The Recipe Tree

Where do recipes come from?

Do they fall, fully formed, from the recipe tree that stands on the middle of the earth, whose branches are so wide that they cover the entire world? Or do they swim about in the oceans, infinitely small, leaping out like a silvery fish to inspire when they feel they are needed? Or maybe they grow in the earth as grains of an idea, ready to help those that are hungry.

I’m not sure, but I know some of my favorite recipes have been an attempt to recreate a favorite meal that I ate while traveling. It’s just such a meal, about 15 years ago now, that first got me into cooking.

I was a junior in high school. Our German class had a sister gymnasium near Saarbrücken that we would attend every-other year for two months at a time. On the years we weren’t in Germany, our German friends would come and stay with us in the States.

My host-sister, Miriam, was a few years older than me, and in my eyes, so cool and accomplished. She had a wonderful older boyfriend (to whom she is now married), who was already in university and had a car. And so, we skipped out on a week of school and went traveling.

We went north, to Köln and Düsseldorf and Aachen and Belgium, and somewhere along the way, I cannot remember where, we ate in an Italian restaurant where I had a plate of pasta that still haunts me. It was simple, a ying yang of white and green linguini, with olive oil, crispy garlic and fried sage, but to me, it was the most exciting thing I had ever eaten.

Up until that point, pasta had always just been pasta. Something that should be covered in cheese or tomatoes. I’m also not sure I had ever thought of sage, at all, before that meal. And crispy, toasted, golden, transcendent garlic? It was too much. I was in love.

And so I arrived home, dressed in black, feeling cooler than cool, and immediately dove into trying to recreate the meal for my family. I think I remember my mom being amused, and I think I remember everyone actually enjoying the meal. From that point on, some of the most treasured souvenirs I’ve brought home from my travels have been recipes, or at least the germs of recipes.

On Saturday I tried to recreate one of the more recent souvenir recipes that I picked up, a pasta dish that I had on Good Friday in Florence. It was farfallle pasta with artichokes and fish. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, and I know our artichokes here aren’t the same, tender, breathtaking carcofi they have there, but when I saw crates full of teeny, tiny, impossibly adorable artichokes at the Greenmarket last Friday, I knew I had to try.

And so I did, with thunderously wonderful results. I used branzino, and braised the baby ‘chokes in vermouth and flavored the whole deal with a fragrant, pine nutty pesto. It was dreamy and delicious and immediately transported me back to that rainy, soggy, impossibly Italian night spent in a steamy, jewelbox trattoria, sitting next to the crotchety old man who ate an orange for dessert.

So, tell me, where do your recipes come from? Are they inspired by travel? By the ingredients you find at the farmer’s market or pull from your backyard? Do you prefer to riff on recipes from magazines or cookbooks? Or are you some kind of recipe evil genius?

Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, and links if you’ve got them!

Head below the jump for the recipe for Ann’s Good Friday Pasta.

Pasta di Venerdi Santo

prep time: 1 hour ~ cooking time: 45 minutes

• 2 lbs Baby Artichokes
• 1 Branzino fillet, scaled, cleaned, trimmed, washed and cut into 1 inch pieces
• Olive Oil
• 1 head Garlic
• 1 Lemon, zested
• Vermouth, about 1/3 cup
• Salt
• 1 large Tomato, chopped
• Pine Nuts, a very large handful
• about 2 c Basil, picked and washed
• Olive Oil
• 1 lb Fresh Pasta, something frilly
• Pepper Flakes

Prepare the artichokes. Fill a bowl with water and add a healthy squirt of lemon juice. Trim each artichoke by cutting off any icky brown parts on the bottom, remove tough outer leaves, cut off the tough, spiky tops (about 1/6 of the ‘choke) and then very, very thinly slice the artichokes from heart to the top. Quickly move the sliced artichokes to the acidulated water as you work to prevent oxidation.

Set a large pot of heavily salted water to boil

In a nonstick pan, heat a glug of olive oil over medium-high flame. Season the branzino pieces with salt & pepper and very carefully cook them, skin-side down in the hot oil for about 3 minutes. Flip and cook on the other side for two minutes. Remove to a plate lined with paper towels.

This can also be done in a non-nonstick pan, but some of the skin will probably stick to the bottom. Make sure to scrape it up as it tastes delicious, like bacon, from the sea.

Chop a few cloves of garlic. Heat a glug of olive oil in a large sautée pan over medium heat. Add the garlic. Cook until fragrant then carefully add the drained artichokes. Squeeze the zested lemon over the artichokes (making sure not to get any seeds in, if you can) and the vermouth. Bring to a boil then cover and cook, stirring every so often, for at least 20 minutes. After that time, add the tomato and cook uncovered another 10-15 minutes until the artichokes are very tender and the sauce is concentrating.

While the artichokes are cooking make the pesto. Place into the bowl of a food processor: a few cloves of garlic, a very, very large handful of pine nuts, the basil, the lemon zest, a nice pinch of salt and a very large glug of olive oil. Process, adding more olive oil if necessary, into a thick, creamy paste. It should almost look as if there is cheese or cream in it because of the high ratio of pine nuts.

Cook the pasta and add the pesto to the artichokes, along with a few spoons of the pasta cooking water. Stir to incorporate. Add the branzino to the sauce and carefully fold in. Drain the pasta and transfer to the sauce pan. Carefully stir to coat. Turn off the heat.

Serve the pasta topped with a sprinkling of hot chile flakes. Mangia!

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