Review: 'Venezia: Food & Dreams'

Venezia: Food & Dreams. Tessa Kiros. Andrews McMeel Publishing. $34.99 (288p) ISBN: 978-0-7407-8516-0

Venezia: Food & Dreams is a love letter to Venice. Reading it and cooking from it is a bit like looking at a Caravaggio painting. The dreamlike colors of the photos, the lovely setting of Venice, the simple yet forthright recipes. This book is written, photographed and designed in a dreamlike fashion; one that is so often associated with Venice. Tessa Kiros knows her subject well. In addition to the wonderful recipes, Kiros sprinkles in her thoughts, and comments; her experiences in the city in the form of poetic moments. Many of the photos are of the city itself and its citizens, or of the colorful buildings, or of Carnival; not only of food and recipes. This book is one of the most beautiful cookbooks I have come across in a long time. And the food and recipes, as I came to find out, are as delicious as the book is beautiful.

Kiros divides the book into sections that mirror an Italian menu: Antipasti, Zuppa/Pasta/Gnocchi, Risotto, Secondi, Contorni, and Dolci -- with additional sections on Essential Recipes and Cicchetti, small bites unique to Venice. As she unfolds the sections she weaves in her thoughts and comments about Venice, about a dish, a little history, or a moment in time. In one she describes trying to stand up in a gondola like the Venetians do; feet apart to steady yourself so you won't fall down. She mentions that a sure sign of a tourist is one who sits versus stands. Standing up allows more people to ride. I loved reading this. I laughed when I saw in the front of the book in the Essential Recipes section that the first entry is Polenta with recipes for both 'fast' (using instant) and 'slow' preparations. I like that it's the first thing you see and that she offers both ways of cooking the dish. It's a nice starting point. From there it's a slow, leisurely roller coaster ride through an Italian menu via the dishes of Venice. As Venice is known for its seafood many of the recipes have fish and seafood in them. Sardines, scampi, octopus, baccala, anchovies, clams, scallops, branzino, crab, calamari, appear in every other recipe. Dishes like Spaghetti al Nero de Seppie, (Spagehtti with Squid Ink) to a simple, ubiquitous Mista de Pesce (Mixed Grilled Fish). Other interludes involve her trying to get the locals to divulge their recipes; she writes that while Venetians offer up directions at the drop of a cappello, getting them to give up secrets to their cooking is not so easy.

Over a recent weekend I cooked several recipes from the book: Polpette di carne (Meatballs), Bigoili in salsa (Healthy pasta with anchovies & onions), Brasato con amarone di valpolicella (Braised beef with amarone), Radicchio al limone (Radicchio in lemon), Fast Polenta. I can say that they all worked beautifully and were huge hits with my dinner guests. At one meal we ate the braised beef, the raddichio and the polenta: the oohs and ahhs didn't stop until the last morsel was consumed. It was truly, restaurant outings included, the best thing I've made and eaten in a very long time. I chose the beef dish as I wanted to buy meat from a new local butcher McCall's Meat & Fish Co. located in the Loz Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. The piece of chuck that butcher Nathan McCall sold me was perfection. Combined with the amazing recipe it was an incredible thing! A dish I will make again, and again, and one I highly recommend. And it couldn't have been easier to prepare. The radicchio (sautéed in olive oil, salt and pepper then simmered in lemon juice for ten minutes) was a beautiful combination of bitter plant, tart lemon juice, olive oil and saltiness: so simple yet so satisfying. The next night for Sunday dinner I made the meatballs and the pasta. The pasta dish was wonderful; a slight hint of the sea due to the anchovies, the cooked-down-to-sweetness onions a perfect compliment. This dish would be great for a light meal, add a green salad = perfetto! The meatball dish was the only one I had any trouble with but I think it may have had more to do with operator error than a flaw in the recipe. For some reason (my guesses: too much oil, not hot enough, meatballs not cold enough, pan too crowded, ratio of beef to potato wrong) I couldn't get the meatballs to stay together when I cooked them. I would have liked the recipe to offer a tad more guidance during the cooking process. That's my only critique. We still ate them, they were still very good.

I love this book. There are so many recipes I still want to try. Dishes I've eaten on my travels in Italy, or at restaurants here in the U.S. but have never made at home. I've never made anything with squid ink, I'd like to try Maiale al latte (Pork in milk) because I've heard of it before and it intrigues me, and I've never made a salt cod preparation at home either. So one day soon, back in the kitchen with Venezia: Food & Dreams, and more Venetian cooking, eating and dreaming.

Buon appetito!

Brasato con amarone di valpolicella

Radicchio al limone

Upcoming Trips: Napa Valley - 2/27-3/1 - Cochon 555 ~ 5 Chefs, 5 Pigs, 5 Winemakers ~ 2010 US Tour. Big Sur - 3/5-/38 ~ Dinner at Big Sur Bakery.

Upcoming Posts: An Interview with Chefs John Stewart & Duskie Estes, owners of Zazu & Bovolo restaurants in Sonoma County. Reviews: My Nepenthe: Bohemian Tales of Food, Family and Big Sur by Romney Steele, The Spirit Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices by Sara Engram and Katie Luber and Kimberly Toqe.

Offal (Not Awful) & Nose To Tail Eating

My great-great grandmother Martha Cloud's husband, Sam Miller, circa 1941, Modoc County, California

'Offal is a culinary term used to refer to the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of organs other than muscles or bones. People in some cultures shy away from offal as food, while others use it as everyday food, or even in delicacies that command a high price.' -- from Wikipedia. 'Nose to Tail Eating,' a term seemingly coined by British chef and restaurateur, Fergus Anderson, involves food preparation using the entire animal (or plant) from nose to tail. Chef Anderson, author of the book, 'The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating,' owns St. John, a restaurant in London where according to Amazon.com 'he serves up the inner organs of beasts and fowls in big exhilarating dishes that combine high sophistication with peasant roughness.'

