Chufi

I also hope that you'll be able to continue!

prasantrin, thanks so much for for pointing out this recipe. I made the cake yesterday to take to work as a goodbye treat, and it disappeared faster than the huge tray of gorgeous brownies I also made It is, indeed a very delicious cake. I used a bit more lemon juice than stated in the recipe, and for the zest, I used the technique I learned from Dorie Greenspan's book to rub citruszest into the sugar to release the fragrancy. I also used joghurt instead of sour cream. I want to try it with lime or orange, too.

it was very simple: just started with onions and garlic sauteed in butter/olive oil, then added chopped sage and pancetta. Added the farro and cooked it with light chicken stock like risotto (I think I used about 5 cups of broth for 1 cup of farro). I roasted a small butternut squash, cut into cubes, seperately and mixed that in right before serving. Also added more sage right before serving, and garnished with some strips of crisp-fried pancetta. very good, I love the chewy nutty farro and it was a great combo with the fall flavors of squash, sage and game.

I always roast from raw! in a hot oven, and I always roast just a little bit longer than I think is right, which makes it just right, if you know what I mean Dinner yesterday was sauerkraut braised with juniper, caraway and bay, with roast potatoes and carrots, fried onions and some really good smoked sausages from one of my favorite butchers here in Amsterdam tonight we had venison steak and 'farrotto' (farro cooked like risotto) with roast butternut squash, crispy pancetta and lots of sage. Hm.. I see a brown/beige/orange theme here.. completely unintentional at least they´re fall colors!

The picture of Kim Shook's broccoli soup with biscuits stuck in my mind. I was craving some sort of creamy soup with the added flavors of ham and cheese, all day! I had half a cauliflower in the fridge, I roasted it and made roasted cauliflower soup. The ham and cheese went into the biscuits.. it was very good, satisfying comfort food.

wow therese I guess you realy liked Amsterdam April is still far away but I hope I can help you with the planning of your week. I have no clue what's cool about your apartment near Waterlooplein.... another hint please?

Welcome, Betamax! I hope you'll share some of your amsterdam recommendations with us!

SUSAN!!!!! How wonderful to see you! Oh and that beer can chicken looks good too Jamie: I love your refrigerator soup.

more pics of wonderful Erba Luna food here in my Italy trip report!

In the afternoon we drove to Perugia, where besided the magnificent museum, the main attraction for me was pasticceria Sandri. This beautiful and elegant pastryshop on Corso Cavour is a wonderful place to stop for coffee and pastry. We drove home, took a nap and walked over to Erba Luna for our final dinner in Umbria. After porchetta, pizza on the way to Perugia, all those pastries (and some icecream ) in Perugia we weren´t that hungry, but I managed another porcini salad and then the ravioli and Dennis, wanting something light had the risotto with blue cheese, walnuts and fresh grapes Can you tell we really liked the food at Erba Luna? We did. Fresh and creative flavors, everything seasonal, and just a little bit different from everything else we´d seen (and eaten) so far (maybe with the exception of the place in Macerata, which was, both in style and originality, quite similar to Erba Luna). To me it felt like a great balance of creativity and more traditional flavors and dishes - I think the combination works really well. The pork with citrus and the malfatti with pheasant were my favorites (and the risotto was decadently delicious!). And the gnocchi - I wish I could make gnocchi like that - very light yet so satisfying, and the celery sauce was unusual but really really good. This dinner was the end of our Italy trip. That was a lot of food wasn´t it? There will be a truffle epilogue, once I get my thoughts on that tricky subject organized. For now I´ll leave you with this picture of me contemplating the joys of aperitivo hour: just me and my Pink Meletti

