A Tuscan foodie in America

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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Steakhouses of Chicago

2011-12-12T10:44:00.000-06:00

Chicago without its steakhouses would be like the seaside without water. This is a city that lives and breathes meat. It is a place where it is perfectly normal to eat bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with sausages as a side dish, probably counting as vegetables. I mean, they even have a baconfest here! Those who knew me from before can understand why I love it here.

The meat is king. No, of course you are not going to starve if you are a vegetarian or even vegan. But you are going to miss one of the life changing experiences of dining in America: the steakhouse.

Now, a steakhouse is exactly what the name implies: a place where you eat steaks. We eat steaks in Europe, believe me, but we do not have the whole steakhouse concept. More often than not, there is a certain decor that goes with the name, with wood-plastered walls, wooden tables, an atmosphere of power, fat cat arrogance, exuding from everywhere. Some of the most famous steakhouses in Chicago even play on their criminal past: local big mafia criminals (there were a lot of that, and yes, Italy contributed more than a fair share) used to meet and decide who to kill in some of these steakhouses (the Chicago Chop House sports a wall with photos of Al Capone).

There are exceptions, obviously. There are always exceptions in life, but this is pretty much standards.

Porterhouse steak at Gibson's: this thing is probably 1.5 kilos...for one person. Photo from Dining Chicago

Now, some of the best steakhouses in America are to be found in Chicago. It is not just me saying this: Chicago is increasingly recognized as one of the top food capitals of the world. On the other hand, you shouldn't be surprised: if you watch Top Chef or other similar programs on TV, you will see that Chicago chefs are almost always present (6 out 16 contestants of this season are from Chicago restaurants...)

Anyway: over the past 3 years (time flies), we have been eating in a A LOT of steakhouses. The price range varies, but no matter where you go, there is a mathematical equation that will hold true: the mass of your body will increase while the mass of your wallet's content is going to shrink. Portions are normally gigantic (I mean it). And you should expect to pay at least $50 per person. And I say "at least", because if you want to go all French on me with the wine, then you are going to spend money as a drunken sailor.

This a brief review of some of the steakhouses we ate in Chicago, in order of preference...

Gibson's

A Chicago institution, it is for the steakhouse with the best meat in Chicago. Prices are steep, but not as they appear at first sight: included in the price of your steak is a salad or a soup, which in other steakhouses would set you off an additional 10-15$. Service is very good, old style. Two negative points: desserts are as gigantic as they are lacking in flavor. And the waiting times are just ridiculous, even if you have a reservation. (Good place also if you are in town looking for a lady...Gibson's bar is a sort of high-end meat market).

Carmichael's

In the West Loop, Carmichael's is most definitely not a place you go to for its glamour. But for us it has by far the best price/quality ratio we have found in Chicago. Pay attention: I am not saying it has the best meat (although it is pretty good and on par with what you can find in other posher steakhouses): but the prices are unbeatable for what you get. A steakhouse that elsewhere would cost 45$ will cost 30$ in Carmichael's. Great desserts and free valet...

Smith and Wollenski
Yes, it is a chain (although a very high end chain), but the food and the location (especially during the Summer, when you can seat on the patio by the Chicago river) is just very, very good. One of my favorites, with the flavor of the meat rivaling Gibson's.

Morton's
One of Chicago's institutions, with different locations, it is good. Just not as good as Gibson's, while the prices are the same. Plus, their central location, in a dungeon with no windows, just doesn't do it for me.

Chicago's Firehouse
They describe themselves as a steakhouse, but I would respectfully disagree. They are a very good all American restaurants, where fish and other items on the menu have consistently always been better than their (limited offer of) steaks.Still, the steaks are good (it is just that everything else is outstanding, not simply good).

Ruth's Chris
Also a high end chain, they are known for cooking their steaks in butter. The food is good, but I just prefer my steak without the butter flavor.

Chicago Chophouse
Very old school, similar to Gibson's, without the meat market scene. Very good steaks. More than in other places, the atmosphere sweats a certain air of power.

N9NE
Very hip, with a beautiful decor, this steakhouse is very different from all the ones I have mentioned above. It doesn't have the look nor the feel of a traditional steakhouse. Yet, the food is good. But it is too hip to top my list. Nice place though if you want to bring a lady friend who likes shiny things.

Keefer's chophouse
Decent steaks, nice bar and atmosphere, but it just doesn't have either the allure or the flavors or the price quality ratio of other places.

Chicago Cuts
Pretentious, expensive and the exact opposite of Carmichael: the price quality ratio is just off. The meat is good, but it is not Gibson's good. So the prices are not justified. Plus, they have Apple iPad's at the tables to choose your wine: douchebags alert!

Kinzie Chop house
Same thing as for Chicago Cuts: they try hard - even harder than most, in terms of keeping their prices way HIGH - but they are just not as good as Gibson's.

David Burke's Primehouse
We went there with high expectations. We came out disappointed, and feeling robbed. That's all I will say.

