Hungry In Hogtown

Moona Lisa: cooking with La Vache qui rit

Once, as a grad student and culinary dullard living on the tips I earned waiting tables at a Tex-Mex restaurant, I met a girl I really wanted to impress.  We'd already been on a few dates, and had reached the point in our relationship where it was time to take the next, anxiety-inducing step: homecooking.  I hoped to knock her socks off (although I have to admit her socks weren't really what I had in mind) by preparing a romantic dinner, something a little different from my usual post-work Whoppers smothered in mayo while watching Law & Order re-runs.  So I created a "homemade" pasta sauce of melted cream cheese with bacon.  The result was a bit of a stodgy mess, to put it kindly, but the girl appreciated the thought enough to at least remove those socks.   

Now that I've learned a little more about cooking and food, I've discovered that some of the great cuisines frequently gild their sauces with dairy, so cream cheese wasn't such a crazy idea.  Italians finish two of their most famous preparations, risotto and polenta, with dollops of butter and grated parmesan.  A little of both goes a long way, after all.  Parmesan adds salty and umami flavours, while butter provides richness and sheen.

This maneuver is such a staple of Italian technique that there's even a native word for it, "mantecare," a verb that means to blend or cream.

Great gastronomic minds think alike, apparently, because the French also exploit the finishing powers of a little dairy.  Many French sauces are incomplete without the addition of a little -- okay, a lot -- of butter.

The culinary world has even come to adopt the French term for this technique, "monter au beurre."

For years, Rachel and I finished countless -- not all, but most -- risottos, polentas, and sauces the same way.

That all changed last year.  One lazy afternoon, I whiled away my time watching French Food at Home on Food Network Canada.  The show stars Laura Calder, a graceful, well-spoken host with a deep love and knowledge of French cooking.  In the episode I watched, she made a zucchini and La Vache Qui Rit soup she describes as a favourite comfort food of French children.

I don't doubt it.  La Vache qui rit -- it's known as The Laughing Cow in most of the English-speaking world -- is a creamy, buttery-tasting blend of cheeses, though apparently it's mainly Comté, that's easy to enjoy primarily because it is so unchallenging.  There are no funky tastes or textures, just a straightforward richness that any child (and most adults) can appreciate.

What makes this cheese so compelling is not simply its taste, however, it's also the dynamite packaging.  Not everyone recognizes the circular box with the big smiling cow on its front, but the individually foil-wrapped wedges within are iconic.  As a child, I remember going to family gatherings and gorging on this cheese.  I especially loved grabbing a wedge, finding the little red pull tab, then pulling back the foil to reveal the delicious triangle of cheese within.

It's no wonder, then, that Rachel and I made Calder's soup shortly thereafter.  It is delicious, but after cooking a batch (and enjoying a few snacks here and there) we still had many wedges leftover.

My eureka moment came while reaching into our cheese drawer to get some parmesan for a risotto.  While looking for the undisputed king of cheeses I glanced at that beguiling bovine smile and grabbed three wedges (as well as the parmesan) to add to the pot before serving.

Now, I'm sure there are many Italians out there cringing at this little experiment, and I can't say I blame them.  I actually feel annoyed when I get served risotto in restaurants that's been finished with a little whole cream; it just feels like cheating to me.

But after tasting the risotto with the laughing cow, we were very pleasantly surprised at both the texture and flavour of the finished product.  The effect is subtle, but the cheese adds richness and creaminess.  Frankly, I think most people would notice a difference in the dish but would be unable to identify what, precisely, had changed.

Our favourite risotto to pair with La Vache qui rit is a simple trio of leeks, peas, and lardons of crispy bacon.  The recipe is at the end of this post.

Having ventured into fertile territory with rice, I decided to expand my repertoire to yet another staple of the boot.  Polenta doesn't deserve its stodgy, bland reputation.  Prepared with time and care, cornmeal can be every bit as satisfying as risotto or pasta.  Of course, we soon discovered that time and care are a whole lot better with two wedges of La Vache Qui Rit.  Just stir them in along with any other seasonings, including parmesan, to finish the dish.

