New Orleans - A Must Visit for Foodies Everywhere!

Hello Foodies,

The cuisine is an exciting blend of French, Spanish, Italian, African, Native American, Cajun, Creole, and Cuban and there is only one place to find it - New Orleans! The cuisine also draws heavily from the use of local ingredients, that may include crawfish or mudbugs, pompano and black drum fish, shrimp and blue crab, sweet pecans, Gulf oysters, etc. These ingredients find their way into all sorts of amazing dishes like an Étouffée (pronounced ay-too-FAY), meaning to smother, it is a Cajun stew traditionally made with crawfish, vegetables, and a dark roux.

Tour de Forks makes it easy with a 5 day guided tour called "A Taste of New Orleans." Highlights include: in-demand restaurants like "Casamento's" and pork-happy "Cochon" with pre-dinner visit to their butcher shop, a hands-on cooking class at NOCE, and an exclusive tour of Alice Waters-inspired Edible Schoolyard of New Orleans launched after hurricane Katrina. By the end of your visit, you'll know the difference between Creole and Cajun cooking and where to find the finest sazerac. Click here for more details.

Enjoy,

the Forks

Get Flakey!

Hello Foodies,

One of my favorite ingredients is crushed red pepper or red pepper flakes. I cook with them all the time. As the name implies, it is made from hot, dried and crushed red chili peppers and usually there is a high ratio of seeds, intensifying the heat of the peppers. Red pepper flakes are popular when used as a pizza topping and in spaghetti sauces but they are also used pickling, chowders, gumbos, and sausage.

Red pepper flakes have quite a history too. Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 BC. There is archaeological evidence at sites located in southwestern Ecuador that chili peppers were domesticated more than 6000 years ago, and is one of the first cultivated crops in the Americas that is self-pollinating.

Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounter them in the Caribbean. He called them "peppers" because they were similar in taste but not in appearance to the Old World black peppers. After Columbus, chilies were cultivated around the globe. Diego Alvarez Chanca, a physician on Columbus' second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, brought the first chili peppers to Spain, and first wrote about their medicinal effects in 1494.

I want to share one of my fave recipes using red pepper flakes. It's simple, fast, and delicious. First open a 2 oz. tin of anchovy fillets, rinse and drain off the olive oil. Next heat up about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a big frying pan. Add the anchovies and mix until dissolved, then add red pepper flakes (make as spicy as you like), and finely chopped garlic. Then add cooked pasta, any kind you like and mix. Throw some fresh parsley on top and mangia bene!

Enjoy,

Lisa

Eggplant Parmigiana Has Never Been This Good!

Hello Foodies!

Flamboyant Tuscan chef Fabio Picchi cooks up his own version of one of the most popular Sicilian (according to me) dishes -- Melanzane or Melenzane alla Parmigiana (original name is Palmigiana) translated to eggplant parmigiana.

A few years ago, Patricia Wells of the International Herald Tribune, ranked Fabio Picchi's Cibrèo restaurant in Florence as # 8 in her personal list of best restaurants in the world. Cookbook author and Gourmet Magazine contributor Faith Willinger defines Cibrèo as her favorite restaurant in Italy. In October 2004, Bruce Schoenfeld wrote in Wine Spectator that Fabio Picchi is the best cook in the world when it comes to trippa (tripe).

While his background is Tuscan, Fabio is known for his takes on traditional dishes from other regions of Italy. In the case of eggplant parmigiana, we think (and we are not the only ones), the results will surprise you.

The recipe:

• After washing and cutting the eggplants, I suggest soaking them in salt water for a couple of hours (as per my late grandmother's recipe this will get rid of the eggplant's bitter taste).

• Separately, prepare the tomato sauce (tomato purée, onions, olive oil, salt).

• Re-wash and dry the eggplant slices, then fry them in sunflower seed oil or soy oil. After frying, use paper towels to absorb excess oil from the eggplant then add salt.

• When the tomato sauce is ready, take a baking pan, put olive oil and/or oven paper at its bottom and start layering the eggplant then cover them with tomato sauce.

• Until this point, this is the traditional recipe, but now things start to change. Fabio's next step is to add pieces of mozzarella fiordilatte cheese. This for many in Northern Italy and in the U.S. would be a standard step, but for me is not. Growing up in Palermo, my mother, grandmothers, and aunts never used mozzarella for melenzane alla parmigiana. They just grated Parmesan cheese.

• Anyway, after the next layer of eggplant is added, Fabio's recipe calls for a layer of slices of boiled potatoes, in his words "to go back to the Turkish and Greek origins of this dish."
  

• Next, a layer of smoked provolone cheese, and finally a layer of freshly prepared bechamel sauce with a lot of Parmesan cheese in it. Now, for many this is unheard of! But we continue with a final layer of tomato sauce and put it then into the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour.

You will find the result surprisingly good. We tried it and we really liked it. As I mentioned earlier, we were not the only ones. Fabio himself has reported that the first time he tried this at home, his son (which he claims to be very difficult to please) said, "Bravo papa, dovresti fare il cuoco." (Well done dad, you should become a chef.). The rest is history...

Ciao and enjoy!

Giuseppe