pesciolini in Scapece:
Marinated Fish with Vinegar and Mint
From Mario Batali’s Molto Mario

4 to 5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
1-2 cup of white wine vinegar. Start with one cup and if it cooks down too much, add more!
¼ cup all purpose flour
2 to 2 ½ pounds small fish such as sardines or smelts, cleaned, scaled and heads removed.


In a small sauce pan, combine the garlic, mint and vinegar. Bring just to a boil over medium-low heat. Reduce the heat to below a simmer. After several minutes, take off the heat and leave the aromatics to steep in the vinegar.

Spread the flour on a plate and dredge the fish lightly through it.

In a 10-12 inch sauté pan, heat ½ cup olive oil over medium-high heat until smoking. Add the fish in batches and cook, turning once until golden brown and just cooked through.

Transfer to paper towels to drain.

Discard oil and wipe out the pan. Add the remaining ½ cup oil to the pan and set over a very low heat to warm. Be careful! You are just WARMING the oil—not getting it hot!

Strain the vinegar into a small bowl, reserving the garlic and mint. Layer the fish in a glass or ceramic dish just large enough to hold them. Distribute the reserved garlic and mint over them. Combine the warm vinegar and warmed oil and pour over the fish.

Cover the dish and refrigerate for 2-3 days. Serve slightly chilled or at room temperature.

Posted on

Bang mi, Bánh mì

I grew up in a small, predominantly white town in Massachusetts where fear of “outsiders” was subtly encouraged and big city living was openly scorned. I spent my formative years avoiding anything unfamiliar, for fear it might turn me into some kind of a monster. It took a college education in the progressive town of Amherst, a semester in France and interacting with a diverse population of students to show me how limited my world view had become. Armed with a journalism degree and a hunger for knowledge, I vowed to explore the world beyond Massachusetts and discover all that I had missed.

The moving to LA part took me a while, but when I finally got up the courage to move west, I made a grand step in the right direction to broadening my perspective. I threw caution to the wind a handful of years later, and moved to New York City for a summer to work as a restaurant consultant.

While overseeing the opening of a LA based restaurant, I sub-letted an apartment in a six-floor walk up a few blocks north of the emerging culinary scene of the Lower East Side. When I wasn’t knee deep in construction and restaurant permiting, I explored neighborhoods on foot, sampled food I had never tasted before and realized that the song lyric “New York, a city that never sleeps” was actually true. And, unlike what I had been told as a youngster, New Yorkers weren’t all that rude (no more than Boston folk) and all the men lurking on street corners didn’t try to kidnap me or demand I take drugs.

But then, there was this one time I did end up trying something in the big city I got utterly addicted to…

Don’t worry, dear reader. I never do drugs. That ominous thing I’m referring to is Bánh mì.

Bánh mì, for the uninitiated small-town foodie, is a spicy, Vietnamese meat sandwich filled with pickled carrots, cilantro, daikon, hot peppers and onion that represents the blending of two cultures: French and Indonesian. Back in the day, the Vietnamese adopted the crispy baguette (Pain de mie) of the imperialist French colonists and made a sandwich filled with fresh ingredients all their own. Say Pan di mie with a thick Vietnamese accent and you quickly understand where the name came from.

Like any good street drug, Bánh mì is priced to sell. Costing between $2-$5 a pop, the contrasting flavors of salty meat (pate or marinated pork and chicken), spicy peppers, crunchy vegetables and crispy bread make Bánh mì’s unusual flavors completely addictive.

I’ll always remember my first taste. It was a rainy summer’s day and the chef went on a sandwich run to Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches. I watched him carefully unwrap the paper around what looked like a pretty straight forward meat and vegetable submarine sandwich, and how his eyes rolled back as he took mouthfuls of the thing.

“What are you eating?” I innocently asked.

The chef stopped chewing and eyed me with surprise. “You’ve never had Bánh mì?” He swore under his breath and shoved the sandwich in my face. “Eat it. It’s gonna change your F*k’n life.”

My first taste of Bánh mì was tentative. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the possibility that this simple sandwich could possibly be as good as he said it would be. I took another bite. And then, much to his surprise (and mine), I became territorial. I stepped back, got out of Chef’s reach, and in just a few short delirious moments of spice, salty meat, and buttery baguette crunch, I had polished off the entire thing. Never in my life had I tasted anything like it.

I was hooked.

