Year: 2009

Going green (chile, that is)

Posted on by Pat
[caption id="attachment_417" align="alignright" width="232" caption="Roasting green chiles at El Pinto"][/caption] After David and I spend much time in New Mexico, we develop chile withdrawal when we go home. It's not our problem alone. We've met chile growers who admit to carrying small cans of green chile with them whenever they leave the region--just so they can get a fix each day. The science of chile addiction says our reaction comes from the capsaicin in chile peppers. The alkaloid not only makes chiles hot, it also stimulates endorphins that create the feeling of well-being. Green chile sauce from El Pinto Restaurant, which has been an Albuquerque mainstay since 1962, is a good basic sauce to heat and put on scrambled eggs or enchiladas. Unfortunately, the nearest...Read More

Raclette made simple – in a grilled cheese sandwich

Posted on by Pat and David
And speaking of cheesemongers…. We have fond memories of eating raclette--a big plateful of melted cheese with cornichons and boiled potatoes--after a tough day of winter snow hiking in Switzerland. It has always seemed too much trouble to make at home: Buy a big block of raclette cheese, find or build an open fire, etc., etc. But one day when we were in Rubiner’s Cheesemongers in Great Barrington, Mass., we wandered into the Rubi’s Cafe for lunch and found the perfect solution to our raclette craving. Rubi’s piled shredded raclette cheese and sliced cornichons onto sourdough bread slathered with Dijon mustard and stuck the sandwiches into a panini press. Voila! Instant raclette in your hand. (And easily duplicated at home.)

Cheeses that stand alone

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_370" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Formaggio Kitchen, Cambridge, Mass."][/caption] Few foods so directly conjure up their origins as artisanal cheeses. Walking into Formaggio Kitchen in our home town is like taking a trip around the world. This is where we went for the Cabrales to serve with apples, and FK is our go-to vendor whenever we need something really special. Ishan Gurdal first opened a cheese monger’s shop here more than 30 years ago and built his own ripening caves in 1996. His cheeses are so special and so perfectly cared for that even Thomas Keller of the French Laundry orders from Ishan. Formaggio Kitchen has a second location in Boston’s South End, and also sells through its web site: Formaggio Kitchen.

Cabrales – why it’s good to get the blues

Posted on by Pat and David
We saw many more cows than sheep or even goats as we drove the twisting mountain roads through the Picos de Europa mountain range last spring. Although the Principality of Asturias is the oldest of Iberia’s former kingdoms, the steep green mountains looked more like Switzerland than Spain. Cows may have predominated, but milk from all three dairy animals goes into Cabrales, possibly the most pungent blue cheese in Europe. When we stopped for lunch in Las Arenas de Cabrales, we made sure we got the blues. The cheese is made by shepherds in the nearby hills, but Las Arenas (pop 797) is the market town. In Sidrería Calluenger (tel: 985-646-441), a hard-cider bar on Plaza Castaneu, we enjoyed a sumptuous lunch of stuffed red...Read More

Making grilled asparagus risotto

Posted on by David
[caption id="attachment_327" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Grilled asparagus risotto"][/caption] Before we bought a pressure cooker, asparagus risotto was one of the few risottos we would bother to make because it’s smoky, luscious, and deeply satisfying. It also pairs nicely with a crisp white wine like a Vermentino from Sardinia. It had become one of our go-to quick dishes, in part because every time we light up the backyard grill, we grill some asparagus, making sure we have enough for dinner and enough left over to chop into salads and to make grilled asparagus risotto. This 2-serving recipe evolved rather radically from the version of non-roasted, non-pressure-cooked asparagus risotto made by Fanny Singer that we found in a 2003 issue of Food & Wine. Cooking time is about...Read More

Learning under pressure

Posted on by David
With a gleaming Kuhn-Rikon pressure cooker in hand, we were ready to try cooking risotto like a Venetian. There were just a couple of problems. Nobody grows baby artichokes on the Boston Harbor Islands (or anywhere else nearby), and Anna Maria Andreola had been, shall we say, extremely casual about measurements when she’d shown us the basic technique in Venice. So we experimented, using the simplest Italian rice dish of all, risotto milanese. (Basic recipe for four servings: Saute a medium chopped onion in 1/4 cup of olive oil until translucent, while infusing 3 1/2 cups of chicken stock with 1/4 teaspoon of saffron. Add 2 cups arborio rice to the onion pan and toast rice until opaque. Add 1/2 cup white wine and stir...Read More

Seeking pressure at home

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_292" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Kuhn-Rikon 3.5 liter pressure cooker"][/caption] We love risottos, but always saved them for special occasions because they were so time consuming. But Anna Maria Andreola had demonstrated in her home kitchen in Venice that it was feasible to make great risottos in a pressure cooker in almost no time. We were eager to try it at home. Finding the right pressure cooker wasn’t easy. Most pressure cookers in we saw in Venetian and U.S. kitchenware stores were lightweight, flimsy aluminum pots. Many U.S. shops didn’t carry them at all. “They’re dangerous,” clerks told us. “They explode!” To which we say, “bah” and “humbug.” We’ve been using a venerable Presto pressure canner for years (David bought it in 1970) to process sauces...Read More

Pressure cooker artichoke risotto

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_276" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="Castraure, or baby artichokes"][/caption] We’d always thought of making risotto as a laborious process that required standing at the stove and stirring for nearly half an hour, sometimes with disappointing results. Not for Anna Maria Andreola, the pressure cooker queen of Venice. Earlier in the day, we’d gone together to the Rialto market and bought gorgeous baby artichokes, which we trimmed as Anna Maria talked us through the risotto she was going to make. She sauteed the trimmed artichokes for three minutes in the open pressure cooker with a clove of minced garlic and a splash of olive oil. Then she added a teacup (about a half cup or 110 grams) of arborio rice per serving, and dumped in a half...Read More

Cucina Italiana moderna

Posted on by David
[caption id="attachment_268" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Anna Maria cooks rombo in her Venice kitchen."][/caption] Anna Maria Andreola's kitchen at Le Mansarde B&B in Venice was not what we expected, especially in a lovingly maintained but traditional old stone palazzo that wore its two centuries proudly. The aroma of fresh bread greeted us at the door. She had dumped all the ingredients into a high tech bread machine that morning and set the timer so bread would be ready for dinner. Right next to the breadmaker stood her universal kitchen machine that weighs, processes and slow-cooks food. (It also serves as a mixer and a blender.) The counter also held a juicer and an electric ice cream freezer. Silly us. We'd been expecting a big stove and nothing...Read More

Cooking in Venice changed our lives

Posted on by David
[caption id="attachment_172" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Crossing the Grand Canal on a traghetto"][/caption] Venice changed our lives. Really. More exactly, it changed the way we eat. After a week of cruising the Venetian lagoon on a rental houseboat, we spent several days in the city, staying with Anna Maria Andreola at the B&B in her family's 18th century Cannaregio palazzo. (It's called Le Mansarde, but has no web site. Contact Anna Maria Andreola at 011-39-041-718-826 or [mobile] 011-39-338-868-8935. Her email is cazzar.ola@libero.it.) One day she took us shopping and showed us how to make a Venetian meal. From the B&B on Rio Tera San Leonardo, we headed straight to the Grand Canal and boarded a "traghetto," a bare-bones gondola that crisscrosses the canal and saves walking long...Read More