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diggDinner with George and Johanne
By Lisa E. Harrison
Nat Rea
And there is plenty of wine tonight, too. Back in town after a three-year retreat in Provence, and with a new cookbook, On Top of Spaghetti, already in its fourth printing, George and Johanne are hosting an impromptu dinner party at their West Bay home, a former boat-building loft turned waterfront pied à terre. The rectangular living space is intimate yet minimalist. A petite sofa and two round chairs, all white, comprise the seating nook. Two French doors separate the sole bedroom from the dining room. The primary socializing space, an open kitchen, is a scaled-back version of a professional one: a six-burner Wolf range, stainless-steel custom cabinets, and a dishwasher that churns out spotless stemware in two minutes flat. Oh, and there’s a pro here, too; they’ve enlisted David Reynoso, the newly crowned executive chef of their twenty-seven-year-old restaurant, to assist with the six-course menu.
The blueprint for the evening calls for direct, simple, yet refined food. “There’s not a difference between our thought process at home and at the restaurant,” says Johanne. “It’s basically all the same — same food, and the aesthetic doesn’t change.” Keeping the cool temps in mind, the couple chose hearty. The star attraction, culled from the pages of their new book, is brasato al Barolo, a slow-cooked, rib-sticking stew reminiscent of Sunday dinner. The brasato broth is served over pasta as a primo, or first course, and then the meat is plated separately as the entree. The other, lighter dishes, from shrimp-stuffed eggs to lobster antipasto, were selected to balance the rich braised meat. “It’s a lavish meal without being formal,” says Johanne. “It’s not an everyday dinner because you’re using twelve cups of wine.” And that, of course, doesn’t count what’s generously being poured into the Spiegelau stemware.
[Call out: The blueprint for the evening calls for direct, simple, yet refined food.]
There are many perks to owning a restaurant. Easy access to the best provisions is one of them. Johanne and George foraged for meats, seafood and staples like fine olive oil (brand of choice: Capezzana) at
Al Forno. For the basics — vegetables, eggs, butter — they took to the aisles of Whole Foods and Eastside Marketplace in Providence. “In France people shop every day and buy just what they need for that particular day,” says George. “They’ll buy two stalks of celery, two carrots, five potatoes. When we’re entertaining, we shop just for that meal.” If something catches their eye, they’re not averse to editing the recipe on the spot.
They prep the day before to leave time for talk. “Our guests never help,” says George with a smile. Johanne boils the eggs that she’ll then stuff with diced shrimp minutes before their friends arrive, while George mixes dough for the pasta (his secret: he cranks it through the roller thirty times). They prepare the stew, refrigerating it overnight to let the flavors develop. “We take turns being chef and sous chef,” says George. “I can begin a dish, and she’ll finish it.”
Many of the dining room chores are also crossed off the list a day out. George presses the white linens Johanne’s mother found on a family trip to Ireland when Johanne was eight years old. He also polishes the flatware — “always George’s job,” says Johanne — a mix of their stamped wedding silver and less ornate pieces collected in France. “We each have different tastes,” says George, “so we mix it.” They use Johanne’s mother’s china for the main course and wine glasses borrowed from the restaurant. Like at Al Forno, the table dressing is sparse but elegant. Tiny white votives float in cordial glasses. The only burst of
color is from two blue vases filled with bunches of yellow alstroemeria, and green-tinged water glasses that Johanne jokingly refers to as “George’s dowry.”
The hosts attend to last-minute details before guests arrive. George stokes the fire; Johanne circles the table, straightening each place setting as she chats on her cell phone with their book rep. Reynoso — they call him Davey — sets out dishes of black and green olives along with the hard-boiled eggs, self-serve style, on the kitchen table, a slab of butcher block stumbled upon more than twenty years ago at a meat-packing outfit near RISD. The guest list is diverse. Most — Maryanne Ziegler, Traci and Bernie Maceroni, and Joe Gilmartin III (they let his penchant for well-done steak slide) — have been regulars at the restaurant since the beginning. Ruth Davis, and her husband, Bill Drew, go back even further, to their college days at RISD.
Seats aren’t assigned at the oval table, and conversation flows from travel to politics to pets — the couple’s new midnight-black cat, Poppy Seed, is the target of much attention — often reverting back to the food sitting before them. George and Johanne’s northern Italian fare hasn’t yielded to the culinary trends common in kitchens today. “We don’t use exotic ingredients; the kids want to use foie gras, caviar, microgreens,” says George. “When we started out, Romaine lettuce was exotic, getting a decent olive oil was hard. We had to search for our ingredients.”
In between courses Johanne, George and David clear the table and race to plate the next dish with an urgency rarely seen outside a professional kitchen. George admits that cooking at home is easy compared to the restaurant, where twenty-five cooks brandish knives and scalding saute pans.
Dessert, hand-churned vanilla ice cream, an Al Forno staple, doused in decaf espresso, is pronounced “gorgeous” by Maryanne.
