Eating our way across Italy (La Terza Parte)

Our Venetian neighborhood.

We ended our first journey to Italy last year in Venice. Since we had rented a car to get us around Tuscany and then up to this iconic city on the Adriatic (via Busseto where Verdi lived, and Verona where we stopped for the night), we had to turn in our vehicle before we got into the city proper. (The city streets are rather damp and it’s hard to see unless you have a good periscope.)

To get to Venice, you either arrive by train, take a boat, or cross the causeway from the mainland in your car which funnels you into a very small area where there are parking garages. In late June, you can imagine the madhouse. It took nearly an hour of waiting in line to get into the garage that Hertz uses – once we figured out which one it was! You can imagine how frazzled we were. Then there were all the Vaporetti routes to Piazza San Marco to negotiate. That morning was not an auspicious start to our stay in Venezia.

But the city charmed us at once. There really is nothing else like it in the world. The weather was coolish with a nice shore breeze during our 3-day visit, unlike what we’d been led to expect (hot and humid). As we had done for the entire trip, we’d rented an apartment. It was just off Via Garibaldi hard on the park in the eastern end where the famous Biennale di Venezia art show is staged. Oddly for Venice, Via Garibaldi is a very wide street, and we discovered later that it had once been a canal.

For Venice, it’s a real neighborhood with small local shops and still with a lot of Venetians living there, something we found out is not common anymore. Since we wanted to do our own cooking, this was the ideal set-up. We quickly found a baker, a cheese monger, a small grocery store and a boat at the end of the original canal a few blocks from our apartment where we could get fresh fruits and vegetables. There was also a small street market where we bought fresh fish – something we were looking forward to during our stay.

Our apartment was down an alley and right at the start of it was a small trattoria that seemed to do a thriving business. We soon found out why. In the evenings, the owner entertains, singing and playing guitar until the wee hours. Being summer, no one sat inside, so it was sort of like a street party. We resisted going there until our last afternoon, when, dog-tired after a long day of researching for the novel I was writing, we got back to the apartment, looked at each other, and both said, “I’m starving, but I’m not cooking!” We immediately thought of the little trattoria.

I believe it's called Giorgione (no doubt the restaurateur’s name) and we had a lovely meal. Why? Because we ordered the house specialty: seafood risotto. Savoring each mouthful, Vicki and I took careful note of the ingredients and possible proportions. We were determined to recreate it at home.

Today, I’d like to share this dish with you.

Our ‘Venetian’ Seafood Risotto
Serves 2

An earlier version of the recipe with larger chunks of seafood.
Very tasty, but somehow not as good as the original.

Risotto is not hard to make, but it most be watched and stirred constantly, and it is a dish where pre-prepping everything is a must. It also has to be served immediately, because even a few minutes wait and everything starts to congeal. Having made numerous mushroom risottos, a family favorite, I felt certain we could pull this all together and give us a memory of our time in Venice. One thing we did notice at the restaurant was that the two shellfish used, shrimp and scallops, were chopped fairly finely. I figured this was a dodge by the kitchen to cut down on the amount needed, but it became clear that the finer pieces allow all the flavors to blend really well. We make this dish with slightly larger pieces of the stars of the show, but still they’re not whole or even in honking big chunks.

Serve this dish with a salad of mixed greens with a simple dressing of primo olive oil and balsamic vinegar. In Italy, you dress your own salad right at the table. Try this with guests. It’s fun. We enjoy a good sauvignon blanc with this dish, but soave or pinot grigio are also quite nice.

INGREDIENTS
3 cups seafood stock
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 doz medium-size raw shrimp
4 large dry scallops
1/3 cup minced onion
1 garlic clove, minced
3-4 Tbs olive oil
1 cup arborio rice (don’t use anything else!)
grated rind of one lemon (our little addition)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tbs fresh oregano, minced
3 Tbs fresh parsley, minced
1 Tbs butter
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper

METHOD
1. Heat the stock, peel the shrimp and cut each one into three or four equal pieces. (Reserve shells for more stock, or do this step early and make the stock for the dish on the fly.) The scallops should be cut to the same size. Have all other ingredients ready to go because you won’t have time to cook and prep at the same time! When the stock is just boiling, add the white wine, and turn it down to a simmer.

2. Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil and gently sauté the shrimps and scallops until they’re just opaque. You don’t want to cook them all the way. Remove from the pan (and leave as much of the oil behind as you can).

3. Add up to 2 more tablespoons of oil, heat over medium heat to the point of fragrance, then add the onion and garlic and sauté until soft (add two pinches of salt to help sweat them). Now add the rice and cook for about 4 minutes, stirring constantly, until most of the grains have turned opaque.

4. Now, one half-cup at a time, begin adding the hot stock to the rice. Stir it gently allowing the grains of rice to absorb the liquid. As the stock is absorbed, add more. (Stir constantly so the liquid is absorbed evenly.) Don’t have the heat too high. You want the stock to be absorbed, not boiled off!

5. Shortly after putting in the last half-cup of stock, taste the rice to make sure it’s done. You want it to be al dente not mushy. If it’s not quite done, you can add a little water or even more wine. Next time have the heat a little lower so the rice cooks more slowly. This is all a matter of feel, and after you’ve made risotto a time or two, you’ll get it.

