You might think he's doing something else. But in reality, he's learning how to sit/stay, and not doing a very good job of it (he eventually learned how to do so beautifully ... sort of ).

domenica 31 ottobre 2010

You'll Be Good Little Dogs II




We’re not picking olives today because it’s raining cats and dogs.[1] The Scallion’s been picking all week by his lonesome; yesterday we were joined by friends from Florence. We lunched (roasted red pepper/caper crostini, mackerel crostini, linguine al pesto, and salad with pomegranate and pumpkin seeds – the latter to mark Halloween). Australian friend brought little sweet delicacies from a pasticceria in Florence, many of them almond-paste filled, which were devoured. We then proceeded to pick.


The two young boys among the group decided very quickly that doing almost anything else was preferable to picking olives, and so absented themselves. Dear German Chum went at it with zeal (she will definitely be getting a big bottle of oil once it’s pressed); the Scallion and Samantha were assiduous. We had some help from two Australians, new to this kind of thing, and Florentine Sister, who like me, preferred to uncork a bottle of vino sfuso and serve the workers.


The dogs, of course, were totally in the way.


It was Rosie’s first foray into the olive orchard, and she acquitted herself well. She managed to sit on a lot of olives, and generally get in the way. She discovered the joys of yet another of Lulu’s Archives – in this case, a pile of logs teeming with furtive lizards. Both of them were oblivious to the rest of the world.


Soon such pastimes will become just that: a thing of the past. Rosie will remain a youngster, sure, but she will also become a mother. Like in about 4 days’ time, or maybe a little longer. Just last Thursday, the Splendid Veterinarian confirmed what we’d suspected: those Neapolitan folks pulled a fast one on us. You might note the photo of Rosie from a couple of blogs ago. You might note that the woman’s hand covers a good part of Rosie’s little chest. Said Neapolitan woman did this to cover up the fact that Rosie is all ready to start feeding her youngsters as soon as they arrive. Rescue one dog, get three free.


Rosie had a sonogram confirming the fact that she was up the spout/up the duff/knocked up; then she had an X-ray which showed three little critters. The fact that she’s constantly lying on her back, paws extended, shows that she’s just about had it with this condition. We spend a lot of time on the couch, and it’s fun to feel the heartbeats of the pups.



But back to food. This gem, truly, of a chili recipe from Larry, a high school pal, who has lived many places in the United States, and picks up marvelous recipes and makes them his own wherever he goes. If you read his Facebook page (as I do, regularly), I often wish I were in Florida sitting at his dinner table. As it turns out, we didn’t serve it to the olive pickers, as a strict vegetarian lurked among us. (An especially nice touch is the mandatory bourbon sipping about midway through the recipe.)



Larry’s Big Pot of Kitchen Sink Chile


1 lb. bacon – chopped
1.5-2 lb. stew beef cut to dime sized pieces
1 lb. hot Italian sausage
1 lb. sweet Italian sausage
1 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground turkey
2 16. oz Guinness Stout (or other stout)
8 oz. Kentucky Bourbon
8 oz. strong black coffee (I like day-old)
3 large white onions
3 large red onions
2 large cloves garlic – minced
6 serrano or jalapeno peppers
2 banana peppers
1 – 12 oz bottle chili sauce
1.5 lbs. sliced mushrooms (white button (Champignon) are fine, I prefer a combination of cremini and Portobello mushrooms that have been given a rough dice)
8 oz. beef base (can substitute 4 beef bouillon cubes)
2 28 oz. cans crushed tomatoes (or homemade tomato puree)
5 14.5 oz. cans diced tomatoes
3 10 oz. cans Rotelle tomatoes
5 4.5 oz. cans chopped green chilies
1 10 oz. can tomato paste
3 16 oz. cans black beans (drained & rinsed)
3 16 oz. cans pinto beans (drained & rinsed)
2 28 oz. red kidney beans (drained & rinsed)
4 large cans black olives pitted and chopped
1 T. Sazon Completa
2 T. Spanish paprika
1 T. black pepper
1/2 -3/4 lb chili powder
1 T. garlic powder
2 T. flour
Liquid Smoke


I use a Dutch oven to cook each layer and then “dump” the contents into my 42 quart pot. Realistically, you need about a 6 quart pot if you make the entire recipe. It freezes extremely well and the flavors seem to intensify while frozen. If you do not want to make this much go ahead and do the math to reduce the size of the batch.


Render the bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon to your chili pot.


In the bacon fat sauté the rough chopped onions and the minced garlic on medium high heat. Sautee until translucent and then dump entire contents into chili pot. Turn on the heat under the chili pot to low.


