Your Gilded Cage
A Linnet In a Gilded Cage
A linnet in a gilded cage, –
A linnet on a bough, –
In frosty winter one might doubt
Which bird is luckier now.
But let the trees burst out in leaf,
And nests be on the bough,
Which linnet is the luckier bird,
Oh who could doubt it now?
Fuerza Bruta
This show has been all over the world, but for some reason it’s been limited to just a few cities in the US (New York, Chicago, Miami). It looks incredibly sexy and the audience looks like they are having a fantastic time.
Prince of Darkness International Airport
Birmingham airport could be named after Ozzy Osbourne
Yes. Obviously. This is a no brainer. I’d make it my business to fly through this airport at least once.
Genuine Food
Yesterday I was looking for something on the NPR website when I saw their list of the best cookbooks of 2012. The article is called “Recipe Rebellion: A Year of Contrarian Cookbooks.” Ok, whatever, so I started reading through their choices and notice the Smitten Kitchen cookbook. I’m familiar with the blog, though I don’t follow it. But anyway, that’s not what caught my eye. When I read this, I think that my eyes crossed:
At the heart of Smitten Kitchen‘s success (both as book and blog) is a paradox: Deb Perelman is fussy about making good things simply. Be careful to get the right consistency in the dough, but don’t bother making ridges on the gnocchi.
Wow. Really?
I’m all about the advancement of food and making things easier. But the ridges are gnochhi aren’t there for the aesthetics. Ridges on gnocchi are there to hold the sauce, which is the flavor of a gnocchi dish. Shortcuts only work when they provide you with an easier way to maintain the same quality and the same result. This is just laziness. If you’re going to take the time to make a gnocchi dough, roll it out, and cut it up, then take the extra few minutes and put deep ridges in your gnocchi by using the back of a fork or a grater, as well as a groove from your thumb.
There’s a reason why pasta comes in hundreds of shapes – the shapes match certain sauces. To paraphrase Marcel Hazan, you can make perfect pasta and an excellent sauce, but if the two don’t match, what’s the point? It’s no good. Think about the shape, form, and texture of the pasta when considering the sauce. Thin sauces work with thin pastas. Thicker sauces work with thicker pastas. Chunky sauces or meat sauces work with pastas that have hollow tubes or shells to hold it.
Gnocchi are made with flour and potato (sometimes cheese, but Smitten Kitchen is using the more common potato version). They are pudgy little balls of dough. They pair well with a pesto sauce, but without the ridges, you will have a plate of dough balls sitting in a pool of pesto. I don’t know, I think that if you wanted any sauce, you’d have to take your fork and try to slide the gnocchi around, get it coated, and deliver it to your mouth before the sauce slid off. The ridges catch the sauce.
I like foodie blogs, but I’m rarely moved to take their advice or try any of their recipes. It’s more of a nosy thing, I want to see what they are up to, or maybe I want ideas. But when I want to learn about food, to learn about cooking, or to try new recipes, I look to someone who actually knows more than I do. That’s not always a professional!
I’ve been following Mimmo (Domenico) Corcione on YouTube for a year or so. Look, he’s not a professional chef, he’s just an Italian pensioner who is really, really passionate about food. There is nothing tidy about his kitchen and he’s definitely not obsessed with catching the perfect angle of the food so he can post the pictures on Instagram. He’s pretty sloppy. But oh, he has character. And his dishes look so delicious. Mimmo’s wife films him cooking in their tiny home kitchen and he’s periodically interrupted by the ringing of church bells. His mustache is distracting. But he cooks home style food from different regions of Italy. I don’t think that you need to speak Italian to understand the recipes because they are so simple, for the most part. Here’s his most recent video on how to make Risotto with Castelmagno cheese.
Castelmagno cheese is from Cuneo, which is in the Piemonte region. It’s semi hard, made from cow’s milk, and I love the way that Mimmo brings your attention to appreciate the texture of the cheese. Smitten Kitchen. Puh.
I don’t have the Smitten Kitchen book, but I searched her blog for a gnocchi recipe and I found this entry, where she frets for five paragraphs about not using a ricer for the potatoes. (I personally use a ricer, but it’s not a big deal. You can microwave the potatoes and mash them with a fork. It’s fine. It’s all good.)
If you want to try a really good gnocchi dish, try one of Mimmo’s. He’s got a few gnocchi videos. I like this one because he also shows you how to make spinach gnocchi (drain the spinach really well!). Notice that he uses a grater and his thumb to make the ridges. No big deal, as long as there are ridges and a thumb groove! Enjoy the captions during the video.
Yes. The suggestion that gnocchi should not have ridges moves me. Maybe I’m as passionate as Mimmo when it comes to food? That would be a complement.
From Alternet: Trading Sex
There’s always a constant stream of people on Facebook who “like” pages or comments about linking food stamps to mandatory drug testing and then feel good about themselves for judging others and taking a hard stance. And if you, as I have, ask them about the kids, you’ll get some brilliant response like: “they don’t deserve to have kids” or “tough.” And then they’ll go off and post something about keeping Jesus in schools, which is just awesome.
People like that need information like this.
‘Tis The Season To Chill the F Out – Christmas in the States
One Christmas Eve, many years ago, my sisters and I sat in the back seat of our parents’ car, clamoring for Christmas music. We weren’t kids at the time, we were adults, but our family was on its way to Midnight Mass. For me, Midnight Mass is one of the nicest traditions that our family keeps.
