Boston and Bulgur

This past weekend Kaitlin and I loaded up another rental car with our suitcases (well, she brought her suitcase, I brought my hamper) and headed back to Boston. This time around, however, we brought our friend Dale. Dale happens to live a floor below us, but I first met her in Italian class, where our teacher insisted on calling her by her last name: Tonozzi! Dale is only partially Italian, but our teacher got a kick out of her surname.

Because Dale and I have ambitions to study abroad in Rome junior year, we are incessantly trying to practice our Italian (probably to the annoyance of Kaitlin who is currently taking Chinese). We decided to eat dinner on Saturday night at Gran Gusto in Cambridge because, at Gran gusto, if your reservation is past eight o’clock, you are bound to hear just as much Italian at the tables as English.

Pizza is one of my favorite foods. That being said, I rarely eat it. Perhaps it is because when I was 12 years old my parents took me to Naples, and eating their belle pizze at least three times daily spoiled me for life. Or perhaps it is because most pizza I get in college just tastes the same – puffy and greasy. In Naples, we drooled over their pizza. I do not come from a family of subtle eaters. We are loud about our food. My mother and father will find ways, even if it is in the most broken Italian, to strike up conversations with our waiters and gush about everything we’ve eaten. The Neapolitan waiters, being very proud of their tourist-avoided city, were more than happy to extol the benefits of the nutrient rich soil of Mount Vesuvius, that, they informed us, grows the sweetest tomatoes and most pungent basil in the world. And we Americans, they would exclaim, had little appreciation for the miracles of true buffalo mozzarella!

Gran Gusto tastes like that trip to Naples. Perhaps it is because, as Antonio (the owner) informs us, all the ingredients are shipped from Italy – including the yeast and the flour, or perhaps it is because they don’t try to Americanize their food. Their pizza margherita single-handedly makes me homesick for Cambridge. The crust is thin and charred and the toppings are applied very lightly. The cheese spreads over the sunny-red surface like the filmy streaks in marble, and tiny pools of fragrant olive oil gather in the crevices of the delicate basil leaves. The pizza tastes fresh and bright; the flavors meld together perfectly, yet are clean and distinguishable all at once.

Of course Antonio insisted on kissing our hands. We didn’t mind; we were too lost lingering with the flavors on our tongues. We even laughed it off when he repeatedly called Kaitlin, “Michelle, my belle.”

We also did some of our own cooking at my house. Kaitlin has never had Armenian food so we planned to make dolma (stuffed vegetables with lots of onions, meat, rice, Aleppo hot pepper and a touch of cinnamon). Yet as much as I love dolma, it is not my favorite Armenian food. My father, a dolma devotee will argue with me, but I put bulgur pilaf at the top of my list.
Every time I come home, I make bulgur pilaf (which is one of my ultimate comfort foods). There are many ways to make bulgur pilaf and they are all delicious and easy to prepare. Bulgur (coarsely ground) should not take over half an hour to cook. I use olive oil to sauté the bulgur, but feel free to use butter or a combination of the two. This recipe is very lenient, so please feel free to substitute any dried fruit for the golden raisins or any nuts for the pine nut and pistachio combination I’ve recommended. Also, adding some chopped onions to the bulgur while it is toasting would be lovely.

Bulgur Pilaf
(Serves 4-6)

1 cup coarse bulgur
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
3 large onions (sliced)
A handful of golden raisins
A small handful of pine nuts
A small handful of pistachios
Olive oil
Allspice
Salt
Pepper

In a large pot, sauté the bulgur, a pinch of allspice and the raisins in plenty of olive oil over medium heat, until it begins to smell fragrant and the bulgur looks toasty. Then add the stock. When the stock begins to boil, cover the pot and turn the heat down to the lowest setting. (The bulgur should take no more than 30 minutes to cook- all the stock should be absorbed).

Toast the nuts in the oven or in a pan over the stovetop (make sure they are nice and golden, but not burnt!).

In a separate pan, caramelize the onions. Fill the pan with a splash of olive oil, and cook the onions until they become a deep golden color. This should take about 20 minutes over medium heat.

When the bulgur is cooked, scoop it out onto a bowl or platter and top it with the nuts and onions.

The French Egg

I just returned from a family road trip in France. Although we visited scores of historic sites and cathedrals, I admit that the primary focus of our vacation was culinary. We ate local boletus mushrooms and pates in the Perigord region, mussels in La Rochelle on the Atlantic Coast and aioli and bouride (a fish soup) in Provence. We made sure to try the local and regional specialties of every town we stopped in. I was blown over by the oysters, truffles and delicious chocolates we ate throughout the trip, but in the end, I was the most enamored of the humblest food: The Egg.

Before my trip, I never gave the egg a second thought. I've always considered it a rather uninteresting food- a vehicle for other flavors and spices at best. I'm not fond of the hard-boiled egg with its rather gray, powdery yolk, and my experiences with rubbery, bland omelets have not been much better. The only eggs I ever truly liked were scrambled ones, but I would only touch the ones my mother made.

After a bite of my first omelet in France, however, I swore I would never again think of eggs in the same light. The texture of the omelet was incredibly silken and the flavor was rich, but clean tasting. There wasn't the same heaviness that I often associated with omelets in the United States and the taste of the eggs came through without being weighed down by the addition of excess ingredients. I continued to eat omelets all the way through France.

Maybe it is the quality of the eggs or the butter that they use, but the French are incredibly gifted in their omelet making capabilities. I was also impressed by the mayonnaise that we ate while we were there. In fact, all egg based dishes that I tasted in France were nothing short of incredible. Mayonnaise is a condiment that I avoid at all costs at home, but in France, I eagerly jumped to order anything that included it on the menu, especially the rouille sauce, a specialty of Provence, which is a bright red, spicy version of mayonnaise and is traditionally served with the local fish soup.

Now that I have returned a transformed college student, I have not only vowed to treat the egg with more respect, but to learn how to prepare the perfect omelet and homemade mayonnaise. Today, I destroyed my lunch while attempting to follow the instructions on Gourmet magazine's website for the "Classic Omelet". Somehow I ended up with a half- scrambled, half-moon shaped disaster. However, I have high hopes for tomorrow and another day of omelet making. I even promise to include some egg based recipes on the blog (but only after I have slightly better results).