David Leite | Personal Recipe Collection | Serves 4, or 6 with the meal stretcher

The One and I have been making and enjoying this dish for years—in fact, it’s been in our arsenal for about a decade. Technically, it’s not a chili, as it doesn’t contain chiles or chili powder. It’s really more of a Mediterranean bean stew. What can I say, nicknames stick. What’s great about it is it’s a cinch to make (all of a half hour) and it’s surprisingly light. When we have weekend guests and don’t want to get bogged down with making six big, heavy meals, we turn to this for a satisfying lunch or a light supper, with a salad on the side.

Customarily, chilis and stews are made by first browning the meat then transferring it to a bowl while cooking the vegetables. Because there’s so little fat in the turkey sausage (and, admit it, they just don’t have that flavor punch beef does), I like to keep the turkey in the skillet while cooking the vegetables. This does two things: 1.) it really gives the turkey a good browning, which adds flavor, and 2.) it doesn’t overcook the red pepper. Oh, and whatever you do, resist the urge to muck this up by adding chili powder (yes, even though it’s called a “chili”). It would ruin the flavor profile.—David Leite

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdLrCbJMtG4

convert Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil, more if needed
1 pound sweet Italian turkey sausage, casings removed
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 large garlic cloves, minced
One 15 1/2-ounce can cannellini beans, well-drained
One 28-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes, undrained, tomatoes chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method
1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Swirl 2 tablespoons of the oil into the pan and then add the turkey. Cook, stirring often and breaking up the meat with the edge of a wooden spoon, until the turkey is chunky and nicely browned, about 10 minutes.

2. Drizzle the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over the turkey. Dump in the onion and pepper, sprinkle with the oregano, basil, and thyme, and sauté, stirring often, until the vegetables are just softened, about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes more. The bottom of the pan may develop a brown coating—that’s good. It gives a lot of flavor. If it threatens to burn, drizzle in a few tablespoons of water and scrape it up.

3. Turn the heat to low and stir in the beans and half of the tomatoes and half their liquid. (Reserve the remaining tomatoes and liquid for a meal stretcher, see Note.) Season with salt and pepper to taste, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Meal Stretcher Note: Unexpected company? No problem. Add a second can of drained cannellini beans and the remaining chopped tomatoes and their liquid. Simmer the chili until heated through. Serves six, easily.

Recipe and photo © 2010 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

My introduction to spaghetti alla carbonara was nothing less than ignoble. In the early ’90s, I encountered the recipe in a low-fat, low-cholesterol cookbook I had borrowed from my friend Diane, a stick-thin Stairmaster mistress. Diane, who has an impeccable palate, nonetheless wanted slim-down versions of her favorite dishes during the week so that she could splurge on the real thing during weekends.

The recipe — which in its unadulterated form is rich with eggs, pancetta, grated cheese, and plenty of freshly ground pepper — was an anemic version of itself. The final dish was a concoction of egg substitute, artificial bacon bits and low-fat grated cheese. After a few bites, I decided to steer clear of the dish — and the book.

Five years later, on a trip to Italy, several friends and I were dining at Vecchia Roma, on the Piazza Campitelli in Rome, and there on the menu was spaghetti alla carbonara. I was resolute in my aversion, and instead ordered risotto with shrimp and whitefish — utterly delicious, but like an ABBA song, I couldn’t get carbonara out of my head.

A week later in Bellagio in the Lake Como region, it appeared again on the menu of a small lakeside restaurant whose name I can’t remember, thanks to a bottle of Franciacorta spumante. I was going to pass it up until I read its description.

“Alla carbonara,” the menu said, means “in the manner of the coal miners.” (Carbonara and carbone, the Italian word for coal, both derive from the Latin word carbo.) According to this legend, the dish was popular with miners because the few ingredients could easily be carried or, in the case of eggs, pocketed from henhouses on the way to work. When appetites knocked, a simple campfire in the woods was all that was needed to make an elegant meal. The liberal use of pepper is considered a modern-day metaphor for the specks of coal that would inevitably drop from the miners’ clothing onto the plates of pasta. Others say the name comes from the carbon that rose from cooking the dish over a charcoal fire.

A sucker for a good story, no matter the origin, I committed myself to finding the best spaghetti alla carbonara our trip had to offer. From Bellagio to Milan to Venice, I ordered the same dish, and each time something different was placed in front of me. Some contained cream; others, wild boar; still others had the temerity to sport sauteed onions and garlic, which tipped the balance of flavors.

