Fun at the Ranch Market

17 Tuesday Jun 2025

Posted by farfalle1 in Food, Mexican food, Uncategorized

Tags

Cardenas Ranch Market, Food, Los Altos Ranch Market, mexican, Mexican Markets, Mexican Restaurants, Tortilla making

It’s been many years since the Captain and I visited this terrific market on Southern and Stapley in Mesa, which specializes in Mexican foods and products. The original Los Altos market chain of seven markets was acquired by Cardenas in 2017, which I think must account for the lighter, brighter and yes, cleaner, store Demonstration Buddy and I found yesterday, and the fact that the sign no longer says Los Altos Ranch Market. We will always think of it as Los Altos, though.

We stopped by the market for a look-see and for a delicious taco lunch. It definitely all looked a lot fresher and tidier than the last time Cappy and I dropped by. It differs from our usual markets in oh so many ways. For instance, you want dried peppers? Take a look at this whole wall of different kinds of peppers!

You need some herbs and spices for taco night that you might not find in your regular grocery? Check out this wall:

Not only do you get a fair amount of what you’re buying, the prices are more reasonable than the McCormick bottles you’ll find in the big chain store.

Some of the items are things we know well with their names in Spanish – cinnamon sticks, little packets of tomato flavored pasta (?!), cardamom seeds; but some are things we don’t recognize, either by sight or name. Fun!

We enjoyed seeing meat that was displayed without being all packed up on plastic trays with plastic wrap. And where else are you going to find chicken feet (Patas de pollo)? (Well, probably at Lee Lee, but that’s for another post sometime.)

We were kind of amused by the fish display. Demo Buddy has eaten these upside down fish in Mexico and reports they are bony, oily, and are neither delicious nor much fun to eat. But someone sure must like them – or knows how to prepare them better than the person who cooked them for DB. Poor guys look like they’re trying to hide. Too late! Too late!

Please excuse the poor quality of this greatly enlarged photo below which I stole from the interwebs and which shows the cafeteria-style lunch counter at Los Altos. Here you can get fresh-made juices and all manner of Mexican prepared food. We opted for tacos, and were delighted to see our tortillas plucked off a board and cooked to order, then made with our requested filling (chicken, please, and for toppings: todo!). We couldn’t resist sides of refried beans (yum), fried bananas, and guac (note to chef: way too salty, have brought home to add more avocados and some sour cream). Sitting at the long picnic tables and dining with strangers is loads of fun, as is seeing what other people are eating – sometimes recognizable, sometimes not. It was the perfect luncheon for hot and weary ladies of a certain age.

We were able to resist the bakery section – seen below in a 2021 photo from Yelp (thank you, other photographer). We both have always found the colors and the amount of sugar in these baked goods a bit alarming. We are so boring.

There are all the usual supermarket items in the aisles, and loads of fresh fruits and veggies. You could certainly do all shopping here and be more than happy. I haven’t included photos of these aisles because, well, supermarket aisles. meh. The fruits and veggies are beautifully displayed; here’s a photo from the store’s website.

I’ve saved the most fun for last. Los Altos has what can only be described as a Rube Goldberg tortilla maker, that was feverishly pounding out corn tortillas as we watched. It goes so quickly it takes three people to handle the output. Just after making the video you can see here, one of the gents waved us over and gave us hot-off-the-press tortillas. Very delicious.

If you have a chance, check out the Cardenas/Los Altos Ranch Markets. There are nine locations, (only the one I’ve written about here is in the East Valley; the rest are to the West). You won’t be disappointed.

16th Street

09 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by farfalle1 in Art in Arizona, Eating out in Arizona, Food, Mexican food, Restaurants, Uncategorized

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Tags

16th Street Phoenix, Graffiti in Phoenix, La Santisima, Mural art, Murals on Buildings in Phoenix

Faithful readers of this blog (thank you!) know that Speedy and I don’t go out to eat very often. Speedy’s skill at stove and oven makes almost everything else seem pedestrian at best and second-rate at worst. A visit from a dear Swiss friend was the impetus for us to break our usual practice and venture forth for a meal, in this case lunch.

