The Door to Harry's Bar, Venice, Italy UPDATE: To
go to my web site, in which I will update food
&
travel information and help link readers to other first-rate travel
& food sites, click on: home page In
This Issue NEW YORK CORNER: Ennio & Michael by John Mariani NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR: The 10 Myths of Wine QUICK BYTES TROUT
by John Mariani Esquire Magazine's first cover, Autumn 1933 If I had to name the tastiest fish in the sea, I would have a hard time deciding among turbot, A trout is amenable to a fair array of cooking treatments, though not to all. It is superb with buttered almonds, succulent to the bone when stuffed with crabmeat or a mousseline, made tangy with fresh capers, and as good as fried fish can possibly be, especially in bacon fat. And even though we must suspend our belief, in light of game regulations, that the best trout is the one we catch, the flavor and spirit of the wild trout is a magical thing. As anyone who has ever read Isaak Walton's The Compleat Angler (1653) or Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It (1989) knows, of all the fish gathered by mankind, the trout has always evoked the most romantic associations. Let Jonah and Ahab have their terrifying whales and the Old Man his magnificent marlin. Trout fishing is part patience, part endurance, part boredom, part Zen and part art. As MacLean put it in the beautiful opening line of his short story, "In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." (To order The Compleat Angler click on photo of Isaak Walton at right.) Most of all, trout fishing requires a man to retreat into the wild, to find a silent stream with no one else around and to spend some time in contemplation. Even when other anglers are included on a trout fishing expedition, there is none of that yahoo camaraderie and machismo that seems essential to bass fishing
The trout, whose species span two
whole
genera, Salvelinus
and Salmo, is
spread throughout the world's
Brad Pitt in "A River Runs Through It" (1992) American anglers merely had to dip their lines in the rivers to come up with large, beautiful fish perfect It was the introduction of the Year by year the books on trout keep coming--a check of Amazon.com turns up more than 800 currently in Fly fishing is a good thing to learn early on, first, Letting a trout go after catching it is neither required nor suggested, unless you've been lucky enough to The classic way to prepare trout is au bleu--poached in a vinegar stock that makes the skin turn a Our great American gastronome, James Beard, who ate a good deal of truite au bleu in his time, would Trout is far more versatile than one might think, although the simpler the recipe, the better. But first and There is something special about a well-caught, well dressed, well-cooked wild trout from a good river Of trout cooked with bacon over coals in the outdoors, Hemingway wrote, "The trout are crisp on the outside and firm and pink inside and the bacon is well done--but not too done. If there is anything better than that combination the writer has yet to taste it in a lifetime devoted largely and studiously to eating." It's always difficult to disagree with Hemingway. NEW YORK CORNER by John Mariani ENNIO & MICHAEL RISTORANTE 539 LaGuardia Place 212-677-8577 www.enniomichael.com Once upon a time, Greenwich Village was home to dozens of Italian-American restaurants almost indistinguishable from one another in decor and menu. They had names like Enrico & Paglieri, Nino & Nella, Gene's, Luigi's, and Mario's, and they all served dishes whose ingredients were purchased at low prices in order to keep the menu prices cheap. Good olive oil? Real Parmigiano? Arborio rice? Fuggeddabout it! Then, in the fall of 1978, two former waiters, Ennio Sammarone and Michael Savarese, opened a namesake place, Ennio & Michael Ristorante, on Bleecker Street, where they started serving updated versions of Italian-American classics along with dishes from their native Abruzzo region. And they opened at a time when fine Italian ingredients--balsamico, virgin olive oil, imported pastas, and good wines--had begun to come to New York. Their success was immediate, and people came to the Village eat well, not just to catch a plate of spaghetti or pizza slice before heading off to the Bitter End or Café Wha. Eighteen years ago Ennio & Michael moved around the corner to larger quarters on LaGuardia Place, with a splendid al fresco patio (above). NYU was expanding, the Village was getting gentrified, and the two men thrived without ever leaping on the uptown Italian bandwagon that sent pasta dishes and veal chops soaring in price. But it was as much the generosity of spirit that imbued E&M as the good food. Ennio, usually up front, and Michael, usually in the dining room, have never become complacent about their work or their regulars, and newcomers are greeted with a warm welcome. There's one wall covered with photos of celebrity guests (below) who have frequented E&M over the years, some, like Bill Cosby, Danny Glover, and Peter Falk, regulars. The late Chairman of the Board, Mr. Sinatra, was a fan early on. The room is spacious, the tables nicely separated, with white tablecloths. Up front is a curved wood-and-marble bar tended by Ennio, and The winelist is nothing spectacular but serviceable and reasonably priced. Prices for dinner have risen only gently in 28 years, with appetizers $9-$15.75, pastas $16-$22.75, main courses $17-$26.75. Every time I've dined here I always order two dishes that are consistently among the best of their kind in NYC: Stuffed artichokes, glistening