Pontormo

I LOVE brisket!!! My suggestion would not be appropriate for Passover or for those who keep kosher homes, but the trimmings would be fantastic in a slow-cooking, meaty ragu. Grated cheese on top of the pasta presents the problem. Please let me add another note of appreciation for the photograph of egg shells. It is humbling to see evidence of how much you are cooking this week.

Edited to completely revise content, pointing instead to the quantity of panelists and names of panelists, especially in Asia and Middle East and the geographic distribution of restaurants that receive awards. There's nothing in Japan or China. There is not a full explanation of the process of selection or audience for the list.

Perhaps this is a chicken or the egg question. And tup...16: Great carbonara! Here's Josh Friedland's fun article on home-curing guanciale. Just not sure I'd call it inspirational....

When epicurious.com was fairly new (ca. 1995?), they had a wonderful resource that gave you exactly what you want: a map of the entire country and weekly updates on what was available during a given week. I agree with the advice about Union Square market and becoming familiar with resources your local markets provide. Here in D.C., interested shoppers receive weekly updates by email and can plan accordingly. In addition to the great recommendations you've received thus far, I'd like to add Elizabeth Schneider's reference books, especially Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, though it doesn't really respond to your question about growing seasons. Perla Meyers was kind of a pioneer when she came out with The Seasonal Kitchen. A return to Fresh Foods more than thirty years ago. To prepare for whatever month features Tuscany in the cooking threads of the Italian forum, you might check out this, although it's not the chef-authored cookbook/family memoir that I sought.

Both of you uphold the importance of a personal relationship with the individual who makes the decisions. I am a regular customer at one branch of Whole Foods and converse frequently enough with some of the staff. There, it seems, it is difficult to effect change when customer requests are channeled through the regional office and then headquarters of a large corporation.

Thanks for replying and offering an implicit response to the final question in my original post. I lack the financial resources to become a regular at the one restaurant that I had in mind, although I might have the shoes. However, I am mostly interested in exploring ways to increase or change inventories in retail stores. Cf. comment about curly parsley in the original post. I remember what it was like at age 15 when a friend and I read a recipe calling for Chinese parsley (no one said "cilantro" & a few said "coriander" back then) and we managed to find only a sad, limp, yellowed bunch in a tiny Asian or Health Food store. Now it is ubiquitous. What can an individual consumer do in advance of a new food trend or major shift in demographics?

What a happy birthday! Are those fresh English peas that you shelled yourself? The ones on the east coast usually disappoint. These look delicious.

Every now and then I have been frustrated in attempts to purchase food items locally that cannot be found at major supermarkets or specialty stores. For example, I was on a quest for cardoons during the height of their growing season in California. Chardgirl showed us photographs of hers. EGullet members in Texas spoke of theirs. I don't recall the presence of anything resembling over-grown, pale celery at the farmer's market during harvest season. Living in a big, cosmopolitan city with lots of great restaurants and specialty stores did not prove an advantage in this case. Since the vegetable is exotic for many who work in produce sections, conversations were educational for both parties whenever there was enough time to hold one...but fruitless. I even called an Italian restaurant whose chef boasts of his Piemontese heritage and cooks many dishes that feature cardoons. One of his cooks swore they were sold at stores where staff do not recall selling them. I had a similar experience looking for guanciale, though it is available through mail-order businesses and Mario Batali offers instructions for making one's own...as long as you can purchase hog's jowls. I had better success finding Montasio, simply because the cheese was still on the inventory at Whole Foods. One department head was convinced by a very kind employee to order something he initially refused to buy since it did not sell terribly well. His customers didn't know what it was or what to do with it. Hell, I never heard about it until Kevin72, Hathor and others in the Italian cooking thread introduced me to the pleasures of frico. Ordering food by mail is often possible. However, we're told by chefs and food writers to ask for things you would like, otherwise we'd all be mincing curly parsley still. How? What are the most effective ways to convince stores to stock items they don't? Do you have any success stories to report? Advice from food professionals who field such questions or make decisions are encouraged. Finally, is there any way to approach a chef or kitchen staff under such circumstances if you are not a recognized, regular patron of the establishment? Or is that simply really bad manners?

