Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta: A Vegetarian Cookbook, Kind Of

By Cal Peternell

2019 James Beard Award Nominee
From the author of the New York Times bestselling, IACP Award-winning Twelve Recipes comes a charming vegetable-focused cookbook with sixty recipes that add depths of flavor using three key ingredients: almonds, anchovies, and pancetta.
Celebrated chef and home cook Cal Peternell likes to eat today the way people have been eating forever: with vegetables at the center of the plate, seasoned with a little bit of meat or fish to make a meal savory and satisfying. A little of the right kind of meat goes a long way, and in this book, the right ones are anchovies and pancetta, along with almonds, because nuts are the meat of the plant world. Cal uses them first for flavor, but also because it makes sense: taking savory little bites is inarguably better than big meaty mouthfuls. The salt in anchovies and pancetta draws out and enhances flavors, enriching the rest of the dish, and almonds compare favorably fat-wise and can bring a major flavor boost, especially when they're ground up. This kind of cooking is healthy, leans toward sustainability, and is economical in a way that pleases both palate and pocketbook.
The simple, flexible recipes in this book include Baked, Stuffed Vegetables with Almonds, Currents, Saffron, and Breadcrumbs; Steamed Clams with Almond and Parsley Butter; Roasted Sweet Pepper and Egg Salad with Anchovies, Olives, and Capers; Penne alla Tuna-nesca; Bacon-wrapped Potato Gratin; and Creamy Salsa Rustica with Egg and Pancetta. Cal's old-new way with vegetables gives them small gifts of tasty goodness that will inspire readers to their own mealtime creativity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9780062747440

Cal Peternell

Cal Peternell is the bestselling author of A Recipe for Cooking and Twelve Recipes, which the New York Times called “the best beginner’s cookbook of the year, if not the decade.” He grew up on a small farm in New Jersey and earned a BFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Cal was inspired to pursue a cooking career while living in Italy with his wife, the artist Kathleen Henderson. After working at various acclaimed restaurants in Boston and San Francisco, he began a nearly twenty-two-year stint as the chef at Chez Panisse, first in the café and then in the downstairs restaurant. Cal’s culinary education podcast, Cooking by Ear, launched in 2018. Cal and Kathleen have three sons and live in the Bay Area.

Book preview

Introduction

The way I like to eat today is the same way people have been eating forever: vegetables at center-plate seasoned with a little bit of meat or fish to make it savory and satisfying. All over the world, we love, for example, the way a smoky ham hock does good things for a pot of beans or skillet of greens, how chicken stock gets slowly pulled into simmering rice, how shavings of bonito brine our broths. A little of the right kind of meat goes a long way. There are many right kinds, but in this book, the right ones are anchovies and pancetta, and, because nuts are the meat of the plant world, I’ve added the fatty and flavorful almond, a kindred spirit. (Other kinds of nuts, as well as varieties of cured pork and fishes, are in here too—substituting, say, walnuts for almonds, bottarga for anchovies, or bacon for pancetta is encouraged.) It’s a kind of vegetarian diet, eaten by those of us who love vegetables so much that we sometimes honor them with small gifts, bringing offerings of toasted nuts, of salted fishes, and of sweet cured pork bellies.

I cook this way first for the flavor, but also because it makes sense: in a crowded world full of eaters, taking savory little bites is inarguably better than big meaty mouthfuls. It’s healthy, leans toward sustainability, and is economical in a way that pleases both palate and pocketbook. And when that grilled steak, roasted chicken, or fried fish fillet does come along, I enjoy it all the more.

In a way, this cookbook, and so much in cooking, is really about one ingredient: salt. Salt draws out and enhances flavors, but it also preserves. Anchovies and pancetta, cured for the savoriest of eating, would not exist without salt. Nor would other staples-turned-delicacies like baccalà, kimchi, sauerkraut, lox, olives, capers, Parmesan, prosciutto, bresaola, biltong, or umeboshi. One need not scrape too deeply beneath the crystalline crust of the history of salt-preserved foods to learn that they are ultimately peasant foods, invented to keep excess seasonal harvests from spoiling. Though few of us cure our own meats, fishes, and vegetables these days, we have evolved culinarily to crave them. There is even a certain pride shown in the enjoyment of cured foods, a bravado that comes from the way that salt can amplify a food’s essential funkiness and render it funkier still, like Bootsy thumping hard on the bass.

Almonds aren’t just tagging along here—just like pancetta and anchovies, they can be added in small amounts to bring a flavor boost to a dish. They compare favorably fat-wise and deliver similar umami levels, especially when ground up. Almonds can also be used in larger amounts, in desserts of course, but also in savory sauces, soups hot or cold, and to enrich stews. If you prefer to eat only plants, this is your ingredient (but don’t ignore the other sections—the anchovies and pancetta can, if they must, be easily left out of many of the recipes).

I admire the conviction of those who do their cooking and make their feasts using only plants. Just like the finest and freshest vegetables, vegetarians don’t need anchovies, fish sauce, bacon, or pancetta, but sometimes I wonder if they might want some. When, for example, stalks of spring asparagus are just so, you should, by all means, cook them as simply as possible, if at all, to eat straight, with a little salt and olive oil. Another time, try them tossed with sizzled sage and pancetta, say, or almonds. Vegetables of every sort and of all seasons deserve to be brought up a notch with judicious additions of one, or more, of the trio. Taste your sautéed summer peppers or simmered autumn greens and see if they don’t want a little anchovy or pancetta melted in. Deep in winter, make squashes crunchy with almonds, roasted roots rich with pancetta, and bittersweet chicories pungent with anchovies.

Eat lots of vegetables to stay healthy, and give them a savory fishy, nutty, or porky boost to keep happy.

