Opted to stay in tonight rather than go to the grigliata with the boys, largely because I wanted to cook the borlotti beans that I had begun to soak this morning (and my decision to stay for Deb’s Spin class after teaching my own left my legs awfully tired). Inspired by my favorite salad at Luca’s restaurant, I had neither the celery nor the fresh bay leaves and sage his recipe calls for, so I made do with what was on hand.

Borlotti beans

Image grabbed from http://www.borlotti.com/

Saute in a pot some:

• chopped sweet onion
• chopped baby carrots
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• 2-3 branches of rosemary

Add the pre-soaked borlotti beans, cover with cold water. Add

• bay leaves
• white peppercorns
• salt

Cook on a low boil, from 30-45 minutes, but not long enough to let them pop open and get mushy.

Borlotti beans, also called cranberry or romano beans, have a mild flavor with a thick skin. I like eating them with salad, but may try whirling them into a puree this week.  To learn more about this bean, check out Woodland Foods’ page:

Cranberry Beans (Phaseolus Vulgaris) are related to the Kidney Bean (Phaseolus Vulgaris). Cranberries are like the Pinto Bean but reversed in color with pink skin and maroon mottling. They are somewhat plumper than the Pinto and are about 1/2 inch long. Cranberry Beans have a sweet, mild flavor. Also referred to as a borlotto, crab eye, roman, romano, rosecoco or saluggia bean.They may be interchanged in recipes wherever Borlotti or Saluggia Beans are required. Like their Mexican and Italian cousins (Pinto and Kidney), they will turn pink when cooked. They’re delicious in recipes with sweet or savory spices.

Last year at this time, I was complaining that a local supermarket did not have zucchine. This year I’m picking my own zucchine from my garden! Today was a perfect day, in just about all respects.

Woke up to sunny, cool, dry weather and a bicycle ride through Fairmount. Kept a pace of 18-20 mph on the flats for about 20 miles, resisting biker boy fantasies with faves on the iPod.  More than 6 weeks after my accident, I felt, for the first time, little discomfort in my shoulder; it felt great to enter the flow and focus on my cadence/breath. Wish every day could start off so well!

Back home, I hit the garden to find several itty bitty zucchine with their flowers still attached. Plucked them from their fuzzy stems, pinched off some fresh basil and high tailed it up to my apartment for lunch. I hadn’t cooked pasta in a month!

Penne with zucchine

Sauté sweet onion in olive oil until translucent

Slice zucchine into half moon rounds, and add them to the onion

Cook for 5-7 minutes until zucchine are softened yet retain their bite.

Add cooked penne to the pan, sauté a bit more.

Add basil chiffonade and microzested pecorino romano right before serving, and think about how much you like all the variations of pasta with zucchine.

Feel grateful for your health and your free time, and then head out to an afternoon with Ben and Rachel and an evening grigliata with the Italian boys. Time does fly when you’re having fun.

Eric and Rich came up for a visit tonight, with food from their CSA share and the will to cook at home. Their loot included fava beans, onion, yellow squash, zucchini and a melon…and a fabulous bottle of malbec, one of my favorite reds. We used all but the fruit and the wine in a risotto:

Risotto recipe

Sauté the summer squash with chopped garlic scapes in EVOO and set aside.

Clean and blanch the fava beans, peel the skin and then sauté in some EVOO with finely chopped parsley and salt until soft.

Sauté chopped onion in EVOO until translucent.

Add to the pan a handful of carnaroli rice per person and stir to coat.

Add copious amounts of white wine and reminisce about all the great Pittsburgh risottos.

Add homemade chicken broth in ladels until the rice is almost cooked.

Add the sautéed vegetables with some some zucchini flowers, and cook several minutes more. Remove from heat, add pecorino romano and serve.

On the way to the kitchen, we stopped down to my garden and found lots of zucchini flowers and several ready-to-pick zucchine! Sharing the ‘first’ harvest with them augurs a summer of fresh food, right?

 

Image grabbed from http://www.pennmac.com/items/3989

Caught up with an old friend this morning at Penn Mac ‘dahn’a Strip, and asked him to introduce me to an Italian version of Zamorano, a favored sheep’s milk cheese from Spain. He gave me pecorino toscano, a far less interesting choice now that I am at home eating it with a slice of ciabatta and some cerignola olives. Mild and a bit creamy, it’s got far less bite than the pecorino romano I bought while experimenting with carbonara a while back. Ate it with a bit of honey, but still derived no particular pleasure. Pazienza!

