It might be generational, or, perhaps, philosophical, but there are, on the one hand, those who enjoy and appreciate handmade things, and the art and craft they require to make, and, on the other, those who prefer their things machine-made, reliable, and standard. The ‘things’ here could be quite literally anything. My father, who, to me, is the quintessential scientist and pragmatist, believes that most, if not all, advances for the betterment of mankind have come as a result of the increased use and application of machines, technology and science. In fact, he would argue, I’m sure, that this blog is evidence of the fact that even something as Luddite as cooking can be improved through the application of technology, though regular readers – with good reason – may not agree.

My mother was cut from very different cloth however, and, though a nurse who believed sincerely in the power of modern medicine, sanitation and inoculation, she was a true amateuse of a hand-turned chair-leg, a cut-glass goblet, and, much to the detriment of my appearance during my tender years, a hand-knitted sweater.  She was also a great lover of gardening, baking bread and, despite the fact that it rarely worked, yogurt-making. I think it’s from her that I get most of my culinary instincts, as the very notion of spending three or four hours in the kitchen doing anything would horrify my dad.

Pasta-rollers, like all machines, were invented for three main reasons: (1) to produce more quickly what used to take a long time (2) as a uniform-quality product, and (3) so that the resulting free time could be spent either more enjoyably or industriously. The assumption behind it seems to be that it makes it easier to make something that is typically quite tricky, and that the making of it by hand was a laborious pain in the ass. Those who have used a pasta roller, whether the hand-crank variety or the KitchenAid attachment, know, as we do, that it is a fabulous invention and enables even the busiest gastronome to home-make great fresh pasta in a relatively short time. They might also have found that it is actually fun to use because it combines the joy of mixing a dough by hand with the ease and convenience of not having to roll it out and cut it yourself.

Taking this notion of fun to its logical extreme this past weekend, I decided to devote my entire Sunday to doing the whole thing – the mixing, the rolling and the cutting – by hand. In spite of the recipe book’s warning that it was a painstaking exercise, I had little idea of what I was getting into. I now have a profound appreciation both for labor-saving machines, and the unique taste, texture and satisfaction derived from hand-rolled pasta.

But it is more than that. I learned something about myself on Sunday. In some ways, it was a revelation. I had always thought that I appreciated handmade things, particularly food and wine, with the all patience, care and skills that their creation implies, but I had never actually tested myself to see if I could enjoy hand-making something that required real patience and physical effort.  And, while there certainly were moments in which I did not enjoy being patient or the physical effort, on the whole, I really did find the process to be incredibly rewarding – relaxing almost. Not only did I (eventually, and with several abortive attempts) make some absolutely first-class pasta, but I learned a new technique and was, in the end, able to enjoy the fruits of my labor in a way I never have before.

Pici Keen

Famous for the lavish displays of wealth and the beautiful arts of the Renaissance found in Florence, Siena, Lucca and Pisa, Tuscans are, by contrast, rather austere in their culinary inclinations with their love of simple grilled meats, stewed beans and saltless bread. Such austerity requires the freshest and best ingredients in order to be delicious, and, fortuitously, Tuscany offers these up in great bounty. Similarly, it often requires great effort and technique.

So it is with Pici (also known as pinci — hand-rolled, eggless Tuscan thick spaghetti — perhaps the best example of this cucina povera (poor man’s cuisine) — utilizing only 00 flour, water, green Tuscan olive oil and a lot of time and effort. Indeed, it is my belief that what the poor, historically, lacked in wealth they more than make up for in patience, and disposable time. Originating from the Val d’Orcia region (the area between Montalcino and Montepulciano), pici are usually eaten with a rich meat sauce, often containing porcini mushrooms, but any hearty meat or game ragu would be a good choice.

The duck ragu recipe below is typical of the region of Arezzo which is the area where we got married in June 2007, and making it engendered all those kinds of warm feelings one gets from a house filled with delicious smells and the wonderful memories of the time of our lives.

Learning a new skill, and in this case, a new recipe, is a matter of managing to overcome self-doubt. Before you attempt making pici, I would highly recommend you try making a regular long pasta with an egg dough, so that you understand how it should feel and look. It will also allow you to develop a sense about the right elasticity of a good dough which will be useful even though Pici dough is a very different creature altogether.

If you follow the exact instructions below, you’ll probably find that your dough feels too dry and too heavy. Do not be afraid to add more water and more oil as you see fit because eggless doughs can easily become brittle when allowed to be too dry. However, do not abandon hope. I urge you to stick with the basis of the recipe (allowing for various seasonal, regional, altitudinal and indoor-outdoor climactic conditions) and overcome your fears of impending culinary disaster, as they will not materialize. If it feels too dry, add more water. Too wet, add flour until it feels right. One word of caution, though: be sparing in any additions of liquid or lipids because at the hand-rolling stage you will be adding extra olive oil to reduce friction and facilitate the rolling process, and you don’t want to find at that stage that you have to start all over again.

Also, do give yourself plenty of time. An otherwise lazy Sunday afternoon is perfect for this, as not only does the pasta make a perfect Sunday night dinner, but, more importantly, it gives you time to rest as you go along. Making enough pici for four people can be a tiring business, even if there are two of you on the job. One final proviso, do not treat pici like regular fresh pasta — i.e. sprinkle it liberally with flour and allow to set-up and dry for a while prior to cooking. I refer to my earlier comments when I say that pici can dry out and become brittle very quickly, so when you make them, plan to eat them within, at most, a couple of hours. This might appear like a disadvantage but it’s not because once cooked they are probably more robust than regular pastas and even reheat remarkably well.

