Whenever I think of endives, I think of the year I spent in France.

During my junior year of college, I studied in Paris, at the Institute of Political Science, or Sciences-Po, as they called it.  While there, my classes were entirely in French – it being a french university and all.  I even took a Russian language course: nothing beats learning a foreign language in a different foreign language.

For the first semester, all of the international students – and there were a few hundred – went to lecture with the native French students, but then had smaller discussion groups among themselves.  The idea was to allow us to develop our French skills sufficiently, so that we could be fully immersed in the regular discussion groups by second semester.  It also allowed us a chance to meet the fellow international students struggling to learn the History of the Second Republic in French.

My Russian class, however, was the one class where I was completely immersed among the french students.  I was the only foreign student taking Russian.  I even bought the obligatory French-Russian Dictionary (c’est à dire, un dictionnaire Français-Russe).

One day, just as class had ended, the student sitting behind me, spoke up.  “Tavarish,” he began in Russian, “ti shutish smotret film snoy.”  I believe my response was simply, “Quoi?”  As difficult as English is for Frenchman, Russian is that much harder.  In French, the stress of a word falls on the last syllable; the same cannot be said for English or Russian.  To mix metaphors, listening to a Frenchman pronounce foreign words is like watching kids attack a piñata: there’s a lot of flailing around, with a few lucky strikes.

“Je n’ai pas compris,” I responded in French, eager to avoid pushing the conversation into English.  “Comrade,” he had said, “would you like to see a movie with us.”  I’d love to, I said, “J’aimerais bien.”

That night, I met Jean-Baptiste LeClere and his friends Jean-Rémi Cognard and Matias de Sainte Lorette (they were French alright) in front of the theater.  He had bought us tickets for Les Rois Mages, a movie featuring the comedy troupe, Les Inconnus.

You know you’ve mastered a language when you go to a movie and laugh along with the rest of the theater as the characters recite their lines.  That wasn’t me – at least not yet.  It’s an unusual feeling sitting in a crowd,  surrounded by laughter, wishing you knew what was so funny.

And yet, I had a great time.  I had made a new set of friends, with whom I would frequently get together.  The group, spearheaded by Jean-Baptiste, was ten to fifteen strong, and called itself Les Endivés – a play on words between a popular musical group, Les Enfoirés, and the vegetable native to Jean-Baptiste’s hometown.

Endive Gratin

Recipe adapted from Moira Hodgson.

PREP TIME: 5 minutes
COOK TIME: 35 minutes
YIELD: Serves 4

WHAT TO GRAB:
6 endives
Juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons butter, diced
3/4 cup water
Sea salt and Pepper
3/4 cup mild Gorgonzola, crumbled
1/2 cup plain, dried bread crumbs (recipe here)

HOW YOU DO IT:

1.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2.  Peel the outer layers of the endives and arrange them tightly in a baking dish, along with the inner layers.  Add the lemon juice and water, and then sprinkle with the butter, salt, and pepper.  Cover the dish and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the endives are tender.

3.  Remove from the oven and turn on the broiler.

4.  Drain the liquid from the endives.  Sprinkle the endives with the bread crumbs and blue cheese.  Broil for about 3 to 4 minutes, or until the bread crumbs have browned and the cheese is bubbling.

Tomatoes have long been a source of suspicion and derision.

Tomatoes were first cultivated by the Aztecs around the 8th Century, who had given the fruit the name “tomatl.”  A few centuries later, the Conquistadors brought tomato seeds back with them to Europe.  But despite its arrival in the Old Continent, the tomato was not yet for eating.  European botanists placed the tomato alongside the Solanaceae family, a group of poisonous and narcotic plants, and came to view tomatoes as poisonous and hallucinogenic.

Even once edible, tomatoes still served as a source of derision.  During the days of Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, it was common for theater-goers to voice their displeasure by arcing rotten tomatoes towards the stage.  Criminals stockaded along the London streets were also known to inspire tomato rage.

Fortunately, by the late 18th Century, the tomato had moved from people’s hands and into their mouths.  It was no longer being thrown at people, but rather, thrown into their soups and salads.  In the United States, Thomas Jefferson was one of the first Americans to raise tomatoes as a food.  Around the same time, the Creoles in New Orleans were using tomatoes to create their distinctive gumbos and jambalayas.

