Pontormo

If you are able to invest in equipment you lack, this might be the time to do it. I'd suggest purchasing an ice cream maker, especially to delight the children. You could make sorbets just in case there's some lactose intolerance in your group; it would also compensate for the fact that most ice cream bases require egg yolks. Home-made ice cream is always impressive to anyone who hasn't made it before and if you want, you might even use it to make a frozen-dessert tart with a citrus or ginger or even bittersweet chocolate base and serve one or two fruit-based garnishes: Lime filling with a ginger crust and blueberry sauce Peach and raspberry with almond flour pastry Coconut, mango and lime Lemon and raspberry with chocolate....(Your choice: chocolate shell, lemon filling, raspberry sauce; lemon shell, raspberry filling, chocolate sauce....) If not, simply purchase ice cream that is made without eggs and make an elaborate ice cream cake of your own. See epicurious for recipes. Cannoli--there are all sorts of flavorings for ricotta filling, especially, to think about. A crostada or galette with seasonal fruit and home-made frozen dessert. These open-faced rustic pies just look a bit more festive than traditional pies. There are also molded desserts such as watermelon pudding or something you invent yourself using one large bowl, Bundt pan or fish and lobster mousse molds.

Daniel: We all know your kitchen creds (and Alicia's too), so I am sure whatever you do will be fantastic. Did you read *Heat* or some of the Buford articles in *The New Yorker*? Tortelli di zucca [big stuffed pasta filled nowadays with winter squash] are traditional on Christmas Eve, too, usually served in broth with sprinkling of cheese. (Same region: do not eat apples, bad luck according to one source.) Traditions differ depending upon the region of Italy. Perhaps the best way to get an overview would be Celebrating Italy by Carol Field. The big 7-fish tradition: Naples at the Table.

PS: Again, with the color scheme: roasted red peppers glistening with olive oil. There are Sicilian treatments that are a bit different from the usual anchovy and capers.

QUESTION OF VEGETABLES & SALADS Instead of tomato salad (not seasonal, not in keeping with your favorite Mario saying), a salad of roasted beets on a bed of beet greens would provide the same appropriate colors. So would something made with red-veined chard: a torta, perhaps. Actually, there is one traditional Christmas Eve vegetable torta prepared with leeks and mixed greens, wrapped in simple dough. Separate, or perhaps on the same platter, but separated: Thinly shaved fennel dressed in lemon juice & olive oil with large Parmesan curls Blood orange salad dressed only with olive oil, sprinkled with a few red chili flakes, topped with snipped chives and thin rings of red onion that have been steeped in red wine vinegar until they turn pink. Alternatively, scrap the 2 onions and use fresh mint instead. Cauliflower is traditional: fried (with Parmesan batter or anchovies and garlic) or boiled. You could do the roasted cauliflower thing instead. Get one head purple, one white and one green. Elie adores the olives in tomato sauce from *Molto Mario* I like the olives from the first Union Square Cafe cookbook. Cf. Kevin's year-long blog from 2005 with a traditional Vigilia di Natale spread from Naples for further ideas.

All the Asian crepes are inspiring, the version with rice flour making me think that summer rolls are not all that different. Klary's double-cheese crepe also looks wonderful. I wish there were more raw milk cheeses in this country to use. I just picked up some lemon-basil at the market and instead of simply making a raw tomato-basil & mozzarella sauce for pasta, it might be fun to try a related kind of cheese for an Italian-Dutch crepe, folding it around chopped tomatoes, garlic and herbs.

I just learned about Philippe Olivier's shop in Boulogne-sur-Mer. It was presented as one of the best places in the world for a cheese-lover to visit. Reports?

Shalmanese: While I plan to bide my time between this week and the unfolding of your 42nd birthday over the course of 42 hours with 36 courses, I DO look forward to seeing what you do when you are twice the age you are today. I have seen the title of your thread every once in a while, but admit that I look at this forum too seldomly. It is usually on birthdays that a glance is worthwhile and I must say this really is one of the best here at eGullet. In so many ways, you respond fittingly to the idea that one's 21st year can be a time of momentous transition, of looking forward with excitement and looking back with pleasure at what means the most: coca-cola chicken, home and great friends. What you accomplished is so impressive and looks like such fun! I hope Seattle is ready for you and that there's a seat at Salumi with your name on it before graduation.

