|
Lummox.org
|
|
Old Guido Email Chef Guido at guido@lummox.org
[Ed. Note: This is a real Guido-written recipe that appears below. When we received it, we couldn't read it at first because Guido had written it, in red crayon, on butcher paper, and either he'd wept all over the recipe, or he'd been sweating heavily. In any case, he included this short comment on the recipe's origins: "Miguel, I am living on a trampoline--that's what this apartment is like, minus the tramp." Ah, artists. What are we gonna do?]
2-10-05 Chef Guido’s “fuggedaboudit” Sausage and Peppers.
Ingredients: Six Hot Italian Sausages. Two medium onions. Three cloves garlic. 3 bell peppers— two red and one green. Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed. A generous glass Pinot Grigio. Salt, cayenne pepper. Two loaves Italian bread.
Serves three
Not for nothing, let’s get right to it. Get the grill going nice and hot for the sa’seeche (goomba talk for sausage). Slice up your peppers, onions, and garlic. Toss the colors of the Italian flag into a hot skillet. Don’t worry about it, Mussolini’s ghost playing a busted violin is not showing up uninvited. Ah, those were the days. Anyway, add salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Once you got this nice and sautéed, deglaze with the Pinot Grigio. For the sa’seeche: Lightly salt, drizzle a little bit of olive oil, and grill to perfection. Finished dish: Slice the loaf of bread down the middle. Toast on the grill—two puffs from a cig’s worth. Tong the grilled sausage into the now-toasted bread, spoon over the onions and peppers, and enjoy. A side note: Chef Guido’s got ten-large on the street for anyone who knows who the hell this M. Naught Guido is. Ten-large! That’s no small potatoes.
1-27-05 Our guest Guido, once again, is none other than M. Naught Guido, who never uses only the finest DeCecco pasta. He uses whatever is cheapest--well, most of the time. His culinary career consists of one job washing dishes for one day at a chain restaurant in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, twenty-two years ago. He quit before his shift was over. Currently, he lives in Carbondale, Illinois, where he serves as Mike Magnuson's personal chef.
Shake to Take Your Booty Off
Calories: 550 or so. Serves: 1 person in training. Taste rating: 8.5 out of 10, depending on whether you use honey and peanut butter. Kids-will-eat-it rating: 10. Customer comments: "Damn, this ain't bad." Chef Guido's comments: "Tony Soprano wouldn't touch it."
When Mike Magnuson lost his six hundred tons, or whatever it was he lost (it happened a while back, and we're starting to forget the particulars), he lost the weight, as he has described in Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180, by riding his bike hours and hours every day and by living on protein shakes, three a day, for something on the order of 12 weeks, maybe it was longer. Nobody, no sane person would suggest that living on protein shakes is smart--let's be absolutely clear on that--but on the other hand, if you're looking for a controlled-portion meal, a breakfast or a lunch type of thing, a protein shake might be the way to go. Mike still has one of these for breakfast most every morning, except on mornings when he has a huge ride planned in the afternoon, in which case he'll eat leftover pasta or maybe some pancakes, and these days Mike skips the peanut butter and honey, too.
1/2 cup skim milk 1/2 nonfat plain yogurt 1 scoop protein powder (Mike uses ON instantized whey protein from GNC, Vanilla Ice Cream flavor) 1 large granny smith apple 1 banana 1 tablespoon peanut butter 1 tablespoon honey 1/2 cup of ice
There you go. Toss all this into the blender, making sure to cut up the apple beforehand, and blend it senseless. Good stuff, Maynard.
1-18-05
TUNA YOU'LL GET USED TO by M. Naught Guido
Calories: 850 or so. Serves: 1 person in training. Taste rating: 3.5 out of 10. Kids-will-eat-it rating: 0 out of 10. Customer comments: "Jesus, this smells like dirty diapers!" [M. Naught notes that the awful smell will only obtain if you add kalamata olives to this dish.] Chef Guido's comments: "You expect me to eat this shit?"
