Apeldoorn, 1: home cooking

Apeldoorn, Netherlands, Nov. 4, 2010—

DINNER AT HOME this evening: old-fashioned domestic Dutch cooking that Hans and Anneke do so well. Well, not entirely old-fashioned, because Hans always manages to find something a little exotic.

This time it was a pumpkin soup he made. He bought an organic pumpkin, washed it well, then cooked it in the oven before reducing it to a purée with a hand-held blender he favors. He flavored it with cumin, red pepper, and coriander, combining it with chicken stock, and let us top it with a dollop of good Greek yoghurt: delicous.

Anneke had made her echt Dutch version of sauerkraut: kraut from the organic grocery combined with chunks of gerookte worst, a mild smoked Frankfurter-type sausage, and topped with slices of canned pineapple, the whole baked in the oven, then held a few moments under the broiler. This is in fact a delicious dish, odd though it may sound to Mediterranean eaters.

Riesling, Pfaffenheim (Alsace), 2008

Earlier we'd contented ourselves with a ham-cheese tosti for lunch, at the excellent café Martins, downtown. Until they opened three or four years ago there was no really good coffee in this fairly large provincial city (~150,000); with their good espresso and pastries they managed soon to expand in a new location to a much more ambitious business.

Brasserie Martins, Paslaan 5, Apeldoorn; tel. 055-5213102

Milan, 3: Eating milanese

Milan, Nov. 3, 2010—

WE FLY THIS EVENING from Milan's Malpensa airport up to Amsterdam, where we'll take the train to Apeldoorn in eastern Netherlands to spend time with old friends, so our only hope for a good meal today is an extended lunch. Dinner, that meal was called in my youth, among my middlewestern relatives, where the three meals of the day were breakfast, dinner, and supper.

But where to eat? After whiling away the morning in conversation over cappuccinos and cornetti, those not entirely successful Italian attempts at croissants, we walked downtown to the center, along "our" Corso Buenos Aires to the Piazza Venezia, then along the Corso Venezia to the San Babuino, the Galleria, and the Duomo. I had in mind the trattoria we like in via Santa Marta, but others felt it was just too far away, and by now it was almost noon.

Our Marta, almost equally santa to some of us, suddenly remembered a restaurant she knew on the Piazza Mercante, only a street away from us. We looked at the menu, looked at the fish on ice displayed inside, talked to the man in charge, and decided it would be fine. Fifteen minutes to stroll the neighboring streets; then it would be noon and we could sit down.

It didn't take long to decide on the menu: all four of us would share a huge platter of pinzimonio, raw carrots, Treviso, fennel, radishes, tomatoes, with oil and vinegar and salt to dip them in; then risotto alla Milanese, based on a tasty chicken stock, nicely colored and flavored with saffron, cooked to exactly the right degree: the rice just a tiny bit grainy at the center of the kernel.

I asked for a panna cotta for dessert; I can't resist it. We were surprised when a crème brulée appeared in its place. No, signore, c'e una panna cotta , the waiter insisted; it's how it's done here; it's our own recipe. Well, it was an okay crème brulée, though I've had better. But it wasn't what I'd wanted. Still.

Dolcetto da Piemonte in carafe

Al Mercante, Piazza Mercanti, 17, Milan; tel. 02.8052198

Milan, 2: non Milanese!

Milan, Nov. 2, 2010—

LUNCH AND DINNER TODAY at places found per caso, at random, within easy walks of our hotel on the Corso Buenos Aires, not far from the Piazza Venezia — an area becoming more fashionable just now, even in this slow economy.

Lunch was at a seafood restaurant nearby, a big, spacious, brightly lit, comfortable place with big photomurals of the Amalfitani coast on the wall. We looked at the extensive menus, then engaged in conversation with the waiter, who brought a couple of fish out to show us and described how they might be cooked. We agreed, and wound up with a nice firm fish braised in piquant tomato sauce well laced with enormous capers, too many olives, a little fennel, lots of flavor.