HOW TO USE THIS COOKBOOK

The best cooking begins with the best ingredients, no way around it. If you think you can’t tell the difference between season-less produce that has made its way from factory farm to vast supermarket and in-season stuff from a local farm, or that you grew yourself, I think you are not giving yourself enough credit: You absolutely can! It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t cook with whatever you’ve got right now—you should, of course—but that it is very much worth it to seek out better meats, dairy, produce, everything, for next time. I encourage you further to substitute other varieties of a particular vegetable for the one called for in my recipe, and indeed to substitute other vegetables entirely if they seem better at the market. The green beans don’t look great but the snap peas do? Switch them out. I ask for Persian cucumbers, but your store’s only got English? Totally fine.

Some of the recipes here—pastas, salads, appetizers—can stand alone. You know what to do with those. Many others can play their traditional roles on the plate alongside fish or meat, but I often will cook several sides and serve them together to make a meal—sometimes with rice, polenta, or a good loaf of bread. For example:

Sweet Corn with Almonds and Sage

&

Grilled Pancetta-Wrapped Figs Smashed on Toast

Green Bean and Frisée Salad with Almond and Anchovy Dressing

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Bacon-Wrapped Potato Gratin

Artichokes and New Onions Baked with Anchovies and Bread Crumbs

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Buttered Peas with Pancetta, Lettuce, and Sage

Creamy White Beans with Pancetta and Rosemary

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Thick Toast with Kale, Cardoons, Garlic, and Anchovies

Tonnato Sauce on sliced tomatoes

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Green Beans with Shallots, Basil, and Almonds

Bacon-Wrapped Potato Gratin

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Snap Peas Amandine

Cauliflower with Almond Aillade

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Greens with Big Chunks of Braised Pancetta and Garlic Cloves

Creamy White Beans with Pancetta and Rosemary

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Celery and Apple Salad with Pounded Almonds, Anchovies, Parmesan, and Parsley

ON POUNDING GARLIC AND ANCHOVIES

First, a request: get a mortar and pestle, please. (A good size one, about five inches across, preferably made of olive wood or granite. They don’t cost much and never wear out, though I had a mortar made of lesser wood that absorbed too much garlic and so on and started to go a bit rogue after a while. I set it free.) For pounding garlic, anchovies, or almonds, your mortar and pestle’s the thing.

Garlic: Sprinkling a pinch of salt on a raw garlic clove before pounding helps it to become a liquid-y paste—what you want when you’re adding raw garlic to vinaigrettes, pesto and other green sauces, raita, aïoli, and so on. (For reference, my pinch of salt is the equivalent of a quarter of a quarter-teaspoon. I measured it for you, reader: four pinches fill a quarter-teaspoon measure.) Garlic can be pounded with salt in a mortar and pestle, or, if you’ve ignored my request, on a cutting board with a chef’s knife like this: place the garlic clove on a cutting board, put the flat side of the knife atop it, and smack the knife hard with your hand. Sprinkle the crushed clove with salt, and crush it again. Chop the garlic holding the tip of the knife down and using a paper-cutter motion. When lots of sticky garlic clings to the knife, smear it sideways so it stays on the board. Continue crushing, chopping, and smearing until the garlic and salt have turned almost liquid.

Anchovies: Whatever you’re making with the anchovies, chances are that you’ll be combining them with garlic. If so, pound the anchovies right on top of the garlic already mashed up in the mortar. If you’re using a knife on a cutting board, perform the crush-chop-smear technique, just as for garlic, but without the initial hard smack and without adding salt.

ON SALT

For years I cooked with kosher salt, though now I prefer to use fine sea salt. It has a better, more natural feel and taste, but when I am on vacation and forget to pack a bag of it, I use kosher. Other than on popcorn, I never use table salt if I can help it.

Whenever my dad spies on me in the kitchen, he comments on my persistent salting You use a lot of salt, don’t you? he says.

I should probably just say Yeah, I guess so or Not that much, really, but instead it’s "I use the right amount."

Snotty, I know, but it’s true: I use the amount that tastes right to me. That’s what you (and my dad) should do, too. Too often, though, I see people adding salt as if it were ritual, not flavoring. They’ll sprinkle, with the dainty tips of their thumb and forefinger, a quantity of grains so small as to be entirely ineffective, unless you are seasoning nothing more than one bite of an egg, say, or a wee radish. For scooping up salt to add to pasta- or vegetable-cooking water, for example, you’re going to need to use at least a thumb-plus-three-fingers pinch, and you should taste the water before any food goes in to determine if you’ve got it right—it should be pleasantly seasoned, the way you’d want a spoonful of soup to taste.

ON OILS

I use my best-tasting extra-virgin olive oil in vinaigrettes and other places where it’s to be eaten raw. Though one could use the same oil for cooking, it makes more sense to have a less expensive oil on hand, either regular olive oil or a vegetable oil or a combination of the two. In these recipes, I refer to the first as good olive oil and the second as cooking oil.

Almonds

You know, almonds are a good snack; I strongly recommend them.

—Barack Obama, President of the United States of America

I miss President Obama.

He was smart, literate, eloquent, and sensible. Questioning whether he was born in the United States, that’s just plain racist of course, but I have wondered about those seven almonds he would eat as he read late into the night (as opposed to tweeting early in the morning). What was that about? He did say he might up the nightly snack count once out of office. Wild man!

In fact, Mr. President, almonds are more than a snack. Consider the nutty and surprisingly contemporary ancient Greek story of Agdistis to get a sense of the almond’s potency: Cybele, the Phyrgian Earth-Mother, aka Gaia, had long been putting off Zeus’s unwanted attentions, but even Earth-Mother has to sleep sometime. In crept horny Zeus, who did his thing