Gene & Georgetti
They describe themselves as an Italian steakhouse. Frankly, it was a major disappointment. The meat is possibly the worst we had in Chicago, and the service was not good. Plus, the room we were sitting in felt like a bad dream, with badly painted images of Italian landscapes. Not for me, thanks.
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Landscapes of food

2011-12-09T01:00:00.000-06:00

I don't know why, but I often look at food and I see landscapes. I see similarities with earthly landscapes (cliffs, rocks, deserts), and sometimes I even see surfaces of other planets, with immensely high volcanoes, alien canyons, strangely colored seas. I have asked around, and none of my friends and acquaintances seem to experience the same thing. So I stopped asking. But I kept on seeing landscapes. And taking photos of them. (What about you? Do you also see landscapes in food? )

Here is a selection of what I see...(landscapes of food are better seen with larger images: so click on them and a larger version will open up). (*)

The cracked-up desert of Planet Castagnaccio (recipe here)

The inabitable surface of Planet Schiacciata (focaccia bread)

The surface of planet Schiacciata again: notice its high mountains and its lakes of oil.

Another region of the unwelcoming planet Schiacciata.

The deep canyons of Beef Stew, and its steep cliffs.

The snowy planet of Unbaked Mac & Cheese.

Rice swimming in the Sea of planet Butternut Squash and sage risotto (recipe here)

The Yellow Cliffs of caramelized apple, over the stormy Black Sea. (Recipe here)

The crater of pasta e fagioli (recipe here).

(*) Yes, I know: I had promised in my previous post that I would have given you the recipe for my schiacciata (focaccia bread). But I didn't have time to bake it nor to take photos of the procedure. I am going to do so this coming weekend, and post the recipe next week. I promise.
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Success and failure in baking focaccia

2011-12-07T07:46:00.001-06:00

Failure and success...on the same day

As we all know, for each dish we want to cook, there are hundreds of different recipes. Each cookbook we own, each blog we follow, each TV show we watch gingerly swears that the recipe they have is the best for that specific dish.

I assume that what most people do when they want to check which recipe of a given dish is the best is to cook first one, then another one maybe one or two weeks later, then another one month later. This is certainly what I normally do. But this is not really a good testing procedure. From one day to another, your ingredients may change (you may be using a different type of flour with a different gluten content, which affects your dough); you may be using different tools, because the pan you used last time broke, or it is dirty and you don't feel like washing it; you have less time to cook, so you actually bend the cooking time; if you are baking, the atmosphere pressure on one day can really influence the final result, for better of for worse; or, simply, your cooking mojo one day is way up and the other day is way down, so that whatever you cook turns out a mess.

Plus, there is the memory factor: when you taste today a different version of a dish you also cooked two weeks ago, your memory may play tricks on you...everything in the past seems kind of better (but I don't want to get too philosophical here...).

So there is only one way to really test two or three recipes of the same dish: cook them all on the same day, using the same basic ingredients, the same tools, and eat them all the same day. This is a very time consuming process, and unless you are a nerd, it is something that you won't be doing very often.

It had been a while since I last had done something like that, so I decided to do it to test two recipes of focaccia genovese, a focaccia bread typical of Genoa, a city in the North of Italy. As those who follow me on my Facebook page know, I am in a phase in which I am obsessed with finding the perfect dough for pizza and schiacciata (the focaccia bread eaten in Pisa). So this was part of the process.

Pisa (my hometown) and Genoa are a little more than a 100 miles away, but they hate each other for historical reasons. Back in the day, the two Repubbliche Marinare (Sea Republics) were the great powers fighting for dominion over the Mediterranean. Pisa was finally defeated from Genoa in a famous battle, and, as I had explained here, it was on that occasion that one of my favorite dishes, cecina (farinata in Genoa) was created.

Focaccia genovese differs from the schiacciata from Pisa for...almost nothing, really. In many bakeries in Pisa you will get exactly the same focaccia you get in Genoa, with the typical white holes in it, caused by an emulsion of water and oil spread on top of it before baking it.

So, what I did was simple. I took two recipes for focaccia genovese, one from a new bread and baking book I recently got from Italy, and another one from a famous baking blog. I cooked them on the same rainy day, using the same flour, the same salt, the same honey, the same water, the same yeast. I even used exactly the same baking pans, of the same brand and size. For each of them I followed the recommended kneading and raising times. I calculated timing so as to have the two doughs risen and ready to bake exactly at the same time, so as to cook them in parallel in my two ovens.

The two doughs ready to go in the oven. You can already see where this is going....

But what I got were two very different things. One was perfect; the other one was not.

Perfection (almost) on your left - disaster (total) on your right.

The one from the book (on the left in the photos) came out almost as good as those that I remember from my youth (memories again...). It lacked salt, and it was a bit too high for my taste. While preparing it, I knew that the large amount of flour it called for would have made it too dense and too think for the pan I had. But the book didn't provide the size of the pan to use (boy, don't I HATE baking books that are not precise...). But all in all, this is a recipe that I could improve easily, and in a few times it would get very good.

The one that came out almost pefect: oily, crunchy, but a bit too thick.

But the other one? What the F happened to the other one? It didn't develop its crust underneath...and I have no idea why. The flavor of the top was actually very, very good, better even that the one that came out well (remember, the ingredients were the same, but in different proportions). But by all means, this was an utter failure.

The one baked from the recipe from a blog didn't develop a crust underneath...

