# working in italy



## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi all.... i'm from chicago, but am currently living in italy, working in restaurants and travelling around, trying to see and taste and eat and experience as much as i can. i posted a thread about chicago, but everyone just wanted to ask me about italy, so i thought i'd start something of an on-line journal. i'm keeping a journal for myself, so i'll just cut and paste some of it. i'll try to be sparse though, as i can get wordy (as any of you who've read some of my other postings may know).

i'm living in bologna, but am planning on doing a lot of travelling to learn as much about the various regional cusines as i can.

i did a week-long _stage_ at a michelin one-star place in piacenza, and now i'm working at a place here in bologna called da francesco. francesco, the chef, is sicilian and the food is very very different from what we did in piacenza, and from what i've been eating here in bologna. what follows is a recent menu from da francesco along with notes that i wrote to myself so i can remember all this stuff.

_*Antipasti £7000*_

*Bruschetta con Alicette Marinate*
-this is just the basic marinated anchovies, the white good ones of course, served as a bruschetta. He marinates the fresh anchovies in white wine vinegar for four hours or so, rinses them off, them preserves them under oil with some herbs. Then just toasts bread and serves them with some grilled cippoline onions that are also preserved under oil.

*Bruschetta con Bottarga*
-this is just a basic bruschetta, toasted bread topped with chopped cherry tomatoes and herbs in oil, but then topped with some grated bottarga, which is salted dried pressed tuna roe. Very salty, it's grated over the bruschetta like cheese, and then topped with a couple arrugula leaves.

*Insalatina di Finocchi con Piccantino, Olive, e Ciliegino Sott'olio*
-this is terrifically tasty and really, i think, is tipical of francesco's southern, sicilian food. Very simple, it's a mixture of pickled chiles (pepperoncini), big fat green olives, and small, incredibly sweet sundried cherry tomatoes (these are the ciliegino, which means little cherries, even though they're tomatoes) that's all perserved together in oil with herbs. Then he just chops up some fresh fennel and mixes it together with more olive oil. So much olive oil....man, he garnishes like every dish with a few streams of the pale green olive oil we use. This is everything that this food is....spicy, sweet, very boldly flavored, salty....yum.

_*Primi Piatti £11000*_

*Linguine al Nero*
-this is pretty basic. I haven't made it yet, but i cleaned the squids and we saved the ink sacs separate. Basically, i think marco sautees the ink sac with a little garlic, oil, and then adds the pasta. Maybe a little squid goes in there, but i'm not really sure. More on this one after i make it.

*Pasta con Alici*
-this is another dish that i think says it all about this type of food. Garlic, a dried red chile crumbled, and some sardo go into the pan, sauteed in olive oil, with a few anchovies (fresh). The garlic is a couple whole cloves which will be removed before the pasta goes in. Sardo is this paste made of sardines that are salted and then cooked down and pureed...it's used in many of these dishes to give an extra jolt of salty fishiness. The pasta here is just spaghetti, and we basically sautee the sardo, garlic, and fresh alici, remove the garlic, adds a good shot of chopped parsley, and salt, then adds the al dente pasta to heat for a minute or so. After it's plated, it's topped with toasted breadcrumbs, which are a nice touch...a tip of the hat to the fact that this is cocina povera, where people who didn't have enough money for parmegiano would toast breadcrumbs and use them in that way.

*Tortelloni di Ricotta con Uvetta e Balsamico.*
-Very good, and very sophisticated, something you'd see on an ambitious restaurant menu in the U.S. the tortelloni are frozen, unfortunately, all the fresh pasta here is bought and kept frozen. They have a lot of freezer space, and honestly, i can't tell the difference. The balsamic sauce is made by reducing balsamic by probably about half, with lots of whole herbs, rosemary, sage, thyme.... then for an order, we just add a little of it to the pan, reduce it again, maybe by about a third, then add a few drops of cream and golden raisins (uvetta). When the tortelloni are cooked, add them to heat them through, and that's it.

*Spaghetti con Cozze e Bottarga*
-havent seen this one too much yet, but pretty basic, i think. More later.

*Maccheroncini con Melanzane e Pecorino*
-the maccheroncini is thin penne rigate that's a frozen fresh pasta. The eggplant is cooked very long and slow, in the skins, baked at a low temp, then skinned and chopped roughly. For pickup, we put oil, garlic, eggplant, and a little red chile, sautee a bit....cooks the pasta, removes the garlic clove (whole again) adds a few ladles of tomato sauce, then the pasta. It's topped with grated pecorino when plated, the pecorino is that stuff you see with the whole black peppercorns like embedded in it.

*Orecchiette con Anduja e Spinaci*
-anduja is a fat, wierd-looking fresh sausage. Closest thing i can liken it to is mexican chorizo, but it-s less spicy, less orange, and not as flavorful. We use a little blob of it, which we mix with hot water out of the pasta unit until we get like a liquidy paste, which we sautee with some tomato sauce. Its pretty spicy and you can really smell how spicy it is when it's sauteeing. The rest is basic.....the spinach is steamed in the steamer, added with the cooked pasta and it all gets mixed together and heated and served with some pecorino over the top. One thing about francesco's is that people don't get cheese at the table. If a dish gets cheese, we put it on in the kitchen and usually pretty generously, but some don't get any, and i guess that's the way he wants it. I think the prevailing school of thought is that fish dishes don't go with cheese well, so he wants to control that.....i'm thinking.

*Ravioli di Pesce con Erbette al Timo*
-this one's really basic. The ravioli are bought, stuffed with fish...i don't know what kind. We melt a good few ounces of butter in a skillet on a turned-off burner...just using the heat of the pilot or nearby pans to melt it while the pasta cooks. A little water is added to the melting butter. Once the pasta is cooked, it's tossed in the butter with fresh thyme. That's it.
Tortelli di Ricotta con Carciofi'haven't seen this one much....more later.

_*Secondi Piatti £15000*_

*Salmone alla Piastra con Finocchi Saltati
Cotolettine di Sarde*
-this is one of francesco's specialties. The sardines are fresh, fileted, and opened, but kept together, so you have two connected filets. The name is a take on cotolete milanese. Basicially, they're sardines done in the same style. Francesco flours them, then dunks them in water (he doesn't use egg, which he says makes the breading too heavy), then in breadcrumbs, and then into the deep fryer. They're served six fish to an order on a piece of brown paper on the plate with just a lemon and salt. This is what i had the first time i went there to eat, and loved it.

*Frittura di Birichini e Sogliole*
-...also very simple and classic. Birichini are small little fish and the sogliole are little soles. They are simply dunked in water, then flour, then deep-fried, and served the same way as above. That's it. Both fish are whole, heads and all. The sole are so small you get 2 or 3 per plate and you have to kind of pull the meat of the rack of bones with your fork, or as phillipo, a friend of mine did when i ate with him, put it in your mouth and drag it out, leaving the clean rack of bones. Francesco serves a big pile of fish for this one....maybe 2 or 3 little soles and like 15-20 or so of the other fishies.

*Tonno Affumicato con Insalatina d'Arance*
-this is a cold dish. Thin-sliced sheets of tuna cured and smoked like smoked salmon or swordfish, cut to order on the slicer. We cut up a blood orange and a regular one into wheels, make a little pile of them in the middle of the plate and sprinkle salt and pepper, and a little crushed red chiles, then drape the sheets of tuna around the outside. Garnished with a few drizzles of olive oil and a fat green olive in the middle.

*Zuppetta di Cozze*
-the mussels we get are so disgusting, i can't believe it. They come in black mesh bags and are all still connected together in big clumps with seaweed and whatever all grows on them as they hang in the ocean. I have to rip them apart to debeard them, and they're covered with light brown mud. I pull the beards off first, then wash them in the sink, scrubbing them together to scrape all the gross green hairy stuff off their shells, tossing the 25% or so of the ones that are open, empty or smashed up. I have found lots of alive bugs and weird-looking crawly sea-worms in them too. Last night i was scrubbing them one by one in the sink and i was a little daunted at the prospect of doing like all 200 of them like this. Francesco walked by and just gave me a look, like... 'that's fine...don't go nuts,' and i was kind of surprised, so i asked him, 'it's ok'' 'paganno poco,' he said. Meaning....it's cheap and we give a big order, so don't worry about it too much. We do give a huge order...like 20 or 30 mussels which we fry/steam in olive oil and tomato sauce, covered, in a pan, then piling them perilously in a small bowl, pouring the juice over it, and balancing a piece of toasted bread on top.

*Parmigiana di Melanzane*
-haven't seen him make this one yet, but it looks pretty basic.

*Triglie All'Acquapazza*
-i've seen this one with triglie, which is like red mullet, and also with gallinella (chicken fish) which is what we call scorpionfish or sometimes, i think, razorfish. It's nicer with the gallinella, where we use the whole fish, with the filets kind of half-sliced off the sides so they're kind of butterflied off the sides and opened up. The triglie are just filets. The acquapazza is a sautee of garlic, a little hot chile, olive oil, then deglazed with white wine. In goes the fish, some fume, a handful of chopped cherry tomatoes, choppped parsely, salt, pepper. The pan is covered as it cooks. The fish is simply plated and the sauce poured over and around, leaving the garlic clove behind.

*Frittelle di Neonata*
-these next two are the same, basically, and are very strange. Neonata are teeny tiny little baby fishes. Like maybe half an inch to an inch long, and so small and skinny. They are like translucent and all you can really see of them are eyes and spines. Francesco has a mix of egg yolks, breadcrumbs and grated cheese and to this he adds a rammekin full of the neonate and a handful of chopped parsely. He uses a fork to mix it all up, breaking up the fish and kind of mushing them all together. The end result is kind of a rough mix, which then gets fried in a pan for the fritelle, in like little burger shapes....baby fishburgers, mmmm.... or into little quennelle type shapes on the flatgrill, for the bocconcini. Basically they're the same. Not bad....kind of weird, though.

*Bocconcini di Neonata alla Piastra*
-see above.

ok....i guess this is now a very long post....sorry

anyone who's got some good knowledge of italian regional food, i'd love to hear from you about the differences/similarities. i need to learn more about sicilian food. one of the cooks i work with is sardinian and he's teaching me a lot about that, too....they seem pretty similar.

anyway...that's that....hopefully, i'll keep this up , pasting a post from my personal journal here a couple times a week or so...

thanks for reading

_This posted was edited by Nicko. I think it is such a great post and I just wanted to make it a little easier to read by putting things in bold. Hope that is ok. Thank you for such an excellent post_

[ 02-16-2001: Message edited by: Nicko ]

[ 02-16-2001: Message edited by: elakin ]


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Thank you SO much Elakin! My husband and I are hoping to visit Italy in the next year or so, and this will definitely add to my culinary dictionary (besides picking up a few basic words of Italian). I'll drool until the next installment.


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Elakin,

Thanks for sharing your experences with us.
There is always so much to learn.
I look forward to your next post
cc


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Sounds like you're learning a lot. Thank you for passing it on. I have never heard of neonata (doesn't that translate into newborns?), but I guess I'd try it. The cuisine in Bologna is so different from Florence, where I spent 6 months. Please keep us posted on desserts, too!


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

Elakin,

Wow that was wonderful. So nice of you to share all that information. I was wondering if at some point you could talk about Italian breads and pastry?

Thanks again!


