I can’t get enough beans, ever. This dish resembles, probably badly, a Tuscan bean dish called fagioli all’uccelleto. I’m translating that roughly, and probably badly, as “bird beans.” For this dish you need: dried beans, tomato, sage, garlic, and love. The recipe calls for cannellini. I usually substitute Michigan navy beans, whose goodness is unsurpassed.…More
Category Archives: Food
How to Correct Your Coffee
“Did you drink my coffee?” Tizi asks. “Yes, by accident.” We’ve just finished a satisfying lunch. In Italy a post-prandial blast of espresso adds an exclamation mark to the experience. Lately she’s been taking her coffee “corrected.” With a dash of “mistra,” the local anise flavored grappa. Typically my wine intake at the table is…More
Take a Tomato Break–antipasto, anyone?
I was talking to my friend Pat a few days ago about tomatoes. “Everyone who’s been there,” she said, “talks about the tomatoes in Italy. They’re supposed to be so good.” Yup, they’re good all right. Here in the US we do pretty well a few months of the year. Over there, year around it…More
An homage pot–bold beans
I went a little crazy the other day. Couple times a year my brother and I go to Breckenridge to visit our mom and dad’s graves. We spook around the cemetery visiting them and all the relatives gone but not forgotten.More
‘Tis the Seasoning–salt me
For years now I’ve suffered from garlic salt shame. It’s the seasoning I use most often, thinking that it’s a shortcut, that an accomplished cook with stores of self-respect would employ solo salt and stand-alone garlic that he would strip, dice, and sprinkle on a side dish or main course instead of going the two-in-one…More
Pass the Fennel
When I was a kid, my junk food of choice, purchased at Pat’s Food Center across the street from my house, or at the park store in the Missaukee County trailer park, was Twinkies or Mars Bar or Three Musketeers bar (Pat’s) or wax lips or wax coke bottle with that syrupy pseudo coca cola…More
Alt-Food for Thought
“I’d like a pound of ground cicadas, please.” I can imagine a world in which I might make such a request. Right here at home. Cicadas are in the news. They’re coming. More
Yick–wine and cheese, maybe
A Yahoo headline greets me this morning: “Study says cheese and red wine could boost brain health.” That’s good news. Two things I like, and I’m all in favor of brain health. The ten-year study, published in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease, involved 1787 people who participated in a Fluid Intelligence Test, “which provides a…More
You Gotta Have Peas–the ragu requires them
No one is neutral on peas. In England for a conference a few decades ago I was taken to dinner by a local guy who ordered something the English like to eat. It came with a side of mushy peas (mushy rhymes with bushy). To the eye the peas looked like they had been cooked…More
Baked Tomatoes–nothing’s more Romagna than these
Boy, was I wrong. Wrong about local tomatoes that are coming into the farmers’ markets right now, gorgeous, firm, red, both sweet and acidic beauties that I’m using to bake alla gratinata. Wrong because in the off season, I content myself with hydroponic vine-ripened tomatoes that do have a little flavor, that are firm enough…More