I will not give you either the recipe for the "good one" or the name of the blog I took the failed recipe from. After all, I could have made something wrong myself, and I intend to give it another try. But what I will do, is give you the recipe of my favorite schiacciata recipe, the one I perfected over the past 10 months...in the next post! Come back, because the one I bake looks like this:

The real deal: tune in for the recipe in the next post...

Our first Thanksgiving dinner as cooks

2011-12-05T01:00:00.000-06:00

Da beast (with socks...our host was very proud of the socks...)

And so my first American Thanksgiving as a cook came and went...Although technically this was my third Thanksgiving in the US, this was the first one where I actually was in charge of half of the menu. The other half - the more important one, to be honest - was the responsibility of our host, a fellow Italian who is a very good cook. Hers was the task of cooking the perfect turkey, and boy, did she deliver...She also had to make the stuffing, the potatoes, the gravy and a pecan pie.

Our task was to fill in the gaps: we had to bake some artisan bread, some focaccia bread, some starters, the cranberries chutney, a sweet potato side dish and a pumpkin cheesecake pie. The idea was to have a traditional American menu, although the only American attending the evening was Charlie Brown (my not yet 5-month old son), who really doesn't care about any food outside his bottle. Everybody else was Italian...My impression is that we made a pretty decent job in maintaining the American cooking spirit, with the turkey and the traditional sides and stuffing. Our only Italian variations were in the appetizers (fried bread with either chicken liver pate' or a mushroom sauce), and in the breads. For the rest we tried to keep it real.

The Turkey, the spread, the plate...

Surprisingly, my sweet potato, brown sugar & pecan crusted casserole was a hit. Let me explain for the non-Americans here. Traditionally on Thanksgiving, many Americans eat a sweet potato side dish with marshmallows on top. I ate it once, many years ago, when an American living in Brussels had us over for what was my first Thanksgiving dinner. And I loved it. I love sweet potatoes, and I love to eat meat with sweet sauces and sweet side dishes. But when I proposed to have something similar for our Thanksgiving dinner, the idea wasn't exactly welcomed. Whereas our host was too polite to tell me to go to hell, my mother wasn't (my family visited for Thanksgiving, in the purest American spirit). So I turned to another recipe, from the New York Times cookbook, which I adapted to make it less sweet, and to give it some heat with the right amount of paprika.

Sweet potato, brown sugar and pecan casserole...with a kick

I expected the dish to remain almost untouched at dinner: even if less sweet than the version with marshmallows, this thing had a lot of brown sugar in it...But I was very wrong: we almost finished it!

The cranberry chutney came out also very good, but there we really had to deviate a lot from the original recipe (taken again from the New York Times cookbook, which has become my go-to cookbook for US food). I had never had cranberries, and let me tell you, they are nasty little berries. They are as sour as taxes, and they need a lot of sweetness to be edible. Good thing is that we realized this in mid-course, and we were able to adjust things, and it turned out very well.

The cranberry chutney: cranberries are evil.

And now Christmas is fast approaching...we will spend it here for the first time, and I am already thinking about the menu...

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-22T10:27:00.001-06:00

Same cartoon as last year, by hey, Peanuts are a classic! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, see you next week!

Sweet surprise - calzone with caramelized apples, raisins and pine nuts (and a few notes on pizza making at home)

2011-11-18T07:59:00.001-06:00

Before I give you the recipe (at the bottom of this post), I need to spend a few words about the issues surrounding home making pizza. If you are not interested, just scroll down to the recipe and enjoy it. I promise, I won't be offended...

Growing up, Thursday nights at my house meant only one thing: home made pizza. My mother would bake two gigantic pans, one with tomato and cheese pizza, and the other one with focaccia stuffed with Tuscan sausages or prosciutto cotto. Recently, and using the birth of my son Charlie Brown as an excuse, I decided to initiate this Thursday night pizza tradition at my house (never mind that Charlie Brown is only 4 1/2 months old so he really doesn't care about pizza...)

Now, there are two approaches to home pizza making: 1) try and replicate with home equipment the results obtained by professional pizzerias, with their wood fire ovens worth thousands of $, and inevitably fail; or 2) acknowledge that it is impossible to make the perfect Neapolitan pizza at home, without a wood fire oven, and go for a different style of pizza, most commonly known in Italy as "pizza al taglio" (pizza to be served cut in pieces).

Classic pizza al taglio

The pizza my mother still makes belongs firmly in the second camp. But I have met many people who have tried to cook a perfect pizza napoletana at home. I won't even go into the problems related to the perpetual quest for the perfect home pizza dough, as elusive as the Holy Graal, because I could write a book about it. The fact is that home equipment cannot make pizza napoletana as the one you buy in pizzerias. It is as simple as that. I have heard of people buying electric pizza ovens for 50$ at a supermarket, persuaded by advertisement agencies that this was all they needed: surprisingly (!) they failed. I have heard of people who managed to remove the safety switch of their home convection ovens, so as to achieve higher temperatures than those normally allowed: surprisingly (!) they failed (and some of them set their house on fire...idiots). I have heard a lot of people buying 20-40$ pizza stones to use in the traditional ovens: they failed.

After toying for a very limited time with idea No. 1, and realizing that I was going nowhere, I safely came back to camp No. 2. Since then things have been looking good.

