Visiting Paris again, we had to stop at our favorite wine bar, Juvéniles. Sadly, our friend, Tim Johnston, went home to England at the same time we arrived. Nonetheless, his daughter, Margeaux and her husband, and accomplished chef, treated us well.
Dinner included foie gras, sautéed mushrooms, fresh scallops from Brittany, guinea hen, and more!
I had a friend ask me that question the other day.
Seems that some people aren’t sure how to pronounce the name of this blog. I guess it’s time to explain it a little…
First, the pronunciation. It’s \ˈliv \ the \ˈliv \…as in “Live for today”….or…”Live to a ripe old age.” Both “lives” rhyme with “give.”
It is not /līv/ the /līv/ (rhymes with “hive”) or any combination of the two, like \ˈliv \ the /līv/.
Where this name came from is a story that my wife and I disagree on. Our versions are similar, but not exactly the same.
Here’s my version: I have a good friend named Lee, who is up on every trip we take, every restaurant we go to, every amazing place we see in this world. Having traveled to many countries, we’ve been fortunate to come home with some wonderful stories.
After one such trip, my Lee said to me: “Wow…you guys really know how to live!”
My wife has quirky fun way with words and her response was: “Everybody knows how to live. The secret is to live the live!” Since then, we use the phrase “live the live” to describe anything that would normally be described as “living the life” or “living it up.”
Live the live simply means to live your life to the fullest by whatever means you are able to do so. You can live the live by climbing a mountain, dining at a Michelin-star restaurant, or simply soaking up the sun on a beautiful beach in the Caribbean.
But if none of that is your speed, you could live the live by sitting in front of your TV on a Sunday afternoon, watching football while chowing down on pizza and beer.
Live the live is whatever makes your life special to you.
For me, live the live means traveling for food…sharing experiences with friends…meeting wonderful new people in far away places…and enjoying a few cocktails along the way.
Whatever your definition of live the live is, I hope that you can achieve it more than once in 2019.
Thanks so much for my reading my blog!
Despite the large Italian community we have here in southern New England, there’s no exceptional pizza to speak of. I suppose you could say “them’s fightin’ words!” but if it’s here, I haven’t found it yet. (Fellini Pizza is about the best in Providence.)
So where is the excellent pizza? New York City, of course. OK…maybe I’m prejudiced because I’m a Brooklyn boy, and worked in a variety of pizzerias in my younger days, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if you want the best pizza–or bagel, for that matter–you’ve got to go to the Big Apple. (Even the most excellent “Frank Pepe’s” in New Haven, CT is a mere stop on the way to the real deal.)
Pizza in NYC can be confusing as there are many different varieties to choose from. Brick oven pizzas abound, but there are pizza lovers who won’t settle for anything less than a pizza baked in a coal-fired oven. The extremely high heat of a coal-fired oven cooks the pizza in just a minute, and imparts a crusty, charred flavor you can’t get any other way. There are only about a dozen coal-fired pizzerias in New York City, and many of them have been around for 100 years or more, so it’s definitely a matter of making a special trip to enjoy this style of pizza. (Providence now has its own coal-fired pizza, but it can’t compare.)
Plenty of good, basic pizza, too: the traditional thin, round Neopolitan pie, and the thicker, square Sicilian pie, baked in that Blodgett pizza oven we all knew in our early pizza-making days.
Several years ago, when I heard through the pizza lovers’ grapevine that a “new” pizza was out there, one that was gaining a cult following, I needed to know about it. And more importantly, I needed to taste it!
It’s called Pizza Montanara, and there’s only a few pizzerias in New York City that serve it. The one I go to without fail is PizzArte, on West 55th, and I have to say it’s the ultimate pizza.
Pizza Montanara, sitting next to me in the car, just waiting to be devoured.
What makes Pizza Montanara so spectacular, quite simply, is that the dough is fried in oil for 30 seconds, flipped and fried another 30 seconds, before they put the sauce and cheese on it, and then they cook it in a wood burning oven. It is not greasy. The frying process puffs the dough up and creates a beautiful pillow-like softness that I’ve never experienced in a pizza before. Imagine a pizza cloud and you’ve got Pizza Montanara.