N.B. For those who keep back issues of Gourmet, look for your copy from March 2003. The issue is devoted to Rome, so the Sterns do street food and Fred Plotkin contributes a piece. It's what taught me to make cacio e pepe which is actually sounding very, very good now that I am starving and lack much energy. There's Locatelli in the fridge. Ciao. P.S. I meant to add that in an article on springtime in Rome, Maureen B. Fant suggests using fresh edamame if you can't find fresh fava beans in a recipe she includes; cf. page 79. Since we won't have any for some time, it might be worth a try.

See the original post, sweetie. However, the meal seems to be based on regional cooking that is seasonal vs. what is eaten on Easter in Emilia-Romagna. (Cf. Lazio thread; I am about to post a quick, related note.)

Italy, too, unless Caciofiore della Campagna Romana, a cheese made with ewe's milk, is from cultivated cardoons. I was just speaking to a local cheesemonger about this particular cheese from Lazio. He claims that the cheese-making process is a lot slower when a plant-based rennet is used and that is one of the reasons many cheese-makers prefer animal-based rennets. He visited a British producer who switched back to animal-based rennets after some experimentation and found the resulting Cheddar superior in flavor.

WOW, Kevin! Any idea of what you're gong to make ?!

I wanted to add a note thanking NYC Mike for becoming a visible presence here. I am very glad your children appreciated your efforts and can look forward to more adventures in the year ahead. P.S. I would not recommend a thinner sauce. It sounds to me as if your very first carbonara came out perfectly without your realizing it; the egg and cheese mixture should really cling to the pasta, coating it, as opposed to pooling in the bottom of the bowl. Some folk like adding white wine (Marcella Hazan, right?), more fat (can get greasy ), even cream, but these are deviations from perfect simplicity. See my post about the technique David Downie provides & see Cristofer Kanljung's recommendation for adding an egg white for lighter results. Downie also gives what is called a papal version of poor man's carbonara, using fresh egg pasta, Parm Reggiano, cream and prosciutto. I prefer the humbler stuff.

I don't wish to stray too far from the central focus on Lazio, but Hathor, you're right. Most Etruscan settlements were further north, especially with the colonization of Sicily and Southern Italy by Greeks. However, the rising civilization of Romans competed with Etruria for the area that became the center of its republic and empire; cf. reference to the Etruscan king Tarquinius above. There are two major necropoli directly north of Rome and Ostia, Tarquinia, the source of the first inquiry and place I visited, and Cerveteri, which is in better shape. To get back on topic, I'll just add that the one bibliographic reference above was to Tuscan cooking, the implication being that ties to that region's cuisine and its Etruscan past are studied. I am sure those of us using David Downie's cookbook will pipe up once we see any relevant information. As far as Bartolommeo Scappi goes, I think it's appropriate to cook at least a few dishes served at the papal court, especially something in 1538 in the presence of Michelangelo when he was working on The Last Judgment fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. I believe there were kumquats in just about every course along with stuffed goat heads and meat jellies and little nun cakes. Interest in cooking the foods of Ancient Rome were already mentioned. This could be fun and I hope you'll share more of what you learned and are learning. For now, though, I am perfectly content with the present and the beautiful deep purple, almost baby artichokes I found today. I really wanted some suckling lamb to go with them and currently seek an appropriate substitute. I imagine we'll have lots of occasions to cook lamb closer to Easter.

As opposed to Jennifer Paterson? I miss the Two Fat Ladies! Is the lack of available DVDs in the States (only found evidence of software in UK in quick search) due to belief that we don't care as much over here? Or are Clarissa Dickson-Wright's feelings of loss and respect for her friend behind the lack of a new boxed set? P.S. I am aware of the distinction between legacies. I still miss the Two Fat Ladies.

I believe Whole Foods had great Icelandic lamb only in the fall. Does anyone know a good source for baby lamb now? In Cooking the Roman Way, David Downie claims his use of the phrase "baby lamb" is not redundant in a recipe for Abbacchio al Forno; he also uses the term "suckling lamb." In the spring, Romans roast milk-fed lambs that weigh no more than 15 pounds (a bit of ). * * * Pam the Butcher has left Brookville in Cleveland Park and headed back to Eastern Market according to her erstwhile employer. Any opinions about the meat mongers there or Meat Dept. in Balducci's would be appreciated either here or in a more relevant thread on local butchers. (I can't make it out to Hemps, Rochelle.)