Polenta or risotto with La Vache qui rit seems miles away from that first pasta sauce of melted Philly.  As for the girl, she liked my cooking enough to stay close.  Rachel married me five years ago.

Leek, pea and bacon risotto

1 large leek (may substitute 1 large cooking onion)
225 g bacon (approximately 2, 1 cm thick slices)
200 g (approximately 1.5 C) fresh or frozen peas
350 g (approximately 1.75 C) arborio or other suitable risotto rice
1 L chicken stock (may substitute vegetable stock or water)
200 ml white wine, if desired
3 wedges of La vache qui rit cheese
salt
pepper
parmesan

Slice bacon into 1 cm wide lardons.  In a large saucepan or dutch oven over medium heat, cook lardons until darkened and crispy on the outside.

Preheat chicken stock to a bare simmer.

Remove lardons and all but two tablespoons of bacon fat from the saucepan or dutch oven and, over medium heat, add leeks and cook until just softened, approximately two minutes.  Add the rice, and cook until white dots appear in the centre of each grain, stirring frequently.

If using wine, add it at this point, stirring.  When it is reduced, add just enough hot chicken stock to cover the rice, stir frequently.  The liquid should barely simmer throughout this process.  Repeat this step until the rice is al dente, approximately eighteen to twenty minutes.  If the stock runs out before the rice is cooked, substitute water.

When the rice is almost cooked, add the peas and La Vache qui rit cheese, and stir until the cheese is completely incorporated into the risotto.

Finish with salt, pepper, and parmesan to taste.

Serve in bowls sprinkled with lardons and with additional salt, pepper, or parmesan if desired.

Makes four portions.

Long may you Rome: four days in the Eternal City, the inspiration for homemade guanciale

With days of feasting on rare regional delicacies behind us and the prospect of a transcontinental flight and the accompanying return to "the usual" ahead, it's no wonder Rachel and I approach the final meal of our trips to Rome with a hint of dread.  But after four visits to the Eternal City, including one this past fall, we've learned to deal with the pain of the "last supper" by curing our depression with a bowl of carbonara at Pommidoro (Piazza dei Sanniti, 44).  Rome's greatest contribution to comfort food is simplicity itself: strands of al dente spaghetti dressed in a luscious sauce of egg yolks, grated pecorino cheese, lots of ground black pepper, and cubes of succulently salty and crispy guanciale.

Ah, guanciale.  For some, prosciutto or jamon represent the pinnacle of porcine pleasure, for others, that means bacon.  For me, pig nirvana is the remarkable guanciale at Pommidoro.  Guanciale is pig's jowl, a rich, fatty, full-flavoured cut of meat, cured in salt and spices.  Romans use it in much the same way we use bacon or some other Italians use pancetta.  The key difference between bacon and guanciale is that the former is usually salt-cured and smoked, while the latter is just salt-cured with herbs and spices.  I adore the spaghetti alla carbonara at Pommidoro because their guanciale has a crispy exterior, meaty interior, and a taste that reminds me strongly of the Colonel's secret blend of herbs and spices.  Say what you will, I love that flavour.

And guanciale is just one of many specialties that distinguish Roman cuisine.  Our first task after an early morning arrival was to set out for a breakfast featuring one of the world's great breads.  Pizza bianca isn't that much different from any other leavened yeast bread -- it's nothing more than flour, a little sugar, water, yeast, olive oil and salt -- but good pizza bianca is an experience not soon forgotten.  This flatbread features a light, pillowy crumb under a crispy, olive oil and sea salt gilded crust.  There's an article in Jeffrey Steingarten's book, It Must've Been Something I Ate, in which he froths over the pizza bianca at Antico Forno in the Campo de' Fiori, an enthusiasm he apparently shares with another notable food writer, Amanda Hesser.  Rachel and I enjoy its pizza bianca.  It's exceptionally light and has a wonderfully delicate texture, but we prefer the pizza bianca from the bakery just steps from our hotel.  Panificio Fagiani Ubaldo (Via Varese, 36) makes a far denser bread, but it features more olive oil and flakes of wonderfully crunchy salt, and it has a noticeably mineralized taste that we love.  Both dazzle, but a bread that combines the texture of the pizza of the Antico Forno with the flavour of the Panificio Fagiani Ubaldo would be transcendent.

