Brunch at the Pannikin in La Jolla is a sleepy beach town classic. So yummy…
Bagels and lox, California style.
Parzen family welcomes new member Daisy, a rescue. That’s niece Amalia and brother Tad with Daisy. Amalia gave her her name.
Tracie P and I just had to stop for something sweet on our way back to the beach at Michele Coulon Dessertier, who made our wedding cake.
Did I mention that I LOVE BEING ON VACATION. We’re gonna take a nap now… yum…
From the department of “dreams do come true”…
Our new friends Sonia and Steven came over for a school-night dinner last night and what a school-night it was! We were utterly floored by the bottle they brought over: 1995 Raveneau Monts Mains 1er Cru.
“I thought you might enjoy this,” said Steven wryly.
My goodness, what a bottle of wine! Such a nuanced nose of fruit and herbs, so steely and rich in the mouth. At 12.5% alcohol (according to the label), one of the most balanced and complete wine. Simply stunning. (Those are Tracie P’s rice balls in the photo btw.)
With Labor Day imminent, I’ve been wearing my Seersucker jacket all week and indulging in the foods of summer, including my guacamole (of which, I will admit it, I am extremely proud). The trick is to purge the tomato of its water before assembly. Check out the recipe below.
Steven’s from Texas originally and has recently returned to Austin: he and Sonia have a lot of big plans, culinary and otherwise… More on that later.
In the meantime, seems that Tracie P and me aren’t the only ones eating and drinking well this summer. Pastrami mia: I guess Alfonso gave up on his health kick when tempted with the pastrami of Shapiro’s in Indianapolis. I think I feel an acute case of pastrami envy coming on!
Happy Labor Day ya’ll!
Jar’s Guacamole*
American Spanish guacamole, adaptation of Nahuatl ahuacamolli, from ahuacatl avocado + molli sauce (OED online edition).
1 medium-sized tomato
1 bunch cilantro
½ white onion
1 jalapeño pepper
1 clove garlic
2 ripe avocados
2 limes
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
chili flakes
Finely dice the tomato and transfer to a colander. Sprinkle lightly with kosher salt and allow the tomato to purge its water for about 30 minutes.
In the meantime, rinse the cilantro, dry well, and finely chop. Peel and mince the white onion. Deseed and finely chop the jalapeño. Peel and mince the garlic and combine all of the above ingredients, including the tomato (water purged), in a mixing bowl. Peel and finely dice the avocado and fold into the mixing bowl. Squeeze and strain the limes directly into the guacamole. Season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Add chili flakes to obtain desired heat (and/or use some of the discarded seeds from the jalapeño).
* Jar, my nickname from childhood, still used by my rock ‘n’ roll friends.
Above: Giovanni Mantovani (CEO VeronaFiere and Vinitaly), Oscar Farinetti (Italian retail, food, and wine tycoon, creator of Eataly), and Stevie Kim (senior adviser to Mr. Mantovani) yesterday at the opening of Bastianchi-Batali-Farinetti brainchild Eataly in New York.
Yesterday, mere moments after Mr. Franco Ziliani and I posted about the Italian agricultural minister’s claim that there is no crisis in the Italian wine industry, I spoke to Stevie Kim (above, right), senior adviser to Vinitaly’s CEO. She and her boss were attending the opening of the latest conquest in the ever-expanding Batali-Bastianich empire, Eataly, the “über-supermarket” conceived by retail tycoon Oscar Farinetti.
“As you know,” said Stevie, “production of Italian wines has increased dramatically in recent years and the Italian market is saturated. And so the international market has become more important for all producers.”
The Italian government, she told me, has asked her and her boss to “revamp” the Vinitaly road show, which has been coming to the U.S. for a decade (fyi Vinitaly is the top Italian wine industry annual trade fair, held each year in Verona in April). They plan to reconfigure the tasting this year, to be held at Eataly New York October 25, to accommodate trade and consumers.
