I love our apartment in Rome. It is in an old palazzo from 1886. I love everything about it. There is just one aspect which I miss, which would make out of this lovely apartment a perfect apartment: A balcony or terrace. So on my kitchen windowsill I have put some planters and have some herbs in there, it is great to have them, not only because of the quick and fresh herbs I can use anytime, but also because they just look great. This lively green in the silver-aluminum planters.

Now they are even more beautiful to look at, because, starting with the sage, they are in flower! As much as I love the looks, I wonder, is the life of a windowsill herb over when it blooms? Will the herbs taste the same afterwards? I have sage, rosemary, thyme and, no, not parsley (this is Rome, not Scarborough Fair!) but basil. I lived in Liguria and know first hand that “wild” rosemary bushes are perfectly ok after flowering but that when basil blooms, the leaves turn too hard and bitter. Do you have any experience to share with me?

In the meantime, the next couple of days I will be in Istanbul, gathering great recipes and hopefully some nice pictures, and eating some real simit, so get ready, when I return, there will be some cooking!

What does a food blogger, sommelier and young entrepreneur do when she has been interviewed for the first time? She celebrates like everybody should: Get the best bubbly you can lay your hands on (in my case a metodo classico from Ca’del Bosco), some strawberries so your stomach is not empty and let the party begin!

Warning: Explicit images

I know that you are fine with the piece of lamb roast above. Ok, some of you readers are vegetarians, but just a few; and some don’t like lamb. But most of you have no problem with eating lamb. You all have had your Easter lamb roast, haven’t you? Leg of lamb, lamb shoulder, as is here the case, even a rack of lamb. You eat it, the braver ones among you have cooked it.

This is already where it starts to get touchy for some. See, I have friends who tell me that they “eat meat as long as it doesn’t look like the animal it comes from”. Last time a friend told me this, I started thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against vegetarians. I am an omnivore, but not only do I think everyone should make the food choices he is comfortable with, I even have empathy with vegetarians. I really can understand if someone has problems with the taste or health implications of meat or with the conditions most animals are kept and slaughtered. But why eat meat if you don’t want it to look, smell, taste the part? Why should another being get killed for you if you do not acknowledge or enjoy it? Isn’t all these meat-eating-but-not-caring-for-it people the reason (well, part of it at least) for the mass production, the cruelty, the low quality?

This is where it gets really touchy:

Roman cuisine, actually a poor man’s cuisine, uses all parts of animals. The innards are called “the fifth quarter”, all the parts that the butcher gets after selling more noble parts to the well-off. Well, let me tell you, the poor in Rome have been eating tasty dishes!

My favorite butcher in Rome, Annibale (that really is his name, don’t you also think he chose the right profession?), after testing me during my first visits, finally decided I am to be trusted and won’t run away shrieking if he gives me the head belonging to the lamb shoulder (actually a quarter of a lamb, since his lamb are so small). He sent me away with a couple of suggestions, but I already knew what I wanted to do with it.

The split-in-half head went into the hot oven, dressed with a couple of drops of olive oil. When it looked done, I scooped out the brains, cut the tongue out, picked the little scraps of meat on the cheeks. With the roasted and now naked skull I made a stock, added a can of tomatoes (it is too early in the year to be using fresh ones), the bits I had pried away and cooked my pasta directly in this sauce. Yes, it tasted of innards, a deep and satisfying taste. Cheap, simple, humble food fit for gods. And that lamb, it didn’t live and die in vain!

It is not like I didn’t know about dulce de leche. I have been making it myself for a long time now, according to the David Lebovitz method. But then Pim snickered about it, calling him names and declaring only real milk is acceptable and no sweetened condensed milk. That got me thinking. Then I moved to Rome and condensed milk turned to be something of an expensive rarity. I started really considering making dulce de leche from scratch. I just had, well, some tummy-ache about it, as me and milk, we don’t get along that well.

