Olympic goooooold!

I'm taking a moment out of Olympic fever to say: it has been a fantastic week of hockey. It's like watching a week and a half chock-full of All-Star games. One exciting game after another, and as the weekend wraps up, we're down to the final two games - Finland plays Slovakia tonight for the bronze; and it's team U.S.A. vs. Canada for the gold tomorrow.

My favorite team is the Blackhawks. They sent six players to the Olympics: Tomas Kopecky and Marian Hossa for Slovakia; Brent Seabrook, Duncan Keith, and Jonathan Toews for Canada; and Patrick Kane for the U.S. - which means that at least four, if not all six, will come home with Olympic medals. Very exciting for a hot, young team, and hopefully the two-week break will not affect their Stanley Cup chances this spring. The team is doing great this season, and I'm very optimistic that this could be the Blackhawks' year in the spotlight!

If you've never watched hockey before, this is your weekend to do it. Finland plays Slovakia tonight at 7pm PST/10pm EST; and the gold medal game is Sunday afternoon at 12:15pm PST/3:15pm EST. (NBC/NBC affiliates, check local listings).

If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere...

View from Top of the Rock

New York City

February 12, 2010

One among the bustle

Evening, Times Square

February 2010

New York City

Tally ho!

Arms and Armor Hall

Metropolitan Museum of New York

February 2010

One of my very favorite books as a child was From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. This marvelous book is the tale of young Claudia Kincaid, who decides she wants to run away, but feels one must have a goal that one runs away to. So she decides that she will run away to live in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and she brings her younger brother along.

The cover of the book - at least the older paperback editions - shows the two children in their pajamas, each standing on the side of the archway leading into the Arms & Armor Hall, where you see the above mounted horsemen. The first time I ever visited the Met, many years ago when I was in high school, this was the first place in the museum that I wanted to see. It still tickles me pink to see this display, and remember that book.

The Met's armor display has an impressive selection of ornate armors, swords and shields. (I am curious if their sister museum in NYC, The Cloisters, contains more; but I haven't gotten up there - yet.) It is a wonderful place to wander around if you have any amount of interest in arms and armor.

One of my favorite breastplates in the collection is displayed on the west side of the primary Arms & Armor Hall; it contains an etching of mother and child that reminds me of Botticelli's Birth of Venus. While not the most ornate piece of armor in the collection, it displays the incredible craftsmanship of which armorsmiths were capable of producing, hundreds of years before the invention of such things as laser-etching and so forth.

Ornate armor

Metropolitan Museum of New York

February 2010

New York City

Spent the long weekend in NYC - was great until the point halfway through when I got sick. Few things are worse when traveling than getting sick, because no matter how little or big it is, it's going to ruin your trip to some extent. I'll post more pictures in a day or two; but here's one I captured as my flight was on final approach to LaGuardia on a perfect, clear winter's morning.

New York City
11am, February 12th

Parmegiano food experiments

For the past week or so, the Whole Foods blog Whole Story has been looking for original recipes to "find and share fresh and innovative ways" to enjoy Parmigiano Reggiano. With over 900 1,000 entries, I think this will be a tough contest for the judges!

Yes, I did enter a recipe - a dessert entry, actually - which looks like this:

Raspberry and Parmegiano puff pastries with chocolate sauce

Notes before cooking: It is best to cook the puff pastries directly before serving, as they taste best fresh and warm.
 
INGREDIENTS:
- Parmigiano Reggiano
- Puff pastry
- Raspberries, approx. 1/4 cup per person
- Agave nectar
- Nutmeg
- Hot fudge or dark chocolate sauce
- Crème fraiche, whipped cream, or clotted cream (your preference)

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Drizzle agave nectar over raspberries. Add a pinch of nutmeg. Blend enough to coat the berries. Refrigerate while preparing other ingredients. (If you don’t have agave, can substitute sugar, and allow at least 2 hrs to chill.)

Slice puff pastry into either: 2″ squares. Space on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and place in preheated oven to bake approx 12 minutes while you prepare the cheese.

Using smaller-sized shredding holes, shred the Parmigiano Reggiano – you will want approximately 1/4-1/3 cup of shredded cheese per pastry. If you do not have a shredder, you can thinly slice (about 2-3mm) the cheese instead.

When the puff pastry has baked approximately 12 minutes, open the oven, pull the tray forward, and heap shredded Parmigiano over the top of each pastry. (Squares will have puffed up in the middle.) Or, if you’re using slices, evenly cover the top of each pastry. Return pastries to oven and allow to bake another 7-8 minutes. (The melting cheese will cause the middle of the pastry to slightly concave.)

Remove pastries from oven. Individually plate. Drizzle hot fudge/chocolate over the top of each pastry. Dollop a teaspoon of Crème fraiche (or alternative) atop the center of the pastry. Sprinkle with more fresh grated Parmigiano. Spoon raspberries over the top of each pastry, and serve.

—-
Note: You can also roll the puff pastry slightly thinner, coat it with a layer of shredded Parmigiano, and place a second layer of pastry over it. This will create a melted layer of cheese in the middle. If you do so, lower the oven to 350, add the cheese topping at 15 minutes, and bake for approximately 22-25 minutes to ensure pastry is thoroughly cooked.

