Category: Cucina

We’re babysitting our neighbors’ vegetable patch while they are visiting family this week. Which is a wonderful responsibility, because it requires us to pick the vegetables as they ripen, and eat them.

Right now what’s in season is the beginning of their tomatoes and the end of their zucchini. While I’m very happy about the former, I’m unexpectedly pleased about the latter as well. I always remember drowning in zucchini as a kid, but now that we only get it occasionally—even though then it comes in large doses—I’m excited about getting it now and figuring out how to cook it.

I grill it a lot. And my mom, growing up, cooked it a number of ways, including cooking it covered in a pot with onions. Tonight I tried a simple Italian variation of that technique, in which a cup of thin-sliced onions is cooked in butter until golden brown over medium heat, then a pound and a half of thin-sliced zucchini are added with salt and cooked over high heat until the zucchini gets tender and golden at the edges. Never covered, so there’s no steaming or moisture involved. The flavor turns out to be sublime and the texture is pretty darned good too. I’m looking forward to trying some more things I’ve never tried before with zucchini.

RIP Beer Hunter Michael Jackson, whose writing taught me everything about beer that I never learned at college. The front page of All About Beer has a tribute and his final column, ironically about surviving a near-death experience earlier this year (sorry, no permalink). They also have a guestbook, which currently features signatures and stories (some quite lengthy) from various beer luminaries including homebrew club members, Finnish brewers, and Sam Calaglione of Dogfish Head.

No, I’m not planning another project. I’m referring to Pete Brown’s Blog, one of the funnier and more observant blogs I’ve read about beer, pub culture, and other related matters. Pete is the author of several books on beer, none of which I’ve read; sounds like a trip to the library is in order.

I’m particularly taken with this little piece of whimsey: he plans to take a pin (4.5 gallons) of IPA from the brewery in Burton-on-Trent to Calcutta … via boat. The purpose is to find out whether the sea journey really does “condition” the India Pale Ale style as we were always told. Should be an interesting story to follow.

Ireland.com: Diageo mulls options for Guinness brewery. As consumption of Guinness falls, multinational conglomerate Diageno contemplates shuttering the St. James Gate Brewery in Dublin. I think I speak for every Guinness drinker when I say, No way.

The State:
These ain’t no chuggin’ beers. I missed the report earlier this month (on BeerAdvocate, naturally) that the state finally repealed its misguided ban on beers stronger than 5%.

The question of course is how long it will take for Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia (the remaining states that have such a ban) to finally lift it. Well, these may be the “hell freezing over” states, given how legislators in Alabama responded to a similar proposal this year: “I don’t know what you said, but you’re wrong,” and “I don’t have to read the legislation to know how I am going to vote.” Oy.

Sad, really, considering that at least in Alabama’s case the legislators who are so concerned about underage drinking aren’t doing anything to restrict wine or hard liquor, and don’t recognize that a Belgian Trappist ale hardly constitutes a gateway to perdition. (To mussels in Brussels, yes, but that’s another story.)

The ironic part? South Carolinians were driving over the border to smuggle high-alcohol craft beer back… from Asheville, NC. Yes indeedy, my dad’s home burg has come a long way. I still remember how blown away I was when I visited for the first time after he retired back there and found a Newcastle truck in the streets; not to mention the Asheville Wine Market, where I found Old Engine Oil Stout, Radgie Gadgie, Workie Ticket, and Bluebird Bitter for the first time.

Relatively light Easter meals yesterday. It was just the family at home, so we took it easy. We went to the early service at Old South, came back, and had fried eggs with prosciutto and hot cross buns for a late breakfast. Then I made my wasabi deviled eggs (recipe below) and White Lily biscuits, Lisa prepared some asparagus, and together Lisa and I baked a ham. But really: that, plus a chocolate cake that was lying around, plus Easter marshmallows (not Peeps) and some pretty spectacular sauvignon blanc: who needed anything else?

The wasabi deviled eggs, by the way, are dead easy. I use the recipe for deviled eggs from the late 1990s edition of The Joy of Cooking, scaling it up for a dozen eggs, then add two tablespoons of dry wasabi powder that have been mixed with two tablespoons water. That, plus adjusting the other spices to taste, is really it. Sometimes I get aggressive and add more wasabi, but at the proportions above it’s just about right. I got the idea one year when I was trying to replicate my dad’s eggs, which use horseradish, but the only thing I could find at the store was wasabi.