Then dear Nicky went ahead and wrote about cajeta ice cream. Can you believe she didn’t warn me beforehand? To think I call this woman a friend, and not just a virtual one… Well, after I got over with my shock, I walked to the small but nice supermarket (in the rain! can you believe it rains in Rome? No one told me!) where I bought 3 liters of goat’s milk and got complemented on my red trenchcoat. You see, this is made of goat’s milk (the cajeta, not the red trenchcoat) which is a lot easier on my tummy.

3 hours later I had liquid gold (1 cup brown sugar and 1 pinch fleur de sel per liter milk, 1 vanilla pod, simmer for hours on smallest flame, whisking every now and then, till golden and thick). Jars and jars of it, although T. had threatened I wouldn’t have any cajeta left if I kept “tasting” during the cooking. Since then we have been eating cajeta with everything, and every once in a while everything with cajeta, just for a change. First there was Nicky’s (and her friend Stephanie’s) helado de cajeta, (with minor changes, I used more cream than milk) which I made without an ice cream machine. Yes it is possible. You just need to work it with your stick blender a couple of times during the freezing.

Can you believe I made ice cream, without a machine, in Rome, world’s ice cream capital? And it was so worth it, even T., who is the ice cream authority in our household, said it was perfect.

Then I thought about blondies. I had just read about them over at Smitten Kitchen. I couldn’t believe I had lived in the States for a year and baked thousands of chocolate chip cookies since then, without anyone telling me “you don’t have to scoop out cookies, just bake the dough and cut it into bite-size after baking”. Duh. So I baked Deb’s one-pot blondies, adding 2/3 cups of cajeta, 1 heaped tbsp more flour (to make up for the extra liquid), 1tsp of fleuer de sel (my favorite secret weapon in anything caramel-y or chocolate-y) and 1 cup of dark chocolate chunks. If you manage to get some dough into the oven (I almost ate the whole unbaked dough the first time around) and bake for just over 20 minutes, you will be rewarded with the fudgiest and most decadent blondies.

And, just because I still had some cajeta, I also poured it over the simplest chocolate pudding (I can so relate to Deb’s story of her mother and the instant pudding). By the way, you can make this pudding with cacao instead of chocolate as well, just substitute 1/2 cups of cacao. Later, when I saw Cenk’s rendition of this, I banged my head on the walls. Why hadn’t I thought about putting the cajeta into the pudding?

So, now there is no cajeta left. But I have to make some more this afternoon, because Johanna mentioned something about eating “cajeta filled churros” in Mexico and it doesn’t look like she is giving me a recipe anytime soon, so I will have to experiment. Any ideas?

This past 10 days, in between all the last minute preparations for vino roma (like begging wine distributors and reps to sell me wine, please, and when they consent to do so, after many mails and calls, wait for them to deliver), I have been taking part in a lot of wine events here in Rome, most of them thanks to A.I.S., the Italian Sommelier Association, of which I am a proud member.

There was a vertical Barolo tasting (vertical not meaning that we were standing all the time, as one of you asked in an email, but that we tried different vintages of the same wine from one winery - in this case Marchesi di Barolo) where I got to drink the oldest (non-sweet) wine of my life, a 1947 vintage, which was very, very good, smooth as silk and velvet, no tannins to disturb your palate, and with very fine, warm fruit aromas.

There was a 2004 Barbaresco tasting with 23 different wineries, where I got to try the first Gaja of my life (I mean the original, Piedmontese, Gaja, not one of his experiments elsewhere - the next day I had the 2nd and in 10 days I will be drinking more and getting to know Mr. Angelo Gaja himself, so I will hold my evaluation of Gaja back till after that event, he is called a “volcano-like man”) along with La Spinetta and Ceretto.