So, please try making this dish. The sauce is easy and indescribably good (I know everyone says that about their food, but, really, this is very special), and the pasta is a great reward for some hard graft both corporeally and in that it offers a real sense of achievement. By the time you’re done, you’ll have sore shoulders but will have mastered the rolling technique perfectly. As a result, pasta-making will have transcended the bland uniformity of the machine-age and become what all good food should be: absolutely unique and deeply personal.

As with a few other fellow bloggers, we were lucky to receive one of my favorite “blog freebies” to try recently – truffle products by La Boutique de la Truffe.  Cha-ching!  As some know, for most of us, blogging will barely help us buy a cup of coffee at a year’s end – that is if you have an ad up.  When we get offered to test out powdered sauces (gag) we usually pass, but when truffles were offered I jumped up and down like a little schoolgirl.  I know truffles seem to be that annoying foodie buzz word that gets all us food-lovers screaming like Beatles fans in the 60’s, but I still say they are worth the hype.  It is obvious we like them – a lot.  You’ll find truffle recipes all over We Are Never Full: like here and here and here. And if you indulge and buy something from La Boutique, it is an investment and one that will pay off in big flavor that really can not be duplicated any other way.

La Boutique de Truffe started in 2003 by a French immigrant, Cèline Labaune, who had a “passion for truffles” (straight from the media kit).  Why am I telling you this? Because if I am going to spend $35 for a 3-ounce pot of truffles, it helps to buy them from 1) someone who is passionate about them and 2) someone who is French and knows her stuff.  It used to be very difficult to get good quality truffle products here in the US and I can say, without hesitation, that the truffle products we received from La Boutique were very good.  Yes, it is still expensive but a little does go a long way.

For this quick dish (bite me Rachel Ray – this is a real 30 minute meal), we paired the nice truffles with an easy cream sauce with walnuts and bought fresh ravioli from our local Italian shop. If you don’t have a local Italian shop, it’s ok, you can use your favorite store-bought variety or even make your own. To top the ravioli, we only used a small amount of the Truffle Carpaccio we were lucky to try out.  While we were in Italy a while ago, we purchased a few white and black truffle products at an amazing store (where we dropped quite a few euro at, but it was worth it) -  Tartufi Morra in Alba.  For much more than La Boutique charges, we purchased an excellent tube of white truffle paste which lasted us more than a year – and which we sadly finished up with this dish.  I recommend buying this one from the La Boutique website – it is super strong and really, really lasts.

You could wow a few guests with this super simple dish – they’ll feel special because they’ll think you spent a lot of money on them but, in reality, per person it’s not a real bank-breaker.  But they don’t have to know… right?

New Jersey, it’s like a cross-section of the entire United States stuffed into a very small area — fenced-in by heavy industry, ugly sub-divisions, peaceful tidal bays and relaxing shore towns — but with its own very distinct character. And, if you drive around it long enough, you’re bound to see some pretty interesting stuff. This goes for the social and the edible, as well as the geographic and architectural.

For example, every spring, you’ll find aged Italian-Americans risking the wrath of New Jersey State Troopers as they harvest dandelions from the banks and verges of Jersey’s myriad highways and parkways. The first time I saw this I thought it must be part of a program to get the elderly outside and active by having them weed public areas. Then, when I’d learned what they were really doing, I marveled at the genetic lottery these robust octogenarians were winning in spite of eating greens picked from the sides of some of the most heavily trafficked roads in the country. So, even though I was apprehensive — for that reason, as well as only having ingested dandelions previously in the form of the disgusting traditional British beverage Dandelion & Burdock (something my grandparents used to trick me into drinking by telling me it was Coke. Its taste is somewhere between sarsaparilla and rust.)— I figured I should give it a go myself.

Now, I haven’t yet had the privelige of picking my own weeds for dinner as cars and trucks whizz by on the NJ Turnpike, and when I do, you can sure you’ll hear about it right here, but I have experimented with eating dandelions a couple of times. The first was an unmitigated disaster, as their unbelievable bitterness ruined an entire meal: leaching acrid chemicals into the sauce and turning my mouth so far inside-out from the first bite that I spent the rest of the evening scrubbing the insides of my cheeks almost raw with a toothbrush.

But recently, I decided that they deserved a second chance. So, arming ourselves with a little research, as well as a precautionary array of tongue scrubbing devices, we set about turning a large bunch of sandy weeds into a delicious side dish. Happily, after a sound preliminary blanching, the outcome was an enormous improvement on our first, rash experiment. And, as part of a scrumptious early fall dinner of veal chop, rich buttery rosemary-brandy cream sauce, and a frankly beautiful (if I do say so myself) roast turnip, I was delighted to concede that eating weeds can, in fact, be very enjoyable.

Of course, the world needs another basic veal chop recipe like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, needs more frickin’ hipsters, but we have been on kind of a veal chop kick since we returned from Argentina in the spring. It’s an expensive habit for sure now we’re back, but in Buenos Aires, as with all kinds of cattle products, veal is very reasonably priced and is treated with a similar degree of skill as the more famous beef.

One particular veal dish stands out. At the rather trendy-looking Grappa restaurant in the Palermo “Hollywood’ district of BA, Amy had a spectacular grilled veal chop slathered with one of the most mushroomy sauces imaginable. It was as if entire sacks of porcini mushrooms had been somehow liquefied on her plate. The menu described it simply as a chuleta de ternera con crema de hongos and our pathetic (certainly for food and menus) dictionary couldn’t tell us what hongos are.