After arriving home and discovering I had gained 14 pounds (the hazards of research), I briefly entertained the idea of Diane’s denuded version from years ago. But the real thing in all its iterations had wooed me and won. Now, would someone pass the Parmigiano-Reggiano, please?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHwniV8Lwfw

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
by David Leite
Serves 4

convert Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
6 ounces thickly sliced pancetta, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 pound spaghetti
3 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk, well beaten
3/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano combined with 1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano
3/4 cup of boiling pasta water
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Method
1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until it ripples. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring often, until crisp. Slide the pan off the heat and set aside.

2. Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Add the salt and the spaghetti, stirring often to prevent the pasta from clumping, and cook until al dente. Drain, reserving the 3/4 cup of pasta water, and return the spaghetti while it’s very hot to the pan. Set over very low heat. Immediately add the eggs, half of the cheese, the reserved pancetta, and any rendered fat, and toss well. Add just enough of the pasta water to make the mixture lusciously creamy. Sprinkle generously with pepper and serve at once. Pass the remaining cheese at the table.

Article and recipe © 2004 David Leite. Photo © 2004 Robert Olding. All rights reserved.
© 2009 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

I feel like johnny-come-lately. This post was meant to go up on Dec. 19th, 2009—the eve of the big nor’easter that was supposed to punish New England, dumping more snow on us than we’ve seen in a long time. The One and I are snow freaks. We love being stranded in the middle of a blizzard, with snow falling for hours while we spend time in the kitchen cooking. The windows all steamed up. The cats curled up the on the rug. But before you sigh and think it’s all “Christmas in Connecticut,” more often than not, one of us is tripping over Raja, our Himalayan, or dancing around Chloe, our Persian, while juggling scalding casserole dishes or Dutch ovens. Not exactly Currier and Ives.

A shrink would have a field day with me, I’m sure, because there’s no time I feel safer than when tucked away in the house during a blizzard. Womb envy? A desire to regress? A need to temporarily severe a social umbilical cord? Who knows, but when snow starts to fall, I start to beam.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n80VHgp-js8

And it was hard not to get excited with weather forecasts becoming fantastically more ominous as the hours progressed. Snowfall predictions mounted from several inches to a whopping foot and a half. And while normal people were canceling plans, filling their cars with gas, and buying shovels, we were making menus. Lots and lots of menus. By noon the day of the avalanche, we had four days worth of meals drawn up, shopped for, and prepped. To usher in what Channel 8 called “the snowstorm of the decade,” we celebrated by making what I dubbed Blizzard Beef—and filmed it so I could try out my new Kodak Zi8. As the beef braised, we kept running from the increasingly hysterical weatherman on TV to the front door to peer out at the post light through cupped hands. But there was nothing. As we ate, we glanced out the French doors. Nothing. Bedtime, four hours later. Nothing. The next morning at 8 a.m., which was supposed to be the pulsing, punishing, twisted heart of the storm, all there was was a meager four inches of white stuff. Even the guy who plows our driveway asked if he should even bother.

Deflated, we did what any sane person would do to combat such disappointment: we cooked. More.

I was going to give up on ever posting this, because what good is Blizzard Beef without a blizzard? But maybe somewhere, someday, someone will get caught in a blizzard with only beef chuck steaks, Worcestershire sauce, and water and will need to do some kind of MacGyver cooking. If so, here’s your dish. It’s so simple, there’s not even a recipe. We accompanied it with over-the-top mashed potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts.

P.S. It’s 6:23 p.m. and I just heard the weather forecast: They say that a big storm is headed our way next weekend. All I can say is, I’ve got my chuck, so let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

© 2009 Leite’s Culinaria, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of use.

Last week I was on one of my favorite shows, Connecticut Style, with Desiree Fontaine and Sonia Baghdady. I made my Orange-Olive Oil Cake. It was a huge hit with them, the crew, and even the dancers from Fred Astaire Studio, who were on later in the show. (And who, by the way, were eating the biggest pieces.)

This cake was, without a doubt, the hardest recipe to develop in The New Portuguese Table. Cindi Kruth, one of my recipe testers, and I made 13 versions of it until I knew it was as good as the recipe I got at Papas, the tiny restaurant up the hill from my apartment in Lisbon. The problem was—and I have no idea of this was intentional (you know how some cooks can be)—but they gave me a recipe for a classic chiffon cake. Yet their mighty bolo de laranja was dense and rich, and just one slice could satisfy even my appetite.