yet another day Citta di Castello, Perugia The next morning I joined hathor and Jeff for their weekly trip to the market in Citta di Castello. artichokes borlotti beans and porcini Porchetta stall All this time in Umbria and I had not had any porchetta yet!! It was now or never! Now, getting an order of porchetta is very serious business. You have to stand in line, and listen to all the other customers giving their instructions: a little bit more lean meat, no yes a little fat too, no not that much fat, just a little, yes, no, yes! A bit of skin, no not that part, that part, yes, oh and a piece of liver, please, yes. And all the time you have to watch that the little old ladies that look fragile enough don´t cut ruthlessly in front of you.. they will, you see, because getting porchetta is very serious business. So I was nervous as I should be, waiting for my turn (wanna see me nervous, check out this post on hathors blog Anyway, I managed to walk away with a porchetta sandwich that was exactly the way I wanted it (with a nice piece of crackling too) and boy was it good

After a glorious afternoon of lying in the sun and soaking in the pool, we went to a supermarket on the way home to get some things to make an easy dinner at home. hathor found limes!!! which apparently is no easy thing to do in Umbria so she was very happy. And so were we because the limes ended up in a lime and chile rub on some gorgeous steaks. The steaks were grilled on the fire in the kitchen. here´s little Rusty keeping an eye on things me cutting up some radicchio steaks with chiles and lime, topped with fried zucchini blossoms we grilled the radicchio and also had mashed potatoes. And dessert

The next day Bagna di Romagna The next day was Tuesday and hathor and Jeff´s much anticipated Day Off (the first in a long time!) They wanted to go somewhere to really relax so we piled in one car and drove up to Bagno di Romagna, a little town just over the Umbria/Emilia Romagna border. The goal was to soak in the thermal baths for a couple of hours, but before that, we had to have lunch. I don´t remember the name of the little restaurant, but here´s what we had - 2 large platters of pasta to share: pasta with canocchie, linguine alla lepre, and potatofilled ravioli with a light meat ragu. and after that roast pork and potatoes:

the next day Montone nex day was Monday. We started the morning with hathor and jeff in the piazza, having coffee and the quintessential Italian breakfastpastry, a croissant filled with pastrycream. After that we took a long drive and somewhere along the way I had this for lunch: lasagne with fresh porcini. I had had a LOT to drink the night before and I am now convinced that creamy cheesy mushroom lasagne is a really good hangover cure That night brought us back to Erba Luna where Jeff made me a killer (I mean this almost literally) negroni, before we sat down to dinner. Here´s Jeff opening some wine, and you can see the beautiful walls of the restaurant. I had the salad with porcini and Dennis had the tartare After that Dennis had bacala with fried artichokes and I had the buckwheat malfatti with pheasant sauce. The picture of the malfatti came out ´corrupted´, that´s what the file says, which seems appropriate for malfatti Too bad because they were delicious!

Thanks therese and Peter! yes I thought that me trying to decide between the 100 EUIR or 120 EUR tasting menu at Uliassi, would make a nice avatar for eGullet back to the trip. another day Montone! So we arrived in Montone on Sunday afternoon. We briefly stopped by ristorante Erba Luna, where Judith (hathor) and Jeff were just finishing lunch service. There was a very brief moment of confusion when Jeff thought we were tourists who came for lunch, before he realized that we were his houseguests from Amsterdam With that cleared up, they took us home and before we knew it, we were sitting on their sunny roof terrrace, purring cat on our lap, with a large platter of sweet grapes and cheeses and bread and salumi in front of us, and a bottle of prosecco! is there anything nicer than prosecco on a sunny roof, in the late afternoon? It was another of those magical moments where you suddenly meet, face to face, in real life, the people you have been ´talking´to in cyberspace for some time. You feel you know eachother a bit and yet ofcourse you don´t, which is great because you have so much to talk about! With the work in the restaurant going on 7 days a week, they don´t have a lot of free time and we were honoured that they shared those bits of leisure time with us. That night, ofcourse we went for dinner at Erba Luna! I hope hathor will jump in with the Italian names of the dishes we had - I did not write them down and cannot remember them now! Also, apologies for the quality of the pics, it was dark in the room but I know many people want to see pics of Erba Luna food, so that´s why I´m posting all of them. Linguine with bottarga Gnocchi di zucca with celery sauce Duck with fig sauce Pork fillet with citrus sauce Crepe with icecream and chocolate sauce Poached pear with vanilla sauce Ha! And that was just the first night! More to come....

