des pates / the paste, patty piece in pasta : part 2 – semolina dough

As promised here is the part two on Italian noodle dough made using semolina flour. Semolina flour is made of milled durum wheat, a hard variety high in gluten. While not exclusive to Italian cuisine, a large amount of durum wheat is grown in the Alta Murgia at the Western edge of Puglia near Basilicata, Sicily and Basilicata are the next largest growers of the crop. It’s grown in some regions to the North too but the relative abundance of the wheat makes it the most commonly used flour in Southern cuisine. It’s familiar to Americans for two reasons, as Cub mentioned last week it is also the flour most often used for dried pasta as the lack of egg makes it easier to preserve. The second is the influence of Southern Italian immigrants on the way Americans think about Italian food.

It’s also my favorite to work with and I wrote a list of reasons why this is the case:

1. The flour is very coarse, but when mixed with only the right proportion of warm water and kneaded for an extended period of time it turns into a smooth, elastic paste. It feels like the dough is more communicative, the language of semolina dough is a bit easier for me to grasp than egg dough or even cookie dough for that matter. It tells you what it’s up to and what it needs.
2. It can take a cathartic pummeling, both in the kneading of the dough and making the shapes. The coarse flour also helps with some beautiful tearing that typifies many of the shapes of the South that sauce just loves.
3. Many of the shapes rely on transforming from a rope of dough which you can just roll with your hands or a little nugget cut from that rope. The gesture of rolling the coil is very similar to my abandoned ceramics practice, rolling from the palms to spread fingers so as not to flatten your chosen piece. I feel invited to tend to each strand or blob individually, and appreciate the differences in their sameness. This contrasts nicely with the more two dimensional transformations of the sheets of egg dough which bring out a pressure for symmetry in the cuts that I both cannot and am not interested to live up to.
4. Making the dough and shaping the pasta often requires zero additional equipment which is nice because I don’t really have room for extra stuff in my apartment kitchen. The elasticity of the dough encourages it to brush up against whatever objects and it will take on their impression. A common one I recently tried is cavatelli rolled on a cheese grater, the artist Meech Boakye recently used a carved glass bowl for theirs which was particularly beautiful. I love that this tacky ball encourages me to think about the surfaces in my kitchen differently. Like how a skateboarder reimagines the architecture of the city as their board meets the side of a building or public sculpture.
5. Semolina is a bit chewier than its eggy counterparts and is well suited to what I like to call “pasta for dinner”. While any pasta you serve at dinner could be considered pasta for dinner, this really refers to my preferred and untraditional ratio of stuff:noodle. This just means that I usually put more sauce or greens with the pasta than I would if it were being served as a first course. I just imagine everything separated out on a plate classic Midwest dinner style and think about how much of everything I want to feed my household. That is how I know it is the right proportion for me. 
6. Olive oil is the fat of choice in our house, perhaps an accidental legacy of the faddish Mediterranean diet of the 90s. As semolina pasta comes from oil-eating regions every plate feels especially suited to being finished with a generous glug. This also compensates for any deliciousness I personally failed to impart of the dish.

The last thing I would like to add is that I am not one of the people who think fresh made noodles are better than store bought, I just enjoy the task. Sometimes you want to start making dinner at 4:30.

Semolina Dough Recipe for two people

200 g semolina flour*

about 1/2 cup warm water

Put your flour in a bowl and make a well, pour the warm water into it. Slowly mix the walls of your well into the pool to incorporate the flour until it has basically absorbed the water. Knead for like 10 minutes (I treat it like wedging clay) until the dough feels pretty taut and even. I like to let it rest for at least 30 minutes though some recipes say that’s not necessary. 

*I hate Bob’s Red Mill for this purpose, if you can make a trip to an Italian specialty shop like Bari to get Caputo’s brand or something I recommend it. If you’re feeling fancy you can try this Sicilian flour imported by Gustiamo

From here you can make many different pastas, but I will suggest cavatelli to start because it will work even if your dough is a little over hydrated. And since it’s pasta for dinner we’re eating our starch with a vegetable and a meat. Pasta, sausage, broccoli (PSB) was a staple in my house growing up. My mom would pan fry the sausage, steam the broccoli, and boil the noodles separately then combine them in a bowl with lots of olive oil, parmesan, and pine nuts (please note we are not Italian). It’s still a comforting dish for me though I make it a little differently and exclude the pine nuts because they’re expensive. However, like my mom’s dish this is also not really an Italian recipe but is definitely “pasta for dinner”. 

