Pontormo

And Mike, if it's any consolation, your olive oil WAS a good deal in NYC vs. DC. I saw the same bottles in Balducci's this weekend. Down here the company's two different types cost between $25 & $29.

I don't think it was a placebo effect, exactly, that made me like the fresh marjoram in the Ligurian chicken that I prepared last week. I have always liked the dried herb in stuffings (remember how common stuffing--dressing in the South, USA--was for all poultry when some of us were little? Now it's just a Thanksgiving thing), for example. However, there's a recipe for a kind of tuna polpette in Molto Italiano that contains lots of potato. For me, the combination of lemon zest and marjoram tasted like soap. Yuck! I also don't care for marjoram when it's boiled--as was the case with the mussels. * * * As for you, Kevin, you seem to have a REAL taste for squid! At least it has made many appearances in your cooking threads. It's wonderful you have an herb garden...and a source for pompano, a fish I don't recall seeing around here. I love olive trimmed plate & the fritters look good! * * * And okay, Hathor. The challenge looms before me. If you can do it, I can do it. Your photograph actually makes stockfish look edible. I'm getting together with friends for Memorial Day. There are kids involved. I don't think I'll subject everyone to baccala, but maybe, just maybe I'll pick some up this weekend. Does anyone know if it can be cooked on a grill or will it just flake within minutes and fall into the coals?

On cans, DOP indicates the tomatoes were grown in designated areas, such as the fields of Sarnese Nocerino for one brand. The same brand processes and sells tomatoes it labels as San Marzano, but indicates only that the peeled fruit is produced in Italy under legal/legislated conditions: "Pomodori pelati prodotti in Italia a norma di legge." These cans do not bear the "DOP" seal. Because of the reputation of tomatoes from San Marzano, near Naples, seeds from the plants were brought over to California and grown there. Cans of these processed plum tomatoes are packaged deceptively with the Italian words "Pomodori pelati" and "San Marzano" repeated around the entire can, framing a drawing of a distinctively elongated pear-shaped plum tomato. The US manufacturer wants you to believe the product is Italian. You may see them on your shelves soon now that the supermarket Whole Foods is becoming the new Starbucks and venturing into London. San Marzano tomatoes are discussed several threads such as this. * * * I don't understand the virtue of "baby San Marzano" tomatoes. Are they grown locally in a greenhouse? Our farmers's markets have plenty of tiny pear-shaped "cherry" tomatoes that come in red, yellow and orange shades. They're very sweet, but do not have the characteristically thick flesh of plum tomatoes; they also have more juice and more seeds.

You're too hard on yourself. These all look very tasty to me! The focaccia looks perfect; the bread rises to different degrees depending on preference...or luck. The tocco is what I should have used for the Riso Arrosto instead of some of my leftover frozen Roman sauce from Easter dinner.

COZZE FAN TU WAY Mussels were on sale, and since the two-pound bag actually contained nearly three pounds, I made one recipe from Micol Negrin's Rustico web site and another found in a post for Slow Travel here by Gavin Crawford who visited Vernazza in the Cinque Terre. The former calls for garlic, fresh marjoram and white wine. Please note if you're interested in the recipe that the cooking time is too long, at least for the ones available to me. Around half the eight minutes called for should open up the shells and plump the mussels without making them rubbery. (I am trying to follow in the footsteps of Jeffrey Steingarten, eating marjoram over and over again until I like it. Technique actually worked for the chicken dish posted above—where I wrote "oregano" in error—but not for this dish.) I preferred the second recipe with a garlicky tomato-wine sauce with lots of parsley and leeks from the farmers's market instead of an onion. Good with crusty bread. White Bordeaux. California Chevre. There was lots of broth left over in both pots, too much for the bread, so it got turned into soup for lunch with added vegetables and thickened with pureed white beans. Not quite a ciuppin or buridda. Sort of a Genoese minestrone, if faintly fishy and good.

