Cooking class in Tuscany

What better way to sample authentic Tuscan food than to take a cooking class with a Tuscan chef!  We took a cooking class with Giuseppina Pizzolato from Cuciina Giuseppina at the apartment we rented in Tuscany and enjoyed every minute of it.  To top it off, we had what we cooked for dinner in addition to other foods that Giuseppina and her son Simone brought with them.  It was a great start to our Tuscan holiday.

Never had this before - zucchini flowers

Preparing the batter for frying the flowers

Giueseppina demonstrating how to dip and drain the flower in the batter before frying

The flowers were so delicious!  This professional stove was in one of the apartments at the Castello di Pastine where we stayed

Like all cooks, we multi-tasked.   After we prepared the zucchini flowers so that they were ready for frying closer to dinner time, we started making the pasta.  Giuseppina showed us how to put the olive oil and eggs in the middle of the flour on a tray.  

Mixing the ingredients right on the tray

The proper way to knead...

So much fun putting the dough into the pasta maker!

This is cute - a simple press on this pasta tool created the little shell pasta

A trayful of shapes all made from the same pasta maker

Giuseppina showing off her students' work 

We learned the secret to the pasta sauce - put the olive oil and garlic in cold pan, just when oil heats up and the garlic is slightly cooked, add tomatoes and basil, salt and pepper, cover with lid, then turn off heat.  The tomatoes will cook itself.

We assisted in the preparation of the risotto with porcini mushrooms - mouth-watering good!  So was the liver paté.

The bruschetta - can't fail when the tomatoes were farm fresh

The fettucini that we made - the best we ever tasted...;-D

The osso buco that Giuseppina brought with her - full of flavour and melt in your mouth

Do we still have room for the apple cake?!

Thanks, Giuseppina - it was great fun!

Cruise fare

We were with a group of friends on an Azamara "small boat" cruise on the Adriatic for 7 nights this past fall - small boat being often equated with excellent food and service.  We ate at least two meals a day on the boat, breakfast and dinner with lunch usually on land.  So what was the food like?

I would say the food was tasty, well-prepared and well-presented and the service excellent.  There were lots of variety with a regular menu and a changing daily menu.   I was impressed by the diversity in the food choices - from basic steak to more exotic middle eastern fare and lots of seafood - all nicely dressed-up.  The only drawback that I could see, looking back on those 7 days on the boat, was that it was like eating out at the same restaurant seven nights in a row.

Even though we were trying different dishes every night, the cooking, the style, the presentation, all ended up being very similar.  The elements of surprise and discovery were diminished after the first two meals and these were often a large part of the food experience after the "basic needs" were met.  Going through my food photos, I find it hard to select from the many that were taken in the course of the week but I have tried to capture the tone in the selection below.  It would have been nice if there were more local regional dishes on the menu but I suspect they may not suit the nouvelle cuisine style Azamara seemed to be aiming for.

Still, the meals were very enjoyable - we had a great time because of the great company we were with and the food obviously added much to the dinner table conversation, especially when all eleven of us were seated at one table.  There was much food sharing and the waiters were very obliging in providing extra dishes of most things for sharing - it was like having a banquet every day!  Ultimately, it was the "abundance of riches" that detracted from what was actually a superior dining experience and we were glad that we lunched on land where we were relieved to be served "real" food, mainly local fish that actually looked like a fish...;-)

Soft-shell crab - can't complain about this one - it actually looked like a crab!

Shrimp appetizer

Fresh-tasting Seafood pasta

Delicious grilled red snapper

Grilled arctic char - tasty!

Perfectly done lamb - and I love the grilled egg plant!

Bouillabaisse - delicious but obviously not quite the real thing

Scallops and fish

Lobster, scallops and squid - this was at the specialty restaurant Aqualina - we had to pay a cover charge to eat here as we were not in the right class cabin

Great desserts!

And a perfect Gran Marnier souffle!

Delicious Meals in Italy 2013

Arufa and M vacationed in Italy in October.  They drove west from Florence to Santa Margherita and Portofino, zigzag across the country to Venice and finally Rome.  Besides sightseeing and shopping, they indulged in the traditional Italian food – a lot of pasta, seafood and funghi.  

