Kevin72

And another bigoli thing: the damned things don't even make for good leftovers. They just kind of glued together into a starchy, sticky ball and have a gummy exterior texture and chalky, undercooked interior. Blech. I hope FM has better luck if he makes this. (Or maybe not, since he'll really be showing me up then! )

How'd it turn out?

As for Plano/Frisco, you may want to consider the Shops at Legacy, a booming hipster area on Legacy and the Tollway, just a hop down from Frisco. It has a number of good eating spots, including Nikola's (Italian) and a new Fireside Pies (Pizza). Be prepared for parking problems and long waits, however. Fireside doesn't take reservations. There's no shortage of restaurants in Frisco either for that matter, but they're mostly chains. 9 Fish had pretty good sushi for a while, but I haven't heard anything or been there recently. Maybe the Babe's has opened up there. It's a fried chicken place that is to die for. However, I'd also imagine quite a wait again if it's new.

One interesting aspect of Venetian cooking is that, like Sicily, they aren't so averse to the fish and cheese pairings. For Sunday's app, we started with a variation of the shrimp and scamorza "pie" from the Da Fiore Cookbook: Their recipe is basically several slices of thick-cut smoked cheese and parmigiano melted over shrimp and artichokes. I didn't want such a heavy onslaught of cheese, so I instead made mine kinda souffle-like, mixing in less cheese with egg yolks and whipped whites, then baking it off. Probably went a little too long: things were kinda tough. But good flavors, though I did reflexively cringe, still, at pairing the strong smoked cheese, parmigiano, and delicate sweet shrimp. We then continued with seafood risotto: I made a stock from some lobster shells that had been sitting stinking up my freezer. Mixed in with the soffrito was tomato paste. The seafood elements were cuttlefish, scallops, and sauteed lobster tail added at the last minute over the top. I was really proud of this dish, one of the best new things I've made in recent memory. Dessert was my attempt at a giant version of the Venetian cornmeal cookies served at Lent. It was a bit dry, but maybe will make a good breakfast accompaniment.

Lovely meal, Weinoo. Kudos particularly on doing baccala mantecato. A favorite of mine from this region which I won't be able to get to. Though when I do make it I always wind up with waaaay too much leftover. I also love all the skewered goodies! Franci, as always, wonderful pics and your baking efforts continue to turn out perfect looking. Funny how the marinated radicchio wound up kinda looking like calamari, which you served it with!

I might consider reshuffling your Sunday schedule so you can try dinner at Lanny's Alta Cocina in Ft. Worth. Given your love of Tex Mex, and I know it'd be giving up Joe T. to do it, but it's interesting to see Lanny apply nouveau cooking concepts to Tex Mex or interior Mexican food.

Ah. Thanks for clarifying.

Cassell is too good a chef not to warrant a second try. I had noticed recently that the menu had been overhauled into a style more fitting with Cassell's Green Room days. So, we decided to give this place a second go Saturday night. Everything on the menu looked good and, as with our first visit, the daily specials significantly outnumbered the regular menu items. We decided to actually go with a salad item and then two apps for a complete meal since they all sounded the most enticing. I had oyster shooters, a pecorino and arugula salad with bacon vinaigrette and a poached egg, and quail with beans. Other apps ordered were rock shrimp "lollipops", beef cheek and feta raviolo, pistachio-crusted mozzarella, and steamed mussels with champagne and jalapenos. Only the quail I'd say was a disappointment: a little bland and undercooked. Everything else, however, notably the shooters and raviolo, were outstanding. I'm glad we gave it a second try. Interestingly, it would appear that plans have been scaled back a little, or maybe our waiter on the first visit was speculating. There's only plans for a Houston outlet, but the Dragonfly there will be run independently by its own exec chef.

David Downie doesn't give much in the way of explanation in his excellent cookbook Cooking the Roman Way other than that traditonally, each day of the week (except Wednesday, for some reason) came to be associated with a certain dish due to Papal or Catholic rules. Fridays and Tuesdays, for example, were "lean days" and so no meat would be served. According to Downie, the dish associated with each day of the week are: Monday: Bollito (boiled meats) Tuesday: Chickpea and pasta soup Wednesday: Freebie Thursday: Gnocchi Friday: Baccala or skate and broccoli Saturday: Trippa alla Romana (tripe) Sunday: Lamb I thought this would have been some quaint little tradition that passed away in bygone days until our trip to Rome. And in fact, in the tratorrias we went to, they still hold pretty fast to this rule. I tried ordering chickpea soup on Wednesday, for instance, and was told sternly by our waiter that that wasn't possible and got a bowl of borlotti bean soup instead. Also, trattoria menus would list gnocchi on the menu, but with a note beside them: "solo Giovedi"--only on Thursdays.

