David

Before he was a food and travel writer, David Lyon was a commercial fisherman, a line cook, a poet, and a sometimes teacher of writing and cooking.

Cayman peppers come to Cambridge

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Back in February I mentioned that our hankering for some of the flavors of the Cayman Islands had led me to introduce the amazing Cayman sweet pepper to the cooler climes of eastern Massachusetts, where I grow at Zone 6. (See Finding seeds for the taste of Cayman.) I started seed from Cayman and Florida sources on March 5 and transplanted seedlings to my community garden on May 5. Other than having richer (and more acidic) soil than they were used to, the plants did just fine. The honeybees loved them. But it quickly became obvious that even with a heavy yield of a dozen or more peppers per plant, the crop would be too small to squander on experiments making Cayman pepper jelly. I...Read More

Thank you, Liguria

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It's August and we are eating insalata caprese for lunch every day in a vain attempt to keep up with the tomatoes and basil from the garden. And we have the Ligurians to thank. On my first visit to Genoa and the Ligurian coast in September 2005, I had the superb luck of eating lunch with researchers at the agricultural experiment station in Albenga, just west of Genoa. In true Italian style, our "casual" lunch consisted of several dishes in rapid succession, all of them featuring plants that the experiment station grows. That's where I met my first Costuluto Genovese and Cuor di Bue Ligure tomatoes. The latter is a large pear-shaped tomato that the experiment station perfected in the 1950s from an heirloom variety...Read More

Making your own lunch in Paris

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We used to have a professional dancer friend from New York who always signed up for a dance class when she visited Boston. We thought it was an amusing quirk--until we discovered that most dancers take classes when they travel. At worst, they get a good workout. At best, they learn something new. In that same spirit, I signed up to make my own lunch in Paris with a half-hour express class through L'atelier des Chefs (Chefs Workshop), which offers a whole array of cooking classes for home chefs and, judging by my classmates, for bachelors who are cooking for themselves for the first time and women who would like to relieve them of that chore. Most classes take an hour to half a day...Read More

Reprising Julia Child’s first French meal

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The marvelously bourgeois restaurant La Couronne changed the way Americans eat, so when I was in Fécamp to write about Bénédictine for the Robb Report (see "Leisure: A Secret for the Centuries"), I had to stop off in Rouen on my way back to Paris. Mark your calendar: On Wednesday, November 3, 1948, Julia and Paul Child stopped for lunch after their ferry landed at Le Havre and they began the drive to Paris. Writing years later, Julia called it "the most exciting meal of my life." It was her first taste of French food. Founded as an inn in 1345, La Couronne (31 Place du Vieux Marché, 33-02-35-71-40-90, www.lacouronne.com.fr) has a strong claim as the oldest auberge in France, not that the countryside Art...Read More

Friuli has the right wine for asparagus

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Asparagus is notoriously difficult to pair with wine because sulfur-bearing compounds in the stalks produce a chemical bouquet that clashes mightily with the tannins in red wine or in whites aged in oak. Eat asparagus and drink your average pinot noir or barrel-aged chardonnay and the wine will literally taste like garbage. The French solve the problem by pairing asparagus with Loire Valley whites or white Sancerre-wines based on Sauvignon Blanc that never see a whiff of oak. But just as Friuli grows some of the best asparagus in Europe (see If it's asparagus it must be Friuli), the northeast corner of Italy also produces the best wine to pair with it. Since 2008 it's been on the market as Friulano, though in Friuli some...Read More

If it’s asparagus it must be Friuli

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Guidebooks to Italy have a maddening tendency to completely ignore one of my favorite areas for gastronomic tourism: the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in the northeast corner of the country. Sharing a northern border with Austria and an eastern border with Slovenia, Friuli has both a dialect and a cuisine with strong Germanic influences. The local version of Italian is full of the hard Rs and the chewy "sch" sounds of central Europe, and the menus are laden with pork and a bevy of mitteleuropan dumplings masquerading as gnocchi. Many of the dishes draw their depth of flavor from cream, butter, or smoked fish. [caption id="attachment_854" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Piazza Libertà, Udine"][/caption] But most food in Friuli is based on whatever is freshest from the fields....Read More

Meeting the master of meat

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Bruno Bassetto of Treviso, Italy, knows meat. The 61-year-old butcher set a Guinness World Record in October by crafting a salamella—a kind of fresh pork sausage—more than 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) long. I had the good fortune to watch him trim a piece of round and make steak tartare in seconds with a pair of huge knives. But beyond his obvious showmanship, Bassetto is also a master of charcuterie. In addition to fresh meat, his butcher shop (via Mantiero 22, Treviso; 011-39-0422-231-945, www.brunobassettocarni.it) also carries fresh and cured sausages, which range from slender little pepperoni to a great expression of the local Veneto sopressa (a soft, cured sausage about 3 inches in diameter). In late fall and winter, he also makes a cooked pork sausage...Read More

Is it the beer—or the pour?

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[caption id="attachment_476" align="alignright" width="264" caption="The Bestowal"][/caption] I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I just learned that Avril Maxwell of New Zealand won the 2009 Stella Artois World Draught Master competition, which was held in New York on October 29. She beat representatives from 25 other countries in what might be the most harrowing bartenders' competition in the world. It's a promotion for Stella Artois that fixates on the brand's nine-step pouring ritual. If you want to practice at home, you'll need a pressurized keg with a proper tap. The steps go like this: 1. "The Purification." Clean and rinse the glass. 2. "The Sacrifice." Open and close the tap quickly to clear the line. 3. "Liquid Alchemy." Place the glass under (not against)...Read More

Making grilled asparagus risotto

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[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

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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