Still, we knew that we liked them and they were delicious, not to mention that hongos is just a fun word to say, so a couple of days after eating said dish, perusing the shelves of a local almacen, we were excited to find large bags of dried Chilean hongos at rock-bottom prices. It was only after we returned to Brooklyn that we learned that hongos translates as “fungus”, but even with a couple of bags of hongos in our pantry, we’re still not exactly sure what kind of fungus we are the owners of. They look and taste very similar to porcini, so we’re assuming that they are a related species, but research into the differences between hongos and setas (wild mushrooms in Spanish) returns no categorical answer except that taxonomically, mushrooms are fungi and fungi are mushrooms. However, one almost helpful Argentine website informed us that, fungus usually refers either to inedible mushrooms, or to the large (usually subterranean) organism of which the mushroom is but the visible, and gatherable, part. To turn the example above ground, the fungus is the apple tree, the mushroom is the apple.

Anyway, though we, like the fungus, might still be in the dark about many micological issues, we can assure you that should you find hongos on the menu anywhere in the Spanish speaking world, you should eat them, especially if paired with veal and a delicious buttery sauce.

Grappa
El Salvador 5802 – Palermo Hollywood, Buenos Aires
T: 4899-2577
E: grappacantina@fibertel.com.ar
Every day 12noon to 1.30 a.m.

As Odysseus was nearly drawn to his destruction on the rocks by the enchanting song of the sirens, so your hardy WANF voyagers were almost powerless to resist breaking themselves on the plentiful tables of Uruguay. However, unlike Homer’s hero, for whom women were the main weakness throughout his epic peregrinations, during our recent travels in South America, we found that grilled organs, specifically sweetbreads, are the likely source of our eventual ruin.

A comparatively short (by Odysseian standards) three-hour Buquebus ferry ride from Buenos Aires across the Mar del Plata – the enormously wide and constantly brown estuary of the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) – lies Uruguay’s capital and largest city, Montevideo. Arriving by water feels delightfully old-fashioned, and it allows the visitor to get a sense of the lie of the land in a way that a plane ride cannot. Rather than the confusing meander through a city’s outskirts on the way in from the airport, the city slowly revealed itself to us as we approached it by sea, face-first, so that we could see the way it had been built, outwards from the port.

Centered on the port is Montevideo’s cuidad vieja (old town), which with its faded colonial glory and salty night-time reputation, is immediately charming to the visitor. Only the giant ultra-modern cruise ship towering over everything prevented us from wondering if the ferry hadn’t also been a time machine. The hub of the old town is the Mercado del Puerto, a magnificent Victorian-era market with a skylit roof supported by wrought iron pillars, where the air is thick with the thwack of cleaver on meat, the cries of competing vendors and the sooty warblings of its resident pigeons. It no longer serves as a venue for trading fresh produce, a fact that might be sad if it weren’t now a giant parilla (grill/barbecue) serving all manner of traditional Uruguayan meaty preparations.

More accurately, there are actually a bunch of different parillas within the mercado all in friendly and typically laid-back Uruguayan-style competition with one another for the title of best in the city. We spent a good fifteen minutes cagily circling the mercado trying to figure out some way of discerning which might be leading this contest. After inspecting rack upon similar rack of sizzling meats, we decided to let demographics be our guide and plumped for Estancia del Puerto, the place with the fewest available seats (2), and the most drunken dudes with guitars serenading the patrons (1).

We had left Buenos Aires on a very early morning ferry and, having eaten nothing on the journey, arrived in Montevideo in a terrible, bleary-eyed state of hunger. The only way out of which seemed to be robust servings of charred beast. Happily then, the menu was the most extensive of its kind we have ever seen, containing more than eight choices of steak, five of sausage, 3 or 4 matambres (stuffed beef rolls), chicken, pork, and an intimidating selection of organ meats, not to mention a full range of pasta, salads and sides, in both full or half portions. Understanding, by this point in our carnivorous odyssey, that servings tended to be of a generous nature in this part of the world, we ordered half portions of mollejones (sweetbreads), morcilla (blood sausage), lechon (suckling pig), the potentially gruesome chotos/chinchulines (guts), and a bottle of typically Uruguayan tannat (red wine), in the hope that this might save room for further sampling of the menu.

Since, like all good grills, only certain sections of this parilla were used to actually cook meat, with others functioning as warming areas for ready-to-serve meats, we were presented with our choices within seconds, and what a presentation! No garnish, no sides of vegetables, no wasted real estate at all, just meat on plates and silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, with deep, communal tubs of chimichurri and salsa criolla scattered around the bar. We dived in recklessly.

The star of the show was the lechon, or milk-fed baby pig, which was heavenly. So good in fact, that were it not for the perfectly crispy skin overlying a thin-layer of incredibly sweet fat, and the moist, almost milky-tasting, flesh of unweaned piglet, it would truly be a barbaric dish. But our pause for reflection on the plight of young pork was brief as we tore into the golden beauty of the sweetbreads, the complex spices of the morcilla, and the (surprisingly) wonderful crunchy texture and minerally-tasting joy of the chinchulines. It all tasted to us like no meat had before, even the condiments had a singular tang and freshness to them that we found a step-up from those we’d had earlier in the week. And it seems we were not alone in this.

Glancing up at our surroundings and fellow diners as we approached fullness, it was comforting to see that everyone else was head-down and going full-bore into their lunches too. And who could blame them? Like the irresistible song of the sirens, the evocative combination of wood-smokey atmosphere, beautiful Victorian architecture, and the surround-sound effect of wall-to-wall sizzling would surely stir the soul of any meat-lover and be ruinous to the anti-meat resolve of even the most hardcore vegetarian.

Mercado del Puerto
Rambla 25 Agosto de 1825 y Perez Castellano,
Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay
Mercado del Puerto online

Juan Camilo took us to the place he feels is the most authentic and best Colombian restaurant in the Colombian section of the incredible ethnic diversity that is the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Cositas Ricas. In order not to make the podcast redundant, I will not write a lengthy description of our experience that day - only a few important details - but suffice it to say that Amy and I learned a great deal about Colombian food over the course of our meal and now understand that we have barely scratched the surface of an exciting and delicious food-culture.

