GREAT MARRIAGES : A Spring Wedding

Because I eat in restaurants nearly every night of the week, Sunday suppers at home are a rare pleasure. When I long for simpler dishes, the unmanipulated tastes of the season, these meals provide relief from many complex meals I eat during the week.

Last week, for instance, I built a meal around a beautiful pork loin I found on special, perfect for trying British cookbook author Alastair Little’s version of maiale al latte--pork cooked in milk.

The ingredients for the rest of the meal came from an early Sunday morning expedition to the vibrant Hollywood farmers’ market. It’s particularly exciting this time of the year: Each week something new is just coming into season.

Cherry tomatoes were tasting good, so I bought a basket of juicy red ones and a small bunch of sweet basil to make bruschetta.

I stopped with my fellow shopper and husband at the Zuckerman family stand for new Yukon Gold potatoes, 2 pounds’ worth. Halved and tossed in virgin olive oil with sprigs of thyme and roasted cut-side-down in a heavy iron skillet, they get a wonderful golden crust.

I couldn’t pass up the bundles of fat asparagus they had either. And when I spotted bundles of pea shoots laid out on a table with baby bok choy and other Asian greens, I decided to use them in a risotto. Actually, I stole the idea from a menu at Campanile, which listed risotto with English peas and pea shoots. I’d substitute the asparagus for the peas.

I hesitated in front of the gorgeous display of onions, garlic and shallots at Throgmorton Farm’s stand. Should I get the violet onions the size of Ping-Pong balls or the more expensive cipolline, small, flat onions grown from Italian seeds? “The cipolline,” advised the Throgmortons. “They taste a little like hazelnuts when they’re roasted.”

On the way home, I stopped at La Brea Bakery to pick up some tiny Arbequina olives from Spain and some dark, oil-cured olives from Morocco to serve with the bruschetta. I bought some bread, too, something new--a French baguette that’s not a sourdough. So much for shopping.

To make the bruschetta, I toasted half-inch-thick slices of the bread and, while they were still hot, rubbed a peeled, halved clove of garlic over the top. Just before serving, I topped them with quartered cherry tomatoes tossed in extra-virgin olive oil and a chiffonade of basil.

I like a crisp, dry white wine with the acidity of the tomatoes. I still had a bottle of 1996 Ritratti Pinot Grigio and decided to serve that as an aperitif. It’s crisp and juicy enough to drink on its own and with the bruschetta.

When deciding on wines for a particular menu, I don’t necessarily pair an Italian wine with an Italian dish. I like to mix it up. When I considered the flavors of the asparagus and pea shoot risotto, I thought an Austrian Riesling might be a nice match with the fresh spring tastes. While my husband stirred the risotto, I opened a bottle of Knoll Gruner Veltliner from the Ried Kruetles vineyard.

Made from the indigenous Austrian grape which shows best in the Wachau, a small wine area along the Danube about an hour west of Vienna, Knoll’s is fresh, spicy and crisp, a wonderful choice for the risotto, playing off the crunch of the asparagus and the pearly grains of rice bathed in stock, butter and Parmesan. The pea shoots give an extra dimension of green and freshness to the risotto.

The traditional way of cooking pork loin or pork butt in milk reduces the liquid to a mass of brown curds with a delicious nutty flavor. It’s a wonderful dish, but definitely would qualify (like the lumpy hazelnut meringue cookies called brutti ma buoni) as ugly but good. I’ve tried versions that infuse the milk with lemon zest or a heavy dose of herbs such as rosemary or sage, but the flavors don’t marry well with the milk.

Little’s version is more sophisticated and truer to the original. Basically, he marinates the meat for a couple of hours in white wine and a little cider vinegar before cooking the roast (on the bones) with the marinade and milk. The result is a subtly complex sauce livened with the wine and vinegar’s slight acidity. To give it a smooth consistency, he stirs the curds and passes the pale amber sauce through a sieve. The pork couldn’t have been more tender or moist.

Cooking in milk is a particularly useful technique since pork these days is leaner and leaner and has a tendency to dry. Nobody had to be encouraged to mop up the juices with the bread. I’m definitely adding this one to my repertory.

I had an idea it would be terrific with the 1994 Voge Cornas, but you never know until you try it. It was. It’s a deep, concentrated Syrah with notes of black pepper and ripe plum, atypically soft and lush. And a perfect complement to the mild, sweet pork. Oh, and those cipolline were astonishingly delicious, roasted in their skins with a little good olive oil drizzled over and a scattering of fresh thyme.

I didn’t have time to make a dessert--we may have been too full anyway. Luckily I still had a half bottle of 1991 Scheurebe Beerenauslese from one of the world’s great dessert winemakers, the Austrian Aloise Kracher. A single drop has so much focus and intensity, it rings like a bell. A dessert would have been superfluous when we had this wine to linger over.

