The House of Marinara

It’s been 10 Thanksgivings since I was last in college, and in all that time I had never hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, I have helped in the kitchen several times, but it was never my Thanksgiving. I was always helping somebody else (or eating Tapas in Sevilla). This year I did it and I wanted to put my mark on it. My goal was to make it a nice long enjoyable meal as opposed to the 45 minute gorge fest.

My plan was to have Thanksgiving dinner over 5 courses. By doing it over courses, we could slow things down and let people enjoy themselves. So here was the menu:

1) Soup- Carrot Dill as inspired by Limani
2) Salad- Spinach Salad with chevre, craisins, pecan pralines, and lavender vinaigrette
3) Pasta- Sweet Potato Gnocchi with a maple, sage, brown-butter sauce
4) Entrée- Fried Turkey. Andouille and cornbread dressing, Green bean casserole
5) Dessert- Apple-calvados tart, chocolate-pecan pie, pumpkin crunch

The Soup- This wasn’t a challenging recipe, and overall it tasted very good. The basic concept was cooking down and browning a bunch of carrots, pureeing it all together, and adding heavy cream. Hind sight being 20-20, I wish had cooked down some more white wine and had added it to the mix.

The Salad- This came off really well. My sister had been working the dressing earlier in the afternoon. It is really hard to have a bad salad with crumbled chevre and craisins.

The Pasta- I’ve learned my lesson on gnocchi. Not how to do it better, but rather buy it from someone who knows how to make it. To be fair, I tired finding someone else to make it and no one accepted the challenge. Still the gnocchi itself was decent and the sauce a decadent.

The Entrée- The turkey tasted great. The beauty of frying a turkey is that there is a lot of forgiveness, it cooks quickly, and it doesn’t take up oven space. The negative is that it forces the meal to become regional. The biggest failure of the night came with the dressing. The combination of the Andouille sausage and unfettered cayenne pepper made the dish too spicy. It had great flavor but it came with a cost to those eating it. The green bean casserole was a Paula Dean recipe. My mom did a great job with it.

The Dessert- I subbed all of the desserts to different people. All were well received. I was able to try only a bit of everything because I was still quite full.

Overall, it was a positive experience. I think everyone enjoyed themselves and I look forward to trying it again. Special props to my sister, she truly made this whole thing possible. I always forget how challenging it is to get up from the table and get the next course ready, especially for 10 guests.

the prelude

- NoVA correspondent Dogburt

(Note to readers – my espresso rantings may be what gets me kicked off The Marinara)

I would have you all know that Mr. Marinara handles his bizness with much grace and aplomb. Whenever he has prepared something for me and my friends, there is never a sense of anxiety, and for that, he is worth emulation. That is not to say he feels no anxiety when he’s throwing down in the chef’s kitchen, but it never shows. I on the other hand am a nervous wreck, because no matter how frequently I do something, I’m always afraid that this is the one time when I screw it up for my guests and whatever expectations they have of me falls through the floor.

I know espresso. I don’t know it extremely well, I’m not an expert by any means, but I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about it over the past 10 years of my life, ever since I was given one of those entry-level Krups-style espresso makers. Even owning one of those and knowing how to use it in a manner of proficiency probably put me in the top third of the espresso-wise. I drank Starbucks, I drank Greenberrys’ (a Charlottesville thing) and I liked it. My goal was to produce in the home a reasonable facsimile of my standard Starbucks drink – the Caramel latte. There is no magic to this – it is simply a shot of espresso, steamed milk, and several shots of caramel syrup. My Krups-style espresso maker along with a heavy dose of sugar kept me entertained for many years.

Eventually though, curiosity crept up on me. I wanted to try espresso made by high end restaurants. You know, like Panera. And so during the early years of my marriage, I started to sample espressos and cappuccinos from every restaurant I attended. And very slowly, I started to learn to distinguish between two types of espresso – that which sucked, and that which did not. That which did not suck simply looked different. It had a vibrant glow in its crema, it smelled different, and it didn’t taste like burnt dirt. So now, what to do? Well, I began to think that I was ready to take the next step in my relationship with the espresso bean. Second base, as it were.

I took a poll, did some research, and determined that this beautiful machine was in my near future. This little lady, called Miss Silvia, would take me to the next level in my espresso obsession. So I ordered it, unpacked it, followed the directions to set it up, ground up some beans in my nifty Starbucks coffee grinder, and thus proceeded to pull a shot of dirty water.

I was crestfallen. I wanted to cry. Countless research hours, hundreds of dollars, and my espresso was worse than when I was using my Krups machine. Sisyphus, I feel your pain.

It was not until many months later that I learned an invaluable lesson – your espresso is not primarily governed by your espresso machine, but your grinder. If you pay big bucks on the machine but skimp on the grinder, you are in for much disappointment.

Soon thereby armed with a decent if not spectacular grinder, I finally had the tools to proceed. And proceed I did, over the next two years leading up to today, I have experimented, altered techniques, refined each step, worked diligently to produce the best shot of espresso that I could. And it continues.

Now, dear reader(s), you might be left with two questions:

1. Are you going to tell us anything useful in this blog post?
2. Is all of this worth it?

Answers:

1. There will be much more to come (I hope) but what I will leave you with for starters is, barring all other information present in the process that you know about or otherwise, the best rule of thumb that I’ve come up with on determining whether a shot is good or bad, is the speed at which the extraction occurs. If it drips out like warm honey, you’re probably good to go. Anything else, throw it away or pretend you just picked up some Starbucks.
2. When you taste espresso that has been pulled with precision and care, it is a true paradigm-shifting experience. You may or may not like it, but it will change the way you see espresso and forever alter your expectations of it.

