Kevin72

Except Ore keeps popping up in all these great threads! Must be doing something right! You've got quite a backlog of stories you're dangling in front of us . . . first the maggot cheese story and now a restaurant short stage?

Actually, I was hoping you would!

Epicurious already sponsors a few PBS cooking shows, so it's certainly feasible. And I remember that comment from Sara about FTV's direction, too. Actually, I had been thinking that it had quietly stopped production long ago.

Oh, and Mark if you're staying in Ostuni the place we were at was Hotel Soleblu. It's a B&B--a sweet, charming couple runs it. It's maybe a block from the main square. Bed & Breakfast "soleblu" Ostuni Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 16 72017 OSTUNI (BR) +390831303856 +393389970478 bedebreakfastsoleblu@virgilio.it

Alot of the wines we got were vino di tavola so they were anonymous. And I wanted to try Primitivo and Negroamaro at their source to see if there was much difference, so I gravitated towards them when I could chose varietals. I did bring several other bottles, including a rossato which we didn't try anywhere, and I haven't seen in Dallas, so I'll comment on that at some point when we drink it. I was surprised by the sweet, syrupy quality of Primitivo di Manduria, normally I just see plain Primitivo. And I'm sure more wine-knowledgeable types will comment on whether this is a variation from that variatal or not. You should seek out and try the unique regional digestivi they have there, like the ones made from bay leaf or olive leaf. Truly a different experience. Will you be going anywhere else in Puglia? Will you be renting a car? If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Albiston was immensely helpful in my own planning of this trip. Very excited for you, please do a thread of your own when you come back! You're definitely going closer to an ideal time of year.

Ore's definitely living the dream, isn't he? I'd love to pack a suitcase full of elastic waistband pants and spend a few weeks in Emilia-Romagna. Where else did you wind up going on your trip?

Well, it's certainly understandable to be suspicious around FTV, but I don't see Alton going anywhere, unless he wants to call it quits himself. He's one of their superstars. And they certainly didn't make that sort of offer to Mario, whose cooking show stopped production last summer.

Mario Batali had one on his older version of Molto Mario. And, searching the FoodTV site, I see that it's no longer available. Here's a similar one with bigoli, just substitute papardelle. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_17148,00.html I'd think there wouldn't be a problem substituting Spanish salt cod for Italian varieties.

Sunday night's meal, no pics: Rosemary focaccia. Ligurians love their focaccie(?), the baked flatbread. Enormously forgiving bread; if you're at all daunted by baking this should be your first experiment. And it is one of the best smells to fill your home with as it bakes. Despite numerous cookbooks and authors saying how un-Italian it is, I can't not serve it with a little dish of olive oil and cracked pepper to swirl the bread in as you tear it off in chunks. With the focaccia I served a not-exclusively-Ligurian dish, but a springtime rite for Italians everywhere, shelled fava beans. Unfortunately in Texas we can't get the really young favas which you can eat raw, so they had to be shelled, blanched, shocked, and then removed of their outer peel. I mixed them with shaved fennel and fennel fronds and made a little salad. Also served two wedges of pecorino with it. One of my very favorite meals, and something we have to do every spring as soon as the weather warms up. We brought it over to some friends' and had a nice grilled steak with it (oops, there goes Lent!), so it really got us in a Spring mood. Last night I made chestnut trofie, a stubby type of pasta that you make by pinching off a piece of dough and rolling on the cutting board with your palm, or between your hands. Here they are cooked and tossed with a mushroom and thyme sauce. Errm, yuck. They had an interesting, almost smoky flavor initially, but then that was followed by a harsh, bitter, acrid aftertaste. Also, they had a very gummy, stick-to-the-teeth quality to them, and were quite heavy. There was no egg in the recipe, I'm wondering if that contributed to the texture. I made a test batch the day before and had cooked them to Plotkin's specifications: put them in boiling water, and when they float, drain and serve immediately. I found the test batch to be undercooked and dry in the middle, so I cooked them last night a few minutes longer until you could easily bite into them, but they were still firm. Anyways, it was interesting at first but we couldn't finish a whole bowl and wound up ditching the leftovers. I'm guessing the chestnut flour went rancid. I had only bought it this weekend so it wasn't improper storage on my part. I'm guessing it's not exactly a fast turnover item, and I bought it in bulk from a bin, so it had likely been there quite a while. At any rate, the chestnut version isn't something I'm going to revisit or try to make again. I had made these before, but I misinterpreted one cookbook saying that they were essentially elongated gnocchi, so I made them with potatoes and rolled them out that way. Actually, as incorrect to the tradition as the potato version was, they were still pretty good, and would defintely be the version I'd make again, if ever.

