The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers is a magic hat of a book. Just when I think I’ve emptied it of every last trick, I fish around inside, and pull out something new.
I wasn’t even after a recipe late last Thursday night. Eli and I were traveling home on the T, and a couple of stops out, the conversation turned to chicken. We had two small birds in our fridge that we planned on roasting the following evening, and I casually mentioned – as casually as one can mention a thing like that – that we should rub them down with salt before bed. We knew that we should. We knew it was the right thing to do. But we couldn’t quite remember why. I mumbled something about texture, but the real answer was simple: Because Judy Rodgers told us so.
I didn’t come here today to tell you about chicken. I’m here to talk broccoli, capers, and breadcrumbs in unexpected places. It would be unkind, though, to deprive you of the chance to hear Judy Rodgers tell you so, too. It’s what happens next in this story, in any case. The Zuni Café Cookbook is as lovely to read as it is to cook from. The only thing lovelier than reading and cooking from it is doing both at the same time, an act that requires two cooks in the kitchen, one on the bird, one on the book. While Eli began plucking, salting, and patting, I turned to a small masterpiece in the opening pages, “The Practice of Salting Early,” and read aloud. Rodgers opens with the story of a Paris restaurant at midnight, the site of her first awakening to the power of this practice. About a page in, she offers the following explanation:
Aside from simply allowing time to diffuse the seasoning throughout the food, which is reason enough to try the technique, early salting also promotes juiciness and improves texture. This is the felicitous result of a few reliable processes. First, salt helps dissolve some of the proteins within and around muscle fibers that would otherwise resist chewing. A second process is more complex. Initially, salt does draw moisture from cells – whence the widely accepted belief that it dries food out. However, the quiet trauma of osmosis is temporary. With time, the cells reabsorb moisture in reverse osmosis. When they do, that moisture is seasoned with salt.
I honestly cannot say whether I find this woman’s food or her words more captivating. With only a couple of raw, salted chickens in the kitchen that night, I decided to fill up on the latter. I toted the volume to bed, and paged through the recipes, past old favorites like panades, crostinis, and mushroom plates, and on-decks like sage grilled cheese and ricotta gnocchi. I was about to switch off the light, when the book fell open to something I hadn’t noticed before, something called “Pasta with Spicy Broccoli and Cauliflower.” I saw capers and anchovies, garlic and fennel. I read on, and in the denouement – a word entirely suited to the resolution of Judy Rodgers’s recipes, I promise you – came the following words, “Taste – every flavor should be clamoring for dominance.” I was sold.
Eli and I have fallen into the habit of Sunday supper over the last couple of years. For us, it’s something between a late lunch and an early dinner, usually taken in the 4 or 5 o’ clock hour (hence the fading blue-ish light in these photographs). The fare is always simple: a pot of soup, a loaf of bread, maybe a wedge of cheese. Often, it’s a meal scraped together from the week’s last scraps which, this past Sunday, included two heads of broccoli lurking in the crisper drawer. Perfect. Sunday supper is no time to fuss, so I made Judy Rodgers’s “Pasta with Spicy Broccoli and Cauliflower” with what I had on hand. That meant no cauliflower. I also replaced the olives with an extra scoop of capers, since Eli’s not an olive man. (No one’s perfect.) I dropped the broccoli into the oil and left it alone to brown and frizzle around the edges, as Rodgers said it would. I pushed the chopped capers from the cutting board next, and once they had shriveled and crisped, the anchovies, garlic, and fennel seeds. Only then did I give the whole thing a stir, and scatter several three-fingered pinches of dried chili flakes over top. I do as I am told, so then, I tasted. Clamor, the flavors did.
