There are two bits of Italian food that I absolutely love - Bruschetta and Prosciutto.  As much as I love them, the pronunciation of them has always been a stumbling block unless I thought about it, because my inclination is to pronounce each of these in the opposite way that they should be. 

Bruschetta is pronounced Brew - SKET- ta.  But I always wanted to pronounce it Brew - SHET - ta.  Proscuitto is pronounced pro - SHOE - toe, but I always wanted to pronounce it pro - SKEW- toe.  I’m sure you can understand the stress this has caused me in life.

In my spare time, I could be found muttering to myself “pro-SHOE-toe - brew-SKET-ta,  pro-SHOE-toe - brew-SKET-ta,  pro-SHOE-toe - brew-SKET-ta”.  And then one day, it just came naturally.  Without thinking, brew-SKET-ta flowed naturally from my lips without thought.  Pro-SHOE-toe was simply second nature, requiring no deep concentration.

And so, without even thinking, I walked up to the (non-Italian) deli counter in our mass market chain.  They used to carry chopped tomatoes, seasoned with basil, garlic, and olive oil at the counter (they called it bruschetta), but as of late they had started putting it in cartons and hiding it in a new place each time I visited.  I suspect it is one of those games born out of boredom that deli counter workers indulge in worldwide.

“Excuse me,” I said politely.  “Can you tell me where you’ve put the brew-SKET-ta?”.  The deli counter said, “What are you talking about?”.

“Brew-SKET-ta”, I said.  “The chopped tomotoes that you used to keep in the deli counter, but that you now put in cartons.  Can you tell me where they are?”.

The deli counter stared at me with frustration in her eyes and exclaimed loudly, “It’s brewSHETta.  BruSHETta!”

Taken somewhat aback, I merely responded, “Ok, so where do you keep that?”

She waved in the general direction of a deli case afar, and continued to exclaim loudly, “It’s brewSHETa.  I’ve never even heard it called brew-SKET-ta.  I am so sick of you people”.

I grabbed my carton of bruschetta and carried on, as the deli counter clerk continued to rant loudly.  Three aisles away, I could still hear her loudly exclaiming her disgust with customers in general, but me specifically.  Though not the smartest move on my part, I turned back to the counter to discuss her clear stress.  She got even louder as she screeched about the twenty years of service she had put in dealing with idiots like me.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry you didn’t agree with my pronunciation - but don’t you think this is a bit uncalled for?  I’m just here shopping.  There’s no need to scream at me while I am three aisles away”.

The deli counter clerk  exclaimed, “I hate customers.  I’m through with customers.  I’ve spent twenty years dealing with customers and I’ve had it!  Go ahead and turn me into the manager - I’ve already turned my two week notice in.  What are they going to do, fire me?!?!?”

I admit.  I did go and speak with the manager.  I let him know that one of his employees had snapped, and was on the verge of doing irreparable damage to his customer service image.  I didn’t really need to tell him - we could hear her screaming as we talked.  As he approached her to get her to calm down, she grabbed her belongings and announced her intentions to leave rather than be asked to leave.

I’m still a bit puzzled by it all.  My only hope is that it does not create a setback in my newly found bruschetta/prosciutto confidence!  Who knew the peril that could be found in proper pronunciation.

My significant other and I have fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving, an elegant meal with a small group of gourmet friends featuring a number of elegant courses accented by fine wine paired perfectly with each dish. The realitiy is that we host a family gathering of eighteen (or is it twenty?) people ranging in age from roughly one to seventy. The dinner is traditional turkey (26 pounds), mashed potatoes (15 pounds), various vegetables served with cheese sauce (too many pounds to count), and of course that jellied cranberry sauce that only one or two people eat. We’re lucky that by adding two tables end to end with the dining room table and using every chair in the house we can actually get the crowd all seated, if only momentarily. Only about half of the adults are wine drinkers with the rest drinking milk, soda and beer.

With that in mind, we avoid anything over $15, try to keep it simple, and have enough on hand so that there is a glass left to drink while cleaning up after the crowd has gone. Here then is what we probably will be drinking this Thanksgiving.

For a white, we’ve been drinking the Hogue Gewurtztraminer ($9). I am not a big fan of Chardonnay, especially at the low end, and don’t find it a good match for food. The Hogue has a nice balance of crispness and fruitiness without being too sweet. Just the thing to go with turkey and mashed potatoes. If you prefer your whites a little sweeter, Hogue also makes a Late Harvest Riesling in the same price range that should suit you. Both of these wines are readily available.

