Dinner With Aunt Sue

This is not a story about food. Its not about a recipe or technique or some special piece of kitchen equipment. Its not about a product comparison, review or unique ingredient. This is a story about people and how food connects us.

Sue Wasserman and I grew up together in White Meadow Lake, New Jersey. Its a small, idyllic lakefront community in suburban NJ, about an hour west of New York City. We were part of the large group of kids born in the final years of the baby boom. We attended nursery school, grade school and middle school together. We went to summer camp, played sports and rode bikes together.

As we got older, Sue and I fell into different cliques and our interests diverged. She started a women's fencing team in high school and I was active in the theater program. When I was 16, my family relocated to Beaumont, Texas and by the time we all graduated from high school, I was only in touch with a couple of my many childhood friends. At some point in our 30's, a subgroup of friends reunited a few times and it was great to see each other after so many years, but Sue was not among us.

Say what you will about social media and its ill effects on our culture, but Facebook brought so many lost people back into my life and it has enriched me beyond words. Sue Wasserman is one of those people. I can't remember exactly when we started following each other on social media, but we became instant mutual fans. Sue lives near Asheville, NC and is a freelance writer, excellent photographer and a warm, charming and delightful person. She frequently comments on my food and music posts and she is also a fan of this blog. Sue inspired my post about honey cake when she came across a loaf pan in her kitchen cabinet. She's one of the coolest and most interesting people I follow. So when I started planning my travel to a conference in Atlanta, I reached out to Sue to see if she had the time to drive up and meet me for dinner.

Having lived in Atlanta for many years, Sue knows her way around and she comes to town somewhat frequently to see friends and family. When I extended the dinner invitation, she started asking around and settled on Secreto Kitchen, which was relatively close to my hotel, at least by Atlanta standards. Sue picked me up at my hotel and when we laid eyes on each other for the first time in 40 years, I was instantly transported back to grade school. We talked nonstop on the way to the restaurant.

The place was perfect and we got a table in the front corner of the cozy dining room. It was kind of a quiet Tuesday evening with just a few other tables besides us. We ordered beverages and started catching up on the last four decades.

Over an order of creamy truffle deviled eggs, Sue and I reminisced about Camp White Meadow and our years at Stony Brook elementary. The deviled eggs were yummy and the conversation was easy. We talked about our families and their expectations of us and how we paved our unique and winding paths in life. We both ordered the fried chicken and it came with a delicious sausage gravy, smooth mashed potatoes and crunchy green beans. As we tucked in to our dinner, the conversation moved to college and the early years of our careers. Sue started as a copywriter at a small ad agency before moving down to Atlanta and doing corporate communications work.

We talked about our friends, where they went and how they turned out. We talked about our mothers and the amazing influence they had on our identities. Secreto is known for its carrot cake, so we ordered a slice and dug into our philosophies on life. The carrot cake jiggled a little when the waiter put the plate down on the table. It was impossibly moist and almost custardy, as if its had been steamed, and it had a dollop of cream cheese frosting cascading over the top. As we enjoyed our dessert, we shared our hopes and dreams and talked about how it feels to reinvent ourselves. It was a three hour dinner and I wouldn't have traded one second of for all the money in the world.

The whole dinner was great, but ultimately, the food was just a vehicle for authentic human connection. Sue and I share a love for great food and we both deeply understand how a meal prepared with love provides nourishment for the body and the soul. That, my friends, is worth writing about.

Bacon Roast

I had no idea what to expect when my husband suggested we go to a bacon roast. I mean, clearly we'd be eating roasted bacon, but the circumstances by which this bacon ended up in our bellies was a bit of a mystery. Jason's friend Barb had extended the invitation and she and I share eastern European heritage. She is of Croatian lineage, I have Hungarian roots and we both love the Hungarian dishes we grew up eating. In addition to the usual catered chicken, baked pasta and roasted veggies, Barb included cabbage rolls and haluski on the banquet table at her retirement party last spring. I surmised the bacon roast was a traditional Hungarian preparation that had eluded me thus far. Barb made the reservations and all we had to do was to show up at Huszar, pay our money and enjoy the experience, whatever that might be. As long as there was roasted bacon in my mouth, I was game for whatever the evening would bring.

In Hungary its called Szalonna Sutes and its a summer tradition in rural and farming communities, much like the classic American barbecue. Giant slabs of bacon are cut into large chunks, skewered on long sticks or roasting forks and each person cooks their chunk of bacon slowly over an open fire pit. As the bacon cooks, the fat renders and you're supposed to use a piece of bread to absorb the drippings, which eventually becomes the delivery vehicle for the cooked bacon. It takes about 30 minutes to roast a half-pound slab of bacon over an open fire, at which point its chopped into small cubes and served on the fat soaked bread with raw onion, red bell peppers and tomatoes. This is accompanied by a shot of noxious plum brandy called palinka, plenty of beer, and lots of storytelling and laughter around the fire. Literally and figuratively, chewing the fat.

On the first chilly weekend of the fall, we headed to Pittsburgh's historic Deutschtown neighborhood for our 5:00 pm reservation. Huszar is a small, welcoming, typical Pittsburgh neighborhood tavern serving authentic Hungarian fare, all prepared fresh in their small kitchen. With its small bar and cozy dining room, this is the kind of place where you instantly feel at home. Barb and her friend Nancy were sitting at the bar sampling Karlovochka beer and small but mighty shots of palinka. We joined them and the bartender brought us our beer and clear shots of palinka, which burned all the way down my throat and started a small fire when it hit bottom.