Ingredients: 2 small cans of solid albacore tuna 3 cups of cooked spaghetti noodles 1/4 cup of diced pepper rings a tablespoon or two of dried Mexican oregano [ed note: He doesn't mean THAT.] clove or two of garlic some olive oil salt and pepper pepper sauce to taste
Let's face it: You want to eat to keep lean and ride strong and all that happy horsepucky, you're going to sacrifice a bit of your fine-dining experience. That's the point of training, in fact: depriving yourself, suffering, et cetera. So why should your diet during training be enjoyable? If you're a serious cyclist, you'll be riding somewhere in the range of 20 hours a week during training, and while there may be satisfaction that comes from such training, enjoyment isn't the point. Or is it?Hell, I have no idea. I'm just trying to get fuel in Magnuson's gut and keep him from getting fatter than he already is, which is fairly fat lately, after all that fudge he garbaged down over the holidays. So this dish is something Mike will eat sometimes three nights a week. It gives him gas; he doesn't like it very much; but it keeps him on the road every afternoon and at his desk working every morning and evening. To make this, it's simple. Boil water and cook spaghetti noodles. While the noodles are cooking, get the oil hot in a big skillet, then fry the garlic (first) and pepper rings (second) and the two drained cans of tuna. A little salt and pepper, please, with each addition into the pan. And don't forget the Mexican oregano, dude. When noodles are done, drain but don't rinse and dump three cups into the tuna-slash-oregano mixture, under which you have killed the flame. Toss this stuff, perhaps add a bit more olive oil to keep the noodles from sticking, and you're good to go. And don't, whatever you do, jazz this up with kalamata olives. Canned tuna and kalamata olives create a stink so bad people will ask you if somebody shit the floor somewhere in your house. Serve with lots of water and of course a nice bottle of pepper sauce. And take a nice walk after dinner; you'll need it.
9-16-04 Mamma Guido’s risotto alla pescatore en bianco
Ingredients: 3 cups Arborio rice; 8 cups chicken stock; a large Vidalia onion and a small shallot, finely chopped; 3 tbsp softened butter and 3 tbsp olive oil; 1 cup dry white vino; 3 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley; ½ tsp saffron; palmful chopped fresh basil and flat leaf parsley, combined; 1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese (optional); 1 tbsp fresh cream. Cooking time: 20 minutes. Serves seven rambunctious grandchildren.
For the pescatore in white-wine sauce: ½-pound freshwater prawns, ½-pound sea or bay scallops; 1½-pound Maine Lobster; a half-dozen fresh littleneck clams; 2 pressed garlic cloves; palmful, again, fresh basil and flat leaf parsley, chopped and combined; 1 cup dry white vino— " chicken stock or canned clam juice; 1 tbsp olive oil; ¼ tsp crushed red pepper flake; salt and pepper to taste. Cooking time: 25 minutes. Serves seven starving grandchildren.
Mamma Guido wants the Lummoxes out there to know that she loves all of you like her very own Chef Guido. She gonna say a few Hail Marys for you, too. She also wants everyone to know that this recipe is from her now calamitous yet still happy heart—that tender tarantella-dancing Abruzzesi heart, which enjoys seven rambunctious grandchildren—tomorrow’s named hurricanes: Milo, Sophia, Gavin, Tommy, Christopher, Emily, and baby Jack—all of whom are huddled, as we speak, around papa Guido’s flat-screen TV, in the famiglia room, safe, hopefully, from hurricane force winds. Al Capone himself could’ve used this room, ostensibly, as a wine cellar/bunker; that’s how safe it is. Anyway, the magnificent seven love devouring—yum yum—mamma’s risotto pescatore almost as much as they love watching Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon; especially when Sponge-Bob Square Pants dupes the fat starfish (what is his name?) meathead. Puts mamma’s little chitterlings (what she calls her seven grandchildren) in stitches, it does. Let’s get to the recipe. If you’ve been reading Chef Guido’s previous recipes then you should know what to do: 3 saucepots or saucepans on the stove, over medium-high heat, ingredients ready to go, and your meat hooks washed. For the pescatore in white-wine sauce, get the hubcap-brazing pan out, on the stove, and over high heat. Now, if you’re using frozen prawns and scallops, make sure you thaw them out overnight in the fridge. As for the Maine lobster, you gonna have to use that frisky and lively. Yeah, Chef Guido hears the objection—animal cruelty!