Our friend needed to be at the airport at 3, so we decided to look for a place near Sky Harbor (I love that name for an airport – don’t you? So friendly, but somehow exciting too). Speedy did his research and came up with La Santisima on 16th Street in Phoenix. It is well-reviewed on Yelp, somewhere north of four stars. Not many places do that well, so we felt pretty optimistic.

Isn’t that a beautiful door? And a mighty fine bench, too. My purse fits right in with the color scheme. Bellas Artes de Mexico has provided all the furnishings and decorations of this pocket-sized eatery.

Our meals certainly exceeded our expectations. I had two house specialty veggie tacos, and they were sublime. Clearly the veg were all fresh and had been sauteed just before being generously heaped on two soft double tacos. I chose the plate, so my tacos were accompanied by a 1/3 sized cup of rice – just the right amount – and a splash of refried beans with Mexican cheese melted on top. My plate was hot, though the food on it was tepid – but it was so delicious I didn’t mind. Our friend had the same taco I had; here are poor photos of our two plates (this was actually a photo of the two of us, I’ve deleted us and enlarged the food):

Clearly I wasn’t thinking about taking good foodie pics. But I’m sharing them for two reasons – one, to show you how intelligent the portions are and how truly beautiful the tacos are; and two, to show you just a couple of the salsas from the restaurant’s salsa bar. In addition to the usual pico di gallo, salsa cruda, salsa chipotle, etc., there were salsa di guacamole (top photo on left), salsa di cilantro, and salsa di fresa (strawberry, top photo on right), as well as others I don’t remember.

Speedy ate a pork and beans burrito and reports that it was “very good.” That’s high praise. Our friend declared her taco, “the best taco I have ever eaten in my whole life.” This is a woman with a fair amount of travel, not to mention tacos, under her belt, so you can take her word for it. This was delicious food, and we saw some enticing plates being delivered to nearby tables (very nearby – it’s a small restaurant and they don’t waste space).

Our host, who flew around non-stop, was very kind when we asked him to turn down the music a tad – he immediately complied, which meant we could actually have a delightful conversation with our long not-seen friend.

But I’m not here to write only about the restaurant, as you may guess from the quality of the food photos. I’m here to write about the neighborhood. We’re definitely returning to this top notch restaurant, and I’ll write more about it when we do.

16th Street north of McDowell is on the edge of a largely Hispanic neighborhood (interesting article on cultural diversity of Phoenix here. It includes a map giving percentages of various ethnicities and where they reside). It is not the most elegant neighborhood in Phoenix, but it is surely one of the most artistically interesting that we’ve visited.

After lunch we took a short stroll – it was in the mid-90’s, too hot to enjoy much of the post-prandial thing. The building above (the sign says Thai Body Healing/TaSen Buddha) houses a little shop that carries woo-woo items, used clothing, and some fun toys for kids. In addition there is a small coffee shop, an art gallery and, in back (beyond the small elevated stage which was surrounded by children’s toys) what might be a sculpture garden or, perhaps, just a place to dump stuff. There was also a bathroom, of which I was in great need at that very moment.

This was hanging over the toilet. I’m ashamed to say I did not comply with the upper command. Maybe I was in the wrong room?

Over the sink was this anatomically vague figure, carefully labeled with such diseases as wrenched ankle, broken heart, water on the knee. I don’t know if it’s art or a children’s game. Note the Scrabble tile holders and a basket of tiles; I couldn’t find all the letters I wanted, so my message read “T_AN_ U. I hope it was clear enough.

I’m not sure what this signifies, but I stared at it for a while.

Outside we continued our stroll, and came upon several more wonderful murals. I got good photos of only one of them. I’m sorry to say I don’t know who the artist is – research needed!

Speedy and our friend give scale to the left side of this mural. The rest of it is below. (I know, there is such a thing as a ‘landscape setting,’ but I neglected to use it (not my best photo day, I guess).

