Cooking With Ideas

Guest Blog: Food in Burkina Faso

Stephanie Czajkowski offers a guest blog here from her Peace Corps site in Burkina Faso. No clue where that is? Check out the map and then click here. And then, read away right here about "Food in Burkina Faso."(Thanks to commons.wikimedia.org for the map, which lets us all know approximately where this county is!)

First of all, there is no overly-processed food problem here like in the states contributing to the millions and millions of people with high blood pressure, obesity, increased heart problems, etc. You can find processed foods here: some cookies and crackers and the like, but it's not as commonplace nor are those things what people generally go for first here which I think is definitely a positive.

What is available? There are a lot of carbohydrates and wheats here which contribute to the ability to find many different types of flour: those made out of millet, maize (Yes, it is a type of corn,however, different; you cannot boil it or cook it and get the same results. No matter how hard you try, you will not get that soft chewy corn you have come to know and love in the US), wheat (although, the supposed wheat flour I bought did not look like any wheat flour I've ever seen, it looked just like the regular white flour you buy at a grocery store back in the states), etc.

One often bakes with flour, no? So, you can also find various baking materials, even though some are easier than others. Sugar is easy to find here and typically comes in one of two varieties: white or brown (And I don't think the brown is like brown sugar, I think it's less processed and comes more directly from the cane); I have found a powdered white substance in the one grocery store that exists in Burkina and that may have been powdered sugar, but the jury's still out. You can find baking soda, baking powder, and yeast as well.

Eggs are available here as well and are often much smaller and browner in color. (I was lucky enough this past week to receive a bag full of eggs as a gift and have thus been able to bake a little and experiment with egg preparation from omelets, scrambled cheesy eggs, to over easy [which ended up being more over hard – I need to practice not breaking my yolks] and hard-boiled.

Popular treats and snacks found here include a small variety of fried cakes and doughs: small ball-shaped fried cakes (gateaux), one type more solid and grainy, the other the consistency of cake; and galettes are often made when it's raining and it's the Burkinabé version of pancakes (They're smaller than US pancakes and thicker, too. Plus, instead of typically tasting sweet, there's often a spicy kick because pepper or piment (spicy pepper such as an habanero or chilly pepper grown here) has been added. They still taste really good. My host family made galettes with bananas.)

Oil. One thing learned in the past three months is that the Burkinabé love their oil. Usually it's the cheap, poor-quality vegetable oil, but again, if you search hard enough and know of the one grocery store in Burkina (Marina Market) and can get to a big city, such as Bobo or Ouaga, you can purchase olive oil and even have your choice between a few different brands. Oil is plentiful and inexpensive. If you go to the marché (market) where one goes to buy many food items, and other types of items as well, you will find large metal cans that look like those you've seen carrying a lot of car oil and those cans will have a small pump on the top where the vendor will put a sachet (small plastic bag) under the spout and pump as much oil as you want into the plastic bag before tying it off and handing it over. (Most things are sold using plastic bags here from the small black grocery-type bags used to purchase fruits, vegetables, grains, flours, etc. to the small clear plastic bags used to purchase oil, peanut butter, water, juice, etc.) Not only is it easy to find, but many Burkinabé put oil in most of their dishes. Instead of adding salt first as people do in the US, here one first adds oil and one adds so very generously.

Vinegar and salt are easy to find here as well, and salt is a very common spice added to most dishes as well. Luckily, iodized salt is sold here and many people use that. I don't think there is as big of a problem with salt here, because of the lack of processed foods, people aren't consuming massive amounts of sodium that shocks their system and increases their blood pressure among other physical problems.

Vegetables and fruits? Yes and yes, but it depends. It depends largely on one's location and the current season. Burkina has three main seasons: hot, hotter, and not quite as hot which translate to a warm season, a hot season, and a rainy season where temperatures a bit cooler (Each of these seasons is still very warm and during the warm and especially hot seasons, the temperatures rise above 100 degrees F easily.) The rainy season and therefore cultivation season is when the most variety and availability of fruits and vegetables is found. Some vegetables found here include onions (one can always find onions), beans (in Jula called s)s) [ the ) should actually look more like backward c's, but the shape doesn't exist in my openoffice character list], in Mooré they're called benga and are very common and easy to find), potatoes, patates (which are a cross between regular potatoes and sweet potatoes according to taste anyway), eggplant of the African variety (green and looks a little like a pepper and has a very bitter taste, not very good on its own, best in sauces) and the violet eggplant, corn or rather maize (which is prepared differently here: they often remove the husk and then grill it so the kernels have black in the middle. Then instead of eating it right off the cob, one holds the cob and picks off kernels with one's fingers before tossing them in one's mouth), piment (which as I said is hot peppers, typically habaneros and chilli peppers of the red and yellow variety. Piment is very popular and used in many dishes. It is dried and used as a spice and sometimes mixed with Maggi cubes to tone down the heat and add some more flavor. It is mashed up and made into a salsa-type sauce that can be added to taste to a dish, as well.), green peppers exist here and are often not as ever-present as the other types of vegetables, tomatoes, garlic, gumbo (which is a long, slender, octagonal, green vegetable used in sauces), and leaves (leaves of many different types and varieties are very popular here when making sauces. The only type that comes to mind right now is Baobab, but there are many. I learned of at least two different plants growing in my courtyard that can be used in sauces: one was a little plant with small round leaves and the other completely the opposite, big with large leaves where one leaf could make a sauce for an entire family and then some.) For fruits, the most common are mangoes, especially around the beginning of rainy season, aloco (African plantains), weda (the Mooré name for this sour orange fruit that when mixed with water and sugar makes the most delicious juice you've ever tasted), and bananas. You can also find applies (imported), oranges, limes (which are actually a cross between lemons and limes if you're going according to taste), pineapple, watermelon, papaya, an oval-shaped bright yellow melon... Other than the few popular fruits first mentioned, one needs to travel to a decent-sized city to usually find the other types of fruit. It is important to note also, that that the sizes of vegetable and fruits here are typically smaller than in the states. I surmise that is the case because people don't tamper with and biologically alter the chemical make-up of fruits and vegetables here which may make the flavor better. I noticed that onions are a lot stronger here, for example.

