As soon as we heard of the move of dear friends from Winnipeg, we started dreaming, saving and planning our trip to visit them.  The celebration of our 25th weddding anniversary was the perfect time.

After they picked us up in Palermo, we stopped en route to their home in their beautiful village of  Castellammare del Golfo at a a bakery called Vito Navarra for breakfast pasties.   My husband was up before me to pick figs in the orchard behind their home.  We had cornetti filled with ricotta cheese and chocolate and another filled with pistachio butter.  There were also castells which are ricotta filled perogies. 

Sicily was the first stop of our Italian Mediterranean tour and we never encountered sweets as delectable as these Sicilian ones.

Bistro 7 1/4 is one of my favourite Winnipeg restaurants and I have been going there for years.  Usually it is at lunch with a business colleague.  Tonight was the first time that I had ever been for dinner.  It was also the first time that I went with my husband and the first time that I sat at the “bar” (which is the Chef’s cooking station near the front door of the restaurant).  One time when I was there in the summer, there was a miniature version of Chef Alex assisting in the preparations.  His son has his own Chef’s “whites” and seemed right at home.

I have not sampled very many things on the menu because I absolutely love the way they prepare moule & frites.  There are a half dozen choices but I always have the Pernod and fennel.  I have blathered on about the dish for so long that my husband ordered it as well.  He also wanted to sample a starter and so we also had a “gnudi”.  We had to ask what we were ordering and a gnudi is the Chef’s version of gnocchi but is lighter as it is prepared with ricotta cheese.  Our selection was mixed with corn, jalapenos, shrimp and a lime wedge, then topped with a sharp cheddar.  Before the starter a baguette that was finished in the oven and served hot and crunchy with a tomato pesto and butter and citrus salt arrived.

Everything was beautifully prepared and absolutley delicious.  The skinny french fries are perfectly salted and very close to the top of my best french fry list.  My husband and I were in Europe this fall and he had a big feed of mussels in Paris on our last night.  When he offered me a taste, I said “I know that you are going to have a hard time believing this, but these are a poor substitute for what we can have back home in Winnipeg”.  Tonight he agreed.

Last Dinner in Paris

On one side of us at the bar sat a couple who I think ordered buffalo and it must have been very rich as the female took home almost her entire plate.  On the other side were two travellers-one from Toronto who was obviously a regular as the Chef remembered him from previous visits.  He says that he likes to sit at the bar when dining alone because he doesn’t feel like a schmutz.

The place is on the small side and was packed.  For an early Wednesday evening in January that is quite an accomplishment.

My son is a great cook.  I think it is because he has always seen his Dad move with ease in the kitchen.  He makes killer omelets and breakfast potatoes. He also does strange things like put a layer of potato chips in his sandwiches.  He’s all about texture and crunch he proclaims!  Today he made me poutine for lunch.  His were very good if not authentic.  Because it was all that we had in the house, he used beef gravy where I prefer a peppery chicken or turkey gravy and he topped them with grated mozzarella, whereas everyone knows that fresh cheese curds are the way to go.

The first time I had ever tasted a cheese curd was in the food barn (more like an arena) at the Minnesota State Fair.  They were served at room temperature to be soft, slightly oily, slightly salty and oh so delicious.  That was also the first time I had ever had a corn dog (not my cup of tea) and the first time that I saw Kenny Loggins in concert (but now I’m aging myself).

According to Wikipedia poutine was invented in 1957 in rural Quebec, when a customer ordered fries while waiting for his cheese curds from the cheese factory in Kingsey Falls.  The owner is said to have exclaimed ça va faire une maudite poutine (“it will make a damn mess”), hence the name. The sauce was allegedly added later, to keep the fries warm longer.

I don’t know of a restaurant in Winnipeg that makes their poutine with fresh cheese curds.  I do know of many that have perfected the French fry.  My recent indulgence was at George’s on Henderson Hwy. this weekend.  Served in a bag, crunchy on the outside and soft and potatoey on the inside with malt vinegar and lots of salts-yum.

Where is your favourite fry place?  Do you know who makes poutine with fresh cheese curds?  Where do you buy cheese curds for home cooking?