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi...thanks to everyone for all the responses...i'm glad you're liking it. hope i didn't go overboard with too much reading material.

nicko, thanks for cleaning up the text....i thought about doing that myself, but it seemed like too much of hassle, so i'm glad you did. i'm cutting and pasting from word, so i lose all my own formatting.

momoreg...this food is very different from that of florence (tuscan, i guess) and also from that of bologna. this is very southern italian food. the chef here is from sicily, and most of the bolognese people that eat at ths restaurant are somewhat perplexed by this food and not sure what to make of it. it's new for them too. the typical bolognese food is much richer...lots of meat, cheese, cream sauces. what is the food in florence like? besides the bistecca fiorentina (which is, incidentally, is currently outlawed in italy because of mad-cow) i don't know much about it.

iza...we make all our own desserts at the restaurant (which is pretty rare around here, i think) and i've actually made a bunch of them in the last couple days. i'll talk about some of them in more detail in my next post. today we made the dough for canoli, though, and i'll let you know how we finish the project tomorrow.

again, thanks to everyone for reading and for your great positive responses.


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Eddie,

How are you finding the culture relating to wine...Is it looked at as a beverage? what I mean by that is in this country so much can be made out of the pomp and cercomstance (I know I spelled that wrong)when my parents toured Italy a few years ago they comented on how at every meal there was wine on the table (breakfast excluded)and just enjoyed with the food.The wine was all local..no "super tuscans" Do you find that wine is part of the flesh of the culture?
Are you being tought about the wines? How doe's it fit in with your travels? If at all.

Eddie thanks agian for your chronicals
cc


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

cape chef....

first of all let me say that i've enjoyed reading your posts and you seem really knowledgeable and it's a pleasure to read stuff from someone who's as obviously passionate and into food and cooking as you are.

wine...yes, it's totally as you said. no big deal. only the fanciest restaurants bother with a wine list. most people just opt for the house white or red, which i think is usually very good. most places have them "on tap" where they come out of like a dispenser system and they use these little ceramic pitchers to serve you either a quarter, half, or a full liter. there's usually a few local wines availiable in bottles. here, in bologna, we have the fizzy red lambruscos, some chiantis from tuscany usually, and maybe a sangiovese. pingnolettos are popular whites, along with the fizzy malvasia from parma, and a few from up in the alto adige, which are gervurtztraminer-types. and that's about it. you probably couldn't find a french or american or other country's wine if you tried. i'd say on average, most restaurants have like maybe 10 wines availiable between what bottles they have and then the two on tap. when people order a bottle of wine, they don't get too particular. they usually just say bring me a nice....whatever. they'll specify like if they want sweeter or dryer, white or red....and then trust that the restaurant will bring them what they want.

and yes, it's very much a part of the meal. when we have staff meal at the restaurant i'm working at, there's always a pitcher of wine on the table, even at lunch, which is unheard of in the states. one thing i've noticed is people here don't like chase down their food with whatever they're drinking. they chew, swallow, eat....then eventually take just a sip of wine or water, not gulps...which i tend to do...kind of washing out my mouth with the drink. 

another thing i've noticed both here and in spain, where i lived for a while, is that people will often pour a little water into their glass of red wine, cutting it a little. this, i think, would be seen as like a mortal sin in the wine-worshipping restaurant world of the u.s.....but i've seen it fairly often.

i'm trying to educate myself about wine by going to enotecas and just buying bottles and trying them. it's not too hard when you can get d.o.c. wines for like 2-5 dollars a bottle. so i'm dutifully doing my research for the sake of educating myself....what sacrifices we in the industry make for the sake of learning!


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Eddie,

thank you for your kind words.
It is also obviouse to me that you are driven by passion. I wish I had the chance to do what you are doing.
I have never been to Europe, but hope to one day. I would like to sit under a shaddy tree with some fresh grilled vegetables,local cheese and a hunk of bread..And sip,not gulp a fizzy,fruity,friendly wine 
cc


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Eddie,

That's what I remember too about Italians and wine. It is simply the beverage of choice. It's not revered the way it is here. And I also noticed that the stigma of alcoholism really doesn't exist the way it does here. Here, if you drink every day, you have a problem. Not so there. It's just a more laid back society.

The foods I remember most from Tuscany were Pappa al Pomodoro (light but filling), Panzanella, all the grilled veg on the antipasti tables, those amazing thin crust pizze without cheese (especially the seafood pizza), the Florentine specialty, spinach, which is sold in "delis", as it were, in baseball-sized balls, just like that. It's steamed and ready to go, for whatever you want to cook. I dined a lot in people's homes, and almost always, I got served enormous amounts of food, which I was expected to finish. A common home cooked dish was farfalle with salmon and caviar, and also gnocchi with a gorgonzola cream sauce. Also in Florence, I recall The olive oil soaked focaccia, and other breads which I found bland and very ordinary. The only time I was impressed by the breads were in places that sold atypical types. 

Naturally, the gelati were not to be believed. It's hard to find anything that good here. And I got a great recipe for biscotti di Prato, which I use to this day. 

One time I was dining at the home of a friend, and his mother served a wonderful pasta dish, which she piled so high on my plate, I could barely eat half of it. I ate what I could, thanking her graciously, and apologizing. The following day, Fabrizio told me that my girlfriend and I had insulted his mother, and we were not invited back, because we didn't finish the pasta. All I could do to thank her was to bake a huge assortment of cookies with a nice note, and then she forgave us. It's really a different culture.


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

worked today after having yesterday off. Lunch was pretty uneventful and slow. We had a kind of a nice staff meal today before we opened and francesco actually sat down and ate with us, which is rare. He and marco were talking a lot about doing something in the campagna....and i didn't really catch the jist of it, but then he turned and asked me in english what i was doing sunday morning. I wasn't really sure what he was asking me, and wasn't really too eager to volunteer for something work-related, but i said i wasn't doing anything and he asked me if i would like to come to his house in the country. He said we'd all go and just eat and lay in the sun and hang around and drink wine and "fare niente," which sounded very good to me, so i quickly accepted. Marco bristled a bit, asking what francesco was planning to make to eat, telling aside in english that "this geezer (he always calls everyone geezer) never has anything to eat in his house, so i've got to ride him a bit." So marco and i are supposedly going shopping tomorrow between shifts and getting some supplies for sunday, if we can get francesco to bankroll us....we'll see.

Dinner was more eventful. We had a new server who i hadn't met and she's like a 45 or 50 year old woman and right from the get-go i could kind of tell that she didn't have it all together real well and that there might be some problems. We were fully booked, as we are tomorrow, and marco and i were working pastas and francesco was doing secondi. the very first ticket we had was for a couple antipasti and then two pastas. The server, i think her name was like lorena or something, brought the ticket back and clipped it to the board (servers handwrite tickets here and come back into the kitchen to put them up for us. There's no pass or anything, the servers just walk into the kitchen and take the plates off the counter where we plate.) Anyway, we make her antipasti, they go out, then she comes in, moves the ticket for the pastas over to "vai," (which is like "fire," if you're working with an "order, fire" system. We have "segue, vai.") so we make the two pastas, put them up, ring the bell, put the ticket next to them, she comes in....looks at the ticket like it's written in a foreign language (which for me it is, and for her, it's not) and looks at us like as if to ask.... "where's this supposed to go?" i hate this. servers always do this. you just took the order....you wrote the ticket....don't you remember? I haven't even met these people or seen them, but i know it's table six, so why don't you? So right away Marco and i give each other a look, like it's gonna be a long nite.

And it was. She had a lot of problems. First of all, she took a lot of special orders, which francesco doesn't like a bit, especially on a friday. She kept writing things wrong, so we'd make them, and then they'd come back and she'd need the right thing on the fly (subito). At one point francesco flung a large cleaver to the ground. He has quite a huge collection of knives and cleavers, among which is the single very biggest chef knife i've ever seen. It must be like 16" long, i can't even believe it. Anyway, the cleaver bounced a little, but we just ignored him and kept working. The worst thing she did was for a big party, they ordered a bunch of bruschettas, so instead of giving them like 6 little plates, we made them like two very large plates for everyone to share...kind of like appetizer sampler platter kind of deals. Marco told her to let them know that this was the 6 antipasti they had ordered, but just on two plates. But she didn't, and then in a bit she came back and said that they wanted to know if the rest of their aps were coming. There was quite a lot of yelling and swearing in italian, they argued back and forth for a while, and francesco just eventually ended up emptying his prep for the bruschetta onto a big plate and telling her that we should maybe sell it by the kilo like they do at the market. For me this was all kind of fun, cause i wasn't the one who was getting yelled at, and it was nice to see that the same problems are universal. I had a laugh with francesco afterwards, telling him, once again, that it's all the same in every restaurant in the whole world, and that we always have the same problems with servers too. He seemed to like this.

So, what did i do, foodwise today? Well, i concentrated on doing the primis during dinner, and am starting to get them pretty well down. I think i'm fine to go solo on pastas on a weeknight....i'm sure i'd be slow and awkward, but i think i'd get it done. I prepped the linguini nero this morning, cleaning the octopus and using the ink sacs from the squid. We chopped shallots fine, sauteed them in olive oil, then added the smallish pieces of cut-up octopus to sautee with also some garlic. Then, when they were cooked, we deglazed it with white wine and added the ink sacs, breaking them all up with a fork in a rammekin first, then mixing them in. Then when we have a ticket for it, we just heat this mix in a sautee pan, add the cooked linguini, and that's it.

The menu's changed a bit...but not much. Seems to be mainly twists on the same theme. Today the orecchiette with anduja also had carciofi and ricotta al forno. For that, we just took two fairly large forms of fresh ricotto and baked them slowly in the oven until they were very dry and browned on the outside. For an order, we just broke off a few chunks of this and mixed it into the pasta. It's much dryer and firmer and saltier, but still kind of spongy, not at all like a hard cheese. This is a new technique for me.

One of the things the server messed up today was an order for neonata, which she wrote, but then she really didn't need. So we had an extra and francesco divvied it up for everyone. i had some and it has quite a little crunch to it. Kind of like a "pop" when you chew. I asked marco if that was like the bones, or what....and he said he thought it was the eyeballs. Francesco was chewing, telling us that he loves this dish, and it's one of his favorites, and i asked him what was croccante, and he said "la testa," like all enthusiastically.

I've done quite a few of the desserts the last couple days, so wanted to document those....

*Dessert £5000*

*Semifreddo al croccante di sesamo*
-this one i made and have eaten when i ate there. Delicious. We make a basic semifreddo, by mixing 10 egg yolks and a cup or so of sugar, whisking well, then heating while whisking until the yolks are cooked and it all starts to firm up pretty well. We whip cream to stiff peaks and fold it into the cooked, cooled yolk-sugar mix. This is the basic semifreddo. To this, we add chopped croccante di sesamo, which is like a sesame praline, which francesco brings back from sicily. It's really good....the caramel is very dark tasting, just shy of tasting burnt, but pleasantly so, and very strongly flavored like toasted sesame. We fold this into the semifreddo mix and then pour it all into a loaf pan. to serve, it's sliced and dusted with cocoa.
*Dolce di Mascarpone*
-This is the classic bolognese dessert which you pretty much see in every restaurant. Most places, i think, use pasteurized egg yolks out of a container which they basically just whip with sugar and then mascarpone, but we use fresh eggs which we treat pretty much the same way as in the semifreddo. Ours is less sweet than most that i've tasted.
*Torta al cioccolato con panna fresca*
-this is a pretty basic flourless chocolate cake with walnuts and it's one of the richest desserts (chocoloate-wise) that i've had in bologna. Very basic...served alternately with whipped cream (unsweetened) or like a creme anglaise kind of sauce.
*Budino di semolino con salsa di mardarino*
-budino is a cake that's made with semolino which is kind of like a mush that's made in the same way as polenta, but with semolina (wheat flour) instead of polenta (corn). We cook first the semolina, pouring it gradually into boiling milk while whisking until it starts to thicken. When they were trying to explain this one to me, marco and giovanna were saying "you know, like you ate when you were a baby." I was thinking....no, i didn't eat this.....but i guess you did. It's like mush. Baby food. So, anyway, we make that, cool it, pass it through a kind of a food-mill kind of device that we have that has a very fine mesh chinois-type strainer on it, and then fold it into egg yolks that are beaten with sugar. A little flour is folded in very gently, but not much. Then baked. We also did some little small versions of this, but instead of sugar they were flavored with pecorino and we served them as a side dish for an entree.
*Cantucci e Zibibbo*
-not sure yet. I think these are little almond biscottis that are then served with grappa or somthing, but the servers just put them together and we don't really do anything for them, so i'm not positive.

