Ciceri e Tria from Flavors of Puglia

I like these stripped down dishes, "cocina povera", arising out of the food of the poor. This is from Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot, with chick peas, and a pasta made with hard semolina but no eggs. Interestingly, a portion of the pasta is fried, and together, the dish packs an intriguing textural punch.

Crunchy fried pasta, chickpeas, and normal semolina pasta textures

Irene thought this was a bit bland, but I rather liked it. Her biggest complaint was the lack of flavor in the pasta, but adding an egg like rich northerners do would be against tradition. I'd like to add some brightness and bump up the flavor contrast with other Puglian ingredients, perhaps capers (fried!) or lemon zest.

Adapted from Flavors of Puglia by Nancy Harmon Jenkins, serves 2 people.

Ingredients

1 C     Chick Peas, dry (about 3/8 pound)
1 small Onion, quartered, root removed
1 stalk Celery
1 leaf  Bay Laurel
1 Tbs   Salt (or to taste)
grinds  Black Pepper

1/3 C   Water, warm
1 tsp   Salt
1 C     Semolina (our was fine, but more coarse than typical flour)

1-2 C   Olive Oil for frying
2 clove Garlic, peeled and crushed lightly
1 small Dried Chili Pepper

Procedure

Hydrate the Chickpeas overnight.

Cover Chickpeas with about an inch of water and cook covered with Onion, Celery, Bay Leaf, Salt and Pepper for about 2 hours, until very tender; if the water drops below about 1/2 inch above the chickpeas, add more boiling water.

Simmer chickpeas covered, with onion, bay, celery

Meanwhile, make the pasta:
Dissolve the tsp Salt in the 1/3 C Water, then make a dough with it and the Semolina in a food processor.
Knead to bring together, then wrap in film and rest in the fridge an hour to hydrate.
Roll it out to #5 or #6 on an Atlas machine.
Cut it into fettucini or -- better -- 1/2 inch strips.
Lay on kitchen towel to dry while the beans cook.

Heat the Olive Oil to 350F with the Chili and Garlic.
When the Garlic turns brown remove it and the Chili; mince both and add to the Chickpea pot for flavor.
Cut 1/3 of the pasta into bits about 2-inch long and fry until golden, about 5 minutes; drain on paper towels.

Flavor the oil with garlic, chili; remove when garlic browns

Fry 1/3 of the pasta, cut into strips

While that pasta fries, cook the rest:
Add the remaining 2/3 pasta to the Chickpea pot and cook until toothsome but tender enough, about 5 minutes.
The chickpeas and pasta should throw off some starch to thicken the cooking water, and I was aiming to have little broth, just a starchy sauce-like consistency at the end.

Cook 2/3 pasta in the chickpea water, it will release starch

Serve in heated bowls, topping with the crunchy fried pasta.
Garnish with a lashing of the hot flavorful Olive Oil.

I made it again, this time frying some large dry capers and some small wet ones, and grating some lemon zest as a garnish; it made for a more interesting dish, and I'd do it again.

With fried capers and lemon zest

a cure for whatever ails you

we discovered the cocktail Penicillin at a laphroaig sponsored event last winter and now that's it's cold again our thoughts turned to a warming drink for a dark evening.  a little googling showed that i had none of the essential ingredients at hand but that's never stopped any project of mine.....here's an original recipe

https://www.thecocktailproject.com/drink-recipes/laphroaig-penicillin

• 2 parts Teacher's® Highland Cream Scotch Whisky
• 3/4 part fresh Lemon Juice
• 3/4 part Honey Syrup
• 3 pieces fresh Ginger, Sliced
• 1/4 part Laphroaig® 10 Year Old Whisky
• (optional for garnish) Candied Ginger

and here's my version, the Tetracycline

2 parts bourbon
3/4 part fresh lemon juice
3/4 part domaine de canton
1 piece crystallised ginger
1/4 part malt whisky

shake the first three ingredients vigorously on ice,  strain into a glass containing the ginger.  float the malt whisky on the surface.  serves one.