Where to get Pizza Montanara.
I’ve made Pizza Montanara at home, with some success. I poured a few inches of olive oil in a large skillet, stretched my dough into a small pie, and gently floated it into the pan. Using a spatula and tongs, I was able to flip the fried dough over after about 30 seconds, then removed it from the pan after another 30 seconds. It was golden and puffy. I quickly sauced and cheesed it and in the oven it went. But it’s a messy process I’d rather leave to the pros.
Every time I post a photo of Pizza Montanara on Facebook or Instagram, my friends don’t believe that this could possibly be a life-changing pizza experience. It is. I just came back from Manhattan, and we devoured 3 pizzas on the ride home. Nothing makes New York traffic easier to bear than a Pizza Montanara in the seat next to you!
Pizza Arte also makes one helluva gluten-free pizza.
It takes a few weeks for this limoncello recipe to be ready, so plan ahead!
It starts with beautiful lemons…
Many years ago, my wife and I visited the Amalfi coast, and we spent several nights on the beautiful island of Capri. On our last night, we dined at the historic Grand Hotel Quisisana, and our meal ended with a glass of the most delicious limoncello I ever had.
I asked the waiter if it was possible to get the recipe of the limoncello, and he made a big deal about the recipe being a “secret.” Though disappointed, I understood, and I left Capri thinking that I would never taste it again.
Sure, you can buy limoncello from Capri in a bottle, but what fun is that?
Two weeks later, now back at home, I was reading the latest issue of Conde Nast Traveler, and there in black and white, was the Quisisana limoncello recipe! WTF?
After making many batches of this limoncello, I started experimenting with other citrus, and the most successful by far was with grapefruit. Now I make a batch of each–lemon and grapefruit–every year. It’s important to use 100-proof vodka in this recipe. Most vodka is 80-proof, so you’ll need to go to a liquor store with a better selection to find it. Absolut makes a good one, as does Stoli.
Four ingredients, easy to make. The toughest part is waiting for it to mellow a bit.
4 lbs. of lemons, but you only use the zest!
Just the zest!
Peel the zest off all the lemons, making sure you don’t get any of the white pith that could make the limoncello bitter. Place all the zest in the bottom of a glass jar with a lid that can hold all the vodka.
Pour the vodka on top of the lemon zest pieces, seal the container, and keep it at room temperature for a week, swirling the jar around gently once a day.
Vodka and zest.
On the sixth day, combine the sugar and water in a pot over medium-high heat, and stir until all the sugar completely dissolves. Remove from the heat, cover, and let it thoroughly cool to room temperature (overnight is best.)
On day seven, strain the lemon zest, pouring the infused vodka into a clean glass jar. Discard the lemon zest.
Pour the sugar/water mixture into the vodka and mix well.
At this point, you can pour the finished product into bottles, but let it mellow for about a month before drinking.
I keep my limoncello refrigerated.
I posted an Instagram photo of soup I made the other day, and had quite a few friends ask me what the recipe was. My little girl got hit with a cold the other day, and I knew only one thing would help: a bowl of my homemade chicken soup. But rather than adding pasta or potatoes, I decided to give it an Asian kick. It was simple, delicious, and soothing.
Making the ingredients for a great bowl of chicken soup, or wonton soup for that matter, takes a little time. But once you’ve got them, you can freeze them, so that putting them all together takes no time at all.
The key to a great chicken soup is making your own chicken stock. Let’s be honest, nothing out of a carton can possibly compare. For one thing, I buy the best quality pastured chicken I can get. Here in Rhode Island, that means buying from local farms like Pat’s Pastured in East Greenwich. They’re at my farmers market every weekend.
I prefer buying a whole bird, roasting it for dinner, then removing all the meat from the carcass before I start making stock. If I’m making fried chicken for dinner, I’ll cut the raw bird up into pieces, then drop the raw carcass into a pot to start the process. Either way–a cooked bird or raw bird works great. (Just remember that a cooked bird can have some salt on it, so you don’t want to add any.)
