Aroma Cucina

Kung-Fu-Zen-Grasshopper Cooking or How I Learned to Banish the Recipe

I've been having a problem with the whole concept of recipes.

How do you read a recipe? I skim it for ingredients, look at a pretty picture of the finished dish and I’m pretty much done. Unless it’s a particularly complicated technique, or a combination of ingredients that I can’t imagine going together, because let’s face it, you usually combine some ingredients and add some form of heat and that's it.

If I actually have to follow a recipe, it tethers me in a way that I don’t enjoy. I check, recheck, double back and question. What kind of onions? A cup of thinly sliced white onions will be a lot more onion than a cup of chunky red onions.  Those onions get added to the dish when? It makes me not trust my own instincts or wonder if the recipe author has a thing for lots of onions.

Cooking from a recipe reminds me of my reliance on Google Maps. Seriously, I could be the brand ambassador, I’m addicted to The Bitch. That’s what we call the voice that tells us when to turn right or left. There’s really no reason to be snarky and call her The Bitch because she’s always polite and never cops an attitude like that iPhone snark Siri.  But, in our car, or on our bike, she is The Bitch and she usually gets us where we are going.

So why is a recipe like The Bitch? Instead of relying on my own instincts or sense of direction, or learning landmarks, I abdicate control and let her tell me exactly what to do. Recipes do the same thing, you give up control.

Fine. Easy for me to say. I’ve spent years in the kitchen, I’ve trained in professional kitchens. So, yeah. I have it easier.  But that doesn’t let you off the hook.

It’s time to banish the recipe as GPS and tune in to the Kung-Fu-Zen-Grasshopper (c)
technique of cooking. It is time for us to cook in the ways of our ancestors, by using our senses. (Yeah..I’m having a moment....indulge me, ok?)   It is also time to cook in the modern way, which is so, like, totally, about self-indulgent self-pleasuring by making exactly what you want.

Kung-Fu-Zen-Grasshopper Technique:

Cook by sight.

If you see smoke, chances are something is burning. When the shrimp turn red, they're done.


Cook by sound. Sizzling means the pan is hot; water boiling over and splashing on the stove top has a special sound that should cause an immediate spike in blood pressure and a high speed jog to the stove. Risotto is the best way to learn to cook by sound, if you hear a sizzle, add broth immediately.

Cook by smell. The pungent raw onion smell giving way to sweetness. Garlic, chili and olive oil will make a gentle sizzle, the smell tells you that everything is going just fine with this dish.

Cook by touch. A rare steak will yield gently when pressed. A raw steak feels like mush. A well done steak is a tragedy and it feels like a piece of wood.

Cook by taste. Stick your (clean) finger in the sauce. Or use a spoon, I don’t care, just taste it. Recognize that early taste before the sauce has time to come together, and remember that it takes some time for the salt to dissolve and for you to taste it. Most of the time you should taste every ingredient.

Cook foods in season. Why do you think processed food is so consistent? The manufacturers spend big bucks and do research to eliminate all the variables of fresh food. Every can of Pringles will taste the same. Every package of DeCecco pasta will taste the same because they source and blend the wheat to be sure it tastes exactly like the last package you bought.

There is no way that a recipe, even one repeatedly tested, can be accurate in your kitchen. Freshness, temperature, variety, even atmospheric conditions are all going to affect your cooking and the finished dish.

I want to taste summer in my tomatoes, autumn in my truffles, winter in my root vegetables.  

We still had tomatoes on the vine in our orto when Jeff tore out the stalks to get the bed ready for winter. The late season tomatoes weren’t getting enough sun and tasted like ..well...like store bought tomatoes. The season was over even if the plant didn’t know it.   
It takes a certain leap of faith, practice and accumulated knowledge to cook in the Kung Fu-Zen -Grasshopper style, but eventually you’ll be able to Keep Calm & Cook.

And here, either to jog your memory or introduce you for the first time to the 1970‘s Kung Fu TV series with David Carradine.

Bon’apetito Grasshoppers!