Some of the dishes they enjoyed in Florence included a salad of burrata and crispy zucchini and tagliatelle with cherry tomato and basil.

On their way to Portofino, they stopped at Lucca for fritto misto, ravioli, and pasta with squid.

 

To celebrate the porcini season, they ate pasta with porcini in Santa Margherita.

In Venice, they feasted on gamberi (large shrimps), scampi, and spaghetti with clams.

Arufa and M visited Eatery Roma, the humongous branch of the giant international high-end supermarket chain (it has locations in Tokyo and NYC).  They had dinners at various restaurants there.  The pan of fried calamari, shrimps and anchovies was wonderful, 

but not as much as the tartufo bianco dishes, such as the eggs with a generous amount of shaved white truffle, 

or a “menu tartufo” consisted of three items on a plate – tajarin (a Piedmonte egg pasta), egg and polenta, and a fondue of Raschera cheese, milk, butter and egg, all of which were topped with white truffle.  The latter two were served in aperitif glasses.

Arufa and M’s meals in Italy were rustic and simple but deliziosa!

Simple Albanian Lunch

When our cruise ship stopped for the day in Durres, we hired a local Albanian guide to take us around to Kruje and Tirana, the capital.  He took us to a family-run restaurant near downtown Tirana so we were treated to a home-cooked meal.  It was a simple Albanian lunch, well, lunch is the main Albanian meal so there is really nothing simple about it if you have to cook it.

What we had:

Simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onions

Simple bread - but memorable because it was dense and crispy with great texture

Simple appetizer dip of tomatoes, eggplant and cheese but it's rather complex in taste and texture - I  love it, especially with the bread.  They gave us five bowls of these for eleven of us  - if we'd finished this, we probably wouldn't need anything else for lunch.

Simple vegetable soup with lots of veggies

Spinach and cheese phyllo - I know, it's Greek, it's Turkish, but it's also Albanian - it's a very common dish for this area of the world but hardly simple

  

And finally the meat dish - simply grilled.  I love the lamb but everybody else voted for the very tender chicken breast

The name of the restaurant, in case you are ever in Tirana...

Seafood in Croatia

We tried squid in three different Croatian towns, Hvar, Split and Dubrovnik - Hvar came out on top with the sweetest tasting.  We did not have an actual meal in Hvar, it was more like an afternoon snack, so it could have some bearing on our tastebuds.  The squid was grilled with very little oil and the tentacles were very crispy.  

Squid and risotto in Hvar

The lunch in Split was very interesting.  We were browsing menus along the waterfront tourist strip when we were approached by the waiter at one of the restaurants.  He proposed a custom menu for us and negotiated a price for the two fishes and squid that the four of us would like to try.  The emphasis was on "fresh" fish versus "frozen" - they were both on the menu and differently priced.  I have to give bonus points to the Croatian restauranteurs for their honesty.   Obviously we went for the "fresh" although these days with the expert fresh freeze techniques on fishing boats, could one really tell the difference?  It was also difficult to tell whether we got a good deal or not but we rather liked the waiter's personality, we were tired and hungry, so we sat down.   The fish and squid both turned out to be excellent.  

"Fresh" fish and squid in Split

In Dubrovnik, we were even more tired and hungry and practically sat down at the first place that we could - a narrow alley in the tourist strip.  Dubrovnik is so crowded with tourists these days that I'm sure anyone with a hole in the wall could make some money cooking fish for hungry tourists.  This particular hole seemed to be a family-run business but it didn't charge any less than the hotel-run restaurant in Split.  The food had a little more grease but still fresh and quite tasty.  I guess the proximity to the sea really helped.  While the food on board our cruise ship Azamara was excellent, you could count on anything we had to be frozen, well, "fresh" frozen.  We most certainly didn't have fish like this.

A week later in a Tuscany street market, the fishmonger identified for us the difference between the squid, calamari and octopus.  From that lesson, I would say that we had squid at all three Croatian towns.  We also had small fried fish in Dubrovnik - when we got to Cinque Terre in Tuscany, we found that they were anchovies - clearly quite different and tasted much better than the anchovies I tasted here in Canada, usually of the soggy variety and usually on pizza!