This area definitely demands a return visit to seek out more of the graffiti and mural art. It is not the only part of Phoenix that sports such excellent examples. Katrina Montgomery has documented her 40 favorites in the New Times. I can’t wait to go hunt for some of them. A picture is fine, but to see such a large piece of art in person is really much more fun.

Goin’ to Ghana

20 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by farfalle1 in Eating out in Arizona, Food, Restaurants, Uncategorized

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Tags

Fufu, Ghana, Ghanaian food, Max's Mukhaase Restaurant

No, not really – I’m pulling your leg. We’re not going to Ghana.

But not too long ago we felt as if we’d been magically transported to that far-away country. Fufu and Jolof rice and Banku – these are just some of the delicacies on the menu at Max’s Mukhaase Restaurant in Mesa. ‘Mukhaase’ means ‘kitchen’ in Akan, a language spoken in much of the southern half of Ghana. While English is the ‘official’ language of Ghana (population 25.9 million), Akan is the language most widely spoken of the 80+ indigenous languages. If you visit Max’s you are more than a little likely to hear a good bit of it.

Map of Ghana

Max came to the U.S. some fifteen years ago and, he told us, since acquiring a cat, fortune has smiled on him. Being cat-lovers ourselves we are perfectly willing to believe that his feline companion has something to do with his luck.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. How did we even find Max’s Mukaase Restaurant? Through one of those irritating restaurant card promotions, that’s how. In this case, though, it worked out really well. Somehow we came to have a restaurant card that gives 50% off at selected restaurants if you order a certain amount. A doctor’s appointment took us to Mesa, and Speedy researched what restaurants from the card were nearby – and there it was: Max’s! Who could resist? Surely not us.

The menu is not enormous, but it’s varied enough for all tastes, from adventurous (fufu with goat) to cautious (hot dog or beef burger). Isn’t ‘fufu’ a great word? It’s almost as fun as ‘wolof’ (the language of Senegal). Fufu, a staple of Ghanan cuisine, is made from cassava or plantain flour. There are several methods of making it; a common one is to boil the cassava or plantain, and then pound it into a dough-like consistency. Peanuts are another staple on the Ghanan menu; a good peanut soup is hard to beat, and is often eaten with balls of fufu.

I had the Peanut Soup with Rice Balls (and lots of veggies) – scrumptious and very, very filling.

Louis opted for the Goat Stew, Waakye, Gari & Salad (Goat meat, Rice, Black Eye Beans, Veggies and Gari; Gari is a kind of pud made from cassava), which he declared divine. In fact, he liked it so much he ordered a second helping to bring home. It did not suffer, he reported, by either its short journey or its wait of a day or two.

The food would certainly have been enough to draw us back for another visit some day, but even more than the food, the atmosphere was delightful. A pair of young men occupied another table, rapidly speaking a patois that, I assume, was a combination of Akan and English. One of them kept leaping up and running outside to conduct important business on his cell phone, to the bemused patience of his friend. At one point Speedy said to him, “You should be paid for providing entertainment,” and he shouted back to the kitchen, “Hey Max! I eat for free from now on!” Great laughs all around.

Not long after we arrived a young woman in a health-provider uniform arrived and sat at another table. Soon a lively conversation began, mostly in English, on the desirability of legalizing marijuana. The young woman it turned out, is a pharmacist, and she declared that having seen what marijuana can do, she could never countenance it becoming legal in any way, shape or form. This was a discussion we followed with great interest but in which we sagely decided not to participate.

Overseeing it all, the activity in the kitchen, the spirited conversation, was Max, who is as friendly and accessible as his delicious food. When I asked for a photo with him he disappeared in back and returned wearing his chef’s coat and a toque. I prefer the photo of him hatless, so that is what I share with you, along with a recommendation to visit Max’s Mukhaase Kitchen if you find yourself near Guadalupe and Alma School Roads in Mesa.

