Aroma Cucina

Hunting Season Conundrum

  The guns are blasting outside, so it must be hunting season in Umbria.  Mushroom hunters battle for territory, clusters of men dressed in camouflage gather on the sides of the road clutching walkie talkies in one hand and the lead of a barking dog in the other. Cinghiale is hunted ‘in battuta’ meaning the hunters and their dogs bark and whoop and flush the prey into a tight spot and then they shoot it. I have mixed feelings about battuta style hunting as it doesn’t’ seem very sporting to have 10 men with advanced weaponry, dogs and a lot of communication devices chasing after one wild boar. On the other hand, the terrain around here is seriously challenging, one misstep and you disappear into the bowels of a bottomless ravine, so maybe it’s best for everyone if they hunt in a group. That is, everyone but the cinghiale.

Dana McCauley’s recent blog post “How Bloodthirsty are you?” is a lively piece where she grapples with her own issues about hunting.

I have to support responsible hunting because I love to cook and eat game, so I can’t be wishy-washy on the subject. But, could I pull the trigger? I just don’t know.

According to my dear friend Jay Cassell, a life long hunter and big muckedy-muck editor at Field & Stream, the number of hunters and women hunters has risen in the US to around 15 million, but as a percentage of the overall population, the hunting population is shrinking and women account for less than 10% of hunters. Jay thinks I should take up hunting, and maybe I’ll go out with him when we get back to NY, if only to symbolically honor the fallen deer (Because Jay, if I go out with you, I totally expect to come back with a nice buck, none of this, oh better luck next time nonsense like you pull with fly fishing!). 

In Umbria, hunting is so woven into the fabric of life, you just accept that in the fall it sounds like you are living outside the Green Zone in Baghdad, it’s best to wear a red bicycle helmet and you always hope that sooner or later someone is going to hand you a choice piece of cinghiale. This weekend, we are serving cinghiale with black olives at the Taverna del Verziere during our Festa del Bosco and I promise to say a small prayer of thanks to the animal spirit. It’s the least I can do.

So, what about you? Do you eat game? Could you pull the trigger?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Green Acres Syndrome

 

Remember Eva Gabor yelping, “Goodbye City Life!”  Well, I’m having my Eva Gabor moment. There was a time in my life when I wore red fingernail polish, uh, actually had finger nails, kept high heels under my desk for those special times and had more suits than pairs of jeans.  Life has changed and I’m not complaining, as we made some conscious life changes and living the way we do requires time and effort. We’ve gone through our first full orto season and as I clean the canning pot yet again, it leads me to wonder when the backlash to local, slow, seasonal eating is going to occur.

 

 It’s wonderful to plant a garden in the spring; the little plants are so full of the promise of good things to come. Then summer comes and you eat tomatoes until you burst. Then fall blows in…and by now, you are flummoxed about what to do with yet another large batch of produce.  I’ve canned tomatoes until my fingers shriveled, figs are embedded in my shoes and my rugs, and I even ground my own grape skin flour! And this morning, I’ve got liters of limoncello waiting to be bottled.

 

I’m not complaining, but I do wonder how many other people would do this. People who eat local for a year get a book deal! OK people, this is not Everyman stuff if you get a book deal.

 

I think its high time for the media to stop taking the easy way out and publish every word that falls out of Michael Pollen’s mouth, and I’m taking the easy way out here by making him the fall guy for what I perceive as an over-simplification. I’m thrilled that Michelle Obama has a garden at the White House, but not for a second do I think she’s loosing sleep over what to do with the green tomatoes that are still on the vine.

 

There has been a huge disconnect from our food source, and I’m completely in favor of acknowledging that chickens actually die to make Chicken McNuggets, but expecting people to grow their own, eat only in season or not eat any food that’s traveled more than 50 miles, is just plain nuts. It’s also not going to solve the problem of e.coli in frozen hamburger patties or spinach, because the bulk of the population uses bagged spinach and stashes frozen hamburger in the freezer. Its time to open up the discussion to reality: food will need to be mass grown to feed the masses, it will need to go through distribution centers, but that doesn’t’ mean that we shouldn’t take a good hard look at what’s going on and fix it.

 

Ask yourself some questions:

Are you willing to wash your own spinach, cut up your carrots?

Are you willing to travel to find a good, responsible butcher, pay more for your meat, and probably eat less of it?

Are you willing to eat fish that hasn’t been filleted and still looks like a fish?

Are you willing to give up coffee or olive oil, because not that many of us live close to coffee growers or olive groves?

Or what about that gorgeous Australian syrah you recently tasted. Willing to give that up?

Are you willing to give up sleeping in on a Saturday morning so that you can weed the garden?

Do you know how to make a pie crust? 