with olive oil and well-seasoned bread crumbs; and linguine with white clam sauce, abundant with small sweet vongole clams, an assertive dose of garlic, a fresh broth, and, if you like, red pepper flakes. The owners bring in very good, creamy mozzarella, served with Prosciutto, asparagus, and peppers, and they also bake asparagus with a coating of Parmigiano that is absolutely terrific. So, too, are the thinly sliced, crisply fried zucchini. Very sensibly, the kitchen lists only six pasta dishes it can make to order, with perhaps one or two specials each night. Aside from the linguine with clam sauce, I love E&M's rigatoni alla Ennio, lavished with a cheese-tomato sauce, peas, mushrooms, and sausage. For something powerful, order the spaghetti alla puttanesca, ripe with Gaeta olives, plenty of garlic, olive oil, and basil. For main courses I recommend pollo all'arrabiata, a pungent dish of chicken morsels dashed with garlic and balsamic vinegar, and the eggplant alla parmigiana is fragrant, rich, and restorative. Scaloppini di vitello alla Michael is tender veal with tomato and slices of bufala mozzarella. Desserts are fairly standard issue and about as good as the better examples of Italian dolci in the neighborhood. Ennio & Michael are not pushing in new directions, nor do they need to. Their commitment is to the freshness of their food, made to order any way their patrons like it. You come here for favorite dishes, sure that nothing has changed about them, and for a chance to get a warm handshake, maybe a kiss on both cheeks, from these two wonderful, ebullient Abruzzese gentlemen. NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR THE TEN MYTHS OF WINE by John Mariani For something that is basically just a beverage—albeit one far more delicious than any other—an awful lot of folderol has grown up around the service and consuming of wine. Indeed, wine drinking is fraught with opportunities to show oneself either a naïf or a show-off, usually both at the same moment. I’ve found more people who pretend to know a great deal about wine often go through ridiculous rituals that make about as much sense as waiting 30 minutes after eating before going swimming. Here are ten myths best laid to rest ASAP: 1. Wine is a living thing. On the contrary, once its yeasts have died off after fermentation, it is a dead and decaying thing, which nevertheless, like aged beef, can acquire wonderful flavor and balance. But if there’s anything still living in a wine bottle after fermentation ends, it’s definitely not supposed to be in there and mostly likely is going to cause problems. 2. All wine gets better with age. Well, maybe one percent of all the white wines in the world may (e.g., a white 3. White wines should always be well chilled and red wines served at room temperature. A white wine chilled below 45° F will lose flavors better tasted at temperatures above that. As for “room temperature,” the phrase has no meaning if the room is 67° or 85° degrees. "Cellar temperature" for reds is more like it: Best is between 55 and 70. 4. One should always sniff the cork. Why? Ninety times out of a hundred it will reveal nothing, unless the cork is so visibly rotted that you wouldn’t want to sniff it. The purpose of presenting the cork is wholly unnecessary these days—a holdover from days when an inferior wine was deliberately and unscrupulously mis-labeled as a better one—a scam exposed by looking at the cork, imprinted with the original, real provenance of the wine. 5. Red wines should always be decanted to remove sediment. If a red wine has sediment, fine. If it does not, there’s no necessity. Most red wines do not throw off sediment anyway, and if one does, it will usually take a minimum of at least five years to develop. Some enophiles contend that decanting brings oxygen into the wine—which may help older wines of a kind that did have sediment--but a few swirls of your glass will do the same thing. By the same token, decanting can quicken aeration of both white and red wines, and I must admit I've taken to decanting most of the time. 6. Vintage 7. When tasting a wine, you should suck in air and swirl the wine several times in your mouth to bring out the wine’s qualities or defects. Well, if you’re a professional wine taster—who may go through 50 wines at a time and spits the wines out—this can be helpful. But at a dinner table? Uh-uh. You’ll look ridiculous and embarrass your friends. 8. A wine should be set at an angle in a wine cradle when served. The only reason for those silly—if often beautiful—wine cradles is to keep any possible sediment in the bottom of the bottle. But if there is any sediment, the wine should be decanted and rid of it. If there is no sediment (see Myth No. 5 above), why lay the bottle on its side? 9. You should always send back a wine you don’t like. No, you should only send back a wine that has gone bad, either by being oxidized or corked. Just because you don’t care for the taste of the wine is no reason to ask for it to be taken off your bill. The exception is when a wine steward has really pushed a wine on you that you’re unfamiliar with and you find the wine distasteful. Then, back it goes. 10. A screwtop closure indicates an inferior wine. This used to be the case until corks were discovered to cause malodorous corkiness in 5%-10% of all wines so stoppered. Today, however, many top wineries, including many of the best in DRINK YOUR SOUP BEFORE IT CLOTS! In Cincinnati a man
claiming to be a vampire plans to picket the
local White Castle because its new hamburger made with garlic has
"angered
the undead."
