Kevin72

They're calamari "steaks"--CMs here sporadically sell them. Not sure how they even work, but they're extra thick cuts from calamari. That's gotta be one huge squid, though.

Finally, a new meal from Friuli-Venezia Giulia last night. Adriatic style grilled squid, and "flavors of the garden" The squid was topped with oil flavored with garlic and parsley before grilling, and then a little more right off the heat. Plotkin urges you to grate garlic and parsley right into the oil, but how the hell do you grate parsley? Into the mini processor it goes!

My understanding, and rereading the earlier part of the thread confirms this, is that it's just too perishable. And I'd imagine that there's just not the demand out there to bother keeping it. Roe is often a tough sell here, sadly.

Damn, cumin's in there? Is it a major player? Gotta love the aquavit.

The sauce for the wallets is juniper berries, the butter that the wallets were sauteed in, and red wine vinegar (though again, I prefer apple cider vinegar but was out). You blanch several leaves of radicchio and lay a slice of prosciutto over them, then fold them in half and attach with a toothpick. I also have that Time Life book then, didn't know Root had a hand in it. It's been years since I've read it, but if I recall it was pretty much arranged by directions, ("The Northwest", "The South", etc.), right? Cumin liquer? I'm sure it works somehow, but ewwww.

I don't like caraway at all, and I also do like cumin, but I think I overdid it in this particular dish. I can tell my wife didn't like it 'cause she asked what that flavor was, was it in there last time I made it, then left most of it on the plate ("But I'm so full!").

Some inconsistencies here from Plotkin. The recipe itself is in fact cabbage with cumin. He hints that it's fairly unusual but doesn't get into where or how it would have originated here. In his long intro chapters, he has a glossary of the various herbs and spices used in FVG. Of carraway, he says that it's called kummel in this region. For cumin, he says: BUT! Later on he has a carraway soup and lists it by its Italian name, Zuppa di Comino . . . In the cjalson this time: sugar, ricotta, bitter cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, chives, grated apples, currants. The condimento was just butter (Plotkin calls for more cinnamon but I thought it was overdoing it) and roasted ricotta.

Yeah, I need to look that one up.

Saturday night was a recreation that I had mentioned earlier, and exactly the meal I thought it would be. We had invited friends over and I rather presumptuously bought ingredients enough for all of us, but they couldn’t make it, so quite a bit of not-exactly-diet-friendly leftovers. Fricco: one with potato, one with pickles. Yikes, that paper towel is transparent! Still, you know you’re in for something good if you can see through whatever paper it’s served on. Cjalson: This was a modification, slightly more traditional as opposed to the gnocchi version I made last year. Now they are stuffed pastas, as the recipe calls for. However, I still didn’t include the laborious list of ingredients Plotkin calls for. I played up the sweet angle decidedly more and they turned out very well as a result. Baked ham in crust, cabbage with cumin: For dessert, something that just popped into my head. Basically, it was a sour cream “custard” (sour cream, brown sugar, one whole egg, several yolks) pie, topped with a blueberry compote. Decent, would’ve been better had I not botched the crust. As usual.

So at this point it would seem I’ve just given up and decided to recook best-of meals from my Friuli month last year. It’s hard not to, though: I remember that month fondly. And, a lot of the dishes I didn’t get to make last year were variations on braises. I still may try one, but this weekend was balmly already, so braising still isn’t so appealing to me. Anyways, Friday night I re-made the three appetizers I kicked my whole experiment off with last year: Crostini with apple and basil spread: For some reason, I had thought Plotkin’s recipe included ricotta and it wasn’t until after I had made it that I looked it up and saw that it in fact did not. Oh well: I like it that way. Radicchio “wallets” with prosciutto San Daniele: I really like this antipasto. Perfect balance of bitter, sweet and rich meat, then the zing of vinegar. I was out of apple cider vinegar, the best match I think for this dish. Finally, broiled scallops with horseradish: Last year I bought a whole horseradish root to grate fresh over dished. I only used about half of it though, and wound up throwing it out in July when I couldn’t rationalize keeping it around any more. I think that damned thing cost $9. Now, despite Plotkin’s urgings otherwise, I’m just using jarred horseradish sauce. Sorry.

Bravo on the brovada, April! I can't conceptualize it in a jota, though. Ha! My grandmother in Wisconsin used to make this all the time! My mom then picked it up and I must've OD'ed on it somewhere, because I could go the rest of my life without having it. Eh, Hathor lives in New York. They probably have a whole store dedicated to each region of Italy lurking in one corner or another . . . OK, just dug back out the book which I'd managed to misplace. He hints around breads but never explicitly says what kind. Somewhere along the line I picked up that the stock bread in FV-G is rye, but now I don't know where I would have seen it. Maybe on Mario's show . . . ? Marlena de Blasi lists several potato breads in her Friuli chapter in Regional Foods of Northern Italy. See, for all the intro and history and whatnot in Plotkin's book, there's something he's missing: a chapter on the regional breads. What's the difference between that version and the full book? Are you referring to those "Foods of the World Series"? A note on the Root book: he groups Veneto, Venezia Giulia, and Trentino Alto-Adige into a broad section of the book under the heading "Veneti", but does break each of the aforementioned out into separate (albeit painfully brief) chapters, so I did misrepresent his writings a little when I started this thread. Nathan, great frico! I like how you got the frico to "encase" the ingredient, particularly the asparagus.