* * *

But there were two recipes I created in my weekend experimental baking fest that I felt were pretty tasty as well. However, I chose not to enter either because there just were an awful lot of variants on __ parmesan or cheese-baked potatoes.

Since I didn't post them over there, y'all get to enjoy them over here, complete with pictures:

Modern parmesan

The following could be made with veal, chicken or eggplant slices.

Basic tomato sauce:

- 24 oz. can of stewed/roasted tomatoes

- 12 oz. can of tomato paste (get 'Italian style' if you like for flavor)

- herbs of choice

- 2 sticks celery, diced

- several mushrooms, diced or thinly sliced

- 1 small onion or 1 large shallot, diced

Heat 1 Tbsp. olive oil or butter in a pot over low heat; add celery, mushrooms and onions/shallots. Allow to simmer for a couple minutes as you ready the tomato cans.

Pour liquid from can of stewed tomatoes into the celery/onions/mushroom mix. Using your hands, a pair of knives, or a few pulses in a food processor or blender, break the stewed tomatoes into smaller pieces and add to mix as well. Add tomato paste; stir thoroughly to blend.

Add herbs/spices if you have not chosen to use pre-flavored tomatoes or paste. I like to use sweet paprika, freshly ground black pepper, a pinch of sea salt, cayenne, thyme, rosemary, and dried garlic.

Main dish:

- slices of eggplant/chicken/veal

- polenta flour (or corn meal) approx 1/2 cup

- shredded Parmegiano cheese

- grated Parmegiano cheese, 2-4 Tbsp

- depending on how many slices you are making, 1-2 egg whites, lightly beaten

- angel hair pasta

- leeks, broccoli and red peppers, cut to bite-size pieces

Blend the grated Parmegiano and the polenta on a plate.

Coat the eggplant/chicken/veal with egg whites, and lay on the polenta/cheese mix; thoroughly coat slices.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan (approx 1/2-1 Tbsp) with a sliced garlic clove. Once it has warmed, remove the clove and lay the coated slices in the pan. Cook on one side and flip over. Load shredded Parmegiano on top, and put a lid over the pan, so that the cheese will melt as the eggplant/meat finishes cooking.

Toss cooked angel hair pasta with some of the shredded Parmegiano. Put a serving (1/2-2/3 cup) onto a plate; place one of the cooked fillets on top. Spoon a small amount of the tomato sauce on top.

Put 1/2 tsp of olive oil in the same frying pan you cooked the fillets in; add the leeks, broccoli and red peppers. Lightly sauteé; then spoon over your pasta/fillet/sauce.

Lamb chops with Parmegiano potatoes

This recipe is easy enough to take the basic recipe (serving for a single person) and simply multiply by how many people you're looking to serve.

Per person:

- 1 large Yukon gold potato, cubed (NOT peeled)

- 2 or 3 lamb chops

- handful of kale (I prefer Italian, but up to you)

- heaping Tbsp of diced red peppers or loosely chopped grape tomatoes

- 1/2 cup grated Parmegiano cheese

- 1 Tbsp Greek yogurt

- Baharat spice blend¹

Add a pinch of sea salt to water and put potatoes to boil. Will take approx 10-15 minutes to make them fork-tender, depending on how small you cubed them. Once the potatoes have cooked, drain well, do not need to rinse. In a bowl, smash the potatoes with 1 Tbsp of butter and 1/2 cup grated Parmegiano per potato. If you have cream or milk, you may want to add a splash for consistency.

Over medium heat in a frying pan, use a small amount of olive oil or butter. Pat dry the lamp chops and place to cook in the pan. Sprinkle a small amount of the Baharat over the chops. Put lid over pan and allow to cook halfway; once they are half-cooked, use tongs to flip the chops over, and sprinkle a bit more Baharat on the cooked side of the chops. Once they are cooked, remove from pan; sprinkle with some more Baharat and keep covered.

Slice the kale into ribbons. Toss and lightly sauteé in the frying pan. (Do not cook til soggy or overcooked!). May choose to squeeze a touch of lemon over the kale.

Add kale to plate, then put a scoop of the cheesey smashed potatoes on the kale. Sprinkle liberally with some more grated Parmegiano. Arrange 2-3 chops per plate and sprinkle red pepper/tomatotes for garnish/flavor.

For a dipping sauce, blend 1 Tbsp of Greek yogurt with an equal amount of grated cheese, plus a pinch of the Baharat. Spoon onto the side of the plate, or in a ramekin.

¹ If you don't have Baharat, make a simple blend of 2 parts of paprika, to 1 part each of cinnamon, nutmeg, chili or cayenne, and with a pinch of black pepper.

The world after us

How did I not know about this show earlier? History.com's Life After People is sooo cool. You can watch full videos or just quick clips online. If you liked reading Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, you'll love this series!

