A Waldo-less World

Waldo died late on Friday, August 13th. We last saw him on Monday; following the advice of most dog experts, we made our holiday exit as unobtrusively as possible. My last image of Waldo is him sitting in the nook of one of his couches, tiny black and white splendor poised against the red sitting room walls, his head cocked, alert. Four days later he was dead.

The local vet theorized that he’d been poisoned, and reckoned that Waldo had ingested said some 10 to 15 days before he died. Slow-acting, it ate his red blood cells.

According to Sam, Waldo’s aunt, he was perfectly fine on Thursday night. On Friday morning, he refused food (only the second time in his too-short life), which triggered alarm signals. To the vet he went, where he was put on an IV hookup, released, with a possible blood transfusion perhaps the next day. He died later that night; Sam buried him in the dog cemetery, near a cypress, and some of the sheep (of which there are presently fifty plus in the land around us) came to pay their last respects. Waldo had only just met them the week before, so it was very kind of them to honor him so.

He entered our lives purely by fluke.

We weren’t meant to have another dog. Tillie had died only eight months before, and we still mourned (nearly six years later, we still do). But a dear friend was looking for a pup, and I went along.

They were a scrappy lot, those five puppies, all black and white, their on-site mother Leila, amiable, blonde, tiny, with a rodent-like face. Love at first sight with those puppies.

Brought the Scallion back to check out the litter, and Waldo-to-Be immediately began gnawing on the Scallion’s shoes. We were sold (and he was free).

He came to live with us in July 2005. He was so tiny that he could neatly fit into our kitchen scales and he didn’t weigh more than 2.5 kilograms (five pounds). He was small, irascible. He grew a little, but he remained small, and he only became more irascible.

He was too small to jump on the bed which, at that point in time in his puppyhood, was a major life goal. We always gave in and lifted him up. The beginning of a most bad habit, as he slept every night on the bed with us, usually under the covers, sometimes stretched out alongside one of us. Always ready to alert us with a growl if we were invading his space beside us. Some mornings we’d wake up and his head would be on the pillow, between us.

Waldo had many names, but the one that stuck was bestowed upon him by Osvaldo, Argentinian by birth, Italian by here’s where I live, who, upon seeing this small critter, said, “Oh, Waldito!” Waldo also sometimes went by the aliases Shrimpy McPup, Lord Dainty Paw. R. W. Yapp (his hip-hop name) and, most importantly, the Squiggler. Because squiggle is what he did.

Imagine a Slinky, but a horizontal one. Add four paws and a tail. Walk into our apartment any time and watch him squiggle (or, at least, before August 13th). He squiggled out of happiness, a constant S curve in motion. He also (annoyingly to everyone except us, I suspect) had to stand on his hind legs to greet you. Bad Dog Behavior, but we didn’t discourage it.

He had other annoying habits: he yapped. He yapped from joy, he yapped from frustration, he yapped at ambulance sirens, he yapped at insects, he yapped at other dogs (of course), he sometimes yapped at air. (Or so it seemed.) He also scratched incessantly at doors. If he was in, he wanted to be out. If he was out, he wanted to be in.

He loved ladies’ lingerie. An unwitting turn in a friend’s fuschsia thong (which he’d found on the floor, and slipped into as if it were a cross between a turban and a tutu) led us to the theory that he had been a drag queen in San Francisco in a previous life. Chums Jonathan and James, upon hearing of Waldo’s death, wrote: “thinking of you and of Waldito dancing at a bath house in the clouds.” We hope he is.

Waldo’s antics convulsed us with laughter. of an evening when things were too quiet. He loved to chase his tail. He could stand on his hind legs for seemingly infinite amounts of time if an insect was involved. He was, as they say in these parts, molto sportivo: he played basketball, some tennis, and volleyball (he loved to hear the air oozing out of the ball).

He loved to hump Lulu. Visualize this: a pre-pubescent Chinese female Olympic gymnast humping a large NBA player desultorily lying on his stomach, not giving a rat’s a** about the details. Waldo, of course, the gymnast; Lulu, Shaquille O’Neal or his equivalent.

If you live with non-human animals, especially ones who share the same space as you, going away/taking a vacation is never easy. We have taken few; when we go, Zoe’s Person steps in and watches them.

In this case, Zoe’s Person was not around, though Zoe was (the rest of her family was in the United States). Fortuitously, two young friends wanted to come to Italy, and we told them if they would watch sometimes four dogs, they could stay in our place, drive our car, have all sorts of adventures. Unfortunately, they started having all sorts of adventures on their first day on the job, and then again on the third day, which meant that they weren’t around much the last three days of Waldo’s life. Waldo was a lap dog, a heat-seeking missile, and it’s a tragedy that his last days on the planet were largely lapless.[1]

We feel beyond lousy that we weren’t there when he died. Beyond lousy that Waldo’s Aunt had to bear the burden of watching him get deathly sick, watch him die, and then bury him.

Waldo spared us the agonizing luxury of watching him get old.

Had we been around him, would we – who knew him best – have noticed sooner that something was seriously amiss?