—blah blah. But look, we’re really cooking here. Anyway, Chef Guido once, well into a pitcher of some wicked Mescalero grog, swears he heard a carrot—moments before the chef’s knife performed its sudoriferous cuisenaire duty—scream: “Hey, stupid, watch the hair!” With that said, let’s halve the lobster and move on. Make sure to scissor the rubber bands from the claws, which you will do with a twist and a snip. You can flour the exposed flesh but Chef Guido just salts and peppers it. Meat sides down, gently place the lobster into the smoky olive oil hot hubcap. An aside: this italicized smoky reminds Chef Guido of a Mario Puzo line: “The smoky Sicilian afternoon sun tinged the green landscape with red.” Enough of that. Brown the halved lobster for about a minute or two. Remove and place aside. Where?: Anywhere. Pat the freshwater prawns and scallops dry, season, and place into the hot pan. Brown both sides and then remove. Add: olive oil, pressed garlic cloves, chopped basil, flat leaf parsley, and crushed pepper flakes. Sauté till brown. Thus, deglaze with white wine, chicken stock or canned clam juice. Simmer that down for about another minute or two, after which you will add the already par-browned freshwater prawns, sea scallops, and halved, meat-side down, lobster. Oh, don’t forget to plunk the littlenecks into this delectable pescatore. Simmer this for no more than fifteen minutes—otherwise you’ll be playing ping-pong with the sea scallops. Side tip: when the littlenecks open the pescatore is done. For the risotto we gonna have to put the pedal to the metal: the cops showed up while we were busy with the Pescatore and informed Mamma Guido that she has to evacuate and hurry-scurry her chitterlings to a cushy hurricane shelter on the other side of Broward County. So we gotta get a move on it. Get the chicken stock hot in another saucepot over yonder. In the risotto saucepot, put a finger’s worth olive oil and softened butter—get that hot. Add chopped onions and shallots, which you gonna cook to slightly translucent. Add all of the Arborio. Here’s the trick to cooking risotto: With a wooden spoon, stir the risotto aggressively—something about wrestling the starch out of the risotto that makes the final result creamy. That done, add the saffron, white wine, fresh herbs, and seasonings. Now, never leaving the risotto alone, ladle the chicken stock in precise two-minute increments. This should take around 15 minutes. Finish the risotto with the fresh-grated Parmesan and a touch of fresh cream. Presentation: Mamma Guido says that once she gets to the shelter Santa Maria will have answered her prayers and there’ll be enough Risotto Pescatore, now sweetened with Mamma’s tears, to feed everyone, including her chitterlings. Oh, don’t forget to combine the pescatore with the risotto before arranging in your favorite Tupperware. God bless. We gotta go!
8-04-04
Bistecca alla pizzaiola con patata alla aglio elephantinoIngredients: a 4-inch thick cut of prime porterhouse; a palmful of coarsely crushed peppercorns; ¼ cup of kosher salt; ½ cup of reduced balsamic vinegar; ½ cup of extra-virgin olive oil; a cup of white wine; two large onions and one red bell pepper; two bulbs of garlic (do use elephant garlic, if you wish); two large Portobello mushrooms; a can of San Marzano—crushed!—tomatoes; fresh basil and Italian or flat leaf parsley; four healthy sprigs of de-sprigged fresh oregano. Oh, don’t forget the three pounds of red bliss potatoes. Serves four. Cooking time: whatever it takes.
This Guido recipe is steak and potatoes alla pizzaiola. Yep, Guido figures it’s time to get the 4-inch thick porterhouses on the Weber, the garlic-roasted mashed potatoes on the stove, and the damn-good vino down the hatch. If you live in Carbondale, though, good luck finding a good piece of meat. Let Guido tell ya that he’s never seen such ridiculous prices for such lousy cuts of meat. For crying out loud, twelve to fourteen bucks for stringy filet mignon that looks like it came off a bulimic squirrel! What are you, nuts? And on top of it, these so-called butchers at Kroger and Schnuck’s wouldn’t know a band saw from their elbow. Oh, yeah? Let Chef Guido see you trying to get a 4-inch porterhouse cut and trimmed without one of these geniuses boning off a ring finger. And another thing, don’t believe this Angus Beef malarkey—prime beef is prime beef no matter how you slice and dice it. Anyway, you can sub out the porterhouse for thick-cut pork chops, but our as-stubborn-as-a-Sicilian-donkey Chef Guido is sticking with the porterhouse.
Get the Weber primmed and primed. In other words—light the coals. Chef Guido prefers K-mart 5 bucks a bag mesquite chunks to Kingsford charcoal. The mesquite has a hotter flame and a tastier flavor. But if you’re stuck on Kingsford, you’re welcome to it. Nevetheless, you’re gonna need one bag of the K-Mart mesquite. Meantime, get your mise en place ready (that’s parley-voo for prepping the ingredients). What you’re gonna do now is make Chef Guido’s pizzaiola sauce: thinly slice the onions, red bell peppers, stem-less Portobello shrooms, and two cloves of the elephantino garlic. Now, get the hubcap-sized sauté pan on the stove and over a hot flame. Get that good and hot and pour in about a quarter inch’s worth of extra-virgin olive oil. Wait about twenty seconds and throw in the diagonally sliced shrooms, which you’ll sauté till brown. Remove the shrooms and spread out on a paper towel to dry. Add a touch more olive oil to the pan and toss in the prepped onions, garlic, and pepper, fresh hand-torn basil, and the de-sprigged fresh oregano. Let that sauté until glimmering as if it were a field of wilting Tuscan sunflowers.