Seafood Pizza

Another of our family traditions (we are a family who loves traditions) is Friday night pizza night.  We’re rarely order in-if we are heading up to the cottage we may stop and pick one up at Sobey’s on the way out of town or we also love the Oetker thin crust pizzas.  When our kids were young we would make ham and pineapple or triple cheese (so called because even when our kids were very young they were impressed with “gourmet” names to everyday food) it would have mostly mozzarella, a little but of cheddar and Parmesan.  Nowadays we love to experiment.  My husband has mastered a traditional margarita pizza with a homemade sauce: raw mozzarella and fresh basil leaves.  Last night we had a fruita de mare pizza because we searched in Cinque Terre when we were there this fall for the best that my husband had tasted on a previous trip but were unsuccessful.

Disappointing Pizza in Riomaggiore

We bought a frozen seafood mix which included mussels, shrimp, squid and octopus and let it partially thaw.  When the pizza was almost baked we put it under the broil to ensure that the fish was cooked enough but not too much.  The moisture in the fish spread around the pizza top and that makes all the difference in taste.  All it needed was a dash of pepper and a good glass of white wine.

I have a bread maker and make our pizza dough out of the basic white bread recipe on the dough setting.  I actually never bake anything in our maker as I find the shape too odd and also find that the bread sweats in the chamber.  We love our bread to be crunchy on the outside and light and soft on the inside so we have a tendency to make two long skinny loaves out of one batch. There are all kinds of other recipes that I use this basic dough for including submarine and hamburger buns, along with braided breads and pull-apart recipes.  My families’ favourite bread variation is this one:  from one batch of bread dough, roll out two long and skinny loaves.  Along one edge cut the dough with kitchen scissors every ½ inch (but not right through) so that it resembles a comb.  Then pull one piece of dough in one direction and the next in the opposite direction.  It doesn’t really matter what it looks like because the goal is just to create lots of uneven bread surface.  In the mean time melt ½ cup of butter with liberal amounts of dried herbs (fresh are to delicate for this robust taste) we like rosemary, oregano and basil and LOTS of garlic salt.  When the bread comes out of the oven, move to a platter.  Then pour all of the butter sauce directly onto the bread.  Encourage people to pull off a chunk and mop up the additional butter that will have pooled onto the plate.  In our house whenever I make this, my son says it smells like Christmas.

The four of us (on separate trips) had recently visited mutual friends in Sicily and we had not had an opportunity to compare travel notes.  I decided to cook something Sicilian to get the memories flowing.  I chose a selection from Jamie Oliver’s cookbook entitled Jamie’s Italy.  His preamble indicated that the dish had been on the menu at a restaurant in one of the roughest parts of Palermo.  We too had enjoyed a similar dinner near the train station in Palermo.  We were able to sit outside in a former train car.  We all had pastas-clam, swordfish, shrimp/basil and sardine/fennel.  Everything was mopped up with great Italian bread and downed with a fine local red wine.  The owner came around with complimentary lemoncellas.  We weren’t certain if they were always offered or if it was because we were so obviously tourists-taking pictures of our meals and each other.

Ahh Italy

Ah Italy….I digress.  Jamie’s version was tossed with arugula.  I made my version with peas for two reasons a) it was one of the few vegetables left in my fridge and 2) I had been so impressed by how Sicilian recipes were the delicious combinations of fairly simple ingredients.  Here’s a rough idea of the recipe.  Heat 3 glugs of extra virgin olive oil in a large frying pan and toss in 2 cloves of chopped garlic and chilli seeds to your liking.  Brown a bit and add a pound or so shrimp.  I then added ½ cup of sake because I was out of white wine as the recipe called for in addition to a 2 heaping tablespoons of mashed up sun dried tomatoes.  Next came the zest and juice of one lemon before I made sure that the shrimp was cooked and then tossed in the peas and cooked spaghetti.

When we served the bowls, we offered a drizzle of truffle oil that we had brought home with us from the Cinque Terre area of Italy. We had learned that it was inappropriate to offer parmesan as Italians don’t add cheese to a seafood pasta. I had also baked a 9 grain bread that I served with balsamic and an olive oil that our Sicilan friends gifted us with.  It was from their own olive tree and was pressed in the community press.

As it was lunch time, we didn’t even serve dessert.  Just put on a pot of tea to look at pictures of their trip.