“In the past, the presentation has been very fragmented. This year, we plan to restyle the tasting by transforming Eataly [New York] into Vinitaly,” said Stevie, who speaks impeccable Italian and has lived in Italy for more than 20 years. 50 producers will be attending this year’s road show, the maximum number Eataly New York can accommodate.
To Stevie I say, in bocca al lupo…
I’m not sure how I feel about Eataly (photo by Stevie). It seems to make more sense in New York than it does in Turin, where it started. It’s a sort of Disneyland for Italian food: a hyper-realistic food court, a recreation of an Italian food and wine street shopping scene. Surprisingly, in Piedmont, where “Italian food” is known simply as “food,” Eataly has been well received. At least, that’s my impression from talking to the Piedmontese. I’ve never visited Eataly, although Tracie P and I stopped once at the Eataly satellite on the road that leads from Alessandria to Asti.
There are Eataly franchises in Turin, Asti, Bologna, Milan, Tokyo, and now New York. Future expansion includes Genoa and Rome. Eataly enjoys the support of the SlowFood movement and its founder Carlo Petrini (however much the organization’s ethos would otherwise opposed globalization).
One thing you can say for certain about Eataly’s creator Mr. Farinetti: he’s no farniente!
Above: Tracie P and I have been thoroughly enjoying Chef Esteban’s housemade Tagliatelle with tomato sauce and housemade ricotta at Vino Vino in Austin. I think that Esteban could go a little lighter on the heat in the sauce (my only lament) but this is Texas after all.
Although Italy’s recently installed agricultural minister Giancarlo Galan (from Padua) claims there’s no crisis in the Italian wine industry (see his comments in our post today at VinoWire via Mr. Franco Ziliani’s blog), he is planning to convene a “task force” to address Italy’s tomato crisis — yes, tomato crisis.
The issue is not the sale of tomatoes in Italy (go figure) but rather fraud and counterfeit of Italian-grown tomatoes. The so-called “agropiracy” vehemently battled by Galan’s predecessor Luca Zaia.
Contemplating the Italian tomato crisis as I drank my tea early this morning, Aldo Cazzullo’s 2009 L’Italia di noantri. Come siamo diventati tutti meridionali (The Italy We [Southerners] Remember: How We All Became Southerners, Mondadori) came to mind.*
In it, he writes: Today, “Italians all eat the same things. Two generations ago in Piedmont, they used meat or butter to dress their food. Today, tomato is found in every sauce… The tomato has become a national symbol. If an Italian has a spot on his shirt, it’s a tomato spot.” (p. 43)
Leaving the racist and separatist (and even futurist) implications aside, I do think it’s interesting to note (probably to the surprise of many) that tomatoes were not widely consumed in Italy until the 1960s. I found hard proof of this when I researched my post on the origins of the name puttanesca.
There’s much to be said on this topic but, alas, my work duties call… I’ll leave you today with one of my all-time favorite scenes by one of my all-time favorite Italian actors, Alberto Sordi, in Un americano a Roma (An American in Rome, 1954). In the scene, he plays an Italian-American who claims that the food in America is better and better for you, drinking milk instead of wine. But in the end, you can imagine what happens. Note that the “macaroni” are NOT dressed with tomato. The year is 1954.
* The title of the book plays on the fact that the Roman inflection noantri for the first person plural has been commonly absorbed by the northern dialects (in the Piedmontese of the author’s grandparents, he writes, the first person plural was nuiautri).
On Friday, Tracie P brought home an open bottle of Produttori del Barbaresco 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo that she had been showing to her accounts that day. The wine had been open for the better part of the afternoon in her wine bag.
As much I have enjoyed drinking this vintage (2008, not nearly as great as 07 for this wine) since its release, I think the wine has entered a period of particular grace.
When we drank it at our wedding in January, it was light and bright, with happy black and red berry fruit.