I really like to drink some sparkling red wine of Northern Italy on pasta night even if the food is inspired by the South. It serves as a nice apero while you’re cooking and is hearty enough for dinner. Indocilis in the shop is perfectly suited for this. If you aren’t a red wine liker, the texture and energy of Bianchetto nicely mimics the skateboard feeling, every vintage it feels like part of you is firmly grounded and the other part is hurdling forward.

PSB for two

1 ball semolina dough

1 large or 2 small mild italian sausages

1 bunch broccoli rabe

hunk of pecorino or parmesan

olive oil

black pepper

Cut pieces of the dough and roll into ropes. Then cut again into smaller almost fingernail size pieces. Roll with your thumb against your work surface, grooved board, cheese grater, or whatever else you like. Dust lightly with semolina flour as you go so your pasta does not stick together. Put the water on to boil. 

Chop your broccoli rabe and leave it. 

Break up your sausages and fry them in the pan you intend to finishing your pasta in. Hopefully your water is boiling, salt it and add the broccoli rabe to blanch.

Pull the rabe out with a spider or strainer with a handle and add it to the sausage pan, give it a mix, and let the water come back to a boil. If it looks dry here add a little olive oil.

Add the pasta, when it starts floating to the top fish it out with your chosen tool and add it to the pan.

Grate a generous amount of cheese into the pan and add a little pasta water if you don’t think enough traveled on your pieces of pasta.

Toss vigorously and then plate.

Finish with a fancy olive oil (we use the Paterna in our house), more cheese, and some black pepper.

Cub wrote beautiful tasting notes for all of the wines in the shop save the new selections from Kindeli, Le Coste, and Zumo which are coming soon. If you want some personalized thoughts DM us @rainbow_wines or email rainbowwinechi@gmail.com. See you this weekend:)

-Emily

des pates / the paste, patty piece in pasta : part 1 – egg dough

 
like a lot of people i’m trying to use covid inside time to learn a new language. I chose french. I learned the french word for pasta, which you might think would just be pasta, as it is in italian and english, but the french have certain boundaries when it comes to taking words on loan– so pasta is les pâtes.
 
It’s always plural. The sound of it is flat and makes me think of the word pat which then makes me think of pat the bunny the "touch and feel" children’s book with all the textures that’s hopefully been updated to not just be about a very normative fictional white family.  
 
In french, a pâte is a dough. I was inspired by this to learn how our italian and english ‘pasta’ comes from the  Late Latin pasta (“dough, pastry cake, paste”), from the Ancient Greek πάστα (pásta, “barley porridge”). ‘Pasta’ is a doublet of ‘paste’ and ‘patty’ meaning it shares the same etymological root as these words, but has come to our language through different, modern paths.

There are two major Italian pasta doughs: egg dough, from flour and eggs, and semolina dough, from semolina flour and water. Dried pasta is from semolina dough. Part 2 of this series will be about that type of dough. 

 
I was interested in all of this because in addition to trying to learn a language this quarantine I’ve also pursued making pasta by hand. I have become obsessed with the dough, paste, patty part of pasta. When we think of pasta we don’t often think of those words– we think of the finished product, of words that reflect pasta shapes, like spaghetti, fusilli, rigatoni, penne, etc. At least, this is how I used to think of pasta – represented by the poster hanging in my high school cafeteria that I was thrilled to find online :

Good how the image includes salt, even if it wasn’t meant as a reference to the ancient greek παστός (pastós, “sprinkled with salt”).

 
Last spring I started making egg dough. Egg dough is wonderful for making noodles, it’s the dough of Emilia, the home of Bolognese. It is the dough meant for buttery sauces (think buttered noodles, what is better?)
 