Dinner Power & A Beer Can Chicken

While our son was growing up, we worked crazy long hours. I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. One other fact of our life is that we always ate dinner together. Even if it meant me riding my bike home from Gleason’s Boxing Gym like a mad woman to get to Gourmet Garage before it closed, then making dinner by 9:30; that’s what happened at our house most every night.
I don’t think any of us ever really thought about it too much; it’s just the way it was. We watched a movie together while we ate, checked to make sure homework was done. Regular stuff.
Dinner has always been our connection time and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We were creating bonds; just enjoying each other’s company at the end of the day. Nothing unusual about it; until you consider all the people I know who don’t eat together. Apparently that’s the trend. And that’s sad and crazy.

Fast forward about 6 or 7 years...Curtis is all grown up and living in Philadelphia. Last weekend he invited me over for dinner..no occasion, just dinner. I get a text message: “Oysters?”  Hell yeah! Who can turn down that sort of dinner invite??   “Beer can chicken?” came the next text. Well, I was a beer can chicken virgin and I thought it was time to see what all the fuss was about.

The oysters were superb: plump, full of brine, sweet. And washed down with a pink Cava, and chili pepper flecked mignonette, just about perfect.

But things got interesting when we pulled the beer can chicken off the grill. I didn’t know what to expect; how could a chicken be on the grill for so long and still be moist? Apparently that’s the miracle of the beer can, it literally steams and infuses the chicken with flavor. I know. I know. I’m late to the party. I’m not a beer drinker, so the whole idea seemed sort of....college frat boy.

It’s not. It’s a jumping off point for me to start exploring steaming foods. Recently I scoffed at someone on Mouthfuls asking about steaming a chicken. “Why would you want to?”, I asked.  I’m imagining pale white, flavorless meat.
Then I listened to Paula Wolfert extol the virtues of Moroccan style steamed foods. And finally, faced with a blackened beer can that had been extracted from the chicken, the light bulb went off.

I want to line up 4 or 5 chickens and do a taste test experiment. Would Guinness make more of a statement than Coors Lite? What about earl grey tea and ginger? What about wine and herbs? Is there a way to get a crispy skin on a beer can chicken?

So, do me a favor. Save up your empty beer cans, send me some, you keep some, and let’s have some fun experimenting!

PS It’s a good feeling to know that we’ve passed on the dinner gene to the spawn of our loins. Dinners are good.

In the News

It's been a roller coaster week for Aroma Cucina! On top of crazy festa doings, we've had some other good stuff going on.

Jeff was recently interviewed for EFAM magazine (Escape from America). Life in Italy has its great moments and its moments of great frustration.

Yesteday's post, In the Service of Dionysus, was front page news on Italian Reflections Daily. IRD is a wonderful, rowdy pulication that is perfect for anyone who enjoys an insiders look at living La Vita Dolce.

And we're being featurned in BlogHer under What' Hot: Spaghetti Ortolano

What a week!

 

 

 

Kitchen Confidence at an all time high!

The results of our Kitchen Confidence survey are in! There are some surprising food and cooking trends: 23% of you use your microwave as a butter melting device, and no one buys bottled salad dressing. Oh, really now.... ?

Here are the delicious details:

1) Kitchen Confidence: Most of us are decent cooks, with an almost even split between novices and Supremely Good Chefs.  Which means that a whopping 82% of us know when to whisk and when to fold.

2) Making dinner for friends: The responses fell into three broad categories: Show-Off, Adventurer, and the Spontaneous Forager.  Obviously the Show-Offs are our Top Chefs,  the Adventurer hits the web and cookbooks for inspiration and isn’t afraid of trying out new recipes on friends, the Spontaneous Forager waits until the last moment and is confident they can pull a rabbit out of the hat.

3) How would we cook a rib eye steak? 98% of us are going to grill or sear that steak. Happily the 5% of us that would give the steak away, can give it to the 5% that are going to make steak tartare.


4) Overwhelmingly we all want more cabinet space (74%) instead of a microwave.

5) What do we do with a microwave? I put this question in because I don’t own or use a microwave and I was curious what people do with this hunk of equipment. It takes up a lot of space, so it better be seriously useful. My favorite response was “Clock” because you know we all use for it that but only one of us ‘fessed up.

