Category Archives: de arte coquinaria

Best wine in Chicago and what Comrade H had for dinner

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Comrade T recently wrote me asking for advice on where party members find good wine in Chicago. I reached out to Comrades N and L for their advice and here’s what they said (paired with Comrade H’s excellent dinner, including Comrade B’s Dolcetto).

Start with the first good cherry tomatoes of the summer.

FROM COMRADE N

Comrade J, we’re always happy to aid the cause.

Webster’s and Rootstock are the most simpatico establishments in my view. Avec is also a good choice.

Good garlic.

If you really want top Italian wines (including properly aged), head to Spiaggia but be prepared to pay dearly for the privilege.

Comrade T, if you need recs for restaurants, shops or anything else in town, feel free to drop me a line.

Wild arugula.

FROM COMRADE L

The two Comrade N mentioned are really it in terms of well thought out, conscientious lists. Again, Comrade N is right in that Spiaggia, while quite expensive, has a very well thought out list. And Alinea, too. This is just more of a beer town (and BYO which helps). That said some places do have nice lists. I just went to the Purple Pig the other week and was able to find a few things (they have some López de Heredia there).

Life is good.

Anyway, below is a list that I put together for someone a couple months ago. The only thing I’d add is the new Girl and the Goat that just opened by Stephanie who won Top Chef a couple seasons ago.

RESTAURANTS
http://www.longmanandeagle.com/
http://www.kumascorner.com/
http://thepurplepigchicago.com/
http://thepublicanrestaurant.com/
http://www.avecrestaurant.com/
http://www.thebristolchicago.com/
http://www.nightwoodrestaurant.com/
http://www.rickbayless.com/restaurants/xoco.html
http://bigstarchicago.com/
http://www.girlandthegoat.com/

COCKTAILS/BEER
http://www.whistlerchicago.com/
http://www.theviolethour.com/
http://www.maproom.com/
http://hopleaf.com/

And of course, good oil (sourced from Rare Wine Company), good wine (Comrade B’s Dolcetto), good vinegar…

WINE STORES/BARS
http://www.permanwine.com/
http://www.redandwhitechicago.com/
http://www.websterwinebar.com/
http://rootstockbar.com/

AVANTI POPOLO!

(and buon weekend, ya’ll!)

Maybe it’s the way she grates her cheese: Tracie P’s rice balls

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Maybe it’s the way she grates her cheese…

Above: When Tracie P asked me what I wanted for my Sunday night birthday dinner, I told her I would love her fantastic ragù. It was great as always, but she surprised me with RICE BALLS. Unbelievably good…

Whether its Faicco’s in the City or the Focacceria di Ferdinando in Brooklyn, Tracie P knows that I love me some Sicilian rice balls. On Sunday she made me one of my favorite dishes of hers, her ragù, but she surprised me with fried rice balls: stuffed with Brooklyn-style domestic mozzarella, using some leftover risotto alla parmigiana that I had made with Arborio earlier in the week for supper.

Or just the freckles on her knees…

Above: Did I mention that the GIRL CAN COOK?

She ALSO surprised me with a bottle of 2004 Sagrantino di Montefalco by Paolo Bea. This wine, at once extremely tannic and ethereal in the mouth, achieves that magic balance of simultaneous power and lightness in the mouth. It showed stunningly well last night and was such a great pairing for Tracie P’s stellar ragù alla bolognese (via Marcella Hazan).

Maybe it’s the scallions…

Above: Our favorite dried (pastasciutta) egg tagliatelle are made by Rustichella d’Abruzzo. Isn’t funny how Tracie P and I agree on the important things in life? ;-)

My good friend Charles Scicolone is not the only one “blessed” by his wife’s amazing cooking!

Maybe she’s Italian…

blueberry pie

Above: She also made me a DELICIOUS fresh blueberry crostata, a tradition for my birthday started by mama Judy.

My goodness, Tracie P, what a wonderful birthday week (I’ll have to hope my birthday falls in the middle of the week again next year!). I love you so… :-)

The lady sticks to me like white on rice…. She never cooks the same way twice…*

Above: We’ve been having so much fun with our new Polaroid 300 instant camera.

