Cicchetti

06 Apr 2012 10 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The most wonderful thing about Venice is you can get completely lost, and yet never be completely lost. The city is essentially a big round island of canals and narrow pedestrian streets that all fold in on one another, leading nowhere and everywhere at once. And if you wander long enough, you’ll eventually wind up someplace you recognize — sometimes even back at the place where you started.

I remember wandering like that once through a maze of alleyways on an eerily quiet and foggy March afternoon in Venice with my sister, trying to find our way back to our penzione. Eventually frustrated in our efforts, we tucked into one of the city’s ubiquitous bàcari wine bars for refueling — a welcome glass of wine and a few plates of blissful cecchitti. More

The Anatomy of a Pasta

08 Nov 2011 6 Comments

by scolgin in Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , ,

One of the most interesting parts of cooking, to me, is discovering the roots of particular types of cuisine and dishes. The etymology of food, if you will. For example, you may claim to love tacos. But in Mexico, regional variations range from the familiar fish and shrimp tacos of Baja to the grilled sandwiched mulitas of Oaxaca to the fried tacos de cazo of Mexico City — often filled with pig’s esophagus. The people of central Mexico eat wriggling live larvae in their tacos. Do you love that?

The coat of arms of Amatrice

A favorite pasta of mine is called bucatini all’ Amatriciana. It has long been part of my Italian repertoire. But making it one evening, and videotaping it for this blog, I realized I didn’t know much about it’s origins. So I decided to investigate. More

The New Soy Technology

29 Sep 2011 1 Comment

by scolgin in Observations, Starlets, Yoga Students & Quinoa (stories) Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Some friends of ours had German guests visiting, and were going to take them to In & Out Burger. “I hope they have soy burgers,” said friend Amanda. “Our friends don’t eat any meat.” I suggested she get them regular burgers and tell them that they were soy burgers, and that they’d made incredible advances in soy technology. Germans are gullible that way. Suffering a national cuisine inferiority complex with France and Italy as neighbors, they’re likely to act overly knowledgeable and tell you they already knew that.

Meat grown in a lab

I was reminded of one of my younger sister, Siobhan’s, bouts of vegetarianism when we were teenagers. I was trying to get her to eat a chicken breast, and she was protesting. “They don’t have to kill the chicken,” I said, “they just cut the breasts off and they grow back. Like a lizard’s tail!” She glared at me. She also wasn’t buying my contention that to get chicken broth, all you had to do was wring the live chicken out over a pot. (More like “juicing” a chicken.) More

Let Them Eat Flowers

26 Aug 2011 Leave a comment

by scolgin in Recipes, Video Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

We stopped by our friend Heather’s house the other evening for a visit. On the counter were two enormous zucchini.

“Did someone leave those on your porch?” I asked.

“My client gave them to me,” she replied.

How generous of them, I thought to myself.

“They’re too big to eat, right?”

“Well,” I pondered, “you could make a parmagiana kind of thing with them. I’ve got a good recipe for Greek zucchini balls. But those would make about 400.”

Zucchini blossoms

I’m always wary of the food-giving generosity of friends, neighbors, loved ones, strangers and clients. More

Igniting Your Own Creative Spark in the Kitchen

11 Aug 2011 5 Comments

by scolgin in Cooking Tips, Observations, Recipes Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m often asked by dinner guests, as I serve them a meal of Sardinian seafood or Japanese sumiyaki grill or Yucatan-style Mexican, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Freshly made mezzaluna

I’ll admit it’s somewhat easier for me than the average person — having a career that gives me the time and flexibility to indulge my passion for kitchen creativity. However, I still have to come up with ideas of what I’m going to cook each evening. More

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