Andrew Fenton

The other day while I was walking down Passyunk, a restaurant billing itself as Abruzzese caught my eye. Unfortunately, they were closed, and didn't have a menu posted, so I don't know whether it lives up to its billing.

Here is the Batali eggplant caponata: The spices were interesting, but the combination of the balsamic vinegar and sugar made it way too sweet for me. If I make it again, I'd leave out the sugar entirely, and maybe swap some of the balsamic for another vinegar. Next up, a little tuna with olives, capers and herbs (basil, parsley, mint): Basic and good. We had some leftovers, which I'm going to add to tomato sauce for pasta al tonno. yum!

All riiiiiight! I'd been thinking that you know, I haven't had sushi since December (fish carpaccio is good, but it ain't the same)... then looking over this thread forced me, zombie-like, to march over to the phone and make a reservation for tonight. Is it reasonable to ask if there are any must-orders? Or is it too long a list?

Did you ever! That looks amazing.

Well then, let's give props to Bassett's at the RTM. Because they make a fine milkshake. And I'll definitely have to head over to Raw ASAP. (For the shake, natch.)

Yeah, I just watched that the other night. Weird thing; the book is pretty short (200 pages or so), but the movie is really long- close to three hours. And it skips the last quarter of the book! But it has Burt Lancaster, aka "Andrew's favorite actor". Anyway, that's a great list. I'll second the recommendation of Salvatore Giuliano: it's exciting! Maybe I'll rent that tonight: gonna make the Batali caponata, and that'd be a good match, I think.

Okay, the Great Leopard Macaroni Pie Project begins today. Step one: find a recipe. Online and in cookbooks, I'm mostly finding recipes for pasta 'ncasciata (aka "pasta incassata"), which is a specialty of Ragusa. Some of the recipes look pretty close to what's described: ham, chicken livers, eggs, with a nice ragu baked into the pie. But they all lack the sweet element. Maybe that's a difference between Ragusa and Palermo? Or maybe it's the difference between 2006 and 1860, and people just don't go for that kind of mixture any more. Or maybe it's Tomasi's fantasy or exaggeration. ANYWAY, I have what looks like a good recipe in Le Ricette Regionali Italiane. But I'll keep looking for something that's closer to what's in the book. Step two: find a mold. Hmm... time to do some shopping!

I'll add to our Sicilian bookshelf The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. While it's not a cookbook (or about food per se) it's almost certainly the greatest novel written about Sicily, and it features a couple of great food-related scenes. Here's one, describing a dinner party and the dish of honor: I love how Tomasi uses the pie as a symbol of a peculiarly decadent Sicilian luxury-- no insipid French soups here!-- filled with spices and truffles and surrounded by gold. The reactions of the diners, and the miniature character sketches they provide, are also terrific. Now, who's up for baking a big ol' macaroni pie?

That's so very... Martha Stewart. Or maybe the Anal-Retentive Chef.

Well, the thing about nachos is I usually order them in lieu of dinner. Take yesterday: we'd had a late lunch and weren't into the idea of a full meal; mainly we wanted a drink. And whereas something like empanadas are something you eat pretty quickly, you can kind of pick at nachos for a while while you booze it up. Which is what we did.

We were in the neighborhood this evening and decided to stop by the Cantina. Not all that hungry, we decided to focus on drinking and just eat a little bit; that meant margaritas and nachos. The margaritas were excellent, both in frozen and on-the-rocks versions: not too sweet, nice tequila flavor. The nachos were pretty good; they'd have been better if they'd been hotter. You know how as they cool, nachos congeal into a solid mass of cheese and beans and chips and stuff? These were well on their way to congealing when they got to the table; not enough time for two of us to polish them off before the core temperature had dropped. Still, it's a neat place, and the drinks alone are enough to draw me back for another shot. I'll try something else then...

Elie, that's a great looking dinner. And absolutely, granita makes a great breakfast! I don't know what they do in Palermo, but in Messina, they serve it on a brioche with a nice big dollop of cream. Breakfast of champions! Here's my dinner from Sunday. A little less ambitious, but it was pretty great... Antipasto: prosciutto and melon. Okay, this isn't particularly Sicilian, but I had a really great cantaloupe... and some good Parma ham... and what was I gonna do with them?... and why am I apologizing? It was freaking awesome. Primo: pennette alla Norma. Y'all probably know the history of this dish, created to honor Vincenzo Bellini (a Sicilian, from Catania) on the opening of his opera Norma. (We listened to Jane Eaglen's recording of Norma during this course.) It's another one of these simple dishes: eggplant, tomatoes, garlic, ricotta salata. But it's fantastic. (You'll have to take my word on the ingredients; this photo sorta over-emphasizes the ricotta...) Secondo: branzino al forno. Continuing on with a loose Catanese theme, I decided to make a simple fish preparation, of the sort that's really common in eastern Sicily. I'd actually planned to bake this with salt (great minds think alike!) but it turned out I didn't have enough in the pantry. So I stuffed it with lemon, garlic, fennel and herbs and baked it in a foil wrap. And it was pretty good. Contorno: asparagus with lemon and olive oil. As you can see, this dish got no respect: "Ma dai! This isn't Sicilian at all! I turn my nose up at your asparagus, signore!" What are you gonna do? It sure tasted good...

Yeah, those clams look terrific. I really think that the smaller the clam, the better the flavor. The tiella looks interesting, too: the escarole filling is very typical of Campania, no? It reminds me of the sort of torta rustica that my friend's mom (who lives in Cuma) makes.

