In celebration of Canada Day, I thought that it would be fun to share excerpts from Ricardo of “Ricardo and Friends” and now a new magazine that just arrived at my doorstep, simply titled “Ricardo.”  From the page which indicates: “a word from RICARDO”:

FOOD IS LOVE  Food is fascinating.  Chefs are rock stars.  Food shows and networks have gone from niche to mainstream.  Cookbook sales have skyrocketed.  And everyone fancies themselves a restaurant critic.

Not me, I fancy myself a restaurant “appreciator”.  But back to Ricardo….

EASY DOES IT …I’m all about simplicity and authenticity.  After a hectic day, sitting with my wife Brigitte and my three girls at the dining room table and sharing a healthy, memorable meal is the best thing in the world.

FMILY COMES FIRST …My family is my muse.  Recipe ideas stem from my desire to nourish my loved ones.  Where’s there’s nourishment, there’s nurture.

DINNER IS SACRED…Trust me: Knowing that they cherish this time as much as I do-and they might one day carry on the tradition in their own families-is worth every ounce of effort.

I LOVE LOCAL …I’m a fervent believer in farm-to-table eating.  I even take the idea of “local” a step further and look to an area’s geography and history for culinary clues.

As you hold this magazine in your hands, I hope that you’re surrounded with loved ones.  People who love enough to call your family-and that you’ll feed accordingly!

The magazine is full of fabulous photography and recipes and I cannot wait to invite “Ricardo” into my home on our a regular basis.

Kath’s quote: “Cooking is an art and patience a virtue… Careful shopping, fresh ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing – love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist – not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh, the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love.”-Keith Floyd

Love-that is all.

I read this book many years ago, almost all in one sitting.  D and I had driven up to our beach house for one last fall weekend and to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  We have a lovely time on this annual weekend, walking the beach, lying on the deck and watching the stars and cooking up delectable little treats to eat.  But it is also the first Sunday in the NFL Season and D is often anxious to make his way over to the “big cottage” that is equipped with satellite TV.  In the mean while, I will make a cup of tea and cozy up on the deck or if the weather is still really fair, down to the beach for an afternoon read.

Tom Stone lived in Greece for twenty-two years and one summer, was partner and cook of a tavern which catered to the fishermen of the area in the mornings, locals at lunch and tourists in the evening and sometime early into the morning.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter entitled “The Main Course”, with the sub-head of “First Lessons” about the weekend before the Taverna opens for business (page 104-105):

That Saturday morning, I unpacked the rest of my things and began making space for myself in the kitchen.

It was, of course, infinitely smaller than the one I had remembered when I was indulging in my fantasies back in Rethymnon.  Barely large enough to accommodate tiny Demetra and myself, much less Memis and the boys, every available space in it seemed to be utilized twice over.  The walls were lined with shelves, cupboards, plates, glasses, flour, pastas, herbs, matches, old lottery tickets, nails, string, and, among other useless items, a broken telephone.  In the center stood a large working table, and another, smaller table was in a nook leading to the glass-fronted display units.  Along the back wall crouched a huge, blackened electric stove with four hot plates on top.  Next to it was a gas-operated three-burner range.

To the left of the stove, also along the back wall, were two stained, stainless steel sinks and a draining board, and leading off that to the rear, a long, narrow space that Theologos had recently added on in one of his attempts at improvement.  It was a bedroom, dressing and storage room, with two narrow cots that were used both for quick naps and for the boys to sleep at night.  A narrow passageway running behind the walk in refrigerator linked it to the taverna’s single toilet, also accessible from the dining area, and barely larger than those you find on airplanes.  In an alcove was a wash basin and a door that led to the outside storage area, mainly used for empty creates and bottles and for washing and peeling vegetables.

I staked a claim to the small table between the kitchen area and the refrigerated display units and set up my food processor and work area there.  Since Memis was apparently also going to help (at no extra cost, it seemed) and had clearly fallen for one potato cutter, I left him to find a space for it.

One of the features of this and many of my favourite stories of living in a foreign place, are the appendices of recipes in the back of the book:

I was going to fashion these around a skewer to grill but the weather turned cold, so I didn’t want D to have to fire up the barbeque.  There were moist and delicious and reminded me of my own time in Greece.

Kath’s quote: Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher, once advised a young courtier, “If you lived on cabbage, you would not be obliged to flatter the powerful.” To which the courtier replied, “If you flattered the powerful, you would not be obliged to live upon cabbage.” – Diogenes

Love-that is all.

Whilst spending almost a month in Thompson this “spring” teaching cooking and hospitality, I did a lot of reading (when I wasn’t prepping for classes).  When I travel, I always over pack, not clothes but books.  I am always concerned that I will start something and not want to finish it (I give the writer 100 pages to hook me) and then where would I be, miles from home and family without a best friend aka a book?  Now that I have discovered the Kindle app on my tablet though, bulky book packing is a thing of the past.  I am not sure that I will allow on line reading to replace my beloved books (besides I still have a stack waiting for me on my nightstand) but for traveling, Kindle is the ticket.

