A Tuscan foodie in America

My week in the kitchen

2012-02-24T11:11:00.000-06:00

On my Facebook page I often publish photos of some of the food I cook at home, with brief explanations on what it is and how it is made. Unless you visit my page often, you miss this food porn. So I decided I will publish every week a recap of the most interesting things here on my blog. Here you go.

Home made polenta with home made mushroom ragu (porcini, morels, white mushroom). The mushroom sauce works perfectly with pasta too.

The mushroom ragu, while simmering in my beloved cast iron skillet

The polenta: this is not precooked, so you have to stir it continuously for 1 hour.

Slow cooker red curry coconut curry beef: roast chuck cooked for 3 hours in a thai red curry coconut milk. The sauce was delicious, but I think chicken or prawns would have worked better.

FAILURE. I think home cooks should share more of their failures. Here is mine: my fried carnival sweets from Italian region Marche failed. The error was in figure No. 1: I divided the dough. That meant that the rolls filled with the lemon and sugar mixture (2) were too small and they opened up while frying (3). They should have looked like two rolls connected at the bottom: basically like the two things in photo 4, combined. They instead look like sad sticks (5).

How easy is it to make pasta, really? My two cents on Top Chef

2012-02-23T15:17:00.002-06:00

I am reading many comments on food blogs about how unfair it is for Chef Sarah Grueneberg, of Chicago's Restaurant Spiaggia, to have made it to the finale of Top Chef. The criticism is twofold: they accuse her 1) of being a total bitch and of having bullied fellow Chicagoan Beverly Kim (from restaurant Aria) and 2) of always making pasta, and that making pasta is very easy, hence she is not a good chef.

I don't care about point 1. The couple of times I've had the chance of meeting and briefly talking to Chef Grueneberg, I have found her a very nice person, down to Earth, funny and amicable. Is she a total bitch in real life? I don't know, I am not friends with her. But honestly I don't care: all I care if I go to a restaurant is if the food is good. And her food for me is the best Italian I have ever eaten outside of Italy, full stop.

Also: TV programs are made to dramatize things, to generate audience. If I were to be on a TV show and say "When they behave like scumbags, I hate journalists", a TV program would probably edit it all and make me say "I hate journalists", and then show me with a gun, and then they would show a journalist. This is how TV works. So, honestly, I don't care.

But let's come to the second criticism, which I find peculiar. Did Sarah Grueneberg often cook pasta on the show? Yes, she did. So what? She is the executive chef of a Michelin-rated Italian restaurant. She is known for - among other things - her pasta. What should she be making? Stir-fries? (Incidentally, Beverly Kim, the chef that Grueneberg is accused of bullying, always cooked the same style of Asian cooking. I didn't have a problem with that, yet I would expect that people criticizing Grueneberg for making pasta would also criticize Kim for using always the same ingredients? Nope, that didn't happen...)

But the final argument is the most stupid I have ever heard: people think that it is unfair for chef Grueneberg to make it to the finale cooking pasta, because anybody can cook pasta, how difficult is that?

Well, now: if cooking pasta was so darn easy, how come that the pasta I have eaten in 99.9% of Italian restaurants in my 15 years abroad has always been disgusting? Seriously people: I make home made pasta, at times with some success. But can I make it excellent every time? Is it Michelin worthy? Nope, it ain't. Pasta is one of those things that people assume can me made to taste delicious very easily. This is so stupid: you can make pasta taste good, at times very good. But can you make it delicious every time? Not unless you are a very gifted chef.

And that's all there is to it, really. You may not like her, you may prefer other chefs, and frankly, I don't care. But when I hear "cooking pasta is so easy anybody can do it" my BS detector goes crazy.

The right ingredients with endless choice

2012-02-22T10:10:00.000-06:00

I have already mentioned that the variety of food on offer in US supermarkets is outstanding. Whereas in my Belgian or Italian years I have memories of a couple of racks with "International food", where you could find some Indian, Mexican and Asian products or Italian pesto, US supermarkets' offer is limitless. There are two reasons: first and foremost the fact that American cuisine is a collage of different cuisines and different ethnic groups. So, the "international" products are not confined to a couple of racks, but they actually are the entire supermarket. This results in an orgy of products that - if you are crazy like me - is a feast for your senses. I mean, who had ever heard of Kabocha squash while living in Belgium or Italy? I most certainly hadn't.

The second reason has - again - to do with the concept of personal choice that Americans built their Nation upon. They want to be able to choose. And the customer service is outstanding.

My wife disagree with me on the quality of produce on display here. She says that Belgian supermarkets had better vegetables. I say she is crazy (and Belgian): Belgian produce suffered from the lack of sun, so it was almost always tasteless. In spite of our disagreement on the quality of the produce, we agree on the fact that we are eating vegetables that we had never heard before. Parsnips? I had to go and look in a dictionary what the Italian name for this white, sweet carrot was (pastinaca, if you are wondering). It turned out that they used to be famous in Italy and in the rest of Europe until the 18th century, when they started to be used as animal food. Apparently over the past five years they started to become trendy again in certain parts of Italy as part of a rediscovery of cucina povera to the use of turists: so now restaurant owners can charge you 10 Euros for a parsnip soup made with scrap (tasty scrap at that) that were fed to pigs and sows.

And greens (collard greens, mustard greens), greens, and greens everywhere you go during Fall and Winter. I like to take these greens and use them in traditional Italian recipes, modifying the flavors. Recently I made a collard green, bacon and butternut squash risotto that came out fantastic, if I do say so myself.

Of course there are times when I have issues with the ingredients. For instance the clams that are sold in Chicago supermarkets are the gigantic variety that dwarfs the little clams we use in the Mediterranean for our linguine alle vongole or soups. I mean, look at this photo: the clam is twice as big as the mussel. It is a monster! The texture is also very different. So I was really happy when I stumbled into Japanese clams, in a Japanese-only big supermarket, that looked identical to the Italian clams. I bought them (cheap) and made spaghetti alle vongole that were identical to the ones I used to eat in Italy.

This is why I love this place, foodwise. The choice is gigantic, and the limits are set by your capabilities and interest. Now go and try and make a chili con carne in Italy or Belgium. Good luck finding the right ingredients.

Top 5 things that piss me off in a restaurant

2012-02-20T10:55:00.000-06:00

Las Saturday my wife and I went to eat out in a restaurant called Vermillion, in Chicago. It is an Indian/Latin American fusion restaurant. Aside from the lackluster food (an alternative name for the restaurant might be" Salt: we don't know what it is"), what really pissed me off was that there was absolutely no light in the restaurant. To the point that we had to use the lights of our mobile phones to read the menus. When we got our food delivered, we had to take a candle nearby, and use it to see what we were eating. I swear I am not joking.

I understand the need to create a nice atmosphere in a restaurant, playing with the lights. I do, I swear. I wouldn't want to eat in a restaurant with the same lights of a Walmart. But - as the ancient Romans used to say - in media stat virtus, virtus is in the middle.

Inspired by this last experience, here is my top five things that really piss me off in a restaurant:

Total absence of light, because it is very cool and hip. As mentioned above, obliging your paying guests to guess what the hell they are eating (will it be a potato? Will it be a piece of fish? Will it be a hot chile? Oh, the thrill of guessing...) is stupid. Many restaurants are guilty of this.
Ear drum breaking music. I understand that if the theme of your restaurant is heavy metal music, you will be playing loud heavy metal music, so if I come and dine at your place I will gladly put up with this (even if I am a not a fan of heavy metal). But if the theme of your restaurant is NOT heavy metal music, then I would like to be able to have a nice conversation with the people I am having dinner with. Well, guess what? In many restaurants, even very good and/or expensive, Michelin-rated restaurants, not only is this impossible, but they look at you as if you were an idiot for even thinking that. Some even write it on their menu "don't ask us to reduce the volume of our music". Well, then don't ask me to give you money for a headache inducing experience in which the pleasure of food will be ruined by stupidly loud music.
Not respecting reservations. Honestly people: if I make a reservation for 7pm, and I show up at 6.55, I want to be seated at 7pm. I don't want you to sit me down at 7,30 every freaking time. It doesn't matter how good your food is: I, the customer, want to be able to decide how to spend my evening. If I want to stand up and talk to friends before eating dinner, I will go to a restaurant with no reservations, and gladly wait my turn. If I make a reservation is because I want to sit and eat at that time. I understand that it is difficult for a restaurant to asses times and all: but it is not my problem.
Pretentious waiters. Hey, guess what? No, I don't know what "alajar infused sbiruli" is. Thus, if I ask you nicely what it is, there is no reason to go all French on me and treating me like if I had just taken a huge dump on your shoes. Be nice, answer back, and put a smile on that hippy face. Because, guess what again, it is your freaking job to explain what the food is.
Overcrowded dining rooms in fancy restaurants. Either I am getting old, and my infamously low level of BS tolerance are getting even lower, or this is something that is happening increasingly often: you go to a "fancy" restaurant (those where the cheapest main course is priced at $35) and you are basically sitting on top of the next guest. The distance between the tables is maximum 5 inches, so that to get in and out you actually need to move the entire table. I don't often go to this type of fancy places, but when I do, I would like to be able to listen to the person I am having dinner with, and not to the (closer) lady who is sitting next to me.

What about you: what are your pet peeves?

