The Food Maven Diary
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Cook at Seliano, Ice Cream, Burgers in the News
I never expected the gratifying response I got to my newsletter announcing my next Cook at Seliano session right after Christmas. It was booked in one day, and with enough interest for me to set up another week of cooking, eating and excursions this winter: Sunday, February 7 to Saturday, February 13. I'm also planning at least one session for next (2010) fall: Oct. 17 to 23. It will be a special olive harvest and olive oil week. We'll follow the fruit from tree to bottle and, of course, make many dishes that rely on it.
The February itinerary will be about the same as New Year's, and, as always, our home for the week is Baronessa Cecilia Bellelli's water buffalo farm-inn in Paestum, just south of the Amalfi Coast, down the road from the famous ancient Greek temples of Paestum. Her rooms are large and filled with vintage furniture, and of course, they all have private, modern baths. (I get asked a lot about bathrooms lately.) February is early spring in Southern Italy. The temperature should be in the 50s. (I also get asked about the weather.)
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we have half-day cooking classes and other activities. We visit the nearby temples and the Paestum museum of Greek antiquities, tiny but exquisite. We watch the buffalo mozzarella being made at the dairy that buys Cecilia's buffalo milk. We'll take a look at the famous "beaches of Salerno," where the U.S. invasion of Italy began in 1944. We'll visit a private home.
On Tuesday and Thursday we make all-day excursions. In February, these will include a visit to an ancient Roman villa in Stabia, facing Mt. Vesuvius, where the super-rich Pompeian era Romans lived and died; a tour of a pasta factory in Gragnano, a town on the Sorrento coast that is famous for pasta manufacture; a walk through Vietri sul mare, the pottery town and the first town on the Amalfi Coast, and a shopping break and pizza night in Salerno. We'll also go to a weekly outdoor market, visit one of the most opulent monasteries in Europe, then on to a town with a Jewish past, not to mention a great country restaurant. Naturally, there's good food and wine along the way.
Though our activities will be about the same, our food in February will be different from New Year's. For one thing, Paestum's famous artichokes will be in season. We'll cook them and eat them many ways. Beyond that, I have had many people ask me for a vegetarian week - just vegetables, eggs, cheese, some fish and, of course, pasta. This is pretty much the way people eat in Southern Italy, so I am happy to oblige. However, if you or a spouse is a committed carnivore we'll also be happy to ask Cecilia's cooks to prepare some meat at the meals we don't cook ourselves in class.
If you are interested in this trip, or either of the two fall sessions, please write to me at cookatseliano@aol.com. The group is limited to 12, and the February trip is already partly booked. Please provide your phone number. Let's talk.
FAVORITE ICE CREAM #1
I am adding Blue Marble to my list of favorites. With two locations in Brooklyn, it scoops up scrumptious, yet purer-than-thou ice cream. You know what I mean. It's an "eco-friendly" business. Even the plaster and paint on the walls is "green," boasts a sign in the stores. In the Underhill Ave. location, the rear wall of the shop, which looks like the side of a farm building, is a recycled stage set from the Roundabout Theater Company. What we used to call salvage is not junk anymore. It's "green" to save it. Don't you love it?!
Ingredients? The organic milk comes from grass-fed cows in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and Ancramdale, New York, in Duchess County. The ice cream is handmade by a man in Columbia County, NY. The coffee they pour is organic and free-trade from wherever in the world they are growing organic, free-trade beans. (See the map on the Blue Marble website.) And they brag that their blackberries come from Columbia and the chocolate from Kumasi, in South-Central Ghana. I have no idea why those provenances make the berries and the cocoa special and gastronomically correct, but it doesn't matter. The only reason I gravitate to Blue Marble is because the ice cream is the smoothest, creamiest and most beautifully flavored ice cream in my neighborhood. I would venture to say that it is the best ice cream in Brooklyn. Who knows? I'd like to say it's the best ice cream in New York City, but I haven't yet tasted every cone in town. All I can say is that when I am licking a Blue Marble cone, I think ice cream can't be better than this. Right now I am particularly enamored of "Gentle Ginger" and the very intense strawberry, but the dulce de leche, not nearly as sweet as this flavor usually is, and the organic Madagascar vanilla, rum raisin and chocolate are always temptations. Of the several sorbets, I'd choose the tangy tangerine, if they have it.
The original Blue Marble location is at 420 Atlantic Ave., between Bond and Nevins Sts., in what is called Boerum Hill. Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights start a few blocks further west, closer to the harbor. In case you've missed Brooklyn's renaissance, Atlantic Ave. is now a street lined with interior design stores, boutiques that sell unique, often handmade clothing and accessories, restaurants, and, as always, antique stores and a strip of Middle Eastern food shops. My favorite cookware store is there, too: Cook's Companion (just off Court St., a few doors down from Sahadi, the big Middle Eastern market.) Many of the late 19th century storefronts have been restored and painted the bright colors of their original era. It's worth a walk down the Avenue just to see them and to window shop.
The other Blue Marble is at 186 Underhill Ave., near Sterling St. That's a very short walk from the Brooklyn Museum, Botanic Garden, and Prospect Park, and way too short a walk from my apartment. This ice cream is dangerous stuff.
NEW BURGER AND FRY CHAIN IN TOWN
My ears perked up when I heard on the TV news a few weeks ago that Michelle Obama had, using her word, "sneaked" out of the White House to get a burger at Five Guys, a hamburger chain that started in D.C. but is now running rampant in and around Philadelphia and New York City. Then last week, on the NBC news special about the inner workings of the White House, we saw that the President couldn't resist the siren call of a Five Guys burger and fries either. Did Michelle tell him he had to try it?
If you go to the chain's web site, you'll undoubtedly find a location near you if you live anywhere near either city, or in the expanse of New Jersey in between. There are now three locations in Brooklyn. Try it yourself.
The First Lady went the very day after I tried it out here in Park Slope, where it is cleverly located on Seventh Ave. and Sixth St., near the big Methodist Hospital complex and John Jay High School.
Gotta say, I was totally unimpressed by the thin, ordinary burger, $5.99 with any of a large list of toppings that come at no extra charge. But the fries are sensational. They are that rare thing: Freshly fried fresh (not frozen) potatoes. Five Guys makes sure you know that they are fresh and freshly fried, too. Part of the signature decor is bags of spuds piled in the window, and a sign telling you from what town in Idaho (or wherever) they are from. Again, I couldn't care less. What I care about is that they are fried in peanut oil (they make a "thing" out of that, too), which is an excellent thing to do, and they are the all-American type of French fry that I love most. That would be crisp on the outside, when fresh from the fryer, but fondant soft inside -- a thick finger of potato. They come in a brown bag that sops up their grease, as you would have to have noticed if you'd watched the NBC special. The president carried take-out two shopping bags full of burgers and fries for his staff back at the White House. NBC did a good job of photographing the grease-stained bags.
A regular order of fries, which is pretty large, is only $2.99, but it has 620 calories, so it's just as well that I have no interest in the burger. I can't afford an additional 700-calorie burger on top of that. In fact, next time I indulge in those fries, it had better be with someone I can split them with.