Sides and condiments

About 20 minutes later we were invited to a large patio just up the street, which had a temporary wood fence in front. There were 8 or 10 long tables with chairs, a tent with a couple of prep tables for the bacon, condiments and desserts and 3 fire pits surrounded by chairs. We walked up to the prep table, collected our long forks with our bacon on the end and headed to a fire pit to settle in with our pork. About half way through our roasting time,The Gypsy Strings arrived and a celebratory vibe overtook the whole evening as the patio filled with traditional eastern European folk music.

Desserts

It was cold outside, but the glow of the fire, excellent company and adult beverages warmed our spirits. We struck up conversations with the other folks at our fire pit and had a grand old time.

When our bacon was done, we brought it back to the prep table where our hosts chopped it up into bite sized pieces and piled raw veggies on our plates. With potato salad on the side and delicious small pastries for dessert, it was quite an abundant feast! The pork was smokey, briny and luscious. There were strains of fat running through each little chunk and slightly charred and crispy bits on the ends. Sandwiched on that fatty bread with crispy red pepper slices, juicy tomatoes and the sharpness of raw scallions, that bacon was pure delight. Barb and I had trouble finishing ours so my helpful husband took care of the remnants. No way we were walking out of that place with uneaten bacon on our plates. This is the third year that Huszar has hosted the bacon roast and its well on its way to becoming a Pittsburgh tradition. Maybe you'll join us next year.

Semolina Pasta

It all came together so perfectly. I had all the requisite ingredients, the inspiration struck at the opportune moment and there I was, breaking out the pasta machine. For our anniversary, my thoughtful and considerate husband decided to take me on an outing in search of local produce, meat and eggs. Schramm's farm store had baskets of huge, ripe tomatoes at their peak of flavor for about $3.00. Each basket had 6 or 7 soft-ball sized tomatoes and at that price, I couldn't NOT buy one. On the way home, I realized that there were already two quarts of tomatoes from our garden in the freezer. The tomatoes I just bought would need to be processed quickly and I had the whole weekend to make it happen. As my thoughts turned to recipes, I remembered the bag of semolina flour I'd bought a few weeks earlier. There it was, the moment of inspiration. I think I actually heard a little "ding" in my head when the idea of making semolina pasta with homemade tomato sauce hit me. Don't you just love it when that happens?

There's really no comparison between your own fresh pasta and what comes out of a cardboard box.  They're almost two different food items. Mind you, I'm not knocking dry pasta here, its a pantry staple and something I use frequently. But when you want to go that extra mile, making your own fresh pasta is not as difficult as you think and it never fails to impress. Most pasta is made either with all-purpose flour, super fine 00 flour or semolina  flour and each imparts its own unique taste and texture. 00 flour is very fine and powdery, which gives the pasta dough a smooth surface and the finished product is fluffy and light when cooked. Semolina has a courser texture than flour, which results in more toothsome pasta, and the slightly grainy surface allows it to hold the sauce nicely, just like ridges on certain types of dried pasta. I found recipes that used straight semolina flour and some that mixed it with regular all-purpose flour and since this was my first time using semolina, I decided to use a mix of the two.

SEMOLINA PASTA

1 cup semolina flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp water

Pasta dough can be made easily in the food processor, but if you don't have one you can mix this dough in a bowl. Measure the two flours and salt into a large bowl and mix them together. If you're using the food processor, blitz the dry ingredients a couple times just to mix them. Crack the eggs into a glass jar and add the water and olive oil, put the lid on it and shake it to blend well. With the processor running, drizzle the egg mixture in until it forms a ball, then turn it out to knead it. If you're using the bowl, just mix everything together until it forms a ball, then turn it out onto the counter and knead it until its smooth and slightly springy, which should take about 5 minutes. If the dough is too wet and sticky, knead small bits of flour in as you go until the dough no longer sticks to the surface. When its smooth and uniform, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for about half an hour to rest.

Of course, the pasta dough was the last thing I did that weekend. Making tomato sauce from scratch is not terribly difficult and it tastes infinitely better than anything you get out of a can or jar. The previous day, I turned 7 gigantic tomatoes into deeply flavored sauce using the basic process and recipe here on this blog, adding fresh mushrooms instead of dried. The sauce cooked for about three hours and while it was on the stove, I kept it covered loosely with a piece of aluminum foil. The foil allows steam to escape as the sauce reduces but keeps it from splattering all over the kitchen. Trust me, this technique will save you from cleaning tomato sauce off of the ceiling. I learned the hard way. Tomato sauce always tastes better after it sits in the fridge. This pot of sauce sat overnight and was all ready to go the next day when I started rolling that pasta.

 I took the dough out of the fridge and let it sit for about 10 minutes before rolling it. Now, a pasta machine is not necessary here, the dough can be rolled out with a rolling pin, but it needs to be really thin and since I have a pasta machine, I used it. This pasta had an interesting cornmeal-like texture, but it rolled out nicely and when it was thin enough to just barely see through, I cut it into thick ribbons, tossed them in a little flour and set them on a kitchen towel while I brought a big pot of liberally salted water to a boil. I just happened to have a small zucchini sitting in the fridge, so I cut it into small chunks and sauteed them in a skillet, then poured some of my tomato sauce in and let that heat up over low heat.

Once the water was boiling vigorously, I dropped in the pasta and gave it a stir. Fresh pasta cooks very quickly, it only take about a minute, and when it was al dente I pulled it out with tongs and dropped it right into the sauce, adding a ladle full of pasta water to keep the sauce loose. I let the pasta continue to cook in the sauce and absorb the flavors for a couple minutes before serving. A healthy grating of Parmesan cheese and a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil brought  this bowl of handmade pasta to perfection. The chewiness of this pasta was quite pleasant and I was happy with the results. Plus, no cans, jars or cardboard boxes were harmed in the making of this dinner. All homemade, its the way to eat.