 
6) If cooking skills and cost were no object what would you make? Seafood was the number one choice with oysters getting top honors, followed by lobster.
Foie gras gets honorable mention as the next runner up.
Then it broke down into roasts, steaks, and multi-ethnic delicacies like Creole Seitan stew, Mexican, porchetta, mole poblano, xiao long bao.
That all sounds delicious to me!
For a vegetable, asparagus wins. Whoever is making the asparagus souffle, can you share that recipe?

7) Comfort Food: Is there a scientist in the house because I think we’ve discovered something: we are comforted by carbs. When we need a cuddle we turn to pasta, potatoes and rice.
 A distant runner up was soup, lots of tomato soup and a few lentil soups and a few any kind of soup at all.
    I need to know, what is Nailey’s canned chili?? There is more than one of you that confesses to loving Nailey’s chili.
And I’m not going to out the person who has an herb butter dependancy.

8) Mystery Basket Menu: We’re all having some kind of lemon chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and a custard for dessert (Or a pudding as our British friends call the sweet at the end of a meal, and based on the responses we’ve got a  few British friends!)  As one commenter noted, we’ve got a color issue with this menu, tasty but blonde.

9) Ready Made, Either Way or Store Bought? Come on...nobody buys salad dressing/cream?? There are whole aisles dedicated to the stuff, so somebody is buying it.

10) One thing you screw up: We were all over the board here except for timing of dishes.  All I can say is practice helps and so does an extra glass of wine or two. For the guests, not for the cook.


Thank you everyone for helping out with our survey!  I had fun and I learned a few things, although I’m still trying to figure out what goes on with all that melted butter.

We start shooting video next week, so I’m trying to get my Julia Child groove on...wish us luck!

10 Things I Need to Know About How You Cook

What kind of cook are you? Do you cook a little? Do you cook a lot?
I’ve set up a quick, fun Kitchen Confidence survey to get an idea of what goes on in our kitchens. We’re working on our second cookbook and I’d love to hear what you think about cooking.

We’re thinking of this project as a prequel to "Cooking Simply: The Italian Way". After talking with people, and listening to my niece tell me  for the 800th time, we’ve decided to develop a real nuts & bolts how-to-cook survival strategy book. 

 I think cooking is simple. It’s just as much a part of my day as brushing my teeth. But there must be a reason that grocery stores dedicate an entire aisle to bottled salad dressing.  It costs about 90 million times more than making your own and you won’t be adding BHA, BHT, red dye #15 and lots of high fructose corn syrup..or do you keep that stuff in the cabinet?  Clearly, I need to get out more often and talk to people about how they cook.

  So, please take the survey and help us out. Pass it along to anyone who even thinks about cooking!  And Mom..this means you too...take the survey. I already know you buy bottled salad dressing.
Thanks and I’ll keep you posted as we move along on this crazy, but very fun project.

Click here to take survey

Kitchen Wizard's Secret Weapon for Divine Dinners

What is the emergency, go-to, secret weapon that I try to keep in my fridge at all times? And it’s not ketchup, although mustard takes second place. First place goes to:....Veal Stock!

If Merlin the Magician waved his wand in your kitchen, he would give you this Secret Weapon.  It’s the painter’s white canvas, it’s the keyboard to your computer, it’s  butter on your toast, the magic in your saute pan.

Michael Ruhlman compares it to turbo charging your Mitsubishi... your kitchen is now faster and more fuel efficient.

It’s a flavor bump, adding depth and intensity to a sauce. It’s the umami bridge that literally blends the components of your dish together.

There is a toll to be paid in order to enjoy all this fast freedom: you need to make some veal stock.
I hear you.. where can I find veal bones? At your butcher, you should be patronizing a butcher anyway.

They’re expensive compared to chicken bones. Correct! But, you’ll get extensive use from the bones, it’s worth the $$.
It takes hours to make it. Correct again, but it’s not like your standing next to the oven, frozen in time, while the bones are roasting. Stop whining.

The How-To of Making Reduced Veal Stock Kitchen Magic:
4-5 lb veal bones
1 large carrot
1 large onion
3-4 ribs of celery
Peppercorns,  salt, vegetable oil, herbs(rosemary, thyme, sage)
1/2 can canned tomatoes
4-5 good sized glugs of white wine, enough to cover the bottom of the roasting pan

In a large roasting pan, lay out the bones and lightly salt and pepper them. Roast the bones for about 1 hour at 350F/180C. Remove from the oven when they are toasty brown and the smell is intoxicating.

