The land of overcooked green things

The other day in class Patricia was cooking green beans for a dish. She brought one over to me. "Is this done?" I tasted it, and it was just at that spot I love: a little crunchy, but no more raw taste to it. Bright green, it tasted like summer and I helped her pull them out and shock them in an ice bath.

About five minutes later Chef started asking who had done the green beans. I presumed he wanted to praise that person for her excellent timing in making sure that they were cooked to perfection. Apparently not.

"These are still raw! Where's the cooking water so we can put them back in?" Patricia defended our decision by explaining that the green beans were going to get re-heated and thus cooked more when we added them in to the next step. Chef looked at her strangely and told her to cook them for at least another four or five minutes. She smiled, "better undercooked than overcooked, right?"

Well I have come to the realization that in Italy that isn't true, because I have seen so many green things be abused and overcooked until all nutrition, flavor, and color has been leeched out of them. I have admired the Italians' respect for products in every department except the one of things which are green.

I've seen the chefs at school do it over and over, and my host mom does it every time she cooks anything leafy. Now, there is a Tuscan dish called "rebollita", which means "re-boiled", where you take a soup of spinach, kale, chard, celery and some other flavors, eat the soup with bread, soak the bread in the soup overnight as a thickener, and re-heat it the next day as a kind of stew you eat with a fork. I understand that when you reheat those things they will get overcooked, but that's the point in this case. However I don't understand the point of overcooking them on round 1 as well! I've started to term it an official philosophy of Italian cooking. Whenever I see something overcooked (for example we overcooked otoro tuna the other day--so painful to watch!!) I just remind myself of the Green things philosophy. Which doesn't make the slaughter any less painful, but at least lets me categorize it as a cultural difference.

I guess the main point of this post is that cultural relativism is not always a good thing--sometimes they're just wrong!!

In other news, now that I've now learned how to embed videos, I'm going to have fun with its awesomeness for a bit. Check out my sister and her show!

On Learning (and a sidenote on lobsters)

First off, how wonderful is this?



So I guess just like Tony, I’m in a soapbox kind of mood.....

I went to visit Alle Murate yesterday, mostly because I had no clue when I would be starting, what my hours would be, or anything of the sort. Turns out their hours are easy and relaxed; I’ll be working from 4 PM on. I then assumed that it would mean I’d get off work around 2 AM, but they laughed at me: “Most nights you’ll be off at midnight, on occasion around 1.” A kitchen with an eight hour workday? I still haven’t totally wrapped my head around this concept. Though I suppose in exchange I’ll be working six days a week.

I also apologized for my stilted Italian where I don’t understand a ton of things. They laughed at this too. “You’ll be fine. You should have seen the last one.”

The chef herself seemed so relaxed. As you can see from this little vignette, she laughs, she smiles, she’s cheerful in general, and she didn’t seem particularly rushed, despite the fact that I had stopped in on a Saturday (not the best time to ever go into a restaurant if you aren’t a guest, but it was what worked for me). At the end of our conversation she excused herself and took her time reentering the kitchen. This was very strange for me. The executive chef in my head of one of the best restaurants in the city on a Saturday night is not a cheerful, bubbly person. I have a stereotype in my head of someone who is busy, working hard, strict, and not to be trifled with. Generally speaking I think I see chefs as hard-core, tough guys. And it could be that she didn’t want to scare me off before I had even started working. But reflecting on it I don’t think that was the case. I think that she actually is that relaxed and cheerful. When something isn’t going right, maybe then she turns on the heat (no pun intended), but it appears that for the most part she defies the stereotype entirely.

I’ve had a lot of time during class these past few weeks to observe the personalities of everyone in the class, and I’ve been using this as an opportunity to self-reflect about my own behavior (this is so atypical of me--I must really not be doing enough!). For manners and  anonymity’s sake, I’ve flipped around genders on occasion, am splitting up different parts of everyone’s personalities, and it probably won’t matter and you probably don’t care. But I’m doing it anyway. One thing I’m not sure about is why I’m doing this, but I am anyway.

School is of course a place to learn. However, in an environment like culinary school whether or not you’ve learned certain material exhibits itself in a very different manner, as at the end of the lesson there’s a final product which illustrates the skills trying to be honed. Furthermore, you can’t really do that much “studying” at home--what you do in class is your main chance to expose yourself to the material and learn it.