What do you do if you have animals who live with you? Hard to take three of them with you on vacation. Never go away? Stay at home watching the Discovery Channel, wine glass in hand, while listening to U2 sing “Even Better than the Real Thing?”

Waldo taught us much. He made us laugh again after Tillie died. Most important, he taught us how to greet the day. For him, each morning was a new adventure, his theme song Pink’s “Let’s Get this Party Started.” Daybreak or bird-chirping time (depending upon the season, sometimes one happened before the other) alerted him to the fact that it was Time to Get Up. His tail would beat out, metronomically, a rather mechanical line (think of Meg White’s drumming), and he would put his face in ours. He almost always won out, which is why we were often up at 6 a.m. when we had no other reason to be. No matter that this day would start exactly like any other: walk in the woods with Lulu, Harry, and the Scallion; breakfast, nap, pee break, pee break, perhaps a leap over the wall separating the terrace from the garden, a reconnoitering of the garden’s contents i.e. Waldo’s Domain (in fact, the last time I yelled at him was because I caught him peeing on the tomatoes), a long walk in the woods, dinner, pee break, bed – this didn’t bother him at all. In fact, he was thrilled.

Oh, to have so much enthusiasm every morning.

He blessed our lives for five years, and I thought about this while we were far away. David Bowie’s “Five Years” ran through my head, and though he certainly wasn’t singing about a dog, the last lines resonate:

“We’ve got five years, stuck on my eyes/We’ve got five years, what a surprise/We’ve got five years, my brain hurts a lot/We’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got.”

Our hearts hurt a lot. And screw the experts: kiss your dogs every time you go out the door.

Waldo (c. May 30, 2005 – August 13, 2010). May you dance with the great Overdog into eternity.
[1] According to all reports, the dog sitters toed the line thereafter.

Ritual Dishes

We have them in the United States: stuff to eat at certain times (4th of July hot dogs and hamburgers, Thanksgiving turkey, ham or lamb on Easter, a great steak house to mark any celebration) and we have them here in Italy, too (fish-filled Christmas Eves, fava beans and pecorino on Pasquetta (Easter Monday), eating mostly fish on Fridays; though the ban on eating bi- and quadruped flesh on Fridays has long been lifted by the Roman Catholic church, habits die hard in this country, and Italians lean towards fish on Fridays in restaurants and at home). (They might not fill the churches on Sundays, but they cling to this tradition.)

The Scallion and I have ritual dishes based on no religious traditions and no calendar days. Ours are based on the following: 1) they’re a pain in the neck to make, hence we make ‘em once a year and 2) they’re seasonal and 3) they’re celebratory and 4) they just plain taste good.
So 5) we make them when lots of friends are around.

One such ritual dish is okrochka, a chilled Russian yogurt-milk based soup. It teems with cucumbers, fennel, and pickles; and then you can add shrimp and/or chicken and/or wurstel and/or veal (according to Marina, dear Russian chum and Designated Okrochka Expert).

Wiki, Italian version, says that the soup is either Ukrainian or Russian (imagine my dismay when a Polish acquaintance grudgingly told me that pierogies might, in fact, be Ukrainian and not Polish at all). The name comes from “krosit” meaning to cut things in little pieces.
It contains mostly raw vegetables, cucumbers and winter onions (strange that, as it’s a summer dish), boiled potatoes, prosciutto with kvas, and it’s usually served with sour cream. Totally clueless what made the broth for the soup … sour cream?

As always, we turn to Elizabeth David in these cases, who loftily informs us that she used to eat this soup at the Russian Club in Athens during World War II (did Rick’s Café serve food? Unclear). She ate it with kwass, and yogurt was served on the side.

Reactions to this soup were mixed, at best. Practically no one had seconds, except for us, and the Scallion’s Mother (who's English). One Italian painstakingly searched his way through the milky mire figuring out what he wanted to eat and didn’t. Another Italian – whose aversion to cucumbers I’d forgotten – minced her way through the soup, a real challenge when you’re vegetarian and are presented with only fennel and pickle swimming in a sea of dairy.

Since Italians almost always “take” seconds, and none of them did, we can chalk this up as a Never Again Experience. (Marina loved it.)(Let me reiterate. She is Russian, and knows.)

Not a disaster, but close. Fortunately, the starters of sorrel eggs (yup, it’s still growing), bruschetta, and anchovy/caper spread on toast ensured that no one starved , and the gruyere-laden curly endive/escarole salad (with optional pancetta on the side) helped ease any lingering hunger pains.

Fortunately, Poldo (idol of last post) met Harry, and we were all able to enjoy what, according to some, were dear friends meeting for the first time: for others, dog porn show; take your pick. Their antics took the sting out of the Really Don’t Much Want to Eat this Soup.

Do you need a Northern soul to enjoy this dish? Is it too wacky for Mediterranean tastes? Who in blazes knows? All I know is that it will remain a Ritual Dish, but perhaps only for family. Oh, and that one Russian chum of ours.