Meanwhile, roughly chop the peeled carrot, celery and onion. Add a little vegetable oil to the bottom of a large stock pot and add the chopped vegetables, another sprinkle of salt, a small palmful of peppercorns, and a bit of rosemary and thyme.
Saute until the vegetables are a  little burned, this caramelization adds color and flavor to the broth.
Add the roasted meat bones to the stock pot.
Using white wine, deglaze the veal bone roasting  pan, dissolving all the tasty browny bits and add the wine and meat juices to the stock pot.
Add enough cold water to the stock pot that you cover the bones.
Lightly simmer for about 2 hours. That means little bubbles gently swimming to the top of the pot. Skim off any of that icky foam.
After two hours,  first remove and discard the bones. Then strain the stock through a fine mesh colander and pour the strained stock back into the pot. (It’s much easier to strain the stock if you pull the big bones out first, less mess and less weight to deal with.  Reserve the bones for a worthy dog.)

Add 1/2 cup canned tomatoes, turn up the heat to a slow boil,  and start reducing the stock.
 After boiling for about an hour, strain the liquid once more and move to a smaller pot. Continue reducing until the stock liquid  become thick enough to coat a wooden spoon, and the boiling bubbles look like syrup.
Reducing time will depend on how much water was in the stock pot to begin with and the temperature you are using to reduce the stock, but plan on a few hours.
Be careful, because at this syrupy stage, you could burn your precious elixir and that would be a real drag.
When you have the stock reduced to about 1 1/2 cups of liquid, carefully pour it into a very clean jar.
Let it cool, then refrigerate the stock. The fat will come to the top and you can remove it later.  What’s left, is Veal Kitchen Magic.  It will keep in your fridge for 3-4 weeks; just be sure to use a clean spoon every time so no other food particles can contaminate it and encourage mold.


What to do with Veal Kitchen Magic:
Saute a a piece of pork, a piece of codfish (yes, it works very well with a meaty fish), chicken breasts, turkey bits. Whatever protein strikes your fancy. Remove the protein from the sauce pan, keeping the meat or fish on a warm plate, add flavoring like chopped mushrooms, a splash of wine and a teaspoon or so of Veal Kitchen Magic to the saute pan. Swirl these ingredients around in a pan, voila!,  you have your sauce a la minute.

Pork chops with green peppercorns: Once the pork chops are cooked, add green peppercorns, mustard, your veal kitchen magic and a shot of whiskey to the pan. Cook for 45 seconds, remove and pour over the pork chops.

Lemon Chicken breasts: Remove the cooked chicken breasts from the pan, add veal kitchen magic, a glug or two of white wine, deglaze the pan, finish with the juice of a fresh squeezed lemon. Add capers if you are feeling happy.

Codfish Delight: Remove the codfish from the pan. Add chopped mushrooms, veal magic, lots of fresh pepper, a little white wine. Cook until the mushrooms are soft, finish with a squirt of lemon juice.

It all builds off the basic saute and stock. It’s like a painter’s white canvas,  it’s like playing jazz in your kitchen. It’s your secret weapon.
This blog post was inspired by a class I gave on Saturday. I hope you guys had as much fun as I did!

