by Maureen | Feb 15, 2010 | Cheese, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Meals, People, Photos
We got together to celebrate Anaïs’s 24th birthday with traditional Milanese apperitivi at an “art bar” in town. Several of us women from Italian classes get together outside of class for chats, bike rides and travel. Anaïs is one of them.
She’s from Cannes, France, and 3 of her friends drove over, (bringing her kitty with them) to spend her birthday weekend. There were 10 of us together around the table, representing 5 countries: 4 French, 1 Portuguese, 1 Turkish, 2 Italian, 2 American, ranging in age from 24 to 40-ish… and me. The language changed depending on the speaker and the listener.
The Milanese apperitivi tradition allows you to go to just about any restaurant in town, buy one drink for 7 – 9 euro and eat as much as you want from the buffet of appetizers: pizza and foccacia squares, bruschetta, pasta, french fries (!), sliced meats, cheeses, risotto, mini-tarts. A better apperitivi offering will include such things as steamed mussels, veggie sticks, interesting salads, and other foods that are lower carb and more artfully prepared.
After our apperitivi, several of us went out for dinner at 11:30 p.m. to a Mexican restaurant, while the others went to the disco.
by Maureen | Jan 9, 2010 | Cheese, Christmas & New Year's Eve, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Meals, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Have you ever wondered about the first ones to eat something new that they hadn’t encountered before? IS it edible? What PART is edible? Should it be eaten RAW or COOKED? What part do you DISCARD? What part is most DELICIOUS? How is it best PREPARED? What should it be eaten WITH?
Traveling to and cooking in a foreign country is much like being a “primitive man” asking all those questions about newly encountered food items. But at least when you walk into a grocery store or step up to a market stall, someone has done the preselection for you and you’re not out in the woods trying to discern edibility. If it’s in the store, SOME part of it must be edible.
For the last couple of months I’ve been seeing these very small, young, almost-flower-like artichoke heads in the street markets and grocery stores. Very beautiful, but what do they DO with them?! I had no idea, and passed them up, regretfully. I had eaten marinated artichokes scooped out of little jars. Had steamed softball-sized heads and eaten them, leaf-by-leaf dipping the ends in butter. And I’ve eaten that sinfully fat-laden, hot dip with artichoke hearts, cheese, mayo and who knows what else. But I’d never done much else with them or seen them offered other ways. Yes, I’m sure the recipes and methods are out there, but the ones I just mentioned seem to be the across-the-board standards for eating artichokes.
On the evening of New Year’s Day, I was out walking around the Duomo and decided to have dinner out. I picked one of the few restaurants that were open, perused the menu and decided I HAD to have “Insalata di Carciofi Crudi” – Salad of Raw Artichokes! I ordered a “Pizza di Quatro Formaggi” – a four cheese pizza – to go with the salad, but that was secondary in my mind.
What arrived at my table was a bowl with paper thin shavings of very young, tender artichokes, including about an inch of the stem. They had been drizzled with a “fruttato” – “fruity” – extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkled with salt and freshly ground pepper and tossed together with some thinly sliced grana cheese. Wow! Delicious! Simple, fresh in the middle of winter and quite a surprise. NOW I knew what could be done with those flowery artichokes.
Tonight, at the grocery store, I didn’t pass them up. They sold some untrimmed with thorny tips and 8 inches of stem, and they sold trimmed, packaged groups of 4. I considered the prices and how much would be thrown away from either and bought those that had been trimmed.
Usually, I would “just wing it” and approximate what I had tasted on New Year’s Day, but I decided to look online to see if there were any guidelines to follow. In doing so I found a handy Italian cooking website: Buonissimo.org. (Sorry. It’s all in Italian.) The recipe I found was what I had surmised and described above.
I removed the outer, half dozen tougher leaves and trimmed both ends to freshen them up. Then I cut the flower heads in half.
Since I don’t have a mandolin slicer here, I used my best Shun Tomato Knife, sharp and serrated, and sliced the artichokes as thinly as I could. (I left the furry inner parts, figuring they hadn’t gotten prickly.) I put it all in a bowl with the grana padano cheese (a nutty, almost sweet, hard cheese similar to parmesan), abundant lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Shook a little sea salt and grated some fresh pepper then gave it a gentle tossing.