Just an hour later, after attending to the needs of my restaurant construction crew, I hauled ass to the nearest Bánh mì stall to buy the first of many Vietnamese sandwiches.

It’s a slippery slope trying to find the best Bánh mì. You get lost. You make mistakes. You add too much chili spice and break into a cold sweat. You get so strung out on spicy meat sandwiches you start saying “bang mi” to the counter person and they threaten to throw you out for talking dirty to them.

STREET LEGAL

Being the addict that I am, I am always on the lookout for the best street-legal Bánh mì out there. Unfortunate, there aren’t a lot of Vietnamese sandwich shops in the Hollywood area. The best and most convenient place I’ve found is:

Gingergrass, a modern take on Vietnamese cuisine, conveniently located across the street from my favorite wine shop in town, Silverlake Wine.

Because it requires a bit of a drive from where we live, my husband and I make an afternoon of it and on Sundays we drive east for the delicious pork Bánh mì with crispy Vietnamese rice crackers, the sautéed baby bok choy and the appetizer special of the day. After filling our bellies we roll across the street to our favorite wine shop, Silverlake wine, and buy amazing wines from Randy and George.

Thanks to a recent comment on my blog by culinary couple and food bloggers, White on Rice, I discovered I was not alone in Southern California in my Bánh mì obsession. White on Rice has a website called Battle of the Banh mi. BOBM is dedicated to finding the best Bánh mì in every city across America. Readers are encouraged to post their favorite Bánh mì restaurants and the site offers suggestions on how to make the addictive Vietnamese sandwich and where to buy it.

It’s true what my small town friends said. Living in the big city really can turn you into some kind of addict.

Posted on

Soffritto–(trying to) learn from a master Part 1

There’s something to be said about learning from a master. Curiosity and reading can assist a student in the basic understanding of their subject. Practice and countless attempts may move a student’s understanding forward, but it is the presence of a master and a student’s drive to understand, that can initiate the most profound kind of learning. The eager student that studies with a master will inevitably learn the important nuances that makes proficiency possible.

To behold a master, no matter what it is they do, is to witness artistry. A master distills millions of hours of learning in a dab of paint, the slice of the knife, the turn of a phrase, the swish of the bat, a musical tone or the stillness of their mind in chaos. Despite the power of academia, the whisper of a master may be more important than a shelf-full of books.

And so it is with cooking. Reading can only get you so far. It’s what’s actually done in the kitchen that will get the novice to a place of mastery. It’s in doing that one does. Cookbooks can only get you so far.

Preparing food from “Soffritto: Tradition and Innovation in Tuscan Cooking”, however, is to learn Italian cooking from a master.

If the student is willing, Benedetta Vitali’s cookbook will teach the traditional Tuscan way of cooking in a handful of well-written chapters. Information usually transmitted via hours in the kitchen by an ancient family member, is shared in meandering stories and pointed observations on the aesthetics of cooking. Vitali’s stories are captivating and her voice is like a patient mother doling out the family rules. “One must never leave a Soffritto on the stove unattended,” is the sort of advice that if taken to heart will haunt you every time you start the traditional onion/carrot/celery mixture sautéing on the stove.

No other cookbook I’ve read gives so much personality and passion for the correct way of doing things. When reading Soffritto, you get the feeling there’s a whole army of Vitali’s family ready to start a war over why she would ever give away all the family’s secret recipes.

After eating the multi-course dinner at her restaurant Cibreo in Florence (one of my most memorable meals of 2007), I knew I had witnessed the culmination of years of experience and real mastery of a subject. The food was not only impeccable and representative of Tuscan food, but each and every one of the dishes elevated the common fare to a whole new level. Each course was a revelation. Even, ribolita—a rustic left over stew mixed with bread—was recreated and deconstructed—making it an ultimately sublime experience.

So when I woke up on Sunday morning with the urge for a meat ragu, I knew I had some learning to do from Benedetta.

What follows is my experience cooking Ragu from Soffritto.

MAKING RAGU–SUNDAY MORNING
Always a slow day, I pull myself from bed at 10. After an hour of catching up on the presidential primaries, I head out the door. It’s cold and rainy (an oddity in LA), so traffic is slow going. I make it to the Hollywood Farmer’s market just minutes before the vendors pack up their stalls for the day.

