Hedonia

Winter salad

This is my favorite season for salad. I love the sturdy, bitter greens of winter, and am eager to consume as many persimmons and pomegranates before their time ends, all too soon.

This salad was inspired by Food Blogga's riotously colored salad of dandelion greens, persimmons and medjool dates, but of course we couldn't let well enough alone. We definitely wanted persimmon arils in there, for their tart-sweet bursts of zing. Fresh fuyu persimmon and toasted pecans added sweetness and crunch. We also wanted to offset the dandelion greens with another green that would temper the bitterness and add some lift; the dandelion greens are so flat, they are sometimes difficult to get on the fork. Some lovely chioggia chickory did just the trick, the flecks of red mirroring the red dandelion stems and bright pomegranate pips.

But the biggest diversion was by replacing dates with hoshigaki. To the uninitiated, as I was just a year ago, hoshigaki are hachiya persimmons that have been peeled, then hung to dry. (In Japanese, hoshi=dried and kaki=persimmon; when words that begin with a "k" sound are merged with words that end with a vowel sound, the "k" converts to a hard "g.") During the drying process, they are gently massaged. During this process, sugars bloom to the surface, resulting in a fine, powdery coating. This lengthy and meticulous process has earned them the nickname of the Kobe beef of persimmons.

Pomegranate borscht

The word "borscht" strikes fear and dread into the hearts of many. It conjures up images of cold, cheerless Pepto-pink liquid. But it need not be any of those things. It can be warm, complex, bright and delicious.

We knew we wanted a soup that was festively red, using seasonal ingredients. Pomegranates sprung immediately to mind, and so I researched a famous Persian soup, Ash-e anar. Delicious though it is, it involves meatballs, and we wanted to keep the soup light so folks wouldn't fill up too early in the evening.

DPaul and I are both big beet eaters (well, we like the small ones, too), so we decided to take this more in the borscht direction. We found one recipe that became our springboard, and adapted from there. It, too, called for meat, but again we were looking for something less substantial. I subbed in celery and anise seeds for caraway, looking for a somewhat more exotic flavor profile. But the real star here is the pomegranate syrup, which subtly holds up the entire dish with a wine-like complexity.  

The end result is an intensely colored soup with a balanced, flavorful broth and just enough substance. This will become part of our repertoire for sure.

Ribollita: Tuscan bread soup

In March of 1998, DPaul and I traveled to Italy for the first time, embarking on the typical American's Grand Tour of the country through Rome, Siena, Florence and Venice. En route from Rome to Siena, my family ran us through a few of the charming hill towns that pepper the Tuscan countryside: Pienza, Montepulciano and San Quirico d'Orcia. Spring was just awakening, and I remember so clearly driving through fields of almost blindingly bright green grass. I was smitten.

When we returned the next year, it was in October, an entirely different experience. We spent a week in Umbria, basing ourselves in Assisi and taking day trips to surrounding towns. Through the chill autumn air thick with the smoke of burning grapevines, we crossed back over into Tuscany one day to visit Cortona, the quintessential hill town made famous by Frances Mayes in Under the Tuscan Sun. Ignoring the slavish American tourists clutching their copies of the book alternately as their guidebook and bible, we ascended the narrow streets of the town to go see the mummified body of Santa Margherita. As we huffed past a doe-eyed girl clutching a puppy who looked up at us and said ciao, we asked a local gentleman how to find the church. His response was, "sù, sempre sù." Up. Keep going up. And so up we went, finally reaching the pinnacle of town so we could breathlessly admire Santa Margherita in her wizened glory. 

Thanks to Ms. Mayes, Tuscany became the penultimate romantic destination for Americans well into this decade, and marketers latched on to this phenomenon. Suddenly, "Tuscan" was appended to anything Italian (or Italian-American) to make it appear more refined and highfalutin, and to raise the profit margin by a few percentage points. 

In point of fact, most Tuscan food is far from fancy; it's downright rustic. Grilled meats, brothy soups and, famously, beans feature prominently. Case in point is the deliciously simple ribollita. While this is now a staple in restaurants in Tuscany and beyond, its roots are clearly in the home -- or the farmhouse.

