Stories and Poems

Virgola (Comma) She knows I will wait for her – (I can’t be sure, she?, he?, but So she seems to me – ) ‘Virgola’, Comma, Always the last to arrive At morning tea. I leave my brew resting on The white table and move to terrace: They all know, fluffy and brown-gray, The family… Read more: …some spring tea…

“Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods…” Julius Cesar 2, 1  Shakespeare had a thing for Italian regional cuisine, with many of his most popular dishes having a distinctly Italic flavor. Brutus’ “Skewered Parmesan and Bologna” is one of those, a re-working of the noted international food writer Plutarch’s “Parallel Recipes”. This version,… Read more: The Ides of March – Brutus’ Skewered Parmesan and Bologna with Aged Balsamic Vinegar

Contain an incredibly large, dense mass in your kitchen. Hide it behind a door that says ‘loo’ or ‘bathroom’. Invite a dumb undergrad over, (any faculty will do though economics would be preferable,) telling him or her you want them to take part in a revolutionary experiment. When he gets to your house, have him sit down and then slowly explain to him about black holes. (Don’t worry if you make a mistake or two. He’s dumb, so he’ll never know the difference.) Pour him plenty of beer as you do. When he asks to use the loo, show him to the door behind which you’ve hidden the black hole – but remember to give him the pasta dough before he steps inside.

Though a simple enough dish to make, timing, as nearly always when preparing fish, is essential. The first thing is to take sole filets and lay them flat. On top of each filet place a thin slice of prosciutto. Role the layer whole into loose tubes, fish on the outside, and secure them using wooded skewers or toothpicks. Next, peel and seed the tomatoes and hand puree them into a lovely, fragrant pulp.

“To fry, or not to fry” is probably the most famous recipe line in the world and its chef perhaps the most widely interpreted. When well prepared, “Hamlet’s Fried Sole” has been described by some food critics as being a religious experience. Others note that Hamlet is fundamentally a Sophist cook, pointing to his question… Read more: Wednesday Will: Hamlet’s Pan-Fried Sole

t’s unclear just where Shakespeare’s popular ‘Weird Sisters’ soup chefs came from, or if they were sisters at all, given their physical disparity. Some commentators say they were British natives, others that they emigrated from Sweden or Norway while a few even mention the Mediterranean. In any case, what is clear is that at some point they started working in the kitchen at Holinshed’s Soup, Steak and Salads in Brodie, Scotland.

A marvelous dish! Exotic, subtle flavors and somewhat complex, with just a hint of the Casbah, yet familiar enough to taste comfortingly of home.

the history of pasta

Wait for a massive thunderstorm. After peeling and seeding the tomatoes put them in a metal pot and hoist them up the tower and under the lightning rod you pre-installed on the roof. As you wait for them to be repeatedly electrocuted, hammer some dissonant chords on the organ. And laugh hysterically, like this: HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Click on the metronome. Grab the raven by its feet and hang it upside down in front of the window. (Never mind it’s screaming.) Fill the pot with water and place it on a back burner for later. Turn on the oven.

…if music be the food of love.

The windows of the kitchen are foggy now with the steam that has condensed on them while you were cooking. It’s almost 8:30, time for dinner. You take the big serving dish out into the dining room where everyone is waiting. As you serve out the pasta, you notice that the sauce is slightly watery. It’s supposed to be, making the noodles appear to float just above the reddish pools of sauce beneath. And since the individual bowls are translucent black, the reddish pools themselves also appear to float in the bowls above the blackness as if hovering over a void. You sit down at the head of the table. Then you twirl some of the bucatini onto a fork to taste them. After swallowing you realize ‘Hey, I’ve just eaten some of Calvino’s floating bucatini!’

