Second because there are free prints in this post that you can download and print as a little gift from my studio to you; and the third because this is still a list of my favorite things.

This is the time of year for lists, not shopping lists, but lists of virtually everything else – lists of the most important world events, top fashion trends of the year, the biggest storms, the sexiest man, the best movies, the most popular celebrities, the most reviled despots, the biggest disasters, the best selling books, and even a list of  top time-wasters.

Print Winter Tree

With these lists as inspiration, I’ve compiled my top ten list of food favorites for 2010, and in a nod to Mr. Letterman, they are listed in reverse order of delight. To celebrate the New Year, I’ve created four prints that celebrate the seasons of the year. They can be downloaded and printed by clicking on the links below each image.

#10 Butter Poached Rhubarb – Combining the best of Julia Child, butter, and the best of James Beard, cream, I melted a stick of butter in a skillet, sprinkled in one cup of granulated sugar and cooked it for about five minutes. When the sugar had begun to caramelize and turned a light brown, I added four cups of rhubarb, cut in two inch slices, shook the pan vigorously to coat the rhubarb and cooked it until it was starting to fall apart. I took the pan off the heat, stirred in two tablespoons of dark rum, and transferred the rhubarb to a bowl set in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Topped with List Entry #4, whipped, it made a gorgeous dessert. This would be closer to #1 if fresh rhubarb were available from my garden year round and if this recipe were not loaded with sugar, butter and cream.

#9 Carrots – I’ve been eating lots of carrots this year, in soups, salads, in fritters, cakes and muffins. Organic carrots, scrubbed and slow roasted with salt, pepper and olive oil complement most any meal. Any leftovers can be mashed with a bit of mayo and garlic and spread on toast for lunch or a rustic hors d’oeuvre.

Print Spring Tree

#8 Cappuccino – Alas, this is one thing on my list that I don’t make in my kitchen; but, the adventure of searching for a café and finding a perfect cappuccino with just the right amount of foamy milk on top merits a place on my list.

#7 Recipe Police – When I wrote about the absence of fish in my pot of chowder I boldly proclaimed that the recipe police would not come to my kitchen to give me a ticket. Little did I know that a Recipe Policeman, in the form of a phone call from an anonymous reader, would phone me and issue a warning that I had neglected to add thyme to the pot. I got away with a warning but I have been careful to add thyme to chowder since then.

#6 Pasta with Raisins and Pine Nuts – So simple, so quick, so delicious! While I waited for the pasta water to come to a boil, I sauteed one clove of garlic in a large frying pan with one tablespoon of unsalted butter and one tablespoon of olive oil. When the garlic had softened but not browned, I added a quarter of a cup of pine nuts. When the nuts where toasted, and the pasta was al dente, I drained the pasta, reserved a quarter of a cup of pasta water, added the pasta, generous handfuls of chopped flat leaf parsley and raisins, and a splash of the pasta water to the pan. I topped the pasta with the mere suggestion of ground cinnamon. Finito!

#5 Chickpea Flour – I discovered that I could make a crisp flatbread by baking in a 450º oven a batter of one cup of chickpea flour, one and a half cups of water and a teaspoon of salt in a cast iron skillet with three tablespoons of oil. Seasoned with salt and a bit of curry powder, an ho-hum soup and toast dinner was transformed into a praise-worthy meal.

Print Summer Tree

#4 Heavy Cream – My favorite comes from local dairies and is not ultra-pasteurized. I like it on oatmeal with brown sugar, whipped, with no sugar added, as frosting on deep, dark, moist chocolate cake, and as a cold topper for broiled apricots, (a treat I learned from my dear friend Didi).

#3 The Open Air Market in Ortigia, Sicily – Chatting with Angelo Cappucio about fish for dinner, choosing blood oranges, smelling the smoky roasted artichokes, sampling wild strawberries, olives, salami and chocolate from Modica is the best way to figure out “What’s for dinner?”