One of about ten titles that I plowed through was this ditty.  David Lebovitz is a food blogger and photographer that most persons in this field are aware of.  His style is sophisticated and humorous at the same time, noticing and commenting on the subtleties of life in a candid manner.  The sub-title to this book is “Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious and Perplexing City.”  This excerpt is from the section of his book where he explains, how it was to be the he moved to Paris.

I spent almost a year traipsing around the continent after college doing nothing in particular except learning about European cultures, primarily by pulling up a stool or chair and eating what the locals ate.  During that time I made it through almost every country in Europe and tried whatever local delicacies were to be had: oozing raw-milk cheeses in France and hearty, grain-packed breads in Germany; Belgian milk chocolates that when sniffed, could transport you to a dairy farm in the countryside; and crispy-skin fish grilled over gnarled branches in the souks of Istanbul.  And of course, lots of buttery pasties and crusty breads smeared with plenty of golden butter in Paris, the likes of which I had never tasted before. Page 4 Kindle version

…

Fortunately, the European style of cooking was gaining a foothold in northern California, and there was a new appreciation for fine foods and cooking du marché: buying locally produced foods at their peak of freshness, which was a daily ritual in Europe.  It seemed like common sense to me, and simply the right way to eat.  So I packed up and moved to San Francisco, just across the bay from Berkeley, where an exciting culinary revolution was simmering.  And I hoped cumin-scented desserts weren’t a part of it.

Shopping the outdoor markets of the Bay Area, I discovered farmers who were raising things like blood oranges with tangy, wildly colored juices and tight bunches of deep-violet radicchio, which people at the time assumed were runty heads of cabbage.  Laura Chenel was producing European-style moist rounds of fresh goat cheese in Sonoma, which were so unfamiliar that Americans were mistaking them for tofu (especially in Berkeley).  And viticulturists in Napa Valley were producing hearty wines, like Zinfandel and Pinot Noir, which had a great affinity for the newly celebrated regional cuisine, which was liberally seasoned with lots of fragrant garlic, branches of rosemary and thyme, and drizzled with locally produced olive oil-a big improvement over the bland “salad oil” I grew up with.

I was thrilled-no astounded-to find the culinary counterparts to everything I had eaten in Europe.  I savored the hand-dipped ultrafine chocolates of Alice Medrich at Chocolat, which rivalled those I had swooned over in swanky French chocolate boutiques.  I’d line up daily for a boule of pain au leavain that Steve Sullivan would pull out of his fired-up brick oven every morning over at Acme Bread, and was ecstatic to find many of the pungent cheeses I remembered so fondly from Europe stacked up at the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley, just across from Chez Panisse. Page 5-6 Kindle Version

If you have lived or traveled to Paris you will appreciate David’s perspective of the Parisians-amazingly formal and stylish, they ride their bikes in business suits and tear into baguettes while walking down the street.  They take a while to warm up to “Americans” (i.e. anyone who lives in North America) but were helpful and accommodating when D and I visited, going on five years ago.

Kath’s quote: “Parisians are always in a big hurry, but are especially frantic if they’re behind you. They’re desperate to be where they rightfully feel they belong: in front of you. It’s a whole other story when you’re behind them, especially when it’s their turn: suddenly they seem to have all the time in the world.” -David Lebovitz

Love-that is all.

I have read many non-fiction books by Marlena de Blasi: “That Summer in Sicily”,  “A Thousand days in Venice”, “A Thousand Days in Tuscany”, and “The Lady in the Palazzo”.  I have been absolutely enthralled by them all.  De Blasi, a chef and food writer, is an ex-pat American who marries a Venetian and relocates to Italy.  Her food narratives make my mouth water.  I typically don`t create a post on a book until I am finished reading it but I came upon this yummy lunch description last evening and just had to share.

This excerpt is from Pages 163-166 of the Kindle edition

I step out of the terrace traffic into the greater choas of the kitchen.  At one of the five-burner stoves, Luce tosses plump pink chicken livers in butter and olive oil, sears them over a fast flame.  Her thumb over the mouth of a litre bottle of vin santo, she splashes the livers with dry-sweet wine, tosses the mass into a grand marble mortar. Cheeks flushed, laughing aloud at something Filipa recounts from half a hectre away, she is an alchemist grinding a wooden pestle into the steaming pluck of twenty chickens, keeping rhythm while pinching in sea salt and capers, lemon zest chopped fine as powder.  Never breaking stride, she drops in bits of cold, sweet butter and droplets of cognac, pounds it all to a rough paste.  A two-kilo round of charred-crusted bread she slices thinly, lays the pieces on a grate over white ash in a deep, flame-scorched hearth.  The bread grilled on one side only, she deftly drags the untoasted side through a bowl of rich warm chicken broth and lays the bread, broth side up, on a tray.  She smears the paste smoothly over the bread.  Right palm upraised, she balances the laden tray on it, ports it to an iron-legged, stone-topped table set outdoors on the flags.