Naturally, I tried their bandeja paisa, the “super bandeja”, and Amy had the similar, but different, palomilla a la parilla (it comes without chorizo or chicharron), after starting with caldo de castillo or short-rib soup (said to be the perfect cure for a hangover), and several Colombian meat empanadas with aji (a spicy, vinegary condiment) as appetizers. Juan Camilo ordered tiritas de lomo (grilled pork ribs), and one of our companions, Don, in a bid to be different, had an enormous plate of the restaurant’s version of surf & turf: chicken and spicy shrimp.

We must take this opportunity to thank Juan Camilo for generously taking the time to share his country’s food and culture with us that afternoon in Jackson Heights, and for his good humor and forebearance in agreeing to the interview that made this podcast.

Sadly, Cositas Ricas has no website of its own, but you can check out their menu here. If you are ever in the vicinity of Jackson Heights and have a serious hunger (and I mean serious otherwise you probably shouldn’t bother), we strongly encourage you to check this place out, or indeed any of the hundreds of restaurants and food outlets in this neighborhood. The sheer diversity is staggering and the myriad aromas are enough to make anyone salivate.

Note on Colombian Juices
I’m still working on figuring out the English names for some of the fruit we drank as juice at Cositas Ricas, but here are some links that might help you visualize what we are talking about: Coruba; Lulo; Maracuya

Have you ever eaten something so fabulous, so lucious, so decadent that you almost felt the need to run to confession (to confess your indulgent food “sins”), say three Hail Mary’s (that’s for you Catholics out there) and pray really hard that you can zip your jeans up again? Ok, a bit exaggerated, but looking back, this is a bit how my first real taste of lardo made me feel.

Now many of you may be scratching your head wondering, “Lardo? Wait, did she mean to write that? Maybe she mean Lardons? Surely she’s not talking about Lard?” Well, kids, hold on to your Spanx-controlled muffin-top, I am talking about lard. But lardo ain’t just any old lard… it’s special lard. Very, very, very special lard.

In our few trips to Italy over the past couple of years, lardo graced our palates a few times, but only in very small quantites (as it should!). The first time we ate it – in Modena, Italy – we were, sadly, so fiercely hungover that we couldn’t really appreciate it. However, this saved us from eating what was an obscene amount of it – slathered in thin ribbons over a beautiful 12 inch thin-crust pizza and topped with the town’s famous aged balsamic.

Apologies for the awful, 1970s plate. I’m blaming the in-laws.

Pearly-white inside and darker and grainy at the edges, lardo, which is basically salt-cured pig fat flavored with rosemary (and occasionally other herbs), is made throughout Italy, though the most famous – lardo di Colonata – is produced only in Colonata, a small, isolated Tuscan town, where the pigs are fed on a steady diet of acorns to better flavor their fat.

In some areas of northern Italy, lardo is used as the cooking fat in which soffrito is sauteed in the preparation of a sugo or ragu, but like other salume, it is often eaten in thin, bite-sized pieces and allowed to melt on the tongue, before being washed down with an effervescent white wine. Which is how, if you can find yourself some, you should try it for the first time. Yes, that’s right, cured pigs’ fat straight-up. No crackers, no bread, no olives. Just fat and your tongue in perfect harmony. It really does melt.

It’s unlikely that we ate lardo di Colonata that day, as the real thing is almost as expensive as the most highly-prized prosciutto, but what we had was still beautifully perfumed of bacon & rosemary, and incredibly rich & luscious tasting, and probably quite pricey in its own right. With the crackle of the pizza crust underneath and the honey sweetness of an ancient balsamic, it was one of the most texturally amazing things I’ve ever put in my mouth, sober, drunk or hungover.

Occasionally, in the intervening year, we’ve complained of a lack of lardo in our lives, but we were completely shocked to find it at a local specialty foods store over the summer – and it was cheap too! They had about half a pound left, and we bought the whole thing, fearing that we might not find it ever again outside of Italy. Fortunately, because it’s cured, it has a good long shelf-life, so we’re taking it easy to make sure we don’t drop dead from cholesterol-related disease before we’re done eating it.

I think we need to do more research into recipes that call for lardo, because apart from taking it neat, so far we’ve only recreated that decadent pizza from Modena. There’s a recipe below, but the sad thing is, if you don’t have any lardo or anywhere that sells it, and you don’t have a 25 year old balsamic vinegar to top it with, that recipe might not be much use. Still, you can aspire to collect these ingredients, and trust me, when you find them, make this pizza and you’ll be glad you waited for it. It might be the most incredible pizza that ever passes your lips.

Lardo Pizza with Wilted Radicchio & Onion

For an absolutely tried & tested, nailed-on recipe for the perfect thin-crust pizza dough read this previous post: Remembering Italy with Thin-Crust Pizza. To get the finest aged balsamic vinegar available in North American delivered to your door, click here, or if you don’t want to buy the good stuff, you can reduce the ordinary kind in a saucepan until consistency resembles molasses.

Unfortunately, Italian lardo is not exported to America. The American Department of Agriculture wants it heated to 156 F (69 C) before it is sold to consumers, but at that point, the fat would start melting, and it would no longer be lardo. However, we found some domestically produced lardo completely by chance in a local store, so you may get lucky somewhere along the line. And while it is widely thought that Italian lardo is greatly superior to any made domestically because it is aged for so much longer, we found US lardo to be very acceptable indeed. Your best bet if you don’t have any awesome gourmet food stores nearby, and this may be even trickier, is to get friendly with your local organic hog farmer and have him save you some back fat from best fed pig on his farm, then cure your own pig fat! Why not? Good luck!

