Italian Lessons: Three-Meat Meatloaf Arrabiata

Sergio was short. Handsome, but very short. I didn’t notice this at first, however, as when I met him I was sitting down. By the time I stood up and realized my mistake, it was already too late.

I was at a private club called Lochness located just a few blocks from my Florentine flat. Private clubs are common in Italy, where the "members only" policy allows the bar owners to skirt one (or a dozen) of those complicated Italian government regulations. The term is used casually in this city, though, and I was able to offer un sorriso (a smile) in lieu of the 3 Euro membership fee. I still have my card in my wallet; a green laminated rectangle featuring a cartoonlike image of the famous monster inviting me to “get messy with Nessy.”

The night I’d met Sergio, I’d been stood up by my wonderful, albeit flaky, roommate who’d promised to meet me after running an errand. I quickly realized that errand had turned into a sleepover with the boy she was not-so-secretly shagging, and so I was left alone at the bar chatting with the cute barman who kept generously refilling my wine glass each time the owner looked away. He spoke Spanish and English, but I preferred to use my newly-acquired Italian to chat away about cooking school and living in the city. He convinced me to stay until closing and offered to drive me the few blocks home in his funny-looking little Italian car.

I met him at the bar again the next night(this time in flats)and again the following evening. But I was quickly starting to realize that the problem with dating the bartender is that he can never leave the bar. That, and the fact that a cute bartender fluent in English in study abroad-saturated Florence is never a good idea. After a week or two of copious text messaging and side-street kisses, I arrived a few minutes later than usual one night to find him kissing the neck of a willowy blonde who giggled as she loudly massacred the Italian language. Furious and humiliated, I shot him a look of death and quickly turned to head out the door. He darted past me, blocking my exit, and in a pleading ménage of languages explained that he was just "helping her with her Italian." I stared at him in stony silence, prompting him to ask me nervously:

“Sei arrabiata??”

I laughed despite myself. Though it was a word I’d not yet officially learned, I recognized it from countless dinner menus back home. Arrabiata. I instantly understood the way my feelings at that moment mirrored the fiery, spicy red sauce.

“Si!!” I shouted angrily, as I pushed him out of the way and walked out the door.

That was the end of Sergio, but as it just so happened, arrabiata sauce was on the menu in my class the following week. It was then and still continues to be one of my favorites.

******

This very simple, spicy tomato sauce comes from Rome and is wonderful over pasta for a quick afternoon meal, but I think it is even better over a savory three-meat meatloaf made from pork, veal, and beef (feel free to replace ground Sergio, if you can find it).

You don’t have to be angry to serve this dish; it's a pretty great comfort dish no matter how you feel! But trust me when I say that when you’re mad at a man (or woman), there are few things more satisfying that pounding one’s hands into a large bowl of ground meat.

Arrabiata
You can adjust the spice in this dish by adding more or less red pepper. I, as I'm sure you've guessed, like it hot...

Ingredients
1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 28 oz canned crushed tomatoes with their juice*
1 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup chicken stock
salt
pepper

*Remember to use canned, not fresh. Tomatoes aren’t in season now so canned is going to taste much better.

1) Place a heavy saucepan over medium –high heat and add the olive oil. Sauté the minced garlic until it starts to turn golden, but not toasted.

2) Add the tomatoes (along with their juice), chicken stock, and pepper flakes to the garlic and reduce your heat slightly. Season with salt and pepper, and allow the tomatoes to cook down for about 30 minutes, until the sauce is thick. Lower the heat if it starts to boil—you want to keep it at a gentle simmer.

3) When the sauce has thickened and the tomatoes have broken down. Turn off the heat and either serve over meat or pasta (or both) or allow to cool before refrigerating

Three-Meat Meatloaf
This is basically a giant meatball for the lazy. Instead of lots of little balls you just shape the meat and bake. The replacement of breadcrumbs with bran and flaxseed dramatically ups the fiber content and lowers the carbohydrates. How perfect is that?!

Ingredients
1/2 cup chicken or beef stock
1 diced medium-sized yellow onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 handful of Italian parsley, chopped
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground veal
1/2 lb ground pork
1/3 cup course unprocessed bran
3 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 egg
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Extra Virgin olive oil


1) In a heavy saucepan, heat the olive oil and sauté the onions until transluscent.
2) Add the garlic and cook until golden. Remove from heat and let cool
3) In a food processor, blend together the stock, cooked onions and garlic, parsley, red pepper, and salt.
4) In a separate large bowl, combine the three meats and knead until combined evenly.
5) Pour the stock mixture over the meat and combine well with your hands
6) Add the bran and flax seed and mix in well
7) In a separate bowl, beat the egg slightly and then pour over the meat mixture. Again knead until everything has been distributed evenly.
8) Turn the meat mixture onto a large roasting pan and mold into a loaf in the center, allowing room on all sides.
9) Bake at 450 degrees for approximately 35-40 minutes.
10) Raise the oven to broiler, and broil for an additional 3-5 minutes until the top is golden and develops a nice crust.
11) Remove from oven and let sit for ten minutes before slicing so as to not lose all the juices.

To serve, place a thick slice on a plate topped with a couple heaping tablespoons of the arrabiata sauce. Shave Pecorino cheese on top and garnish with more parsely if desired.

In which Alejandra goes to the grocery store and discovers a new kind of mutant lettuce

The wind was biting when I left the office today so I skipped my usual six-block walk to Whole Foods, and instead popped into the nearby Morton Williams. For those of you who don't live in New York City, you should know that the grocery stores in Manhattan are a dismal lot. The big specialty stores, like Whole Foods are wonderful, but twice as expensive and always packed to the gills. The other stores—Gristedes, C-Town, D’Agostinos—all seem to exist in constant states of disarray, with employees perpetually restocking, sweeping, mopping, and doing just about anything they can to make the shopping experience as inconvenient as possible.