Let’s not forget the roasted elephantino garlic red bliss mashed potatoes. Plunk the red bliss potatoes, skins on, in a pot of salted boiling water. Break a bulb of elephant garlic into cloves—peel, salt and oil, and wrap in tinfoil. Drop that little bundle of joy and the porterhouse on the Weber: A 4-inch porterhouse should take around 25 minutes for rare, and 40 minutes for medium to medium rare. As for the elephant garlic, it’s only gonna take fifteen minutes, which, once done, you’ll mash into the fork- tender soon-to-be blissful potatoes—adding olive oil, Parmesan cheese, a touch of buttermilk, and finishing it all off with salt and pepper and a smile.
Back to the pizzaiola sauce. Deglaze with a cupful of white wine. Add the crushed tomatoes. Simmer and stir constantly. Oh, don’t forget to turn the heat down while simmering the pizzaiola sauce. The penultimate final touch. Thus, spoon the pizzaiola sauce over the lip-smacking and sexy porterhouse and the blissful roasted garlic mashed potatoes and the sautéed portabellas forthwith—all of which you’ll neatly arrange on your Mamma’s favorite platter. Woops! Chef Guido almost forgot the best part of the dish: the balsamic reduction. Take a non-reactive saucepan and add two cups of a good but not super-expensive balsamic vinegar. Let that simmer down on a medium heat till you’re able to coat the back a spoon with it. Twenty minutes, tops. Let that cool overnight in the icebox. As if you’re decorating a birthday cake, scribble the cooled and finished balsamic reduction over the finished porterhouse and elephant garlic potatoes masterpiece. High-five it to the picnic table and dig in. Ciao.
6-29-04 Carbondale Spaghetti Carbonara a la purgativo
Ingredients: A box of De cecco spaghetti; two medium onions; ¾ pound of bacon; cups of chicken stock; three medium egg yolks (room temp.); cracked black pepper; ¾ pound of grated Parmesan; two tablespoons of olive oil— half stick of unsalted butter. Serves four. Cooking time: 25 minutes. Chef Guido says: Hey, kids, keep an eye out for Italian Leprechauns: Matzamareels. These little buggers love slurping up leftover spaghetti Carbonara— especially, while watching the Cartoon Network when you’re fast asleep. So watch yourself. Italian Leprechauns are toothy and tricky pickpockets, too. They also think it’s a laugh when they steal your remote control and hide it in the microwave. Another off-key note: Tell you this much, Chef Guido is a hack linguist at heart; do forgive the occasional indulgences in his mother tongue: Abruzzesse. It’s just too much fun to pass up. This recipe is—well, a piece of cake. Slice the onions thin but rustic-like. Do the same with the bacon. Now, get the sauté pan on the fire—medium-high heat is what you want. Add the butter, olive oil, and onions—sauté till creamy and lightly golden. After all, we are not making French onion soup. Remove the now-sautéed onions, placing them aside in some dish that your mother-in-law intended to throw out but gave it to you instead out of sympathy. Continue. Add the bacon to the hot sauté pan. Just get them started; you don’t want bacon bits. And now add back the onions and some cracked black pepper. Stir and sauté for about another ten minutes. Add the chicken stock. Let this reduce to half. While the Carbonara is taking on its purgative properties, get the spaghetti going in lots of boiling, well-salted water. Drain the al dente spaghetti and dump into the sauce. Let this simmer for about a minute—constantly stirring and folding the sauce into the spaghetti. Here’s the crucial part of the recipe. At this point, you want to add the Parmesan. Some more cracked pepper and the room-temperature egg yolks. Remove the sauté pan from the heat. Stir in the egg yolk gently. This will take a couple of seconds. Don’t put back on the heat—unless you want scramble eggs with bacon and spaghetti. Hey, that’s not a bad idea, is it? Anyway, serve immediately. An important aside. Many online Chefs entertain not only a foolish but also a dishonest objection to acknowledge the sources whence they derive much valuable information. Guido has no such feeling. He is merely endeavoring to discharge, in an upright manner, the responsible duties of his Cheffing and chuffing functions. With that said, Guido would like to thank, posthumously, Grandma Guido Olympia Tilda Liberatore-Scopino for laying the foundation of Abruzzesse cooking in Guido’s most bulbous head, even if it meant with the back of a wooden spoon. Chef Guido would also like to thank— again, posthumously—his great uncle Sargento Chef Guido Liberatore I: A sergeant-major in the Julia Alpine Division of the Italian Army, an excellent chef in his own right; he was lost to us at the Eastern Front during operation Barbarossa in the winter of 1942. We report that his last dish was Pasta and Beans a la Liberatore—a Guido family secret recipe. Ciao.