thanks everyone for the kind words and sorry about the delay in posting! day ? I lost count Urbino After our night in Senigallia we headed west to Urbino. Before we left we visited the market where we saw this guy with all the fish beautifully and lovingly displayed: Beautiful Urbino: where we had lunch with a spinach frittata (in a weird cake-like shape) and the local specialty Crescia Sfogliata, grilled flatbread filled with vegetables and cheese In Urbino we saw someone selling fresh truffles. We had promised a friend we would bring him back some truffles, so we bought some here even though it would be almost a week before we could deliver them. More on that later... Dinner that night was at our hotel, a little drive out of Urbino. One of the very few disappointing dinners, Dennis had a terrible pizza but my pasta was ok: I forgot the name but it was some sort of gamey, creamy ragu. Lunch in Urbino the next day was another Crescia sfogliata, this one was way better than the one I had the day before: Aperitivo, it was still warm enough to sit outside until 7:30 or so. Crodino for both of us, and we very much liked the Italian habit of serving some nibbles with every drink Dinner that night at trattoria Il Coppiere. The entire diningroom smelled intoxicatingly of truffles (as did our hotelroom since we brought the fresh truffles there ) salad with truffle ravioli with truffle steak with mushrooms. the next day we drove to Montone (with a little stop in Gubbio for more Crescia Sfogliata and some icecream) where we waited on the little piazza until hathor and her husband had finished their lunchshift in Erba Luna The bar on the piazza (note this is not Erba Luna!)

Rachel, thank you for a wonderful blog. I have been reading bits and pieces during my busy week but am looking forward to reading the whole thing at leisure over the weekend. I have a strange and inexplicable affinity with Mexican food, I say strange because I'm pretty sure I haven't ever tasted 'real' Mexican food, but for some reason when I read about it or see pictures of it it really strikes a chord with me. I need to get to Mexico one day and try to find out if I REALLY will love the food as much as I think Anyway, thanks for the glimpse of your life, and talking so freely about all aspects of it.

IlCuoco, I've no idea!! I don't think the Dutch know much about cider! maybe you could try one of the health food stores (natuurwinkels?) or one of the expat stores, Eichholz in Leidsestraat or the one on Sarphatipark 114. Good luck!