Usually pizza al taglio is cooked in electric ovens, in large rectangular pans, and its dough is much thicker than the one for neapolitan pizza. It is sold by weight, in pieces which are cut at the customer's request (hence, its name), who will eat it either standing on the spot, or walking in the street. The advantages of pizza al taglio is that you can really make it with any toppings you like. It is basically what Americans call flat bread, only much bigger. You want to put thinly sliced potatoes with truffle oil on your pizza? No problem. Onions and thyme? Done. Mushrooms and salami? Go ahead. Pizza and nutella? Well, paradise on your tongue.

Yesterday, while making a - very good - butternut squash, sage and blue cheese pizza, I wondered: why not bending the rules of pizza making also for the calzone, and prepare one filled with caramelized fruits? I mean, what could go wrong with that? Well, I have news for you: NOTHING could wrong with that. On the contrary, you have yourself a delicious desserts that is easy to make, and enormously satisfying...

"Sweet surprise" - calzone with caramelized apples, raisins and pine nuts
DOWNLOAD OR PRINT THIS RECIPE

Sweet surprise

This is the perfect way to end a home made pizza night. You can use any pizza dough you are happy with, even those you can buy at supermarkets. I personally use Jim Lahey's no-knead pizza dough recipe, and it works well: you can find it here. You may also choose to make two smaller calzones with the same ingredients, rather than a single big one. It is up to you. Use parchment paper: this will help you ease the calzone in and out of the oven, and it will prevent the calzone to stick to whatever pan you are using. And do not omit the confectionery sugar at the end: it is incredible the difference it makes...

Ingredients (1 calzone serves 2 people)

Two apples, peeled and cut into 0.5 in (1 1/2 cm) cubes
2 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp sugar (I use 2 tbsp of brown sugar and 1 tbsp of regular sugar)
1/4 cup of amaretto (or brandy)
a handful of pine nuts
a handful of brown raisins
enough pizza dough for a single margherita pizza (if you don't have your own dough recipe, look here)
1 tbsp confectioners sugar

How to make it

Heat the oven to 500 F (260 C).
Melt the butter in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the apples, the raisins, the pine nuts and stir, to coat them all in butter. Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring regularly, until the apple are golden brown, and are soft, but not soft enough to break down.
Add the sugar, stir and cook for 3-5 minutes, or until the sugar has melted and has coated the fruits. Take off the fire and set aside.
Using a dough roller, shape a disk as if you were preparing a pizza margherita (around 12 inches/30 cm). Place the dough on parchment paper. I usually put the parchment paper on a wood cutter, that I then use as a pizza peel to ease the parchment paper (and whatever is on it) into the oven.
Place the apple mixture on one side of the dough, leaving at least 1 cm from the border. Pull the other side of the dough onto the filling, as if to make a turnover. Make sure the borders overlap, then seal them by rolling them up towards the filling, so as to avoid the filling to come out.
Bake for 15-20 minutes on a preheated pizza stone or any pan. If you think the top of the calzone is becoming too brown, cover it with aluminium foil.
Take it out, sift the confectionery sugar on top of it, cut it and enjoy it.

Vegetable suicide

2011-11-17T02:00:00.000-06:00

I think this is quite cute. Stereotypical of the Japanese people perhaps, but very cute.

Bra'zhul, anyone?

2011-11-16T09:37:00.001-06:00

It was a couple of years ago when I first heard someone pronouncing the word braz'hul, and suggesting that it was an Italian dish. We had recently moved to the US, and we were watching an episode of Desperate Housewives. At the time, the red-headed Brie had a catering business, and got into a fight with an allegedly Italian blond lady, who had accused her of stealing her family Italian bra'zhul recipe.

I distinctively remember looking at my wife and ask her "and what the F would this bra'zhul be?". It wasn't the first time that the name for an Italian dish or food was pronounced in such a way as to make its original Italian irrecognizable: for a long time, for instance, I didn't have a clue that the food Americans pronounce baloney stood actually for Bologna, something in between a sausage and Mortadella.

But braz'hul? I couldn't make it up. And since the discussion about this dish really took a central place in that tv series for quite some time, I really was curious: there was talk of using a specific red wine, of tenderizing the meat...but the only food that I could think of that had a vaguely similar name was the braciole, i.e. veal steaks simply pan fried in olive oil and served as a 2-minutes meal at night, when there was no time to cook. They were good, but obviously they couldn't be what the desperate housewives were fighting about.

It took me two years, but finally a few weeks ago I solved the mistery. I accidentally came across a recipe with a beautiful photo of what appeared to be a roast of some kind, called "Braciole". And so, thanks to wikipedia - I learnt that braz'hul is actually the mispronunciation of the Sicilian dialect for braciole...and that braciole in Sicilian indicate what every other Italian calls "involtino", or "roulade".

Photo from Williams-Sonoma

So, what is this famous braz'hul? It is a large piece of beef steak, tenderized, stuffed with ham, sausage, cheese, sometimes eggs, rolled as a roulade, and cooked for hours in the oven, often with a tomato sauce.

It is not surprising that most Italians visiting the US have a difficulty in understanding and appreciating what is called Italian-American cuisine. The first Sicilian immigrants who came to the US as of 1900, from very tiny villages, probably learnt that they were Italian when they arrived to Ellis Island. Italy had been officially created only 40 years before, and the news hadn't made it there yet. These immigrants brought with them dishes and food traditions that were unknown in the rest of Italy, but that deeply shaped what would come to pass as Italian cuisine in America.