Ingredients & Recipe

1lb fresh pizza dough

1/2 head of radicchio di Chioggia (regular round, red radicchio), shredded finely

1/2 spanish (yellow) onion, finely sliced

2tbsp good olive oil

1 pinch kosher salt

- Sweat radicchio and onion until soft and decorate your pizza with it.

- Then, place thinly-sliced lardo on top and fire pizza in the oven. Remove and dress immediately with balsamic vinegar.

- Savor every mouthful.

Gentle readers, please sympathize with me, for I, like a man who’s been dining exclusively on centipedes, have the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth. That this humiliation and defeat arrived, to twist a metaphor, at the hands of nothing more sinister than a pig’s foot, has only served to exacerbate these feelings of embarrassment and self-loathing.

Those of you already somewhat familiar with our body of work here at We Are Never Full may know that we are always ready to face down even the hardiest gastronomic challenges, frequently with all-to scant regard for liver, waistline and coronary arteries. It’s a kind of culinary cockiness and machismo that, strangely enough, we find so odious in TV food tools like Guy Fieri. I sincerely hope that this foolish trend, which continued during our recent trip to Montreal, has no lasting repercussions on our health.

Having heard about the restaurant Au Pied de Cochon (literally, at the foot of the pig) and its joyful, some may say reckless, use of duck and pork fat (& offal) in the preparation of traditional French and Quebecois dishes, plus several unique heart-stopping creations, we figured that it sounded like the kind of place we should visit.

“…a green salad tossed in warm, duck-fat vinaigrette and topped with a fritter of trotter mush…”

The red sign near the entrance cautioning patrons to be careful on the greasy floor should have been taken as warning, as should the glazed and listless gazes of departing patrons. Heedless, we proceeded to order the sliced tongue and the crispy PDC salad as starters. The former, which was beef tongue, sat nicely in our comfort zone. Meltingly tender and served with a butter-finished veal stock sauce and garnished with sliced cornichons for a texturally-satisfying crunch. We were intrigued by the latter when the waiter explained that it was basically a green salad tossed in warm, duck-fat vinaigrette and topped with a fritter of trotter mush. Yes, that’s right – the nerves, cartilage and natural gelatin from the pig’s foot, mashed together and seasoned, then breaded and deep-fried. Not a salad for dieters, but amazing tasting, wonderful mouth-feel, with the prince of vinaigrettes.

That we had ordered mains after this was our first major mistake, and the second was that one of them happened to be the pied de cochon with foie gras. (The fact that the other was a large tranche of foie gras with a side of poutine (more on this in a later post) barely registered.) Few are the times in my life that I have had a plate of food put in front of me and I have suddenly felt weak, timid and overawed – even at the most trying times I usually soldier bravely on before leaving the table bloated and sweaty – but, on this occasion I was defeated the moment I was served.

“…like the governor of a provincial state thrust into the spotlight of CBS News … I was suddenly way out of my depth and performed pathetically, embarrassing myself in the process.”

Never before have I even seen a plate of food that large for one person, let alone been prompted to eat it. It was gigantic. The pigs foot was large – maybe a foot long - and deep-fried, though that of itself caused little consternation as it was mostly bone, and was topped with a 4oz slice of seared foie gras, again, excessive, but perhaps not fear-inducing exactly. What really intimidated me was that the trotter sat on an inch-deep bed of creamy mashed potatoes and between two foot-long trenches – for that’s what they were – of button mushrooms and spinach in a cream and butter sauce. I would estimate there were two 6oz boxes of button mushrooms plus a cup of cream on the plate, and the whole thing must have weighed about 5lbs and could have served six adults. What was I to do in the face of such magnitude?

You’re right, I could have plowed in and tried to eat it all, and then admitted defeat gracefully later on. I could also have harangued the waiter for not giving me any idea of what a fool I was making of myself, but frankly, my spirit was broken. You see, I’ve always managed to perform creditably at the table before, even if I have ultimately been overwhelmed, but, like the governor of a provincial state thrust into the spotlight of CBS News for the first time, I was suddenly way out of my depth and performed pathetically, embarrassing myself in the process.

As these photos attest, I was barely able to make a dent in it, and in truth, it was my wife who ate the lion’s share. I had been psyched out and failed to regain my composure. Some would say, with good reason, that it was a shameful waste of food, but I prefer to think of it as a lesson in humility.

Indeed, chatting with the maitre d’ later on over calvados (one of the few things that can cut through thick layers of duck fat) I learned that this was Martin Picard, the owner’s, dastardly plan for this dish, — that no-one who orders it leaves unscarred. Everyone is dominated by it and no-one gets anywhere near cleaning their plate. So confident are they at Au Pied de Cochon of their ability to manifest gluttony so vaingloriously that they number every deep-fried pig’s foot they serve. Mine was 5141. So from now on, like a retired GI with a talisman made of shrapnel, I shall wear that number with pride and humility, in place of a hospital bracelet during the bypass surgery I expect to now need.

Au Pied de Cochon
536 avenue Duluth Est
Montréal, QC H2L 1A9, Canada
(514) 281-1114

Check out some other posts you might enjoy:

• Thursday, It’s Gloria Day
• Quickest Meal to Make… Ever – Pasta con Tonno
• Authentic Tortilla Soup
• South African Hot Toddies

We are fortunate enough to live in a city with a ridiculous amount of diversity when it comes to restaurants, and one place we frequent often is a ‘hip’ Colombian restaurant (what the hell, it is Brooklyn). When we go there it’s because of two things: 1) We’re friggin starving and are ready to eat till we drop and 2) we want to get drunk. They have very strong drinks, and the food, shall we say, ain’t exactly light either. Maybe the strong drinks are to help your appetite and enable you to eat more?

