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April 5, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Lobster Rolls on a Jaunt to New York City

When you think “New York City”, lobster rolls aren’t usually the first things that come to mind. Unless you’re me. I’m crazy about lobster rolls and since I spend most of the year where they aren’t readily available, I tend to go a little overboard when they are.

My sister, Mary, was the first in our family to discover lobster rolls. Years ago she went to Boston on business and happened to call on a client at the shore. The business call evolved into an unexpected detour at the water’s edge in a small town on Cape Cod, at a shack with big signs that said “Lobster”. Too early in the day for a whole lobster (is that possible?), she went out on a limb and got something called a “lobster roll”. And then she called me and told me about it. Now, I’ve been a lobster nut since I was a little girl, obsessing over my grandma’s baked lobster with spaghetti. But the thought of someone else cleaning a lobster and putting the meat on a buttered roll rocked my world. I couldn’t wait to get to Massachusetts, or wherever I was going to be able to get my hands on one.

It wasn’t long after that I found myself planning a trip to Rhode Island for a friend’s wedding and realized it was only a short drive to the most lobsterish of states, Maine. I got out there three days early and rented a car specifically to eat lobster and search out the lobster roll of my dreams.

I’ve eaten a lot of lobster rolls since then and I take every opportunity to enjoy them when I’m in New England. The best one I ever had was at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset Maine, the meat of an amazingly fresh lobster stuffed into a toasted, buttered hot dog bun, whole claws sticking out each side. Once on my way to the Boston airport to fly to Portland, Oregon, I ate one for lunch at the Clam Box in Ipswich, Massachusetts; it was so good I got another to go to eat for dinner later. Best decision I ever made. There I was at 30,000 feet, unwrapping the roll with the other passengers staring me down. I could have retired on the sale of that lobster roll, which made eating it all that much more enjoyable.

Fifteen years ago they were almost unheard of in New York City, just a memory of summer at the shore. Then the Lobster Place opened in the re-born Chelsea Market and since then it’s been a steady stream of great lobster roll opportunities.

I was recently in New York City and over the course of four days I tasted three of them. Here are the rolls I had and how I rate them.

The Lobster Place, Chelsea Market

Aside from ordering food, the Lobster Pound is a great space to hang out and gaze at all the shellfish. Their lobster rolls are freshly made but not lobstery enough; I think they’ve been out of the ocean and in the tanks too long. There’s a small amount of celery, chive and mayo, which you don’t need if the lobster is really tasty.

Jean-George Vonrichten’s Spice Market

Nice little twist, rolled into rice paper with a little, cool dill gelee, srirachi mayo for dipping. A yummy little appetizer but obviously not the real thing. I loved Spice Market tho and went back again.

Luke’s Lobster, 7^th Street between 1^st and 2^nd Ave

I think Luke’s has the best in town. The lobster has a great fresh taste – just lobster meat on a toasted bun. This time they added a little melted butter, which oozed out as you were eating it. It was overkill, but it was delicious! Now Luke’s has locations all over town with one in the Financial District, the original in the East Village and another on the Upper East Side. Plus I hear they have a mobile unit that shows up in farmer’s markets! Mobile lobster roll units. If I can just get them to park outside my door.

March 27, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Tuscan Vegetable Truths (or how a NY Journalist proved me wrong)

It was April 2008 and my friend Elizabeth Koenig, the head of PR for Castello Banfi in Tuscany, called me to ask if I would talk to a New York Times journalist, Mark Bittman, about vegetables in Tuscany. She said she couldn’t think of a better person for him to talk to about the vegetables in Tuscan cuisine. He said he didn’t think vegetables were very prominent in the Tuscan diet and there wasn’t anything interesting or new to learn. I said that after seeing our vegetable gardens, meeting our growers, and tasting some select dishes, he would appreciate how much a part of our lives vegetables are in Tuscany.

[Mark Bittman is leading the discussion in America on the ethics and health benefits of eating less meat, and has spoken out about the relationship between increased beef consumption and global warming. He writes The Minimalist column in the Times, has written several cookbooks, and was at that time traveling in Italy researching his cookbook ”How to Cook Everything Vegetarian”.] bittman.blogs.nytimes.com/

So Mark and his friend came to lunch. I don’t remember what I cooked, hopefully he does, I’m sure it involved seasonal vegetables like artichokes, asparagus and fava beans. We did spend several very pleasant hours in my old mill kitchen, eating and talking and drinking good local wine, and I don’t know if I convinced him of how much Tuscans love vegetables, but I did enjoy the experience as well as his book when it came out and started winning awards.