I will write about the history of Italian-American cuisine very soon. But for the moment, I am just happy I finally know what braz'hul is. And I can confirm that the version I made the other night, with bacon, pork sausage, sage, basil, pecorino and wine-based tomato sauce - is actually very, very good...
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Behind the Speculoos craze, or how cool it is to be Belgian in the US...

2011-11-14T08:41:00.001-06:00

I had already briefly talked about my surprise in discovering how trendy anything Belgian, and in particular food, is in the States. Don't get me wrong: I am the first one to say that Belgian food is amazing, and that it should deserve far more recognition in Europe. But the fact is that unless things have changed since I moved out of Belgium three years ago, you would have a hard time finding a Belgian restaurant outside of Belgium in Europe...But come to the States, and you will find them aplenty.

Fat tire beer, by New Belgium

The obsession for anything Belgian starts obviously with beers: in Chicago there are countless bars that proudly advertise their huge Belgian beer selection, Kriek and triples included...But even when there are no original Belgian beers, you will still find a lot of Belgian style beers (triple, wheat...). New Belgium, for instance, a brewery belonging to a guy who once fell in love with Belgian beers while touring Belgium on a bike, is famous for its Belgian style Fat Tire. Even breweries that do not have "Belgium" in their name will still go the extra mile to prove that they are able to come up with good Belgian style beers (Sofie and Matilda beers from Chicago's Goose Island, anyone?). And I had already talked about the cherry beer by New Glarus in Wisconsin...

But US fascination with Belgium doesn't stop at beer. There are restaurants that only serve traditional Belgian dishes (and that make a pretty good job at it, according to my Belgian wife...). And there are at least a couple of Belgian dishes in pretty much every pub, gastro pub, or decent "European" inspired place.

Coffee at Pain Quotidien

In light of our recent trip to New York, my impression is that the Belgian fade is even stronger on the East Coast. While there, I think we had four Belgian meals in only a couple of days. Le Pain Quotidien, a Belgian chain famous for their very good breakfasts and very tasteless sandwiches, have many restaurants in New York. I think their market positioning here is a bit different than in Belgium: they are pushing their "organic" side here, which I don't recall as strong in Belgium. Whatever the reason, it definitely works: we visited three Pain Quotidiens at different times of the day, and they were always packed, especially with female customers (--> a good place to chat up women, I guess...)

The latest Belgian craze though is Speculoos spread. Speculoos are ginger cookies once baked only for St. Nicholas (December 6th), but now available year round. They are as common in Belgium as tramezzinis are in Italy. The spread made out of the cookies is very sweet, and although I am not a huge fan, my wife swears for it. It was the only thing that she consistently asked friends to bring her from Belgium.

Speculoos cookies by Lotus, one of the largest manufacturers

Speculoos are NOT a European thing - as I have read in some poorly written US blog posts and articles - in the sense that they are not known beyond Belgium and the Netherlands. And most definitely nobody in Belgium would dream of considering speculoos spread as a replacement of peanut butter (Belgians do not even know what peanut butter is).

Whatever the reason, speculoos spread is becoming increasingly popular, and it can now be found relatively easily in various US supermarkets. Not only that, but restaurants are now trying to insert it in their menus: yesterday we went to Edzo's, a place in the Northern suburbs of Chicago which advertised its "speculoos milk shakes". They were good indeed...

Be as it may, my favorite speculoos dish still remains the speculoos & pear crumbles that my wife makes...I may ask her ther recipe for this blog, if you are interested...

Butternut squash, sage and chile de arbol risotto

2011-11-11T06:30:00.000-06:00

If hot chiles are undoubtedly the ingredients that have had the deepest impact on modifying the way I cook since I moved to the US, butternut squash would come in second place. Before moving here, I had never cooked with this pear shaped fruit. You would have a hard time in finding it mentioned in an Italian recipe book: in Italian cuisine the squash of choice is really the pumpkin.

But when I moved to the US I discovered, with a sense of shock, that pumpkins here are most for display and not for cooking (unless they are canned...) But pumpkin played an extensive role in what I had been cooking until then. I had been using it in risottos, soups, pasta sauces, raviolis ...Giving it all up it would have been stupid.

Butternut squash, with its slightly sweeter and nuttier flavor, proved to be an excellent replacement in many of my recipes traditionally requiring pumpkin. This was the case, for instance, of the butternut squash tortelli that I submitted last year to a cooking contest.

Granted, some of the recipes needed to be modified to take the full advantage of the new world's flavor. In some case - as in today's recipe - I personally believe that the results obtained replacing pumpkin with butternut squash are actually better than the original Italian recipes.

Butternut squash, sage and chile de arbol risotto
The 'original' recipe of this risotto called for pumpkin and peperoncino, but I find that this offspring version using US ingredients is actually tastier and more flavorful. Obviously, if you are reading this in Italy, you may use pumpkin and peperoncino...The butternut squash base (steps 1-4) can be prepared ahead of time, but before stirring in the rice you will need to reheat it.

The final product: creamy...

