Cookbooks

This is an Italian interpretation of a grilled lamb entrée you might see at a Lebanese restaurant. Scottadito means “burnt fingers” in Italian, and it refers to the fact that the lamb bones are meant to be picked up with your fingers while they’re searingly hot. We serve the lamb with a tabbouleh-like salad made of fregola sarda, a bread crumb–size pasta shape from Sardinia so small it acts like a grain in the kitchen, and Greek yogurt.

We are not a steakhouse, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when our customers tell us that our rib-eye is their favorite steak in Los Angeles. We start with quality, conventionally raised meat, just like what you will be able to get at a good butcher. The reason our steak is so good is the rub we coat the meat with before grilling it. The rub contains dried porcini, which have a delicious, earthy flavor, and a tiny bit of sugar, which caramelizes on the grill and gives the steak a beautiful crust. More often than not our customers share it among two or three people along with two or three contorni, such as Smashed Potatoes with Rosemary (page 255), Cipolline with Thyme and Sherry Vinegar (page 254), and Sautéed Broccolini with Chiles and Vinegar (page 262) to eat along with it. We order our rib-eyes “frenched,” which means that the meat is cut off the bone so the bone looks almost like a handle, which makes for a more unusual, elegant presentation. If you have a butcher who will do that for you, great. If not, it won’t make a bit of difference in the flavor. Unlike a French preparation, served with a heavy Béarnaise sauce, ours is served with Italy’s two best condiments: quality extra-virgin olive oil and aged balsamico condimento.

Cannoli are one of the most widely known Italian desserts in this country, so naturally I wanted to find a way to include them in our repertoire. Traditional cannoli are tubes of fried pastry filled with ricotta cheese, and, often, bits of chocolate or dried fruit. When made right and served when the shells are still crisp, cannoli can be delicious, and when Dahlia came up with the idea of stuffing the shells with gelato, I knew she’d hit on something even better. They’re like little elegant ice cream cones where you get crunchy cone in every bite. We serve them three to a plate, each filled with a different gelato, with complementary dessert sauces and chopped nuts. Serving this kind of selection would be extremely challenging to do at home, but even one flavor of gelato and one type of dessert sauce will still make a really special presentation and a delicious dessert. The cannoli dough makes enough for four servings, but the dessert sauce our gelati and sorbetti recipes make are enough for exponentially more cannoli. So to serve a crowd, just double or quadruple the dough recipe. You will need a 3-inch square cookie cutter (preferably fluted) and small cannoli forms to make these. To get away with buying fewer forms, you can fry the cannoli shells in batches.

Peas, Parmigiano, and prosciutto are a combination that you see often in Italy, and one that, to me, says spring. The way we plate this dish it looks like a bird’s nest, with half of a ball of burrata nestled into folds of speck, topped with a pile of peas, and then covered with a light dusting of Parmigiano that looks like fresh fallen snow. Although I prefer the smoky flavor of the speck, prosciutto is a fine substitute.

In the last few years, it seems like there have been two requirements to opening a successful restaurant in Los Angeles. You have to offer a selection of decent wines by the glass, and you have to offer braised short ribs. You see short ribs served on the bone and off the bone; cooked with Indian spices, Asian spices, and Latin American spices; and served over mashed potatoes, polenta, and who knows what else. I don’t roll my eyes when I see them on a menu because I know how good they can be. Once they’re cooked, they’re good for a few days, so they’re convenient for the home cook. Braise them today; reheat them tomorrow. In the Italian spirit of not wasting any bit of food, shred the leftover meat to make Francobolli di Brasato al Pomodoro (page 177).

When the media review the Mozzarella Bar, they almost always mention having eaten this dish. It is composed of two special ingredients—large hazelnuts that we get from Trufflebert Farms in Eugene, Oregon, and sheep’s milk ricotta imported from Italy—paired in an unusual way. Aillade is a French condiment of garlic pounded with some type of nuts, usually served as a condiment for duck or other meats. We make ours with hazelnuts; it’s one of the few condiments that we make at the restaurant using a mortar and pestle because otherwise it comes out too smooth, like peanut butter.