It was January 2011 when I went on an all-vegetable diet, also known as the yeast cleanse or acid/alkaline diet. It basically means you eat all the alkaline foods (vegetables/fruits) you can and shun any foods that cause your body to be acid (meat, dairy, alcohol, beans and grains). For two weeks I ate only vegetables and fruit; then for four months my diet was 80% veggies and fruits and 20% fish and chicken. I ate a lot of avocados, olives and almonds – the only alkaline nut – for some satisfying fat. If I had a snack attack I ate a mountain of pumpkin seeds in the shell. Sometimes I cheated but mostly I didn’t. It wasn’t the easiest thing I’d ever done, but it also wasn’t the worst. I started the diet in January while visiting my mom in Florida and had a pretty good rate of success in following it while I traveled around the US doing cooking classes. It took me a month to lose a single pound, but at the end of 4 months I had lost 20 and had a new relationship with vegetables.

The really hard part was when I got back to Tuscany in April. It was easy to continue my new way of eating as long as I stayed at home and cooked. But I’m a social animal. I wanted to go out to restaurants with friends and I frequently had to eat out with the culinary tour groups I lead. It didn’t take me long to realize Mark Bittman was right:

They don’t eat vegetables in Tuscany.

They sell them in the market. Piles and piles of artichokes, peas, leeks and greens.

They grow them in their gardens. Mountains of zucchini and peppers and tomatoes.

You can buy them and cook them at home, but God help you if you have to go out.

My options in restaurants and trattorias were always the same: sautéed spinach or swiss chard, heavy with heated oil, a bowl of plain lettuce leaves or some sliced green tomatoes (Tuscans like their tomatoes green). If I got lucky there might be a mix of zucchini, eggplant and peppers, which are great when grilled and lightly drizzled with olive oil, but an inedible mash of oversalted, overcooked veggies when roasted. Never wanting to be one of “those” people on a limited diet, repeating a litany of what they can’t eat, I often ordered whatever sounded good and then made up for it the next day by eating raw veggies for breakfast and lunch.

In Italy, eating seasonally means celebrating each vegetable or fruit in their season. Your attention and culinary efforts are concentrated on the goodness of each before they’re gone from the market until the next year. I knew that veggies like fresh beets, turnips, daikon radish, cilantro and jicama were “exotic” and impossible to find in Siena, and anticipated that my veggie diet would be more limited than it had been in the US. But what surprised me is that some really common things like broccoli are seasonal and missing from the stores, and the diet, for much of the year.

Mark Bittman was right. Tuscany has nothing new to add to the vegetable discussion. At one time, when Tuscans were poor peasants and country farmers, their diet was vegetable based, meat was scarce and saltless bread was the main starch. But in the last 40 years as Tuscany acquired wealth through international recognition of their wines and an increase in tourism, Tuscans quickly left their vegetable roots behind them and embraced piles of cured meat, grilled meat, braised meat and pasta.

I’m not as religious about the diet as I was a year ago. It turns out 2012 is the year of the cocktail, so I had to add alcohol back into my diet. I feel better when I eat lots of fresh vegetables, and my cooking classes include more vegetables and less meat than they used to, with a fresh green salad rounding out the meal before dessert is served. To date no one has noticed or complained. I tell them Tuscans have a long history of eating vegetables, which is true; now I’m admitting that they’ve left that history behind

March 19, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Frittelle di San Giuseppe

The feast of St Joseph, earthly father of Jesus Christ and husband of Mary, is celebrated on March 19 in Italy, which is also Father’s Day. (Which makes sense really. He’s also the patron saint of anyone wishing to sell a home and homeowners desperate to sell their homes have been known to bury a statue of St. Joe in their front yard to help it sell – sometimes upside down, although I’ve never understood the logic of that – but that is all another story.)