Rev. and Mrs. B and the B family gave me a power drill for my birthday over the weekend when we visited with them on Canyon Lake in the Texas Hill Country. We SO NEEDED it for our little home and the new library I’ve been setting up. :-)

Thanks, so much Rev. and Mrs. B and B family!

Birthdays used to be a nagging reminder of all the things I haven’t done yet in life. Now they remind me how lucky I am to be surrounded by wonderful folks who share such rich love and warm joy for living with me. Thanks again, also, to everyone for all the warm birthday wishes this week on Facebook, Twitter, and here at the blog… I’ve got so much to be thankful for this year… The words of support mean so much…

* “Eggplant” 1975 (same vintage as Tracie P!) by Michael Franks (my fellow La Jollan)

In other news…

Everyone in Italy is reading BrooklynGuy’s excellent post on old vintages of Vallana Spanna. Be sure to check out Alfonso’s comments to the post as well.

Tracie P’s sfincione was amazing

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Above: Last night we hosted the first couple of the Austin wine scene, Craig and April Wright Collins. Tracie P truly outdid herself with her cooking.

To borrow a phrase from friend and colleague Charles Scicolone, whose wife Michele is one of the best cooks I know, “I am truly blessed.”

Tracie P simply outdid herself last night with the dishes she prepared for a dinner party we threw.

Ever since cherished family friend Mrs. Reynolds (above) made us a sfincione to celebrate our then upcoming wedding (back in December), Tracie P has wanted to make this classic savory pie from Sicily.

That’s Tracie P’s, above, on the pizza stone we received for our wedding (thanks, Aunt Holly and Uncle Terry!). Did I mention that I’m blessed?

She also made a wonderful olive oil cake for dessert. Yum…

The 2005 Barolo Ca’ Mia by Brovia was stunning. (Check out Cory’s awesome post on Brovia here.)

That’s all I got time for this morning… gotta run… thanks for reading!

BBQ Capital of Texas ERGO THE WORLD

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Yesterday, I finally made it down to Lockhart, Texas, historic Texas small town and the barbecue capital of Texas, “ergo the world,” as my buddy Josh Cross put it. Chef Josh is a Texan through and through but he’s also lived and worked in New York and traveled and eaten his way through Europe. I’d been angling for some time to do a ‘cue crawl with him.

Now, let me tell you, people, when the folks in Lockhart say they reside in the barbecue capital of Texas, they ain’t kidding…

First stop was the legendary Smitty’s Market, just one of the triad Black’s, Kreuz, and Smitty’s. It never ceases to amaze me how idiosyncratic Texas barbecue is: even though everyone is working with the same basic ingredients (brisket, beef rib, pork rib and loin, pork sausage) and cooking techniques (“low and slow” smoking), the expressions of the Texas bbq canon vary as widely as the people who do the cooking. In other words, everyone and every venue offers a distinctly personalized interpretation (the only thing consistent at each eatery is the swagger!).

Smitty’s is known for the juicy, untrimmed fat of its brisket. The smoked brisket and smoked prime rib were unbelievably good but the sausage… o the sausage… perfection…

Of all the bbq joints I’ve visited, Smitty’s is the most impressive for its atmosphere. On the weekend, folks wait hours on line in the smoking room itself, an “inferno,” where the raging fires are literally a span’s length from the chow line. We took our place in line at 11:30 and it took 45 minutes to reach the carving board.

The main dining room (above) is full of happy families and well-behaved children whose good manners are rewarded by the comfort food of all comfort foods (and Blue Bell ice cream for dessert).

There are plastic knives and spoons in the Smitty’s dining room but no forks: you eat the beans and other sides (potato salad, cole slaw, etc.) with the spoon but everything else is consumed religiously with one’s fingers.

I took this photo of chopped Live Oak in the Smitty’s wood pile. Josh explained how Live Oak is essential to central Texas bbq because it burns very hot but without releasing a lot of oil as Mesquite does. 90% Live Oak and 10% Mesquite, he said, is the ideal blend of wood types.