That's it for now...we made the dough also for canoli, mixing it like pasta on the counter, making a well with flour, but then cutting in some butter, adding eggs, sugar, white wine, and marsala. We kneaded it forever until it was smooth "come un culo di bambino," as francesco put it, then wrapped it to rest in the fridge overnight.

[ 02-17-2001: Message edited by: elakin ]


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

Elakin,

I must have gained 10 pounds just reading about all those desserts. Thank you so much for taking the time to write about your experience and those fabulous desserts. Now all I can think of is that I want to go to Italy!

So what will happend to the waitress? I feel like I am reading a roman feuilleton, and will have to come back tommorow to see how it ends...


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Keep it comin', Eddie!


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Oh Eddie, what a treat! Thank you for sharing.


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

YUM. Need I say more? You should consider being a stringer for a travel magazine!

[ 02-18-2001: Message edited by: Mezzaluna ]


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

2/20/01

it's been a few days since i made an entry so i've gotta catch up.

Wendy (my girlfriend who is living here with me) and i went in campagnia sunday with marco and his girlfriend and the whole gang from the restaurant. Marco brought his and Maria's (his g-f) dog and we also picked up claudio (the crazy dishwasher at the restaurant) and jammed all of us into marco's small car. We drove out of the city, stopped at a pasticceria to buy some sweets to bring with us, and also had a drink. Marco and claudio both had campari and gin, and looked weird at us when we tried to beg off (it was sunday morning at like 11:00.) Maria had martini bianchi and so i had a coffee with bailey's, but wendy just had water. She still felt compelled to have something, i guess. So after a bit, we got back in the car and drove up to francesco's place.

It's way up in the hills and well into farm country. When we got there, francesco and a couple other guys were taking various wood scraps and other things and kind of throwing them from one pile to another, it seemed like. They made a big pile of various trash that was all over the place. Wood, glass, broken bricks and roof tiles, etc... Francesco would work frantically, throwing things around, and then just kind of stand around and survey the scene for a while. His place is really cool and old, with like orignal farmhouse wood beams and stone construction. It's very low-ceilinged and pretty dank and musty in there. And very raw. No kitchen, no electricity, i don't think. There was some running water in one sink, a ladder leading up to an upstairs, and a couple lawn chairs wedged in amongst all the old junk everywhere. There was all sorts of weird old things....giant basket-covered wine bottles, tools for looms, for carving things, sewing....all sorts of weird stuff. Most things i saw i had to try to figure out what is was. Marco kept finding things he liked and asking francesco if he could keep them, but francesco didn't let him have anything. There were a few other of francesco's friends all kind of standing around and checking the place out, including Pino, the guy who introduced me to francesco last saturday.

After a bit, we all motivated and piled back into the cars to go eat. We went to this place, which is called an agriturismo, which is, i guess, owned by claudio's brother. It's a big house set on a large farm and a lot of land. I guess it's kind of like a bed and breakfast, but they grow all their own food, and have other activities like horseback riding or other naturey things. It was closed, i think it's only open in the summer, but claudio had keys, so we opened up the kitchen and started setting up a big table outside. Everyone pitched right in and started working, women cleaning off the outdoor tables, setting out plastic silverware and paper plates, cutting sausages and cheese, some people came around with wine and paper cups, marco and i made a salad with blood oranges and these like purple spring onions, proscuitto was sliced, and pretty soon we had a pretty nice-looking spread all laid out. It was a gorgeous day, very warm and clear and sunny, and we all sat around outside eating and talking and drinking wine.

And i totally indulged myself. This was like the scene i had been picturing when i envisioned this trip to Italy in the first place. A beautiful place in the mountains, sunny day, green hills all around, tons of good food and wine, and lots of nice cool people all just there with nothing to do but eat, drink, talk, and hang out. I told francesco this, saying that i had pictured this moment for a long time when i was planning this trip, and he seemed to like that. I ate a ton....lots of proscuitto, lots of this thin little cured sausage from sicily that had pistachios in it, a young pecorino with peppercorns embedded in it (also sicilian), wine, bread, someone brought a bottle of home-pressed unfiltered olive oil and i have never tasted any olive oil more fruity....more olivey...than this.

And so we just sat around and kept drinking and eating all afternoon. The two workers francesco had hired to work on his place with him came with us and ate too, and i assumed they would be returning to work in the afternoon, but we ended up not leaving until around six, so i don't think any more work got done that day. At one point, after the pastries we bought had been eaten, i kind of wanted a coffee, and said to wendy that i'm surprised they don't have an espresso machine out here for coffee, seems like everything you could think of is provided... Not two minutes later, someone showed up with two bottles of freshly made espresso. I guess they must have gone somewhere and bought a bunch, and maybe they just put them in bottles to carry them....couldn't quite figure that one out. But we had a laugh over that, like... "of course, how could it be a complete meal without some coffee?" I was stuffed, but marco complained....asking where is the meat? He said that where he comes from, this is just the starters, and now he was just getting hungry.

By the end of the day, wendy and i were exhausted. I think we were both ready to go around 4 or 4:30, and it seemed like a lot of others were, too, getting their stuff together, packing cars, etc. But these people take seriously forever to organize enough to actually proceed. It took at least an hour or two of shuffling around, acting like it was almost time to leave, having one more glass of wine, one more cigarette, some more cheese, or whatever. They just keep talking and talking and talking. The amount of talking done just astounds me. We were talking about this day for about 3 days before it happened....not really planning anything, but just kind of talking. Not productive talking, that's the thing. You talk for 2 hours and still no one knows who's bringing what or picking up who. Then today, at lunch, of course, we did quite a bit of talking about it too....talking about who was there, who ate what, what the dog did....and on and on and on. This is why nothing ever gets done in this country.

But, all in all, it was a great experience and it made me feel like even if this job ends up not panning out and i don't end up making any money from it (i told him i'd work a week for free, then we'd talk money), the whole thing was worthwhile just to have this experience. It was seriously, an idyllic scene, straight out of the most non-touristy, authentic italian brochure you could imagine.

And then today it was back to work. I made semifreddo again today. Also made the tomato sauce that we use for anything with tomato sauce. Very basic recipe. We rough chop onion, carrot, celery and sautee a while in lots of olive oil, then add two cans of peeled tomatoes and simmer the whole thing for maybe an hour, reducing and cooking further. Once it starts to stick a little to the bottom and all the veg is very soft, we puree it with a stick blender and season with just salt and pepper. That's it, nothing fancy. I also cleaned a lot of fish today. The cozze, of course, which is becoming like my special job, and then also we got a lot of triglie, which are kind of like red mullet, but these were especially small, so we called them trigliani, i think. To clean them, they're way too small to filet, so we just scale them, clip off the fins with a scissors, then slit them from the belly to just under the chin and pull out the guts and the gills and the jaws. Also i cleaned the birichini, which are little inch-long fish that we fry whole and serve in the frittura. Had those in spain too, they called them pescaditos-"little fish." Marco told me that birichini means "naughty little ones," and that he thinks the fishermen call them that cause they're a pain to catch for not that much meat. He also told me that in Sardegnia they call them mangitutto, literally "eat the whole thing," since that's what you do with it. Funny.

[ 02-20-2001: Message edited by: elakin ]


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Wonderful description, eddie.


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Eddie,

I was right there with you in the mountains.
Those are the expereinces that make life so wonderful.The scene you desribe at Marco's house had me chuckling, sounds kind of like my father in law...Just keeps thing around because he knows someday he or someone will need it. I can taste that olive oil,dipping the bread in, Makes me want to run out and get the fixins for bagna cauda. Thank you eddie for your updates..It's really cool for us to be able to enjoy your writtings.
cc

[ 02-20-2001: Message edited by: cape chef ]


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

I've heard of Italian time and didn't quite understand......Your side trip sounded wonderful, reminds me of Southern Louisiana. If your not eating your talking about your last or next meal...and life is definately a slower pace. 
What a super place to visit.


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi...thanks all for your nice comments...

more food stuff...

*Primi Piatti £11,000*

*Linguine con Canocchie*-canocchie are a kind of shellfish that i've never seen before. Maybe the closest thing is like crawfish, but their shells are much thinner and almost translucent, and they don't really look like small lobsters but something else entirely. The meat part is the tail, and it's pretty close to a little lobster tail, but then there's just the head and the bottom of the tail, and that's about it. We clean the canocchie with a scissors, cutting off the legs, and separating them into three parts-head, tail, and the end of the tail which looks pretty and has a spot on it and it's just for show. To make an order, we sautee the canocchie with olive oil and a garlic clove, pressing on the heads and tail bottoms a little as they sautee to bring out the flavor. We pull out the garlic clove, deglaze the pan with wine, and hit it with parsely, salt and pepper. Then add the cooked linguine.

*Tortelloni di ricotta con Uvetta, Pinoli, e Zafferano*-same tortelloni, only now we've added pine nuts, and instead of the basamic reduction, we're using saffron that we boiled in water, and a little cream and butter to do the sauce. Also parsely in this one.

*Maccheroncini con Anduja e Carciofi*-we do the anduja into a paste with a little water out of the pasta station, then it goes into a pan with the tomato sauce, and some artichokes that we slice thin and sautee ahead of time. I usually turn the artichokes. The one's we get are smaller than the globes at home and they always have a very large stem still on. I trim them down some, then turn them to the hearts...same as normal. We slice them in half, then into thin slivers so all the pieces are still attached.

*Tortelloni di Ricotta con Trevigiano*-Trevigiano is like.....what do we call it? Red endive? I think....so many names for this stuff. It's long and thin and with a compact head, but red like radicchio. We cut it to order, very thin, coleslaw-like shreds go into a pan with a garlic clove, a little butter, and plenty of olive oil. We sautee them, letting them get darker than i'd think would be right, and then remove the garlic clove before adding a little cream and the cooked pasta.

*Spaghetti al Polipo*-Polipo is octopus and we had a couple huge ones. Very dark blackish purple. Francesco stewed them for a very long time in a dark purplish brown sauce. I didn't get a good lood at how he did it. For a ticket we just hack off a couple arms of the octopus, and put a few ladles of the sauce in a pan, heat it, cook off the pasta, and combine. Very easy.

*Spaghetti con Spada e Menta*-This is a very nice dish, and, I think, one that Francesco thinks of as very much typifying his food. The spada is swordfish...basically we dice the scraps from the filets we do. We sautee those with a garlic clove, a little crushed pepperoncini, and olive oil, until they're cooked. Then we add white wine to deglaze, then parsely, salt and pepper, and mint. Marco kept calling the mint "sylvatic" mint, which i had never heard before. He said something today about how down in the south they cook with lots of "sylvatic" fennel, too. So i asked him, and i guess that term just means "wild." From what i could gather
That's all the primi that have been different from what i wrote before.

