Italian-Asian Fusion

Seriously? Italian and Asian? Well, sort of. If you count the egg roll wrappers sold in the produce section of your supermarket as an Asian ingredient, then yes.

But technically, it's pasta. Shall we recount the Marco Polo legend about bringing pasta from China to Italy? Nah - this is a cooking blog.

Anyway, I did this recipe once before on TV and called it "Italian Chicken Bundles." With all of the changes in television technology, I needed a high definition version of the dish and in the process renamed the bundles "purses."

Perhaps I should have led with this: This recipe is one of my all-time favorites. When I was in the personal chef business, my clients loved this dish. It's designed to be an appetizer or first course, but most of the people who've tried my recipe report back that they made a dinner out of them.

Here's a picture of what it looks like. I think you'll see that, based on appearances alone, it's a beautiful dish. Tasting the filling will confirm it.

Your muffin tin is the perfect vessel to make the "purses." While the egg roll wrappers may seem to be sturdy pieces of pasta, they actually tear quite easily, so it's important to be gentle while pushing the wrapper into the muffin cup. Try to center it so that when you go to close it, the ends of the wrapper come together uniformly. It will make for a good looking bundle or purse after it finishes baking.

The ingredients in the filling are fairly mild, especially with the ricotta cheese and chicken. So I jazzed up the dish by placing the purse in a pool of spicy marinara. If spicy isn't your thing, then a regular tomato sauce or pasta sauce will do.

Here's the video followed by the recipe:

1 1/2 cups chicken breasts, cooked and cubed (bite sized)
3 large green onions, sliced thin
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium to large garlic clove, minced
2/3 cup gated Parmesan cheese
2 spinach bunches, washed, stemmed, steamed and minced
8 ounces Ricotta cheese
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons butter
12 egg roll wrappers

Marinara sauce for serving

 

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook chicken and green onions in the oil over medium-high heat until chicken is lightly browned and onions are soft. Add garlic and cook one minute longer.Let cool slightly then combine 1/2 of the Parmesan with the spinach, ricotta, oregano and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper.
 
In a 12-cup muffin tin, brush melted butter into 10 of the 12 muffin cups, reserving half of the melted butter for later. Carefully press one egg roll wrapper into a muffin cup and fill with the chicken mixture. Close egg roll wrapper over filling by gathering the ends and gently twisting. Brush with some of the remaining melted butter.
 
Continue until all 10 muffin tins are filled.
 
Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.
 

Serve in a pool of marinara sauce and garnish with additional Parmesan cheese and Italian parsley sprigs.

Apple Lasagna - Am I Kidding?

No. It's for real. A lasagna for dessert.

Pasta sheets are made from dough, aren't they? Of course they are. Pie crust is made from dough. Isn't it? Yep.

So what's all the fuss?

There are some purists out there who took me to task for messing with the Italian classic. But this isn't the first time I've messed around with classic lasagna. A number of years ago when I first started doing the weekly Kitchen Guy program, I made a crab meat lasagna -- probably one of the most expensive dishes I've ever made on the program. Do you know how much crab meat you have to use to fill a 9x13 baking dish?

Anyway, I decided to give this a whirl and treat the apple lasagna as if it were a hybrid between a pie and a crumble, hence the topping made from quick-cooking oats, butter and brown sugar. I could have added nuts and raisins -- hey -- that's a great idea! Next time I make it, I'm going to add nuts and raisins.

Seriously, if you want to surprise the family or dinner guests with an unusual dessert, this will do it. It has all of the elements of a lasagna, with the apple pie filling (I used the canned stuff found in the baking aisle of the supermarket, but you can certainly make your own), as a substitute for the meat and sauce; the lasagna sheets, of course, and the cheese filling.

In my traditional lasagna, I use a combination of cheeses, but I chose to use only ricotta. I suppose I could have used mascarpone, as it is already sweetened. But ricotta seemed the logical choice to keep up the lasagna-like appearance of the dessert.

So while you'll never find this dessert in any self-respecting Italian restaurant, it's perfectly acceptable to serve it in our homes. don't you agree? After all, we want to eat stuff that tastes good. And this dessert really tastes good. Here's the video, followed by the recipe.