One guy in the class came in with some experience, and as a native Italian he’s obviously had exposure to a lot of the material. It’s a little unclear why he’s doing the program, but it obviously isn’t for mastering the material, since he already feels he’s got a good grip on the material. When he does decide to grace us with his presence you can tell he’s not taking what he does particularly seriously, he isn’t asking questions, and he’s just going through the motions of the class. It’s a lot of money to not focus on the material. Perhaps he’s just doing it for the contacts during the stage, or perhaps the certificate at the end has more significance than I had imagined. And I think I would have less problems with this if he were doing everything correctly. But he’s not. His hubris has gotten in the way, and rather than taking the class at least as a chance to improve his palate, I feel like he’s just passing through.

Another person in the class also has issues with knowing how to learn. With the other person, hubris is clearly the issue blocking him from getting as much out of the class as he can. With this other person, however, it is more stubbornness. He knows that he has lots to learn, and as such is always getting up there to help out and participate in making the food. Doing is the best way to learn. But the issue is that he just puts on the blinders while working. When an instructor tries to correct his technique, he’ll at least not and listen, but almost never change whatever he’s doing. When a classmate mentions something not happening correctly or safely, it is as if nothing has been said. He doesn’t listen, doesn’t hear, and its gotten to the point where even the least experienced classmates often notice mistakes in technique now, because they’ve all progressed and he hasn’t. Whether this is some kind of machismo or stubborn streak I have yet to figure out, but whatever the reason is, everyone in the class is starting to get tired of things being poorly done.

There are also some people who are striving hard to learn. Not only are they trying to get involved in everything which is being made, but they ask a ton of questions and listen to the answers, no matter who answers. Especially in our class, with all the multicultural backgrounds, there is a lot of dispersed knowledge, and so sometimes the instructors aren’t the best people to answer a question because someone comes from a background where that thing is more common. Seeing these people take full advantage of that fact is really great, and it has actually been exciting to watch them improve.

However learning in the class isn’t directly dependent on getting involved. One person in the class has what I would term some kind of stage fright--despite the fact that there are only nine of us plus the instructor, she gets extremely nervous about doing things for the class because of everyone watching. When she does do something, it’s almost always precise and excellently done, but her nerves get in the way of her trying many things that can be messed up. I try to encourage her to step up and take more risks--these aren’t extremely complex dishes where one step wrong will result in a disaster, but even so she hesitates. However she is clearly learning a ton--her notes are detailed and done in such a way that I have little doubt she will be able to recreate all the recipes when she wants to with little ado.

So where do I fit in on this spectrum? I don’t think I’m either of the first two people, where I refuse to learn. I’m definitely learning a lot from the class, though probably not the same things that the people without kitchen experience are learning. More I’m discovering new flavor profiles, different ways to bring depth to dishes, and cooking techniques demonstrated in a new way. However I don’t think I’m learning much about basic cooking techniques like roasting and sautéing, but I also don’t think that that’s where I’m looking for improvement. I definitely sometimes cross the line between student and teacher, especially when there’s trickier knifework to be done or trussing to happen, but for the most part people don’t seem to mind that, and I try not to force knowledge on others unless there’s a safety issue involved. I know that sometimes I get a little academic in my knowledge and start on diatribes, but again I’m trying to be more aware of it.

At the same time, I’m definitely not always getting my hands in every dish. I am perfectly happy sitting on the sidelines on many occasions, and I think that’s in part because the basic production of Italian food in my head is not technically involved such that if you haven’t felt it yourself you can’t learn it. I think it is much more about timing and quality of ingredients, which are both things you can get from watching and tasting almost exactly as effectively.

Or maybe its because of the trajectory of the course. I was definitely more engaged--both mentally and physically--at the beginning, when everything was new. After almost two months we’ve covered all the basics, and I think a lot of what is going on now is theme and variations. However I’m itching to start the stage to see new material, and have had enough of the repetition. I definitely feel myself more mentally checked out now as the novelty of the coursework wears off. But I also feel like there is not much for me to gain by doing, which could mean my pride is just as pronounced as that one guy’s, but I still feel like I am learning and getting something out of the class. I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time, and I suppose that’s enough.

A Smidgen more on gender

So I just wrote up that whole thing on sexism and all that. I have to say, despite the behavior of this chef, he is a really fabulous teacher and cook.

