Kevin72

Any unique ingredients, or is it pretty much the same stuff: (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes)? Yes, dialects are a delight there. I keep waiting to order a dish in some restaurant in a different region and touch off an international incident through my mangling!

Final meal in Puglia was last night. Started with "'ncappriatta e tria", a modification of "ciceri e tria", a Pugliese specialty that's a unique variation on pasta e fagiole. "Ciceri" in the traditional version, are a type of chickpea: Armando Bellastrazzi of Il Frantoio served them to us and said that ciceri are the chickpea's ancestor, and only in Puglia do they still consume them. At any rate, they ciceri are soaked and cooked down with celery, anchovies, chilies, and garlic, then mashed and used to sauce ribbons of homemade semolina pasta. Instead of ciceri or chickpeas, I used some leftover 'ncappriatta, the mashed dried fava beans, from when I made it last week. What makes the dish unique, however, is the "tria" part, where a third of the pasta ribbons are fried in olive oil and then garnish the dish, giving it a nice textural crunch. The secondo was "pollo assute-assute", a dialectical variation on "asciute", dry. The chicken is quartered, rubbed with salt, pepper, copious olive oil, and a paste of chopped garlic, parsley, and oregano, then roasted over a bed of potatoes (also rubbed with the herb paste and olive oil) in a very hot oven, with no basting liquid. And, yes, the chicken went back in for a little more color after that picture! Dessert was an unusual dish stretching no doubt back to antiquity: wheat berries with grape must. I used spelt instead of the wheat berries. The "must" is a cooked down grape juice which I augmented with a little honey. Certainly not what many Americans outside of hippie communes would probably run to for dessert. That would include me: it was interesting enough, but now I have a whole container of it to use up. I'd probably prefer it for breakfast, maybe with a little yogurt. That's it for Puglia. Hopefully I've conveyed some of what I find so unique and appealing about its cuisine. It's a great region to get into and counter your presuppositions if you think you "know" Italian cuisine.

Monday night I did ciambotta, a stew of vegetables and fish. "Wait, Kevin, didn't you do something called ciambotta already, and say it was a vegetable stew?" Well, yes, and again, here's micro-regional dialect (and generations of feuds) at play. In Bari and its surrounding province, this dish is what is meant by ciambotta. Southwards though, it is the stew of vegetables. Also, this is more traditionally a condimento for spaghetti. But I knew pasta would be involved the next night, and we wanted something a little lighter after such a gutbuster weekend, so it was served more as a soup-type dish, garnished with large croutons of bread that had been fried (so much for "lighter" I guess . . . ). Edit: Typing spaz.

Saturday night's feast with my family: Antipasto: Taralli Secondo: "Grigliata mista" Contorni: Tiella of zucchini and potatoes; stewed artichokes and edamame Dolce: Lemon tart Taralli are Pugliese-type pretzel where after shaping, the dough is boiled, then baked. After the first rise, I split the dough recipe in half, and mixed fennel seeds in one half, and lots of black pepper in the second half. They can be eaten as-is, or dipped in wine for a snack. When Mario Batali made them on his show, he did an interesting way of serving them where they are dipped in olive oil, then vinegar, coarse sea salt, or caccio cheese, which is also how I did it. I had made these a few days in advance and then brought them with us when we went to Austin for the family weekend. Initially, they were incredibly tough when I sampled them. I tossed them in a hot oven to refresh them a little and dry them out a bit, thinking that maybe they had gone stale? Now they were rock-hard and had to be broken up to be eaten. Embarassing. Good flavors but just not pleasant eating. I've made them before and served them that day and this was not a problem then, so I guess maybe they went stale sitting out? And I know part of the appeal is that they keep and "refresh" in some wine, but I can't imagine this was the goal. The "grigliata mista" (as usual, apologies for mauling of spelling or terminology) is a "mixed grill" of assorted meats. Naturally this is not unique to Puglia, but a couple of authors and personal experience there have really captured my imagination for this dish. In Culinaria: Italy, there is a section on a couple of butcher brothers in the town of Martina Franca that serve various lamb and sheep innards wrapped in caul fat or intestinal casings that are then skewered and roasted in a large brick oven in the back of their store. Similarly, in Flavors of Puglia, Nancy Harmon Jenkins begins the meat chapter with a mouthwatering account of a visit to a butcher/osteria in the town of Sammichele. They went to the butcher first and picked out several meats (veal sausages, pork sausages, pork chops, and more of the lamb innard packets) under his watchful eye, then directed downstairs to a modest osteria where his assistant grilled everything up and served it to them only on butcher paper to eat off the table. This was particularly captivating to me since it is similar to the serving style of many of the barbecue temples we have in Central Texas. So I decided this would be the centerpiece. I skipped out on doing the lamb innards (though briefly considered doing chicken livers wrapped in pancetta but figured it wouldn't fly), and went with pork chops, lamb chops, and handmade spicy sausage patties made of lamb and pork. Before I get into trouble with the grilling police for Insufficient Grill Marks on the pork chops, let me say that this was a pretty temperamental grill. I had used it before and reduced a glorious four pound Fiorentina cut of porterhouse to a charcoal briquette in ten minutes, so I was leary and kept the heat down. All the meats turned out good, but the pork chops were a little too dry for my tastes after so much tinkering trying to get a better crust on them. For contorni I did another tiella, this one of potatoes, zucchini, and olives: and a braise of artichokes (more of those lovely purple artichokes!) and favas (pssst! they're soybeans) braised with bay leaves and onion. Dessert was a lemon tart. The lemon was basically a lemon curd (lemon zest, juice, yolks and sugar thickened in a double boiler) lightened by mixing in some beaten egg whites. The crust was standard pasta frolla variety with some almond paste and a little Amaretto. Edit: I brought with us some Primitivo "dolce" di Manduria that we had purchased on our Puglia trip. We tried it first as a table wine with the meal, but found it way too sweet. After dinner, though, it was perfect.

