Corsican cuisine in Davis

I just cooked my dinner of Corsican cuisine on Tuesday, and it turned out amazingly well. We started with some home-made giardiniera, not Corsican at all but I guess you can't be too picky.

The first course was soupe de poissons, of course, made with only two kinds of fish (butterfish and cod). I actually made it once already, with three kinds of fish, but I don't think it made much difference to have only two. I chop up the fish and toss it into a pot with potatoes, carrots, onions, LOTS of garlic, and herbs, boil it for a while, blend it, then pass it through a food mill. I think I'm doing something wrong, though, because it never gets very smooth, and in fact stay chunky enough that it doesn't pass through the food mill very easily. My main goal is to get the bones out, which isn't always successful.

I made rouille, which was more successful this time than the last as well. Last time, I tried crushing dried red pepper and mixing it in, but it didn't turn out that well ... some bites were spicy because they had a big piece of pepper, and others were bland, with no pepper. This time, I added a bit more garlic, whipped up some aoili, then added some saffron and powdered cayenne pepper. Perfect! And stuck it in the fridge overnight, which helped it thicken. It was the perfect color, taste, and consistency. I was a happy woman. Served with sliced and toasted bread and grated ementhal cheese, it was delicious in the soup. Two of my guests had second or third helpings and finished everything.

The next course was stuffed eggplant, which I hadn't tried before, and came out really well also. I used eggplants from my garden, which I sliced length-wise and boiled. I wasn't clear on the boiling time, and I'm still not sure I picked the right amount of time. It was tough to scoop out the flesh without breaking the skin, and I mangled a few of them. I soaked the inside of some white bread in milk while this was going on, and when I had my eggplant pulp in a bowl, I drained as much liquid as I could, then I added the drained bread, garlic, basil, eggs, butter, and cheese - tomme and parmigiano. Mashed this together, stuffed it back into the eggplant skin (even the mangled ones), then fried both sides in a skillet. That was a bit weird, but it turned out just fine, and gave the top of the stuffed side a nice, golden color and texture. In the meantime, I cooked up a tomato sauce with onion, garlic, and red chili pepper, which I put in the bottom of a baking dish, set the eggplants on top, and stuck it in the oven to stay warm until dinner. I would definitely make that recipe again, it's not as hard as it sounds.

Last we had a dessert, fiadone. It's basically a brocciu cheesecake, although of course you can't find brocciu here so I used ricotta instead. Mix that with eggs and sugar and lemon or orange zest (I used lemon juice), stick it in a pie or tort dish and bake. That's it, it's easy and really delicious.

The only thing we didn't think of was a nice rose wine to go with the dinner, but white did just as well, along with a moscato for dessert. I can't help smiling when I think of that meal.

Food at our Italian wedding

The food at our wedding celebration was wonderful. All of it was homemade by Loris' family and Bruno. I can't even count how many appetizers there were. Several different kinds of bruschetta, including one with tomatoes, one with gorgonzola and walnuts, one with a vegetable spread, and one with, rather unfortunately, foie gras. Also one with some type of cheese (I'm not sure what it was).


And a rather interesting watermelon apperitif.



Then a dish of sit-down antipasta, roasted peppers with tuna sauce, wild mushrooms, raw pepper salad, melon with prosciutto, several types of frittata, and bagnet. I'm sure I'm forgetting something.


This was all followed by pasta with leek sauce, then pasta with tomato sauce, and finally, wild boar with polenta. This is a photo of Bruno cooking the meat, the day before the wedding celebration.


Needless to say, that was the only meal we ate that day.

Some generalizations on Italian food and drink

I don't really know where to start, since I've been eating Italian food for a few years now, and some of it isn't so exciting anymore. Also, I make a lot of it at home now, too.

Probably the best thing about Italy for me is the cheese. I mean, a lot of the other food is amazing, but it's reproducible at home. The cheese just isn't (and I've tried). Actually, we've had some luck locating acceptable substitutes for some of the Italian cheeses we eat when we're here, but they're always either difficult to obtain (i.e. from the Cheeseboard Collective in Berkeley, which is closed on Sundays, random holidays, etc.), or ridiculously expensive. After a while, it's possible again to eat the "creamy" gorgonzola in the US and not think about the really creamy gorgonzola we've left behind. And we usually bring some stracchino and parmesan with us to last a little while. But the variety of cheese that is all so fantastic and almost guaranteed to be delicious no matter which one you pick, that almost doesn't exist in the US, and certainly not in Davis. Loris thinks I should open a Cheeseboard Collective of my own, but then again, I also need to open a bakery, and a restaurant, and a deli, etc.

