StevenC

Funny you should mention it. Having grown up in New England, where wild labrusca vines grow everywhere, the "Vinland" name never seemed implausible to me. Of course, the grapes that grow on those vines have a peculiar aroma, sort of like nail polish remover. Vinifera vines don't really do well there, yet, except in milder microclimates along the coast... they die when winter temperatures consistently approach zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 C). As for global warming, the threat isn't so much that places like Napa won't support viticulture any longer, but rather that specific terroirs will no longer be able to produce the unique qualities we've come to treasure. Norway might produce good Pinot Noir in 2150, but we will suffer a devastating loss indeed when Burgundy becomes subtropical.

I could go on, and on, and on (but I won't). The most expensive "Chianti" generally come from Chianti Classico. In that category, I'd recommend the following off the top of my head, although you're going to have to stretch your budget a bit beyond 15 euros: Rocca di Montegrossi, Badia a Coltibuono, Isole e Olena, Terrabianca, Villa Cafaggio, Castello di Fonterutoli, Castellare. Frescobaldi's Nipozzano, from Chianti Rufina (NOT to be confused with the large producer Ruffino), is quite decent and costs around 12 euros, at least in Italy. Good price-value ratio. Whatever you do, avoid the 2002 vintage, and drink the wines with food.

A few years ago I had a very good dish in Moneglia, on the Riviera del Levante: chestnut-flour tagliatelle, with a sauce of pesto and prescinseua cheese. The slight sourness of the cheese complemented the sweetness of the chestnut pasta very well. Granted, it wasn't an orthodox pesto, but it worked. Another idea, although definitely more of an autumn theme, would be to sauce the chestnut gnocchi with pigeon stock and sprinkle some chopped toasted hazelnuts or chestnuts bits on top. In making chestnut gnocchi, my instinct would be to use reconstituted dried chestnuts, passed through a ricer. The resulting gnocchi would probably be lighter, with a more interesting texture. You have to be careful with chestnut flour--as someone else mentioned, it can be bitter, particularly if it's old. My relatives across the border in Emilia-Romagna advised me once to make their traditional chestnut pasta with a half-portion of wheat flour because the chestnut flour by itself would be too bitter.

Ouarka is slightly thicker and has a more glutinous texture than phyllo. I suppose that phyllo would make an acceptable substitute for ouarka if you bake b'stilla in a pan, although the phyllo will not hold up as well to the moisture. If you fry the b'stilla or make any other fried pastries for which ouarka is traditionally used, however, phyllo doesn't give the same effect at all. Fried phyllo is delicate and brittle; fried ouarka has a certain firmness and resistance from its more obvious gluten texture. Kalustyan's in New York stocks, or used to stock, packages of ouarka leaves in their backroom cooler. So, if you're ever in the area... On the other hand, if you ever have the inclination to make them for yourself, bonne chance! I once stood for half an hour watching a man make ouarka right inside the Bab Boujeloud in Fez. It seemed so easy--take a handful of springy, moist dough; bounce it around the top of the griddle until you've formed a large circle; wait a few seconds and lift up a perfectly round sheet of translucent ouarka. So, back home in New York I tried to follow Paula Wolfert's instructions to the letter. I bought the right flour. I prepared the dough. I heated the special upside-down ouarka griddle I bought in Morocco. I said an Inshallah. It was a total disaster, each time I tried. The dough would be too dry or too wet. It wouldn't cling to the griddle, or it would stick to the surface and burn. I suppose with enough patience I might have succeeded, but patience is not one of my virtues. (By the way, a similar process is used to make Asian wrappers, as shown in a scene towards the end of Ang Lee's film Eat Drink Man Woman.)

Absolutely. Sorry I forgot to mention it. Something else in Matera--you should be able to find 'nduja readily, even though it's more of a Calabrian speciality. If you've never had it, 'nduja is a spreadable sausage of pig innards and fat mixed with dangerous amounts of hot pepper. I have never seen it outside Italy.