Taralli from Flavors of Puglia

These savory cookie-like things from "The Flavors of Puglia" book interested me because they use a high percentage of semolina, with wine and olive oil but no water; they're also boiled before baking, like bagels. I'm annotating the recipe with metric here.

The author, Nancy Jenkins, points out that Puglia produces a lot of hard durum wheat so they use "semola" which we refer to as "semolina".  The texture is not as fine as conventional wheat flour but what we buy is more like a sand texture, more coarse than "flour" but not as coarse as most corn meal.

You can use 1 Tbs crushed black pepper corns or 1 tsp red pepper flakes, or other flavorings as you wish. The New York Times has other variations in two different recipes.

  7 g     2 tsp  Yeast
250 ml    1 cup  Dry White Wine at 38C=100F
420 g     3 cup  Flour, All Purpose
325 g     2 cup  Flour, Semolina
125 ml  1/2 cup  Extra Virgin Olive Oil at 28C=80F
 10 g     1 tsp  Salt
 20 g     2 Tbs  Fennel seeds, crushed in mortar

Toss the yeast on the warm wine, let bloom, then mix.
Add to other ingredients.
Knead in a stand mixer with dough hook: it should come together like a stiff bread dough -- if it's too dry, like mine was, drizzle in more wine until the crumbly bits come together properly.
Form dough into ball, place in bowl and cover with film and let rise 30 minutes or more.

Pull off a golfball-sized chunk of dough and roll into a 25-cm / 12-inch snake; divide into 3 and roll into a pencil- or pen-thick snake about 15-cm / 6-inch  long.
Loop like a ribbon and press the ends to seal.
Lay on parchment or something the dough won't stick to, and do all the rest.
We had 3 cookie sheets worth of loops.
Divide dough into pieces about the , roll each into a snake the thickness of your little finger, cut into 4-inch 10-cm pieces; loop and connect the ends like a ribbon or doughnut.

Preheat oven to 190C=375F.
Bring a pot of water to boiling, drop taralli in a few at a time.
When they rise to the surface, skim out and drop onto a kitchen towel to dry.

Arrange boiled taralli on cookie sheet and bake at 190C=375F for 15-20 minutes until brown and crisp.
Remove and let cool on a wire rack where they should finish getting crisp.

These were mildly flavored of fennel seed, but I think it could be punched up a bit. Perhaps next time, saute the fennel seeds in the oil to extract more flavor.  I also think they would benefit from salting the boiling water to get a zing in each bite.

Marge's Pecan Pie

I'm usually not a sweets person, but I really liked this -- great flavor and texture. I noticed a similar recipe on the back of the Karo jar but it used only 2 Tbs butter and 1 1/2 C pecans; Marge's seems more indulgent, as it should be. The original recipe used only Dark Corn Syrup, but I preferred the taste with half Molasses and half Light Corn Syrup. 

   
  1               Pie Crust, 9-inch (pre-made or home made)
  3 large         Eggs
100 g    1/2 C    Sugar
1.5 g    1/4 tsp  Salt
 42 g      3 Tbs  Butter, melted
120 ml   1/2 C    Dark corn syrup

120 ml   1/2 C    Molasses
  5 ml     1 tsp  Vanilla extract [4 g]
110 g      1 C    Pecan Pieces, for filling [4 oz]
110 g      1 C    Pecan Halves, nice quality for top [4 oz]

Fit Pie Crust into 9" pie plate, blind bake (optional: paint with egg white to seal it)
Whisk together Eggs, Sugar, Salt, Butter, Corn Syrup, Vanilla until thoroughly blended.
Stir in Pecan Pieces. 
Pour mixture into Pie Crust.
Arrange attractive Pecan Halves on top of pie.

Bake at 175C=350F on lower rack for 40 minutes, or until pie is set, shielding edges after 15 min if needed.
Remove & cool on wire rack.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Filling puffed up spectacularly but settled down when it cooled