The Italians Are Here

I’ve fallen into one of those headspaces again where I think posts have to be long and about something. I hate that. I like when the blog meanders and is like a series of little snapshots.

Oh well. I went to New York, and I had an ok time. I saw some friends, ate a couple of decent meals, blah blah blah. The gig I went to do was great, actually, one or two of you might have seen it (the ball drop). It’s quite a thing being in Times square surrounded by some little aluminum barricades keeping out 400,000 cranky drunk people. Oh well.

Anyway, I’m back, and so glad to be. I even had my first houseguest on monday. None other than [Kung Foodie](http://kungfoodie.com/), Gnocchi Katz herself, came to visit me at the beach and have a bite. I had invited some peeps over, but they ended up being previously occupied, so I had her all to myself.

That store that I hate had some great manila clams which I cooked up with some shallots, bacon and sherry, which we snacked up, dunking bread and dripping clammy juice all over ourselves while mostly finishing the aforementioned bottle of sherry. Naturally, we were kind of loaded, so I set the *brasato* on to simmer and we went on a little walking tour of the neighborhood, including a little trek on the beach since, really, it’s right there. And who doesn’t like the beach?

The guest of honor took some great photos, too, reproduced with her *permesso, naturalmente*. *[Flicker is down, will get on that when I can- jf]*

When we got back, we had a little piece of pork, too, like you do, and some roasted rutabagas and parsnip, cut lengthwise and roasted in olive oil, garnished with a few cooked chestnuts (castagne in italian, *marroni* in sicilian, from the french word).

I have been craving gorgonzola lately, but unable to find any decent ones, so we had a MARVELOUS Point Reyes Blue, which fits better into the Eat Local ethos anyhow.

The rutabaga, certainly, is among the most overlooked vegetables around, and I encourage you to try it, especially when you find small ones. Even though I love them, it still seems I only eat them *ogni morte di papa,* or every death of a pope (meaning once in a while).

I’ve had a lot of italian idioms in my head. Last night, a friend of mine and her visiting in-laws- who speak NO english- came over for a little *cena siciliana*.

Honestly, I’m still a little skittish about cooking anything too far from my personal exerience for them, but I’ll branch out soon. Meanwhile, it’s fun to eat sicilian food. I don’t often cook it, since I’ve had so much of it, it’s often more fun to cook something I’m learning about.

We had:
Bruschetta of tuna and tomatoes
Bruschetta of dinsaur kale

Fennel with Oranges and Onions

Whole Wheat Pappardelle with Pork Guazzetto

Pork Shoulder Guazzetto with Oranges and Three Color Salad

And a pear cake that Anna made (I had bought some cheeses, but they were hurting, I still need to work on my portion control)

The first bruschetta is an old one, tuna packed in oil with tomatoes and onions. You could put garlic in it, too, if you wanted, but I didn’t. The other is a traditional tuscan dish, dinosaur kale cooked for a long time with onions and garlic. One of my favorites.

The fennel is a traditional [messinese](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messina) salad made with thinly sliced fennel and red onions, traditionally with chopped whole blood oranges, pith and all, but you need to have some special oranges for that, which I didn’t have, so I segmented the oranges and mixed the juice, the zest and olive oil in the blender to make the dressing (traditionally it would just be EV olive oil poured over plus the juice from the oranges).

[Guazzetto](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/265) we’ve been over before, but this is a slightly different one, very popular all over sicily, although I believe it is from Pantelleria originally. Pantelleria is an island between sicily and africa that gets VERY hot; it’s famous for its citrus and for its *passito*, a sweet wine, made from moscato d’alessandria, a more characterful version of its cousin from Asti (in Piemonte). Anyway, it’s made with a lot of onion, some rosemary and the juice and rind of blood oranges (two or three for a 3 pound piece), plus smaller quantities of the traditional wine, tomatoes and stock. We had the meat with a small green salad, *molto california*, if I do say so myself.

Anna (La Mamma in capital letters), was very sweet and brought a simple but simply wonderful pear cake, a plain cake batter poured over pears and baked. It was fantastic.

Much is made of the fact that Anna eats my cooking. When she visits, she does most of the cooking herself, and when people invite her over, she usually refuses food, claiming not to be hungry… but I know better. She ate like a horse at my house, which is about the best compliment I can get.