The subject of the perfect red wine for Thanksgiving always causes debate, and from any group of three wine experts you can expect at least four opinions. In the past, I’ve usually chosen either a Zinfandel or a Syrah. Syrah is a very food friendly wine and Zinfandel has enough fruitiness to avoid overpowering the turkey.

This year I think we will go with the Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel ($12-$14). This is a nice Zin with a bit more depth to it than Zin’s a few dollars less. There are certainly a number of Zin’s in this price range that would also be good choices, the Ravenswood Vintner’s Blend ($10) and the Renwood Sierra Foothils ($12) come to mind.

If I was going to go with a Syrah, I’d be tempted to choose the Qupe Central Coast ($16) though it is just over the $15 mark. I’ve been a fan of this wine for years. It is elegant, smooth, and extremely food friendly, everything one looks for in a good Syrah. There are of course any number of Australian Syrah’s (Shiraz), but this is after all, an American holiday.

It is nearing that time of year - the time when the CSA box begins to deliver produce that can be creatively put to use for an entire meal. Tonight’s dinner was based nearly entirely on the CSA box, which we get from our terrific farm, Harmony Valley Farm.  The Grilled Caesar Salad with Steak and Blue Cheese was filling, flavorful, and healthy!

As I unpacked my CSA produce box this week, I realized I had the making for this immediately on hand.  The large, leafy green head of Romaine lettuce and the purple scallions were exactly what was needed for this dish.

First, the greens were grilled over our charcoal grill.  Not for long, mind you, because you don’t want the greens to wilt away to nothing.  You merely want to toss them in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and pop them on the grill for about 2 minutes - long enough to get nice, smokey char lines, while still maintaining most of the crispness.

Once pulled off the grill, a toss with your favorite caesar dressing, some croutions and chopped scallions makes it nearly perfect.  However, to make the dish completely perfect, we topped it off with sliced top sirloin steak, grilled to medium rare, and then we added something that sent it over the top - an Artisan Blue Cheese from Castle Rock.  Rich, creamy and pungent, this cheese also came from our CSA program, as a part of the cheese shares that we opted into this year.

And, of course, our Shiba Inu Jimbo, convinced that he was on the verge of starvation, cared only about the grilled sirloin!  (Though he thought the Blue Cheese was pretty worthy as well).

This summer, Saturdays have turned in to a leisurely meal outside on the deck, enjoying the shade of the 250 year old oak tree, the gentle breeze, and the mild early summer temperatures. And in such a relaxing, civilized setting, not just any lunch will do.

A recent Saturday morning found me watching FoodNetwork TV as I got ready to run my routine errands (like picking up the CSA produce box that we get weekly).  Tyler Florence’s show “Tyler’s Ultimate” was on, and while he tends to do food we like, I wasn’t paying extraordinary attention… until he began to discuss a dish called Gallina De Madre, or Mother Hen Toast.  I was immediately intrigued.

This dish consisted of a crusty, toasted slab of rustic bread, topped with serrano ham and an egg, then baked.  I knew that the chances of finding serrano ham were slim, but I also know that other high quality ham would work for this dish.

Gallina De Madre was offered up as a tapas, or even a nice breakfast.  It looked to me like the perfect lunch for that very day, and so I made sure that my errands for the day including picking up anything we might need.  As is usual, I modified the recipe that he presented to suit our tastes.

Recipe serves 2:

2 thick-cut slices rustic bread
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 
4 slices shaved serrano ham (We used Boar’s Head Black Forest Ham)
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Lay bread out on a sheet tray and drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper and toast lightly in oven. Arrange 2 slices of ham on each slice of toast and nestle it into a nest shape so the egg will rest in the center. Crack egg and drop into nest on each toast. Bake in oven until eggs are just cooked but the yolk is still slightly runny, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, if needed.

Served along side a bed of greens simply dressed with salt, pepper, olive oil and red wine vinegar, it was exactly what we were looking for that day.

Do you love Salmon?  Do you have a great recipe you want to share?  Then MarxFoods.com has the contest for you with their “Win a Summer of Wild Salmon” contest.  Now through Friday, June 20, submit your original recipe.  The winner receives three 5-lb. wild salmon shipments throughout the summer.  Click for more details.