I started out following Evan Funke’s method for egg pasta, which is helpful and nicely outlined in his book, American Sfoglino. The trouble with Funke is his dogmatic and agro ideas about hand rolling pasta (in his restaurant Felix Trattoria, there’s a plaque that says ‘f* # * your pasta machine’) and his bandying about of his mattarello, a long, thin rolling pin, which Em rightly noted had a priapic feel. Personally I do hand roll pasta, and I do have a mattarrello. The thing is I am still terrible at using it, and I have to deal with my partner Dave referring to it as my phallus. While cleaning up the kitchen he might say, for instance, ‘is your phallus water safe, should i clean your phallus in the sink or just dust it off ?’ All this being said, I am only writing about rolling out pasta in the recipe that follows because I haven’t really figured out how to knead and shape using the machine.
 
As the weather got warmer last spring and into summer, I switched from egg based to the semolina dough of southern Italy, thanks to Em. She is a great advocate for this dough. But when it got cold again in the fall, I longed for richer noodles to accompany braises and stewed sauces, so I went back to egg based, this time conferring with Marcella Hazan.
 
Hazan tripped me up. The first time I followed her recipe, it was the best egg dough I’d ever made. The heavens parted and I felt I figured out pasta dough forever. But then…every other time was trouble. The ratio of egg to flour seemed high and hard to manage. * It was often too wet. Every time I made the dough, it was different, because my eggs were of different size. Finally I resorted to weighing my eggs. This felt fussy, but at least I got a consistent result, right ? Wrong. When I tried it out on Monday night (if you’re in Chicago you know it was very humid) the change in the air meant I had to stray even from my egg weighing system.
 
Ultimately I decided it honors Hazan most, works best given the wildly different weather we have in this city, and is the easiest system to just use her original ratio + a little more flour, and know that you are probably always going to have to add more flour, and to not be scared of that.
 
She gives the excellent tip that you know you have the right ratio of flour to egg when you stick your finger in the dough, and if you don’t feel any tacky or sticky resistance, you are good to go. Otherwise, add more flour.
 
 
*Hazan’s ratio is about 4 :3, flour to egg. In his excellent book Ratio: the simple codes behind the craft of everyday cooking, Michael Ruhlman goes for a 3 :2 ratio. Others like Samin Nosrat have a high ratio of eggs to flour (even higher than Hazan) in her basic fresh pasta dough recipe for the New York Times, but she use lots of yolks. I don’t know enough about food science, but imagine the yolks make it easier to handle the dough, with higher fat than a whole egg with the white. Nosrat’s recipe is very solid, but it’s a little eggy for me.
 
 
 
Egg-based dough Recipe – adapted from Marcella Hazan
Makes enough for 2 large entree portions or 4 appetizer portions
 
Ideal tools :
-Large bowl preferably with a wide bottom
-Fork
-Bowl or bench scraper
-Counter or tabletop surface
 
 
Ingredients :
 -About 1 ¼  c of 00 flour, plus another roughly ¼ - ½ c, depending on humidity and egg size
-2 eggs (try not to use very big eggs)
 
La fontana
This is the fontana, or fountain, method, it’s like a fountain because you have a little pool of liquid in the center.
 
Place flour in bowl.
 
Make a well in the center and crack in eggs.
 
Break up the eggs with a fork, while keeping the liquid in the center.
 
Once the eggs are well blended, slowly start to incorporate the flour.
 
Keep going until all the flour and liquid have made contact, but before you have a very shaggy dough.
 
Dump out onto clean countertop.
 
 
Cutting in
Now you do the ‘cutting in’ – like you were making biscuits. This is the only part I remembered to take a picture of but I think it's worth it, this step isn't always included, and I find it a helpful step. 
 
Use the bench scraper to further incorporate the liquid and flour. 

Rest
Once you’ve formed a dough, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temp for 10 minutes. You want it more floury than not at this stage.
 
 
Knead
Knead the dough until it feels smooth as silk, when you run your finger along its surface, for about 10 minutes. Do the finger test to check the ratios. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let rest  (ideally for 30 minutes or up to 24 hours) before rolling out.
 
To make the noodles, use a little flour on your counter and rolling pin and take your time getting it down to about 1/8 «  or 1/16 » or pretty much as thin as you can.
 
If you’ve double this recipe, make two sheets and stretch one at a time.
 
Sprinkle semolina flour over the sheet. Fold it in half then in half again, and transfer to cutting board. For tagliatelle, cut into 1/8 » strips, using a carving or chef’s knife.
 
Use more semolina flour to keep your noodles from sticking together while waiting to be cooked. I like to toss mine around to make them kind of krimped.