With my heaped serving of “Insalata di Carciofi Crudi”, I ate Norwegian, farm-raised salmon seasoned with Seattle’s Tom Douglas’ sweet/peppery Salmon Rub. The salad will become one of my new favorites. (If nothing else, it’s certainly good for the roughage!) But are the artichokian flowers available in the States?!
by Maureen | Dec 25, 2009 | Cheese, Christmas & New Year's Eve, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, Paris, Shopping & Markets
Hungry in Paris? Good food is never far away. I like that the stores are specialized and are clustered near each other. Hop from one to the next and gather enough for a very good meal. Here’s the selection of food stores at my metro stop, Maubert-Mutualité, on St. Germain.
The boucherie (butcher) and charcuterie (cooked meats and other delicacies):
The boulangerie (bakery):
The fromagerie (cheese shop) and wine shop:
And here are some of their goodies:
by Maureen | Oct 11, 2009 | Canals, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos
Wow. An absolutely gorgeous day in Milano. Is this what Fall is like in Italy?! Sunny after some 2:00 a.m., drenching downpours recently. Fresh air, yet nicely warm. No humidity to be bothered with. It was a day that screamed for a bike ride along the canal.
Fish are always present in the Naviglio Pavese Canal, and I’ve been told they’re fussy about biting. I see them when glancing over as I ride along. Sometime in the last week or so they’ve lowered the water level down to just a couple of feet. Perhaps this has affected the fish, and perhaps it’s just their biology (spawning time?) but now they are clustered in clouds! AND I saw three of four that were brilliant gold or gold and black. Koi let loose? Whatever the reason, I had to stop and simply watch them.
I still don’t know what kind of fish they are. One day I stopped to chat with an elder fisherman and I should have had pen and paper with me to write down what he told me. “Trota” was one fish that was easy to remember. Trout! But I see a few others with different markings and body shapes, which keep up my curiosity.
by Maureen | Oct 11, 2009 | Canals, Featured Articles, Journal, Meals, Shopping & Markets
Nope. It’s not a Vespa-type scooter or a little car. It’s a little fish.
A couple of months ago, while at the Saturday market, I was overwhelmed by the seafood choices I had no familiarity with. No halibut, salmon or rock cod here. There was fish I knew nothing about except for a couple I had ordered from menus: orata and branzino. “But what do I do with it?” Besides. I had neither a filet knife nor knife sharpener, so I was ill-prepared.
Having just returned from a visit to Seattle this week, (filet knife and EZE-Lap sharpener in hand), hankerin’ for fish*, and doing a “fast stroll” near the Naviglio Grande (the big canal) I found a street-side fish market in my path. “Uno branzino”, I said to the guy. He wrapped it up. I paid 4 Euro, 6 bucks. I threw it in my bag and went on to shop for fabric. (Fabric and fish in the same bag? Hmm.)
(*By the way, can one ” have a hankerin’ ” in Italy. I’m not sure the translation works.)
Saturday evening. Canal-side. The place was lively with people strolling at a slow pace. Here I was, trying to keep my usual 4.5 mile-per-hour Indian Trail pace. (Fat chance, Maureen. Take it easy! Relax for once.) Maybe that’s something Italy will teach me: how to stroll properly, without being “on a mission”.
At 7:00, I stepped into the little fabric store NOT like those in the U.S.! Dark, jammed floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, and much of it had probably been there a long time. I was looking for, and found, fabric for a baby quilt. (Just try buying quilting supplies in Italian!) I left moments before they closed at 7:30.
It was the first time in 4 months I had gone out in public wearing blue jeans (!) and tennis shoes (not quite blinding white). I had been cleaning all day and felt like being comfy. At 8:00 in the evening, sleeveless, it was muggy enough that I was working up a sticky sweat. (All the more reason to slow down.) Most everyone else was either paired up or on-the-make, so blue jeans and tennis shoes never entered their minds, I’m sure!
Meanwhile, I had a scantily-wrapped branzino in my bag with baby quilt fabric, so I figured I’d better hustle to the grocery store, buy whatever else I needed, and get home and cook!
I hadn’t noticed at the fish stall that the fish had not been gutted. No problem. I’ve gutted many a fish in my day. And I found out that branzino, (which is actually a European Seabass), has a pretty wicked, spiny dorsal fin! A pair of scissors made short work of those half dozen thorns.
Based on it’s size, roughly 11″ stem-to-stern, I figured I could cook a branzino much like a nice-sized rainbow trout. Flour, salt, pepper, mixed herbs…and since I had just been in Seattle, I threw in some of Chef Tom Douglas’ Salmon Rub (Brown Sugar, Paprika and thyme). A little extra virgin in my new grill pan, crank up the heat and throw on the fish. Veggies searing in the pan next door promised a lovely dinner.
