Food Pilgrimage: What to eat, where to get it, and how to cook it.

Can a Tuscan Daydream Become a Reality?

Sage — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:10:00 +0000

Lately, my insistent day dream plays itself out on a rolling slope on the south face of a green hill in Tuscany. It involves a tan stone farmhouse in ruins that I craftily revive with my own sweat and toil until the building and I are one, at which point I start inviting the food curious friends I’ve made on these last few years of cuisine-guided travel. We pluck oversized ingredients from the dark volcanic soil and wash and scrub them over a thick oak table and prepare them in those simple oil and garlic Italian ways that mystically elevate pure, rustic flavours. Occasionally, my stocky, cap wearing neighbour and I would get into a debate about the provenance of the Sangiovese grape and argue about the need for a shallow gravel bed and if a six-degree slope is ideal for draining the May rains.

…And then I wonder if all of this vision is just a flight of fancy; another grass is always greener wandering of a mind dusted over in the soot of busy London.

Well, this Spring, I had the amazing opportunity to visit a tan stone farm house in the hills of Tuscany that has been lovingly and laboriously revived as a bright and clean guesthouse replete with sloping acreage of vivid green vegetable gardens and the small yellow blossoms of short, twisted olive trees.

And… I’m pretty sure the dream is real.

It only took an hour of following my host Vincenzo, with the sun on our necks, fumbling through the stringy vines of beans, bending over to pluck shoots of the season’s first wild asparagus, to determine that I could very easily find massive amounts of peace, intrigue, curiosity and passion in such a place.

Standing in the shade of the stone walls, rinsing clean a massive, snow white cauliflower in the outdoor sink, with a breeze pushing circles of small black birds overhead, it was easy to get very, very excited about the notion of a few passionate food lovers (which all Italians are) congregating over the long kitchen island assessing and poking at a bubbling casserole dish of the cauliflower, roasted, hot and browned at the edges, laden with crisp bread crumbs and a snowfall of parmesan cheese. Someone would be stabbing at it with their folding pocket knife and someone would be opening bottle after bottle of Barolo wine until they found the perfect match. Then someone from the next farmhouse over would clamber through the door wearing hunting tweed triumphantly holding up a brace of pheasant bound by their feet. At some point cheese and more Barolo would be served and the conversation would look to the future, when the olives started to darken and the oil pressing would begin.

The day plodding and picking and cooking actually unfolded slightly different, mostly involving Vincenzo’s family, cured meats, and an omelette of tender wild asparagus… Oh and and pigeon and rabbit instead of pheasant. The bliss – however - was present. Watching Vincenzo step through the rows of garden vegetables, turning over leafs and plucking shoots, his connection to the land is palpable and leaves little room for doubt that this is where humans are supposed to spend their days. Watching him labour over the details of simple dishes like an omelette or a risotto reminds me of how much obsession can be funnelled into these pure, honest tasks and how much reward comes from executing them to the best of one’s ability and sharing them with others who appreciate such gestures.

And so now I just need to figure out how to make it happen. Is it a build-it-and-they-will come guesthouse, where food pilgrims flock from the far corners of the earth? Is it a long oak table where I teach others all of these amazing preparations that have been taught to me on my food travels? Or is it a tidy goatskin yurt on a hilltop, with a trickle of wood smoke lifting out of the center ? Or is it more wanderings, wading through the mists of inspiration left in the wake of the passionate food folk that seem to be everywhere? Or should I go back to the city, shining and tall, and put in my desk hours and put off the dream until the safe, secure harbour of retirement when I can lay bricks on my own pace funded by the working man’s nest egg?

But I guess that’s the great question: How to live the life of the passion-fuelled daydream and make it a viable reality. In the meantime, I’ll still be right here, cooking and teaching to cook and writing about all of it.

Oh.. and I leave for India on Friday… Any ideas?

~Sage

Bank Holiday Weekend: Paper Mug Cappuccino and Plastic Cups of Rioja on the Train to Wales

Sage — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:55:08 +0000

In my adopted home of London, arguably one of the grimmest, dampest, smile-free rat-races in the western world, the proletariat know how to do a holiday weekend, rain or shine, and I am getting better and better at following their lead. Their inalienable work week tradition of sharing a 5:30 pint at the pub before boarding the 6:20 train home to Dagenham translates to a workforce well skilled and primed to begin the Holiday weekends the minute the clock ticks 5:00.