*Secondi Piatti £15,000*

*Triglie Arrosto su Letto di Spinaci*-This is very basic. The triglie are nice red mullet filets. They aren't roasted, per se, but really sauteed...just the straight filet, skin side down so it gets nice and crispy. The spinach is steamed and then just tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper. Wendy ate this when we went for dinner on thursday night.
*Pesce Spada al Gratin (£18000)*-swordfish roasted in the oven with some breadcrumb-cheese-herb mixture packed on top. 
*Pesce Spada alla Piastra (£18000)*-just swordfish that's crosscut, then pounded a little with the flat side of the knife to spread it out a little. It's grilled on one of those little ridged grill-pan type thingies since we don't have an actual grill. "Troppo caldo in cocina," Francesco said when i asked him why he doesn't have a grill.
*Filetti di Orata al Vapore con Salsa di Alici*-i'm pretty sure these are dorade filets. It's a fairly big sea-bass looking fish, but without the weird sea-bass thick skin. Texture is more like halibut or cod. Is that dorade? I'm not sure. We steam the filet and then serve it pretty plainly, spreading this sauce that is like a pesto, but with lots of anchovies included, all over it. Francesco usually throws a couple slices of peeled, cooked potato in the steamer with the fish and serves these alongside it. They don't really give like a starch and a veg. In most places in italy....if you want it you have to order it separate. But francesco is somewhat of an exception and at dinner, he gives a little vegetables with the secondi. usually something really basic like some chopped fennel that he sautees quickly, or a couple pieces of potato....whatever....it's a bonus for these people so it doesn't have to be anything all fancy and great like it has to be in the u.s.
*Sarde Ripiene*-This one hasn't left the menu yet and i think it's another one of francesco's pet dishes. He takes six fresh sardines, cleaned and butterflied open, packing the breadcrumb gratin mixture onto one of them, then making like a sandwich of it with the other fish. So there's three little sandwiches total and they go onto a little roasting plate and he strews fresh herbs all around them. Whole sprigs of rosemary, thyme, fennel tops, and fresh bay leaves....whatever herbs he happens to grab at the moment, and he drizzles olive oil around the whole thing. They roast like that for maybe 6-7 minutes....usually until the bay leaves start to brown a bit, and then they're served simply....just plated with a few streams of olive oil, and maybe an olive or a cherry tomato half for garnish.
*Gallinella all' Acquapazza*-this is a pretty basic "pan-roast." A term which i've always loved, cause it sounds nice, but what the **** does it mean? You can pretty much go ahead and cook it however you want. The gallinella is whole...we slice the filets halfway off each side, so they're kind of drooping off the sides of the fish, but still attached. We sautee first a garlic clove in some olive oil, along with a few sliced cherry tomatoes. Deglaze with white wine after a bit, then the fish goes in along with salt, pepper, fume, lots of fresh chopped parsely, and a few more tomatoes. Then the pan is covered. When the fish is cooked, it's plated, and then the sauce is spooned over it, wetting the meat, and extra sauce poured all around it. Very wet. Acquapazza translates literally to "crazy water."

the menu continues to change a little every day....and i am now officially being paid for working at this place. after a week of working for free as sort of a tryout, francesco told me today that he'd pay me a few lire...

[ 02-21-2001: Message edited by: elakin ]


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Eddie~ I'm really surprised that you take the garlic out of everything....is that just standard operating procedure? I've not run into that before.


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

shroomgirl,

it seems to be standard operating procedure at this restaurant. we don't chop the garlic or cut it at all, just peel it and then sautee it with the oil usually to start a pasta pan, then remove it before the pasta goes in.

i think it's somewhat of a misconception that italian food is very garlicky. the northern italian bolognese food has almost no garlic at all. southern italian food has more, but i think they use it more subtly than italian restaurants in america do. i think there's somewhat of a feeling here that food with lots of garlic is less refined, coarser...or something. there's kind of a thing between the more modern, industrial, wealthy north and the rural, slower-paced south of italy, so i think there's some bias here (in bologna) against all things related to the mezzogiorno (as they refer to it).

by the way, shroom, a guy i work with said he was going to a restaurant outside of town called "tartufo," and that it featured all dishes with mushrooms or truffles. i asked him to bring me a menu...

[ February 26, 2001: Message edited by: elakin ]


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

2/21/01 16:23

hanging out during my mid-day break.

Today lorena worked again, she worked yesterday too, and it was very slow. So i guess she’s still around after the debacle on friday. We had pasta with speck and zucchini today for staff lunch and it was very good. We shred the zucchini into like a fine julienne on a mandolin, and fry it with the speck. Marco chopped the speck smallish for ours, but when francesco made one for me for a customer, he sliced it thin on the slicer and put the whole pieces in. They both threw in a little whole butter at the end, and fresh parsely. And cheese. They seem very particular about which pasta dishes can get cheese, and which kind of cheese. To me, pecorino, parmegiano, grana, it’s all the same, but for some staff meals, they don’t put cheese out...and i always want some. So today i was fairly confidant that this pasta would be “ok” by their standards to put cheese on, and i went and grabbed a bowl of it-—grana padano, our basic parmesan—-and, eveyone used it...i guess it was ok. 

This guy roberto, who owns a bar under the due torre, i’m told, came by twice—before and after service—and both times we had to all stop what we were doing and have some wine. It was a fizzy pignoletto...very nice and sweet, and i’m not sure what the deal was...maybe he was trying to sell francesco wine...not sure. He was very schmoozy, and came back into the kitchen to talk, very friendly.

Also, when i came in today, there was an older woman working in the dining room. She had a couple tables pushed together and our big wooden pasta board set up on them, and she was making tortelloni. So i guess we don’t buy all of our fresh pastas. Very good to see. Marco made the fillings for her and she was rolling dough out, making two different kinds of cheese tortelloni, bringing tray after tray in from the dining room. And she kept working once we opened, and right on through lunch. I was thinking that if you were a tourist wandering in to this restaurant for lunch, what a cool thing that would be to see. This 55ish woman, wearing this like kind of gingham-y kind of housecoat/dress thing that all the older ladies you always see wear, rolling out dough and then cutting and filling them one-by-one and folding them into tortelloni...very nice. That would never happen in the u.s. The first ticket we got, both people ordered tortelloni con parmegiano, but of course we used the old stuff and not the ones that were made that day. When we sat down after lunch do drink wine again with roberto, i watched her roll out the dough and i couldn’t believe how thin she was going by hand. The rolling pin is really long and thin...just like a dowel, no handles, and much longer than the normal rolling pin...almost like the length of two. She would roll it out thin, constantly turning it, and then would roll it up around the pin to maniulate it, using the pin to stretch it a little, and to turn it after it started getting big. Once it was getting really long she would flop half of it over the edge of the table to work one side, then roll it up, stretch a certain part of it, and then turn it around to work it evenly. It got very thin and translucent and i was watching and there were no tears or holes at all. Amazing. We have a pasta machine, but she rolled it so much wider than a pasta machine could. It was one piece, probably like 6-8 feet long and maybe 2-3 feet wide and it never broke or even seemed to threaten to.

I did pastas today...all like 5 of them or so. But it seemed to be a somewhat of an eventful shift for marco and the kitchen. Francesco like barked something at him at some point and marco moved over and started doing the secondi, francesco on top of him the whole time, training him, i guess. So they didn’t really pay too much attention to me, which was nice. Anyway, there seemed to be an evident shift, with marco kind of officially moving down the line, for this shift anyway.


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

2/25/010

menu updates....these things are new or different

*Tortelli di Caciotta con Rucola ed Erbette*--these are one of the tortelloni that the old lady made when she came in the other day. I made the filling with francesco and it had ricotta, lots of parmesan, another cheese called caciotta that was like a softish melting cheese that was fairly mild...maybe like a mild brie-ish taste...but not nearly as stinky as brie. We chopped that all up and mushed it together with the other cheeses, a couple eggs, salt and pepper, and chopped parsely. For this dish it's just served in butter with chopped arrugula, parsely, and maybe some chives or whatever other herbs are around. 
*Spaghetti con Ricciola, Spada, e Basilico*--this is more or less the same as the spada with mint, only now it's swordfish and also another fish, ricciola, which seems exactly the same as spada to me...a little darker in color, but still very firm and meaty. Maybe closer to albacore tuna than swordfish. Anyway, we sautee the two kinds of diced fish in olive oil with a garlic clove, deglaze with wine, and then add sun-dried tomatoes (dry, not packed in oil), capers (sometimes we use wet capers, rinsing them, but usually it's dried, salted capers which are much bigger and milder), parsely, and whole little basil leaves that we pick off of a little basil plant. Lots of places sell basil like that here, a little whole plant in a little pot of dirt, and you just pick of what you need and throw the rest away. It all goes in, the hot pasta gets added...heated for a second or two....until the sauce is right....then served with more parsely and black pepper.

*Fitturina di Gamberi*--these gamberi were weird looking things. Basically the same as shrimp, i guess, but these were bright red-like seriously red, like one of those red-hot jawbreaker candies-before they were cooked. They were whole, and francesco just cooked them like the normal frittura that we do of just about anything...dunked them in water first, then dredged them in flour and deep-fried them. Shells and all. I was served shrimp like this once here and i didn't know what to do, so i just tried eating the whole thing except the head. The shells were a little crunchy, but were edible, so i guessed that's how you eat them. I asked marco and he said, yes, you eat the shells, but just not the head or tail. 
*Spada Affumicato con Insalitina di Arance*--this is the same as the tuna affumicato, but now it's with a piece of smoked swordfish. We bought it and it's a big cross-cut off one side....a very thick chunk with the rosy red part on one corner. It's very soft and fresh-feeling right now, like you'd think it wouldn't slice, but it did. We have a huge deli-slicer, probably the nicest one i've used, and we hardly even use it.


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Mmmmmmmmmmm... glorious post! I loved the image of the woman rolling the pasta. I have my grandmother's dowel-like rolling pin (from about 1915 or so, and her board for kneading bread and making noodles). I could see her there, stretching the dough on the backs of her hands. Was that the method? Sounded like making phyllo. I'll bet the tortelli were fabulous. Wonderful prose, made me salivate. Ahem... 55 isn't OLD!! Only 7 years off for me. But I must remember the quote from some wise man, "Old age is 15 years older than I am." You must be a pup!

[ February 28, 2001: Message edited by: Mezzaluna ]


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

OH EDDIE~what a post!!!
Tartufo- my kinda restaurant. 
I've got a speaker coming in from KC (Karen Adler) and she is going to make smoked morel twice smoked potatoes...as she described it to me it is smoked dried morels heated in cream then added to the baked potato and smoked again....can't wait to see her in action...May 24. 
I came close to interning one summer when I was 16 in San Fran at a fillo maker's....they make it on a huge table stretching and turning, amazing how elastic dough can be.
a Restaurant here made a ravioli with spinach/ricotta/parmesan filling and an egg in the middle covered with pasta boiled and topped with alfredo....lucious the yolk ran into the sauce
Are they making anything like that? It reminded me of burekas


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

02/27/01 16:01

Tuesday today, which means francesco goes shopping and brings back tons of fish. He went late today, so we kind of waited around a little and when he got back, we had to clean all the fish and were late going into service, so we didn’t get to eat. Marco seemed very bitter about it. Then when we did start cooking i apparently was going to be doing pastas by myself and there were like two or three that i’d never seen before. Marco did all the seconds and i pretty much did all the primis, francesco helping me and showing me the first one of a few... It wasn’t busy...but not slow either. No claudio either, so i had to wash all my own sautee pans and things kind of piled up in the sink, the pans floating in a dirty sink stopped up with fish guts from us cleaning them earlier and not cleaning the sink. We also had this gnocchi sorrentina that had tomato sauce with fresh mozzarella melted in so it gets all stringy, so there were gobs of mozzarella stuck to the pan that ended up floating in the sink too. Plus, we got out late cause marco insisted that we make food for the staff after service, so i first made the garganelli with proscuitto that was on the menu, which we all split four ways, then he wanted some other pasta which i ended up making but not eating. He’s very prima-donna-ish about getting to sit down and eat and says he’d never work anywhere in the states if they didn’t give him at least a half hour to sit down and eat after hearing about all my horror stories (which, i admit, i did exaggerate a bit).

