Current Draft of Pete's Menu (outside)

Current Draft of Pete's Menu (inside)

Sun - Dried Tomato Pesto

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto...Oh how we complicate things. Life should be simple, easy to handle, like food. As much as I like French Haute Cusine, and I especially love watching Julia Childs cooking. It is complicated, I'm to busy as it is. My wife, Annie and I made Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto yesterday, absolutely delicious. And it was very easy.
You need a few pieces of equipment that if you do any cooking at all will be a part of your kitchen collection. For this recipe, a spatula, a food processor, Cuisinart sells one for $40, a saute pan.
Please feel free to make variations, thats the fun part, along with eating.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
sun dried tomatoes...a small handfull
basil leaves...a handfull
pinenuts or walnuts or both...a small handfull
(nuts should be toasted, toss them in a hot saute pan continuously for 1~2 minutes, don't burn)
garlic cloves...3
parmesan...1/2 cup
salt...1 tsp
pepper...a few twists..or..1/2 tsp

Place all ingredients into processor.
Turn on, using pulse button.

extra virgin olive oil...drizzle in slowly to desired consistancy.

Remove to saute pan, add favorite pasta, heat and serve.
If needed, thin out with some pasta water, also adding cream is very nice.

We made it without the basil yesterday, it was very good. Everyone loved it, including Isaac who is 14 and Alexis who is 2.
Of course the better the ingredients you use the better it will taste, sea salt or whole pepper in a mill, fresh garlic that you peel, imported Italian Parmigiana, from Parma, basil leaves from your own plant.

You can make food as easy or complicated as you want. My Italian heritage says, use good quality ingredients and don't spend to much time in the kitchen doing it. Eating is about family and community, spend as much time as you can with them. In fact why don't you get some good bread, a bottle of wine, make some pasta and go visit someone tonight.

Recipe - Sauces - Marinara

There are many thoughts on the cooking of Marinara. I find the one that I created to be the best that I've tasted anywhere. I say this because I have made and tasted many versions of Marinara and over the years have found that it truly does take fresh ingredients in the right combination to get it right. This recipe however, uses dried herbs and canned tomato's because it is not always feasible to use vine ripe tomato's from Italy and fresh herbs from your own garden. So I wanted to give you a recipe that you can use every day and will be WOWed by it, and so will you friends & family. Here it is....

Gather together...
1 Onion
3 Cloves of Garlic
1 #10 can of Crushed Tomato's (With as few ingredients as possible in it.)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
The following herbs in any combination.....
Dried Italian Herbs
Dried Thyme
Fresh Thyme & Oregano

Salt & pepper (preferably Kosher or sea salt)

1 Thick bottomed pot. (6 Qt)
1 Utensil to stir with.
1 Cutting board
1 French knife


Put the pot on the stove and turn the heat to medium, add a puddle of Olive Oil, dice the onion, small dice, and place into pot, smash, peel and chop the garlic add to pot. Open the can and place the tomatoes into the pot. (The oil will heat up by the time you get the onion cut and that will cook by the time you get the garlic ready and then that will be ready by the time you get the can open and pour it in.) Add salt and pepper to taste, a small amount then add more as needed. Adding the herbs is a personal thing a 1/4 to 1/2 cup total of all the herbs, start with a small amount and taste the sauce as you go. Stir it all in. Let cook for a half hour or so.
After I add the herbs and stir them in I add an ingredient that takes the bitter from the tomatoes and adds a little sweet to the sauce. The ingredient that I use is Coke, its a secret ingredient here at home, so it adds a little mystery to it. I know its not a "fresh" ingredient, but it tastes good and you can use other ingredients instead like sugar, honey or baking soda, when you put baking soda in it will froth up because of the acid in the tomatoes.
From this recipe you can make meat sauces, try adding mushrooms, spinach, ricotta or any combination of foods that you like give it a name and have fun.

