Pasta alla Carbonara

When Judy Rodgers, the chef at Zuni, was a 16-year-old high school student in St. Louis, she went to France to study abroad for a year with friends of her neighbors. But these weren't any old friends. They were the Troisgros brothers, who had a famous restaurant in Roanne, Les Frères Troisgros, and it was in their kitchen that the Midwestern teenager absorbed the pleasures of cooking and eating in a way that would direct the course of her life. She spent that year with the Troisgros family, including the Troisgros sœur, Madeleine Troisgros Serraille, who at least twice a week fed Judy Rodgers wonderful, homey meals cooked in her own kitchen. Judy Rodgers inhabited the Troisgros kitchens, where, at the encouragement of her St. Louis neighbor and a nod of assent from the family Troisgros, she became a scribe, keeping notebooks so meticulous that one day they would become her passport into the world of fine American food when Alice Waters hired her to cook at Chez Panisse.

After cooking in America and France, Judy Rodgers went to Italy, where she was bewitched again - this time by Italian food.

Stopping in Roanne on the way home, sharing travel stories with the Troisgros, I could not help but focus on how delicious the food was in Italy. I should not have been surprised that they also shared that view. So much for Gallic chauvinism. No one seemed the least bit bothered by this apparent "defection" - if anything, it was evidence I had inherited their affection for authentic, generous food to celebrate every day.

I had found a culinary home in the Tuscan idiom, and on subsequent trips, fell for the charms of Umbria, Sicily, the Abruzzo, Campania, and so on. By the time I headed back to California that first year I had a goal. I would look for that restaurant where I could settle down to cook both French and Italian traditional food and evoke the spirit of dinner at Madeleine's.

Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Pages 23 and 24.

My friend Walter likes pasta, but he doesn't LOVE pasta. He doesn't like pasta in the same way that those of us who adore carbs and who might actually consider eating a potato chip sandwich do. Every now and then he has a little hankering for it, but most of the time, he'll pass. So when I set out to make the Zuni version of Pasta alla Carbonara, I assumed I would like it. However, I wasn't prepared for its being so delicious that Walter would eat every morsel on his plate within what seemed like seconds of my placing it before him and, for the first time, before I finished mine.  It's that good.

Pasta alla Carbonara

Zuni's Carbonara is not traditional.  Its ingredients include ricotta and bacon.  My favorite ricotta in the whole world is from DiPalo Fine Foods, which is a wonderful place for all things Italian. DiPalo's, a family-owned business, is run by brothers Salvatore and Louis DiPalo and their sister Marie. The store is located at 200 Grand Street in New York City's Little Italy, across the street from its original location, which was opened in 1910 by the trio's great grandfather, an Italian immigrant. I've been going there since I was a little girl; my grandmother was born in an apartment two blocks from where the store now stands. The ricotta and mozzarella are homemade, and both are absolutely delicious. If you live in NYC, it's always worth a special trip there. 

At DiPalo's you will find pastas cut on bronze dies - and you might even run into the man from Italy who produces them. You can taste Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese from a wheel personally selected in Italy by Lou DiPalo. Some of what else you will find is the newest harvest olive oil; artisanal Balsamic vinegar; whole grain farro; the three kinds of rice for risotto - Arborio, Carnaroli, and Vialone Nana; dried sausages; fresh sausages; cured meats imported from Italy; all kinds of cheeses; and, as I said, the best - THE BEST - handmade mozzarella and ricotta (which means amazing ravioli made from that ricotta) you will find in any of the five Boroughs.

It's no surprise that when it was time to make my first Italian-inspired dish from Zuni, I headed straight for DiPalo's.

Marie holding pecorino romano cheese and beautiful handmade ricotta

Judy Rodgers suggests using a "chewy, dried semolina pasta shape that does not grab too much sauce: spaghetti, spaghettini, penne, or bucatini." I find it really does make a difference to use artisanal pasta from Italy, which has been made using bronze cutting die, and usually use Pasta Setaro or Rustichella D'Abruzzo pasta.




This time I tried Cav. Guiseppe Cocco penne rigate, and it was delicious.

I always weigh pasta before I cook it, planning on 4 ounces a person for a main course and 2 ounces for a starter.