03/02/01 23:42

I just got home after a fairly easy night. Interesting day today....many ups and downs. Wednesday night, during service, francesco said he wanted to “sit down” with me and talk. Somewhat ominous. I told him i was planning to come in for dinner on Thursday, my day off, and he said we’d talk for five minutes after. But then as we were cleaning up, he said “ci sediamo stasera,” and he told me he wanted marco to translate. We sat and he said that we talked about money “troppo presto,” and that he was concerned because—-from what i could gather—-he thought that maybe he’d spend a lot of time training me and then maybe i’d find a better job or just leave or whatever. He said that as of now, i wasn’t contributing anything. He said he thought that i had the potential to contribute, but right not, that i wasn’t. I don’t agree with this....but whatever. I tried to assure him that the original agreement was one i’d stick to, that i wasn't really looking for a full time thing, etc...but he didn’t seem convinced. He told me that i could work thru this week and the next, and then we’d talk again. I wasn’t too happy about that and was very worried about it. I just wanted things to be resolved and known...whether they were good or bad. I am liking working there and the prospect of looking for something else is daunting. The schedule is perfect for me, giving me some free time still, and i think when i want to travel it should be no problem, it’s not like i’m not expendable there. But if he was planning on not paying me, i wanted to know soon, so i could do something about it, not in two weeks. It seemed like he was maybe being somewhat reactive, so i decided to just wait and see, and not to do anything. We went to dinner on Thursday, everything was good....

So today when i went in, after thinking about it some, i was honestly feeling somewhat pissed off about it. I mean, i told him i’d work for free for a few days and then we’d talk about it....i worked a week, then asked him....he didn’t come to me with an offer. He needed time to think about it....and i gave it to him. I have honestly been busting my *** to do all the little extra things like cleaning whenever i find myself with some time.... I think, considering the inconsistency, the lack of instruction and direction, the constant self-contradictions, i’m learning the food pretty well. So, this morning i was feeling somewhat slighted by francesco’s comments, especially the one where he said i wasn’t contributing anything. Also, this morning, i was really tired and didn’t feel like working, and i kind of thought that if we ended up deciding that he wouldn’t pay me, that i’d say i’d only work two days, and that i’ve already worked my two days this week, so i’ll see you Tuesday. Francesco wasn’t there when i got there, so i waited for him in the dining room in my street clothes. When he came in, i said i wanted to talk to him. He asked me “adesso?” and i said yes. With conviction. I was ready for the worst outcome....almost welcoming it, so i had no fear. We sat down and i told him that if he couldn’t give me some assurance that i had a future there, that i needed to start looking for something else right away. I told him that i’d still work two days a week—-whether he wanted to pay me for them or not. He said, ok, he wanted to think it over and we’d talk later today or tomorrow. I said, i’ve already worked my two days this week, so i wasn’t sure i’d be here today or tomorrow. He seemed very taken aback by this and kind of flabbergasted, telling me that he said he’d pay me thru next week, so i could at least not change the plan so suddenly. I said since he said that i wasn’t contributing anything here, what’s the difference? If i wasn’t contributing anything, than i wouldn’t be missed. He said he was planning on having me in the kitchen today, so he wouldn’t have left marco alone if he knew that i wasn’t going to be here. So i said.... “yes....and this is what i’m contributing. You know you have me to help marco, so you can take time to do other things.” I asked if he thought he needed me there today, and he said yes, so i said ok and went and got changed.

I think what happened was that yesterday, marco and francesco had a big discussion about marco’s future. He originally worked front-of-the-house with francesco at another restaurant, and has always been a waiter, but moved to the kitchen 6 months ago. He doesn't seem too happy working in the kitchen and he doesn’t like it and he keeps talking about leaving and saying this is the last straw, i can’t take it anymore, i need a life, etc. In my opinion he’s being a big baby, since he’s got it way easier than any job i’ve ever had in the u.s., but i guess it’s all relative. So i think when i sat down with francesco and talked to him this morning, he had visions of losing both of us, and being all alone. I didn’t know that at the time, but after i talked to marco, i knew that i was in the driver’s seat. 

Also francesco and marco had to continue their big discussion today, i guess, marco told me he was planning on sitting down with Francesco too. At some point they both left the kitchen and went and sat in the dining room. I was in the middle of doing something and neither told me what to do next, to watch any of their pots that were on the stove, etc. They sat there talking for almost two hours, in which time i finished the few projects that they were working on, put them away, set up the line for service, and made staff lunch. All without being asked. It was coming up on 12:15, so i just took plates out when the food was ready--they were still talking--and we all just started eating. We were still eating when people started coming in a little before 12:30, and by the time we cleared our plates and got back into the kitchen, we were busy. Also, marco and francesco hadn’t written the menu for the day yet, and lorena gave the customers yesterday’s lunch menu which wasn’t totally accurate. So in about 5 minutes we had like 4 or 5 tickets hanging, which for us is a lot, and we were all grumbling. Francesco and lorena got into a huge screaming match about the whole menu thing, meanwhile i’m cranking out the primis. I paid a lot of attention (as much as i could without knowing the exact menu) to setting up the primi line, since i thought i’d be working it solo. And it’s a good thing cause i was and i had a lot of tickets early. Lunch was very busy, i had to wash all my own sautee pans cause claudio wasn’t working, and there were like 2 or 3 menu items i’d never seen before. But neither marco or francesco touched any of my primis except to taste them. I was in the weeds, but not swimming, and i was able to tread water and keep the pace. One thing i had told francesco this morning during our talk was that i thought that i could work a lunch and do all the primis solo, and that i’d like to try to do it to prove i do the job.... I really meant like next week, but it ended up happening today. 

But, nobody said anything about any of that. Nobody said thanks for watching my sauce while we were talking, thanks for setting my line, thanks for making lunch without being asked. I guess that’s kind of the way of this place. You don’t get a lot of instruction, you just have to start noticing what needs to be done and do it. And....nobody said anything about the fact that i worked a busy lunch shift solo and that all my plates looked and tasted good. So i patted myself on the back and gave myself some praise, cause i felt like it was somewhat of an accomplishment.

Dinner was so different. It was raining and nasty out. We had few reservations. It ended up being slow. Everyone was in a very good mood, joking and laughing and smiling. I made dinner and instead of just frying up sausage like marco always does and serving it on chopped iceberg lettuce (yuck), i cut some potato wedges and fried them up with red peppers and garlic, then cooked the sausages in it with fennel seeds, and fresh rosemary...i deglazed with white wine to make a sauce and it turned out really nice....kind of like a giambatta-meets-sausage vesuvio kind of thing. I guess very americanized italian food, but everyone seemed to like it. Halfway thru service, francesco went and broke open a bottle of wine, pouring a glass for everyone, and we were all goofing around the rest of the night while we worked the few tickets we had. As i was leaving, francesco said he wanted to talk again, so i should go and get changed. I was thinking like, “jeez, how many times are we gonna do this?” But this time it was brief. He asked me if i was still agreeable to the original “accordo,” and i said yes, and he said ok, then, we’ll stick to that. I asked him if that meant indefinitely, and he said yes. So i guess i proved myself to some extent today....either that or he just feels like he needs me more today than yesterday.


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## papa (Oct 5, 2001)

Dear Elakin:

Thank you for your wonderful posts. 

I especially enjoyed the recipe for Frittelle di Neonata. We have a similar dish in Greece, which is called Marides. These tiny fish are wonderful! By the way, I always eat the head of the fish which I find to be the most tasty part of any fish. The only fish that I do not recommend cooking with the head is the macro. 

Thank you once again.


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Eddie,

Great post...I can't help but feel a sence of pride for you. I'm happy the day ended on a high note for you.
You and Logan should get together one day and compare notes..you both could definatly write a book...

cc


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Eddie, 
Do you think it is alot different in Italy than here? Is communication more nebulous?
Just curious....


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

I was thinking about this journal the same way. It's a wonderful continuing saga, like Logan's. 

It really was a gripping story. You're a good writer, eddie. And I'm glad, after all they put you through there, that things turned out well, and they showed some appreciation for you. Sounds like they just don't express themselves very openly all the time. You kinda have to read between the lines. Keep up the good work!


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi all....

thanks for reading and for your complimentary comments....i just thought i'd take a minute to catch up on some of your questions.

mezzaluna--i'm 31, so not quite a pup, and i did try to temper it by calling her an "older" woman. she didn't stretch the dough on the backs of her hands, but used the rolling in, rolling up the dough in it and then pulling on it to stretch.

shroomgirl--the dish you described earlier with the egg yolk and alfredo sauce is definitely too heavy to be served where i work. this might be closer to something they'd do in bolognese cooking, which has tons of eggs, dairy, etc....but the sicilian food at da francesco uses very little cream, cheese, etc. 

is the communication more nebulous in italy? well...i hesitate to broaden my personal experience with italians thus far and make the generalization that anything is a certain way "in italy." but, that being said, i think there's more of a tendency to avoid potential confrontations here, and therefore a lot goes unspoken. but just like in the u.s., it's a personal thing. maybe it's because once you start talking about something it seems you have to talk for a day and then have a glass of wine and some cheese before it's all settled, so everyone just wants to avoid all the hassle. francesco, the chef i work for, is a very quiet guy and only says a few words at a time...he doesn't really volunteer information and sometimes getting it out of him is like pulling teeth. but just like at home....some places train you, and in others you have to train yourself.

thanks again for all the nice feedback...is logan's thing going on now? i saw on the home page that it's slated to start in sept. 2001, but you all seem to have been talking about it as if you've been reading it.


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## greg (Dec 8, 1999)

Eddie (and anybody who hasn't has a chance to see it): here's a link to Logan's column: http://www.cheftalk.com/HTML/Educati...y_student.html 
Thanks for all your fine work here; it's been very interesting and informative.

[ March 10, 2001: Message edited by: Greg ]


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## seattledeb (Nov 5, 2000)

<<Orecchiette con Anduja e Spinaci>>

Elakin, does this dish also include potatoes?  I had something similar once at Travigne in Napa. It was so good. As best as I can remember it was orechiette, Chorizo-esque sausage (they said it was their homemade), olive oil, crushed dried red chilis, lightly steamed spinich, new potatoes (quartered), and cheese (pecorino I guess), maybe even basil. It was so simple and so good.

I'm really enjoying your journal btw.


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

seattledeb--

the dish we do doesn't have potatoes. lately we've been doing it with broccoli instead of spinach. we sautee a whole garlic clove and a couple salted anchovies in olive oil, then add the cooked broccoli. it gets served with orrechiette, and then we garnish with the anduja. it's vaguely like chorizo, but not really that close. it's very soft and comes in this like pouch kind of bladder thing which you just kind of bust open and then scoop some of the sausage out with a spoon. we mix it in a rammekin with a little hot water from the pasta cooker to make like a firey bright orange paste, then drizzle this over the pasta. the closest thing i could think of to describe it would be like tobasco sauce, but with the added bonus of pork fat! we really use it more like a spice paste than a sausage.

here's another post from the diary. i'm getting behind...i've been keeping up with writing it, but not posting....

03/05/01 15:12

started a new week this morning. things went nice and easy today. As always, Tuesday morning is cleaning fish day....francesco went early today though, so it was all there when i got there and we had it cranked out in no time. Marco and i were very productive this morning. He was very quiet, hardly saying anything, and that suited me fine cause i wasn't feeling too talkative either...sometimes it's nice to just work and be quiet in the morning. So i just grabbed stuff and started working. I cleaned the triglie, the mussels, the seppia, and then made the "black of the squid" as marco calls it for the linguine nero. Then i started setting up the pasta station (i almost am to a point now where i can call it "my" station). By lunchtime, we were all set up with no reason to hurry, and we got to have a nice leisurely lunch.