6. Now add the lemon rind, parmesan cheese, and oregano, plus the reserved shrimp and scallops. Heat another minute or so, then melt in the butter. You want your risotto to have a nice sauce so don’t let it get too dry. Check the salt and add what you need. Just before serving (on warmed plates!), sprinkle on the chopped parsley. Pass around the pepper mill at the table.

Note: Not everyone has seafood stock lying around, but don’t let that deter you! Whenever we have shrimp or lobster, we save the shells and make stock. The shells are strongly flavored, so it doesn’t take a lot. One lobster or two dozen shrimp shells will make at least six cups of finished stock. Simply throw them in a pot of cold water, bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour or so. Strain, chill, put the stock into old yogurt containers (or whatever you use for this sort of thing) and throw it into the freezer. It will keep for six months or so. Easy, huh?

A special announcement!

One week from today, July 26th, if you’re anywhere near Toronto, toddle on down to The Revue Cinema at 400 Roncesvalles Avenue in Parkdale at 6:30 p.m.

I will be participating in an evening of great food and cinema, acting as host for a really terrific event, part of the theatre’s Epicure Revue series. The evening consists of food, in this case Italian, prepared by chefs from restaurants in the area, and a showing of the film, Big Night. If you haven’t seen what I feel is perhaps one of the best “food movies” of all times, now is your chance – and on the big screen! The 1966 release starring Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub, Minnie Driver, Ian Holm, and Isabella Rosselini (among others) is about two Italian immigrant brothers who own a failing restaurant on the New Jersey Shore.

Set in the ’50s, it’s nostalgic (including music by the incomparable Louis Prima), bittersweet, and totally engrossing. Roger Ebert had this to say about Big Night: “…one of the great food movies, and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language – the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection. There is a moment in the movie when a timpano is sliced open, and the audience sighs with simple delight.”

Taking part in the evening with me will be Chef Carmine Accogli, whose restaurant The Big Ragu stages Big Night parties. He’s ebullient, extremely knowledgable (about food in general and Italian food specifically), and an absolute delight. My job as host, interviewing him, will be very, very easy. Carmine is bringing “timpano meatballs” with him. Local eateries also in attendance will be The Chocolateria with chocolate biscotti, and Barque, bringing smoked bay scallops with a jalapeño pesto sauce. Mildred’s Temple Kitchen will also be bringing something. I will have copies of my novels there for sale, and while they don’t feature much about food in the plots, they do make great summer reads.

Tickets are $10 for members and seniors; $12 for non-members.

I’m really stoked to be a part of this event. It sounds like great fun. Read more about the evening by clicking HERE.

Be there or be square!

Home curing: “The Smoked Bacon Report”

I’ve been going through “meat-curing withdrawal” since it’s way too hot in our basement at the moment to make much of anything that requires a hanging period in a cool environment. Fortunately, we made enough guanciale in our last batch to last into the fall, so we’re good to go there, but our lonzino is nothing more than a fond memory at this point and it will be late November before we have another taste of that. Now at least there’s a good reason to look forward to cold weather!

All smoked and ready for slicing!

Down at the SLM last weekend, my son and I dropped by our friends at the Sausage King where Ben showed me a gorgeous piece of pork belly when I mentioned we were thinking of smoking some bacon. I could not resist.

Back home, I pulled out Charcuterie (link in the RH column), a fantastic recipe book/treatise that covers home curing, smoking, drying, terrines and patés, etc. Not only does it tell you what to do, it tells you why to do it. I like that.

Anyway, we decided to start slowly, make the most basic recipe, and save the messing about until we gain enough experience. I also only bought half the amount of pork belly specified in the recipe (2.5 pounds instead of 5). We made up our cure consisting only of kosher salt, pink salt (curing salt) and dark brown sugar. After spreading it evenly over the pork belly, everything was put into a freezer bag and refrigerated for a week, turning it every other day and redistributing the cure over the meat, so it would progress evenly.

Once 7 days had passed, I thoroughly rinsed the meat, dried it with paper towels and then set it on a cake cooling rack in the fridge to develop the pellicule (tackiness of the surface to which the smoke will stick). Next day we began the smoking process.

The real issue was not knowing our new equipment. I started with a modest charcoal fire (no lighter fluid!) and let that build up heat. Having read some online articles, I decided pretty early on that wrapping our soaked applewood chips in aluminum foil was the way to keep them from burning too quickly. Poke holes in with a cooking fork, and the little packs (about 1 cup of chips in each) smoked for about 40 minutes.

The smoker came with a very basic thermometer, so I picked up a cheap and far more accurate one (also dishwasher proof!) at our hardware store so I would know what 200°F was, not some “Ideal Range” that looks to be anywhere between 190° and probably 230°. Our smoking probably took a bit longer than it should have because I was trying to figure out how much charcoal to add and when in order to keep the temperature nailed at 200°. The answer was a good-sized chunk every 20 minutes or so.

Three hours later came the crucial taste test. The chunk of bacon came out of the smoke with an attractive gold patina and it smelled fantastic. Cutting off some nice-sized chunks, we popped them into our mouths and chewed reflectively. The apple added beautiful notes to the overall flavor and we will definitely go with it again. It may be because of the smaller piece of pork belly used, but we all felt the bacon was a tad too salty. Since from the firmness of the meat I had felt it might be done after 6 days in the cure, I think we’ll drop that seventh day and see what we get. We could also soak the cured bacon in water for an hour or two to leach out some of the salt before drying it overnight prior to the smoking process. I’ll have to get back to you on this one after we try the recipe a few more times.