#2 Making Cheese in Sicily – Near the top of my list is the morning I spent in the cheese shop in Ortigia, making cheese with Andrea Borderi. I was welcomed into the small kitchen in the back of the shop, wrapped in an apron and put to work. I learned how to cut, ladle and knead curds as we made ricotta and mozzarella. I make a simple breakfast of a bowl of ricotta cheese, topped with a drizzle of Vermont honey and slices of orange when I’m wishing I were in Sicily.

Print Fall Tree

#1 Contact from Friends – I am cheered and delighted when I hear from friends, whether old or new, by email, telephone and even snail mail. It doesn’t matter if the message is lavish praise, a complaint, or a correction – you are there, reading what I write, cooking what I cook, improvising, improving recipes and sharing your discoveries. You bring me joy. Thank you and please stay in touch.

There are many desserts, called puddings in Britain, with names that are charming and inscrutable enough to require translation.
Here’s my guide to British Puddings:

Cabinet Pudding or Chancellor’s Pudding – This traditional steamed,  molded pudding, made from a combination of bread or sponge cake and dried fruits, is usually served with a sweet custard sauce.

Clootie Dumpling – Dumplings made with flour, breadcrumbs, raisins or currants, suet, sugar, spice, milk and, sometimes, golden syrup. The dough is wrapped in a floured cloth, placed in a large pan of boiling water and simmered for a couple of hours before being lifted out and dried in front of a fire.

Duff – A steamed pudding, traditionally served on Christmas Day, it originated in medieval England and is also known as plum pudding or plum duff.

Figgy Duff – It resembles white Christmas pudding but contains figs. It may be baked, steamed, boiled or fried and is known primarily because of the familiar request, “Now bring us some figgy pudding,” in a Christmas carol.

Jam Roly-Poly, Dead Man’s Arm, and Dead Man’s Leg are all names for a traditional dessert invented in the early 19th century. It is a flat, suet pudding, spread with jam, rolled up like a jellyroll and steamed. It is called Shirtsleeve Pudding when steamed in a shirtsleeve rather than a pudding bag.

Spotted Dick –A steamed, suet pudding, containing dried fruit, usually currants, commonly served with custard. The spotted refers to the dry fruit and Dick may be a corruption of the last syllable of the word pudding or a corruption of the word dough. This sweet treat is also known as Spotted Dog.

Sussex Pond Pudding - A rich dessert made by encasing whole lemons, butter and sugar in a wrapper of suet pastry. It is either boiled or steamed for several hours. If currants are added, this dessert is known as Kentish Puddle Pudding or Kentish Well Pudding.

Toffee Sticky Pudding, also known as Sticky Toffee Pudding, is a steamed or baked dessert consisting of a moist sponge cake made with dates, topped with a warm toffee sauce and finished with a cloud of whipped cream. It is my favorite pudding because I can remember its name, I can make it in the oven without using a shirtsleeve or any other strange equipment and it doesn’t have any suet in it. I made it on Sunday to share with six friends for Charles’ early birthday celebration. Here’s a recipe for the cake and a second recipe for the toffee sauce that makes it a sticky pudding:

I served slices of still-warm cake with warm toffee sauce and a dollop of whipped cream. Sticky Toffee Pudding is one of the reasons that my Nana sang “There’ll always be an England, and England will be sweet!” 

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The unusually wet and humid September brought extraordinary fungal inhabitants to my garden — none of them edible. Most prolific were the freakish, foul-smelling, dog stinkhorns, good only as subjects for a photo or two before they withered. Not that I would trust myself to eat any mushroom that might poke up amongst the yellowing hostas and rambling morning glories. I’m no mycologist, nor have I been schooled in the ways of forest foraging like my friends in Eastern Europe.About ten years ago, I began what would turn out to be perennial work with an old Soviet era film studio in Vilnius, Lithuania. The former propaganda mill had been retooled to serve the needs of low-budget Hollywood movies and TV shows like the ones we were making for The History Channel. Whether filming re-creations of Viking battles or an enactment of Attila the Hun entertaining Pope Leo I, many of our locations were in pine forests. In autumn, mushrooms sprang up everywhere. At lunchtime, all of the Lithuanians on the film crew disappeared into the woods to forage for wild mushrooms. They returned with bags of boletes, chanterelles and other, more unfamiliar beauties. Everyone was completely confident in their mushroom identification skills that had been passed down for generations.