But I got a taste of what was to come when I drank a glass at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego last month (where they serve it by the glass): on Friday, the gentle savory notes I enjoyed in July had evolved into rich, earthy, muddy flavors, balancing the bright fruit in a lover’s embrace. I think that in the arc of its evolution, this wine has reached its moment of plenary expression (read: complete and utter yummyness).
In other news…
I just had to share this photo of Tracie P’s fried green tomatoes (from Sunday night), which she makes in her grandmother’s cast iron skillet. They were like savory candy: salty on the outside and sweet, tart and gelatinous on the inside. Paired resplendently with a bottle of Laurent Tribut 2008 Chablis (12.5% alcohol! yes!) and the 2010 vintage of True Blood.
Ain’t you glad we ain’t all California girls
Ain’t you glad there’s still a few of us left,
who know how to rock your world
Ain’t afraid to eat fried chicken and dirty dance to Merle
Ain’t you glad we ain’t all California girls
In other other news…
Seems I’m not the only one with Langhe Nebbiolo and summer tomatoes on the brain: Gary, watch out for that cucuzz’!
It was delicious…
Above: I was cold, I was hungry, I was tired… and, yes, damn it, I sat in my lonely hotel room on a damp, cold evening in Asti and watched TV, ate takeout pizza, and drank a bottle of 2005 Barolo Ravera by Elvio Cogno.
Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. I can already hear the E-Bobs and WineBerserkers wailing, “infanticide!” It was a very lonely evening for me in the heart of winter in Piedmont: the Barbera 7 had abandoned me in my hotel, just as Jeremiah’s lovers had “forgotten him.”
My only companion was a bottle of 2005 Barolo Ravera given to me by Valter Fissore of Elvio Cogno. I was cold, I was hungry, I was tired. So I ordered takeout pizza, popped the cork, and watched TV.
I don’t know where food maven Arthur Schwartz said this, but Italian cookery queen Michele Scicolone often repeats his chiasmatic adage regarding pizza: if you can’t be with the pizza you love, love the pizza you’re with. Well, honey, I loved me some pizza and Barolo that night and I lived to tell about it!
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest… Buon weekend, ya’ll!
Above: Basil was prized for its healing properties for external wounds in the Middle Ages. The image of basil (note the presence of a woman and man) on the verso (left) is taken from the Tacuinum Sanitatis, in this case Codex Latinus 9333 from the Bibliothèque de France in Paris (click here to view a larger version). It was also a symbol of hate (read on).
I never imagined that my post the other day on Fake Pesto would lead to such a long comment thread here at the blog and over in the Facebook feed.
Here at the blog, Hande pointed out rightly that pesto, literally pestle, denotes the dressing for pasta made of ground basil, cheese, pine nuts, garlic, and olive oil. I was surprised to learn that the Genoese Pesto Consortium’s officially sanctioned recipe allows for walnuts (as a substitute for pine nuts) and Parmigiano Reggiano along with (the more traditional, in my view) Pecorino. As per Hande’s comment, when I wrote that pesto is traditionally served with boiled potatoes and green beans, I should have noted that the dish is properly called pesto avvantaggiato, literally, enriched pesto, whereby trenette or trofie (noodles) are tossed with the pesto, the boiled potatoes and green beans, and some of the cooking water from the vegetables. Thanks again, Hande, for keeping me on my toes!
Image via SchoolGardenWeekly.
But when friend Leslie noted (over in the Facebook thread of the post) that basil is an anti-depressant, I began to think about one of my favorite novelle from Boccaccio’s Decameron, the Tale of Lisabetta da Messina.
…
And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly, if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture elsewhere; but as she might not so do, she took a knife, and, as best she could, severed the head from the trunk, and wrapped it in a napkin and laid it in the lap of her maid; and having covered the rest of the corpse with earth, she left the spot, having been seen by none, and went home. There she shut herself up in her room with the head, and kissed it a thousand times in every part, and wept long and bitterly over it, till she had bathed it in her tears. She then wrapped it in a piece of fine cloth, and set it in a large and beautiful pot of the sort in which marjoram or basil is planted, and covered it with earth, and therein planted some roots of the goodliest basil of Salerno, and drenched them only with her tears, or water perfumed with roses or orange-blossoms. And ’twas her wont ever to sit beside this pot, and, all her soul one yearning, to pore upon it, as that which enshrined her Lorenzo, and when long time she had so done, she would bend over it, and weep a great while, until the basil was quite bathed in her tears.