Over the weekend, Austin (about 45 minutes northwest from Lockhart) played host to the Republic of Texas Biker Rally 2010 and so there were bikers everywhere, from every walk of life, like this couple Marc and Kat, who sat next to us at Black’s. (For the record, whenever I photograph strangers for the blog, I always ask permission, just in case they’re wanted by the law.)

The beef rib at Black’s was simply amazing. The smokiness and dry rub had gently penetrated the meat, giving it a wonderful savoriness and spice, and it was so tender that you could cut it easily with a plastic nice (look how even the plastic sliced it!).

But the brisket at Black’s… o my goodness, the brisket… Here, the brisket has been smoked for so long that the smoke ring is entirely black and the meat is so tender that it literally melts in your mouth. Of all the truly delicious things I ate yesterday, the brisket at Black’s was the dish that really blew me away… amazing stuff…

We never did make it to Kreuz Market yesterday but I promise I will before summer’s end in a gesture of purely selfless altruism in order to satisfy your insatiable culinary curiosity.

I’m sure that BrooklynGuy would approve of my self-sacrifice for your gastronomic well-being!

Buona domenica, ya’ll! (That means, “enjoy your Sunday,” for those of you who don’t speak eyetalian.)

BBQ pork loin sandwich, Lost Pines, Giddings TX

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lost pines

Above: On our way out to Orange, Texas yesterday evening, Tracie P and I stopped for a pork loin sandwich, with sliced pickles and barbecue sauce and all the fixin’s at the Lost Pines BBQ (“dine in or take out”) in Giddings, Texas (along highway 290, on the way to Houston from Austin). Highly recommended.

Seems that every travel corridor in Texas — whether it be Houston-Austin, Dallas-Austin, or San Antonio-Austin — has its own community of barbecue joints, each with its own signature expressed within the paradigm of the Texas barbecue lexicon. One of the things that has really impressed me about living in Texas (even as compared to other parts of the south where I’ve traveled) is its idiosyncratic nature of the culinary arts: whether professional or intimate, whether public or familiar, food and recipes always have a very personalized and individualistic mark to them. Even though smoked, dry-rub brisket is the pièce de résistance of any Texas bbq, gently smoked dry-rub pork loin is the way to go at Lost Pines.

lost pines

Above: Lost Pines BBQ along Hwy 290 doesn’t have a website but you can’t miss it from the road. The folks there are so nice and the décor so homey… You can’t help but want to linger even after you’ve finished your meal.

Lost Pines BBQ in Giddings is named after the Lost Pines area in Bastrop in the Texas Hill Country, just south of Giddings. I’ve only driven through the enchanting Lost Pines once but I hope to make it out there one day this summer. One of the most beautiful areas in the Texas Hill Country.

In other news…

Tracie P and I are spending the weekend with her folks and family in Orange, Texas. We’re about to head out to the Texas Cajun Heritage Festival. I am so geeked! Stay tuned…

Kitchen-sink paella and pleonastic etymologic Sunday morning musings

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Photos by the angelic Tracie P.

In Austin, Texas, one really needs no particularly apparent reason to throw a party, other than the patent excuse that the weather’s nice and it’s Saturday. Such was the case when a group of folks gathered in the home of Austinite food and wine personality (and all-around nice guy) John Bullington yesterday for a paella party, a series of paelladas, including some very traditional expressions and highly unconventional interpretations, like the one above, including orange slices, purple carrots, Brussels sprouts, and roast chicken, among other ingredients (and omitting saffron for at least one safranophobe). John cooked the paella over an open, pecan-wood fired pit, and at least one observer could not help but admire his collection of paelleras.

Upon noting praise for his paella prowess, John pointed out that paellapans.com is the perfect place to purchase such implements.

A philologist and lover of words at heart, I couldn’t help but note the pleonastic nature of the binomial paella pan, the pan pan, so to speak, a linguistic conundrum akin to that encountered in the La Brea Tar Pits, in other words, the the tar tar pits. Indeed, the lemma paella has become so deeply entrenched in our everyday parlance that it has lost its connection to the etymon patina (patena) and later patella, meaning [open] pan, from the Latin pateo, meaning to open (which also gives us Anglophones patent, meaning open, widespread, unobstructed, clear, evident, obvious).

Okay, so now you know what I sit around and think about on an early, lazy, sleepy Sunday morning as the genteel Tracie P slumbers angelically.