Ingredients for 2 people

150 grams (5.5 oz) of arborio rice
5-600 gr (17-21 oz) of butternut squash, peeled and cut in 1 cm (0.5 in) cubes
1/2 chile de arbol (the lenght of your index finger), finely chopped.
1.5 liters (6 cups) of vegetable broth, boiling hot.
10-12 leaves of fresh sage, finely chopped
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
3 TBSP olive oil
60-80 gr (2-3 oz) of parmesan, grated
1 TBSP unsalted butter
salt and pepper

How to make it

In a pan with high walls, heat the olive oil on medium heat, add the onion and let it cook for 8-10 minutes, until it becomes translucent.
Add the chile de arbol and stir. Add 2/3 of the chopped sage, saving the rest for later. Stir 30 seconds.
Add the butternut squash cubes and salt and pepper and stir so as to coat the squash in oil. Add 1 ladle of broth, reduce the heat and let it cook for 20 minutes, partially covered, stirring now and then. If the pan gets too dry, add more broth. Cook until the squash is soft enough to be poked by a fork. 20 minutes should be enough, but you may need more. (You do not have to cook the squash all the way through, because it will still cook with the rice for another good 20 minutes...)
Throw in the rice and stir it to so as to coat it well, 2 minutes. Add enough broth to cover the rice, and keep on adding broth when the rice gets too dry. Stir regularly, to avoid that the rice sticks to the pan. While cooking, the rice must have the consistency of a dense soup, like in the photos below.
When the rice is cooked (check the cooking times on the package of the rice you are using, but generally arborio rice takes anything between 15 and 19 minutes to cook), take the pan off the heat and add the butter, the grated parmesan and the rest of the chopped sage leaves and stir well, so as to melt the butter and the cheese. (The consistency of the risotto should be creamy, very creamy, much denser than a soup, but soupy enough to make you wonder whether it is not too liquid. If you don't have the sensation of it being too liquid, chances are it is too dry...)
Let it rest 3 minutes. This is VERY important, like letting a good steak rest before slicing it.
Plate and eat!

Soupy while cooking

While cooking

The slow cooker chronicles / 2: the first sub-optimal results

2011-11-09T14:30:00.000-06:00

Once I had understood what a slow cooker was, I knew I needed to buy one and start experimenting...A blog about American food written by someone who had never used a crock-pot would have not carried any credibility...

The first results I obtained following recipes found here and there were lackluster. They seemed to confirm what I had been told by others, and what I had feared myself: throwing food in a pot, flood it with liquid and cooking it at very low temperatures will surely create something edible. But edible food and good food are two different things entirely.

The solution appeared simple in my mind: let's just do all the prep work that I would normally do for a recipe and THEN, only then, let's throw everything in the slow cooker. By doing this, I thought, you seal the juices in the meat, you develop flavors through a soffritto, you create the basis for everything to come together in the slowcooker.

Armed with my new convictions I set on making ragu, the Italian bolognese sauce. My family recipe calls for ragu to cook for 6-7 hours on a stove, so I thought it was a perfect candidate for the slowcooker. I chose the ragu because I thought that it wouldn't make any sense to try and cook something I had never cooked, or that I wasn't strongly familiar with: I needed to be able to judge the performance of the slowcooked version, comparing it to flavors to something I knew well.

The first result was good, but far, very far from the killer taste that I had always gotten on the stove. I realized I had made two mistakes: I had used far too much water in the slowcooker, and I had added a spicy sausage that altered the flavor. That taught me two valuable lessons: never use US sausages like I used Italian sausages, because their flavors are either too strong or too messed up for my palate. And, more importantly: in the slowcooker you need a lot less liquid than on a stove or in the oven.

In retrospective, this makes a lot of sense. Even the highest temperature settings in a slowcooker are below the lowest temperatures you can get on a stove...so the liquids do not evaporate, especially if you use the slow cooker at the lowest setting, with temperatures far below water's boiling point.

So I ended up with a ragu that was way too liquid, and way too spicy. But I learnt the trick, and next time I cooked a ragu, it came out almost as good as on a stove. The key is in almost. I don't seem to be able to obtain the same texture with the slowcooker than I can obtain on the stove. It is still an excellent ragu, if I may say so myself, but it is just not there. However, when you are not at home, or when you want ragu without having to spend 6-7 hours at home to check the stove and prevent the meat from sticking to the pan, the slowcooker is an excellent companion.

Needless to say I was disappointed. Was the slowcooker simply something capable to save time, while providing less than sub-optimal results? Or was there a way to have meals cooked with the slowcooker that tasted as good as or even better than their stove version?

And this is when three words came to my mind: one was stew; the second one was braising; and the third one was Amazon. And we will talk about them next time...
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The American sandwich problem

2011-11-07T10:40:00.000-06:00

Evidently Americans have a big sandwich problem. There is no other way to put it. I am not talking here about the (delicious) hamburgers or pulled pork types of sandwiches (we will talk about them sooner or later). I am talking about what US people call "subs" and everybody else in the world calls sandwiches: bread (often baguette type) with some type of cold cuts inside.

I am not joking when I say that in Italy you grow up eating at least one of this a day. They are very simple: two slices of bread, or a roll, or a focaccia piece with EITHER mortadella OR salami, OR prosciutto inside. Americans must have seen this, but somehow the EITHER/OR part was lost in translation. The result are messy sandwich with absolutely every type of meat you can find. And more.