Meat Sauce...4 parts beef to 1 part pork, (ground)
Mushroom Sauce...cook up a 4 or 5 different mushrooms in olive oil (EVOO) & onion
or try this......caramelised onions & garlic... & Mushroom
4 Cheese
Florentine.....4 cheese and spinach (cooked in onions & EVOO)


RVB

The Food of Enchanted Tuscany

With its enchanted landscapes and rolling hills covered with bright yellow fields of sunflowers, olive groves, and grapevines, hill towns, monuments, and art, Tuscany is the Italian region in every foreigner's dreams.

During the Renaissance, this magic land gave birth to some of the most influential characters in Western civilization: artists and architects, saints and philosophers, navigators and scientists. These include Amerigo Vespucci, the merchant and navigator who gave America its name; Giovanni da Verrazzano; Leonardo; Michelangelo; Lorenzo de’ Medici “The Magnificent”; Brunelleschi; Della Casa; Galileo; Giotto; Donatello; Botticelli; Dante; Machiavelli; and Boccaccio, to mention only a few.

The Etruscans, who inhabited Tuscany before the Romans, had a reputation for being great eaters and wine drinkers. Their habits were considered by many to be degenerate and to be the cause of their decline. In Roman times, until the fall of the Roman Empire, Tuscany cooking coincided with that of Rome itself. After the year 1000, and after the Crusades opened the way to the East, with the fear of barbarian incursions diminishing, the northern Italian cities became the center of production and commercial power.

At the end of the twelfth century, in spite of the permanent hostility between the factions loyal to the Pope (Guelfi), and those devoted to the emperor (Ghibellini), Florence grew to be independent and the most powerful city of Tuscany. The lily became the symbol of Florence and its supremacy. The food of the time was simple and meager; dishes were based on grains or chestnuts, and were merely flavored with herbs: breads such as focaccia, and castagnaccio come from those times. Towards the middle of the 1300s, economic recovery set the basis for the supremacy that the gastronomy of Tuscany and Florence would hold for the first few centuries that followed.

Improved agricultural techniques made more widely available the products of the Tuscan countryside that we so much appreciate today: wine, olive oil, vegetables, pork, and all sorts of game. Shops offered porchetta (roasted piglet flavored with Tuscan herbs), cow meat, chicken, lamb, vegetables, and fish from the Arno River. Many of the recipes of the time remain alive in Tuscan cooking today.

In 1434, the town of Florence became a signoria and Cosimo de’ Medici, powerful merchant and banker, became the lord. He governed with such wisdom that he was declared “Father of the Homeland” at his death. In 1439, the council of the Roman and Greek churches was held in Florence, as guests of the Medici.

One story says that, on this occasion, two important terms of Tuscan cooking were born. While in a banquet, Greek Cardinal Bessarione tasted some roasted piglet, and he exclaimed, “Aristos!” meaning “the best” in Greek. The Florentines present at the table thought he called that meat dish by that name, and since then Arista became the name of the whole loin of pork.

Again, Cardinal Bessarione, when tasting a sweet wine exclaimed, “This is Xantos!” alluding to a similar wine produced in Greece. Those who were listening thought that he wanted to say the wine was so good as to judge it santo (holy). From that day, this special wine has been called Vin-Santo (holy wine), offered in all of Tuscany as a dessert wine to be drunk with the famous Cantucci “biscotti.”

The David by Michelangelo Buonarroti is considered one of the highest artistic expressions of the Renaissance.

Lorenzo “The Magnificent,” son of Cosimo de’ Medici, succeeded his father at age twenty. He ruled Florence with great determination and liberalism. That same year, he married a lady of Roman nobility. The event was celebrated with great feasts and banquets. One aspect of these events was the distribution to the population of a profusion of food, including hundreds of chickens, ducks, fish, game, calves, and barrels of wine.

Wrote Lorenzo, a poet himself:

“Quant’e’ bella giovinezza
che si fugge tuttavia
chi vuol essere lieto sia
del doman non v’e’ certezza”

How beautiful is youth, that runs away so fast, who wishes to be happy so, there is no certainty in tomorrow.

