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Archive for the ‘Seafood’ Category

2 birthday parties (+1 more birthday)

Posted in Bread, Nuts, Poetry, Seafood, Sweet Things, Wine, tagged American Academy in Rome, Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Byron in Rome, eating locally, local food, locavore, locavore Rome, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore on November 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Dylan turned five, and Jim turned ninety. We celebrated with them both. It was a busy, delicious day filled with tasty tidbits—of both food and conversation.

Dylan and his parents live in a fourth floor walk-up in Trastevere. Sarah offered me a cafe latte as soon as we arrived, which was welcomed on a blustery morning. She had clearly been working for hours on the food, which was spread on their square table that sits invitingly in the middle of the open eat-in kitchen. There were assorted sandwiches for the kids to scarf down, two kinds of chicken salad with greens, a cous cous salad, a hummus platter, sliced cheeses and salumi, crackers, two kinds of cupcakes, and, warming in the oven, pizza rossa (pizza topped with tomato sauce) and lasagna! The party rolled along at an Italian pace, with people arriving as late as 12:30 for an 11:00 party. The kids went from sandwiches to cupcakes to chocolates, in between sessions of semi-organized play, and the parents went from coffee and oatmeal cookies to wine and lunch. The crowd was made up of Arcobaleno and ex-pat community friends; most of the parents switched fluently from Italian to English, and the kids played together in a happy bilingual, prelingual, nonsense, and gestural chaos. I tried to get a picture of the “fishing for chocolate” game, but only captured a bit of the party’s buzz:

The rest of the afternoon was down-time for me, but Jack was ready for more socializing, so we invited Lulu up from apartment 1. She and Jack play together so agreeably. They played “store,” which involved emptying Jack’s clothing drawers onto the bed and making play money. They drew and painted pictures of “ghosts eating people.” They played “boat” in a printer box, and rode up and down the hallway on Jack’s scooter. We made kettle popcorn, and Lulu told us that her dad is such a kettle corn expert that every kernel is popped. She also told us it was her mom’s fortieth birthday. Happy birthday, Anna!

After putting Jack to bed, and leaving him with his kitchen-intern babysitter, Jaimi, we went next door to the Ackermans’ apartment for a birthday dinner party. What an honor to be Jim and Jill’s guests! They are the most elegant, lively, curious scholar-artist couple, and they brought together some wonderful company. And Jill, who loves to help out in the Academy kitchen, cooked a fabulous, finger-friendly meal.

We started with steamed artichokes—it’s high carciofi season here in Rome—dipped in brown butter. Next, along with Mona’s chestnut bread, Jill served her own fish stew, with a soaked crouton, flavorful aioli, tiny local clams and some small whole-roasted fish to lay on top. Jeffrey managed to get a good picture of this dish:

After arugula salad, before melon and crostata, and with vin santo, we read aloud some short pieces we’d brought with us to honor Jim—as a friend, historian, Michaelangelo scholar, man, artist or all of these together. Since the text I read is in the public domain, and was the least personal, I’ll copy it out here. It’s Lord Byron’s description of seeing and being in St. Peter’s Basilica, from Canto IV of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

Thou movest—but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;
Vastness which grows—but grows to harmonize—
All musical in its immensities;
Rich marbles—richer painting—shrines where flame
The lamps of gold—and haughty dome which vies
In air with Earth’s chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground—and this the clouds must claim

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break,
To separate contemplation, the great whole;
And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye—so here condense thy soul
To more immediate objects, and control
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll
In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

Not by its fault—but thine: Our outward sense
Is but of gradual grasp—and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense
Outstrips our faint expression; even so this
Outshining and o’erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great
Defies at first our Nature’s littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV, stanzas 156-158

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the Mediterranean diet as cultural heritage

Posted in Cheese, Dairy, Drinks, Fruit, Grain, Pasta, Philosophical, Seafood, Sweet Things, Trends, Vegetables, Wine, tagged agricultural biodiversity, Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Bioversity International, Diversity for Life, Italian food culture, Mediterranean diet, roving locavore, UNESCO Italian diet, UNESCO Mediterranean diet on October 31, 2009| 3 Comments »

Italy’s Parliament voted unanimously this summer to recommend that UNESCO list the Mediterranean diet as endangered, so that it might be protected and preserved as a part of cultural heritage.

I’m interested in this public declaration, in part, for its semantic implications. Can a diet be treated as an aesthetic or religious object, or as a plant or animal species? In fact, the Mediterranean diet is all of these things. Italians are rightly proud of their food, and of their heritage. Diet here is interwoven with cultural practice, with religious ritual, with craft and design, and with plant and animal species that have an intimate connection with both the geography and the history of Italy’s distinct regions.