The perfect sandwich: focaccia bread with mortadella. Nothing else.

The problem seems particularly acute in the so called US "Italian sandwiches", like the muffoletta. This is a typical sandwich from New Orleans that Americans are convinced is typical Italian. Look at this photo: layers and layers of different types of meat, cheese, plus giardiniera. Can you spot a difference with the focaccia with mortadella of the photo above?

The "Italian" muffoletta: I don't think there is enough meat here. But hey, can you spot a difference with the photo above?

Or look about this other monster: a baguette filled with mortadella, coppa (another cold cut), onions, olive oil, three type of cheese. WTF people? Each of these ingredients would be delicious enjoyed on its own with bread. The BEST sandwich is the one where the filling complements the texture and the flavor of the bread. Saying this doesn't mean being snob or not being open to new foods. Adding up ten good things into one doesn't always result in a better thing. On the contrary...

This "Italian" sandwich really allows you to appreciate each of its flavors...

But there is nothing I can do about this. When I dared to mention that this thing was just a flavor mess, I was told that I didn't know anything about Italian sandwiches. Of course...I just grew up with them, but hey what do I know?

I had already talked about the US tendency to make completely crazy flavors and food associations. It works like this: do you like donuts? Do you like pork chops? Then you will LOVE our pork chops flavored donuts! And this is what I think happened with the "Italian sandwich": if I like a mortadella sandwich, and a prosciutto sandwich, and a tuna sandwich, and a turkey sandwich and a salami sandwich, then obviously I will LOVE a mortadella-prosciutto-tuna-turkey sandwich, with blue cheese and emmenthal and provolone and asiago on top!

And don't forget those olives, or else the flavor will be a tad bland...

Pasta e fagioli: comfort food a' la Italian

2011-11-04T10:34:00.001-05:00

The English expression comfort food is I one I adore. It manages to convey immediately images of satisfying, sinful dishes, rich, full of flavors. You see a bowl of mac & cheese and you immediately know that it will comfort your soul, and bring you back to your childhood home. Same thing for a good chicken pot pie, or a hearty stew.

Although the terminology doesn't exist in the Italian language, the same dishes do exist. As it is the case for their American counterparts, they are mostly Fall or Winter foods. Dishes that are able to warm up both your body and your soul after a cold day out.

In my private recipe book, one of the opening recipes of an imaginary comfort food section would be pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans). "Pasta e fagioli" is one of those dishes that everybody cooks in Italy, everywhere. Yet I dare you finding two versions that are exactly the same. Not only does the dish varies from region to region or from city to city, but even from family to family within the same block. The reason why every region has its version is because this is one of those dishes of the so called cucina povera (poor cuisine): it is a dish made of only a few ingredients that most people would still have at home at the end of the month, when money was little, and fancy food was scarce.

To qualify as pasta e fagioli, the dish needs to have some type of pasta and some type of beans, and be more liquid than a normal pasta dish. I am not saying it needs to be a soup (although it can be a soup), but it definitively needs to have some more liquid than it would be acceptable in a normal pasta dish. Other than that, there are no limits to the variations of what you will find: cannellini beans, garbanzo beans, short ditalini pasta, broken spaghetti, oregano, other spices...The main discussion is about tomato: there are family that will laugh at you if you mention that your mother used to put tomato in her version, and family that will spit to your face if you say that you eat your pasta e fagioli without tomato. In Italy we are able to divide ourselves in two camps pretty much on everything, and pasta e fagioli is no exception.

There are more versions of this dish in Italy than stars in the sky...

The version I grew up with has tomato in it (lots of it), borlotti beans and ditalini pasta, small tubes of pasta, like elbows, but without the bend. When my grandma was around, the ditalini would be replaced by quadrucci pasta, which is nothing more than home made tagliatelle cut in quadrucci, i.e. very small squares (this pasta is typical from the region my mother comes from, Marches). (See the photos of both pasta shapes at the bottom of the post).

You cannot really say that this version is a soup. It is liquid, but not too liquid: the pasta ends up soaking up all the liquid, becoming a swollen mess, which is what makes it fantastic to my eyes. This is actually one of my childhood memories I love the most: watching my mum putting the pasta e fagioli in a bowl, and then wait 1/2 hour for the pasta to cool off and absorb almost all the liquid...

A couple of nights ago, feeling homesick, I decided to make it. It had been ages since I had last made it. And while I was at it, I thought that it is one of those dishes for which improvements are out of the question. Yes, you could probably add more spices, and get more flavor. Yes, you could add bacon and get some smokiness in it that would turn it into a crowd pleasure. And yet, that would not be my pasta e fagioli, the one I grew up with. The one that is perfect as it is, the one that I will never change a bit.