Making chicken stock is incredibly easy. It just takes time, which is an ingredient many people don’t have enough of. Honestly, though, if you’ve got time to binge-watch your favorite show on Netflix or watch a football game on a Sunday afternoon, you can make stock. If you can’t make stock at the same time you’re making dinner, simply put the carcass in a Ziploc bag and toss it in the freezer until you’ve got more time.
If you don’t want to deal with cutting up a chicken carcass, buy a pack of chicken parts. It doesn’t really matter what parts you use, as long as it’s something on the bone. You want all that good fat and gelatin.
Once you’re ready to make stock, fill a large pot with clean, filtered water. Drop in the chicken carcass or pieces. Chop an onion in half (you don’t have to peel it unless it’s dirty), 2 or 3 celery spears, and 2 or 3 carrots. (Wash the carrots well, or just peel them.) Everything goes in the pot. Turn the burner on high, and let it come to a boil. If it’s boiling too hard and spilling over, reduce the heat to medium.
Let it go for at least an hour, two is better. If it looks like too much water has evaporated, simply add more. How intense you want your stock is really up to you. You can reduce it like crazy to make something very concentrated, or you can cook it down to a point where it’s user-friendly right away. The best way to know is to taste it along the way.
When making your stock, feel free to add any other ingredients you like. But I stick with only the onion, carrots, and celery–avoiding garlic, salt, bay leaves, and other flavorings–adding them only when I use the stock at a later time in a particular soup or recipe.
Once the stock is done, I let it cool a bit before I strain it and pour it into individual plastic containers with tightly sealing lids. (Don’t use glass if the stock is going into the freezer!) Then it’s off to the freezer until I need to use it in a recipe.
When it’s time to make soup, I run the frozen container under warm water, and drop the frozen “block of stock” into a sauce pan, adding a little water to it, and setting the burner on medium to thaw. Then it’s time to decide on what I want to put in my soup. Most of the time that simply means using whatever I’ve got in my fridge.
When I made my almost-instant wonton soup the other day, I had some carrots and kale in the fridge. I peeled and thinly sliced the carrots, and I removed the stem from the kale before chopping it up. I dropped the veggies in the soup and brought the heat up to high to get it to a boil.
If I’m using potatoes, I usually peel and chop them into small cubes and add them raw to the boiling stock. If I’m adding chicken, I usually choose already-cooked chopped breast meat. And if I’m using pasta, I use dry or pre-cooked, but I only add the pre-cooked pasta at the very end to avoid it turning mushy. When making chicken noodle soup, I add a pinch of salt and, for flavor, a pinch of dried bouquet garni to the pot.
With my wonton soup, I skipped the pasta and potatoes, because I had a package of dumplings in my freezer. A half-dozen of them, still frozen, go right into the boiling water. They’re fully cooked in about 5 minutes.
These dumplings were delicious in my soup.
Once the dumplings are cooked, the soup is done! I turn the heat off, and add a couple of drops of sesame oil to the soup, mixing it in well.
Once I’ve placed the soup in the bowl, a few splashes of soy sauce, and it’s ready to serve.
This is my version of a holiday drink I was introduced to by my mother-in-law from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I knew I was marrying into the right family after one sip!
This classic is loaded with sugar. But then…so is everything else around the holidays!
Boil the water and sugar, making sure the sugar dissolves. Turn off the heat and steep the tea bags in the liquid for 10 minutes. Discard the tea bags.
Add the OJ, lemonade and whiskey. Mix well, then pour it all into a freezeable container with a lid. Freeze.
To serve: Scoop the slush out of the container (it doesn’t freeze solid) and mix in a tall glass with 7 Up.
Over the years, I’ve learned to cure and smoke my own bacon, from heritage breeds like Berkshire. I’ll make my own pork sausage on occasion. But the need to make a classic Italian dish, genuine spaghetti carbonara, required that I learn how to cure an unusual cut of pork I’ve never used before.
In the beginning, I could only find huge jowls that required them to be cut and weighed to mix with the right amount of cure.
Pork jowls with a good sprinkling of the cure, ready to be wrapped.
Cured, rinsed and dried guanciale. Cut the jowls into smaller pieces before freezing. A little goes a long way!
Let’s face it: there’s no such thing as healthy eggnog. This recipe kicks ass but is also a heart attack in a glass.