Of course, the natives of this boot-shaped land could describe the complex set of cultural practices that is the Mediterranean diet better than I, an outsider, and a barbarian American, could. But I’ll offer a few arguments, anyway, in favor of designating this diet an endangered piece of cultural heritage.

The Mediterranean diet is interwoven with national and regional identity. This goes deeper than the kind of identity declared by small towns with billboards at their borders declaring them the pistachio capital of the world. It’s an identity that has less to do with marketing, and more to do with the deep emotional ties of childhood memories, in which food and family are tightly woven together. Particular foods and foodways are tied to family traditions, religious rituals, and to regionally specific cooking styles.

When I was at the Bioversity offices yesterday, I met one of the senior scientists there, a man named Stefano, whose work as a scientist and educator about agricultural biodiversity perfectly aligns with his passion for food and food memories. In our brief conversation, he gave me many examples of the Mediterranean diet as cultural heritage and as endangered. When he was a child, he said, the whole neighborhood would get together in someone’s garage to peel, cook, and bottle tomatoes for use as sauce. While he was living in Africa, his homesickness took the form of a craving for the comforts of pasta. His mother and sister write down the recipes and menus of family meals; these recipes are their family scrapbooks and triggers to memory. One of these recipes is for a stew containing 57 varieties of wild leafy green. (Surely this recipe and the knowledge of how to find, much less cook, 57 varieties of wild green are endangered!) Another recipe is for quince jelly. How many quince orchards have you seen lately?

These foods and practices—this cultural heritage—is endangered for several related reasons: the globalization of simplified diets based on cheap, and less nutritious, commodity crops; the lure, or necessity, of convenience foods for working mothers who don’t have the time or inclination to hunt out 57 varieties of wild green; the encroachment of fast food into the diets of children; the loss of food and cooking knowledge through the generations. One of the terrible consequences of the loss of food practices is that the actual foods can be lost as well. Many of the crops that have sustained peoples all over the world for millenia fall under the new designation of “neglected and underutilized species.” This is how food as a cultural and aesthetic practice shades into an endangered species.

Another, no less important, reason to preserve the Mediterranean diet is that it works. People have thrived, and not been prone to cardiovascular disease or obesity and its consequences, on this diet for many generations. This is because of the intrinsic nutritional value of the foods themselves, and it is also because of the set of cultural rules that guide eating. The people here eat small portions, a variety of vegetables, whole grains, fish, and cheese, meat, and wine in moderation. No cappuccino after lunch, no hard liquor before dinner or gelato in the morning… the list goes on. And dessert is often fresh fruit.

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back from Venice

Posted in Baking, Bread, Drinks, Ice Cream, Meat, Nuts, Pasta, Restaurants, Seafood, Sweet Things, Water, Wine, tagged American Academy in Rome, Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Anice Stellato restaurant, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, Paradiso Perdito restaurant, Venice food, Venice restaurants on October 27, 2009| 5 Comments »

Going to Venice for a long weekend is like being transported to a different realm. In this immersed city, we immersed ourselves in grand-scale Renaissance art, long winding walks, gelato, spritz (Amaro—a bittersweet red liqueur—and prosecco), and seafood. What everyone says about the acoustics stands out as a strong sense memory: without the sound of cars, the ear hears the click of heels on stone, voices talking, murmuring, laughing, and the soft splash of water against stone and brick. True, there are motor boats, but their rumble is nothing after the roar of Roman traffic.

We ate well. Oh, yes we did.

On the first night, we turned the corner from the little alley where we were renting an apartment (with 5 others from the American Academy), and happened upon Paradiso Perdito, a wonderfully unlost paradise of seafood, pasta, off-beat music, and attractive diners and servers both young and old. Here’s a sampling of that meal.

antipasti

vino di casa pump

frito misto

amazingly flavorful garlicky pasta with a never seen before crustacean

squid ink pasta

Jack fell asleep on my lap.

see the rosemary sprig?

nicely boned

Other highlights: The dolci, which we all agreed were better than any in Rome.

how many pistachios are in this torta?

This place especially, which Lisa discovered at 7:30 one morning, by following the aroma of buttery baking, had the most amazing almond croissants we’ve ever had. They weren’t overly sweet and flabby like so many, but were improbably both dense and flaky, and were almost savory in their delicate sweetness.

bread turtle?