Snow dibs

Chicago street "snow dibs"
January 11, 2009

I featured this picture on my blog before, and it just never ceases to amaze me how many hits it continues to rack up on Flickr. I guess people have heard of the odd Chicago snow habit known as "parking dibs". At any rate, because of the licensing rights I put on the picture, it has appeared in a variety of blogs and even a newspaper article or two, and today, I was amazed to find it showed up on the NPR's Bog of the Nation!

I love NPR. Talk about a little gleeful moment when I saw that!

Better the fond memory than a pale copy

I'm posting a picture here of one of the kitchen experiments I did this weekend, because the picture turned out nicely and the dish looks tasty.

Strozzapreti with Parmegiano cheese sauce and sauteéd mushrooms

I'll tell you why I am not posting the recipe for this one as usual, however.

A few years ago, I had the great pleasure to visit Switzerland on assignment, and one of the best dishes I had on that trip - and still remember fondly to this day - was at a little Italian restaurant located behind the train station in Bellinzona. The restaurant was called Osteria Pedemonte, located at via Pedemonte 12, Bellinzona-Daro (local telephone 825-3333).

Their menu was short - half a dozen or so dishes to choose from, depending on what ingredients are fresh and local, and they are influenced by Italian, Mediterranean and French cuisines. Their wine list featured a variety of Swiss and other regional wines. (Yes, the Swiss have a thriving wine industry; but most vineyards have such small production that you rarely find Swiss wines outside of Switzerland.)

I had been informed it was porcini season in Ticino (southernmost canton of Switzerland). From late August through October, when the porcini mushrooms are in season, they are so prized that whole families will make a day of it, hiking the local mountainsides looking for them. And oh, gentle readers, like any food, the more fresh it is between being plucked and landing on your plate, the more divine.

So, although I rarely enjoy cream sauces, I decided to try the local specialty, and go with the porcini with cream sauce on strozzapreti. "Strozzapreti", by the way, means "priest chokers". The reasoning for this interesting choice of pasta name has been lost to the ages, but is similar to cavatelli, a tube-shaped hand-rolled pasta. I bought some strozzapreti this weekend at Whole Foods, and noticed that the pasta, if cut in half, has an "S" shape to it.

The dish was sublime, a perfect balance between the exquisite freshness of the mushrooms, the delicate cheese flavors in the sauce, and the marvelous chewiness of the fresh-made strozzapreti. If I had been able to spend more time in Bellinzona, I would have happily re-indulged in the dish.

And I have been trying to find - or create - its equivalent ever since.

Since porcini has not been successfully grown in commercial cultivation, it is generally available in dried form most of the year. Any chef will tell you that dried food products rarely come anywhere near fresh for taste. And while I will readily admit that I often use a porcini mushroom powder to add mushroom flavor to dishes, it is something that you only get fresh in the fall. It has a distinct flavor that is highly prized among mushroom enthusiasts, almost sort of a meaty flavor.

This weekend, among other food experiments, I thought I would give a go at attempting a facsimile of the dish I longingly remember from Bellinzona. Let me first admit that my cream sauce was perhaps too heavy on Parmigiano, so the cheese flavor was a bit overwhelming to my choice of mushrooms. Also, baby bellas (portabellas) have a more beefy flavor, whereas porcini have a flavor more reminiscent of pork or veal. So, alas, as tasty-looking as the dish was, it definitely did not live up to that memorable original.

And it's good that it didn't, after all. It gives me a good excuse (one among many) to return to Bellinzona.

Baby, it's cold outside

Here in Chicago, we barely caught the edge of the big storm that slammed the Mid-Atlantic region. It was enough to give us a bit of snow on Friday and Saturday, and lots of wind all weekend.

I headed down to North Avenue Beach in hopes of catching some stormy-wave action, but forgot that all the wind and water action would simply drive all the surface ice towards shore. The snow/ice crumpled up along the shore, looking calm and flat, but if you looked further out on the lake, there were whitecaps most of the day Saturday.

Most of all, though, it was simply cold, the wind blasting the city. And amazingly, there were some jogging die-hards out there, facing the freezing temperatures.

Chicago
February 2010

A new look for cross-Pacific economy flights

We would all love the opportunity to fly the incredibly posh first class sections of today's airlines. Two years ago, when flying to China on a frequent flyer award ticket, I flew first class - but that particular airline (I won't name names) had nothing on how mind-blowingly luxurious some first class cabins are. Some airlines first-class seats turn into little private cabins, even.

Air New Zealand has come up with a new concept for their economy class seats on the long hauls called a "Skycouch". The arm rests lie fully flush with the backs of the seat, and the seat back reclines and the seats slide forward enough to create a fully flat couch/bed. (see video below)

According to an article on ABC.com, there will be 22 Skycouches per plane, and passengers will be required to buy a block of three seats - "paying standard rates for two of the seats, and approximately half the price of the third seat".

As ticket prices between New Zealand and the west coast of the U.S. are around $800 each, this means a couple or a family of three could pay about $2,000 for flexible seating that is more comfortable. A single business-class ticket for the same route can easily run several thousand dollars, so this is an extremely clever design choice on ANZ's part.

Hopefully other airlines will follow their lead, and find more ways to make long-haul flying (5+ hours) much more comfortable for the economy-class passengers.