Jaymes

Don't know about Fat Guy, but I like the sound of it very much.... After all, artichokes and pecorino...what's not to like? Sounds fabulous! Thanks, Caped Wonder

Don't mean to pick on you, oh caped one, but the mispronounciation of this drives me nuts...the spelling is bruschetta, and "ch" is always pronounced like "k" in Italian, so you say brew-sketta. (my specialty is butchering French) Jim That's my pet peeve too. We Americans manage to get the correct pronunciation of "Chianti"... with the hard "ch" and "ciao" with the soft "c" so why is it so damn hard for us to say "bruschetta" correctly???

Suvir.... WOW. That looks fabulous! Does it taste as good as it sounds???

I haven't. Don't know why, but just haven't "fiddled around" with this recipe much. Like it so well as is. That's really why I started this topic. Wonder what other people do.

Ripe summer tomatoes are in the markets now, and the pots of basil are bursting with their fragrant green goodness. This is the time of year I make Tomato & Bread Salad. Do you? Mine: Four good-sized slices two-day-old Italian bread, cubed (about 4 cups) 2 C chopped tomatoes (either cherry tomato halves, or other flavorful tomato, seeded and chopped) 1/2 C chopped sweet salad onions (Maui, red, 1015's) Handful fresh basil leaves, chiffonade 3 T EVOO 1 T wine vinegar (or to taste) sea salt & black pepper to taste. Toss all.... let set at room temp about 5-10 minutes. Serves two as a main course luncheon salad.

It's good..... creamy I use lots of olive oil. Can go through even the expensive stuff like Morea too fast, so have to keep on hand lots of different grades: Always have EVOO, VOO, POO, and OO.

Jinmyo, Would this be the bagna cauda I talked about? Might be a good topic for a new thread. I am not the final authority for Bagna Cauda, but my recipe for the dip is: 1/2 cup butter 10 cloves garlic, minced 2 (2 ounce) cans anchovy fillets, drained 1 pint heavy cream Cooked for a while till creamy and served warm. I think this is fairly traditional... EDIT: Thought about it some more, and after SA's post, realized I've only been making it this way for about three years, and is probably not traditional. I actually got this recipe on the internet somewhere, thought it sounded interesting and tried it. It IS good... very rich and creamy.

I didn't know this was an American thing. When the New olive oil arrives/is produced in Chianti the Italians I know sit around a shallow bowl of the oil dip their bread in and sprinkle salt on top. They also pour the oil over a lot of other thinks, like steak, bean/chickpeas or fish, so I can't see them having in problem with bread. Obviously, Italy is a diverse country so who knows? Will extra special oil - just bread and salt or pasta. Second grade stuff gets used on almost every food item in our home. I have also seen Italians dipping bread when sampling that year's new production of olive oil. What I have never seen is Italians sitting around in restaurants in Italy dipping bread into saucers of oil, or oil with herbs, etc. And when I ask for it, they glare at me. I began trying this after being unable to have butter brought to the table for my bread. Some restaurants just told me they were sorry, but they didn't even HAVE any butter....which I found hard to believe, but okay, so then can I have a little olive oil in a saucer...I KNOW you have olive oil. I'm sorry, but I just don't like my bread dry. Of course, I will eat it that way, but prefer some sort of oil or fat or something. OH - they DO put olive oil on bread....witness bruschetta.... and you can order that, and I often do. It's the dipping thing I've never seen in restaurants there.

Mike - You are a man of uncommon courage to make such a post. I suggest you immediately turn your back and protect your soft underbelly.

Cooking for a party of one these days..... and am busy..... don't have time for complex cooking except on the weekends and often I don't want to spend all weekend standing around in the kitchen. When I finish work, late and tired, I'm thrilled to death to have a jar or two of Mom's in the pantry. I can make a quick eggplant casserole, for example, by thinly slicing eggplant, dipping it in beaten egg and seasoned flour, frying in olive oil, arranging in glass dish, dumping Mom's sauce and some P Reggiano over it and heating it in the MW. I'm eating in fifteen minutes. And eating good. Here's the list of ingredients for Mom's Puttanesca.... tomatoes, olives, fresh carrots, EVOO, fresh garlic, real butter, real cream, capers, sea salt, pepper, anchovy, herbs and soy. And that's it. Period. No sugar. So what's not to like? Soy??? It's easy to say, "I would never do this or I would never do that" but the fact of the matter is that different times, different circumstances call for different methods.

Ditto Mom's. Mom's Garlic & Basil Spaghetti Sauce - with fat cloves of whole garlic Mom's Special Marinara - with butter and cream Mom's Puttanesca - with black olives and capers Mom's Caponata - with Sicilian olives and capers It just doesn't taste a thing like any other bottled pasta sauce I've ever tried. Don't know who she is, but I love that "Mom" almost as much as my own!!

Yep, but it isn't about taking a plain piece of bread and swabbing it through plain olive oil. Or, for that matter, taking a plain piece of bread and smearing it with butter. Both of those things seem to me anyway to be darn difficult to do in Italian restaurants.

You might have done a "search" to locate other olive oil threads.... I use olive oil most often in just plain bruschetta... rough bread... toasted, rubbed with garlic, brushed with EVOO, sprinkled with sea salt. I usually use either Morea from Greece, or Nuñez de Prado from Spain. I also like Colavita... affordable and nice peppery finish. Also, make a simple salad: sliced tomatoes, sweet onions, few good olives, drizzle with Morea and balsamic vinegar, sprinkle with flat leaf parsley, sea salt, and generous handful Greek Feta. Good olive oil is sublime. Oh - also often do that American thing of dipping bread into olive oil, sometimes with a few herbs, sometimes not. I think the reasons Italians are so uppity about not doing this is just because they haven't tried it. And, of course, because the Americans started it.