RISOTTO WITH ASPARAGUS AND PEA SHOOTS

1 bunch pea shoots

1 bunch asparagus

4 cups homemade or canned chicken stock

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 ounces pancetta, thinly sliced

1/2 small red onion, finely diced

1 cup arborio rice

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano

2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces and softened

Salt, pepper

Remove large stems from pea shoots. Wash and shake off excess water. Heat nonstick skillet over medium heat. Place still-damp pea shoots in skillet, cover and steam just until pea shoots wilt, 2 to 3 minutes. Roughly chop and set aside.

Snap off tough ends of asparagus and discard. Cut tips from stalks. Peel thicker part of stalk with vegetable peeler until same size as thinner top part of stalk, if desired. Cut stalks into 1 1/2-inch pieces. Bring chicken stock to boil and blanch asparagus, about 1 minute. Remove asparagus from broth and set aside.

Heat olive oil in heavy, wide-bottomed pot over medium heat. Saute pancetta strips until they begin to turn gold. Add red onion and saute until it softens, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in rice and cook about 1 minute. Add just enough hot stock to cover rice, about 1/2 cup, and stir. As soon as stock is absorbed, add more stock just to barely cover rice and stir until it is absorbed. Continue adding only enough stock to cover rice, stirring and cooking until rice approaches al dente, about 30 minutes.

Add reserved asparagus and about 1/4 cup stock. Stir in Parmigiano and reserved pea shoots. Swirl in butter until it melts. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately on warmed plates or in shallow bowls.

4 servings. Each serving:

378 calories; 1,316 mg sodium; 34 mg cholesterol; 15 grams fat; 41 grams carbohydrates; 18 grams protein; 0.30 gram fiber.

PORK COOKED IN MILK (Maiale al Latte)

This recipe is adapted from Alastair Little’s “Italian Kitchen: Recipes From La Cacciata” (Ebury Press, London, 1996). Little, a British chef, has two Alastair Little restaurants in London. Little recommends cooking the pork loin with its bones: “The preferred cut is the best end of the loin, which you should ask your butcher to chine and skin; make sure he gives you the chopped-up chine bones and the skin to make crackling. Ask him to leave approximately half the fat on the roast and half attached to the skin. The rib bones should still be attached to the joint, and the roasting is done with these under the meat, forming a kind of rack. Do not omit the marination; some authorities do, and they are missing a vital step. The interaction between the pork, the marinade and some complex enzyme action in the cooked milk is what produces the exceptionally tender and moist result.” Of course, because it’s almost impossible to find a real butcher, I made mine with a boneless pork loin roast picked up on sale at the supermarket. But it was a particularly nice one, beautifully tied, and still had a bit of fat on it. Served with steamed or roasted Yukon Gold or new potatoes and Roasted Cipolline Onions.

1 (3 1/2-pound) pork loin roast

Kosher or sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups dry white wine

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups milk, or more

1 sprig rosemary

Season pork with salt and pepper to taste. Marinate pork in vinegar and wine at least 2 hours, preferably longer. Remove pork from marinade, pat dry and season again with salt and pepper. Reserve marinade.

Heat olive oil in roasting pan or casserole over medium heat. When hot, add pork and brown on all sides. Add chine bones (if you have them) and reserved marinade and roast fat side up at 350 degrees 15 minutes. If marinade has not almost evaporated, reduce it on top of stove.

Add 2 cups milk and rosemary. Milk should come almost immediately to boil. When boil subsides, baste meat generously, return to oven and roast uncovered at 300 degrees, basting often, 1 1/4 hours. Add more milk to pan if necessary.

Remove pork from oven and keep warm on serving platter. Reduce liquid in pan until consistency of gravy. Pass through sieve into small pan and keep warm. (If mixture in roasting pan is dry and brown, add 2 cups water and boil, stirring vigorously, until consistency of gravy, then pass through sieve into small pan and keep warm.)

Pour any juices from platter into gravy. Slice pork and arrange on platter. Pour some of gravy over meat and pass remainder.

4 to 6 servings. Each of 6 servings:

757 calories; 289 mg sodium; 147 mg cholesterol; 58 grams fat; 9 grams carbohydrates; 39 grams protein; 0 fiber.

ROASTED CIPOLLINE ONIONS

10 to 12 cipolline onions

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt, pepper

1 tablespoon fresh thyme

Place onions on baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with thyme. Shake or roll onions on baking sheet to coat with oil and seasonings.

Bake at 375 degrees, turning twice, until onions are soft and skins are golden, about 25 minutes.

5 to 6 servings. Each serving:

62 calories; 51 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 5 grams fat; 5 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.38 gram fiber.

The Wines

1996 Ritratti Pinot Grigio, Alto Adige. About $12.

1996 Knoll Gruner Veltliner “Ried Kreutles” Federspiel. About $18.

1994 Voge Cornas, Rho^ne Valley. About $32.

1991 Kracher Scheurebe Beerenauslese, Austria, $40.

The Menu

Bruschetta Served With Oil-Cured Olives

Risotto With Asparagus and Pea Shoots

Pork Cooked in Milk

Roasted Cipolline Onions

*

Ralph Lauren dinnerware from Room With a View, Santa Monica; Greco, San Pedro; and Pottery Shack, Laguna Beach.