And in the modern day, this New Orleanian was making

Mozzarella Stuffed Tomatoes

PREP TIME: 30 minutes
COOK TIME: 20 minutes
YIELD: 4 tomatoes

WHAT TO GRAB:
4 firm tomatoes (I used slicing tomatoes)
2 cups seasoned bread crumbs (recipe here)
1 cup mozzarella
2 tablespoons diced shallots
2 tablespoons butter
Salt and Pepper

HOW YOU DO IT:

1.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Lightly grease a baking dish.

2.  Slice the top quarter of each tomato and discard.  Using a tablespoon measure or a melon baller, carefully hollow out the tomato.  To each tomato, add 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs, followed by 1 teaspoon of diced shallots, 1/2 tablespoon of butter, and 1 or 2 tablespoons of torn mozzarella.  Lightly season with salt and pepper.  Add enough bread crumbs to fill the tomato to just below the top.  Top the bread crumbs with about 2 tablespoons of torn mozzarella.

3.  Bake for 20 minutes.  Serve warm!

I wasn’t quite sure what to name this dish.

After making my three-cheese risotto, I ended up with several servings of left-over, cold risotto.  Cold risotto, it turns out, is perfect for making fried risotto balls, alternately known as suppli or arancini.

Suppli is short for “Suppli al Telefono,” which translates as “telephone wires.”  Traditional suppli is fried risotto that has been stuffed with mozzarella cheese.  The idea, of course, is that biting into a good suppli produces a low-hanging mozzarella string, reminiscent of telephone wires.

Arancini is Italian for “little orange,” because deep-frying the rice, saffron, and bread crumbs produces an appetizer with a golden-orange hue.  According to Alberto Denti di Pirajno, the famous Sicilian gastronome, the dish owes its origins to an Arabic dish, naranjiyya.  Naranjiyya appeared in the Baghdad Cookery Book, a work dating back to the 13th Century, and describes a fried ball of meat, meant to look like an orange through the use of saffron and egg.  Naranj is the Arabic word for orange.

The differences between Suppli and Arancini are subtle.  By some accounts, Arancini is larger than Suppli, and can include mushrooms, peas, and meat, while Suppli is often limited to mozzarella and tomato.  The principle distinction, however, seems to be geographic – with Suppli hailing from Rome, and Arancini from Sicily.

But no matter what you decide to call them, you can always call them delicious!

Three-Cheese Suppli al Telefono

Recipe inspired by thoughts from Caitlin.

PREP TIME: Requires chilled risotto
COOK TIME: 20 minutes
YIELD: 10 to 12 balls

WHAT TO GRAB:
3 cups chilled three-cheese risotto (recipe here)
1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon warm water
2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup bread crumbs (recipe here)
12 cubes of mozzarella (optional)
1 cup chopped mushrooms (optional)

HOW YOU DO IT:

1.  Heat the vegetable oil in a medium saucepan or dutch oven over medium heat, to about 360-370 degrees.  You want to have enough oil to cover the balls completely, about 2-inches high, so a smaller pot will require less oil.

2.  Roll chilled risotto into small balls, about 1- to 1 1/2-inches thick.  If you are adding mozzarella or mushrooms, poke a small hole in the center of each ball and insert the cheese and/or mushrooms.  Then re-form the mixture into a ball.

3.  Put the flour, eggs, and bread crumbs in three separate bowls.  Dredge the ball in flour, dip in egg, and then roll in the bread crumbs, making sure the ball is well-coated at each step.  Keep the balls on parchment paper while waiting to fry them.

4.  Working in batches of four, fry the balls for about 3 minutes, or until a nice golden brown.  With a slotted spoon, transfer to a paper towel to drain.  Serve warm!

HELPFUL HINTS:

If you need to cool the risotto in a hurry, you can spread the cooked risotto out on a baking sheet.  The greater surface area will expedite the cooling process.  For a healthier choice, you can also bake the risotto balls.  For the baking option, bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, and then broil, rotating the balls after 3o or 60 seconds to ensure even browning.

“We have not an hour of life In which our pleasures relish not some pain, Our sours some sweetness.”  — Philip Massinger.

Why does sour get such a bad name? The word is practically synonymous with misfortune and unpleasantness.   A business deal goes sour.  A friend develops sour grapes.  A neighbor becomes a sour puss.  You can’t help but develop a sour disposition.  In fact, under these conditions, your whole outlook on life may turn sour.