 
 
 
 
Tagliatelle with lamb and onions or ramps
 
In it's essence bolognese is a butter sauce, it is meant to be creamy and coating. I wanted to make something like a lamb bolognese, but we didn’t have celery or tomatoes. This ‘white bolognese’ was really tasty, the sweetness of the carrot came through very well, which was nice with the ramps.
I don’t really like how pungent ramp bulbs are, so cooking them for so long in butter and lamb fat made them very mild. It’s not necessarily the best use of ramp bulbs, but it’s very tasty.

 
 
Ingredients :
2 tablespoons butter
1 onion or half a big onion minced nicely, or about a dozen cleaned ramp bulbs, cut into ½ inch pieces.
Ramp tops (if using ramps)
One carrot, minced nicely
1 lb lamb
3/4 c milk
½ c white wine
Half a clove of garlic, grated
 
A few tablespoons chopped parmesan
 
Heat a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Melt butter. Add your ramps or onion and cook a few minutes. Add minced carrot and cook a few minutes. Add lamb and cook til red is gone. Add milk, cook until reduced by about a quarter. Add white wine, garlic and then simmer for 2 1/2 hours or so, until there’s little liquid left.
 
Bring a big pot of water to a boil, then salt generously.
 
Get a skillet going on medium- high heat. Toss your cleaned ramp tops in the skillet and sear until lightly browned. Remove leaves and give them a rough chop.
 
Cook noodles for 1 minute, then transfer them into your saucepot to cook with the lamb over medium-low heat for another minute or so. Add parmesan. Put in bowls and garnish with ramp tops.
 
This was delicious with the fruit-forward, zingy Primitivo Anfora from Cristiano Guttarolo. I would also recommend Les œillets, the orange wine from Jean Yves Peron – it would surely bring lift and vibrancy to this creamy, delicious dish of pasta.

New wines in the store are landing on Friday – we are so, so excited. Kindeli from New Zealand, Le Coste from Lazio and Zumo from Californie. Can’t wait.
 
Please don’t hesitate to email us at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM rainbow_wines on instragram with comments or questions. 

-Cub

flavors saved my life pt. 1

In the German language there are two words synonymous with our English word “experience”. There is Erlebnis referring to a physical sensation, something that is happening to you and Erfahrung which serves as your understanding of your past and the perception which shapes your present. I read about this in an art history book and am not a student of this language so I don’t know what the Germans have to say about the word “taste”. There are a few definitions of that word in English too that I think nestle nicely into the German understanding of experience. The immediacy of perceiving a flavor through your mouth, nose, and brain feels more Erlebnis to me and whether or not we appreciate it in the catalog of things that we like feels more Erfahrung.  I like this because in the moment of tasting (taking a small amount of food or drink to your mouth, yet another definition of taste) the distinctions become less clear and it almost feels appropriate that we have one word for this whole thing. 

Hugh Johnson, author of the influential World Atlas of Wine and natural wine skeptic, says in addition to being worthwhile, communicating that moment is not easy “What is much harder than appreciating wine is communicating its sensations. There is no notation of taste, as there is of sound or colour, apart from the words sweet, salt, sour, and bitter every word in the language is borrowed from the other senses. And yet giving another identity to sensations helps to clarify them.” I think that we exchange a lot of words between the senses in English, but think his point stands, which is that it is hard and like other hard things requires practice.

In hospitality it’s your job to usher someone through processing of what you’ve sold them, it’s fun and feels valuable to both parties though I’m too confused at present to tell you why this actually is. When I managed a restaurant I wrote a little document to help facilitate discussions about the dishes we would taste. It was one of those restaurants where the food changed a lot and we were often trying something that was unfinished and rushing to dot the i’s and cross the t’s before service. This was written in 2017 and I think I would add some things now, mostly about learning the history of cookery and where dishes come from. This is probably why I wrote that dry piece about dry bread, which is good by the way and I still think you should make it. However, I will offer this older idea unchanged because, whatever, it seems easier to approach like this. While it was written for food it could be for wine too, kind of:

How to Taste Food

Textures: one? multiple how do they interact? are they layered and fused? or experienced in sequence?

Temperature: same questions

Flavors: what do you taste and how do the texture and temperature affect your perception of flavor?

Emotional Stuff:

-does it remind you of food that you know in other contexts?

