Kevin72

There've been several discussions about Fettucine Alfredo on eG lately, but the ones I'm thinking of were sidebar conversations on a larger thread. At any rate, my understanding of the dish is that in Rome it is made with double or triple cream butter, and since that was not so readily available in the U.S. until recently, cream was substituted. I made it this past spring almost completely to recipe from David Downie's book Cooking the Roman Way (using a stick of double-cream, Plugara butter) and it's one of those things that should be tried at least once to appreciate the real deal. And once is probably all the average adult's cardiovascular system can take.

Normally olives that size come already stuffed. These had garlic in them, which I removed and then soaked the olives to get rid of the overtly garlicky flavors. In fact I'd gravitate to the pre-stuffed kinds (there are some even with anchovies in them) and my olive pitter can't handle olives that size and I'm not dexterous enough to do it by hand.

Fish stew (brodetto) from Le Marche:

Along the lines of what Pan said, if it smelled that bad then no matter what you do you'll still get a lingering taste of it in there. I had a similar experience with some beautiful double-cut pork chops from the butcher once (butcher paper seems to have the same effect) and cooked them anyways. And that smell had permeated the meat.

Antipasto: Fried olives Primo: Vincigrassi Secondo: Sausage-stuffed quail braised in cognac The olives are a specialty of the city of Ascoli Piceno. They are stuffed with finely minced salami and breadcrumbs, rolled in egg, then flour, egg again, and finally breadcrumbs, and deep fried. Perfect party food, and an excellent match for the Jesi white wine we were drinking (I’m surprised at the availability of Marchese wines here). Vincigrassi is a type of lasagne. The pasta is made with semolina and regular flour and flavored with vin santo (I used Marsala—vin santo is not so readily available here with our funky liquor laws). The pasta is then layered with béchamel and a ragu made of mushrooms, pancetta, and chicken livers, then baked. The quail were stuffed with sausage and breadcrumbs again, seared in butter and olive oil, then topped off with cognac and white wine and braised. I love quail, and thankfully I’ve gotten my wife aboard on it as well. For a contorno it was cabbage with fennel seeds, used as a bed for the quail to be served on.

This weekend was dedicated entirely to Le Marche dishes. Saturday night, I attempted Le Marche’s famous brodetto, fish soup. As I recently noted on another thread, I’ve finally acquired Waverly Root’s seminal Italian regional cooking tome, The Foods of Italy, and immediately read the Umbria and Le Marche chapters. (FYI Adam they do credit Le March as the place of origin for porchetta). He has an extensive writeup on brodetto and fish soup in general, devoting four pages to the subject. Umm, well . . . I violated every principle listed above and then some. No scorpion fish, which according to Root is essential not just in a brodetto Marchigiani but in almost any Mediterranean fish soup. What did go in mine: spiney lobster, cod, squid, mussels, and scallops. Made a stock out of the lobsters and some fish trimmings, a bottle of white wine, water, bay leaves, peppercorns, garlic, and celery. Strained it off and reduced to about half (and it was still more than could fit in the pot I made the brodetto in!). In the typical custom I’ve read many places, I went in layers, starting first with aromatics (garlic, shallots, chilies, parsley), then adding the calamari and stewing them for a bit. Added some vinegar and cooked it off, then the calamari and the stock, and saffron to simmer for a while. The fish (cod) went in next, followed by the mussels, and last the scallops and already cooked lobster meat. Finished with more vinegar. While the soup cooked, I whipped up some “vongole alla Hathor”: clams steamed open in white wine, garlic, chilies, and anchovies. I used steamer, aka softshell, clams and they were pretty thin on the meat. In fact that seems to be the case with both clams and mussels this time of year. Anybody else notice this? I may make a thread about it elsewhere. I have to say that I almost routinely find that for all the effort and expense that goes into a fish soup I’m generally slightly disappointed by the end result. Few of the flavoring elements carried through: the garlic, the saffron, the chilies, or the vinegar. Still good, mind you, just not as unique as I’d hoped.