8 lasagna noodles (uncooked)

2 20-oz. cans apple pie filling

1 32-oz. container Ricotta cheese

2 large eggs, beaten

1 tsp almond extract

1/4 cup sugar

6 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 Tbsp unsalted butter

6 Tbsp brown sugar

1/4 cup quick-cooking oats

freshly grated nutmeg

Grease a 9x13 baking dish and spread some of the apple pie filling on the bottom. Layer four lasagna noodles over the apple pie filling.

Mx together the Ricotta with the eggs, the almond extract and (white) sugar. When well-combined, spread evenly over the lasagna layer. Top with four more sheets of lasagna noodles and spread the remaining apple pie filling on top.

In another bowl, crumble together the flour, cinnamon, butter, brown sugar, oats and nutmeg. Sprinkle over the top layer of apple pie filling.

Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 45 minutes. Let stand for 15 minutes before slicing.

Top with sweetened sour cream or vanilla ice cream.

Wax-covered Chianti Bottles

...and red-checkered tablecloths.

Do those two things bring anything to mind?

Those are the images of Italian restaurants starting from the 1950s and going at least until the late 70s. How times and menus have changed in America's ristorante Italiani.

That being said, I went back in time with this week's dish and made the good old standard, "Eggplant Parmesan."

This dish requires four separate stages or processes, which is a bit unusual for any of my recipes, for as you know, I favor simplicity in pursuit of accessibility.

Nevertheless, it's important to liberally salt the eggplant slices in order to leech out the bitter liquid, as it is equally important to rinse off the salt and dry the slices. Then the slices must be dredged and fried. You have to make a sauce (well, you could actually use something from a jar, but why would you?); and then you have to bake a casserole.

But if you follow the steps, you'll end up with a succulent dish that gets even better as a leftover. Here's the video, followed by the recipe:

2 large eggplants

kosher salt

1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 1/2 cups olive oil for sauce and frying

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs

6 large eggs, beaten

1 1/2 lbs. Mozzarella cheese sliced into 1/4-inch rounds

1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup basil leaves, packed tightly

Cut eggplants lengthwise into 1/4-inch thick slices. Arrange one layer in the bottom of a large colander and sprinkle evenly and generously with salt. Repeat with remaining eggplant slices. Let drain for 2 hours.

While eggplant is draining, prepare the tomato sauce by combining the tomatoes, garlic and 1/3 cup of olive oil in a food processor. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

When the eggplant has drained, press down on it to remove any excess liquid, then rinse with cold water and pat dry. Lay the slices out to dry further on paper towels.

Set up a three station dredge with flour in the first, beaten eggs in the second and breadcrumbs in the third.

Heat the rest of the oil in a deep skillet and fry the dredged eggplant slices until golden brown on each side. Drain again on paper towels.

Preheat the oven to 350. In the bottom of a glass casserole dish spread a cup of the tomato sauce. Top with one third of the eggplant slices. Top the eggplant with half the Mozzarella slices. Top with a third of the Parmesan cheese and half of the basil.

Repeat wit another layer of eggplant, cheeses and basil. Top with remaining tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese.

Bake for about 40 to 45 minutes until cheese is bubbly and just beginning to brown.

Italian Dessert/French Sauce - What's the diff?

When I teach dessert sauces in the Kitchen Guy Cooking School, one of the first ones that I teach is Sabayon, a very simple sauce made with egg yolks, sugar and Madeira. It comes together fairly quickly but requires a good amount of elbow grease, as you have to whisk the ingredients vigorously in order to at least double, if not triple, the volume.

We then drizzle it over fresh berries and every student to a person is amazed at what this one simple sauce can do.

The Italian version differs in that Marsala is used instead of Madeira. And to make semifreddo, (a name, by the way, that mystifies me since it means "half frozen") we add cream whipped to stiff peaks, folded into the egg mixture which is now called, "Zabaglione."

We upped the flavor profile, as well as the Italian influence, by adding crushed Amaretto cookies to the bottom of the ramekins and as a top sprinkling, so that when you unmold the dessert, you've got the crushed cookies on the way in and the way out.

While the extra steps to make semifreddo do take time, I promise you this dessert is well worth the effort. It's pretty good before you freeze it, too, but I highly recommend going through all of the motions. Watch the video and you'll see how easy it is to make. The recipe is below the video window.

Zabaglione Semifreddo

4 large egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup Marsala wine

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup crushed Amaretto cookies, plus whole cookies for garnish

Fill a large saucepan with about 2 inches of water; bring to a boil over medium high heat. As soon as the water boils, reduce the heat to low or medium low to maintain gentle bubbles at the edges.