Marie with wheel of Fulvi Pecorino Romano

After I left DiPalo's, I jumped off the train at Union Square and headed to the Greenmarket, where I got beautiful blue eggs laid by Araucana chickens from Windfall Farms. Araucana chickens are a breed that originated in Chile. The natural color of the shells of Martha Stewart's Araucana hens inspired a collection of paints by Fine Paints of Europe. (I can personally attest to the radiance and quality of these paints, which are fully pigmented and produce a light-reflective finish that has to be seen to be appreciated. If you are interested in this fantastic paint and want some color guidance, give Emmett Fiore a call. He is friendly - and brilliant - and will work with you tirelessly to achieve the result you are looking for. Trust me on this one.)




I often make a special trip here to get these eggs, which have the most wonderful flavor and are so fresh when they are fried that the yolks stand up round and proud the way I picture the breasts of a 16th century Italian courtesan. The picture does not do justice to how blue the eggs are.

Peas from my Garden

I was going to say that this is a recipe where excellent ingredients shine, but that's really the point, isn't it? If Zuni has a philosophy, this would be it.

And so, the Zuni repertory is an evolving hybrid of the cuisines that I love, made possible by the generosity of many teachers and colleagues. I hope I can in this volume honor and convey some of their collective wisdom and passion. If our food is delicious, it is due to that passion, and to the extraordinary quality of the products we obtain, and to the talent and devotion of every cook who has embraced it with heart.
Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Page 28.

I served this dish with salad made from arugula grown at S & S.O. Farm and sold at Union Square.

S. & S.O. Farm Stand at Union Square

Dessert was a bowl of cold cherries.

As usual, Sylvano was on hand to help out.

The Gold Standard

If you have armed yourself with a copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook and have done more than flip through the pages, you know that this book is not just an instruction manual with a lot of recipes, each with a list of ingredients followed by directions. It's actually a diary as well as an in-depth discussion of how Judy Rodgers cooks. It's as personal a cookbook as I've ever seen. Listen to what Michael Ruhlman, the apostle of making your own stock, has to say about it.

It was actually written by the chef herself and is thus a true reflection of her personality: eccentric, passionate, articulate, and most important, deeply observant about the way food behaves. This is a cookbook that’s truly valuable to read.

I'm rambling and feeling a little like Bilbo Baggins this morning, trying to decide where to begin. So I guess I'll just start at the beginning....

Meet Jeffrey Ruhalter of Jeffrey's Meat Market located in the historic Essex Street Market.  He is the real deal - a butcher, who can get you anything you need in the way of meat or poultry and can prepare it any way you want, all without having to take out a bank loan. Plus, he is without a doubt one of the nicest, friendliest people you will ever meet. 

Jeffrey Holding Thelma and Louise

There's no recipe for veal stock in Zuni. (If you want to make veal stock, go see Carol.) In The Elements of Cooking Michael Ruhlman reported that Judy Rodgers said she "hasn't found a good source for veal near her restaurant and so doesn't use veal stock."

Chicken stock is Zuni's basic stock. It's used for most of Zuni's soups, for meat and poultry braises, and for making compound meat stocks, which are other meat stocks that start with chicken stock instead of water. I'm going to need a lot of it. And that's why this is the beginning.

Zuni Chicken Stock

Whole birds - with their head and feet - are Judy Rodgers' first choice for making chicken stock. Before I met Jeffrey, I used to get my chickens for this stock in Chinatown, so if you don't have access to Jeffrey (or the Jeffrey of your hometown) but can get to an Asian market, that will probably be your best bet. If you can't get whole chickens, don't let it deter you from making this beautiful stock. You can add wings, necks, and feet, but Judy Rodgers cautions against using backs.

Thelma and Louise on Jeffrey's Counter

I've been making this stock regularly for a little over a year now, and I can testify that you want to have one cup increments of this stashed in your freezer to use at will.  This was the first time I doubled the recipe so I used a 20-quart stock pot. Unless you are lucky enough to have a BIG sink, prepare to wash this baby in the bathtub.

Thelma and Louise After a Bath

Ta da!

A Home Cook's Notes

Next time I won't double the recipe; I will use one chicken at a time instead of two as I did here. I don't mind making this recipe often - I love the way my house smells while this stock is simmering away, and I find making a single batch to be more manageable than a double batch.  The 20-quart stock pot was just too large for me to handle comfortably.

