The Food Maven Diary
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The City Cook and Italian Shopping
I can’t believe I listened to the whole thing, the entire 22 minutes of my interview with Kate McDonough at her great website. The audio interview is beautifully edited, making me sound quite professorial, going on and on (and on) so fluently about Southern Italian food. In reality, I rambled more. But Kate and her techy husband, Mark, gave me gloss. I’m very impressed with the sound quality, too. Play it, you’ll see.
I must, however, confess to one major blooper on my part. At one point, discussing the various forms of fresh Southern Italian pastas, I stupidly (forgetfully, mistakenly) say that in Puglia they call a certain handmade shape filei or simply maccheroni. I should have said that in Calabria they call this type of pasta filei.
Boy, am I in trouble with my Calabrese friends here in Brooklyn. I’ll see if Kate can somehow edit the word “Calabria” into my discourse as seamlessly as she has constructed the rest of the interview. If you get to the end, by the way, you’ll hear me tout my favorite New York City sources for Italian foods and products. They make it possible for me to live an Italian life in Brooklyn, as you will hear me say to Kate.
To synopsize, the stores are DiPalo on Grand and Mott Sts. in Manhattan, D. Coluccio & Sons on 60th St. and 12th Ave. in Brooklyn, plus Costco for some inexpensive but high quality Italian tuna and olive oil, and Fairway, for their Pugliese and Sicilian olive oils and cheese.
I am also lucky enough to have a great specialty food store practically around the corner: The Blue Apron on Union St. near Seventh Ave. in Park Slope carries, for the price of convenience, almost everything Italian I could ever want (to eat) in life (naturally, I exaggerate), including the all-important Royal Crown bread from the RC bakery on 14th Ave. and 65th St. in Brooklyn, among other great loaves.
Kate has also written a review of “The Southern Italian Table” and offers my recipe for pasta and chickpeas, one of the dishes in the book that I prepare frequently. Kate caught me using Goya-brand canned chickpeas, but, yes, I sometimes do think ahead enough to boil my own chickpeas -- ceci (pronounced che-chi) in Italian. When people ask me if my recipes are tested, I say, “No, they are lived with.” I don’t put anything in a book that I don’t myself love to cook and eat – and do so over and over again. Just last night, for instance, I made potatoes and cabbage (with a little pancetta and hot pepper) to go with a roast chicken and I followed my own recipe.
Now go check out www.thecitycook.com. It’s a great web site even without me.