The Morton Williams near my office isn’t as bad as some of the others, but I’m completely puzzled by their stock. They boast an olive oil and imported Italian product selection enviable of most gourmet specialty stores. They sell just about every kind of ice cream flavor known to man (Acai Berry! Mexican Chocolate! Pinot Noir!). They even have an entire aisle devoted to British products like tea, Cadburys chocolates, and two different kinds of Marmite (ugh). And yet, they always seem to lack the most basic of products. Necessities like skim milk, toilet paper, and sour cream seem to never be available.

But perhaps this is the reason why I actually enjoy this store. I am not a quick food shopper. I browse supermarkets much like I do bookstores: going around and around the same aisles surveying my options and usually leaving with much more than I planned to buy. I rarely shop with a list or preset recipe in mind, preferring to base my meals on whatever is in season or simply strikes my fancy. It’s a creative process (an adventure, even) to walk into the store knowing that I have a completely blank slate on which to experiment.

Lately, I’ve been drawn to the oddball products on the grocery shelves; the dusty, imperfect things found up high or way down low, all but obscured from plain view. Morton Williams is perfect for this with its weirdo stock. Somewhere in the back of my head I seem to have decided that any items produced outside of the US must be better than their American counterparts. For this reason, I regularly come home with bags full of slightly more expensive imported products like unsalted Danish butter in lopsided little bricks, slightly dented cans of Israeli tuna, and jars of clotted cream covered with tiny British flag stickers.

Accustomed to strange little discoveries in the inner aisles, I was surprised to be surprised in an entirely new part of the store today: the produce section. There, nestled among the tightly cellophaned balls of iceberg lettuce and the lush, wet bouquets of romaine, was a plastic clamshell package containing what it proudly proclaimed to be a: “New Lettuce!”

"A NEW lettuce?!" I thought. I had no idea they were still making new lettuces! It's called “Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce,” and claims to be the “Best of Iceberg and the Best of Romaine.” I stared at this for a while. Turning the package over and over in my hands, trying to figure out the magic behind Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce. I’d never really seen a trademarked lettuce before, so that was exciting in itself.

At 5 dollars a pop, Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce is twice as expensive as the other kinds, which I suppose is what one would expect of mutant lettuce. There were several packages on display, all baring a “Best By 1/24” stamp on them. Checking my watch for the date, I suddenly grew a little concerned for the Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce, picturing it meeting an early demise in a stinky Hell’s Kitchen dumpster. I thought, "that’s no way for Cosmopolitan ™ lettuce to end its days."

So I rescued it. I adopted the Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce, vowing to bring it home and bathe it in Meyer lemon cilantro dressing and serve topped with pieces of spicy, citrus marinated flank steak and avocado.

So that’s exactly what I did.

A bit more about Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce*:
I may have purchased this wierdo x-lettuce out of some kind of strange sense of yuppie food guilt, but I can honestly say that I’m glad I did. The lettuce really does bring together the best parts of iceberg and romaine—the crispness of the former with the sweet, leafy flavor of the romaine.

The leaves are long, and almost taco-shaped, so they work perfectly for wraps or sandwiches. (Ideal for the low-carber who can't eat bread.) The crisp leaf holds its shape really well even when stuffed with steak and avocado (like I did), and the flavor really is a cut above.

Though a bit overpriced, I would still recommend trying it out. I couldn’t help thinking that the smaller inside pieces would be great with dips or fillings as an hors d’oeuvres.

Meyer Lemon Marinated Flank Steak with Lemon Cilantro Dressing in Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce Wraps
This recipe would work just as well as a normal salad, but I wanted to see just how much these Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce wraps could hole. The answer is a lot. Please note that the flax seed in this recipe is completely optional--I just like to toss it in everything as it's an amazing source of fiber and also adds a lovely (and subtle) nutty crunch.

Ingredients
1/2 lb flank steak
1 bunch of cilantro with stems cut off
2 Meyer lemons, juiced
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/4 cup of pine nuts or almonds
3 tablespoons of ground flax seed (optional)
2 cloves garlic
course sea salt
black pepper
Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce leaves (or other kind of lettuce)
1/2 large avocado
3 tablespoons homemade or packaged mayonnaise


1. In a food processor, puree the cilantro, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, nuts, and flax seed. Season to taste with course salt and freshly ground pepper. The final mixture should resemble a loose pesto in texture, with a brighter (almost neon) shade of green.

2. Set aside about a third of the dressing. This will be used at the end to dress your salad so keep away from the raw meat. The rest of the dressing will be your marinade. Place the steak in a glass dish and pour the marinade over. Let marinate for at least 45 minutes, covered, in the refrigerator.

3. Broil the steak for approximately 5 minutes on each side, or to desired doneness. After removing from the oven, let sit for a few minutes (covered) so that the juices sink in. While waiting, mix the portion of dressing you originally set aside with the mayonnaise (or sour cream if you prefer).

4. When ready, slice the steak thinly against the grain (meaning perpendicular to the natural lines of the meat), and pile into your lettuce leaves. Top with a few cubes of avocado and drizzle on the dressing according to taste.

Enjoy!

*Please note that the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own and that I am in no way affiliated with the makers, producers, or other evil geniuses behind Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce. Nor do I believe is Cosmopolitan ™ Lettuce affiliated with the magazine of the same name. Or with the cocktail. Or that new resort they're opening in Vegas.