Il Forno

Cookbook spotlight: Kitchen Sense (and Buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy)

As all my fellow food bloggers, I have a passion for cookbooks: as hard as I try to promise myself that THIS book is the last one (... at least for a few months) I inevitably end up with a new addition to my collection sooner than I can say mise en place. You can imagine that when Cathy of A Blithe Palate asked me if I was interested in Getting a copy of Mitchell Davis' new cookbook, Kitchen Sense, to test I simply could not resist.

Now, I must admit that I am most definitely not a huge fan of plain cookbooks. I do use them, to great extent sometimes, but they're not exactly what I would read from cover to cover. Like wise, I must admit I had little idea of who Mitchell Davis is, of his role in the James Beard Foundation and of his previous books, The Mensch Chef and Cook Something.

And still, once the book arrived, I found myself reading through it (almost) from cover to cover captured by the clear and concise recipe descriptions, the short introductions to each  and the very welcome tips for variations and leftovers. I cannot even complain too much about the Italian recipes, one of my favourite hobbies. Apart one or two details and a semantic disagreement, these keep the original spirit if not always the original ingredients. Nonetheless, this makes the recipe more feasible for the US public the book is aimed at.

Fabulous Favourites Festival Roundup, part 1

Hosting a blogging event is always been fun for me. Co-Hosting two events at once, together with Lenn, even more so. Yet the creation of a theme, makeing adjustments and putting the announcement up are all foreplay. The real action comes, in this case, on the event's day in an explosion of cooking and wine drinking. Going through the blogsphere searching for the single entries can be a bit of a pain though and so here is the first part of the event's entries round-up: our highlights of the match, if you wish.

I hope you will have fun reading the round-up below. I sure enjoyed going through all the entries, reading about the appetizing dishes and mouthwatering wines. Now though, I feel the terrible urge to pour myself a glass of wine ;-).

Visit Lenn's blog for the other half of this roundup.

What the heck is Konnyaku?

Japanese cuisine hardly ever appears on this blog, which does not mean I am not facinated by it. I don't know half as much about it as I would like, so I was intrigued when Jason of Pursuing my passions dropped me a line to tell me about tomorrow's Konnayaku-day blogging event.

If you, unlike me, know perfectly well what konnayaku is, then you might like to use this chance and join Jason with your favourite recipe.

For me and all those who are not afraid to declare their ignorance, it is a great chance to head back to Jason's blog and learn something new.

Itadakimasu!

IMBB25: Pasta c'anciova e muddica

I love bread.

Not something hard to say, when your blog is called "the oven" and was originally started with baking in mind rather than food in general, as the focus rather turned out to be. (I never could keep my mind concentrated on one single topic, too much interesting stuff out there.)

As much as I love bread, I hate wasting it. In part it must have to do for my passion for it, but I rather believe that my maternal grandparents are to blame (or praise, depending on your point of view). Having lived through WWII and food rationing, they had a careful attitude to food waste, yet not guilt-ridden like the grandparents of a few school friends I got to know better during my childhood. If you exclude bread, that is. I cannot remember a piece of bread being thrown away: stale bread would always be used somehow, eventually as bread crumbs if no other idea popped up. I can still se the huge brad crumbs jar in my grandparents cupboard as if I had it before my eyes.

Fabulous Favourites Festival: WBW 21 + IMBB? 26

I have to admit that when the let's just give this a try idea for Is My Blog Burning appeared on my blog over two years ago I hardly suspected that so many would follow suit, in an explosion of gastronomic blogging events for all tastes. To be honest with you, I was almost surprised to see those first brave bloggers join me on the first edition of IMBB? One of the first events to follow suit was Wine Blogging Wednesday, born from the mind of Lenn over at Lenndevours; WBW has gone a long way from its first baby steps, becoming the best virtual wine blogging event out there. I love to peek at the bottles the various blogger choose for each edition, often discovering wines unknown on this side of the pond.

This month Is My Blog Burning and Wine Blogging Wednesday have decided to join efforts: Lenn and me are bringing you the Fabulous Favorites Festival taking place on Friday May 19.

What is the Fabulous Favorites Festival exactly, you might ask? As my granddad liked to say, wine and food should always go together and so we are asking you to:

1. Pick a favorite bottle of wine from your cellar and create/cook a dish that goes with it.
2. Pick a favorite dish from your collection and seek out a wine that will pair with it.

and if you're feeling particularly brave, or maybe want to impress someone and blog about it at the same time you could always 3. create an entire wine-food pairing menu for the event. If you do you'll have us all in awe, I promise.

We hope that we'll encourage the cooks among you to have a go at the corkscrew and tasting glass and similarly to see a couple of you wine experts drop, lay aside, your precious Riedels and pick up a pan.

Join us on Friday May 19 for the biggest and wildest wine and food pairing seen on the blogsphere!

... and while you are at it don't forget to buy some extra bread for IMBB25: Give us this day yesterday's bread hosted by Derrick at An Obsession with Food this coming week-end.

IMBB23; A Taste of France – Tartiflette

Europe sometimes resembles more a little village than a continent. At least I can't help thinking so when I look at the relationship we Italians have with our French neighbours, our "cugini d'oltralpe" –cousins across the Alps– as we call them. There's both love and hate, jealousy and admiration, likeness and envy... on both sides, I like to think. Just loveable cousins' fights, compared to what the English feel for the frog eaters neighbours across the Channel.

