Snow Madness

Well, this seems to be the winter to remember!  A historic December snow storm left a whopping 17 inches here in Easton and this weekend, Superbowl weekend no less, we got blasted again!  I measured about 18 or 19 inches of total snowfall here in Easton.  This makes last weekend’s storm seem like a drop in the bucket.  Personally, I don’t mind the snow, but as a business owner I hate it.  The bad weather has resulted in worse than usual sales during our slow season.  It’s beginning to feel like it only ever snows on the weekend!  I have to tighten our ordering and  scheduling to compensate for the decreased cash flow.  So please forgive me if we are out of your favorite obscure pasta shape.  It will return in due time, just like warm weather and sunny days.

 

More Press For the Scrumptious Pantry!!

Lee has done it again– her products are getting the attention they deserve!!
Daily Candy gave her a big thumbs up in their recent post.  Check it out.

 

Pasta Shapes

This past spring CHOW.com published an article aimed at showing readers how to pair pasta shapes with sauces.  The Washington Post did the same thing with a big diagram.  The bottom line in the CHOW article is that “delicate noodles are for delicate sauces while heartier noodles are for heartier sauces.”  Then CHOW says “it’s not always that simple”, so let’s take a closer look.

Every one agrees that there are no hard and fast rules about what sauce goes with what pasta shape.  I think that personal taste should always come first when making food choices.  However, in the world of pasta there are some guidelines that are just too old to mess with.  For example, it is always fettucine alfredo, and parmesan does not belong on fish pasta.  There are good reasons behind these two traditions; fettucine was used by the chef who invented that dish.  The flavor of cheese can overpower seafood.  Then there are some ‘rules’ that have no logical explanation–why should you make tomato sauce with a wooden spoon?  Because that is just the way it is done.  And by the way, don’t add the salt until the end.  I’m just saying.

Let’s get the other ‘MUSTS’ out of the way; spaghetti goes with bolognese sauce, bucatini is the pasta for al’amatriciana, pesto matches trofie and linguine goes with vongole.  Those combinations have regional histories, an important factor to consider when matching sauce to pasta.  Only Ligurians eat trofie.  Basil pesto is from Liguria.  So, I recommend you trust the Ligurian tradition of pairing a little twisty pasta with pesto.  Trofie can be hard to find; fusilli, gigli, rotini, or gemelli are fine substitutions.  And really, if you like linguine then make linguine, but know that in Liguria they prefer trofie.  Another super-regional pasta shape is orecchiette, it is only eaten in Puglia.  The same goes for malloreddus from Sardinia.  The Setaro pasta brand from outside Naples doesn’t make either of those shapes.  They just don’t eat them.

Pesto, like butter and sage, oil and garlic are thin sauces, these are very flexible because they cling to any shape.  Pasta with a hole in it, like rigatoni, would be superfluous for a thin sauce.  Pasta with a hole in it is more suited to thicker cheese sauces and sauces with small diced vegetables or meat because the pasta can catch those pieces.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but thin sauces with peas or a small amount of chunks like prosciutto and peas, shrimp and peas, or al’amatriciana are best with long pastas.  It is easier to eat the little pieces of peas or whatever if you fork them after twisting up the pasta.  That is the idea, anyway.

Wide, flat pasta is good with thicker meat ragus because the braised, raggedy pieces cling to the face of the pasta.  By the same token, thick cheesy sauces do a nice job coating the pasta surface.  Wide flat pastas include pappardelle, tagliatelle, and  fettucine.  To me, the thicker the sauce is, the wider the pasta should be.  But again, some people like to have maccheroni or rotini with this type of sauce.  I think it is some kind of “mac and cheese” habit but I prefer maccheroni only when the sauce is really chunky or if the whole thing is baked.  [Again, some things can't be explained!  Where did mac and cheese come from??]

Very short pasta like tubetti, ditali, stelle, riso, orzo or acini di pepe are good for soups (thick or thin) and pasta salads.  The main reason for this is that the little pieces can easily fit into your spoon.  So if you are making soup and you only have spaghetti, break it into bite-sized pieces.