6-17-04 Try Chef Guido’s Veal Ossobuco—it’s the best in the city.
Ossobuco Caçe Còppe a la fettuccini casa linga
Ingredients: A pound of cooked to al dente fettuccini noodles. Four ossobucos, cut 2 ½ inches thick, fat trimmed neatly; two good-sized carrots, four celery stalks, and one fat Vidalia onion; two garlic cloves; three bay leaves; a lemon peel; two tablespoons of a good tomato paste; two cans of San Marzano tomatoes [ed note: CRUSHED: Guido awoke from uneasy dreams last evening and shouted, “The tomatoes must be crushed!]; four cups of sweet Marsala wine, or, if you must, substitute with Sherry wine; a cup of virgin olive oil; four ounces of reconstituted Porcini mushrooms; 3 cups of beef stock; salt and pepper. Cooking time: two solid hours, so get the vino out—you’re gonna need it. Serves four.
Let’s get right to it. Ossobuco is Veal shank. So if you’re squeamish about eating Veal, then this delicious recipe is not for you. Now, what you wanna do is get to a good butcher pronto. Tell’em you want four center-cut veal shanks, trimmed neatly, and tied with butcher twine. The next thing you wanna do is blaze on over to your nearest wine shop and pick up a bottle of Sweet Marsala wine. You can substitute dry Marsala too, but this Guido likes it sweet. Oh, makes sure it’s Italian Marsala; California Marsala is no better than Mad Dog 20/20. As you can see, this recipe is not cheap. So prepare this dish on special occasions, like when you finally get a real job. Anyway, let’s assume you got the rest of the ingredients, especially those dried Porcini mushrooms. Here’s what you wanna do with those delectable gems. Run those musty Porcini under cold water and thoroughly rub that fine Tuscan dirt off them. Next, soak the shrooms in a cup of Marsala, for about an hour. Remember, save this musty liquor, we’re gonna use it later. Dice and chop the carrot, celery, Vidalia, and garlic—even Italian chefs use French culinary parlance, referring to this melody of vegetables as mirepoix. Now, you can start cooking. Get yourself a good-sized, lidded brazing pan. You’ll need the lid once you start simmering. Salt and pepper your ossobuco (ossobuchi, if you wanna get all I-talian proper on me). Sauté both sides till golden brown. Remove the ossobuchi and set aside on paper towels. You want substance, not grease. Anyhow, go ahead and pour some more olive oil into the hot brazing pan. Now, here’s the clincher: tap in the tomato paste, and, with a metal or, if you must, a wooden spoon. Spread the tomato paste all over the pan, picking up the bits and pieces that will make your final sauce taste like heavenly Guido tears. Sorry. So now, throw in the chop and diced mirepoix. When the mirepoix starts looking like a Vincent van Gogh painting, grab a handful of Porcini and squeeze all that delicious liquor back into the receptacle, and throw the shrooms into the pan. Let that sauté for about five minutes. Now it’s time to add the S. Marzano, and all the liquid: the rest of the Marsala, the Porcini liquor, the beef stock. By the way, this technique is deglazing. Don’t forget the lemon peel and bay leaf. And, of course, salt and pepper to taste. This is gonna take, on a slow simmer, a good two hours. Occasionally, remove the lid and skim the fat. Try not to disturb the ossobuchi. Even though the butcher twine is gonna keep the ossobuco nice and tight, you don’t want to screw up this dish. In other words, be gentle. So the way you tell that they’re done is by sticking a fork in them, seriously, and pulling up. If the ossobuco slides off easily, then you’re good to go. The carbo-loading part of the recipe is as follows: Cook about a pound of fettuccini in lots of boiling water, and plenty salted. Take another sauté pan, add a little butter and cream, I mean a little, don’t go French on me. Add the cooked and strained noodles to this and some of the brazing liquid from the ossobuco. Also, add a cup of a very good Parmesan cheese and about two ounces of Gorgonzola. Slide all of this onto a fine serving platter and place the ossobuchi over the fettuccini, and ladle that blissful sauce all over. An aside: while the ossobuco is brazing, and you notice that the sauce itself is a little on the thin side, do the following. Take a little bit of butter and flour, equal parts, and knead this into a paste, about an ounce’s worth. Add this to the sauce. Make sure you cook this for a while; otherwise, you’ll taste the flour— not Chef Guido Power. Enjoy!
