Everyone knows that classic Italian favorite Fettuccine Alfredo! But most of what we get in this country is a rich, somewhat bland mass-consumption version of a very fine (if labor-intensive) recipe from Rome. The original version is well known and the technique is brilliant - this one is well worth making.
This delicious bit of decadence came from my late friend Dexter, a past president of the Old Colony Club. We often serve it at gala events at the club.
This is one of those simple recipes that any fool can make (that is, the technique is simple), but it requires the finest ingredients that you can get, and the experience can be immeasurably improved in the right environment. This would work just fine at a Super Bowl party, but it responds very well to a fancy event!
This traditional Italian semolina bread is delicious and fun to make, but it doesn't keep very well. Fortunately it does freeze well.
The dough is easy to work with. It can be baked into many shapes; the sesame-sprinkled s-shape shown here is the occhi di Santa Lucia, or the eyes of Saint Lucy.
Deep in a cold New England winter, we had John and Christina over for a Sicilian feast to brighten things up. Most of these recipes came from a fine cookbook called Sicily, and most of these were dishes that we had enjoyed in Sicily. The Sicilian names are similar to Italian but not the same, for example "cu" for "con" - Sicilian is an old and proud dialect!
I list this as Eastern Sicilian because all of the showstopper recipes are from the Eastern and Southern slopes of Mount Aetna from Messina to Siracusa and west to the ancient Greek temples at Agrigento; someday I'll do a Western Sicilian dinner that touches on Palermo, Trapani, Sciaccia, and Marsala.
We started light with two appetizers before moving on to soup, salad, fish, meat, and dessert courses:
Maiale cu Cioccolatu is a Sicilian dish of pork loin with an exquisite savory rich chocolate sauce.
The town of Modica, in inland south-eastern Sicily, is known for chocolate. We went there in 2018 as part of our Sicilian vacation, but the town itself was crowded and the driving was not fun so we got out of there, having already acquired bitter Modican chocolate at the farmers market in Siracusa.
This dish, called (more or less) Pisci Spata in Crusta ri Fastuchi in Sicily the Cookbook is a pistachio-crusted swordfish very like what astonished me in Chianalea, the swordfishing port of Scilla at the very tow of the boot of Italy. I say more-or-less because that recipe is for monkfish, but Scilla is all about swordfish and that's how I had it. In all other particulars, this is how to replicate that heavenly dish.
This Caponata Croccante is the "crunchy caponata" on p135 of Sicily the Cookbook.
A caponata is often a melange of flavors, typically based in eggplant and olive oil, to be served as a side salad or on crostini or bruschetta.
This fresh caponata is finished before the final "stewing" process, making it "crunchy" but the vegetables are soft enough that it's not a problem but rather a benefit. The flavors are zesty and fresh, and it's a brilliant accompaniment to Passaluna to start a Sicilian dinner.
It's amazing what happens when you heat olives.
We think of olives as a kind of garnish or as a no-effort hors d'oeuvres served cold, but they respond well to heat. It unlocks rich flavors that pair with zesty ingredients like the orange and chili in this recipe.
Passuluna means specifically Sicilian salt-cured black olives, which have a wrinkly appearance. You rinse the salt first, so if you cannot find true passuluna, good black olives (not those woody horrors in the cans) work out pretty well.
Of course you can tone down the Sicilian heat by using just one or even no chilies, but this recipe is very good as written.
The origin story of this ancestor of the Martini is shrouded in fog, but it seems that it was developed in San Francisco (near Martinez, CA) in the mid-to-late 1800s, after the Manhattan but before the modern Dry Martini. The basic idea, equal parts vermouth and gin with bitters and a touch of Maraschino, is a clear descendant of the fancy cocktail formula of spirit + triple sec + bitters, except that vermouth adds complexity and Maraschino replaces the triple sec as the sweetening agent.
There's a ton of research on this classic, and a number of recipes have emerged. This version is a commonly-accepted one today, but it should by no means be considered canonical.
I did some careful reseach on this in 2019, during a vacation up the Pacific Coast from LA to Juneau, during which I sampled a number of Martinez cocktails at some very fine bars with knowledgeable mixologists. In fact, that's about the only place that you will find the Martinez, so it's good to know the recipe!
It's still a good drink, especially to play with different gins and vermouths. It's much less alcoholic than a Martini, so it's good to have when you're out, if you're at a bar that has Maraschino. If not, try Triple Sec.
We had this all over Sicily and then in Rome. It's a classic Sicilian dish of simple ingredients that must be fresh and well-prepared. Make this in summertime when the eggplant is fresh and flavorful. The tomatoes can be fresh in season or canned, but canned tomatoes without preservatives are better than "fresh" tomatoes out of season (the tomatoes were fresh when they went into the can). I like Cento brand canned tomatoes.
This strange-sounding summer-time salad came to my attention when I was planning a feast to celebrate the Kentucky Derby; something similar is made at a ritzy hotel at Churchill Downs.
This is a simpler version and in my opinion better able to showcase excellent ingredients.
Our friends Owen and Brigitte were visiting from Germany. They'd been intrigued by my adventures in Moroccan cooking, and I had just added to my gear an authentic Moroccan terra cotta tagine schlepped all the way from Morocco by the mother of my friend Youssef! So that became the cornerstone of the dinner, but we wanted Brigitte to try some authentic New England treats as well, so we came up with this screwy menu:
The Moroccan recipes came from the collection of excellent Moroccan recipes by Christine Benlafquih at The Spruce Eats. The links above go to the recipes as I prepared them for this dinner.
I whipped this up when I was confronted with the leftovers of an excellent-but-too-large haddock. It's a simple dish, homey and satisfying.
I started with the fish flaked into a basic white sauce seasoned with dried dill and chervil, but then I thickened the sauce up with an egg yolk (see Mayonnaise for why that's a good idea) and then proceeded to top it with mashed potatoes and baked it.
(See Notes for a confession.)
We had our old friends Jim and Peg Baker over for dinner, after reconnecting with them over the Old Colony Club's 250th Birthday Gala. They wanted something on the lighter side, and something with an exotic flair. I suggested Moroccan, and they accepted.
For personal reasons, I added a non-Moroccan cocktail and dessert, which I will explain below.
Here's what we had:
I've been a member of the Old Colony Club of Plymouth for a long time. We have great formal parties there, but none as grand as the one that we put on for the 250th anniversary of the club's founding on 13 January 1769.
The gala is modeled on a seven-course formal dinner that might have been served in 1919, but it's all served cocktail-party style, with no need for knives and big plates and tables. That's important because we had about 100 attendees!
Before people arrived, we had set out:
This enabled early arrivals to explore and graze until the formal courses came up from the kitchen.
Here's what we had:
