Live From Atlanta! The Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show

Wow! What a day! This year's edition of the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show in Atlanta is in full swing and it looks like it's going to be bigger and better than last year's.

Founder Denise Medved, with able assistance from Jill Collins and an excellent staff, have brought more vendors, more exhibitors, more local chefs, and more celebrities to the Cobb Galleria Center than ever before for this fourth iteration of what's quickly becoming  a classic culinary event.

A big feather in the cap this year is the inclusion of recognition by the celebrated James Beard Foundation and appearances by several James Beard chefs. I'll be talking with some of them tomorrow, so more to come on that score.

Today's highlight, of course, was Giada De Laurentiis. For all you haters, there's an old Italian phrase: Va'a fare in culo, often expressed more simply as "fongool." (Go look it up.) After years of worshipping my personal Italian culinary goddess from afar on TV and in print, I finally got the chance to worship at her feet -- literally. She was seated in a big overstuffed chair in the green room when we met and appropriately placed furniture near her was scarce, so in order to get close enough to her for her voice to register on my recorder, I sort of had to squat next to her chair, which eventually turned to lowering my aged bulk to a seated position on the floor. At least I didn't drool on her shoes. The results of the conversation will be forthcoming soon.

But I will tell you this much now; Giada put on a fabulous show for her fans. She is easily the most personable celebrity chef I have seen to date. She interacts with her audience and seems to enjoy the interaction as much as they do. In fact, when asked by a fan to name her culinary inspirations, Giada responded that her fans were among her inspirations and cited Q&A sessions like the one she was participating in as a source for the development of many of her recipes. She even engaged volunteers from the audience to assist her in the preparation of the three dishes she presented during her hour-long demo. She moved seamlessly back and forth between fans with questions lined up at microphones and her volunteer sous chefs on the stage. And the lucky helpers got to take the finished dishes back to their seats. It was an entertaining hour that passed far too quickly.

I talked to numerous vendors with interesting stories to tell and useful products to sell. And my sales resistance being what it is, I wound up owning several of said useful products. I'll be reviewing some of those goods and detailing some of those conversations soon.

Paula Deen and Pat and Gina Neely are making appearances on the celebrity stage tomorrow. Paula, I understand, is dealing with a family crisis that will limit her availabilty this weekend, but I may get a few minutes with the Neelys. And I've got lots more people to interview before the show wraps up tomorrow afternoon. Then the show moves on to Houston and Washington, DC. You really owe it to yourself to try to make it to one of these fabulous events, the largest of their kind in the United States. Go to http://www.metrocooking.com/ to find out more and check back here from time to time over the next few days as I sort out my thoughts and experiences from this year's great Atlanta show.

A Man's Place Is In the Kitchen

Overcoming Generations Of Uninformed Prejudice

I don't get it. Actually, I don't think I've ever gotten it, but the older I get, the less I get it.

It's a form of sexism, I suppose. According to one dictionary definition, sexism exhibits “attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles.” Like that other despicable “ism” that defines a person based solely on matters of pigmentation, it is a prejudice that is hard to understand in today's world. What makes it particularly difficult to fathom – at least for me – is its ubiquity.

Before I go any further down the tangent trail, let me clue you in as to the specific nature of my rising rant: the idea that cooking is “woman's work.”

If this were an attitude held solely by the occupants of the bottom rung of the intellectual ladder that champion totin' guns and racin' cars and openin' beer bottles with your teeth as the ultimate in “manly” activities, I wouldn't be surprised. Disgusted, maybe, but not surprised. However, when such outdated, uneducated, backward drivel comes out of the mouths of otherwise intelligent men, I am both surprised and disgusted.

I have a few knuckle-draggers grafted into the lower branches of my family tree. One such troglodyte refuses to allow his male child to learn how to cook because “cooking is for girls.” I find myself barely resisting the urge to jam an apple in this moron's mouth so as to better illustrate the image of the sexist pig that he truly is.

“Cooking is for girls,” eh? Let's look at a few recent James Beard Award winners: Tom Colicchio, Timothy Hollingsworth, Jason Wilson, Jeff Michaud, Koren Grieveson, David Kinch, Nicole Plue, Alexander Roberts, Michael Schwartz, Daniel Humm, Sean Brock, Claude Le Tohic, Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier. Yep. Il stronzo uomo delle caverne is right. There are, indeed, two girls on that list.

I really struggle, though, when I hear a well-educated, respected professional, like a good friend's father, say something along the lines of, “Men don't belong in the kitchen.” My only explanation is that he is old and a product of his generation and its uninformed prejudices.

A recent tally of top earning chefs includes Wolfgang Puck, Rachael Ray, Gordon Ramsay, Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, Alain Ducasse, Paula Deen, Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio, Bobby Flay, and Anthony Bourdain. By the benighted reckoning of my friend's father, only two of those named “belong” in their professions.

“Only sissies like to cook,” spouts a redneck relative. Oh, please, please just let me be in the room when you say that to Emeril Lagasse, Marcus Samuelsson, Rocco DiSpirito, Marco Canora, Masaharu Morimoto, Scott Conant, José Andres, Todd English, Rick Bayless, John Besh, Jamie Oliver, Tyler Florence, Michael Chiarello, or Daniel Boulud! And give me a chance to get a mop and bucket before you make such a stupid comment to Robert Irvine.

I can understand where the prejudice comes from. In the shallow, sexist view of a disappearing society, women do the cooking and cleaning while men do the “real” work. Women knit and swap recipes while real men go out and provide for their families. Men bring home the bacon and women cook it. That's the way it's always been and that's the way it's supposed to be, right? Never mind that the last half of the 20^th century knocked that kind of Neanderthal thinking into a box and buried it. Some people haven't gotten the memo yet.

Although it may be casting pearls before swine, let me attempt to enlighten the unenlightened; in the everyday Walmart world, grandmas and mammas and aunts and sisters and wives may be the queens of their kitchens. But when it comes to wearing the crown in the professional culinary world, men absolutely rule.

This is not opinion; it's inescapable historic fact. I don't imagine that the names Antonin Careme and Auguste Escoffier would mean much to the average redneck, but those men created the modern professional kitchen. Women might customarily hold sway over the home kitchen, but in the arena of cooking for dollars, men have always made the decisions that influence the direction of the industry. Don't believe me? Ask a female chef – if you can find one. I'm sure she'll tell you all about the 77% male dominance in the restaurant industry. Or visit a local culinary school where the “sissy” boys outnumber the girls who “belong in the kitchen” by a ratio of 7 to 3. Things are slowly changing, but isn't it an ironic twist on the idea that only women belong in the kitchen that on a professional level they have to fight to get there?

Of course, if you aren't an habitue of five-star restaurants, you could just drop by your local IHOP, Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, Olive Garden, Applebee's, etc. and see who's “manning” the stove.

So tell me again: “Only sissies like to cook.” “Cooking is for girls.” “Men don't belong in the kitchen.” How do you breathe with your head jammed that far up your backside?

Not that I particularly care. Along with Shaw, I learned a long time ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it. So, if any of you raging rednecks or rampant reactionaries want to take issue with me, mount your tractors or hop in your pickups and come on over. You'll find me in the kitchen. It's where I've been for most of the last half-century. It's where I belong.

A Really Tasty and Successful Green Bean Dish

Fresh from my Easter table, here's a green bean dish that everybody raves about. It's easy and delicious. What more could you want?

FAGIOLINI ITALIANA CON PANCETTA
(Italian Green Beans with Bacon)

4 or 5 slices pancetta or bacon

1 lb Italian green beans, cut into 1-inch pieces

3 medium carrots, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 clove garlic, minced
Freshly ground black pepper
Kosher salt
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (optional)

In a large skillet, cook the pancetta or bacon over medium heat until crisp, turning occasionally. Remove when crisp and drain on paper towels, reserving about 2 tablespoons of drippings in the skillet.

Meanwhile, in separate saucepans, precook the green beans and the carrots in small amounts of boiling salted water for 4 or 5 minutes; drain. (Note: you can also steam the vegetables to retain more nutrients, flavor, and color.)

Add the partially cooked green beans, carrots, butter, and garlic to the reserved bacon drippings in  the skillet. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes or until the vegetables are crisp-tender. Crumble the bacon and stir it into the vegetable mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat. Transfer to a serving bowl. Top with freshly grated Parmesan if desired.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

As always, I recommend high quality ingredients. Use fresh vegetables if possible. Frozen are okay, but stay away from canned. Use unsalted butter. Salted is okay if you must, but watch your seasoning later. (That greasy, yellow-colored cousin of solid vegetable shortening, margarine, does not exist in my kitchen.) Use fresh garlic. Garlic powder is okay but lacks the depth of flavor imparted by fresh. Same with the pepper. Pre-ground pepper is weak compared to freshly ground. I use kosher salt for everything, but sea salt is good, too. If you want to garnish with Parmesan cheese and all you have is the sawdust-like substance that comes in a can, just skip it. You'll be better off. There's a reason Parmigiano-Reggiano is the "King of Cheeses." A "princely" domestic Parmesan is acceptable if the "King" is unavailable, but the "fool" in the green can should always be barred from the court.

Buon appetito!

Granita: A Delightful (and Easy) Italian Dessert

With hot weather on the horizon, thoughts turn to cool, refreshing desserts that are easy to prepare.

A granita is a cousin to an Italian Ice. Believed to have originated in Sicily, granitas are great for summertime desserts or refreshers and they can be made out of just about any frozen liquid; fruit juice, coffee, tea or even wine. Some people use juices like lemon, lime, orange or apple. Some use freshly pureed fruits like raspberry, peach, watermelon, blackberry, blueberry, or strawberry. I'll use strawberry to illustrate this deliciously simple recipe, but the procedure is the same for any fruit or liquid.

Granita di Fragole Fresche

1 1/2 cups water
2 cups fresh pureed strawberries
1 tbsp lemon zest (or 1 tsp lemon juice)
1 cup sugar
mint leaves (optional, for garnish)

Combine ingredients in a small pan and heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves.

Remove mixture from heat and let cool. Pour cooled mixture into a glass or metal baking dish, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze for about forty-five minutes to an hour.

Remove from freezer and scrape down the length of the surface with a fork, breaking it up into icy flakes. Return to freezer for another hour or so and then scrape again. Freeze for about one more hour, then scrape and serve.

When served, the granita should look like a dry, fluffy red snow. If it's too solid, let it sit in the refrigerator for about half an hour until you can scrape it with a fork.

Scoop the granita into bowls, goblets or parfait glasses. If you want to get really fancy, granita looks great in a martini glass with a little sugar around the rim. (Dampen the rim of the glass with water and dip it in sugar.) Garnish with mint leaves, if desired, and serve immediately.

Yields 4 to 6 servings

There's No Such Thing as "Garlic Bread"

When my son first moved to Italy several years ago, he called me with two observations: you can have too much cheese on a pizza and there's no such thing as garlic bread. I'll defer comment on the first note for now, but allow me to elaborate on the second.

“Italian garlic bread,” as found in American restaurants and grocery store frozen food aisles, indeed does not exist in real Italian cuisine. It is still another Italian-American creation that nobody in Italy would recognize.

Now, there's nothing wrong with garlic bread as Americans know it. I order it in restaurants and have been known to toss a frozen loaf into the old grocery cart when the mood strikes me. But make no mistake, if you want to serve an authentic Italian-style “garlic bread” with your next spaghetti dinner, stay away from the buttery loaves from the freezer case. In fact, stay away from butter altogether.

“Garlic bread” is the American cousin of a classic Italian preparation called bruschetta. The word comes from the Italian bruscare, meaning to roast or toast over coals. First things first; that's pronounced broo-SKAYT-ah if you want to sound like an Italian or broo-SKET-ah if you want to sound like an American trying to sound like an Italian. It is only pronounced broo-SHET-uh if you want to sound completely clueless.

The common American version of “garlic bread” calls for thick slices of crusty bread – Italian or French – to be liberally coated with butter that has been infused with either garlic powder or garlic salt. Sometimes you'll find a little oregano added to up the “Italian” factor. Topping with some combination of Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses to make “cheesy garlic bread” is also a popular option on American menus. The buttery, garlicky bread is then toasted in an oven or broiler until it's lightly golden brown.

Bruschetta also starts with thick slices of crusty bread, but that's about where the resemblance ends. In an Italian kitchen, a very basic bruschetta – the closest equivalent to “garlic bread” – begins by lightly toasting the bread on a grill or a grill pan. (You can use a broiler if need be.) For the next step, Italian cooks peel a garlic clove and cut off an end. Then they rub the cut end of the clove lightly over the surface of the toasted bread to achieve a subtle garlic flavor. The bread is then drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil. (Some people drizzle first then toast, others toast first then drizzle. I'm part of the “drizzle first” crowd because I find doing so allows the olive oil to impart a nice golden color as the bread toasts.) Sometimes a very light pinch of coarse salt finishes the process.

Okay, you may ask, so where did the buttery version come from? The answer is fairly simple. Italian immigrant cooks settling in American cities often had to make do with what was at hand. The concept of “making do” is at the heart of many of Italy's regional cuisines. As hard as it is to believe today when olive oil can often be found on corner convenience store shelves, it wasn't always so. In fact, extra-virgin olive oil could only be found in ethnic neighborhood specialty stores as recently as twenty years ago. So immigrant cooks turned to the most available culinary fat in America, butter.

Now, what I've described here is just the bare-bones basis of a bruschetta. From that foundation Italians layer on a variety of toppings, including finely diced tomatoes, savory fresh basil, rich roasted peppers, and paper-thin slices of prosciutto. Various cheeses can also be used to finish a proper bruschetta.

Another question sometimes comes up; what's the difference between bruschetta and crostini? Really, the only difference is the bread. Bruschetta is usually made on rather thick slices of bread cut from a big rustic loaf. Crostini, on the other hand, are “little toasts” and are usually made on thinner slices cut from a baguette or something similar. From that point, whatever you put on them is pretty much the same, excepting only that thicker slices of bread hold up better under heavier toppings.

