Kevin72

Tiella's a very subtle, simple dish, in my experience. Outside of the Barese-style, not lots of big flavors in there, but comforting. What happened with your tiella, or is that going to be on your thread? Why does opening the mussels in olive oil and garlic lead to less mussels: do they look to good to resist eating?

Thank you, Behemoth. I think part of it too is that my camerawork has gotten a little more "professional" as well . . . going to Italy and taking 50 pictures a day with our digital really got me to know the ins and outs of that contraption! I look back on the earlier out of focus stuff and cringe. Also, I'm pretty familiar with Puglia and Roman cuisines and have cooked them extensively, so there's a bit more confidence in those dishes. But I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I lived in Houston almost half my life and never would have thought of all the things you're foraging, fifi. I'm absolutely fascinated, keep up the great writing!

That's the spirit! Now, excuse me while I attend to this annoying, shooting pain in my left arm . . .

Just say "I watch PBS" when the Reality Show topic comes up and leave it at that.

Maybe i'ts the new Federal Mandate that all Americans must watch at least one reality show per week, but I'm getting hooked. Each time I watch, the half hour just flies by. The Kentucky/New York girl is impressive in what she turns out, though I am waiting for her to snap and put a knife through someone's eye.

Any of Andrew Dornenburg (sp?) and Karen Page's books, particularly Culinary Artistry. One of those books I just read over and over again the first year after I bought it.

I'm a one-time flipper for both burgers and steaks. I usually cook them 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through and then finish on the other side. As far as when to flip . . . I've just gotten to know my grill well enough to instinctively time it. Then of course when I do it on someone else's grill, I wind up overcooking/burning things . . .

Great pics. You're truly becoming a 'cue afficianado if you're finding ways to put meat in with your vegetables so they don't go all healthing things up. Get a rib in on your cheesecake, and you're there!

Thank you, Chufi. Feel free to weigh in if you do cook any of these.

Last night was ciambotta, a "stew" of summer-type vegetables. Onions, green and red pepper, eggplant, tomatoes (which fell apart and made the "body" of the broth), and lots of potatoes: Jenkins says that her research turned up that there should be more potatoes than all the other ingredients combined. I forgot this little tidbit, which cut back dramatically on the previous volumes I've had when I've made this dish before, but truth be told that many potatoes in the dish kind of soaks up all the flavor after several days in the fridge. I like her suggestion to swirl in some pecorino at the end, and I added a squeeze of lemon, also, to "lift" the cooked down flavors.

The recipe looks like it would be good, as-is, without tomatoes. The wine will add a good acidic kick. Maybe take out the chicken broth and replace it with more white wine. As you and others are thinking, peppers would be appropriate, too. Maybe roasted peppers?

Interesting. I made bigoli when I was doing the Veneto (here) and remarked at the time that I was under the impression that they were whole wheat only, then was upset when I got a "white flour" variation in Verona. So I wonder if it's a regional variation then? Still, that doesn't let Verona slide, since the pasta was plain ol' spaghetti noddles.

*gurgle* What's in the sauce? How do you make it? Were the bigoli made from whole wheat or white flour? So, are we going to have competing Puglia posts in our threads this week?

The basil more commonly available is indeed one of the reasons why it's said that pesto is so difficult to replicate outside of Liguria. Apparently, also the sea air contributes to its unique flavor. Finally, Fred Plotkin and others insist that the only way to make it truly authentic and optimally flavored is to pound the ingredients in a mortar and pestle, and well, we all know what my stance on that is . . . Having not eaten authentic Ligurian pesto at its source, I'm concent to revel in my ignorance! Thanks for the input, Michelle! Feel free to share your homesickness here anytime. I haven't lived there, but I'm even homesick for Italy!

I wasn't terribly picky as a kid, but I did hate fish in all forms (other seafood was okay). Then one day I was watching Food Network and Mario was cooking with whole red snapper, and I thought, "that looks really, really good" and went out and bought some and tried it. Haven't looked back. Hated zucchini for the longest time, and that was one of my first aversions conquered after trying some grilled zucchini out of sheer blind hunger. Compounding my zucchini dislike was that it was often paired with dill, which until very recently I still avoided. Tried it in one dish this past winter and it worked okay. I still don't like it to be overpowering, but I'm coming around. The final frontier, and I don't think I'll ever get around it, is that I hate, hate, hate coconut. Don't even like suntan lotion because it smells like coconut.

I love the touch that it was purple and had mushrooms growing on it at that point.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the dish is a wash without them, just that you'll have to play up other elements to compensate for their loss. What are the other ingredients?

I briefly marinated some mackerel in olive oil, lemon juice, and rosemary, then tossed it on the grill. As others here have said, it really takes to the big, smoky flavors well. Give it another shot.

