Something we gut-wrenchingly miss about Italy: the plentiful celebratory festivals that take place in small towns across the countryside. A typical Saturday in Piedmont would consist of Jonas and me revving up the Alfa to hit the hills in search of a gathering of townfolk united in their reverence for classic Fiat 500’s, white truffles, esoteric antiques, gelato, formaggio, vino, et cetera.  One of our favorites was the Festival delle Sagre, translated that’s the Festival of Festivals.  It takes place in the town of Asti, famous for great wines (Barbera d’Asti, Asti Spumante), horseracing (The Palio), and its close proximity to the heart of the best white truffles on earth, tartufo bianco d’Alba.  The festival is a great place to sample rustic Piedmontese cuisine in a large-format, entirely informal setting.  It is also a great place to drink plentiful amounts of wine poured directly from large glass damigiane (carboys, casks, huge glass vessels used to store wine) and have a sinfully good time.

One of the more memorable dishes on hand at the Festival delle Sagre is carne battuta, which means (now get your mind out of the gutter here) beaten meat.  The longer version, carne battuta al coltello just means beaten with a knife. In other words, you cut up chunks of raw, very high quality beef or horsemeat, then beat it into submission (and tiny little pieces) with a super-heavy meat cleaver.  It’s like the Italian version of the French dish Steak Tartare, only with different flavors.  Typical Piedmontese additions would be lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and perhaps some herbs. I have seen people add cream as well, though rarely.

In my case, I wanted to top my battuta with a quivering quail egg because I thought it would add a nice, carbonara-like texture to the finished plate.  I started with extremely fresh Wagyu filet mignon cut from the center of the tenderloin and trimmed of any oxygenated pieces just before preparation.  Then I roughly chopped it before going to town with my man-sized meat cleaver. I beat up half a pound of filet so much my arm is sore today, no kidding. Perhaps I am just a big wimp!

Once I had my perfectly beaten cubes, I used a fork to stir in lemon juice (one small lemon for half pound of meat), olive oil-to taste, ½ c of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, ½ tbsp chopped fresh oregano, and Maldon salt.  I then plated the battuta using a cookie cutter as a form, topped it with a sous vide quail egg (you could just soft boil too), and sprinkled on some fresh pepper.  I served the battuta with celery and carrot ribbons because they are nice to break up the mouth feel of the meat.  It’s a great appetizer for a more adventurous dinner party, of course you’d want to be sure everyone was ok with raw meat before you wasted all that delectable filet.

When I think of poutine I think of romance, legs in pencil skirts gracefully exiting limos, Concord dashes to Paris for a quick shopping jaunt. Those of you who have had poutine are surely shaking your heads right now thinking what it should conjure for me is glutted arteries and heart attacks at 45, but no matter. Poutine is one of those insanely attractive foods that I’ll never refuse, even if it means an extra five miles on the treadmill the next day.  A quick bit of history: poutine originated in Quebec in the late 1950’s and consists of fries, cheese curds, and sauce.  There are many variations on the sauce, but it is essentially agreed upon that the most traditional sauce is a veloute made with chicken stock (the difference between veloute and gravy being that the former is made with stock whereas the latter cream or milk).  By the 1970’s, poutine had worked its way into the hearts of New York and New Jerseyites who often referred to it by another moniker: disco fries.  I’m sure Lady Gaga would be proud.  I think this is where my non-lived-through nostalgia comes in. I just imagine the fabulous queens (gay and otherwise) of the Studio 54 set tumbling out of the club at 5 am ordering disco fries from the nearest greasy spoon to sop up all of the vodka tonics consumed during a wild night of dancing and debauchery. 

I’ve been on a bit of a poutine kick lately, which is perfectly ok since I’m also on a bit of a training for a half-marathon kick too, so there.  I’m not sure any amount of running can justify the fact that I recently bought a deep fryer, but it sure makes kick ass fries, so I’m throwing caution to the wind.  I’ve been experimenting up a storm with the Okinawan purple sweet potatoes that are flooding the shelves of Uwajimaya right now, and the true test of a good potato is to fry it straight up.  I feel like by buying a deep fryer I’ve suddenly become initiated into a secret club where I get to learn little secrets like when you’re frying potatoes you must double dip.  Yup, it’s true, the interior gets cooked but stays soft, then the second dip in the fryer crisps up the exterior and provides necessary crunch. 