Whisk together egg yolks and sugar in a medium heatproof bowl. Set the bowl over the saucepan of simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. use an electric hand-held mixer or a whisk to beat the mixture vigorously for 30 seconds to a minute. Then drizzle in the Marsala wine as you continue to beat. After the Marsala has been incorporated, beat for 10 to 15 minutes until the mixture has at least doubled in volume and transformed into a dense foamy cream.

Remove the bowl from thereat and beat for another minute or two until the mixture has cooled slightly.

Place the heavy cream in the bowl of stand mixer and beat on high until firm peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the cooled zabaglione mixture.

Lightly butter or spray six 8-ounce ramekins or custard cups. Sprinkle a tablespoon of the crushed cookies into the bottom of each. Divide the zabaglione among the ramekins and sprinkle the tops with additional cookie crumbs. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 6 hours until completely solid.

To serve, remove from the freezer and let stand for several minutes. Dip the  ramekins in hot water and run a paring knife around the edges. Unmold onto dessert plates by inverting the ramekin on the plate, holding the plate and ramekin firmly and give a firm shake until you hear the semifreddo release onto the plate.

Garnish with whole Amaretto cookies.

The Starbucking of New York

The city I've called home twice in my career has changed -- and not for the better, in my opinion. I just returned from a business/pleasure trip to New York and I didn't care much for what I saw.

Midtown Manhattan has been overtaken -- conquered might be a better word -- by Starbucks. There's one on every block. Sometimes two. And New Yorkers are famously so blase about most everything, I think that maybe they haven't even noticed.

The last time I lived in New York (paying more in rent for my one-bedroom apartment than my wife and I paid for the mortgage on our three-bedroom home), there was a sense of community in each neighborhood in Manhattan. Yes, despite the massive skyscrapers and never-ending traffic, the luxury retailers and department stores, Manhattan is actually a conglomeration of neighborhoods. And each has its own character.

Even Midtown used to have locally-owned coffee shops, diners, groceries and the like. They're still there, but not in the numbers they used to be. Companies like Starbucks have squeezed out most of the independent coffee shops and diners, not unlike Wal-Mart decimating downtown retail everywhere it builds one of its massive boxes.

I was actually on a mission to bring back a piece of New York that I truly miss: full sour kosher dill pickles. These are not available anywhere else in the world except in New York delis. And the delis that I used to patronize for lunch are long gone. Even the 800-pound gorillas -- the Carnegie Deli and the Stage Delicatessen -- are out of business. A piece of New York that's gone forever.

Now that doesn't mean that New York doesn't have good places to eat. It's still the center of the American culinary universe. Happily, I did eat some excellent meals and not once did I ever have to tell a bartender that a martini without vermouth is not a martini.

Here are a few of the dishes we had at Cellini, a well-known and long-established Italian restaurant in midtown Manhattan: From top to bottom: Caprese salad with roasted red peppers, capers, yellow tomato slice, fresh mozzarella, basil and balsamic syrup; Tuna carpaccio; Seafood Rissotto; and Rack of Veal.

Coincidentally, this week's Kitchen Guy episode is also an Italian dish: Flank Steak Tagliata. Here's the video and the recipe:

2 lbs. flank steak
Coarse salt and black peppercorns
Several sprigs of rosemary
6 garlic cloves, sliced thin
Extra virgin olive oil
Arugula or Radicchio
Parmesan or Pecorino Roman wedge
Lemon wedges for garnish

Lay flank steak on a baking sheet and season well on both sides with coarse salt and ground black peppercorns. Strip the rosemary sprigs and press leaves and garlic slices into the meat. Then coat the flank steak with a thin film of olive oil and "massage" the meat. Leave the meat at room temperature for about an hour.

While the meat is marinating, heat the oven to 450 and place a cast iron pan or grill pan on the bottom rack and let it heat up with the oven.

Carefully remove the pan from the oven and place the flank steak in the pan and return it to the oven to cook for about 5 minutes. Then flip the meat (make sure the bottom is well-seared) and cook for an additional 4 minutes for medium rare, longer for medium.

Remove the pan and place the steak on a cutting board to rest for about 10 minutes.

Cut the meat against the grain, on the diagonal. Arrange on a platter on top of arugula or radicchio and garnish with lemon wedges. Shave Parmesan or Pecorino from the wedge with a vegetable peeler.