I think I'm a pretty good eater; I don't shy away from too many things. But like most of us I have my likes and dislikes; more likes than dislikes. I abhor any kind of dried fruit; I simply don't eat it. And I don't like cooked apples so not a big apple pie eater. My dislike of dried fruit disallows a goodly number of cereals, granolas, trail mix, and some baked goods and desserts. I've learned to check first to avoid the interminable picking out of unwelcome items. The reason I don't like dried fruit is textural. I hate that it sticks to my teeth -- end of story. I can't get beyond that. I can't exactly explain my issue with cooked apples just that they're oddly, uhm, slimy. I hate apple sauce. Again, it's a textural thing; how it feels in my mouth affects how it tastes. Offal can and does fall into the textural issues category but I've still eaten my fair share of it. I wouldn't say I'm an avid consumer of it however. Living in and traveling often to France I've had many French offal preparations, liver and kidneys, among others that I've enjoyed. I do like sweetbreads, and blood sausage a lot and will order them in restaurants. However if there are offal dishes on a restaurant menu invariably I'll choose a non-offal dish. Recently I've noticed that there seems to be a much keener interest in offal here in the U.S. -- at least in restaurants, in food journalism and in foodie circles. It's almost as if offal is replacing pork this year as the favorite food item? This offal uptick has me wondering why I don't eat it as often as I eat other animal protein, and I've decided there are a few reasons.

The first is related to the dried fruit issue: textural. A lot of offal is gelatinous, sinewy, and chewy in ways a well-prepared steak is not. Depending on what gland or organ is being cooked the feel of the food is different too: liver, kidneys, tongue, brains, tripe and so on. It has a different texture, and often a different smell, than cuts of beef, pork, lamb or chicken. These differences have always given me pause. And then there's the cultural issue. I wasn't raised eating the stuff. It wasn't a part of my diet growing up in the '60s and '70s. It was a part of the diet of my relatives, a generation before my mother. My great-grandparents, my grandfather and great-uncle ate it. They had a ranch; they raised their own chickens and sheep. My great uncle hunted, butchered and prepared deer. My mother tells the story of watching my great-grandfather chop the heads off of chickens and how they ran around headless until they died. That was normal to them. I've never seen an animal killed let alone butchered. We bought our chicken already cut up, wrapped in plastic in a styrofoam tray. If we did buy a whole chicken the giblets were wrapped in a small sealed paper bag which was easy to just throw away. Fast food did not help my palate adjust to eating offal either. Just think of the textures in fast food: 'soft' comes to mind first; with flavors that are 'bland,' 'salty' and 'sweet.' We ate a lot of fast food when I was a kid and while it probably contained offal we didn't know it. My mother did cook us a fair amount of liver and we hated it; it wasn't until I left home and lived in France that I first understood that offal could be tasty and interesting. I ate my first blood sausage at a French friend's house: broiled blood sausage, couscous, a green salad and cheese. It was a revelation to me. I ate a few other offal dishes the year I lived there. After France when I was first back home in Sonoma County, a friend and I went to a 'fancy' restaurant and we both ordered sweetbreads, and they were delicious. Besides the liver I ate as a child and the dishes I ate in France those sweetbreads are the first offal food memory I have. I've eaten sweetbreads over and over ever since.

I hate to admit this but I think I'm a picky offal eater. I am not, I have come to realize, the type of 'I'll-eat-anything-put-before-me' eater that Anthony Bourdain is. I have foodie friends who are very adventurous who will eat almost anything. I admire heartily the enthusiasm of Bourdain and my food-obsessed friends. I fully appreciate the nose-to-tail movement as it is economically sound and environmentally conscious. It easily fits into the '100 miles' philosophy: when possible use all of whatever we take from nature. I have eaten pigs feet; they were good, I enjoyed them. I will eat them, and other offal and nose-to-tail dishes again. Many cultures use offal and nose-to-tail ingredients in their cuisines. What better hangover cure is there than menudo? I'll keep trying new things, new dishes, domestic and foreign. My point here is that if I'd lived during my great-grandparents,' and grandparents' time my palate and diet would have been more acculturated to eating the whole animal. More than likely I would have been involved in the slaughtering and butchering of the animals. For economical reasons we would have used the entire animal. Sadly, I grew up in the industrialized grocery store, frozen everything, fast food era. That's not to say that I won't eventually become more adventurous, and I do know plenty of people who grew up the way I did who are 'eat anything' eaters, but for me right now: I am a picky-less-adventurous-offal-eater that's willing to grow. I have friends who will lead the way. You know who you are!

Upcoming Trips: Napa Valley - 2/27-3/1 - Cochon 555 ~ 5 Chefs, 5 Pigs, 5 Winemakers ~ 2010 US Tour. Big Sur - 3/5-/38 ~ Dinner at Big Sur Bakery.

Upcoming Posts: An Interview with Chefs John Stewart & Duskie Estes, owners of Zazu & Bovolo restaurants in Sonoma County. Reviews: Venezia: Food & Dreams by Tessa Kiros, My Nepenthe: Bohemian Tales of Food, Family and Big Sur by Romney Steele, The Spirit Kitchen: Everyday Cooking with Organic Spices by Sara Engram and Katie Luber and Kimberly Toqe.