Kevin72

It's fascinating how what you and Docsconz discussed dovetails with the negative reaction from journalists to Adria. Since you mentioned this, would you happen to know what was the consensus around the other "foreign" chefs? Was it particularly pointed just towards Adria and what he represents?

With a number of new (and hopefully ongoing) contributors having joined us this month, I think it would be a good time to reiterate the regions we'll be covering next: Liguria in May, and then Sardinia in June. In mid-May or therabouts, I'll "open the polls" so we can start voting on the next three regions we want to cover for July-September. Voting is done via PM to me, and I'll announce the results sometime in the first couple weeks of June. Glad to have to many new contributors this month, and please stick around for future months!

Welcome, Natasha and Calimero! The pasta alla Gricia looks great, Natasha. No parsley needed! I keep wanting to make it but I can't leave Amatriani out of the mix. Calimero, also a great pasta contribution, that looks like spring in a bowl. Frustratingly, in the U.S. the Romanesco isn't widely available, if at all. I can't believe someone out there hasn't cracked the code on making a choke-less artichoke. I think the vegetable would be much more widely accepted here if people didn't have to deal with the choke.

Hugo's, T'fia, or Da Marco are my recommends for Houston.

Two of the chefs you mentioned seemed to take pains to emphasize promoting ingredients in a more "natural" sense and downplay technology. Is this then something that is in response to the Fefran Adria/molecular gastronomy movement? Is it endemic to the Identita Golose's purpose, or their own (the two chefs') personal beliefs? How much does this tie into the Italian nature of this congress, i.e., the affinity the Italians traditionally show for their own indigenous ingredients? Thank you for the great writeup. I look forward to more installments and mouthwatering pics!

Most of the recipes I have for mozzarella en carozza generally attribute it to Naples and Campania, just to the south. A common Roman preparation for mozarella is to skewer it with cubes of bread and then saute them with olive oil and then make a sauce of anchovies and maybe capers or garlic to pour over them.

Well, you picked a good month to start on, Mike. I agree that one of the many appeals for Italian cooking is how simple and straightforward alot of it is, and this is especially the case in my opinion with Rome. Welcome aboard and don't be afraid to pipe up and ask anything about any cooking questions.

I'm forever indebted to Faith Willinger by way of Mario Batali on learning how to cook vegetables slowly in olive oil with only trace liquid instead of blanching first and then sauteeing. Everyone really enjoyed the scafata and my wife's sister, who was in town visiting for Easter, started fondly recalling the braised broccoli and kale I made for them at Chrismas once. My wife called me "the vegetable master". Faith Willinger's cookbook Red, White, and Greens is a great sourcebook on Italian-style vegetable cookery. So, we've got two converts on Downie's book, eh? Good to hear, I think it really is excellent. And Mike, you're just learning to cook? Bravo! Looks like we have a project, everyone!

I just ate lunch and I am literally famished all over again. That lamb sounds and looks incredible.

I was talking to a coworker who lives close by and she says that other nights she's seen it absolutely packed, so who knows. But I am trying to get the word out and want to head back there soon. Great place.

I can't tell which part made me squirm more: eating raw seal off the kitchen floor or eating 14 courses of foie gras. You really did a number on your digestive system this time, Tony.

So, the traditional Easter dishes made over the weekend: Pasta with Asparagus, from Rome: Torta Pasqualina, from Liguria: On Easter Monday, Pasquetta, we had the lamb in brodetto (cheese and egg sauce) mentioned upthread:

Monday's meal: Spaghetti cacio e pepe Guess I must've sounded too smug when someone asked about difficulties in making this earlier on in the thread. A good portion of the cheese and pepper promptly fused to the bottom and sides of the pasta pot whle tossing it. We followed with abacchio en brodeto, an Easter Monday tradtional dish in Rome. Lamb (perhaps leftover from Easter meal the day before) is braised in white wine, herbs, and aromatics, then removed from the liquid. The pan juices are then mixed, off the heat, with eggs, cheese, and mint, and their residual juices "cook" the eggs and form a custard-like sauce: Normally Easter Monday is a picnic day, and we were planning a meal on the patio, but it was ninety-goddamned-nine degrees outside. This summer is going to SUCK.

Sounds like a great meal, Pontormo. I contemplated trying to fit the fettuccine alla Romana somewhere but then it fell by the wayside. Glad someone made it.

So we went here with some guests from out of town Saturday night. This used to be the Moroccan place (Marrakesh?) right across from the Inwood theater. It is, indeed, a very exotic layout. Outstanding food. We had: fried monkfish, the ham and cheese "hushpuppies", potatoes with serrano ham, entremesses platter (serrano, manchego, olives, anchovies), spicy shrimp, crab-stuffed eggs, tuna escabeche, and sausage and mushrooms. Only the shrimp was less than spectacular. I really liked the fried monkfish, and the croquettes were a table favorite. This is more refined than the rustic De Tapas, so each order really is best-suited for one or maybe two people. The service, also, was very friendly, attentive, and accommodating. Yet, sadly and frustratingly, the restaurant was, on a Saturday night, never more than a third full. If you're wanting to check this place out, go soon, both to give them a much-needed boost but also because they may not be around much longer .