Wow, you all!!! Must be good karma? After being out in the hot sun (a wonderful breeze, though, every now and then) volunteering at the farmer's market, I come home and find all these really good suggestions. Thank you! I actually have some of the ingredients and will soak some extra chickpeas (since Torakris's blog made me crave homemade falalfel and Klary knows I am trying to use up a cupboard full of beans) & prepare a couscous-pine-nut and herb salad on the side. I hope it lasts since it's not appropriate for tonight's salmon. I was also thinking about some ricotta-stuffed polpette based on a recipe in Molto Mario that includes pistachios, skipping the milky broth which would be with the eggplant. I had some last night with a pseudo-Italian hamburger and liked it. For someone not accustomed to agrodolce, the flavor is something I may need to try more frequently. Franci, that pseudo-caponata looks delicious. Is it simply without a tomato sauce? Klary, good to see you back here with beautiful, perfect arancini. I am sorry the weather is still so oppressive. I hope early September in Northwestern America makes up for what plagues so many of us this year...and that relief comes much, much sooner than that.

I am bumping this thread up since the deadline for the Do Us a Flavor contest is July 31, next Monday. You've got the weekend.

I think my question might have been phrased differently: While "chiaroscuro" refers to the effect achieved when an artist accentuates a strong contrast between light and dark, _________________ refers to the aesthetic a photographer uses when playing a precise, deep focus against a surrounding soft focus and drawing our attention to the sharp contrast. It just seems that some of this thread's sprinkling of complaints about images seeming out of focus stems from the fact that major portions of compositions are occupied by virtually amorphous blur with only a small portion of the illustration in focus. Leafing through the August issue, I see that precise definition and sharp focus are not always used so contrasts can be more subtle than I first thought. On the cover, for example, you've got a clear (more or less?) focus on scattered crumbs of the tart Ruth Reichl singles out in the Letter from the Editor in the foreground. They cast shadows and against the metal surface, sit above their own reflections. You see the weave of the tablecloth. Given the low angle of the shot, the tart climbs up the flat surface of the page with few visual markers of spatial depth since the fabric's weave disappears into a slightly pink then white haze on the right. Sort of like the tables in a still-life by Cezanne where edges disappear and surfaces tilt instead of recede, except here in a close-up, the top/rear portion of tart is blurred, too, due to shallow depth of field. Since the tart occupies little more than a third of the cover's space, there's little that is in focus, not even the lower edge of the cover, especially on the right. Woman with the pork chop? Just her face and a bit of the salt-crusted chop are in focus; the rest is a blur. The effect is interesting, and often makes the food desirable (the raspberries on the cover make me want to add them to my shopping list), but when almost all the in-house photographs are shot this way, the style no longer seems as distinctive. Now, I can't believe I wrote all this. I need a beer.

GA (?) Mike : I never realized that Mario Batali was concerned about cutting calories until I saw your eggplant roasted vs. fried. If I am correct in guessing the fifth ingredient in your cake was orange (olive oil, flour, sugar & eggs), it seems to be in the spirit of Sicily especially given the Middle Eastern associations of such a cake. Hathor: I haven't made a braise since the very beginning of the month. Yours seems very rustic and far more tempting than my chicken. Elie : Yes, this has to be one of the most tempting dishes this month. (The decorative strips look very Union Jack.) I was hoping someone would make sfincione and am grateful for the comments on the tomato paste. In Sicily, some of these I would think incorporate homemade estratto (or 'stratto) as described by Mary Taylor Simeti. Given what I have started to learn about Puglia's dishes, Italian-American lasagna is beginning to make a lot more sense to me. * * * Last night I finally got around to making my first caponata, relying primarily on Mario Batali's recipe, though adding extra Valrhona cocoa, some celery and a few plump Green olives that came from Bari where we are supposed to be headed next Tuesday. I'll wait until it's room temperature again, but I don't think it's my favorite thing to do with eggplant. I did enjoy tasting it while it was cooking; even a little currant I picked off of the stovetop before cleaning was filled with spicy, complex flavor. (HELP! There's too much! Creative uses (already have ruined clothing) or "sides"?) For lunch, I prepared a simple rice salad with the last of the golden cherry tomatoes, tuna, capers, red onion, garlic and chopped fresh herbs, dressed with lemon & olive oil while the rice was still hot. The touch of cayenne Tasca Lanza calls for contributed quite a lot and made it more interesting than tuna, red onion & cannellini salad or panzanella as much as I enjoy both in the summer. I'll have to be on the lookout (using both eyes) this evening for cheese made with sheep's milk when grocery shopping or maybe I will buy extra whole milk to try Eli's recipe for ricotta since the wonderful local ricotta at the farmer's market costs around $6 these days. Since I have swordfish and lots of sultanas, nuts & currants left, I am going to drag my feet. I will definitely return to this thread when there's more incentive to pop skins off of blanched almonds, grind them and fill cookies with pistachio paste. Still haven't finished watching La Terra Trema either; once you get used to the polemics, it becomes too, too heart-breaking to bear.