-does it satisfy a craving you had or didn’t know you had (like thinking about the weather and stuff)? did you experience something new? if so, where did that newness come from? what does that inspire (if anything)? imagined worlds, future culture, etc.

-basically what kind of person does the food make you see yourself as? is there a moment that makes your heart jump and what contributed to it?

maybe: does it leave you wanting something? if so can you identify it?

These questions got people talking in a way where they could connect the taste they were experiencing to their past and build on their spectrum of things to pull from. New people were always quiet, it takes a lot of confidence to speak in this gray area that is neither wholly objective or subjective. The more we talked together though the more fluid conversation became and the less we had to refer to conversation starters. It felt like we could help each other pull those words out of our bodies. Some days you would find something you didn’t know was there or hadn’t already registered as pleasurable. Other days you realize you just don’t have the capacity to understand something presently. And then there’s another kind of day when you encounter something familiar and beloved and you’re not challenged at all and it’s quite comforting. 

Thank you to everyone that’s shared beautiful tasting notes and drawings. I appreciate your vulnerability and I learn so much from you. If anyone ever wants someone to talk to about something they are tasting, food or wine DM @rainbow_wines we’ll work it out together. You can place an order in the shop Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays before 5 and expect your wine the same day.

-Emily

feeling weird, turning to rhubarb

 I’ve been having a pretty tough time of it lately. When you look out the window and see flurries of snow during a Chicago April or May day you can start to feel a little deflated about the progress of the season, and when you’re already feeling deflated about your personal progress, that can doubly weigh you down.

 

In these redbud winter days, I turn to my old friend rhubarb, a pink food that resists easy categorization. I have always had a sour tooth, and from the time I first tried rhubarb as a pre-teen, I loved it. I also liked how it was kind of weird (vegetable you treat like a fruit, poisonous leaves, requires cooking to be palatable) because I felt like a weird kid, and now I feel like a weird adult.

 

Back then I loved to bake, so that was its main application. I love Rhubarb in a pound cake, but one of my favorite sweet rhubarb recipes is a recent one by Melissa Clark– these rhubarb custard bars.

 

In the last few years rhubarb has taken on some more savory uses for me. It changes over time– often becoming more vegetal when harvested in warmer weather. The stalks are more tender and delicately flavored in these early days.  It keeps for about 2 weeks in the fridge, so I don’t stress out as much as with some other fresh fruits about using it right away.

 

 

I used to think of rhubarb as a harbinger of spring that I would buy once or twice in March or April and make something sweet and that’s it.

 

I am still really excited at the first sight of rhubarb, but lately I may notice the end of the season more than the start. In the midwest the last rhubarb is usually harvested in late June or July, often coinciding with the strawberry season.  Then you know it’s really summer, and that you’ve come out of the cold and reached the mirage, to paraphrase Joan Didion. It’s true what she says, « it’s easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends. » The fade out of the rhubarb run in June makes visible the passage of spring, and the hard-won arrival of summer.

 

 

 

Rhubarb Sauce

Nice with pancakes, also pork chops, tenderloin or belly.

 

Wash rhubarb and chop into 1 inch pieces. Place cut fruit in a saucepan and add water, just enough to cover the rhubar

b. For every stalk of rhubarb or so, add a tablespoon of sugar or honey. Bring to a boil then turn down heat to a simmer. You don’t have to do much stirring. Cook until rhubarb breaks apart completely and serve.

 

 

Rhubarb Quick Pickle

delicious addition to any salad, or as a giardineria-style friend for cheese and charcuterie

 

Cut rhubarb into thin (about quarter inch slices) and put in a small bowl or jar.

 

Heat a wine vinegar, water, sugar, salt and a couple of black peppercorns in a saucepan. For every two rhubarb stalks or so use 1 cup of vinegar, 1/2 c water, 1/2 c sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt. Heat until the sugar and salt is just disolved. Pour over the rhubarb. Let sit. Once it’s at room temp, cover and keep in fridge and use within a week.

For a nice salad: get some escarole or other sturdy, bitter green, some sheep or goat feta, some pistachios and have a fun salad art time arrange them all mixed into little composed nooks on a plate, drizzle with the pickling liquid and some olive oil. I wanted to take another picture in better light but then i ate it, it was really satisfying to snack on. 