One of the favorite menu items is the very popular and typical Colombian dish Bandeja Paisa. Yes, I wasn’t lying when I called it a “gut buster”. There is no way in hell I’m not unbuttoning my jeans when I decide to order this one. Originating from northwestern Colombia (the province of Antioquia), this dish’s name stems from bandeja, meaning tray or platter, and what the people of the region are known as, paisas, or country-folk. The idea is that this mixed platter would be eaten at lunchtime after a hard morning working in the fields and would be followed (like there would be a choice!) by a lengthy siesta before anything resembling work could resume.

In 2005 the Colombian government planned to make bandeja paisa the national dish, but instead with the name of bandeja montañera (mountain tray). This move was actually faced with widespread opposition, citing that only a small percentage of the population actually eats bandeja (perhaps unsurprisingly, or they’d all be in cardiac arrest and/or 500lbs). However, the government persisted and now you can find all sorts of Colombian tourism paraphernalia advertising bandeja as the national dish – perhaps in a daring bid to encourage obese gringos to head on down for a feast…?

Anyway, like many traditional dishes the exact combination of ingredients/items often differs depending on who you ask, but, again, like many traditional dishes, there are a number of ingredients that all versions contain. Arepa (a thin shallow-fried corn cake), grilled marinated skirt steak, pork chicharron (crispy, deep-fried pork belly cracklins), a fried egg, chorizo, red beans (stewed red beans) and rice. [Note: some versions contain other foods including morcilla (blood sausage), sweet fried plantains, avocado, vinegary shredded red cabbage salad, fried potatoes, tomato sauce, and hogao (aka criollo sauce made with onions, tomatoes, pepper, oregano, cumin, and salt).] We combined our beans with the chorizo, substituted the rice with yucca fries, and cut the richness of the meal with the traditional Colombian condiment, aji.

Estimates vary, but it’s a meal of between 1,500-1,800 calories (that’s most of your daily intake), and yes, that’s right, and it’s all eaten for lunch. I, who can hardly sit up straight at my desk after a sandwich and an apple for my midday repast, find it almost impossible to imagine engaging in manual labor even after only half a plate of this magnitude. Combine this with the nearly year-round equatorial heat that part of Colombia enjoys, and I’d be retiring to my hammock for forty (or more) winks, which is why we tend to save up our bandeja eating for the colder months, and happily for us (but not our cardiologist) those months are on the way. So, get out the largest plate you own, starve yourself for a couple of days ahead of time, consider cancelling your plans for the afternoon, and get stuck into a bandeja paisa - it’s only your waistline at risk!

Bandeja Paisa

So, because this is a meal made up of many constituent parts, and because, with our version, we tinkered with the traditional ingredients a bit, what follows is basically a run-down of recipes starting with the most time-consuming preparations.

Stewed Pinto/Red Beans with Chorizo
See this recipe here we made a while back.

Yucca Fries

• 1 medium sized yucca (cassava), peeled and cut into 1/4inch (1cm) rings or half-moons
• 2 cups vegetable oil, heated to 350-375F
• 1tsp kosher salt
• Fry yucca rings until golden and crispy. Remove to plate covered with paper towels to drain, and sprinkle with salt.
• Keep warm in oven if not eating immediately as they get chewy and tough if left to cool

Skirt Steak

• Sprinkle steak lightly with salt, pepper and rub generously with sliced garlic.
• Marinate in olive oil until ready to grill.
• Heat skillet or grill to screaming hot. Brush marinade off steaks and grill on each side for about 2-3 minutes (depending on thickness – use poke test regularly) for a nice medium-rare.
• Cover with foil and allow to rest for 5-10minutes.

Shredded Red Cabbage Salad

• Shred or finely slice 5-6oz red cabbage after removing tough outer leaves
• Put cabbage in a bowl and mix with 3tbsp granulated sugar, 1tsp kosher salt and 1/2cup white vinegar
• Allow to marinate and grow together for as long as a couple of days.

Colombian Arepas

• 1 cup masa harina (fine cornmeal flour)
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 4oz vegetable oil
• combine corn flour, water and salt into a sticky dough
• make a ball out of some of the dough and roll into a circle about 4-5inches across and 1/4 thick
• heat 1tbsp oil at a time, and fry dough circles until golden and crispy
• drain on paper towels, then dress with butter/margarine and serve immediately while still warm

Spicy Colombian Aji

• 1 sweet pepper, finely diced
• 2 jalapenos, finely diced and de-seeded
• 3 small cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 onion, finely diced
• 10-15 stems cilantro, finely diced
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• Combine all these ingredients together and let sit for at least an hour or as long as 2 days for the flavors to improve

Pork Chicharrones
We used the great recipe we found at Nikas Culinaria, and encourage you to do likewise.

Then, combine all this goodness on a plate (we suggest you share it with at least one other person unless you want to drift into a food coma you may never come out of) and enjoy with the latin cocktail of your choice (avoid beer, it makes everything swell up), or perhaps, as the Colombians would, accompany it with a few shots of aguardiente!

Thank you to about.com for featuring this post in their Colombian food section.

Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton’s widely-revered nouveau American place on East 1st Street has been called a lot of things since it opened in 1999 – among them, “phenomenal” and “inspired” (NYMagazine), “wonderful food” (BlogSoop.com) and “immediate success” (NYC.com), and rightly so, in my humble opinion. Generally, we aren’t attracted to, can’t afford, and don’t really desire to visit big-name chef’s big-name restaurants and pay big-name prices for big-name signature dishes, all the while praying for the merest glimpse of said big-name chef, and this is precisely why our first review of a well-known (outside of NYC) restaurant is Prune and not Mesa Grill, Babbo, or Jean-Georges.