Wow, what a fun challenge! Just a few quick notes... Park the car somewhere well outside the city and spend at least two days in Naples itself. Some people might try to dissuade you from visiting Naples, but it's one of my favorite cities in Italy for its food and the exuberance of its street life. As recommended, spend at least three more days in the area to the immediate south of Naples: visit Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Amalfi coast, and Paestum. Apart from your time in Naples, it's probably easiest to base yourself somewhere on the Amalfi coast if you have a car. Moving inland, you can drive southeast of Naples to Matera. (While I haven't done the drive myself, I've plotted it out, and it seemed reasonable.) Matera is an absolute must-see. It hasn't quite made the tour-bus list yet, but it is unlike any place you will ever visit. Before you go, try to read Carlo Levi's Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped in Eboli), the account of his exile near Matera during the Fascist period. From Matera, it's a fairly easy trip over to Puglia, with its phenomenal food and fascinating sights. Places to visit include: - Lecce - Martina Franca - Alberobello (go to see the trulli, but unfortunately the town seems to have sold its soul to mass-market tourism) - the old quarter of Bari, the second big city of southern Italy - Altamura (for the bread) Be sure to drink the Negroamaro and Primitivo in southern Puglia. You might also explore Calabria (esp. Crotone), but you'd be pushing the 17-day timeframe. Assuming the 17 days don't include the 5 you'll be spending in Rome--damn, I'm jealous!--here's what I'd suggest for a timeframe: 3 days in Naples, including drive down from Rome on the first day 3 days for Pompeii, Amalfi coast and Paestum 3 days in Matera, including travel time from Campania 3 days in Martina Franca and Alberobello, including drive in from Matera and a stop in Altamura on the first day 3 days in Lecce and the Salento peninsula 1 day in Bari 1 day to drive from Bari back to Rome. Of course, you could spend the 17 days just in Lazio... Have fun!

There is (or used to be) a place on the corner of Burke Avenue and White Plains Road in the Bronx called Two (or Three) Boys from Sicily that, as I recall from 20+ years ago, made stunning pizza. I don't know if they're still there. Much as I adore New York-style pizza, Pizza Fresca on East 20th between Broadway and Park Ave South makes a very good facsimile of the original Neapolitan treat. They even have a certificate from the Associazione Vera Pizza Napolitana, which certifies the authenticity of such things. True, the cheese is less tangy and the tomatoes less flavorful than in Naples, but on the whole the result is pretty impressive. On an entirely separate note, someone in New York needs to import the white-clam pizza.

True, which is why I noted that a horse race was perhaps inevitable. As one who neither implicity accepts 100-point scales nor lacks outside references, however, I have also resigned myself to the fact that scoring systems, like asinine contests, are here to stay in a mass market. (Although I still enjoy ridiculing the contests...)

I became addicted to butter tarts during a stay in Edmonton exactly ten years ago this month (wow, I'm getting old). Now I need to make them myself to get a regular fix. This may be heresy, but I add a pinch of cocoa to the filling for an extra richness and a bitter counterpoint.

I spend a fair amount of my day reading through blogs, magazines and books about wine. Some are informative, some are not. Some are entertaining, most are not. Even the best ones seem to fall short, though. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just that reading about wine can’t compare with the pleasure of actually drinking the stuff. Wine beguiles me, thrills me, makes me drunk to the point where I’m prancing around the apartment and speaking French to the cat. No wine writer has ever done that for me. Not even Hugh Johnson.

Not necessarily. Numerical systems are a shorthand for seeing where a given wine falls on a reviewer's own global scale of evaluation. So long as you don't give them undue importance, you take the time to read the full description of the wine (as Mr. Parker himself has consistently urged), and you stick with the best reviewers, numerical scoring systems may have some place. The problem comes, perhaps inevitably for a consumer product, when wine criticism devolves into a horse race.

First of all, what will he be serving? Seafood? Meat? Vegetables only? Barbecue? As general, all-purpose choices for Korean food, you might try an Alsatian Riesling or Gewurztraminer, particularly off-dry examples, which would balance salty flavors (soy, kimchee, etc.). An off-dry Chenin Blanc might work too. If the meal is going to veer towards meat, you might try a plump, juicy red like a Zinfandel. Stay away from tannic wines, though (Cabernet Sauvignon and such)--the hot and salty flavors in the food won't pair well. Of course, Lambretta is right too--you might go beyond wine and try soju, if you can find a top-quality example in time.

Cute headlines. In the spirit of pitting California wines against French ones, how about the following? English literature vs. French literature... Which one trounces the other? Battle of the painters, Raphael vs. Picasso... Who comes out on top? Italian opera vs. Beijing opera... Which one would you bet on to win?

I love any salt-cod preparation, but my favorite is the most simple: slather a thick baccalà steak with olive oil, roast it over a charcoal fire, and serve it on a mound of deep-fried potato slices with some minced parsley and green olives. Here in the United States it can be difficult to find pieces of baccalà that are sufficiently thick for this preparation, especially compared to wonderful examples for sale in Italy, Spain and (especially) Portugal. A lot of the stuff, even in upscale stores, tends to be a thin, stringy and overpriced. I've had my best luck at Portuguese fish stores in New England.

Does anyone know the traditional pig feed that is used in China? It could explain the unique flavor. Italian prosciutto is salt- and air-cured--it's almost never smoked except in the northern German-speaking areas of Italy, in which case it's called Speck. So, prosciutto might be a good, if expensive, substitute.