With my stomach growling, I quickly buy a cinnamon bun from the Bread Man and eat it out of its plastic bag while I speed shop for my vegetable essentials. I buy a bag of sweet carrots, three perfectly white onions and a hearty bunch of celery for soffritto, the traditional base elements for most Italian dishes. I buy a flowering bok choy, leafy red lettuce, Meyer lemons, and cherry red tomatoes. I taste test blackberries and drip sugary raisins on a bag of dried favas as I reach into my jean pocket for my stash of wrinkled dollar bills. I leave the market before someone shoes me away for ruining their product.

After failing to my friend’s recommended butcher, I fight the weekend traffic and go to the permanent farmer’s market at 3rd and Fairfax. Finding a parking spot is nearly impossible, but I find a space in the 30 minute parking area and run for it.

On my way across the parking lot I call my husband and ask him to read to me the ingredients for the meat ragu from the Soffritto cookbook. As he reads me the ingredients I scribble them onto a scrap of paper I scrounge from my cluttered purse.

“You’re going to need 1 ¼ beef sirloin. 2 chicken livers and one pork sausage” My husband pauses. “Uh, the recipe calls for 1 chicken neck and 2 oz suet. Are you sure about this?”

I shrug. “Why not?”

The forward moving force of limited time (my thirty minute parking spot) and powerful muses (Vitali’s gorgeous Soffritto cookbook has me convinced this is a meal worth eating) has me excited and dodging dawdling mall customers and hurtling at a break-neck pace for the meat counter of my local butchers. Hah! I laugh. Chicken necks and the unknown ingredient “suet” can not deter me.

At the Puritan Poultry, I buy the chicken livers, no problem. They’re fresh and a gorgeous purple brown. The butcher rings up the chicken neck. It weighs next to nothing and it looks like freshly skinned pinky finger. The whole thing costs me less than 50 cents. Who knew a person could get fresh chicken necks at the butcher?

I head over to the Pork and Beef butcher by the Korean food stand. These guys are always busy and their playful meat displays (pig faces made out of pork sausage) always put a smile on my face. Behind the glass case are two young men in white butcher’s coats. A wiry old guy that looks like he’s spent more time chain smoking than actually eating food stands behind them, checking their work at the counter. I carefully check my list of ingredients and prepare to direct my questions to the senior gentleman.

A young man with a thin moustache approaches and offers to help. I rattle off the easy stuff. Instead of purchasing in spicy Italian sausage, the young butcher recommends a small portion of pork sausage meet. When I order 1 and ¼ lbs. of beef sirloin, he finds me the best chuck sirloin. With my basic meat needs met, I wait for the right moment to ask for the suet.

“So, I’m also going to need some suet,” is say as the senior butcher crosses behind the young man with the skinny moustache. “About 2 ounces.”

“What the hell kind of recipe calls for 2 ounces of suet?” The old man laughs at me with spite. “I hate cookbooks like that. Those people don’t even know how we have to sell this stuff. I should sell you a whole pound and let you deal with the rest of it.”

I smile and nod. “I know. Crazy cookbook authors.” I chuckle.

I do my best to try to make the guy understand I’m on his side–not the cookbook’s.

The man disappears into the meat locker and comes out with a plastic bag filled with what looks like a white powder. He shovels a few scoops of the stuff into a white bag and seals it.

“Here’s about a ¼ pound.” The man frowns as he slams the bag down onto the counter.

“What you don’t use, you can freeze.”

I thank the man as I screw up my courage for the question I’ve been saving. Time this wrong, and the innocent act of questioning could turn this transaction seriously sour.

“You wouldn’t mind educating me on what exactly suet is? “ I swallow hard. “Would you?”

The senior butcher pulls the paper hat he’s wearing over what’s left of the hair on his head. “Fat. Suet is the fat that lines the kidney.” With that, the man disappears back into the meat locker. As soon as the door locks behind him I know the old man is swearing underneath his breath at me. I comfort myself with the thought that someone has to ask these questions. Someone has to act stupid so others won’t.

(to be continued…)

Posted on

Employee’s New Years

If you work in the food service industry, chances are you work most holidays. Popular holidays like the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Yom Kippur and in LA, the night of the Academy awards, are practically impossible to not work. So if you’re a traditionalist and insist on getting time off for all the major holidays you can most certainly can kiss your restaurant job good bye. Or you can suck it up, work the holidays, and schedule your life around the restaurant’s required hours of business. And so it goes. That’s just the nature of the food service business.