I just can’t get over how great all of the food is in San Fransisco. Really. Our first stop today was to Tartine, a well known bakery in the Mission District.

Prosciutto, arugula e provolone panino a Tartine

Owners Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson have created a masterpiece. Representing their life’s work and passion, theirs is a space well worth a visit if you’re visiting the city, not only because they won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef and Baker, National, in 2008, but also because they bake bread in a wood-fired brick oven, and serve up perfect pastry all day long.

Sigh. I so wish such a place existed in Philadelphia … and so wish my vacation weren’t ending in five more days.

Today I ate both the perfect pastry – an almond croissant at Bouchon in Yountville (Napa Valley) – and the perfect pizza – a margherita at Bistro Don Giovanni between Napa and Yountville. Scary. Never thought this day would come.  Now what should I search for?

The perfect almond croissant. Truly.

So perfect I had to share. So perfect even the birds froze with pleasure.

So thin, so crispy, so dreamy. It ended too soon.

I’m also totally enjoying all of the creative salads out here. Each restaurant has multiple intriguing combinations. This one included butter lettuce, goat cheese, peaches and almonds. My.

A creative twist.

I’ve been finding fabulous salads here in California. Could it be because I am travelling in the “salad bowl” of the US? Perhaps. This one was served at It’s Italia, an Italian place in Half Moon Bay at our hotel. It includes fava beans, peas and parmigiano, with a lemon olive oil dressing. Hello heaven.

According to its website, It’s Italia has been around since1997 “as a San Francisco style trattoria and pizzeria serving gourmet pizzas, house pastas, and creative salads, always with a California Italian flavor”.  As we eat our way up the coast, I’m beginning to understand that California Italian can mean just about anything. And that’s a good thing. I love that I’ve not seen anything traditonal on any of the menus.

Carlo’s appetizer tonight was a lovely dish of mussels and clams, served up in a bowl of tequila & cilantro lime sauce and ‘crunchy crostini crumbs’. While cilantro-lime-tequila combo can hardly be called Italian back on the East coast, it works.

We got excited that these appetizers might lead to something even more interesting, but the meal fizzled out. I ordered a roasted vegetable risotto with Italian sausage:

Looks good, but the rice had absolutely no texture or bite, and more gravely, the most pronounced flavor apart from the sausage was GARLIC. And, let me tell you, it was really strong. This dish got four thumbs down. Way down. What made me think I could order risotto in a casual seaside restaurant? Carlo’s shrimp and crabmeat pasta was just as garlicky. YUCK!

We finished the meal with a piece of key lime pie. While its mild citrus flavor failed to mask the bitter sting of our main courses, it did manage to bring a pleasurable ending to what was otherwise a most disappointing dinner.

Am in the Bay area until the 19th, exploring west coast Italian under the pretext of attending a professional conference and taking a much-needed vacation. Have spent my first few days with California cuisine (hello, avocados!), but am excited to try out some interesting twists on Italian in the days to come. Promise I’ll write about a few of them upon my return to the grid at the end of the month. Buon appetito!

Tonight we had a “grigliata” with Melissa and Benedict, on their newly paved patio. On the menu were grilled vegetables and grilled steak, cous cous salad, Melissa’s mom’s giardiniera (lightly pickled vegetables), and the tastiest bruschetta I’ve had in  a very long time. 

Served on a toasted grainy bread, the topping contained chopped tomato, cannellini beans and olives. A perfect appetizer for a summer evening. Grazie!

Back in the day when I actually liked garlic, I remember one of the Italian doctors showing me how to make the classic bruschetta by rubbing raw garlic onto toasted bread and smashing cherry tomatoes on top, drizzling it all with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. I remember being surprised at how good it was. Wonder if I’d like that version now?

Shopping at Trader Joe’s is fun. The store is small enough so that I don’t feel overwhelmed, and I always find something new and interesting to try. This weekend I picked up Trader Joe’s Perline Pasta, from from the refrigerated section. The little sacs of filled pasta looked interesting, and I figured that, if nothing else, I’d get a blog post out of the purchase.

Apart from the 400 calories, and the misleading photograph, the blog post is just about all I’m getting from it. Made in Canada and arriving in a package which Their pasty wheat starch filling hardly screamed prosciutto, and their pasta lacked bite. What a sad waste of parmigiano. Sigh.

Carlo reports in tonight that he ate a fabulous egg noodle pasta with scallops and asparagus at his friends’ house. Second time this week he’s one-upped me on the food front this week. I’m starting to feel jealous. LOL.