Our Natural Easter Eggs

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by farfalle1 in American recipes, Cooking, Food, Holidays, Uncategorized

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Tags

Coloring eggs, Dyeing eggs, Easter, Easter eggs

I can’t remember how it started, but once upon a time Speedy either read about or dreamed up himself the idea of dying Easter eggs using flowers and leaves that we found outdoors. Now that we live in the desert the types of things we find has changed considerably; but it is spring and there are a lot of flowers blooming right now, on trees, bushes and cacti, so there was plenty to choose from.

This basket contains Speedy’s gleanings from our yard: some frondy leaves from a mesquite, some flowers from hedgehog cactus (ouch – I’m still pulling spines from my fingers today), bougainvillea flowers and flowers of sage and lavender. There are also a few odd stems in the mix, and I have no idea what they are. I should add that the dry skins of both red and yellow onions are always part of the process.

First we boil up a big pot of water with tea and vinegar added to it, take it off the stove when it’s good and murky colored and let it cool for a while.

While the cooking water is cooling we wrap the beautiful white eggs. The skins of the onions go on the outside, the various leaves and petals go on the inside, held in place by the onion skins. Then we tie each egg package securely with cotton twine. This is tricky because the twine wants to slip, and frequently does, either before or during the cooking.

Into the warm water the little packets go. We slowly bring the water back up to a boil and cook the eggs for 15 minutes to a half hour.

We take them out let them cool and then unwrap them. This year’s efforts were a bit underwhelming, but still lovely. For some reason our red flowers did not share any of their colors – we’ll have to search for others next year. (We’re not remotely expert on the flora of this area, and this is a good way to get to know some new plants.) We also did not have very tightly wrapped bundles this time, and I think too much tea water got underneath the petals, which blurs the shapes they are supposed to leave on the eggs.

Still, it makes a pretty Spring Time basket and we’ll enjoy eating the well-cooked eggs.

Next year I want to try coloring eggs with Speedy’s old silk ties, the few that he still has. When we moved back to the States he gave most of them away, but there are a few left, and I’m sure more are readily available at thrift shops. Kate Jones and Sara Wells have a great tutorial over at Our Best Bites – it looks easy and fun. Come back next year to see how it goes. It is certainly a different look from our tea, leaf and flower eggs.

Meanwhile, Happy Spring to all!

Prickly pears!

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by farfalle1 in Cactus, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Uncategorized

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Tags

Nopales, Opuntia englemanii, Paddle cactus, Prickly pear

Lovely, isn’t it? At our house we it call Paddle Cactus. Its true scientific name is Opuntia englemannii, but if it’s your friend you may call it Englemann’s Prickly Pear. It blooms in the spring and by August it has formed fat fruits which some deem delicious.

Source: http://www.pricklypearextract.net

photo courtesy of prickleypearextract.net

How to get from what you see above to something you might want to put in your mouth was the purpose of a delightful morning program recently at Boyce Thompson Arboretum, Arizona’s oldest and largest botanical garden. Intrepid friend E and I went to learn and taste. The first thing to know is that there are Opuntia and there are Opuntia. There are 181 species in the genus, including the ubiquitous cholla cactus which looks nothing like its cousin above. The variety with round fat paddles is Englemann’s. There is a similar variety with elongated paddles and the appropriate and charming moniker of cow’s tongue cactus (it’s another englemannii, but with the variation subname ‘linguiformis’).

The harvesting problems are evident in the photo above. The paddles are equipped with daggers, and the fruit has nasty little hairy spikes that like nothing better than to insinuate themselves into your fingers or tongue and drive you mad. They are called glochids, and they can be a misery.

Luckily there are ways to deal with them, as we learned from our instructor at BTA. The first step in your prickly pear adventure is to pick a bunch of desert broom, a stiff brushy plant that is everywhere in the desert, frequently and courteously to be found right in the middle of the cactus whose fruit you wish to harvest.

picking-001

Before picking the fruit, vigorously brush each globe with the desert broom. This will remove a great many of the glochids. Then, using tongs, carefully twist the fruit off the cactus and drop it in a bucket.