Rome in the fall also means puntarelle, a crunchy, slightly bitter variety of chicory that is a regional, seasonal delicacy.  Romans typically serve them as a salad dressed with anchovy, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar.  Rachel and I tried our first and best bowl at Dal Cavalier Gino (Vicolo Rosini, 4).  The mixture of anchovy, garlic, oil and the crunchy texture of this bitter green call to mind a classic Caesar salad.  I would kill to get my hands on some, but I've never seen them in Toronto.  Not only are they hard to find, they're a pain in the ass to prepare.  We watched teams of greengrocers in the Campo de' Fiori labour over a time-consuming process that involves cleaning, cutting, shredding, and soaking a plant that resembles an asparagus-producing weed. 

The most pleasant surprise of our trip was a dazzling lunch at Palatium, a stylish enoteca run by the regional government to showcase Latium's remarkable food and wine.  We started with a selection of local salumi, such as finnochiona, a peppery sausage with a noticeable dose of fennel seed.  But the star of the meal was a stupendous cacio e pepe pasta featuring fresh, golden tonnarelli (square-cut spaghetti) made with locally sourced organic flour and caciocavallo cheese, a southern-Italian specialty, that, when aged, adds a salty, parmesan-like bite to dishes.  Rachel took one bite of my perfect pasta, then asked me to trade it straight up for her less than perfect, but still excellent, amatriciana.  I did it, but the words "cacio e pepe" have now become a convenient shorthand for "you owe me" around our house.  Dessert was an orange and ricotta tart with a little drizzle of melted dark chocolate and some diced peaches.  Surprise, surprise, this was no ordinary ricotta.  This was ricotta romana, a sheep's milk cheese so precious it's been given a protected DOP status.  It also makes one hell of a tart -- light and creamy, with a subtle but noticeable orange taste.  The only problem with Palatium is the service, which is maddeningly slow even by Italian standards.

Pizza bianca, puntarelle, Palatium.  We miss them all, so we don't want to add our favourite Roman delight, guanciale, to that list.  But despite the growing popularity of traditional Roman dishes that require it, like carbonara and amatriciana, guanciale remains scarce in North America.  Quality bacon or pancetta make a decent substitute, but after finding Mario Batali's recipe for homemade guanciale in The Babbo Cookbook and motivated by our recent visit, I decided it was time to make some myself.

The biggest obstacle was sourcing the pig cheeks.  After several weeks, I finally managed to get my hands on some from Cumbrae's (the same butcher who helped us find lamb brains), one of Toronto's finest butchers.  Floppy and fatty, and still covered with a layer of whisker-dappled skin, uncured cheeks bear little resemblance to the marvelous epicurean delight they eventually become.  After a week covered in kosher salt, thyme, and black pepper, followed by three weeks dangling from pieces of string in the fridge, our two cheeks metamorphosed into a marvelous treat.  The skin had hardened into a leathery carapace, but the flesh beneath had darkened and firmed until it resembled the fattiest of bacons.

We used it first in a delicious risotto, sautéing lardons of guanciale until they were crisp outside but still supple inside, then using the drippings in the pan to wilt dandelion greens.  This guanciale astonishes.  Without the often overbearing smokiness of some bacon, Batali's cured pig cheeks taste overwhelmingly porky, but with a marvelous saltiness and mild peppery and herbal notes.  Texturally, guanciale dominates bacon, which, especially when sliced, is only ever crispy or soft; guanciale offers both at once, popping under your teeth.

Though delightful in risotto, the pinnacle of guanciale achievement remains spaghetti alla carbonara.  Despite the simplicity of the ingredients, carbonara is actually a remarkably difficult dish to execute well.  The trick, as I see it, lies in the sauce.  North American recipes often call for the addition of cream.  This is a form of culinary heresy I detest.  The sauce requires nothing more than raw egg yolks, which add plenty of richness on their own, and the magic of pasta water.  Of course, adding hot water to raw eggs demands some skill, unless the desired outcome is scrambled eggs carbonara.  I posted our first carbonara recipe two years ago, but I've updated it here.  The only real change is that I now use a bit more pasta water, both in the egg yolks and in the pan with the fat leftover from cooking the guanciale. 

