I'll be in France, so very far from my Italian Christmas traditions! No tortellini in brodo, no Cappone, no Panettone, but Fruits de mer, Oysters (too many!) and Buche de Noel...
How far away will you/would you/would love to go this Christmas???
For me is mashed potatoes, for some of my friends is pastina (Italian name for little pasta cooked in hot bouillon), for my French husband is Pot au feu (poached meat and vegetables)...
What's yours?
I'm Heading to Briançon area for the 1st November: do you a good place to eat? I mean, an outstanding place, as I think is rather difficult to eat poorly in France... :-)
I was reading a comment on an Italian food blog the other day, and someone wrote that avocados are out of fashion, so seventies (well, this is Italy!) and not at all modern. I, of course, do not agree, but do you think some kind of vegetables or food can be out of fashion?
Midnight... a sudden need for something sweet (or savoury). For what are you going to?
Mmmmh...
I've tried Starbucks in France and in England (in Italy they do not have the courage to open: we like our coffee, and we like plain, but especially VERY fast!)...
I agree with your 5 points, but why not burn the coffee? I mean, you just need to lower the water temperature in your coffee machine, and bum, it's not burn any more...
So may be they can open in Italy too! I need a cosy armchair to work from!!!
I found what for me is the perfect recipe for Scones on an old number of BBC Good Food: I've tried many times and always worked perfect, both straight from the oven or re-heated... But its so quick that I normally do it on the same morning I want to eat them...
Anyway, here's the link to it, on my blog:
http://kitchenpantry.blogspot.com/2007/06/best-scone-ive-ever-baked.html
@kfarrel3: absolutely agree: this is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO Robyn!
Most of the time I already know without looking at the author that MUST be her!!!
I want to play this video all day long!!!
:-D
Mind, I'm Italian, living in Italy, so I'm obviously spoiled!
Barbecue:
A.) is always a noun - Yes
B.) is something you get invited to in a friend's backyard - Yes, or garden...
C.) cannot contain liquid smoke - Absolutely!
Fried Chicken:
A.) must always be pan-fried in a cast-iron skillet - that depends
B.) can just as good made in a fryolator - why not?
C.) is the most delicious way to cook chicken - well, not really... It's a way...
D.) is the best fast food on the planet - can be
Hamburgers:
A.) should only be eaten rare or medium-rare - Absolutely
B.) need to be served on a potato roll to be considered great - or a bun of other kind (I sometime have then with normal bread and they are as good!)
C.) do not need cheese - it's not a must
D.) need to be at least 15 percent fat to be considered great - I dunno, I make mine myself, with minced beef and some salsiccia, so I suppose they even have more...
Hot dogs:
A.) need to have a natural casing to be considered great - at least in this way is better for my stomac...
B.) should be all-beef - well, at least all meat...
C.) are best eaten grilled or griddled - boiled are not bad, if done in a good way...
D.) taste best deep-fried - EVERYTHING taste better deep fried!
E.) are best eaten standing up - yep!
Pizza:
A.) is the world's most perfect food - with spaghetti, yes!
B.) must be made in a coal or wood-burning oven- OF COURSE!!!!
C.) should never have pineapple on it - NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!
D.) must have discrete areas of sauce and cheese - and a discreet area of crust, free of anything...
E.) all of the above - Of course!
I add a F to this one:
F.) must have ONLY REAL mozzarella on it (unless is 4 formaggi, which can have at most 4 cheeses! And none of them can be fake mozzarella or Gruviere!!!)
So, ok, I'm a Reverse food snob...
Oh my: I though I was just caring about what goes into my mouth and stomach and the best way to cook it, but apparently this make me a food snob...
Sorry, but pizza with emmenthal or gruviere is just French trash: I cannot stand it!!!!
You are evil Robyn!!!
Pure evil!
I can see you giggling watching this video!!!
;-D
Cook, so I do not have to say: "mmh, good" even if I don't think it!
If I cook something not so good, I'm the first to say it's not good! And the only one that can! ;-)
Genius, as usually!!!
Give me MORE!
Encounters of the third type with a lemon in the middle of a paella!
:-D
I too missed this, and it's fun!
When I was in fourth grade I was seated at lunch where there was a sort of protrusion in the cafeteria wall just behind me. Other kids had to squeeze by to get to their seats. I made some wild gesture, hit a tray passing behind my head and ended up wearing a bowl of tomato soup just like a hat.
"Tomato head" in the yearbook eight years later -- guess who?
I doubt I can come even close to the cleavage [silver]wear... but here's my worst food moment:
For several weeks last year I attended class with my daughter.
One morning just before school the girl was putting the milk back in but pushed out the Palek Paneer (spinach & Indian cheese) leftovers. I had tried this one shelf stable brand but it was icky. I'd put it in the fridge because that's where things go to rot; at which time I can feel okay about tossing them but, until then I try to convince myself I'll be eating it soon. So, with the child's help there was green stuff everywhere including all up and down her legs just before we needed to leave and we were already running late. But really, we had to clean it up, and we did, but what a comedy of errors. I pulled the garbage out so it would be right next to her and after I did that she went over and dropped things under the sink not realizing the garbage was no longer there. In the car I told her she'd done me a favor because I hated that spinach. Will I ever stop blowing her mind away?