Once you have a full bucket find a nice gravelly or rough patch of ground. Be careful to choose a place where you will not later be walking barefoot (don’t do this in your garage!). Empty your bucket of fruit and rake it back and forth, around and through the gravel. This will pull off almost all any remaining glochids. Now you’re ready to make use of your fruit.

Eric and Terri of Tall Order Catering in Phoenix, along with several helpers, taught us how to peel the fruit for use in various recipes, as well as how to make juice for jelly, sangria or margaritas. They also peeled the paddles of the prickly pear and used them in various recipes. The name for this veg in Spanish is ‘nopales.’ In the picture below Eric and Terri are demonstrating that the juice of the prickly pear does not stain.

Eric is also demonstrating that you can shave the spines off the nopales with a sharp kitchen knife.

During the program Eric described how he had made the dishes that were so temptingly on display for us to look at, and afterwards, to eat. The internet is full of recipes, so if you care to try any of this yourself, you can begin your search here. Here are some of Eric’s delicious preparations:

Nopales salad

Salsa!

Nopales in the foreground, sangria in the background

Salad ingredients for the salad above: strawberries, prickly pear fruit, cilantro, nopales, red onion

The easiest way to extract juice from the prickly pear is to use a juicer. My cohort E just happens to have one, so after the program we went foraging to put the methods we had learned to practical use. A few cactus fruits make quite a bit of juice – it is a gorgeous color, as you can see. One thing we quickly learned is that the round Englemann’s makes a much tastier juice than the cow’s tongue.

The juice has some very beneficial side effects – Mayo Clinic explains: “Prickly pear cactus, also called nopales, is promoted for treating diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity and hangovers. It is also touted for its antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties.” Not all of these benefits have yet been proven.

What does it taste like? The closest I can come to explaining is to say the juice tastes both red and green, a bit like a fruit, a bit like a vegetable. It is a pleasant flavor. The paddles taste rather like green beans.

As you can see from the pictures of Eric’s food above, there is no end to the ways the paddles and fruits of the prickly pear can be enjoyed. Have some fun and experiment. I decided to make jelly with my share of the juice E and I made. After an afternoon in the kitchen I had 10 jars of over-sweet soup. I followed the directions for failed jelly and ended up with 9 jars of over-sweet soup. It all went down the drain. But I’m not discouraged – there will be more prickly pears next year, and I shall try again. Meanwhile, the paddles are always available at Food City.

Next time you encounter a prickly pear cactus, look beyond the daggers and spines and see all the good free food waiting for you!

Basil Hummus

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by farfalle1 in Food, Recipes, Uncategorized

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Basil, Basil hummus, Hummus

Above you see the Basil That Will Not Quit. We bought this remarkable plant a couple of months ago at Trader Joe’s, thinking that it would behave like all our previous basil pets. We used to broadcast seeds in the old wash-tubs-turned-planters outside our house in Rapallo. The plants flourished in the high summer heat, then the leaves would begin to get tougher and have a slightly bitter flavor, and then the plant would bolt. Not this plant. This basil keeps growing taller and taller (almost 2 feet in the photo). We whack it back to make pesto and it just says, Fine, watch this! and grows a foot in two days. (Speedy removed a lot of it just before I took this photo.) It would be nice to take full credit for the plant’s vigor and health, but it came with its own vigor, and only the daily watering by caring neighbors (thank you Linda and Laura) kept it alive while we were gone for two weeks.

The other day as Speedy was having his afternoon bob-and-read in our community pool he began to think about what he could do with all this basil. Smart Phone to the rescue! Huffington Post offered 34 Basil Recipes, some of which sounded interesting, some ghastly (basil ice cream? Well, maybe I shouldn’t condemn it til we’ve tried it). Way down at #23 was Edamame Basil Hummus.

“Hummus!” said Speedy, “what an interesting idea.” As soon as we got home he put together his own take on Basil Hummus:

It’s one of those recipes where you’re going to have to find your own way with measurements – do what feels right to you, what gives you the consistency you prefer.

