Snackshots: Italy

A very sunny, very crisp day in early April, five girls decided to break from the Eternal City and ride the train out to Nettuno, a small town on the Tyrrhenian Sea. We brought bread, wedges of soft cheese, mortadella, and apricot jam. One winding turn away from an early sixteenth century military fort, we picked up pesto and several bottles of mineral water from a market with a beaded curtain in place of doors. Spread out on the white, shell-studded coast, we lunched by the sea, sand between our toes and our sandwiches. Italy is kind of perfect, in a bizarre, mix-matched way. 

ROME

Wine and Pizza at Carlomente Ristorante

That was one of my favorite days while studying abroad. Each of the eighty-nine were exploding micro-adventures, mostly because the Italian relationship to everything is precious and weird. We ate and slept in a villa spread over with orange and olive groves; the oil on our salads was once olives harvested by classmates before us, pressed by the monks who hosted us. In Rome, you have a relationship with the cobblestones, with the rooftops, with stairs and domes and nuns and beggars and bartenders, and if you spend enough time with anyone, you will probably dine with them. 

Carlomente - Because we are students, we are poor. I mean, we're in Italy, touring ancient streets and chapels and museums, so no one is complaining, but we're not blowing Euro on leather shoes or seven course meals or aged bottles of Merlot. When we went out (and mind you, we took the time to go out) we were as frugal about it as can be afforded by a good time. We wanted to embrace the city. We didn't want to go hungry. Carlomente was the perfect place for this purpose. At night, the tented out-door seating is lit by twinkle lights and streetlamps. One night a cap-toothed street vendor leaned over the wall to offer us roses; another offered a tabby dancing robot cat. Pizza: two Euro. Half liter of wine: four Euro. Watching a mechanical cat dance under the stars: priceless. 

30 Cent Pastry Shop - I really shouldn't have to elaborate because the name alone is testament to the wonder of this place. It is literally a hole in the ground; you'd miss it, if you weren't a manic caffeine addicted tourist desperate for cheap and plenty cornetti. Before we left for spring break in Poland (we'll get to that), we stopped for chocolate croissants on our way from St. Peter's Square. The evening we returned from Poland we ended up snacking on donuts from this shop after meeting in St. Peter's Square. Every important event was punctuated, invariably, by the thirty-cent pastry shop; and some days were just important because of the thirty-cent pastry shop. 

Worth Mentioning - That one awesome panini shop between Via di Trastevere and Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. Best sandwich ever: mozarella, pesto, melanzane (eggplant), and prosciutto, savored by a fountain, surrounded by friends, gypsies, and men playing cellos. We raced to that shop after classes ended around noon; it closed before two, when all the bread sold out. 

FLORENCE

Roast pig at That Awesome Unnamed Market in Florence

The day after exams two friends and I took one of the famed European fast trains to Florence on what turned out to be one of the best days of the semester. We had a snotty, meant-for-students guidebook with us, which we referenced for maps, but we completely overlooked its restaurant recommendations because on our way from the Duomo to the "fake" David statue we crossed a market of epic proportions only to discover that every stall offered free samples of everything. Like any self respecting traveling student, we filled up on free food: 150 year aged balsamic truffle oil, crumbly molded cheese, thick, crusty bread, salami, prosciutto, pastries, and chocolate. 

Cheese, bread, and salami stall in Florence

And not just any chocolate. Chocolate filled with extra extra extra virgin olive oil. Chocolate pressed with hot roasted peppers. Chocolate-basil spread, like Nutella, except with basil. Eighty-nine percent cocoa unsweetened hot chocolate. Florence has rewritten everything I thought I knew about chocolate. Also, my perception of a free lunch. 

MILAN

In Milan, the last city I visited while in Italy, we got to hang out with real-life Italian college students, who were (some) younger than we were, (all) better at English than we were Italian, and (generally) cooler than we were in every way. On the metro to the Duomo from Milan's massive central station, we were told that in Southern Italy, Rome, people are very hot--- hot blooded, fiery, very loud and expressive and pushy. In Northern Italy, people are generally cooler, our guide told us proudly. The students brought us to a side street, a crowded, swift-moving shop that sold calzones, typical Milanese street food. They're little inside out pizzas, fried or baked, and stuffed with pizza toppings. The most popular, we were told, was a standard tomato, mozzarella, and anchovy, fried. We opted for tomato, mozzarella, and pepperoni, and brought our spoils to the piazza outside the Milan opera house.

Our guides left us in the evening, so we- a group of six or seven- wandered around in search of an open grocery store. (Shops close early in Italy; it was a challenge.) We found it, quickly threw together a dinner that could easily feed nine or ten, and ate (dessert first, so our boxed pistachio gelato cones wouldn't melt )in the piazza outside a closed church, with no utensils and only paper bags for napkins. Pure class.