I very much enjoy this soup, which is why I give you this recipe, loosely based and almost-plagiarizingly so from my hero Elizabeth David. It tastes beyond brilliant on a hot summer day. It’s pretty and its checkerboard aspect, floating tiny bits of pink and green, might bring to mind Domenico Veneziano’s St. Lucy Altarpiece at the Uffizi, though I’m sure none of those ascetics (Francis, John the Baptist, and St. Lucy included in said) had much appetite.

(Jury’s out on St. Zanobius; Queen of Kansas? Your thoughts most welcome.)

Okrochka

4 c. diced fresh cucumber
3 c. diced wϋrstel (mild flavored, poach, then dice)
1 lb. chicken breast, poached with a bay leaf, half a carrot, thick onion slice, 3-5 peppercorns, generous pinch of kosher salt, thick slice of lemon, 3 garlic gloves, handful of parsley), then cut into dice around the same size as the wϋrstel)
1 lb. shrimp, preferably poached in an Old Bay Seasoning/vinegar mix, chilled, then peeled and deveined, chopped in pieces about the same size at the two above
1 c. chopped leeks, the part that bridges the area between green and white
1 c. diced fennel
1 c. diced pickles (kosher dills would impart a wondrous texture to this soup)
2 c. chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 pt. low-fat plain yogurt
4 c. low-fat milk
Salt and ground white pepper, to taste
Handful of fresh dill, chopped

Throw all ingredients up to the yogurt and milk into a big glass bowl. Separately mix the yogurt and milk, and then pour over the vegetables. Chill for at least an hour, and then serve.

Ostensibly serves 8.

Elizabeth David’s recipe comes from A Book of Mediterranean Food (London, 1950). She would probably sneer at the very idea of using low-fat yogurt and skim or 2% milk; she would probably also raise an arched, perfectly-formed eyebrow at my inclusion of all the animal products she suggests. She would also be quite disappointed, I think, that it wasn’t served with kwass.

(Photo of Two Stooges thanks once again to Alli S.)

We are off to northern climes on Monday; this will be my last post; blog will re-appear at the end of August. Buona vacanza!

Dogs Peeing on Couches, Rigatoni

What’s the culinary equivalent of a male dog spot-peeing on a living room couch? Rhetorical question to self while cleaning up liquid, vinegaring (oh, geez! I just did what I complain about in a footnote …) the floor, and then spraying the couch with Bitter Apple, a scent so repulsive it’s supposed to make dogs cringe. (It doesn’t, but it makes the purchasers feel they are in control of things.)

Cleaning spinach or my beloved sorrel? Frying eggplant on a hot summer’s day? Peeling onions from one’s garden, the onions so small, the skins so thick it’s painful? (Worth the effort, however, when it comes to eating them.) Oh, do let’s factor smell into this equation. Removing rotting vegetables from the refrigerator? Dealing with a delicate layer of mold that’s formed on a favorite piece of cheese you long forgot you had? Taking out your compost bucket days after you should have? The Scallion has pointed out – rightly – that peeing for dogs is not a chore, and that the things I list in this paragraph are. He says my analogy is off. He’s right, but please keep reading. (Do dogs do anything they don’t want to do? Oh, yes … coming when called … being on a leash … )

Mulled these pressing issues while googling “Dogs peeing on couches.” 743,000 results; went to http://www.thriftyfun.com/, and read Bonnie, posting on July 20, 2010, who complained that her boxer was peeing on the couch. A day later, xintexas posted the following suggestion: “put double stick tape all over the sofa.”[1] Esthetic reservations aside, I feel certain that that product is not available in Italy.

“Stop dogs marking territory” came up with 13,400,000 results (clearly dogs peeing on couches is a world-wide issue – at least, in countries that like dogs). The lucid http://www.dogchatforum.org/ provided invaluable insight: “We as humans tend to think of dog urine as something unpleasant but to a dog it is something of great interest … Dogs with feelings of insecurity or who have separation anxiety may also mark, as territory marking the dog’s confidence ." Mostly boy dogs do this – which has convinced me that Waldo is my first, and Harry my last male dog – but girl dogs can do it, too.

From Tillie’s unpublished memoirs: “En route [to a bar] …for a coffee and a toast is a glorious thing, It’s raison d’etre for any canine, anywhere in the world: the smells! Oh, the streets are perfumed with them. As we wend our way down the very narrow Borgo Pinti … I get to check my messages, my “pee mail.” Yes, you know we canines have highly advanced senses of smell, among other things. Imagine the wondrousness of sniffing, smelling, and reveling in the accumulated scents of centuries! For Borgo Pinti has many buildings that date from the Quattrocento and, let me tell you, some things just don’t go away … it’s sort of like pentimento with smells instead of. The things I learn from putting my nose, delicately but deliberately, to the stones of Florence. Lots of my pee mail is often of recent vintage, and I always know who is in the neighborhood before I … well … before I let them know that I am walking down the street.” Tillie, always a lady even to the very end, declined to mention that she enjoyed peeing on top of whomever else had peed there, previously. Which made walking down Borgo Pinti a long process.)