Generally, I believe that when a recipe calls for a certain shape of pasta you should think more broadly about it.  Is it short, long or tiny?  What do I like/have on hand?  Unless you are making one of those specific dishes, deciding what shape goes with what sauce doesn’t matter too much.  I think that the Italians enjoy playing with their pasta and you should too.  After all, they make pasta in the shape of butterflies, shells, pens, hats, ears, stars, little mouths, radiators, and hair!!  So play with your food too, it doesn’t matter as long as you enjoy it.  Just don’t serve it to any Italians.  [Remember when Anthony Bourdain served Jamie Oliver's spaghetti carbonara with meatballs to the Italians?  They said it was disgusting! Go to the 2:00 minute mark.]

 

finally, we are organized

Sometimes when I am upstairs at the desk a customer will try to open the door next to my desk because they are looking for the bathroom. The door is not marked and we keep it locked because it is really not for customers. The bathroom is downstairs.  You may be curious about what is behind that door. Well, until last Monday it was not that exciting. Embarassing, even. It is a storage closet.  Now it is a wonder of organization!  A week ago Sandy, Steph and I put together five sets of beautiful steel shelves.  Where there once was an annoying pallet there is now a designated shelf for our 50 # bags of flour, sugar, chocolate chips, extra tote bags, plastic containers and light bulbs. Christmas has come early to Piazza! We are all so so thrilled that we can walk inside that space instead of tripping.

 

I met Lidia Bastianich

This past Friday my family went to meet Lidia Bastianich in Virginia!  She is on tour promoting her new book, Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy.  Unlike the Sarah Palin book tour, we did not have to camp out the night before but we did have to wait in a line for an hour.  Lidia looked great and it was really fun.  I brought a Piazza canvas bag for her, filled with some of our more unusual items; pistachio paste, tropea onion spread, and a Scrumptious Pantry cantuccione among other things.  She was happy to take the bag and since she was traveling with her assistant, book rep, and the executive chef of her Kansas City restaurant I’m sure those provisions won’t last long.  Her new book is great, it is all about the foods of lesser known regions of Italy, Liguria, Val d’Aosta, Lombardia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Molise, etc.  At this time of year, I am thrilled to find good recipes for celery root and she has two!  I was also very glad to find a ‘white bolognese’ sauce in the Emilia-Romagna section.  I don’t know exactly when but about eight years ago the New York Times Sunday magazine printed a similar recipe that my mom made.  I think of it often.  Another great find is a recipe for Cima alla Genovese, something that I seen but haven’t been able to try.  I saw slices of it in Torino at a shop called Baita Formaggio.  It is a boiled veal roast stuffed with vegetables and hard boiled eggs.  She says that hers is the home-version, I imagine the deli version I saw might be made from ground meat more like mortadella.  I didn’t think to ask her! 

 

Scrumptious Pantry Press

Woohoo!  The Scrumptious Pantry was featured by Fancy Food Magazine’s blog as an editor’s choice.  I am proud to represent such a notable company.  Lee and I are also working on gift baskets that feature the artisans she represents.  More to come of gift baskets soon!

 

MOTO GUZZI

One of our customers pulled up to our store on his 1983 Moto Guzzi motorcycle and we were all very impressed.

Che bello!

Moto Guzzi is owned by Piaggio which also owns the Vespa and Aprilia brands.  Piaggio is based in Tuscany but its motorini are dominant in every region of Italy.

If you have a Moto Guzzi motorcycle or an Aprilia or a Vespa moto, please ride it to the store!  I will take your picture and put it online.  If you have a Moto Guzzi and haven’t heard, there is a club in Maryland that meets at the Ingrams Diner in Jefferson, MD.  Contact Rep Bill Sharp, 410-551-6939 or check this website for more information.