If the guests scanned the room now, they might forget they’re not at the restaurant. The food. The wine. The people. Even the ceiling — striped, just like at Al Forno — would belie the truth.
The Menu
Shrimp-Stuffed Eggs
“I love eggs and have been doing a fair amount of deviled eggs in the past year,” says Johanne. Here, olive oil gives the eggs a lighter, more pure taste and doesn’t conflict with the added flavors.
12 medium, fresh eggs
sea salt
fresh-cracked black pepper
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 to 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
12 medium, cooked shrimp, finely chopped
Cover the eggs with cold water in a large saucepan. Add plenty of sea salt (this will help release the membrane and shells of the cooked eggs). Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 8 minutes. Immediately drain and cover the eggs with cold water to cool. Peel the eggs and set aside until ready to stuff.
Cut the eggs lengthwise in two. Pop out the yolks and place in a mixing bowl. Lay out the egg whites on a platter and set aside.
Mash the yolks and season with salt and pepper. Add the lemon juice and enough of the olive oil to make a moist paste. Add the shrimp and mix thoroughly. Mound the mixture in the cavities of the reserved egg whites. Chill until ready to serve. Serves 8 as an hors d’oeuvre.
Spicy Lobster with Mint and Ginger
This antipasto course was influenced by a trip Johanne took to the Italian island of Salina to meet with Anna Tasca Lanza, the renowned Sicilian cooking instructor. It’s a riff on a raw fish appetizer served at Porto Bello restaurant in Salina.
4 cooked lobsters (1-1/2 pounds each)
sea salt
2 tablespoons finely chopped ginger
2 tablespoons finely chopped jalapeno (seeds and ribs removed before chopping)
2 tablespoons finely chopped carrots
2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion
extra virgin olive oil
8 large, fresh mint leaves
Remove all the meat from the lobsters. Cut each tail in half lengthwise, then cut the pieces crosswise to make medallions about G-inch thick. Lay the medallions on 8 individual plates. Divide the knuckles, claws and any remaining lobster pieces among the plates.
Sprinkle the lobster with sea salt. Sprinkle the ginger, jalapeno, carrots and onions on and around the lobster like confetti. Drizzle generously with olive oil.
Slice the mint leaves into a fine chiffonade (or julienne). Scatter the mint over the lobster and serve right away. Serves 8 as a first course.
Pasta Hankies and Brasato al Barolo
In Italy, meat and potatoes are eaten separately; the starch is served first, followed
by the protein. George and Johanne use a combination of boneless stewing meat and beef short ribs, the latter to give the dish its necessary fat (translation: flavor). Mushrooms give the first course added depth while peas give the entree a jolt of texture and color. (George prefers frozen peas over fresh because they are less starchy.)
6 to 7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2-1/2 pounds short ribs
2-1/2 pounds stewing beef cut into large chunks
3 cups diced onions
I cup finely chopped carrots
I cup finely chopped celery
1 teaspoon sea salt
4 plump garlic cloves trimmed but unpeeled
12 cups dry red wine, preferably Barolo
3 cups beef or chicken broth
2 cloves
1 fresh bay leaf or 1 dried bay leaf
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 cups thickly sliced white mushrooms
1-1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
1-1/2 cups blanched fresh or frozen peas
12 ounces (3/4 batch) fresh pasta (recipe follows), rolled and cut into “hankies;” (dried papardelle, fettuccine or penne may be substituted)
freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large Dutch oven. Add the short ribs and as many pieces of stewing beef as will fit in the pot in one layer without crowding. Brown the beef on all sides over moderately high heat. Transfer the browned pieces to a large plate and continue to brown the remaining pieces of beef. Set aside.
Drain off any fat left in the pot. Add the remaining olive oil and the onions and cook over moderate heat for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the carrots and celery; sprinkle with about 1 teaspoon of salt and saute the vegetables slowly until they are soft and just beginning to brown. This could take about 20 minutes.
Drop in the garlic cloves and pour in the wine. Bring to a boil and boil rapidly for 5 minutes. Return the beef to the pot; add the broth, cloves and bay leaf. Cover and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to maintain a very gentle simmer. If on the lowest heat you have more than a gentle simmer, set the cover askew a bit; and/or use a heat diffuser. In the first hour of cooking skim off any scum that floats to the surface. Thereafter, spoon off the fat on the surface every 15 minutes or so. Cook until the beef is fork tender. It could take 2 to 2-1/2 hours for the short ribs. Remove any chunks of stewing beef from the pot if they become tender before the ribs. Keep the pieces moistened with some of the cooking juices and return them to the pot when the ribs are done. At this point, you can leave the pot on the lowest possible heat with a diffuser, or turn off the heat until you are ready to serve the second course.
To serve the primo, or first course, bring a large pot of water to a boil for the pasta. Use a pasta cooker with a built-in strainer if you have one.
Ladle 2 cups of broth from the beef in the pot into a heatproof measuring cup. Let stand for a few minutes, and then spoon off the fat that floats to the surface. Set aside.