Remove both Italian sausages from casings and cook thoroughly chopping sausage into very small pieces. When cooked, remove sausage to the chili pot preserving the fat.


In the fat from the sausage add the ground pork and ground turkey. Season the meats with some of the chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, and the Sazon Completa . Chop into very fine pieces and cook thoroughly. Remove to chili pot preserving the oil.


At this point increase the heat beneath the chili pot to medium. Add the crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, bourbon, and coffee to the pot and give it a good stir. Add the chili sauce and stir through again. Add approximately .25 lb of the chili powder, stir and let this mixture heat through.


Chop the serrano/jalapeno and banana peppers finely after removing seeds and ribs. Add to the fat from the pork and turkey. If necessary add a little olive oil. Place the thoroughly sautéed peppers into the chili pot. If desired add a few finely chopped pickled jalapenos to the mix. Remove peppers to chili pot.


Spread the stew beef pieces on your cutting board. Sprinkle with flour, black pepper, paprika and garlic powder and using a tenderizing hammer pound the beef until tender but not flattened. Add beef. the oil in your prep pot(there should be a little oil left after you sautéed the peppers). Add Guinness, beef base, mushrooms, a couple of dashes of liquid smoke, more of the chili powder, reducing heat and simmering for 15-20 minutes until the beef is tender. WARNING! This is so good you’ll be tempted to drag a piece of bread through it for a snack! When done, “dump” into chili pot.


Add the coffee and 6 oz. of bourbon to the chili pot. Stir until completely incorporated. Pour the remaining bourbon into a glass over ice and take a short break while the mixture heats through. This is an essential step!



From here it is “everyone into the pool." Add all remaining ingredients to the chili pot and bring up to temperature. (If you are a “no beans” person you can leave them out.) You may want to add the chili powder gradually to ensure that the heat is not too much for you and your guests.


Once up to a simmer cook on low heat for 1-2 hours until chili is a deep red color and has thickened. Taste and season with chili powder and/or cayenne pepper to reach desired level of heat.


Ed. Note: Obviously, Larry’s chili could feed an army. But it does freeze well, as he says, and if you already have an army at hand (i.e., olive pickers) freezing shouldn’t be too much of a problem. (Larry and family eat this wonderful concoction with either beer or a nice spicy Zinfandel.)

Myrtle, at left, all dressed up for Halloween funkiness -- any ideas about her costume?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!


[1] Wondering about the origin of this phrase, I went to http://www.phrases.org/ and got the following: “This is an interesting phrase in that, although there is no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation.” It continues: "The much more probable source of 'raining cats and dogs' is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. The poem was a denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated. While the poem is metaphorical and doesn't describe a specific flood, it seems that, in describing water-borne animal corpses, Swift was referring to an occurrence that his readers would have been well familiar with: Now in contiguous/Drops the Flood comes down,/Threat'ning with Deluge this devoted Town..../Now from all Parts the swelling Kennels flow, /And bear their Trophies with them as they go:/Filth of all Hues and Odours seem to tell/What Street they sail'd from, by their Sight and Smell./They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid Force,/From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their Course,/And in huge Confluent join'd at Snow-Hill Ridge,/Fall from the Conduit, prone to Holbourn-Bridge./Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood,Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud,/Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood." Oh, what perfect images for Halloween.

martedì 26 ottobre 2010

You're a Good Little Dog Part I


And most of them are, especially JR, left, who died this past week. (Waldo was little, and he was a dog. But good? Bah!)

We pick olives beginning this week, that is, if the torrential downpours stop torrentially downpouring. Lots of trees, lots of olives … here’s hoping.

It’s the time of year when people who are lucky enough to have their own trees put down their nets (the better to catch them with, my dear), whip out the rakes to shake the s*** out of the branches, and watch the olives fall to the ground, preferably on the net.

You typically do this on a sunny day, well after the dew has magically evaporated (and trust me, there’s a lot of dew, even without torrential rains, this time of year). At day’s end, you roll the nets (presumably the olive trees are terraced, thus making the nets easier to roll) to the bottom of that terrace, and then bring the nets together, and put all the olives in a big container. Typically, dogs have gotten in the way, and this year will surely be no exception. Over the weekend, there will be at least 4 present.

(You keep doing this ‘til you’ve picked all the olives, and this can take time. Because it can take time, you rope any willing friend/relative/passerby off the street, bribe him/her with a good meal at day’s end, and then ply him/her/it with wine … as much as it takes to hear, “Hey! Helluva good time! Would love to do this again next year!” ... we take Tom Sawyer and painting that fence as our inspiration.)