 

What to do with a preserved lemon

Food & Wine October 2009

DJ brought this wonderful recipe to my attention last week– Grilled Salmon with Preserved Lemon and Green Olives.  I think it sounds delicious.  It is printed in the October issue of Food & Wine magazine under a section written by Joe Bastianich.  I can’t argue against someone who grew up eating Lidia’s food and now co-owns restaurants with Mario Batali.  He must be on to something. We must be on to something too because we started carrying preserved lemons about four weeks ago!

The recipe is basically this: make a marinade from the preserved lemon, grill the salmon, and serve it with olives.

Give your grill one last hurrah with this salmon dinner.

 

Euro USA Show

This Tuesday I was flown out to Cleveland to attend EuroUSA’s food show.  EuroUSA is one of my food distributors out here in Easton, even though their local office is in Sterling, Virginia.  I guess that EuroUSA racks up airline miles transporting their fresh fish and that was how I was able to be on an airplane from BWI with 13 other people serviced from the Sterling office.  The Euro show was fun, I got to meet other people who buy the same products that I do; the cheese buyer for Dean & Deluca in Georgetown, the deli buyer for Arrowine, the owner of the Atwater cafes in Maryland, the owner of a natural food store that has been open for 5 months, a buyer for Balducci’s, and the food buyer for the Curious Grape in Shirlington, Virginia, Massimo Fabbri the executive chef at Tosca and Mateo Venini the chef at Posto (both are in DC).  In Brooklyn, I knew many of the local buyers and chefs because they would shop at the Bedford Cheese Shop but in Easton I don’t get many visitors who run stores like mine so that was a treat. 

Let’s get down to it, I had some good food at this show.  I was able to try foods that I have seen on the product list but have not ordered, anchovies with chili flakes, salami from Colombus, pate from Fra’ Mani, a young artisanal Asiago, new tortas from Ines Rosales (which you will certainly see soon), rolls from Tribeca Ovens, goat milk butter, and truffle salami from Creminelli.  I discovered that EuroUSA is selling great Italian wines in Ohio and they are working on their Maryland liquor lisence.  I guess I should have given you the live update via twitter, but I’m old fashionedd and I made you all wait for the blog post.

 

Mozzarella Hell

I want to begin by apologizing to all our customers for any trouble they may have had related to mozzarella from our store this week.  If you recently purchased a mozzarella that was not to your satisfaction, please come in and let us know.  We will happily refund your money or replace your mozzarella with a fresh one, just let us know when you come in.  We’ve been having some trouble with our suppliers.

This week of July 13th will go down on the record as “mozzarella hell” and I will refer to this week as such for years to come.  Let me tell you why.  The story revolves around two suppliers, CW and NJ.  On Monday I ordered a case of buffalo mozzarella from CW and I decided not to order our fresh mozzarella from them.  For the last few weeks an increasing portion of our mozzarella order was arriving with brown spots.  I would set those pieces aside, call my sales representative and receive a credit for those; problem solved, except for the fact that I had less stock to sell for the weekend.  My sales rep was aware of the mozzarella problem, I had complained to him and asked him what the problem was-  were they sitting in the warehouse too long, were they on the delivery truck too long and what changed?  No response.  It was disappointing but was a problem that we were able to absorb.

On Tuesday I came to work and found that two customers  had called the night before and complained that the mozzarella they had bought during the weekend was sour by Sunday.  I was angry with CW because I had no way of knowing that those mozzarella were bad, they looked normal.   I was embarrassed.  I wrote a very angry letter to the regional manager of CW (whom I met two weeks ago) along with copies of the notes from my customers.  I didn’t hear from CW so I decided to order my fresh mozzarella from another supplier, NJ, and I expected it to arrive on Wednesday.

