blogfromafar

Spring twinkles in – just stop and look. Little signals, points of change: there all along, but now, different. Catch this Iris bud as it spirals out of its green sheath. It blooms in full, then changes again and drifts away.

A mockingbird sings at night, all night. You know at once why someone might want “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Rising to Google at 3am, you find that bachelor mockingbirds sing at night until they find their mate. A love song that changes and flows into the night, then blooms and sails into the dark.

Brio Tuscan Grille opened in Allen and we just had to check it out! “Brio”, meaning “liveliness” in Italian, is an apt name for the eatery. It’s lovely, dark, elegant, cozy inside, and manages to escape for the most part the feel of a chain restaurant.

However, the dining experience, especially for Italian food lovers like all of us, is decidedly surreal. We call it “Italy-Land“, featuring a Disney playground of a menu that may rival “Tex-Mex” for tasty, though inauthentic cuisine. (more…)

Gary’s got his grill game on! Last night we tried this recipe for Pork Tenderloin wrapped in Pancetta (put the fat back in that “other white meat!”) and seasoned with herbes de provence. We used our silicone Food Loop ($17.99 for a set of 6) to tie the little dumpling together, pulled out all the stops, using Full Grill Functionality as we moved from Indirect to Direct heat, and served the sizzling result with Broccolini and baby potatoes mashed whole. Oh yeah……….

Olive oil scandals, sadly, are not a new phenomenon in Italy. Click here for a summary of a 2002 Italian television expose (“Excuse Me, Are You a Virgin?”) on reprocessing the olive “must” left over after the first pressing of olives and selling the refined product as “Extra Virgin” olive oil. Then, the New Yorker last August published Tom Mueller’s well-researched article on the crime and nuances of mislabeling “Extra Virgin” olive oil.At Flavors From Afar, we hold one or two Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar tasting parties a week (see bottom right to sign up for yours!) and a question we get nearly every time is “How do I know that what I’m getting is Extra Virgin?” The truth is, that in our country where Extra Virgin is a marketing term, you just don’t, unless you know your supplier or producer. (more…)

Vinitaly, Italy’s premier wine tradeshow is over, but a bubbling controversy over Brunello, one of Tuscany’s flagship Sangiovese wines, pours on. The issue? Word is that although Brunello should be made from 100% Sangiovese grapes, other varieties like Merlot or Cabarnet Sauvignon are creeping in, to sweeten and plump up the taste a bit, to appeal to Americans with a sweet tooth, perhaps. Wine has been seized from four wineries and among the accused are Big Wine Names such as Banfi, Antinori, and Frescobaldi.

All are denying the accusations, of course, but at the same time another controversy is brewing on the other end of the quality spectrum. Word is that agents such as muriatic acid, sulfuric acid, even fertilizers and other carcinogens have been added to inexpensive Italian wines to stretch them a bit and make them more profitable. For those of us who weren’t drinking wine in the 80′s, we may have missed a similar scandal that caused several deaths and resulted in the dumping of millions of gallons of wine and import prohibitions from the French and Americans. This on the heels of the Buffalo Mozzarella Cheese scandal near Naples (though the EU reports none of the dioxin-bearing cheese was exported) and one could say we’re at an embarassing point in the lauded Italian food and wine industry. More to come, but here are some resources:

• Eric Asomov on the scandal
• A Secretive, Tainted Evening at a Brunello Winetasting
• Time Magazine’s article on the 1985 adulaterated wine scandal

Speaking of loosening standards and pushing the envelope a bit, even France is getting into the act. The recent plans to expand the growing region for “Champagne” is a case in point. Yes, there’s a lot of money to be made for those within the designated growing zone; but will the expansion dilute the distinctive taste of the famous bubbly? Read this and chew on it!

What better to do with your knife skills than to slice up a little pork? If you’ve been to a market in Italy, no doubt you’ve been taken aback by the sight of a cooked baby pig smiling at you all the while being chopped up for panini. (For Nancy’s Stories on Life, Death, and Humor in Italian Markets, click here and here.)

We’ve got three Porchetta recipes to try. First, Porchetta is usually a whole pig roasted, but can also refer to any large cut of pork, roasted slow with herbs. First, let’s look at Gary’s Pork Involtini. Involtini is a cut of meat butterflied, stuffed and rolled like a jelly roll.