Then you take the olives to the frantoio (the place where they press the olives and make olive oil) and the stuff comes out young, green, redolent of … yup, olives. You take a piece of unsalted bread, toast it, rub it with a peeled garlic clove, magnanimously drizzle the olive oil on top, add a pinch of best-quality sea salt, grinding of freshly ground pepper, and you eat it. And it is heaven. And you want all around you to eat it, because otherwise you will smell like my cousin Sean’s garlic recipe, below, and no one else will.

What to serve these unwitting, kind, generous friends of ours? Normally, it’d be Italian, the usual. Instead, why not serve American – since, in fact, I am?

Here is Cousin Sean’s take on his parents’ recipe, long served at a beloved tavern to many of us. Why is it award-winning? Says Sean: “I went there last year [to a garlic festival in Easton, Pennsylvania] with Ellery [his young, presumably garlic-loving daughter] and saw that they had a garlic dip contest. I tried all the entries and was thoroughly unimpressed. So I decided to enter the contest this year using the dip my parents always made. I won the contest. The prize was a bag of garlic flavored goodies and a $50 gift card from Wegman's. So now when you blog about it you can tout it as an ‘award-winning’ recipe.” [Done, Cousin!]

(Larry’s Big Pot of Chili, to follow this dip, is next post’s recipe.)

Old Brewery Tavern Garlic Dip aka Sean’s Award-Winning Garlic Dip

1 lb. cream cheese
4 oz. sour cream
1 oz. whole milk
½ medium bulb garlic, mashed through a garlic press
1 T. ground cayenne pepper

Let the cream cheese sit out for a couple hours so it is easier to work with. Then mix in the sour cream and milk. Add the garlic and cayenne pepper to taste. If you let someone try it and they don't comment about how freakin' spicy it is, then you haven't put enough garlic and pepper in it! My mom came up with the original recipe, sans the cayenne pepper. Then along came my father and added the pepper and an instant classic was born. Serve with the thickest crinkle-cut potato chips you can find. Even the native Italians will find it outrageously garlicky and irresistibly delicious. P.S.- You will eat it all in one sitting, so batch it accordingly. Buon appetito!!

If the idea of eating all that raw garlic appalls you, roast it first (slice the top off, place on aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil, loosely pack it up, and place in a 375°F oven ‘til lightly softly browned; squeeze the cloves from their skins, and mash … then add to dairy mix).

JR died last week, a dog beloved to His People. You can see his picture on the upper left on this post. I never knew him, but his people are my family. A lab/chow mix, he was rescued at the age of somewhere between 2-5, and quickly ingratiated himself into his pack. In the beginning, he divided his time between undergraduate/graduate studies in Philadelphia and family life in Bethlehem before ultimately deciding to settle in Bethlehem – perhaps because he loved Musikfest so much? Or Pottsie’s Dogs? Or perhaps, simply, Lori and Fred?

JR was named, as previous members of his pack were, for ice hockey players (many of his pack played the game). He was popular with his neighbors: as Fred, one of His People wrote, “JR was fondly referred to as ’Chinese Guard Dog’ by his neighbors.” He was a talented dog who, as Lori, His Other Person writes, “He was quite an escape artist when he first arrived and even I got a call, from a bar - the bartender told me he was quite charming and would have probably ordered a drink if he could have, when he got out one time.” (One wonders what would have been his tipple of choice.)

And then, for any of us who have rescued dogs, you wonder about their back story, the stories they could tell if only they could speak (we’ve been wondering this about sweet little Rosie this past near week). Lori continues: “Someone took the time to train him because you could put a plate of table food on the floor and he would not touch it unless I told him it was okay.” One of JR’s greatest pleasures? Recycling: “He pretty much went everywhere with us - and became quite the little recycler - that was once of his favorite places – the Bethlehem Recycling Center. He rode around in the convertible with the top down and never moved a muscle.”

JR, know that when we eat the Old Brewery Tavern’s garlic dip, we will all have DOG BREATH. Safe trip to the Happy Hunting Ground, dear boy, where you’ve already been met by your immediate and extended canine pack, all hamburger loving, who will teach you, as Robert Frost once wrote, to bark with the great Overdog, “that romps through the dark.”

JR circa1999/2002-October 2010.

venerdì 22 ottobre 2010

Pup!


It’s the picture at the left that sold us. Actually, it was a posted picture of a small abused little white poodle which first stirred us – so much, in fact, that I wrote to my friend and said, “Where is that poodle?” As it turned out, the poodle – unlike so much of the Please Help this Pup Out photos that we get – happened to be in Florence. We happened to be third on the waiting list, but we lost out to the first.

At which point Florentine Sister (aka Bobo, who pairs wine with my recipes) sends us a photo, the one you see above. We write to the woman who saved her. Here’s what Marilena wrote:

Carletta [the name Marilena gave her] and her lucky choice.