Cowboy bison and beer pie

2012-02-17T10:11:00.001-06:00

This is my take on shepherd's pie. I made it with ground bison and used a dark beer and brandy to develop a thick, sweet and sour sauce that complements well the bison's flavor. If you have time, I recommend you let the bison simmer as long as you can. Treat it like a chili con carne, and it will reward you with complex flavors. But you can speed things up, if need be. It will still be good.

This recipe is perfect if you have a cast iron skillet: you can cook the bison on the stove, and then put it in the oven directly.

Cowboy bison and beer pie
(PRINT OR DOWNLOAD THIS RECIPE)

Ingredients (for 6 people, in a 10in skillet)

1 pound (450g) of ground bison
2 tsp of chili powder
1 tsp of cayenne pepper
3 slices of bacon, chopped in ⅓ inch (1cm) pieces
1 tbsp of olive oil
3 peeled and chopped carrots
2 peeled and chopped parsnips
1 celery rib, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
½ onion, chopped
⅓ cup canned crushed tomatoes or a few tbsp of tomato paste
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 tsp chopped sage
1 laurel leaf
1 can of dark beer (I used an Imperial stout)
1/4 cup of brandy
½ cup beef broth or water
salt & pepper

For the mashed potatoes

¾ pound of russet potatoes, or other baking quality, peeled and cut in four
¼ cup milk
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp heavy whipping cream
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper

How to make it

Heat your heavy skillet (I love cast iron) on low fire. Add the bacon and let it cook, stirring it occasionally, until it becomes crisp. This will take 10-15’. Don’t rush it. Take the bacon out of the pan and lay it on paper towel to dry.
In the same pan with the bacon fat, add the oil. Add the carrots, the parsnips, the onions, the celery and cook, stirring for 5 minutes.
Add the bison meat, the chili powder, a pinch of salt. Stir and make sure to brown the meat evenly, 10 minutes.
Add the brandy, let it evaporate 2 minutes.
Add the beer, thyme, sage and laurel. Scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, so as to make sure to get all that flavorful bits. Let the beer reach the boiling point, then reduce the heat, add the broth and let it simmer for a 1-2 hours, until the sauce has thickened to a thick gravy. You can speed up this part by slightly increasing the heat, but the flavors will not be the same. It will still be good though (treat it like a chili con carne: the more it cooks, slowly, the better).
Check for salt and pepper and adjust to your taste.

For the potatoes: cook them in lightly salty boiling water for 20 minutes, or until they are soft. Drain them and rice them into a large bowl.
Heat milk, butter and cream in a saucepan until they are hot and almost boiling. Add the milk mixture to the riced potatoes and stir. Once the potato mixture is cool enough, add salt and pepper and add the beaten egg, stirring.

If you have used a skillet that can go into the oven, simply spread the potato mixture on the flattened bison and vegetable mixture. If not, you need to transfer the bison to a baking pan. Cross hatch the potatoes with a fork, and bake in oven at 400F/200C degrees for 20-30 minutes, until the potatoes are browning (see photo). If you are in hurry, use the broiler in your oven, and it will brown your potatoes in 10’.

Let the pie rest 5-10 minutes: serve!

We have a winner (almost): Green chili

2012-02-17T08:13:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I submitted my green chili recipe and a revised version of my red chili - which for the revamp I christened as "Four fresh chiles and a ghost" chili - to a chili contest organized by Food 52. Food52 is the culinary and recipe blog by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs that I recommend you regularly take a look at, because they have pretty interesting contests (Ms. Hesser is also the author of The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, an awesome book, if you ask me).

My green chili didn't win, but it was among the four community picks chosen by the editors. In the words of the tester: "We were won over by the gorgeous aroma of cumin and peppers filling the kitchen. Browning the pork in bacon fat is a nice touch. The end result is a seemingly mild chili with a good spicy kick at the end".

This is the third time that one of my recipes is selected as editors/community picks: the first time it was my butternut squash and amaretto cookies tortelli, and more recently it had been the turn of my spaghetti with cherry tomatoes and pecorino cheese.

I wonder: will I ever win?

Flemish beer beef stew (Carbonnade flamande)

2012-02-16T08:46:00.001-06:00

The first time I ate Carbonnade Flamande, in a little cave-like restaurant in Brussels' Grande Place, I hate it. I found the texture repelling, and the beer flavor put me off. Now I would eat it every single day. What happened in the meantime? I guess 11 years of living in Belgium, a Flemish wife, and a lot of beer ingested: that's what happened.

Every Belgian family has its own perfect recipe of this beef Flemish stew. My wife's makes no exception. This is her family's recipe: the secret weapon is the bread smeared with mustard, which is added to the stew and let to dissolve slowly: it adds a flavor dimension that I haven't found in any recipes. The bread you use is important: there is no need to go fancy on the bread, even stale bread will work, but please: do not use the spongy, packaged disgusting thing that US supermarkets call bread: use real bread.

Since we are in the US, we have also made this in the slow cooker and it works perfectly. So I am giving you that option in the cooking notes.

A word about the beer to use: traditionally you should be using a red Flemish beer. What we use at home here in Chicago is a beer called Duchesse de Bourgogne, which - in spite of its French name - is Flemish. You can find it at Whole Foods or at Binny's. Let me warn you: it is expensive. But this is a beer flavored stew, and if you are saving money on the beer, I suggest you go and cook something else. I am serious: the beer gives 70% of the stew's flavor.

If you can't find it, ask your beer vendor if he/she can suggest a red Flemish ale for a Belgian stew. If he/she is any good, he/she should pick one for you that is sweet enough to help the caramelization that needs to take place in the stew, but not sweet enough to turn this dish into a dessert. If any Belgian reader is reading this and wants to chip in with advice on the best beer to use, by all means please do.

Tuscan Foodie's wife's Carbonnade Flamande
(PRINT OR DOWNLOAD THIS RECIPE)

Ingredients:

4 tbsp unsalted butter (2oz/60g)
4 slices of good quality bacon (about 4-5oz/100-150gr), roughly chopped
2 yellow onions, thinly chopped
2 teaspoons of dark brown sugar
2 minced gloves of garlic
3 tbsp of all purpose flour
3 lb (1.5 kg) of beef, chuck steak or round steak, fat removed, cut into pieces 2-3 inches/4-7cm wide
2 tbsp olive oil
16 oz / 500ml of red Flemish beer (see notes above: Duchesse de Bourgogne would be perfect)
2 slices of bread (see notes above)
2 tbsp of yellow mustard
salt and pepper

How to make it

Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Throw in the bacon and cook until crisp, but not burnt. Turn the bacon often. This should take 5-10 minutes.
Add the onions to the bacon in the skillet, add the sugar and cook until the onions caramelize, turning into a deep brown color. This will take 30-40 minutes, and you will need to stir now and then. This process is key: you are creating the sweet/caramelized flavor which will be a key component of the stew. Be patient: certain onions take longer than others to caramelize.
When the onions are brown, add the garlic, cook for 2 minutes and set the whole mixture aside on a plate.
While the onions cook, mix flour, salt and pepper in a plate or in a zip-lock bag: add the beef pieces and coat in flour (in a zip-lock it is easier).
Using the same skillet in which you cooked the onions and the bacon, melt the remaining 2 tbsp of butter. Add the beef pieces, making sure not to overcrowd the pan. Brown the meat on all sides. This will take 10-20 minutes: depending on the size of your pan, you may need to work in batches, adding butter as necessary. Browning the meat is also key, because it locks in the flavors.
When the beef is browned, remove it from the pan, and set it on a plate.
Add the beer to the skillet, and deglaze it, scraping its bottom with a wooden spoon: you want to make sure that all the brown pieces of meat that are stuck to the pan get loose: they are flavorful and you want them in your stew. Cook and stir until the beer boils.
Put the meat, the onion/bacon mixture, the beer in a large Dutch oven on the stove top, or in a slow cooker. Add the two slices of bread smeared with the mustard to the stew: the bread will dissolve while the stew cooks.
Dutch oven on the stove-top: cook covered for two hours, on very low fire. Stir now and then, to make sure to dissolve the bread.
Slow cooker: cook covered 6-7 hours on low. Stir towards the end to make sure to dissolve the bread.

How to serve it

Serve this with french fries or roasted potatoes or even roasted sweet potatoes. A beer - better if the one you have used for cooking the stew - is a must!

Cooking Ratios: table and charts

2012-02-14T07:47:00.000-06:00

Ratio - the simple code behind the craft of everyday cooking is a book that will change the life of anyone interested in cooking. The idea behind it is the classic egg of Columbus: super simple, and yet I hadn't thought of it. Rather than giving you another book of recipes, author Michael Ruhlman gives you the ratios behind a whole list of them: for bread, you need 5 parts of flour for every 3 parts of liquids; for cookies, you need 3 parts of flour for 2 parts of liquids and 1 part of fat...

The idea behind this book is that when you know the basic ratio (in weight), you have a working basis from which the sky (and your capabilities) is the limit : you can add whatever variation you fancy. Still, the basic ratio will remain the same.

Ruhlman is candid about not having invented anything. In the introduction, he explains that the idea of this book came to him when Uwe Hestnar, a chef at the Culinary Institute of America, gave him a piece of paper with a list of basic ratios, telling him that "this is all one truly needs". No fancy books. No detailed explanations. Just ratios. Because - Mr. Hestnar says - the fundamentals of cooking don't change.