(By the way, note the pan in the upper left. I’ve boiled water for coffee twice and that’s the amount of white, calcium build-up that occurs! I have to scrub the pan hard every day.)
Ahh. The smell of fish cooking with oil. One would think it’s a good time to open the windows, especially on a muggy night! No way! I wouldn’t sleep all night; the mosquitos would eat me alive. I opted for the fishy smell and a good night’s sleep.
“Mr. Branzino” cooked for about 20 minutes or so. Perfection. A glass of Grillo from Sicilia, a couple slices of cornmeal bread and at 9:30 I was ready to eat. Note that the branzino is served up right alongside my Mac, my updated to-do list, the utility bill from the landlady, a job ticket, trip receipts and hardware warranty info.
Delicately flavored. White. Moist. Cooked perfectly. Mmm. In trout fashion, I lifted the tail and peeled the spine and upper half away from the lower. I didn’t eat the skin because trying to scale the fish earlier had been making more of a mess than necessary, so I simply lifted the fish flakes away from the skin and gobbled them. Then I flipped the other half, easily lifted the skeleton and enjoyed the rest of the fish. What a delicious meal!
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
The European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax, also known as Morone labrax, is a primarily ocean-going fish that sometimes enters brackish and fresh water. It is also known as the sea dace. As a food fish, it is often marketed as mediterranean seabass, bronzini or branzini(“branzino” is the name of the fish in Northern Italy; in other parts of the country it is called “spigola” or “ragno”). In Spain, it is called “lubina”. It has silver sides and a white belly. Juvenile fish maintain black spots on the back and sides, a feature that can create confusion with Dicentrarchus punctatus. This fish’s operculum is serrated and spined. It can grow to a total length of over 1 m (3.3 ft) and 15 kg of weight.
Its habitats include estuaries, lagoons, coastal waters and rivers. It is found in the waters in and around Europe, including the eastern Atlantic Ocean (from Norway to Senegal), the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.
It is mostly a night hunter, feeding on small fish, polychaetes, cephalopods and crustaceans.
The fish has come under increasing pressure from commercial fishing and has recently become the focus in the United Kingdom of a conservation effort by recreational anglers. In Italy the seabass is subject of intensive breeding in salt waters.
by Maureen | Sep 5, 2009 | Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Shopping & Markets
I’m not joking when I say that one of my consistent sources of stress here is in grocery shopping. It’s easy to take for granted the comfort of knowing WHAT I’m shopping for and HOW to shop for it. And when I don’t know those two things there’s an absolute and certain anxiety aroused. That may sound ridiculous, but it’s true.
It’s one thing to shop at the grocery store. I’ve greatly improved in that realm. At least there are labels and I can pick up the items to read and figure out what I’m looking at, what to do with it and whether I want it. I’ve gotten better at discerning ingredients listed in Italian, and labels these days often feature a photo which gives a hint of ingredients and serving suggestions.
Someone finally told me how to order my favorite, bresaola. It’s not ordered from the meat counter by the slice, it’s ordered by the gram. OK. Fine. But how many grams do I need? I was raised with ounces and pounds. How big of a pile of paper thin bresaola would 100 grams amount to? As it turns out, 80 to 100 grams is about right for me to order, and I now know what it amounts to. I can order bresaola and prosciutto with the rest of them and not sound completely like I’m from outer space.
In the produce department, it’s absolutely forbidden to handle the fruit and veggies with bare hands. There’s a ritual in buying produce and I had to learn that first thing! I go to the little stand to get my wispy thin plastic gloves. THEN I select my fruit and put it in a plastic bag. THEN I make note of the code number for my item and take it to the scale. I punch in the code and the machine spits out a UPC label. Very simple. But if someone hadn’t told me about that, or if I forget and get up to the checkout stand with unmarked produce, heaven help me!
There are handy tote-along plastic bins on wheels at the entrance to the store. Pretty handy because I usually don’t need a big cart. They have a compact “footprint” and are pretty deep. Therein lies the problem. The produce is at the entrance to the store. I go in, get my tomatoes, peaches, plums, rucola and other delicate, soft fruits and vegetables and put them in my bin. As I continue shopping for yogurt, milk, cheese, wine, bottled water, the heavy things either get piled on top of the fragile things, or I have to constantly shuffle the contents in my cart to put the heaviest at the bottom. I could get my cart, walk immediately to the end of the store, shop in reverse, end in the produce department, then walk back to the cashier at the opposite side of the store. I suppose I could try that and see how it goes.