And though it's not that last meal at Pommidoro on a chilly fall day after strolling through the Eternal City, our spaghetti alla carbonara with homemade guanciale is a delicious way to rekindle fond memories -- the Bernini sculptures at the Galleria Borghese, the awe-inspiring dome of the Pantheon, and the Baroque splendour of the Trevi Fountain -- from a kitchen many thousands of kilometres away.

Spaghetti alla carbonara

There are a couple of keys to producing a creamy sauce, not scrambled eggs:
1. Use room temperature eggs
2. Temper the beaten eggs with a bit of the pasta water
3. Try to add the egg mixture to a warm, not hot, pan.

500 grams spaghetti or bucatini
4 room temperature egg yolks plus one whole egg, beaten
200 grams guanciale, pancetta, or best bacon cut into 1.5 cm (approx 3/4 inch) lardons
30 grams (approx. 3/4 cup), finely grated pecorino romano or parmigiano reggiano
pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
pasta water

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  When water boils, add a generous amount of salt.

Heat a sauté pan over medium heat.  Add olive oil and guanciale, and sauté until outside is crispy but inside remains slightly chewy, approximately 5-7 minutes.  Drain desired amount of fat from pan (guanciale fat tastes good, so I try to leave it all in the pan).

Place spaghetti in boiling water.  Prepare as per package instructions.

When there are five minutes remaining in the pasta cooking time, add 125 mL (approx. 1/2 cup) of the starchy pasta cooking water to the guanciale fat in the sauté pan.  Return pan to medium-high heat.  Reduce the mixture by at least half, stirring occasionally until the mixture has emulsified.

Add pepper to taste to beaten eggs.  Slowly add 70 mL (a generous 1/4 cup) of the pasta water to the egg mixture.  Do not add quickly or the eggs will scramble.

When spaghetti is al dente, lower the heat under the sauté pan to low.  Drain the spaghetti and add it to the sauté pan.  Slowly add the beaten eggs to the noodles, tossing constantly (I find a good set of tongs work best) and adding more pasta water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce.  Add pecorino and more pepper, if desired.

Serve promptly with additional pecorino and pepper.

Brain food: Mario Batali's lamb's brains ravioli

My first exposure to the glories of lamb offal was entirely accidental.  "Abbacchio con funghi," read the chef's recommendations at one of Rome's oldest restaurants, La Campana, and a succulent lamb chop or tender braised shank did seem like a perfect fall supper in the Eternal City.  Moreover, because of my almost non-existent knowledge of Italian at the time, I was tickled about having understood the Roman dialect word for lamb.

"Pride goes before a fall," they say, and I was about to learn my lesson.

The full name of the dish is actually "animelle di abbacchio con funghi."  I naively ignored that first word, dismissing it as nothing more than a minor detail.  This is Rome, however, a city that prides itself on its culinary artistry with the "quinto quarto," or "fifth quarter" of the animal, the collection of snouts, guts, brains, and tails that have been staples of the city's working class cuisine for millenia.

When my meal finally arrived, I couldn't help but notice the extensive network of ridges and crenelations running through my piece of lamb.  "Rachel," I muttered, "I think I've ordered brain."  Not quite, it turns out, but nestled within my pool of rich brown gravy and mushrooms lay a tender, plump lamb sweetbread.  I had a decision to make: suck it up, try it, and then reach an informed opinion, or take a mulligan and order something new.  My decision: eat first, ask questions later.  So I screwed up my courage and took a bite.  Not bad, really.  The texture was smooth and rich, pillowy like a dumpling, and the meat gravy superb.

Having finally eaten a sizable portion of my meal, I tried to ask our waiter what I was eating by tapping my temple while asking, "Dove?" -- the Italian word for "where" -- hoping he would understand the implication, which he did.  "Si," he confirmed.