High Altitude Chopped

I’ve got at least 20 years of experience under my belt, or in my ski boots, whatever the case may be, but I still think high altitude cooking is a royal pain. The Lodge at Snowbird is 8100 ft above sea level, which means water boils at around 185F. It means the little white Zolfino beans that I lovingly carried all the way from the Italian village of  Anghiari, that usually cook in 45 minutes, are still rock hard 2 1/2 hours later.   It means pasta that should cook in 16 minutes was done in 8 minutes. There is no rhyme or reason.
It’s not that temperatures don’t mean the same, but is a rare steak rare at 140F, or is it bleeding red, or that funky grey overcooked color?
  Do you know anything about Snowbird? It has a reputation for being a tough, rugged, testosterone mountain, but in reality, it’s a tough, rugged, testosterone mountain. The ratio of men to women is roughly 750 to 1. Maybe I’m exaggerating. I refer to the hot tub as being a “man tank” bubbling away with tired man flesh. The occasional women who show up are ogled like pin up girls from the 1940’s. There is a certain tough girl glamour for those of us who ski with the boyz. Connected to the hot tub, is a large heated swimming pool and that’s where our clan usually gathers, and the conversations range from the weather (it’s an obsession), the conditions in Mineral Basin, did you hear the avalanche bombs this morning,  and what’s for dinner.
The ‘what’s for dinner’ part of the conversation is always the most serious. Fresh food ebbs and flows depending on if anyone has gone down into the valley to shop, or has someone passed along some mountain stash, or is it time to break out the frozen vegetables? If we tap into Kevin’s stash of canned goods, then things are dire.

 It’s like playing an endless game of Chopped. In your mystery basket tonight you have: 1 package of scallops, 2 boneless pork chops, 2 cajun sausages and 1 orange bell pepper and an onion. Too easy!  Cut up the pork and sausage into bite size pieces. Thinly slice the onions, thickly slice the pepper and saute the ingredients until done.
Remove from the pan and add a few chili peppers, chopped garlic and quickly sear the scallops. Finish with a zap of soy sauce and hot sauce. Toss together. Finish with finely chopped fresh basil and serve over rice.

For last night’s finale dinner, we started with one tri-tip steak, but the party was too big for just one tri-tip, so we added shrimp to the mix. The last bit of fresh broccoli needed to be eaten. Salad greens were a distant memory, but we had celery in abundance. And there was a last minute request for couscous. So here it is, dinner made in 30 minutes.

Sear the tri-tip. Have staff open all the windows and doors so we don’t set off the smoke alarm. It’s good to be the Queen of the Kitchen with a minion of hungry men willing to do  my bidding.
While the tri-tip is searing, chop the broccoli and thinly slice the last of the ginger.
Give a trusted kitchen companion the super sharp mandolin and let him slice the celery for the celery and blue cheese salad. Keep a close eye on the companion so that we don’t wind up with finger salad.
In the shrimp pan add all the remaining garlic cloves in the house, a few chili peppers, a small glug of olive oil, a knob of butter, a bay leaf, a few shots of hot sauce. Turn the heat on medium low.
Add the remaining frozen peas to the boiling couscous water, add some Vadouvan spice that you had forgotten all about, add the couscous, turn off the heat. One dish done.
Saute the broccoli. Realize the men folk are wolfing down almonds. Grab a handful and chop them up to finish the broccoli.

Turn up the heat on the shrimp pot.

Check on the tri-tip which is resting comfortably.

Toss the shrimp (with their shells on) into the pan and toss vigorously. Complain loudly that there isn’t enough heat. It’s good to get a disclaimer out there early. No one is listening anyway. Hit the shrimp with a good sized glug of cognac.  Remove the shrimp from the pan, add another knob of butter and let it melt and mingle with the spices. Add a few more shots of hot sauce, a couple of squirts of Worsteschire sauce and the rest of  lemons left over from the cocktail making frenzy that went on while you were cooking.

Slice the tri-tip, drizzle generously with truffle oil and sit down with the gang.

Serve. Eat. Laugh a lot. And that’s what high altitude mountain cooking is all about. Sort of makes cooking at sea level boring, doesn’t it?
I’m already missing the clan, but I’m  certainly happy to be a member.

Picking, harvesting, storing, using olive oil

For centuries, for millennium, olives were picked the same way: grasp a branch and lightly running your fingers downward, gently pluck and pull the olive away from the branch. Let the olives drop into a basket or a well placed net. At the end of the day, your hands feel soft and supple from handling the fruit, and your arms are a little stiff from reaching for the next branch. Picking olives is fun and romantic when it’s a hobby, but far more serious when it’s your life’s work.