But shouldn't one be true to one's own region, too?

Cardoon sformati are not just in Batali's cookbook. Roberto Donna likes them as does Matt Kramer, so it really must be a Piemontese thing even though I find that sformati are made in a number of Italian regions, including Tuscany. I must say that leftovers were even better than the originals, if not as attractive re-heated. The flavors merged and the ricotta no longer seemed off-putting, nor the red onion dominant. More importantly, I found how good different toppings were as foils...or vice versa. The toasted (well, butter-sauteed, even better) breadcrumbs and grated cheese Batali prefers were fabulous, especially with the crunchy texture contrasting with the soft food the toothless might enjoy. The tomato sauce from a chicken dish was wonderful as was market asparagus, blanched and sauteed with pancetta and shallots.

Nice mortar and pestle, there, Elie! Do you ever use it to make pesto? * * * And Natasha, let this serve as a belated welcome to this thread! I do hope you'll continue to post even as we move on to Sardinia and other Italian regions in the months ahead. It's nice to have someone else from this (meaning my) area participating in the cooking project. As for better pans, I bought a mini-muffin tin around Christmas time to make pine-nut cookies. I found mine at Sur La Table, so it wasn't dirt cheap, but is of good quality and accommodates, I think, two dozen cookies/crostade/muffins at a time.

Would it be off-topic to ask if anyone recommends any baguettes currently on sale in this area?

This is a VERY old thread, but I don't think a simple request for help in maintenance/repair is worth a new thread. I have the same blue enamel Chantal kettle that at least two other members own(ed). You'll find the same model in green, yellow and white on the back burner in many sitcoms such as Friends. A recent problem: The metal piece that contains the whistle and closes over the spout is loose. There are no visible screws where it is attached, unfortunately, just nice, clean doughnut-shaped metal circles (word? it's not a rivet, but similar to the metal holes you stick your shoelaces through) with no visible parts to tighten. Since the kettle's metal handle is a pain and requires a towel to prevent burning, it would be nice if I didn't have to lift up the loose attachment to pour water. Does anyone here understand what I have written? Solutions?

In a land tenderly embraced by dazzling blue sea , where pesto drips from chins and clings to silken folds of egg pasta, there is BROWN FOOD : As you can see, this photograph is borrowed from Restorer, a contribution to "Dinner II: Regrettable Food..." It is even prettier than Riso Arrosto, a Genoese dish that I made last night since I had all the ingredients, including an artichoke that was no longer new. According to Colman Andrews, it is supposed to be made with leftover risotto, though he has developed a different method of preparation that requires neither constant stirring nor leftovers. Onions and sausage meat are sauteed, then rice and reconstituted dried porcini are added along with beef stock, meat sauce, peas (the kind Tim Hayward despises in my case: frozen organic petites) and chopped artichokes. Cover 10 minutes. Uncover. Add Parm-Reg, S & P. Pop in oven and wait until liquid is mostly soaked into the rice and a crust forms on the surface. It was ugly, but also quite satisfying. Ligurian hot dish.

Elie's comment about vents is really the most important. See the link I added again regarding the foccacia I made. Look at the photograph way at the bottom. The hole torn in the center revealed the spinach, adding visual appeal, but it was mostly made to allow steam to escape and thereby keeping the edges of the thing intact.

The original post asks "Anyone eaten in Norway lately?" The auxillary verb, "has," was ommitted. Reading the question as it stands, another interpretation is more sinister. I would hope no one has been eaten in Norway lately.

By the way, Mike, your array of dishes is quite impressive. I find it difficult to believe cooking is so new for you. The only suggestion I have for the edges of your pie is to slide a finger under both layers of dough and pinch them together...or brush/dab a little water in between the two layers. (DON"T brush it on first, just in case you need to realign that upper crust once you place it on top of the pie.)