Fostered with such constant, unremitting care, and nourished by the richness given to the soil by the decaying head that lay therein, the basil burgeoned out in exceeding great beauty and fragrance.
There is so much I’d love to share about this truly fascinating (at least to me) story and the role that basil plays in it. Boccaccio’s Decameron has so many wonderful references to food and wine in it. (Read the entire tale in English here.) But, ahimè, professional duties call… I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
In the meantime, here’s a scene from Pasolini’s version of the tale:
Photos by Tracie P.
Just had to share some images from last night’s dinner in the home of our good friends Patricia and Bill.
Tracie P and I met Bill last year at a Valpolicella tasting and we’ve been friends ever since. Dinner began last night with jumbo shrimp wrapped in bacon and grilled (below). Only after I recited Artusi’s open letter to meatloaf did Bill acquiesce and agree to let us try his meatloaf from the night before.
“Signor polpettone venite avanti, non vi peritate,” wrote Pellegrino Artusi in La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, first published in 1881). “…lo so bene che siete modesto e umile…”
“Please step forward Signor Meatloaf and please don’t be shy… I know that you are modest and humble.”
He cubed it for us and we ate it cold. It was delicious.
It’s hard to describe how much sheer, pure fun we have when visiting with Patricia and Bill. Patricia is an interior designer by trade and their lovely Mediterranean-style home above Pease Park in Austin is a happy labyrinth of wonderful artifacts, paintings, and beautiful objects.
From his tales of working with the Israeli army to his anecdotes of Charlie Wilson and his time working in Washington, D.C., there’s never a dull moment in Bill’s presence. And the man can COOK. Bill made an unusual pasta shape, lanterne, dressed with a vodka-tomato sauce inspired by the Trattoria alla Vecchia Bettola in Florence. We paired with a bottle of 2008 SP68 by Occhipinti (which just came into the market here in Austin, available at the Austin Wine Merchant).
Next came involtini di vitello, veal rolls stuffed with mozzarella and accompanied by roast potatoes. We paired with a superb bottle of 2007 Bourgueil Cuvée Alouettes by Domaine de la Chanteleuserie (not sure where Bill picked that up, but I would imagine the Austin Wine Merchant). A supremely delicious pairing however you sliced it.
Customarily, one dines in the dining room when attending a dinner party chez Patricia and Bill. But on this special night it was just the four of us and so we ate in Tracie P’s favorite room in their house, the cappella. My lady loves her a turret!
Thanks again Patricia and Bill, for an excellent meal and a fantastic evening. We mustn’t let so much time pass between our visits again!
Above, from left: Importer of Basque, Spanish, and French wines André Tamers, Vino Vino owner Jeff Courington, and Tracie P at a Txakolina tasting in Austin on Saturday.
When I moved back to California from New York, a lot of concerned friends asked me, “what will you blog about? what will drink in California?” When I decided to move to Texas nearly two years ago, people admonished: “there won’t be anything interesting for you to drink there!”
Above: My favorite in the flight was the Ameztoi Txakolina, so bright and fresh in the glass, with white fruit and spice on the nose and in the mouth. Low alcohol and gentle spritz. At under $20, the wine quickly shot up the charts to reach a top-five slot in my favorite wines of summer.
Well, folks, I’m here to tell you: I’m alive and well in Texas and drinking good juice!
Over the weekend, Tracie P and I attended a fantastic Txakolina tasting, hosted by André Tamers (the wine’s main proponent and Svengali in this country) and Jeff Courington, my client and friend, owner of the best little wine bar in Austin, Vino Vino.