In harmony with this thought, Lorenzo surrounded himself with a large court of painters, artists, architects, writers, and poets, and made Florence the liveliest center of the time. He was also an enthusiast of good food, and a good cook himself.

Lorenzo’s death in 1492 ended an era—on the same year as the discovery of America, which would bring so many changes to the history of the world and would also forever change the gastronomy of the West.

Since Florence was one of the greatest commercial nexus of the time, Tuscan cooking was enriched earlier by the produce of the new world than the fare of many other countries. New beans, potatoes, maize, and chocolate were tasted here, even while they were still considered ornamental plants in other parts of Europe.

With the decadence of the Medici family, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany slowly faded away. After the death of the last of the Medici, the Grand Duchy was given to the Lorraine, a French-Austrian dynasty, followed by Napoleon, by the return of the Lorraine again after the fall of Napoleon’s empire, and finally by the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy in 1860.

From 1865 to 1871, Florence was the capital of Italy. Florentine cuisine in those years seems to have forgotten the Tuscan way of cooking; the official dinners only proposed French dishes and wines. The presence of the royal Italian court, originally from Piemonte and influenced deeply by the French style, had caused the Florentines to value only what came from across the Alps.

French cuisine dominated in Italy and added a lot to the language of cooking. Many French words remained in everyday use, such as menù, dessert, and buffet, just to mention a few. The French also brought back to Italy many dishes of the grand cuisine that originated in Italy, were taken to France by Caterina de’ Medici, but had fallen into disuse—for example, the bèchamel (balsamella) and crepes (crespelle). French cooking certainly added the use of butter to Florentine cooking.

But while French cooking dominated official cuisine, the taste for genuine Tuscan cooking was kept alive in more modest environments. The strong traditions of Tuscan cooking soon made a great comeback, thanks to many gourmets who used the antique flavors, followed the old recipes, and treasured the genuine, gastronomic dishes of Tuscany.

Tuscan cooking today is characterized by simple food, not covered in heavy sauces. Cooking is done with olive oil—used as salad dressing, poured over bread, and in soups and stews. Beans are a staple. Sage, rosemary, thyme, and marjoram are popular herbs. The farmland produces olive oil and wine, wheat, and fruits. Chickens, ducks, rabbits, cows, and pigs are raised in small estates. The vegetables grown here include artichokes, asparagus, spinach, beans, and peas; and, a great number of wild mushrooms, including porcini and morels, is found.

Anna Maria Volpi

© Anna Maria Volpi, 2005

Lucca - The Gongalone

"GONFALONE - Drappo white and red to green border arabescata gold emblem of civic loaded with the inscription centered:" City of Lucca. "Above, in the border, the emblem of terziere San Paolino surrounded by the side of badges Contrade "Crab" and "Moon", above, 'Siren' and 'Eagle', below. At the bottom, always in the border, the panther accovacciata sorreggente with a flame front paws white with the words "Libertas". In two corners down a lion in majesty, on a stone base loaded of acronyms' SPQL.
In the back, white and red on the same border, heart, in the middle of a newsstand depicted in marble, the figure of Simulacro of Christ said the Holy Face. Top the border, the emblem of St. Saviour terziere surrounded the badges of contrade 'Sun' and 'Crown' top, 'Rosa' and 'Gallo', below. At the bottom, center, San Martino terziere with the badges on the sides of contrade 'Parrot' and 'Horse' above, 'Wheel' and 'Star' under (Royal Decree on October 15, 1936).
The emblem presents a balzana silver and red. The simplicity of the symbol denotes ancient origins date back, according to Passerini, to periods prior to the Mille. The panther that appears in banner draws all'indomita pride in the defense of freedom. The crown marchionale placed above the shield was granted by Lodovico Charles of Bourbon, duke of Lucca, in 1836.
" The writing that appears in the patch does not correspond to that specified in the decree mentioned above: the title of "city" is not mentioned. "
Dov Gutterman , 30 July 2002 Dov Gutterman, 30 July 2002