Must be something in the air, indeed. Speaking of Crescenza, Micol Negrin and dough, I made the Focaccia di Recco, called Focaccia con Spinaci Saltati e Marzolino in the recipe with photographs here. In Recco, Crescenza is traditional. I wonder if your focaccia di formaggio is basically the same thing, different name, Mike. I used a Pecorino Fresco from Pienza for the cheese. I thought the spinach added a great deal since the flavors are rather subtle. One of the minor problems I had may have been due to the weather since the sky has been overcast, threatening to rain again for days. The dough didn't cling to the blade of the food processor; it sat like soup in the bowl until I fed it more flour. Later I consulted Colman Andrews who calls for 3 cups of flour and 1 cup of water vs. 1 c. flour and 1/2 c. water for a pie of similar dimensions. When rolling out the dough, one half played Good Cop to the other's Bad Cop, forming a perfect, transparent circle, lifting docilely off the floured waxed paper onto the oiled pizza pan instead of clinging on for dear life and tearing like its companion. Easily fixed. I e-mailed Micol Negrin who surprised me with a quick response to my question about proportions of water to flour. She wasn't sure why my dough was as liquid as it was, but said that she uses a high-protein flour. She was delighted to learn about our project here.

There are lots of regional variations on themes such as Piemontese lasagna with anchovies and Ligurian lasagna with pesto. Then there are the Italian-American takes on Bologna's lasagna, using dried ridged noodles instead of fresh sheets of egg pasta, ricotta instead of a white sauce, etc. that have been adopted from the Jersey shore all the way to San Diego. Tradizione schmadizione Nonetheless, in Liguria there is a dish called Fidelanza in which dried sphagetti is cooked slowly in a vegetable-rich tomato sauce after adding a minimal amount of water. While recipes written in English do not call for the strands to be broken, Colman Andrews relates the dish to Catalan recipes that require short lengths of pasta to be browned first in oil before being added to a tomato-rich stock. I would be surprised if someone somewhere on the Riviera didn't have a pan wide enough to accommodate those long strands of dried spaghetti and thus, broke them in half.

Adam: I'm gormless. Does "poncy" mean "fancy"? Were the cardoons simply boiled and bottled or is there something a bit more interesting in the Sardinian preparation? (I guess these sort of make up for the deep-fried pizza of Scotland.)

For a discussion of theological implications see this link on angels and the Summa. For the ahem aspect of the pasta's name, see Post #156 of this terrific thread and Alberto's correction of a typo.

Elie: Your dish is beautiful. I love the Italian flag effect. What might have made it more Ligurian is a stamped design on each little square of pasta, transforming them into corzetti. Traditionally made into slightly thick disks and then decorated with the use of a wooden stamp, corzetti are sauced simply with tomatoes. I have a Swiss mold for making Christmas cookies, carved with images of a giraffe, peacock, studious elf and baby-bearing stork, but suspect the designs are carved too deep to be of use. Like Kevin, I made Ligurian chicken, although with thighs reserved when making stock this weekend. The dish is called Pollastro a-a caccieuia and is basically chicken cacciatori. Andrews said the secret ingredient is high-quality free-range chicken. I decided it was fresh oregano and added that. I served it with simply boiled potatoes, preceded by sformati di cardi as documented in the Piemontese thread. Earlier I also used up a batch of pesto on trenette with boiled potatoes and green beans.