Like manna from heaven, my sheer enjoyment of reading Eric the Red’s recent article on Txakolina was redoubled with a flight of the wines, poured personally for us by the dude who is making the synonymous Txakoli and Txakolina (pronounced CHAHK-oh-lee, CHAHK-oh-LEE-nah) household words here in the U.S.
Above: I also really loved this rosé by Gurrutxaga. It had a crazy spicy note on the nose and was wholly sexy in the mouth. A truly and utterly “original” wine on my palate.
The world of wine is encyclopedic in breadth and I am constantly reminded that, beyond my love affair with Italian wine, there are so many fantastic wines to learn about, to taste, to pair with… now, more than ever, thanks to small importers like André, who launched his company more than 10 years ago when he was living with his wife and painting (oil on canvas) in Spain.
Txakolina is a truly “original” wine, to borrow a phrase I once heard Angelo Gaja use in a speech. Like Nebbiolo from Langa or Chardonnay from Chablis, it could be made in no other place in the world. It tastes of the place where it is raised and the people who make it. (Again, please see Eric the Red’s recent article on Txakolina for a great profile of the region, the people, and the wines.)
Being the self-appointed philologist of the enoblogosphere, I couldn’t help but nose around the interwebs in a search for the meaning and origins of the name Txakoli (Chacoli in Spanish, also spelled Sakoli). The lemma txak seems to denote small or little from what I can find in Basque language dictionaries available online. The editors of the Diccionario vasco-español-francés (Alfred Mame et Fils, Tour, 2 vol., 1905-1906) often translate the term (which appears in numerous instances in the two tomes) as vinaza (Spanish) or petit vin (French), literally, little wine, akin to the Italian vinello, an easy-drinking, light-bodied wine. According to the dictionary, the term also is used to denote wine must used to obtain distillate.
Above: Tracie P and I munched down an entire plate of Chef Esteban’s excellent fresh Manchego, dressed with basil, roast peppers, and olive oil. A sublime pairing with the Txakolina.
Beyond the great music and people here, the Texan lifestyle and the fact that the love of my life loves this town, Austin is such a great city because it attracts some of the brightest and best people I’ve ever met. Txakolina is sold in 26 states. Texas is one of them. When I asked André why he flies here especially to attend the tasting (now in its second year), he told me “because Jeff [owner of the venue] is a friend.”
The whole world may be talking about the wines of the Basque country these days. But here in Austin, we’re drinking it!
Summertime means fresh basil and pesto chez Parzen. Last night, before me and Tracie P cozied up on the couch for a Saturday movie and some Lini Lambrusco, I whipped up some “fake” pesto with some beautiful basil we found at the Central Market on Lamar.
True pesto is made with Pecorino, pine nuts, boiled potatoes and green beans, and extra-virgin olive oil, ideally from Liguria.
Pan-Italian pesto is generally made with Parmigiano Reggiano and omits the potatoes and green beans. And while true pesto should be milled by hand, using a mortar and pestle, fake pesto is super easy to make: just combine the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until you obtain the desired consistency.
Here’s how I made my “fake” pesto:
Pan-Italian Pesto
serves 4
1 handful pine nuts
1 heaping handful cubed Parmigiano Reggiano
(avoid pre-grated cheese!)
2 small bunches fresh basil (or 1 large bunch)
2 medium-sized cloves garlic, peeled
pinch of kosher salt
¼ extra-virgin olive oil (I love Sardinian San Giuliano)
Combine all the ingredients in a food processor and mill using short pulses. Add the olive oil as needed to obtain the desired consistency.
In the meantime, in a large pot, cook the pasta (long noodles, no short pasta!) in generously salted water until slightly undercooked. Before straining, add a few tablespoons of the cooking water to a large mixing bowl. Strain the pasta and transfer to the mixing bowl. Fold in the pesto, reserving a dollop per serving to top the pasta.
Et voilà!
And remember: the chalice from the palace has the brew that’s true! NOT the vessel with the pestle!
Do Bianchi 