And then there was the Bibenda Day. Bibenda is Italy’s best Wine Mag and is affiliated with A.I.S. Every year they organize a day, where the members get to experience a guided tasting of 25 of the best wines to be found, Italians and international ones, rotating every year, from several (old) vintages. I drank the most expensive wines of my life during this evening: nothing under €60, the most expensive at €500, some were invaluable because not on the market! The picture at the beginning is from this tasting. Do you see the perfect accuracy? 50 rows of perfectly prepared tasting tables for a total of 500 tasters at this event: everything was perfectly organized.

They really thought about everything; there were 6 glasses, a spittoon for each taster, booklet of the wines to taste, a booklet for your tasting notes, a pencil, a napkin, bread and cheese, water….The rows and everything on the table were accurately set, the tasting began on time (all the A.I.S. events- 4 up to now - have been on time and well organized, I have to say, we had been expecting anything but good organization based on our experiences in the last two months here in Rome, but A.I.S. is nothing less than perfect) , the excitement was palpable. I really was nervous (in a good way), I have to admit, I knew I would drink wines better than any I had, and so many of them.The tasting was divided into 5 parts, the bubbly, the white, the red - Italians, the red - international, and the sweet. For each part the 90 sommelier on duty (all very friendly and professional) served the wines for that part in our glasses (each part had 3 to 6 wines, a total of 25 wines) and a different specialized moderator for each part talked about the wineries and the wines and did a tasting of each wine, relating his/her thoughts about the wine.

My highlights were:

The bubbly: 1995 Ferrari Riserva del Fondatore Spumante Metodo Classico (I loved the base wine of this spumante most; among 1989 Ca’del Bosco and the champagne from Krug, Jacquesson and Bollinger, all 1996)

The white: 1987 Terlano Sauvignon (this was really hard, as I loved all the whites: 1998 Chardonnay Tasca d’Almerita, 1984 Cabreo, 2006 Riesling Dellchen Dönnhof, 2004 Meursault-Genevrières Jobard and 1991 Chevalier-Montrachet Jadot)

The Italian red: 1995 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Valentini (this was the most “ready now”, doesn’t mean others won’t be grand when their time comes: 1999 d’Alceo Castello dei Rampolla, 1999 Sassicaia, 1998 Sorì San Lorenzo Gaja and 2000 Barolo Giacosa)

The international red: 1999 Chateau Margaux (this was also the most expensive wine - aside from some which were invaluable because not on the market at all - with €500 for a bottle. I loved, loved, loved this wine, it was the best one for me in this evening of superlatives. Other international reds were 2002 Chambertin Rossignol-Trapet, 1998 Latour, 2001 Le Méal Chapoutier, 2002 Relentless Shafer and 2001 L’Ermita Velles Vinyes Alvaro Palacios)

The sweet: 1932 Marsala Ambra Dolce Florio (this being the oldest wine I have ever tasted - the record which has been broken twice within a week -, others were 1996 Rotenberg Vendange Tardive Humbrecht and 1975 Sauternes Suduiraut)

If you want to see all the wines we tasted, here they are (pictures courtesy of Bibenda):

No, no, no, before any Romans come out to throw stones at me, this is not a traditional recipe. It is my interpretation of typical Roman ingredients which turned out to be truly yummy: Guanciale, romanesco, pecorino romano are real milestones of the roman kitchen - mind you, not the only ones; but they really are everywhere.

Once you taste guanciale, you would understand why it is used in so many dishes. Do you like bacon? Wait till you have eaten guanciale. It is not smoked but rubbed with a delicious cure and is so much more delicate than bacon or pancetta or speck. (Though of course you could substitute it with these if you don’t live in Italy.) Since we started our scouting visits to Rome last year to check out so many things before really moving down, I have been thinking about guanciale. Actually, I even dreamt about it. There, I said it. It was in December that I made a note in my cellphone while going through the mercato Trionfale (on Andrea Doria): rigatoni, guanciale, romanesco, pecorino romano, onions, raisins, almonds, white wine (sweet?).