Turns out Billo was back. Billo is a lovely terrier mix, about two years old, who lives (sometimes) down the street. He jumps/slides over a lame little fence we have, and is suddenly on our terrace. This sets the two male dogs off into hullabaloo (the unperturbed Lulu barely acknowledges his presence, as little phases her: She is a golden retriever, after all).

Billo first made his way into our lives sometime this past winter. We saw him one rainy morning as we headed down the driveway. Hours later, when we came back, he was in our garden. We began to wonder if he was an abandoned dog (we live near-ish an exit of a major highway, happily for those monsters on their way to the beach, and there’s lots of rolling hills, and woods, and it’s a favored spot for People Who Ought to be Shot to dump their dogs, which they do in this country, still with too much frequency, and especially in the summer as they head off to the beach or the mountains). We lured him in, fed him treats, saw that he had a collar (usually abandoned dogs don’t). We set him up in a little crate in the garage, and called the vet, who in turn alerted local officials, who drove out the following day to see if he was chipped (meaning his person’s information was recorded in a little chip his neck). He was, as it turns out, and chipped to someone who lived just down the street.

This made us happy, and sort of very sad, because it had occurred to us that we might be adding a fourth Stooge to our pack.

Billo’s presence sets Harry off. Harry has Issues. He was abandoned perhaps five years ago near Viterbo, a town north of Rome, often lived in by popes. He spent most of his life in a kennel. He had already had two failed relationships with two Florentine families (which should have told us something, but whoever said we were smart?). Italians euphemistically say “he’s an outdoors dog.” Read that as: He’s not housebroken.

Harry’s integration into the pack has been a lengthy (and costly) process. He had a marvelous Dog Whisperer for a long time. But he feels uncertain – Waldo, a fraction of his size, won’t take any of his guff. His attempts to hump Lulu have been futile. He’s housetrained, usually. He’s at the bottom of the heap, and knows it.

We were in Florence all day yesterday, and Billo was back. The pee made all sense in the world.
We had this for dinner last night, in between cleaning up piles of pee. It was good, which was fortunate, because it was all we had in the house.

Rigatoni con salsiccia, pomodori, e olive
(Rigatoni with sausage, tomato sauce, and black olives)

1/3 lb. rigatoni
3 T. extravirgin olive oil
1 small onion, preferably red, but in last night’s case white, as it came from our garden
1 clove garlic, minced
½ Scotch bonnet pepper, seeded and minced
¼ lb. Italian pork sausage
¾ c. tomato sauce (preferably homemade)
2 T. (generous) of triple-concentrate tomato paste (hard to find in the States; just use the best tomato concentrate you can buy
Handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Put a pot of water on to boil. Toss the rigatoni in, and cook per package instructions. Don’t salt the water in this case: there’s enough salt in the sausage/black olive mix to make up for it.

Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized sauce pan. Add the onion, garlic, Scotch bonnet pepper, and still ‘til the onion’s golden and the garlic soft (but not browned). Take the sausage from its casing, crumble, and add to the mix. Stir ‘til cooked through, add the tomato sauce and tomato paste. Stir to blend, and let cook for about 15 minutes.

Drain the pasta, throw it back into the pan with the sauce, stir to combine, set down two plates, and serve yourself directly from the pan.

Bobo suggests pairing this with a Morellino di Scansano, specifically the one put out by Le Pupille (this one’s a docg), 2008. It’s 85% sangiovese, 15% malvasia nera.

Poldo, the lovely animal pictured at the beginning of this blog, is a success story. He’s about two years old, a segugio italiano a pelo raso tricolore (a segugio – a breed we don’t have in the United States, but a kind and gentle one – with short hair in three colors). He was found on a street somewhere between Florence and Arezzo, “as skinny as possible” as his person recounts; he was about 10 kili (for pounds, multiply by 2.2). When Poldo was rescued from carcere (jail), he was about 20, and this explains his name: Poldo is the name for Wimpy, Popeye’s hamburger-loving pal. He’s blind in one eye, the result of his training as a hunting dog (for either hare, wild boar, or roe deer). He either encounted a wild boar or simply hit a branch, and badly. The blindness is probably what caused his demonic person to abandon him. For my dear art historian pals who read me, I’ve dubbed him Wimpy, Dog(e) di Montefeltro.

If you’re in Italy, and looking to add a mutt to your family, check out http://www.cani-abbandonati-it.com/. Be prepared to cry. If you’re in Italy reading this, go to http://obliooilblog.altervista.org/, which does have some happy news: Nei cento canili monitorati dall’associazione nel fine settimana sono entrati complessivamente 317 cani rispetto ai 483 dello scorso anno con una diminuzione di entrate pari al 34%. (In the hundred kennels monitored by the association at the end of the week, 317 dogs, as opposed to 483 from last year, found temporary lodgings [these last two words mine and not true to the translation], with a 34% decrease.)

[1] Other sites provided infantile refreshment, as in dogs “going potty.” Potty, to my mind, means daft or nutty. NOT peeing on the couch. Even better: “pottying.” Nice making an adjective – i.e., daft or nutty – into a verb of some weird sort.