Saw coverage of it on the news this morning. An uncomfortable-looking Robert DeNiro was there, and was cornered by a reporter who asked him why they chose Dallas. DeNiro said something to the effect of it's a big city, seems like people would like it, "At least that's what we were told!" He added and did that patented DeNiro grimace-laugh, like he's about to pistol whip someone. They said it would be at least July before people would be able to get in the door for reservations. Looks like The Fickle 500 already have this place locked up!

Further DFW Farmer's Market update: Dave Levinthal reports in the Dallas Morning News that there is a movement afoot to get farmers back into the market selling their wares, as opposed to the vendor and wholesaler-dominated scene it is today: Also are plans to bring in more meat and seafood sellers, as well as live music events. But the changes are not without controversy of course: the wholesalers and vendors, who have been doing this for years and have kept the Farmer's Market afloat, now feel they are being shut out unfairly by the process, and resent their exile to the more traffic-heavy Shed 1. I must admit that I'd really grown disenfranchised with the Farmer's Market the last few times I've been, particularly since Central Market hit the scene. I do like the organic butcher that's been there for a couple years now, and I think a few seafood stalls would be a natural, welcome addition as well. So, are things looking up in your eyes for the Farmer's Market? Would these changes get you to come back and/or frequent it?

Finally ate here a few weeks ago. Hourlong wait at 8:30 so it's still hopping. This was during the big heat wave so it was oppressively hot both inside and out. They really need to expand somehow, or do something about the patio, since I can't imagine it being terribly pleasant in the months to come, and inside there's maybe 10 tables, and you're getting nudged by the bar crowd, and it's noisy as all hell. But I quite liked the pizzas. We were with a large group, so we got to pass around different kinds: the barbecue chicken, the Jimmy's sausage, and the "piled prosciutto" (sans goat cheese). The barbecue chicken was even good enough to stand apart from the California Pizza Kitchen infamy. The Jimmy's was pretty sparse on toppings and cheese, though--not that I was looking for the groaning chain pizza variety. The piled prosciutto was probably the favorite. The salads, too, are good here and enough for 4 to split as a simple appetizer.

Allison cook reviews the lunch offerings at Da Marco latest Houston Chronicle Dining Guide and decrees it "the best food in town". Has anyone else been for lunch or dinner lately, or revisited? Thoughts?

Yeah. What was I thinking? Only time available was 6 pm, and then that was already snapped up. Maybe try again in a few weeks for my birthday outing.

Have you ever tried dried fava beans? Very different from fresh. Earthy and homey and comforting. But be sure to get the peeled dried fava beans (they'll be yellowish colored, those with the peels will be brown) or they'll never fall apart as they need to for this dish. First time I made this I made that mistake and got impatient when it wasn't coming apart and pureed it in a blender, so the whole thing had the rough skins in it. Completely different flavor as well.

Actually, I'm trying to get in there tonight, as it happens. But that definitely adds to the excitement.

