December 2023 COTM - CARMINE'S FAMILY-STYLE COOKBOOK

[MelMM (Mel)]

PASTA GIARDINIERA (ebook)

The headnote says this recipe is the author’s answer to pasta primavera. Truth is, it is way better than pasta primavera. For this recipe you first need to make the Carmine’s marinara sauce, which is chapter 8. Then for this recipe, you will sauté onions and a garlic in a generous amount of olive oil. The recipe has you add both at once, but I added the onions first and the garlic later, to keep the garlic from getting too browned. Then goes in mushrooms, zucchini, prosciutto, basil, and parsley. I just omitted the prosciutto, and didn’t miss it, but maybe next time I will included some sun-dried tomatoes for a little umami hit. You add some of the marinara sauce, heavy cream (I made a vegan heavy cream from cashews blended with a high-protein plant milk), and chicken stock (used a vegan stock). Simmer that for a while, then add in romano cheese (I used vegan parm here) and frozen peas. Meanwhile, you bring water to boil, and boil some broccoli for about 4 minutes. Remove the broccoli with a slotted spoon, and stir into the sauce. Let the sauce sit while you then cook the pasta in the same water. You spoon the sauce over cooked pasta, or, if you are me, you toss it all together. More grated cheese is supposed to be served with, but I added all the cheese to the sauce.

We liked this a lot. If you had a big batch of marinara already made, it would be pretty quick to whip this up. I had to make the marinara first, which added time. I served this with a chickpea/lentil rotini. We’re off to a pretty good start with this book!

[NJChicaa]

I’ve noticed that the Carmine’s restaurants really get the garlic brown. I know that gives the dish a more bitter and stronger flavor but that seems to be their MO. I don’t go as far as they do when I’m making their dishes but they definitely do it on purpose. I love their linguine with white clam sauce and you can definitely tell the garlic is like 20 seconds from being burned.

[NJChicaa]

CHICKEN SALTIMBOCCA (p.211)

You need to make the brown sauce first which is on p. 307. It makes enough for 2 recipes of this dish. I’ve successfully frozen half of it many times. You then top 4 boneless skinless chicken cutlets with a fresh sage leaf and half of a piece of proscuitto, cover with plastic wrap, and pound until thinner. You then dredge them in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper and saute in vegetable oil (proscuitto side down) for a couple of minutes before flipping. When that is finished you remove the chicken to a plate and add butter and chopped shallots to the same pan. Then you add white wine and the brown sauce. Return chicken cutlets to pan to simmer. Then you top them with slices of fresh mozzarella and broil until cheese is melted.

This is delicious and one of the dishes I ALWAYS order at Carminie’s. I follow the directions in the recipe except for the broiling. I just put the cheese on the chicken, add a lid, and give it a couple of minutes. They suggest serving with their spinach and garlic dish which is a great recommendation.

[Aubergine]

I don’t have access to the book; can you remember what goes into the brown sauce?

[NJChicaa]

yes I’ll do that one now.

[NJChicaa]

BROWN SAUCE (p. 307)

This recipe is used for several dishes including Stuffed Braised Chicken Legs, Chicken/Veal Marsala, and Chicken/Veal Saltimbocca. Extra freezes fine. It won’t look great when it thaws but it is fine.

You melt 1/8 cup of butter and then add 1 diced celery rib, 1/2 diced onion, fresh thyme srpigs, and 1/2 peeled diced carrot. Saute until tender. Then you add 1/2 cup of flour and cook–stirring continuously–until it is all absorbed. Then you add 3 cups of hot beef stock and whisk. Then add the remaining 3 cups. Reduce heat and let it simmer for an hour. Skim off fat. Strain and discard vegetables. Season to taste.

[maestra]

I bought this ebook when it was on sale, assuming it would come up as COTM soon. I should be able to make 2 things in December, but I will hope to explore more in January. My son will love the dishes; maybe he’ll even eat the broccoli in the pastas

[CaitlinM]

Nomination time!

January 2024 Cookbook of the Month Nominations

Hard to believe we’re speeding into a new year, but it’s time to nominate books for January’s COTM. What books strike your fancy for the chilly season? HOW TO NOMINATE: Please type the name of the book (or website) you are nominating in ALL CAPS for easy recognition. (If you’re discussing, rather than nominating, a title please use standard capitalization to avoid confusion.) You may nominate as many books as you like. Please nominate with the intention to cook from and report on your recipe ex…

[digga]

@MelMM

vegan parm

Which is your favored brand?

We often use nutritional yeast with lush non-tomato-y pasta sauces, such as yours (I could dive right into the bowl) but the flavor profile might not be quite right (?) I’ve yet to try vegan Parmesan.

