Kevin72

At a POTLUCK?! Grrr. Don't get me started on potlucks . . . This is from an ep where he did dishes more in the style of "older" Rome, and in fact yogurt is what he used when he did it. He may have spoken to why it was used, but then again, anything goes in Rome! I think I'm about done with cardoons. I think part of it is that you have to get them younger, not the big monsters we get here, and more fresh out of the soil so they're not so old. But beyond that, I'm just not a fan. They have this faint metallic flavor to them I don't like. But, you do have to cook them alot longer than most recipes say to avoid the stinginess factor: I poach them 30-40 minutes usually. Hell, maybe that's why they don't taste good then.

No, several cookbook authors and food writers have noted the particular affinity Romans seem to have for artichokes, and when I was there a year ago, they were at every vegetable stand and were on most of the menus at places I went to. I believe that there is a region just outside of Rome, still in Lazio, that is reputed for the quality of artichokes it produces, but the name escapes me at the moment. In Downie's cookbook there's also marinated artichokes, fire-roasted or grilled artichokes, another version of fried artichokes that are dipped in eggs, and then Mario Batali did two pasta with baby artichokes in his Roman shows; I'll be doing a variation on one of them next week, probably.

Except with Sandra Lee involved, it's probably Shork® Brand Imitation Shark spread on Rice Flour Crackers. Just like real sushi!

We're planning a trip there to visit family over Memorial Day weekend and this is definitely on my agenda.

Welcome Shaya! Great-looking meal there; Amatriciani is one of my all-time favorite pasta dishes/sauces.

Arrgh! What kind of market are you going to that you have to "worry" about getting guanciale by mistake?! I once again got caught off-guard this year and didn't take the steps to order Guanciale for this month's cooking. Foodman, any chance you're gonna try curing a batch?

Ugh. See, THIS is my objection to RR, or at least, FoodTV's handling of her: they've cut back yet more original or different or varied programming just to cram in one more airing of one of her shows. All the variety's being sucked away. Still, a few years ago FTV tried to do away with Iron Chef reruns at night and got swamped with complaints, then put it back into rotation.

Absolutely feel free to jump in with ancient Roman recipes if you have access to 'em. I was considering making carbonara myself as the inaugural dish but now I'll go in a different direction, I think. It's definitely on tap for the month, though.

I'm kinda torn on the whole thing, actually. I've been a fan of Mario's from the start, and I'm glad to see him getting his due, but it's too bad that he had to emulate the likes of Emeril, Giada, Ray, et. al to get there and market himself to this degree. As the article points out, two or three years ago, he was emphatic about not opening a restaurant outside of NYC, that he'd never market sauces in his name, and yet here we are. He's opening restaurants at such a rapid-fire rate now, and the last two have drawn less-than-stellar results, so there's a whiff of hubris creeping in. Not to begrudge him success, and not that I blame him for taking the opportunities presented; he's certainly put in his dues and built up the credibility, in my eyes at least. But here's hoping he doesn't take the DiSpirito route to get there.

Damn, GG, ya beat me to it! Just finished reading it. The article doesn't mention the problems that seem to have been hitting Del Posto of late that are discussed at length on the New York board (here), so it must've been beforehand. Erm, I'll be passing on the NASCAR book. But the other one sounds fun.

I like the caponata suggestion upthread and think that adapting it for sweet potatoes would be a natural fit. Mint works surpringly well with vegetables as a pasta sauce, particularly when combined with a pinch of chilies and pecorino cheese.

Yeah, they really do a good job on their staff. One time when I went there there was an old Sicilian guy hanging out on just the Italian wines aisle and I could've talked to him for hours. He recommended a Sicilian red (natch) called Frappato that was really good. Unfortunately, I haven't seen him or that wine since when I've gone.