Last night's meal started with a spritz cocktail; mine was a slight variant on the normal preparation by using lemon pellegrino, vodka, and a dash of bitters. We then continued with turkey meatballs in citrus sauce from Della Croce's Veneto cookbook. These were highly addictive. Very delicate meatballs and then the trace of citrus sauce really sent them into orbit. There probably, in fact, could have been even more sauce: I doubled the recipe and it still made just a thin dribble to coat the meatballs. Incidentally, della Croce has two recipes in her cookbook that call for ginger and lemongrass in them. I know Venice is of course a spice and exotic flavor capital, but I wonder how traditional those two in particular are. Not that I'm complaining since they do make for a novel break. Then we had bigoli with duck ragu. "Bigoli" loosely translated mean "monstrous pain in the ass". Hathor already went over the real traditional method in her intro writeup: a bench-type mechanism you sit at and then "screw" the pasta through to extrude. Mario has recommended running the dough instead through an electric meat grinder with the cutting blade removed. The dough shoots through the holes in the grinder, making nice, rough-looking strands of pasta. The problem is, though, that as it extrudes and gets longer, it comes back together. When you cut it off, then the end pieces all gum together. So after each pass you spend several minutes laboriously picking the pasta strands back apart again. So the other translation for "bigoli" is "Kevin's never doing these again". I can now see why when we were in Verona and ordered them we just got a plate of plain, box spaghetti. Too much trouble. I posted this as a due warning to Elie, who I know is also planning to make them this month. Maybe he's more dextrous than I am.

So, everyone's in a risotto kinda mood, I see . . . I'll be doing one of those this weekend myself, also. Elie, your meal sounds like good, mountain, ribsticking stuff. And Franci, as always, your photos are perfect. I had the opportunity to experiment with tardivo the first time myself last week.

It appears there's been a menu and conceptual overhaul here. This is our first Ft. Worth jaunt in a while and this was the top of our list to go to for dinner. So, I'm looking at their menu (eatdrinkliveduce) and they're being dubbed a "Modern Steakhouse" with some sushi thrown in, but unfortunately none of the Big Food/Little Food items that joiei got to sample originally. Disappointing. On a side note, why do websites for places have to have that annoying atmospheric music that cues up with no way to turn it off?

There's a skate and broccoli dish that's popular in Rome on Fridays. Rome seems to still stick to certain traditions or traditional dishes served on certain days, beyond even Lent: Gnocchi on Thursdays, chickpea soup on Tuesdays, etc.

This past weekend, my whole family came up to help paint the baby's room and various other chores. To thank them, I made one of my favorite meals, all from Emilia-Romagna: Ragu Bolognese: Made to top handmade tagliatelle: The main were costolette Bolognese, cutlets of meat, pounded flat, breaded, then baked off with prosicutto and a shard of parmigiano: I made a tart salad afterwards. Normally for this meal I do something called "insalata daNello" which we had at Montegrappa DaNello in Bologna. There, it was thinly shaved ovoli mushrooms, truffles, celery, and parmigiano tossed with fruity olive oil and lemon juice. When I make it here, it's usually trumpet mushrooms, celeriac, and parm again. I didn't this time since my wife's been mushroom averse since her pregnancy, but I mentioned it here because it's really good and if you have access to a mandoline, it's definitely worth it, particularly in the fall. Dessert was ciambella della nonna, a ciambella (shortbread/cookie type dough) baked with jam in the middle. No pics.

Looks like someone's meyer lemon tree is out of control! Nice seasonal matchup; like Pontormo, I find this bout of warmer weather has banished my craving for braises and is making me eager for some spring dishes. Shaya, I didn't get a chance earlier to say how flattered I was about your own Valentine's meal and how much better your stuff all turned out. Bluefish, I think, is perfect for these fried and then marinated fish dishes. And the ravioli are exquisite!

Friday we checked out the new sushi place here. It had opened last weekend. Erm, the service situation could be only best described as "a cluster", as my wife would say from her own food service days. Food was brought out with no utensils, plates, or accompanying sauces. Servers had to be told and reminded a couple times to refill tea or drinks. Edamame were ice cold and mealy; hot sake was lukewarm. Sadly, I think we were getting the best service; at least five tables of customers left having been completely unacknowledged and every other table had the telltale furrowed brow, craning necks, desperately waiting for someone to stop by. Sushi was unremarkable. Maybe give it 2-3 months to level off and find its groove if you go at all. Another Chinese place has also completely snuck in under the radar in a corner of this center. Given that these places all seem to be having rough service patches right after opening, though, I still will probably wait a while this time before checking this one out.

