Paccheri con ragù bianco di coniglio, or pasta with rabbit ragù

 

 

In my American genes it is not even Thanksgiving yet, but I seem to already be doing all things Christmas.

 

I spent last week end helping my kids make decorations to bring to school.

Which would be ok if:

a) the elementary school project didn't involve making three different decorations using the five senses as inspiration. Which makes it a bit more complicated than dumping a bunch of glitter glue, loose ends from last year's Christmas ribbons and some cardboard toilet paper rolls onto a table* and letting your kid "freely express her artistic inclinations" (although I will admit that the huge Christmas tree they decorate in the entrance with the kids' work gets me teary every year and I am proud of the school's amazing Parent Association that funds great projects with the money they make selling one of the three decorations each child makes); 

b) I didn't spend the whole time I am picking glue out of my pre-schooler's hair and wiping glitter off the floor (and chairs, and table and the rest of the house) thinking why the heck they don't make them do their artwork at school since they don't exactly spend their days reciting Homer and solving equations.

 

 

 

 

This week end I will be helping my mother in law make her famous tortellini for Christmas Eve. I cherish family traditions and have noticed that with the passing of time it is getting harder and harder for her to make the enormous quantities of food she has spoiled her family with for so many years. I want to be able to help her, take some of the weight off of her shoulders; and I want to hand this art down to my own children and their families. I know I will be getting a bag to stash away in my freezer for our Christmas celebration with my family this year. But what I and my children will really be getting out of it are precious memories of these Christmases together, memories they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. I know I cherish the moments I spent with my grandmothers, even more so now that they are no longer here with me. 

 

I have been translating Christmas recipes for a website, sorting through hundreds of pictures of the kids for our Christmas cards and scouring the Internet for gifts because I swore to myself last year that I am never getting stuck in that last-minute shopping frenzy again.

 

But the truth is all I want to do is slow down and enjoy some turkey and cranberry sauce and think about all the things I have to be thankful for, because there are many. The first being my friend who is organizing a belated Thanksgiving get-together next week end for all us nostalgic expats.

 

Another one being all those things that make life easier. Like a recipe that can go two ways, depending what you are in the mood for. 

 

(If you were hoping for something a little more soppy, go here (I am also thankful my photography has improved a tad!) and here, to Thanksgivings past).

 

 

 

 

This is the "sliding doors" of recipes: a small twist of fate and you can get two entirely different meals out of it. A primo or a secondo as they would say here, a first course or a main course. I posted about the latter a couple of years ago. This time I took it a step further. 

 

If you follow the recipe until the meat is perfectly braised (in the link, I finish braising it in the oven, but the stove top will do fine. Just use less liquid for cooking) you will end up with a comforting dish of fall-of-the-bone tender rabbit meat to serve with polenta, mashed potatoes, rice or whatever other vehicle you have in mind to mop up every last drop of the sauce. If you read all the way to the end of the recipe, because like us, you cannot get through the week (or day) without a big plate of pasta, you will enjoy a delicate and delicious ragù. 

 

 

*Now I know that my grandmother's weren't just thrifty because of the Great Depression and the WW2... before being grandmas they were mothers of pre-schoolers and schoolers, which literally means hoarding every piece of crap a functioning person would normally throw away, because at some point you are going to need it for a school project.  

 

Cottage (or shepherd's) pie with an Italian twist

This past Halloween turned out to be special in a very unexpected way. It also brought back yellow tinted* memories of a Halloween long ago, when I was a little girl.

 

But let me start from the beginning. You know how sometimes the strangest things happen, like when you bump into a person in a totally unexpected place, or when you find out that you and another person know somebody in common, the famous six degrees of separation?

I have had my fair share of these kinds of coincidences (the ones I know about, because I often wonder how many times I have crossed paths with people without even realizing it... but I digress).

 

Once, for example, when I travelled from Italy to Florida to visit my grandmother with a girlfriend. My boyfriend at the time was in London with his best friend staying at my sister's. On the spur of the moment, my friend and I decided to drive from Palm Beach to see some Italian friends staying in Fort Lauderdale. In the afternoon we were looking for a restaurant and got totally lost somewhere in the suburbs. We stopped at a strip mall to ask for directions and as I was getting out of our car I saw my boyfriend's father drive right by me... I was so surprised I literally jumped on the trunk of his car to stop him. He was in the States on business and had just visited a client. Needless to say, we were both speechless.