: OHHHH!

True dedication, Rodney. Curious about the glaze: why use a tiny bit of extract instead of fresh orange juice? I've always had success with the latter. And Sarah Phillips, I was very interested in your professional perspective offered a while back about the flavors in the oils of the orange zest. If you're still reading this thread, I wonder if you might offer further comments on the following: 1) In limited experience with two recipes that have given me great success, I have never noticed any adverse effects resulting from the use of the entire orange, pith and all. The cottony texture seemed the only real drawback and with just a couple of oranges, it just never proved noticeable. Does the pith really have any adverse effects if included in muffins and cakes? 2) I just mixed the zest from a single orange with olive oil. (I'll be added a few more things to make something Silician.) The potent flavor is noticeably bitter, thus making my suspicions about pith's harmlessness even stronger. Luck of the draw? Due to season? Type of orange? Thanks.

Since I'm not a vegetarian, I've been at a loss when in comes to finding the appropriate terminology. I'm an ag freak! P.S. Chardgirl, those carrot beets look wonderful!!! Didn't they sell at the farmers market? If chefs were reluctant to exploit the unusual shape, so be it. However, I'd say there's a practical dimension: you don't have to slip off as many skins when slicing them into rounds for a salad or garnish.

Yes, Toliver, it was. In the new August issue which arrived well before the beginning of the month this time (credit is due), the only artistic decision that really made reading difficult for me was the use of spindly, small white font in a compressed format against black for the first page of Ruhlman's revisionist take on the hot dog. Do photographers have a term like "chiaroscuro" that describes, instead, a sharp contrast between deep and blurred focus? Currently, the love of soft focus to play up the one or two areas in the image that are in focus borders on overkill. It's only a bit annoying to me when it's not a matter of obscuring the background for the sake of emphasizing the foreground, a traditional device. For example, cf. the image of a beautiful young woman eating a pork chop. (How refreshing that it is not a dainty crustless sandwich!) I'm sure it's the unexpectedness of the aesthetic that the photographer enjoys. Just like artists who don't do commercial work, these folk have to experiment, alter their style and need room to feel creative or distinctive. The disconcerting loss of sharp edges and use of light evokes Vermeer and other Netherlandish art of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, I notice there is a trend shared with some of the best photography here at eGullet or on Chocolate & Zucchini: the cropped (as in Degas's paintings AND photographs) close-up. Some of the montages suggest the internet, though I am not sure the latter is a direct influence. Cf. page 105. Very Flash grid. Favorite picture in issue: wizened glistening peas and rabe in Quick Kitchen. Someone needs to fire the company that Spain uses to promote tourism. Old campaign, always odd and unappealing.

In the new issue of Gourmet (August 2006), Ruhlman offers the cock and bull story: The meat of bulls (vs. steers) is preferred in making Vienna Beef's hot dogs; it's said to have a "higher concentration of protein and more aggressive beef flavor than does cow meat." (p. 40)

Discriminating taste!

Not much that a raw foodie can eat there I'm afraid. Maybe substitute the bread for some dehydrated crackers or something. Raw tuna is not on the diet as, in my experience, most raw foodies tend to be vegans as well. Capers are probably cooked too aren't they? Uncooked rice? ← I know, I know. I was moving away from the focus on a vegan diet of raw foods & simply making a plea for the rest of us who may not believe our bodies benefit from "uncooking" to prepare more than is needed one night so there is leftover rice, for example, and to avoid cooking the next evening since it would conserve energy. Think about buying bread as equivalent to taking public transportation; you're not turning on your own oven in the middle of a heatwave. BTW: Here is the web site of Nourishing You, the business of someone local who trained at a school in California that advocates a Raw Food diet. "An alternative place," she said. "There were no stoves." I might have mentioned her cooking demonstration at our farmer's market since she made a frittata with pancetta, herbs, cheese, etc. It would have been easy for her to omit the meat at the very least if she simply wished to promote things that could be purchased from the farmers and to appeal to the crowds, but not everyone attracted to Raw Food remains a steadfast believer that it is the only way to eat.