As for meat and protein sources of the like one finds mouton (sheep), beef, goat, chicken, and fish. It's important to specify what type of cut you'd like, because here fat is often included and consumed (During my first visit to site, I ate lunch with a group of men and lunch consisted of a plate filled with meat and fat with powdered piment and maggi to dip it in. And there was a lot of fat making it difficult to find a piece of meat without a chunk of fat attached). If you get fish it is of the dried or bony variety and you spend much time picking out or crunching on fish bones, whichever you prefer. If prepared well and if a decent type of fish, it can be quite tasty. (I recall my host family preparing a fish fillet, bones included of course, with cut up cucumbers and onions on top with a light sauce perhaps made with mayonnaise and water.) You can also find sardines in a can which taste good – they're not salty like the sardines supposedly are in the states. They remind me of canned trout you can purchase from Trader Joe's (ah, Trader Joe's...) You can also find tuna here, but it's expensive (hence the reason I prefer to receive it in packages sent from the US!)

I mentioned earlier that carbohydrates are commonplace here and include rice, couscous, pasta, spaghetti, and most importantly tô. Tô is the staple food here and is often made from millet, but can be made from rice and other sources as well, I believe. Tô is as if someone were trying to make porridge and left it cooking for too long and ended up with one solid mass that is slightly gelatinous. The flavoring is very bland, but one typically eats it with a sauce. Usually, for a meal here, one prepares a starch or carbohydrate such as tô or rice and a sauce to go with it. Both are kept separate until joined on each individual's plate (I made macaroni and cheese for my host family and kept the cheese sauce separate from the macaroni, so they'd be more comfortable with it). Although there are dishes like rice and beans or riz gras (riz = rice; this is a dish where one prepares the sauce, then adds the rice and cooks it down until no water remains). A big problem here is that people cook their sauces for so long that most if not all nutritional value from the vegetables is gone by the time the meal is ready to be eaten.

What types of appliances are available, you ask? If you're in a village like me, you do not have electricity, so that means no blender, electric can opener, electric stove or oven for that matter, microwave, toaster, toaster oven, coffee maker (for you avid coffee drinkers out there),  and while we're at it, no dish washer for afterward. That leads me to the two most missed of all: refrigerators and freezers. You can't keep things cold like you're used to and you certainly can't really chill anything. To counteract this, desert fridges exist. These are constructed in large clay bowls when filled with water use evaporation as a cooling mechanism. I haven't tried this yet, but hope to. This won't keep things refrigerator-cold, but it can cool things down enough and help preserve some produce an extra day or two. One also learns, that food lasts longer than people often think it does in the states. You can prepare a meal and have it last a day or two without refrigeration as long as you make sure to check it and heat it up before consuming again to kill off any bacteria that may have formed. The appliances we do have available include: cooking outdoors with wood and/or straw (luckily, many have learned how to construct these clay cylindrical ovens that increase efficiency and decrease the amount of wood needed to cook a meal and have made cooking easier, faster, and cheaper), a small gas bottle about 2 feet high and maybe 2 feet in diameter with a round, flat, holey metal piece attached to the top with a long plastic knob used to turn the gas on and off. The upper outside of the gas bottle is surrounded by a thin sheet of metal with pieces leading to the center where the gas comes out, thus leaving space for pots and pans to be placed, a larger gas bottle twice the size of the smaller that is hooked up via a piece of tubing and a metal contraption to a stove top (mine has 2 larger burners and one smaller while others have as many as 4 total burners), and small cylindrical metal contraptions where  coal is added underneath and things such as tea are made. Naturally, one needs matches or a lighter to get the fire started after turning the gas on.

So, we don't have ovens here? Wrong! We have Dutch ovens. I like it best using my little gas bottle and that stove rather than the big one, but you can use either, it's only necessary to have a heat source. To construct your Dutch oven, you use a marmite (which is a big metal pot that looks like one a witch would use to prepare a brew), fill the bottom of it with 2-3 inches of sand, not dirt, and then place three empty cans, such as little tomato paste cans (like I used) in a triangle on top of the sand. When you want to bake something you can place the lid on the marmite, but it on top of your heat source and wait for it to heat up. Then you place whatever you want to bake or toast inside the marmite on top of the three cans and watch it happen. Or  rather, put the lid on and wait for it to happen. Sadly, marmites with a clean pane in front and a light inside have yet to be invented.

I made two batches of banana bread this week because I liked it so much. I used a recipe from a book we volunteers were given and put my own spin on it. I first mixed the dry ingredients: 2 cups flour (I used wheat but as I said it looked white to me), ¾ cups sugar (the recipe called for white, but I used the brown cane sugar instead which after mixing that with the flour, it then looked like wheat), 1 tsp salt, and 1 tsp baking soda. Then I mixed the wet ingredients: 2 slightly beaten eggs, 3 mashed up bananas (I used four because I like bananas and they're very small here), 1 tsp vanilla sugar (I found a small bottle of some type of vanilla extract at Marina Market and so used that and I think it made the dish). Then I added the wet to the dry and stirred it up. I'd also like to point out that I don't have any measuring cups or utensils here, so I eyeballed it and did my best guesstimate regarding quantities. Then, since I didn't have butter or a loaf pan, I chose a pot about the right size, oiled it with my olive oil and then added my bread batter to the pot. I then placed my bot on top of the three tin cans inside my preheated Dutch oven, covered the marmite with it's top and waited an hour for it to bake. I kept my heat fairly low to prevent the marmite from getting too hot. Unfortunately, the gas here is not as reliable or consistent as in the states, so my second banana bread batch (made 2 days after the first, because I ate it in two days and even that was hard dragging it out for that long) was a bit darker on the outside because the gas increased and therefore made the flame higher and hotter and I did not realize it right away – I did luckily realize it in time to do some damage control and not burn my tasty treat. And it was delicious.