The other day in class we were waiting for a whole bunch of things to cook, and so he took the moment to give us a little speech. During this entire speech, his face lit up, and you could tell that he was really happy to have this relaxed chance to talk to us, especially since he was now feeling comfortable with us. In the speech he described the passion one needs to cook, and the importance of really loving it if you want to do it professionally. As he said this in his fish print baggy pants and green Birkenstock clogs, you could tell that he had this passion and was excited to see it present even in a few of us. He really loves what he does, and I only hope that I can always feel like him.

Gender in the kitchen

Has the whole gender in the kitchen thing been done to death? Probably yes. But I think here I have encountered a bias for the first time, and I think I also have just recently (aka this week) overcome it.

Of our instructors at school, only one makes me think of a real chef with actual restaurant experience. His demeanor and comportment triggered my trained responses, so when he asked me to do something at the beginning I always replied "Yes, Chef." I had to force myself to humanize him in my head so I could behave like all the other people in the class. Now I just reply "Yes." or "Of course." However part of the reason I think I respond to him differently than the other instructors is that he is male. I am well adjusted to working under women in a kitchen, but even so there's something about a man which elicits a different response. Its stupid, I know, and probably has to do in part with my first culinary school experience as well as my first work experience being underneath very classic male chefs, which has created the association in my head. But that isn't the part which was fascinating to overcome.

This guy has been discriminating ever so slightly against the girls in the class. Or I've been projecting such that I think he has been. I had noticed, however, that whenever he needed a job done right--a piece of meat cut in the correct way, a perfect dice, a good saute of a dish--he would call over one of the boys. Now, this is a reasonable thing to do, logically, because of the four boys, three have worked professionally, and the one who hasn't is the most competent of the non-professional cooks. Furthermore, one or two of the girls get a little grossed out at the idea of gutting fish and removing the heads from chickens, so again, in terms of pure statistics, it makes sense to call on the guys.

But I want to behead chickens too! So I started a campaign to insert myself on his list of competent people who do things right. I started choosing tasks very specifically--anytime anything needed to be chopped evenly, I tried to snag the job. I always asked, "can I try?" when he did a demo, I avoided doing dishes when he was in the middle of something serious, and I tried to never work on the dessert. I tried to act more like the guys (who never ever do dishes unless explicitly asked), and by the end of last week or the beginning of this one I felt like he was starting to see me in a different light. Having to act like one of the guys sounds stupid, but it made the most sense as a good way to get around things. And I don't like doing dishes either, so while it was sort of an asshole move towards my female colleagues, it had its advantages.

Finally this week he asked me what I'm planning on doing after the course, to which I replied that I'm going back to the US to work the line in some restaurant somewhere in DC. He paused. "Have you worked in a restaurant before?" I could see exactly what was going through his head, because it had gone through mine so many times when I had friends or classmates say they want to work in a restaurant, be a cook. Do you know what the sacrifice is? Do you understand the physical stress? The mental stress? The misery? The crappy pay? Do you love it enough? Of course, when he asked me, I was able to laugh. I replied that I've worked in a handful of interesting and diverse places during my summers off from school, and that I love the life. I also replied that I knew exactly what he was thinking, and he smiled back.

Yesterday we were deboning chickens to keep the skin intact. He first asked the boys to start the work, but then when he told them to let some other people take over, he handed one of the knives to me. And I have to say I rocked it :)

Random photos from a random person

In case you were wondering what I look like in class at school, a lovely visitor to class one day took some photos and sent them my way. Of course I had wanted her to send photos of the food we were making and some of the processes, but she instead sent almost all photos all of me. I figure someone might appreciate these too :) All credits go to Nordis.

The one photo of food. These were Italian meatloaves. We simmered them in tomato sauce.

I take notes in class. 

Sometimes we put things in pots and stir them. Annie turns the meatloaves.

When dishes get too hot we turn the heat down. Next to Annie is one of our instructors, Gabriella.

Pour!

Why are so many of my cooking memories actually of doing the dishes?

That's Maria next to me. She's from Poland.

Medhi and I chop.

On Olives and Olive Oil

Olive oil has been cultivated since at least 4000 BCE (the earliest amphorae were apparently found from around 3500 BCE), and while olives have been an important part of the culinary history of the Mediterranean, they were not always as important in Italy as today. One might imagine that the Romans simply imported the alimentary habit from Greece, but the turning point in the olive's position in Italy actually happened much later, during the mid 14th century.