Today was the first day where i didn't really have to ask a thousand questions...i just moved on to the next thing and started working. Very nice to finally be at a point where i can just work without having to wonder if this is the right way, if they do it this way or that way....what goes in everything, etc... All morning, i was doing tasks i've done before, so i could just go about my business.

Lunch was fairly slow. Francesco was wearing a somewhat dashing outfit...it was very warm today, so he eschewed the chef coat and just went with a white t-shirt and chef pants, but then he still tied a napkin around his neck like he sometimes does when he wears the chef coat. He's always newly head-shaven at the beginning of the week as well. He kind of looked like a pirate or something. Marco and francesco got into this huge argument during service. It was fairly slow and i was working all the pastas and marco the secondis, francesco just running plates and occasionally grabbing one of my pans and messing with it. Anyway, marco did a spaghetti cozze, which he did "white," meaning that he left the tomato out of it that we'd normally put in. When he served it, francesco complained that it was too dry, and marco insisted that it wasn't. It was an argument, with both of them yelling at each other, but not a serious one...i think they were just doing it to keep from getting bored. So marco decided to show francesco by making it again. He stops what he's doing, with a few orders on the board--"hold off on those for a minute, ok?"--he tells me, and starts making a half-order to show francesco that he was right. So i guess he was in a hurry cause he pulled the pasta while it was still very crunchy, sauced it, and both he and francesco start eating it. It was so undercooked, that when they twirled it around their forks, it wouldn't even go around right, sticking out at all angles, and it was like twirled in huge circles cause it couldn't bend all the way, as they shoved it into their mouths. Marco told me that this is the way they eat pasta in Napoli, and that he cooked it this way cause francesco likes it that way. I didn't believe him, since he covers up all mistakes that he makes with some story, but after a minute, francesco came up to me, offering some of the pasta, saying "come a napoli," so i guess it's true. I ate it and francesco was watching me to see me reaction. Honestly, i thought the sauce was perfect, in marco's favor, but i didn't like the undercooked pasta, and francesco could see that and he said that the way we cook it (still quite al dente, to my taste) is only for sick and old people in napoli.

So, all in all, a very laid-back and entertaining morning. I beat it out of there as fast as i could, just catching the bus home, and now i'm already almost done with this journal entry before 3:30.... I have to start grabbing menus again. It's been a while, cause the copy machine that we do the menus on is broken and they haven't been printing them, just verbalizing the menu. But i think it's fixed now cause i saw a menu today.

[ March 14, 2001: Message edited by: elakin ]


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi chefecoco and welcome to cheftalk

thanks for the kind offer to meet your friend in florence. i'm pretty close to florence, so i'm sure i'll get there. do you think your friend andrea would let me do a stage at his restaurant? maybe for a weekend? 

i'm glad to see people are still reading this, since i haven't been posting much. 

where did you live in italy? when? do you speak italian? i'm having a lot of trouble picking up the language beyond just basic communication. 

anyway, thanks again...more diary entries coming soon, i promise...


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

03/09/01 1:25am

had a fairly interesting day today. Lunch was kind of crazy. When i got in, marco was moving pretty slow and i checked the station and did a few things, but he kept saying that we were _tutto aposto_, so i didn't worry too much. I made _gnocchi alla gorgonzola_ for lunch and we all (me, marco, lorena, francesco) ate together. But people started coming in right at 12:30, as we were still lingering over lunch, and by the time we got back into the kitchen we had a few tickets hanging.

And right away i was pretty much slammed. I, of course, was not all set with everything i needed, marco, with his experience of only working in this place where you do maximum 40 covers per meal, is used to doing things on the fly during service, but for me this is nerve-wracking and i like to have everything in it's place in copious amounts, just so i can relax and not worry about it. So i'm cleaning anchovies as i need them, pinching off the heads and opening up the bodies by sliding a finger down them, forcing out the guts and then pulling the spines out. Very messy business to be doing during service, while you're making plates. The other thing that kind of screwed me was the sink that's next to my station. On lunch shifts, we don't have "the washing-up guy," as marco calls claudio (they're actually friends outside of work, i think, but marco continues to refer to him as "the washing-up guy." Very strange) so i have to wash all my own saute pans. If i get hit with a lot of orders all at once, i don't really have time to wash them until i don't have any more pans left and just have no choice. This is also the sink we clean pretty much everything in.....fish, vegetables, etc.... This morning marco had cleaned a double-batch of _seppie_ (a kind of like really big squid) which comes covered in this like black slime. And he didn't clean the sink. And he also threw most of his other pots and pans he used for prep in there including a big rondeau that he used to make the _peperonata_. So when lunch started the sink was half full of black slimy fish water, the drain stopped up, and with about 5 or 6 pots in it. I had to move everything out, unclog the drain, and clean all the gross **** out of the sink so i could get ready to recycle my saute pans. This was all done while i had tickets hanging.

But, as bad as i had it, marco had it worse. I at least went over my station and got most everything together before lunch. Marco just figured he'd do everything "in the moment" and got his butt kicked a little. He was cutting veg for _contorni_, fileting fish to order, washing spinach as needed, etc.... His first tickets took a long time because i think he forgot to fire up his piastra and his steamer, he didn't have the oven hot enough, etc. He's learning this station, still, so this was a good lesson day for him. After it was clear what happened, francesco came into the kitchen, watched him flailing around, and yelled at him pretty good about how he was to be absolutely ready at 12:30, saying he wants him to have enough prepped to serve 80 people, just to make sure. I didn't get any of this, but i'm not sure if it was cause i was more prepared or just cause he's not at a point where he feels like he can yell at me yet.

Dinner went much smoother. Actually, it was probably the best shift i've had there yet. It was the first time i felt comfortable enough to be really loose and have fun with things....everyone was joking around, singing, cracking jokes, even francesco. We were busy, but pleasantly so, with things coming and going at a good pace, but never getting hectic.

When i came in at seven i started doing the normal pre-dinner preparations, but marco wanted me to make the staff meal. He pointed to a bunch of short ribs he had thawed out earlier in the day and told me to "throw them on the piastra for a few minutes." I told him that they wouldn't be good that way, that they'd be very tough, and he said that that was the way he always cooked them and that it was fine. I said i thought it would be better to braise them in liquid,but he didn't know what i was talking about, looking at me like i was from another planet. Francesco was there and he was watching this discussion and i said to him in italian that you have to cook this kind of meat in liquid, very slowly, to get them to be tender. So i started prepping to do them the way i wanted to cook them, rough chopping carrot, and onions, cutting the short ribs into small pieces so they'd cook quick. Marco was wary.... "it's got to be ready in a half hour..." he said. So i'm braising short ribs in a half an hour. I dredged them in flour, browned everything over very high heat, then deglazed with red wine and water, adding lots of salt and pepper and a bunch of fresh thyme and bay leaves. I cranked the heat and left the lid a little open so the sauce could reduce, but it would still cook as fast as possible, all the while warning everyone that i thought it wouldn't be very good, that it would be tough....that if i had two hours it would be excellent...etc. But actually, they turned out pretty good. The meat wasn't tender....but it wasn't like beef jerky either....it was not bad. I just served all the carrots and onions and stuff as the veg, and then i reduced the sauce after pulling everything out and poured it over the whole thing. The sauce was really quite good, i thought, and it totally gave me a craving for a good red-wine sauce which i have not eaten probably since we were in paris in october. So i'm thinking maybe i'll try to make something like this on sunday at home. Although i'm not sure i can get short ribs around here what with the whole ban on beef on the bone cause of mad cow. When we were eating, giovanna was gnawing on a bone and i told her that there was "molto mucca pazza dentro questo." She laughed, but kind of gave me a worried look. Seriously, if you're worried about mad-cow, there's not much worse things you could be eating than short-ribs, especially when you hack them all up into little pieces in order to cook them faster. Even marco, although he didn't say anything complimentary, was, i think, somewhat impressed. While we were talking about it, beforehand, he was giving me a lot of attitude, as usual, telling me that his way was always fine. After we ate, though, he was asking me all kinds of questions about how to make it...did i use red wine...etc..

This whole thing, i think, made me remember how much i do know about cooking and reminded me that i know what i'm doing here and, i think, gave me a newfound confidence in this kitchen. I've been playing the role of the humble apprentice for the last few weeks, just laying back and listening and trying to learn how to do it their way, and i think i kind of got stuck in that mindset somehow, forgetting that even though this food and much of the fish is new to me, that all the techniques and principles are still just rooted in the basics and are all things i'm thoroughly familiar with. I think the whole thing gave me a little more respect from marco and francesco and also, with myself.... i'm starting to find myself in this kitchen after almost 4 weeks.

3/11/01 18:17

off today and really relaxing. We made pancakes for breakfast, fried up pancetta, and we even managed to find real maple syrup somewhere, so we had a good ol' american-style breakfast. Yum.

Thought i'd do some menu updates....seems like it's been a while.

I'll just update the ones that are new or that haven't been commented on before...