Here’s the Recipe: Take your sharp knife and butterfly a pork roast to an even 1″ thickness (you may also cheat and have your butcher do this). Mix our Chateau de Fromage fresh chevre ($7.49) with an equal part Pesto Trapanese from Sicily ($9.99 in typical Sicilian style with sundried tomatoes, basil, and almonds). Add in 1T fresh rosemary. Now taste and add in more pesto or rosemary if you like. Slather the mix on the opened roast, then roll it up and secure with butcher twine or our own Food Loops, silicone “twine” that is reusable and dishwasher safe ($17.99 for a set of 6). Sprinkle the outside with salt and pepper, rub with olive oil, and cook in a grill preheated to 350 degrees, until a meat thermometer stuck in the middle registers 160 degrees. Slice into pinwheels and enjoy.

Two other interesting takes on Porchetta:

• Click here for the WP’s recipe with slide show for Porchetta Today, Leftover BBQ Sandwiches tomorrow.
• Mario and Esquire do a Macho Pork Shoulder alla Porchetta as part of their “Recipes for Men” feature.

A new tradition at Alessio’s Restaurant: Third Thursdays wine dinners, complete with produce from Tom Spicer’s FM 1410 around the corner. We tried out the first one on March 27 and found it to be a great value and learning experience, well worth a return trip.

The evening started off with a Doria “Contessa” Spumante from Lombardy (“spumante” means the foam at the top of a wave in Italian). The sparkling, yeasty notes were light and fresh. For the antipasti, we had a Bagna Cauda that was a little heavy and light on the garlic to our taste, paired with mortadella, and finocchiona, a salmi with fennel, both of which were excellent. The Pinot Grigio seemed a little soapy with apple notes; not our favorite.

The risotto with mushrooms (courtesy of Tom Spicer) had a wonderful flavor, but a gummy texture. No complaints with the Ravioli Aurora. The Quattro Valli Primitivo (zinfandel grape) was smokey, leathery, and just perfect. Next, we tried a house salad with wonderful Asiago cheese, but with an oil that was a little heavy (we would have like to have seen the new Texas olive oil there instead).

Alessio brought out his best with the secondi. The rolled veal and Gorgonzola pork loin were superb, served wtih fiddlehead ferns (courtesy of Tom). We tried a Doria Barbera that was a little tannic for us, but a tasty bubbly fruity Trevisani “Diana” from the Lake Garda region was our favorite for the night. Finally, finally the dolci…gelato with almonds and chocolate was far from light, but added a perfect punch to the evening.

Alessio is partnering with a local wine purveyor who guides the group through the evening and sells wine to those who so desire at the end of the evening, with volume discounts. To sign up for April’s Third Thursday, give Alessio a call.

Knowing that foodie literature can get a little self-important and serious these days, we found three books, all published within the past few years (and generally available in paperback) that talk of food as a portal to understanding a little something new about life and history.

First, the Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland. Vreeland chronicles Renoir’s financial crises, the stories behind the models in the painting, and gives us a sense of France in the late 1800′s, a interesting period peopled with artistic and political struggles.

Next, has anyone out there not read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert? It was eerily sitting on about every deck chair and airline seat last summer, so I waited a bit to join in, especially after “Friend of the Flavors” Cindy Alexander opined that this gal drove her crazy, with no direction in life or sense of self, waiting to be filled by places and others. Faced with a few empty hours at an airport, I finally bit. The premise is that the author travels for a year to redefine herself after a messy divorce: first, eating her way through Italy, meditating at an ashram in India, and finding both love and disillusionment in Indonesia. Though I basically agree with Cindy’s premise, and surprisingly could have done without the Eat part in Italy, I loved the Pray part in the Ashram. It makes the point that “everyday” people can have an intensely deep spiritual life, and I drank it in like water.

Finally, A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage, and on loan from “Friend of the Flavors” Randy Romig, is along the lines of Guns, Germs and Steel, in that it slices through familiar history with a new prism, so that we see familiar scenes in new ways. The premise: the influence that beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, and Coca-Cola have had on history. For those of us who missed a few fun facts in 9th Grade World History 1, this book provides a refreshing view of mankind; our needs for relaxation and/or clarity of mind, and the marketing methods that capitalize on those needs.