duck

World on a Plate: Montreal Jazz Festival goes digital!

World on a Plate: Montreal Jazz Festival goes digital!

Posted on by Pat and David
This time of year, we're usually in Montreal. We like to head up in time for June 24, Quebec's National Day, and stay through July 1, Canada Day. It's party time—not least because the Montreal Jazz Festival is usually in full swing. It's time to grab some great food to go, settle into a spot in one of the smaller venues, and jazz the day away. The thing is, in Montreal even the fast food is something special. And we're not talking Rotisserie St-Hubert (though we like rotisserie chicken as well as the next jazz fan). How about the casual sandwich above from a lunch counter in the Place Ville Marie shopping center? It's duck confit with a peach and red pepper barbecue sauce on...Read More
Barnsley’s Rice House cooking exalts Southern tradition

Barnsley’s Rice House cooking exalts Southern tradition

Posted on by Pat
About 30 years ago, a farmhouse from the Rice Plantation in nearby Rome, Georgia, was dismantled and moved to the Barnsley estate. Carefully rebuilt and restored, the Rice House is now the setting for Friday and Saturday night dinners at the Barnsley Resort (597 Barnsley Gardens Road, Adairsville, Georgia, 877-773-2447, barnsleyresort.com). The meals celebrate the rich tradition of Southern cooking. “Southern cuisine is much more than fried chicken and lots of butter,” says Aaron Stiles, the resort's director of food and beverage. “You never hear people brag about discovering this really great Northern restaurant.” With its stone fireplace big enough for some hearth cooking, the Rice House feels a little bit like stepping back into a Southern grandmother's kitchen. And that's just as it should...Read More
Bon appétit, y’all! (At the English Grill)

Bon appétit, y’all! (At the English Grill)

Posted on by Pat and David
Louisville certainly has some nice new hotels, but for old-city ambience and sheer Southern comfort it's hard to beat the Brown Hotel (335 West Broadway, Louisville, 502-583-1234, brownhotel.com). A bastion of hospitality since 1923, it's a pillar of the New Old South. Its English Renaissance-inspired architecture has a polite reserve that reflects Louisville's role as the epicenter of bourbon and thoroughbred racing. If we were true barflies, it would be hard to pry us out of the Brown's elegant sepia-toned lobby bar. The room opens at 3 p.m. and by late afternoon it begins to fill with Louisville's business elite. As befits one of the city's finest and most storied bars, it even has a bourbon steward. On our last stay, it was Troy Ritchie,...Read More
Radicchio di Treviso: sweet winter crunch

Radicchio di Treviso: sweet winter crunch

Posted on by David
We've written about the beautiful Venetian city of Treviso as a center for Prosecco DOC and the birthplace of tiramisù, but it's also home to one of our favorite winter vegetables. Radicchio Rosso di Treviso IGP is the blanched winter chicory indigenous to the region. Treviso radicchio generally comes in elongated, slightly pointy, tightly packed heads. But as Lucio Torresan of Park Farm (actually, Azienda Agricola Tenuta al Parco) shows above, field-grown radicchio looks little like the market product. Those big red and green weeds he's holding “are so bitter that even the goats won't eat them.” When Torresan and his workers get done with the field-grown plants, though, they will be tender and sweet, with just a slight residual bitterness. Magic in the dark...Read More

What to buy in a Dublin grocery store

Posted on by Pat and David
Whenever we visit Dublin, we make sure to enjoy lots of incredible butter and cream since we can't bring any home. (U.S. Customs frowns on such dairy products.) Fortunately there are lots of other good Irish foodstuffs that we can pack in the suitcase. For cheeses, we make our purchases at Sheridans Cheesemongers (see earlier post), but here are some of the things that caught our eye in a neighborhood Dunnes grocery store: Irish soda farls Pat's mother still remembers her own mother, who hailed from Northern Ireland, making soda bread farls in a round pan on the top of the stove. First she would shape the dough into a circle and then cut it crosswise into four pieces, the so-called farls. This style of...Read More

Montreal bargain lunches

Posted on by Pat and David
Of all the guidebook series we work on, the research for the Food Lovers' series may be the most fun. Our most recent published volume was on Montreal, but we didn't spend all our time eating foie gras or dining at innovative contemporary restaurants. We're always on the lookout for good values, and we found 10 great lunches for about $10 where we could tap into various strains of Montreal culture. We recently published that roundup in the Boston Globe. You'll find the results as a pair of PDFs on our Sample Articles page. We are just about finished writing our next volume, Food Lovers' Guide to Vermont & New Hampshire, and have a refrigerator full of artisanal cheese, cured pork products, and storage vegetables...Read More