_Bruschetta con Patè di Acciughe con Fichi al Balsamico_-this is a thick puree of cooked _scombra_, which i think we call scorpionfish, and salted (from a jar) anchovies. I didn't see francesco make it, but it's incredibly salty. He spreads it in a very thin layer on toasted bread and tops it with sliced dried figs that are rehydrated in balsamic vinegar until fairly soft. Arrugula leaves go over the top, and it's drizzled with olive oil. Sweet, salty, crunchy, soft....really nice.
_Sgombretti in Carpione_-the _sgombretti_ are small versions of the scombra used above. Francesco cleans them (actually usually either me or marco does this) and then they are floured and deep-fried. They are then stored in a pickling-type liquid that has vinegar, water, salt, sugar, and onions. This is heated to a boil, then when the fish are ready, the boiling liquid is poured into the container to cover the fish. Kind of like _en escabeche_ style. To serve, he just gives a few whole fish on a plate. 
_Linguine con Tonno, Basilico, e Mentuccia_-This is the same dish again but now we're using tuna instead of swordfish or the caciotta. When we get a big load of basil in, we pick it all and then wash it, spinning it dry in a salad spinner. Then, we pack the leaves into a container and keep them under oil. Marco has told me repeatedly that you can't keep basil in the winter, so they do this, let the container just sit out at room temp....and use it for anything where the basil is going to be heated.
_Linguine al Nero_-making the sauce for this has become one of my near-daily duties. After marco cleans the seppie (which i've seen translated as cuttlefish, but they're way bigger than any cuttlefish i've ever seen) i get the little bodies with the tentacles and francesco gets the big sacs for the _seppie arroste_. I have to rinse the tentacles under running cold water vigorously to get all the black slime and sand off them, then i finely chop a couple shallots and sweat them in olive oil. I cut up the seppie bodies into small pieces, and after deglazing the shallots with white wine, toss in the seppie and cook it until done. Then i add a spoonful of tomato paste, cooking it a little, and then some water. The water gets brought to a boil and then i add the ink sacs after ripping them open with two forks, to turn the whole thing an evil jet black. I season it, cool it down, and then we just heat it in a pan and toss it with cooked linguine for the plate.
_Orecchiete con Broccoli e Anduja_-francesco cooks broccoli in the steamer for a contorni, and i usually get it after it's on it's way out...a couple days later. We sautee a good bit of garlic in olive oil with a couple salted anchovy filets, mashing them up, then add the broccoli, which we mash some with a fork to break down the bigger pieces. The cooked pasta is added to this, and usually a little more oil, since, as marco says "broccoli ***** oil." The anduja is mixed with a little hot water to form a paste and then drizzled over the top.
_Tagliolini con Ragù di Totani_-Totani is another kind of calamari. These are reddish orange in color and francesco uses the sacs for the frittura, so we again get the tentacles, which we do similarly to the linguine nero, but without the ink. Totani has a lot of sweetness and it's more tender than the seppie, which are huge. It turns a very bright orange-red when cooked and it's very pretty. 
_Tagliolini con Carciofi e Gamberetti_-pretty basic. We clean the artichokes, getting them to the hearts, then halving them and keeping them under lemon-water. Then we slice them thinly and sautee in olive oil with garlic until they're almost tender. The gamberetti are just little shrimp, which we peel, using the tails, and sautee in oil with garlic. We deglaze with white wine, add the artichokes, salt, herbs....and toss with the pasta.
_Carpaccio di Tonno con Insalatina di Arance_-this one was new last night...and i think it was only cause we ran out of the smoked swordfish. Same dish, but instead of the smoked fish, francesco sliced fresh tuna on the slicer and draped it over the orange slices.
_Tonno al Gratin di Pecorino Siciliano_-this is a very weird and interesting combination that francesco's been playing with the last week or so. The first night, he took thin slices of pecorino and breaded them...dipping first in flour, then egg, then breadcrumb, and put them on top of tuna steaks, then broiled them until brown and melty, then roasted the whole thing to finish cooking. The pecorino is not _ pecorino romano_, which most people in the u.s. know, but a somewhat softer cheese. There are about 100 different types of pecorino, with just about every town or region doing their own version ranging from rock hard grating cheeses to softer cheese resembling a gouda with more bite. The siciliano is somewhere in the middle of these two, but nothing like the very hard, sharp, saltyness of a pecorino romano. The second time he did it, the cheese was cut up into small sticks and soaking in cream. He would dredge them in breadcrumbs and then pack some more of his gratin mix (breadcrumbs, oil, herbs, salt, chopped caper) onto the top. This is the one he stuck with. The cheese melted more evenly, getting more browned on top. Very strange combo of cheese with fish, which you hardly ever see.
_Sardelle in Frittura con Salsa alla Menta Fresca_-not sure if i wrote about this one yet. The sardines are dredged only in flour, not breadcrumbs for this one, and they get kind of puffed up when you fry them. They're served with a sauce in a little sauceboat that's a severely strong-smelling sweet-and-sour kind of sauce made with vinegar, sugar syrup, and lots of fresh mint leaves.
_Tonno Arrosto con Lattughino e Capperini di Pantelleria_-This is another interesting one. Francesco chops the tuna into smallish pieces for this, then start them in the padella with olive oil, sauteeing them hard to get color. Then he adds chopped iceburg lettuce, white wine, capers, salt, pepper, herbs.... it ends up looking more like an asian dish than an italian one....like a tuna stir-fry. 
_Fritelline di Carciofi e Gamberetti_-this are similar to the fritelle di neonate, but with artichokes and shrimp. Francesco uses the same egg-flour-grated cheese-baking soda mix to bind it, and frys the mix into cakes. Somewhat chunkier and harder to get to the plate whole than the neonate.
_Cantucci e Zibibbo_ -once again, i assumed that we bought the little almond biscotti that we call cantucci and keep in a big glass jar behind the bar. But yesterday when i came in, marco was rolling out the dough for it into long logs and brushing them with eggwash before baking them for the first time. Basic biscotti technique....bake once, slice, then bake again to dry. The zibibbo is not grappa after all, but a very sweet dessert wine, very similar to sauternes. I think they'd call it a type of vin santo here. It's a dark golden color, fairly strong alchohol, and very syrupy and sweet. You're supposed to dunk the cantucci in the zibbibo when you're eating it. i've tried them a few times after service and it's a great combination....but what sweet thing isn't good with desset wine? i'm a huge fan of sauternes, late harvests, etc...


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## pooh (Mar 13, 2001)

Keep'em comin, Eddie!

Such a good read!

Looking forward to more of your posts soon.


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Eddie~ I make a version of your broccoli pasta with rapini, orrechetta, garlic, cayene or pepper flakes,anchovies, peppercini and romano....that is comfort food to me.

Pancetta with pancakes....normal fare here!!!

sounds like your having a great time, are you on a time frame??


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi all

thanks as always for reading and all your nice compliments.... i haven't posted much lately because i've been on vacation. we have been travelling for the last couple weeks in sicily and soaking up the sunshine here. i was inspired to visit sicily partly because the chef i'm working for is sicilian and i absolutely love his food. and the food here has not disappointed. i'm writing this from an internet cafe in palermo, which is known as the best city in italy for sweets. the pastries are absolutely incredible! just about anything you can stuff with sweetened ricotta, they've got it. cannoli, brioche, croissants, profiteroles, etc... they have these little things called sigaretti that are like tuiles rolled up very thin and filled with sweetened ricotta. and the gelato here is also widely known to be the best in italy. we visited one place in Noto (near Siracusa) which does very traditional gelati, and they still do the old arabic-influenced flavors like rose petal, violet, and orange flower water ice. the arabs brought the idea of making ice-cream here way back when, i guess. sicily is really a historically and culturally rich area, with various cultures (spanish, french, arab, greek, roman) having come through and moved in and out of power. it's quite a melting pot.

food-wise i've been eating almost nothing but fish. i'll always eat fish when it's fresh. you see sardines, anchovies (both fresh), swordfish, and tuna just about everywhere. a big specialty is pasta con le sarde, which is spaghetti with sardines, olive oil, white wine, golden raisins, and a ton of wild fennel tops. we were on the island of lipari, which is one of the aeolean islands, and as we explored the island, we couldn't help but noticing all the fennel and caper plants growing wild and huge all over the islands. people there drive around in their "apes" (little three wheeled trucks) and just harvest what they can and bring it to market. they call stuff that grows wild "silvatico" and it's got tons more flavor than the cultivated stuff.

anyway....i'll write a longer post about sicily and all the great stuff i've eaten when i get back, but i wanted to respond to some of the recent posts....

chef roberto...you can feel free to email me, i'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. my email is [email protected]. my advice to you is what i've told anyone who expresses interest in doing this. just go! all the details will get figured out, don't worry about it. don't get bogged down in the small worries. i've now gone and lived in barcelona and bologna, without having any prearranged contacts, and things have worked out great both times, with jobs and apartments finding their way to me. the experience is life-changing, it's a fun time, and it's the only vacation that you can put on your resume when you get back!

shroomgirl...your broccoli with orrechiette sounds very authentic. that's almost exactly the way we do it at francesco's, with lots of spice and the anchovies fried in there to give a hidden burst of flavor. our time frame is to stay in bologna through september, and possibly through october. we've paid for our apartment in bologna through september, so we're definitely staying until then... i plan to do lots more travelling too...this recent trip has given me a taste of how different other parts of italy is and i want to go and see them all. i have the whole month of august off from work (along with everyone else in italy) so we'll probably join the hordes of tourists then. i hope to get to rome, florence, tuscany, pompeii and the amalfi coast, venice, cinqueterre, and liguria....

ok...so thanks again to everyone for your kind words and your attention....it really makes it worth writing to hear all of your nice comments...

more posts coming soon when i get home...


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

I hope you can find yourself an agent, Eddie. This would make great reading in travel or culinary publications, and certainly, a delicious-to-read book!


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

hi all

well, it's been more than a month since my last post and lots of changes have happened at the restaurant. i'm still working there, but everyone else except the chef is gone and we have a whole new staff.

i haven't been writing too much, but i've started again tonight because this new cast of characters may be more entertaining to me than the last one. claudio (the washing-up guy) took off to sardinia to learn how to bake bread. marco (the other cook) had a few more arguments with francesco and left in a resentful huff. and francesco fired all the waiters and hired one guy to replace them all.

i'm going to start keeping a regular diary and posting menus again, but for now, i'm going to post some older entries to get this thing up to date.

3/14/01 2:06am

got home a little while ago and i have lots of stuff to tell....new developments. Yesterday francesco pulled me out in to the dining room to talk and told me that marco wants to move back to the front of the house and could i work more days? I said yes, that i’d work the fifth day, and take on the responsiblity of running the primis myself, but that of course i’d expect more money for this. he seemed to agree that this was obvious and so he said he’d get back to me with an offer today or tomorrow. Then when i went home for mid-day break i was really regretting it, thinking about working five days in a row instead of having two days, then a day off, then two more. Big difference. And the weather is just starting to get nice and i’m not in italy to just see the inside of one kitchen all summer, not being able to leave cause i promised this guy something i’d regret. 

Marco was in a good mood all day after this, not caring about anything, acting like a short-timer. But then today in the morning as we were working he lets out a couple off-hand comments about how now francesco says, no, that he has to stay in the kitchen. So i’m not really sure where things stand. Francesco hasn’t made me an offer yet, either. I told francesco i’d do it until he hired a new person and got them trained, but then he said something about how maybe he just wouldn’t hire anyone else for a while and it’d be just me and him. But this idea i don’t like, and i don’t need the responsibility while i’m trying to live in italy and soak up all the culture.

Then tonight during service, marco and i got into a big fight/pissing match and escalated the situation. Marco’s been doing this thing where he’s very high energy during service, always pushing the pans very early, pulling pasta too early....just generally rushing things and being very grabby, always turning francesco’s fish or grabbing my pasta, whatever. Yesterday during service we had two tickets for a total of maybe six pastas and i dropped the pasta for the first two together, then the next four a couple minutes later...i figure this gives us time to sauce and plate the first four, then the next two will be ready. Marco asks me while they’re down if i dropped them all together, and i said no, and told him how i did it. He seems to have a problem with this. it’s supposed to be my job to just work the pastas—-just the noodles—-during evening service. Marco insisted on this division of labor after the first few shifts. We hadn’t really talked about who would do what at first and ended up crossing over a lot, so marco insisted that we pick either pasta or pans and stick with whichever it was for a whole night. So i agreed to this and he wanted to do pans so i’ve been just working pasta in the evening. A few times, if i checked his pans or worked one while he was over helping francesco, he yelled at me, saying “i got it...” and kind of acting all insulted that i’d infer that he couldn’t keep up or someting...so i’ve been staying away from his area and just doggedly working my pasta...doing a lot of standing against the fridge...tasting each batch a few times.... very low key. 

Anyway, he doesn’t like that i’ve staggered the pastas and tells me that i should’ve just dropped them all together. Then, my back is turned, and the next thing i know he’s got all six of them out and in pans. Two are clearly done and the other four are still stiff enough to not be bending easily...i turn around and i’m like “what are you doing....?” but it’s too late and their all in sauce and we can’t put them back. I’m just standing back, kind of shocked, and he’s working them in the pans a little. We put out the first two done ones and then i start putting a little water or fumè so we can let them go in the pans a little longer, but he says no and just starts plating them all. 

That was last night and tonight it was more of the same. Marco is all over place, grabbing my pasta usually 20 or 30 seconds before i was going to pull it and just generally pushing and rushing things. So again we have a couple orders going together with about 6 pastas on them. And again i drop the first few and then the next ones. Let me explain here that for the dry pastas (linguine and spaghetti) i have to scale them on this old tray scale we have sitting on the station. So if there’s a lot of individual orders with either spaghetti or linguine, i have to keep like 4 or 6 little bundles of 110 grams each of long pasta sticks all together, while i’m weighing the next one. I weigh it all toghether if it’s all going into the same pan, say if i have 3 pasta alici, but for singled out tickets of spaghetti con tonno e mentuccia and pasta alici, and spaghetti cozze bottarga i have to weigh three separate bundles. So i weigh the ones that are going together—the first ticket with two pastas—drop those, then weigh the next ticket. Obviously if there’s doubles on separate tickets i double up, but you can’t always do it. So....that being said, i dropped them separately and told marco i was doing this as i did it. He starts yelling at me again, demanding to “know the reason” for this, saying that i’d better have a good reason, telling me twelve reasons why it doesn’t make sense to do it this way, and that if it was just one person on the station, it would be ok, but with two it didn’t make sense. To me, what’s the difference? I’m just cooking pasta and then plopping it into the pan, then plating them while Marco works the pans, so it’s not like we don’t have time to do it this way, and what’s the difference as long as i remember which ones were dropped when? I’m pretty on top of it since this is really all i’m doing during service besides plating the occasional bruschetta or insalata mista.