Lettore, alzati e vai in cucina. Guardi fuori dalla finestra. Fa freddo, non ti pare? Meno male che sei qui dentro al caldo. Giri verso l’interno e vai a mettere il tuo grembiule. Sicuramente non vorresti sporcare i vestiti. Stasera ci saranno degli ospiti e un po’ d’eleganza non guasta. Ora rilassati, appoggi questo libro – aperto sulla ricetta di Calvino – accanto al lavandino. Stai per preparare i Bucatini Fluttuanti di Calvino. E ‘una buona ricetta e richiede la tua attenzione. Percio’ spegni il telefonino – non vorresti essere disturbato da eventuali chiamate di lavoro o altro – poi afferri un buon coltello. Si inizia il piatto con la pulizia dei fiori di zucca, e affettando il lardo…

Before opening his now world-renowned restaurant The Mab, Mercutio worked alongside Romeo and Juliet in Verona. He and Romeo were best friends, so much so that Mercutio decided to work for a short spell at The Globe not long after the young couple emigrated from Italy. There, his brilliant juxtapositions of textures and flavors were quickly noticed, prompting local chef and food critic Dryden to note that Shakespeare’s kitchen “show’d the best of its skill in Mercutio.” However, unable to compromise his inventive nature into The Globe’s more structured kitchen, William was forced to dismiss him.

Il cafe che le persone bevono dice tanto della loro cultura. In passato, gli americani volevano un certo livello di qualità combinato con una quantità massiccia (lascia il caffettiere in tavolo, amore,) di cafe americano per un prezzo fisso. Oggi invece si comprano tutti i migliori tipi di caffè (non necessariamente il miglior caffè, si badi bene) di tutto il mondo a prezzi esorbitanti, in particolare nei centri commerciali e nei aeroporti. I tedeschi richiedono una qualità superiore che è ben confezionato e la… Read more: Food Story – Il caffe e il destino (Hardy Griffin)

Only an essential, clean sauce can complete an elegant pasta dish as a purple-hued cloud can complete a glorious summer sunset. Not a vulgar sauce like, say, one made with Italian meatballs, those shiny, dirty round mounds of grease that sit glistening on the top of Little Italy restaurant displays calling out to passing Midwestern travelers like sirens to Odysseus’ crew. This dish is closer to the essence of pasta and for that reason I recommend you use only the finest ingredients, Martelli butterfly noodles, the most virgin of Tuscan olive oils, and free–range Connecticut chicken. (Avoid those of New Jersey, as they are often unclean. I know Hemingway thinks such differences are pretentious and without significance but he puts ketchup on his hotdogs. Ketchup. Hotdogs. ‘Nough said.)

Anyone can learn and appreciate but without those conditions…consistency, already nearly impossible in the typical context of wine tasting competitions with a bizzilion wines out of context, is unlikely. I suppose flavor perception might be comparable metaphorically to perfect pitch. Money can’t buy it. But as it seems to be increasingly evident, the notion of removal from context of sensory inputs, of sort of absolute qualia, probably isn’t usually descriptively useful. Maybe ever. Perception, integration and response seem to occur on many levels, use parallel pathways, and therefor per force are contextually influenced. Plus, well, this anglo-saxon notion of absolute point scores and our increasing use of uncouth symbolic representations of wealth…don’t change the fact that a cheap, disdained bottle of acidic, cherry-ish fast-fermented novello is the perfect fermented drinking sauce to accompany a paper roll full of steaming hot roasted chestnuts – and together they make a complex, culinary whiz. You need neither expertise nor wealth to enjoy that. (It might be, of late, better to have neither.)

Drink, food and laughter in word is on – for ninety and nine cents. Or one hundred cents minus one:

10 dishes Will lkely ate: 10 Foods From Shakespeare’s Plays That Shakespeare (Probably) Ate Himself hteysko@gmail.com A Guest Post from Cassidy Cash In addition to the beer you’ve probably heard about being popular in the 16-17th century England (due to the poor sanitation of the water) Shakespeare’s lifetime saw a flurry of culinary oddities grace the… Read more: Wednesday Will – 10 Foods From Shakespeare’s Plays That Shakespeare (Probably) Ate Himself

Why on earth would you want to have to sushi in Rome? With all the traditional alternatives, trattorie, restaurants, enoteche, osterie, pizzerie, regional take-away joints, delis for fresh sandwiches, etc., is your urge for a sushi fix that uncontainable that you just gotta’ have some hunks of raw fish with vinegared rice, a little ugly mound of green wasabi and another little ugly pinkish mound of sliced ginger root? Well, yes.