“I was transferring a dog to a friend’s house. While I was going down a country road suddenly a little black muzzle popped out from under the guardrail, and threw itself before my car; if it weren’t for my instinct of always checking the side of the road, the little pup would already be dead. She chose the right car to throw herself in front of. Carletta is a young little dog, let’s say around a year or less, weighs about 10 [20 plus pounds] kili but has the paws of a bassett hound. She’s very sweet and affectionate, and has fears being abandoned. In fact, as soon as I took her she attached herself to me [as she’s done in one day with me]. Now she’s at a friend’s house who is also hosting another dog, so I must help her find a beautiful family who will love her, because her will to survive had her choose the right car.”

Read it and weep. Well, I did. Negotiations began; we were told that Carletta was “vivace, curiosa, e testarda” (lively, curious, stubborn: three adjectives that could be applied to many a small dog).

Marilena belongs to a national organization here in Italy which rescues abandoned dogs. In a country where inefficiency is as common as pasta is for dinner, this We Help Dogs (literal translation) is remarkably the opposite.

Michela, a local representative who’s a medieval classicist and philologist in Pisa when she’s not rescuing canines, came to interview us, and said interview lasted an hour. We filled out a complicated questionnaire. Fortunately, we passed, and were told that a team of vets from Germany (why not Italy, we wondered?) were heading to the south of Italy to offer pro bono spaying and neutering (a requisite of this program, though emphasis – typical – is placed on females; remember, this is a balls-oriented country). Pup would be spayed and then sent up.

Probably because a convoy was on its way north, this plan was scrapped. Michela, the Scallion, and I met with a trucker at an exit ramp/parking lot on the autostrada just outside Florence, and picked up the pup. He opened the truck door, revealing several containers of crated dogs, all destined for loving homes. Our pup, wildly shaking from fear (she’d been in the back of a semi overnight from Naples) was crated with another youngster destined for a home in Pisa. You wanted to cry, and I did. Horror at the people who abandoned these dogs, and joy that these pups, at least, were saved.

She stayed pretty shy yesterday, and her body reveals that she – heartbreaking at her tender age – has had at least one, perhaps more – litters. She does indeed have bassett paws, and probably the most ridiculous tail we have ever seen.

The sun cooperated mightily, and we spent most of the day sunning ourselves. Lulu took one look at her and basically yawned. Harry returned from the hospital only that evening[1] and seemed most intent on humping her. Though we have yet to hear the pup speak, we did hear her growl at him on more than one occasion.

Solicitations for names via Facebook were all terrific, creative, fun. My mother, recalling her decades' long dead dog: Scrappy. Claudia in Amsterdam: Annunziata; Judy Z in the States: the beautiful Biblical name Selah; High School Chum Scott in Houston: Dinah … “as in Roadside Dinah” (he added helpfully). Dogeressa of the Broken Halo: Ella, Cleo, or Jane. Long Tall John from Ithaca suggested Bitch. Canadienne Red in Chicago: Little Tiny Baby Little Small Thing (quite the mouthful, no?). Some went edible: Gamine Stephanie in Florence suggested Biscuit, and Cecilia, also in Florence, suggested Muffin. Frau Doktor von Spritz, London resident and perhaps taking a cue from Canadienne Red: Eleonora (da Toledo?) or Sancia. Auntie F also in London started with a Halloween theme (Glinda, Elvira) and added Bessie for good measure. Florentine Sister championed Pepita. Paula from Ithaca (she of the cold soba noodle recipe): Chibi. Preacher Guy in Nashville, Tennessee: Oreo, Mr. Jay (explicable only to those of us who went to the same high school, but pretty funny nonetheless), Mickey, Paws, and Midnight. Michele in Boston: Lia, Roxie, or Maxine. Aunt Bets in Toronto: Lira. Chantal in Brooklyn: voted for Glinda and Eleonora. Zoe’s Person: Daisy (impossible, as Cousin Daisy just died this year). Jenny, Zoe’s Person’s Daughter: the delightful Doris. Doc G in Charleston, South Carolina: Daphne. Lisa in Florence simply sent a message full of exclamation points, which made us very happy.

Susie, a dear pal from San Diego, suggested a name, which we quite liked. A lot. My sister suggested the same name while we were having our daily morning U.S./Italy chat. Kismet.