We will freeze our share of the bacon for use in cooking (clam chowders, a few or our stews, etc.) where the slight saltiness of the bacon can be compensated for with less salt elsewhere in the recipes.

The plan now is to try amping things up by doing maple smoked bacon. My son Karel really loves anything maple flavored, and we have the recipe for a slightly sweeter bacon made with both maple sugar (replacing the brown sugar) and 100% maple syrup. (Anyone out there ever used maple wood chips for smoking?)

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

The problem of internet cooking “experts”

We bought a smoker last week, a cheap one for sure, but something we’re going to have a lot of fun with. Being the hands on sorts we are, it’s no problem to have to watch what’s going on, stoke the fire, regulate temperatures, etc. We enjoy doing that. For instance, tomorrow my son Karel and I are going to smoke some bacon we’ve made and sit with it, chatting for a few hours while we make sure everything is done just right. We get some great food at the end – and some important quality time together.

As of last fall, I knew very little about home curing of meat, and certainly nothing about smoking. While looking for a guanciale recipe, I stumbled across two terrific resources: Wrightfood and Charcuterie, a fantastic book about home curing, smoking and preserving food (both with links in our right-hand column). They’ve been indispensable in helping us get a handle on this very interesting – and delicious – part of our culinary heritage. I encourage you to check out both resources if you’re interested in learning more. Helpful too, have been our two friends at The Sausage King at the SLM. Ben and Reete are both experienced curers and smokers, and are most willing to share their knowledge (and talk baseball).

But all of these resources are not enough to answer every question I have. I like to know as much as I can about things that are new to me. In the case of food, alternate recipes, cooking methods or just general information can really be useful. One of my pet peeves is recipes that tell you to do something a certain way and then never tell you why. Sometimes the why is the most important thing!

I’ve spent a lot of time online during the past week, trying to find out as much as I can about smoking. For instance, we enjoy ribs on occasion during the summer, and the best ribs I’ve had have always been smoked. How do you get the best results out of a smoker when making ribs? How hot? How much smoke? How long?

When you Google “smoked BBQ ribs”, it returns a dizzying number of sites all offering help. At the top of the stack are the usual recipe sites, but I’ve learned long ago that the offerings there are generally by amateur cooks, many of them fine, no doubt, but also from a number of people who really don’t know very much, but are just enthusiastically sharing their recipe. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who really knows what they’re talking about. Same thing when you search on YouTube, although here, watching the people do their thing, it’s easier to suss out the real experts.

Blogs are no better. It’s easy to set oneself up as an expert, but do you really have the credentials to back that up? I’m not talking about diplomas or job experience (although that most certainly helps), I’m talking about knowledge of your topic, use of that knowledge and the ability to help people cook better.

So what does one do to separate the wheat from the chaff? It can be difficult. Some of us have enough skill to be able to see where there might be problems with a recipe or technique, although I’ve certainly been fooled a few times. If one is using expensive ingredients, errors can become really costly – not to mention embarrassing if you’ve invited guests to share in your special dish.

One hard and fast rule we have is to never make anything for the first time and serve it to guests. Too many things can go wrong, or you may find you simply hate the dish. With some of the sketchier recipes, you are really taking a risk – especially if your skill level or experience is not that advanced. I’ve made some horrendous gaffs over the years (grist for a future “tell-all” blog posting), and if I can help anyone to avoid embarrassment, I will consider it a job well done.

Wrapping up this post’s topic: stick with the pros as much as you can. Most professional chefs will not put something on the internet which is not of a high standard. If nothing else, they risk ridicule within their profession, and believe me, that can be a virulent thing. Home cooks are just that. It’s buyer beware when you listen to them or try their recipes. Anyone can put anything on the internet. Always look at things with healthy scepticism.

And if you find me making any mistakes, please call me on it. I don’t mind. One of my life mottos is “I’d rather be good than right.” If you have any questions about any of the recipes I post, for heaven’s sake ask! I’m only too happy to help or clarify.

Happy cooking.

And I promise to let you all know how the bacon smoking turns out.

One solution for leftovers

Leftovers are something that everyone has to deal with, whether you enjoy cooking or not – or even if you don’t cook at all. There is little that’s more depressing than finding a bowl of a green and fuzzy substance in the dark recesses of your refrigerator and realize that something that was never finished has now died and gone to food heaven, rather than being enjoyed.

Leftovers can be a great boon or an albatross hanging around one’s culinary neck. After a long day, it can be quite wonderful to realize that eating that evening is simply a matter of heating up something not finished at a previous meal. Leftovers become a chore, though, when you realize food is on the slippery edge of going bad and must be eaten or thrown out – and maybe you have other plans for dinner. Our moms always chided us as children about not wasting good food, and that early conditioning still hangs on with much guilt being felt when we don’t do what we know we should. And as I said in the opening, there is genuine sadness as well as guilt when you find that terrific dish that got pushed to the back of the fridge and is now working hard to produce penicillin.

Casseroles, soups and stews, leftover roasts and some vegetable dishes work very well just being reheated. Other things are not so good, and we’re often left wondering what to do with them. (Other things should never be eaten as leftovers.) We all have horror stories about that, I’m sure.) Whole cookbooks have been produced on the topic of leftovers, and some of them are quite “creative”. Another solution to the perennial problem that is often overlooked is to just not cook so much in the first place. Sound simple, doesn’t it? So how come we don’t do it?