Still, my husband Rob insisted that I not take any mushrooms to cook for dinner. He changed his mind when we saw fresh chanterelles being sold for few Litas a pound  at the city farmers’ market. I prepared them in the local way – sauteed with onion and bacon. They were delicious.

Before we left Lithunaia to return to Baltimore, I stopped at a market stall for a string of dried mushrooms of an undetermined kind. I hung it as a decoration, next to antique baskets on a rack above my green Aga stove. All winter, their distinctive forest fragrance lingered in the kitchen as a reminder of Lithuania.

The following spring, two Lithuanians who had worked on our film crew called to take us up on our offer of a place to stay should they visit  the U.S. We had become especially fond of this young couple whose comical banter could have been the genesis for the characters Latka and Simca on the old TV series, Taxi.

While I roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots for dinner, our young guests, let’s call them Latka and Simca, sat at the kitchen table sipping wine and entertaining us with their first impressions of America as seen from the windows of the Greyhound bus that had brought them from Newark airport to Baltimore. Suddenly, Latka looked around as if he had just realized that he was no longer on the bus. How surprising, he exclaimed, to see in our American kitchen a woodstove so like the one his grandmother had.

“It’s not a woodstove and it’s not even American,” I laughed. I had owned the Aga for less than a year — its novelty hadn’t worn off and it didn’t take much to get me boasting about its unique features – it was always on and there are no controls to adjust. To hear me tell it, the great cast iron Aga was an all but a human presence in my kitchen, producing the finest meals imaginable and requiring absolutely no effort on my part. “Why,” I went on, “it cooks bacon perfectly. I just throw it into the roasting oven. There are no messy splatters to clean up!”  Simca noticed the string of dried mushrooms and asked why we hadn’t eaten them.

During dinner, we reminisced about shooting battle scenes with Huns and Romans in the cold and mud of the previous autumn. We told our guests that we had to attend a meeting early the next morning and I showed them where to find bread, cereal, milk and jam and they assured us they’d be fine until our return. I offered to show Simca how to use the special Aga toaster but she assured me that she would have no need to cook anything.

Lithuanian Bacon

When we returned from the meeting, the smell of bacon wafted from the house. Our guests, who were watching television, jumped up as we came in. We knew by their long faces that something unfortunate had happened. “Latka is very sorry, Char, for the destroy of your fine stove,” whimpered Simca.  As we headed for the kitchen, I couldn’t imagine anything that would really damage the Aga. Then Latka began a dramatic reenactment, complete with hand motions, of what had happened.

It had begun with the discovery of his favorite food, bacon, in the refrigerator. Recalling my comments from the night before, he had thrown the entire pound of it onto the cast iron floor of the roasting oven. Then he went to help Simca with the TV remote. When he returned to the kitchen, bacon fat was flowing like a river down the front of the Aga and across the floor.  He managed to remove the bacon, consume some of it, (very tasty he said), and clean up the fat that had oozed out of the Aga. He paused before he nervously opened the roasting oven door and showed me a huge greasy, black stain. He said, “Is very bad, no?” I reassured him that it would burn off eventually even though I wasn’t sure that it would.

I remembered their visit on a rainy Saturday a few weeks ago as I was cleaning the pantry, organizing drawers and preparing the kitchen for autumn cooking.  I used the wire brush that came with the Aga to sweep out the roasting oven. The grease was gone – it had taken a few months but it finally did disappear. I removed all the utensils from the rack above the stove and loaded them into the dishwasher. Then I gave the rack a good scrubbing. After re-arranging my collection of old biscuit tins and dusting the antique baskets, I took down the equally dusty decade-old string of dried mushrooms and gave it a quick swish in warm water. Restored to pride of place, they again filled the kitchen with the dusky scent of the forest. All is in readiness for my favorite cooking season.