By then, the pasta was ready to drain; the breadcrumbs were toasted and warm. Ah, the breadcrumbs! Rodgers lists them as an optional ingredient, and I almost did without them. Why would I want bread on my pasta? Well. It turns out that these breadcrumbs are about as optional as the pour of milk in my Earl Grey tea, which is to say, not optional at all. Pasta with breadcrumbs, or “pasta con il pangrattato,” is pasta that crunches, people. Pasta that tastes like toast! It’s apparently some kind of Italian culinary institution, an age-old solution to dressing up a bowl of pasta when more expensive ingredients like meat are scarce. I had no idea. Now I know.
I also know something else, courtesy of Tuesday dinner: this broccoli and breadcrumbs is equally delicious over a bowl of brown rice. Just to be certain, on Thursday, I confirmed it.
In case you’re wondering, the chicken was good, too.
Pasta with Spicy Broccoli (and Cauliflower)
Adapted from The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers
In her exposition, Judy Rodgers encourages us to experiment within the loosely drawn borders of her recipe: “You can try minced fennel bulb in lieu of seeds for a sweeter, more subtle note, or dash both and use freshly chopped mint instead. Substitute pecorino romano if you don’t feel like bread crumbs, trade black olives for green ones, or skip the olives and add more capers or anchovies.” Except for that bit about leaving out the crumbs (heaven forbid!), it all sounds good to me. The following list of ingredients reflects my own take on the recipe. I skipped the 4 to 5 tablespoons of coarsely chopped pitted olives (I upped the capers, instead) and the 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley that Rodgers includes in the original recipe. And I suggest using slightly less pasta than the 1 pound that Rodgers recommends; I prefer a tighter broccoli to pasta ratio.
About 1 cup (about 2 ounces) fresh breadcrumbs made from slightly stale country bread, crusts removed (In a pinch one night, I used panko breadcrumbs from a canister, and I'd do it again.)
¼ cup olive oil, plus an additional 2-3 Tbsps
¾ pound pasta (I used spaghetti)
Two medium-large heads of broccoli with a few inches of stem intact (or one head of broccoli, and one of cauliflower; about 24 ounces, total)
4 heaped Tbsps of capers, drained and dried lightly between towels
6-8 salt-packed anchovy fillets (if you increase the amount of anchovies, remember to adjust the salt in the opposite direction)
6 garlic cloves
½ tsp. fennel seeds
4-8 hefty, three-fingered pinches of dried chili flakes
A splash or two of rice vinegar for deglazing the pan
Sea salt
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Toss the breadcrumbs with 2 tsps. of olive oil, and shake into a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake for 4-5 minutes, until golden. Keep the crumbs on the stovetop until needed.
Put up a pot of water to boil. When it does, add the pasta, and cook until al dente.
Slice the broccoli lengthwise into 1/8-inch pieces. You’ll have some pieces that are all stalk, some that are all flower, and some that are a little bit of both. If the strips of stalk look too long to you, chop them in half.
Pound the fennel seeds lightly in a mortar, and chop the capers with a single pass of the knife. Then, coarsely chop the anchovies and garlic.
Warm the ¼ cup oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Add most of the sliced broccoli. Leave the tiny buds and bits behind for now so that they don’t burn. Salt very lightly (keeping in mind the saltiness of the anchovies), and swirl the pan for a second or two. Then, put it down on the burner and leave it alone. That part is very important. You want to give the broccoli time to brown and frizzle, so don’t touch it for a good 3-5 minutes.
Drizzle with another tablespoonful of olive oil, and scrape the remaining broccoli and capers into the pan. Shake gently so that the tiny buds and capers fall to the bottom of the pan and crisp up. Still do not stir. After another 3 minutes, reduce the heat, scatter the anchovies, garlic, fennel, and chili over the broccoli, and then only then, give it a gentle stir. Cook for another minute or two. If there are a lot of brown bits clinging to the bottom of the pan, splash with rice vinegar, and scrape them up with a wooden spatula.
When the pasta is ready – just a few minutes after you’ve finished the broccoli, hopefully – drain and toss with the broccoli in the pan. Garnish with the warm, toasted breadcrumbs.
Serves 4-6.