Her name is Rosie.

www.aiutiamofido.org


[1] Two nights before he’d eaten about two cups of cooking oil carelessly left on the kitchen counter, breaking the container. He began to heave later that night, and at 5 in the morning we decided to take him to the Splendid Vets for observation and to make sure that he didn’t have any glass in his stomach. He didn’t, but was put on a drip, and stayed overnight. One of his prescriptions includes Maalox.

lunedì 18 ottobre 2010

Birthday Retriever


Lulu turned five yesterday, and we marked the occasion as we mark all dog birthdays: we eat burgers. On Waldo’s fifth and last birthday this past May, all five of us happily tucked into Mark Bittman’s absolutely delicious dim sum burgers[1]

It was a more subdued celebration this year, as the pack is one less strong, that’s for sure, but all good dogs (which surely doesn’t include our two) do deserve their birthday burgers. (Italians either refer to hamburgers as “HOM ber ger” or, more oddly, svizzera (which means “Swiss”).)(I don’t know why.)
(Lulu was one of ten, and born in Greve in Chianti. Her mother Millie and sister Matilda live in her natal home, and her brother Oliver also lives in the neighborhood. A quick call to M&M's person revealed that Millie had decided to celebrate her tremendous output of five years ago by giving in to her wanton ways: four separate calls to her person complaining of her carousing in the Tuscan countryside.)(Millie's capers go far to explaining Lulu's personality.)

According to Alan Davidson, the hamburger “is one of the principal forms in which BEEF is consumed in the western world.” The word “hamburger” first turns up in print in 1890; the “St. Louis World Fair of 1904 was a significant launching pad for the hamburger in a bun as we know it." http://www.whatscookingamerica.net/ will give you everything you need to know about the dissemination of the burger in the United States of America, as well as the competing claims of various cities who want credit for inventing it.

Tillie loved burgers. From her sadly unpublished memoirs: “It’s kind of tough to find a well-made [cheeseburger] in Italy, though they can be had. You could, if you wanted, succumb to the allure of McDonald’s and yes, I have indeed done so … Some Italian bars will make hamburgers, or cheeseburgers, though they’re usually not all that interesting.” In Florence, Tillie loved the burgers at Danny Rock, where she often dined.

Two schools of thought re: seasoning hamburgers. The first school – we’ll call it the Purist School – advocates adding absolutely nothing to the ground meat. The second school – we’ll call it the Rococo School – salts, peppers, spices, and does other things to the meat sometimes adding so much stuff it pretty much becomes like meatloaf without the bread crumbs and egg. Mark Bittman is of the latter school[2]

All a question of taste, of course, like preferring vanilla to chocolate ice cream.

Type in the word “hamburger” on google, and you’ll come up with 15,400,000 hits. Play around with some word combinations: “hamburger” and “women” and you get “Women bringing you Hamburgers [sic], better than sandwich”(sounds like a fortune cookie gone seriously awry). You can find that Ted Reader, in an attempt to best the Guinness Book of World Record’s current titleholder, just this very year made a hamburger weighing 590 pounds. President Obama and Russian Tsar Medvedev had a cheeseburger together during recent meetings in Washington; they split the fries. Google “hamburger” and “movies” and you eventually get Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (U.S. version) or Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies (U.K. version). If any of you have seen this little gem, were you salivating by the time they finally got there?

Tillie adored the following recipe.

Danny Rock burger

¼ lb. ground beef
1 slice of Fontina
2 slices bacon
1 sesame seed roll

No need for directions, as I think we all know how to fry bacon, set it aside, then fry the burger, melt the cheese just before it’s done, toast the roll, and eat immediately.

We opted for turkey burgers last night. The Scallion, following the dictates of Mark Bittman, dutifully ground the happily-raised-‘til killed turkey, and fashioned two burgers for us, and two smaller ones for the Rotten Dogs. He equally dutifully toasted the rolls.

Both burgers (open-faced) were presented to the R.D.s in their bowls. Lulu had no doubts, and basically inhaled hers in about 15 seconds. Harry, puzzled, pulled the roll from his bowl, ate that, sniffed the burger, and then daintily ate it. What follows is part of the recipe; we were both too tired and lazy after a long day to go out into the garden, flashlight in hand, and pick season’s end basil. So we didn’t.

Turkey burgers with mozzarella, basil oil, and sundried tomatoes

1 lb. preferably organic turkey, ground, or put through a meat grinder
2 hamburger rolls
1 ball of mozzarella, sliced sort of thick
2 ample handfuls of basil mortar’d and pestle’d with
2 T. (or more) extravirgin olive oil
½ c. sundried tomatoes in oil, drained, and chopped fine

Cook the burgers in a frying pan, toast the rolls, and melt the cheese about a minute before burgers are cooked through. Liberally ice burgers with basil oil, top with the chopped sundried tomatoes, and eat immediately.