For lunch while she was in math class, I ran down to our store that has a great organic deli section with fresh hot food that changes seasonally, each day's selections even depending on what the farmers bring in that morning. It was a special delight to find out what veggies they were having everyday. Apparently that day though there was a bounty of mushrooms as everything had them in it so there was nothing I wanted.
Anyway, no hot veggies for me so I put together a salad, putting some bleu cheese dressing in a little plastic container. Then I went to the check out lines because the one by the food was backed up. I managed to get behind some lady apparently confusing the store for the bank because she wanted something like $25 in ones and a roll of quarters but handed them $40 which the checkout girl couldn't conceive that meant $5 left over so she was short-circuiting. I was about to move to the next line but someone scooped it before I could so I was freaking a bit on the time left to get back before 4th period ended.
Finally, my turn and I stepped forward. That's when the dressing container flung itself out of my hand over to the next checkout I had wanted to jump to, up against this lady's shoes where it exploded and went all up and down her legs and shoes. In slow motion no less. It doesn't look like much when it's in one of those little containers but when it's on a person it seems like so much more. I'm just grateful she was wearing a skirt rather than pants because I would have destroyed those. It was awful. I'm still horrified.
She was really nice about it but it's not like I could help her get clean; that would have been completely creepy. She said, "It's not like things such as this happen everyday." at which point I told her about the spinach not 4 hours hours earlier.
Thanks for reviving the thread. I'd missed it earlier and this gave me a bunch of giggles. Great stories. :)
We were in Beaune, France, when my moment occurred. It was in 1988 and my first trip to France. The restaurant in our hotel (Hotel de la cloche) was very famous so we had dinner there one night. It was the off season and only one other couple was in the place, so it was very quiet. Nate and I were conscious of the fact that we needed to add to the quiet, so we spoke in whispers. That's the back story. I decided to order les escargots because they were traditional to the region and I'd never had them. The waiter handed me a device that looked like an eyelash curler. I had no idea what it was for but took a guess that maybe it was meant for holding the snail. I picked it up, closed it around the shell, and then the device snapped out of my hands, clattered across two tables and finally fell on the floor. I would gladly have climbed into one of those shells if I could have. The other couple looked up at me and the man said..."It is a different way of life, is it not?" We all laughed....and then gabbed away for the rest of our dinners. PS, no harm was done to those snails...the waiter brought some pate for me, something I could handle!
8 yrs old. I was in charge of the mashed potatoes for the Sunday dinner. Company coming -- had to make it good. My first ever anything in the kitchen. I used 1 CUP of salt rather than 1 tsp. HORRID. 30 years ago and my family STILL won't let me bring potatoes to dinner.
I used to work at a coffee shop.
Our milk came in normal 1 gallon plastic jugs and we had a trick for conserving space in the trash can when we threw away the empty jugs... we'd steam it and then stomp it (the heat would make it easier to compact them).
So one night I was steaming and stomping a bunch of jugs and for some reason, my co-worker put the cap back on a steamed-but-not-yet-stomped jug. I didn't realize it so I put the jug on the floor and jumped REALLY hard on the jug.
It was like a gun went off in the cafe! The cap flew about 30 feet and hit one of our customers. Luckily it didn't hurt him but boy did I feel like an ass.
thought it was time to revive this thead; another one got me thinking how young I started cooking unsupervised...
I started wearing glasses in 6th grade, but was never happy how I looked in them. It wasn't until high school that I wore them at home, I figured I already knew where everything in the house was. So this was sometime between then.
I had made a chicken stir fry for my parents, and they commented on the fresh lemon seasoning I had used. I didn't think about the fact that I hadn't put any kind of citrus in until my dad's tongue started to go numb, followed by mine and my mother's. I had grabbed the Lemon Pine-Sol instead of the Mazola oil - in a certain size they come in the same bottle! We called poison control and he assured us that a few tablespoons between the 3 of us didn't warrant medical attention and made a point to tell me to always cook with my glasses on from now on.
I always did after that! Just after I met my husband, though, I brushed my teeth with antibiotic cream, so he got me LASIK for my 30th birthday this year. It's safe to eat at my house again!!!
I just saw this a couple of months ago and immediately shared it with everyone I knew, to mixed reactions, haha. I agree with corycm -- it's creepy and funny, but mostly wonderful, haha.
Yes, my nonna always sauced pasta to prevent its stickiness and bring out the flavors, but we never lacked for sauce, or cheese. Also, there's a difference between using a lot of sauce on pasta (totally justifiable if it's great, thick, homemade sauce, I say,) and drowning it into soup. And I have never had CRUNCHY pasta, in America or anywhere in Italy, whether in a restaurant in Firenze or my family's house in Messina.
This video is a perfect example of over-exaggeration by an over-zealous, tempermental chef that has obviously been out of the American culinary habits loop. Perhaps, he feels the 0.1% who don't over sauce their pastas are the ones who visit his establishments? Nevertheless, the pompous critique of Italians on the use of "condiments" is and always will be considered arrogant. Wasn't it the Chinese that invented pasta? And, ironically, have never read or heard similar commentary. I love his shows but leave the attitude at home.
Mmm. That looks so delicious!! I completely agree with Mario, but Krit has it right ^^ To each, his own! ...or till they realize that he's right haha
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