Tonno e caipirinha More tropical flavors: little cubes of raw tuna (each about the size of dice) marinated in caipirinha, I though the little yellow cubes were made of caipirinha jelly. This was the only dish where the tropical flavors really worked for me.. Fresh, zingy, with a nice bite from the alcohol. Panzanella, canocchie, chiffonade di sedano a anguria. This was really, really good. The canocchie was, I think, poached - it was firm but now chewy, and resting on a little scoop of ´bread mush´ that had the most intense tomato and basil flavor. Of the 3 purees, only the black one (olive) stood out and was the most expressive flavor. Strigoli al nero di seppia, calamaretti pennini e basilico This was one of my favorites. The little squid were the tenderest, juiciest I ever tasted and the pasta was so satisfying, yet the basil made it light and fragrant. Oca laccata e fegato grasso di anatra Goose meat, duckliver, in a rich berry sauce with soem,ightly cooked raspberries/currants/blackberries. As good as it sounds! But. Yes But. On either side of the row of meat was a cube of mint-marinated pineapple. we were instructed to eat these after eating the meat and foie gras. as tupac said, like a palate cleanser. I did not get this at ALL. Not only did i want the taste of foie gras and tart berry sauce to linger a little longer, I thought the acidic pineapple and especially the mint, really clashed with the other flavors. Zuppa di gorgonzola, datteri e sorbetto di sedano aka as cheese heaven. This was incredible, a rich but not at all heavy thick blue cheese cream, with bits of sweet caramelly date floating in it, topped with some (goats?) cheese icecream, celery granita and fresh celery. Flavorwise, already a match made in heaven but the different textures and temperatures really made this a glorious little bowl. Dessert was meringa di ananas, gelato do fragola e mou al rum - strawberry icecream, pineapple flavored meringue, fresh pineapple and a coconut cream. interior (you can just see Mauro Uliassi and his sister, Catia, talking together in the back) So, what did I think? my comments may come across as very critical. Don´t get me wrong, this was a fantastic dinner. He has a very distinctive style. Dennis, who really likes clean, fresh, ethereal, flowery flavors loved this dinner more than I did. For me, it was just a little bit too heavy on the tropical/fruity flavors. As I am thinking about it, I do wonder if I liked the dishes which seemed more traditiona Italian (basil, tomato) more because we were in Italy and this was what I expected? But I don´t think so. I don´t mind a bit of pineapple but to have it in 3 different dishes seemed a bit excessive. He likes to play with this, I think. There was basil/tomato in 2 dishes, pineapple in 3, coconut in 2, celery in 3. The service was great. Language was a bit of a problem but they were very helpful with explaining stuff, wine etc. At the end of the dinner I asked to see the menu again so I could make notes of the dishes we had. Nothing happened and we finally gave up and left, only to find out when we went to pay in the front, that they had printed out the menu for me. Mauro Uliassi made the rounds in the restaurant a couple of times. The second time he stayed at our table for quite a while and talked to us, asked where we were from, what had we eaten in Italy so far After 4 hours we stumbled out, to our hotel which was fortunately only about 100 metres away, and fell asleep to the sound of the waves. Thanks tupac fro writing about Uliassi and I hope my pics will bring back some memories for you Anyway. Even I feel a bit weird now, having described and analyzed a meal in such a detailed way. God bless eGullet because my friends would have left the room after me describing the 3rd course Also, I have typed the word flavor a 1000 times now so it´s time to quit and continue tomorrow (with simpler fare)

So where are we? Ah, it´s day 11, this must be Senigallia We ended up in Senigallia because of eGullet. More precisely, because of tupac17616! I read his raving review of Uliassi in Senigallia here. For some reason, what he wrote just made me want to go and eat there! So this turned out to be the only ´destination restaurant´of the whole trip. It was the most expensive, and the most formal dinner of the trip. Was it the best? let´s see some food first... I read tupac´s review again after we came bakc, and it turns out we had many of the dishes he had. So by all means check out his post to read a more elaborate description of some of the food. Uliassi is a restaurant right on the beach in Senigallia (which is by the way a very pleasant town to spend a day) we arrived in the afternoon, found a hotel and went for a stroll. And checked out the restaurant and the menu We did not want to order a la carte, so this left us to choose between the two tasting menus. One consisted of about 12 courses of raw fish, the other of about 12 courses of fish raw and cooked, a pasta dish and a meat course. You have to order the same menu for the whole table. This was cause for some discussion during the hours before dinner.. Dennis wanted the raw fish and I didn´t... at least not an entire menu of it. I won but actually we both won because even the ´regular´ menu had enough fish (raw and cooked) to make him happy. Anyway some pics.. it was very dark in the restaurant and htey serve many dishes on glass plates, which are set on a sort of ugly wiry plastic placemat.. so the pics are not good.. but I want to include them just to illustrate what this dinner was like. We started with thin wafers sandwiched together with foie gras and hazelnut paste Loaker di fegato grasso e pralino di nocciola (no pic) then two large pasta shells, deepfried and one stuffed with a mixture of raw vegetables, the other with a fossa (local cheese) mousse (no pic) Tagliatelle di seppia e alghe marine this was really good, intensely savoury from the algae, the ´tagliatelle´of raw squid was chewy yet tender, the crunchy bits on top (which tasted of shrimp) a great texture. Scampo Zen Raw shrimp, with a foam I can´t remember. there was pineapple and mint, and supposedly green tea, but the taste of mint was very overpowering and there was no delicate green tea flavor to be found. Wasn´t too fond of this. Ricciola e latte do cocco Raw fish (I´m not sure what ricciola is but it tasted a lot like swordfish) with a coconut lime cream. The little mushroom on the other end of the plate was raw shrimp, with a tiny scoop of sea urchin ice cream, topped with a very crunchy biscuit. This was one of my favorite bites of the evening. So it deserves a close-up: Erbe selvatiche, cristalli di sale nero e capesante This was wonderful. A salad composed of what seemed to be all different leaves, each with their own oungent herby flavor, on top of some perfectly cooked sweet scallops. There was also some fruit and some little frozen discs of cucumber and tomato and celery. All of it worked really well together, each bite w asexciting and fresh tasting. Schiacciata di patate mazzanolle e tartufo nero The best truffle flavor of the trip. Mash with truffle, how can you go wrong This was perfect, luscious and rich, but not exciting. Like the very best comfort food. Albanella con molluschi e crostacei next came this little jar, which was opened at the table to release an intense aroma of shellfish, steamed in a tomatoey, basl and garlic broth. spooned onto the plate