The book is really fantastic, and I really recommend you buy it. It is simple, and super usable: on top of the basic ratios, he explains how to obtain several variations from the same ratios, and gives you also a list of quick to try recipes. Alas, it has a big flow: it doesn't have charts. Actually, it does have a couple of charts, but they are small and unusable. And this is a pity, because I think everybody should have a summary table of this stuff hanging in their kitchen. After all, even Ruhlman admits that he made a chart and framed it...so why not his readers?

Ratios summary table with notes - inspired by Ruhlman's book - click to access a high-def image

Ruhlman used to sell a pdf on his site, but now it is not available. He actually has an iPhone app which he charges $4.99 for it. (Not bad: charging $4.99 for something you haven't invented, and that was given to you for free by another chef. Hat off to you).

So I made my own table (above) and my own charts (below). I don't think I am infringing on anyone's copyright in passing them to you: after all, Ruhlman has NOT invented these ratios, which are well known among professional chefs. So consider this my valentine to you.

For downloading, you have two options:

You can click on the photos that I have inserted in this post (the table above and the charts below), and access high definition images of the pie charts I made. (The three photos with the pie charts are the same in content, but with a different layout, so you can choose which one you like best.
Or you can click here, and download a presentation with these four slides. Up to you.

And yes, you are welcome.

Ratios for doughs and batters - inspired by Ruhlman's book - click for a high-def image

American fads

2012-02-10T11:18:00.000-06:00

The lack of a strong, centuries-lasting food tradition is what makes the US such an interesting country in which to eat food at the moment. Alas, it is also the main reason why Americans seem to be so prone to fads, including diet fads.

French and Italians cuisines have all formed during centuries, assimilating traditions coming from different influences. On the bad side of things, this means they are now less open to new things, and they may be described as stiff. (Spanish cuisine is probably the exception here, with its capability to innovate itself profoundly at the moment). Because "American cuisine" is so new, Americans are more eager to try new things: some of them work, some don't, but at least this process of trial and error can generate new things.

The problem is that this lack of a stable dietary history also generates diet fads. The level at which the average American person seems to be influenced by diet fads is incredible. Up until 2002 the official government's guidelines invited Americans to eat grains and carbs and to reduce the level of animal fat. At the same time though, the Atkins diet was all the rage with a vast sector of the population, advocating exactly the opposite: cut the carbs, increase the fat (including animal fat) and eat as much of that as you want.

The low carb histeria exploded thanks to a famous article from the New York Times, appeared in July 2002. It cast a doubt over whether fat was really the culprit for the overweight pandemic that had struck America since the mid-70s. Overnight, a country which had been taught to eat pasta like Italians do, because it was supposed to be good for you, started to obsess with low-carbs options. I distinctively remember spending New Year's Eve in New York in 2002, and every waiter was offering low-carb options. I didn't even know what it meant at the time.

Now there is a new fad coming along: the so called paleo diet, which actually originated in Europe. It advocates for a regimen based on what we think paleolithic men were eating, from 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago, before agriculture came into the picture: lots of meat, no pasta, no bread, no grains (all agricultural products or byproducts). The theory behind this actually doesn't sound too wacky as you might think: their point is that from an evolutionary point of view, man evolved to consume meat, roots and berries. Agriculture appeared too late in the game to have had any impact on our evolution as a species yet. To imitate the paleolithic lifestyle, there are even those who fast for 36 hours, exercise with an empty stomach, and then eat an entire buffalo. And I am not even joking, people.

As for me, I simply don't trust nutritionists. As the fat/carb issue well proves, nutritionists are always ready to crucify you for something, and then the day after they will be on your back for something else.

And tonight I am eating pie.

Cioppino vs Cacciucco = Cioppucco - a Tuscan Foodie recipe

2012-02-09T17:47:00.000-06:00

The first time I saw cioppino on a menu in San Francisco I didn't have a clue what it was. How is it possible, I was told: it is Italian. This is a fish soup which is said to have been invented by San Francisco fishermen originally from Genoa. However, as far as I could find, there is no trace of a dish called cioppino in any of the Italian regional books I own, nor could any of my friends from Genoa remember of having heard the word. As many other things Italian-American, it turns out it isn't Italian.

Where it comes from doesn't matter though in the end: the point is that it is a fish soup, it is delicious, and it is indeed in line with the many fish soups you can find in Italy.

Whatever coastal city you go to in Italy (and there are a lot of them, since Italy's shoreline is more than 8000 km long, almost 5000 miles) you will find a fish soup. It will be called different things, it will have different fish in it, but you will find it. People will tell you that you must use white wine, no, actually red wine, what are you talking about you can only use dry vermouth...hey, don't even joke, you only use water.

Got the picture? There are as many fish soups in Italy as there are fish in the sea. One of the most famous though, is the cacciucco. Originally from Livorno (a city that people from Pisa, like me, hate with a passion), cacciucco derives from the Turkish kucuk, which means tiny, referred to the small fish and pieces of fish used in the soup.

Nowadays, any restaurant serving you a fish soup in Italy or in the US will ask for a stiff price. From a historical point of view this is actually funny: originally fish soups were made by fishermen with the scraps of fish that they couldn't manage to sell, because they either didn't look particularly good, or because they were the worst cuts. In a stew, though, they would develop a lot of nice flavors and feed a ton of people. But if there ever was a poor man food, fish soup is the one. Keep it in mind next time they ask you $30 for a cioppino or 25 Euros for a cacciucco.

Tuscan foodie's cioppuccio fish soup (serves 4)
(Print or dowload this recipe)

Now, back to us. In light of the historical development that I just explained, giving a recipe for a fish soup is always odd. Simply, use whatever fresh fish you will find, or use whatever shells you like. Even I don't have a fixed recipe, although some things are ALWAYS there: clams, mussels, tomatoes, white wine. But for the rest, feel free to improvise: add octopus, calamari, whatever you feel like adding. The important thing is that you follow a number of steps to develop the flavors. And this is how you do it.

I called this soup cioppucco (from cioppino and cacciucco) in honor of my Tuscan origins and of my new home.

One word about the cost: If you buy fresh fish, the biggest expenditure will be represented by the shrimps. So you can either omit them, or use frozen shrimps (you can actually make the whole stew with frozen fish, if you prefer).

Ingredients

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 pound (450g) mussels, clean, in the shell
1 pound clams (450g) (the smallest you can find), clean, in the shell
8-10 large shrimps, with the shell, but deveined
12 oz (350gr) of white fish, chopped in bite sized pieces: whatever you have: I often use tilapia, but it could be any white fish that you have in the freezer or that the fish market has cheap at that moment
10-12 mini bay scallops (but you can use normal scallops - 8/12 of them - or omit them)
1/2 can of diced tomatoes
a handful of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
2 cups of dry white wine (pinot grigio, verdicchio work perfectly)
4 tbsp of chopped parsley
2 peperoncini finely chopped (or chile de arbol, if it is easier to find for you - remember tha chile de arbol is hotter than peperoncino)
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
12 slices of baguette or ciabatta bread

How to make it

Heat the olive oil in pan large enough to contain all the fish and the broth that you will develop. I use cast iron because it better conveys the heat to the food, but any large pan with a lid will do.
Add the chopped parsley, onion, garlic, pepper and let it all go for 5-10 minutes, until the onions are soft. Stir occasionally.
Add the wine, let the alcohol evaporate for 2-3 minutes. Stir.
Add the crushed tomatoes and the chopped cherry tomatoes. Bring to boil, reduced the heat and let it simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add a pinch of salt. Not much though, because the shells will be salty. Stir now and then.
Add the shrimps, the white fish, bring it back to boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Add the bay scallops or the traditional scallops if you are using them and let it all go for an additional 5 minutes.
Add the clams and mussels that you will have washed in cold water before. Let it all go for 5 minutes, or until all the mussels and clams are all open. If you are using big clams beware: they may take a long time to open, far more than the mussels. You will be running the risk of overcooking the rest of your fish. So, if you are using big clams, cook them separately in a pan, covered, until they are open, and then add them to the stew when the mussels are open.
Let it rest 1 minute. Taste for salt and pepper. Plate in plates that you will have warmed up in an oven, putting the bread on top, on the side.
Devour

For the bread:

Put the slices of bread in a on oven at 400F (200C) and roast them for 10 minutes, turning them once. Brush with 1/2 clove of garlic and put on plates.

Cooking for Charlie Brown

2012-02-08T01:01:00.000-06:00

Over the past three months I have been cooking also for Charlie Brown, my now seven-months old son. He is showing signs of appreciation for my cuisine (if we can call the pureed shit I feed him that). But he also shows early signs of preferences: sweet potatoes are always a winner, as are bananas. Other things are a hit or miss (turkey or chicken with gravy, unless sweetened with carrots or prunes, is a no go). All in all he is really being a very good boy, and he eats everything, home made or store bought.

Since I am now a stay-at-stove-dad, for at least a few months, I see no reason to feed Charlie only store bought pots of baby food. I have plenty of time to cook his meals. Especially because babies are not particularly demanding in terms of variety: you can prepare carrots and dates on a Monday and feed him that until Wednesday night. But on the other hand, we also want him to eat store bought food: we want to be able to travel with him without having to worry "where will we cook for him?". He needs to be able to eat the Target bought pot as well as my chicken stew. And so far so good (and he actually seems to prefer the silky texture of store bought food, which I cannot replicate with a home blender).