If you should be lucky enough to have some chanterelles, here is how they are prepared in Lithuania and on my lovely green Aga.

For one pound of mushrooms: gently wash and dry them and  trim the ends and remove any soft spots. Drop them into boiling salted water and cook for twelve minutes. Dice three ounces of bacon and fry it. Add a diced, medium yellow onion to the pan. Drain the mushrooms and add them to the bacon and onion along with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Cover the frying pan and continue cooking over low heat for seven minutes, stirring several times. Serve for lunch with hot potatoes.

Char sent me this timely link from Saturday’s New York Times.

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Matthew and Alison have a “veg” box from Riverford Farm delivered every Thursday. The organic vegetables and fruit come in a reusable cardboard box and are accompanied by seasonal recipes and news from the farm. The “veg” box, augmented with a bit of meat or fish, milk, cheese and eggs and miscellaneous items like fresh ginger and hot peppers from the grocer at the train station, is the center of their healthy and sustainable diet. This week’s box had leeks, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, fennel, potatoes, onions and baby bok choy.

On Thursday, we had “veg” box stir-fry and bok choy with black beans for dinner. Here’s how Matthew did it:

“Veg” Box Stir-Fry

He washed and sliced enough leeks, carrots, cabbage and broccoli to fill a medium bowl, about four cups. For the sauce, he combined a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, a heaping teaspoon of cornstarch, two teaspoons of hoi sin sauce, a tablespoon of toasted sesame seed oil and a tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl. He heated two tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large pot, added three small, whole, dried chili peppers, two cloves of garlic and a one-inch knob of ginger root, both minced. As soon as we could smell the garlic and ginger, he added the vegetables. After the vegetables had cooked for five minutes, he added the sauce and cooked the vegetables for two more minutes.

It took less time for Matthew to cook the bok choy than it took for me to set the table and serve the stir fried vegetables.

Bok Choy with Chinese Black Beans

He rinsed and quartered three heads of baby bok choy, put a splash of vegetable oil, about two teaspoons, one clove of minced garlic and a tablespoon of rinsed, salted Chinese black beans and the bok choy into a cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat. After the bok choy had cooked for a minute, he added a tablespoon of white wine, turned the bok choy over and cooked it for another minute.

We evaluated dinner as we ate it. The texture of the crisp bok choy and the sweet/sour sauce on the stir fried vegetables were pluses, forgetting to remove the whole chili peppers before serving the stir fry was a negative. We awarded dinner four-stars.

On Saturday, I bought a pint of strawberries and a small container of double cream, (heavy cream in Vermont), at the train station market so that I could make strawberries and cream French toast for Sunday breakfast. Here’s how:

Strawberries & Cream French Toast

I rinsed the strawberries, removed their leafy caps, sliced them and combined them with a tablespoon of sugar. I toasted four pieces of sunflower seed, whole-wheat bread. I combined two eggs, two tablespoons of cream, a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter of a teaspoon of nutmeg in a shallow bowl. I put the toasted bread into the egg mixture, set it aside for ten minutes, turned the slices over, waited ten minutes more so that the bread would absorb the eggy mixture, and then sauteed the bread in butter in a medium cast iron frying pan over low heat.

I found a whisk and recruited Matthew to whip half a cup of the cream. When the French toast was golden, I sprinkled each serving with a teaspoon of sugar, added a generous helping of strawberries and a scoop of whipped cream to each plate. We sat in the sun, enjoyed our breakfast and tried to decide what we should make for dinner.

Here’s a link to the Riverford Farm website. If you live in the UK you may be able to arrange to have a Riverford box delivered. Whether or not you have a veg box delivered, the Riverford site has a great variety of recipes here.