Lisa and I are trying to branch out a bit and eat healthier, and for me that means trying some more Asian recipes. Tonight we cheated, buying some pre-marinated boolkogi from Trader Joe’s and trying a recipe for generic Korean greens. The recipe wasn’t bad, but in retrospect I would have used a stronger vinegar and some hot sauce. The bookogi, on the other hand, was excellent.

Which brings me to my question: is there a good Korean cookbook out there for beginners? I haven’t found one I like. If you have a favorite, contact me with the link below this post.

Eric Asimov in the New York Times writes Quiet Cover for a Vital Brew, another in his series of beer tasting adventures. Reading these is almost as much fun as reading the great Michael Jackson’s beer writing; one gets the sense that if Asimov were not constrained for space by the newspaper, he would be fair competition for Jackson when writing about New World beers.

One of his Top 10 brown ales this week is the Double Bag Ale from Long Trail, a Vermont brewer whose stuff shows up in my local package store—interesting, since according to a 2001 interview with the president of the company they had pulled out of Massachusetts. Perhaps things turned around. I have enjoyed both the Double Bag (an appropriate name for a Vermont beer) and the Harvest Ale in the past; I think I’ll have to check out their other offerings…

Last year it was a mild and easy meal, the year before an epic battle, the year before that a show-off feast, and in 2002 and 2001 we helped out in other people’s kitchens. For this, the fourth Thanksgiving in a row we’ve hosted and the sixth since I started blogging in 2001, we’re playing it cautiously. I am getting over a cold and Lisa isn’t moving around too spryly either. So the menu is a little more conservative this year:

• Turkey a la Alton with pan gravy plus random stuff
• Apple and sausage stuffing—this year using a bulk pork sausage that we found at Wilson Farms
• Baby Brussels sprouts with buttered pecans
• Green beans with ginger butter
• Buttermilk biscuits
• Lemon chess pie
• Pumpkin gelato

I stayed up late last night working on prep. I cooked two quarts of chicken stock, pre-boiled the Brussels sprouts and toasted and buttered the pecans, brined the turkey, and Lisa and her mother made the gelato filling and the pie. And this morning we’re not too far off: there’s bread to be cubed and bulk sausage to be thawed for the stuffing, more biscuits to be made, a turkey to be roasted, and the green beans and the final assembly on the Brussels sprouts. I’m not as far ahead of the game as Isis, but we’re not doing too badly.

And I’ve even influenced some others; one of my coworkers is evaluating the pros and cons of duck a la hairdryer. I’m looking forward to hearing that story.

We had an opportunity to give the kitchen a trial run before Thanksgiving. On Saturday night we made a polpettone—big meatball, essentially an Italian meatloaf—along with two pots of bolognese sauce and a cake. Last night we had our neighbors over to help us eat the bolognese sauce and the cake. It was an entertaining visit: they have a nine-month-old who was consistently the center of attention and in turn distracted by Joy and Jefferson, who decided they adored her.

The kitchen is functioning pretty well now, though it may be a while before I finish the missing toe kick since that involves traveling to Ikea. The odds of my doing that before the holidays are slim and the odds of my doing it on Friday are nonexistent. I may be crazy, but Ikea on Black Friday? I’m not stupid.

I thought his book Kitchen Confidential was nasty, brutish, and not short enough, but at least Anthony Bourdain has the cojones to tell it like it is:

[Emeril] looks like [legendary chef Georges Auguste] Escoffier now compared to some of the bobble-heads who are on that network… [For example,] Rachael Ray. She’s paid more and is more popular [than Emeril], and I see a day when the executives say, we don’t need Emeril anymore, even though he built their network. They’ll replace him with some industry-created freakozoid who’s been grown from a seedling into a recognized brand. When you look at Sandra Lee or Rachael Ray or some of the new shows like “Calorie Commando” that are just vomit-inducing — at least Emeril worked his way up and has a real restaurant empire.

Heck yeah. Apologies to her fans, but we really need to have a Beat Up on Rachael Ray week. It’s still not clear to me why she’s become such a Persona when her main talent appears to be talking endlessly and purveying mediocre food.