I continued to eat more, though I didn't attack supper with my usual gusto.  Yes, even I -- gobbler of rabbit ears and glutton for horse fat --  get culinary cold feet.  I'd like to rationalize my anxiety by claiming fear of mad cow disease, but no lamb has ever been diagnosed with BSE and no case of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, the human equivalent, has ever been linked back to sheep.  No, my fears about eating lamb brains aren't about what's in the lamb's head.  It's about what's in mine.

Brain presents a big culinary problem for most of us.  It's squishy; when cooked, it's grey.  Both factors are a huge turn off.  But the bigger issue with brain, I think, stems from the unmistakable resemblance of an animal's brain to our own, and from the immense symbolic weight we place on that organ as the locus of thought and as the seat of the soul.  We rather easily disassociate ourselves from animal flesh, but we've all taken enough high school science classes or watched enough sci-fi and monster movies to recognize that a lamb's brain looks almost exactly like a miniaturized version of our own.  We recognize a little too much of ourselves in a brain.

I first tasted actual lamb's brains a few years ago at Babbo, Mario Batali's flagship New York restaurant.  Batali actively promotes cooking with offal, and his menus reflect his passion.  At Babbo, our server urged us to try the lamb brains francobolli -- postage stamps of fresh pasta stuffed with a mixture of poached brain, ricotta, sauteed onions, and a little seasoning, dressed with gently heated butter, some fresh sage, and a sprinkling of parmesan -- so I took the plunge.  I'm glad I did.  The brain's contribution is more texture -- a slightly creamy lusciousness -- then flavour, but the dish really does taste marvelous.

Of course, Batali does his best to make "the nasty bits" palatable to his patrons.  As others have already pointed out, he usually mixes offal into his dishes in small quantities, and it's probably no coincidence that the lamb's brains are hidden within a pasta envelope.  As they say: out of sight, out of mind.

It's an entirely different story when you're both diner and chef.  Any illusions are forgotten the instant you hold a chilled, slick brain in the palm of your hand.  No easy task given how difficult it is to find naturally raised lamb in Toronto.  The most pleasant surprise I received when preparing lamb brains is price -- they were free.  According to my butcher at Cumbrae's, no market exists for the product in Canada.  The next step, cleaning the brains, can hardly be described as pleasant.  For one, there were a few small chunks of skull wedged into the brains -- a by-product, no doubt, of extracting the brains from the skull using a saw -- and, for two, there's the pain-in-the-ass task of removing the outer membrane and blotches of congealed blood.

After soaking the brains overnight in a couple of changes of water to drain any remaining blood, the recipe, which I adapted from an identical recipe for calf's brains in The Babbo Cookbook, is entirely straightforward.  Rather than fuss over the pasta envelope, I prepared basic, square ravioli, not postage stamps with fancy edges.  The homemade dish, though less artfully presented, is every bit as good as the restaurant version.  The richness of the filling marries artfully with butter, flavours complemented by the sharp herbal note of sage and the zing of lemon zest.  We even found one friend eager to taste the dish, and he enjoyed it too.

Having come this far, we must now decide if we want to explore brains further.  Where Batali uses brains as just one note in a broader harmony, Fergus Henderson features them front and centre.  The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating includes a small section of lamb brains recipes, everything from deep fried brains to a terrine.  There's even a recipe for cold lamb's brains on toast, "for those who particularly enjoy the texture of brain."  Hmmm.  I'm not sure we're there yet, Fergus.

The undisputed king of noodles: el Bulli's two metre parmesan spaghetto

Sometimes molecular gastronomy can be a real pain in the ass.  Even the simplest of recipes -- and a two metre parmesan spaghetto is, believe it or not, relatively straightforward -- can be sabotaged by seemingly benign requirements, requirements like "1-1 L ISI siphon with the emptying attachment spaghetti."  Emptying attachment spaghetti?

Mangled English aside, I have no idea what that might look like, nor have I found a retailer that sells it.  The likely reason is simple: the spaghetti attachment is actually a customized piece of equipment designed specifically for (and likely by) el Bulli itself.