Having the baby though has made me reconsider the type of food we buy. Since moving to the US we have increased the amount of organic food we buy. A big chunk of our income goes to Whole Foods, I am afraid to admit. Even after reading Pollan's book, buying organic seems the best choice: at least you are avoiding pesticides. This is especially true now that the baby is involved. So we are buying more and more organic stuff, and even the store bought processed baby food is organic for the most part.

Since we are not vegetarian, it didn't even occur to us to raise Charlie Brown vegetarian. He has a lot of bacon to eat, I am afraid. When he is out of my house, he can do however he pleases. But there is no escaping my bacon until he is with me, I am afraid. Having said that, most of his diet is vegetarian at the moment. And I must admit that some of the things I cook for him are pretty good also spread on a nice toast: like blended boiled carrots and dates...

Books: The Omnivore's dilemma

2012-02-07T11:08:00.002-06:00

The Omnivore's dilemma, by Michael Pollan, is one of those books that I approached with great hesitation. I was biased: I thought the author would try and teach me a lesson about how nasty and stupid eating meat and processed food is, and how wonderful the vegetarian and organic world is. My assumption was based on absolutely nothing. Luckily, I kept an open mind, so that I could prove once again to myself that you don't know what you don't know, and that if you base yourself on prejudices and on what you think you know, you won't go far.

The book is a wonderful read, and I have learnt so many things (did you know, for instance, that mushrooms are like flowers springing out from huge underground organism, called hypae, that seem to work like a neurological system linking hundreds, thousands of trees of the same forest, but that nobody knows exactly what they are? I certainly didn't know...)

The author sets on his quest for the perfect meal, following three different paths. The first path will lead him to buy a steer that will be processed by the meat processing industry. But the real star of this section is corn. Pollan in fact explains how corn has come to occupy every available nook in the American food chain, to the point that Americans are now literally made of corn. His conclusions about the industrial food processing alternative is that yes, it is cheap, but only because the final price that consumers pay does not reflect the real production costs. If one was to include in that final price also the costs of the use of pesticides, chemical substances, potential money you may need to spend to cure the diseases that that food may cause to you, the fast food burger would cost a lot more. And this, without even considering the conditions in which animals are kept and killed.

If his conclusion about the industrial food option were not surprising, his account of his "organic" experience was. Pollan goes to spend one week living and working on a farm that has refused the government's organic certification, on the ground that this certification now means absolutely nothing, and is designed to please big business. And indeed, if when you buy your milk from "grass fed cattle" or your eggs from "free range chicken" at Whole Foods you imagine happy beef cattle and chickens living in harmony on a green prairie, then you are delusional (like I admit I was). Yes, Pollan explains that if you are buying organic you are surely not buying things that were treated with pesticides. But that doesn't exclude a lot of other chemical substances which are instead still allowed. And do you know what "free range chicken" means? It means that they are in a cage, with a door which gives access outside. But since that door is closed for the first weeks of life of the chicken (as required by the US law), the chicken will most likely never develop the instinct of going through that door, even when it will be opened.

Not exactly what you thought, right?

His conclusion is in favor of those farms that still operate on a local scale. They alone - Pollan suggests - seem to be able to provide the potential buyer with the guarantee that the meat they are buying come from animals that lived freely, doing what they were supposed to do, and which have been killed humanely. A fallacy in his argument? He doesn't address the price issue. He does address it in the industrial food section, so I was expecting him to do the same here. But he doesn't. He simply says that the cost is lower than many thinks. And this bugs me, and I will explain myself in a minute.

The last section of the book sees the author hunting for pig and foraging mushrooms in California. In this section he deals with the moral issues surrounding eating meat and killing your own food. Whatever your position (omnivore, vegetarian, vegan) this is fascinating read.

His final conclusions is that neither the industrial food processing system nor the hunter/gatherer approaches are sustainable in the contemporary word. You are obviously not going every day to kill a beef cattle to make beef broth yourself. But you shouldn't even think that beef broth comes from a can, and costs 5c a gallon. He therefore seems to lean on the organic option, in spite of its fallacies and lies, and especially on the local movement.

There is part of me that agrees with him. But another part of me thinks that Pollan ignores the proverbial big elephant in the room: price. I can't stop thinking about Nigella Lawson's words abouve the locavore movement: i.e. that it is an elitist movement. This annoys me, the fact that the supporters of the idea that you need to eat local (and seasonal) refuse to concede that this food always costs more. There is nothing wrong in admitting that it costs more, that it is better quality and that it is better for you. But there is a lot wrong when idiots I talk to tell me that no, it is not true that food bought at the green city market of Chicago, for instance, is more expensive for my wallet than what you can buy at Jewel Osco's supermarkets. This is a fat lie, people. Rather than denying the evidence, let's just bring forward the argument that no food should be bought on price only: nobody would buy a car on price only. So why are we buying food on price only?
v

Kitchenware in America: nurturing my obsession

2012-02-06T08:07:00.000-06:00

As hinted by my obsession with cast iron pans, I am a huge sucker for kitchenware and cookbooks. Kitchen tools, plates, gadgets, pans: when I enter into a kitchenware shop I feel like the proverbial kid in a candy store. I even start to get stressed about the best strategy for browsing the shop: should I go directly to pick up things I need/want, and then browse the rest of the store to see if something else catches my eye? Or should I start from racks with things I don't particularly care about, and slowly make my way to my real objectives? What if while I do that, somebody else snatches the only remaining item of something I was looking for? And what if, while I go directly for my target, somebody buys the only remaining gadget of something so amazing that I haven't even heard of?

I know, I know...

Although I had this lingering obsession already while living in Europe, America has exacerbated it. Because kitchenware shops here are mind-blowing. The choice, the quality, the prices, the atmosphere are nothing like I have ever seen in the cities that I lived in or visited before (with a possible exception: in Tokyo I spent 5 hours in a kitchenware shop trying things I had never seen in my life; I bought so many things that I had to buy an extra bag to take them back home...and some of these things are still untouched).

When I was still living in Brussels I would make sure to always have time for at least two shops in my US business trips: Barnes & Nobles for books, and Williams-Sonoma for kitchenware/food. Yes, the prices at "Sonoma and Gomorra" (my nickname for this shop) are way high. But the pleasure I get from browsing it is embarassing.

For a country where most of the population does not and cannot cook, and rely on processed home made dishes, the quality of shops like Sonoma or Sur La Table may seem odd. However, once you get to understand how important are customer care, the strive for excellence and personal freedom for American society at large, it all makes sense: yes, there may be less people cooking than, say, in Italy or France. But what these people demand is huge variety of high quality tools. And they are ready to pay a steep price for it.

Speaking of steep price, though, my main problem with the US kitchenware shops is that often prices are actually way cheaper than in Europe...with the result that I always find a justification in my head to buy something new. I see a 12 inches cast iron skillet? Well, yes, I already have a 10-in and an 8-inch skillet, but hey, it is only $25...I already have five baking pans? Yes, but this one is 50% off, and it is one cm larger than the others I have...

My new Christmas dinnerware...

Another one of my favorite is Macy'. In Chicago the kitchenware department is located in the basement. When I feel down or homesick, this is where I go: browsing in Macy's kitchenware aisles. Which sounds sadder than it is, really.

Macy's is particularly good for its great sales. You see something that you like and all you need to do is wait a few weeks and you will be able to buy it at very, very low price. Before Christmas I had seen this very traditional collection of Christmas dinnerware (something that any housewife like me should have...). I waited and hop-la! I could snatch the entire set for a fraction of the price. And while at it, could I perhaps not take home this penguins winter wonderland dessert plates set, which was going for $9 down from $81? Only somebody with no heart could have left these little puppies there...

Do you believe me than I am here, in February, praying for November to come as fast as possible to be able to use these plates? There is something wrong with me.

My new Caribbean blue Le Creuset braiser:
how have I been able to cook without it
for so many years?

Anyway...I find that Americans here in Chicago are particularly obsessed with French brands of cooking tools. I don't know if this is a national obsession, but I am tempted to think it is. If French cuisine has lost its No. 1 spot in the preferences of American restaurant goers, the French allure still seems to conjure an image of quality in everything related to the kitchen.

Up until now I had always resisted the sirens of Le creuset, the iconic French cast iron enameled French ovens maker. The prices were way too high, and I was more than happy with my Lodge cast iron Dutch ovens and pans...But yesterday's visit at Sur La Table made my resistance melt: 20% off on already discounted Le Creuset's bakeware meant that this braiser in caribbean blue entered into my kitchen. Now I know myself: over the next few months I will obsess about owning some other pieces of the same color...

Food to fight six more weeks of winter

2012-02-02T08:36:00.000-06:00

Winter this year has been very mild. I could even throw in a short motorcycle tour of a few hours in January. This is pretty amazing, although I do miss the frozen lake. So the news that this morning Punxsutawney Phil has come out of his lair to see his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter, may not be so bad after all.

I am always fascinated at how certain traditions and beliefs exist in different cultures, but with different explanations. February 2, groundhog day, has very ancient roots. Romans used to celebrate Lupercalia at the beginning of February, purification rituals. The Catholic Church transformed this festivity into the Candle Festivity (candelora in Italian), to celebrate Jesus' appearance at the Temple.