So probably parmesan is an english translation. Here in the US we do call parmigiano parmesan, or did until the real cheese became much more readily available, but the name "parmesan" for dishes cooked this way always stayed the same. Actually, I usually don't batter or fry the eggplant for parmigiano ( ) dishes. A vegetarian cookbook I have has a recipe to grill them instead, which I like a lot more. With these I knew I needed to do a pre-cook so frying became more of a necessity, though I considered blanching in hot water first. Edit: And with the Swiss Chard stalks, again, here's where shoddy produce in Dallas comes into play. Had the stalks left over once and thought I was really clever and made a salad out of them with some apples. They were inedible: tough, stringy, unpleasantly tart and bland. I do know of a recipe (Marcella, I think) where you layer them with besciamella and bake them, but then of course I'd have the leaves left over and not know what to do with them instead!

One more thing Alberto, or anyone familiar with the language: is it proper to call it eggplant (or whatever vegetable) parmigiano or parmesan? I switch back and forth. The only reason I ask is that in Jenkins' book, she calls everything by its proper Italian name, but then does in fact call this dish "parmesan", leading me to wonder if such a spelling has been accepted in Italian vernacular.

Didn't know about the chard variation, but the zucchini version brings back foggy memories of running across it back when I hated it. I always feel bad when I throw out the chard stalks, but the couple of times I've saved them "for later use" I'm tossing out a bag full of a slimey substance from my veggie drawer a few weeks later . . . Edit: And these were made with the new purple artichokes that have finally made their way to Dallas this year. Both of our local gourmet chains started carrying them. Man I wish people would get into aritchokes more . . .

Wednesday night I made focaccia with a filling of caramelized leeks, cod, and olives. Yep, another dialectical variation: as opposed to the more common conception of a flatbread that people have when you use the word "focaccia", in Puglia it is more like what in America we think of as a calzone. In fact in Puglia there is also a similar item called a "scalcione", but it is only applied to a very specific dough recipe and the filling can only be caramelized leeks and anchovies, according to Jenkins. Last night I made an interesting variation on the classic eggplant parmesan, using artichokes instead of eggplant. I'd always wanted to make this dish since I first saw it: eggplant parmesan is one of my wife's favorite dishes, and artichokes are one of our favorite vegetables, so it seemed a natural. The artichokes are battered and fried (I used again a paste of egg white, water, flour, and pecorino) then layered with tomato sauce, fiore di latte, and parmigiano cheese. Highly addictive, in fact we ate it all up. Edit: Got ingredients in focaccia wrong.

This sounds like Bar and Trattoria da Fiore. That's where we went, and I've been curious if they are related to Osteria da Fiore. At any rate, there's a sit down-type place, and then a cichetti bar adjoining next door. And they are on a main thoroughfare leading away from San Marco. The only reason I suggest that this might be the case is that I'm unaware that Osteria da Fiore has and adjoining cichetti operation, but I'm not so up on any recent developments on the Venice dining scene.

Good review. York Street keeps popping up on my dining radar; and this sealed the deal that I need to get there soon.

Alot of the quotes in the article seemed to veer towards what you were talking about there. Good to hear a non-local's view of the dining scene. Glad you saw some of the good places we have to offer.

An article in the Dallas Morning News profiles Nobu, the famed "innovative Japanese restaurant" that began its rise to fame in New York's Tribeca neighborhood in 1994. Its newest outpost will open in Dallas in June, joining other outlets in London, Milan, Tokyo, and Miami. I've been pumped about this ever getting scooped about it (on eGullet, of course! ) late last year. Has anybody been to the original, or any of the other locations? Thoughts? I must say, though, that something about the article gave me pause. My regional pride bristled a little when the article quotes people like Tim Zagat saying "Any city that has Nobu has a culinary star . . . It's not like any restaurant you have. It is a restaurant that is excellent in every way, but it is unique." On the one hand, as Goodloe points out, such a high profile opening helps elevate the city's dining scene as a whole, as surrounding restaraunts ratchet up their own offerings to compete. On the other hand, I get a little twitchy at the implication that the Dallas dining scene is so lacking, and it diminished the impact for me a little to read that Dallas is just one of four planned Nobu openings this year alone. Raynickben, in posting this article in the Texas Food Media thread, points out one of the last times New Yorkers tried to bring a famed restaurant to the Dallas scene: the Il Mulino debacle. Will Nobu suffer the same fate? (Well, let's hope not a major lawsuit at least . . . )

I have to agree with you. Sitting down to a plate of raw radicchio salad is way too bitter even for me. When I did radicchio for the Veneto, it was slivered fine and used as a garnish, almost like an herb, or cooked. And, acid really does seem to cut the bitter quality more (*remembers High School Chemistry*), and cooking it for a long time helps get rid of its bitter edge as well. I wonder if it's as bitter in Italy. That makes sense that our varieties might be older and more "concentrated". The bigger, elongated heads are $6 a pop down here, so I never buy them.

Hmm, maybe that's why I've been known to serve this with pita other times I've made it . . .