My buddy, Rick Sammarco, a wicked talented bartender, credits his father, Al, for this eggnog. The original recipe calls for a lot more of everything. I’ve cut it down to a “more reasonable” size.
A word about salmonella: Many people are concerned about it, and you need to decide what works for you. Some recipes tell you to make your eggnog weeks in advance to “sterilize” the drink with all the booze you’ve added to it. I’m not sure that really works. Look…if you’re really worried about it, maybe this drink isn’t for you. I use raw eggs in my Caesar salad dressing and in other recipes, so I’m willing to risk it here.
If you’re lucky, some stores–(though very few of them, and none near me)–sell pasteurized eggs. They say the taste is a bit funky, but that it does remove the salmonella.
Let the ice cream soften 1 day in the fridge. Mix the ice cream, eggs, vanilla, half and half in a blender.
Add the spices and liquor. Blend until it’s frothy.
Taste, and add more cinnamon and nutmeg if you like.
After it’s fully blended, let it sit in the fridge, covered, for at least 12-24 hours for the flavors to blend. Even longer is better.
This is a story about something that is near and dear to my heart…and liver.
I’ve been making Krupnikas for over 40 years. (And no, I won’t be posting my secret recipe here.) It’s a honey-based liqueur that is popular in eastern Europe, especially in countries like Lithuania, where my parents were born. Though most of the Krupnikas that I’ve tasted is similar, no two recipes are exactly alike…and that’s where the arguments begin!
I have many friends that make Krupnikas. Some use the leaner-meaner approach (like me)…others go for the everything-in-one-basket approach. I’m not sure that more is necessarily better. Some friends claim that it isn’t real Krupnikas if you don’t use black pepper. But I’ve been to many pubs and restaurants in Lithuania and have never been served Krupnikas with black pepper in it. Other recipes include ginger, turmeric, saffron, and heavy amounts of anise. I prefer a lighter approach.
If you Google “Krupnikas,” you’ll find many different recipes…some pretty good, some incredibly awful…but none as good as mine! I use grain alcohol…there’s no distilling involved. There were times in the last 40 years when grain alcohol was not readily available to me, and so my Krupnikas production came to a screeching halt for a while. But these days, you can usually find it within a short ride from home just about anywhere you live. (Here in New England, it’s sold in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.) Desperate times without grain alcohol forced me to try vodka instead, but I never liked the way it came out.
Krupnikas uses a variety of unusual spices, none of which have their origins in Lithuania, so it’s interesting to hear how these exotic ingredients made their way via various trade routes to eastern Europe.
The story goes that Krupnikas was created by Benedictine monks in the 1500’s, and that it became popular in both Lithuania and Poland for celebrations like birthdays, weddings, and holidays. But when the Soviets shut down all Krupnikas production, the recipes went “underground,” passed down from generation to generation through closely guarded family recipes. That’s why everyone thinks their family recipe is the best!
One pot for honey, one pot for the various spices I use…to be combined later.
My own Krupnikas making story started with my uncle, who would make large batches of the stuff in his tiny Richmond Hill, Queens, NY kitchen. Because I am the godfather of my cousin, his son, I received a bottle as a gift from my uncle every Christmas. By New Year’s, that bottle would be gone. It wasn’t long before I got very tired of waiting 51 weeks for another bottle and I asked my uncle if he would share his recipe with me. He never did that exactly, but he did let me sit in on a brewing session and take notes in a cramped corner of his kitchen.
My wife, an artist, helped me design my own label.
I took my notes home from my uncle’s house and tried to decipher what I wrote. Since there was no such thing as the internet back then (what we call “the dark ages,” kids), I drove all over New York City in search of some of the more exotic spices used in making my uncle’s Krupnikas recipe. I became a regular at several Asian and Indian stores, where, at first, they looked at this tall, geeky white dude somewhat suspiciously as I brought my spices to the counter for purchase.
Over the decades, through trial and error, I changed my uncle’s original recipe to the one that I proudly call my own today. You can’t buy it in a store, but if you have tons of money and want to go into business with me, I’m sure we can work something out! Or become my best friend and you’ll get a bottle every Christmas…and then you’ll be the one waiting 51 weeks for another!