Serves two humans, one Birthday Retriever and her companion
The Queen of Kansas poses a seasonal question:
A quick cooking question: the sage in my backyard overfloweth and I was thinking of making some fried sage leaves. Some sources say just to fry them quickly in oil, others recommend dipping them in a pastella and then frying them. I don't seem to remember eating battered sage leaves in Italy but it's been so long since I've had them that I'm not sure.

My -- ahem -- sage answer: What's your recipe? If the sage leaves are garnish, just fry them w/o pastella. If they accompany an aperitivo, reverse.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/dining/26mini.html
[2] See his “For the Love of a Good Burger,” New York Times, May 23, 2007.

Danny Rock, via Pandolfini 13/r, Florence, 055/2340307.

martedì 12 ottobre 2010

Into the Woods


It was safe to take Lulu and Harry into the woods today, because the 54 sheep who’d been hanging out there these past two months sadly rejoined the other half of their flock.[1] Various forms of funghi punctuated our walk due to lots of rain. Heavy rains typically happen in Tuscany in the fall, but not this early and not quite so torrentially like the other night. Torrential rains are bad, but what often happens after is really, really good.

Porcini.

Today’s walk with Harry revealed scads of different kinds, probably all of them lethal, including some amazing toadstools.[2] (Lulu began the walk with us, and then went off to her archives, a pile of chopped wood where she noses in looking for lizards; at least, this is what I thought she was doing until she just this very instant threw up something so disgusting I won’t even go into it.)

Sometime in July, the Scallion went wandering in the woods, and returned with a nicely-sized porcino. At least, he thought it was. They do have a deadly nearly identical twin cousin, so we waited to ask Daniele, our Water Guy who is also a mycologist.[3] He affirmed the porcino-ness of said, and so we made a lovely frittata and ate it with Samantha .

Daniele and the Scallion went off into the woods a couple of days ago, basket at the ready, but returned empty-basketed.

Frittata di funghi porcini[4]/porcini frittata

2 T. butter (from Devon or Cornwall if you’re blessed)
1 medium-sized porcino, trimmed, cleaned with a paper towel, and cut into large dice
½ lb. button/champignon mushrooms, cleaned and cut into fine dice
5 organic eggs, cracked and whisked briskly with a fork in a bowl for a couple of seconds
¼ c. heavy cream, which has been added to the lightly-scrambled eggs in the bowl
Pinch of sea salt, Ibid.
White truffle oil

Melt the butter in a non-stick pan over a low, steady flame. Add both mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, ‘til cooked through. Pour in the eggs, and tilt the pan so that it’s completely covered with egg mix. Tilt the pan as it cooks on the edges and roll the uncooked egg/cream combination over it. When it’s just about set, take a plate that’s at least as large as the non-stick pan, hold it over the pan, and flip it. Cook the other side ‘til done, which will be significantly less time than the other side.

Remove from pan by gently sliding it off onto another nice plate. Liberally drizzle with the white truffle oil, and eat immediately.

Serves 3. Sort of.

We have other wild mushrooms growing where we live, and though they are bland and somewhat tasteless, they are absolutely gorgeous to behold. Called galletto (young male chicken), they look like engorged narcissi on a sunny but cool March day (only they’re burnt siena colored, not white). If you can’t find them (and you probably won’t be able to), use any sort of mixed fresh mushroom combination; texture and variety provide the visuals. (This provided the kick-off to last Sunday’s lunch; follow it up with a tasty veal stew, which we did.)

Risotto ai tre funghi /risotto with three mushrooms

¾ c. dried porcini, soaked in 1 c. nearly-boiling water
½ lb. pretty but ultimately tasteless wild mushrooms
½ lb. button mushrooms (States) or champignon (Italy), trimmed and finely diced
1 small red onion, minced
1 c. red wine
2 T. butter
1 T. extravirgin olive oil
1½ c. Arborio rice
4-5 c. mushroom or vegetable broth, warmed
White truffle oil
Chopped fresh mint (if truffle-oil-less)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Soak the porcini in hot water for at least a half hour; strain, reserving the liquid, and run the mushrooms under lukewarm water to ensure that all the grit’s gone; using cheesecloth, strain the porcini liquid and reserve. Chop the porcini, and set aside.

Melt the butter and olive oil in a wide saucepan, throw in the onions, stir until translucent. Add the button mushrooms/champignons, and stir. Add the rice, stir to coat, and throw in the wine. Stir ‘til absorbed. Add the mushroom (or vegetable broth) incrementally, stirring all the while. After a ladleful or two, throw in the dried chopped porcini. Keep stirring.

When the risotto’s nearly done (20 minutes or so after embarking on this project), throw in the pretty- but-ultimately- tasteless mushrooms. Remove from the heat, taste (add sea salt and freshly ground pepper if necessary), swirl in the truffle oil, and eat immediately.

Generously serves 3 people and 2 dogs.