Wednesday morning and it seems that the delivery from NJ is late.  I call the company and they told me that they are having computer trouble and that all deliveries are running 5-7 hours late.  We start to tell our customers that we are switching mozz suppliers and that the delivery is coming that evening and offer the buffalo mozzarella from CW.  Soon after, a customer comes in and says that the buffalo mozz he bought yesterday was sour.  We check another bag and sure enough, all the pieces are bad although none are bubbled or have any indication of their expiration.  Now I’m really mad at CW and I call my rep and demand he find out what is going on.  He tells me that he can give me a credit on the buffalo mozz but he doesn’t really know what’s going on.  He told me that he asked one of his other accounts about the fresh mozz because, apparently, I’m the only one who has been complaining about this problem.  The local restaurant that orders the same mozz from CW has noticed that the mozz have been arriving with spots but that they just cut those out before they cook with them and didn’t think to report the problem.  How gross.  I left the store before the NJ order arrived because they said that the driver from NJ won’t be there until 7 pm.

Thursday morning I looked around for the mozz from NJ but there is none and it’s not even on the invoice.  I call NJ and ask for my sales rep, J.  My rep is not there today but E says that he can help me.  I explain that I ordered two cases of mozz on Tuesday with a woman but there is no evidence of those pieces on my invoice.  E says he’s going to do some digging around and call me back.  While I’m waiting to hear from E I’m trying to figure out what to do because another day is passing and we don’t have any mozzarella.  Should I drive up to the CW warehouse and pick mozz in person, making sure its fresh?  Drive to NJ and pick up my two cases in person?  Drive out to another supplier in VA and pick something there?  See if NJ can ship me the mozz overnight?  E calls back at 11:30 and says that he found my order, he sees their mistake and he offers to overnight ship the mozz before I even have the chance to insist on it.  I am relieved that I won’t have to spend Thursday driving around and that I will be able to enjoy my day off on Friday knowing that mozzarella is on its way.

On Friday morning my assistant manager DJ calls NJ because it’s 11:30 and the mozzarella hasn’t arrived.  The woman at NJ says that the mozzarella was shipped out yesterday but that it won’t be at Piazza until 3 pm because it costs (them) twice as much to get it to us before noon.  DJ is angry because Friday morning is second only to Saturday morning in sales but she bites her tongue because she figures that the lady at NJ doesn’t know that.  At 2:50 pm the mozzarella still hasn’t arrived so DJ calls NJ again and asks the same woman for the tracking number of our package.  The woman tells her to hold on while she looks for it.  She comes back and informs DJ that the mozz never got sent because while they were packing it up on Thursday they noticed that it was out of date and decided not to send it to us.  So why had the woman at NJ told her that it was on its way??  She answered that she had heard the delivery guys talking about the mozz yesterday so she had assumed it had been sent out.  She doesn’t know why no one called us but E isn’t there and neither is our rep, J.  So DJ calls me and asks me what I want to do.

The sad thing is, at this point, I’m not surprised that there is more drama.  I mean, since Monday, I have burned my arm pretty badly, cut my finger, found out that farro won’t be available until the end of August, forgotten to go to a radio interview, forgotten to order Sesamo bread, and realized too late that Altimura bread and provolone were out of stock (and today this post was completely erased and had to be re-written)!  Why couldn’t something else go wrong?  I called NJ myself.  I asked for the woman who was there earlier, the man on the phone said that she was gone but that he could help me.  I told him the whole story and I said “whatever can be done at this point NEEDS TO BE DONE, send me ANY mozzarella.”  He said they don’t send things out on Fridays.  I said drop it off at a shipping center.  He said that was unnecessary because they don’t have any mozzarella.  Nothing.  No ovaline, bocconcini, ciliegine, loaves, NOTHING.  He said nothing can be done until Monday.  I told him that it was too bad that I hadn’t known about this yesterday because now I’ve missed a big shopping day at the store, I’ve been telling my customers all week to please be patient because mozzarella is coming and now its 3:00 on Friday and I don’t have any options???  Thanks for nothing.

At that moment I was on my way back from Salisbury (that’s another story) and I realized that I had to continue onto Annapolis (where I had gone last night and the reason I had to go to Salisbury) and beg a store for enough mozzarella to last us for the next five days and return to Easton during Friday rush hour.  Today is Saturday and we have mozzarella and we’re not making any money but at least we don’t have to make any more excuses.  To all our customers, my apologies and please forgive me, this week was mozzarella hell.