[Sidebar: I have a horror story from my youth about leftovers. It left me forever scarred. My mother, like everyone who lived through the depression, never threw out any food. Every morning in the winter, she’d make hot chocolate for us. If we didn’t finish it all, into the fridge it would go, usually in a glass jar. One day, I arrived home from school, and being cold, searched the fridge to see if there was any leftover hot chocolate. I found two jars with enough in them to make a large mug with maybe seconds! Not paying much attention, I threw the liquid into a saucepan and while reading something, lazily stirred the pan so the HC wouldn’t scald. Pouring it into a mug, I took a taste and immediately spit my mouthful out. I didn’t know that mom had heated up some Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup for her lunch and hadn’t finished it. Believe me when I say that Chocolate Cream of Mushroom soup is unlikely to ever become a gourmet treat! (It also shows you just how little mushroom they include in the soup.)]

Regardless, everyone has to deal with leftovers, whether we want to or not. But what are problems without solutions? I’m here to over one small solution to a problem I bet you’ve faced on numerous occasions: what to do with that leftover baguette?

Baguettes can be wonderful things. Here at the Blechta Test Kitchens in Beautiful Downtown Toronto we’re particularly fond of the country grain baguettes made by Stonemill Bakery located in the basement of the St. Lawrence Market. If you live in the GTA (greater Toronto area), you may also be able to get these at your local supermarket. Down at the SLM on a Saturday morning, we often find them still warm from baking, and taken home and eaten immediately, they are wonderful things indeed.

But all baguettes have a very small window during which they’re at their best. Even if you store them in a carefully sealed plastic bag, they’re not very good the next day, especially if part of them has already been used. The delightfully crispy crust gets soft, the inside dries to cardboard, and even putting them briefly in a microwave to soften the inside or reheating them in a low oven for 10 minutes to crisp up the outside never restores a baguette to its full glory.

In Paris, where the baguettes are truly wonderful, one can purchase smaller ones, or half of one (cut by a terrifying guillotine-type contraption), but here in North America, those options aren’t available. So we’re often left with a length of bread that we can eat more out of a sense of obligation than anything. And if it’s a few days old, that’s not even be an option.

We often had that problem…and then we discovered crostini. Actually, it was part of a recipe for an olive tapenade we make. In the recipe, we were told to make crostini from a fresh baguette, but then I thought, it will work with stale ones, too. Our problem with leftover baguettes was instantly and forever solved. Stored in an airtight bag or container, they’ll keep for several months – although ours always disappear quickly and mysteriously, especially when the boys are around.

The basic recipe is utter simplicity and the only thing of any difficulty is slicing the baguette really thinly and evenly. Once you’ve got that down, you can change that leftover food into something quite wonderful in a matter of minutes. Add some dried herbs or a touch of salt and pepper if you want, and you’re off to the races!

Crostini
Make as much as you want or have baguette for

INGREDIENTS
Leftover (or fresh) baguette
Olive oil
Additions to consider: sea salt, pepper, garlic, dried oregano, powdered rosemary, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, etc.

METHOD
1. Slice the baguette about 1/8" thick, and as evenly as possible. You’ll need a sharp bread knife for this. Spring for a good one. They’re not expensive and they last forever if treated well. If you want to be fancy, slice the baguette on the bias.

2. Lightly brush one side of each slice with some good quality olive oil. If you’re using extra flavorings, but them on this side. For garlic, just slice a clove and give the bread a few swipes only. For any other additions, you just want a hint of their flavor, so go lightly!

3. Arrange the slices olive oil side up on a baking sheet, and put under the broiler. Keep the door open and light on so that you can watch the crostinis like a hawk. You want them lightly toasted, not burnt – and they burn quickly. I usually turn the pan a few times, so everything toasts evenly.

4. When the first side is done, flip them over and toast them a little less. Again, watch carefully! You want the crostinis to be dried out completely so they’ll store well and not go moldy, but no more. If you’re going to use them immediately, you can toast them a little less. They won’t be as crisp, but that can be nice, depending on how you’re using them. For longer storage, you want them pretty crisp.

5. Cool your crostinis thoroughly and then store them, tightly wrapped in a cool, dry place.

Eating our way across Italy (La Seconda Parte)

Mercato Centrale in Florence, the largest market in the city.

In the first part of this series (click HERE to read it), I talked about our experience buying our food during our Italian sojourn a year ago. Due to the fact that we were not eating in restaurants very often (not just for financial reasons) and because we weren’t staying in hotels, we had to quickly become adept at finding our own grub in a foreign country.

Are you thinking that this shouldn’t be very difficult? Well, it isn’t – and is. First of all, we needed to speak Italian. Since Vicki is extremely adept with languages, she set out to learn Italian, something she’s always wanted to do anyway. She found a teacher, a native Italian from the state of La Marche on the Adriatic Coast, and spent many hours studying and listening to the point where she was pretty fluent after nine months. Case in point: she talked a gondolier in Venice down to a 40% reduction in his outrageous price for his services one evening – all done in Italian! So when it came time to deal with shop owners and vendors, she could negotiate all deals in the native language.