As any history buff will tell you, there was really only one important event in Europe during the 14th century, and that was the black death. In Italy alone the population went from 10 million in 1340 to around 6 million by 1400 (for reference, Italy's population is now about 60 million and shrinking). Before the plague, Italy was a self-sufficient peninsula agriculturally speaking, growing its own grain and feeding its population through lots of hard manual labor. But much of Italy is very hilly, and thus not ideally suited to growing grain. Grain works better where you don't have to work so hard to get the water to the fields, and Italy ignored this fact through sheer numbers. However once the plague hit things needed to change. There were no longer enough people to grow all the grain that the country (I use the term for convenience, not because Italy was a single country at this time) needed, and it was necessary for them to manage their labor force with more care.

The solution ended up being to switch to a cash monoculture: olives. Olives need certain things to grow well: lots of space, soil with a certain PH and moisture level, lots of sun, a fair amount of rain, etc, etc. The Italian peninsula happened to be a perfect match, and with all the dead people there was suddenly a lot more space cropping up. So the survivors started to plant olive trees on these hills, and decided that growing olives was a lot easier than growing grain. They then pressed the olives for oil and traded it out to get their grain instead. The more efficient use of resources and labor led to an improvement in the quality of life in Italy, as well as the proliferation of the olive tree. (Much thanks need to go to Prof. Michael McCormick for teaching me all this and to Ellen Bryson for helping me remember it.)

On Monday our class took a field trip to the Fattoria Casamora, an agroturismo and olive farm. Here we were greeted by a man who would generally be referred to by his coworkers as "the architect", because not only was he the person who runs the olive farm and oversees the production of the oil, but he also happens to be a full time architect. He designed all the spaces inside this beautiful Italian farmstead, and also designs buildings all around Italy. His real name is Maurizio.

The architect first gave us a tour of the building, including a very large amount of public space used for the guests of the agroturismo. An agroturismo is essentially an Italian country bed and breakfast, which happens to also be a farm. They are usually known for their fabulous food, fresh from their land, and are definitely a wonderful way to experience the uniqueness of Italy and to learn about a less well-known facet of Italian culture.

The spaces were all minimalist and contemporary, very clean and comfortable. The giant lecture hall could have easily sat 70 or 80 people at least, and they even had minimalist solo piano music playing in there, just for the ambiance. This place was not a small operation, but despite that it felt like something unique and to be treasured, just 40 minutes outside of Florence.

The architect gave us a much more detailed description of the equipment than we really needed, and definitely more than I understood. It also didn't help that they had asked us to wear our chef jackets (photo op) for the day, so we weren't wearing our coats. This was the coldest day of the year so far, and inside these huge spaces with no heating it couldn't have been above 60 degrees. But what I gathered was that they use several different techniques to make their oil, though I couldn't quite understand why.

The farm actually grows six or eight different varieties of olive, and they make separate oils for each varietal. You can definitely tell that the olives produced different tasting oils--some were spicier on the finish, others milder, and we discussed what kinds of dishes and food you would pair with each variety. Oils of this quality, we were told, are never heated up; the heating process denatures the oil and ruins the subtle flavor. Rather these oils are for using raw, as a final garnish to a finished plate. And they were so wonderful and fragrant, I could definitely imagine the right oil bringing a dish to a whole new level. The picture to the side was of the casks where they store the oil over the course of a year: each one was labeled clearly with what kind of oil was inside and what the bin number was. Each bottle they fill of oil also has this same information on it, so if there is ever a problem with one of the oils, they can track it straight back to the source (or, more likely, if someone treats the oil wrong and complains, they can show that their oil isn't the one with the problem).

All of us took turns stepping out of the tour to warm ourselves by the roaring fire they had set up for us. Here Medhi takes his turn. It doesn't get this chilly in Casablanca! Despite the cold, it was a really beautiful experience.

While we are still unsure as to why we were being used for advertising purposes, Annie definitely looked great as a Vanna White for a 5 liter jug of oil. She took the job mostly because it gave her an excuse to stand by the fire.

Luckily for us, after the tour we were asked to sit down for a late afternoon snack of sorts, where the farm showed off one of its other specialty products: Tuscan beans. They made us a wonderful, hot tuscan bean soup, heavily flavored with rosemary, and then gave us a challenge: the soup needed to be dressed with olive oil to finish it off, and so we had to decide for ourselves which oil we liked best with this dish. They set a beautiful table with small bottles of all the oil their farm makes.

I took seconds, ostensibly to try a different oil and soup combination. It was a wonderful soup. Really highlighted the quality of the beans through a very simple combination. They served a lovely chianti red with the soup, and were extremely generous with all their portions.