 

None of us are saints; everyone has something they don’t want to do without and I’m not advocate of paralyzing food guilt. Not all of us are cut out for the Little House on the Prairie routine and I’m absolutely certain that if a woman from the mythical Old West Prairie was to drop down into a 21^st century kitchen she would sink down on her knees in tears of gratitude.

 

So, let’s step up the discussion and stop damning all that is mass produced or shipped, stop feeling guilty for buying potato chips instead of growing the potatoes, and start getting creative in our thinking about how to fix what is wrong with our food distribution systems. We should move beyond sound bytes and media slogans to truly, honestly debate how to develop a sustainable food model.

 

Why? A Tomato Canning Revelation

Once upon a time there was a woman who always cut the ends off the ham before she put it in the roasting pan. Her daughter, having learned the recipe from her mother, cut the ends of the ham before putting it in the roasting pan. When it was the grand daughter’s turn to make the ham, she asked, “Why do we have to cut the ends off, Grandma?”  Grandma replied, “Because my roasting pan was too small.”

 

It’s good to remember to question, to not work from rote.  Case in point:  I just figured out that I don’t have to peel the tomatoes before I can them. I learned how to peel tomatoes (pour boiling water over them and the skins will slip off) at my mother’s knee. I remember the hours, the tub of hot water with tomatoes bobbing around, the wrinkly fingers, the smell of a gazillion warm tomatoes as we put them up for the winter.

 

I also remember a few Italian summers ago, having to deal with a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, and I peeled every last, stinkin’ one of them.  It was a good day not to come and talk to me in the kitchen.

 

This year, I had the  “Ah-Hah Moment God” come and bonk me on the head with my food mill. I put the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes, ran them through the food mill, all the tomato juice and pulp goes into the pot and you are left with nothing but seeds and skins in the mill. No peeling. No seeding. The tomato juice and pulp went back on the stove until it thickened, then into the sterilized jars.  Sooooo much easier than peeling all those tomatoes!! No wonder those clever Italians call it passato.

 

So the moral of the story is: just because you’ve always done it one way, doesn’t mean it’s the only way. And that’s not just in the kitchen.

 

P.S. I needed to show off our gorgeous beefsteak tomatoes. Stunning to look and just as stunning in your mouth.

Where Credit is Due: Name that Dish Contest

There is a legal minded school of thought that believes  recipes should be copyrighted. That he who creates a dish can somehow  ‘own’ that dish and could possibly even be paid a royalty for it every time another person makes it.

I think it is a fool’s goal.  Virtually since the moment that a woman figured out how to put meat on a fire and cook it, the art of cooking has been a communal affair.  (And you know it was a cavewoman because woman were the food preparers, so it stands to reason that she stood there saying, oh god, I don’t want to eat carpaccio again tonight and so she tried putting a little heat to the meat.)  Every recipe stands on the shoulders of another recipe, on inspiration from somewhere or someone. 

Which brings me to the name that dish contest. I wanted to make something a little special for lunch last week because it was our anniversary. A romantic dinner is not an option during festa week, so we had to settle for a quick, but joyous lunch and we both love roast quail.

I wanted to make a rich, spicy sauce as a counterpoint to the roasted quail, and I’ve been in a Renaissance spice mode recently, so there was mace, nutmeg, ginger, lots of pepper, but I used tomatoes as a base which weren’t around during the Renaissance, and I finished the sauce with a good jolt of whiskey, New Orleans style.  So what could you call this creation if you wanted to honor its roots?  Roast Quail with a Post-Renaissance Creole Sauce accompanied by Creamy Polenta? Now, that is a catchy name that should earn me the coveted “Pretentious Dish Description” award.

And now that I have a unique name, could I copyright the dish?

I don’t think so because all those medieval and Renaissance cooks influenced my choice of spices, and while dreaming of merchants in Venice, I wandered into modern times with my tomatoes and then remembered how the whiskey flavor acts like jazz music to bring all the flavor components into focus.   For me, paying homage to the roots of a dish is critical because no one, since the harnessing of fire, has operated without knowledge of someone else’s contribution.   Cooking is one of the ultimate grand traditions and we do right by knowing and understanding its history.  So the next time, you slice a tomato and throw a few leaves of basil on it, stop and think about how that dish evolved, and take comfort that you are truly not alone in the kitchen.

P.S. If anyone does think of a good name for that quail dish, let me know, ok?

Is there a new dining culture afoot?

Is it the ‘crisi’, as it’s referred to in Italy? Has the economic crisis actually caused people to lose their taste for over the top opulence, or is it just me?

The past few years in New York, we started going out to dinner less and less. I thought it was just the high prices; it certainly puts a damper on things when you have to pay $14 for a glass of mediocre at best wine, or when going out for pizza and a bottle of wine isn’t a cheap evening.

“I get no kick from champagne, mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all.

