Posts tagged ‘italian’

Does GFS Contributor C.C. do nothing but travel? Today she shares an unexpected find from a trip to Mexico: crazy good Italian food on the beach.

Back in the spring, after experiencing British weather with her British B.F. , C.C. decides she needs a little warmth in her life and acquiesces to B.F.’s request to try kiteboarding.

C.C. gets on the Google and finds one of those rare travel spots, a place so remote you feel as if it’s all your own: Isla Holbox (pronounced “hole-bosh,” Mayan for “black hole”), a small island off the Yucatán peninsula that is safely removed from the craziness of Cancun by a distance of two hours by car and 45 minutes by ferry.

This laid-back fishing village has no cars—everyone drives golf carts, accompanied by their cute happy little dogs (no unfortunate mangy mutts here). There are no buildings over two stories high. And the beaches are gorgeous and windy for the kiters. The island is renowned for whale shark watching from May through September, but alas, C.C. and B.F. went before May.

Parts of the island are a nature preserve where pink flamingoes flock and rays scoot under the clear water. There are no ATMs on the island, but there are mosquitoes. People on Holbox don’t speak English particularly well, and apart from “dos cuba libres, por favor,” C.C. and B.F. don’t speak Spanish. This being Mexico, they knew not to drink the water, but they had no idea they’d discover such spectacular food—namely, Los Pelicanos.
>> Read on to find out why you should eat Italian food in Mexico. >>

Last Sunday, Casey and I turned Good. Food. Stories. into a live show! We demo’d our signature dish, spaghetti carbonara, at New York Botanical Garden’s Edible Garden series. While Casey did the majority of chopping, grating and tossing (someone please give this girl her own tv show already!), I—being the history geek—shared some of the stories about the origin of carbonara.

Much of Italy’s cuisine has been shaped by the different groups that have conquered parts of Italy throughout history. Sicilian food often includes dishes with saffron and raisins which reflects the Arab culture that dominated the island in the ninth and tenth centuries. Tomatoes didn’t even exist in Italy until the 16th century when Spainiards, who controlled the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, brought them back from their New World explorations. You may be surprised to know that a distinctly American influence can be found on spaghetti carbonara.
>> Shocked by this revelation? Read on! >>

Dan and I had to start off somewhere on our Wild West Americana adventure earlier this month (we couldn’t road-trip the whole way out from New Jersey to the Grand Canyon, unless someone is willing to subsidize that trip). And that somewhere was Phoenix, land of Cactus League spring training, a curvaceous bulldog named Oliver who was more than happy to share his home, and the food empire of Chris Bianco.

His award-laden Pizzeria Bianco has been joined by two younger siblings, Bar Bianco and Pane Bianco, over the past decade, and with two days and two nights in the city to bookend our trip, we thought, hey, why not eat at all three? All in the name of science, dear readers.
>> Pizzeria, Pane, and Bar Bianco—two people eating crusty bread all around Phoenix, after the jump. >>

Two years into my residency as a New York Eater, I officially declared a boycott on Restaurant Week and most prix fixe menus. I was tired of being served one too many subpar options, too many basic dishes that weren’t showing off the true talents of the restaurant I was sitting in. Why was I shelling out $35 for a dumbed-down piece of seared salmon when I could be ordering a more satisfying app and entree for the same price off the real menu? I didn’t see the deal.

So it was an unexpected (but happy) blow to my jaded snobbery to discover the most compelling reason to have lunch at A Voce—apart from the phenomenal fresh housemade pastas—is that they don’t play around with their prix fixe menu.

For the past year or so, the restaurant has instituted a daily $29 three-course lunch special, an actual well-thought-out menu rather than the cheap-to-serve stuff like a boring green salad and a chicken entree. Chef Missy Robbins changes it up every so often, highlighting different regions of Italy depending on the area’s iconic cuisine and the time of year she’s serving it—hearty dishes from the Piedmont in the winter, lighter seafood-based fare from Sardinia or the Veneto in warmer weather.
>> Read on to discover the menu standouts at A Voce. >>

Who else hates New Year’s Eve? Anyone? I never could figure out what I was supposed to be doing on this, the most Amateur of Amateur Nights. Times Square was never an option, dinner out was always an overpriced snooze, and staying at home to cook a romantic meal just resulted in overwhelming levels of drunkenness as I tried one mixed drink experiment after another. Bad news all around.

So we started hunkering down at our friend Bryan’s house in Boston six years ago and it’s worked out incredibly well. It’s such a great compromise: All I have to do is cook lots of food, I don’t have to drive anywhere, and the party just happens around me with a rotating, crazy, always amusing cast of regular characters. After the first year’s ad hoc affair where I cooked a few random appetizers and munchies, we started assigning ethnic themes to the party food. As the crowds grew from seven to now more than 70 people, we of course couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the tradition got a little more elaborate every time.

In 2005, Bryan decided we should attempt paella, despite having way-too-small skillets incapable of holding enough rice to feed 20 people. (A nor’easter at the last minute left us with a lot of leftovers anyway.) In 2006, the Chinese Year of the Pig—Bryan’s favorite animal—gave us inspiration for a few Asian courses. In 2007, Bryan and his boyfriend LeeMichael’s gut-renovation condo in the South End necessitated a few trips to IKEA, so we hosted a Swedish-themed party influenced by the frugal retailer. Last year, in honor of Bryan and LeeMichael’s upcoming wedding, we celebrated the food of the Netherlands, the first country to legalize gay marriage.

Even before the first Dutch oliebollen and oudejaarspot were set on the table in 2008, I made an executive decision to take a year off from obscure culinary challenges. 2009 would be simple and delicious: an Italian feast. Having an entire year to prepare and a massive library of recipes from which to choose, I couldn’t resist going a little nuts (so much for simplicity) and make as much as I could from scratch—breads, pastas, sauces, ricotta. Had I thought of it earlier, I would have even tried homemade mozzarella for the first time.
>> Read on to see the full menu of Italian specialties >>