Category Archives: American recipes

A Pretty Good Thing We Ate This Week – Lemon Meringue Pie

22 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Desserts, Food, Uncategorized

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In all honesty the Best Thing We Ate This Week was Louis’s osso buco, served with risotto; I hope to put that recipe up soon.  Meanwhile, we served a lemon meringue pie for dessert to Italian guests, and they seemed to like it (asked for the recipe in fact).  So, though it’s not the Best of the week, it’s one-of-the-better of the week.  If it has any downside it is that it’s very sweet.  But then, that’s what dessert is for, no?

Betty Crocker taught me how to make this pie and I still follow her recipe almost to the letter.  You can find the recipe here.  I like to make my own crusts, but there’s no reason not to buy one if you’re short of time.  It won’t be as good, but it certainly won’t be bad.  Likewise, freshly squeezed lemon juice and freshly grated lemon peel are best, though you can buy bottled juice and dried zest.

By the way, if you haven’t yet made aquaintance with the new breed of microplaners, do so.  They are fantastic tools for grating cheese, zest – whatever you need grated.  We use ours almost daily.  They come in several sizes for different jobs.

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Smoked Salmon

02 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Hiking in Arizona, Uncategorized

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Sometimes it’s not the food – it’s where you are and the person you’re eating with that makes a meal special and memorable.  My hiking buddy and I had our last hike together for many months on Sunday.  We returned to the Goldfield Mountains to search for an elusive trail that will now have to wait til November to meet my boots.  In lieu of the missing trail we opted to scramble up several rocky hills.  Lest you think these were gentle little mounds, here is the view of our car from our picnic spot:

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Can you even see that little dot down there?

In any event, after our exertions we had a fancier than usual mountaintop meal.  HB (hiking buddy) brought smoked salmon, caviar and those wafer thin crackers that want to be Wasa bread but aren’t rough and tough enough.  I brought smoked gouda cheese (which come to think of it was a gift from HB), grapes and salted pecans.  Accustomed as we are to wolfing down sandwiches, this was a meal fit for royalty, and we enjoyed every bite.

The company was superlative, the views in all directions were breath-taking and the day was warm without being hot.  There is no accompanying recipe to this post; here’s what you do:  buy some great smoked salmon and a little jar of caviar, pack that with some crackers, fruit and nuts in your pack, remember to take plenty of water, and don’t forget a lemon (HB didn’t), find a high place, climb to the top with a good friend, and eat.  Buon Appetito!

$26.00

26 Thursday Feb 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Food, Uncategorized

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BOOKS!  Who doesn’t love ’em?  Is there anything better than holding a new (or gently used) book in your hands, flipping through, tasting a paragraph here, devouring an illustration there?  Much as I love bits and bytes, books will always win the race for my heart…

In 1957 the VNSA held their first book sale in Phoenix and raised $900 to benefit the Visiting Nurses (the VN of VNSA). The sale has been held every year since, though since the transfer of Visiting Nurses to a large hospital corporation, the VNSA now stands for Volunteer Nonprofit Service Association.  This year the sale benefited three Valley agencies: Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation, Literacy Volunteers of Maricopa County, and Toby House, Inc, an agency that helps adults with severe mental illness.

The sale is held in a 50,000 square foot building on the Arizona State Fairgrounds for two days at the beginning of each February (some great pictures of the 2004 event are here).  People line up for entry to the sale hours ahead, some bringing flashlights to read through Friday night in order to be among the first to enter Saturday morning.  Fire regulations dictate how many hundreds may be in the exhibit hall at any one time, so sometimes the wait can be long.  We go on Sunday, when everything is half price and the crowds are somewhat diminished. This year there were over 600,000 items for sale (books, records, cd’s, dvd’s, maps, etc.) and the VNSA expected to raise in excess of $350,000; there was plenty left for us to buy on the second day of the sale.  Here’s what I bought with my $26.00:

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Notice that book up at the top, Working a Duck?  What a find.  Written by Melicia Phillips and Sean O. McElroy (Doubleday, 1993, $25.00) it tells you everything you could EVER want to know about preparing and cooking any part of a duck.

The Captain was not thrilled with the Christmas arrival of two more cookbooks.  “Maybe we have enough cookbooks,” was his comment.   Damn, I thought, that leaves only golf for next year.  Oh well.  BUT – he was well pleased with the duck book, because it filled an empty space on the cookbook shelf (right between crabs and eggs).  In fact, can one ever have enough duck recipes?

Ever the culinary adventurer, the Captain dove right in and two nights later served up Fried Noodles with Duck, Ginger, Garlic and Scallions, a recipe with a definite Eastern accent (and I don’t mean Vermont). It takes a bit of preparation, but if you, too, are an adventurer you can find the recipe (slightly changed) here, or over on the right under Recipes.

Just in case the Duck book wasn’t a hit, you’ll notice in the photo above there is also a great big golf book.  One must cover all the bases…

Rustic Bread

12 Thursday Feb 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Food, Uncategorized

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There are many things we miss about Italy when we are in the States (just as there are things we miss about the States when in Italy).  Aside from missing friends, a lot of our pangs for Italy have to do with food, especially bread.  Good bread is available here, but it is quite expensive.  At home in Italy we routinely visit one of two bakeries for our daily loaf, as well as for assorted pizza treats, and sweeties to accompany tea.