Unfortunately, the attachment points to a larger problem with pursuing molecular gastronomy at home generally, and cooking from the el Bulli cookbooks specifically: both require a constant stream of specialized equipment -- equipment that is often difficult, if not impossible to get.  The el Bulli cookbooks compound the problem by offering no indication of where, or even if, the necessary equipment can be purchased.

Acid flashback: memories of balsamic vinegar and Faith Heller Willinger's Adventures of an Italian Food Lover

It seems fitting, in hindsight, that the first gift I gave Rachel after our wedding was a bottle of balsamic vinegar.  And not just any old bottle, either.  I'm talking about the genuine article, the mahogany ambrosia produced in and around Modena, Italy.

Like many couples, we honeymooned in Italy.  Unlike many couples, however, we spent our first week in Bologna.  It may seem an odd choice, but Bologna and the surrounding region of Emilia-Romagna are widely considered to be home to the best food in Italy.  The region straddles a unique culinary fault line.  To the south lies olive oil country, while to the north, butter is the fat of choice.  These traditions collide in Emilia-Romagna, where Bologna sits at the epicentre of this culinary earthquake.  Rather than choose one fat over another, the bolognesi do what all sensible gluttons would -- eat both -- thus earning themselves the apt moniker, "la grassa," or "Bologna the fat."

After a week of tortelli, squacquerone, and mortadella, we knew why.  One night we'd feast on a luscious ragu or bollito misto, the next would be an orgy of truffles.  Every meal included yards of pasta fresca, or fresh egg pasta.  One particularly memorable meal, at Trattoria da Gianni, included a marvelous cheese plate consisting of nothing more than two of the region's towering culinary achievements: chunks of parmigiano drizzled with balsamic vinegar so intense it tasted more like sharpened honey than vinegar.

That's what makes it special, of course.  The finest balsamic is aged for decades in an ever smaller series of wooden barrels, each imparting subtle hints of flavour while further concentrating flavours through evaporation.  The result is vinegar in name only, for the finest balsamics taste sweet, with a captivating, but not overwhelming, acidity.  This is vinegar that can be sipped like a liqueur, or even enjoyed with dessert. Before we were married, Rachel would sometimes finish a meal with a bowl of strawberries, peaches, or vanilla ice cream drizzled with good balsamic.

But never the best kind.  Not the liquid gold christened with the prized Denominazione di Origine Controllata -- the government designation that certifies the origins and quality of traditional Italian food products -- and sold in a bottle so distinctive it looks more appropriate to a sorcerer's workshop than a kitchen.  Then we entered a tiny little shop in Bologna on Rachel's birthday, fewer than ten days after our wedding.

Mmmmm... donuts: beignets, paczki, zeppole, and malasada

My most vivid memory of my first and only trip to New Orleans is of visiting a strip club in the French Quarter with my grandparents.  If I've ever had a more Fellini-esque moment in my life, I don't know what it might be.  There I was, seventeen years old, drink in hand, with my adorable, five-foot tall grandmother by my side watching half-naked women wrestle.  I wasn't sure whose eyes to cover, hers or mine.  Thankfully, the great state of Louisiana had the common sense to protect the wrestlers' modesty and the crowd's decency by mandating covered nipples.  In this dive that meant a pair of Band-Aids.  Voilà! Innocence preserved Big Easy style.

My second most vivid memory was my first plate of beignets smothered in icing sugar at Cafe du Monde.  Those beignets opened my eyes.  Up to that point in my life fried dough had meant only one thing: donuts from Tim Hortons, Country Style, or one of the independent donut joints that were ubiquitous in the days before Starbucks.  From that point forward, I recognized that the standard North American donut is really just the tip of a delicious, glazed iceberg, a mere johnny-come-lately of fried dough.

Cultures around the world, from South Korea to Argentina and dozens of points in between, celebrate homegrown variants of the donut.  In Okinawa, Japan, for example, they serve sata andagi, whereas in South Africa the fried dough of choice is a koeksuster.  Some cultures even use fried dough in savoury cooking.  Any lover of congee, Asian rice porridge, is probably familiar with youtiao, the dish's typical salted donut accompaniment.  Having a place in so many cuisines is the greatest testament to the universal appeal of fried dough.  The appeal extends into modern cuisine, as well: donut soup is one of the most recent incarnations of the beloved treat.

