Eat First

Santangelo's scores upset win at March Meatball Madness

Santangelo's went home with a gleaming trophy -- and the right to say "home of  the best meatballs in Central New York'' -- from Sunday's March Meatball Madness event at Drumlins in Syracuse.

Joey's took second place and two-time winner Aunt Josie's finished third.

But the biggest winner was Elmcrest Children's Center. The annual fundraiser sponsored by Dominick Tassone of Dominick's Restaurant on Burnet Avenue raised $15,000 for the center and its programs.

So many meatball-loving Central New Yorkers filled the banquet room at Drumlins to sample saucy balls made by a dozen participating restaurants that those who showed up at the door without purchasing tickets in advance were asked to please stand by until the line for the buffet donated by Dominick's had thinned a bit.

That spurred talk of moving the event to a larger venue next year.

In the meantime, Santangelo's has a year to savor its victory and keep that trophy polished.

Full of Greens: Utica Greens!

Greens Morelle, Dominique's Chesterfield Restaurant, Utica

Many local foods have a place in the hearts -- and stomachs -- of Utica residents: Chicken riggies, tomato pie, Half Moon cookies, pusties (better known as pasticiotti here in Syracuse). 

And let's not forget Utica greens. 

This staple of restaurant chefs and home cooks owes its existence to Utica's Italian-American community and takes escarole, a common salad green, in a whole other direction. It's chopped, blanched, sauteed in olive oil, then tossed with prosciutto (usually), cherry peppers, Parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs and piled on a plate. 

Voila! That's how escarole becomes Utica Greens, an appetizer to share or a complete meal, depending on how you want to eat it -- and how much you want to eat. 

Our travels took us to Rome and Utica recently, and we weren't about to leave the Mohawk Valley until we were full of greens.

First stop was Dominque's Chesterfield Restaurant, on Bleecker Street on Utica's east side. The restaurant is well-known for its Greens Morelle, named for chef Joe Morelle, who added the dish to the menu at Dominque's many years back, according to our bartender/waiter. 

The generous portion of greens ($8.99) was savory and well-seasoned, rich and filling thanks to prosciutto, Romano cheese and breadcrumbs and slightly zippy, courtesy of the thinly sliced cherry peppers that dotted the dish. The greens were served with crusty Italian bread and dipping oil, and a single serving was plenty for two of us.

Greens Giorgio, Giorgio's Village Cafe, New Hartford

Second stop was Giorgio's Village Cafe in New Hartford. The menu offers several takes on greens, including Greens Giorgio ($8.50), which combines escarole with Romano cheese, salami, hot cherry peppers, roasted potatoes and seasoned bread crumbs.

They were tasty, to be sure, but the presence of the potatoes in the greens made us think of fretta (a popular breakfast scramble here in Central New York) and made the dish seem heavy.

If we were to go back to Utica for greens, and it seems inevitable we will, we'll go back to Dominque's Chesterfield.

Apple Pusties, a seasonal treat at Florentine Pastry Shop, Utica

Besides the lure of its greens, the restaurant is conveniently located within walking distance of several of Utica's Italian bakeries, including the Florentine Pastry Shop, also on Bleecker Street, where we picked up a couple pusties (single-serving pastries filled with chocolate, vanilla or lemon custard) and some Italian cookies for the road. 

Do you have a favorite place in Utica or Syracuse or anywhere in between you like to go for greens? Let's get a dialogue going -- leave a comment below! 

 Photo courtesy of Stef Noble

Want to try your hand at Utica Greens at home? The following recipe is from an old newspaper ad for Chanatry's Market in Utica. 

Utica Greens

1 large escarole (or 2 small heads)

4 slices prosciutto, thin slices, chopped

1 to 2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 long Italian hot peppers, seeded and julienned

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup Pecorino Romano cheese, grated

1 cup chicken broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Clean and rinse escarole twice; chop in large pieces.

Boil down for 5 or 6 minutes so it’s tender and wilted.

Place olive oil in a saute pan and heat.

Add chopped garlic and prosciutto and render for 2 or 3 minutes. Do not burn garlic.

Add seeded peppers and cook another minute or so.

Add the escarole and all the other ingredients in the pan.

Gradually add the breadcrumbs and grated cheese, tossing gently until blended.

Taste for final salt and pepper seasoning.

Place in a casserole; sprinkle a little of the breadcrumbs and place under a broiler for 3 to 4 minutes. Serve hot.

 

Let's Go Orange -- Clap-Clap-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP!

It's March Madness and Central New York is bleeding Orange.

If the closest you get to orange food in your diet is the sauce on your chicken wings or the Cheez Doodles in your snack bowl, here's some orange food that's more pure and natural:

Pumpkin-Maple Scones.

The pale orange and utterly delicious scones were the first in a three-game streak of going orange in the kitchen.

 

 
To get out of a winter cooking rut, I turned to some magazines for inspiration and found plenty in the autumn issue of Edible Finger Lakes magazine, which contained a recipe for Winter Squash Scones and Roasted Delicata Squash Stuffed With White Beans, Greens and Sage.