Another thing taken for granted in the states is water. In my village, I don't have running water, so I need to go to a pump to get it. This has taught me to be very conscious about water use and I've found ways to reuse and conserve water. Sinks with running water and toilets do exist here, but only in the bigger cities and even then, they're not very commonplace. One is more likely to find houses with water spickets coming out of the back of someone's house, like with my host family, than to find a sink.

Regarding spices, as I said, salt is easily available. One uses leaves a lot here to flavor things. Ginger and tamarind leaves are easily found. Spices like black pepper, oregano, basil, thyme, and coriander can only be found in big cities like Bobo and Ouaga.

For utensils, one can find bowls, pots, pans, plates, forks, and spoons fairly easily, but they are often not of good quality. It's difficult to find decent knives here. I bought a set before coming to village and within the first couple days my knife was showing signs of rust. Spatulas are expensive and I have yet to see any baking spatulas or scrapers. If you want a good can-opener, it's best to bring one or have one sent from somewhere else.

Things like ice cream and cheese are only found in big cities and again, obviously, must be eaten right away. The only cheese that is easily found here is vache qui rit or laughing cow and that's a cheese spread that can be left out and lasts a while, so you can make up your mind about that. But when it's all you've got, you learn to love it.

Things to have sent from home include cheese-related products (cheese wiz, easy cheese, nacho cheese, mac n' cheese, Parmesan/Romano cheese), beef jerky, granola bars, special teas and coffees (both are found here, but not in large varieties), gravy, dressings, sauce, and soup packets, kool-aid, gatorade, and drink mixes, maple syrup, peanut butter (again, can be found here, but it's not sweetened and is made from peanuts and oil = still tasty).

One final note: juices. The juices the Burkinabé made are delicious. I already mentioned jus (juice) de weda, bissap which is made similarly to weda only one uses bissap leaves, zoom-koom (made with tamarind leaves, ginger, millet, piment, sugar, and water), and ginger juice to name a few. So, that's the basics of the food situation here in in Burkina. It's different, but it works, especially once you get used to it. You've still able to prepare a variety of different foods and dishes if you aren't afraid to get creative.

Oh, I almost forgot, bouillie! Bouillie (pronounced bwee) is Burkinabé porridge. It's made with water (best when first soaked with tamarin leaves), millet meal, sorghum, maize, or rice, and I like mine with ginger. You can also add salt They form these little balls of flour and ginger first with water and then add that and the rest of the flour to water, boil it, add sugar and milk if you want, and enjoy. It's delicious. It's like a cross between cream of wheat and oatmeal, but more watery. It's like thickened water with little tiny balls of tasty goodness in it. I'd highly recommend trying it or learning how to prepare it! Well, that's it for now.

Until next time?

Guest Blog from 2.5 Million + 1

This guest blog from 2.5 Million + 1 has been languishing because I got overloaded - but for those who travel to the land of Brooklyn, here's a great bit of insight from a William Smith grad.

Today I’ll be bringing you food news and reviews from the neighborhood.  And that neighborhood is Crown Heights, Brooklyn! Some qualifiers before starting: 1) I have only included stores and restaurants within 10 minutes walking distance of my apartment (there is one exception, but I’ll explain that later).  2) Each entrée costs less than $10 (because that is my budget).  3.) In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a vegetarian (as my mom says, “I would be one, if bacon didn’t count,” which about sums it up), but since I am living with a vegetarian, all the places I talk about will be vegetarian focused or have strong vegetarian options.  4.) I’ve never really written about food before, so bear with me!

Well, it ain’t Wegmans: Grocery Shopping

As a born and bred Western New Yorker, I have a freakish, life-affirming devotion to Wegmans, which also includes trying to shoehorn it into any conversation whenever possible (We all know this is true.  But who can blame us??).  There is a Whole Foods, somewhere, and I think a Trader Joes, but that’s not my scene.  Since I am sans Wegmans, the store I usually go to is walkable, and has the basics.  The produce is on the iffy side—which is supplemented by going to a farmers’ market—and though there are holes in the floor, the music they play is danceable Spanish, and the cashiers have a tendency to sing along.  The organic section is literally one shelf at the end of an aisle, which would be funny if it wasn’t so depressing (no social hierarchy of food, my foot).  Although cereal and other staples tend to be much more expensive than I’m used to, big jars of curry powder and other “unusual” ingredients tend to be less.  I’ve also started eating things like guava yogurt and plaintain chips, since this store is stocked for its predominantly Hispanic and West Indian customers.  I can’t attest to the meat quality or price, since I haven’t purchased any here.

Eating Out/Taking In

Some categories to consider:

Pizza—like bagels, I think it is generally hard to have a bad pizza experience in NYC, although I’ve had slices that are certainly superior to others.  The best, in my opinion, is either Slice of Brooklyn on Franklin or Ginos on Washington, both which are about 2 blocks from my apartment in opposite directions.  Slice of Brooklyn has a good deal on slices (2 + a can of soda for $5) while Ginos is more economical if you’re buying a whole pizza.  Interestingly, I have yet to see pineapple offered as a topping anywhere, which is my favorite (I know, it’s weird).  The standard pizza is thin-crust with not-overly sweet sauce, and not too much cheese.

Mexican—There is a Mexican restaurant on my street, but the one I have been to is one street over, and is delightfully called Taquería de Los Muertos.  The menu isn’t huge, and I’ve only tried their burritos, but OH are they good, as well as being roughly the size of a human head.  I think my favorite filling is pollo rojo with the black beans, and I usually pay the extra 50 cents to make it a “super,” so it includes guacamole.  They have good vegetarian fillings, like squash, peppers, corn, and mushrooms.  They also make sure to tell you which bean choices are vegetarian, too.