Instead of tuning into Christmas music, my Dad was blasting a live version of Kashmir by Leg Zepplin. It’s a great song, of course, but on that night, on Christmas Eve, we were craving something a little bit more traditionally Christmas on our way to church.
This year, I finally understand why my Dad played Kashmir instead of Winter Wonderland. I so get it.
In the years between the Kashmir Christmas and Christmas 2012, I haven’t really experienced the full court press American Christmas season. Right after the Kashmir Christmas, I began working, really hard. Every year, I seemed to spend most of November and December either preparing for trials that ended up being postponed, or just cranking out work to try to wrap up loose ends before the end of the year. I would rush back to my hometown for Christmas, and then leave for Italy on the day after Christmas. In recent years, I’ve spent most of November and December in Italy, returning right before Christmas, so I never experienced the “Christmas season” in the U.S. until this year.
Wow. I love Christmas, so I really don’t understand how folks can turn such a happy part of the year into something so awful. I’m sure that everyone has good intentions, but they seem to be good intentions on mega testosterone. Leaving in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner to go stand in line outside of Walmart so you get deals on already cheap products that you probably don’t need? Excessive buying for kids who already have everything so they will have a perfect Christmas? Put up an insane amount of decorations on the day after Thanksgiving and massively stressing out over it instead of just enjoying the time off that weekend with the family? And of course, the bloody radio station that changes from Classic Rock to a 24-hour Christmas Music format on Thanksgiving Day! Yes, Kashmir, please Dad!
People in the States seem to try so hard to force a feeling of Christmas and a holiday spirit, but instead it seems to make everyone so sad. They have super high expectations of what Christmas should be – a certain feeling, a certain mood, maybe romantic, a time when everyone should get along perfectly, perfect decorations, perfect food, perfect gifts. How can anything live up to those kinds of expectations?
Italians aren’t perfect, not even close. But Christmas is so different there. Well wait, in many ways, it’s similar. Cities put up their best and most beautiful lights. There are traditions and traditional meals to be made and enjoyed with family and friends. But these things, this time of the year, everything seems to happen so organically. It’s not forced. There aren’t expectations, except that the food will be delicious and served beautifully. But even then, Italians don’t get hung up on things – most Italians just buy their Pannetone or Pan d’Oro from a bakery instead of getting caught up in making the “perfect Pannetone.” Spending time together is more important than buying the perfect gift ( “Spending time with children is more important than spending money on children.” Anthony Douglas Williams).
What’s interesting is that in the States, after this massive build up to Christmas, the crazy rush of buying perfect presents, the loading of houses with plastic deer and inflatable Santas, the incessant and repetitive spewing of hundreds of substandard versions of a few classic Christmas songs on the radio, after all of this, Christmas Day comes and everything ends abruptly. The Christmas music ends and most people have to go back to work. On December 26, Christmas is over.
In Italy, the holiday has really just begun. Vacation, time with friends and family, traditional meals – these things last through New Year’s Day to the Epiphany. It gives you some time to stop and really enjoy the season.
Complaints about the 24 hour Christmas musak stations aside, there’s some really nice Christmas music out there, and I’m not talking about Kashmir. A few years ago, when Pittsburgh’s NPR station ran all jazz, they came up with a list of the best Christmas songs. The music is fantastic, so play it, make yourself a drink, and chill the F out.
Fifty Shades
Women who love Fifty Shades of Grey embarrass me.
Women who love these books lack sexuality and gross me out. Julianne Smolinski at The Vulture says everything that I want to say about it in “The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Fifty Shades of Grey.” Best part: “I guess if you’ve managed to familiarize yourself with your e-reader but not YouPorn, well-written erotica, or your own body, congratulations on “finding” Fifty Shades of Grey … but also for going one more day without stumbling into a zoo enclosure. Up top.”
Shoulder High We Bring You Home
We had been separated by an ocean, but distance didn’t seem to matter because we had an affair via email and Skype, and he could correct my Italian through any medium. I will miss you terribly Roberto, and I don’t know what I will do with all the random thoughts in my head. Maybe I will bubble them. Maybe I will post them here. But for some reason, I don’t feel like sharing right now. Chi ben vive, ben muore.
Global Gomorrah
Corruption Is Seen as a Drain on Italy’s South
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: October 7, 2012 89 Comments
REGGIO CALABRIA, Italy — Italy’s A3 highway, begun in the 1960s and still not finished, starts outside Naples in the ancient hill town of Salerno and ends, rather unceremoniously, 300 miles farther south as a local street in downtown Reggio Calabria.
There’s really nothing in this article that’s new in the way of information. It’s just more tragic evidence of they way that organized crime siphons off public funds in southern Italy. What I find interesting is some of the commentary that regurgitates the same old argument about northern Europe funding southern Europe, with all of the usual racist implications.
But Roberto Savianni, expert in all things ‘Ndrangheta, has documented the spread of the ‘Ndrangheta beyond southern Italy, northern Italy, and well into northern Europe. Outside of Calabria, Germany is the next largest stronghold for the ‘Ndrangheta. The mafia is a global organization and those old generalizations just don’t apply.