Wine suggestions from Bobo: Frittata funghi porcini: Cerviolo bianco Chardonnay Toscana Igt You can drink the same white with risotto ai funghi (if you are serving it before the frittata. You don't go back to a white after a red wine) or I'd go for: Rubesco Rosso di Torgiano doc Lungarotti 2006 (I love it, Umbrian, not Tuscan, but perfect with porcini). If there's wine in the risotto, consider you are supposed to drink the same wine you put in the food.

Bobo’s right-on. Rubesco, mushrooms, Italy in the autumn: heaven.
Fans of Florence should check out this lovely blog: http://lettersfromflorence.blogspot.com
To Papaya: Victoria Stilwell could, I'm sure, straighten us all out. For those of us despairing of cayenne-loving canines (or other equally strange canine behavior), go to her official web site at positively.com.

[1] Angelo, their shepherd, brought 52 ewes, 1 ram, and a ram-in-training to graze near us in late July (pity a camera was not around when Waldo met the sheep). Ram meant to have his way with most of the ewes, perhaps inspiring the ram-in-training to follow suit. Sadly, Angelo and his wife have split up, so he’ll be tending his flock solely for meat; his wife made the fantastic, I-can-practically-taste-the-grass in my mouth cheese.
[2] Wondered why this appellation. From Wikipedia.org: 'The terms "mushroom" and "toadstool" go back centuries and were never precisely defined, nor was there consensus on application. The term "toadstool" was often, but not exclusively, applied to poisonous mushrooms or to those that have the classic umbrella-like cap-and-stem form. Between 1400 and 1600 A.D., the terms tadstoles, frogstooles, frogge stoles, tadstooles, tode stoles, toodys hatte, paddockstool, puddockstool, paddocstol, toadstoole, and paddockstooles sometimes were used synonymously with mushrom, mushrum, muscheron, mousheroms, mussheron, or musserouns.'
[3] He comes every other Friday and makes crucial deliveries of bottled water, ale, and wine.
[4] The difference between a frittata and an omelette? Elizabeth David tartly weighs in, but not on the difference: “It must be admitted that very few Italian cooks have the right touch with egg dishes. They are particularly stubborn with regard to the cooking of omelettes, insist on frying them in oil, and use far too much of the filling, whether it is ham, cheese, onions, tomatoes, or spinach, in proportion to the number of eggs, and in consequence produce a leathery egg pudding rather than an omelette.” (Italian Food, 1954.) Alan Davidson, the Go-to-Guy (much as Larry Bird was for the Celtics in the 1980s): “a French word which came into currency in the mid-16th century but had been preceded by other forms, e.g. alumelle, which are littered along a trail leading all the way from the Latin lamella, ‘small thin plate’, suggesting something thin and round.” Well, that appellation fits both omelette and frittata. Lest we think that the bastardized spelling of omelette to omelet is a 20th/21st century idea, we should think again. Davidson, one more time: “Cotgrave, in his dictionary of 1611, recorded its arrival in England in this entry: ‘Haumelotte: f. An Omelet, or Pancake of egges.” As usual, with things culinary, it looks as if we can credit ancient Persia for this dish. The frittata does not enter into his “omelette” entry, nor does it merit an entry of its own. (Oxford Companion to Food, New York, 1999.)

sabato 2 ottobre 2010

The Trouble with Harry


There’s always been trouble with Harry.[1]
He was abandoned, as so many dogs are come summertime in Italy, by the side of the road, somewhere near Viterbo (north of Rome, where various popes vacationed during those sweltering months).

Picked up from the side of the road, he was a trovatello (a foundling) and placed immediately in a kennel. Because he quivers when he hears ambulances, and gun shot, our theory is that he was a hunting dog gone bad … like, he didn’t like to hunt; hence his abandonment.

Italian kennels are, for the most part, not good. Crowded, dirty: don’t think industrial chicken farming, but imagine something close. Unhappy canines in crowded spaces.

We saw “his advertisement” in our local bar in Florence about three years ago. We saw questa pubblicità separately, his pathetic bio included (think Ford Maddox Ford’s “This is the saddest story I’ve ever heard” and then apply it to a dog) -- as sad as we'd ever heard – we thought we’d be his saviors.

Long story short: Italian euphemisms for “outdoor dog” translates into “not housetrained, pees everywhere in the house.” (Completely proved by his damaging a precious copy of a Giuliano Bugialli cookbook.) Previous tenants of Harry (who was then called Bianco)(how imaginative) said that he didn’t get along with others. Actually, Bianco/Harry had two previous tries of life outside the kennel, and failed them both. Or the people who attempted to live with him failed him.