Versions of Krupnikas are available in liquor stores: Old Krupnik is a Polish liqueur, and the German brand Barenjager is another. And many whiskies, like Dewar’s and Jack Daniels, now have honey-flavored spirits as well.
Though quite different from my own recipe, there are two authentic Lithuanian style Krupnikas liqueurs made in the United States by acquaintances of mine.
Based out of Durham, North Carolina, the Brothers Vilgalys Spirits Company (www.brothersvilgalys.com) has a pepperier version that uses local North Carolina wildflower honey. President of the company, Rim Vilgalys, the son of my good childhood friend from New York, has done what I never got around to do: make this fabulous elixir available to the public. You’ll find it at ABC stores throughout the state of North Carolina.
The second brand is made and sold in the New York area and goes by the name of KAS Krupnikas. (www.kasspirits.com)
Both are pretty darn good. But are they as good as mine? I think you already know my answer to that question!
Sveiks! (Cheers!)
So I’m watching a video of Andrew Zimmern grilling chicken wings using an apricot-mustard glaze after he marinated them in yogurt and threw them on a hot grill. They looked amazing. But I had ribs already thawed in my fridge (Curve ball 1). I thought: How bad could this recipe be on pork? I gave it a shot.
Combine the ingredients in a bowl, whisking them together. Set it aside.
I got a large bowl out, and cut the ribs into smaller pieces, about 3 ribs per piece. I placed them in the bowl, threw in about a 1/2 cup of plain yogurt, and mixed it around until all sides of the ribs were coated. I let the ribs stand this way at room temperature for about an hour, while I headed to the grill to set it up.
The plan was to light a decent amount of coals that would ash over and then be pushed to one side of the grill, placing the ribs over indirect heat on the other side. They would cook this way until done, with a nice grilled smokey char on the edges.
That’s the little mouse home on the left.
Unfortunately, when I opened my grill, I found that a family of mice had made themselves a happy home inside my grill, and I didn’t have the heart to toss them out, babies and all. (Curve ball 2.) So I needed to find another way to cook the ribs. I headed to my smoker.
I have an electric digital smoker, which allows me to set the temperature and basically walk away, only returning to add smoking chips every hour so. I set the temperature to 275 degrees.
I removed the ribs from the bowl, placing them on a cutting board, sprinkling one seasoning on half the ribs, and another seasoning on the other half. The first half got my favorite basic seasoning: Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. The second half received my favorite Cajun seasoning: Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning. The ribs went into the smoker for about 2 hours.
I thought I would smoke the ribs longer than 2 hours, but then I realized it would soon be time to pick my daughter up from school and take her to guitar lessons. (Curve ball 3.)
Out of the smoker.
I took the ribs out of the smoker, one half batch at a time, and placed them under the broiler of my toaster oven, flipping them over once I saw the edges of the ribs get nice and dark. This gave them a bit of that char I was looking for that the grill would’ve given me…had I not had a family of mice in my way!
After a few minutes under the broiler.
After broiling the ribs on both sides, I placed them in aluminum foil, brushing them on both sides with the apricot-mustard glaze, wrapping the aluminum tightly around them in 2 packages. I placed them on a baking sheet and into a pre-heated 175-degree oven.
Tightly wrapped and into the oven they go.
The low temperature in the oven would continue to cook the ribs low and slow, and the glaze would add a little steam to make them tender, and hopefully, delicious. Off to school and guitar lessons I went.
Unwrapping the ribs after a few hours.
We returned a few hours later, and I placed the sheet pan with the ribs on the top of the stove to cool for a bit, allowing the ribs to rest.
One of each: with Lawry’s and Tony Chachere’s.
Using a bit more of the apricot-mustard glaze, I brushed the ribs one more time and placed them under the broiler one last time before feasting. It was worth that extra effort to get them nice and caramelized.
The final verdict: They came out great, but I preferred the ribs seasoned with Tony Cachere’s better. The Cajun seasoning added a nice kick of heat to counterbalance the sweetness of the apricot-mustard glaze.
Live the Live ™ 