The first bakery we fell in love with in Rapallo is called Paneficio Campo (Via Trieste) and is owned and operated by Nino and Maddallena and their three daughters. They are originally from Calabria, and are true artists with their rustic loaves.  The Captain, who has spent no small amount of time on his bread recipes, has dubbed Nino a Genius.

Our ‘local’ bakery,Panificio Schenone Giorgio on Via Betti, is closer to our house, and makes killer pizzette, which are excellent for a before dinner treat.  They also make very nice ciabatta, the shoe-shaped loaf which originated in Liguria, but which is now common throughout the boot. We don’t know the proprietors, but it is clearly a family operation.

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What to do about bread while in America?  Easy! We make our own.  Last year we discovered the wonderful La Cloche Covered Baker, a domed ceramic baking pot which we bought from King Arthur Flour. (You can see from the photo above it’s received a lot of use).

How’s the bread that’s cooked in La Cloche?  Fantastic!

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The loaf above was made from a very simple bread recipe (with a surprise ingredient) developed and given to us by Sherri Harris, about whom you’ve previously read in these pages.  The recipe is over on the right, called ‘No-Knead Bread (Almost).‘  Also on the right is another recipe which was sent along with the cloche by King Arthur (himself!  really!!): ‘Rustic Hearth Bread.’

Making your own bread is such a pleasure. If one didn’t want the expense of the cloche there is surely something one could substitute: perhaps a heat-proof bowl upside down on a tile-lined baking sheets? The house smells wonderful during and after bread-baking, and nothing tastes better than a warm slab of fresh bread with a lot of butter on top.  Oh yum!

Buon appetito!

The Best Thing I Ate Last Week

22 Thursday Jan 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Food, Uncategorized

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lobster-aftermath

Not much comment required here… the best place in the world to eat the best lobsters in the world is New England, preferably within 100 miles of the coast.  We bought these beauties live, from a tank; each one weighed about 1.5 pounds.

Now the awkward part – how to kill the little dears?  While plunging them headfirst into a large pot of boiling water is the time-honored way, some say that there is a more humane way to do it with a knife, which you can see here, complete with gruesome photos of lobster-cide.  A friend skilled in biology once told me that lobsters have such a basic nervous system there is some doubt about whether they actually feel pain, as we think of it.  Who knows?  Ask a lobster!

The advantage of the quick knife through the brain is, supposedly, instant and relatively painless death.  The benefit of the boiling water method accrues completely to the murderess – one can look the other way and scream while thrusting the beast into the pot.  That way you won’t hear it if it screams.  Surely death by boiling water is also quick?  I have never heard a lobster scream, but then, being a practitioner of the second method, I have a pretty well-developed scream of my own.

However you choose to do in your lobster, serve it with drawn butter and lemon, and put out a big bowl for shells and extra liquid, as well as plenty of napkins. If you’ve never eaten lobster and don’t know how to tackle it, you can find some excellent instruction here.

A note on what you might find within:  if you find some orange stuff you’ve got a female and those are her eggs – considered delicious by many.  The green stuff is the lobster’s liver; while it is yummy, it might not be such a good idea to eat it; the liver is where all the poisons and contaminants of the lobster’s body gather.  The lobster is a bottom-dwelling garbage eater, so what his body considers poison is probably pretty gross.

Is it worth traveling to New England to eat lobster.  Oh yes!  The ‘shedders’ (lobsters who have outgrown their old, hard carapace and are wearing a new one that is still soft) have less meat in relation to the shell size, but the shell is much softer, and some consider the meat sweeter.  Typically a lobster sheds in the summer, so if you want a crusty old fella bursting with meat, eat lobster  in the winter or spring.  Having said that, my two companions had hard-shell lobsters and mine was soft-shelled; you really just never know.

Buon Appetito!

Crispy Tortillas with Pork and Beans

07 Wednesday Jan 2009

Posted by in American recipes, Food, Uncategorized

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While he was working on these tasty goodies I asked the Captain if he would call this Tex-Mex food.  He thought for a while and opined that no, these are Arizonican – so here you have it: the first entry in a whole new food category.

Its best to fry up the tortillas yourself, though you can buy them already crisped. After the frying you will put the toppings on and broil.  Garnish with salsa cruda and, if you like it, sour cream.  I’m of the school that believes there is little in the world that is not improved with the addition of sour cream, but there are those who don’t agree, strange as it may seem. The recipe for what you see above can be found here, or by clicking under recipes over on the right. The recipe for the salsa is here, and also on the right.

There are two great things about this dish: 1) It’s really fun to make and 2) It’s infinitely adaptable to what you have around and what you like to eat. It is only coincidental that these look like pizzas, it does not mean that we are pining for our adopted country.  Well, maybe a little…

The Best Thing We Ate – Pumpkin Ice Cream

28 Sunday Dec 2008

Posted by in American recipes, Food, Uncategorized

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It was a few weeks ago that we ate Sherri’s incomparable Pumpkin Ice Cream.  She has been kind enough to share the recipe, which you can find here.

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Don’t skimp on the trimmings!  You can see them above the bowl of ice cream: caramel sauce, candied pecans, and rum-soaked raisin.  All of them add immeasurably to the ice cream experience.  I especially like the pecans, but the others are awfully good too.  And as Sherri has pointed out, if all the raisins aren’t eaten with the ice cream they make a delightful little mid-afternoon nibble in the following days.