Continuing with the theme of traditional Tuscan food, they ended the only way a proper Tuscan meal can: cantuccini and vin santo. Cantuccini are little biscotti with almonds in them, very sweet and crunchy, and vin santo is a white dessert wine, sort of similar to a moscato or a sweeter, white sherry. Of course they served a vin santo that they had made on the property, and had pulled out a bottle from 1991 to share with us. We were more than happy to help finish off every drop of it, and during the process were regaled with a complex story about the time the archietct had met the pope and been given something. At this point all the wine was getting to me though, and even if I could have understood the story in the best of shape, well I wasn't going to understand it then. The architect liked telling it though.

On the whole this was a wonderful outing, a chance for us to bond a bit as a class, learn more about a very special part of Italian culinary culture, and enjoy an evening outside of Florence. This really showed off some of the very best parts about Italy, and I couldn't help but want to stay there for much longer.

Cute old ladies make bread

At the end of last week our class was visited by the Simili sisters, a pair of really old ladies who bake bread and write books about doing so for a living. They taught us an amazing amount of things about breadmaking, and together we made about eight or ten different kinds of leavened breads, from baked loaves to fried bread to Sardinian crackers.

What stuck with me most though was the way they kneaded the bread. As you can see from the photo, these are not exactly strong ladies. I had always thought that kneading bread was a thing to be done with lots of force and energy, an activity that can make your brow bead with sweat. But these ladies were manipulating the dough so easily, and they taught me how to be gentle with the dough and to knead it by simply folding and rolling it across the table instead of trying to force the gluten molecules together. A big part of their kneading technique is called "battere": it means to hit, like with a bat (or at least that's how I memorized the word). You lift the dough into the air and then slam it against the table three times, trying to make as much noise as possible. The louder the noise, the better (again, inferred, not actually how they explained it). This allows gravity to do the work of kneading, instead of your arms.

These women held an encyclopedic knowledge of bread: after we made each bread they would discuss how if we wanted to do the bread in the style of this town instead of that city we could just shape it differently, and how different flours absorb water at different speeds, and how other parts of Italy did things in entirely different ways.

One of the coolest (and most delicious) breads we made was a very simple dough, but the shaping of it was very complex. They rolled out very long, thin strips of dough, then rolled them up like a fruit roll-up, then let them rise. Next they cut them in half, and then scored the bread very deeply. Finally they put these little rolls in the oven, from which they emerged light, fluffy, and really beautiful.

And that was my experiment in storytelling via photography. Let me know what you think. Aren't these rolls just beautiful though?

While they weren't even 100% hands-on, the lessons we had with these sisters (twins, actually) were really some of the best lessons we've had so far. They were clear even when I couldn't understand what they were saying, I felt that we really gained an in-depth knowledge in a very useful area, and I already know that this will improve my cooking skills exponentially. I have a much better understanding of why my challahs never quite worked, and I imagine that I will be making bread a lot more often now that it has been demystified even more. I think I have entirely gotten over my fear of yeast now (I used to think I could do no recipe which involved the stuff), and that in and of itself is very exciting! Hooray for old ladies making bread!

 PS. I will be making pumpkin bread tomorrow! Thank you to the four people who voted!

Pasta factory

We had our first field trip for school on Friday. It was all in Italian, like everything else, and I was exhausted mentally from dealing with so much language stuff, so I missed a lot of the presentation while I was just struggling to stay awake. We went to a small town called Strada in Chianti (the "in Chianti" is part of the name) and the factory was a small business which has been in the family for four generations.

The factory splits its time almost exactly 50/50 between making artisan pasta and commercially sold stuff. They do both pressed pasta (aka with rollers, and you can see an old one in the back on the right in this photo) and stamped pasta.

This is an old-fashioned pasta stamper, which is how you make pastas that aren't flat, generally with holes in the middle (such as macaroni, penne, and the little ones shaped like stars which go in soups). There is a disc at the bottom with the shape of the pasta, there is a hole in top, and then you press the pasta through by turning the crank at the top...just like I used to do with play-doh when I was little. And both are safe to eat!

Of course with commercial production the presses are much larger and don't need to be cranked by hand. The owner showed us a few stamps, but my favorite one was definitely the one in the very center: look carefully and you'll be able to see that it is a bunch of animals! Roosters, sheep, rabbits, birds, all in minuscule. The other stamps you see here are both for different sized spaghetti. The pasta gets made fresh and then air dried on racks. In the drying room so much pasta had fallen on the floor that we walked with a crunch because of all the pasta we were stepping on. It was a cool sensation,  to be treading on a carpet of food. A couple of us enjoyed the concept of it.