I didn’t actually take any photos of anyone eating gelato, because I always had a drippy cone of my own to control, usually with some combination of fruity and nutty. My favorite duo: cherry and hazelnut. Jack’s favorite: strawberry and cherry. But this is the place to get it:

We happened upon this graffito, which to me says, “Is this a gelato I see before me?”

We also saw lots and lots of art. Jack was inspired to do some painting, and then ran off to chase pigeons.

We took one gondola ride, but it only went across the Grand Canal, took two minutes, and cost 50 cents. Still, it seemed to make everyone happy.

Susanna & Stephen

Peter

Our last meal was at the Anice Stellato—the Star Anise—and it was a meal to remember. I wasn’t so good at photographing every plate, but my favorite dish was a lamb tenderloin rolled in crushed pistachios. Oh, my…. The wine, a local carmenere blend, and an antipasto plate called sarde in saor, with sardines, polenta, and pickled onions, also stood out.

Jack enjoyed hanging with the grown-ups. And I think they liked his company too.

Aurelia, Jack, Richard, me

(For more photos, check out my Flickr page.)

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all about shellfish

Posted in Restaurants, Seafood, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Cape Cod local food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, Mac's Shack, Mac's Wellfleet, roving locavore, Wellfleet clams, Wellfleet oysters on August 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Tropical Storm Danny is pouring long ropes of rain down the walls of the Truro Public Library. I’m taking advantage of the wireless, while Jack negotiates with the hordes of other kids for a few more minutes with the trains. He’s into non-fiction lately, so we’ve just read books about tornadoes, hurricanes, the first railroads, and kittens.

We had a good meal last night, at Mac’s Shack in Wellfleet. Mac’s original restaurant is more the shack—right on the sandy shore of Wellfleet Harbor. It’s all take-out from a window, picnic tables, paper and plastic, and BYOB. It’s a kid-friendly spot that also serves excellent food. The story about the more expensive and relatively fancier “Shack” is that they hoped it would be less of a kid and family destination, and more of a date or dinner party spot. But last night—Saturday at 6—almost every table had a child or two. The building’s facade is pretty inviting to those little people for whom reality and fantasy are often blurred:

macs shack

(Jack asked if the fisherman was real, but he knew the lobster was pretend.)

I haven’t been able to persuade Jack to eat fish except in highly disguised forms, so he ordered a bacon cheeseburger. Good boy. While he waited impatiently for his fries, I let him have the camera. He took portraits of everyone, but I won’t embarrass Peter, Anne, or Curtis by posting them here.

me at macs

Local shellfish was flying out of its shells, due to the fast, professional shuckers:

clams

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On Nantucket

Posted in Seafood, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, bluefish, eat locally, eating locally, eggplant recipe, local eating, local food, locavore, Nantucket local food, Nantucket seafood, Nantucket striped bass, roving locavore, Something Natural Nantucket on August 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I’ve eaten much more fish in the past two months than I normally eat in a year. I’ve been lucky enough to visit these seafood capitals of the northeast. Eating locally on an island is pretty easy at this season. For Nantucket, in particular, striking a balance between conservation and sustainability on the one hand and the inevitable conspicuous consumption of a resort island on the other, is especially important, and tricky, because people come for the timelessness of its beaches and weathered shingle cottages, but also come to vacation and to do all of the spending and consuming that entails. My Nantucket Quaker ancestors rode the wave of one tide of American capitalism centuries ago, and helped to whale nearly all of the sperm whales out of the Atlantic. The great white whale is now a threatened species. Bluefish are abundant, due to regulated sport fishing, and stripers are vulnerable, so I’ll savor them when they’re fresh and local. We’ve come too late in the year for Nantucket Bay scallops, the sweetest, smallest morsels in the sea. When I worked at a restaurant in Somerville, near Boston, those of us in the kitchen snuck a couple of raw ones when the small, highly priced shipment came in. They have a brief season, anticipated by seafood lovers, and hopefully protected by sustainable harvesting practices.

We saw some small-scale fishermen working quickly the other night, just before the dinner hour, to clean and portion these tunas.

fish cutting

albacore

A large vegetable and flower farm here has turned to sustainable energy,

turbine

but I also saw some spray tanks attached to the tractors. Their seasonal produce, displayed in a bountiful tumble of color, is wonderful, though. There were at least four kinds of eggplant; I bought bunches of the Japanese and the “Fairy Tale” varieties, along with a pile of pattypan squash, and roasted them last night (it was chilly outside). (Olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, 425 for 40 or so minutes.)

eggplants

pattypan

Another local institution I like to frequent when I’m here is the bread bakery and sandwich shop, Something Natural. They bake hundreds of loaves daily, and construct hundreds of jumbo sandwiches for a steady stream of people. Their chocolate chip cookies, with dark chocolate chunks and a chewy-crispy buttery crumb, are the best.