Monday morning promises to deliver some significantly less whimsical wine blogging (stay tuned)… In the meantime, let’s all hope that everyone’s favorite natural wine blogger Saignée can be delivered swiftly and safely back to his lovely better half… He’s stuck somewhere between a volcano and San Francisco. Let’s all wish him buon viaggio…

And buona domenica to the rest of ya’ll…

1989 Produttori del Barbaresco for Easter

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produttori del barbaresco

Above: The 1989 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco was truly brilliant yesterday afternoon. We paired with roast leg of lamb and sat outside in the gorgeous weather. Ubi major minor cessat: check out Tom’s excellent profile of Produttori del Barbaresco here. I visited the winery during my March trip to Piedmont and will post on my tasting there in the next few weeks.

Posting in a hurry this afternoon because slammed with work and getting ready for tonight’s Orange Wine dinner at Vino Vino, where I’ll be pouring and talking about some amazing wines. We posted the wines and the menu earlier today. (There are still a few spots open: the wines are great, chef Esteban is pulling all the stops, and in true Austinite fashion, the dinner will be followed by Gary Clark Jr.’s first performance at Vino Vino.)

produttori del barbaresco

We shared our Easter feast with another couple, close friends of ours. I roasted a leg of lamb yesterday afternoon, seasoned with rosemary from our garden. My beautiful Tracie P made all the fixins. :-)

produttori del barbaresco

Tracie P had also dyed some Easter eggs. Our new home is so wonderful. Words just cannot say how much I love her…

In other news…

Alfonso aka Italian Wine Guy has been making his way from Bordeaux down to Italy. I’ve really be enjoying his posts and his travels… Definitely worth checking out…

More tomorrow…

Recipe: Giovanna’s Spinach Casserole (and I know my chickens)

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Many years ago, I worked as an editor at an Italian food magazine where I must have translated thousands of recipes. I had fun this morning translating Giovanna’s recipe below.

Giovanna’s Spinach Casserole

An old, simple, and tasty recipe.

Wash the spinach well and then wilt in a pan with a pinch of salt. Squeeze and then use a sieve to purge the spinach of its water. Sauté in a pan with a little bit of butter.

Make a béchamel and seasons with salt and pepper to taste and a dash of nutmeg. Fold the béchamel into the spinach and add freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 2 whole eggs, and 1 egg yolk. Whisk the remaining egg white until it forms peaks and then carefully fold it into the spinach mixture.

Grease a loaf pan (or a bundt cake pan) with butter and then coat with a thin layer of flour before transferring the spinach mixture to the pan. Heat the oven to 375°, arrange the pan in a bain-marie and bake for 40-45 minutes. Remove the loaf from the oven and let it cool for a few minutes before turning it out on to a serving platter.

Serve with a fondue, with mushrooms, or chicken livers.

*****

Tracie P’s comment reminded me that I had neglected to post about Giovanna’s rooster and chickens!

franco ziliani

There’s a wonderful expression in Italian, a phrase you might hear a mother or a grandmother utter when she can predict a child’s desire or request: conosoco i miei polli (I know my chickens). If you ever get to stay in an Italian farmhouse estate like Giovanna’s, you’ll notice that the chickens (like Giovanna’s) have very distinct and often peculiar preferences about their daily routine and pecking order, as it were. Hence the familiar, affectionate expression…

Thanks again, Giovanna, for sharing your recipe!

And for my fan of the “burning disappointment,” please don’t despair! Next on deck: Beppe Rinaldi on natural yeast… Stay tuned!

Do Bianchi becomes VITELLO-TONNATO-WIRE!

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Above: The best vitello tonnato of 2010 was prepared for Tracie P and me by our friend Giovanna Rizzolio of Cascina delle Rose in Tre Stelle (between Neive and Barbaresco). I’ve eaten a helluvalotta vitello tonnato over the last two months, with TWO (yes, TWO! COUNT ‘EM!) trips to Piedmont in as many months.

I love vitello tonnato. I could eat vitello tonnato every day. I’m not kidding. In fact, while I was in Piedmont with the Barbera 7, I literally ate vitello tonnato four times in four consecutive seatings, over three days. That’s 1.33333 servings of vitello tonnato per day.