Put in a food processor:
A LOT of basil
Olive oil, about 1/4 cup to a can of beans
1 can of canellinni beans, drained
1 clove of garlic, chopped
Lemon juice to taste
Salt and black pepper to taste

Whiz it all up and then sit down with your favorite dipping tool and enjoy. We used crusts of old dried bread and some stale tortilla chips. It was so good we couldn’t stop eating it, so then we put it on the gorgeous pork roast Speedy had done to golden perfection the BBQ. I imagine it would also be wonderful with crudites. Or you may want to just sit down with a spoon and pretend it’s soup. It’s that good.

Poor, Sad Olives

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by farfalle1 in Food, Gardening in Italy, Italian food, Italian gardens, olives, Rapallo, Weather

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olive trees

Speedy and I were pretty happy this spring as we watched the olive trees blossoming – it looked to be a good year for olives, something we haven’t enjoyed for the last four or five years. Then came the summer that wasn’t. Uncharacteristically cool and wet, the hot dry days we expect in July and August never materialized. For the first time since we’ve lived here I did not have to water the gardens at all.

The olives didn’t like it. The first problem is an annual problem, but one that has never been as bad as this year: the Mediterannean fruit fly.

Photo by Jack Kelly Clark

This little stinker, only about 1/4″ long, has an ovipositer that allows her to deposit her eggs in ripening olives. The maggots that hatch dine on the meat inside the olive until they are ready to burrow out, leaving behind a black and mushy mess. We’ve always had some fruit with the tell-tale dots that show an egg has been laid. This year we’ve had ample evidence that the larvae flourished. Why they were more successful this year than other years I don’t know; I think I’ll blame climate change.

Two other problems, certainly climate related, are a kind of rusty growth on the fruit that is called either anthracnose or soft nose. I don’t know enough about either of these conditions to know which has affected our olives; I just know that either one leaves the fruit completely damaged and useless.

Fruit showing both the rusty disease and puncture wounds from egg-laying

Usually at this time of year, if we are having a good year, we are dragging out nets, olive rakes and sheets for our own particular style of harvest. (You can read about our harvest by pressing here and here.) This year there is no point.

Many of the olives have turned dark prematurely and have fallen off the trees on their own. There’s no telling what quality of oil might lie within the few hardy individuals that are still clinging to the trees. We’re not going to invest the not inconsiderable time and effort to find out.

Ours are not the only trees thus affected. We have heard from friends that no-one in our part of Italy has an olive harvest this year. This is a pity for those of us with trees, but it’s a misery for the people who have the business of pressing olives. They will have few customers this year. Fortunately for olive-oil lovers, we have also heard that the crop in the south is excellent this year. With luck they will pick up the slack for those of us in the north.

One thing that never seems to die is hope – and I just know that next year will be the best year ever for olives.

Poster courtesy of Santa Clara Design

Porchetta

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by farfalle1 in Customs, Food, Italian festas, Italian food, Italian recipes, Liguria, Rapallo, San Maurizio di Monti, Uncategorized

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Comitato Fuochi, Festa di San Maurizio

San Maurizio’s wonderful Comitato Fuochi put on a weekend-long shindig a couple of weeks ago, their Summer Festival. This doughty group of volunteers was first formed in 1903. In the early days the Committee divided our frazione into three districts. In the 1940’s the three districts became two, and in the 1980’s the two became one; since 2006 the group has been particularly active. Working with the town of Rapallo they helped organize the construction of the soccer field where they now hold their events. In the intervening years they have added several permanent and temporary structures so events can be held in all weather.

The main purpose of the group is to have a Festa in honor of our frazione’s patron saint, San Maurizio each September. One of the highlights of the annual Festa Patronale is the fireworks display; this, of course, costs money, and part of the reason for the other four annual Festas (Carnivale, Spring, Summer, Chestnuts) is to raise money for the main event.

The weekend festa is comprised of food and entertainment. Being old farts we didn’t make it down to the soccer field to enjoy the entertainment.

In fact, sadly the Friday night show was rained out. We did, however, stop in for lunch on Sunday, not knowing what we would find on the menu. To our delight we found trofie al pesto (a traditional Ligurian pasta), totani (small fried squid) and porchetta, seen above, amongst other things.