something nat.

bread
When the endless possibilities for people watching turn tedious, it’s fun to find the animals. We watched swallows gathering on the wires, and the flock seemed to grow by the hundreds every few minutes.

swallows

even more

Bunnies hop out of the bushes, and scurry back in when they see Jack coming.

bunny

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en route

Posted in Seafood, Whimsical, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat local Vermont, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, Nantucket bluefin tuna, Nantucket local food, roving locavore on August 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We’re on Nantucket for a bit this week. My cousin’s getting married, so our family (minus Peter, who’s at Breadloaf) is crashing in a mothbally cottage that sits on a rare high hill on this island, and would have a 360-degree view if it weren’t for the fog, clouds, and rain. “It’s ANOTHER blustery day!” shouts Jack, thrilled by any weather.

I’ve been enjoying local food steadily, but don’t have a steady stream of internet access. I’m sitting in a corner in the “Atheneum”–the town library–right now, but I forgot to upload the great pictures I took last night of three tunas being butchered dockside.

So… more on tuna and other treasures of the sea, and the organic farm, and Something Natural, later.

Jack and I enjoyed a simple meal on the ferry on the way over: slices of Jarlsberg, “crispy wheats,” amber ale, lemondade.

Jack ferry

His favorite part was watching the wake.

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Bayside

Posted in Baking, Beer, Restaurants, Seafood, tagged Amy Campion, Bayside Restaurant, eating locally, Gorilla coffee, Green Restaurant Association, green restaurants, Indian pie, lobster rolls, local food, locavore restaurant, locavore restaurants, Martha's Vineyard beer, Martha's Vineyard IPA, Massachusetts green restaurant, Massachusetts local food, New England clam chowder, New England seafood, Offshore Ale Company, Offshore IPA, Rhode Island clam chowder, roving locavore, strawberry rhubarb pie, sustainable restaurant, Westport Mass restaurants, Westport Mass. local food on July 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We had to ditch plans for the beach when we heard the constant rain pouring down as we dozed this morning. But Jack’s Uncle Grady arrived just in time for a big lunch at Bayside, just off of Horseneck Beach. Bayside is an officially “green” restaurant certified by the Green Restaurant Association.

green cert
The greenness in evidence took the form of compostable soda straws and many local ingredients, including a range of seafood from lobster and crabs to cod and striped bass (which, around here, is called striper, and further down the East Coast, in Maryland, where we lived for a short while, is called rockfish). The local beer menu offered many choices; I had an IPA made on Martha’s Vineyard by Offshore Ale Company: it was amber and hoppy, as I like it.

IPA & chowdah

We quickly polished off a plate of fried calamari topped with spicy banana peppers. I tried the Rhode Island style, brothy quahog chowder, but remain a fan of “New England” chowder, with its cream and whole clams.

calamari
Grady and I ordered the lobster rolls, which in normative New England parlance means a warm, limp hotdog bun lined with a lettuce leaf, and a pile of lobster chunks and diced celery held together with a dollop of mayonnaise. Bayside serves a pared down version which gives the consumer more control (in the manner of the Starbucksification of to-go food consumption) and evokes the simplicity of “sustainable” eating. The bun lined with lettuce holds a generous heap of lobster meat, and a little dish of mayonnaise or melted butter sits on the side. I liked the lobster, of course, but missed the celery and mixed-up-edness of a traditional roll.

lob roll

Also on the table were fried clams, a salmon-asparagus wrap, and a gingery salmon salad.

We were full of good food, but had seen the pies on our way in. The Bayside bakers make at least four kinds of pie every day. Today there was lemon meringue, blueberry, apple, and strawberry rhubarb.

pies

We ordered “Indian Pudding”—a traditional New England custard made with milk, molasses, eggs, butter, and cornmeal, and seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, alspice, and cloves, and topped with a spoonful of melty vanilla ice cream—and one slice of strawberry rhubarb, which, curiously, was spiced with cardamom. Now we were really full.

My first move when we got back to the house, was to brew a big pot of strong Gorilla coffee, a bag of which Chris and Kate brought us from Brooklyn. I finished The City of Falling Angels, Jack watched the classic version of Winnie the Pooh, others took naps, Peggy baked banana bread…

A satisfying rainy day.

I also looked into green restaurant certification. There are seven areas of greenness in which a restaurant must qualify:

1. Water Effciency
2. Waste Reduction and Recycling
3. Sustainable Furnishings and Building Materials
4. Sustainable Food
5. Energy
6. Disposables
7. Chemical and Pollution Reduction

For more information on this worthy cause, check out the Green Restaurant Association’s website.