Owner and chef Gabrielle Hamilton, my wife’s new girl-crush, describes her aim when she started Prune as wanting “…an unassuming way to slip into the shallow end of the pool of New York City restaurants”, and she appears to have achieved this in Prune’s unassuming feel, no more than 10 tables, the austere, French-brasserie-style decor, and the small menu. Of course, Hamilton has also taken the restaurant scene by storm, serving simple, tasty dishes with a gusto that befits their often hearty, gamey ingredients, and in doing so, she has been widely emulated.

In his forward to Fergus Henderson’s St. John Bar and Restaurant cookbook The Whole Beast: Eating Nose to Nail, Anthony Bourdain says that Henderson’s signature dish of roasted veal marrow bones with parsley salad would be his last meal should he find himself moments away from the electric chair, adding that he was delighted upon finding an exact recreation of this in New York because he felt he had found a “kindred-spirit” who “gets it” – namely, Gabrielle Hamilton. This should not imply that Hamilton simply serves excellent knock-offs of other people’s food, but rather that the rediscovery of unpretentious, traditional dishes made from less popular cuts is now a growing trend in the UK and US because of people like Henderson and Hamilton.

Readers of this blog with any sense of our body of work and culinary proclivities will know that while we do not disdain chicken breasts and filet mignons, we are interested in exploring the eating and cooking of other parts of the beast, not because we are food fashion conscious, but rather because we understand that it takes more skill to make offal taste good than it does to present a fat fillet, and, as we said in our first podcast on rabbit, we believe it’s foolish and represents a small-minded snobbery to restrict yourself to prime cuts of the chicken, cow and pig. So, a trip to Prune was long overdue.

Amy chose the deep-fried sweetbreads (described by one peevish restaurant reviewer as Kentucky Fried sweetbreads) with bacon and a caper-lemon butter sauce, while I made like Bourdain and chose the veal marrow bones with parsley salad. The sweetbreads resembled nothing I’ve seen at KFC and, frankly, such a description is insulting. They were crispy, light, and tender inside with a sauce that had the tangy flavor of lemon and capers rounded out with the ineffable goodness that is a lot of butter. The marrow bones initially appeared slightly intimidating, especially when served with a small ramekin of what looked like fleur de sel, but armed with nothing but a teaspoon we bravely attacked them, bringing forth an amazingly translucent animal fat/juice along with the soft, gloopy, simultaneously sweet and savory wonder that is bone-marrow. Sucking the bones proved irresistible so tasty were they, and in the quest for that one last morsel greasy fingers slipped, knocking salt ramekin and contents onto an alarmed, but gracious adjacent diner. “But, what of the parsley salad?”, I hear you say. Well, of course, it was delicious too. A simple dressing of oil and lemon juice over a salad of flat-leaf parsley, thinly-sliced shallot and crunchy bites of cornichons (baby gherkins) complimented the rich and glutinous bone marrow perfectly. I can imagine making this salad with virtually any kind of roasted or grilled red meat or game, and I would guess we’ll be recreating it on these pages very soon.

While we readied ourselves for the arrival of our main courses, we struck up a conversation with two of our fellow diners (on the opposite side to those we had just showered with expensive salt). James, a soon-to-be food journal publisher from London, and his native New Yorker companion, Brian, had eaten at Prune before and while they also had the sweetbreads to start, they had the monkfish liver with warm buttered toasts in place of our marrow bones. “It’s quite oily and, er, liverish.” was James’ assessment of the latter dish, and you can’t argue with that.

As our main dishes arrived, Brian and James were experimenting with a very yellow wine from south-west France that was fermented in open barrels allowing it to oxidize and develop a more astringent flavor. The waiter described it as the “wild-west of wine-making” which, to anyone with the briefest understanding of the American frontier, would have connoted the brawny perfume of unwashed cowboys, saddle-grease and rotting chuck-steak. Happily for our erstwhile companions, it was only rather tart, like a young scrumpy cider, but they found it not to their taste, offering us a go on it, perhaps as a way of getting rid the quicker. I could have drunk a glass of it, but a bottle would likely have turned my mouth inside out.

Amy had ordered the rabbit in vinegar sauce and I the grilled quail with braised escarole and raisins on the vine for our main courses. My quails were perfectly grilled. Crispy-skinned with a hint of heat from red pepper flakes, but beautifully pink and moist inside. They were gamey and delicate, more like squab than any quail I’ve had before. Amy’s rabbit was, well, better than the one we made recently (even though that was very good) perhaps because of the oodles of butter in the sweet and sour vinegar sauce which also contained some warm whole cornichons — an unexpected, but highly successful addition. Our side dish of steamed asparagus tips (which could have used a little salt) came with an egg yolk (the white having been cut away) for dipping which we both thought was ingenious and delicious.

Meanwhile, James and Brian were enjoying their mains, respectively steamed razor clams with an almond-chili picada, and grilled branzino with fennel oil and gros sel. The clams and fish both looked excellent, especially the branzino which was charred to a dark, rich patina on the outside but remained white, flaky and moist on the inside. Their side dish was the particularly unusual boiled fennel shoots, which had a crunchy, wholesomeness rarely found in restaurant side dishes where the flavor of vegetables is usually masked by garlic, spice or a sauce.