Wikipedia describes porchetta as “a savoury, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast of Italian culinary tradition. The body of the pig is gutted, deboned, arranged carefully with layers of stuffing, meat, fat, and skin, then rolled, spitted, and roasted, traditionally over wood. Porchetta is usually heavily salted in addition to being stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel, or other herbs, often wild. Porchetta has been selected by the Italian Ministero delle Politiche Agricole, Alimentari e Forestali as a prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale (“traditional agricultural-alimentary product”, one of a list of traditional Italian foods held to have cultural relevance).” The dish originated in central Italy, but is now popular throughout the country. You can frequently find it at weekly markets at a special truck, and it turns up often at festas like ours as well. This particular porchetta came from Tuscany, from Montepulciano to be exact. And it was delicious, according to Speedy (I ate the totani, which was also really, really good).

I asked Speedy to write down the story of his introduction to porchetta to share with you. This is what he said, “I first learned about Porchetta and its charms back in the 1970’s when I was flying cargo from New York to Rome. Without flight attendants and the access to First Class fare which was available to crews on passenger flights, the guys and I would arrive in Rome famished–and with the usual thirst that follows long flights. One day I asked one of the agents meeting the flight where was the best place to stop to take care of this problem on the way to the crew hotel in central Rome. He suggested telling the taxi driver to take the Via del Mare where we would find one of those open-sided trucks that are, in fact, full kitchens that serve the food out on paper from a high counter that runs the length of the vehicle–this is the Italian version of a Truck Stop. And, the ground in front would, in fact, be crawling with huffing trucks. Anyway, we would get slabs of steaming porchetta on thick slices of crusty, chewy bread and a small glass of frascati for about a dollar. For a couple more glasses of frascati one had to put out another quarter or so.” It is a very happy memory for him!

Image courtesy of Charcouterie Ltd.

A porchetta-like dish is not hard to make at home. You can find many recipes on the internet, for example this one from Epicurious or this one from Bon Appetit. My own favorite, natch, is Speedy’s own recipe for rolled, stuffed pork roast, which is very porchetta-like. But for the true porchetta experience you have to come to Italy and visit one of the many stands or festas where it is served. I recommend the ones at San Maurizio. You won’t find a harder-working group of volunteers any where and the food is always great. Here are a few more photos of our visit to the tent and there are more over here if you are interested.

One of my favorite poems from the book Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs (1999) is this one by a yellow lab, whose writer companion I don’t remember. The poem goes something like this:

Ya gonna eat that?
Ya gonna eat that?
Ya gonna eat that?
I’ll eat that!

I love how they keep the porchetta swaddled up in a sheet – keeps the flies off.

These girls are run off their feet when things get busy, but they never mess up an order.

Kumquat and Cherry Upside Down Cake

28 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by farfalle1 in Desserts, Food, Uncategorized

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Amarene, Sour cherries, Upside down cake

A friend recently asked if I was ever going to put up another recipe, and I realized that it has been quite some time since I’ve done that. For once this is something that I whipped up, not one of Speedy’s incredible dishes. This year I have become the Queen of the Upside Down Cake, mostly by default because it is such an easy thing to make and people just love it. Especially here in Italy it is a treat because it is not a normal sort of Italian dessert.

That shrubby thing in the middle of the photo is our kumquat ‘tree.’ Why it is becoming a bush instead of a tree I’m not sure, but no matter. The important thing is that it has given us zillions of little kumquats this year (you can see them hiding in the leaves). For those of you unfamiliar with this fruit, it is a wee orange in reverse; that is, the skin is sweet and the inside is very, very tart. Kumquats are good to eat right from the tree if you enjoy a tart treat, which we do; it’s not to everyone’s taste.