Most non-industry people see this way of thinking depressing/tradition ruining/frustrating, but I just see it as an opportunity to avoid preconceived notions, required moments of pomp, traffic and crowded shopping. Instead, every year I celebrate holiday MY WAY and on ANY DAY I LIKE.

So while Joe Public is getting messy drunk and spending way too much money on New Years because he feels he has to, Joelyne Server like me makes lots of money I can spend on a less pricey night with a million times less social stresses. Friday or Saturday night on the town with all the rest of the 9 to 5ers? No thanks! I’ll work on the weekends and forgo the line at the door for an amazing meal on the town on a quiet Monday night!

Which brings me to my point. Finally.

Since both my husband and I had to work New Years Eve at our restaurant jobs, we decided to celebrate the beginning of 2008 on first night of the New Year. Though I’m against celebrating big holidays with the masses, I am all about creating a great big traditional meal with friends. So while the rest of LA suffered through their lingering hangovers, husband and I were just gearing up for a night of incredible food and wine with our two wonderful foodie friends, Leah of spicysaltysweet and her boyfriend, Neal.


With the streets clear of drunken idiots and DUI searching cop cars, we were ready to enjoy ourselves.

NEW YEARS NIGHT MENU
Cotechino con lenticchie

With hearts set on making a traditional New Year’s meal, we decided to make Cotechino and Lentils. According to Mario Batali, Cotechino con Lenticchie is the most traditional dish of all Italian New Year’s dishes. The humble dish of pork, it is said, originated in Emiligia-Romana (while others say Modena) with the peasants who made the sausage from left over ends of a newly butchered pigs.

Quick to dive into research, I learned that Pellegrino Artusi, author of Italy’s first popular cooking book in 1891, believed that Cotechino was “not a refined dish” and was fit to be served only to very good friends who wouldn’t mind its rusticity. Undetered, by this information and descriptions of the sausage’s strange “tacky” texture (which comes from the gelatinous matter that is released from the pig skin component of the sausage), Leah and I went in search of Cotechino.

Though Cotechino is sold in two ways: pre-cooked and uncooked, I could only find the pre-cooked variety at local LA gourmet markets. The nice people at Froma on Melrolse sold me Umbrian black lentils and a reasonably priced pre-cooked l lb Cotechino sausage (Under $14). I skipped the $25 cotechino at Joan’s on Third I put my $$ towards a luxury bottle of $40 fresh pressed olive oil (harvested and pressed in October of 2007) from Gianfranco Becchina and a slice of Gorgonzola Torta (A layer “cake” of Gorgonzola and marscapone topped pine nuts).

On New Year’s day I arrived at Leah’s apartment with my ingredients in hand to cook our special meal together. While Leah rolled out her dough on the dining room table,

I started cooking the lentils.

Instead of following a recipe, however, I decided to go on instinct. Here’s what I came up with:

LENTILS

EVOO Olive oil (enough to coat the pan)
1 Onion (finely chopped)
1 Carrot (finely chopped)
A handful of sage
2 cloves of garlic
1 bag of Umbrian lentils (1/2 pound)
Chicken stock (2-3 cups)
1 tbl of tomato paste from a tube
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup fresh press EVOO
Salt

Chop the onion and carrot finely. Heat a large sautee pan on medium high. When hot, add enough olive oil to coat the pan. Add the finely chopped onion then carrot. Throw in the un-sliced garlic. Sautee down the onion and carrot until they become soft and transformed into cohesive, soft duo of texture. Add the lentils. Sautee for 3 minutes and then begin adding ¼ cups of chicken stock until the pan is filled with liquid. Allow to cook down and continue adding chicken stock and water from the cotechino pot (see below). Cook for 30-60 minutes, depending on the texture. The lentils are done when they are no longer al dente. Finish with vinegar and olive oil. Season to taste.

COTECHINO (pre-cooked prep)

Prick the Cotechino sausage with a toothpick and then drop into a pot of cold water. Bring the water to a boil—approx. 20-30 minutes. The sausage is done when it appears plump and a new shade of pink.

**Save the Cotechino water for adding to the lentils.
Slice the Cotechino and serve on the Umbrian Lentils. Serve with Mostarda di frutta or Salsa Verde (a sort of pesto of olive oil, parsley, garlic, S&P).

Our NEW YEARS MEAL:

Leah’s homemade ravioli (stuffed with Butternut squash, asiago cheese, and walnuts) and for later the Torta di Gorganzola

Cotechino and Lentils, Swiss Chard, Mostarda di fruita

Happy New Year!