The first time I encountered olive oil cake was at Capezzana, an olive oil– and wine-producing estate in Tuscany. Olive oil cake was the house cook’s signature morning dessert. I had never heard of such a thing and it sounded strange to me, but when I took a bite, it made perfect sense. It was a very simple sponge-type cake in which the butter had been replaced by olive oil, and it was delicious. Since it’s all about the olive oil, the better the quality, the better the cake. For drizzling over the gelato, this is the time to bring out the best olive oil you have—and use olio nuovo when it’s in season. We bake the batter in tiny teacake molds, which means more surface area—and the slightly crispy exterior is my favorite part. The teacake molds we use are sold in a pan, like a muffin tin, at cookware shops. Alternatively, you could use individual teacake molds. This batter keeps well, and you’ll have plenty of olive oil ice cream, so double the recipe to feed a crowd or if you think you might want to bake more later in the week. We serve the cakes with Olive Oil Gelato, which is equally unusual and delicious.

Tagliata, which means “cut” and refers to a dish of sliced meat, is probably the most popular secondo at the Osteria. The tagliata I’ve been served in Italy has been dressed in different ways, ranging from chopped arugula to sautéed fresh porcini, to black pepper and Parmigiano, or just a drizzle of aged balsamico condimento. I am a salad nut, so the version we serve at the Osteria consists of thinly sliced steak and a pile of dressed arugula layered with thin slices of Parmigiano. When I make it for a crowd at home, I serve the meat on the cutting board and offer the arugula and Parmigiano in a big, wide salad bowl. This recipe calls for two types of balsamic vinegar: an inexpensive cooking-quality balsamic to marinate the steaks, and an aged condimento-grade balsamico, to drizzle on the steak. If you don’t have an aged balsamico the other is no substitute

If subtlety is your thing, this Mozzarella Bar creation is not for you. Each crostino is composed of a really strong vinegar presence from the escarole, which is marinated before being grilled and again after; a strong flavor of smoke from the bacon; and sweetness from caramelized shallots. The role that the cheese plays is to tame those aggressive flavors but the result is by no means bland. The recipe for the shallots makes more than you will need for this recipe, but they are essentially pickled, so they will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator. You can use the leftovers on sandwiches or spooned over grilled beef, chicken, or pork.

We serve this as a daily piatto special in the Pizzeria with Lentils Castellucciano and fried sage sprinkled all around. We included it as a variation to the Duck al Mattone because the preparations of the duck, with the exception of cooking times, are identical.

From my vantage point behind the Mozzarella Bar I can see people’s faces when they’re eating, and their expressions when they bite into this dish are that they’re wowed. I like brown butter with asparagus, and I like asparagus with almonds, but putting brown butter with burrata—that was a really indulgent decision and a combination I’m not even sure how I had the courage to put together. We use Sicilian almonds, which have a strong almond flavor and also a slight bitterness. If you can find them, use them. When making brown butter, the trick is to brown it enough to get the delicious, nutty flavor that you want without letting it burn. It’s best to do this in a stainless steel pan as opposed to a black-bottomed pan, so you can see the butter browning as it cooks.

One of the unique and really great things about duck is that if you do everything right, you are able to get the skin deliciously crisp, as it is here. We borrowed the idea for cooking the duck from a similar dish that is served at Mario and Joe’s Lupa Osteria Romana, in New York. We call it “al mattone,” a term that refers to something (generally chicken) cooked under a brick, because it has the same crisp skin as if you had put pressure on the bird when you cooked it. We serve the duck with either a side of sautéed corn or Brussels sprout leaves. Even though we gave you recipes for both, the idea is that you make only the one that is in season. The duck also comes with a ramekin of pear mostarda, a spicy Italian condiment whose sharp spiciness cuts through the richness of the duck and really makes the dish. To confit the ducks, buy rendered duck fat from the same source as you buy your ducks. We serve half a duck to each guest, but it’s a dish that people often order, along with two or three contorni, to share. Served family style with the corn or Brussels sprouts, and two or three additional contorni, four duck halves could feed six or eight people. After cooking the ducks we like to rest them in the fat they were cooked in for at least 24 hours. Plan accordingly.

