Italian Regional Cuisine: Islands (Go Green)

Today was the last day in Italy, and the menu was thus: Caponata di Carciofi(eggplan fritters), Pesto Trapanese(tomato pesto), Fregula all Sarda(sausage and tiny pasa), Involtini di Tonno(baked tuna rolls), Stemperata di Pollo (braised chicken), Fritelle di Melanzane(eggplant stew) and Insalata di Arancia (orange and fennel salad). Recipes were divvied up and I focused on the sausage.

Fregula are tiny little balls of toasted durum wheat pasta, reminiscent of a couscous but...toasted. Once I got all the mise together, I browned the hell out of some sausage taken out of its casings in good Sicilian olive oil. I threw in onions, mushrooms, and some crushed garlic cloves into cheese cloth, and cooked them down to translucent and dry. Deglazed with white wine, then tossed in enough veal stock to cover. Added the pasta, removed the garlic, and let simmer until tender. At the end, hit it up with a large amount of shredded pecorino. The whole thing had a nice, sausagey flavor that tempered nicely with the cheese and stock, balanced by the nice bite of the tiny pasta.

The tomato pesto that Chef Jr was making required pasta, so I thought something green would look pretty cool with something orange (helloooo Nickelodeon!). I conferred with Chef K, and she called down for everything I needed. First step was to prep the liquid. Spinach was blanched and shocked, dried thoroughly then put in a blender with my 2 eggs and egg yolks. I blended it until I couldn't even see the spinach leaves, it was so smooth. The concoction was poured into the flour well, and made as usual.

To cut the pasta, Chef brought me a Chitarra, a traditional Italian tool which is basically a box frame with thin metal wires strung across it. The sheet is lies across it, a rolling pin forces it through. The pasta came out like fettuccine, but a little bit more random and hand-cut looking. In the end, it was a really good-looking pasta. (Dora attempted the same pasta later in class and it came out lumpy and a bit brown, oddly enough -- she musn't have blanched the spinach or something.)

Tomorrow, we enter India and a little bit of Thailand, all with a new group of classmates.

ADDENDA

BREAKFAST: 6:45am, smoothie, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Used Stoneybrook farms vanilla yogurt instead of the good yogurt, it added a sweetness and a vanilla flavor that just made the whole thing taste a little bit too fake, like a little bit too much make up on a beautiful woman.

AM TASTINGS: 10:30am, small plate of sausage pasta stuff, small plate of spinach pasta with tomato pesto, several eggplant fritters with yogurt dipping sauce, 1 bite of dry chicken, 1 small wedge of almond-cinnamon cake, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACKS: 3-5pm, 20oz of organic sports drink, Nathan's hot dog, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Chill ride out to Coney Island on the bicycle. Felt the urge for naughty food.

DINNER: 7pm, small bowl of vegetables, modified Chinese Brick (shrimp and broccoli, pork fried rice, egg roll, shrimp toast), water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Feeling the need for naughty food. Ate it too fast, so fast I got hiccups and had to get up and get water. The HVS mentioned the other day that sometimes I eat food to be indulgent, but I don't actually enjoy the food. With this in mind as I was scarfing, I was thinking about what exactly I was enjoying. I enjoyed eating it fast, I enjoyed the emotional memory of having Chinese at home with my parents, and how doing so made me feel really intimate and close with them. I did not particularly enjoy the taste; not bad, but not great, it's all a bit too heavy and a bit too salty. Hmmm. Are these associations immutable? Can they be shifted? Or am I doomed to only bring up these happy feelings by eating really shitty food?