Continuing our conversation with olive oil producer Nicola Bovoli, of Vicopisanolio in Tuscany, he tends about a thousand trees, and each tree yields on average 10 kilos of olives, but it can range up to 25 kilos per tree. Last year’s harvest was about 12-13% oil. If you hang around an oil mill at pressing time, yield is a big topic.  Many factors will affect the fruit yield and the oil yield. Sometimes the olives have more water in them, so even though you deliver more fruit, you won’t necessarily get more oil. And you pay the mill by weight, so having water heavy olives, or processing fruit filled with branches and leaves is a drag because you pay by the bulk weight of the olives delivered, not by the oil yield. Olive trees tend to produce abundant olives in an every other year cycle so once again you have to yield to Mother Nature’s capricious rules.

After you’ve harvested your olives, it’s time to press them, and historically at Vicopisano, the olives were crushed between two large stones that were turned by animals. However, Signor Bovoli was intent on getting the best yield and the best oil so two years ago he upgraded the system.  He explained some of the problems with the stone method.  Let’s say, your neighbor accidentally delivered moldy fruit and his olives were crushed before yours. The stones are now contaminated and even though they are washed, your oil will pick up some of the muffa or mold. Now that’s going to be a real bummer after all the work that went into the growing and harvest of your oil. There is also a degradation of the flavor and quality of the oil the longer it is exposed to air and light. Oxidation is the enemy of olive oil.

Vicopisano upgraded to the Pieralisi system about two years ago, and it was a difficult process. The problem wasn’t the installation of the high tech Pieralisi machinery, but convincing the customers of his mill that this machine was better than the traditional stone method of crushing the olives. Have you ever tried to change an Italian’s mind about something?? The system used at Vicopisano is a little different than this post, because he uses a vertical centrifuge, but the basic idea is the same.  Within 45 minutes, the olives are processed into oil without ever exceeding 24C and without any oxidation. A pure expression of the fruit.

Once the oil is produced, Nicola stores his olive oil in stainless steel tanks, maintained at a constant temperature of 18C. Oil that is stored this way will remain at its optimal quality and can be sold for up to 18 months after the harvest. But, Nicola’s oil never lasts that long!

What this means for those of us who don’t have our own olive groves is: store your olive in a dark colored bottle, away from light, away from heat. I buy olive oil in bulk 3 or 5 liter tins and decant it into a bottle. In our case, we’ve found an old whiskey bottle works superbly, however you should label it or you wind up with strange salad dressing and even stranger cocktails.  Properly stored,  an open bottle of olive oil will last from 2 to 4 months, but be aware that the flavor degrades and fades as it ages. Use it or lose it.

A general rule of thumb is to buy what you can use in a two month period. Use industrial grade extra virgin olive oil for cooking and save the good quality artisinal olive oil for finishing or for when you want to truly experience the unique flavor of that oil. For the good stuff, I only use it for finishing, never with heat.

Vicopisanolio is available at Gustiamo.com and is part of the Pantry Basket that provides essential ingredients for the recipes in Cooking Simply: The Italian Way! Buon’appetito.

What's in your olive oil?

Even the most casual wine drinker probably knows the difference between a chardonnay and a white zinfandel.  If this is the case, why don’t the most passionate chefs or home cooks know more about their olive oil? Maybe the chefs know a brand name, but do they know what variety of olive is used?

The concept of terroir or terrain or terreno (French-English-Italian) is frequently discussed with grapes and wine; why not with olive oil? If sun, soil and climate affect a grape, it stands to reason it would affect the flavor of an olive and it’s oil.

Yesterday, I had a unique opportunity to discuss just this subject with Nicola Bovoli, a world renowned olive oil maker and oil taster. Nicola’s Vicopisanolio was selected by Gustiamo to be included in our Aroma Cucina CookVook Pantry Basket, so I jumped at the chance to listen to what he has to say about the oil he produces.

Nicola’s Vicopisano oil is made exclusively with the ‘frantoio’ olive. Frantoio olives are as identifiable  with Tuscany as the sangiovese grape and Chianti wine. The frantoio is a medium to large olive, known for producing a fruity aromatic olive oil. It could be considered a ‘global’ varietal as its grown in diverse places such as Australia, Argentina and California, but according to Nicola, don’t expect it to taste the same.  In fact, Nicola thinks the oil from Mendoza would probably taste more like Tuscan oil than the same oil produced in Umbria because of the difference in climate.
 