My favorite meal in Rome, hands down, was the night of Holy Saturday. Holy Week is a big deal in Rome, what with the Vatican and it being the most important week of the Liturgical Year. And on the most important night of the most important week, it rained miserably. All of our classmates were in the city, either at the Vatican or St. Anthony the Abbot or any one of the many churches holding the most important Vigil to be held. I and one dear friend, however, were in the small chapel of the Villa, praying quietly, until we remembered we'd missed dinner traveling home in the rain. We put together a very late meal (classic Italian dining) ourselves: panini (the classic Italian sandwich), Peroni (the most popular Italian beer), and... Pringles. 

Somehow, Italy has changed Pringles forever. 

RECIPE: Lemon Herb Zucchini

This recipe walks the fine line between veggies and candy. Short neither on flavor nor butter, it is one of my favorite side dishes to make and to eat. Some might think that such large quantities of butter undermines the integrity of the holy squash, but those people are probably iconoclasts and I think our irreparable differences extend far beyond taste.

I make these at home; they are something of a house favorite (chortlechortle). But in all seriousness, this recipe is intended for normal human servings, not catering sizes. Hurrah!


LEMON HERB ZUCCHINI 
Prep Time: 5-10 Min.
Cook Time: 15-18 Min.
Serves: 4-6

INGREDIENTS

• 3 Regular-Sized Zucchini
• 5tbls Butter (move over, Paula) 
• 3tbls Lemon Juice (or, One Lemon)
• 1tbls Basil Flakes
• 1tbls Garlic Powder
• 1tbls Parsley Flakes
• 1tsp Olive Oil
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/2tsp Black Pepper
• optional: 1tsp Lemon Zest

Removing the stem and blossom (read: both) ends, slice the washed and rinsed zucchini into thin coins, just thick enough to stay opaque and hold their shape (floppy and see through are just a hair too thin). 

Into a large skillet or frying pan, pour 1 tea spoon of oil. Using a paper towel to wipe it, spread oil over the entire pan. This will keep the butter from burning; the towel will collect excess oil. When it's spread, toss the towel. We don't need that anymore. Then heat the skillet to medium-high (halfway between full blast and half-assed heat). 

Melt three tablespoons of butter in the skillet. With your spoon/spatula/utensil of preference (I opt for wooden spoons, but I'll only judge you a little otherwise), keep that patty moving for an even melt. It should be bubbling nicely. Dump your zukes right into the skillet and toss them about so they lay something resembling flat. This is where you throw in two more whole tablespoons of Butter with the little discs so the zucchini are evenly drenched. 

Toss in your basil, parsley, garlic powder, pepper, and salt. Push your zucchini about with your spoon so the herbs touch each coin, then squeeze the lemon (or, pour the lemon juice) evenly around the pan. Trick to get more juice out of the lemon is to stick a fork in and squeeze, wriggling the fork around a bit. If you decided on lemon zest (or, zemon, as I just typed) you can sprinkle that here. 

Cover with a lid or, if you're me and cooking in your parents' house where no two glasses match, a square of foil, and let simmer. They cook surprisingly quickly, so keep an eye on the clock. If you, like me, are fussy, you can lift the cover and mess them around from time to time to keep those little zukes on their toes. 

Let them simmer up to fifteen minutes, or until your thickest piece is just tender. If you wait for them all to be see-through, you'll have awful zucchini mush. You definitely want more opaque than not.

So there you have lemon-herb zucchini. I'm pairing them with balsamic chicken and tomato herb rice (I like me some basil, I kid you not), but they're not shabby over pasta with a little grated parmesan, or next to grilled steak, or quinoa, or whatever you hipster children like these days. Enjoy! 

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Whew!

Undressed

I work in a small catering kitchen next door to my house. I'm a prep cook, given much more freedom than I've earned to play with the foods and flavors. My boss has owned and operated a smattering of eateries around the neighborhood, but this one has stuck. (He leaves a lucky trail behind him: one of his old locations is now my favorite pizza place; another is a favorite cafe among the hipster population.) It's a simple little spoon. It's smaller than your typical rowhome (which aren't spacious to begin with) with a modest pantry, a mismatched collection of reach-in refrigerators, and an oven that to be perfectly honest scares me just a little bit. (It looks a lot like European ovens, which are universally intimidating.) 