Vicki’s Italian teacher, Sabrina, also helped with alerting us to some customs when food is purchased. While Italians are pretty forgiving where tourists are concerned, it’s never good to put your foot in it because you don’t know the locals customs. So Sabrina told Vicki a number of things we should be aware of.

First and foremost is that it’s a pretty hard and fast rule that the vendor always serves the customer. This is really not an issue when you’re buying meat or cheese because these are kept behind glass. Where it is an issue is when you buy fruits and vegetables. In North America, we generally pick our own out. In Italy, this is just not done. The vendor handles everything for you. You may point out what you want, but the polite thing is to just tell them and let them select for you based on that. Per oggi means “for today”, so if you want a perfectly ripe peach to eat with your lunch that day, this is what you tell the vendor.

It was not a pleasant experience to watch some North Americans vacationing near us in Tuscany, buying fruits and vegetables in a small supermarket in Gaiole, ignoring the protestations of the employee in this section as they picked things out in the North American way. They didn’t speak any Italian, but it was obvious she was upset. The odd thing was that they seemed to own property in the area and somehow had never picked up on this custom. We decided, based on their behavior, that it wouldn’t be a good idea to try to alert them to this.

Another wonderful thing about Italy is that supermarkets don’t have the stranglehold on the selling of food that they do in North America. From what I gathered, this is changing, especially in the big cities in the north, but while in Rome, Florence, Tuscany and Venice, we only purchased in small stores, usually single-item places like butchers, bakers, and fruttivendolos (green grocers). These shopkeepers were quick to learn to recognize us and welcome us into their shops, to the point where prices were dropped a bit.

That was another thing Sabrina told us: don’t haggle. I would have thought this would be standard practice in a country like Italy, but apparently it’s considered to be in poor taste. That’s probably why the shop owners we dealt with on multiple visits dropped prices on their own accord. They obviously wanted to keep our custom, which is the usual reason for haggling anyway.

Obviously, the Italians value good service. If someone is picking out your lettuce for you, they have a vested interest in giving you what you want and making it of the highest quality. As I mentioned before, we weren’t let down. In one case we were advised against buying something because it “wasn’t of the best quality and we would be disappointed”. An alternative suggestion followed – and it was at a higher cost – but the vendor was also probably correct.

The other huge difference between North America (especially Canada where we have mostly government-run liquor stores) is that you can buy wine and spirits almost anywhere in Italy. Most shops that sell any kind of food also sell at least wine. It may not be a huge selection, but it will be there. We saw wine amongst cabbages, on shelves in butcher shops, with the post cards in a corner store, even once in ice next to some fresh fish.

Hot weather calls for cold soup

Mechanical refrigeration has not been around all that long. To us who all have refrigerators and freezers, it seems inconceivable that at one time having ice in the middle of a hot summer was a really big deal. Mostly it came from ice that was harvested in winter from lakes and rivers, transported to ice houses where it was stored for the hot months by covering it deeply in mounds of sawdust.

My father owned a building (formerly a bank) in Mamaroneck, New York, where I grew up, and in its sub-basement was a huge tub, looking like a bathtub for Andre the Giant, where chunks of ice would be brought in several times a week. Blowers connected to air ducts for the building would take the cooled air upwards into the offices. I have no idea when it was last used, but it’s very impressive. The building opened in 1928, and obviously modern air conditioning didn’t exist. Most people still had iceboxes in those days, too.

What did people do when they needed to cool off, weren’t near open water to jump in, trapped in cities where you could only pray for rain to keep you from melting? Who wanted to eat hot food on days when the sidewalks are on slow roast – and what about those poor souls who had to cook?

[Sidebar: I worked one summer in the kitchen at the National Club located in the heart of the financial district of Toronto. It wasn’t air conditioned at that time (the kitchen) and it used to get up to 110° and more. I would drink pint glasses of iced coffee, 4 or 5 on an 8-hour shift and not pee once.]

One elegant solution to hot weather when it came to eating out was cold soup, served in special bowls surrounded by cracked ice. The most elegant of these soups is vichyssoise. It was created by French chef Louis Diat who was chef at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City (and we all know how hot in can get there in the summer!) back in 1917. Harkening back to a rustic hot soup of his youth spent near Vichy, potage parmentier, he came up with the idea of chilling it (and also adding a lot more cream, I'm sure). The result was a sensation – still is, when it’s made well.

But we’re not making that today.

Toronto at this moment is beastly hot, much like those days I remember at the NC. This weekend I found some beautiful local watercress, so instead of vichyssoise, I decided to make Vicki’s favorite cold soup, cream of watercress, mostly because I do love her and she really suffers from the heat, but also because today is our 42nd anniversary! (I can’t believe she’s put up with me this long – but she also says the same thing.)

Happy Anniversary Vicki. We fell in love at Playland in Rye, NY. Wonder if those evening breezes coming off the Long Island Sound are as cooling as I remember?

The soup today at lunch was lovely and very refreshing.

Chilled Cream of Watercress Soup
SERVES 6-8

INGREDIENTS
2 Tbs butter
2 cups sweet onions, sliced finely
4 cups potatoes, sliced finally
2 bunches fresh watercress, washed carefully
1 tsp salt
1 tsp white pepper
2 cups whole milk
1 tsp Tabasco sauce
1 cup low-fat sour cream (optional but encouraged)

METHOD
1. Melt butter in a two-quart pot, then sauté the onions until soft. Add the potatoes and sauté 4 minutes longer. Don’t let anything brown.