Vicopisano, located  between Lucca, Livorno and Pisa enjoys a particular micro climate where it benefits from the sea breezes, generally congenial weather and not a lot of natural pests like flies.  That being said, in December of 2009, Nicola lost 30% of his olive trees in two hours due to intense cold. So, like any other natural harvest, it’s  subject to the whims of Mother Nature.

Nicola tends to harvest his olives in early October which gives a totally different flavor than if they are harvested more mature. His oil has notes of artichoke, just cut grass, with a lovely balance of bitter and ‘piccante’.  Piccante means spicy, but to me it means that pleasant little tickle you get at the back of your throat when you taste this oil.

For his Vicopisano extra virgin olive oil, he uses only the frantoio olive because he feels that mixing olives gives the oil an ‘artifical’ flavor. He calls mixing the olives an ‘artificial intervention’.  As he describes it, he wants his oil to be exactly what nature wants to give us. Each year it will taste different, and each year he’s convinced it’s the best he ever tasted. This is pure zest for life speaking, an understanding that comes from sharing the seasons with the olives. There is something ‘connected’ about knowing that you’ve shared the same heat, rain and fog with these olives. Unlike wine that needs time to be aged, the oil is at its peak of flavor as soon as it’s pressed.

While this obsession with olive oil might be considered another example of food elitism, it’s not elitism as much as an expression of place and time. Nicola Bovoli has the good fortune to be in a place that produces extraordinary olive oil, and he wants to share his good fortune and have people understand what they are tasting. If that’s elitism, I’m all for it.

Next post: the nuts & bolts of harvesting, storing and using extra virgin olive oil.

Nicola’s Bovoli’s Olio Novello from the 2010 harvest is now available at Gustiamo.com and is part of the Aroma Cucina Pantry Basket that is filled with premium quality ingredients that will have you Cooking Simply: The Italian Way!

The Mysterious Marvelous Mythical Martinez Cocktail

Mysterious because there are more variations on this classic cocktail than I’ve seen for any other cocktail. It’s odd that this cocktail has no ‘definitive’ version, although it is alleged to be the precursor to the Martini.
Marvelous because it is very delicious in an aromatic way.
Mythical because every cocktail historian has another spin on how it came to be.
Martinez? I have yet to find a reference as to why it called a Martinez. Something about a guy in a bar named Martinez....?

Here is the Aroma Cucina house version:
2 oz gin (whatever we have in the cabinet)
1 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Triple Sec
2 dash orange bitters
Stir.
Garnish with a flamed orange peel.

The Historical Version:
David Wondrich’s take on the Jerry Thomas version from 1887:
1 Dash Boker’s Bitters
2 Dashes (1t) Maraschino
1 Pony (1oz) Old Tom Gin
1 Wine Glass (2 oz) vermouth
2 lumps ice

Jerry Thomas says shake.  Wondrich says stir.

The Old School Confusing Versions:
"Mr. Boston, Platinum Edition", same book, 2 recipes
p.21                                              p. 78
1 oz gin                                         1 oz. gin
1 oz sweet vermouth                      1 oz dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters                      1 dash orange bitters
Stir, garnish with a lemon twist        3/4 t Triple Sec
                                                      Stir, garnish with a cherry


"Old Man Drinks", Robert Schnakenberg
2 oz gin
1 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Maraschino liqueur
Dash orange bitters
Shake

The Maestro’s Versions:
"Essential Cocktail", Dale DeGroff
1/2 glass gin (2 oz??)
1/2 wineglass Italian sweet vermouth (1 oz)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes curacao
Stir

Agostino Perrone, 2010 Winner Best Bartender, Tales of the Cocktail
(An Italian, who works in London, wins in New Orleans)
Martini Rosso sweet vermouth
Genever Bolls Gin
Maraschino
Abbots Bitters
Stir

Balsamic Martinez from Perrone
(Bangin’ good)
Genever Bolls Gin
Sweet Vermouth
Maraschino
Galliano (!!!!??)
Dash true Balsamic vinegar
Dash Abbots bitters

If your are out and about in NYC, Odeon Restaurant in Tribeca makes an outstanding Martinez and if I ever get anyone to answer their phone, I hope they’ll share their recipe.