I wander over to Filippa as she works through a small mountain of artichokes, trimming the leaves, scraping the dead chokes-barely formed on these beauties-and peeling the nearly foot-long stems.  Into each here she presses mint leaves, crushed unpeeled cloves of garlic, thin slices of lemon, piles them into a huge copper bacinella, pours in white wine, water, oil, heaves in more mint, sea salt, covers the pot and turns up the flame.

They won`t take long at all.  Let`s drink some wine, she says.

On the oak dressers placed here and there against the veranda wall there are tureens of thick faro soup with new potatoes, blue and white oval platters of red wine-vinegar braised chicken and Filippa’s borlotti mousse, its final decoration a great tangle of fried sage leaves.  A wheel of young, still creamy pecorino sits on a marble near a glass bowl of caramelised peaches and another of fresh ones, some still on their leafed branches.

A tavola, tutti a tavola, invites Antonia, though she still stands- a hand folded on her hip-in front of her place at the head of the table.

From the speckled green jugs of wine passed about, everyone pours for someone else.  Àlla nostra.  Alla nostra.  To us.

Giorgia arrives with a copper tray, the sausages, charred and crackling from the fire and laid on a bed of wild rosemary branches.  At the last it`s Filippa and Luce-each one holding a white cloth to a handle of the steaming bacinella of gorgeous purple-leafed artichokes.  They set it down in front of Antonia’s place.  A stack of shallow soup plates before her, she takes one, places as artichoke in it, spoons on some of the lemony, winey broth from the pot, pours thick green oil over it from a two-litre anfora, passes it down the table.

Buon appetito echoes like a prayer.

De Blasi has swept me to Tuscany even though I am alone here in my little house on the frozen prairie.  My evenings pass with pleasure as I imagine eating artichokes at a table with my sisters. I will keep you posted as my reading concludes (my next Italian adventure has already arrived to my Kindle).

Kath`s quote: “They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman’s octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.”-Luigi Barzini

Love-that is all.

The excerpt below is from this steamy book entitled La Cucina by Lily Prior , that kept me warm and cozy over the frigid Christmas season here in Winnipeg.   The story of a lonely librarian (I have yet to discover why the world assumes that librarians lead uneventful lives) is set in Palermo and Castiglione, Sicily.  The latter lies about 160 km east of Palermo and when we visited Sicily we were about the same distance from Palermo but in the opposite direction in Castellammare del Golfo. When I shared with my Facebook friend Erica Bauermeister writer of The School of Essential Ingredients that I was reading this book, this is what she commented “if I remember La Cucina accurately, you might need that blood pressure monitor!”  So if you are in the mood for a good (and lusty read), I would recommend the story. Here is an excerpt (Page 220 Kindle Version):

Once I arrive back at the farm, my legs walked me into la cucina, and instinctively I rolled up my sleeves and tied on my apron.  It was time for me to make myself at home once more in the kitchen.  The glossy eggplants nestling in a basket invited me to make a caponata, a sweet-and-sour vegetable stew.

I sliced and salted the eggplants and left them to disgorge their bitter juices.  While waiting, I chopped an onion and some tomatoes and celery on the old table.  The blade of the knife became a blur in my fast-moving fingers.  I chopped for Bastolomeo, a beautiful young life so needlessly cut down.  I chopped for l’Inglese, who I knew in my heart was also dead: no one ever survived a disappearance.  And I chopped for myself, for the happiness that was snatched away from me.  The vegetables soon became very small dice.  When I wiped the eggplants I fried them in some of Mama’s best olive oil, then set them to drain while I fried the onion, and added the tomatoes and a good pinch of salt.  When the sauce had thickened I put in a handful of capers, the celery, and two handfuls of green olives, and left the dish to simmer for a while.  This caused a delicious perfume to emerge from the open door of la cucina, and led old Rosario, loitering in the yard, to say, “Ahh, Rosa’s home.”  Rosario had been loitering in the yard my whole life.  When the time came we would have to bury him there.

Then I added the fried eggplants, a little sugar, and a little wine vinegar, and cooked it just long enough for the vinegar to evaporate.

I waited impatiently for the caponata to cool a little, and then ate it up with some chunks of fresh bread.  It felt good to be home.

Kath’s quote: “The meat touched her tongue and the taste ran through her, full and rich and complicated, dense as a long, deep kiss…feeling the river wind its way to her fingers, her toes, her belly, the base of her spine, melting all the pieces of her into something warm and golden.“-Erica Bauermeister (pge 56 School of Essential Ingredients).  Erica, obviously has blood pressure rising writing skills of her own.

Love-that is all.