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Hearty Trentino dishes complement the wines

Posted on by David
If you're going to spend all morning tasting 128 wines, you really need some hearty food to follow up. The Trento cuisine is a fascinating blend of Italian and Germanic foodways, and it's well suited to the regional wines. After we sampled our way through the wines, most of us had absorbed enough alcohol, even without swallowing, that we really needed a good meal. The Trentino wine consortium made sure we got it! We started with a glass of light white wine made from the Incrocio Manzoni Bianco grape. It's part of a group named for professor Luigi Manzoni (1888-1968), who experimented with crossing a number of grapes during the 1920s and 1930s at Italy's oldest school of oenology in Conegliano, north of Venice. The...Read More

Going loco for Koko Moco

Posted on by Pat
New York-born chef Lee Anne Wong cooked in restaurants around the world before settling on Oahu and opening Koko Head Cafe in Honolulu's Kaimuki neighborhood in 2014 (1145c 12th Ave, Honolulu; 808-732-8920, kokoheadcafe.com). She may have been a newcomer, but she had an unerring sense of what people would want to eat when they gather for brunch in this very Hawaiian take on a modern diner, right down to the varnished plywood counter and orange vinyl banquettes. She also seems to belong to the school that holds that brunch really should hold you all day. Wong's inventive dishes range from kimchi bacon cheddar scones to a hearty congee with bacon, ham, Portuguese sausage, cheddar cheese, scallions, and cinnamon-bacon croutons. But I was most taken with...Read More

Lemon risotto and Caprese salad with truffles

Posted on by David
What a luxury to shave truffles over some of our favorite summer dishes! I was surprised when several chefs suggested black truffles on a Caprese salad, but if the tomatoes have enough acidic zing, it's a match made in heaven. Our own tomatoes aren't quite ripe yet, so I have to resort to hoop house or hot house varieties. One trick to restore the “fresh tomato” flavor to these typically bland fruits is to give them a tiny sprinkle of salt, sugar, and citric acid. Citric acid is sometimes sold as “sour salt,” and is readily available in Indian grocery stores. (I mix up the seasoning in a ratio of 20 parts salt to 5 parts sugar and 1 part citric acid and store it...Read More

A prawn by any other name

Posted on by Pat and David
Few things are as quite as confusing as the wonderful array of crustaceans available in southern Spain. When we were in El Puerto de Santa María in February, we photographed some of them at the Romerijo fish market (www.romerijo.com). The same crustacean (per its Latin name) may have two or three different common names, depending on size and where it is caught. The six images here, for example, only show four different species. Here they are, from left to right, above: Camarón (Palaemon serratus) is the common rock shrimp (common prawn to the Brits) found in abundance at the mouth of the Río Guadalquivír. When they are small like this, they are comparatively inexpensive. In Andalucía, they are often fried up, shell and all, in...Read More

Remembering Italy #3 — asparagus & prosciutto risotto

Posted on by David
San Daniele del Friuli is a beautiful little community about 20 kilometers southwest of the big industrial city of Udine, located in the hill country where dry-aged hams are a tradition. Making prosciutto is the principal business of the town – perhaps followed by eating it. Even some of the flower planters in town are in the shape of pigs. Although the Friulani love their asparagus (see my posts from May 2009), the only time I've ever eaten asparagus risotto in Friuli, it was made with white asparagus. The Friulani version was silken and smooth and very pale. Oddly enough, I had often been served cold steamed asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, and Pat and I wondered why we'd never seen a risotto that combined the...Read More

All menus lead to Rome

Posted on by Pat and David
Ultimately, we did visit the amazing museums at Vatican City—and here's our sneaked photo of the Sistine Chapel ceiling to prove it. (Yeah, like we were the only ones....) But we have to admit that we were originally waylaid by Rome's greatest gourmet food shop. And who could blame us? Gastronomy is Italy's other art. Or maybe its other religion. When we'd finished eating lunch at Franchi (see previous post), we decided that it was a good time to stop in at Castroni (Via Cola di Rienzo 196, Tel: 06-68-74-383, www.castronicoladirienzo.it, open Mon-Sat 8am-8pm), reasoning that since we were already stuffed, we would be immune to the lures of the merchandise. It was only next door, and we'd still have plenty of time to get...Read More

Stuffed tomatoes from Roman pizzerias

Posted on by Pat and David
Like many Roman visitors (and many Romans, for that matter), we took advantage of the city's many pizzerias for quick meals or snacks. Once our Zone 6 garden swings into production around mid-July, we hope to revisit the subject of Roman pizza for the myriad of vegetable versions. But it was in the pizzerias that we stumbled onto another quintessentially Roman dish: stuffed tomatoes on a bed of roasted potatoes. Tomatoes stuffed with rice are a standard dish in a lot of parts of Italy, but Rome was the first place where we had seen them served with a big batch of potatoes. The simplicity of the single combined dish appealed to us, as it clearly does to many Romans getting an inexpensive casual meal....Read More

Having a blast at Las Fallas in Valencia

Posted on by Pat and David
Valencia is beginning to rev up for Las Fallas, the festival of fires, fireworks, and managed explosions that culminates on the evening of March 19. The pageantry, sheer noise, and almost giddy sense of celebration is almost unfathomable, and we were not sure how we could possibly write about it. But we gave it a try for the Boston Globe. See it on the Globe's web site or check it out on our page of sample articles. This being Spain, there is of course plenty of time set aside for eating. Paella, the quintessentially Valencian dish, fits the celebratory mood as people gather around a big festive pan. Last year we posted our version of paella valenciana . But we know that a lot of...Read More

Super Bowl arroz con pollo

Posted on by Pat and David
We were surprised to read recently that Super Bowl Sunday is the second biggest eating holiday in the U.S., close on the heels of Thanksgiving. Since our own team, the New England Patriots, is not part of the action this year, it's a diminished holiday for us. But we thought we could console ourselves with a good meal, and realized that the one dish we've probably eaten most often while watching football is arroz con pollo. Of course, the football in question is what we Americans call soccer, but the Spaniards are every bit as obsessive about it. As in the U.S., tickets to the games are expensive, and the matches are typically broadcast on premium cable. If you want to see a match in...Read More

Making paella Valenciana at home

Posted on by Pat and David
Paella must be popular worldwide, judging by the recipe we received from the proprietor of Ceramicas Terriols (see below) when we purchased our paella pan. The directions were in a babble of languages, including Chinese and Russian. We can't comment on the clarity of the Chinese and Russian, but the English was, shall we say, tortured. (Sample directions: "When the meat is gilding, the tomato and paprika are thrown well moved till the whole is lightly fried.") Still, we got the gist of it and we wanted to try it when we got home. Since we have to traipse halfway across the city to buy rabbit, we decided to see if chicken thighs would make a good substitute. We can get good periwinkles in our...Read More