Two Stars

It is not often that we happen to be on vacation, within a half hour of a Michelin-rated 2 stars restaurant, have the means to both get there and pay for the meal - so we went all out to make sure we planned our last day in Tuscany around lunch at Arnolfo with Chef Gaetano Trovato.  We chose lunch instead of dinner because we didn't want to drive on country roads in the dark - it was the same menu.  All six of us were very excited by the thought of the lunch and looked forward to the event with great anticipation.  We spent our morning in the street market in the new part of town but really our heart was on the lunch.   We got lost looking for the restaurant and were relieved when we found it and was warmly welcomed by Giovanni Trovato, brother of the Chef and co-owner.

The restaurant is in the historical part of Colle Val d'Elsa, a medieval Tuscan town.  (Visit my travel blog for photos of the town.) The main dining area was on the street level of what looked like a residence that is on the hillside - even the lower level was bright and open.  We were glad we chose lunch because for once it's great to see our food in broad daylight!   The formal dining room had an understated elegance even though the chandelier and the stemware are ostentatiously Bacharrat.  The window looked out onto a sloped field (of sunflowers in the summer) - it was a picture perfect windowscape.  And so was the meal...

In the 4 hours that it took us to go through our lunch, the farmer had finished ploughing his field.   The owner told us that it was a field of sunflowers before it was ploughed.  Imagine how stunning that would have been...

The entrance portal on one of the main streets in the old town

The lower level sitting room

The book-lined dining room

There were two set menus - we ordered both and tried everything.  One is the "Territorio" - translated on the menu as "Territory & Research" - and is really the Tuscan menu.  The other one is called "Essence" which is a seafood menu.  I no longer see this on the website.

There were two amuse bouche, I've only captured one here: crispy melon, zucchini stuffed with cream cheese, pink shrimp with celeriac, tuna tartare, chicken liver pate with hazelnut and grape compote - all amazing contrasts in textures and tastes

A selection of breads, all deliciously bite-sized

I love the cover for the soup!

Tuna with sweet sour onion swimming in chickpea soup (I confess I'm not going to rave about this one)

This one, however, is superb: scallop with caviar swimming in pumpkin soup with orange compote.

Pigeon breast with goose liver, grape sauce and chestnut paste

Anchovies with fennel foam, onions under the foam, saffron with scampi

Lasagnita with lentils and lobster, clams

Ravioli blue lobster vervain with enoki mushrooms

Pasta with tiger shrimp and squid, broccoli

Pasta stuffed with sausage, parmesan cheese, cabbage and lima bean sauce

No you can't eat this, but I just want to show the place of honour for my camera - its very own stool!

John Dory with coffee sauce, Jerusalem artichoke, fois gras terrine

Rabbit with curry, wine, liver, olives and capers

Suckling pig ribs, lamb with celeriac and red currant

Beef cheek with red wine, porcini mushrooms, squash flowers and squash

Anise-flavoured figs with San Giovesia ice cream

Chocolate with chestnut (mmm...GOOD!)  and ginger ice cream

Petit fours: pistachio macaroon with almond flour, tartlet and fig compote, spice panna forte, beignet lemon custard, crispy almond chocolate with salt - hard to imagine each exquisite piece can taste so good even at the end of the four hour meal

Blueberries custard with cotaceni biscuits and spicy ice cream - a perfect ending

It was a very enjoyable meal and the best part for me was the quality and the variety and how we were able to try and savour a little of everything - which was of course the intent of tasting menus.

My special thanks to my friends H & S Gotts both for the idea of going to Arnolfo's, arranging it and best of all, remembering all the details about the lunch - without which this blog post would not have been possible!

Eating in the oldest butcher shop in Tuscany

Lunch at the Antica Macelleria Falorni was a new eating experience for us.  The butcher shop is reputedly the oldest in Tuscany and still run by the 8th generation of the same family since it was founded in 1729.  It was one of the main reasons why we visited Greve in Chianti.  For more pictures of the shop and the town, please visit Travels with rarecat.

We sat down at the picnic tables outside the shop, looked at the neatly folded one page menu (perfect for taking away as a souvenir) and waited for the waiter.  After a while, one of us finally read the front page of the menu that outlined "how it works" - order at the till;  hand the orders in at the counter; help yourself from the take-away fridge; take the food to your table and enjoy your meal!  There was even a microwave that you could use to heat up your food but most unique for us - a self-dispensing wine tasting machine for which you could purchase a card at the counter.

Lunch turned out to be a picnic...

We had the prosciutto, salami and pecorino with fig jam - all tasted good (especially the pecorino) but not distinctive - I wondered if it had anything to do with the paper napkins we were eating out of...

Notice how fatty the meat was 

Ham, ham and more ham... 

Many customers hovering around the wine-dispensing machine 

Seafood in Cinque Terre

We had lunch in Vernazza, one of the five villages that made up "Cinque Terre" on the Italian west coast.  (For more photos on the village, please visit my travel blog Travels with rarecat.)  We were a group of eleven but we split up into two groups for ease of ordering.  In any case, we tried to "maximize" our food experience - the motto was try as many kinds of seafood as we possibly could!

In general the seafood was fresh tasting.  The one dish we were looking forward to was the fish baked in salt, just because it was the house specialty and the restaurant made a show of its presentation.  In reality, I found the fish too salty and was disappointed the skin was not crispy, in fact it was quite tough (likely from the salt), and not great for eating, no wonder the server was about to throw it out when I stopped him.  I would think that most seafood already have enough natural sodium in them that very little salt, if any at all, is needed in their preparation.  This is clearly a recipe that needs updating.