Thai—If I were recommending just two restaurants in Brooklyn for someone to check out, it would be these two: Udom Thai and Wild Ginger . First, Udom Thai: it is next door to the Taquería de Los Muertos, and the ambiance is great.  It’s small-ish, but cozy, and there are really neat wire figures on each table (each one is different) which all hold a different colored silk flower.  And the food is just dandy.  My standard so far seems to be the ginger noodles, which are soft, wide noodles in a spicy, gingery sauce, with shredded chicken, eggs, bean sprouts, scallions, sliced ginger, and lettuce, which provides a good crisp element.  They also have food delivery-ready in a crazy fast time.  I recently tried one of the curries, and that was also really good. The second Thai restaurant, Wild Ginger, is the exception to my geographic criteria.  It’s in downtown Brooklyn, and therefore a bus ride away, although they *just* opened another Brooklyn branch on Flatbush Ave, only 5ish blocks from me.  I am including this restaurant not only because it was delicious, but because it was the first time I’d been to a Vegan restaurant, and it has amazingly low-priced lunch specials.  I got Mango Soy Protein (I didn’t know this, but soy protein has a consistency kind of like chicken and, just like tofu, tastes like whatever you cook it in).  It was served in a sweet plum sauce with generously big mango slices, green beans, peppers, and asparagus, and came with brown rice with bulgur, plus miso soup.  I got a ginger ale, which I think was just club soda with shredded ginger.  As someone who really likes raw ginger, I loved the tanginess.  Also, they get extra points for having a really cool bathroom.

The Art of Snacking

Mr. Softee is the usual neighborhood ice cream truck (I have seen fancier ice cream trucks with lemongrass and green tea confections, but I’ll take my vanilla soft-serve with rainbow sprinkles over that.)  The best part is that a Mr. Softee truck drives by the apartment at 11:00 nightly, and parks someplace nearby.  One night I heard its obnoxious siren/jingle/ice cream truck call constantly for half an hour while I was trying to read, and it began to seem like an experiment to see how long the average citizen could hear the song without turning into a raving sociopath.  It just adds to their charm.

Further up the road from the grocery store is a mostly vegan (can something be “mostly vegan,” or is that like being “mostly pregnant?”) Jamaican restaurant called Natural Blends.  They have substantial food too, and my cousin swears by their veg lasagna, but all I’ve had is a smoothie and a chocolate chip cookie.  The smoothie was tasty, as smoothies often are, and the cookie was large and dense, with carrot and sweet potato in it and lots of cinnamon.  They have a lot of really good looking baked goods there, which I plan to test out.

Also very important to the consummate snacker are the small convenience stores, often called bodegas, which are on nearly every corner.  I have the delight of living next door to one such store, which is usually staffed by a trio of brothers, the youngest of which is probably 15 and the oldest of which is probably my age.  They are dysfunctional, and it’s always an adventure stopping there (for example: everyone will be outside and the youngest one will be working the cash register and he won’t know the price of something, so he’ll take candy bars from under the counter and throw them at the window until one of the other brothers comes in to help).  Corner stores are good for getting deli meats, cheese, milk, and late-night seltzer and Doritos, which is my usual purchase.  I also have no shame about going there in my pajamas, and in fact have done so today.  Twice.

 

Some of the neighborhood places that I haven’t had time to try yet boast cuisines from the Caribbean, Senegal, Vietnam, France, China, Korea, the Middle East, and Japan, not to mention bagels, burgers, fried chicken, kosher groceries, pastries, organic specialty stores, and all manner of coffee.  Come to Manhattan for the culture—although Brooklyn has plenty of that, too!—but desert the island for dinner. Brooklyn will be eagerly awaiting your arrival.

 

VeeV -- a Guest Blog by Meg Colombo

So: it came in the mail. First, an email -- would you like to try. . . and then it came in the mail. So, booze, it turns out, can be shipped.  But, I was nto ready to review it -- I thought maybe someone else might. So, I was in touch with Meg Colombo for other reasons and sent her off with the bootie. And here's what she has to say (and it is her picture above): 

VeeV.

Cool name, cool logo, very cool packaging and message. As their letter of introduction explains, VeeV, made with the acai berry (pronounced ah-SIGH-ee), has been introduced as an upgrade to vodka – an odorless, tasteless, colorless flavorless spirit. So, I naturally popped the VeeV into the freezer to wait for a time when I could get a few friends together and a few opinions on the product. The package also came with some good background info (on recycled paper using soy ink) and some recipes for cocktails.

 

I noticed right off the bat that VeeV froze differently than vodka. It had a few crystals trying to form – which is OK with me. Still definitely pourable. The first thing I wanted to do was to try the product straight – to really see if this was odorless, tasteless, etc, etc. I snack on dried acai berries – would I really be able to taste any evidence of the fruit? Here are my notes:

Nose: fruity and sweet

(Not a lot of taste over the tongue – which didn’t surprise or disappoint)

Finish:  pretty good vodka type heat but then a very sweet, sweet finish.

Concerned that this was just imagined – I had to try another taste. But no- there is a definite sweetness to the nose and it was almost something that you could taste when you smelled it. I felt the same about the after glow – it seemed to get sweeter as more time went by. I could taste lingering sweet after about a full minute. Not at all unpleasant – even for a person who prefers savory or salty. So now I was really looking forward to a few cocktails with friends.

