Chicken, Pesto, Pasta, Don’t Ya Know

Chicken, Pesto, Pasta, Don’t Ya Know

Sometimes the Italian hidden in all of us springs forth.  Last night, the floating lyrics to Arrivederci Roma and accompanying accordion set me off. 

Ah, the splendor of it!  Dreams of hillside olive groves, the unrepressed aroma of espresso, and condensed trickles of water on bottles of white wine at outdoor cafés.  In narrow streets, smells of pizza and fish markets waiving past.  The smooth, but staccato bursts of lyrical language, carried along by waving hands, and unsubtle remarks about gorgeous women flowing past. White and red table cloths, cloth napkins, polite and competent waiters with movie star looks, the purr of Vespas, and most of all, dishes whose deliciousness defies description.

So, can’t ya git some good spaghetti right here in the ole U.S. of A.?  Oh, my word, you charming, but pitifully mistaken man.  Maybe there are some good Italian restaurants here, but I have yet to find one to compare with the real thing.

And, so, regretfully, I must live on memories and pursue my own meager culinary talents.

But, there are some associated pleasantries I can employ.  Things to set the tone. Italian white wine is a good first step.  Flowery Italian music is next. A woman gently stroking my hair as she sips her wine and whispers “Baciami molto…”  This of course is the dream sequence in my already complicated dream. But, after all, it IS MY dream.

How about the food, my three, constantly hungry, faithful readers ask?  They sound as impatient as snapping alligators. 

First, I must mention, I read about a chicken salad that used most of the ingredients in my pasta dish.  But, not being able to leave well enough alone, I dropped the mayo and converted the recipe to a pasta dish.

So, here we go, on our way to delicious egg noodles (because that’s what was in my pantry), with bits of roasted chicken, home made pesto, and chopped, oil marinated, sun dried tomatoes, half an onion, half a lemon.  That’s it?  Yep. Toss some grated Italian cheese on top, if you prefer.

The Ingredients:

3 cups of roasted chicken, boned, skin removed, and shredded

1 cup of pesto (recipe below, or use a jar from the supermarket)

1 cup of oil marinated, sun dried tomatoes, well chopped. (Careful not to use too much of the oil!)

½ sweet onion, diced

1 package of egg noodles, or the pasta of your choice

juice of half a lemon

Putin’ It Together

Boil the noodles according to package directions.  Meanwhile, add the diced onion and a little olive oil to a deep frying pan.  When the onions are soft, toss in the sun dried tomatoes, pesto, and roasted chicken.  Stir well and heat through.  Squeeze half a fresh lemon over the mixture.

Drain the noodles, but save a little bit of the noodle water.  Toss the chicken mixture over the noodles and stir well.  Add a bit of noodle water to make the mixture combine.

Serve with a wedge of fresh lemon.  Hello Italy!  Goodbye hunger!

This is a meal meant to be shared around a big, noisy table, with plenty of wine!  Saluti!

Here’s the Pesto Recipe I Promised:

In a food processor, combine 2 packed cups of fresh basil leaves, ½ cup each of grated cheese, pine nuts, and olive oil.  – No fresh basil?  Use spinach.  No pine nuts?  Use any nuts you have handy.  I’ve used walnuts and roasted pumpkin seeds and both were delicious.  Taste and add a bit of salt if you choose.

Pesto Stuffed Pork Chops

Pesto Stuffed Pork Chops

Time for truth or consequences.   Do you like pork chops?  How about pesto?  How about you don’t care one way or another?

It’s my pleasure, in the spirit of the Christmas season, to bless all three groups equally.  For the third group, I implore you to refrain from drinking all the wine, beer, and brandy while the others of us are cooking a remarkable dish that will please every one of your guests and even your very iffy family.

As in all my dishes, as both my faithful readers know, this one is simple.  I don’t do difficult dishes.

