Crossing the Border into Culinary Crazy Land?

How far would you travel for a superb lemon? Would you consider giving up eating shrimp after tasting fresh red shrimp and knowing this is the best you’ll ever have? Is the market your first stop in a new place even when you only have a hotel room and no kitchen and you feel as though you’ve been denied entry to Paradise? Do people still tell stories about that time in Puglia when you bought out half the fish market and invited a boat load of strangers to dinner? Do you hang around in coffee bars and restaurants eavesdropping to hear what people are cooking? Do you keep track of when peaches are at their peak in different regions of Italy?

When do you cross the line from culinary traveler to Culinary Crazy?

Read More

Fennel & Bay

There is an unexpected synergy between these two flavors that surprises me. They get along like Nick & Nora Charles of The Thin Man films, feisty, combative but ultimately they very elegantly get the job done.

Read More

Summer Broiled Shrimp and Fresh Herbs

In the spring, a livelier palate changes on the burnish’d hearth
In the spring, a young cook’s fancy, lightly turns to to thoughts of grill.
Apologies to Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, but as soon as the warm weather comes I want to eat things light and barely cooked. I want to eat things from the sea, I want to eat grilled shrimp, and linguine with clam sauce, and those little crabs that come from the Veneto. And I obsessivley go online to find a cheap place to stay at the beach. So I guess spring has sprung into summer here in Montone and it’s about freakin’ time.
This is how we celebrated the arrival of warm sunshine with a dish that could be a light meal of its own, or served as a finger licking starter: Summer Broiled Shrimp and Fresh Herbs. Easy livin’.

Read More

Head Case

When you have the chance, buy your fish with its head on and try not to buy topless shrimp. Seek out whole fish, ask your fish guy to leave your fish whole. “Eeewww!” I can hear my mother as clearly as if she was sitting next to me. Simply put there is flavor in the…

Read More