Wonderful thread. Wonderful. I'm doing this very thing myself tomorrow.

I'd agree with that. Many wonderful recipes and good advice, as well as interesting stories. Robb Walsh is, according to the book jacket, "a two-time winner of the James Beard award." The book is a treasure.

Yes... and blueberies, apples, strawberries and so on. Salads are a good place for an unexpected ingredient. I am so not with you. I cannot stand sweet surprises in my salads. toasted pine nuts, seeds, crispy prosciutto etc... are all great and fine but as for fruit - keep it for the fruit salad as dessert. My only exception with fruit in salads is sliced pear tossed with rocket (arugula), parmigiano, crispy prosciutto, good balsamic and evoo. Simply delicious. Oh I lie - of course melon or balsamic strawbs are great with prosciutto but then that is hardly a salad. Actually, canteloupe is not all that sweet... not much sweeter than tomatoes and not as sweet, to me, as pears. I've served cantaloupe balls in salads (but only with some type of vinaigrette...not blue cheese or ranch or any other creamy dressing) for years and there are never any left on the salad plate. So someone else besides me must think they're tasty there. Thought of this thread when I read the following description in a recent rave review in the Austin Statesman of one of our top restaurants: "Executive chef John Maxwell's food is marked by extensive preparation that takes it beyond that of most restaurants in Austin. Maxwell, who has been at Zoot three years and who subtly manipulates flavors to produce his exceptional plates, used the same multistep technique in his Butter Lettuce Salad ($8.95). The greens were deveined and tossed with a dressing of crème frâiche, lightly whipped cream, lemon juice and lemon zest and were topped with blue-vein goat cheese, toasted pecans and fire-roasted peaches. Roasting the peaches, for example, added a dimension found in few salads."

Hey... Congratulations!!! What I had smuggled in was, unfortunately, a box of Godiva chocolates. That was when I gave birth to my first son and I was breastfeeding him in the hospital. About the third day, my baby had a terrible rash of some kind. I was horrified and rang for the nurse. "What could it be?" I said, expecting the worst. "Well," she said..."it looks to me like a chocolate rash. Have you been eating chocolate?" "Who.....ME?"

Like maybe shrimp cocktail Mexican style... Far and away my personal favorite.

PEACH SANGRIA.... 2 ripe peaches, peeled and sliced (in winter, I use frozen) 1 lemon, thinly sliced, seeds removed 1 orange, thinly sliced, seeds removed 3 T sugar (or to taste, depending on size of lemon) 1/4 Cup Peach Schnaaps 750 ml dry white wine Combine all and chill well, at least one hour. Serves two very jovial people. As is immediately apparent, there is no brandy, so this is a pleasant, light, fresh-tasting summertime drink. Particularly good variety of Sangria when entertaining guests upon pale-colored carpeting. And on occasion I have, at the end of the evening, fished out any remaining peaches (now wonderfully marinated) and served them for dessert with pound cake and either ice cream or whipped cream.

Zarela says that the recipe for Puerco con Calabasas in her cookbook, "Zarela's Veracruz" is one of her very favorite dishes of all time. You take a pork roast and boil it in water flavored with cloves, onions, salt and pepper. Then, boil acorn squash till tender. Puree in blender with tomatoes and some cooked serrano peppers; fry the puree in a little lard. You grind coriander, pumpkin and cumin seeds, then add it to the puree along with a little cider vinegar. Fry the pork in lard, top with squash sauce. I don't have the exact ingredients or amounts or methods. The book is next on my "must have" list. But it sounds fabulous to me.

My grandmother made amazing biscuits. She made several different types, one of which was called, "Angel Biscuits." She kept that dough in the fridge and when you wanted some, you just pinched off a bit of the dough and baked it. My grandmother showed me how to make her biscuits but they were never as good. I asked my Great Aunt Melcina (grandmother's sister) why my grandmother's biscuits were so much better, even though I had copied every step to the letter. Aunt Melcina said, "Oh, you might as well give up. No one can make biscuits as good as your grandmother. It's because she has cold hands. Everyone says that's silly but I know better. Her hands are colder." And she DID have 'cold hands.' Although at the time, we didn't know why. But many years later it was discovered that she had Raynaud's Syndrome, which affects blood circulation to your hands.

A silly friend of mine gave them to me.... He owns a store... had these ripe bananas. I make many dozens of banana breads with his ripe banana in the fall to give away to friends.. and now.. in the middle of the summer.. he has sent this big package of ripe bananas.... Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't think it was banana harvest time in New York City. You can always just throw them in the freezer as is, then use the pulp later to make your banana breads. Or, make your banana breads now and throw THEM in the freezer. That'd get a lot of your autumn work out of the way ahead of time!

A better question is: How on earth did you wind up with "over 30 bananas at home" that you don't know what to do with?

The mild green has a wonderful flavor and little heat. I always have some on hand for entertaining people who for either dietary or preference reasons don't like "hot" hot sauce. Just had a dinner party and started with Mexican Shrimp Cocktails. Had a small basket with a variety of hot sauces that I passed... several of the people declined, but when I told them about Marie's mild green, they tried it and loved it.

This creative method also works splendidly when you have a casserole or other baking dish that you cannot get clean. Just bake something in it and present it to the neighbor; it will be returned in no time, clean as a whistle.