What is interesting is that the belief that if there is good weather on February 2 we will have a long winter ahead of us exists everywhere. We even have a proverb in Italian that goes like this: per la santa Candelora, se nevica o se plora, dell'inverno siamo fora. Which means that if it rains or it snows on February 2, then winter is over.

Since our family by now is anything but a monolithic culture (we have even added an American son to the Italo-Belgian mix), we have made our own traditions for February 2: Belgians eat crepes on this date, and this is what we normally do at home (in certain parts of Italy they eat crespelle, which is basically the same thing). I like mine with brown sugar and lemon, while my wife generally goes for speculoos spread.

Then I always want to watch Bill Murray's movie Groundhog day, of course. The tradition also calls for me to fall asleep in the middle of it and for my wife to get upset because I forced her to watch a movie she doesn't like.

Happy Groundhog day everyone!

Super Bowl food madness

2012-01-25T09:31:00.001-06:00

The Super Bowl is the final game of the NFL championship, and it is normally held at the beginning of February. It culminates a long season of American football, which starts the Summer of the previous year.

Why is this relevant in a food blog like this? Because Super Bowl day is the second largest day of food consumption in the United States, after Thanksgiving, but before Christmas and New Year's Eve. Super Bowl day is also the the biggest winter grilling day of the year, with thousands of pounds of meat being sold. It is such an important "food day" that the US Department of Agriculture even has an page of its website dedicated on how to handle food for Super Bowl party! It is not a coincidence, then, than pretty much every recipe website or any food magazine is coming up with stories on how to cook your best Super Bowl food.

The tradition is for a relative large crowd (10-20 people is the norm) of friends to gather at somebody's house, and watch the game (and the many new commercials which make for half of the fun) while munching on large quantities of party food. Some classics include chicken hot wings, dips of some sort (mostly guacamole, but cheese balls - potentially with bacon - are also a must), pizza. Some fast facts (*):

Super Bowl fans spend around $50 million on food in the four days prior to the game...
Around 70 million pounds of avocados will be consumed, mostly prepared as guacamole dip. Considering the average weight of avocados, this means that a little less than 150,000,000 avocados will be eaten. That's a lot of avocados.
Where there is guacamole there are chips: 14,500 tons of chips are eaten on Super Bowl day (and 4,000 tons of pop corns)
Approximately 90 million pounds of chicken wings are eaten, roughly 450 million individual wings...

At the two super bowl parties I went to since I moved here, chili con carne also played an important role, but I don't know if this is a tradition or not.

Now, this may sound like easy food to prepare. So you may think that there is not a lot of cooking involved. You would be wrong, for two reasons: on the one hand, preparing something for 10-20 people is always challenging and time consuming. And on the other hand, often people try to fashion their food - either in shape or in presentation - in a super bowl related way, as you can see from the photos that I have taken from the internet.

All in all, it is a very fattening day, in which you end up eating a lot of junk food and drinking LOADS of beer. It is not by coincidence that apparently 6% of Americans call in sick on Monday after the game, and that convenience store 7-Eleven reports a 20% increase in antacid sales the day after...Also, according to the Insurance Information Institite, more drivers are involved in alcohol-related accidents on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year, with the exception of St. Patrick's day (can't beat the Irish).

For the record, this year Super Bowl game sees the Giants against the Patriots. But I only care about the food.

(*) The sources for the data are a variety of websites.

Pizza in America: mafia, slices and why eating a whole pie is a no-no

2012-01-23T11:12:00.001-06:00

Since coming to the US I have often wondered why Americans, who otherwise seem to be in love with pizza, find it absolutely strange to eat a whole pie on your own. In Italy - and pretty much everywhere else in Europe I have traveled to - the common thing is to order an entire pizza, thin crust, and eat the whole thing. In America I noticed that this is not the case. (I am obviously talking about the round Neapolitan style pizza, not the pizza al taglio).

This is how pizzas are served in the rest of the World. Not by the slice

If I can understand why you wouldn't (you couldn't, actually) eat an entire Chicago deep dish pizza on your own, I cannot understand why even thin crust is often served already sliced, and as a dish to share. Plus, in most of NY restaurants pizza seems to be offered by the slice: a very large slice, from a very large pie. But still a slice. Don't tell me it is because an entire pizza is too much to eat, because I will laugh in your face.

I hadn't given much thought about the reason behind this until last week. I was having a disappointing BBQ dinner with a couple of friends, and one mentioned that he had read something about the Italian American mafia obliging pizza parlors to sell pizza by the slice. I dig deeper and I found out a couple of interesting things.

As reported by a blogger of the Village Voice, Al Capone, the notorious Mafia boss from Chicago, owned several dairy farms in Wisconsin. To ensure that his farms got all the business they needed, he forced NY pizzerias to use his own cheese on their pizza. This was very different from the mozzarella cheese that Italian pizzazioli in the city were buying from farmers up in New York (incidentally, mozzarella is the only cheese that Wisconsin seems unable to make decently to this present day: for the rest, Wisconsin's cheese is on par - at times better - than any cheese I have tasted from France or Italy).

Apparently - and I admit that I don't understand the reasoning here - Al Capone only allowed certain pizza parlors, like the famous Lombardi, to use good local mozzarella, but only as long as they promised to never sell pizza by the slice. This would also give a new meaning to the many "No Slices" you can see on many awnings in many NY pizzerias: it would be a sort of a code for the Mafia, something saying "don't kill us please, we are using Mafia cheese". Or something like that.

No slices = mafia bought cheese?

According to many New Yorkers I have talked to - and as noted also on the post I have linked - the cheese served on pizza slices is often inferior to the one you can find on pizza served whole. I don't know if this is because the mafia still controls the cheese distribution, or if it is simply because the pizza parlors selling slices have a bigger need to cut down their costs, so they shop for inferior cheese.

However, I personally believe that if this Al Capone story is true, it could help explain why the pizza slice - nowhere to be found in Italy - is ubiquitous in the US: it all started with the mafia...

Incidentally, it seems that the mafia in the '70s also controlled the olive oil distribution, and that connections between the mafia and pizza parlors are very much still alive, as reported in this cute overview pizza-slice shaped, from the New York Magazine (click on it to view it larger).

Italian American cuisine

2012-01-18T11:21:00.001-06:00

The concept of Italian cuisine in America is heavily influenced by the first Southern Italian immigrants that got to Ellis Island at the end of the 19th century, and especially between 1900 and 1924. These were mostly very poor people from tiny little villages from Sicily. Some of them probably didn't even know that they were "Italians", since the Italian unification had taken place in 1861, and the news hadn't made it everywhere in Italy yet...These immigrants brought with them food traditions and "dishes" that shaped forever the image of Italian cuisine in America. But most of these dishes were - and still are - completely alien to the rest of Italy.

The Spaghetti meatballs!

There is a look of incredulity, almost of shock, that often appears on the face of my American friends, when we talk about what they consider Italian food and I tell them that I have never eaten it. When I say that the stuff they mention either doesn't exist in Italy, or it comes only from a specific part of the country (mostly Sicily), I am not sure they believe me. This issue has come up a few times already on the blog: about the braciole/braz'hul, about the sandwich called muffoletta, and more recently on my Facebook page speaking of Italian meatballs in tomato sauce (which I cooked yesterday for the first time in my life).

Now, to be honest, the first lasting Italian American communities had been founded by Northern, not Southern, Italians in Northern California in the 19th century. They had migrated there to get involved in the starting Napa Valley's wine business, and in the San Francisco's fishing fleet. However, the image of Italian American cuisine - and of Italian Americans - was provided by the Southern immigrants that moved to the East Coast: the red checked tablecloth, the tomato sauce on a huge plate of spaghetti, the meatballs, all these elements came from the South. A traveler to Italy of the 19th century would have had a very hard time to find these things North of Rome.

Yet, the image stuck.

Obviously Southern Italian cuisine adapted to the new American surroundings. The fast pace of the American life seems to be the major driver behind many of the now iconic Italian American dishes. Italian meals were normally a three/four course affairs, taking a good chunk of time out of your day. This couldn't work in the US: hence, the meat and the pasta dishes - originally separated in two courses - had to be merged into one single dish, with a salad as a side. Things needed to be faster. And here you are your spaghetti meatballs, your seafood fra diavolo, your meat dish with some pasta on the side.

The importance of meat in Italian American cuisine is very interesting. Back home, very few of these poor immigrants could afford to eat meat more than once a week (IF they could afford it at all). In the US, perhaps as a sign of a newly found prosperity, meat - and in particular beef - became a very important part of Italian cuisine. This desire to put as much meat as possible on the table lead also to the creation of a couple of typical Italian American dishes: the eggplant parmigiana, for instance, was modified and made with veal, becoming veal parmigiana. Something still unknown in Italy as of today.

Pizza, which is now as American as a cheeseburger, had some catch up to do: it really became popular only after WW2, when the US military came back home after having occupied the South of Italy for some time. During the occupation, soldiers had the chance to try the local pizza, and they loved it. And that's when pizza parlors started to pop out in the US like mushrooms after a rainy day in September.