But, before we put knife to the chopping board and heat to the oven, let’s take a look at pesto’s origins.  This won’t take long:  Pesto started in Genoa around the 16^th Century.  Simple and simply elegant.  Fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan cheese, and olive oil.  But, really, any combination of greens, garlic, nuts , cheese and olive oil will do.  And, as in everything else we cook, tinker with the ingredients to get the taste that fits your palate. Start with only one clove of garlic if you must.

How about the pork chops?  Need to mention those.  I get my butcher to cut my chops about an inch to an inch and a half thick.  This time they were about an inch and a quarter.  I also use only pork that comes from animals whose bodies were not enhanced with growth hormones, unnecessary antibiotics, and other medicines and chemicals.

Let’s Get to It!

Prep time:  About 20 minutes

Cooking time:  50 minutes

First, heat the oven to 375ºF (190ºC)

Have 4 big (bone in) pork chops at room temperature.

Have a large baking dish handy. You’ll put all 4 chops in it.

Now make this version of pesto:

½ Cup fresh basil, chopped fine before measuring

1 Cup, spinach chopped fine before measuring (pack it down!) You may also use frozen spinach.

½ Cup Parmesan cheese

2 Cloves fresh garlic, chopped

¼ Teaspoon salt or to taste

1/3 Cup shelled pistachios

1/8 to ¼ Cup olive oil (Note:  You want this to be a thick paste, so be judicious and start small with the olive oil.)

Put all of the ingredients in a food processor to make a smooth paste.  Give it a taste and add more of anything you want.

Prepare the 4 Pork Chops

Make a pocket in each chop. Rub them with olive oil and dust with salt and pepper, then stuff pesto in the pockets, as much as you can.

Put the stuffed chops in the baking dish, cover and slide it in the pre-heated oven for 25 minutes.  Take the dish out, uncover and slide it back in the oven for another 25 minutes.

Caution:  If you’ve cheaped out and are using thin pork chops, you’re  on your own to decrease the cooking time and to explain to your hungry guests why you didn’t make more of the most delicious pork chops they’ve ever tasted.

I served the chops over a small bed of buttered pasta, accompanied by a side salad and a bottle of a nice Pinot Grigio.

Famous names from Genoa, Italy:  Christopher Columbus, the composer Paganini, John Cabot (English Italian) discovered Newfoundland.

Lunch With Daniella: Cinque Terre, Part II

Our perfect hostess, Daniella

It’s mid morning. We lounge idly in canvas backed lawn chairs, on the sun-blessed terrace of Daniella’s eclectic home and wait for her to return with a chilled bottle of Prosecco.  Below us, in the near distance sits the placidly picturesque blue Mediterranean and old town Monterosso, with its colorful buildings clustered on the hillside below us.  It’s our fourth day in the World Heritage Site of Cinque Terre (Chink-co-terra).

We’ve wandered the cobblestones, admired the work of artisans, stared up at laundry hanging on the balconies of ancient buildings, slain the fatted calf a dozen times over, and soaked in the culture of the small fishing villages turned tourist Meccas.   This morning we wandered the local market, admiring fresh vegetables and fresh catch, while throngs of locals bartered and filled their shopping bags. Have we had enough?  Seen it all?  Not hardly, no way.

We’ve already met so many people.  Franco the short, graying taxi driver who lost his cab, Elania, the beautiful girl who works an outdoor café on the waterfront, another taxi driver named Franco, several watercolor artists, and Swiss, German, and yes---Italian--- tourists.

We’re wonderfully accommodated in one of Daniella’s hillside villas and now we’ve walked up a hundred stone steps to get to her home for an afternoon’s Italian cooking lesson.  Let’s be more specific and call it a Ligurian cooking lesson, for this is the Italian Riviera, spread along a rugged coastline, with its own tastes and styles of cooking.  Much of it features local olives, lemons, and seafood straight off any of the many small fishing vessels that line the harbor and rest on the sand.  Daniella even has a lemon tree on the terrace.

The promised Prosecco arrives and we are ever grateful.  We sip gently and pop fat green olives in our mouths, between bites of deliciously crunchy bread.  

Wonderful, giant capers!