2. Add one bunch of watercress, salt and pepper and add just enough boiling water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the potatoes are just done. Don’t overcook!

3. While the soup is cooking, remove the stems from the other bunch of watercress and finely chop the leaves. You should have about one cup of minced watercress at the end.

4. Using a blender or food processor, purée soup until it’s no longer lumpy, but also not too smooth. I use the blender lightly and then just sieve everything to get rid of any remaining lumps. You don’t want to take away all the texture.

5. Put the soup back in pot, add the milk and Tabasco sauce and bring up to serving temperature. Check for seasoning.

6. When ready to serve, put 2 tablespoons of the minced watercress in each soup bowl, pour the hot soup and stir lightly to spread out the minced leaves. Note: If you’re going to serve it chilled, stop after step 4, and chill the soup for several hours, or preferably, overnight. When ready to serve, stir in the milk and sour cream if you’re using that, then follow step six, except have the bowls really chilled. (I put them in the freezer.) I usually add a bit more Tabasco when serving it chilled because the sought-after bite is somewhat muted.

Bruschetta Update

This past Saturday while down at the St. Lawrence Market, I scored some beautifully ripe plum tomatoes. Seems as if the grower (a friend) had potted some plants and had them on his sun porch. In the warm weather we enjoyed this March, they got off to a fantastic start, and he’s had them outside since late April. I managed to talk him out of three of these little beauties. So you know what I made for our first course on Father’s Day.

Stonemill Bakery down in the basement of the south market makes a fantastic sour dough multigrain baguette, so that covered the base. We used oil pressed from organic green olives that we purchased from our friends at La Porta di Vertine in Tuscany. (Those of you from Rye Neck HS will be interested to know that this is the winery owned by Ellen Ross and her husband. More on this at a future date.) Basil was covered by fresh-picked leaves from our own plants. A garlic clove, a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, and that’s it – just marvelous! We just can’t wait until our own tomatoes are ready which, judging by their current size, we’re about six weeks away from that day.

Because we weren’t sure whether it was going to bucket any moment, we had to pan toast the bread indoors rather than outside over our wood fire. It tasted lovely but would have been that much better with a little wood smoke added to the flavor. That’s a lovely foil for the pepperiness of the olive oil. Try toasting the bread over an open fire if you get the chance. Coals from real wood (as opposed to briquettes) are best, either from wood or hardwood charcoal. I encourage you to try it.

We enjoy cooking and eating complicated dishes, but there’s a lot to be said about the goodness of simple food. Bruschetta made with the finest ingredients you can get your hands on fits that description.

[Sidebar: That beautiful platter was bought by Vicki as her special remembrance of our time at a villa near Gaiole in Chianti. The potter was a wonderfully warm lady with whom Vicki really enjoyed speaking, in Italian, of course. I wasn’t much good there, so I just browsed all the lovely hand-painted dishes, at a fraction of the price you would pay at the tourist traps in San Gimignano.]

For the complete recipe for Bruschetta, click HERE.

The ultimate in Italian barbecue(?): Bistecca alla Fiorentina

At Ristoro Di’ Cambi in Florence in June 2012

This past weekend I celebrated my birthday, and no, I won’t tell you how old I am. I prefer to think of myself as “well-aged”. Since I’m the main chef in the family, I decided to make my own birthday dinner.

As mentioned here already, a year ago Vicki and I were in Italy researching for the crime novel I’m currently writing and our one big meal out was in Florence where I had the best darn bit of beef it’s ever been my pleasure to negotiate: the justly famous bistecca alla Fiorentina. We went to a place that specializes in this iconic dish: Ristoro Di’ Cambi in the Oltrarno section of Florence. They did not let us down.

For some reason I hadn’t equated Italians with North American’s near fetish for cooking slabs of meat over charcoal. Stupid, I know, but there it is.

Nowhere to be seen, though, were those gleaming silver monstrosities you see lined up every spring at your local Home Depot. The only barbecues we saw on our trip were the very basic little round types with spindly legs and a grill on the top, the kind where you throw some charcoal in, light it up with a bit of paper and twigs, then throw the meat on. I asked an Italian about cooking outdoors using propane and he looked at me as if I were mad.

After using the fantastic charcoal available in Italy, I could see why. It burns clean and very hot. This same person told me that most of it is made with oak. We could certainly see evidence of this in groves of the trees on the sides of many hills throughout Tuscany, some under cultivation for centuries.

You need the best lump charcoal to cook bistecca properly. Briquettes won’t cut it because they don’t burn hot enough. Since the meat is very thick, by necessity, you need to sear it over very hot coals, then spread out the fire leaving most of it on one side of your barbecue, raise the grill several inches and finish the meat over a lower heat. If done correctly, it comes out with a deep mahogany color with no burning, and after letting it rest sufficiently before carving, the inside is rare at the center, more done at the edge, but not at all dry and with very little leakage of juices. In short, after having this dish a few times now, I believe it’s the best way to cook a steak.

First and foremost, in Italy the only proper beef comes from Chianina cows, a breed you see all over Tuscany, dotting the hillsides in small herds. This breed is quite large and grows rapidly. The meat also tends to be fattier than what we’re used to on this side of the Atlantic. Of course, it’s also grass-fed which makes a huge difference in the flavor.