These expressions are hardly novel or recent. Sour has held its pejorative crown for centuries.  The expression “sour grapes” dates back to William Caxton’s 15th Century translation of Aesop’s fable about the fox and the grapes.  A century before that, Chaucer turned sour into an adverb, “That thou schalt with this launcegay Abyen it ful soure.”  Indeed, nearly every luminary of English literature has cast his dark light on sour, working the word into countless phrases and uses.

Their ranks include William Shakespeare (“How sowre sweet Musicke is, When Time is broke, and no Proportion kept?), John Dryden (“Love once past, is, at the best, forgeotten; But oftner sours to Hate.”), John Locke (“When the Father or Mother looks sowre on the Child.”), Alexander Pope (“Touch’d at his sour retreat, Through hell’s black bounds I had pursued his flight.”), Lord Alfred Tennyson (“She sour’d To what she is: a nature never kind!”), Ralph Waldo Emerson (“Michael Angelo had a sad, sour time of it.”), and James Joyce (“The face was eyeless and sourfavoured.”).

But maybe it’s finally time to stop puckering our collective faces at sour.  After all, a good lemon can go a long way, from pancakes and breads, to cakes and Italian Ice.

Had he tried it in his day, Chicken Piccata, with the full array of lemons and lemon juice, might have had the Bard himself no longer regretting that, “The sweets we wish for, turn to loathed sours, Even in the moment that we call them ours.”

Chicken Piccata

Recipe from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa at Home.

PREP TIME: 30 minutes
COOK TIME: 20 minutes
YIELD: Serves 4

WHAT TO GRAB:
2 split (1 whole) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup flour
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups seasoned, dried bread crumbs (recipe here)
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1/3 cup lemon juice, lemon halves reserved
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon fresh parsley, chopped
1 lemon, thinly sliced, for garnish
Salt and Pepper

HOW YOU DO IT:

CHICKEN BREASTS

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Place each chicken breast between 2 sheets of parchment paper or in a plastic bag (no splattering!) and pound the breasts until they are 1/4-inch thick.

3.  On a large, but shallow plate, mix the flour with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 pepper.  In a second plate, beat the egg and 1/2 tablespoon of water together.  Place the bread crumbs on a third plate. Dip each chicken breast first in the flour, shake off the excess, then dip in the egg, and then coat in the bread crumb mixture.

4. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium to medium-low heat. Add the chicken breasts and cook for 2 minutes on each side, until browned.  Remove the breasts to a paper towel, and let some of the oil drain.  After a few minutes, place the breasts on the baking sheet.  Bake for 10 minutes, turning the breasts over half-way through.

LEMON-WINE SAUCE

5.  Wipe out the saute pan with a dry paper towel. Over medium heat, melt 1 tablespoon of the butter and then add the lemon juice, wine, the reserved lemon halves, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.  Boil over high heat until reduced in half, about 3 or 4 minutes. Off the heat, add the remaining butter and swirl to combine.  Discard the lemon halves and serve each breast on a plate, along with yellow rice and broccolini.  Spoon on the sauce, and add the lemon slices and a sprinkling of fresh parsley!

Bread crumbs are one of those indispensable ingredients.   They give gratins and casseroles their attractive topping, they give meatloaf its consistent texture, and they give fried chicken its trademark crunch.  To accommodate these various roles, bread crumbs come in two styles: fresh (soft) or dried.

As the name implies, fresh, or soft, bread crumbs are fluffier and softer than their dried counterparts.  Because of their consistency, they are frequently used as a binder in meatloaf and dumplings, or as a topping for gratins and casseroles.  Dried bread crumbs, on the other hand, are finer and crisper than the fresh variety.  Their crisp texture makes them perfect for breading meat and seafood.  With the addition of herbs and spices, each variety can be transformed into seasoned bread crumbs.

Any good bread can serve as the raw material for bread crumbs, though a firm bread of good quality, like sourdough, French, or Italian, works best.  The bread should also be relatively fresh.  Stale bread is not what you’re looking for here – unless of course you want stale bread crumbs.

Making your own bread crumbs is quick and easy, and adds exponentially more color and flavor than the bread crumbs found in tubes of your supermarket aisle.