Lovely meals of your own, there, Elie. I forgot that rossette are made with lard, which I didn't have on hand when I made them originally. I'll bet they were great as sandwich bread! And I also like the dessert. I remember that recipe for the pasta in Mario's book. He gives full credit to his latino kitchen staff for modifying the original version, which had radicchio in it in place of the chilies. Interesting stuff.

With the wife being pregnant, I was worried she'd be averse to the all seafood onslaught of my typical Valentine's feast.. So I came up with a newer menu, still Venetian-inspired, though. First up was roasted scallops wrapped with duck prosciutto and a radicchio salad: I used apple cider vinegar to dress the salad. The scallops were very good, but I'm pretty sure I could have made do with normal prosciutto instead (and saved the expense of the duck prosciutto also). But as I suspected, the richness of the scallop and prosciutto worked nicely off of the radicchio, though maybe some lemon, too would have been nice. Next was crawfish soup, based on the Imperial Shrimp soup recipe in the Da Fiore cookbook: Then, my traditional Valentine's ravioli, a re-interpretationl of the beet ravioli in Michele Scicolone's Italian Holiday Food cookbook. So, rather than put beets in the filling, I mixed them in the dough and made a filling of ricotta and chives. The condimento is butter, a touch of rosewater, and poppyseeds, which aren't so photogenic I guess. Finally was roast squab with peverada, the heavily spiced sauce for roasted fowl I mentioned earlier in the thread. In my version were the livers of the squab, minced salami, anchovies, ample black pepper, a dash of cinnamon, orange zest and juice, and red wine. The squab were purchased at the Asian market nearby. They came head and feet on, a first for me. And one of them hadn't even been gutted, and even bigger first for me! Oh the things we do . . . So I couldn't do them medium rare because of my wife's pregnancy, but also because she doesn't like the texture for game birds. I can see why medium rare is preferred; these dried out quickly. We finished with the also traditional banana-ricotta gelato (without raw egg in there, of course).

That sausage is amazing. I'd never had it before or even seen it. Another great bargain is the "pieces missing" duck in the frozen bin. They were 3.99 ea and the "piece missing" on mine were the head and entrails. I was expecting maybe a missing leg or wing or something.

Good lord, I totally spaced on that. I even meant to comment that I, too, cooked the polenta the Buford way, again with less-than-stellar results. It never behaves the way he describes in the book and takes on different, noticeable characteristics. The greens are collard greens cooked with minced prosciutto and duck fat. The pumpkin ravioli were spiced with clove, cinnamon, and nutmeg and also had candied citron in them (I was going to use sultanas but was out).

Lookin good, FM! Love the negroni. Something about cold weather makes you crave these bitter drinks. Last night's meal started with pumpkin ravioli and ricotta salata: We then had duck vallesana style from the Culinaria cookbook: Valle salsa, "salt valley" is a marshy region of the Veneto with ample fish and more importantly water fowl present in the cooking. The duck is marinated in vinegar and wine overnight, browned off, then braised in the marinade with ample onions and anchovies. Really good.

when i cook them, i often do. they're available frozen in packages of six for $8 at asian supermarkets. since i don't know where they're from or anything, i generally don't make them in preparations that call for searing them to medium rare or anything, but for recipes where they're roasted or something, they're good. ← Me too. Occasionally they'll have the same packages already thawed "in season". Also, the quail I get are almost always sleeve-boned (i.e., only the wing and drumstick bones remain). I can't remember the last time I bought whole quail with bones intact. Just as well, though, since my wife's aversion to them used to be the small bones. Beware when you buy quail however; there's one producer that sells them pre-seasoned and it's not well marked on the package. I've made it home with them before!

Though not from Venice, I think a clear example is the heavily spiced peverada sauce used in this region to sauce game birds. I've seen recipes all over the map for ingredients but they all involve cooking the livers of the birds and then layering on various spices and flavors. But that's a good point on the differences between Venetian and Sicilian food. Maybe the more elaborate, spiced cuisine was more a relic of the Middle Ages and Rennaissance style cooking that then faded away. ETA: The da Fiore cookbook has a more old-school risi e bisi recipe that they say harkens back to Venice's golden age and uses cinnamon as a flavoring element.

Wow, Judith. One of your very best of many great intro writeups. Thank you!

It can be both. Look for rottolo di patate or I guess just potato rottolo.