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Striper

Posted in Seafood, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Andrew Orr, basil pesto on fish, eating locally, foodie locavore, locavore, Orr's Farm, pea greens salad, roving locavore, striped bass recipe, Westport Mass. local food, Westport organic farm, Westport striped bass on July 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »

beach jack

After a satisfyingly lazy afternoon on the beach, here in Westport, Mass., Peggy and I went to the fish market. It was a bare bones kind of operation, but all of the fish and shellfish was glisteningly fresh and abundant. We decided on striped bass. On the way home, we stopped at the farm stand at Orr’s Farm—an organic vegetable farm run almost single-handedly by Andrew Orr, who is about 20 and is referred to proudly by locals as the town’s youngest farmer—and stocked up on potatoes, garlic, and a few others items. Dinner was a locavore’s feast: striper grilled mid-rare and topped with fresh, coarse-chopped basil pesto, garlic mashed potatoes (yes, it’s a craze of mine now), and a salad of lettuces from the back yard mixed with local pea greens, tomatoes and radishes.

pesto striper

Yum!

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oysters

Posted in Seafood, tagged Cape Cod lobster, Cape Cod oysters, Hog Island oysters, Tomales Bay oysters, Truro, Wellfleet oysters on July 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The oysters we had the other night in P-town were getting spawny. It’s summer–a cool one, but still summer, so the oysters have lost their briny, idiosyncratic edge, the flavor that marks them as a certain species in a certain water. They’ve grown flabby and creamy, inevitably fertile. I’m glad there are cultivated things that haven’t become completely unseasonal, indistinguishable month to month. We’ve tried to achieve it with tomatoes and strawberries, and haven’t.

I do love Wellfleet oysters, but the oysters I long for are those from Tomales Bay. The oyster company out there in Marin County, called Hog Island after the bay island once peopled with pigs, was one of our favorite destinations in the Bay Area. We’d park the car just off the narrow slip of road along the bay, hear the crunch of oyster shells under the tires, feel the breeze off the water, walk just a few yards to the table of sorting tubs right on the shore, and order 50 or 100, depending on who was coming over later.

Kumamotos–which fit into the circle of your hand’s ok sign–, Sweetwaters–Pacific essence…

Sometimes we’d hike, or stay over, and wade in the water on the opposite side of the long, skinny bay.

Shucking, back in our birdhouse apartment in the Berkeley hills, Peter would find an extra dozen or two. Shhh… don’t tell!

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Fun With Fish

Posted in Seafood, tagged Cape Cod lobster, Cape Cod oysters on July 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

jack lob

We spent the Fourth weekend on the Cape, and, for me, it was an absolute festival of shellfish, topped off with a feast of fish. (More on all that to come…) We were welcomed after the long drive with an easy going dinner at a new fish joint in Provincetown—Townsend’s. My step-father-in-law, Curtis, is a selectman in Truro, a big talker, and all around friendly guy, so of course he knew the owner. We shared the big family table in the corner with Becky Townsend (and daughters), who had recently coordinated, with Curtis, the creation of the coolest playground we’ve ever been to, in Truro. We ordered platefuls of the freshest local goodies around: day boat scallops, grilled and seasoned only with salt and pepper; lobster salad, fried clams, two dozen oysters—all of which had been gathered in that day.

oysters
We also had large baskets of fries, and I celebrated the summeriness of it all with a gin & soda—served, according to lobster-shack aesthetic, in a plastic cup.

On the wall behind the banquette where I sat, there were two representative family portraits. That’s Chris, the owner, on the right, as a young guy with a huge fish. And there on the left is his grandmother. What style!

townsends

We got to view the seven-pounder:

lobster
The weekend was really like one long meal. There were fresh raspberries growing in Anne & Curtis’ back yard, and we ate them with breakfast, for snacks, for dessert. Jack ate them right off the bushes, and weighed down my colander with his little hand, like Sal and the little bear in Blueberries for Sal.

raspberries
On Friday, we had a leisurely picnic lunch with friends, finished with what was to be vanilla bean ice cream but was served as a stubbornly, meltingly delicious semi fredo.

Several hours later, after hot sun, strong wind, and frigid water at the beach, we were, miraculously, hungry again.

beach
We shared three-pound lobsters, accompanied just with butter, bread, a Boston lettuce salad, and wine.

Then we ran after fire flies, watched an episode of Wallander, and collapsed into bed with cool breezes blowing in the windows all night. I love pulling up the covers on a cool summer night.

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