                                                  

 

 

There’s several new wines in ! We have some very exciting new Georgian wines in the store this week – three new orange wines and one cherry-juice red. They are utterly perfect for an afternoon glass on a brisk spring day.

 

We also added a stunning orange wine from another planet, Les Oeillets from Jean Yves Péron. Then there's also the unequivicaolly delicious Vermut from Partida Creus. Order it and get a bottle of sparkling water (one of the best, it's called Agua de Piedra) with your purchase. Easy spritz, sweet and tart just like your rhubarb. 

 

 

Find them all in the shop.

We are here for all your thoughts, questions and concerns about cooking and drinking on these mercurial spring days. Email rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM @rainbow_wines anytime -  we love to hear from you. 

- Cub

thank you Yvonne Rainer thank you Rachel Roddy

 Yvonne Rainer wrote about what dancing is to her in a letter to her brother Ivan, and subsequently published it in her autobiography feelings are facts: a life. Like most writing about other things it reminded me of service and is so under my skin I thought I’d share it here.

“Dance =

1. A way out of an emotional dilemma.
2. A place where the training period is so long and arduous as to almost indefinitely postpone a coming to grips with things like purpose and aesthetic or vocational direction.
3. A place that offers some rare moments of rightness (that word again; I think it is equivalent to joy, or ‘fitness’ i.e., things fit).
4. Something that makes my throat fill up.
5. Something to do every day.
6. A way of life, where most other things in life assume a lesser importance and value.
7. Something that offers an identity: ‘I am a dancer,’ also ‘I am a hard worker, I work my ass off in class in spite of being handicapped by a crazy Rainer body.’ The virtue of hard work, salvation through sweat, is very important here. I am sure most dancers are martyrs of one variety or another.”

I’m not alone in seeing this relationship I think? A friend of mine who pursued undergraduate studies in dance while working at a restaurant was inspired by Rainer too. Her final project was choreographed through her experience as commissary baker and restaurant host. While I’m no dancer I see the choreography of the restaurant clearly. Each person with their own style, bringing themselves to the pans, the dish pit, the pass, the door as part of a loosely structured piece with many participants; what is inevitably called the service. Losing my body’s work last year hurt in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Reading Rainer’s words helps locate that pain. The loss of a coping mechanism, those moments of rightness, the full throat/full heart that comes with those moments of rightness, routine, a way of life and of how you have cared for others, and your identity, intertwined with hard work. I felt it a lot, I still feel it some weeks. But with the location of the pain points comes ways to soothe them.

One of these ways is cooking from Rachel Roddy’s weekly column “A kitchen in Rome” for the Guardian. I look forward to it every Monday. I love her writing that precedes them, always so much meat on the bone. About olive oil, salt, lemons, things that already shaped the cooking of my household. They also shape the way I approach this writing. The recipes always have just a few ingredients and steps, allowing me to feel the weight of all of my gestures. It’s so easy to dig into the nuances of the recipe, find it for my kitchen. Asking myself how I want the bacon to eat or how noticeable the onions should be. My knife work is changed, it still lacks a chef’s precision but is more harmonious with the dish, with consideration to the effect of the preparation of the dish. The more I repeat any cooking task with empathy the more my intention shifts to my intuition and the more my identity shifts from restaurant professional to home cook.

The most successful dish I have made from her column is a bean and clam soup. I had both beans and clams in my freezer at the time so it took 15 minutes. It was served with toast and salad and I think could be a good time to bring it back as it fits our emotionally confusing season nicely. We drank Chenin blanc which I thought was perfect but did start a little argument in our house about culturally appropriate pairings. I say, you’re eating clams in Chicago and all the wine is imported so you make your own culture.

Bean and clam soup (by Rachel Roddy, from A kitchen in Rome)

1 small onion

6 tbsp olive oil

500g cooked beans from your freezer or a can (drained)

1L water

300g fresh clams

1 peeled garlic clove

150ml white wine

In a deep saucepan or casserole, gently fry the onion in four tablespoons of the olive oil until soft and translucent. Add the cooked beans and a liter of water, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes.*

Meanwhile, in a frying pan, warm the whole clove of garlic in the remaining two tablespoons of oil for two minutes, add the clams, raise the heat, add the wine and cover. Once you hear the clams opening, lift the lid and remove them with a slotted spoon. When they are all open, remove from the heat and filter the clam liquor. Separate the clam flesh from the shells and set it aside, keeping just a few shells for decoration.