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Grapes - watercolor painting by Carol Egbert

There was caviar, pate, platters of unfamiliar cheeses and even an oyster bar. I was twenty-five years old and impressed. In the midst of this exotic spread, there was a chafing dish filled with sweet and sour meatballs that were irresistible. I asked a fellow meatball-spearing guest if she knew how the meatballs had been prepared. “Oh,” she said, “these are always served at Peter’s parties. He’s related to the Welch’s, the grape people, and this is his favorite way to eat grape jelly.” Trying to keep up my side of clever party banter I added, “Yes, of course, and the meat balls are filled with peanut butter.” With an un-amused shake of her head she said, “Actually, the sauce is made by combining equal portions of Heinz chili sauce and Welch’s grape jelly, the culinary merger of two important families,” and walked off.

Jam unexpectedly came to my rescue when I was a passenger on a Russian train traveling from Mongolia to Siberia in the mid 1980’s. I was weary and homesick and craved a pot of freshly brewed tea flavored with a squeeze of lemon and a bit of sugar. I went to the dining car and asked the waiter, chef and busboy (all the same person), for a pot of tea.

The tea came in a small, dented metal teapot, along with a chipped mug, a spoon and a small pot of strawberry jam. I asked why he had brought me a pot of jam when there was nothing to spread it on. He explained that there were no lemons on the train or probably anywhere else in Siberia and, more importantly, real Russian tea was flavored and sweetened with jam rather than with lemon and sugar. I put half a teaspoon of jam into the mug, he shook his head, took the spoon and added a very rounded spoonful of jam to the mug, filled it with tea, stirred it vigorously, handed the mug to me with an expectant smile and hovered as I sipped. The tea was very strong and quite smoky, the addition of the strawberry jam made it palatable and a few hours later we parted as friends when the train pulled into the station in Irkutsk.

It was a jar of peach jam in my pantry that saved the day last summer when I was preparing the dressing for a brown rice and papaya salad for a potluck picnic. I had forgotten to buy a jar of mango chutney and had no time to make a trip to the market but I did have a jar a peach jam in the pantry. Combined with spices, vinegar and oil, it provided the sweet note that made the salad sing. Since then I always use peach jam rather than mango chutney when I make this salad. Here’s how I did it:

Brown Rice and Papaya Salad

I began by preparing the rice. I preheated the oven to 375 degrees, heated two and a half cups of water, one tablespoon of unsalted butter and one tablespoon of kosher salt in a saucepan. I put one and a half cups of short-grain brown rice into an eight-inch square, ceramic baking dish. When the water was boiling, I poured it over the rice, covered the dish tightly with aluminum foil and baked it for one hour. I uncovered the rice and fluffed it with a fork and set it aside to cool.

I cut a peeled and de-seeded large, ripe papaya into one-inch chunks. I put the chunks into a large salad bowl. I cut one medium red onion into quarter inch dice and put it into a small bowl of salted, cold water to eliminate the raw onion tang. I added one large red pepper cut into half-inch chunks, one finely minced jalapeno pepper, half a cup of walnuts, half a cup of raisins, the leaves from a bunch of cilantro, the rinsed and drained onion and the cooled rice to the papaya chunks.

For the dressing, I blended together two teaspoons of ground cumin, one teaspoon of ground coriander, one minced clove of garlic, three tablespoons of red wine vinegar, three tablespoons of olive oil and half a cup of peach jam. I stirred the dressing into the rice and papaya mixture and headed to the picnic that was jam packed with friends.

Download and print cookie recipe with an ingredients list here.

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Watercolor by Carol Egbert

I bought a deep violet eggplant,

Watercolor by Carol Egbert

a sweet pepper that was sap green on one side and cadmium orange on the other, white cippolini onions with forest green leaves, a bunch of celery with chartreuse leaves attached to leaf-green stems,

Watercolor by Carol Egbert

blue-black olives cured in oil, a scoop of grey-green salt cured capers, six Windsor yellow lemons and two kilos of blood oranges.