[MelMM (Mel)]

I like Violife brand because it comes in a wedge that I can grate myself. But there are other options for topping a pasta that aren’t a parm imitation, but taste good and kinda fill the same function. For example, you can grind up some pine nuts (or walnuts, or any nut) with some nutritional yeast and salt. Or you can sauté some bread crumbs to crisp them up and season with nooch, salt, or other seasonings. Salt is important here, because real parm is quite salty. Some of the homespun options have the advantage of adding some crunch to the dish.

[MelMM (Mel)]

PASTA MARINARA - ebook

Since I had the marinara sauce already made for the pasta giardiniera, I decided to try it in a more featured presentation. I have to say it seems kind of odd to basically duplicate the initial steps of the marinara sauce recipe to start this one. If the sauce needed more garlic, basil, and parsley, why wasn’t it just included in the sauce? But that’s the way this goes. You already have the marinara sauce made. You sauté garlic in a hefty amount of olive oil, add fresh basil and parsley, then add the marinara sauce. You let that simmer while you cook the pasta. Add the drained pasta to the sauce, season with salt and pepper, loosen with pasta water if needed, and add romano cheese (vegan parm for me). Serve with more cheese.

This was fine. I feel like I’ve made marinaras with fewer ingredients, or less of the same ingredients, that were more flavorful. Not sure how that works, but that’s my impression. The next night, home alone and dealing with a migraine, I made pasta with the marinara sauce on it’s own, skipping the part where you sauté additional garlic and herbs. And it was also fine, just as fine as the previous night’s that included those steps. And also nothing spectacular.

[MelMM (Mel)]

CARMINE’S MARINARA SAUCE

I guess I should write up the marinara sauce itself, as it can be used stand-alone, in addition to being a component of so many dishes. Plus, there is the method. Which is… kinda problematic. The first instruction is to take 3 big cans of tomatoes (I assumed whole peeled, but it doesn’t say) and drain them in a colander, reserving the juice. Then you sauté a lot of garlic until it is brown, which does not take the 5 minutes they suggest. You add fresh basil and parsley to this, along with salt and pepper, followed soon after by the drained tomatoes. You are supposed to bring these to a boil, breaking them up as they cook. Then reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. At this point I though the bit about draining the tomatoes was genius. I had a nice thick sauce and wasn’t going to have to cook it to death. But then came the next instruction: add the reserved juice. You are supposed to do this, then boil for 12 minutes, and what you end up with is your sauce. Well… I had a LOT of reserved juice. No way could I add all that and have the sauce reduce in such a short time. So I added some juice, let it cook down, added some more, let it cook, and so on, until I got about half the juice in there. And that’s where I called it quits. I ended up cooking quite a bit longer than specified (I didn’t keep track of exactly how long), and I had a sauce of what I felt to be an appropriate consistency. I mentioned in one of my reviews above that I thought there might be a theme of adding too much liquid and not cooking it down enough, and this recipe was why I was saying it might be a theme. I’ve made enough now from the book to be pretty sure it is.

[MelMM (Mel)]

SPICE COOKIES WITH LEMON ICING - ebook

I am a sucker for a spice cookie and also a sucker for citrus in any kind of sweet, so these called to me. They looked pretty simple to convert to GF and veganize. You start by beating butter and sugar using a stand mixer, then add an egg and mix until combined. You then add in orange and lemon zest, raisins, vanilla, and cinnamon. Finally you add in your flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Roll into balls, flatten them a bit, and bake at 300 for 40 (!) minutes. My changes to this were using a GF flour mix (I went with King Arthur Measure-for-Measure), using a vegan butter, using an egg replacer and aquafaba instead of the single egg in the recipe, mixing the cinnamon in with the flour and leaveners (I feel it mixes in better this way), and substituting chopped dried sour cherries for the raisins, just because I really don’t care for raisins in cookies.

While the cookies are baking, you make the lemon icing by whisking lemon juice with confectioners’ sugar. Guess what? The amount of liquid given too much for the amount of sugar. See? It’s a theme. I ended up adding extra sugar to the glaze. I notice now that I was supposed to dip the tops of the cookies in the glaze. Wish I had done that. I spooned the glaze sloppily on top.

This is supposed to make 3 dozen cookies, if you are making the balls out of 1.5 to 2 Tbs of dough. Umm… I used 2 Tbs dough/ball, and got 17. I felt like the cooking time was too long, but I went with it because it was a lower temperature than I usually use. The cookies browned quite a bit, even the interior, which is unusual with a gluten-free dough. GF baked goods tend to stay paler than those made with wheat. I would prefer a paler cookie here, so would reduce the cook time in the future. I did reduce the time by 5 minutes on my second pan of these, but that wasn’t enough.