Last night we had a few seafood items. The pasta was spaghetti with mussels and capers, from an intriguing recipe from Marlena di Blasi's book Regional Foods of Southern Italy. She specifically calls for the mussels to be cooked "unfettered by garlic" so that they can taste "like their sweet, turgid selves . . . " Told ya her prose gets flowery at times. But in this case, she was right (and to be fair, alot of her recipes are first class, just ignore the elaborate intros). No garlic, onions, or chilies went into the condimento: the base is capers, olives, rosemary, and fennel seed (hi, Hathor!), along with white wine and just a dish of vinegar. Very unusual, but pleasant and satisfying dish. Highly recommended. The secondo was mackerel poached in a spicy fennel-spiked tomato sauce. I bought all the ingredients for this dish and was on my way home before I realized that this was too much like I dish I had made when I was cooking from Rome. How to make it different? Don't use the fennel bulb, as I had done in the Roman dish, substituting sambucca instead, and to play up the sweetness, toss in some currants. Good stuff. When I bought the mackerel at the fish counter, a woman working there asked me how I was going to cook it. "I'll poach it in a spicy tomato sauce with fennel." I replied. "Great! Thank you! Customers never buy mackerel because they don't know what do with it. What's your name so I can tell them who came up with it?" "Kevin". "Mackerel alla Jeff it is, then!" She said and went on to help the next customer.

Sunday night was another antipasto-style spread, centered around the dish near and dear to every Pugliese's heart, 'ncappriatta (foreground). 'Ncappriatta is nothing more than dried fava beans (get the kind that are peeled and dried, or you will have to peel them yourself once they have reconstituted), cooked in a little water and olive oil until they just fall apart from periodic stirring. Some parts of Puglia also add potatoes, but I kept it pure: no herbs or aromatics, even. Off the heat, I emulsified in more olive oil (which we bought in Puglia at Il Frantoio), then sprinkled with coarse sea salt for a textural crunch. The little red bulbs on top are not onions but lampascioni, also brought back from Puglia. Lampascioni are the root of an edible variety of hyacinth. This is one of those items that fascinated from the moment I heard about it, since quite a few authors have pointed out its bracing bitterness is an acquired taste. I got quite a bit of Pugliese street cred with the proprietors of our hotel in Ostuni when I excitedly told them I had bought a jar of lampascioni to take back with us. The woman there told me about a recipe for fritters involving raw lampascioni, but I regrettably forgot all the steps and what the batter ingredients were. Should have taken notes. At any rate, they really aren't that bitter, at least this jar isn't, and the couple times I had them in Puglia they weren't. They are pickled, so maybe the vinegar tames their bitterness. They taste like onions without the horsebreath aftereffect, and really compliment the fava puree well. Accompanying the 'ncappriatta in the background dish are traditional sauteed green peppers and braised bitter greens (which themselves were much more bitter than the lampascioni). I've really picked up a liking to bitter greens, specifically dandelion, and crave them most in the spring. The first time I bought them I used them raw in a salad and we threw them out because it was so bitter. Since then whenever I've cooked them I blanch them first to leech out the overtly bitter edge, so I'm probably not quite there yet. For the peppers, I used poblanos per Nancy Harmon Jenkins' instructions in Flavors of Puglia as the best substitute for the type of peppers used in Puglia. When we went to Osteria del'Tempo Perso in Ostuni, my wife had the 'ncappriatta spread as her primo with all of these accompaniments, and indeed the peppers did taste almost exactly like poblanos. Also with this dish we had "green" meatballs and more Pane di altamura. I have to confess that the green meatballs are not at all Pugliese. There is a dish for meatballs stuffed with a little mixture of herbs in the center, called "green meatballs". The first time I mad this dish, I didn't have the recipe handy and just winged it based on my presuppositions of Pugliese cuisine, and made the meatballs from equal parts ground lamb and pork, and once they were cooked through I swirled into the pan off the heat a paste of capers, mint, parsley, and almonds. We liked it so much that it's stayed in the repertoire, even after I found out how wildly I missed the mark on the traditional recipe.

Sushi on an Italian terrace? Salumi? Wine? All in one post? Congratulations on your soon to be completion. What's the biggest lesson you've learned? Please keep this thread up from time to time in your hectic new life!

Just so you know, it is unseasonably hot for this time of year, or at least in my 5 years of experience living here. So we do blame you for bringing it! If you're a Farmer's Market vet, the downtown one may underwhelm. There's something offputting about the whole buying from the farmer experience when you buy oranges with the Sunkist label on them . . . but the other "sheds" at the Farmer's market have some neat artwork and furniture, so that compensates a little.