I created an ad hoc still life as I unpacked the market bags and thought about what I would cook. The caponata I had eaten in Taormina earlier in the week came to mind. Considered a Sicilian classic, caponata, like pasta, couscous, oranges and lemons, was brought by the Arabs when they conquered Sicily in 827 AD. The Arabs, then called Saracens, also introduced sophisticated methods of irrigation that made vegetable farming possible. Making caponata, a salad of cooked vegetables with a sweet and sour sauce, is an opportunity to combine colorful vegetables and Mediterranean history. Here’s how I did it:

Caponata

When I was choosing the eggplant at the market, a fellow shopper suggested that it was important to soak eggplant in salted water for at least half an hour before cooking it. I usually skip this step, but she insisted it that kept the eggplant white and prevented it from absorbing excess oil, so – when in Sicily, do as the Sicilians do. I cut the unpeeled eggplant into one-inch cubes, put them into a large bowl filled with water, added a tablespoon of sea salt, Sicilian of course, and left them to soak for half an hour. I rinsed two tablespoons of salt-cured capers in cold water and put them in a bowl of water to soak to eliminate the excess salt.

I put two tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan and when it was hot, but not smoking, I added the drained eggplant cubes and cooked them over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until they were tender and browned on all sides. It took about fifteen minutes. I put the cooked eggplant into a colander, poured the olive oil that drained from it back into the frying pan, reheated it and added the sweet pepper that had been cut into one-inch pieces. After about ten minutes the pepper was cooked and had begun to brown and I added it to the eggplant in the colander.

I followed the same procedure to cook one thinly sliced onion and four thinly sliced stalks of celery, including the tender chartreuse leaves. I used a small glass to gently push the excess olive oil out of the vegetables into the frying pan, reheated it and added the rinsed and drained capers and a handful of olives to the oil. After they had cooked for three minutes, I added the capers and olives to the cooked vegetables and returned the frying pan to the heat to make the agro dolce or sweet and sour sauce.

I added a tablespoon of granulated sugar to the oil that was flavored with the caramelized juices of the vegetables and cooked it over medium heat, stirring constantly. When the sugar had melted, I stirred in two tablespoons of red wine vinegar and cooked the mixture until most of the vinegar had evaporated and the sauce had begun to thicken.

I added all of the cooked vegetables to the sauce and gently stirred them together over medium heat for three minutes to combine the flavors. I put the finished caponata into a bowl to cool.

To complete my Arab inspired cooking extravaganza, I made orange-lemonade by adding three tablespoons of sugar to the juice from two lemons and one blood orange to a pitcher of water.

Caponata is eaten at room temperature and served as an appetizer or as a side dish. It can also be heated and served with pasta or polenta and, if the ingredients are cut more finely before being cooked, it can be used as a spread for crostini. Caponata is a recipe that does not require exact amounts or ingredients. Its flavor improves with age and it will keep for a week in the fridge. Some recipes include chunks of tomatoes or tomato paste, green olives can be used instead of ripe ones and anchovies may be added with the capers and olives. The olive vendor, who also sells chocolate from Modica, suggested I could make the caponata “Baroque” by sprinkling it with unsweetened chocolate just before it is served. That sounded strange to me, what do you think?

Download and print caponata recipe with an ingredients list here.

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Since I hadn’t been to the open-air market on Sunday and the small, nearby markets were closed, breakfast resources in the fridge and pantry were limited. Charles decided to stop for coffee and a pastry on his way to the library so it was just Matthew and me for breakfast. Although, there were no strawberries, bread, milk, cereal, eggs or yogurt in the kitchen, there was one banana, some fresh ricotta, two blood oranges, honey and a shaker of cinnamon that Matthew had brought with him from the UK. I carefully peeled and sliced the banana and oranges and arranged them on a plate, added a scoop of ricotta, topped the ricotta and oranges with honey and squeezed a bit of orange juice on to the banana before dusting it with cinnamon. There was enough sun to capture this colorful breakfast in a photograph before we ate it.