Classic ribollita is actually not one dish, but three. It starts out as a minestra, a simple vegetable soup with greens and white beans (which, incidentally, is very easy to make in the pressure cooker). The next day, leftovers of of the minestra are extended with pieces of stale bread to make minestra di pane. On the third day, the soup is reheated (ribollita means "reboiled"). As is typical with most soups, the flavors meld and improve with time. No matter which phase of its life you are consuming, be sure to serve it with a drizzle of very good, fresh, fruity olive oil.

But ribollita's life needn't end there. Around the time we first sojourned to Italy, a new restaurant called Delfina opened around the corner from our (now former) apartment. Chef Craig Stoll's debut menu offered a new twist: Pan-fried ribollita. I can't claim to have exactly reproduced Chef Stoll's creation, but my approximation is adequate.

Pasta e fagioli

Why is it so damn hard to find ditalini around these parts?

Where I grew up, ditalini was a sine qua non of the pantry, an ur-pasta good for almost any application. It's the pasta used in minestrone, for example, and is without exception what is used most frequently in the ultimate peasant dish, pasta e fagioli. (Note: That's pronounced pahs-ta va-ZHAWL.) Yet, look high and low though I may, there was not one box to be found anywhere. I wasn't all that surprised not to find them in A. G. Ferrari, specializing as they do in less pedestrian fare. That they were missing from mainstream grocery stores I took in stride. But to go to Lucca Ravioli, temple of all things authentically Italian, and still be thwarted really chapped my hide.

Mind you, it's not that they didn't have a reasonably suitable alternative. They carry Barilla tubetti. Like ditalini, tubetti are small, tube-shaped pasta (hence the name); the difference is simply in proportions. Ditalini are generally as wide as they are long; tubetti are slightly narrower and longer. Sure, we're talking by millimeters here, and so of course the tubetti worked just fine, but they're just. Not. The. Same.

But I digress.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, captures the rustic spirit of cucina povera -- the food of the poor, or as my mother calls it, "Italian soul food" -- better than this dish. I mean, it's pasta and beans, basta. It's a dish that neither requires nor invites embellishment. Getting too fancy with it is like putting lipstick on a pig. It really will improve neither the appearance nor the flavor. That said, I favor Rancho Gordo beans. That's as much gilding the lily as I do.

It's not only possible but actually de rigueur for pasta e fagioli to be not only vegetarian but vegan. After all, the poor folks hardly ever could afford meat. Personally, I happen to like a little pork in my beans and chicken in my stock, but both are optional.

So great and pervasive a staple is this that there are many variations on it. Within my family alone, there are two distinct preparations, one from the bloodline hailing from Benevento in Campania (near Naples), and the other from our ancestors from the tip-toe of the boot at Reggio di Calabria. The former version is lighter, using cannellini beans and a touch of tomato; the latter, with kidney beans, is heartier, thicker and stick-to-your-ribbier. That's a word, right?

English pea soup

I am addicted to KCRW's Good Food podcast. I love host Evan Kleiman's effervescent yet lucid tone as she investigates a wide spectrum of food-related topics. And I especially love the kick-off segment, the Market Report with Laura Avery, who interviews farmer's market vendors and local chefs with the intensity and sincerity of an embedded reporter in Tikrit.

The main reason I enjoy the Market Report, though, is hearing what produce is coming into season in sunny SoCal, knowing that in a matter of weeks the same things are likely to crop up here in the north. Case in point: English peas.

The peas first made their market debut during Avery's March 1 report, and started appearing at Ferry Plaza a few weeks later. Now, at the tail end of their season, I was able to nab a good hearty bagful at the Noe Valley market, pods plump with bright green orbs within. In Avery's report, she talked with LA überchef Mark Peel of Campanile, who shared a simple, fresh pea soup with a luscious, creamy texture without using actual cream. In fact, Peel's original recipe is completely vegan, with just peas, potatoes, onion and garlic. I used chicken stock simply because we have gallons of the stuff.

The pureed potatoes and peas lend a soothing, velvety texture and pleasant weight. A simple garnish of a few glowing dots of bright-green McEvoy Ranch olive oil completes the presentation. A perfect bowlful of springtime freshness.