Even in my hopelessly romantic mind, recollections of holiday weekends in The States “escaping into the great outdoors” revolve around packing, unpacking and repacking the car, fuelling up the car, driving the car through the In-and-Out to pick up a grease soaked bag of flattened burgers and soggy French fries* before queuing up at the Orwellian, one-car-at-time traffic control light that reluctantly lets each bloated family wagon onto the hot black tarmac of a freeway hopeless snarled with other weekenders who will all spend the next four hours in smog-choked stop-and-go freeway traffic listening to some hideous self-help audio book about being more productive before tumbling out and pitching a feeble tent onto the gravel patch of a manicured campground surrounded by towering recreational vehicles plugged into thumping generators. This ritual is often described as “getting away from it all” to “recharge the ol’ batteries” and is habitually repeated only because the memory of the last outing is blocked by blind optimism and fatigued neuroreceptors. (* chips)

In Britain, this past holiday weekend featured the truly unexpected ingredient of sunshine, thus allowing me an opportunity to hone my holiday skills a bit further. In recounting the glorious three-days of (pretty much, sort of) blue skies, I’ve come to identify that it is a handful of culinary luxuries that go down as the highlights of any English holiday weekend

First, is the better than average train-station Benugo cappuccino and chocolate croissant consumed while sitting back into a comfortable Virgin train seat staring out at as graffiti-on-grey-brick, urban London nearly instantly gives way to the rolling green of suburban farms and ultimately, the “authentic” English countryside. The cappuccino - though served in a paper mug - is not “to-go”. It is a proper café experience, drunk one frothy, savoured sip at a time, where the café just happens to be a quiet, high-speed, rolling train carriage that – about the time I finish reading a few chapters of Dickens - will come to a smooth stop at some quaint little village where I will carry my backpack to a Tudor tavern and study some walking maps while taking a pint beside a country log fire.

The other great tradition is on the train back, where I extend the holiday bliss up to the very last minute by pushing the cork into a better than average bottle of Rioja and drinking it from a thin plastic cup nicked from the dining car. Again, this act may sound like a bastardization of a ritual, but I assure you that it - like the coffee - is a proper indulgence; a tasting cellar where the vineyards (OK… sheep farms) are rolling by outside the window. Really, just the act of forcing open a bottle of red and stabbing my Opinel folding knife into a disc of smooth goat’s cheese in the presence of a train ticket-taker who simply gives a sly wink is a bit of a religious experience.

Both of these great acts are really only possible because of the culture of compact, pedestrian-scale cities, a respect for wide open countryside, and a love-hate dependence on train travel . There are times when I miss my car, and there are even times where I miss a flattened burger and soggy fries, but the peace and reclaimed time that come from turning transit into a relaxed café / aperitif / bodega / taberna experience simply makes my heart sing… And don’t get me started on the pork pie and English mustard with a plastic fork main course.

~Sage

A Perfect Paris Breakfast

Sage — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:32:58 +0000

The smooth, back-and-forth rocking of the carriage bed reminded the man where he was as he woke up in the thin gray light coming in though the train car window. He and the woman had boarded the overnight sleeper higher up in the mountains, at the base of the skiing resort called La Plagne. They had had three days of skiing in fresh snow and blue skies, with hearty mountain lunches of roasted potatoes and melted cheese eaten outdoors on the patio of the lodge, with cold glasses of rose and with the bright yellow sun warming them in the clear mountain air.

The train back to Paris was always less jovial than the train heading out to the ski villages on a Friday night. On the train out, there were people in the aisle-ways drinking bottles of cold beer as they sang songs and joked and watched the lights of the city give way to the dark and gray of the countryside at night. Returning to Paris, in the early morning, pulling into Gare Austerlitz, with the city just coming to life and no-one really wanting to go back to work, you could hear the deep exhales and feel the resignation. The man and the woman were not part of this mourning crowd. They had a few hours to spend in The City before boarding the high-speed train to London.

Looking out the window as the train pulled into the station, the woman smiled gently to the man and her eyes crinkled and she knew they were both thinking about hot café au lait and breakfast at a marble table on the boulevard near the Gare Du Nord, which is where the high-speed train departed from. The man clutched both suitcases and the two of them stepped down onto the cool, brick platform and made their way through the people and the trolleys with the clacking of shoes and the tin sound of the announcements over the speakers and the steam from the espresso machines and the people staring up at the departure board. Then they were outside in the sun.

It took thirty minutes to get to the Gare du Nord and by the time they got there, the sun shone bright orange on the tall, gray stone facades and it made orange ripples on the tall glass of the entrance of the station. The man and woman crossed the street between the early morning coaches and the large work trucks making deliveries. They turned the corner and went in to the Café La Consigne. They sat indoors at the corner table, where they could look out the glass one way and see the bakeries putting out their awnings and look the other way and see the rushing people dragging trolleys across the street and into the station.

The server brought the breakfast, a small basket with half of a warm baguette, two croissants and a plate of cold butter and a pot of bright raspberry jam. Next to that he poured two steaming bowls of Coffee and topped them from a pot of hot milk. Then the server returned with two short glasses of fresh-pressed orange juice, bright orange with bits of orange floating on the surface. The high-speed train would leave in forty minutes.

“I wish that we could stay right here in this very spot for just one more hour” said the woman.

“There are croissants and coffee in the dining car on the train” said the man as he watched out the window at the station entrance.

“It’s not the same. And it would be broken by moving and walking”

“The view is better on the train with the countryside going by”

“I like the view here. I like the people and the trucks and here the coffee is in nice warm cups and on the train it will be in paper cups and it will be too strong and we’ll be standing at the small café table with no chairs.”