But kumquat upside-down cake IS to everyone’s taste. Even a friend who usually declines dessert took a very thin sliver just to be polite, and then came back for a full serving (which I found enormously satisfying). I have made three of these so far this year, and each one has disappeared with gratifying speed. In the iteration pictured above I added our sour cherry crop. The great thing about an upside-down cake is you can use pretty much any fruit you have on hand – I have made plain kumquat, kumquat with cherry, the ubiquitous pineapple (from fresh pineapple please, otherwise it is too cloyingly sweet), and nectarine. All have been completely successful.

The next time you’re entertaining and want to have a dessert you can depend on that won’t take you all day to make, try an upside-down cake. You can find the recipe I used for the cake above here. It was shamelessly adapted from one found at Love and Duck Fat, a very beautifully presented web site about food (I recommend you visit them). Have some fun with your fruit and your design, there are no rules.

Making Mozarella

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by farfalle1 in Food, Italian food, Italian recipes, Uncategorized

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Cheese, Cheese-making, Mozzarella

Cheese. It’s one of the things I miss the very most about Italy when we are not there. Cheese has always been one of my major food groups (others: vegetables, fruit, rice-bread-potatoes, and chocolate; I believe that adds up to the requisite five). We are spoiled in Italy – the Italian Cheese book put out by Slow Food (edited by Rubino, Sardo and Surrusca) describes 293 different kinds of cheese. Granted some of these are kissin’ cousins: add a little smoke to fresh mozzarella and you have smoked mozzarella, two different cheeses but close relatives. Still, you can eat a different cheese every day in Italy and not run out for almost a full year.

Speaking of mozzarella, it is the comfort food of the cheese world. Soft, not really bland but not challenging, it goes with everything. On its own with a bit of oil, salt and basil it is the perfect first course. Mix it into pasta, make a sandwich, put cubes of it in your salads, make pizza – there’s little that is not improved by the addition of fresh mozzarella.

Photo courtesy of Woodstock Water Buffalo Company

Sad to say it is almost impossible to find it here in the States (unless you live near Quebec). And when you do find it, it is generally shrink-wrapped with a token amount of liquid, not swimming in the briny water it prefers. Store-bought mozzarella here is of dubious age and provenance, not like Italy where we know it has come from very nearby, unless it is mozarella di bufala – then it is made from the milk of water buffalos (see the winsome face above) from ‘the south’ – Campania, Lazio, Apulia or Molise.

Map courtesy of understandingitaly.com

What to do about this sad lack in our lives? You already know the answer – we decided to make our own. Thanks to Emma Christensen’s delightful website thekitchn we discovered that mozzarella is not only easy to make, it’s FUN to make. Basically all you need is a gallon of milk, some citric acid and rennet (readily available online) and about an hour.

The hardest part of the exercise for Speedy and me was getting the temperatures right; but evidently we didn’t do too bad a job. In the photo above you see the milk, to which has been added the citric acid and rennet, coming up to temperature. Curds and whey are already forming – this so so much fun!

Once the curds had clumped up we separated them from the whey (Emma suggests using whey for bread-making, soups, smoothies and so forth) and… microwaved them! I know – we were really surprised too, but it turns out to work very well. We had to bring the cheese up to an interior temperature of 135 F in order for it to become elastic.

After that it was a simple matter of adding salt and ‘kneading’ to make the cheese elastic and glossy.

Our finished ‘balls!’ I’m not sure why ours flattened out so much. Perhaps we left too much whey in, or perhaps we didn’t knead enough – or too little – or perhaps we were off on our temperatures (a new instant thermometer is on the shopping list). In any event, they taste just fine. Maybe not quite as good as what we buy in Liguria… but maybe so.*

Now… what to do with 3 quarts of whey. If only we had a pig…

*Honesty compels me to admit our cheese was a bit strange. The balls didn’t hold their shape; instead they flattened out into large discs. The texture of the cheese was denser than we expected, though the flavor was just fine, sweet and rich. Bottom line: we need to do this again!

A week later and a second try: better, but still not *perfect*.

An Ex-Expatriate

~ and what she saw

Category Archives: Food

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Our Natural Easter Eggs

Prickly pears!

Basil Hummus

Poor, Sad Olives

Porchetta

Kumquat and Cherry Upside Down Cake

Making Mozarella