As with any religious holiday in Italy, there are specific dishes and desserts to celebrate the occasion, differing from region to region and town to town. In Siena, from mid-February to mid-March the bakeries are filled with Frittelle di San Giuseppe, fried pastries made with rice and orange zest and rolled in granulated sugar. Sometime in February, a small wooden hut is erected in the Piazza di Campo in the middle of Siena and retired men and women of the community take turns frying the delicacies and selling them wrapped in cones of paper, 3 for a euro.

Originally a Sicilian custom, the Italian American community in the US actually celebrates St. Joseph’s Day with more sincerity than do the Italians; many churches and families of Southern Italian heritage build St. Joseph’s tables to honor the saint. The table typically has a shrine to St. Joe or the Holy Family and is decorated with baked goods, cakes and cookies and occasionally savory dishes as well. After prayers and blessings are said everyone partakes in the bounty.

Here is the recipe for Frittelle di San Giuseppe:

Frittelle di San Giuseppe (St Joseph Fritters)

1 lb rice

3 quarts water

1 teas salt

Zest from 1 orange and 1 lemon

2 tbsp flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 egg

Peanut oil for frying

Granulated sugar for coating

Bring the water to a boil with the salt and cook the rice until it is really well done, stirring occasionally and adding additional water if necessary. Drain the rice, place it in a colander over a bowl and leave it to drain, then spread it on a sheet pan and leave it to dry out, at least 4 hours.

Mix the rice with the citrus zest, flour, sugar and egg until it becomes creamy. Heat the oil, scoop small balls of dough about 1” in diameter into the oil and fry until golden brown, turning for even cooking. Drain on paper towels and roll in sugar to coat. Served hot, warm, or room temperature.

March 15, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Carciofini Sott’Olio – preserving baby artichokes under olive oil

I’ve been missing artichokes this winter. I’m in the US and while I see them in the stores, they just aren’t as fresh and beautiful as what I get in Italy, plus the price is astrological. So I’ve been missing them. Sometimes I succeed in talking the produce manager into discounting old artichokes he won’t be able to sell, but generally not. Apparently they’d rather throw them out than sell them cheap, but I keep trying!

So I was thrilled yesterday to find a beautiful pile of firm, fresh baby artichokes at a little produce store, and I snapped them up and ran home to preserve them, pretending I was in Tuscany, which I will be again shortly.

The Tuscans preserve most of their vegetables under oil, as opposed to southern Italy where they tend to preserve things in vinegar, pickling vegetables like eggplant or peppers, or the mix of carrots, celery, cauliflower and onions known as “giardiniera”. In Tuscany we preserve “sott’olio”, or under oil, grilled eggplant and zucchini and fresh porcini or chanterelles when they’re in season. But artichokes are especially good under oil and very easy to make, although a little labor intensive on the front end.

Baby artichokes are especially plentiful in the spring. Contrary to popular belief, they are not a variety of artichoke, but actually what any artichoke plant will bear after the adult bud has been picked. With almost no choke at all and with the exception of a few layers of outer leaves, the whole thing is edible.

Cut off the top of the artichoke, peel off and throw away the outer dark green leaves and carefully peel the stem. Bring to a boil a mixture of white wine vinegar (or cider vinegar), white wine and water, enough to cover the artichokes, add them and boil for no more than 4 minutes. Take them out and drain them upside down on paper towels. After a few hours remove them to a rack and allow them to airdry at least 12 hours.

Next get large jars that have been sterilized in the dishwasher, and pack the artichokes in, layering them with whole garlic cloves and a sprig of mint, pressing them down to compact them in the jars and squeeze the air out. Cover them with good quality extra virgin olive oil, making sure that the oil completely covers every bit of artichoke, mint, or garlic, with a good ½” on top. If any food is exposed to the air, mold will grow and you’ll have to throw the whole thing out. Believe me, it’s a tragedy when that happens.

You don’t need to run them through a hot bath to seal the jars. That actually will cook the artichoke more and heat the oil, which changes the flavor. The oil acts as a natural seal, preserving the vegetable in the semi-crisp state that it was blanched in.

These will keep for months and are wonderful on an antipasto platter or in a salad. They make a wonderful warm dip pureed with garlic and a little mayonnaise, and the oil can be reused in a salad dressing.

This is just the beginning of the preserving season, followed soon by spring strawberries and early summer cherries and mulberries. But more on that later. Buon Appetito!