 

Here are some of the titles of the ‘Better Way to Drink” signature cocktails provided by the folks at Veev: 

VeeV It ^up

Rainforest on the Rocks

Joie De VeeV

VeeV Global Cooler

That last one is not just a ‘hanging of the hat’ on green and global concerns:

My press kit explains that each bottle gives a $1 donation to Rainforest preservation through The Sustainable Acai Project. [Editorial remark: I think this is Sambazon's sustainability project; for information on this, click here.] VeeV is the industry’s first certified carbon neutral spirits company. VeeV’s distillery is the only distiller to get their energy through renewable wind energy and the VeeV 4-column distillation process uses 200% less energy than a traditional pot still. Learn more about other green initiatives or to get more signature cocktails visit www.veevlife.com

 

I have to admit that there was a tinge of ‘jumping on the green, solar-powered cart’ to the press pack and initial impression, but that feeling fell away when I pushed through the website.

 

This is a cool site with some little flash-y tidbits of info. “The acai berry is perishable after only 24 hours.” “Has 57% more antioxidants than pomegranates.” “Acai berries grow on the same tree as the Heart of Palm.” (Usually, I don’t much like flash and none of the text is copy able – but, I think a spirits site should have a little sparkle and flash.) VeeV also is made from prickly pear and acerola cherry. Check out the buzz section of the website, too. I signed up for VIP status – so they got me, again.

 

My cocktail party focused on the VeeV Eco Mojito – with a bit of a change on my end. I love the Wegmans brand sparkling mineral water with lime – produced in a glass bottle – and substituted that for the club soda. So I made up a pitcher, but saved the splash of mineral water for the top of each glass and just smiled wisely when my friends said “oh, good! Mojitos”. So even though it was a blind taste from the start they did notice something different right away. First of all – not as sweet as a Mojito – but that was a bonus, calorie wise and taste wise. It felt fuller somehow – a more rounded out taste. This was at the end of a moving day – so the refreshing taste – the muddled mint – the cool heat running down the throat was a wonderful thing. When I brought out the bottle the friends were liking it even more– the drink, the bottle, the philosophy. Anna even took home the bracelet.

 

Yes. I will go out and buy this product. And feel good doing it.

 

Meg Colombo

e-Brand Manager for FLVC

www.VisitFingerLakes.com

(585) 394-3915

50 Great Appetizers

The mail again brought along a new book: 50 great appetizers by Pamela Sheldon Johns. It is a small little book, a mere 110 pages including the index. Not fancy. Dips. Bites. Wraps. Skewers. Menus at the front in case you want to do thematic sorts of hors d'oeuvre nights -- Mexican, Italian, Vegetarian, Pacific rim, Mediterranean, whatever. I don't have much to say about the book really except I intend to make lemon chicken escabeche one of these days. And, I did make one dish from the book, just because I was feeling a bit obstreperous. Here we are, all saying "SEASONAL FOOD IS BETTER" in our loudest, trendiest, most politically righteous, environmentally and economically  responsible tones of voice and along comes a dish called "four-seasons frittata." 

No, the four seasons in the label does not reference a famous eatery. At the top the author says: "the four seasons are represented by the vegetables in this dish."  No further details are offered. So they are? Asparagus (spring?).  And, well, more than 3 more: onions, potatoes, red bell pepper, mushrooms. (Maybe the onion does not count. Certainly, they were not counting the parley?). 

Anyway, I made the frittata -- well, 2/3 of it since I had 6 rather than 8 eggs. I did indeed slice my potato into 1/4 inch slices and blanch. I did indeed blanch some asparagus in 3 inch lengths. I almost never do this before making a frittata -- and in this case it did help the potatoes and asparagus a lot. So, I learned a lot. And, I did fry up very well diced onion with thinly sliced mushrooms which for some reason tasted better than ever. Finally, I did put all this on top of my 6 egg fritatta and then thoroughly cover all that with grated parmesan. The result: tasty but it did tend to fall apart. There was a sort of oddly sweet tone to it all -- as it carried the parmesan to my lips. 

Most importantly: I discovered that thinly slice, blanched potatoes with parmesan cheese liberally sprinkled on top of them, when broiled, make an absolutely incredible snack. Less importantly, but well, swell, (what can be more important than discovering a new form of degenerate snacking?), I learned that Pamela Sheldon Johns runs foodie events, including cooking workshops in Tuscany. Not that I will ever get there, but there is always fantasy. Click here to take an imaginary trip right after you eat a real frittata.   

Eating in Rome: And I Do NOT Mean Rome, NY . . . Not that There's Anything Wrong with That

Guest Blogger, Michael Tinkler, of The Cranky Professor, is an art historian at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Here's what he has to say on "Food in Rome": 

I'd like to thank Bibliochef for the kind offer to guest-blog here about eating in Rome.  I've been to Rome and Italy just often enough to know that eating in Rome isn't eating in Italy - Italians are incredibly local in their patterns.  Until quite recently a foreign restaurant in Rome served Venetian or Abruzzese food.  Nowadays one can find Chinese restaurants and Moroccan restaurants and such in Rome - but I really haven't bothered with them.  These are notes on eating in Rome, some of which applies elsewhere in Italy.  

Likewise, with only a few exceptions I'm going to stick to the neighborhood I lived in this year (2008), between Ponte San Angelo and Piazza Navona (rione Parione).  Restaurants in Rome sometimes seem to have the same menu;  one judges restaurants by elegant variations on traditional elements.  So the restaurants you can find in your neighborhood will vary, but not by as much as you might think.  Season is probably more important than price-point.  Salads of puntarelle with an anchovy sauce are only available in the early springtime, then they're gone.  Everyone has them for a few weeks.

Let me take your through some of the possibilities for your days in Roma.

MORNING - Italians have a little something baked and coffee, either at home or at a bar.  Bars are not bars as we think of them in America, nor are they coffee shops, though some of them offer seating.  Bear in mind this general principle - it's always cheaper to stand - and you sometimes pay as much as a 100% premium to order table service.  