After weeks (months?) of being first without an apartment, then without a kitchen, this week I finally made the dish I had been thinking about for months. And it was even better than I imagined. Sitting in front of the fire, along with a glass of full bodied white wine, this pasta dish hits all the right spots, savory and hearty, with a mellow and sweet note from the caramelized onions and moscato soaked raisins. Comfort food for a chilly night at the end of winter here in Rome, though I am sure it will taste just as well where you are sitting right now! Well, except maybe in Cebu, Philippines (hi!), where I think is summer right now!

Pasta alla Romana
own creation

prep: 15 mins
cook: ca. 20 mins

rigatoni, 500g, or other short pasta
romanesco, 1, or broccoli
guanciale, 100g, or pancetta/bacon, in one thick slice
onions, 3 medium sized
raisins, handful
pecorino romano, 50g, or other hard, flavorful sheep milk cheese
almonds, handful, blanched and slivered
sweet white wine, 1 cup

Bring a big pot of water (at least 5 liters/quarts) to boil, add salt after it boils.

Soak the raisins in the sweet white wine. Cut the onions in half-slices and roast them over a medium-low heat in a heavy pan with little olive oil. You want to do this slowly so that the onions turn brown slowly and caramelize during the process. Cut the romanesco into its florets. Cut the guanciale into strips. Add the guanciale to the onions halfway through. Add the raisins and the soaking wine to the pan near the end.

Throw the pasta and the romanesco florets into the boiling salt water and cook till al dente, firm to the bite. With rigatoni, this happens about the same time for the pasta and the romanesco, after around 10 mins. Drain and mix gently with the onion-guanciale mixture in the pan. Divide between 4 serving dishes. Add the almond slivers and freshly grated pecorino romano on the individual servings.

It looks like magic, doesn’t it? A bunch of olives, suspended in mid-air mid-liquid.

These are some olives we bought at the organic market (every 2nd and last sunday on the Vicolo della Moretta). I found them to be not cured enough, still too bitter, so decided to help a little bit. I know real olive curing involves natron-lye solution, but I am afraid of that. And since these are not totally uncured, but just need a little push, I decided saltwater would suffice. What do you think? Is salt enough? Should I change the water everyday?

Can you tell I have a new camera? Can you tell I am loving it? Because I do!

Rule #1: A good pizza is thin and crisp. This pizza is thick and soft.

Rule #2: A good pizza is baked free form. This pizza is baked in a rectangular black deep pan.

Rule #3: A good pizza is baked in a wood burning stone oven. This pizza is baked in an electrical oven.

Yet, it is one of the best pizze I have ever eaten. I go there at least once a week to get my dose of pizza. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t call it a pizza. The dough is so tasty, it is made with high-quality artisan flour and slowly matured with natural yeast. It is not there just to showcase the ingredients on it (which are always the best quality) but is in itself a dream.

Where to get it? You have to come to Rome and go to Pizzarium. This smallest shop manages to produce the best pizza (and bread! real bread, not the usual Italian airy stuff) in Rome. You will have to eat it standing up (you can have some of the best micro-brew beers of Italy and Europe with it), or take it with you.

Oh, wait, this is the philosophy of the owner (and chef):

“It cannot be denied that nourishment is of high importance. It is the primary necessity of humans and it shouldn’t be dealt with lightly, given that it represents the biggest coefficient of health, and one of the joys of existence. Science shows that the food prepared in a simple but careful way is the healthiest, since it stimulates the appetite and restores the stomach, which is the most important human organ.”

You gotta love this guy.

As I sit in the sun in front of my favorite café in the middle of Rome, sipping my cappuccino (very Italian) and reading the newspaper (very un-Italian), I hear the beggar who is standing in front of the door and holding out his hat. “Just 70 cents”, he is murmuring at everyone who is leaving, “please, just 70 cents”. Not just “some coins” or “1 Euro”, as one might expect. Why is he asking for exactly 70 cents, I wonder. The answer comes with the next bout: “I am hungry, didn’t have any breakfast yet, just want to buy a cornetto.”