For the euro-trash connoisseur: Get yourself a cocktail fork and eat the most delectable of delicacies—the bone marrow of the ossobuco. In fact, ossobuco translated means bone-hole.
Chef Guido.
5-04-04 Chef Guido’s recipe of the
week: Spaghettini ala Davide. This one’s for the
carbo-loading, Euro-trash-loving, peddle-pumping cyclists of Carbondale,
Illinois. Yeah, better believe it, Chef Guido’s cooking his way into the
hearts and minds of the Midwesterners, those guys and gals who bike their butts
off every day all over southern Illinois, zigzagging around suicidal squirrels,
fending off loose puppies, and dodging gravel-spitting semis—well, you gotta
have some serious spaghetti meatballs just to saddle a bike, let alone pedal it
for four hours. Guido himself used to be
quite the athlete, played soccer in Argentina in the early eighties for a second
division team named Renato Cesarini. Injuries have sidelined him to sag and spectator, but this
passion for soccer—the international sport of sports—still brings the driest
tear to his eye. Since he was a little Guido kicking around rotting tomatoes in
his Godfather’s garden, he dreamed of playing in the greatest soccer league in
the world: Serie A of Italy, playing center midfield for the great teams of
Juventus, Roma, Milan, and Inter. Better believe it, Chef
Guido wanted his name among the great Italian Calciatores: Baggio,
Costacurta, Maldini, Totti, and the great Gentile! He even bought himself
Italian shin guards, socks, and cleats made by the finest Florentine shoemakers.
Leather so supple it made him cry. You say, Get over it, Guido. Guido says: We can only
learn to fail better. Learn something of value from these mountain-goat-tough
players that stick to the strictest of diets, which the team chefs prepare with
love and health-conscience precision. And what these chefs cook tastes great,
too. A happy player is a good player. That is enough. The best macaroni is from
Abruzzi: a region of central Italy that borders on the Adriatic Sea. Very
mountainous, beautiful, and clean rivers, it includes Mount Corno, the highest
peak of the Apennines (The Italian Alps). Let me tell you, if you can make it
through those mountains, you can make it through anything. So the macaroni brand is De
Cecco. The best. You want the thin
spaghetti (spaghettini)—a dry pound of the stuff will do the trick. Serves
four good-sized Guidos. Cook al dente—just the way it says on the package. By
the way, do Guido a favor and don’t run the pasta—once it’s cooked—under
cold water. After all, we are not amateurs. So while you got the
spaghettini cooking get started with the sauce. Time the sauce with the cooking
time of the spaghettini. Real good and healthy sauce—low in fat and easily
digestible—should take no longer to prepare than it takes the spaghettini to
cook. This is a solid rule to follow for a kick-ass lifestyle, one that gets you
actually doing more than just sitting on your prosciutto. Here we go. Saucepan on high heat, pour
in a quarter-cup of Virgin Olive, which is the secret to good digestion and
clean pipes. Once the saucepan and the olive are hot, throw in two cloves of
chopped garlic, (four minced anchovy filets— optional), two-tablespoon of
capers, about three-dozen pitted, and halved kalamata olives, and a handful of
chopped Italian parsley. Three nice-sized Roma tomatoes chopped and deseeded.
(You can use the canned, but make sure it’s the San Marzano variety.) Oh,
don’t forget the fresh basil. About a handful. Season all of this to taste. Here’s the trick: Take
some of the pasta water, that’s right, that boiling water that soaks all that
good Italian starch, and, about a cup’s worth, throw that into the sauce. This
move binds our ambrosiaceous sauce real nice. Another trick: Strain the pasta, and dump it into the sauce. Let the sauce and the al dente spaghetti simmer together for about a minute. Make sure you toss it all around. Don’t use wooden spoons; Grandma Guido—God rest her lovely soul—used to smack little Guido’s curly head with her wooden spoon, leaving a knot the size of a tomato. Okay, so he wasn’t
supposed to dip into Grandma’s sauce—but it was so good. Well, let’s just
say he hasn’t been the same since. Anyway, serve with Chianti—preferably a
2001 Castello di Abola or a tasty 2000 Poggioni Montipulciano.
(If you want Guido’s wine list, e-mail Mike. We’ll get one to you,
pronto.) Enjoy. And watch out for the
semis, Mike. We need you with us, brother, in one piece.