Yesss, another artichoke convert! Glad you liked 'em, Mike! So, now the collective thread interest seems to have turned to Amatriciani, I see. Interestingly, when we were in Rome, all the places we saw that offered it served it over penne, ziti, or even rigatoni. It's one of my other top pasta dishes. I think it's the endorphin-releasing combo of pork fat, tomatoes, spicy, and cheese all bound up together in a big ol' plate of Good. Definitely on my "to make" list this month.

Friday night's meal: We started with a plate of fritto misto di verdure, a "mixed fry" of vegetables. I used zucchini, onion quarters, eggplant, (frozen) artichokes, and broccoli. The batter was soda water, then equal parts corn starch and AP flour, another Mario recommendation: the corn starch makes for a crisper crust. I agree. In another odd instance of synchronicity, I, too, have been drinking alot of vinho verde (leftover from a tapas party) lately, and here, the slightly fizzy wine went very well with the fried veggies. Then we had a modification of a dish from Downie's cookbook, pasta with ricotta and asparagus. In my version I used homemade papardelle and I mix basil in with the ricotta to give it a more herbal note. This is supposedly a dish served on or near Easter: The sauce was a little out of hand, I think. Easter Sunday's meal. Err, not necessarily Roman, and only one of the dishes is a strictly "traditional" Easter item, so it doesn't exactly belong on the Easter thread, either. We started with prosciutto and cheese-wrapped asparagus: (I had forgotten to take a pic until all but one were left!) Then, the only "true" Easter item of the night, torta pasqualina from Liguria: This is a tart stuffed with ricotta, eggs, spinach, parmigiano, pecorino, and salami. For the main, porchetta, a Central Italian favorite: This is from Batali's older shows where he made porchetta with a pork loin, then stuffed it with sauteed fennel and sausage. Adam is probably out of his mind right now: another porchetta without that glorious, burnished crackling. Anyways, yeah, I overcooked it a little , and either they had mis-labeled the sausage at Central Market or the butcher gave me the wrong kind; I had wanted their black pepper version but the one I got had cumin in it instead . The contorno was the Umbrian version of scafata: a mixture of spring vegetables (peas, edamame, and escarole) stewed with onions, bacon, chilies, and tomato sauce. As with last year, as a substitute for guanciale I went out and bought a slab of bacon, blanched it, then rubbed it with sugar, black pepper, rosemary, and juniper berries and have it sitting in my fridge. Dessert was strawberry tiramisu from Downie's cookbook:

The common "must go" baccaro in Venice is Cantina do Mori, the 500 year old bar near the Rialto Market. It's fun, standing room only when crowded, and serves lots of vegetarian cicchetti. But there's tons of them all over the place and part of the fun is to just wander into one when appetite hits.

Lamb prosciutto . . . numbers 1 and 3 on Kevin's List of Reasons He Could Never Be A Vegetarian. I have GOT to try some, somehow.

Oh man oh man that pancetta, Elie! You should be showing it off! Are you going to get one of those deli slicer thingies? How soon before you attempt prosciutto? Is that a Roman beer I see in the background there? I've, erm, taken to making a little variation on Caesar salad myself this month, coincidentally: anchovies, a clove of garlic, olive oil, white vinegar, a dash of Tobasco, and pecorino whizzed to an emulsion and then topping romaine as well. A Julius Caesar salad, if you will, heh heh.

With the potato rottolo, I kept thinking that it would be like a giant gnocchi, too, but I forgot that there's no flour in there, or at least, not when I made it (I went by memory). So, more mashed-potato-like, though there were eggs in there so it set up a little, just not as firm and toothsome as a gnocco.

I think it's along the lines of what you're theorizing, Grub, that she feels that Pancetta lends more fat to the fairly lean chicken breast. Too, as a native of Emilia-Romagna, maybe she just doesn't like seeing her beloved prosciutto cooked through . . .

I think Mario's going to owe this thread some promotional royalties. On his Roman shows he did a grilled leek "packet" wrapped with cabbage. He mentioned on the show that you could also wrap the leek in pancetta, then cabbage, and grill it and I did that version once and the smell of it on the grill would wake a dead man. He made a veal braise with leeks and spicy peppers, also. You could do them "sweet and sour style" as they do with onions and use leeks instead?

So, does anybody have experience with nepitella and mentuccia? These are two mint-type herbs used alot in Roman cooking, nepitella in particular. Several cookbook authors suggest comibining oregano and spearmint for a close approximation of the flavor, though Mario has said to do spearmint and fennel fronds. Downie recommends going a completely different track and using pennyroyal. I got some from my Mom, and despite her warnings that it would take over my garden, it hasn't budged from the little dome shape it was in when I first got it two years ago. Are seeds for either readily available in the U.S.?

All this talk of strucolo in the Friuli thread last month brought to mind a dish from--all together now--Mario Batali that he made on his Rome shows. Basically it was a rotolo made of mashed potatoes, stuffed with escarole, then bound in cheesecloth and poached. I went a different route and baked it instead, and, since it was to be our main course, topped with tomato sauce and pecorino.