One thing we Italian definitely do not suffer lightly is France supposed role as global culinary heaven and reference... OK, we're just envious. The simple truth is that whatever we might think, France gastronomic infrastructure and promotional ability is something we can only aim to imitate successfully. In this, I'm definitely different from my fellow-Italian: I like France, its food, its wines, but most of all the passionate opinions and discussions these subjects stimulate, not unlike in Italy. I do have my grudges too, starting from Larousse Gastronomique's many hilarious entries on Italian food and continuing with a certain stiff and kill-joy haute-cuisine ideal – which luckily seems to be loosing ground even in its birthplace –, but I love the Bistro philosophy, close to the Italian Trattoria yet different, and adore its regional home-style cuisine. Good for me that Laura did not choose haute-cuisine classics for this month's IMBB theme!

IMBB 22: of Love and Pasta

Most couples have their special song, movie or special place which bring back memories of that special time at the beginning of their relationship when every moment spent together was lived with joy, expectation and maybe a little fear. Daniela and me have our special place too –actually more than one, though a particular spot in Cambridge has a special meaning for us– but the one thing that brings bag that special feeling is a particular pasta dish that is forever bound with a particular moment in our relationship when mere flirting turned into something more serious.

Holiday cookie swap - part two

You've already read the first half of the 2005 SHF/IMBB Cookie Swap Round-Up, andhave impatiently waited for part two: here it comes! Jennifer and I divided the received entries into two parts in alphabetical order: the first half of the entries, from A to K have already been presented by Jennifer.  Today we go on: from L to Z, or better said to W. Hey, no Z-named blogs out there? Zorro's cooking blog will have to wait till next time.

If either of us has missed anyone, please let us know so we can add you. And please don't forget to vote on your favourite cookie recipe once you have read all the entries! There will be 12 copies of "Cookie Sutra" going out as soon as the votes are tabulated.

Note: As many of you have noticed, there were some issues with many of the pictures. Everything should, hopefully, be OK now. Sorry for the inconvenience and the long wait. Thanks!

Cookie swap: a joint SHF/IMBB event

"Teilen macht spaß" (sharing is fun) is a German saying children often get to hear in these parts, and I've been trying to convince my son about, without much success. Maybe three years old cannot yet see the sense. Things are different when it comes to food: is there anything nicer than sharing the food you prepared with those you love, or your favorite recipe with a fellow-minded cook? That's the spirit of the many food blogging events that delight us every month, and to top that, there's a little surprise in store. This month we'll not only be sharing recipes, but even events! That's the idea behind this month's joint Sugar High Friday-Is My Blog Burning Cookie-swap Party.

Join me Jennifer and me for this festive cookie swap. Share a recipe or two...or more for your favourite homemade cookies with us and look for new ideas among the contributions of other bloggers, without the stress of having to look through books, magazines and webpages for your inspiration. I for one hope it will end up a yearly holiday tradition.

On top of the bounty of recipes, Jennifer has organized a special treat for this month's participants. Yes, this time there are also prizes to be won! Go over to her forums (click on “Blog Events”), and you will see a few photos of the outside and inside of a very sweet cookie book called “The Cookie Sutra”. Jennifer has managed to secure a dozen of these naughty little cookie books for 12 lucky winners. How will we ever judge the winners, you ask?  Quoting Jennifer: "Well, I won’t…and Alberto won’t…but YOU will!". Read through the round-ups, choose your top three favorites and email us before December 8th quoting the recipe and which blog  it appeared on (please, don’t vote for yourself – someone will, we're sure!). The top twelve most selected entrants will get a copy mailed to them – just in time for the holidays.

The usual "rules" apply to this IMBB/SHF event as always. And if you're joining us for the first time, here it goes: any and all bloggers...or readers of blogs... or complete strangers without blogs (yet!) are welcome to take part, whether they regularly blog about food or not. The theme is "Cookie Swap" and the weekend for this joint SHF/IMBB is Friday November 25th – Sunday November 27th, 2005. The cookies don't have to be made on that weekend, but your entry and recipe should be posted then. Share the recipe for your cookie(s), and if you can include a picture too: we would all love to see what they look like. Once your entry is posted, please email us at our joint cookie swap email address with permlink to your recipe, your blog, your name and where you are located. We will include it in a post that lists all of the participants and their recipes the following week.

And now: hush, hush off you go, turn those ovens on and start baking!
And be sure to check out Jennifer's announcemet too!

IMBB18: fried chicken.

In the past, I've mainly used the series of  Is My Blog Burning? events to prepare Italian classics, taking the chance to share those recipes that I love but don't prepare all that often. So, when Linda announce the theme of this 18th edition would be frying I was pretty much set to follow the known path and knock up one of the many fried recipes of the Neapolitan tradition. And I would have, if I hadn't started being obsessed by Southern-style fried chicken.

It all started a couple of month's ago with the fried chicken cook-off on the eGullet Society's forums. For one reason or another I didn't join in, but the idea stuck in my mind. A few weeks ago, reading a short detective story I stumbled upon a character obsessed by the fried chicken his grandma used to make. At that point I had started getting pretty fixated on fried chicken myself. Although I did have a few fried chickens in while living in the States in the '80s I had never cooked one myself. So what better than having THE perfect excuse for knocking up a batch of fried chicken? Sing with me (and Madonna):

Like a virgin, frying for the very first time,
like a vi-i-i-rgin, put your chicken next to mine