Once again I am here using my blog as a confessional. I live in the Museum District. I am within walking distance of Mary Angela’s, Arianna’s, Bon Giornio, and 8 1/2. Yet, I still found myself ordering PJ’s last night. My excuse is that I could use the online ordering system to order ahead of time, pay easily with a credit card, and try this new Zesty Italiano pizza.

Guess what! It sucked. The sauce was way too sweet. The pan crust was like cardboard. I am not sure why I thought a combination of toppings would somehow make it better, but now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

I spoke with Mrs. Cavanna yesterday and she said that the store would not be totalling closing. Starting January 1, the store will be open a few hours a month. And as stated before, they will be focusing their efforts on farmers markets, restaurants, and grocery stores.

- NoVA correspondent Dogburt

I may be in the minority, but I have found dining in our nation’s capital to be somewhat of a challenge. When I’ve visited Chicago or NYC or LA, it has always been easy for me to settle into an earnest search for both fine dining as well as the magical hole-in-the-walls. Yet for some reason DC represents the equivalent of a dining writer’s block. I know there is good stuff there, but I have a tough time extracting the cream from the chaff. Perhaps it is my fault, since I spend a great deal of my waking hours in the city, but general fatigue of the city leaves me unfortunately uninspired.

So with that trepidation always lurking, I cling to my sure things with all my might. One of those is my favorite DC Italian restaurant, Filomena Ristorante. Tucked in the corner of historic Georgetown, Filomena is quite nondescript in comparison to other more lavish spots. If you choose to drive there, your best bet is to park in the Georgetown Park Mall’s underground garage and walk across Wisconsin Ave to the small opening.

Have you ever gone into a historic building, or a well preserved home, or grandma’s kitchen, and just smiled? When you enter Filomena, you will simply smile, because upon entering, immediately to your right, is a tiny, ancient kitchen where a little old lady is hand making pasta. On my most recent visit, she was hand-stuffing raviolis. Regardless of what you were thinking about on the outside of that door, on the inside of that door, all you can think about is eating the very thing that this little old lady, whom Filomena boasts as its “Pasta Mama,” is making.

You won’t want to leave the side of the Pasta Mama, but eventually you will have to part ways (possibly not before whispering to her, “will you come home with me?”) and head down a flight of stairs into an atmospheric dining area that conveys New Vesuvio, but in a good way. It is almost always busy with commotion and crowds, but the manager and wait staff go out of their way to make you feel comfortable.

Ah, but how is the food? Short of describing the nuances of every dish I’ve ever eaten there, the easiest all-encompassing statement I can make is that the food matches the rest of the experience, if not surpassing it. I have shared in dishes of pizzas, linguinis, raviolis, and in my most recent visit, a penne dish called Penne con Salsicce. The care by which the sauces, meats, and pasta are made help redefine your thinking on what Italian food does to a man. It makes you feel warm and good inside and that you wish for a little while you were an authentic Italian.

If you dine for dinner, you are then treated with courtesy after-dinner cordials. Thoughtfully (if not dangerously) they don’t just bring you a tasting glass; they actually leave the full decanter on your table to imbibe at your leisure.

No, you’re not done yet. To finish things off, you have at your option and capacity the choice of tasting their pastry chef’s magic. The first time I went there with my family, the chef came out to talk to us about her cakes. She recommended a decadent chocolate cake, and said that with this cake, she would quite happily sit down with it and a glass of milk and enjoy her breakfast. After one bite I knew exactly what she meant.

You leave the restaurant begrudgingly, but it is now time to walk off your dinner. The historic area of Georgetown is the perfect place to go arm in arm with your loved one, delaying the inevitability of fishing your car out of the garage and leaving the place that you swear your loving Italian grandma is calling you back for one more bite of ravioli.

Filomena Ristorante
1063 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 338-8800

Since returning from my trip, I have been fairly adventurous in my cooking. This initially started with Greek food, but it has extended into other cuisine. Last week, I thought I would give gravlax a try. I have been fascinated in trying it ever since Bookstore Piet was telling me about how well it turned out. A few months later, I was fortunate enough to try the actual goods from the man himself. So without further ado, here are Piet’s gravlax instructions.

Ingredients:
Salmon (high quality, preferably sushi grade)
Salt
Sugar
White Pepper
Fresh Dill

Instructions:
-wash the salmon, pat dry, remove pin bones
-combine salt and sugar (1 part salt to 2 parts sugar) and add 2 tablespoons white pepper
-place salmon in a dish or pan. pour a shot or two of akavit over and let sit for 10 or 15 minutes
-remove excess liquid and pat dish dry
-pour a small base of sugar/mixture into dish a place salmon (skin side down) onto mixture.
-place several sprigs of fresh dill on top of salmon
-cover salmon with remainder of salt/sugar – make sure the salmon is completely covered
-let sit on counter for 30 minutes to an hour
-cover and place in fridge and wait 36-48 hours to do it correctly
-when you remove it rinse under cold water, make sure you do NOT rehydrate the salmon.
-after rinsing pat dry and wrap tightly in saran wrap until ready to use. I find it best to remove from the mixture at least a couple of hours before serving
-slice thin at a heavy bias

Oh, it turned out perfect!

This is the first year that I will actually be cooking a Thanksgiving Dinner. As such, I want to buy a decent turkey. So my question is:

Where will you be buying your turkey this year?