Pasta e fagioli di Licia (6-8 persone)
DOWNLOAD OR PRINT THIS RECIPE

Ingredients

400 grams of ditalini rigati pasta (14oz)
2 cans of borlotti beans, rinsed
1.8 pounds (800 grams) of pomodori pelati, crashed in a food processor, or of tomato puree
7.5 cups (1.8 liters) of water
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
sugar, a pinch

How to make it

In a large soup pan, heat up the oil until it starts smoking. Reduce the heat, add the two onion halves (the oil will sputter), and let it cook for 5 minutes, stirring the oil every now and then, letting the onion burn. Once the two halves are well burnt on all sides, take them out with a wooden spoon and throw them away.
Add the tomato puree. Add salt and sugar (to reduce the tomato acidity), and stir for a couple of minutes.
Add the borlotti beans, stir. Add the water (possibly, your water should be boiling hot: warm it up in a tea maker or in a separate pan, but do not use warm tap water). Stir, bring to boil, and let it simmer for at least 1 hour, stirring now and then.
Throw in the ditalini pasta, and cook for the time indicated on the pasta package.
Serve in pasta bowls, and let it rest for at least 20 minutes. This "soup" shouldn't be eaten too warm. Resting will also give the pasta time to absorb even more water.
Eat

PS: If you have left over, by the time you will have finished eating, you will notice that the pasta in the pan will have absorbed almost all the water. That's how it should be. Don't panic, because you are in for a treat. After a nice night in the fridge this "soup" can be warmed up and eaten without adding any liquid, and it will give you a taste of paradise. Believe me.

Ditalini rigati

Quadrucci

The slow cooker chronicles / 1

2011-11-02T11:30:00.004-05:00

I had been living in the US for less than a year when this acquaintance of mine told me something that in his mind should have shocked me. "Do you realize that 83% of American households have a slow cooker?", he said sounding very sad. "83%, do you know what it means? DO YOU?".

I kept quiet, and showed enough fake consternation to apparently please this guy. When I was finally free of his slow cooker generated rage, I went away with only one question in my mind: what the hell is a slow cooker?

I had never heard of this thing, but if 83% of American households had it, then I too would have it. If I was to understand American food culture and really embrace it I had to have something that was as common here as a moka coffe making machine in Italy (although I guess that 99.9% of Italian households have a moka coffee making machine, not just 83%).

So I did my research. And to the benefit of those readers living in the Mediterranean countries (the UK readers know what this is...) here is what a slow cooker is: an electric pot. Yes-sir. That's it. An electric pot that cooks food for a very long time (8-10 hours) at very low temperatures, unattended, so that the cook can go out and about doing his or her things.

The machine was invented in 1971 by the Rival Company: the Crock-Pot (this is the trademarked company name for its slow cooker, which is commonly used to indicate any slow cooker, like scotch is used to indicate any adhesive tape) was made of a ceramic vessel lined in a steel casing where a lot of wires are located, to generate heat through electricity. And it is still exactly like this now, 40 years later.

By the end of the '70s, the Crock-Pot was a huge success: more and more people were starting to cook in America, and they were looking for easy ways to make something tasty out of inexpensive ingredients, without having to spend all their time attending the food while it cooked. Julia Child had instilled the desire to cook in many Americans, but many of them were not willing (or able) to spend their time behind stoves, cooking French gourmet meals. The Crock-Pot was therefore perfect: by cooking for 10 hours even the toughest piece of meat will give up its connective tissues and become tender and moist, turning into an edible stew. Anybody could do this.

When I started looking into this, I was puzzled. Not because I couldn't understand the basics of cooking something slow and for a long time. Slow cooking in pits dug out of the earth is probably one of the most ancient forms of cooking...and I knew that Japanese cooks had been using clay vessels to slow cooked food thousands of years B.C. And without getting too fancy: Italian cuisine is FULL of slow cooked recipes: my family's ragu (bolognese sauce) recipe calls for the meat to cook 6-7 hours on the stove; a Tuscan vegetable soup needs to be boiled for hours to develop flavors.

But I had an issue: all of the dishes I was familiar with required some level of preparatory work: you needed to prepare a soffritto, you needed to brown the meat...you couldn't just take a piece of meat, throw it into an electric pan with very low temperatures (the highest setting in a slow cooker is normally at 280 F/130C, and the lowest setting is at 170F and 77C) and let it cook for 8 hours. I thought this would come out bland, soggy, sad. Yet, this was the method that was suggested to me by a couple of US acquaintances, and the one described in a few recipes I had found on the internet and in a couple of cookbooks: throw in this piece of meat, add beer, put the lid on, cook on high for 8 hours and here you are. Well, no. Here you aren't. I tried a couple of these recipes, and I was less than happy about the results.

I wasn't alone in thinking this. The lack of flavor was one of the reasons that led many foodies to abandon the slow cooker concept in the '90s. Slow cooking became associated to bland food. Recently, though, the old is new again, and there is a resurrection of slow cooking everywhere here in the States. The reason is very simple: people want to coook, but people don't have time...

The more I looked into this, the more I struggled, until it hit me: if slow cooking means cooking food for a long period of time, covered more or less in liquid, well, it isn't any different than braising or stewing foods on a stove or in the oven. So I switched gear: how about I simply use the slow cooker as a replacement of a pan, while NOT skipping all the preparatory steps that are normally needed to have decent results in the kitchen? The advantage would still be that AFTER you did all the preparatory work, you could throw everything in the slow cooker, and then leave and do your thing.

So I started experimenting. And the results started to come in, and we will start seeing them in the next post.

PS: I know that for many American this will all seem very stupid: dude, this is just a slow cooker. But remember: this was all new to me...even the concept of an electric pan was something I had never heard of...

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