These are good, because they are cookies! The cinnamon is subtle, mostly overpowered by the lemon. What I really want here is ginger. So next time, I would add ginger (a lot of it), in addition to the other changes I made, and I would reduce the cook time. Let’s see, make it GF, make it vegan, change the spicing, change the cook time… yeah, that’s a whole new recipe.

[GretchenS]

You are - as always! - admirably intrepid. And yes, that is now your cookie recipe, lol.

[MelMM (Mel)]

SAUSAGE-STUFFED MUSHROOMS - ebook

Who doesn’t love a stuffed mushroom? This recipe calls for white mushrooms about 2" in diameter. You stuff 10, and chop up 4. These mushrooms come in packs of 6 at my grocery store, so I bought 12. I included chopped up stems and trimmings from the mushrooms to make up for the two I lacked.

You start by cooking fennel sausage in a sauté pan, breaking it up. I used Beyond Hot Italian here, which does indeed have fennel in it. You had chopped green pepper (Bell? They don’t say. I used bell.), garlic, and the chopped mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms release their liquid and it evaporates. You then add Carmine’s bread crumbs (a separate recipe) and chicken stock. At this point, you are supposed to reduce the heat, stir in cheese and diced pickled cherry peppers, and the filling is done. But I had a problem because… wait for it… 1 cup of chicken stock was way too much. So I did a combination of continuing to cook until the stock was reduced, and adding more bread crumbs. You then set this aside to cool, and even refrigerate for a while, before stuffing the mushrooms.

The mushrooms eventually get stuffed. The quantity of stuffing was about perfect, even with the additional crumbs added. They get baked at 400 for 15-20 minutes (I did 20).

The flavor of these was good, but the texture suffered from the fiasco with too much chicken broth. Even though I added extra crumbs and reduced the stock, mushy bread crumbs don’t just un-mush. I would make these again though, just adding very little stock. Actually I think a couple tablespoons of white wine would be a better option here.

[Saregama]

I think it’s hard when one has good versions of simple preps like this.

When I finally get to the book (not this month) I think I’ll focus on dishes I’ve enjoyed at the restaurant (like the scarpariello).

[MelMM (Mel)]

GREEN BEANS, POTATOES, AND TOMATOES - ebook

This recipe was infuriating.

“Because we are committed to the spirit of Italian American home cooking, what some people call “grandmother’s cooking,” we cook these vegetables together until they are soft and yielding and their flavors become one.”

Thus reads the headnote. The recipe then proceeds to direct you to cook the potatoes and green beans SEPARATELY. They are each drained and rinsed under cold water. Then you sauté some onion in olive oil, add some garlic to that, then add the green beans, tomatoes, some fresh oregano, and a bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for FIVE MINUTES, then add the potatoes and cook for another FIVE MINUTES. And that’s it.

I’m sorry, but - wait, no, I’m not sorry, I’m enraged - flavors do not “become one” in five minutes. I’m a southerner. I’m used to, and incredibly fond of, well-cooked green beans. These are not that. This is a recipe written by someone who had it drilled into there head, maybe in culinary school, to cook green beans until they are barely past raw and still have an unpleasant fuzziness to them. These are cooked past that stage (thanks for small mercies), but nowhere near the flavors melding stage. Nowhere near. And the tomatoes, cooked for such a short time, taste flat and tinny. The potatoes taste like nothing. GAAAAAH .

Picture above next to the stuffed mushrooms.

[NJChicaa]

I’ve made this recipe a dozen times and now don’t even mess around with the whole peeled tomatoes/juice thing. I just go with crushed tomatoes when I make marinara sauce these days.

[MelMM (Mel)]

CARMINE’S MARINARA SAUCE - update

I made this again because I need it for a couple more dishes I want to make. This time, I used the ingredients in the recipe, but went my own way with the technique. I used whole peeled tomatoes, but pulsed them, with their juice, in the food processor until broken up. Then added that slurry to the sautéed aromatics, and just let it cook until it looked right. This is in line with my usual method. The result was MUCH better. Flavors melded better, tasting less like canned tomatoes. I also neglected to note in my first review that the amount of salt in the recipe is insufficient, especially if you are using an Italian brand of tomatoes without added salt (as they tend to be). I doubled the salt in the recipe.

[stockholm28]

PASTA POMODORO

I enjoyed this classic combination of tomatoes and garlic. It was easy and flavorful. I screwed up and dumped the tomatoes and their juice into the pan before noticing that they were supposed to be drained. This turned out to be fine. I would definitely make this again. I used rigatoni and thought that worked well.