Stevarino, those posters are gorgeous!! I WANT one! Thanks for posting them.

I´ve seen some discussions recently on how to get the seeds from a pomegranate, all intructions seem needlessly complicated to me. I thought about this yesterday as I was making my salad with feta and pomegranate seeds. I saw Nigella Lawson use this method on one of her shows a couple of years ago, it´s easy and fast! Slice your pomegranate in half Hold the half cut side down over a large bowl Use the side of a wooden spoon and tap hard on the outside of the pomegranate. The first few taps nothing happens but then the seeds get dislodged and voila, a bowl full of seeds and an empty shell!

It's good to be back home after our trip to Italy! After 18 days of pasta, truffles and icecream we needed something light so the first night we were home I made a quick trip to the supermarket for this easy dinner: salad with salmon and mustard/honey dressing recipe here on markemorses blog. Yesterday was chilly and grey and I wanted to make soup! Eggplant- yellow splitpea soup with mint and yoghurt salad with feta and pomegranate

B]day 10 Macerata The next day we drove to Macerata, which had an entirely different (and less agreeable) atmosphere. It´s funny how each city you enter has it´s own vibe and feel.. ah well. The hotel in Macerata was better than in Ascoli Piceno, and even if there wasn´t much to do and see, Dennis got a haircut and I took a really long nap in the afternoon, and then we had a great dinner, which made everything right again Osteria dei Fiori in Macerata. They describe themselves as a restaurant cooking ´creative and traditional Macerata dishes´. Our wine My starter, a traditional local sausage (soft and fatty and with a little tang, like headscheese, I tink (if i can trust my notes) that it´s called ciauscolo. Served with crostini spread with a garlicky kind of mint pesto, which worked very well with the fatty sausage. Dennis had pappardelle made from farro, with chestnuts and porcini mushrooms. [ after that I had pork fillet with vino cotto, and , oh joy, fresh borlotti beans! I´d never had these before Dennis had roast rabbit, which turned out to be boned and stuffed, ´alla porchetta´ with lots of garlic and fennel. it was really good. Roast radicchio with pancetta. Dessert: Icecream with coffeesauce for Dennis and a beautiful, fresh from the oven pear cake for me. A glass of vino cotto to finish. I´d never had this and was surpirsed, I thought it would be sweet, but it was actually quite sour

most kitchens close around 10, 11. There a couple of late night places where you can order until midnight or a little later. But not many. Streetfood can be had until much later, and in bars you can order snacks etc, but we were looking for places where you can have a sit-down dinner with a nice glass of wine. Ok this doesn´t have anything to do with mac and cheese anymore, maybe I should add these findings to the Amsterdam thread!