At least until the end of the 1980s, Italian restaurants continued to be associated with cheap eateries with red checked tablecloth serving pasta dunk in red tomato sauce. It was in the '90s that a different perception of Italian cuisine started to appear. In parallel with the fall of elaborated French cuisine, which had dominated fine dining for two centuries in America (read my story on the rise and fall of French cuisine here), a different type of Italian food started to appear and be appreciated. Northern Italian, Tuscan food, started to achieve wider appeal. And now some of the most renowned US celebrity chefs are either of Italian origins or serving Italian food.

But if you still want to find your red checked table cloth, Lombardi's in New York city is still there.

The American Casual dining chain project

2012-01-15T18:51:00.000-06:00

As I had mentioned here, one of my 2012 projects is to eat in as many American casual dining chains as I can. Why? Because they are a major part of the American dining scene, and this blog is about understanding American cuisine. Plus, I think it is going to make for a fun (and child friendly) experience.

Now, some definitions. Casual dining restaurants are moderately priced restaurants, providing table service and made-to-order food. If you have been to the US, you will have seen restaurants such as Applebee's, Chili's, Red Lobster, Cracker Barrell, TGI Friday, Cheesecake Factory (some of these have an international presence). These are different from fast food restaurant chains, because they provide table service: you sit down, you are brought a menu, you order from it with a waiter, like in any other restaurants. The only difference is that they are part of a chain.

Dining restaurant chains are an American invention. Disagreement exists on which was the first restaurant chain. But it is a well established fact that between the 50's and the 60's some of the chains that we are now familiar with started to appear. Some of them offer typical American fare, with steaks, burgers, bar food, while others go after specific niches (Red lobster is specialized in seafood, Olive Garden in Italian American food).

My initial attitude towards these chains was skeptical. If I was ready to enter into a fast food restaurant chain and order a burger or a taco for 5$, I was a lot less inclined to enter into a casual dining chain and order an entire meal for 20$. I thought that these chains would never be able to provide a better service than the mum and pop's restaurants next door. I do remember passing in front of a Chili's restaurant in Chicago, seeing it packed, and wondering: why on earth would anyone want to go there, if there are so many other options?

I was wrong.

My reasoning had a fundamental flaw: it was anchored in my Italian and Belgian experience, where you can find pretty much everywhere, even in the most outlandish far away village, a decent mom and pop restaurant, serving decent food at a decent price. Look at Italy, and at its thousands of trattorias: I am not saying that they are always fantastic (they are not); but I am saying that if you stop by a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, chances are you are going to have a good meal for a decent price (unless you are in a very touristy area).

In my experience, this is not always true in the US. It may be true in large cities such as Chicago, New York, Washington: in large cities you can probably find small family operated diners and restaurants where you can have a good meal for a decent price. But Europeans often tend to forget that America is not New York. Or the East Coast or California. There is something else in between. A huge something else.

As soon as I started to venture even only 20-30 miles outside of Chicago on my motorcycle tours, going through small villages, I started to see the flaws in my argument. I would look for a local diner, a local roadhouse, assuming it would be ten times better than the fare offered at the Cracker Barrel chain next door. And I ended up having less than sub par experiences: dirty establishments, bland food, poor services. of course there are good independent diners. But I must say that outside major cities, they are the exceptions, not the rule (again, at least in my experience).

In our trips to Utah, Arizona, New mexico, my wife and I only had good food in the major cities and in Native American reservations...but other than that, we found ourselves desperately looking for a big chain sign along the highways. Our experience in eating at local family owned restaurants that we had stumbled upon our highways tours had given us too many stomach aches. And we are no wimps. Yet, we found ourselves increasingly going to the casual dining chains: a healthy salad, a good steak, a nice bowl of soup, in a clean environment. Hell, in Holbrook Arizona, a must-see spot on Route 66, the only place we found offering a decent breakfast in a clean environment was Macdonald's...

In a land where the phenomenon of the so called food deserts is so widespread, I started to see the value in these casual dining chains: consistently good food, wide choice, good prices. Some of these chains are actually very, very good: it is the case of the Cheesecake Factory, for instance, which I already talked about here.

Over the next twelve months I plan on eating in as many of these chains as possible, providing comments to you readers...you may consider this a dining guide for casual dining. I have created a specific page for this project, with a list of the restaurants I intend to eat at. If you have suggestions or recommendations, just let me know in the comment section.

Next stop: Chili's, a chain offering Southwestern/Mexican food.

American BBQ

2012-01-06T08:27:00.000-06:00

I realized that I haven't talked about one of the most traditional American things: barbecue. Readers unfamiliar with American BBQ may be frowning upon what I just wrote. The Tuscan Foodie has lost his mind...we have barbeque in Italy, or France, or pretty much everywhere! This is not an American thing, you will be thinking.

And boy: would you be wrong.

What we traditionally call barbecue in Italy, the simple form of quickly grilling meat or fish on an open pit, has evolved into a very serious artistic slow cooking form in the US, with regional variations that make a Kansas style BBQ something very different from a Texas BBQ. Texans in particular are very serious about their BBQ.

Kreuz Market BBQ, from Texas.

I remember one of the most mystical experiences (I cannot avoid using almost religious terms when I talk about the flavors of BBQ) was to enter into this giant BBQ joint, Kreuz Market, in Lockardt, Texas, the self-dubbed Capital of Barbeue. Two gigantic smokers, as big as the 18 wheels trucks that are the nightmares of any motorcyclists, were slowly cooking tons and tons of meat. The smell was Paradise. And the food we got - served in plain paper, with no forks or knives and with absolutely no sauce - was the tastiest meat we have ever had.

In much of Europe barbecue is often associated with quick preparation: you get your steak and your sausages, you throw them on the grill, you eat. Although this type of BBQ can obviously also be found in the US, the actual cuisine called BBQ is a different thing entirely. And it is as much to do with fast preparation as Berlusconi has to do with sexual abstinence: very little.

Certain traditional BBQ dishes (brisket, pulled pork), are extremely long preparations, requiring often more than 20 hours if you want to do them right. Texas BBQ, if I understand correctly, actually demands the longest preparation, because here the meat is cooked/smoked through indirect heat: the meat is not put on coals or a grill, but it is cooking standing next to a furnace which sends its smoke and heat towards the meat for hours.

If you are not salivating by now you have no heart, really.

Different American States have different traditions in barbecuing different animals (or different parts of the same animals). Variations can also be found in the sauces or rubs used to marinate the meat: from the mustard based sauce of South Carolina (I must admit, one of my favorites), to the Texas mop sauce, the sauce will tell you what type of BBQ you are eating as much as the cooking method.

Whatever the type of BBQ you are having though, the one feature that groups them all is that BBQ is served in joints which are as unpretentious as they come: metal chairs, metal tables, no towels. Some places - for instance Chicago Q - try to offer an upscale dining experience, with cloths on the table. But if you are going to eat BBQ and you can't be licking your fingers at the end of the meal, then you are in the wrong place, as far as I am concerned.

A typical BBQ joint interior: unpretentious...

Cooking good BBQ at home is not impossible. Provided your building allows for charcoal grills or at least gas grills. If - like me - you live in a place where the only grill allowed is electric, and no smoker, then you are out of luck. That's why my experiments with BBQ have been mostly limited to the classic quick grilling, and to the BBQ dishes that you can actually make at home in a slowcooker. The slowcooker is in fact an excellent alternative cooking method for some of the BBQ dishes: the extremely long cooking times allow the fat and the connective tissues of the meat to dissolve and give the meat that specific tender, off the bone appearance that is required in so many US BBQ dishes.

Baby back ribs, slowcooked and caramelized in the oven. Not a bad alternative...

I have devoted myself to two areas in particular: BBQ ribs and pulled pork (but this year I am going to start experimenting with brisket). Pulled pork is a US specialty that I disliked at first: In a very old post back in 2010 I indicated that that stuff was growing on me...now it hasn't just grown: it is one of my favorite dishes.

I have been playing it with quite some time, and I came up with a couple of recipes that I think are smashing good, if I do say so myself: pulled pork with dry tart cherries and cherry beer, with a cherry beer BBQ sauce, for instance. Interested?

The plan for 2012

2012-01-04T01:00:00.000-06:00

I am not going to call them New Year's resolutions: 2012 is going to be a tough year for a number of reasons, and I intend to treat food as pleasure, not as a resolution. They are more like a draft plan of attack for 2012, some guidelines that I hope to be able to follow to some degree. Here they are:

Eat in as many American diners' chains as possible. Chili's, Texas roadhouse, Olive garden, Red lobster...I have eaten in some of them, but not in all. I want to eat in as many as possible this year. Why? First of all because I think they are a quintessential part of the American dining scene, especially outside large cities. If you don't want to eat at fast foods, diners' chains are often your only options. In my experience the food served there is often superior to the one served in small city, non-chain diners. Yes, I will say it again: the food served in most chain restaurants is not bad. I am not saying is a gourmet experience. But good? Often yes. And what I like about them is that often they go with a theme: Mexican, bbq, even Tuscan...I am curious. And I think this makes for a fun, inexpensive and child-friendly project. And I think it will provide good writing material...

Eat in Cicago' culinary landmarks. Next to the inexpensive chain dining experience, I have another pet project, a tad more expensive. Chicago is home to some of the world's most renowned restaurants. Charlie Trotter (now closing in August 2012), Alinea...these are once in a lifetime experiences. And I intend to enjoy them this year. Will I be disappointed?