Whereas I think of another "Salty Dog", recorded by Johnny Cash (though I don't think he wrote it): "Standing on the corner with the lowdown blues A great big hole in the bottom of my shoes Honey let me be your salty dog Let me be your salty dog Or I won't be your little man at all Honey let me be your salty dog" I've had the gin/grapefruit juice/salt drink, and I found it unspeakably nasty. But Squirt and tequila? Now that is good stuff.

Bought some boiling peanuts the other day-- not at the RTM, but at the Italian Market-- and cooked them up last night. Man, are those things ever good. I plan to put in a good session of peanut-eating and beer-drinking this afternoon. (Because what better way to celebrate this great nation?)

Hooray! I'm really excited about this month: the first one in which I'll be able to participate, and even better, Sicily is one of my favorite parts of Italy. It's a big, big island, with a really wide range of climates and terrains; as a result, the food varies widely from place to place. It also has the longest culinary tradition in Europe: the first known cookbook was written by a Sicilian, 2500 years ago, give or take a bit. I'm looking forward to experimenting with some of the more far-out dishes that Kevin mentioned; but so far I've stuck with a couple of simple favorites. I started the other night with a very basic pesto alla Trapanese (adapted slightly from Gabriele Franca, La Cucina di Trapani e Provincia.) It differs from the Genoese version by adding tomatoes and a little pepper, and by using almonds (so central to Sicilian cooking). For my money, it's better than "regular" pesto: it's more vibrant and bold, if a little less subtle. I don't have a photo, alas, but I've put the recipe up on RecipeGullet.

Agreed that spicy ice cream for its own sake is stupid. It's interesting how hot peppers and pepper sauces have the tendency to bring out the stupid in people. That whole heat/masochism axis just reeks of displaced testosterone...

I still think "rabbitherd's pie". But either way, it was gooood. The escargot were also really exceptional: tender in a way that I didn't know snails could be. (Ah, the tender, tender snail: whispering sweet nothings and blinking its eyestalks seductively...) And the foie gras terrine, a mainstay of Pif's menu since the beginning, and still absolutely first rate.

Pesto alla Trapanese Serves 4 as Main Dish. This is a classic dish from Trapani, in western Sicily. It's bolder (if less subtle) than Genoese pesto, and is built on the typical ingredients of Sicily (especially the ubiquitous almond). It's also about as simple as a recipe possibly can be. Rock! 500 g linguine 2 cloves garlic 4 nice ripe tomatoes, peeled & seeded 3/4 c shelled almonds 3 oz fresh basil, washed & dried extra virgin olive oil salt dried hot pepper fresh mint, chopped fine Combine the garlic, a little salt and half of the basil in the food processor and process away until it's all creamy. Chop the tomatoes into small pieces and add them along with the almonds, a wee splash of oil and pepper, and the rest of the basil. Process as if your life depended on it until you get a homogeneous mixture. Cook the pasta, add the sauce, and sprinkle with the mint. Keywords: Main Dish, Italian, Vegan, Food Processor, Easy, Pasta ( RG1750 )

You can also add some cayenne or other pepper while you boil to give them a little spice. Mmm... I've gotta head over to RTM and pick up some redneckedamame...

'course, in other places, peaches have a longer season: I ate maybe the best peach I've ever had in Tunisia a couple of weeks ago. So if the botanists aren't able to work their mojo, maybe global warming will turn Pennsylvania into a nice Sahel-like climate, and we'll have local peaches in June, hooray!

Sam! That's right, I couldn't remember his name. A really funny guy; he cracks me up. I bought a bunch of baby poke from him last year; very tasty, and I only discovered later that poke is something that can, um, kill you. Between that and the snapping turtle, I'd say that Sam is a facilitator of truly dangerous dining... Vescor is the form you want, but yep, that sounds about right... Whee!

1. I don't know any restaurants in the vicinity of the Accademia; doesn't mean there aren't any, but I don't know Florence well. 2. I do know a wonderful gelateria right down the street from the Accademia: Carabe, at 60R Via Ricasoli. It's a Sicilian gelateria, and the thing to get there (especially if it's spring or fall) is the granita. I had a peach granita there that was really wonderful, and a pineapple granita that was almost as good. 3. Florence is not a big city, and while the Accademia is on the edge of the tourist zone, it's still not too far. Unless you have mobility issues, you would probably be fine eating in a more central location. 4. (This is a general FYI, not directed at any one person, really.) For the last two or three months, Google Maps has been working for Europe (or at least for Italy). It's not perfect-- it won't always give house numbers, and it gets very confused by Venice, though who doesn't?-- but it's still very useful. You can use it to get an idea of locations. Here is a link to Via Ricasoli.

Back in Philadelphia and ready to cook, I headed over to my local farmer's market at South & Passyunk for the first time in a year. In some ways, nothing has changed since the last time I was shopping. Mainly the same vendors, though fewer of them. I'm guessing, though, that that's because it's still a little early in the year; later in the summer and into the fall, when the produce really picks up, I'm hoping that more folks will be there. Still, plenty for me to get some good beans, mint, peas and tomatoes for dinner, as well as a dozen eggs. Livengoods was there (hooray!), with some stuff I don't remember them selling before. A couple of coolers of beef, for one. But more exciting was, of all things, a live snapping turtle. We're talking twenty pounds of pure remorseless reptilian fury; it doesn't come any fresher than that, people. So, pretty exciting, though as I told them, killing and butchering a snapper is a little bit above my pay grade... Still, they're around until 7 PM, for anybody who wants to pick that bad boy up. Turn him into soup and you'll win massive glory. At least from me...

So which Grom is better (or are they equivalent)? I've only been to the one in Florence, but found it quite good. The Sorrento lemon granita, in particular, was really first-rate, but I liked the gelato as well.