I went to the market looking for inspiration and ingredients. San Marzano plum tomatoes from Georgio were a start. I choose a few waxy new potatoes, a bunch of broccoli and spring onions from the vendor next to him. Unfortunately, he is so grumpy that I’ve never asked him his name. I think his canary’s name is Elvis because that’s what’s painted on the cage. My final stop was to get cheese. Andrea was serving samples to passers-by but stopped long enough to wrap a ball of fresh mozzarella for me. I hurried home with a clear plan and everything I needed for a wonderful veggie dinner – a potato and tomato torta and steamed broccoli seasoned with garlic and dried hot pepper flakes. I would create a new recipe for dinner. Unfortunately new does not always mean good. Here’s what I did:

Potato & Tomato Torta

I wanted the toaster oven to be medium hot but the numbers on the dial are too small to be useful so I turned the knob to nine o’clock. I washed three tomatoes, scrubbed three potatoes and cut them all into quarter inch slices. I made stacks by alternating tomato and potato slices and arranged the stacks in three horizontal rows in an aluminum baking pan. I sprinkled a thinly sliced green onion on top, added a generous sprinkle of dried oregano, fresh black pepper and drizzled a couple of tablespoons of olive oil on top. After the torta had been baking for forty minutes, I added two tablespoons of white wine to the pan. I topped the torta with thick slices of fresh mozzarella after it had baked for fifteen more minutes and turned the oven control to broil to melt the cheese. In three minutes the cheese was melted and the torta was ready.

I peeled the broccoli stems and steamed it while the torta baked. Matthew minced a few cloves of garlic, sauteed it along with a generous pinch of dried red pepper flakes in a tablespoon of olive oil. He tossed in the broccoli, cooked it for a couple of minutes and we were ready for a wondrous feast.

Charles poured the wine and lit the candles. It was instantly obvious that two spoons were not up to the task of scooping out the torta. The potatoes and tomatoes were swimming in a pool of unappetizing milky pink liquid and the mozzarella was forming meter long strings that I snipped with a pair of scissors.

Charles bravely tasted the liquid in the pan, and said with a grimace, “It tastes pretty bad, a bit burned. Here, have some.” We laughed at his comment, remembered other cooking experiments and made do with a dinner that was less than splendid. Two candy bars from the corner store meant that we didn’t go to bed hungry.

As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about what I should have done:

Baked Potatoes

I should have layered the raw potatoes in a baking pan, added two tablespoons of olive oil and a grind of pepper and baked them in a medium hot oven until they were tender and beginning to brown.  Adding wine to the potatoes made them mushy and it would have been better sipped between bites of crispy potato.

Tomato Mozzarella Salad

Rather than cooking the tomatoes with the potatoes, I should have arranged slices of tomato and fresh mozzarella on a platter and topped them with generous splashes of olive oil and fig flavored balsamic vinegar.  The texture and flavor of the uncooked tomatoes is a perfect foil for the creamy, fresh, un-stringy mozzarella.

Failure in the kitchen happens and it’s not the end of the world.  We had a good laugh, enough to eat and shared a meal I’ll never forget and won’t repeat.

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My first two meals in Sicily, reminded me that a few simple ingredients carefully combined often result in a sublime meal. Pasta alla Norma, a Sicilian classic, is inspired by Mt. Etna. The chunks of eggplant suggest lava and the creamy white, ricotta salata cheese sprinkled on top represents the snow that I saw as the plane circled the still active volcano just before we landed.

Thursday morning, we set off to reconnect with the vendors at the market. With so many tourists passing through the market each year, I wondered if my return would be noticed. I needn’t have worried; we were warmly welcomed with hugs and smiles, bits of cheese, samples of olives and chunks of bread. The bustle of the shoppers, the raucous calls of the fish vendors and the bright colors of the fruits and vegetables energized the market. Inspired by the meals we had eaten since our arrival and by the limited resources in my Sicilian kitchen, I’ve decided to try to live, cook and eat simply for the next eight weeks.