These are my methods for making:

Homemade Bread Crumbs

PREP TIME: 5 minutes
COOK TIME: 5 minutes
YIELD: 2 cups

WHAT TO GRAB:
6 to 8 slices of Sourdough, French, or Italian bread
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil (optional)

IF SEASONING:
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons parsley, finely chopped
2 teaspoons thyme, finely chopped
1 teaspoon rosemary, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

HOW YOU DO IT:

FRESH BREAD CRUMBS

Remove the crusts from the slices.  Throw four of the slices into a food processor, and pulse for about 10 to 15 seconds.  Remove the bread crumbs to a plate, and repeat with the remaining slices.

SAUTÉED, FRESH BREAD CRUMBS

Some toppings call for sautéed bread crumbs.  To sauté fresh bread crumbs, heat butter or olive oil over medium heat (1 tablespoon of either for every cup of bread crumbs).  When the butter or oil is hot, add the bread crumbs, tossing until evenly coated.  Sauté the crumbs until they are golden brown, and then allow them to cool.  The longer the crumbs cool, the crisper they will be.

DRIED BREAD CRUMBS

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.  With the crusts removed, lay the bread slices on a baking sheet in a single layer.  Bake the slices until they are completely dry and lightly toasted.  The baking time varies depending on the freshness of bread.  But generally, you should bake them for 10 to 20 minutes, turning the slices over half-way through.  Once the slices have cooled to room temperature, process the slices in a food processor.

SEASONED, DRIED BREAD CRUMBS

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Cut 6 slices of the bread, including the crusts, into 1/2-inch pieces.  In a large mixing bowl, toss the diced bread with 3tb oil, and the parsley, thyme, rosemary, salt, and pepper.  Mix the ingredients thoroughly, so that the bread is coated with the oil and seasonings.  Bake for 8  minutes, or until lightly browned.  Once the cubes have cooled to room temperature, process the cubes in a food processor.

These bread crumbs are perfect for making Mozzarella Stuffed Tomatoes.

Within my circle of friends, two of us cook.  Which gave Jamey, the host of our weekly poker game, an idea.  He would volunteer to host a cook-off between Eric and I – a Top Chef Deathmatch as he billed it. As part of the competition, Eric and I would be charged with creating an appetizer and an entrée in ninety minutes, which our friends would then collectively judge and critique.  As part of the rules, Eric and I could bring our own proteins and rely on our girlfriends as sous-chefs.  We could also help ourselves to any ingredients and cookware we found in Jamey’s apartment.  The competition had yet another element.  The four judges would be bringing an unknown ingredient with them that night, which would have to be incorporated in at least one of the dishes.

What I thought would be a rather stressful night of cooking-on-command, turned out to be an incredibly fun night with fantastic food from the four of us.  As it happened, the quality of the  judging was on par with the food, and there were a few instances where we found ourselves passionately defending our meals.

The next time you’re faced with secret ingredients and a meal you may have to defend, I suggest Chicken Roulade with Spinach Ricotta filling.  Credit for the recipe, as well as its flawless execution, goes to my girlfriend, Caitlin.

Chicken Roulade with Spinach Ricotta filling

PREP TIME: 20 minutes
COOK TIME: 40 minutes
YIELD: Serves 2

WHAT TO GRAB:
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/2 cup spinach (roughly 12 leaves)
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs (4 slices of bread)
1/2 cup flour
1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon warm water
2 teaspoons Kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Lemon Zest
6 toothpicks, oiled

HOW YOU DO IT:

1.  Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

2.  Toast four pieces of plain white bread on the lowest setting.  Remove the crusts, and process in a food processor.  Set the bread crumbs aside.

3.  Heat the skillet and 1 tablespoon of oil over medium heat.  Once hot, saute the garlic and spinach until the spinach is reduced.  Off the heat, mix in the ricotta and lemon zest.  Set the mixture aside.

4.  Season each chicken breast with salt and pepper.  Place the breast between two pieces of parchment paper, and pound the chicken breast until the meat is about 1/4-inch thick.

5.  Reheat the skillet with 3 tablespoons of oil over medium heat.  Meanwhile, fold each chicken breast around half of the spinach mixture so that the smooth side is showing.  The filling should be placed in a thin line down the center of the breast to prevent it from leaking out.  Secure the edges with the oiled toothpicks.