Fried shrimp

Mussels and squid

Anchovies made three different ways - deep fried tasted best for me

Octopus!  Love this!

Scampi and squid - personally I don't see much point in scampi - neither shrimp nor lobster and not tasting as good as either...

The galley kitchen which opened out onto the street

The fish baked in salt presented with a flourish

Good fileting! 

Looked good but...

Where we ate - prime location in Vernazza on the main street right by the water

A High Risk Menu

Whether the menu of Rickybobby, a casual neighborhood eatery, is terrific or terrible depends on one’s point of view.  But there is no doubt that most items on it are high cholesterol, high fat and high calorie food.  Here are some examples: “Beef and Bacon Burger” with two patties of ground bacon and beef glued together by melted American cheese, “Pork Fries” of curly fries and pull pork with cheese sauce and buffalo sauce drizzled all over, meaty “Spicy BBQ Pork Ribs” with country bacon potato salad, and “Duck Confit Potato Skins” with Manchego cheese and ranch dressing.  Arteries, beware!  With this sort of food, it is amazing that the restaurant has been packed since its opening.  

On a recent evening, Mr. & Mrs. A felt brave enough to eat dinner there, carrying along some baby aspirin with them as a precaution.  It was a relief that they did not need to ingest the pills after all.

Mrs. A loved her “Lobster Mac n Cheese”.  Bathing in the bubbly hot béchamel sauce were farfalle (a.k.a. “bow-tie” pasta), lobster meat, corn and spinach.   The sauce was slightly over-salted but it went well with her beer.  The dish would be even better if it was made with macaroni. 

Lobster Mac n Cheese

The aroma of Mr. A’s “Crawshrimp Grits” captured his attention when it arrived.  Inside the bowl was a pile of crawfish and shrimp meat and shredded pork belly in a spicy broth.  Hidden underneath was a generous portion of creamy cheesy grits.  Every spoon of grits, mixed with broth and meats, delivered a rich flavor so delicious that Mr. A kept on eating until the bowl was empty.  

"Crawshrimp" grits

As an attempt for a balanced meal, Mrs. A ordered sweet potato and broccoli.  The kitchen turned the two healthy vegetables into something otherwise.  The sweet potato tots were deep fried and served with a ranch dressing, and the broccoli crowns were covered with a Welsh cheddar cheese sauce.  

Sweet potato tots

Broccoli

Mr. A ordered something good for his heart – a glass of red from the wine list that could not be any shorter.  It had just three words: house red/white. 

The four dishes were both satisfying and filling, so filling that there was plenty of food to take home.  That did not prevent Mrs. A from ordering a piece of pumpkin pie with maple whipped cream to go.

They like to return to sample the rest of the menu.  But it won’t be any time soon as they reckon that a “de-tox” period is absolutely necessary.

Veal and Chicken Stew, an Italian Recipe

Mr. A received in the mail the gift Arufa & M got him in Italy.  It was a box set of four cookbooks on Vegetables, Fish, Meat and Desserts, Cakes, Cookies, the “1,000 Recipes From the Cooks and Restaurants in the Slow Food Osterie d’Italia Guide” (edited by Bianca Minerdo and Grazia Novellini).  

He browsed through all four books immediately.  Right away, he found an interesting recipe titled “veal and chicken stew”.  He conjured up an image of a casserole of boiled chicken, chunks of veal breast and shank, root vegetables, all in a rich stock.  As he read on, he knew that he was way off the mark.  

The leading sentence of the recipe set the tone.  It read “Clean and wash the brain, sweetbreads, marrow, testicles, and cock’s crests in cold water.”  For sure this was not for the squeamish eaters, he thought.  

The brief recipe continued: 

“Blanch separately in boiling salted water for 5 minutes.  Allow to cool, and cut into small pieces.  Chop the veal fillet and calf’s liver to pieces of the same size.   Melt a knob of butter in a skillet with bay leaves and, in separate batches, brown the meat and liver, the offal, and diced porcini mushrooms.  Melt more butter in a large pan, and add all the ingredients.  Pour over the dry Masala, white wine vinegar, adding a little broth if necessary.  Cook for another 10 minutes, season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve hot.”

This recipe comes from Ristorante Sotto la Mole in Turin.  It was devised in the 19^th century for bankers and financiers of Turin, thus its Italian name “Finanziera”.  The English name “veal and chicken stew” is totally misleading as it is not a stew, the only chicken part is cock’s crest, and the veal is mostly offal.  This old-fashioned local dish sounds delicious to Mr. A.  He has eaten all but one of the ingredients before in separate dishes as roasted marrow bones, pieces of crispy sweetbreads as well as whole creamy ones, sauced cock’s crests and mushroom in a pastry puff, and so on.  But having all of them on a single plate is a culinary tour de force, a masterpiece of Italian cooking.   

Unfortunately Mr. A won’t be able to cook this dish at home as many ingredients are not easy to come by where he lives.  Besides, this is not Mrs. A’s “cup of tea”, so to speak.  He has to wait for the day that he and Mrs. A can travel to Turin to eat it at the Ristorante Sotto la Mole.

(Note:  A picture of the dish can be found on the Tripadvisor site under “Sotto la Mole, Turin”; look for “Finanziera alla Piemontese” posted by Senor blunotte79 in Nov 2013 in the section of visitor photos).