Above: Getting to have dinner in someone’s home in Piedmont was a real treat for me. I’ve traveled to Piedmont so many times for wine but you always end up in Michelin-star this or Michelin-star that… Always great but nothing beats exceptional homecooking like Giovanna’s. Supper began with traditional Piedmont salame.

I am fascinated by vitello tonnato — culinarily and intellectually. And, gauging from all the comments here and on Facebook in the wake of the recent vitello tonnato pornography, you’re fascinated by vitello tonnato as well.

Above: And no Piedmontese meal is complete (lunch or dinner) without raw beef, in this case, homestyle.

That’s why I’ve decided to give up all the petty politics and ego-driven parochial bullshit of wine blogging to devote my blog exclusively to vitello tonnato and its epistemological implications. Veal with tuna and anchovies and capers. The basic ingredients alone and their highly unusual but thoroughly delicious combination will occupy volumes and volumes… The dissertation I delivered in 1997 was about Petrarch and Bembo, apostrophes (no shit!) and dipthongs (no double shit!) and episynaloepha (no triple shit! look that one up, Thor!). But this, ladies and gents, I assure you, will be a mother of all dissertations.

Above: But the true pièce de résistance of Giovanna’s superb repertoire was this sformato di spinaci, a spinach casserole topped with a fondue of Fontina and Parmigiano-Reggiano. I couldn’t resist a second helping. Simona, you would have LOVED this.

Seriously, back from Mars now, I don’t have time to blog today because I’m on my way to San Antonio to make a living. It won’t be long before I pick up the narration of our February trip to Piedmont again — the meals, the wines, the tastings, and most importantly the people. Giovanna runs a wonderful bed and breakfast in Barbaresco country and her wines are killer.

And all joking aside, I have a great deal to say about vitello tonnato (no kidding!).

Stay tuned…

On right health and good pleasure

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Above: Pope Sixtus IV appoints Bartolomeo Platina prefect of the Vatican Library, fresco by Melozzo da Forlì, c. 1477 (Vatican Museums). That’s Platina kneeling. Click the image for the entire fresco.

The title of today’s post is a play-on-words, a riff on the canonical translation of Bartolomeo Platina’s De honesta voluptate et valetudine, On Right Pleasure and Good Health (as translated, superbly, by Mary Milham in 1998). Italian humanist, gastronome, and literary consultant to some of the most important cultural and political figures of his time, Platina authored a treatise considered by many the earliest printed work on gastronomy. It was overwhelmingly popular in Europe from the time of its initial publication in the late 15th century through the 17th century, by which time it appeared in myriad translations from the Latin. (I know a little about Platina and his book since I translated the 15th-century Italian recipe collection by Maestro Martino from which Platina drew heavily).

In the mind of the Renaissance humanist, good health and right pleasure were inexorably linked. As food historian Ken Albala illustrated so eloquently in his 2002 Eating Right in the Renaissance, inhabitants of 15th-century Italy believed — rightly — that everything you put into your body affected your health, emotionally, intellectually, and physically.

Sumus quales edamus: we are what we produce (äfere), we are what we eat (lèdere).

I’m no Renaissance man but I do believe that right pleasure and good health go hand in hand, so to speak.

That’s why I’m thinking today about “right health”: President Obama’s signing of the new health care legislation (however flawed, however riddled by political posturing) marks for me the fulfillment of a dream (both personal and civic). As David Leonhardt wrote in The New York Times today, “The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago… Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would ‘mark a new season in America.’ He added, ‘We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.'”

As a long-time self-employed translator, writer, copywriter, and musician/songwriter, health care has always been a primary issue for me. To my mind and in my heart as a member of American society, the inequality of health care in our country has always represented a tragedy in our affluent nation.

So today I ask you to consider a step forward in our country, toward an inalienable right that is guaranteed, however imperfectly, to citizens in most Western countries.

What’s next? Will we outlaw the death penalty? I’d certainly drink to that.

In other news…

Please read BrooklynGuy’s excellent post today, with its oxymoronic title, How to Buy Excellent Cheap Wine.