The man sat back in the wicker chair and crossed his legs. “There is a great feeling about sitting back in a chair while you drink good coffee.”

“Like the English do when they take tea” said the woman.

“Only they don’t sit back and relax, they always sit upright. Even the old men standing at the espresso bar in Rome lean on the bar and get more relaxation out of it than the English when they take tea.”

“Leaning on the table in the dining car on the train will not as good as sitting back in these chairs right here while coffee is brought to us.”

The man nodded and uncrossed and re-crossed his legs and sipped from his coffee.

“And…” said the woman. “Let’s not forget the getting up and walking across to the station. That will change everything.”

The man was still nodding and he turned to look at the people hurrying across to the station. “Yes, I suppose it will.”

On the high-speed train, the man and the woman left their luggage on the rack and set down their coats to hold their seats and walked back to the dining car passing men in business suits and women in hats reading magazines. In the dining car, standing at the small café table, which was fastened down to the floor, the man and the woman watched out the window through the mist at the farms passing by. There was frost on the ground in places and the mist and the rows of trees let the sunlight through in clean, straight shafts.

The coffee on the train was strong, and the croissants left a mess of crumbs on the plastic table top and the woman swept them up and into the small metal waste bin that was also fastened to the floor in the corner of the dining car. ~Sage

Grilled Flank and Good Red Wine | Steak Night at Bedford and Strand, London

Sage — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:49:51 +0000

In London it is not always easy to find an honest steak, cooked the way it should be and served with good, smooth red wine. The English have this thing where beef is always cooked as slow roasted joints for Sunday feasts, which is fine and they do a good job, but being so long away from America, on occasion, I find myself having daydreams, and maybe even real dreams about that thin charred veneer that seals in the hot running juices on a good, grilled flank or skirt steak. Then I get to thinking about the creamed spinach and the gratin potatoes with sharp cheese sauce. Then I go on thinking about a bottle of thin, French red wine that washes the thing down. When these visions start to affect my work, I take my coat and walk from the office through Covent Garden and down the marble stairs on Bedford street to the black and white tiled dining room of Bedford and Strand. On Monday, they do a steak night - perhaps for homesick Midwest Americans like me - where a good, grilled to order steak costs £10. The dining room is always full on Mondays and I try to listen for other American accents, but it is hard to tell when the dining room is full, with the wine glasses clinking and with the laughing at the cocktail bar, where the West End’s best people are taking their Gin and Tonic with cucumber as is the fashion on this side of town. The glowing candle light, the wicker chairs and the shiny brass give the place a feel of a real steakhouse, or maybe I’m thinking of a Parisian brasserie where I just happened to have a very good steak one time. On a Monday night, it is for sure that I will order one of two steaks; what the chef calls a Bavette (but what a sensible person would call a flank steak) or the Flat-iron steak which is (as it is back home) a grainy, marbled cut of the shoulder. Both cuts are working muscles and so they taste rich and hearty with the warm coppery taste that reminds me of the flat plains and the roadside grills and the tall wheat fields of the Midwest and they require a bit of effort to eat (but what is a steakhouse if not men and women conversing through a little bit of chewing while also working away with a fork and with a wood-handled steak knife). The side dishes are where the English do amazing things. They also do very good sauces, which they must have learned from the French. I have become quite fond of the little white jug of Sauce Café de Paris, which is a smooth mix of fresh butter tinted with curry powder and smelling of shallot and garlic and just the right amount of Lea and Perrins sauce. For sides, I have never strayed from the creamed spinach, which is rich in a good béchamel, but still tastes bright and slightly bitter like wilted spinach should. Then of course there are the salty, crispy fritte; fried twice to be fluffy on the inside. Thinking about it, it is the fritte that I use to get up all of the drops of the Sauce Café de Paris. My wine is always the same too. Well, from the same region because I want it to be flavoursome with spice, but not heavy and sweet. I order a blend from the Languedoc, lately a bottle of Peyrasse which has enough Syrah to smooth it out. I take it straight from the cellar as to be slightly cool. When I leave the table, I am always satisfied in a way that will last a week or so. I don’t take a fin or any pudding, though I have seen the treacle sponge and know it be very good; rich and sticky-sweet. I don’t even take a coffee, thought that is done well too. I instead climb the marble stair and outside, turning up the collar of my coat and walk east, down the Strand, now quiet without the afternoon taxis and buses. I walk out onto Waterloo bridge and look at the coloured lights of the National Theatre and of the big Ferris wheel on the south bank and it is always windy with the cold of the river and the feeling of being back in the States wears off and in this way I slowly return to London as she is. Bedford and Strand does a brilliant £10 steak on Monday Nights that does justice to flavourful, juicy cuts grilled to perfection. The creamed spinach and chips make the whole thing divine. The wine list is the stuff of dreams and they will be glad to help you find your perfect pairing. I will be the guy with the folded newspaper and Harris tweed. ~Sage