As we concluded our meal with a distinctly average chocolate cake that was too dry, but with two excellent digestifs – mine an eaux de vie from Oregon made from pears, and Amy’s, her favorite, sambuca, we chatted some more with James and Brian about food and food culture in Britain and America. James argued that he thought Britain was slightly ahead of the states in terms of regaining its endemic food culture and reviving typical products. Perhaps it’s true that America, as a whole, has yet to rediscover its culinary roots and return to them in the whole-hearted way the British have – though many areas of the East and West coasts have been doing this for some time. But I would argue that any restaurant, chef or restaurateur who wishes to focus on quality local ingredients and traditional techniques should first eat at Prune and see how deliciously it can be done. Emulation is no bad thing if you get it bang on, and, for me, I would be perfectly happy if I never got to eat Fergus Henderson’s original bone-marrow dish at St. John in London, if I could dine on perfect knock-offs like Gabrielle Hamilton’s twenty minutes from my front door.

I think we’ll let the debate about where gastronomy is and should be heading, who’s in the lead, and who’s falling behind rage elsewhere. Our blog is not the forum for food snobs to poke holes in the successes and failures of various chefs, rather it is the place where we honestly appraise meals we’ve eaten whether we’ve cooked them ourselves or enjoyed the work of others. In this case, I cannot speak highly enough of our visit to Prune and I would encourage you all to give it a try if you’re prepared to be a little adventurous in your eating. This isn’t grilled locusts in peri-peri, this is honest-to-goodness food, simply prepared and given the respect it is due.

Although we haven’t made roasted bone marrow yet in our little kitchen, two food-blog friends did and I think they both look absolutely delicious. You can check out the first recipe here and please visit our friend Claudia’s Fergus Henderson recipe here.

Prune, 54 East 1st Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, New York. F, V trains to 2nd Avenue/Houston or 6 train to Bleeker/Lafayette. Reservations are recommended. Lunch 11:30 – 3:00 p.m. Mon-Fri; Dinner 6:00 – 11:00 p.m. Mon-Thur, 6:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. Fri-Sat, 5:00 – 10:00 p.m. Sun; Brunch 10:00 – 3:30 p.m. Sat-Sun.

Last year, among the many beautiful and delicious places we visited was the affluent and storied Piedmontese town of Alba. The countryside surrounding Alba is literally bursting with good things – Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera and Dolcetto wines, thermal and freshwater springs, and multifarious game, but the town’s most famous product, and rightly so, is the white truffle. Though we only stopped in to Alba for an all-too-brief visit, we wanted to make the most of our time there. So, after a gentle stroll around admiring the architecture, we quickly got down to brass tacks. We scoured the town for its famous food & beverage products, and either ate or drank them on the spot or purchased some to consume later, or both. In one store we bought bottles of the four principal varieties of local wines, and in another we bought a small jar of strawberry-sized black truffles, a 100ml vial of truffle oil (complete with small lump of white truffle), a 50ml squeezy-tube of white truffle puree, and another small jar of white truffle mousse. It was a targeted strike of almost military precision and I am very proud that we were so single-minded about it, especially after a bottle of wine and a large lunch. Indeed, now that we’re back in the US, where Albanese products are not only scarce but terrifyingy-priced, I am even more delighted with the foresight and commitment we demonstrated that day.

Of all the good ideas out there, two of the best (at least in my opinion) are: the thought that whatever the soil-coated, lumpy tumescence was that a pig was urgently digging up at the base of an oak tree was worth further investigation; and the thought of using said ugly growth to flavor butter. I should add that neither of those ideas were mine, yet I support them both vigorously. It is clear to me now that while pigs are not always particularly discerning in their choice of foodstuff – and I do not take many of my dietary decisions based on their proclivities – they make an extraordinarily good choice when they choose to root for truffles. And, if you’ve never eaten a truffle before, I am hereby going on the record and saying that they are as good as people say they are, probably better. They are one of the best things I have ever put in my mouth and I enjoy them more each time I have them. Potentially, they are the basis for a lasting and bankrupting addiction.

However, we weren’t able to come away from Alba with quite the volume of truffles and truffle-products that I would have liked, and sadly, I doubt that we’ll manage to make them last until we’re able to visit the town again. But instead of dwelling on this maudlin fact, we decided to make the most of what we had brought back with us and recently treated ourselves to a slap-up steak dinner that celebrated our Albanese truffles appropriately. We prepared a black & white truffle compound butter to go with our (perfectly-cooked) steak, and the result was possibly the richest and most decadent thing I could have imagined (see recipe below).

If you come across some reasonably-priced truffles anywhere, buy them. If you find any truffles anywhere, in fact, buy them, even if it requires some complex re-financing of other property. You will not regret it. If you can’t find truffles, or have nothing of worth to mortgage, you can make compound butters out of all kinds of things. Previously, we’ve made one with garlic and tarragon, and it was pretty darn delicious, and apparently, crushed walnuts and a dash of walnut oil are also very acceptable. I would suggest you make at least one kind of compound butter very soon to top your favorite cut of steak. It’s exceedingly good.

Black & White Truffle Compound Butter

1 stick unsalted, softened butter
1 small black truffle, chopped or shaved finely
1 tbsp white truffle paste
pinch of black pepper

Allow butter to soften out of fridge until very pliable. Unwrap it and put it in a mixing bowl. Add the truffles. Get your favorite wooden spoon and cream butter and truffles together until thoroughly combined. Take a spatula and scoop butter into a piece of plastic wrap leaving at least an inch of room at the ends. Roll-up butter in wrap and twist at ends to tighten wrap around butter. You should have something that resembles a short, wide sausage. Place compound butter wrap in freezer for 25 minutes before using it to allow it to set up. Slicing it onto your steak is also easier if butter is almost frozen. [If you're not intending to eat the butter immediately, you can just place it in the fridge.] Slice rounds of truffled butter onto your warm steak or potatoes and enjoy!