So next time you're hungry for a little “garlic bread,” bypass the frozen grocery store stuff and make some the true Italian way. You'll be amazed at the difference traditional techniques and fresh ingredients make.

You, Too, Can Cook Like an Olive Garden Chef

Getting a “Culinary Institute of Tuscany” Education Without Leaving Your Home

Over the past few years, I've written more than a few commentaries about Olive Garden. While none of them have been out and out bashes of the place, none of them have been particularly complimentary either. 

Understand, I have no personal ax to grind with the chain. It's not like they dosed one of my toddlers with sangria or anything. No, my issue is broader: through a series of successful business and marketing maneuvers, Olive Garden has managed to position itself in the American consciousness as the “go to” place to go to when you're looking for Italian food. And that's just wrong. Olive Garden is about as authentically Italian as my Grandma Ida's haggis. And yet this scenario plays out hundreds of times each day: “Honey, I'm hungry for Italian tonight.” “Okay, dear. Let's go to Olive Garden.” And off they go, bypassing thousands of real, authentic Italian eateries that don't have huge corporate advertising budgets.

So it was with a rather mean-spirited sense of delight that I observed the recent media revelation that one of Olive Garden's key advertising gimmicks – the “Culinary Institute of Tuscany” – is a fraud. I've always known that, but I am only one little voice crying out in the culinary wilderness. However, when Time.com, prompted by the viral online revelations of a person claiming to be a former Olive Garden manager, set out to answer the question, “What Actually Goes On at Olive Garden's 'Culinary Institute' in Tuscany,” I felt totally vindicated by the answer.

There ain't no such place.

(See the article at http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/04/15/what-actually-goes-on-at-olive-gardens-culinary-institute-in-tuscany/)

Turns out that the folks at Darden Concepts, Inc., the parent group behind Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse, and others, simply rent rooms at a Tuscan resort hotel with an attached restaurant during the off season. Olive Garden owns nothing; the place belongs to a local winery. But the company sends select members of Olive Garden management off in shifts to enjoy week-long, all expenses paid visits to Italy. While there, said managers spend a little time in the restaurant and its kitchen where they talk with a chef about Italian food. They visit the winery and a fresh food market and they eat lots of Italian goodies.

I did the same thing on a recent visit to North Carolina. I ate at a couple of great Italian restaurants, talked to the chef at one and to the manager at the other, visited a couple of wineries, and went to a local market. I guess that makes me a graduate of the “Yadkin Valley Culinary Institute.” (Hey, if Darden can make 'em up, so can I.)

But if even attending the “Yadkin Valley Culinary Institute” is beyond your means, here's a cheap and easy way to get the same degree of culinary education that Olive Garden offers. Go to your local grocery store and get a nice bottle of wine. Bring it home, pour yourself a glass, sit down at your computer and log on to www.olivegarden.com. Go to the “recipes” tab, and there you can watch videos of Chef Paolo Lafata – the same “Culinary Institute of Tuscany” guy you see in the TV commercials – as he prepares “authentic Italian recipes.”

I'm serious! I've appropriated a number of Chef Paolo's recipes and they're pretty good, provided you get the right ingredients and know enough about cooking to keep from burning yourself or cutting your finger off. If you can find your way around in a kitchen, if you can assemble good, fresh ingredients, and if you can follow the recipes on the website, you, too, can cook like an Olive Garden “chef.” You can even claim to have attended the online version of the “Culinary Institute of Tuscany” and to have studied with Chef Paolo!

Make no mistake, Paolo Lafata is the real deal. Educated at the Istituto Vittorio Emanuale, he did a stint at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago and spent seven years in the kitchens at Walt Disney World. He's Darden's Senior Executive Chef and Chef Director and he even made five appearances on “The Tony Danza Show” back in 2004. Now that's Italian! His home kitchen is not exactly in Tuscany, but it's nearby – in Orlando, Florida.

And if for some reason you find that you just can't master the skills of a “Culinary Institute of Tuscany” graduate, there's always this option: “Honey, I'm hungry for Italian tonight.” “Okay, dear. I found a great little authentic Italian place. It's right down the street from Olive Garden.”

Before You Take Your Kid To Olive Garden...

What is it with chain restaurants boozing up the kiddies this week? Hot on the heels of the debacle at a Michigan "Applebee's" in which a 15-month old got a margarita instead of apple juice, now a Florida Olive Garden serves up sangria to a toddler.

Read the Tampa Bay Online story here: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/apr/13/131837/toddler-mistakenly-served-sangria-at-lakeland-oliv/news-breaking/

In case you're not up on your alcoholic beverages, sangria is a mixture of red wine, grenadine, and vermouth mixed together with fruit in a simple syrup of sugar and water and served over ice. Olive Garden describes it as a "refreshing beverage, perfect for any outdoor party." Except, maybe, kid's birthday parties?