Sunday night was a Pugliese seafood antipasto feast, inspired by recipes and vivid descriptions in Flavors of Puglia. The large white dish in the front is broiled stuffed mussels. The mussels are steamed slightly open (even Jenkins admits to this shortcut rather than prying them open while still raw and alive). Then you remove one of the shells, leave the meat in the other half, and top with breadcrumbs, minced garlic, oregano, parsley, and pecorino cheese. I'm curious as to why the no-cheese and seafood rule seems to only apply to pasta combinations, but whenever you "stuff" a seafood item, be it calamari or shellfish, you invariably throw in a bit of cheese. Not that it wasn't a success here: I thought it was the best of the dishes. But it's been so ground into me to not put grated cheese over a pasta, that I'm not even willing to experiment and lose my Italian street cred in doing so. Is it because the pasta dishes are usually a little more delicate? Anyways, on to the other dishes. Starting in the middle row, on the left, is shrimp roasted with olive oil and sea salt. Get an earthenware dish very hot in an oven, toss the raw shrimp with olive oil and coarse sea salt, put them in the pot (they should sizzle and hiss immediately), cover and bake for ten minutes, then finish under a broiler if you desire. Next, in the yellow dish, is tomatoes with oregano, olive oil, and more sea salt. In the white, smaller dish are fried baby zucchini that are then steeped in a marinade of vinegar, mint, and garlic. In the green bowl is a squid and potato salad (try bringing that to your next office function when you get stuck with having to make potato salad!). It was actually supposed to be octopus, but my usual sources for it have dried up, so squid was substituted. I was actually a little relieved since it saved me the added step of pre-cooking the octopus first. On the back row on the far left is Pane Pugliese, a large round loaf of crusty bread that is almost as doted on as the semolina flour Pane di Altamura. Had a Pugliese rosato (the "Silvium" bottle) that we bought on our trip. Pretty good. Also a Sicilian grillo(?) which I find to be a good, reliable Southern Italian white. Dessert was "calzoncelli", a pastry that is folded around a jam filling (I used a compote of oranges and apricot preserves) and cooked. The recipe says they should be fried, but I got nervous that the filling would leak out while frying and lead to disaster, so I baked them instead. Good thing, too, as they did indeed split open a little as soon as they hit the heat. They were finished with cinnamon and powdered sugar, which really made the dish, particularly the cinnamon element. My wife remarked that they tasted "like Christmas" which was dead-on, since they are traditionally a Holiday dessert item.

Saturday night, I made an appetizer of grilled oysters, topped only with olive oil, lemon juice, and just a pinch of sea salt. The instep of the "heel" is the Gulf of Taranto, and Puglia makes up the eastern half of this gulf. Here, and in fact all up and down the Pugliese peninsula are a number of beds ideal for growing bivalves, particularly oysters and mussels, so there are numerous dishes for both in Puglia. I love oysters, but I think they are going to be a only-in-restaurant dish from now on. Even though I by the "preshucked" oysters that have become commonplace now, they are still an unbelievable pain to open. And I can't quite get the cook timing right, so some were pleasantly cooked through, others halfway between soft and raw but slightly cooked, so it was an unpleasant mediation. Plus, I vastly prefer oysters raw. I've never tried raw clams or mussels and would have done so in a heartbeat had they been available on our trip to Puglia. For the main course, we had a pizza made of potatoes. Casual observation of Pugliese cuisine reveals they adore potatoes. Witness their essential presence in the tiella above, or a dish I'll be getting into later, or this pizza, where boiled potatoes are peeled and passed through a ricer into flour, then worked into a dough with some of the potato's cooking water and yeast. The dough is quite sticky and ungainly, and I pre-bake the crust to set it and so it doesn't soak up all the toppings in its final pass in the oven. Topped it with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and two different sheep's milk cheeses (one being feta, a new favorite). When removed from the oven, it got topped with fresh arugula. I make no claims for Pugliese authenticity on the toppings, but the sweet, chewy crust is a nice variation on an old classic.

Last Wednesday I made Barese-style tiella. Tiella is a layered casserole of vegetables cooked in an earthenware or terra cotta vessel of the same name. It is considered Barese-style because it uses rice; there are numerous variations on tielle throughout Puglia, each one incorporating a local ingredient (and each of course only calls it a "tiella", not "tiella di . . . and wherever they are). A common element through all tielle, is, according to Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a layer of potatoes. When studying on Puglia, I figured that their tielle were a mark left by Spanish rule, as indicated by the presence of rice and the casserole cooking method named after its vessel. No sooner had I theorized this than I got smacked down by Jenkins in her writeup on tielle in Flavors of Puglia. She almost immediately dismisses this common misconception, saying that the rice was a later addition to a pre-existing dish. In fact even the essential element of potato is an addition: she says that the dish originally consisted of pounded grains and vegetables layered together, and more than likely came from the ancient Greek's rule. On our last night in Puglia, it suddenly struck me that I hadn't encountered this dish at all yet, and was beginning to lament this oversight. Sure enough, though, at dinner we were served two tielle: one of mussels and potatoes, another of potatoes, cardoon, and olives. In addition to the rice and potatoes, this version had a layer of artichokes, zucchini, tomatoes, and was flavored with a mixture of parsley, oregano, and garlic scattered over each layer. Finally the top had a layer of breadcrumbs and pecorino cheese. I do not have an earthenware vessel large enough for this dish: in fact the recipe made two batches.

Classic! Only in Italy!

Yeah, I'm the gourmet cook in my circle of friends so reciprocal invites after our dinner parties are hard to come by, and we don't look for them anyways. We enjoy doing it. And yes, most friends are needlessly intimidated about their own cooking skills. The only thing that burns me up is people asking what the meal is before they say yes or no . . .

You guys have hit almost all my favorites: the breakfast morning burger, Homer gains weight episode, Mr. Pinchy, Homer sues the all-you-can-eat restaurant (I was laughing before I even saw the episode based just on the TV Guide description). Another favorite is the party sub that Homer takes home with him from an office picnic. It's too big to fit in the fridge so he just stores it behind the radiator and eats off of it whenever he remembers to. Hilarity and salmonella ensue! Oh, and that reminds me of Apu repeatedly selling expired lunch meat and room-temperature shrimp to Homer at discounted prices . . .