Went there on Saturday, 03/04 and had the “Voyage”, the ten-course sampler: Pickled tomato, black olive Miniature monte cristo Cucumber salad, carrot sorbet Oyster & potato soup, white truffle foam Yellowfin tuna “crudo” with fennel and honeydew melon sorbet Foie gras panna cotta, peppermint & ginger sorbet Marinated salmon roe, pickled jicama Veal sweetbreads, sweet onion tortellini, onion consommé Confit of Atlantic Salmon, shrimp “panzanella”, curry froth Hill Country Quail, puree of kumqat and sumac berry, petit vegetables Lightly smoked beef strip loin, puree of mushroom and bacon, shallot confit, cardamom reduction Mint infused rice pudding, lavender biscotti, mint bubbles Roquefort blue cheese “rilette”, dried strawberries, honey granules A fun and interesting evening. Highlights were the quail, the sweetbreads (everyone at our table fretted about these but enjoyed them immensely), the oyster & potato soup with truffle foam, and the assorted canapes at the beginning, most especially the monte cristo. I’ve never been able to have food like this before but know that it’s all the rage elsewhere, and I’m glad that Houston, in my book an all-too-unsung dining destination, has its own version as well. Definitely one to watch in the coming months.

That you have the rind and fat of a prosciutto is lewd enough. Cook up a pot of beans with the rind in there. In fact, make jota; I want to say Marcella's original recipe called for pig skin or some such. Please make jota.

That's too bad about the paparot, Klary. I, er, ahem, do need to make a mild confession: the recipe as listed seemed a little "bland" to me, too, so I augmented it with nutmeg and just a dash of cinnamon. And I sauteed several cloves of garlic in butter and discarded them, not just the one called for.

I know I had said earlier that I wanted to get to dishes I didn't get a chance to make last year when I cooked from Friuli, but I just can't help going back to the items I really liked. Sweet potato gnocchi with radicchio: Reminiscent of the pumpkin gnocchi I made for the Veneto, so not technically a repeat, but close enough. This is more or less a recipe from Batali's FV-G shows. I used sweet potato instead of pumpkin since they don't get as "wet" from cooking and require near as much flour and/or production, something to avoid on a weeknight. Sauced with a little butter, a lot of broth (still on a diet, mind!), some leftover radicchio, scallion greens, and poppy seeds.

Yep, that's what the ableskivvers looked like when my Mom has made them. So, in Dutch tradition are there any variations with fruit in them?

Spec's has a decent selection of pretty much everything. A must-go next time you're in Houston. Block off about 3 hours, at least, though.

Iceland? He went back?

Deer, right? I suspect that it may be a mistranslation since "comino" is Italian for carraway.

And, as to the question of the age of the Montasio used in fricco: Plotkin gives two recipes in his book for fricco: one is the thin, crackly, wafer kind and uses older Montasio. The other is a much thicker kind that you literally coat a small pan with and cook slowly and needs a young, very young even, Montasio, so maybe the style you're going after has something to do with it . . . ? Didn't Lidia or some part of the Bastianich family have a fricco bar in New York a while back?

No, jota is a prime example of wanting the flavors to merge and develop. And, at least in the recipes I use, a good deal of the sauerkraut does dissolve, just as part of the natural cooking. It's another "synergy" dish that the whole is much better than you'd ever think the sum of the parts would be.

Gah! bigjas beat me to it: Paparot, the spinach and polenta soup. I really like it; it doesn't seem like there would be much going on, but it just tastes so nourishing and was one of the dishes I had in mind when I said the cooking of Friuli Venezia Giulia made a good transition winter/spring cuisine. As to your question about thickness, mrbigjas, mine turned out midway between a really runny polenta and a thick soup. No residual or loose liquid or broth. Bear in mind that this will thicken even more as it sits. I used the Plotkin recipe; forgot that Mario had done this on his show. Everything else looks great. Man I've been craving San Daniele since the month started. Edit: Oh, and I wouldn't worry about the chervil thing. Per Plotkin, Friuli Venezia-Giulia is a very herbal cuisine and uses a lot of herbs that one doesn't normally consider "Italian", so it was right at home in that mix.

Here's how it's stacking up for Q2: April: Lazio/Rome May: Liguria June: Sardinia These three regions are in a three-way tie for most votes. Lazio has gotten the most votes for April, and, not to try to sway the group or anything, but like Nathan I think that it's a perfect time: height of artichoke season, and Easter. (Nathan, I walked into our Whole Foods yesterday and they had an enormous display of gigantic globe artichokes with a foot of stem attached. Next to them are were the smaller red or purple variety, which both Whole Foods and Central Market started carrying last year. They have much less choke than the globe kinds, and are more soft and supple. Love 'em!) Are we comfortable with this lineup then? Don't want to take the thread too far off-track, so either a brief public vote and move on, or move further discussions to PMs.

Everything's looking great, I don't even know where to start. Thanks for adding your memories, Bernaise! I remember you from my thread last year, and I still want to hear more about this "goose with 100 herbs" you mentioned! Hathor's trip writeup sealed the deal that Friuli is one of my favorite regions when she wrote it originally. Thanks for the region summary, Pontormo. Maybe we'll pull this out from now on at the start of every thread . . . ?

I can't believe I have to look back fondly on this now, but they used to be *only* $39/lb when they first rolled fresh porcinis out. I bought some a couple of times and they are a whole other world. What a pity.