I would call this a Sicilian restaurant. The Pugliese waiter, clearly a spokesman for the place, disagreed. He proudly led me to a much bigger dining room downstairs, waving at the photomurals: Look: this is Sicily. Over here, this is Sardegna. You saw the Amalfi coast; over here is Liguria. This is an all-Italian restaurant, in Milano, because the Milanese cooking is not really very interesting.

I'm not sure I don't agree.

Colomba Platino, Duca di Salaparuta (Sicily), 2009

Trattoria Il Bragosso, via Omboni, 4; tel. 02 29521357

But where to eat dinner? We asked a man on the street; he waved us down a block, another to the right, then to the left, to a restaurant called La Ragazza. It was closed, of course. But nearby was a brightly lit, brightly decorated place with an attractive menu promising spaghetti caccia e pepe, with grated cheese and pepper, one of my favorites, so in we went.

I had a brilliant and delicious appetizer, ceci e baccalà; the chick-peas served as a rough purée, flavored deeply with onions and olive oil, the salt-cod beautifully cooked as scraps and scattered across the purée. Then the spaghetti, which was very nearly as good as anything I'd had in Rome.

Bianco di Lazio, 2009

Osteria Arrivederci Roma, via Malpighi 7, Milan; tel. 800.03.19.95

Milan, 1: Da Giacomo

Hotel Aurora, Milan, November 1, 2010—

WE THINK WE KNOW Milan by now, but: we arrived hungry a little after one o'clock after a slow rainy drive from Asti, and having cooled our heels while the room was being made ready we didn't want to drive anywhere, and didn't want to take the time to do much research, and it's Monday when restaurants tend to be closed, and it's a holiday ditto ditto, so.

We just walked down the street to the Bar Miró and had a club sandwich — ham cheese and tuna for me, with a glass of Dolcetto. I'm not in principle agreeing with the idea of mixing fish and meat, or fish and cheese, or fish meat and cheese. For that matter I think it bad luck to eat fish of any kind on a rainy day; that's just the kind of received knowledge I run on. But what can you do.

Dinner was, wouldn't you know, at a fish restaurant. After endless trawling of Zagat and a number of other sites we settled on Da Giacomo, which sounded really nice and wasn't all that far away. Lindsey had a plate of pappardelle with porcini and a big platter of grilled vegetables; I had a cotelette alla Milanese, forgetting it was nothing but an enormous breaded veal cutlet with a half lemon, and spinach in butter on the side, because it's a very favorite vegetable of mine. It was all perfectly fine, and the bread they serve here — mother-in-law's tongues, flatbread, a thick kind of grissini, and even a whole-grain bread of some kind, is very good indeed.

 

Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Planeta (Sicily), 2008

Da Giacomo, angolo via Benevenuto Cellini e Pasquale Sottocorno (no. 6), Milan; tel. 02 76023313

Alba: White truffles

Asti, October 31, 2010—

WE'RE IN A PLEASANT country hotel outside Asti, but we ate today a few kilometers south in Alba, because there was an exhibition there of Morandi landscapes that we didn't want to miss. Alba is of course the center of Italy's white truffle economy, and this is the season, so we did the expected.

But where? We didn't have time to look around, we'd got into town too late for that, and we're travelling without restaurant guidebooks, since we're mostly eating in hotels or agriturismi. So we parked near the center of town, walked past a couple of uninteresting-looking places, and settled on Pasta e Pasta, a chain I'm pretty sure (since I think I recall eating at one in Milan a few years ago).



Still, they had the requisite fungi. So we ordered tajarin, the Piemontese version of tagliarini, served dressed with good Piemontese butter, with fourteen grams of white truffles sliced thin on top. (You pay for your truffles by weight: they bring four or five to the table with a little scale, you choose the ones you want, they weigh them.) Afterward, we both wanted brasato Barbaresco, slices of beef braised in that red wine, polenta on the side. Nothing more but an excellent coffee, thank you; it was very good; I'd go back.

Arneis in carafe; Barbaresco in carafe

Pasta e Pasta, Via Cuneo 3, Alba (CN); tel. 0173/363825

Giaglione, 3: Chestnuts!