Italian Melon

If you’re lucky enough to live in the United States, count your blessings and praise the Goddess that living where you do allows you access to variety, especially in the vegetable world, and lots of it.

Right now, I’m thinking about the melon in the world of said. The next time you’re in a supermarket, or farmer’s market, or a greengrocer’s, stroll down the vegetable aisle, make a mental note of the honeydew, and bask in anything else that follows. Think of your poor brethren in Italy.

Italy has two kinds of melon. Yup, just two. Watermelon and melone. We in the United States of America call it cantaloupe, either with or without the “e” (though I think we always go for the “e”).[1]. During Italian summers, when it’s always hot and you’re thinking FINLAND, meloni are omnipresent, especially when served with thin slices of prosciutto di Parma or di San Daniele. It constitutes a “light” meal for lunch, skipping the fact that ham is ham is ham (and how “lite” is that?). Doesn’t matter: we can all feel light and virtuous while eating this perfect marriage of sweet and savory, cholesterol be damned (speaking of sweet/savory, right now Casa del Vino in Florence serves perfectly ripe figs with salame toscano, and the planets are in harmony).

Italians are obsessed with eating “light” when it’s hot. For them, it mostly means eating stuff that’s cold. Do explain how a cold rice salad laden with cubes of ham and cheese can be considered “light.” Equally explain how any grain salad – i.e. farro – can be considered “light.”
It ain’t. Unless you go off to the beach or mountains (as many do) and sweat/swim it off (unclear to me what one does while in the mountains, but one can imagine sweat is involved), you hold those carbs as close to your heart as you do tortellini in brodo (preferably eaten in Bologna in the fall).

According to Wikipedia.org, you can spell it “cantaloup,” or refer to it as muskmelon, rockmelon, or spanspek (this must be what they call it in Stuttgart). North America has one variety, Europe another. Supposedly Christopher Columbus brought cantaloup(e) to the New World on his second voyage to said. (A sop, perhaps, for introducing syphilis to Native Americans.) Again, thus spake Wiki, Burpee introduced the “Netted Gem” (sounds almost pornographic, no?) in 1881. From there, our love – if such this can be called with something that grows with difficulty along large parts of garden tract – was born. http://www.answers.com/ says that the word comes from the (French) word “cantaloupe” … well, and then … who knows? It might come from a papal villa near Rome (from the Italian cantalupo, the name of a supposed villa near Rome)(rot, say I. Were this so, “cantalupo” would be in our lexicon much as “zucchini” is (the plural of the singular “zucchino”).

This recipe comes, more or less, as a memory from a long-dead (sadly) wine bar in Florence called Enoteca Baldovino.[2] It’s Rebs’s recipe; Rebecca, weaned in Denmark, has a Canadian mother, and found a recipe (loosely resembling this) in a Danish vegetarian cookbook many, many moons ago. It may sound strange. It doesn’t look or taste that way.

I’d like to introduce you to Bobo who, from time to time, will pair wines with recipes. Bobo is Florentine, a sommelier, and an ace cook. She has exquisite taste.

Rebs’s Melon Salad

1 ripe cantaloupe/e, muskmelon, rockmelon, spanset, aka “melon,” rinds/seeds removed, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 red pepper, seeded, and cut into pieces resembling the “melon”
½ lb. feta, soaked in water for at least 10 minutes, drained, then crumbled
1 c. black olives, pitted and minced
2 T. extravirgin olive oil
1 T. best-quality red-wine vinegar
Freshly snipped chives
A handful of freshly chopped mint
One cayenne pepper, minced (optional)

Throw the first four ingredients into a salad bowl, mix the olive oil and vinegar together, pour over said, add the fresh chopped/snipped herbs, cayenne if using, toss, and serve.

Bobo suggests washing this down with a fine Sauvignon Colli Orientali del Friuli d.o.c. Livio Felluga 2009.

Casa del Vino, via dell’Ariento 16/r, Florence, 055/215 609.
Baldovino, via San Giuseppe 22/r, Florence, 055/241 773.
Baldobar just next door to Baldovino.

[1] And who knows why.
[2] Do know that its flagship restaurant, Baldovino, thrives still, and is well worth a visit. In the past couple of months, David Gardner (proprietor) has been written up in both the Financial Times and the New York Times (synchronicity, one should think). David and his charming wife Catherine have recently opened Baldobar, a lovely wine bar featuring Spanish/French wines and food, the subject of an imminent blog.

Dog Daze

It’s really hot here, like it is in a whole lot of the rest of the world these days. It’s so hot that between the hours of 1 and 4, the Stooges do not go outside, even though they want to (they have a tendency to plunk themselves down in full sun, and then forget to take themselves out of it, whereupon they need to be called back in, and they do, panting furiously and looking somewhat dazed). (This is one of the many reasons why they are Stooges.)

Dog days comes from the Latin dies caniculares and, as wikipedia.org reveals, “The name comes from the ancient belief that Sirius, also called the Dog Star, was somehow responsible for the hot weather.”