Then there’s the checkout! This is when I need heaven to help me. I think the checkout stand at the grocery store is the epitome example of Italian speed-demon impatience. I walk up and stand in line with “all the other Italians” (ha ha ha). When it’s my turn, I empty my cart onto the conveyor belt trying to get the heaviest items out from the bottom of the pile and put them on the belt first. The cashier asks me if I want a bag and if I do its extra cost gets added to the tab. (Take note, Seattle.) Well-trained, I always have my own bags, so I say “no”. While I’m still unloading my little cart, my grocery items are flying out the other end and rolling down on top of each other into a big pile. Believe me, I unload as fast as I can so I can immediately start loading up my bags as fast as I can. Invariably, the cashier finishes the race before I do, there’s a line of people waiting, my total is rattled quickly in Italian (I’m getting better all the time at hearing and understanding euro totals), I don’t have my reading glasses on, I can’t see the still-unfamiliar coins to know their denominations, and I haven’t even finished loading up my groceries! It would almost be funny if it weren’t so anxiety-producing!
I’m always glad to get out of the grocery store.
Ahh. Then there’s the Saturday Market I discovered for the first time today. Open air. Lovely, end-of-summer weather. Picture-perfect produce, meats, seafood, cheeses, breads and sundries. This market makes Seattle’s Pike Place Market look like nothing. (Really. Sorry, but it’s true.) Everything is arrayed so beautifully, all so artful. I shot photos for the first hour or so. All so gorgeous.Idyllic, right?
Then it was time to shop. Uh oh. Trouble. New rules here. No labels. No handling the products to investigate. And it wasn’t clear what the buying process was. Who do I talk to and when is it my turn?
After wandering around dazed and afraid for a while, I got bold. What I wanted was simple and recognizable: tomatoes on the vine, fresh figs, prunes, green beans, onions. I told the guy at the front, but then he told me I had to go off to the side to pay for it first. OK. But when standing in line, I watched them fill bags with other people’s orders. They take this beautifully displayed fruit and THROW it into a paper bag! There go those nice tomatoes, those ripe peaches, those soft, fresh figs. After watching this for a couple of minutes, I walked away, telling the guy I decided not to buy any. After having been a farmer for so many years, I just can’t bring myself to buy fruit and veggies from someone that is throwing my food. And I don’t get to select it myself, so don’t know until I get home that the figs are overripe and smashed open, the tomatoes punctured and the prunes bruised. Let alone not yet having the vocabulary to tell them I want just one vine of tomatoes, not a whole basket, etc. When they don’t allow us to pick up the food, I don’t have the opportunity to select 4 nice tomatoes and gently place them in a bag to be coddled during my walk home.
Yearning for good seafood, I found the fish booths down at the very end of the street. (Maybe other vendors don’t like the smell at the end of a hot day so the fish vendors are ostracized.) But I don’t recognize any of the fish, (only the shrimp, octopus and squid). I don’t have a good filet knife in the apartment and I don’t know the flavors of what’s in front of me. (Is it strong and “fishy”?) By this time I was feeling paralysis rather than excitement, so I ordered what the little old lady in front of me ordered: fresh shrimp. I can deal with that for now. I guess that, next time, I’ll just buy myself a fish, drag it home, throw it on the fire and see what it tastes like. (And maybe I should pick up a good filet knife in the meantime!)
I must say that the cheese displays were beyond belief and I finally stopped at one on the side street, not the main drag of the market. This little shop was extensive and more personable and homey. I asked the cheesemonger “which one should I try?” He replied “all of them!”, and we both laughed. He gave me a little sliver of a soft cheese, but it was more mild than I had in mind. He had a huge round of pecorino with several bands of black peppercorns through its middle. He gave me a sliver of that one, and it had power to it. I bought the small wedge that had been sitting waiting for me. He weighed it and said it was 2,40. “2,40?”, I asked, wanting to make sure I heard correctly. “Yes, dear” he said in Italian, and he waited patiently while I squinted at my coins to count out change. I decided, then, to have him slice some bresaola, too.
by Maureen | Aug 10, 2009 | Featured Articles, Food!, Introspection, Journal, L'Isola d'Ischia, Meals
One would think that in a coastal town on an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea it’d be possible to find a good meal of seafood. I was on a mission to satisfy a craving for a plate of mixed, grilled, fresh fish. I found it, and it was perfection.