We would begin with a market breakfast. I chose three pale yellow pears touched with pink blush, red strawberries in a bright blue container, three blood oranges with garnet red splotched flesh and three lemons still sporting green leaves. After we had found a loaf of crusty bread, a jar of orange blossom honey and fresh ricotta and yogurt we headed home for a late morning treat. Here’s how I made it:

 Creamy Ricotta with Fruit

I used a fork to combine a half a cup of ricotta with two tablespoons of vanilla yogurt and a teaspoon of honey. When the cheese mixture was smooth, I made fruit parfaits by alternating the ricotta mixture with layers of diced pear, blood orange and strawberries. Combined with the sunshine, a chunk of bread dripping with honey, the roar of the crashing surf and the warm Mediterranean breeze, breakfast was simply perfect.

Download and print creamy ricotta & fruit recipe with an ingredients list here.

Friday we spent the day deciphering bus routes, schedules and tickets so that we could get to the Super Mercato to buy a small toaster oven to go with our very simple, three burner cook top, the small fridge, and the non-existent electric mixer, toaster, blender and food processor. At the end of a long, wet, rainy afternoon we unpacked the oven and walked to the closest pizzeria for dinner.

Saturday, with a clear head and a lovely sunny day, I was ready to make dinner. Vegetables, cheese, fresh tomato paste made with sundried tomatoes and olive oil, all from the open air market, was all I needed to make pasta primavera. Here’s how I did it:

Pasta Primavera

I began the sauce by knocking clumps of mud from the roots of one very large scallion, discarded the top twenty inches of ragged greens and cut the rest into thin slices. I sauteed it over medium heat in two tablespoons of olive oil, added one clove of garlic, one small zucchini cut in quarter-inch dice, four minced black olives and a handful of flat leaf parsley. When the vegetables were soft, I added two tablespoons of sun dried tomato paste, reduced the heat and cooked it for three more minutes.

I quartered six small plum tomatoes and grated a quarter of a cup of ricotta salata cheese while I waited for the large pot of the water to come to a boil. While half a pound of pasta cooked, I added the tomatoes to the sauce and turned the heat to low. I reserved a cup of the salty pasta water before I drained the al dente spaghetti. I raised the heat to medium, stirred two thirds of a cup of the pasta water into the vegetable mixture and used a wooden spoon to combine the thick tomato paste and vegetables with the water to create a tomato sauce. I added the drained pasta and stirred to coat the noodles with the sauce. Topped with freshly grated ricotta salata, dinner was ready.

This recipe is very forgiving, an exercise in Sicilian simplicity. I used zucchini, but mushrooms, bell pepper, or celery could be substituted. When I don’t have sun dried tomato paste, I use either tomato paste that comes in a tube, like toothpaste, or canned tomato paste, preferably Italian. Pasta water, scooped from the pot just before the noodles are drained, is the secret ingredient. It’s difficult to give an exact quantity.  You need “enough, until it’s just right.” Fiorina, my son Noah’s Italian great-grandmother, said many years ago when I asked, “How much do I add to the pan?” “Look and taste, you will know!” she assured me. So, scoop out a cup of water just before you drain the noodles, add a bit, look and taste and you will know when it is enough. Ciao!

Download and print pasta primavera recipe with an ingredients list here.

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The confetti was intriguing whether or not one was in costume.

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]]> http://www.carolegbert.com/regazze-regazzo-in-piazza/feed 0 http://www.carolegbert.com/ortigia-fruit-parfait http://www.carolegbert.com/ortigia-fruit-parfait#comments Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:03:20 +0000 Carol http://www.carolegbert.com/?p=3566 A sunny walk to the market, determined to keep things simple, our breakfast was a parfait with layers of ricotta mixed with yogurt and orange blossom honey and diced pears, blood oranges and strawberries. Without a toaster we had to settle for crusty bread toasted in butter.

Yummmm!

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