Since the woman married to a member of a man's club would be in charge of running a smooth household rather than seducing her life partner with her culinary skills and then throwing him down on the carpet, it makes sense that she would be invited to think of economy, cleanliness and how to prepare chops in such a way that theirs would be a model home and a place a gentleman would be proud to retire at the end of the day. It's her job, though, yes, it is funny to think of recipes as nothing more than a formula for making such a domestic sanctuary and that these very unsexualized things would be presented as lures as well as a means to secure her own position in life. It's rather ambiguous as to who's doing the actually cooking at home since I would think such a woman would have a staff--but you seem to imply that the wife is urged to develop a chef's knowledge. Just to instruct? What is interesting is that there seems to be an implicit distinction being made between home cooking and cuisine prepared by professionals working in the public sphere, the latter being presented as the benchmark, the more desirable. It's suggestive of the fortune of home cooking in the past century when it's compared to dining out, the way a chef like Ramsay chastises British women for not knowing how to cook and even the reason why Haute Cuisine has more cache than Italian food which is basically home cooking. At the risk of moving off into too many different directions, let's just say there's complexity & contradiction: simple home cooking, none of that fancy stuff, is supposed to be a way for today's Girl to get the Guy. As for the Bearnaise BACK THEN, wouldn't knowledge of French sauces be considered the foundation of a truly elegant, sophisticated cuisine, and therefore a sign of a man's distinction? His success in finding such a cultivated bride?

Banana tetrapyloctomy?

Watermelon instead of brownies? Salad and a sandwich? Sashimi? In this weather we might consider uncooking our dinners once a week, or at least not cook our meals by combining leftovers with raw ingredients and restricting the use of appliances to nothing more powerful than a blender if a whisk, knife or grater will not do. Raw Food is an easy target because its vegetarian advocates sound like zealots and the movement represents an extreme. Extreme heat calls for extreme measures. A cold blended soup, and raw sauce of tomatoes, red onion, capers, parsley & tuna tossed with yesterday's rice might not be better for you than a slow braise, but it might be better for the environment were some of our stoves not turned on every night, she says not unaware of this post's preachy tone.

Looks good, Hathor. If you do see particularly stunning or hideous greens that you know we don't get here, please do report. I'm thinking more along the lines of large bins full as opposed to those precious little bundles of herbs, grasses and leaves sold for salads. Second, if the subject of your Sicilian cooking comes up among Umbrianese again, it would be fascinating to learn more from their chauvinistic sense of your peculiarity. What are they saying? There is a whole branch of psychology to be tapped here: the Mentality of Regionalism. In the Greek world, Sicilian diets were thought exotic and strange, an attitude that apparently persists in your wilting hills. Finally, there are LOTS of Sicilian dishes that respect the power of intense sun such as rice salad. (Well, almost finally. Your blog is fun. Sledgehammers and repairing old stone buildings seem to be central to summer in Italy.)

At one of my area's markets, there is a stand known for its galvanized steel buckets full of greens, piles of beets and baskets of herbs. The farmer who oversees market days confirmed that they have never sold purslane at the rate that they have since the NYT published Marlena Spieler's article...5x more than before, she estimated. People come up to her asking for it before they read the signs. This past Sunday, Les Dames d'Escoffier, a peer-elected associated of professional women in the local culinary world hosted a special weekend-long event called Green Kids. While children were given fun things to do and learn, the chef demo was kept simple: a salad of tender mixed greens with goat cheese and blackberries. Copies of Spieler's article were held in place by the bowl of the purslane.

Disclaimer: I've read the entire Commedia, I swear, but I do love terrible TV shows as long as they're not disgusting. This is something one summer fill-in taught me: Guys become aroused by the scent of oranges. So, fruit is manly. Heterosexual guys need to know this about women: Women go for the smell of cucumber. Where's Megan?

Next time! I would like Daniel's plum soup decorated by his girl and the lobster-potato & caviar Naps, first, please. BTW: How are your stone fruits this year? Ours in the other Washington are not as sweet as they were last summer; the intensity of flavor that you get with some fruits due to drier season (true? myth?) seems to be missing...or maybe it is still too early for peaches and nectarines in their prime. ETA: Some bonbons afterwards with mint leaves on the plate, if it would not be too much trouble.