A bare majority of Italians have a latte first thing in the morning, though plenty of folks have an espresso (a caffè ).  A caffè americano,an espresso with some boiling water, won't raise an eyebrow.  After all, you're not an Italian and they don't expect you to pretend.  The two basic baked goods for breakfast are the cornetto and the cornetto con crema - something like a croissant but less devoted to flakiness.  I always have a cornetto con crema.  If I'm shameless, I will sometimes walk a block or so to the next bar on my list and have another round, but ordering a second latte would indeed raise eyebrows.

There are bars everywhere.  Try a lot of them!  Though there's hardly any point in making recommendations, two of my favorites were Bar Amore (via Banchi Nuovi 41) and Gerri's Bar (Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II & Vicolo Savelli - nice seating indoors).

MIDMORNING -hit a different bar, but try un caffè instead of a caffelatte.   Romans flood out of offices and schools into the bars around 10 or 11.

EARLY AFTERNOON - You have four excellent possibilities for lunch in Rome - grabbing something in a market, stand-up food, sit-down pizza, or a full meal.  I'll postpone discussing the full meal to Night.

On the hoof -  You can always hit an outdoor market or grocery store and buy fruit, bread, cheese, and whatever else makes you happy.  Remember that the fountains of Rome, unless they are explicitly labeled non potabile, have clean, cold, and delicious water.  The little street side fountains, fontanelle, are excellent places to wash fruit.  You might also carry an empty bottle to refill with water - at this exchange rate why on earth pay a Euro every time you want a bottle of water when the fontanelle are free?

Stand-up food - Italians never charge as much if you eat at the bar or carry something away.  There are hundreds of places that serve pizza by the slice - pizza a taglia is a sign to look for.  Order by holding your hands apart for the size of slice you want.  You can have it heated or not - then you'll be charged by weight.  This kind of pizza is often pan cooked with a thicker crust than the fire cooked pizzas.  I love the potato pizza - the whole surface will be covered with a shingling of pizza slices, sprinkled with olive oil, spices (usually rosemary?), and baked.  Yum!  And hearty!  There are good places like this everywhere.  This kind of establishment usually also sells supplì, rice and cheese croquettes.  Two or three of these and a drink are a great lunch - and they make a nice appetizer with a pizza slice, too.  I'd buy them and take them home to refrigerate and eat them cold for lunch on my own.  

One of the greatest - and cheapest - pizza by weight places is on the Campo de'Fiori.  It says FORNO - "Oven" -  in big letters above the door.  The simplest pizza is either white pizza, pizza bianca (just oil and garlic) or red, pizza rosso, (red sauce), but they have many others.  Again, point and move your hands - and watch out for the crowd!  It can get smotheringly packed in there about noon.  The pizza-man will wrap your selection in wax paper and bag it, weigh it, and hand you a ticket.  Take that to the cashier - grab a drink from the cooler, if you like - and pay. Take your pizza and cut a block over to the Piazza Farnese to eat in peace and quiet on the side of fountain, or stay in the Campo de'Fiori for local color.  It's hard for one person to spend three Euro at Forno for lunch, without a drink.

Bars offer another kind of standup food - sandwiches and panini.  Tramezzini, triangular sandwiches on white bread, come in amazing varieties of fillings.  I liked shrimp and tomato this winter, but you should experiment.  If you have your caffe after 10 a.m. you will usually see the bar folks starting to make their sandwiches for the lunch rush.  Panini - do we italicize this any more in America?  I think not - are also premade, and usually very poorly labelled in the cold case!  I always have to point and ask what on earth they are, unless there are clear bits of arugula sticking out around the edges of some prosciutto.  The norm is for sandwiches to be heated up and served in a napkin.  Italians regard touching sandwiches with your fingers as abominable and unclean.  Unfortunately, this often leads to melted cheese sticking to napkins, but one must sacrifice for la bella vita.  A meal with a couple of tramezzini or a panino and a beer or a soft drink will probably run 5 Euro or so.

Sit-down pizza, al forno - 

The closest pizzeria to my apartment this spring was Pizzeria Baffetto (via del Governo Vecchio 114).  Baffetto shows up in all sorts of guide books and it really is amazingly good - but theyr'e only open for supper and you have to stand in line to get in.  Their location over near Campo de'Fiori is open for lunch, but it's kind of soulless.  

For an amazing pizza at lunch time with the leisure of table service and the chance to eat in the sun (or just outdoors under a propane heater in the winter time) go to Pizzeria dal Paino (via di Parione 34, closed Tuesday).  I ate here constantly this year - and in previous years.  The service is lovely, and if you stay long enough there's plenty of family drama going on.  

Roman pizza al forno should be cracker-thin and light on the sauce by most American expectations, and the normal way to order them is one per person. Total doneness of crust even under the center is the hallmark of a good one - with crackly edges for fun.  Margherita, with mozzarella and tomato sauce, is the classic, but I love dal Paino's Four Cheese with zucchini flowers.  Pizzas with lots more on them, like mushrooms and onions and sausage, are splendid, too - but more likely to be damp in the center.  A family might order a large to share, but it's not all that common.  

Pizza, a quarter or half-liter of house wine, and dessert will run 15 or 16 euro.  I usually go for a half-liter and no dessert and keep it to 12, which is still a depressing amount of money for a pizza.  Don't think about it, just eat.  

LATE AFTERNOON - Many Romans have a drink between work and heading home for dinner.  If you don't like Campari (and I don't), prosecco is a classic afternoon drink, and many bars with outdoor seating will bring complimentary salty crunchy things with drinks.  Italian mixed drinks are under-iced, but if there are 2 or 3 people ordering gin and tonics even the hardest hearted waiter can be prevailed upon to bring a side-bowl of ice for the Americans.  And in Italy in the summer it's worth admitting that you're a tourist for ice.  They knew anyway.

bridging the gap - Happy hour is a new concept in Rome, where one celebrates evening with aperitivi, or "drinks."  The best versions are wine bars with buffets of little munchables - the buffet either included in the drink price or separately priced for something like 3 euros.  This is a great idea if you're finding Roman dinner hour too late to support - aperitivi start at 6 or 7. I'll give two excellent and rather different examples, neither in Parione.