Agriturismo Crè Seren, Giaglione, October 30, 2010—

AFTER A MORNING of sight-seeing we were hungry, and had gone to Chiomonte, Lindsey's father's birthplace, so we lunched in the old Albergo there. We first ate there in the summer of 1974, when its kitchen was a bit better, I think; it's been under new management since the late 'seventies, and the kitchen's a bit pedestrian. Still, you can do worse: I had a plate of tagilatelle with Bolognese sauce, then a couple of veal scallopine in a thick flour-based sauce, washed down with the local red.



After an afternoon visiting new-found family — Lindsey's third cousin, I think, once removed — we dined back at our agriturismo with Andrea and Teresa, a third cousin twice removed and his wife, a pianist. Our hostess, Serena Sereno, having heard I liked chestnuts, arranged a dinner featuring them in almost every course, as follows:

Lettuce, onion, and sliced fennel salad, with slices of soft raw pancetta
Grilled chestnuts with lardo (all this is from the agriturismo, by the way)
Gnocchi malfatti in butter and oil


Tomato tartlet with peppers and chopped parsley
Tagliatelle dressed with chopped chestnuts, carrots, and leeks
Roast vitellone with roast potatoes


Chestnut crumble cake topped with chopped apples in jelly

White, Dolcetto, and Crè Seren Nero, 2009, as yesterday

Albergo Chiomonte, Via Levis, Chiomonte (TO)Agriturismo "Cre Seren", Frazione S. Rocco 10, Giaglione (TO), tel. 0122.62 92 64

Giaglioni, 2: Bagna Cauda

Giaglioni (Piemonte), October 29, 2010

LAST NIGHT WE SHARED the dining room of our agriturismo with nine noisy Calabrese who were celebrating a birthday. Tonight, after a fairly strenuous two-hour walk through forest, we had it all to ourselves. Too bad for the business, perhaps—though perhaps not, as in addition to looking after us they'd been busy with the last day of the Barbera harvest— but very nice for us.

It's a pleasant room, with tables for perhaps two dozen, with identical straight-backed but comfortably upholstered chairs painted various muted pastels, photos of local attractions (including the goal of today's walk, an ancient abbey across the valley), and nice lighting.






We began with two unusual and very tasty salads, one of apples and cabbage flavored with a delicate vinaigrette, the other of red-stalked Torinese celery, walnuts, and the local Brùc cheese, a sort of soft-hard creamy tomme, something like Castelmagno but without any runniness or blue-streaking. These were chopped fine and served in a delicious green olive oil, no vinegar, but a discreet amount of salt. Both of these will be imitated when we get home.






Then came red and yellow peperoni, the yellow a bit more peppery than the red, sweated in oil, cooled to room temperature, and served with a dollop of particularly unctuous bagna cauda: lots of anchovy taste, just the right whiff of garlic (it was steeped in hot milk, then discarded), and a little butter. A version of bagna cauda (one of the Hundred Plates) to contend with.

Afterward there was a plate of agnelotti filled with ground veal, pork, and a little bit of lamb, with rosemary, thyme, and garlic, all ground up very fine. And then came a local delicacy, a beautiful example of cucina povera or peasant cooking: mutton, laurel leaves, salt, garlic, and nutmeg, layered in a high narrow terra-cotta vessel, weighted with a stone on a plate the right size, and left to itself for a week.






I suppose it's a distant relative of the Provençal boeuf daube, or the Spanish olla podrida, the sort of dish that makes a virtue of necessity — my kind of virtue.
Whatever its relatives — and they probably extend to Hopi country — it was a delicious thing, very rich, unctuous, challenging, memorable.

We finished with a delicate and very flavorful apple sformata, nothing but apples, eggs, and sugar, mixed in the right proportions and allowed to take shape. With a tiny garnish of whipped cream it was all you could ask.

Zal blanc, Chardonnay and local white grapes, Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; Dolcetto, Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009; Cré Seren (Pinot nero and local red grapes), Azienda Agricola Martina (Piemonte), 2009