Blend the soup (or half-blend it, if you prefer) until smooth, taste and add enough clam liquor to season. If it seems too thick, add a little water.

Ladle into bowls, top each with some of the clam flesh, a few shells, a pinch of red chilli and a zigzag of olive oil.

*the beans I used had been cooked with coriander, charred lemon, bay, parmesan rind, dry chile, and I think marjoram. Feel free to add whatever extra aromatics inspire you here.

Another Chenin blanc from the shop that I recommend

We should have some Georgian wines from one of our favorite importers in the game Chris Terrell on Thursday, if you’re curious before they go into the shop let us know and we’ll hook you up. Email rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM @rainbow_wines.

-Emily

maiale al latte / porc cuit au lait / milk-braised pork

x

There are a few times I’ve cooked a festive dinner for a group of people with little planning, little access to quality ingredients and little available equipment. This weekend’s easter dinner was one of them, and it solidified that this is the recipe I turn to in that instance : maiale al latte, or, pork cooked in milk.

 

This is also a very suitable spring-time braise, whereas many braises are strictly winter for me. First, as Em points out, there's something vernal about milk - about birth/rebirth etc. Also, this doesn't need to be served piping hot. It's nice with the meat cool and the sauce just warm. And finally it works well served alongside green things like asparagus, peas and salad.

And all you need is pork, milk and onion.

A few recipes add other aromatics -  herbs like sage, thyme, rosemary, or lemon zest and chilies – you can add these in your braise with the milk, but I don’t think they are necessary.

 

I have experimented with a few different cuts of pork, depending on what I can find. Pork loin is traditional. You can also use pork shoulder, and cook for 2 hours, which is delicious, but it slices kind of weird for the presentation.

Pork cooked in milk

 

Heat a few tablespoons of neutral oil in a dutch oven or skillet that has a lid. Salt the pork then brown it in the pan on all sides (this takes about 8 minutes). I like to really brown it. Remove the pork to a plate, then add 2-3 yellow onions per pound of meat, peeled and cut in half. Brown the onion a little, then add the pork back. Add milk enough to cover the meat and onions. If you run out of milk you could add a little wine or stock or water. Bring to a boil then turn the heat down to just below a simmer.

 

If using pork loin – cook on stove for 1 hour 30 minutes.

If using pork tenderloin – cook on stove for 45 minutes.

 

After that time, remove pork from pan. Reduce milk sauce for 30 minutes. It will be chunky with milk curds, and the onion will be very soft. Taste the sauce and season with salt.

 

~It is unorthodox – to the extent that I would not call this recipe maiale al latte just because of this step -- but I really like to use a blender or food processor to blitz up the sauce at this point. It takes on a creamy coffee color and is sort of like a soubise, a classic pairing for pork tenderloin. It’s a little…french in its refinement and tradition. If you want to honor the Italian way, just pour the sauce with the chunky curds over the pork at the end. ~

 

Turn on the broiler. Place pork under the broiler. This is just to give a little more color and crispness. Remove from oven, let rest a minute, and slice the pork.

 

Pour sauce on top and serve more sauce on the side.

 

Also :

It can be nice to make a fruit sauce in addition to the milky onion sauce. If you’re in the scenario I’ve been in with little fresh produce, you can get some frozen cranberries or other red fruit, heat in a saucepan with water, add some sugar and thicken over heat. This time of year I love to get some rhubarb and cook that in a little water and sugar and serve that with the pork. Some sliced apples cooked in honey and water would also be nice.

This dish is definitely 'wine food' - it goes well no matter what wine direction you choose. From our online shop, I've personally tried the La Navine Chenin Blanc from Babass. I opened this while I started cooking. It's initial spritz was so refreshing, but there's a deeper, nuttier wine underneath - delicious with the pork. I also recommend the Rosso di Gaetano from Le Coste, served with a chill. That wine IS the red fruit/rhubarb sauce to be friends with the soubise.

We have those wines and many more delicious things to drink throughout the week ahead in the store. Please feel free to email us at rainbowwinechi@gmail.com or DM @rainbowwines on instagram and let us know if you try out this recipe, or any others. We love to hear from you!

-Cub