6.  Roll each breast in the flour, then the egg mixture, and then the bread crumbs, making sure the chicken is well-coated at each step.  Once the oil is hot, sear the breast until lightly browned on each side – about three minutes on a each side.  Transfer the chicken to a baking dish, and bake for 30 minutes.

7.  Slice in one-inch pieces and serve warm!

In August 2002 (back in the early days of blogging), Julie Powell began an interesting project on her blog.  Frustrated with her job, her marriage, and her living arrangements in one of the “outer boroughs,” she vowed to master the art of french cooking.  That is, Powell decided to make every one of the 536 recipes contained in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year’s time.  The project’s simplicity, balanced with its sheer scope, soon captured the interests of her fellow bloggers and several media outlets (and eventually earned her a book and movie deal).

On a much smaller scale, the Barefoot Bloggers make it their goal to blog roughly twenty-four of Ina Garten’s recipes every year – or two every month, which is a lot more manageable for those members satisfied with their lives.  The blog group is essentially an online book club – though in the place of a book is a Barefoot recipe.  Every other week, the home page offers participants the chance to share their insights on one of the meals of the month.

One of the recent recipes was Ina’s version of Meatballs and Spaghetti. (I kinda cheated though and made the marinara sauce my own way).

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Adapted from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style.

WHAT TO GRAB:
MEATBALLS
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground veal
1 cup fresh white bread crumbs (4 slices, crusts removed)
1/4 cup seasoned dry bread crumbs
2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, chopped
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
2 teaspoons Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup warm water
vegetable oil
olive oil

MARINARA SAUCE
1 28-ounce cans of peeled, whole tomatoes (I like San Marzano)
1 can tomato paste
2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon oregano
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

SPAGHETTI
1 1/2 pounds spaghetti (I like De Cecco)
Grated parmesan cheese for serving

HOW YOU DO IT:

MEATBALLS

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the grounds meats, bread crumbs, parsley, Parmesan, salt, pepper, nutmeg, egg, and warm water.  Combine very lightly with a fork.  Using your hands, lightly form the mixture into 2-inch meatballs.  You will get about 24 meatballs.

2.  In  a large skillet, pour equal amounts of vegetable oil and olive oil to a depth of 1/4-inch.  Once the oil is hot, carefully place the meatballs in the oil and brown them well on all sides over medium-low heat, turning carefully with a rubber spoon.  You’ll have to work in batches because you don’t want to crowd the meatballs.  This should take about 10 minutes for each batch.  Once the meatballs are done, remove them to a large plate covered with paper towels.  (I find an old newspaper sandwiched between the two layers of paper towels helps absorb the oil and saves on paper towels).

MARINARA SAUCE:

3.  While the meatballs are resting, clean the skillet, and re-heat with the oil over low-medium heat.  Add the parsley and garlic and saute over low-medium heat for about 3 or 4 minutes, stirring frequently, and making sure not to let the garlic brown.  Remove from heat and let the mixture cool.

4.  Strain the tomato juice into the skillet.  Working in batches, put the whole tomatoes into the strainer, and press down on them with your hand or a wooden spoon.  I like to use a large strainer, fitted into a mixing bowl.  Juice all of the tomatoes and run your spoon under the strainer to gather what remains of the tomatoes.  Pour the tomato juice into your pan.  Discard the remaining seeds and tomato bits.

5.  Add the oregano and cook the sauce over medium heat for about 20 minutes, reducing the heat as necessary if it begins to bubble.  I also like to add about a half can of tomato paste for a thicker sauce.  I add the tomato paste about halfway through the cooking time.

FINISHING TOUCHES

6.  Salt your water for the pasta, and bring the water to a boil.  Now turn your eyes to the simmering sauce.  Return all the meatballs (or as many as you can) to the simmering sauce, cover the skillet, and simmer the mixture on low heat for 25 to30 minutes, or until the meatballs are cooked through.  Don’t worry about crowding at this point.

7.  Prepare the spaghetti according to the package.  After you drain the spaghetti, combine the pasta with the sauce and meatballs in the large pot, and cook together for just a few minutes over low heat.  This will help the pasta absorb the sauce.

8.  Serve warm, with my grilled garlic bread!  And for dessert, Italian Lemon Ice!