Finding an appetite when it’s this hot ain’t easy. Remembered a dish of cold soba noodles, served with a vinegar/soy sauce, from many many moons ago. Funny how some dishes are cyclical, or native to a period in your life (Like, Oh! Here’s when I was a vegetarian! Or: Here’s where I was sticking it to my parents and only eating white things! And then you think of the food you used to eat then, and sometimes you wince and say, What a pretentious git was I, or maybe you don’t; maybe you have a Proustian moment and are transported on angel's wings back into a special kitchen. Or not.). Ramen noodles are certainly a period piece. We ate them a whole lot right out of college; they were quick, easy, cheap (5 packets for one dollar, those were the days).[1]

Higher on the food chain was a cold soba noodle dish. It seemed, somehow, to lower the temperature within oneself and beyond oneself. Simple, unadorned except for that perfectly-mixed sauce/dip/condiment.

Hadn’t made the dish in far too long. So spoke with sister, who’s done several stints in Japan, about how to cook the noodle (it’s very easy to overcook). Her method, the Japanese one, is to bring a pot of water to boil, throw in the noodles, bring it back to a boil, add a cup of water, back to a boil, and repeat the action two more times. Various web folk said throw it in the pot, but guard it carefully.

Wrote to pal Paula, who has done numerous stints in Japan, and therefore qualifies as an authority (high school exchange student, junior year abroad, TESL, three years in the 90s). She has very nicely provided the classic recipe below, and then there’s my total bastardization of it to follow. Paula notes that she prefers making this dish with somen noodles, “the much thinner wheat noodles which often come in serving size bundles.”

But back to the cooking: guarded it so carefully that the Stooges, carefully arrayed on cool, soothing tiles at my feet, got to taste the noodle while it cooked. This is certainly the first time they have had any Japanese food. They did not seem at all puzzled by it, but then again, they are omnivores; indeed, they seemed to like it, looked at me expectantly, hoping that the quest for al dente soba was still in progress. (It wasn’t, after that first proof.)

Hiyashi Somen

4-6 servings
冷やしそめん (hiyashi means cold)

Prepare a dipping sauce:
2 T. mirin
1/4 c. soy sauce
1 c. dashi or broth (recipe below)
2 T. rice vinegar
1 t. sesame oil

Dashi
1 piece of konbu (dried kelp)
¼ c. katsuobushi (bonito shavings)
1-5 c. water depending on your need

Boil for 3 minutes and strain. (From Paula: “Last night I boiled a cup of chicken broth with scallions, slivered ginger and a Thai chili pepper to make my broth.”)

Toppings:
¼ c. fresh cilantro, chopped
3 green onions finely chopped (best if you put them in a thin cloth, run under cold water, and then squeeze out excess water)
1 large carrot cut into 1 inch pieces and julienned
½ c. julienned cucumberShredded lettuce
½ c. julienned sweet red pepper (not traditional but good)
Toasted nori cut into thin strips

Optional: Any or all of the following:
½ c. tofu-kan thinly sliced
1 block kamaboko (fish cake) finely chopped
Tamago yaki (beat 2 eggs, fry as you would a thin omelet and cut into fine strips)

Heat a pot of water to boiling. Drop noodles into pot and stir to fully submerge. Boil for 3 minutes. Drain and run under cold water. Place in a bowl with ice cubes.Serving:In each serving bowl place the desired amount of noodles and an ice cube.Top with desired toppings.Pour one or two spoonfuls of dipping sauce over each bowl.In the summer this is often served as a full meal but also might be accompanied by a square of cool, fresh momen dofu (tofu) with shoyu and wasabi.Paula suggests the following, “For a fancier meal we like to eat it with cold poached white chicken. We usually use a recipe from The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Gloria Bley Miller.”

Cold soba noodles with tofu, leek, and cucumber

200 gr. soba noodles
1 T. toasted sesame oil
1 T. red-wine vinegar
300 gr.tofu, chopped into uniform cubes
2 young leeks, shredded
¼ c. toasted sesame seeds
½ cucumber, seeded, sliced into crescent moons
3 T. low-salt soy sauce, shoyu, or tamari
2 T. red-wine vinegar
2-3 T. mirin
Multiple generous shakings of Shichimi Togarashi[2]

Throw the noodles into a pot of boiling water and zealously guard it. They should be done in about three minutes, but do check before removing from the flame and draining. Pour cold water over the noodles while they cool down in the colander.

Put into a bowl, add the shredded leeks, diced tofu and cucumber. Mix the soy sauce, red-wine vinegar, and mirin, pour over the salad, toss gently.

Vigorously apply the Shichimi Togarashi, and serve.

[1] Spaghetti puttanesca is equally cheap, but who knew about that dish then?
[2] The label kindly informs us that it contains red pepper, orange peel, yellow and black sesame seeds, Japanese pepper, sea weed, ginger. Rather than try this concoction at home, buy it.

Leftovers

Leftovers. What a discomfiting notion.

They often happen after a party, or Thanksgiving, or when your eyes are much bigger than your stomach. In this case, we have leftovers from the 4th of July. Fortunately, we have the Three Stooges.