I made the scones with organic pumpkin puree (canned) in the interest of convenience and the main course with butternut squash because delicata was not available.

 

The extra pumpkin puree was used to make a couple Pumpkin-Apple-Maple Smoothies, a healthy way to go orange for breakfast.

To make one, combine a half-cup of low-fat vanilla yogurt, a quarter-cup of pumpkin puree (or to taste), a couple spoonfuls of applesauce, a splash of milk and a tablespoon or two of maple syrup in a blender. Blend until smooth. To thicken the mixture, add a couple ice cubes. Serve in a tall glass, garnished with a sprinkle of cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg.

If you care about your body and what you put into it, you know that it's important to eat a rainbow of foods, including red, green, yellow, blue, purple, brown and ORANGE. The color of pumpkin, squash and other vegetables comes from beta carotene, which plays a role in maintaining healthy vision. Beta carotene is believed to delay cognitive aging, help the heart function properly and protect skin from sun damage.

For an orange recipe using carrots, see my first-ever Eat First blog post, Orange Comfort in a Bowl (2009).

Pumpkin-Maple Scones
Adapted from Edible Finger Lakes magazine

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
½ cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg beaten and mixed with a little water to make an egg wash
Maple sugar for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone baking mat.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Add chilled butter to flour mixture and combine using a pastry cutter until you have pea-sized chunks.

In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, cream, maple syrup and vanilla until smooth. Add to the flour mixture, mixing lightly with a fork until the liquid is just incorporated. Do not over mix.

Knead the dough several times in the bowl, then turn it out onto a floured work surface. Cut the dough in half and pat each half into a disk, roughly 1 inch high and 5 inches in diameter. Cut each disk into six wedge-shaped scones, and place the scones on the baking sheet, spacing about 1 inch apart.

Brush the tops of the scones with the egg wash and sprinkle with maple sugar. Bake for 15 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned. Cool on a rack.  Stir together the confectioner’s sugar and syrup until smooth. Makes 12 scones.

Chocolate chip cookies: Double(tree) the pleasure

There's nothing better than a homemade chocolate chip cookie, just baked, still soft and warm and oozing chocolate goodness.  Except for a Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies are a hallmark of the Doubletree hotel experience. Talk about your warm welcome: Guests checking in are handed their room entry card and a warm chocolate chip cookie. The cookies are so popular they're sold online and shipped all over the world.

I had never had a Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie until recently. My friend Scott Severance received a tin of them from the Doubletree Syracuse hotel and shared one with me. It was not warm, but it didn't really matter. The rich, buttery cookie was fully loaded with chips, nuts and oatmeal.

This is the ULTIMATE chocolate chip cookie (sorry, Wegmans), I thought to myself as I inhaled it while walking to my car.

Then I had occasion to meet Kevin Magdon, business travel manager at the Doubletree Syracuse and I told him how much I enjoyed the cookie from Scott. Kevin said he enjoyed the cookies so much when he was new in his job at the Doubletree that he gained 15 pounds. Now, he says, he limits his intake to about one cookie a month.

That's willpower!

Kevin sent me off from our meeting with a warm cookie in a brown paper sleeve. It was gone -- here's a news flash -- before I reached the Thompson Road South turn-off from Carrier Circle. And that got me thinking about trying to duplicate the Doubletree cookie at home.

I usually make chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of whatever brand of chocolate chips I have on hand, adding extra vanilla extract, a smidgen of cinnamon or maybe some finely minced orange zest or finely minced fresh mint for something a little bit different.

The Doubletree recipe is a closely guarded secret, but there are plenty of copycat recipes online, including a so-called Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe from Choc-chip-cookie-Recipe.com.

I baked a batch of them for dinner with friends, following the recipe to the letter, including its instructions to refrigerate the batter overnight and use a quarter-cup of batter for each cookie. They were a big hit (pun intended). I also reserved six portions of batter and put them in the freezer for later use.

Last week, I brought a half-dozen of my faux Doubletree cookies to the Syracuse Doubletree, where they were warmed in a microwave oven and served alongside a plate of real-deal Doubletree chocolate chip cookies in a "blind tasting" hosted by Kevin Magdon.

Also in attendance were a group of Central New York cookie lovers: Scott Severance, Jenn Pedde, Mitch Mitchell and Bill Gambino.

The copycat cookies were more crisp and lacked the consistency in color and texture of the real Doubletree cookies. Even so, they were  pronounced "very, very close'' to the original. If they were a more soft and gooey and a little more light in color, it would have been really hard to tell them apart.

Two things I learned in this experiment:

1. All chocolate chips are NOT created equal. The chocolate chips used in the copycat cookies (Price Chopper brand) didn't melt on heating like those in the original Doubletree cookies. Doubletree uses Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips in its cookies and they are definitely of superior quality. I'm going to switch to them in my baking projects -- no more cutting corners.

2. Remove cookies from the oven when they are a little bit UNDERBAKED, especially if you like a soft chocolate chip cookie. Leave them in the oven a little longer if your resident cookie taste-tester, like mine, prefers cookies with crispy edges.

But either way, watch them disappear!