You know, if foie gras hamburgers could work, what about stuffing some into a cheesesteak? It could become a new Philadelphia icon. (Having been born there, I say it with love)

Reflexive opposition to food-safety laws has nothing to do with it. The argument is whether the regulations go ridiculously overboard and have the secondary effect, intended or not, of destroying the last vestiges of pre-industrial food culture in America and quashing attempts at fostering a new one. I don't think I'm imagining this problem--again, we saw it six years ago when the federal government was toying with (or at least revisiting) the idea of banning all raw-milk cheese, despite the fact that Parmigiano-Reggiano doesn't seem to be killing off hoardes of people. By the way, small temperature differentials can have a marked effect on fermentation.

The problem isn't the desire to protect the food supply. The problem lies in an approach to public safety that is inherently skewed towards methods of mass production. The same thing popped up in the debate over raw-milk cheeses a few years ago. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some federal agency decided to require the pasteurization of wine one day. You're quite right about the EU, but there's one important difference: artisanal meat and cheese have a strong popular base in Europe, particularly in countries like France and Italy. Prosciutto and raw-milk pecorino aren't fetishized yuppie foods; they're things your great-grandparents cured in their basement (yes, mine did) because the ingredients were cheap and the results were tasty. Ultimately, the only answer lies in truly popularizing this stuff here, in large part perhaps by returning to America's own amazing traditional foods--the country hams of the South, the cheeses of New England, and so on.

I totally agree. Meat consumption is not going to disappear in the United States. Foie gras is singled out because it's vulnerable--consumption of foie gras is seen as elitist in America, and hey, don't think its French name has nothing to do with the prejudice against it. Part of a reasoned response, however, is to point out the public blind spot about industrial agriculture, because such a response illustrates, as you note, the purely emotional basis of the counterargument. Compared with steeres being skinned alive in slaughterhouses and assembly-line chickens stewing in their own filth, the image of a farmer placing a funnel into the calcified throat of a free-range goose may not seem so horrific.

Don't know if anyone has posted on this topic yet... I don't think so. I would be very interested to hear reactions to Julia Moskin's excellent article in today's dining section of the New York Times, "Dry-Cured Sausages: Kissed by Air, Never by Fire". There's an especially poignant quote from the owner of Il Buco, when health inspectors recently destroyed all the cured meats at the restaurant because the temperature in the curing room was six degrees above regulation, not because they found the meat contaminated: "'These are pigs that were raised for us... We knew their names. We were trying to do something sustainable and traditional, and this is what happens.'" Personally, I am puzzled by the mentality that a supermarket ham injected with embalming fluid is somehow healthier than an air-cured prosciutto. I am also enraged and frustrated at how traditional, sustainable methods of food preparation in the United States seem to be constantly stymied and penalized in favor of anonymous mass production. In a year of travelling up and down the length of Italy eating traditional cured meats wherever I could, I got food-poisoning exactly once: from a plastic-wrapped carton of industrial pancetta I bought at a supermarket.

Let's face it, pretty soon we'll be able to eat foie gras only in France and Hungary, maybe Italy. I just wish that the legislators who have worked themselves into such a fit over the force-feeding of geese would focus part of their rage at the horrific treatment of livestock in factory farms across the United States. But then again, small foie-gras farmers don't have the same lobbying budgets as the agribusiness leviathans and the fast-food industry, I suppose...

My grandmother bought a bottle of Essenza di Senape in Italy back in the early 1970s, and thirty years later it was still extremely potent... whenever I'd add the essence to a batch of mostarda, I'd go outside, put a wet rag up to my nose and add a couple of drops to the syrup. I ran out of it a few years ago, so I thought of buying some in Italy recently, but I don't think it would be appropriate to carry it back on an airplane! Does anyone know if mustard essence is sold in the U.S.? You can find jars of mostarda di frutta here, but they seldom have enough kick, and I'd like to make my own vegetable mostarda.

Maybe. I'm frankly not accustomed to drinking coffee that contains chicory (at least to my knowledge), so I'll have to buy some and see if I notice the flavor again.

Is it the same GROM as the one in Torino? Is it a chain?

I've been in lampredotto withdrawal since I returned to the States from living in Florence. I've desperately wandered the streets of New York looking for the fourth stomach, but I can't find it. Even in Chinatown. Nerbone has the best, or at least the best-known, lampredotto sandwiches in Florence, although there are carts throughout the city. The lampredotto sold at the cart in the Via Maso Finiguerra (across from the Fulgor cinema) always seemed to have a distinct aroma of cinnamon. For me, the broth dunk, salt & pepper, salsa verde and salsa piccante are all essential. Finally, no discussion of lampredotto can omit the ravioli at Il Magazzino, in the Piazza della Passera.