Oven-Roasted Tomatoes
Someone around here jumped the gun here on early harvested tomatoes and I came home the other day and found a bowl of les tomates Campari in a little paper sack, in the kitchen.
Someone around here jumped the gun here on early harvested tomatoes and I came home the other day and found a bowl of les tomates Campari in a little paper sack, in the kitchen.
Even though itโs just next door, every time I go to Italy, I wonder why I donโt go more often. Before I moved to Europe, I used to wonder why Europeans didnโt travel to other countries more often. And now Iโm one of them. I think itโs because just to go anywhere, whether itโs a 45 minutes flight or a 4.5 hour flight, you stillโฆ
Patricia Wells has been writing about Paris for decades, and put a lot of bakeries, restaurants, and reallyโฆanything food-relatedโon the map for visitors. And when Patricia recently invited me and some friends over for lunch in her well-equipped Paris cooking school kitchen to celebrate her new book on salads, I jumped at the chance (okay, I didnโt jump because people would have looked at meโฆ
Iโm one of those people that really craves bitter greens. And France is a funny place because on one hand, radicchio (trevise), frisรฉe, arugula, and Belgian endive are found easily. The more sturdy greens โ like kale and broccoli rabe, are frequently absent, although I did recently hear an Italian vendor at the market explaining to a baffled patron what broccoli raab was. He toldโฆ
When I was in Nice a few months ago with my friends Adam and Matt, I wanted to show them some of the more unusual local specialties, ones you wouldnโt come across unless you were actually in a certain region. French cooking is very regional, which is why you wonโt find bouillabaisse in Paris or all that many macarons in Nice. And a lot ofโฆ
Iโve noted that wine bars in Paris often are the best places for casual dining in town. So when my friend Rochelle, a pastry chef friend from the States, came to visit, I wanted to go somewhere easygoing, where weโd be assured of good, honest food. So we agreed to meet at Le Garde Robe,ย which serves mostly natural wines. Another plus are the charcuterieโฆ
I was having drinks at a friendโs house last night, who is a cuistot, the French slang for a cook. I donโt think youโd say cuistat for a woman, but whatever you want to call us, the conversation pretty much stayed on one topic: Food. We talked literally for hours while we drank brisk sauvignon blanc and picked apart an amazing wedge of 30 month-oldโฆ
Last summer, Romain went to stay at a place in the French countryside with a large, semi-wild potager, a vegetable garden, which the people who lived there fed themselves from. They let weeds grow, didnโt spray pesticides on anything, and they ate most of the food as close to raw as they could. During his stay, he called me and said that he never feltโฆ
I donโt think Iโve ever made a New Yearโs resolution. Even if I did, I likely didnโt have much success sticking with any of them, so I just donโt bother with them anymore. Usually resolutions involve quickly-forgotten rules about eating better, losing weight, and saving money. (Which is probably why I never make them in the first place.) So I wouldnโt place any bets thatโฆ