BLOCK THAT METAPHOR! "No, that
isn't the sun glinting off Mariah Carey's toe ring.
It's the sparkling Carrera marble powder that stands in for sand at the
Monte-Carlo Beach Hotel and Club."--Sandra Ballentine, "39 Ways to Have
a Sand Blast," NY Times (May
24, 2006).
QUICK BYTES *
From July 1-23, to commemorate
the Tour De France, Chef Jean Joho of Brasserie Jo in
*
On July 13 “Dancing
Under the Stars
with Midsummer Night Swing” at Lincoln
* On July 14 in
* From July 14-16 The Glenlivet Single will host “The Glenlivet Gathering,” incl. a traditional Scottish dinner aboard a classic steam train, a private tour of The Glenlivet Distillery and tasting of stock with the Master Distiller Jim Cryle, a hike along the famous Smuggler’s Trail, a fitting * From July13-16, Robert Mondavi Winery celebrates its 40th anniversary with TASTE3, a gathering of 30 professionals in wine, food, and the arts, at Copia: The * From July 14-16, The Finger Lakes Wine Festival®, supported by The Corning Museum of Glass will be held, with 80 wineries from across the *
On July 14, a Bastille
Day Celebration 10:00 p.m. will be
held at Carafe in Portland, whose French
community will presents a day-long celebration with the 2nd
annual Portland Waiters Race, a French marketplace, live music,
petanque
demonstrations, kid’s activities, and a pig roasted by Pascal Sauton of
Carafe.
Free admission. www.alliancepdx.org
or
call 503-223-8388.
* On July 15 The Culinary Vegetable Institute and The Chef's Garden in "THE SWEET LIFE" CRUISE This fall, from Sept. 29-Oct. 6 John Mariani (left),
publisher of Mariani's Virtual
Gourmet and food & travel columnist for Esquire Magazine, will host
and lead a 7-day cruise called "The Sweet Life," aboard
Silverseas' Millennium Class Silver
Whisper,
with days visiting Barcelona, Tunis, Naples, Milazzo (Sicily), Rome,
Livorno, and Villefranche. There will be a welcoming cocktail
party,
gourmet dinners with wines, cooking demos by John and Galina Mariani
co-authors of The Italian-American
Cookbook), optional shore excursions will include a
tour of the Amalfi Coast,
dinner at the great Don Alfonso 1890 (2 Michelin stars), a private tour
of the Vatican, dinner at La Pergola (3 Michelin stars) in Rome, a
Night Cruise to Hotel de Paris and dinner at Louis XV (3 Michelin
stars)
in Monaco, and much more. Rates (a 20% savings) range from $4,411
to
$5,771. For complete information click.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MARIANI'S VIRTUAL GOURMET NEWSLETTER is published weekly. Editor/Publisher:
John Mariani. Contributing Writers: Robert Mariani, Naomi
Kooker, Kirsten Skogerson, Edward Brivio, Mort
Hochstein, Suzanne Wright. Contributing
Photographers: Galina Stepanoff-Dargery, Bobby Pirillo. Technical
Advisor: Gerry McLoughlin.
Any of John Mariani's books below
may be ordered from amazon.com by clicking on the cover image.
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