If I had to name a signature secondo at the Osteria, this agrodolce preparation of quail would be it. The quail are stuffed with a savory mixture of pancetta and herbs, and then drizzled with honey and aged balsamico condimento. When Matt and I travel to fund-raising and other food events around the country, this is the meat dish we most often choose to serve because it can be prepared ahead of time, and I’ve never met anyone—not even quail skeptics—who wasn’t completely enamored of it. It’s also easy to pair with wine. The gamey flavor of the bird and the pork can handle a big, fruity wine, and it doesn’t overpower even the finest wines.

Everyone loves doughnuts, so it didn’t surprise me when these bombolini, Italian for “little doughnuts,” turned out to be the most popular dessert at the Osteria. You’re likely to find some version of sweet fried dough in every Italian region. That said, ours is made with a brioche-style dough that’s fried to order and served with a berry marmellata, or compote, and lemon curd—not at all Italian, but reminiscent of jelly doughnut combinations that Americans know and love. For the marmellata, we use mountain huckleberries from Oregon; you can use blueberries, blackberries, or boysenberries, or a combination—as you like.

One of the principles of Italian cooking—and maybe this is true of all of European kitchens—is not to be wasteful. Italian cooks find a use for every edible component of each animal or vegetable they cook. In the Italian spirit, I use all parts of the celery in this dish. I slice the celery ribs for the salad, and I use the leaves, so often discarded, both in a salad the cheese is served on and to make a celery-leaf pesto that gets spooned onto the cheese. The result is a bright, flavorful, and textural salad that is equally pretty and unexpected. We peel celery using a vegetable peeler anytime we are serving it raw; it takes only a few seconds and the celery is so much more tender with the fibrous strings removed. The pesto recipe makes 3/4 cup, which is more than you will need for this recipe, but it’s difficult to make pesto in a smaller quantity. Spoon the leftovers over grilled chicken, fish, or vegetables; use in place of basil pesto to make a tomato and mozzarella salad; or simply double the salad and the stracciatella in this recipe to make eight salads. Since stracciatella is hard to find, feel free to substitute burrata in this dish. I normally like to use only the pale green leaves from the celery hearts, but since this dish requires so many celery leaves, I call for you to use the darker green leaves for the pesto, reserving the light green leaves for the salad. If you were inclined to buy even more celery, then use the light green leaves for both parts of this recipe—and use the excess celery ribs as inspiration to make Basic Chicken Stock (page 27), Soffritto (page 28), Lentils Castellucciano (page 264), or any of our other recipes that begin with sautéed diced celery.

Pain de mie is a French-style bread shaped like a traditional, square-edged slicing loaf similar to a Pullman loaf. Mie means “crumb” and is a breadbaker’s term that refers to the inside of bread—that which isn’t the crust. This bread is so named because, baked in a loaf pan, it doesn’t have a crust. Pain de mie contains a touch of sugar and butter so it makes for the most flavorful bread crumbs. If you can’t get pain de mie, substitute brioche, which is even more buttery.

I love leeks, and I especially love the traditional French preparation of leeks vinaigrette—boiled or steamed leeks served cold and dressed with a sharp vinaigrette. This is my Mozzarella Bar take on that classic. All of the Mozzarella Bar dishes have some kind of crunchy bread as a contrast to the soft cheese. Some are served on crostini, but those that aren’t are topped with some kind of crouton or, in this case, bread crumbs, which really finish this dish.

I’ve been making a version of this condiment for as long as I can remember. Currants and pine nuts are a traditional Sicilian combination, so anytime I use this I feel like I am making a Sicilian dish.

Every restaurant menu has at least one or two items that can’t be taken off lest customers riot. This sundae and the Butterscotch Budino (page 272) are those items for us, which just goes to prove that caramel and salt are a winning combination. In Italy, coppetta refers to an unadorned dish of gelato, but we took liberties with the definition with this sundae. It’s a good dessert to serve to a crowd, since the recipes for the caramel, marshmallow sauce, and gelato make enough for twelve or more. To increase the yield, just increase the amount of peanuts that you toast.

Marshmallow sauce is one of those things that can’t be made in a small batch. It must be served the day it is made, so making it is a great excuse to feed the Caramel Coppetta with Marshmallow Sauce and Salted Spanish Peanuts (facing page) to a crowd.