In a large straight-sided skillet, heat 3 tablespoons butter over high heat. When the foam subsides, add the mushrooms and stir and toss them in the butter. Saute until the mushrooms are cooked through and beginning to brown. If they absorb all the butter and seem dry, lower the heat until they release some of their juices, then raise the heat again to brown. Add the reserved broth to the mushrooms and bring to a boil. Reduce to the lowest heat.
Salt the boiling water in the pasta pot and drop in the noodles. Cook until al dente. Do not undercook; you want the pasta to have a silky, almost slippery texture. Drain the pasta and slide into the skillet with the mushrooms. Add the remaining butter and toss gently. Serve immediately with grated cheese.
To serve the secondo, or second course, puree some of the broth. If you have an immersion blender, stack the meat on one side of the pot so you have a pool of broth to puree. Otherwise, transfer about half of the liquid to a blender and puree. Return the broth to the pot.
Stir the tomato paste thoroughly into the broth and add the peas. Reheat gently until the peas are cooked. Serve the brasato with a crusty loaf of bread. Serves 8.
George’s Fresh Pasta
Here it is: the tried and true pasta recipe still used at Al Forno!
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 jumbo eggs, weighing 4-1/2 ounces in
their shells, lightly beaten (slightly over
1/2 cup but less than 2/3 cup lightly beaten
eggs measured in a liquid measuring cup)
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (10 ounces) flour
1 tablespoon hot tap water
Lightly whip the salt into the beaten eggs. Set aside.
Put the flour in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. With the motor running, pour the eggs through the feed tube. Stop the machine as soon as the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Run the motor again, pouring the hot water through the feed tube. Pulse on and off for 10 seconds; stop the motor.
The dough should stick together when pressed between your fingertips. If not, add another 1/2 to 1 teaspoon hot water and pulse again. Turn out onto a cool, smooth surface — marble is ideal. Knead for a minute or two until the dough is smooth and pliable. If it is sticky, knead in 1 to 2 tablespoons flour. Shape into a ball, cover the dough completely with plastic wrap, and allow to rest at room temperature for a minimum of 20 minutes or up to 2 hours in the refrigerator. If the dough is refrigerated, remove it from the fridge about 20 minutes before proceeding with the recipe.
Set up the pasta machine with the rollers at their widest opening.
Divide the dough in half. If the dough is sticky, dust it with flour. Flatten the dough half with the heel of your hand, and feed it through the rollers of the pasta machine. Fold the dough in half lengthwise, and feed it through the rollers again. Repeat 20 to 30 times, occasionally folding the dough widthwise to fit between the guides. This kneads and smoothes the dough further, creating silky and supple pasta.
Now you can roll the pasta into thin sheets by feeding it through each successive setting of the pasta machine until you have passed it through the second thinnest opening (dust with just enough flour as necessary to keep the dough from sticking). This process is done without folding. If the sheet of pasta becomes cumbersomely long, cut it crosswise into 2 pieces to make it more manageable. Repeat with the second half of the dough. Lay the dough out on a barely floured counter or clean, dry kitchen towels. Each half of dough will yield 2 strips of pasta, roughly measuring 3 feet by 4 inches.
To make pasta hankies, cut dough into 3- or 4-inch squares.
After you cut the hankies, you can cook them right away or lay them out on a single layer, without touching, on a lightly floured surface or on clean, dry kitchen towels until ready to cook. If you are not using the pasta the same day, allow it to dry completely, then transfer to long, shallow containers with lids. You can keep it in a cool, dry place for 1 week. Makes about 1 pound.
Bitter Greens Salad
A simple salad of bitter greens follows a rich main course to cleanse the palate and aid digestion.
3 cups frisse
1 cup shredded radicchio
3 cups tender escarole cut into bite-size pieces
2 large endive cut in half lengthwise then across in 1-inch pieces
2 cups watercress
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
sea salt or kosher salt
Set up all the greens in a large salad bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
Drizzle half the olive oil and lemon juice over the salad. Season with salt and toss. Taste and add additional olive oil, lemon juice and salt to taste. You may not need all of the oil and lemon juice. Serve immediately. Serves 8.
Gelato Affogato
The dessert course is usually headed up by Johanne. For the party, she kept it simple with a traditional Italian treat: homemade vanilla ice cream “drowned” with a shot of hot decaf espresso.
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups milk
8 shots espresso
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl.
Split the vanilla bean lengthwise with a paring knife and scrape the tiny black seeds from the pod. Combine the seeds, pod, cream, and milk in a heavy saucepan and scald over medium heat.
Very slowly, pour the hot cream into the egg yolks whisking constantly. Return to the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon.
Strain the custard into a bowl, discarding the vanilla pod, and chill for at least 2 hours. Freeze in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Once ice cream is frozen, divide it among 8 individual serving dishes or coffee cups. Pour one shot of hot espresso over each dish and serve at once.
Makes a generous quart. Serves 8.