Sylvano 

The View Outside the Kitchen Window

So all in all, it was a good two days!

Why Me? Why Now? Why Zuni?

Why me?

A few years ago I spent a glorious ten days with the Lauer’s at Sea Island in a house with a beautiful kitchen overlooking the marsh where Jane and Amy and I cooked dinner (almost) every night for the nine to eleven people who were ready to eat. After calling my office repeatedly to get a recipe emailed to me from my computer and not being able to get any on Saturday and Sunday, I realized there had to be a way to have my recipes where I could access them wherever I was and where I could direct my friends when they called for a recipe. Each idea I had was more cumbersome than the one before.

Then my adorable elderly father died unexpectedly, and for the first time in my life, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. During that sad period, I had an “I could have had a V-8” moment. Do a blog. My own blog. And somehow in the middle of a dark winter’s night, I opened my laptop and figured out what to do. And I was right. It is a huge convenience for me. I live in the city, and weekend in the country, and visit friends, and now – just about anyplace I am – I can get my hands on my favorite recipes.

What I didn’t know was how much I would like to write, how much it would enhance my already passionate enjoyment of cooking, and how many people I would “meet” because they read my recipes, and I read theirs. It’s been quite an adventure, and the journey goes on.

Why now?

This is a question I am answering mostly for myself. I am so busy at work, I have a ton of personal projects going on, and I already write a blog. Am I crazy?

The first blog I ever read was the Julie/Julia Project, a blog on Salon in which Julie Powell was documenting her resolution to cook her way through the 536 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.

Before that I didn’t even know what a blog was. I found it late in the day and had a lot of back reading to do. I laughed out loud, I rooted for Julie to finish on time, and when I got to the Smithsonian to see Julia’s kitchen, I was as interested in checking out where Julie left the stick of butter as anything else in that wonderful room.

And after that I loved her book, Julie & Julia.  It isn't the blog in print; it's about writing the blog – and how it changed her life.

It’s different now; there are lots of really great food blogs out there, and I would love to read them all regularly and explore new ones. But I can’t. Just like I can’t read every great book there is - although not for lack of trying. So I’ve picked a small number, and they are like my friends that I check on regularly to see what’s going on and how they are doing.

One of them is the French Laundry at Home where Carol Blymire is breathtakingly cooking her way through Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook.


Carol's blog is beautiful, interesting, enlightening, inspiring, and hilarious. And every time I read the newest post, I think how cooking through TFL is changing and enhancing the way Carol Blymire cooks. I remember I felt the same way about Julie Powell’s cooking her way through Mastering. And a little voice in my head says………hmmmmmm.

Why Zuni?

I have a lot of cookbooks. I mean A LOT of cookbooks. What I call a rude amount (it’s a personal joke) – what some people call a ridiculous amount – what some people call an insane amount. The question usually is, “What are you going to do with all these books?” It is, of course, an exaggeration, but I’m beginning to feel like Cecily Brownstone. But I don’t have a lot of cookbooks that make me say “I’d like to cook every single recipe here.” (There are exactly three - Nigella Lawson's How to Eat, Patricia Wells' Simply French, and, of course, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.) And I’m not looking for a project. So the idea comes. I put it away. But it keeps coming back...Zuni.



I have four copies of the book. Three are in places I cook often, and one is at my office. I give The Zuni Cafe Cookbook as a present all the time. The book is wonderful - it is physically beautiful, the hand of the paper is sensual, the writing is excellent, and all that is surpassed by the recipes, which are long, thorough, easy to follow, reliable, and delicious. There isn’t a recipe in it I don’t want to cook when I open it. (And I’ve already made the pasta dish with gizzards and hearts – a number of times – and I make the chicken stock with a chicken that still has its head and its feet all the time, thank you very much.)

The answer is

Why not?

This isn’t a race. I don’t have a timetable. I’m not going to rush. Too much of what I do at work is time-dependent. So as I wend my way through The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, I'm going to have fun and learn all that I can. It will require lots of reading, lots of procuring, and - best of all - lots of cooking.

I’m not going to post recipes. If you’re interested, get a copy of the book if you don’t already have it, and follow along. Even if you don’t want to follow along, get a copy of this fabulous book.

Sylvano