So tell me why should it be true?”

Cole Porter’s lyrics suddenly start playing in my head.

I don’t want to be in Las Vegas dining at some deluxe food palace where it’s all about show-me-the-money. That doesn’t mean that these temples don’t serve fine, fine food, but the setting seems wrong, sort of crass and entirely from another era.  Has the pendulum swung away from ostentation towards a more personal, intimate dining experience? Will there be pent up demand for ostentation or is there a new dining culture emerging?

I’m betting on a new dining culture, where passion for the food trumps passion for a spectacular chandelier. Methinks there is a subtle trend afoot where people are pulling in their purse strings but still wanting, expecting and receiving excellent food and wine at fair prices. Look at the ‘gourmet’ street carts that are popping up in US cities like Portland, or the BYO culture in Philadelphia that allows a restaurateur to get their place established without mortgaging their first born for a liquor license. There is a resurgence of interest in old school charcuterie, cheese making, bread baking, brewing beer at home.  In the US this could be the emergence of an actual food culture akin to the European culture where local and seasonal always held sway and teaching your children the fine points of pinot noir is considered an obligation.

Italy is not exempt from this cultural shift although it faces different challenges. One of the biggest hurdles is the resistance of Italians to try something new, even if it is a salumi from the next region over. I fell in love with a Tuscan salumi called finnochione on a recent trip to Florence and stupidly didn’t bring any back with me to Umbria. It will require crossing the border before I can taste that salumi again. Wine lists are numbingly the same from place to place and menus tend to be variations on the same old, same old.

I’ve been thinking about this since Sunday when we treated ourselves to lunch at Spritio Divino in Montefalco. I believe they could be the embodiment of the future of Italian dining. There is passion for the food and a sincere joy in sharing the flavors. We were treated to a mind blowing taste of prosciutto that is produced by somebody’s nearby grandfather. It was rather thick cut, the fat melting onto the plate, salty, unctuous, sexy. It would have been a sin to eat it with a piece of melon. This proscuitto flavor had a beginning, a middle and an end and another flavor would only have been a distraction. We chatted with Nila, our sommelier waitperson and all three of us enjoyed having a complete wine geek conversation about grape varietals, the weather in 2005, Prohibition in the Ukraine. It was a perfect lunch, served in a simple setting but with such attention to detail, such passion, such flavor that I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world for all the money in the world.

And that my friends, is where I think the future of dining is heading and I’m excited.

Celebrity Chefs beget Celebrity Butchers?

Say it isn’t so.
It’s bad enough that celebrity chefs have become entertainers instead of cooks, now we have a new macho breed of butchers?

Look, I’ve been the butcher’s friend and advocate for years. I believe in a good butcher, I revere a good butcher, but please, don’t make him a rock star.

HOWEVER, if you are must go the rock star route then you have to feature Jeffrey. It’s like forgetting to mention Elvis when you talk about rock n roll history and pretending that Eric Clapton got his education in a vacuum.  If there is to be a macho, philanthropic, sort of crazy butcher rock-star icon, it’s Jeffrey. Only please don’t any suggest to him that he show up at the Essex St. Market in full glam rock, because he just might do it.

For shame, Ms. Severson.

Head Case

When you have the chance, buy your fish with its head on and try not to buy topless shrimp. Seek out whole fish, ask your fish guy to leave your fish whole. “Eeewww!” I can hear my mother as clearly as if she was sitting next to me.

Simply put there is flavor in the head even if you don’t plan on eating it. If all you do is boil some shrimp, the end product will have more flavor. Ditto for bones, as it is damn hard to make a boneless, skinless fillet of fish taste like anything but generic cardboard.  If I ruled the universe, fish fillets would be outlawed (and my mother would give up fish altogether). 

If you are feeling virtuous about eating fish,  and you would like to eat fresh and buy local, consider this: that filet of halibut was most likely shipped to China, filleted and then shipped back to the East Coast.  That tilapia you bought? It probably came from China, which produces 50% of the world’s share of tilapia.

Here’s a quote from Sarah Murray’s excellent book, Moveable Feasts"  about how food has traveled throughout the ages:  “Today temperature-controlled shipping containers allow companies to send their frozen salmon to China, where it’s thawed, filleted, refrozen, and sent back to the United States for sale in supermarkets as “fresh” Atlantic salmon.’  Fresh fish indeed.

So, if you are making fish stock….just like with meat stock, you need the bones and there’s no good reason to throw the head away, its full of flavor.

Here are some simple tasks to get you started on the path to the full enjoyment of the underwater world:
Work on your fish seller to stock more whole fish. Start a revolt against fish sticks so that kids learn what fish is really all about. Do your fish the honor of being served whole in all its glory, and besides you have no idea how much fun it is to play with your fish head and scare the beejeezus out of my mother. The time we actually tricked my mother into putting a smoked trout head into her mouth is a moment that lives in family infamy.