Well, the title says it all. Sad but not surprised. REALLY hope PBS can snap up all these FoodTV refugees. And I shudder to think at what "new direction" Food Network is going in, having seen it head that way for the past three years . . .

Happy St. Joseph's Day! My familiarity of this day comes largely from Sicilian and Pugliese cooking traditions, both of which use lots of almonds, sardines or anchovies, and fried fish of some sort to make a big meal. Coming (usually) at midpoint during Lent, it's often used as a break from the lean diet to have a really big feast. Doing the same for Liguria, I cooked a few items specifically noted as being used as festive dishes during "lean" times. Started the meal with eggs in "special sauce": Plotkin notes the translation of this item might make it sound odd, and indeed our dinner guests were perplexed by the name. The "special sauce" is a mixture of basil, parlsey, capers, chilies, olive oil, and vinegar, and is pretty addictive. Should have served the eggs with some bread to sop up the rest of the sauce. Liguria seems to be an interesting "sauce culture", particularly with the affinity for the mortar and pestle to make much of them. I tried to explore that with a number of interesting sauces throughout the meal. There is a walnut sauce which I'm interested in but may not be able to get to. For the primo I made another famous Ligurian food export, ravioli. I got to use for the first time a ravioli tray my mom had sent me from the dark recesses of her cookware collection. It was surprsingly easy and fun, a refreshing change from hand-cutting them and invariably ending up with wildly different sizes. Here's the tray and the ravioli cut out: And here they are cooked and tossed with a sauce of sundried tomatoes. I got burned out on sundried tomatoes with the "Mediterranean boom" of the '90's. In fact it seems like several of the items from this food craze were Ligurian in nature: also pesto was pretty overused back then. But of course going back to its source, in both of these cases, proves the item to be much more delicate and used with a lighter hand than its translation in the U.S. The ravioli, "Lean Ravioli", were stuffed with more of the prescinseua cheese and swiss chard. The secondo was cappon magro. This is a feast day Ligurian dish which, Plotkin relates, unites the sea and the land in one glorious dish. It was designed to welcome the sailors home. On its base is bread, slathered with another sauce made of eggs, parlsey, olives, vinegar, capers, and basil. Then you place fish atop the bread. It would appear one essential item that I left out is a lobster. Then you pile vegetables including potatoes, artichokes, carrots, cauliflower, and green beans on top and then more seafood, and the rest of the sauce. All of these items are poached separately. It's supposed to be arranged in this artful pyramid but food presentation like that isn't something I can do well, so here's what I got: Because all these items are just poached, there is a delicacy (that word again!) to the whole dish. It is bountiful, and yes there's bread, but you don't feel agonizingly full afterwards. For the dessert I made sciumette, "clouds" of meringues, poached in a simmering flavored milk. Then you use the milk to make a custard which you drizzle over the top of the meringues. No pictures of this; the meringues swelled beautifully while poaching but deflated instantly when I took them out. Is that supposed to happen? It was an ideal dessert for the big meal, once again very light in texture and feel. There was a bit of an eggy taste to the meringue, however.