Any specific errors jump out? Is it just factually wrong stuff? I noticed some inaccurate ingredients here and there but I attributed them to limited understanding of the cuisine at the time (1971): i.e., the cottage cheese/ricotta thing.

The Food of Italy. After twice recommending it here based on its reputation, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and order it myself. I've been a giddy little kid waiting for it this past week and it finally arrived last night. Sat down and read the Umbria and Le Marche chapters right off. This is a whopper of a book: 700 pages, no pics, no recpies (I think), all text. Got flashbacks from college just hefting it out of the box. A little dated: he refers to ricotta as "cottage cheese" but still, how have I missed this book for so long? Endlessly informative.

Nothing screams “soup!” like an unseasonably hot 94F day so time to dig out the big pot and go to town! One of many identifying factors of Central Italian cooking seems to be a pronounced affinity for legumes: cannellini beans in Tuscany, chickpeas in Lazio, and in Umbria, it’s all about lentils. The lentils of Castelluccio one of Umbria’s most reputable products. Small, pebble-like, and with a distinct, mineral flavor, they are as much an example of terroir as any wine from the region. Yeah, so we don’t get those here in Dallas. I went with a Spanish kind (pardina). Started with a base of ample garlic, carrots, celery, finely minced salami Toscani, sage, and rosemary. Then I added the lentils to the mix, toasted them a little, and topped off with water and cooked for about an hour. Served with pane pecorino and some tossed salad greens, and drank a bottle of Jesi wine with the meal. Somewhere, it’s getting cooler.

I'm not so up on tours or how to tell if they're legit. Have you done a Google search for their name to see if it comes up in local lawsuits or there's a board dedicated to slamming them? There's a similar thread where someone's asking about touring Tuscany, and there've been lots of threads on the three areas you're going to. I would caution again that if you plain on using trains to get around, you may want to build travel time into the itinerary and be sure you're getting the most direct line to and from those cities. I'd even cut one of those two out and double up your time there. They deserve more than a day!

Spoken like a New Yorker! Like we all have a local Chinese butcher? Actually though, there is a pretty decent Asian market here in Plano, and I know they sell the skin separate, but I've never seen the whole loin with skin on. You know what though? All this may be a moot point--my wife's one of those aforementioned fat/skin-o-phobes so all this effort would pass completely unappreciated by her.

Thanks fou!

All right, now I'm the one incurring wrath from Adam . . . but is that the same as the skin? That's just the fat, right? Isn't that porchetta pic above with the skin on?

Careful with such sweeping generalizations or you'll bring the wrath of Alberto down on you! Isn't selling pork cuts with the skin on pretty much de rigeur there? In Emilia-Romagna, I know they often make a snack food of the deep-fried rinds and sell them in butcher shops. In fact I think you'll read about that in Splendid Table (/full circle). Oooh, and let's not forget that cotechino and zampone are made with considerable amounts of pig skin . . .

Gah! Gah! You're killing me. It's only 10 am here and I'm already breaking into my snack stash. It's a fat/skin-phobic culture here, what can I say? I'm sure in more ethnic butchers you can find skin-on loin, but it's just not at all something looked on as "desirable". Remember, the U.S. once implored Parma prosciutto makers to make a "lean" product with no fat. And our pork has progressively had the fat bred out of it over successive years. Though that's making a turnaround and fatter pork is coming back into vogue.

The bread is, then, more like a cake, with that baking soda in there? Do you know of a flatbread version? I'd assume the biscotti are dipped in or made of grape must, then? That website needs to explain the dishes they're talking about!