2-5-03
Chef Guido’s been on recipe recon. Now that he’s back, he figures it’s time for a simple, Rachel-Ray-inspired Guido Sauce: Marinara alla Marinara. As far as tomato-based sauces go, you can use this meatless Italian classic for just about anything: grilled Chilean Sea Bass (Patagonian tooth fish), sautéed pollo rolatini (Stuffed chicken breasts braised to perfection), etc. You get the idea. So let’s get started Go to your nearest Italian market and pick up a couple of 8oz cans of Italian tomatoes—San Marzano whole and peeled and packed in basil is what you’re looking for. While you’re there feasting your eyes on the columns of mortadella, prosciutto, Reggiano parmesan, don’t forget to slide the guy behind the counter a five-spot; tell him you’re on the sly with this Guido, and that you’re ready for the under-the-counter goods. For the record, we’re not going heroin-chef on you—you’ll know that rat by the mark of the squealer across his gin-blossomed cheek—we’re just keeping an eye out for you. Two cans of the aforementioned tomatoes, hand-crushed or pureed. (Me, I like my sauce chunky.) Four cloves of garlic. A bunch of Italian flat-leaf parsley. Two palmfuls of chopped fresh basil. A nice not-so-virgin olive oil, pick one that you feel comfortable with. Salt and pepper. Oregano is optional: that is, contrary to popular belief, Italians use garlic and oregano sparingly, unless you are what we call a Cardboard Italian. You can find these gems cruising South Beach wearing their Canuck-flag diapers and two-toned Gucci sunglasses, and if you do run into one give ‘em a swift kick in the ass, will you? Now you’re back in your kitchen and at home behind your stove. On that stove, you’ve got a sauté pan—any size will do—over a medium-high flame. Hold on a second— Okay, I’m back. Make sure—like I just did— to prep the ingredients. That means you gonna need to use a little common sense: for example, slice the garlic the way you like it, but, please, for the love of Pete, don’t use a razor blade, that’s movie bullshit. And another thing, Clemenza is a straight-up guy in our book, but he doesn’t know Jack about making sauces. For crying out loud, the guy spoons sugar and pours dago-red into his sauce. At least the guy gets the meatball part right, frying the meats first and then adding them to the sauce. Hey, what do you expect from a Sicilian? So back to the goods. So you got your garlic crushed or sliced, the fresh baysil, parsley chopped, and the tomatoes crushed or pureed. Once that’s all set up, get your ass in gear. Get the pan smoking hot, pour in as much olive oil as you like, and then throw in the garlic—get that nice and toasty. Hey, Mikey, don’t forget to tell her you love her. Continue: Once the garlic looks like toasted almond slivers, throw in the basil, oregano, and parsley. Let that fry up nice. You see, the idea is to create a base of flavors, a tier of mouthwatering ambrosia—Sorry. Now add the tomatoes. Let all of this simmer for a good forty minutes. Constantly stir with a wooden spoon so that the tomatoes don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. (The pros, in order to avoid the tomatoes sticking to the bottom of their pans, step on the emptied tomato cans can like elephants stomping and crushing Land Rovers and slide the flattened tins underneath the simmering Guido Sauce.) Once you got the one-size-fits-all sauce all done, serve over al dente linguine, spaghetti, perciatelli—or, like I said before, over your favorite grilled or sautéed meat or fish. Salud. Chef Guido.
1-17-03
Chef Guido has just returned from South Florida, where he caught himself a fifty-pound sailfish, a real lunker, on his birthday—a 38th birthday that parallels Jimmy Page’s birthday. Yeah, dude, Zeppelin rules. Too bad they’re English. Off the record, Guido is, as you should have already guessed, an ethnic mutt: half Abruzzese—that’s an I-talian hillbilly in case you needed to know—and a don’t-cry-for-me Argentine on his father’s side. So, if you know your insignificant soccer/war history, there’s no love lost between the Argies/Wops and Limeys. Anyway, back to fishing, Guido and his buddy Lenny used live bait—blue runner and goggle eye— to catch the sail, which they ran (the bait that is) down on the deep line, at about seventy feet. They were drift fishing the outfall on Lenny’s new/used skiff aptly named Da Tuna Tower, two nautical miles south of the Pompano Beach pier, when they hooked the sail and fought it to starboard side. They did the right thing by tagging and releasing the magnificent fish. Confession: They almost sold the lunker to some Florida Crackers for a few measly bucks. These two Crackers said they was Oswald and Bundy and that they was from Bronson; that’s up Gainesville way. These two genius yahoos aimed to smoke the fish and make dip out of it, but Guido and Lenny opted for God’s smile instead. You go, Guido! By the way, are there any broads out there who wanna go fishing? Let this Guido know. He’s jonesing for a fine gal who can cast a plug into the wind and make homemade gnocchi and dance the marimba on busted stilettos. Oh, yeah, the other reason Guido was down Florida way, as Guidian destiny would have it, was to straighten a few wiseasses out at Marcello’s Ristorante; as you already know that’s Guido’s old man’s joint. Yeah, some dufus golfers who’ere soused to the nines and who didn’t know when to keep their traps shut were giving Guido’s old man a hard time. And that shit doesn’t fly with our Guido. To make a long story short, Guido took care of it; and he did not forget the cannolis. So give Guido a couple of days to get his bearings back. He is bouncing a few recipes in his head: Roasted Grouper with Mike’s famous Kalamata Olive and Tomato and fresh basil salad, or Braised Ossobucco with a Marsala wine sauce smothered in toasted almond slivers, and served over Italian grits. By the way, Guido’s sous-chef, Magnuson, is not a bad pantry/ prep guy, too. If anyone out there is looking for a sous-chef who cooks with a kaleidoscope-like digital timer and meat thermometer the size of an obsidian turd, Mike Magnuson is your man. If and when he gets his mind back, that’s off the record of course.
