Resentin....drink up!

During my past week in Urbino, Italy, every supper typically began around nine and finished around midnight.  Each meal ends with grappa and lemoncello, the traditional after-dinner drinks of Italy.  An espresso is also de rigueur and a true Italian will pour a small amount of grappa into his almost empty espresso cup, swirl it around, then down it in one swig.  This espresso-infused grappa called resentin or "little rinser".

Oh, the tingle of warm minerals!

Murray River pink salt (click to enlarge to appreciate its beautiful flakiness)

Last week in the Dining section of the New York Times, Harold McGee, that guru of all things culinary, wrote an article about salt.  During my travels I look for local salt and have a growing collection of herb salts from France, truffle salt from Italy, rock salt crystals used for deodorant from the souks of Egypt, and my favorite, a large box of pink Murray River Basin salt from Australia.  Guests in my kitchen occasionally notice this salt and ask me why it is pink.  I proceed to say I don’t know (until now) and then a taste test generally ensues whereby said guest convinces themselves that indeed not all salt tastes alike and that this pink salt really does have a lovely sweet taste and great “mouth feel”----or to quote selmelier-extraordinaire Mark Bitterman’s description of Murray River salt, “distinct sunshine sweetness; tingle of warm minerals.”

From McGee I now know the pink color comes from algae living in the groundwater of the Murray River Basin.  It’s the pink flamingo of salt!  I also discovered Bitterman wrote an entire book on the subject of artisanal salts, Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes, which just went to the top of my reading list.  Apparently, I have only just scratched the Earth’s surface when it comes to salt…..

(photo from the NYTimes article by Tony Cenicola)

A Steampunk H. H. Richardson Train Station Diner

A clever renovation of an historical building, with a steampunk themed interior decor, yields delicious food and drink paired with great architectural karma....the Deluxe Station Diner in Newton, MA.

Added 3/28/11:  more pics and narrative about renovation can be found on artist and sculptor Mark Fisher's web site. 

Capt. Robert's Conch Salad

Ingredients (serves 12):

4-5 freshly caught conch
a few red or green peppers
an onion
a few tomatoes
a few cucumbers
a few pepperoncini

a few oranges
a few limes

Step 1.  harvest the conch meat using the back of a hammer to whack a hole in just the right spot on the shell.  Insert long thin knife and cut muscle away from shell such that you can pull conch out of front door.

Step 2.  clean the guts off such that white meat remains (optionally eating a certain clear gooey part rumored locally to make you more virile).  Dice into small pieces with small machete (for most authentic experience) or any strong knife.

Step 3.   Fill a large bowl half full with seawater and put diced conch and diced veggies into bowl as you continue with chopping of peppers, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes.

Step 4.  When all veggies chopped, drain out seawater then squeeze in juice from a few oranges and limes.  Add chopped pepperoncini.

 Step 5.  Toss and serve immediately with a cup of Goombay Smash!

Trips in the Exuma Cays with Capt. Robert can be be booked through his web site Robert's Island Adventures.   Mention Maureen of the stromatolites  :-).

Happy Thanksgiving! *

(* Dear foreign readers....A secular holiday with the only requirement that you have a long bountiful feast with family and friends, typically built around a roast turkey, and be thankful for the things you might take for granted the rest of the year.)

I apologize to everyone who's enjoyment of today's turkey I ruined by the last post!  I will state for the record that I will be eating turkey today.  I buy very expensive, special order turkeys that lived happy, carefree lives in rural Vermont, possibly roaming their neighborhoods and woods, flirting and making turkey-babies like my local bird above (see this post).  I am happy to pay double for the humane narrative, hope it is somewhat true, and recognize how fortunate I am that I can make such a financial choice.  Beccacowster came to her vegetarianism through her love of cows, other social action groups try to get Americans to choose "Meatless Mondays".  I eat meat about once a week and try to buy local/regional farm-raised animals rather than factory-grown produce (this is harder in America than it should be).  The best book I ever read about food and the choices we make was The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.....I think everyone should read this thoughtful book which celebrates food.

  

Please don't eat me!

Just in time for Thanksgiving....this moving YouTube video (link here) made by my friend's twelve year old daughter Rebecca, aka beccacowster, using iMovie on a Mac.  I am in awe!

Nishiki Food Market, Kyoto

For over 400 years this 400 meter-long covered indoor market has been the destination of Kyoto foodies....and I can see why!  I didn't know so many types of small eatable marine organisms existed. For your viewing pleasure, we'll start with the very best.....octopops!  I'd like to see Anthony Bourdain eat one of these puppies.

"How about trying this? Delicious, a quail egg is in the head of the octopus."  (click to enlarge to fully appreciate their juicy looking deliciousness)

more octopops...

lots of small seafoody things...

lots of live seafoody things in buckets....

a cool refreshing pickle pop?

many tables of vegetables (?) slathered in soy paste (?).....

dehydrated in many forms.... 


 
beef buns -- Kyoto's answer to the hamburger?

the Market....

halfway through an earlier meal.....glad I didn't have to do the dishes.