I had sous vided a quartered duck the day before, so I made a veloute of the remaining jus and simply slathered it over the pretty fries. I completed the look with a smattering of fresh cheese curds from Seattle’s own Beechers Cheese.  It couldn’t be simpler, like Canada’s answer to nachos, but to my mind, much better, and irrefutably more romantic.  What are you waiting for- go out and imbibe too much of your favorite liquor and soak it all up after you’re good and drunk and danced out with a steaming plate of poutine.  You’ll be hooked before you can say “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.”

Best. Dinner. Ever.  When you challenge yourself to the limits of personal creativity, more often than not the result is an epic failure. I have had my fair share of those: popovers that didn’t “pop”, mousse that was more like sludge, pasta fit to line the rubbish bin, not the inside of a happy mouth.  That’s why I was so elated when I tasted the first bite of this bite-sized bliss.  Who knew Jerusalem artichokes would make such great gnocchi- certainly not me, though I thought I’d try because I had success with parsnip gnocchi recently, and what the hell, right?

Many of you may be asking yourself what in the god-damn is a Jerusalem artichoke aka sunchoke? It looks to me like a cross between ginger and galangal with a purplish skin if you are familiar with both of those roots, but it tastes like, well, an artichoke.  Sort of a really condensed artichoke with the minerally flavor many roots take on that is vaguely reminiscent of licking a D battery (in a good way!). 

I had a healthy handful so I baked them along with some purple potatoes and milled them into an even texture.  Then I added salt, a banty egg (but any egg would do) and enough flour to form a dough.  I rolled pieces of the dough into very thin tubes, maybe ½”.  Then I cut the tubes into ¾” lengths as you would gnocchi and placed them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  I find that resting the gnocchetti (little gnocchi since they are so small) for up to an hour helps it to develop a nice solid exterior post-boil, but anything over an hour makes them too hard and dried out. 

This dinner in all actuality started three days before I served it, however, as I wanted medium-rare beef short ribs, and the only way to do that is in the sous vide machine.  It takes quite a bit of time for the collagen to break down and tenderize the meat at medium rare temperature (134°) so I planned ahead and gave myself 72 hours to tenderize the ribs.  I removed them at more like 60 hours and they were actually completely ideal, so in the future I’ll stick with that number.  Before I sealed them in the foodsafe bag I seasoned them with salt, pepper and smoked garlic powder (which you can learn to make here).  I tossed in a mango that I had sliced, since I wanted a sweet, tangy sauce made from mango and the sweetish effervescent Italian wine, Moscato.  Pan-global, I know, but it worked so well together I make no apologies. 

When I pulled the ribs from the sous vide bath (pictured above, before deep-frying), I added the juices from the bag to a shallot I had lightly sautéed in a saucepan.  I let the juices reduce a little, then added another chopped mango.  Finally I added a cup of Moscato and let the sauce reduce until slightly thickened and all the flavors came together.  I gave it a few whirrs with the immersion blender et voila.  I didn’t even add additional salt and pepper as the bag juices were already seasoned to the perfect level.  The smoked garlic powder came out stunningly in the sauce, and lent a subtle savory hint to the sweetness of the mango and Moscato. 

The final step in putting together this plate of scintillating savory seduction is to throw the sous vide short ribs in the deep fryer at 375° for 60 seconds.  This all came about because a few days ago I was excitedly tweeting (on twitter, for those of you wondering whether I regularly walk around the house acting like a bird-follow me @saltyseattle) about my new deep fryer.  One of my wonderful twitter follows/followers who is also sous vide-obsessed (@bamiyahara) suggested I deep fry sous vide short ribs a la Chang of Momofuku fame. 

still rare but so soft after three days

I couldn’t track down a recipe, but it’s not exactly rocket science, so I worked my own magic, and after one minute in the fryer I was very pleased with the nice caramelized crust that had developed on my short ribs.  Much more than a minute and I’d have worried too much about undoing all the great pains I took to keep the ribs at medium rare, but any less than a minute and not enough caramelization occurs.  I am very thrilled that this was the inaugural use for my deep fryer. It has convinced me unequivocally that there will be many more to come.