It was 2:00 p.m. and I was hungry. I strolled the walk along the string of dockside restaurants and read the menus. The dozen restaurants were empty of patrons, and yet of them all, only one had a waiter that came out to the walk to greet me: “O Purticciull”. I told him I was checking out all the menus before I made a decision, then walked on. I walked to the wharf end, and turned around and went back. (The personal touch wins points with me.)
I sat facing the marina, the small local boats, the luxury yachts and the cruise ships. I ordered my mixed, grilled fish and the waiter (I didn’t get his name) suggested a small salad, a “quartino” of white wine and some bottled water. Yes, exactly! I sat on that sunny day with my journal, at ease and breezy. When the waiter arrived with my meal I knew I had selected the right place. Heaven on a plate!
The swordfish, squid and scampi were fresh and grilled perfectly. Delicate, moist, tender. Every bite was savored. Absolutely what I had been looking for!
If you find yourself on the island of Ischia, reserve a meal for O Purticcull, and say thank you to the waiter for me.
http://www.porticciullo.it/index.htm
by Maureen | Aug 9, 2009 | Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, L'Isola d'Ischia, Meals
The command came by e-mail from my Italian instructor back home:
“Non dimenticarti di mangiare il famoso ‘coniglio all’ischitana’ accompagnato di un buon vino dell’isola. Ischia e’ famosa anche per il suo vino. Divertiti!”
Translation: “Don’t forget to eat the famous Ischian-style Rabbit, accompanied by a good wine from the island. Ischia is famous also for its wine. Enjoy!”
I did, and I did. The rabbit was fantastic! (I even ate it off of Glenda’s plate since it wasn’t her thing.) Coniglio all’Ischitana showed up as the main offering for dinner at the hotel. Delicious. Just a little spicy. Nice sauce around the meat. (I questioned its being served with french fries and over-cooked baby peas, but hey…) The Rabbit was preceded by prosciutto and melon, then pennoni pasta with rabbit sauce and a fantastic Risotto ai Frutti di Bosco (risotto – rice – cooked with berries and a creamy, cheesy base.) The meal was finished with dessert of a wickedly yummy Napoletano sfolgliatelle pastry. I had only planned to “taste” the dessert, but that plan fell through.
The berries lent a beautiful violet color to the risotto, not a color I usually see on my dinner plate, but very nice with the red-orange.
I was so pleased to see the rabbit listed on the menu! That was one evening I wasn’t going to eat “out”.
Add to this good meal all the other good things I ate while on the Island, such as prosciutto-wrapped fresh figs and melon, followed by the one-and-only, true Napoletano Margherita D.O.C. pizza.
And if only I had a kitchen available, I could bring some of this fresh seafood home and make my own dinner! Displays frequently featured lobster, sea urchins, mussels and countless fish both recognized and unrecognized.
One can also marvel at the pastries displayed temptingly along the main tourist travel route.
OR, drink your dessert and enjoy a little sip of the local Limoncello, much of it homemade. If you’re not one for lemon, there’s Meloncello, Kiwicello and a dozen other variations.
by Maureen | Jun 25, 2009 | Featured Articles, Food!, Meals
Dinner at Il Giardino del Naviglio (Garden restaurant, near the Naviglio Pavese canal). When our server brought this platter and set it in front of me, placing another one on the other side of the table, I thought that each platter would be shared by two. But no. She brought two more matching platters. This was just the appetizer: “Imperiale”.
What an understatement that name is! A platter of superlative, ultra fine seafood, all raw and absolutely fresh: sea bass, mussels, oysters, mediteranean scampi, red shrimp, chopped tuna with olives and oil, orata tartar, branzino, 3 kinds of caviar, olive oil, soy sauce, lemon and fresh baked bread rolls. Wow.
Then came the platter of grilled seafood: more scampi and shrimp, scallops, squid, octopus (the most sublime I’ve ever eaten), and a lovely golden-grilled white fish. (The platter was shared, thankfully!)
OK, so it all had to be topped off with a little taste of something sweet, a little counter to the salt and protein of the seafood. Dessert! But something simple and light, please. A chocolate tasting. There were 6 different flavors of chocolates, including truffle (as in, real truffle. It was my least favorite), cinnamon/sugar, vanilla, hot pepper, selection #5?, and 97% cacao. Each chocolate was paired with a rum so different from the other. What an array of flavor subtlety! The chocolate tasting was light, and fortunately shared by 5 at the table.
On the way home, we all did a “passeggiata” stroll north along the canal and back just to settle things a bit. I don’t think I’ve ever had a meal so sumptuous!