70 cents can buy you 3 substantial sandwich rolls, with which you can get full for a whole day. Or one croissant, gone in a minute, but flaky, creamy and delicious.

Italians do everything with style.

With the year 2007, our stay in Stuttgart is coming to an end as well. The original 9 months ended up being 17. We will be leaving in two days for a short stop in Bavaria and then on 26th we will be heading for Rome, to realize our dreams. Wish us luck!

Although the one and a half years in Stuttgart may not have been the happiest in our lives (we were away from friends!), I have to stress the fact that culinary-wise the area has a lot to offer. The geographical and historic proximity to France has left its marks, and the produce from the area is eye candy in the many markets. Not only was it very satisfying to shop and cook in Stuttgart, but also the restaurants were, as a whole, among the best Germany has to offer. So before we go, I would like to point out some excellent restaurants in and around Stuttgart. The last months have been crazy, what with all the bureaucracy to deal with (not only are we moving, we are also starting a new business, of which you will hear soon enough!) etc., so I never had the time to write the individual posts these restaurants all deserve.

Bachofer

With a formerly Michelin starred chef, this is a restaurant you don’t expect to find in the countryside. Evaluated highly in almost all restaurant guides, we had the feeling that the chef is trying a little bit too hard to make everything interesting. The food (an excellent P/V of €99 for 10 courses) is very good, there are very interesting combinations (seabream with rabbit ravioli? calf’s head strudel with octopus?), but not always thought thoroughly. I think here is a great chef with a lot of talent, who will get even better when he calms down a bit and re-thinks his creations, which are sometimes too “show-y”. Good wines, also by the glass.

Bachofer
Marktplatz 6
71332 Waiblingen
Tel.: 07151-976430

Fässle

Another reputable restaurant in Stuttgart, it is especially lovely to sit on the terrace on a mellow summer evening. The five-course menu (for €51) is not the most groundbreaking you ever had, but offers very reliable craftsmanship. Most products are local, as well as the wines, which are not always perfectly matched. If you are self confident, choose your wines yourself and enjoy a relaxed and high quality meal for a relatively small sum of money.

Fässle
Löwenstr. 51
70597 Stuttgart
0711-760100

Irma la Douce

This restaurant opened in the red light district of Stuttgart in may of this year and took us by storm. We were there three times, this was the restaurant I wished to visit for my birthday dinner. Another former Michelin starred chef who is bound to get it again with this restaurant as well. Mostly local produce, mostly seasonal, french style cooking. Great sauces! The maitre is at times a bit too chichi and ladida, but he recommends great wines and somehow all the show fits into the surroundings between the, ehm, yes, you know, “establishments”.

Irma la Douce
Katharinenstraße 21
70182 Stuttgart
0711-4704320

Epicerie fine

A little jewel of a shop, this place has charmed us. It is actually a delicatessen-shop where you can buy directly imported french cheeses and wines (these not only french). Many a Monday dinner (when the market doesn’t offer its best) has been saved by the perfect baguette, some cheeses and pates from here. But the real ace up their sleeve is the lunch. I ate some of the best dishes of this year standing up in this little no-smoking, no-mobile phones deli, accompanied by some very interesting and less known wines. Everyday, there are up to three courses on offer, which you may pick and put together as you like, with a wine by the glass and at unbeatable prices. No reservations taken and be sure to go early enough, when the food is sold out, it is sold out! Mrs. Hebener, the owner and chef behind the scenes, was planning to open a “real” restaurant just across the street, but it seems like there have been technical problems. Do keep an eye on this!

epicerie fine
Olgastr. 136
70180 Stuttgart
0711-3803383

Earlier this year I put together a culinary city snapshot of Stuttgart for Johanna, everything I wrote there is also still valid. If you are planning to visit Stuttgart any time soon, do have a look at that post as well.