Nothing screams Spring like asparagus.  By mid-spring it becomes the fresh go-to vegetable unlike any other.  Sure, by early summer you are so tired of asparagus that you are ready to scream, but that’s ok, because that is just the time that the season is ending for the year.With the prevelance of aspargus in early spring comes the necessity at creativity.  Steamed asparagus over, and over, and over just doesn’t cut it.  The Asparagus Spring Salad is just the answer.

Simple to make, it doesn’t even warrant a formal recipe.  Simply add your favorite freshly available produce to the crisply steamed asparagus and toss it with salt, pepper, olive oil and just the lightest touch of balsamic vinegar.  In the picture included here, I’ve added fresh radishes, scallions and tomatoes to the mix.

Spring hits in Wisconsin in a very welcome way.  After the brutal winter that we lived through in our area we needed Spring desperately.  Over 100 inches of snow was a hard memory to shake off, but somehow we managed to do just that. 

This process was helped along with a Spring Tradition of ourse - the enjoyment of a Hacker Pschorr Dunkel Weissen, a plate of artisan Wisconsin cheese, and farm fresh radishes.

Memorial Day weekend has special meaning in Madison, Wisconsin.  For the last several years, it has marked the weekend for Bratfest, the biggest Bratwurst-eating orgy in the World!  Thousands gather to buy bags of brats at bargain prices.  And that’s not all, there are major celebrities on hand, as shown below:

Yes, the Johnsonville Brat Truck and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile is about as big as it gets in these parts.

This year a major World Record was set in the number of bratwurst consumed (191,712).  Here’s are some interesting facts from last year - when a record was not set!

There are MANY, MANY photos below. 

We here at Cuisine Capers know our cuts of meat. We encounter them often. So we don’t take it lightly when we announce that we’ve now named the tri-tip roast the perfect cut of grilling beef available.

But Tri-Tip?  This is not a cut that is easily found in our parts.  But fate was smiling down happily on me the other day at Jenifer Street Market in Madison.  I was gazing fondly at the meat counter, when what should appear in my line of vision but a Tri-Tip.  I scrutinized it for a moment or two, then made the plunge.

It was a mid spring’s eve, and it was a perfect night for grilling. So grill it we did. First, we through your basic spices on the roast - garlic, onion, cumin, salt, pepper…. anything you like to put on your beef works here.  It sat at room temperature for over an hour, getting ready to meet the grill.

The grill master made one side of the charcoal grill hot, while leaving the other side devoid of direct heat. The tri-tip was placed in the direct heat for about 5 minutes on one side, then flipped for about 5 more minutes on the other side. Then the beef was moved over to the other side of the grill, devoid of direct heat. The top was placed on the grill, and there it continued to cook away, until it reached approximately 125 degrees.  After resting, it was sliced into thin-to-moderately sized slices.

The end result was fabulous. Moist, tender, perfectly grill-roasted, with the most robust beef flavor imaginable, this has now entrenched itself into our repetoire as the go-to beef dish of the summer.  Served alongside a simple salad of spring greens, along with grilled spring onions and asaparagus, this made for a noteworthy spring meal.

Bolognese alla Carbonara Bucatini

I’m not too sure what to call this recipe, for it is not a traditional bolognese, and it is certainly not a traditional carbonara.  On the other hand, it combines elements of both of these dishes into a hearty, satisfying pasta fitting for Sunday dinner.

I start with a base of good quality Italian Sausage, crumbled.  Into that goes diced pancetta, onions and garlic.  This is browned, and the richness of this sauce starts right at the beginning with the addition of cream to the meat as finishes browning.  Allow the meat to absorb the cream completely.  Follow this by adding red wine and allowing the sauce to simmer.

 Add coarsely chopped tomato once the sauce begins to simmer.  The key to this sauce is that it is not a tomato sauce.  It is a sauce with tomatoes in it.  This is an important distinction, so keep it in mind as you add the tomato.  Let the sauce simmer for up to two hours, adding cream as you go to maintain desired consistancy.

The carbonara portion of the recipe comes as you being to put together the dish for serving.  In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and cream.  Add cooked, hot pasta to the egg mixture and toss thoroughly to coat the pasta.  Then add the sauce to the same bowl, tossing to complete.

Serve topped with grated parmesan cheese and chopped basil.