Cooking more recipes from the Marche's region. Now, the name of this blog is A Tuscan foodie in America. But as I said often, I am only half Tuscan, from my father's side. My mother is from the Italian region called Marche, which faces the Adriatic sea. As a result, the food I grew up w always a bit of a mixture of Tuscan, Marche's and northern Italian recipes (a big chunk of my family comes from Lombardy, near Milan). Although less known than Tuscany, both internationally and within Italy itself, Marche is a gem, both from a landscape and a food point of view. In an article of a couple of years ago that I cannot find, the New York Times ferred to it as a rougher Tuscany. My objective for 2012? Cook more recipes from the Marche region, and take you on this tour with me.

One year of food

2012-01-02T01:00:00.000-06:00

Exactly one year ago I had compiled a list of resolutions for 2011. Looking back, the glass is half full or half empty, depending on the way you look at it. I certainly did entertain more at home compared to the previous years, although you could argue that that's because we couldn't really go out that much in the evening, with a newborn in the house...I most certainly did bake a lot more than in the past: actually 2011 was the year of baking, if you will. And we did visit at least one US food mecca, New Orleans (I always meant to talk about it on the blog, but for some reason I never got around it). But I did fail miserably on all other accounts.

One year ago I also started my first real diet of my life. I will soon talk about this in more details, but to cut a long story short, even in this area the glass is half full and half empty. I did lose weight, but I did not achieve my objectives (and most certainly over the last three weeks I threw away a good chunk of 12 months of work).

Anyway, I think 2011 was overall a very good year from a food point of view. And I want to summarize it like this, with a photo for each of the 12 months. Happy New Year everyone, and I hope I can still count you among my readers for 2012!

Bread: I have been baking more bread in 2011 than in my entire life. Sourdoughs, ciabattas, Tuscan breads...name a bread: I am pretty sure I tried to bake it. I am not saying they all came out well...but some of them did!
Barbecue: it is official. In 2011 American barbecue cuisine became my No. 1 favorite cuisine, overtaking Mexican and Japanese BY FAR. I will soon talk about this new passion of mine.
Oysters: I have eaten more oysters in 2011 (and in very funky ways) than in my entire life. And in New Orleans they were so cheap (I mean, really cheap: 3 dollars for 6 oysters!)
Tuscan traditions: in my schizophrenia, in which I sometimes cook a purely American dish, next to a Mexican, next to a Belgian, next to a French, I tried not to forget my roots. Tuscan cantuccini help me in that sense.
New Orlean's beignet: good. Yet, overrated.
Raw shellfish: I have eaten a lot of this stuff this year...
Soft shell crab po-boy: one of the new foods I tried (not a fan though: I mean, it is ok, but it is a sandwich. I can't understand the excitement about it).
Cupcakes: I have been baking a lot of them. And I think I am getting decent at them, and my piping skills have improved a lot...
Christmas in Santa Fe: Green pork chili, next to red beef chili. This is what you get when you ask for a "Christmas" dish in New Mexico. 2011 was the year of the chili, among other things.
Snake: there is a first time for (almost) everything. And this year it was the first time for me to eat snake, in Arizona. It is ok: it tastes like dry chicken.
Thanksgiving: my first Thanksgiving as a cook. It went decently.
Schiacciata: at last, 2011 was the year I was able to replicate the schiacciata (focaccia bread) from back home!

Christmas beers

2011-12-21T01:00:00.001-06:00

Photo from Serious Eats.

The first year I was living in Belgium (many, many years ago, alas), I saw bottles dubbed Christmas beers for the first time. I wasn't a beer connoisseur (and neither I am now), but I assumed that this was a marketing gimmick to sell more beers during Christmas. Little did I know that Christmas beers were actually a very respected tradition, dating back to...when?

Depending on who you ask, you will hear different accounts of the history behind the so called Christmas beers. The story I heard living in Belgium was that Christmas beers started after WW2. At the end of the harvest period, brewers would put freshly harvested hop into their barrels, together with the remains from the previous season. Autumn providing the perfect temperatures for the fermentation of beer, by December these Christmas beers would be ready to be sold/given as presents to the best customers. Each brewery would of course put its signature into their Christmas beer, adding spices of their liking.

But this story may not fly if you talk to a Brit: he will tell you that British brewers had been making Christmas beers for a very long time, well before Belgians copied this tradition. But then again, talk to Scandinavians, and they will tell you that they invented the tradition: hundreds of years ago, Scandinavians would celebrate Jolner in December, in honor of one of their gods, Thor. In preparation of that celebration, they would start preparing a special drink in September/October, for it to be ready in December. They called this drink Julol.

Personally I am inclined to go with a mixture of these stories: I think the Scandinavians did invent this, although it had nothing to do with Christmas; the British imported the whole affair in the UK, but the Belgians were those who relaunched the whole tradition after WW2. Do I have any ground to think that this is how it went? Nope.

Christmas beers are richer than "normal" beers: denser, more aromatic, spicier, with a higher alcohol content, they are made of two different types of malts. Although there are a couple of "blonde" Christmas beers, the vast majority are dark beers, some of them almost pitch-black.

As many things-Belgian, Christmas beers go strong in the US. The American beer scene is, even to a non-expert like me, pretty impressive: artisanal beers are pretty lively, but Belgian beers are dominating the import markets (+29% in 2011 compared to 2010...). However, next to many traditional Belgian Christmas beers (Delirium Noel, N'ice Chouffe, Fantome de Noel), you will also find American and Canadian Christmas beers that are very, very good.

Christmas beers are a wonderful thing, and make for a beautiful Christmas present, if you are still undecided about what to give. Here is a list of 8 Christmas beers, some Belgian, some North American chosen by the site Serious Eats. I have had a few of them (Fantome de Noel, Mad Elf), and they are very good.

The all American Mac and Cheese tradition

2011-12-19T08:33:00.001-06:00

If Americans were to single out one meal as their favorite comfort food, there is no question that macaroni and cheese (mac & cheese for friends) would win hands down. The overcooked, super soft pasta covered in melting cheese is something that most Italians do not even dare to get close to. If there is one thing that scares the hell out of Italians more than non-Italian food is food that is "similar" to Italian, but - as they would put it - it is an Italian violated.

Photo from the website My recipes

And let's be frank: nothing says violation of pasta more than a good, gooey, overcheesy bowl of mac & heese. It is true that some traditional Italian pasta dishes are technically mac & cheese: spaghetti cacio e pepe are nothing more than noodles with pecorino cheese and pepper; pasta alla ricotta is nothing more than pasta with ricotta cheese. Yet, nothing is more un-Italian than mac & cheese. It is even a bigger violation than the Chicago pizza, that at least resembles a Sicilian sfincione. In a good mac & cheese the pasta (traditionally tubolar "elbow" pasta) is boiled well past its al dente point, and then baked with a cheese sauce so as to become almost a smooth paste of starch and melted cheese. Sometimes you can add a crust of crunchy crumbs on top, but that's considered fancy in many parts of America.

Plus, this dish is almost never considered an entree, rather a side dish that one chooses to replace vegetables. YES!

Now, I often said (for instance, here) that Italians are stupid to even refuse to taste certain food simply because it is not Italian or because it seems to go against every rule of Italian cuisine. And my position is exactly the same also on mac & cheese: this stuff is D E L I C I O U S.

The history of this dish is quite interesting. The first to import pasta making machines from Italy to the US was Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of the 19th century. Pasta had already appeared here and there, but it was only with the French fleeing the French revolution that pasta factories were then created. Although there are several "recipes" of what resembles mac & cheese popping out here and there, the original mac & cheese recipe is attributed to Mary Randolph, the author of the book The Virginia Housewife. Her brother was the son in law of Thomas Jefferson, so perhaps it is not by accident that she came up with what is considered the first REAL mac & cheese recipe:

Since then, mac & cheese has become first a Southerner typical dish, then an African American specialty, and finally a national obsession. Kraft introduced its mac & cheese in 1937, and its ubiquitous blue box is still the market leader. Kids grow up loving it, and I can't blame them.

Now, since I moved here I have been (eating and) experimenting a lot with mac & cheese. Recently I also organized a mac & cheese dinner, where guests were invited to bring their own versions of mac & cheese. If it is true that the original version only calls for pasta, butter, cheese, the variations are infinite: I have eaten mac & cheese with lobster, with burnt tips (a barbecue specialty), apples and walnuts, bacon, hot chiles, herbs...so the idea of the dinner was to see what people could come up with.

The mac & cheese options at the Tuscan Foodie's house: a traditional one, one topped with fried onion rings, one with bacon and jalapenos, one with radicchio and one with walnuts and apples...

The dinner came out well, if I do say so myself: we ate like pigs, and there were two mac and cheese that really stood out. One with apples and walnuts that was subtle, yet very cheesy, and then there was a heart attack chili, with I can't remember how many kilos of cheese had in it, and that was smothered with a crust of fried onion rings. Boy, was that thing GOOD. My liver was crying for mercy at every bite, but I kept on going. For science, of course.

I don't think anyone can accuse me of not doing enough to embrace the culture I am living in, right?
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No-knead schiacciata with potato in the dough

2011-12-15T01:00:00.000-06:00

Before I give you the recipe for this schiacciata, let me explain a couple of things. If you are not interested, scroll down to read the recipe, or just click here to download it or print it, and go try it.