In Trastevere, within sight of the Tiber - such as views of the river go in Rome - is Freni e Frizioni (via del Politeama 4-6).  Cross the Ponte Sisto footbridge from the Campo de'Fiori neighborhood, cross the Lungotevere (the street paralleling the river embankment), and go left about a block.  Freni e Frizioni is in a converted garage - the name means "Brakes and Clutches," after all - and the service parking lot has been converted into a terrace.  Drinks are 5 euro for beer or wine, with several selections of each.  I believe mixed drinks (mojitos are big in Rome, too) are 6 or 7.  The generous buffet is included.  They have raw vegetable crudités (not a common feature in Rome - if you stay for a semester you'll be surprised how glad you are to see celery sticks), cous cous with various sauces, roasted chicken cut into finger-food pieces, chips and dips, bean salads, a pasta or two with sauces, and other nice items.  You can easily make a light meal out of the evening - and both inside and outside are comfortable.  The crowd is young and rather loud.

A more adult version of the same event is Gusto winebar (Piazza Augusto Imperatore 9) - upstream a few bridges from the Ponte Sisto at the Altar of Peace of Augustus.  Visit the new Richard Meier-encased Ara Pacis on a Thursday evening when they're open late (8?  9?) and then go have aperitive at 'Gusto.  'Gusto is a small empire of food scattered around different parts of the building - wander around and decide where you want to go - I went to the wine bar this year, but the osteria (sit down restaurant) is good, too.  The wine list is impressive and the staff is happy to make suggestions based on the simplest tastes - do you prefer structured wines?  sweet wines?  Give them a chance and they'll find you something.  I think the wines for aperitivi ran about 8-10 euro a glass with the complimentary buffet of fancy finger foods.  The crowd was more 30s than 20s and much better dressed, if that's the kind of people-watching you're in the mood for.

NIGHT - One distressing truth about Italy is that eating at nice restaurants for lunch wins you no price break - so have your bigger meal when it works for your schedule.   We no longer have the built-in excuse of museums closing for lunch to drive us out into the restaurant world, but there are certainly days when a long midday break is appropriate. Peak dinner hour starts at 9 or even 10 on warm nights.  Americans who stroll into a restaurant at 7 usually eat alone, if they're served at all.  

When I went to Rome for a semester in 2003 my parents found me a handy little book, Cheap Eats, Italy.   Sadly, it had not been updated, because I never had a bad meal out of it.  One of their selections in rione Parione is on the via dei Coronari, a long, straight street lined with very expensive antique shops.  Ristorante Tre Archi (via dei Coronari 223, close to the Piazza Navona outlet of this pretty, mainly pedestrian) is a typical, simple Roman restaurant.  Soup, secondo, wine, and water comes to about 18 euro.  Their tortellini in brodo is excellent. Secondi, meat dishes, run the range, though I think I always had either roast lamb with potatoes - a classic Roman dish - or a veal chop.  I don't believe I ever had a dessert, which isn't fair to them, but I've always gone there planning to save money.  

Just off the via dei Coronari is Osteria del Pegno (vicolo di Montevecchio, 8 - hard to spot, but worth hunting for!).  I like this restaurant a lot - it's one small room and one big room, and maybe seats 30 people total.  The glass doors of the big room open up on warm days and evenings and the front tables scoot out into the street.

Osteria del pegno's fettuccine and ravioli are both worth the effort it might take to find the restaurant.  My rule of thumb - if you don't understand a word on the menu, don't pretend.  Ask.  Italian restaurant staff love to talk about food.  Real Italians don't seem to order off menus (though they do if you watch them often enough).  But especially when Italians are out with family for a special night at a favorite restaurant they will start by asking what's good tonight - and that's just the kind of thing to get the staff talking.

During the winter I occasionally (see prices below) had roasted meats here - lamb or rabbit - which always come with roasted potatoes or other root vegetables.  Roman roasted lamb is cut - umm - differently from ours.  Necks are often included, as is the occasional kidney.  I was not surprised that I liked kidneys, because i like that kind of thing in general, but I'm sure there are folks who would be appalled.  Rabbit is rabbit, and in shop windows looks distressingly like skinned cat.  I hope the flavor is different - or maybe we should be eating more cat.  One of the best things to eat in Rome is lombata di vitello, veal loin chop cooked on the grill.  They're characteristically cooked to what we might call medium or medium rare unless you ask for it to be pink (rosa).

I believe this is where I first ate a semifreddo - a cold custard dessert.  Dreamy - but summertime only.  Their other desserts, particularly the torta della nonna, the house cake, are worthwhile, too.

Primo, secondo, water, wine, and a dessert runs about 35 euro - and if you're an appreciative eater you'll not unlikely get a free limoncello or grappa afterwards.  Reservations are often necessary on weekends and even on weeknights if you show up after 9 with a party of 2 or more - telephone 06.688.07.025.  Closed Tuesday.

Across the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II from the Chiesa Nuova (which was about where I lived this spring) is Trattoria da Luigi (piazza sforza Cesarini, 25 - closed Monday?).  Da in Italian is like chez in French restaurant names - "house of, place of."  Da Luigi has wonderful outdoor tables, and is a great place to have a long, late sunny lunch or a long, late, evening dinner in warm weather.  Inside is cozier - lots of little rooms upstairs and down.  

If you eat inside you walk in to confront a big table of prepared things - items ready to dish out for antipaste or to carry back into the kitchen to heat up and serve.  Remember what I said about asking?  Pointing and asking about a bowl full of minature octopuses got me an amazing plateful of moscardini one night, 2 inch octopuses that had been stewed, I think, in a very spicy tomato sauce.  I was stunned.  They also did a very good fried artichoke, the essential carciofi alla giudea of Rome.  I could eat them all night long if restaurants didn't price them so unfairly.  Why should they cost 4.50 euros apiece?  or 6?  It's wicked, I tell you!  Most side vegetables, contorni, are priced separately - and you can eat them before the pasta or with your meat.  5 euros is not an uncommon price.