Friend and Portuguese food scholar Janet Boileau was smitten with the cake and also went to work trying to figure it out. In the end, it took a call to the wonderful Lisbon chef Fausto Airioldi to help me get a handle on the dessert. He agreed with me that this was no stinking chiffon cake. It was too full of the bold flavors of Portuguese. So, that’s when Cindi and I started from scratch, literally. Several weeks later, we came up with this. And if you had a chance to stop one of my book signings, you would have had a sample. It’s what I always serve, and people always ask for, when I’m fending off those huge lines of three and four fans.

If you want the recipe, leave a comment and let me know.

Portuguese Orange-Olive Oil Cake
by David Leite
from The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast
(Clarkson Potter, 2009)
Serves 10 to 12

Atenção: Make sure to use a light-colored Bundt pan. A dark one will turn out a cake that sticks and is unpleasantly brown. Since this cake only gets better with age, don’t even think about taking a bite until the day after you make it, or even the day after that.

convert Ingredients
Nonstick baking spray with flour
4 to 5 large navel oranges
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt
5 large eggs
3 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups mild extra-virgin olive oil
Confectioners’ sugar, for sprinkling

Method
1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven, remove any racks above, and crank up the heat to 350°F (175°C). Coat a 12-cup Bundt or tube pan with baking spray and set aside.

2. Finely grate the zest of 3 of the oranges, then squeeze 4 of them. You should have 1 1/2 cups of juice; if not, squeeze the 5th orange. Set aside.

3. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a handheld mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs on medium-high speed until well-combined, about 1 minute. Slowly pour in the granulated sugar and continue beating until thick and pale yellow, about 3 minutes. On low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and oil, starting and ending with the flour, and beat until just a few wisps of flour remain. Pour in the orange juice and zest and whirl for a few seconds to bring the batter together.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a cake tester comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it, about 1 1/4 hours. If the top is browning too much as the cake bakes, cover lightly with foil. Transfer to a wire rack and cool for 15 minutes.

6. Turn the cake out onto the rack and cool completely, then place it in a covered cake stand and let it sit overnight. Just before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

Confused by all the conflicting information about brining a Thanksgiving turkey? Well, no wonder. There are as many brining techniques out there as there are cooks—and some of the methods are pretty weird. But a well-made brine can make a turkey more flavorful and eminently juicy. This video, from our sister site Fine Cooking, takes you step-by-step through the process of brining.

Check out some of our favorite brined turkey recipes
Brined Herb-Butter Roasted Turkey with Pinot Noir Gravy
Brined Roast Turkey with Sage Butter Rub
Brined Roast Turkey with Juniper-Ginger Butter

On Thanksgiving, do you reach for dressing or stuffing? (Don’t know the difference?) Have you heard all kinds of food safety stories about the harmfulness of undercooked stuffing? It’s enough to make you want to buy a turkey sandwich at the deli and call it a day. But in this video, from our sister site Fine Cooking, you’ll learn how to safely stuff a turkey, cook it properly, serve the stuffing with style.

Check out some of our favorite stuffing recipes
Rustic Bread Stuffing with Cranberries, Hazelnuts, and Oyster Mushrooms
Wild Rice, Cornbread Stuffing with Pears, and Dried Cranberries
Herbed Bread Dressing with Bacon, and Prunes

If visions of lumpy, bland gravy are enough to keep you clear of that roasting pan—filled with luscious stuck-on bits just waiting to lend flavor to your dish—take heart, Thanksgiving comrade. You’re in good company. In this video, from our sister site Fine Cooking, you’ll learn how to make a delectable gravy from pan dripping and those stuck-on bits that are just calling out your name. (View this video to  make gravy for a brined turkey.)

Check out some of our favorite gravy recipes
Pan Gravy with Cream, Cognac, and Thyme
Mushroom Gravy
Classic Pan Gravy

Love a brined turkey? Adore its amazingly juicy meat and kicked-up flavor? Well, we do, too. But while everyone these days is churning out beautifully brined birds—oftentimes with the most amazing brew of herbs and spices—they make a mistake when it comes to gravy. A brined turkey will turn out a salty topper. This video, from our sister site Fine Cooking, reveals a few secrets that can help you make a perfectly seasoned gravy worthy of your bronzed baby.