Living in multicural Toronto means not always having to travel the globe to taste regional delicacies.  Fried dough is no different.  I read last year that a Toronto bakery specializes in zeppole, an Italian donut traditionally eaten to celebrate St. Joseph's Day, March 19.  So what better way to celebrate the patron saint of Canada and confectioners than an expedition to sample a stomachful of donuts from different countries the weekend before the feast.  Our friends Rob and Jill, who writes a knitting blog of her own, joined us.  Recruiting people to spend a day eating donuts is, shockingly, not that hard to do.  Donut Day 2007 was born.

How to be a polentone: the secret to great polenta

This may come as a surprise to non-Italians, but "polentone" is actually an insult.  "Big polenta" or "polenta eater" may seem like mild stuff, but it's a pejorative term used by southern Italians to raise the hackles of their northern compatriots. Think of describing a French person as a "frog" or a German as a "kraut," insults that are also based on food preferences. The northern equivalent for southerners, "terrone," also lacks a suitable translation, but is equally, if not more, insulting.

The tension between northern and southern Italians may surprise many non-Italians, who tend to think of Italians as a homogeneous mass.  This notion coudn't be further from the truth, especially in the minds of Italians themselves.  This is, after all, the country that invented "campanilismo," extreme devotion not merely to one's region or city, but to the area within earshot of the local campanile, or church bell tower.  In Rome, for example, your typical aventino believes that your average esquilina may as well be from another planet, not a different hill.  You can imagine, then, the chasm that exists between a napoletano and a milanese.

This tension manifests itself most noticeably in three areas: politics, soccer, and food.  Italian politics is a muddle, but it also most explicitly reflects the differences between the regions.  The Lega Nord, or Northern League, has risen to prominence by giving voice to northern dissatisfaction with the south.  At its most extreme, some in this coalition have even called for independence for Padania, their name for the northern third of Italy.  This party is not a marginal one.  It holds seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and helped to bring Silvio Berlusconi to power, for which it was awarded positions in cabinet.  The League's message has softened over time -- it now emphasizes decentralization over independence -- but its popularity testifies to rifts in the belpaese.

Soccer is a notorious vehicle for sublimating broader social, political and religious tensions.  One need look no further than the rivalries between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona or Celtic and Rangers, proxies for the battles between Castillians and Catalonians and Catholics and Protestants respectively (How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer explores this idea in depth).  Italian soccer is no different.  In A Season with Verona, expat British author Tim Parks chronicles the highs and lows of following his favourite team, Hellas Verona, up and down Italy for one season.  The book offers insights into the strained relationship between north and south, filtered through the lens of the beautiful game and the tifosi obsessed with it.  While visiting Catania, which, being in Sicily, is about as far south as you can go in Italy, Parks is struck by a newspaper editorial lamenting the return of the Veronesi.  "'We must form a common front against these northern barbarians," the article blares.  Why the harsh reception?  Because at the last match, when volcanic eruptions from Mount Etna threatened the Sicilian city, the Veronese fans brought banners saying Forza Etna ['Go Etna']."

Politics and soccer aside, we come to food.  Anyone familiar with Italian cuisine is well aware that "Italian food" is not a monolithic entity.  It is, rather, a collection of regional cuisines, many of which bear almost no relation to one another.  The Arab and North African roots of the Sicilian kitchen, for example, are completely foreign to the Austrian-influenced dishes of Trentino Alto Adige.  There are some ties that loosely bind Italy's diverse culinary traditions -- wheat pasta being the most obvious -- but all regions pride themselves on the distinctive ingredients and techniques that distinguish their local fare.

Throughout much of the north, one of those traditions is polenta.  Polenta is textbook Italian -- a rustic dish with peasant roots that's adaptable to a limitless variety of sauces and preparations and is a snap to make.  Great.  Sort of.

You say tomato

Has nature ever created anything more delicious than a perfectly ripe tomato?  I think not.