I'm more and more convinced it is not traditional at all. My first version of this was Mario Batali's recipe which called for a pork loin stuffed with sauteed fennel, fennel fronds, onions, garlic, rosemary, and sausage. No other recipes I've seen since call for sausage, but a few recipes do add minced pancetta or prosciutto. I guess I'm being a bit of a heretic then by sticking to using sausage, but my wife wouldn't have it any other way. And now having greedily gulped down a hot porchetta sandwich in Rome, I realize one of the great pleasures of the dish is, of course, the burnished, crackling skin and that nice fatty layer right under it. You won't see too many butchers in the U.S. selling loin or any other cut of pork with the skin intact, though. One or two recipes I have direct to to find pork skin, then tie it onto the loin with butcher's twine (and put ample seasoning under the skin and over the loin).

Ristorante Gambero Rosso has quite a following on these boards if I recall and has been mentioned on a few threads. Good that you're driving--that frees up considerable time and you can visit the little corners of each of the regions. I second, third, and tenth docsconz's Villa Gaidello recommendation, which a car is pretty essential to get to.

I have and it is. More later . . .

Thanks for the compliments! A quick Google search for Houston and wine festival turns up an online service called HoustonWine.com that promotes local tastings and festivals. Along the lines of what fifi said upthread, it looks like Messina Hof has a lock on a number of them and has various festivals throughout the fall, but it may be just for their own wines. There is something called the South Shore Dockside Food and Wine Festival which sounds along similar lines. HoustonWine website South Shore Dockside Food and Wine Festival link Edit: Looks like it's not reserved to Texas wines, though.

You've definitely got some culinary heavyweights in there. How will you be planning on getting around? My word of caution is that when we've gone we've had a similar timeframe to work with and didn't budget in travel time effectively. If you're going by train you're probably killing a day in travel getting to or from Campania from the North. Our first time over we had planned on doing Rome in addition to Tuscany and E-R but then had to leave Rome out when we looked at travel times by train. Likewise, if you're planning on touring the smaller hill towns of Tuscany, there's train and bus schedules to consider that run at different times on different days. Just some advice there. MichaelM went to Montalcino and Bologna earlier this spring and did a solid writeup of highlights and "best of " restaurants there: Link to the thread Edited for clarity.

Mark: Congratulations on the restaurant! Have you written about that somewhere here on eG? Pan: I'm mentally summoning Hathor or Alberto to this thread to answer your pecorino question. I've been using younger pecorinos, and I think one is indeed a Toscano. In the bread I used a mixture of finely grated Sini Fulvi Pecorino Romano and coarsely grated Toscano.

As a lover of many an underappreciated and invariably cancelled TV shows (Mystery Science Theater anyone? Hello?) I've learned to tape as much as you can, when you can. Consequently I have I'd think about 90% of his new MM's on tape and maybe a third of the older version from the 90s. Not the best of quality since I taped it on SLP. And now, I'll watch an old episode, accidentally leave the tape in, and record a TV show over it, so there's quite a few holes in them.

See, I wonder if they keep that gamey flavor in the U.S. product. There were a few bites here and there that had a different flavor, but overall it was like overcooked chicken. Picked up a good flavor from the potacchio sauce, though. I'm really interested to try lepre, but only in Italy and certainly not anything I'm willing to cook. My wife doesn't do the gamey flavor so well. But the carrot and fennel recipe was from an Umbrian cookbook! So am I doing it right with the flavoring elements: rosemary, sage, pepper, fennel? Seems like you're suggesting a much more austere cuisine than I'd been led to believe.

I think I've only done Haak's whites, which are pretty good. They have a very interesting, almost tropical fruit flavor to them (guava?). They were a standout from the Fredericksburg wine tasting last fall, if I recall correctly. Quite a few Texas wineries, including those in the Hill Country, actually grow their grapes out in the panhandle. The question of why whites do better is really much more about what's wrong with the reds in my opinion: we lack the climate and soil for them to really build up a nice, full body to them. Steurz's article in the Dallas Observer I posted a few weeks back really explores all the challenges to making great wine in Texas. Too many reds are all tanin and oak and taste "leathery" to me with no body whatsoever. Exceptions so far are Circle S, Los Pinos, and Lone Oak's merlots.