See my report on this forum's thread asking where to take boys 10 & 13 years old which Busboy obviously read. Very underwhelming food if one doesn't order raw oysters or other of his recommendations; mediocre fries. Some parts of the interior evoke Babbit, Carnegie, Frick--I mean that in a positive sense if you like late 19th-early 20th century American splendor. This is what B's earlier post discusses. I will add that at crowded times, sometimes hapless parties are seated OUTSIDE the transplanted original interior in a rather characterless space clearly part of a marble lobby.

Yes, it was Divina's panel that I had in mind when posting my question earlier. I also understand David Leite was honored, no? As for your final comment, I was intrigued since the name is new to me. You'll see the results of preliminary investigations back in Lazio.

FYI, I am extremely impressed by this site which provides a great deal of information about Lazio, including the Jewish cooking of Rome. There is a wealth of information, if hard to read in the way that it is formatted. There are also lots of recipes and lists of local products. Finally, has anyone seen the illustrated guide that the Slow Food movement has published on Italian cheeses? It is organized according to regions of production. My favorite entry for Lazio is for Caciofiore della campagna Romana. The production of this cheese revives an ancient tradition whereby flowers from cardoons are gathered, dried and used to produce the rennet of this sheep's milk cheese.

Nathan and Shaya, this historical entry concerns your beloved vegetable and one that alludes me: click here. Hathor will recognize one name. I am grateful for her reference to the sixteenth-century figure, Scappi, new to me. Searches on line retrieved maddeningly difficult entries for banquets; the vocabulary is highly specialized, with many words not in any dicitionary I own, though a google-image search helped me discover just how essential the kumquat or melangole was in Roman sauces way back when. Howeover, for those of you who like the idea of cooking Roman food of the past, a British member of the Society for Creative Anachronism has provided a useful tool, a translation of some of Scappi's feasts. Her name is Louise Smithson and here is the menu from October. In the meantime, one of Bartolommeo Scappi's simpler dishes: tortelli in brodo.

Pan, did your dining companion order fegato by chance? I have also dined in Tarquinia, though I can't remember what I had. I mostly recall the grumbling stomach of the reluctant guide who escorted me from one storm-cellar door to another so I could climb down into tombs too close to his lunch hour. Etruscans produced Italian wines before the Romans kicked Tarquinius out of Rome in 510/09 BCE. Perhaps the use of farro in certain dishes in Lazio could be traced to Etruscans. The ancient cultures of Etruria and Greece and Rome are so closely intertwined that it might be difficult to separate them in thinking about their influence on contemporary cuisine. In the burial grounds of Tarquinia, tomb paintings depict reclining diners engaged in eternal banquets, men and women together. The Tomb of the Lioness even includes the symbol of life that associates stracciatella with this time of year: the egg. (On the lid of one very late Etruscan sarcophagus, the sculpted funerary portrait is of reclining deceased diner with a tremendous paunch, a sign of his elevated status.) Here's another related entry; many of the best preserved examples of Ancient Greek pottery come from Etruscan tombs given a strong admiration of all things Greek. About Italian Cuisuine, a Web site that many of us consult, continues to impress. The author of the entries, Kyle Phillips is the son of an archaeologist who specialized in Etruria, so the subject that interests you is treated in a number of entries. Here is one of three recipes you'll find on the site. Note the bibliographical reference that links Tuscan cooking to Etruria.

Two things: I plead terrible ignorance, but as a shiksa invited to a potluck Seder long ago, I was careful and made a nut crust for a pie. Reading about the changing attitudes towards baking powder, pasta made from corn flour above and recalling all that I have had at more recent Seders made from matzah meal instead of flour, I would like to know more about the reasons that flour made from wheat became taboo, and not just leavened bread. Redirect me if this issue has been explained before. Second: If anyone prepares Italian food to celebrate, please share here.

....AND the topic's come up in the regional forum devoted to Italy.

Judging by the participants, someone has to redefine the word "celebrity." We need better incentives to watch, especially with such hosts. NBC is the new FOX these days. Tom Cruise puffs out his chest all the time about what a great cook he is (or sits blushing as the young actress seated next to him, holding his hand, does the promo for him); I'd watch if he were on. Put a soft cushiony chair nearby, so if the sauce turns out really good.... P.S. Since PBS has such good cooking shows, why doesn't it air them on weeknights as alternatives to this dreck?

Actually, my favorite jam is the kind you despise. I could never figure out why anyone would want to buy raspberry jam without seeds...or real sugar.