Steve Wilson has a fun site (http://www.la-story.com/) and provides a “What to do with 4th of July leftovers” piece. Unfortunately for us, nothing appears for potato salad.

Not that it wasn’t good. It was. But there was far too much of it, and other more exciting things crammed the table; it got shafted.

“Leftovers are the uneaten edible remains of a meal after the dinner is over, and everyone has finished eating … The ultimate fate of leftovers depends on where the meal was eaten.” Source: Wikipedia, of course. Which continues: “Leftovers from a restaurant meal may either be left behind to be discarded by the restaurant, or taken away by the diner for later consumption. In order to take the food away, the diner may request for it to be packaged [hell, why not take the plate?]. The container used for such leftovers is commonly called a doggy bag or doggie bag; the name comes from the euphemistic pretense that the food will be given to the diner’s pet …” If you click on wiki’s link to “doggy bag” you come up with “foam plastic container.” Nothing dog-like about it, and nothing bag-like about it, either.

Well, I resent that “euphemistic pretense,” since we actually have dogs, and we actually feed them leftover restaurant food. Oh, and our food, too. Canine nutritionists the world over probably curse us (in the highly unlikely event that they are reading this). It’s nice to have marvelous beings among us who provide a penultimate link to throwing food out (a very bad thing to do).

The most marvelous epicurious.com lists 81 recipes for “leftovers,” and most of the recipes are … well … bizarre … like “Wichcraft’s Roasted Turkey, Avocado, Bacon, Onion Relish, and Aioli on Ciabatta” (sounds a wee bit busy, but good), “Turkey and Sweet Potato Sandwich” (thanks but no thanks),(sounds much too much like the horrifying English chip butty (buttie?): French fries wedged between two slices of bread, perfect for sobering up after a night down the pub and not much else). Of the 81 recipes, 10 are devoted to turkey, so you know we’re thinking Day after Thanksgiving. And how does “Coriander Crusted Scallops with Chive Potato Hash and Sweet Corn Sauce”[1] constitute a leftover? My goodness, what did the dinner guests eat the night before?

The penultimate Joy of Cooking lists three recipes, and all make perfect sense: risotto pancake, sandwiches from, and turkey.

What to do with leftover pesto cheesecake? [2](Feed it to the Stooges.) Potato salad? (Make hash, top with poached egg, and too much hot sauce.)

The potato salad’s all gone now, and the Stooges now know what blue cheese tastes like … if they hadn’t already.

[1] A difficult dish for those of us in Italy. Unless you have access to a great market (Vivi in Florence, and the Mercato Centrale, for sure) or your own garden, coriander’s tough to find. Scallops are virtually impossible, but can be had. Corn? Well, here they feed it to the pigs; those of you who aren’t in Italy, please think of all of us the next time you bite intoa Silver Queen cob.
[2] From the Joy of Cooking. Recipe went over like the proverbial lead balloon. Perhaps it’s best to stick to sweet cheesecakes. No one seemed to know what to do with its savory cousin. Bless the Stooges.

Independence Day, Potato Salad

On July 2, 1776, our Founding Fathers declared a legal separation from England. On July 4, 1776, the document explaining this move -- the Declaration of Independence – was approved.

Philadelphia was the first to celebrate the 4th one year later, and in 1778 George Washington celebrated the day by allotting his soldiers a double ration of rum. (Those were the days.) Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, in Paris, had a dinner for fellow Americans that same year. In 1781, Massachusetts recognized the day as a state celebration; in 1791, we have the first documented phrase “Independence Day.” In 1870, the United States Congress made Independence Day an unpaid holiday for federal employees, and in 1938 same body made it a paid holiday.[1]

If you like to read about food, you’ll notice that most food writers in print and on the web offer potato salad recipes for 4th of July gatherings. Epicurious lists 239 recipes (including Julia Child’s classic “American-Style Potato Salad”), and wikipedia.org provides readers with several variations of potato salad, including the somewhat lurid one with orange slices, Worcestershire sauce, bacon, and chives (upon reflection, it sounds sort of tasty). Obviously, you can throw just about anything into it. You can even go as crazy as the 1946 Joy of Cooking, which lists 15 ingredients besides potatoes. If you’re stumped for recipes, go to http://www.potatosalad.org/, which bills itself as “The Largest Potato Salad Website on Earth.”

Garrison Keillor wrote a marvelous piece last year, just about this time, called “It’s Time to Stand Up for Homemade Potato Salad.”[2] This lyrical piece extols the virtues of homemade potato salad, largely a thing of the past.

The potato made its way to the Old World via the Spanish sometime in the 16th century; Arnold Shircliffe, a Chicago chef, traced the first recorded instance of potato salad in 1597.[3] A man named John Gerrard wrote about ways to eat the potato, and one of them included salad. It appears, however, that potato salad only really caught on in the 19th century in the U.S. spread by German immigrants.