One very neat pasta that they do is a flavored one, and the pasta itself is a nice, dark brown. The flavoring they use is cacao, and while the pasta didn't have much of a different flavor, you could just barely smell the rich bitterness in it, and my mind instantly started imagining what sorts of richly flavored things you could use with the pasta....lamb, squash, cinnamon, anything rich and dark would work great. I think I might have to try making that on my own sometime!

School

Sorry that the last post was put up so late--I've been having internet problems which got in the way. I hope that I've figured out a workaround, at least temporarily, and hopefully it will change into something more permanent.

On to the subject of the day, how is school? The terrific news is that its all in Italian, and as such I am picking up a whole slew of vocab, from things about pots, pans, spices, and utensils, to being able to answer questions like "what did you do yesterday afternoon?" I really hope my language progress continues at the same rate-- if it does, I'm going to be great in Italian by the end!

As for the cooking part, I am enjoying it. The way the class works is that every day we make our lunch, always based on a traditional Italian-style menu: an antipasti (app.), a primo (pasta, usually--today we made three different kinds of sauce), a secondo (usually some kind of meat or fish dish), a few contorini (side dishes), an insalata (salad), and a dolce or posto (dessert). We work all morning to create our feast, and then finish off the day with eating. We only make small servings of each dish, which means a few bites of each--just a perfect portion. Having these kinds of menus allows us to see a lot of different dishes every day, and is a great way to learn about the food. However since we make such small portions, not everyone participates in the making of every dish, so there is a bit of watching as well.

The people in the class are diverse and international. There is only one other native English speaker, and she speaks terrific Italian. The only person with weaker language skills is from Israel, and the only person with stronger cooking skills is a native Italian. Four of us have worked professionally before (I'm the only girl in that group), and there are four guys in the class, leaving five girls. I'm bonding best with the other American--she went to Penn and is interested in some of the same food philosophies I am-- and with Patrizia, a Costa Rican mother who decided to pack everything up and go to Italy for a new experience. I like talking with her, because she understands me even when I speak half in Spanish. How healthy that is for my Italian is a whole other story.....

As promised, I'm going to share some recipes. This first recipe is the dish I was responsible for in class today: Spaghetti all'Arancia (Spaghetti with oranges). I picked the recipe because it sounded so strange and excited me--I was hoping to learn about some new flavors, and this sounded like a step in the right direction.

Ingredients: spaghetti, 4 oranges, 4 anchovies, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs, olive oil, 4 tablespoons of white wine, parsley to garnish, salt to taste.

Apparently this is some kind of traditional Tuscan dish, and it sounded so interesting to me! The recipe followed a classic flavor profile combination: sweet and salty, one that works very well in many other dishes (think about pretzels dipped in chocolate, or a carrot soup). I also have to admit I was craving to do some good knifework...it pains me to be in a kitchen and just watch. I much prefer to cut things. The recipe called for the oranges to be cut into supremes, a technique which involves cutting the thin skin off of each slice so that you only have the inner pulp. When I started to attack the oranges today, someone whispered to a classmate that it was clear I had learned the technique elsewhere. I smiled to myself. I'll be the first to admit my pride :D

Put the pasta on to boil. Put a large amount of oil in a hot pan, along with some garlic that has just been lightly mashed with the side of a knife but still left mostly whole. Let the garlic sweat for a moment, then add the anchovies and stir it around until they disintegrate. Add the breadcrumbs and toast them, then add the wine and orange slices and let some of the liquid evaporate. Cook for a few minutes under a high flame, being careful not to let anything burn. Add the pasta and parsley, mix well, and enjoy. If done right, the texture of the sauce should be a little pasty and gummy, helping the pasta stick together well.

It was about as good as it sounded. I was mightily disappointed by this, as I had the hopes that I had found a new and wonderful flavor combination. there was just something about warm orange slices that didn't work. I want to say it was partially because of the flavor combination with the wine, and partially because of the fishiness. It was just too much in a plate, and while it wasn't disgusting, I didn't finish my portion.

Don't worry, I promise to put up a delicious recipe tomorrow to make up for this one. I just want to share recipes with stories, and this recipe definitely did! I'm so glad that school is going well and that I'm settling in to life here, and glad to be learning, even if it isn't always about learning how to cook good food.