I forgot to mention that the potatoes do indeed break up a little when cooked this way and make a second "sauce" for the pasta. I was surprised at the lack of leavening to, but as Divina's post upthread shows, it must be tradition somewhere. Maybe with all that cheese it seem leavened enough! Well, I certainly wouldn't recommend the standard "lose weight" resolution with this one! But thank you for the kind words.

I made pesto last weekend, so this week a few dishes to try it on. As always, Plotkin approaches Liguria's most famous food product with a fetishistic frenzy, offering 16 variations (including one mixed with ricotta that I prepared long ago and really liked), and devotes a 5 page introduction to the subject. And naturally he asserts that the pesto should be ground in a mortar and pestle and not that modern abomination, the blender. Here's what he says about the method: "A mortar and pestle mashes while a food processor or blender grinds . . . The whole process of making pesto by hand takes about twenty minutes . . . the pestle must be made of wood, in Liguria it is traditional that it be made of olive wood, but--" The rest of his discourse is unfortuntately drowned out by the sound of my blender whizzing the ingredients together in 20 seconds as opposed to me pounding and grinding the ingredients in my 6-inch diameter mortar and pestle for 20 minutes. So, apologies to Plotkin, and to avoid any impending lawsuits or restraining orders on his behalf, let me say that I use my old tried and true recipe and didn't really use his specified ratios and ingredients (inlcuding the hard-to-find Genovese basil). First up was trenette alla Genovese. Trenette are a flat dried pasta similar to linguine (an "acceptable substitute" Plotkin sniffs at me from the recipe), which I used. This is a neat recipe to make because it's all done in one pot. You quarter some small boiler potatoes and put them in boiling salted water, cook them a few minutes, then add the pasta and cook it a couple minutes, then add green beans. Take a few ladles of the cooking water and thin out some pesto, then toss with the pasta and vegetables. For a secondo it was calamari en tegame: squid braised with olives, capers, and lemon. For lunches this week I made a big pot of minestrone. Normally I make minestrone in high summer and use only summer vegetables, but Plotkin's recipe uses a seasonally-appropriate mix of winter and spring vegetables: cauliflower, spinach, artichokes (which dissolved into the broth), and peas. Finished with a generous dollop of pesto.

It's a good start, and certainly a great coffee table book. Seems to run out of steam halfway through though, the chapters get shorter and more cursory. In a similar vein, the much-beloved Time-Life series, with an installment on Italy, would also be good, but they are becoming collector's items. Marcella Hazan's cookbooks are I think a great starting point, but may not exactly what you specify in your addition at the end. She goes light on history, and sticks pretty much to the Northern regions (although I picked up my interest in Puglia from her). Two regional books I don't have but am looking to get are Rustico by Negrin or Megrin, and Waverly Root's book on Italy.

"Say, Mario, what kind of oil do you use to deep fry in?" Keep drinking until he finishes the discourse on cooking and frying in extra virgin olive oil.

Excellent and most informative thread with stomach-rumbling pictures. Vietnamese is probably my second favorite cuisine and yet I've barely even scratched the surface, as your cooking has shown.

Oh, and I'm going to have to give a next day thumbs down to my preparation of Plotkin's recipe for the fritters. They discharged an alarming amount of oil when warming up the leftovers. There was egg in the batter, and Alton Brown has said that egg or any fat in a frying batter will attract oil. Can anyone verify this? I usually avoid eggs in the batter, and thought about doing it this time but tried it regardless. I'd be interested in seeing how it turns out without the egg, since the batter is further leavened with yeast.

Thanks for that resource. I just looked it up and will probably get it soon. Plotkin would get into a frenzy seeing that book though (not that I'd agree with him). He's a pretty passionate guy, if that hasn't been made clear. He gets huffy when the French and Italian riverias are thrown together. He also clearly has a bone to pick with Venice, first comparing it (unfavorably) to Genoa and then in Terra Fortunata he dismisses it when compared to Trieste.

It's onnnnnnn!

Man, we drove right through Monopoli on our way to Ostuni! I had looked around for places to eat in Monopoli on the web when researching destinations but everything that came up sounded touristy. It's really close to Ostuni as well so it's another good jaunt if you're using Ost as your base of operations.