So marco is demanding my reason and i said “because i’m doing the pasta and this is how i'm doing it, and if you don’t like that you can do it yourself.” I mean, either of us could work this station solo without too much of a problem. While he’s yelling at me he’s got pans on the fire for the two pastas that i dropped second, and they’re starting to get a little crispy. As he’s yelling at me and they’re burning, francesco, who’s there but can’t understand any of this cause we’re talking in english, sees marco’s pans and starts yelling at him for this, telling him that he always uses too high of heat, and trying to save the pans. Marco immediately points the finger at me, saying that i should have been watching his pans for him. Unbelieveable! I just had to laugh at that one and shake my head after he’s yelled at me often for even touching his pans. He’s very hard to work with...very prideful....never will admit if he makes a mistake. Sometimes a ticket will come in and he’s talking or doing something else, and if i try to point it out or tell him what pans he’s got on it, he acts like, of course i saw it.....and then quickly looks at it and starts his pans going. Anyway, francesco trashed one of the pans and marco started remaking it, then went over to the pasta machine, grabbing the not-yet-done pasta and marching over to garbage and dumping the whole ticket’s worth. I was like “what are you doing?” again....but it was too late and all i could do was drop new pasta. “i didn’t have time to finish the pan,” he said, “before it would be overcooked.” 

It seemed like he was digging his own grave, so i just didn’t get upset and just quietly kept working. Francesco looked at me a few times and i kind of just shook my head in astonishment at how marco was acting so crazy. We worked in silence for a while and the mood was very tense, with marco and francesco occasionally arguing about the whole thing again in italian. I couldn’t understand a lot of it, but when i heard a lot of “lui” and “americano,” i listened and it seemed like marco was trying to blame me for the whole thing. I have enough trouble speaking italian, much less arguing in it, but i tried and got into the whole thing a little, denying what marco was saying, and trying to explain that he kept horning in on my work and he should just follow his own rules and stay on his pans and let me do the pastas. Marco took it to mean that i wanted to move around and do pans as well (which i do) and started saying stuff like “ahh...now i get it....you just want to be able to do pans and secondi as well as pasta.” Which honestly wasn’t the problem, but was true. I’m fine with just doing only pastas if that’s all they want from me, but if that’s gonna be how it is, then just let me do them. I heard them talking about the set up of the line, who stands where and cooks what, etc...and then Francesco started talking to me as if to reassure me that i’d be learning everything and that we’d start a new phase next time where i’d be in the middle between the two of them. 

It seemed like, mainly, that francesco understood where i was coming from on the whole thing. He started explaining to me that with cooks, sometimes they’re like animals and that they protect their territory, which i pretty much realized marco was doing the whole time. He didn’t really need to explain it to me since something like this has happened just about everywhere i’ve worked. But the whole thing seemed a little strange considering that as of yesterday marco was on his way out of the kitchen and i was supposedly taking his place. So i told francesco that i understood this, that i’ve seen it everywhere i’ve worked and not to worry. Marco took off, climbing down the ladder and going to change as soon as he was done cleaning the pasta cooker. I had to stay, since i usually clean up the secondi station and have to wait until all the tickets go out, and as i was cleaning and marco had already come back upstairs to hang out, francesco started yelling at him at how he left me to do all the cleaning. I honestly didn’t care that he left, since he had done his cleanup, and i pretty much knew that he was just making me look better by acting like such a baby, so i played it up a little, telling francesco that it was no big deal, that marco had finished his cleaning and that i was fine to finish mine alone. I mean cleanup there takes about 15 minutes, we hardly do anything. The dishwasher does the stoves, ovens, fryers and the floor, so it’s pretty much of a breeze.

I took off right after i was done, but made a point to say goodbye to marco and not leave it things all hostile. Then when i got home, francesco called me, which he’s never done before, and asked if i’d come in and sit down with them tomorrow, on my day off. I said that i was really busy (a lie) and that we’d talk on friday when i worked....he seemed to want to do it tommorow, but i said i couldn’t and he said ok....and for me not to worry. I figure i’m pretty much in a power position here, since i just yesterday told francesco that i’d help him out by taking on extra hours, and i was planning on just taking a day and not thinking about the whole thing, so they can wait.

So this job has been very tumultuous, first with francesco saying he can’t pay me cause i’m not contributing, then me saying i’ll just work two days a week and that whole thing, him going back and telling me that we’ll keep things the way they were, and then a week later telling me that marco was leaving the kitchen and could i take over his hours? This would all be crazy if it happened in english in a familiar environment....but in italian languange and culture, it’s really difficult to deal with and know what is the right thing to do. I guess however it works itself out it’s already been a great experience....


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## kimmie (Mar 13, 2001)

Hi eddie,

I had a good laugh, just to realize that I missed your posts. Glad to have you back on board!


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Hooray! Our Eddie is back on board! 

I can't say I've been in the same situation- not by a long shot! But I have felt some of what you're feeling: overwhelmed, confused and frustrated, in a country where you aren't fluent in the language. But I sense that you're processing all of the tumult and realize the value of even this rough experience. Bravo for you! 

I eagerly await your next installment. Be well, and good luck!


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## momoreg (Mar 4, 2000)

Eddie, 

As always, a well-told story. Thank you. Did you see my follow-up to the best in Chicago thread? I went looking for your friend Jason in Logan Square, and the cafe was closed...on a Tuesday 11:00 am. I was so disappointed. We also checked out Pizzeria Due, as per your advice.

Not to distract from the subject at hand...

I truly enjoy reading your journal. Keep 'em coming!


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## elakin (Jan 12, 2001)

part II: the diary continues

5-30-01

i haven’t made any entries for quite a while so i thought i’d make it official and make this the second section.

Also....this is really a pretty new chapter in my life at da francesco. Marco is gone, Claudio is gone, and all the servers (Lorena, Francesco, and Giovanna) are all gone too. We now have Sergio (the one and only server), me, Rashid (a morrocan dishwasher), and Gamal (an Egyptian cook). Quite a change. The work, however, remains pretty much the same.

Let’s see...what happened? After my last entry, i ended up going in to talk to francesco the next day after all. He called me again that morning, so i came in and talked to him and he told me i was suspended. He said he needed to reorganize the kitchen and he wasn’t sure where i’d fit in. I was agast after i had just told him i’d replace marco by going full time. He assured me he’d call me in a week and that this wouldn’t be the end of me working there. He called me after only about 5 days or so and i went in to talk with him again. This time he told me he couldn’t pay me anymore, so maybe it would be better if we ended things there. I was upset, but considering how often this guy changes his mind, i figured maybe it would be better if i kept up the association with him and the restaurant, so i offered to still work 2 lunch shifts a week for free. He seemed somewhat impressed with this, and i figured, i’m not really doing anything else anyway, and i was planning on going on vacation to sicily in a couple weeks, making looking for a new job kind of tough.

So i stayed...i worked for free for a few weeks, then went on vacation to Sicily. When i got back, i came in to work my normal time and after the shift Francesco paid me. He said he wanted to start paying me again and he’d pay me after every shift. He asked me if i could do six shifts a week, split between lunch and dinner, and i said sure. The strange thing, though is that the money he gave me was the same as i’d been making for a whole day, and he was giving it to me for just one shift. I asked him “this much for each shift? Or each day?” and he said each service. So basically, he’s now paying me double what i was making the first go-round. I figured it wouldn’t be long before he figured this out and tried to change things again, that maybe i had a couple weeks before the next big shakeup happened.

Well, the next one happened, but it actually helped me out. Marco and francesco had a few more blow-ups and arguments...always driving each other crazy, both of them burned out with working there and with each other, and one day after Francesco yelled at Marco over something very no-big-deal while we were eating lunch, Marco got up and took of his apron and walked out. So Francesco and I worked lunch and dinner of a Saturday alone....it went fine, and after Francesco called Marco over the weekend and had a sit-down (so many endless sit-downs in this place) on Sunday, Marco was back on Tuesday morning. But it wasn’t long before they had another argument, and this time Marco told Francesco that the following Saturday would be his final day, “definitivamente!” He worked out the week, coasting with that i’ve-just-given-notice short-timer attitude, and this time he stuck to it.

Francesco asked me to cover all his shifts, but i really don’t want to work that much, so i told him i’d work a maximum of 6 or 7 shifts. He didn’t hire anyone (or apparently even think about it) until after Saturday night, but he told me to come in and work all day on Tuesday and we’d see what happened with the other days. We had a guy named Sorrelino for a couple mornings who was really gung-ho and enthusiastic, but very inexperienced and wide-eyed and clumsy. He didn’t last too long. Francesco has no patience for training people. 

For the last couple weeks i’ve been working all day on Tuesday and Saturday, and covering the other dinner shifts, and i’m really not sure what Francesco did for the mornings i wasn’t there. I think he may have worked a couple of them solo. But a couple days ago he hired this Egyptian guy named Gamal who seems like he’ll work out. He told me he’s worked in restaurants for 15 years and he has that kind of cockiness that annoys you from a new guy. But...he also seems like he knows what he’s doing. He’s been working every shift and learning primi in the morning and secondi at night, when i’m there, and he seems to be catching on quick. Francesco, i think, wants to be out of the kitchen during service, helping with the floor more. he really needs to be, since sergio is practically useless as a server (this is a mere preview of a future rant about our current server).

anyway....the whole thing worked out pretty well and it makes me feel pretty smart for having read the situation correctly, thinking francesco would probably change his mind again, and also for having the presence of mind to think instead of just reacting when he was pretty much firing me after having just asked me a week before to cover all of marco's shifts. it just serves to show me that there's always a good possible outcome to be had if you look for it and know how to read people. the food continues to interest and inspire me as francesco has started having things shipped up from sicily, and i've reached that place where working the line is no longer an effort but a pleasure, when you know your dishes well enough to not have to think at all, your hands just moving automatically for what you need. that's when it truly becomes a dance and you can really enjoy not only the cooking aspect, but also the sheer physicality of what you are doing. making 60, 70 plates in a couple hours, sometimes working 5 or 8 pans at once, moving smoothly around your co-workers in a cramped kitchen, always knowing which plates are for what tables and catching out of the corner of your eye when the server tries to take one that's not properly garnished or intended for another table, turning to turn off of a pan because you can tell just from the sound it's making that it's about to burn. besides the food aspect of it...this is one of the things i love about the job. being in this place, this groove. just like anywhere, it doesn't run well every night. every night is not a dance. but on some nights, when everything seems to be clicking, it's just a magical, amazing thing to watch and be a part of and it reminds me of the feeling that i had with my first restaurant job, a feeling i still get sometimes--"i can't believe they let me come back here and do this cool stuff...let alone pay me for it!"


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## luckyslevin (Jun 28, 2010)

I know this is a very old thread, but there arn't too many new ones and this is just greatness, really felt the need to bump it for people to read and reread. Really is insane how simple most of these recipes are. I mean I've always heard italian cuisine was about letting a few basic ingredients shine through but wow, I can't wait to try so many of these thank you!


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