I’m not picking on you Mom, you’ve actually become a very good fish eater over the years! But you have to admit the fish head incident was pretty funny.

And if you are serving a platter of ‘mezzancolle’ as these shrimp are called in Italy, they just look prettier with their heads on, sort of Busby Berkley style. If you have good shrimp and want to serve them cold try just a drizzle of excellent olive oil, some salt, pepper and a generous squeeze of lemon juice. You can’t go wrong, especially if you serve them with a nice rose’!

Cucumber Linguine Slaw

Its not enough to slice a cucumber in a different way, there has to be a reason for it. Here's a simple cucumber salad: sliced cucumber, bit of red onion, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper; but it's a new and improved cucumber salad because of the way it's cut. The ribbon slices of cucumber rendered the whole salad more crunchy, with more tooth and texture than chunks of cucumber.

See, it pays to experiment.

Salt War Simmering in NYC?

Our NYC Mayor Bloomberg has decided that we eat too much salt. Our Dear Leader has our best interests at heart and is mandating a nationwide movement for restaurants and food processors to cut the amount of salt they use by half regardless of the conflicting scientific information currently available.

That distant knocking sound you hear is my head beating on the wall. Foie gras, trans fats, a  proposed tax on soda and now it is salt's turn to be caught in the cross hairs. We are talking about half-baked, poorly researched concepts that mutate into being accepted truths. I get it, the government wants us to eat well so that we won’t get sick and then we won’t notice that we don’t have any health care. Thank you very much but leave my salt alone. I have visions of clothing designers installing secret salt pockets into the cuff of a shirt, you look like you are passing your hand over the French fries, but you are actually salting them perfectly. 

I once toured the inner sanctum of the DeCecco pasta factory in Abruzzo, Italy and was flabbergasted to learn that pasta that is imported into the United States must be vitamin enriched with niacin, ferrous lactate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin and folic acid. Being a confirmed cynic, I assumed the legislation was passed due to the efforts of The Niacin and Ferrous Lactate Lobby, but now I’m more concerned about where does DeCecco get that stuff and couldn’t I have just have my pasta with wheat and water like everyone else in Italy?  I’ll throw caution to the wind and take my chances with riboflavin deprivation.

We always joke that the word “Umbria” translates as “land of meat and salt”. They like their food SALTY and it takes some getting used to, but generally speaking the Umbrians aren’t obese, they have a higher life expectancy than someone in the US and they actually seem pretty happy with their food.

I think Dear Leader Bloomberg has gone too far and I’m drawing a line in the salt. Leave my salt alone and go work on some other stuff to get the city back on its feet.

  

Kickin' it old skool: Chicken Cacciatore

Last night, I don’t know why, I just had a hankering for chicken cacciatore, the tomato-ey chicken braise that was popular along with cheese fondue, celery boats with crème cheese, Jell-O ambrosia and pretty Braniff air stewardesses.  (If that wasn’t a trip down memory lane, then google up the word stewardess. And once upon a time the pretty stewardesses brought you a hot meal on an airplane, and you got to eat it with a real knife and fork.  Who knew that was the Golden Age of air travel??)

I decided to do a little searching and see what sort of history I could dig up on chicken cacciatore. Most recipes are kind enough to explain that cacciatore means hunter in Italian, but that’s about the only thing they agree on. With mushrooms, without mushrooms, red wine or white wine or no wine, peppers show up in most recipes, as does oregano. A nice woman named Sara has a YouTube video on how to make the dish, which is all well and good, but the best part is the comments where everyone has ‘their’ own correct way of making the dish. Which come to think of it, is actually a very Italian point of view. However the guy that insists that you must never, ever brown meat in olive oil, well, that’s just wrong.  Dictionary reference.com says that its chicken cooked in the Italian way. Good to know! Narrows down just about nothing. It was actually pretty entertaining to see all these references spout off about ‘authentic’ recipes, which just goes to show you that some dishes belong in the general public domain, and that’s ok.

My take on the origin of the dish is that it probably was made with rabbit, hare, pheasant or any other unlucky game animal, unless the hunter got confused and started shooting the animals in his courtyard. Mushrooms would have been added in the fall, which also coincides with hunting season.  Peppers probably got added to the recipe when the game turned into skinned chicken breasts.

If it’s suddenly chic, or PC to know the source of your food, shouldn’t you be curious about the origin of the recipes as well?

And just for the record, I’ll probably make this again the next time I have a craving for celery sticks and cream cheese. It’s good, but there are better things to be done with chicken legs.

My ‘authentic’ recipe is available upon request. OK, now who is thinking about the joys of Jell-O ambrosia??