That makes sense, thanks for the clarification. No you're right, it is made in New York I believe. But that might as well be in Puglia from here (Dallas), particularly since it's so perishable. Dallas does have the Mozarella Company, which gained quite a bit of fame in culinary circles for a while, so maybe I can drop a bug in their ear, hmm . . .

Crepes are my kryptonite. I get through half the batter before I can get the first one to come out right. With these the first few were these big, thick, pancake looking monsters that made for tedious eating. I noticed the color issue too but they just didn't seem to pick it up well . . . went from pallid to burnt very quickly. The recipe you list is pretty much Plotkin's. No leavening, which threw me for a loop.

I've literally sat in a room by myself reading that name off out loud to figure out the pronunciation and I can't. I'm guessing also there's some dialectical twist to it.

Sunday's Meal Cheese Focaccia, what Plotkin calls "the most addictive food on the planet". After that buildup I was a little let down. Granted I cut way back on his recipe requirements: he calls for four and a half pounds of cheese! Anything with that much cheese on it would have to be pretty addictive I'd imagine. At any rate it's stuffed with prescinseua cheese mixed with taleggio. Prescinseua is a tangy ricotta like cheese that is found only in Liguria at the moment. Plotkin recommends mixing ricotta with a high-quality yogurt, which is what I did. Also, I baked it on a stone, as the "classic" method calls for in a very hot oven. The crust got too crisp and browned: good for a pizza but with this focaccia I'd want it a little more gooey and soft to match the cheese. He gives an alternate recipe with a lower temp and baked in a pan, which I'd do next time. Contorno was braised portabellos finished with pinenuts. Monday night we did a "fritter sampler". Left to right, they are: bean, lemon, and cucumber. Had some friends over and opinions varied on which was the best. I preferred the bean. Even though I only used one recipe and divided it into three parts as the base for the fritters, it was still entirely too much food, even for four. Followed with chickpea-flour crepes topped with more prescinseua and scallions. WARNING!!!! Not really and authentic dish! In Liguria they make focaccia and bread from chickpea flour, not crepes. But it seemed rather labor-intensive, with equipment I didn't have, and Plotkin advises eating it just-made as it gets more unappealing in texture when it cools. I had had a similar experience when I made a chestnut bread which was great right out of the oven but then sat in the fridge until it was thrown out. So I opted for crepes. All apologies to Liguria. Ligurian wines are pretty near impossible to come by, even by Plotkin's admission: they don't travel well and are best enjoyed at their source. I did find a Vermentino, a Ligurian varietal, from Sardegna which we had Saturday night. Had a little alcohol punch to it but it was enjoyable.

Other observations • I’d like to apologize to Italy on behalf of America for the blight of the low-carb paranoia, which is even now making headway on The Boot. I was in a wine shop in Rome and came to their pasta aisle and saw, prominently displayed, “sensa gluten!” pasta. • I ate tripe and liked it! Whenever I’ve encountered it in the U.S., it’s been pretty noticeable, certainly smell-wise, but in Rome it was very neutral in flavor. A little tough in spots, but I was glad I had the experience. Even my wife admitted it wasn’t bad. • I was surprised at how un-spicy both Roman and Pugliese foods were. Certainly they aren’t famed for being such, but I had always thought that chilies would play a larger role, certainly in Roman cuisine. Only at Trattoria Cadorna in Rome did the food have the slightest, lingering chili tickle. • Burata is a great, great thing and the sooner some one here learns to make it, the richer they’ll be. Take mozzarella cheese (ok, fiore de latte cheese), fold it around a filling of ricotta and cream so that when you cut it lactic heaven oozes out. In fact I’ll go a step further: someone needs to make a burata gelato. • Puglia: Really, just go. Avoid Bari and Brindisi, though. Make Ostuni your base of operations for a few days, and at least one night treat yourself to a stay at Il Frantoio.