Moussaka-inspired lasagna

I am sure at least some of you are wondering why the heck I didn’t just make moussaka. I'll get back to that in a minute. First I wanted to share with you one of those unique moments of motherhood.

Those of you who have (or have had) young children know that many earnest conversations take place in the bathroom. Little ones rarely answer important questions if posed directly, but they somehow seem to reveal a lot of essential information in the most unexpected moments. We had one of those mother-daughter moments just last night.

My daughter: “Mommy, when we grow up we leave to go and look for a husband, right?”

Me: “…” (quick mental note to self: never ever let daughter watch another princess movie).

My daughter (misunderstanding my snort of laughter): “no, I mean, not go all around the world. I mean in the city we live. I’m scared, I don’t want to go”.

Me: “Sweetie, first of all your husband could be from anywhere in the world. Secondly, there are a lot of things you will do when you grow up. You will study something you are passionate about and hopefully find a calling or a job you will love and that will fulfill you. You will travel and meet lots of people and make many friends. And maybe on one of those trips or when you are having fun with your friends you will meet the person you will fall in love with. And then maybe you'll get married, or maybe you won't. You certainly don’t have to. But when it is the right time it will happen, you won’t look for it” I sentenced, proud of my women's lib talk.

My daughter: “But I want to get married. Voglio cercare marito (I want to look for a husband. I just had to leave it in Italian for those who could appreciate the choice of words of my five year old, so quaint and old fashioned, something out of a nineteenth century novel)”.

Me: “Well then you should (get married I mean). Love will find you when the time is right”.

My daughter: “But I’m scared anyway”.

How did I get from trying to convince my daughter to eat her vegetables to trying to dissuade her from becoming a wife as her sole reason of adulthood in a matter of a few days?

Which leads me back to where I started. Why did I make a moussaka inspired lasagna instead of a moussaka?

Simple: I had some fresh packaged lasagna that needed using up, two large eggplants that I didn’t know how to convince my kids to eat and a jar of ragù sitting in my fridge. If you decide to make it from scratch, you could use lamb for your ragù, but I had beef ragù. And since my ragù was the Italian kind, lacking those flavors so unique to Greek moussaka, I made a cinnamon flavored béchamel sauce.

 

I am aware that eggplant (aubergine for many of you) is no longer in season in this part of the world. I made this a few weeks ago when it still was. I decided to post this recipe because so many of my readers are in the other hemisphere. You Australians, New Zealanders, Chileans and so forth and so on must be sick and tired of reading recipes for stews and gingerbread when you are getting ready to pull out your flipflops and head to the beach. So this is for you, although I have to admit that lasagna isn’t exactly beach fare.

It served its purpose at my house. The roasted eggplant puree was perfectly nestled between the béchamel sauce and the ragù and although adult taste buds can easily detect the smoky flavor, my children didn’t and gobbled it up. After they swallowed the last bite, I of course informed them of what they had so much enjoyed, as I always do when I have to resort to this method. They giggled.

Trilogy: ragù, bechamel sauce and lasagne

The week end started pretty badly.

Our little one brought home some nasty germs from day care on Wednesday and by Friday the whole family was hit by the dreaded stomach flu. I woke up early feeling pretty awful only to remember that F was leaving on a business trip and staying away a day and a night.

I had two choices: give in to my feeling of impending doom and nausea or pretend it wasn't happening and go to work. I opted for the second in a moment of relative well-being only to regret it soon after. I had to get some urgent things done at work and decided I would rush home once everyone had left the house and lie in bed feeling sorry for myself. Until the call came: our older one revisited her breakfast just as they were walking out the door. Several calls ensued to organize a baby sitter and let husband leave during the craziest part of my work day (before the stock market opens at 9:00am). This, while feeling like worshipping the Porcelain God myself and dreading the 36 hours stretching in front of me alone with the kids. All I really wanted to do was curl up in fetal position under my desk and cry.*