OK, on to other things. The meat here is generally pretty good, but as I don't usually eat meat in the US, it's hard to describe it, or compare it. Some of it is just too spicy for me. Although I ate it anyway. And speaking of spicy foods, I ate a dish of pasta with garlic and red pepper that I wasn't sure I'd survive. I was certainly proud of myself. I would like to develop an ability to eat spicy food, although I probably won't ever enjoy it, but just to get by when, for example, I'm a guest and have to eat what is put in front of me.

We haven't eaten a lot of vegetables here (see my post on vegetarianism), but of course the ones we eat are always delicious. We've had some roasted peppers, a ratatouille (at least, I think that's what it was), stuffed onions (with meat, of course), green beans, eggplant parmesan, and to be honest that's all I can remember. This vacation has been really low on vegetables, considering that theoretically, it should be the time of some serious harvesting.

We've been to dinner twice in the fort. The first time was for a fish dinner, which was pretty decent. We ate whole sardines (I think), which were not worth the time it took to remove the head, skin, and bones (and then keep fishing little annoying bones out of your mouth), two delicious fish steaks (one was salmon), and a variety of other seafood (calamari, etc.). And a dish of mussels, yum. The only vegetables that appeared here were some heavily battered and fried squash and eggplant. Which were good. But heavy. The other meal was a pasta dinner, where I ate the aforementioned spicy pasta and pasta with tomato sauce (which was, sketchily, the only veggie of the meal). This was preceded by a dish of meat. Spicy meat. In retrospect, that was probably the spiciest meal I've eaten in a long time. And the pasta was followed by a slice of apple that was, once again, heavily battered and fried. Another heavy meal. But good.

What else can I talk about? The delicious chocolate budino? The delicious goat milk ice cream we had at Manuela and Franco's? They also made us three pizzas, one with gorgonzola, one with olives and cheese (not sure if there was some sort of white sauce), and one with raw onions. They were all good, and served with real German beer from a mini-keg. It was quite possibly the best beer I've ever had, as the carbonation was different from typical beer carbonation - more like root beer, softer, less harsh, and taking a lot longer for the foam to go down. Once again, the meal started with meat, although I thoroughly enjoyed this meat. Speck from Valle d'Aosta, and some type of salami (NOT spicy). Yum. I'm not sure I've ever had speck before.

And that is my "brief" outline of the food in Italy on this trip. I'll add another post if I remember some other things.

Coriscan food

There's so much to write about since I've been in Italy, including many of the meals I've had here, but I'd like to use this post to describe the week I've just spent in Corsica before I forget too much of the wonderful food I ate there. As it is not a common destination for American tourists, traveling in Corsica meant a few things for me: 1) the food wasn't very Americanized , which was great (although it was probably still standardized to French or Italian cuisines more than was necessary); 2) I didn't hear very much English, and figuring out the menus was sometimes difficult; 3) much of the local food simply doesn't have an English translation, and the best I could do was to guess that something was "some type of Mediterranean fish (i.e.)". That being said, I spent a week eating some amazing things.

Most of the restaurants Loris and I dined at served various "tourist menus", meaning they had several fixed price menus consisting of several courses that were much cheaper than buying each course individually. While in some cases this could be a bit limiting, and also indicated that we may not necessarily be eating 100% authentically, it was great because we could afford to eat multi-course meals and by each taking different menus and then sharing, we could sample twice the variety of food. Most of the time, this worked out great for us.

One of my favorite first courses was the soup de poisson, a local dish of Southern France, but also of Corsica. It's a soup made with fish and vegetables and then pureed and served with toasted baguette slices, rouille, and sometimes Swiss cheese (gruyere). You spread the rouille (a sort of orange, spicy aoili) on the toasted bread, dunk it in the soup, and sprinkle cheese on top. It's delicious, but apparently difficult to make as you have to pass it through a food mill several times. I'm thinking I'll try making a big batch of it and freezing it. Or finally getting the pressure canner I've been wanting so I can can it.

Other memorable first course dishes were the salade de chevre chaud, which is, I think, more typical of France than Corsica, Bonifacienne eggplants (roasted and stuffed with some sort of brocciu cheese mixture - similar to ricotta), and stuffed zucchini (with a similar mixture, including what Loris thought was mint). In addition, we ate a lot of fish. The sole was in general a bit disappointing, I think we only had it once at the worst restaurant we ate at overall. I also got cannelloni with brocciu, and Loris got a sampler dish that included wild boar, cannelloni, lasagne, stuffed zucchini, and tripe. Good stuff!

Our last courses were always excellent. Corsican cheese is good stuff, especially the goat cheese, often served with fig jam. Delicious! Desserts included a sort of light chestnut cake, chocolate mousse, and a brocciu torte.

There's so much more to write about, including the food we've had in Italy, and my plans for my winter garden, that I must stop here. But thankfully, I bought a cookbook of Corsican cuisine, and I'm really looking forward to trying it, if I can find the necessary ingredients.