The report: I picked up my cardoons in the parking lot of a bank directly across from the Colombian Embassy. Heinz Thomet, a Swiss vegan farmer, charged me all of $3.50 for a bundle of six enormous stalks. I was thrilled. While I may have passed them by at European markets, I don't recall ever seeing them or eating them before. They created a stir due to the fact that they looked like celery from Outer Space and did not fit into my basket. I was stopped a couple of times by curious patrons; I had a chat with a chef and his friend who spoke of candying cardoons (a French dish) and boiling them and eating them with beef marrow. After sitting on my dining room table while I read the paper, the leaves of the cardoons shriveled and grew limp, the stalks, pliant, bad signs both. Upon cleaning them, I learned why the farmer told me he felt a Meditterranean climate was necessary for the plant to thrive. These were extremely fibrous with roomy hollow spaces running through the entire length of the stalks. So I cut them in half and set them upright in water in the fridge for a few days to firm up. Raw, they were extremely bitter until I took a paring knife and severely eliminated all the ribs, or approximately a third of their weight. I was surprised by how sweet the flesh was, if virtually tasteless. Despite initial disappointment, after boiling for eight minutes in highly salted water the slices of cardoon tasted EXACTLY LIKE ARTICHOKES if more delicate. They were actually delicious and I should have stopped then and there when they were still a little firm. However, I let them boil four more minutes and by then, the pronounced flavor fled. I turned them into Mario Batali's sformati di cardi. The recipe's in Molto Italiano. They were lovely little things plated with snipped chives, chive flowers as purple as cardoon blossoms, and bright pink roasted rhubarb. If you are ever tempted to make the recipe I'd recommend using Vidalia vs. MB's beloved red onions; a more delicate, sweet flavor would be preferable. I also would leave out the ricotta cheese since the grainy cheese in a flan made it seem as if the egg had curdled. I did like the effect of the big, soft chunks of cardoon and onion in the sformati, though. Having read about how bland such white food is, the added texture challenged expectations.

I believe cannibalism is illegal in Norway.

I noticed your new signature line and immediately came here. I really appreciate the posting of the first attempt, too. I'm not proud of Schadenfreude, but if someone as gifted and experienced as Ling could forget a crucial ingredient, then I can forgive myself more readily when I make a similar mistake. I must say even your mistakes look great baked! This version is GORGEOUS !!!!

Join us in The Cooking and Cuisine of Liguria. Starting with Post #20, you'll see examples of MARO , a puree of the fresh beans used as a spread for crostini or when thinned, a pasta sauce. You'll also see the beans used in a light soup with lettuce. (I believe we began addressing fava beans in the thread devoted to The Cooking and Cuisine of Latium since there are a number of Roman recipes that incorporate them.)

Heh. Those poor priests! ← I change my mind. Just learned about "cazzetti d'angeli." Immature, I know.

Please believe that I am not writing out of a desire to change you, judge or proselytize. Nonetheless, I am extremely curious about the reasons why people do not eat vegetables and why they don't like them. I have my own aversions to things others here at eGullet adore, so I understand. I hope you can trust that and would be willing to answer a few questions. I am writing specifically to you, Anonymouze, because you began this thread. However, I would be interested in responses from others if they identify with the sentiments expressed in the original post. You don't have to answer each of the following questions if you prefer to respond to the general issues they raise. Thank you. 1) What kinds of vegetables did your family serve you when you were growing up? 2) Which ones were canned? Frozen? Fresh? 3) How were they prepared? 4) Of the ones you mention, rank them either as 1) LOATHE ; 2) HO HUM tolerable, but could do without; 3) LIKE/ENJOY/LOVE even if it is a vegetable . A short explanation of a few of these reactions would be interesting. 5) Did your family like vegetables? Did they make you eat them or....? What did they say? 6) Give an example of a typical weekday meal at home. Feel free to elaborate, whether providing more than one example, or addressing whether you ate the same kinds of meals--and vegetables--all year long, or if meals changed with each new season. 7) When you left home, during those first four years or so on your own when you could make your own choices, how did you eat compared to the way you ate when your family fed you? Keep the theme of vegetables in mind. 8) What about now? 9) You specify a particular aversion to green vegetables. Why? You also say you dislike "most" green vegetables. Which ones are okay...and why? 10) Finally, would you be willing to tell us more about the way your allergies were determined and how your body reacts to produce it cannot tolerate? Are you allergic to anything else, such as nuts, dairy...? Thank you.