Simple antipasti

In Italy, antipasti are meant to whet your appetite. (Granted, when I ate out in Italy, my appetite needed little whetting -- what with all the whiffs of freshly-made pasta and roasted tomato sauce drifting from the kitchen to my table.) Nonetheless, in Italy, antipasti are simply appetizers, mere preludes to the main dish. In my house, they're just part of the meal. After all, roasted vegetables with a splash of quality balsamic vinegar and just the right amount of good olive oil make a perfect accompaniment to whatever's being served. In my humble opinion, they need not precede the main course -- in fact, they do just fine right alongside it.


By far the best thing about antipasti is their simplicity. Season, drizzle, and roast, that's all there is to it! These simple steps work wonders for eggplant, zucchini, onions, tomatoes, even sweet potatoes. The trick is to slice thinly, and flip once half-way through the roasting process so that both sides crisp up. If you're sparing with the oil, as I am, best use a pastry brush, which will spread the oil over the entire surface without soaking them all too much. And while cooking spray is fine for the pan, I strongly recommend sticking to real olive oil for the vegetables themselves; olive oil is a strong player in the saturated, concentrated flavor that antipasti develop.

I can safely say that this "recipe" has no recipe, but a method, instead: slice whatever vegetables you use about 1/4-1/8 inch thick, as uniformly as possible. Line a roasting pan with a single layer of vegetables. Brush each side with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper, and add herbs if you like (I favor sage, pictured below, for eggplant, and rosemary with sweet potatoes, onion, and a new addition -- turnips).


Bake at around 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes until the tops are browned; flip, and bake another 10-15 minutes. Check regularly to avoid burning (which I unfortunately have a tendency to do!). Once the vegetables are out of the oven, transfer to a platter, drizzle with good balsamic vinegar, add salt and pepper to taste, and bring to room temperature before serving.


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Moroccan Couscous

I'll admit that I'm not such a couscous fan. When I was 15, my summer camp took us on a five-day hiking trip through the Berkshire mountains. We carried everything with us on our backs: water, tents and poles, food for five days, clothing, etc. Breakfast was PB&J or granola bars, since they were light; dinner, five days in a row, was couscous; and lunch every day was ... you guessed it: leftover couscous. I guess 10 nearly-consecutive meals of just couscous did the trick. These days, I tend to stick with rice.

Sometimes, though, I make tagine. Tagine is a moroccan stew in which, traditionally, the meat and/or vegetables are slow-cooked in a large shallow clay bowl with a tall conical top. Tagine is traditionally served atop couscous, so in a pinch, I do have a go-to couscous recipe, which I'll share here.

Couscous is very simple to make: if you buy one of those Near East boxes, it's as simple as bring the requisite amount of water to a boil, adding the couscous, covering the pot, turning off the heat, and fluffling it with a fork five minutes later. I change things around, since the last thing I want is some boring couscous for dinner. Try this with a tagine recipe, or even as an accompaniment to tonight's veggies.

Moroccan Couscous (corrections appended)

serves 6-8.

1 box couscous

1 cup dried apricots, chopped

1 cup dried raisins

1/2 cup orange juice, substituted for 1/2 cup of the water called for in the recipe.

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1/2 tsp. cloves

1/8 tsp. star anise (optional)

1/4 tsp. powdered ginger (optional)

1/2 tsp. turmeric

a dash of olive oil

(If you don't have any of these ingredients, it's fine to go without. For example, the batch pictured above was made without anise, turmeric or cloves.)

For the fruit:

Bring 1/2 cup water to a boil. When it reaches a boil, pour it over the dried apricots and raisins in a small bowl. Allow this to sit for at least 15 minutes; this will reconstitute your fruit, making them plump and juicy. When 15 minutes have passed, do not spill out the water! Use it as part of the cooking liquid for the couscous.

For the couscous:

Bring two cups of liquid to a boil. I usually use 1/2 cup orange juice, and occasionally 1/2 cup white wine, and the rest either water or broth. Add all the other spices and ingredients to the pot as the liquid heats. When the liquid is boiling, add 2 cups of couscous. stir quickly, cover the pot, and turn off the heat. Let the couscous steam for 5 minutes, then uncover and fluff with a fork.

Add the dried apricots and raisins, and toss. Serve with almost anything.

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Slow-roasted onions, fennel and tomatoes

If you're an onion hater, this dish will convert you. Slow-roasting onions releases their natural sugars slowly without burning them, so that by the end they're smooth, slippery and taste like caramel.

The tomatoes undergo a similar transformation: they become soft and sweet, and their flavors become incredibly concentrated.

And the fennel...well, you get the drift: soft, sweet and delicious.


The technique is simple (I feel like I've said that before...): roast thick slices of the veggies in a medium-hot oven for an hour or so. Instructions below are in slightly more detail, promise.

Slow-roasted onions, fennel and tomatoes
serves 4-6.
3 nice, large, red tomatoes, cut into four slices each
2 white (not yellow) onions, cut into four-five slices each
1 bulb fennel, fronds removed, cut into five-six slices each
good olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Places the slices randomly on two cooking sheets. feel free to smoosh and squeeze them so that they all fit. It'll only make things taste better. Plug the spout of your olive oil bottle with your finger and drizzle the oil over the vegetables. use your fingers to spread the oil so that it coats the exposed surface of the vegetables. Season liberally with salt and pepper.

Cook on 300 degrees for about an hour, flipping onions and fennel once at the halfway point. Leave the tomatoes alone as much as possible. You'll know it's done when onions are caramel-colored and soft and your kitchen smells ridiculously good.

To serve: layer vegetables on a white tray: onion or fennel on the bottom, then tomato, then fennel or onion.

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quick greek stew

If you made the slow-roasted dish and have some leftovers, here's a great way to take care of 'em:

Quick Greek Stew

slow-roasted onion, fennel and tomato leftovers
fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup feta cheese
a few kalamata or other greek olives
fresh basil

Roughly chop onion/fennel/tomato leftovers into large pieces. Toss in a shallow sauté pan with some of their juices, about 3 minutes. Add a bit of crumbled feta cheese, a few greek olives, and a crank of the pepper mill. Cook about 2 minutes longer. Garnish with fresh basil.

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Easy-as-pie Roasted Potatoes

Sometimes, simple is best. I'm often inclined to throw every fancy ingredient in the pantry into whatever dish I'm making, in the hopes that a dash of truffle oil and some fancy mirin and a little chili mango and....ugh, what an awful combination!

Point is, I've learned that good olive oil, salt and pepper are often all you need to make something great. These potatoes are a perfect example; the tricks here aren't in the pantry -- they're in the oven and on your watch. Think temperature and time; whenever potatoes come out too mushy or too dry or too something else, it's because I wasn't precise in my choices of cooking time and temperature. This recipe is sure to produce the kind of consistent results that will please you and your guests.

Easy-as-pie Roasted Potatoes
serves 4.
10 small purple, red or fingerling potatoes (I like to use a mix)
salt
pepper
good olive oil
chili powder, optional

Preheat the oven to 315 degrees.
(Can you guess the steps?)
Cut potatoes into triangular shapes.
Sprinkle liberally with salt, pepper, and chili powder, if you like.
Put your thumb over the spout in the olive oil so that it drips slowly; drizzle with restraint.
(Alternatively, toss all ingredients in a plastic bag -- I don't like this method because you lose a lot of the olive oil and spices that way.)
Put the potatoes in a shallow pan in a single layer.
Bake anywhere from 1-2 hours, until the potatoes are crunchy but still moist, and the skin is crispy.



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