The cut used for bistecca is what we would call a porterhouse. A porterhouse has a larger portion of the tenderloin than the related T-bone cut and on the opposite side of the T-shaped bone is the strip loin. In Italy, the thickness of the bistecca is dictated by the thickness of the bone, so with a big animal, the piece can be quite thick and large. Italian restaurants sell it “per etto” but you get the whole thing so you can expect a steak up to a kilogram. I’d suggest that one steak should be ordered for 2 or 3 people. It will be about 2 inches thick. Only use meat that has been well-aged, so you need to trust your butcher.

As for preparation, the meat is left to shine on its own. Seasoning is left to primo olive oil, salt and pepper and maybe a rub from a cut clove of garlic. All of this is supposed to be done after cooking, by the way. Some restaurants in Italy apparently serve it with wedges of lemon. That’s it. No fancy rubs or sauces, no herbs.

My birthday dinner. I got skunked on the asparagus!

My birthday dinner was for 6, so we were looking for two porterhouse steaks. The place I originally ordered from (Beretta Meats, a usually reliable organic source) messed up and had cut two 1-inch thick porterhouses which I could not accept and which they could not rectify (the person taking their phone orders should listen a little better from now on), so we were left scrambling. Fortunately, I remembered being told about an excellent Italian butcher on Toronto’s Bloor Street, so we went down there.

Gasparro’s is a wonderful place. I dealt with Nick, an enthusiastic man who knows what good food is and where to source it. His shop sells Mennonite free-range chicken and eggs, and the display was filled with cuts of beef, pork and lamb, all locally sourced, and store-made sausage. Nick talked me into buying two rib steaks he cut on the spot from a long rack, and I went for it because the 28-day aged meat looked fantastic with wonderful marbling throughout. After dinner on Sunday, we had to agree that Nick knew what he was talking about. While not strictly a bistecca alla Fiorentina, the meat was tender, juicy and delicious.

Anyway, you carnivores are probably getting a tad peckish at this point, so here’s the recipe.

Bistecca alla Fiorentina (Florentine Steak)
SERVES 3-4

INGREDIENTS
1 two-inch, or traditionally, 3-fingers high porterhouse steak (2 pounds or more)
Olive oil (the good stuff only!)
large grain sea salt (we use a Welsh version, smoked over oak for extra flavor)
freshly ground black pepper
one garlic clove, peeled and halved (optional)

METHOD
1. Make sure your steak is room temperature and completely dry. I take a steak this thick out of the fridge a good two hours before cooking. That way, the center is not really cold anymore. If it is, your finished steak is going to be dry and tasteless on the outside before the inside is even warm.

2. Build a really intense charcoal fire with the best lump charcoal you can find (it will burn hotter). Heat the grill for only a minute or two before putting on the steak to avoid having it burn into the meat. It should be about 2 inches from the coals. I rubbed ours with a bit of olive oil seconds before putting on the two steaks.

3. Cook the steak 3 minutes on each side, searing it well. Now, raise the grill about 2 inches, bank most of the fire to one side (with a few coals left on the opposite side), and put your steak at the cooler end. Cook each side an additional 5 minutes (assuming you want the steak rare – which you should!), and finally spread out the coals again and turn the steak up onto its end bone and cook another 6-7 minutes. This evens out the cooking as the bone spreads the heat into the center of the steak. It’s very important (unless you’re highly skilled at barbecuing meat) to watch the temperature at the center of the meat. For rare, you want it to be around 125°F, for medium 140°. If you want it more done than that, it’s up to you, but I can guarantee the results will be tough and dry, especially on the outside of the meat. You can’t trust the poke method to see if a cut this thick is done on the inside. I’m very good at that, but since this steak will be pretty expensive, I don’t trust myself to get it right. An instant read thermometer is a good (and cheap) way to get it right!

4. You will want your steak to rest for a good 10 minutes to get the juices to migrate back to the core of the meat, so this is the time to lightly brush it with olive oil, grind some pepper over it and lightly salt it. Using salt that’s not finely ground allows it to not completely melt, giving you small bursts of saltiness as you eat that are quite lovely. If you are using the optional garlic addition, rub the meat on both sides before you brush on the olive oil.

5. Remove the meat from the bone and slice it. Serve it on heated plates (especially important if you’re serving outdoors. Let the birthday boy or a favored guest nibble the meat left on the bone!

The traditional accompaniment in Italy is boiled canellini beans (yet another example of why Tuscans are disparagingly referred to as “bean-eaters” in the rest of Italy) that have been seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper. For wine, an excellent Chianti Classico Reserva is a perfect choice, or maybe a Brunello, but you want something “hefty” – and good. Don’t cheap out here!

For my birthday, we served this with a few pieces of buttered spinach and cheese ravioli from our favorite place for fresh pasta, Bologna Pastificio (with freshly-grated Parmesan from Zito’s), and local asparagus.

For dessert I made a Beethoven Torte, but that’s a recipe for another day.

Eating our way across Italy (La Prima Parte)

A year ago, Vicki and I were madly getting ourselves ready to depart for eighteen days in Italy, and this past weekend over radish sandwiches, we were remembering very fondly all the great food we ate – mostly prepared by me (since our trip was entirely done renting apartments for our accommodations) or meals we enjoyed the few times we dined out.