1-08-03
Guido’s Chicken Scarp Hey, how you doing. That’s nice, now to the goods.
What we have here is a classic Abruzzesi chicken recipe that’s going to take some planning and some good dago-red—yes, a nice bottle of Chianti or two will do. My grandpa Nuncio, an old-school Italian shoemaker, used to use carp for this dish, before he gave up the shoes and became a chicken farmer. So now, we use chicken. Let’s get started. Here’s whatcha gonna need to get this sucker going:
(Serves three)
A whole roaster chicken An Idaho potato (optional) Four whole garlic cloves (not optional) A jar of hot or mild cherry peppers or pepperoncini, set aside some of the vinegary juice A half-cup of kalamata olives, buy them with the pit and then remove Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed A dozen or so mushrooms (porcini, morels, or button mushrooms) Two glasses of white wine (if you wouldn't drink it, you shouldn't use it) Three hot or mild Italian sausages, large Fresh rosemary, four sprigs Four cups of chicken stock A couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce Fresh chopped parsley, about a palm full, when chopped A fresh squeezed lemon Step 1: The Chicken First things first, get the oven started, 375 degrees. Take the whole chicken and wash thoroughly, and pat dry. (A note: Ma, peel the chicken skin off and discard). Using a meat cleaver or a heavy chef’'s knife, quarter the chicken. Rub the quartered chicken pieces with olive oil and de-sprigged rosemary. Don’t forget to add salt and pepper. (A note about the chicken: if you oil, season, and place the chicken in a Ziploc bag the night before, it will even taste better). Now cut the Italian sausage into marshmallow-sized pieces. Put it all together (seasoned chicken, sausage) in a roasting pan and slide it into the hot oven. Roast until brown and crispy, but remember that you will finish the chicken and sausage off under the broiler later. In a separate baking pan—after you’ve peeled and quartered the potato into bite-sized pieces and seasoned and oiled and placed them on the pan—slide that too into the oven. Don’t worry if the taters brown sooner than the chicken. It’s not the end of world. Step 2: The Sauce Now here’s the tricky part. In a braising pan that you will heat on top of the stove over a medium-high flame, add enough olive oil to cover its surface, about a quarter inch’s worth. Throw the fresh chopped parsley and whole garlic cloves in and brown. When the garlic is nice and toasty—but not burnt—throw in the mushrooms, which you will have already sliced. Let that brown, too. Okay, when all of that starts smelling like roasting chestnuts deglaze with the white wine, let that reduce to half, then add the chicken stock, deseeded vinegar peppers and, here is the secret, a shot glass full of the Cherry pepper or pepperoncini juice. Oh, don’t forget the Worcestershire sauce—a couple of healthy dashes—the fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and pitted kalamata olives. Simmer this at a lower burn while the chicken and sausage pieces and potatoes roast to perfection in the oven. There should be enough liquid in the braising pan to cover the roasted chicken pieces. Step 3: The Finishing Touch When the chicken, sausage, and potatoes are ready, yank the sucker out of the oven and throw it all into the braising pan. Let that simmer for a good twenty minutes. Make sure, as I have already said, there’s just enough braising liquid to cover the chicken and company. Meanwhile, set your oven to broil. Pull the chicken out of the now to-die-for sauce and put it back onto the baking dish, sausage morsels too, but not the potatoes. Shove that sucker under the broiler. Keep an eye on her because she’ll get away from you real quick. Very important, reduce the sauce to half. Take the chicken and sausage out from under the broiler, set in a nice dish, pour your sauce over it, and enjoy. Here’s to the shoemakers of the world, salud. Chef Guido!
|
|
|