And yet, with the possible exception of the peach, there is no other produce I can think of that is so hard to find at its ripe, flavourful best.  You know the story: your typical tomato in your typical North American Megamart is green and hard as a golf ball.  Slice it open and the flesh inside is mealy and tasteless, suitable, at best, as a garnish on a sandwich, and even that's a stretch.

That tomato is the crowning glory of mass-market, industrial food production.  Smothered in pesticides in the field, picked while green, then gassed within an inch of its life, and somehow available fresh year-round, this lipstick-covered pig is then devoured by consumers who value looks over flavour.

What's a tomato-lover to do?  For this tomato-lover, the solution is to ask everyone you know with even a modicum of greenspace if they grow tomatoes, and, if they do, to see if you can snag a few for yourself.  Then, limit truly rapacious tomato consumption to late summer and early fall, when tomatoes are actually in season.  Come fall, it's time to go canned (but that's a separate post).

If you're really lucky, you may even have Italian friends whose fathers have massive backyards and a green thumb.  Thank God I do.  My friend and co-worker, Carlo, also known as "my best friend" come late-August, is just such a person.  For the past two summers, he's stopped by my desk every few days with a massive bag of homegrown, organic, vine-ripened tomatoes.

Now, a fresh, ripe tomato demands to be the star of whatever dish it ends up in.  This is not the time or the tomato to contemplate a couple of slices as a garnish on a sandwich.  Nope, you've got to seize the moment -- eat the damn thing on its own like an apple, or, if you're like me, consider a salad.

Berried alive: a wild blueberry bonanza

"Do you mind if I go to Sudbury for a week to visit my parents?"

This sentence may be phrased as a question, but it's not; it's actually Rachel's way of telling me she's going up north.  It did provide an opening, however, so I seized the moment.

"No problem," I said, quickly raising my index finger to signal the seriousness of my next statement, "but you have to come back with blueberries."

Wild blueberries, to be precise, which grow in such abundance in Sudbury that the city hosts an annual Blueberry Festival.  It's no surprise, then, that wild blueberry bushes flourish within a pleasant summer's stroll of my in-laws' back door.  The trick, if there is one, is to get to them before the bears, those "godless killing machines without a soul," who happen to love them almost as much as we do.

Alright, perhaps I'm overstating the threat a bit, but the bears are just one of many reasons I'm not cut out for life in northern Ontario.  I'll never forget my first visit to Rachel's parents.  It was Christmas, 1998, and they lived in Timmins.  Timmins makes Sudbury look downright tropical; it's almost as far north of Sudbury as Sudbury is north of Toronto.  What I'm trying to say is that it's cold, really cold, colder than anything you've likely ever experienced: spit-freezing, skin-numbing, testicle-reascending cold.  I'm not sure the temperature ever got warmer than -40C (-40F) on that trip, and, with the windchill, it fell below -60C (-76F) one day.  As if that weren't enough, Timmins averages 3.5 metres of snowfall per year (thats 11.5 feet)!

It is, in short, the Canada many non-Canadians conjure up in their minds when they think of this country.  Not that Sudbury's much different, mind you, what with -20C (-4F) being a respectable winter temperature.

CAMPIONI DEL MONDO! Celebrating with lasagna bolognese

Wooooooooohoooooooo!!!!!!  Champions, baby!

What better way to celebrate than with another tricolour dish?  That's why it's time to unveil Hungry In Hogtown's ultimate lasagna bolognese.  Check it out.  Every last bit of it is homemade -- the spinach pasta, the ragù, you name it.  It's so good, you'd probably headbutt someone in the chest if they ever tried to steal a piece.

There are only a few keys to making a brilliant lasagna, and fresh pasta is the first.  I know, making pasta is something of a pain in the ass, but paper-thin layers of pasta fresca are infinitely better than those clumsy frilled shrouds sold in stores.  It takes mad skills to assemble a ten-layered lasagna (what can I say?  I have the skills to pay the bills), and it just can't be done with store-bought pasta.  Fresh pasta deserves a post of its own, and we will eventually get around to it, but here's Mario Batali's recipe if you're eager to get your hands dirty in the meantime.