Well, the long and the short of it (who can resist tweaking, badly and longer-ish, “long story short,” above?), Harry went through a lot of therapy (it cost us). He got better. He stopped biting others, humans and canines alike. Eventually, he moved back into the house. He tried to get along with Waldo, who simply couldn’t stand him (Lulu tolerated Harry; every time he tried to hump her, she took no guff.)

Waldo’s been dead this past month and a half, and Harry’s evil kitchen nature has once again reasserted itself. The Scallion and I believe that Waldo’s presence prevented these Acts of Mass Kitchen Destruction. Harry, smart enough to climb up on his hind legs, can demolish whatever’s on the kitchen counter (lately: wooden tongs, oven mitts, compost gone astray (not on the counter but in the compost bucket)); from the kitchen bucket under the kitchen sink, everything that’s not compostable; from the bathroom, whatever he can get his mixed setter paws on).

We find this disturbing, so have thought of all sorts of ways to have this not happen. We barricaded the cupboard underneath the sink, which meant rubber-banding the two doors, putting a door stopper in front of it, and then two kitchen chairs in front of that. Came back from Florence one day this past week to find two kitchen chairs tossed to one side, door stopper too, and frantic attempts to get into the garbage (as evidenced by the claw marks on said doors)(by the way, we take the garbage out every time we go out, to free him from temptation). Praise the goddess for the rubber band.

Next strategy: pushing the lovely wooden kitchen table in front of the sink, thereby blocking access to sink. (Neglected to say that he enjoys chewing kitchen sponges, which are now put on our drying rack, safe out of harm’s reach). And making a pyramidical formation of kitchen chairs to prevent access.

Oh, no matter! He’ll hit the kitchen counter, an act he’s always been fond of, but now is milking since Waldo’s gone. He’s actually eaten raw onions (and yes, Dear Reader: we feed him well, often, and properly). To counteract this, we thought we’d give him some astringent crostini heavily doused (with powdered cayenne pepper) in the mistaken hope that he’d eat one and give up. Four of them, all in a row. Eat one, have the roof of your mouth think you’re in one of Dante’s circles, and quit.

But NO. That experiment colossally failed. He ate one, and decided he’d eat the other three. (For those not living in Italy: dried peperoncini powder can be lethal even to the most seasoned hot pepper palate.)(Second attempt at said experiment resulted in the same: he ate it all. Face it, our dogs are weird. Lulu loves raw fennel; Waldo loved … well, he was molto particolare when it came to eating most things, except for things that were laced with slow-acting rat poison.)

(One wonders what Mr. Johnson would have thought, since he wrote once upon a time, “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” My thought: stuff a cayenne-laden bit of bread into that pompous ass’s mouth, and let him watch Harry do his stuff … oh, and then let him listen to Sarah Palin with mouth on fire… I digress …)

At least Harry hasn’t reverted to peeing on cookbooks. So far.

This from Jamie Magnificent, who comes from a family of seriously-committed-to-good-food&wine folk:

“know that i am avidly reading your blog in hopes of learning some new dishes!! (i think i need simpler recipes though-- i have a couple debilitating factors: college budget, college palate (i.e the sophistication, or lack thereof, of my peers haha), my skill haha, and American supermarkets) that said, i've been trying to learn some new things and i am soon going to attempt to bake bread!”

This recipe was a life-saver senior year in a college apartment; cheap, easy to make. Equally life-saving in a squalid bed-sit in South Kensington. Equally tasty while doing the 9-5 thing; just as tasty in graduate school. Equally tasty for the rest of my life, I expect.

This one’s for you, Kiddo.

Potato soup

1½ lb. potatoes, scrubbed for sure, peeled if you feel like it
¾ lb. leeks, trimmed, chopped coarsely
2 T. butter (2 T. vegetable oil if either budget or cholesterol conscious)
4 c. vegetable broth
3 T. dried dill (if an undergraduate) or 3 T. fresh chopped dill (if you have a garden or access to Whole Foods)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Optional garnishes: chopped hard-boiled egg (college/grad school); caviar (the rest of one’s life?)
Melt the butter or oil in a big, deep pot. Add the potatoes and leeks, toss to coat, then add the vegetable broth. Bring to a low boil, cover, and let cook ‘til done (about 20 minutes). Let cool, slightly, then purée the soup in a blender. Add the (hopefully) fresh chopped dill. Stir to combine, and eat immediately. This is good hot, this is good cold.

Jamie: potatoes don’t freeze well, so make sure you and your pals Hoover this one up.

[1] Alfred Hitchcock made a stab at black comedy horror in 1955 with a movie of the same title. Then there’s the wondrous Harry the Dirty Dog series … also from the 50s. Both Harrys were trouble.