Earlier in the summer I had a job at an ice cream shop. I've worked there every summer for four years; I didn't always hate it, but it was never particularly fruitful or satisfying. The thing was, it's a seasonal gig, which is convenient because I go to school six hours and several states away (also where I got started cooking in a professional kitchen) and hate having to reapply for jobs. I'm not entirely lazy (though I could go toe to toe with any sloth, three toes as they may have); I hate, hate, loath, despise the scrutiny of job interviews and the inevitable realization that I am essentially unemployable. So I stuck with a job that was just a few sizes too small, and before long it started to suffocate me.

Meanwhile in the Little Kitchen that Could, my boss was securing a Special Job. It's a year long contract feeding nerdly little medical students as they take their exams; you can imagine, feeding, say, your future brain surgeon or grandchild's pediatrician is a great responsibility. This ain't your ordinary picnic. As I like to see it, Boss decided to pull together an Avengers-style team of super cooks, because the future of America's health and well being begins and ends with this lunch spread. 

He got me, and he got the Boss Chef, a ladle-wielding, cigarette smoking, no bullshit cook.

My mentors tend to look like this.

I'm the Robin to Boss Chef's Batman. I set up her spoons, I take out her trash, and when she doesn't come in, I step into her toque.

Simply put, I make dressing for pasta salad.


A basic dressing is built upon a 2:1 ratio of oil to acid, and from there you can go as wild as you want (or don't want: growing up, my best friend's mother was from Sicily, and she unfailingly dressed her salad in nothing but olive oil and red wine vinegar, 'das it).

I like to play around with dressing. We make them from scratch for each salad, so depending on the ingredients at our disposal, the pasta we want to use, or the flavor we want to realize (I say 'we' because the kitchen is one conglomerate, congealed entity, like stew), all bets are on as far as a 'recipe' goes. Today's recipe went like this:

• 1c Extra Virgin Olive Oil (from a tin, so you know it's fancy)
• 1c Plain Old Veggie Oil (not from a tin, not so fancy)
• 1c Red Wine Vinegar (so there's your two to one)
• 3/4c Fresh Chopped Parsley
• 1/2c Fresh Rough Chopped Oregano
• 5-6 Garlic Cloves
• 2tbsp Minced Marianted Garlic 
• 4-5 Whole Roasted Peppers
• 1tbsp Salt
• 1tbsp Pepper

Undressed, it looks like so: 

So you shove all that into a food processor. Our handy dandy processor has two options, 'ON' and 'OFF' (the tricksy OFF button also features 'PULSE'). So you start to pulse until it looks like roasted pepper salsa (which is delicious, if you stop here, no one will judge you) and the garlic cloves are properly minced. Then you stir it about with a spatula or spoon, just to keep it on its toes whilst preventing the herbs from getting smushed along the bottom. Then, forgetting about pulse, you press that ON button and you never look back.

A steady hand is a learned skill, one acquired after several burns, spills, and standoffs (there are steady chefs and there are trigger-happy chefs; I may not be a chef, but I'm certainly trigger happy). That said, with a steady hand, start to drizzle, drip by drip, the oil and vinegar into processor and watch that baby emulsify. Don't be afraid, a steady stream never hurt anyone, but if you dump all that oil in at once you will have a BP style spill that will harm the wildlife in your kitchen irreparably.

Think of the seals. Keep that hand steady.

You may think, 'Holy guacamole, Robin, that's lot of dressing!', but it is, after all, intended for several hungry med students and what is imperially referred to as a big ass pasta salad (well, two pounds of pasta). But have no fear. Play around with measurements, just never forget the 2:1 ratio. We cook for the greater glory of food, after all, not the bureaucracy of numbers. It's all to taste. If you don't want to play with measurements, if you keep this in an air-tight container (a pretty salad dressing flask works just nicely, or mason jars, or Tupperware, I don't know your life) it will hold for about a week.

Among my greater prepping duties, I make the the dressing, cook the pasta, dream up a few ingredients to toss in, then package it up neatly. This salad also features whole wheat penne, about two cups of blanched snap peas (they have their own built in timers, it's brilliant), a small carton of grape tomatoes (because measuring is simply too much work), a whole julienned pepper (yellow, because this is color by cooking) and about a cup of chopped green onions, all washed and parted with wax paper.

Cin cin!

Allergen Warning: May Contain Traces of Foodie

Welcome to Whisk and Pestle, another blog in a sea of blogs in a world entirely taken by food.

My knowledge of food is minuscule. Pea-sized, really. What I have learned I learned through massive screw ups, impossibly lucky triumphs, and the patient tutelage of a handful of truly amazing cooks. Facts: I love food. I love to cook. When you share a mutual love, and you love to learn, it isn't very hard to find someone willing to teach you.

So here I am, learning to cook. I'm here to share what I learn, but above all, what I love.

So take, that foodies.