Renting apartments is a splendid way to really feel as if you’re living somewhere, even if for a few day. Since I, especially, enjoy cooking, it’s not a problem to visit a market, or search out food in small shops (and a few big ones, just to see what they were like).

I had my beautiful and talented editorial assistant on hand (Vicki), who astoundingly became fluent in Italian in nine short months, and she led our shopping expeditions, from the small salumeri (“deli” will suffice for North Americans) down the block in Rome, through the Marcato Centrale in Florence (where, I swear, one vendor had a large tray of various livestock penis’s for sale) to an old ship moored in a canal in Venice that sold fruit and vegetables to the neighborhood where we “lived” for four days. I took to calling her my “Little Linguini” because of her skill with the language. She talked us out of some tight corners…

As you might expect, the tomatoes, even in June, were uniformly wonderful. It became clear pretty early on that Italians won’t tolerate food that isn’t at its very best – especially tomatoes. I cannot imagine what they would say if they were served the appalling things North Americans call tomatoes during the “off-season”. From what we were told, June tomatoes come mostly from Sicily or the southernmost regions of the country where it gets warm early. Even small fruttivendolos had great tomatoes.

After a long day of sightseeing (and research, since I was contemplating setting my next novel in Italy), we’d stop for a few plum or San Marzano tomatoes, a panini roll and a sprig or two of fresh basil. With a can of fantastic olive oil we’d bought on our first day in Rome, I’d whip together some bruschetta. Vicki would uncork yet another terrific bottle of inexpensive but tasty wine, and we’d put up our tired feet for a few minutes.

Later on, I’d boil some pasta with maybe a fresh sauce of some kind accompanied by a salad of lettuce and more tomatoes. Maybe we’d stopped for fresh fish or some sort of chops. For dessert we’d have whatever fruit looked good that day, and maybe we’d stroll out for a bit of gelato later on in the evening. Our mobile larder always included a few cans of tomatoes, a hunk of guanciale (which I bought down the street from our apartment in Rome – and fantastic stuff it was), freshly-grated parmesan, a head of garlic, an onion or two, various kinds of pasta, some salami and proscuitto and a few of the amazing peaches or cherries that were in season. We also had our stash of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and a few other herbs. My suitcase still smells faintly of basil almost a year later.

And I almost forgot the melons! Italian cantaloupes are smaller than ours but ultra sweet. We shamelessly gorged on those every morning for our breakfast. All our fruit and vegetables were bought per oggi, meaning that the fruttivendolo knew we wanted to eat it that day. No matter where we stopped, none of them ever let us down.

Bread was another matter, surprisingly. We bought some really appalling bread in a few places – even from bakers. It was like eating dry cotton fluff. Whole grain bread (pane integrale) seemed to be in short supply as well. The best we found was in the Marcato Centrale in Florence, a marvelous round loaf called “pane panda”. We snatched up two and should have bought more, it stayed fresh for so long.

Anyway, there will be more parts on this topic as the summer goes on, so please stay tuned!

I’d like to leave you with the recipe we used for bruschetta. I asked a number of people in Italy about it, and most gave me the same ingredients and preparation instructions. You’ll notice that it’s quite simple: few ingredients, everything fresh, and possible to prep in about 5 minutes. Now, that’s a perfect recipe to my mind.

One note: Just about the very first thing we did on arriving in Italy was to purchase a small can of the best olive oil we could find. It was pressed from green olives and had a sharp spicy taste that was perfect foil to the tomatoes and basil. When that ran out, we bought a can of oil pressed from mature olives and it made a surprising difference to our bruschetta, more than I would have expected, smooth-tasting and almost “creamy”, if I can use that word to describe the flavor of olive oil. Most of the best Italian olive oil never makes it out of the country. When you do find it, you’ll likely pay through the nose. Do it. Bruschetta without the best olive oil you can find really doesn’t cut it.

Bruschetta
Serves 4

INGREDIENTS
3 meaty and perfectly ripe plum or San Marzano tomatoes
1 large fresh panini roll sliced diagonally, slices about 1/2-inch thick (or you can use a baguette)
1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced in half
8 large fresh basil leaves
sea salt and pepper

METHOD
1. Core the tomatoes, then chop into a 1/4-inch dice. If there are a lot of seeds, remove most of them, along with the pulp surrounding them. If there aren’t a lot, I usually don’t bother. Stack the basil leaves, roll them up widthwise and then thinly slice them.

2. Brush each bread slice on one side with olive oil. (I simply use my finger for this. It works well.)

3. Toast the bread on both sides on a grill outside, or if you’re inside, I suggest pan toasting rather than using your broiler. Suit yourself. Outside definitely gives you additional flavor, though, and it’s the traditional way to do it.

4.  Now rub both sides of each slice well with one of the garlic halves. You don’t want to be overcome with garlic taste. You just want it to be there.

5. Mound on the tomatoes, sprinkle with basil shreds, a grinding of pepper, a very slight pinch of salt, and a few additional drops of olive oil.

You can enjoy this with a chilled bottle of white wine, or red wine if you prefer. Either one works just fine. They can be a bit sloppy to eat (especially if you don’t chop the tomatoes finely enough). We feel that adding onion, sliced olives, or melting cheese on it, etc. really does nothing to improve this simple, rustic dish.

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Shockingly, I can’t find a single photo of any of the bruschetta I prepared on our trip! The photo above is a generic one, since this year’s crop of tomatoes is at least six weeks off.