Yes, I already feel as if I could live here, so long as the money holds out and my liver doesn’t desert me.  If wine is as good for you as they say it is, my arterial plaque is in for the fight of its life.  No, Prosecco is not from around here, but Prosecco has a vast variety of local cousins that have already helped us down quantities of fresh seafood. Now I’m wondering what new wonders of the Ligurian kitchen Daniella can show us?

First off is the kitchen itself.  It’s built into a corner of her terrace and is so quaintly lovely it should have come out of a romantic movie, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant.  In addition to an array of cooking implements hanging serenely above the tiles on the wall, there’s a four-burner gas stove, and a stone sink I plan to steal.  Except for three things:  it’s too heavy, more wine may slow me down, and Daniella’s husband may be too ferocious.  I don’t know for sure, but I can’t take the chance.

The expansive terrace is itself an architectural dream, with tiled floor, green plants, colorful flowers, that fruit bearing lemon tree, and glorious views in every direction.  Daniella turns out not only to be an exceptional cook, but a talented decorator.

The basil must be thoroughly dry.  Daniella shows us how.

See, I meant to simply tell you about a cooking lesson, but got carried away.  Cinque Terre is like that.  A bombardment of sun, style, friendly people, and an entirely different way of life.

So, back to cooking.  But, first I must mention the second wine Daniella served, a local white, and it is delightfully fruity and dry.  But, it’s not the best, says Daniella modestly.  Wait until you taste our best local wine.  If the wine we’re sipping is not the best, my knees may weaken and I may try out my Italian tenor’s voice.

So, as I said, back to cooking.  We’re going to make pesto, casserole chicken, lasagna, and baked fresh fish.  Those are the common American names.  I’ll give you the more charming and descriptive Italian names later.  You can be sure, all the dishes will include fresh – from the garden and the sea – ingredients.

First we hand make the basil pesto in an old stone mortar.  And with the first stone-on-stone scraping of the pestle against the mortar, Daniella begins to delight us with tales of food and family, heritage, and the wonders of an Italian-American wife living with a locally born Italian husband, in the most Italian place in the world.  Along the way, this requires her listeners to acquire a taste for several more bottles of local wine.  Her fascinating story, enthralls us with all the elements of history, romance, and family struggles that make up a great novel.

Ingredients for Lasagna 

The creamiest, more delicious Parmesan!  An essential in all the dishes we prepared.

But, once again I digress.  With the pesto, the remainder of which is made in a food processor, we have the first ingredient in what will become the most delicious lasagna I’ve ever tasted.  The other ingredients include flat pasta, of course, plus a silky béchamel sauce, and a generous handful of pine nuts. 

Lunch is a hands-on culinary experience!

Making the béchamel

The oven is inside and in it goes, while we start work on a wonderful chicken casserole, called Pollo Piero.

Other ingredients for Pollo Piero

The main ingredient for Pollo Piero is skinless, bone-in, chicken thighs, followed by a deluge of bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and seasonings.  

Note:  Italian cooks do not normally use onions and garlic in the same dish, although for the accompanying asparagus dish a full head of unpeeled garlic will have the bottom sliced off and accompany the vegetable platter as it’s slipped in the oven.

Sea bass, right off the boat, is baked Liturigan style, meaning rosemary, salt and lemon in the fish cavity, with more of the same and olive oil over the top.  Yes, it’s a whole fish, with the sides slashed to permit the oil and lemon to penetrate the flesh.

For dessert, we have freshly made lemon cake, with cream and berries, along with short glasses of Daniella’s homemade Limonchello.  To make Limonchello, there are only four ingredients: lemons, vodka, water, and sugar.  Lots of recipes online.

Daniella’s lunch only lasts about 4-5 hours.  I stop counting after the second bottle of wine.  Delicious doesn’t really explain it.  A lunch on her terrace is an all-encompassing experience of incomparable tastes, scintillating conversations, carefree humorous banter, all delivered under blue skies, and in the glow of scenery that will forever live in memory.  A complete adventure in Italian living. Now if I can only figure out how to separate Daniella from her stone sink…

Perfection!