I eat fish at da Luigi a lot - maybe because the first time I went there was a steamy June evening and we had carpaccio of sword fish for an antipasto and for a secondo I had grilled turbot (rombo - common on menus in Rome).  For whatever reason, I enjoy fish there a lot.  If you order a whole roast or grilled fish the waiter usually walks the fish out for display in its pan and asks if you would like to fillet it.  Leave it to the professionals!   I had a trout once this spring that was perfect - and hardly a bone left in it.  I would've left enough to test my knowledge of medical Italian with an emergency room doctor.

One of my indulgences this year was to go to da Luigi and have a salad, a pasta or soup, and then a pear stewed in red wine and prunes for dessert - a perfect winter dessert, cooked so the redness penetrates the outer 1/8th of an inch of the pear flesh.  Maybe it's middle age coming on strong, but stewed fruit is more and more appealing these days.  My more indulgent dinners, when I'd have a secondo and a vegetable, ran 35-40 euro.

I never had trouble walking in and getting a table, but I always ate here alone this year and did it just frequently enough that they squeezed me in sometimes.  Calling ahead might be wise - telephone: 06.686.5946.

Enjoy Rome if you get a chance soon - and eat something for me!

(Or, Bibliochef says: Live vicariously thanks to Michael aka The Cranky Professor, where this guest blog is cross posted!) 

Slice, Dice and Spice NY Update: A Guest Blog With Pictures

Our mystery guest blogger reports from her wonderful time at the Slice, Dice and Spice NY finals in Canandaigua -- complete with beautiful photographs of the action (copyright to the guest blogger -- please do not use these photographs without permission!). They give a real sense of the "heat" of the action on May 15th.

It’s 4:10 p.m., Thursday, May 15th, and all’s anticipation at the New York Wine and Culinary Center’s (NYWCC) cook-off for crown chef of the inaugural Slice, Dice and Spice. It’s New York’s version of the Iron Chef with one major spin – all ingredients and wines are local! Winning teams from the previous three night cook-offs (click here) and teams of onlookers jostled eagerly to peer through the kitchen windows to catch a glimpse of the Market Baskets whose ingredients had been carefully secreted away under a white linen cover. You could feel the culinary energy being channeled into the countdown to the baskets’ great unveiling. But, this was not just any unveiling, as each team knew. Once the covers were lifted, it became each team’s time to reveal their culinary imagination and talent. Teams had but a few minutes to create a menu, and then but an hour to bring their menu to the judges’ table.

4:20 p.m. was marked with the great anticipation. All was quiet as the Market Baskets were unveiled and teams’ culinary imaginations set afire with the featured ingredient of Hartmann’s Old World Sausage Andouille Sausage, the surprise ingredient of Arbor Hill Sherry Wine Syrup, three wine selections (Arbor Hill Traminette, Casa Larga Oak Chardonnay and Brickstone Cabernet France), and an array of other ingredients, including mustard, jalapeno pepper jam, apples chili sauce, kasha, fresh greens, fruit and bread.

And then it was: Let the slicing, dicing and spicing begin!

Teams were shepherded by highly collaborative chefs and as the slicing, dicing and spicing went on over the hour, you could not help but be struck by each team’s intense but clearly happy focus on the competition. Once inside the kitchen (and I was allowed a few seconds to visit to take some photographs) the entire event was transformed for me by the wonderful smells and pleasurable sounds of chopping, sautéing, mixing, and grilling – wow! Now that’s where the action is – in our senses! It felt all too removed watching the teams’ cook from the other side of the glass windows or on the large projection screens mounted throughout the NYWCC and trying to hear what was going on over speakers whose volume ranged from faint to screechy loud. Of course, clearly one cannot welcome an audience into the traffic of the kitchen so the organizers did create many ways to watch – and to enjoy other culinary and wine delights while doing so.

With but a few minutes of cooking time left, teams are plating and once done let out a cheer and move away from their cooking island. Judges begin to circle the islands, and the audible broadcast was turned off to allow judges the privacy they needed. They tasted, tasted again, wrote notes and moved to the next team. Then judges came into the adjoining room (Demonstration room at NYWCC) where those of us who had been following the events over the television screen had been ushered out to make way for judges and teams. Alas, we were ushered out during chefs’ presentations of what they had prepared! I was in the middle of hearing the list of courses designed by each chef when out we went. Maybe there is another way to feature the dishes? Judges deliberated here for quite a while as crowds gathered outside the room waiting to grab a spot to hear the announcement. At last, the doors opened and those first in line grabbed a seat.

Then the teams entered to rounds of cheers and applause, and pictured here is the winning team (the wild card team) led by Chef Eric Mueller of Warfield's entering before they heard the good news.

According to the judges, the decision was indeed a difficult one - they had to slice and dice quality, presentation, pairing with wine, use of wine in cooking, use of the featured and secret ingredient, and, last, but certainly not least, taste. What stood out for this team was their dessert of fritters and gelato, all sumptuously prepared in under 45 minutes. Brava!

With that, the inaugural Slice, Dice and Spice wound down. But don’t think you will have to wait another year to enter yourself or to enjoy the event from the sidelines as I did. Slice, Dice and Spice has brought local restaurants, wines, and produce to our attention, and the ripple effects of this event can be enjoyed throughout the year. The chef’s cook-off was a fabulous event but what really made this event sing were the ingredients of intelligence, wit and know-how, whether cooks, organizers, producers or restaurateurs. I absolutely love how they networked so many local parts for gourmets and gourmands alike.

Stay tuned for more on how Slice, Dice and Spice does local unlike anyone before and for menus from the events.