For April, we take a jump midway down the Italian peninsula to Lazio and of course the capital city of Rome. Another favorite region of mine: I love the staightforward, robust cooking style and the honest trattoria food of Rome. It's a perfect match for Easter month, as well as the peak of artichoke season in the U.S. They are consumed with abandon in Rome and two classic artichoke dishes were popularized here: carciofi alla guidea and carciofi alla romana, both of which I can't wait to make. In cookbook literature at least, "Rome" seems to have become almost interchangeable with "Lazio" and in fact an Amazon booksearch for cookbooks on Lazio or Latium (the English name) turned up no exact hits. However, a booksearch for "Rome" turns up these books: Roma: Authentic Recipes from In and Around the Eternal City, by Julia Della Croce In a Roman Kitchen: Timeless Recipes from the Eternal City, by Jo Bettoja Williams-Sonoma Rome: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods Of the World , by Maureen B. Fant Rome, At Home : The Spirit of La Cucina Romana in Your Own Kitchen by Suzanna Dunaway Diane Seed's Rome for All Seasons: A Cookbook A Thousand Bells at Noon : A Roman Reveals the Secrets and Pleasures of His Native City by G. Franco Romagnoli A Taste of Ancient Rome by Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa Cooking the Roman Way by David Downie Of these, the only one I have experience with is Downie's book, and that's more than enough for me. His is one of my favorite regional cookbooks, combining all of my requirements: history, personal anecdotes, dish origins, and a wide range of recipes. Other dishes created or popularized in Rome: fettucine Alfredo, pasta carbonara, bucatini all'Amatriciani, pizza bianca, spaghetti cacio e pepe, saltimbocca alla Romana, gnocchi alla Romana, pollo alla Romana, lamb scotaditti, puntaralle (bitter endive) en salsa, and finally, the "quinto cuarto" (fifth cut) dishes from the slaughterhouse district, including oxtail stew, tripa alla Romana, and pajata, spicy veal intestines and pasta. And we're off!

Great looking brovada sampler, April! And the variation with sausage makes me want to whip up a batch just to have that dish! Did the brovada lend a different flavor to the jota? For the blec, Plotkin specifies corn flour for his recipe and directs you to find the finest grind available.

The author of Rustico is Nicol Megrin.

Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cookbook, or the one that combines the two (Essentials of Italian Cooking?). I also second Culinaria.

It's possible, I guess. He does describe one soup in the book that is born of poverty that is basically a roux or bechamel soup.

Well, my final meal for Friuli this months yielded less than stellar results. I made a dish called "blecs di cjanals di guart" from Terra Fortunata: buckwheat noodles with corn flour sauce. When reading the dish, it sounded so interesting, and I was curious how it could possibly work so I gave it a spin, which unfortunately quite often leads to a disaster. The buckwheat noodles were no problem (if, again, a bit fragile: they drooped and then tore when I was hanging them after cutting them), but the sauce, corn flour toasted in butter, was another issue. I couldn't find corn flour, so I bought the finest cornmeal I could, then ground it into a powder in a spice mill. Once the flour hit the butter, it immediately seized, clumped, and drank up all the butter, then promptly began to scorch. So I thinned it out with a little chicken broth. The a little milk. Then more milk. And more. Then I moved on to pasta water. It just kept drinking up the liquid and clumping again. I finally had to break out the immersion blender just to take care of the clumps and finally wound up with basically a cornmeal bechamel (which is what I suspected it was going to be when I started). And it thickened very quickly. Realizing I now had probaly three cups of sauce for my pasta, I removed the majority of it from the pan and thinned it out even more, then tossed it with the pasta and water and topped it with coarse parmigiano and scallion greens. The "blec" part of the name is right, at least. Soft, overcooked noodles (but cooked three minutes, per Plotkin's instructions) with a starchy, pasty sauce that glued everything together and needed buckets of salt for any kind of flavor to carry through. I'll freely admit my own ineptitude in ruining this item, but I'm really curious how it's supposed to work.

So did the squash flavor carry through in the pasta, or was it more just for coloring?

Hats off on attempting the squash pasta from Roden's book, Foodman! When I saw that recipe I worried that it would be too wet or messy to ever come together after doing squash gnocchi. And the pork dish sounds awesome. Refresh my memory on how to make prune vinegar again?

Is it common to braise a goose?

Great looking meal, April! I love the touch of the rooster being used. I recall that the pollo is squazzet caught my eye when reading Lidia's book as well, and that I was frustrated also by the disconnect between the recipe and the vivid description. Wish I'd heard about struccolo earlier in the month; I'd like to try one out myself, too. So was it just puff pastry dough? What's really odd is that there's a baked version of the struccolo with the same ingredients (maybe a little chocolate and grappa thrown in, too) called gubana, served as a dessert . . .

All right, I should've specified "city boy" American-ness then. Please don't cut my head off! Yeah, it's really easy, and it's in Plotkin's book. Though it looks like there's many variations, as Pontormo pointed out. A small cooked eggplant, two red bell peppers, and two cloves of garlic pureed together. I still want to hear about this brovada jota!

The ones at our market do. Plus there's the wife factor: I just got her to come around on duck in the past few years, but her coming home to me hacking one of their heads off may put her right back over again.

Let me roll out my complete American-ness here and say that those ducks and geese at the Asian markets scare me since they still have the heads on. Which leads me to worry that they may not be gutted, either. Besides, I don't have anything I could readily hack their heads off with. See, I can do duck breast okay, and duck legs okay, and a braised duck I do just fine, but roasting 'em is problematic, and I keep remembering similar results growing up whenever my mom would roast them.