Schiacciata is as Tuscan as the leaning Tower of Pisa: you eat it every day, either as a snack mid-morning, or at lunch, or as a mid-afternoon snack, or at dinner. Or - at least in my family - in the morning AND at lunch AND at dinner. Alas, finding a good schiacciata outside of Italy is difficult. And that's what got me into bread and schiacciata baking: the need to replicate the flavors that i couldn't find anywhere else.

The perfect morning snack. The perfect lunch. The perfect mid-afternoon snack. The perfect dinner.

What is schiacciata, you may ask? For the sake of brevity, let's just say that schiacciata is the name used in Tuscany to indicate what is elsewhere known as focaccia bread. I am half lying saying this, because there are some differences, and focaccia is a very confusing word in Italian, sometimes indicating even sweets, panettone style. I will get back to the linguistic differences of schiacciata and focaccia. For the time being though, let's just say that if you are in Tuscany and go to a bakery you are going to ask for schiacciata and not focaccia.

At its core, schiacciata is a very simple thing: a flattened bread (schiacciare in Italian means to flatten), containing three basic ingredients (flour, yeast, water). But the infinite ratios to combine these ingredients (and the different quality in the flours and the water), the addition of other elements (olive oil, herbs...), and the climatic conditions mean that 1) a lot of different products go by the same term and that 2) it is very difficult to consistently obtain the same product at home.

As you may have understood from my previous posts about schiacciata baking, this has almost become an obsession of mine. I am spending a lot of my free time baking schiacciate from different recipes, from books, blogs, conversations with old Italian ladies...each one comes out different. Some of them I discard after the first attempt, because, honestly, they suck. Some I spend weeks baking them again and again to make them come out as I want them. I even baked a sweet focaccia with dried fruits and jams as dessert once. (And yes, it was very good).

Some of the focaccia bread I have baked...

Today I want to share with you the recipe that got me started, and that I baked and altered, baked and altered, baked and altered, until I consistently started to get what I wanted: a schiacciata with a crisp crust, a moist crumb, tall enough to be sliced open and eaten with cold cuts, but not as tall as to lose its crunchiness and become too airy when eaten on its own.

I developed this recipe starting from the no-kneading recipe given by Jim Lahey in his "My Bread" book. Lahey's method for bread baking calls for a lot less yeast and a lot less kneading (almost none). As a trade off, it requires extremely long rising time, sometimes as long as 24 hours (although this is not the case for this schiacciata). According to Lahey, working the dough less but let it rise longer, develops a bread structure stronger than what you can obtain with longer kneading and shorter rising times. I can confirm this: I baked tens of focaccia recipes requiring longer kneading times, and none of them has given me the same strength in the schiacciata crumbs (I am not saying the no-kneading method is the best for every bread, of course. All I am saying is that it seemed to work for this specific schiacciata I wanted).

Obviously Lahey hasn't invented anything, and he admits it openly: this method was used already in Roman times, and often in Middle Age's Tuscan bread making.

My obsession started now more than 18 months ago. Since then I have actually developed another recipe, with no potato in the dough, which has become my absolute favorite. I will publish it some other time, if you are interested. However, every guest we have seems to prefer this "potato" version, so here you go.

No-knead schiacciata with potato in the dough
DOWNLOAD OR PRINT THIS RECIPE

The final product will look like this

This schiacciata takes very little active time to prepare, but it takes a long time to rise (twice), and you should plan accordingly. From the moment you start to the moment the schiacciata is out of the oven at least 5 hours will have passed. In cold weathers, make that 6 or 7.

For this particular version of schiacciata, in my experience all purpose flour seems to work better than bread flour, which has a higher protein content: the schiacciata comes out less dry. However, if you only have bread flour, it will do perfectly (for Italians I would recommend OO flour). As for the potato to use: russet potatoes seem to work better than Yukon gold: Yukon gold leave the crumbs too moist to my taste, but any yellow potato will do the trick (I even tried it with a sweet potato and it came out delicious...). The potato in the dough serves to moisten the crumbs and to make the schiacciata lighter, since it replaces part of the flour.

I call for honey or sugar in my recipe: both help the flour ferment. I prefer honey because it gives a darker crust, but sugar will work just as perfectly.

Also, this is a no-topping recipe, perfect to be cut open and filled with cold cuts. This is the real deal. For this reason, there are no herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, onions) nor olives added on top. What I am giving you is a "vessel" to transport the cold cuts' flavors, but which is also delicious on its own. But of course you can add whatever herb you want. Keep in mind though, that adding "wet" ingredients, such as onions and olives, will have an impact on the rising times and on the fermentation.

Ingredients

600 gr (4 1/2 cups) all purpose or bread flour (or 00 for my Italian readers)
600 gr water (2 1/2 cups)
1 potato (approximately 200 grams)
4 gr sugar (1 tsp) OR 10gr honey (1 tsp)
10 gr dry yeast (or 30 grams fresh yeast - lievito di birra - diluted in a finger of water)
5 gr table salt (3/4 tsp)
10 gr coarse salt (if you don't have it, you can use regular table salt) for dusting the dough
olive oil: enough to coat the pan and the top of the dough, approximately 50-70gr (1/4 cup)

How to make it

Cut the potatoes in cubes, put them with the cold water in a sauce pan, and bring to boil, covered, over high heat. Cook until the potato is very tender (you need to be able to cut through it with a fork), about 15 minutes. Keep the sauce pan covered, or else the water will evaporate, leaving you with a dough non wet enough.

With an immersion blender (or in a blender) pure' the potato with its water. Let the mixture rest until it gets cool enough to touch, but not still warm. It will take about an hour.

In a large bowl, sift the flour, then stir in the yeast, the sugar (or the honey), the salt, the water with the potato. Mix with your hands or with a wooden spoon for about a minute, until you have an extremely wet dough (there is a 1:1 flour/water ratio!). Cover with plastic wrap and put this in a draft-free spot to rise for 3 hours, or until the dough has at least doubled, but preferentially tripled. (Remember that - as for any baking - the rising times and fermentation are heavily conditioned by the atmospheric pressure, the humidity, temperature...this is why a good recipe during the summer may not work as well during the winter. Put the dough to rise in a draft-free spot. The oven is perfect. A trick I sometimes use is to turn the light of the oven on (NOT THE OVEN) and, with a thermometer, I check that the temperature is at 25C/77F. If the temperature goes up, I turn the light off: fermentation above 25C/77F will give a nasty yeasty flavor and smell to your schiacciata - or to any bread, really).

Oil a 13 X 18 inches (33X40cm) pan (beware: a smaller or larger pan will give you a thicker or thinner schiacciata than the one I took photos of, altering the flavor and consistency: you may even like it more, or less, who knows). Pour the dough onto the pan: it will be very soft, sticky and messy. Oil your fingers, and use your hands to gently press the dough down, so as to extend it to cover the whole pan, creating a surface of an even thickness. (See the photo below).

Using your fingertips, create dimples in the dough (no long nails, please): this is typical of any schiacciata. Drizzle with olive oil, and spread the coarse salt evenly (table salt will also be fine).

Let the dough rest around 1 hour, or until it has risen to the (or over the) edges of the pan. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F).

Put the pan into the oven on the middle rack, paying attention not to move it too violently, or else the dough will collapse. Baking times vary a lot: from a minimum of 20 minutes to a maximum of 45 minutes. Just make sure you have a golden brown crusted top (see photo below).

Take the schiacciata out of the oven, let it rest a minute. Take it out of the pan, gently, so as not to break it. Let it rest using a cookie rack or something that lets air pass underneath, or else the schiacciata will become soggy.

Slice after at least 5 mintues and devour it...

Schiacciata can be served warm or cold, and can be frozen in air-tight containers.

1) The ingredients; 2) sift the flour; 3) cook the potato until it is soft, but it doesn't break out completely; 4) mix the wet dough; 5) let the dough rest for at least 3 hours; 6) the dough has risen and fermented; 7) pull the dough onto an oiled pan; 9) spread the dough to cover the entire surface of the pan; 9) after 1 hour the dough has risen again; 10) cook in the oven at 400F/200C; 11) and 12) the schiacciata is ready. Look at that crumb and that crust...

Downloadable and printable recipes

2011-12-13T11:26:00.002-06:00

Although this is not really a recipe blog, I have been publishing a few recipes over the past 18 months, and more are coming your way (*). As of today I am launching a new feature: each recipe can be opened in a separate page for easy download and print-out.

You can access the downloadable and printable versions of each of my recipes either from this "recipe page", or via each single post containing the recipe. For instance, this is how the downloadable and printable version of my recipe for Pasta e fagioli, and for Risotto with butternut squash, sage and chile de arbol look like.

I have formatted each recipe so as to be on two pages maximum. I have not changed them from my original posts, but I have eliminated the introductions and the notes about how I came about developing that recipe. You will still be able to read that stuff on the blog.

I hope you will find this useful. I personally don't like to follow a recipe from a blog, because the formatting is a bit off. This will give you something that is condensed and that will look perfect if you want to print it out, include it in your files or get dirty in the kitchen. So have a look at the recipes page, and tell me what you think!

(*) Next in line, this coming Thursday, the schiacciata - focaccia bread - with potato in its dough.
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