We make like Jefferson and Franklin, though we are not in Paris. A handful of American friends are coming to eat, drink, and salute (metaphorically) the Stars and Stripes. We’ll be joined by pals from Italy, Lebanon, Spain, and Russia. Naturally, we’ll be having potato salad. Onion dip (still undecided between a great recipe in the penultimate Joy of Cooking, and a very tasty-looking one at http://www.dailybeast.com/), guacamole[4], and devilled eggs[5] to whet the appetite. Zoe’s Person aka California Babe brings her terrifically tasty taco pie; another friend brings ribs[6] to throw on the grill. We’re also tossing hotdogs and burgers (both beef and turkey) amid the ribs, serving them with all sorts of condiments, including David Chang’s ridiculously simple and ultimately satisfying pickled vegetables.[7] (Unfortunately, corn on the cob isn’t an option.) And probably bolted or just-about-ready-do-so mixed greens from the garden (it’s suddenly gotten insufferably hot here, as it always does this time of year). Dessert: mixed red and blue berries served atop vanilla ice cream, and s’mores.[8]

Image our great pleasure when, this morning in an attempt to see What’s What, and Expecting Very Little if Anything at All, the Scallion turned over what looked to be a dead potato plant (many rows carefully planted a while ago; too much rain, too little flowering, dashed hopes) to turn up – from the half spud planted: nine potatoes. Which means that this year’s 4th of July potato salad comes from our back yard.

There won’t be any fireworks. They happen in Florence on their feast day of St. John the Baptist (June 24th). If you want fireworks on the 4th of July, and you’re in Tuscany, head to Camp Darby, a U.S. military base near Pisa. They send them off from the beach.[9]

This potato salad was inspired by a cicheto (little snack) at già Schiavi in Venice. The
combination of ingredients might be somewhat alarming, but trust me, it works. Their cicheto’s served on a toothpick, and potatoes are not present. Nor are onions. Nor are jalapenos. Nor is the vinaigrette. Whatever. I said ‘inspired,’ right?

Potato salad with gorgonzola, mortadella, and jalapenos

4 lbs. potatoes
1 whole red onion, peeled, thinly sliced into crescent moons
1 lb. mortadella, thinly sliced
1 lb. gorgonzola piccante (or other sturdy blue cheese that crumbles easily)
2 c. walnuts, toasted lightly and coarsely chopped
2-3 jalapenos, seeded if you feel like it, chopped

The vinaigrette:
2/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil
½ c. red-wine vinegar
1 T. lemon juice
1½ T. Dijon mustard

Cook the potatoes in boiling water, let cool, peel.

In a big bowl, combine the mortadella, gorgonzola, walnuts, and jalapenos.

Make the vinaigrette, pour over the salad, and toss gently to combine. Taste for salt and pepper, which it probably will need. If it seems dry, add more olive oil and vinegar increments.

Should serve about 10. Don’t worry about it sitting out in the sun. There’s no mayonnaise in this.

“ … and is this not the meaning of our beautiful country, to take what is common and make it beautiful?” This from Garrison Keillor’s piece about potato salad.

If you can, play X singing “4th of July” really loud sometime during the course of the day. Or Bruce Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).”

To re-read the Declaration of Independence, go to http://www.earlyamerica.com/

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

[1] All of these factoids come from http://www.wikipedia.org/, “Independence Day.”
[2] You can find it at www.salon.com.
[3] This from http://www.foodtimeline.org/; the recipe appears in the Edgewater Beach Hotel Salad Book, Evanston, 1928.
[4] Not North American at all, obviously. The origin of the word is Aztec (ahuacatl), and Spanish conquistadors turned it into aguacate, somehow tagging the Mexican word “mole” (sauce) on to it. The Aztec translates ahuacatl as “testicle tree” (see http://www.wisegeek.com/). But http://www.mexicofile.com/ insists that that Aztecs were already calling it ahuacamolli. Wiki reports that the Aztecs were making guacamole as early as the 15th century, and tells us that National Guacamole Day in the United States is September 16. Or perhaps November 15.
[5] Not American at all. They ate them in ancient Rome. Wikipedia.org (“devilled eggs”) reveals that they were “first in use in the 18th century … in the 19th century, it came to be used most often with spicy or zesty food … in some parts of the Southern and Midwestern United States, the term “salad eggs” or “dressed eggs” are used particularly when the dish is served in connection with a church function, presumably to avoid dignifying the word ‘deviled’.” Can such a thing be true? The Wikipedia entry also remarks upon the following: “Prepared and packaged deviled eggs are now available in some U.S. supermarkets.” If you’ve read Garrison Keillor’s marvelous piece, you’ll hear him roaring.
[6] No point in discussing the origins of these, as the Chinese – I’m sure – have been doing this for millennia.
[7] David Chang and Peter Meehan, Momofuku, New York, 2009.
[8] Which is an elision of “some more.” http://www.slashfood.com/ reports that campers developed this dish in the early part of the last century; the first recipe appears in a Girl Scout Handbook from 1927.
[9] At 10 pm on the 4th, a “Fantastic Fireworks Display.” http://www.usag.livorno.army/. Camp Darby “stores and maintains prepositioned equipment and vehicles” according to http://www.globalsecurity.org/, and is named for Brigadier General William O. Darby, who was killed in action in northeastern Italy on April 30, 1945.