Food of the Gods

Marika's in da house

Pretty much no matter where you go in the world, Italian food will be tasty.  Cultures that will fuck up everything else (I'm looking at you, England) will manage to get pasta right.  This is mostly attributable to it basically involving boiling noodles and adding sauce, but the fact remains: if you're afraid to eat anything else, put your trust in pasta.

That said, I didn't cook the month I spent in Venice in 2001.  Mostly I was being lazy (heh, I really didn't cook much the month before I went to Venice...or the month after...or really much during my college years...or in the years since then...) but there was also intimidation factoring in there.  I get along pretty well in Italian, in spite of never learning it, but I can't rely on it.  At this point in the game I can look at a package, make some inferences, and 9 times out of 10 I'll come out ahead, but I didn't have those coping skills fourteen years ago.  I'm making up for it this week.  My final AirBnB host, Lorenzo, showed me my shelf in the refrigerator, and I thought to myself, "Heh, not likely."  And then I went to dinner and spent 25 euro on gnocchi and water, and had to reevaluate.  So I'm experimenting, and it's been nice.

Fresh gnocchi - a new way I'm willing to eat potatoes

Taking cooking classes has kind of become one of my things, and I was desperately scrambling before I left to figure out where I could do one.  Acquolina Cooking School was actually the first one I came across, but I putzed around before I actually contacted them (in retrospect, I'm not sure why).  More than anything else I was interested in learning to make homemade pasta, and when I finally emailed them, they said they'd do the pasta class on Friday, July 3, even though Monday was ordinarily pasta day, so I was ecstatic (in fact, so ecstatic that - in the ensuing emails - I skipped over the part that said cash only and had to run out to an ATM, grumbling at myself all the way).

Ravioli stuffed with fresh cheeses

Fortunately the bancomat wasn't that far and in 10 minutes I was back and meeting Marika, our chef for the day.  Villa Inez, where the cooking school is held on Lido, is her home, and the kitchen was fantastico - hey, you know you're in Italy when you've got  frizzante on tap.  We started by making three kinds of dough - regular, basil, and gnocchi.  She had all sorts of great Kitchen Aid machines and things to make it less time-consuming.  A crew of 8 of us were cooking these things for FOUR HOURS, but in the old days yo mama'd be up at 6 to start making everything.  Once the dough was wrapped up airtight and setting in the fridge, we started making sauces and fillings.

Tortellini with meaty goodness filling

We finished the gnocchi by cutting them into little pieces and rolling them against a fork, and then learned how to roll out the dough.  The tagliatelli reminded me of how the Tsataan made their noodles...rolling up the dough and then cutting strips...but you had to wait until it had dried some or else the dough just stuck to itself.  The ravioli and tortellini could be made right away, though.  The ravioli was pretty straighforward, but the tortellini...oh gosh, that was hard work.  You had to cut the dough in a square, sprinkle it with semolina so it doesn't stick together (you cut them all at the same time), keep them covered so they don't dry out, brush the semolina off, put the filling on top, moisten half the sides, fold it over, seal it up, then fold the two acute angles together and pinch them into a little sitting shape.  It was exhausting.  It was also my absolute favorite dish.  Once upon a time, Evil got me addicted to Trader Joe's tortellini, and I used to think they were pretty good.  Now, I don't know if I can ever go back.

Alright, probably I can.  Remember: I'm lazy.

One finished product: tagliatelli in buttery sage sauce

Finally, at long last the time had come for us to dig in.  The food was superb, in spite of the fact that we noobs did most of the work.  Attribute that to Marika's AMAZING recipes and guidance.  The table was set with what I recognized as Murano glassware, and when I asked Marika she explained that her husband's family is one of the original "secrets-handed-down-from-father-to-son" glassmaking families, dating back to, like, 1400 AD.  We were also served special prosecco that either her sister's in-laws made or her sister-in-law's family made (I don't remember which, because by that point dessert was on the table and it kind of derailed my brain a little bit, and all I could think was, "I wonder if Enkhaa knows a good place for us to hunt wild strawberries this fall so I can make this...")  Part of me kind of wanted to try it, but fortunately alcohol's never been the hard part of my religion to live up to.

The grand finale: panna cotta alla fragolina di bosco

As I mentioned before, Villa Inez in on Lido, and it was SO REFRESHING to be there.  I'd been putting off heading out there; I went to Lido several times when I was here before, and loved spending a morning or an afternoon at the beach, but there were far fewer tourists here back then, and I had visions of beaches in China, where the sand AND the water are absolutely packed.  After all, Burano used to be a sleepy little island - when I went in 2001 I was pretty much the only tourist there, but this time, there were people everywhere with their freaking selfie-sticks.

So I walked straight across the island to the beach.  I had time before we started cooking.  I didn't have to go that far to tell that there was a difference.  Almost all the people I passed were living there - having a breakfast espresso and brioche, moving slowly and enjoying life, not taking shitloads of photos.  Out at the beach, there were a handful of people.  Admittedly, it was 9:30 in the bright and early, and I'm sure it was busier the later it got, but I don't do the beach in the afternoon, so this was good enough for me.

I went back the next day.  I was a little pissed at first - apparently I was too early for the first #2 vaporetto, and had to take linea 1 instead (which stops at every freaking point along the way.  I could have SWAM there faster than that!)  But it was a cool morning, and I had a chocolate brioche before hitting the beach, where I laid out my towel before walking into the water.  It was chilly, but I've been taking partly cold showers at Lorenzo's (mostly because it's so hot here that it actually feels good), so I adjusted quickly enough.  I relaxed, floating in the water, rocking to the rhythm of the waves, and when I decided I'd had enough, laid in the shade under a boardwalk (which, as far as I could tell was built for no other purpose than to throw shade) and read.  If that's not a great way to start a morning, I don't know what is.

Grub Club: Tendo

 What kind of girl takes you to an Italian restaurant and doesn't show you what the pasta looks like?  This girl right here.  I have to start out with an apology this week - I was starting to worry that my pasta was never going to make it, and when it finally came, I jumped right in.  By the time I realized what I'd done, it was too late...everyone was nearly done because, regrettably, the portions were not that big.

Anyways, this was our last day of vacation, and it didn't take much convincing to get everyone to agree to go ahead with Grub Club.  Today it was my turn to pick a restaurant, and I went for a new Italian place on Beatles Street that I'd heard about on UB Foodies - Tendo.  From the outside, it's not much to look at - a brown facade with a very small sign with the name on it (luckily the directions left on the Foodies were specific or I would have had my work cut out for me on my reconnaissance).

The inside, however, had a nice ambiance - warm, low lighting and dark colors.  It's not a huge restaurant (with not-huge chairs that my ass just barely managed to squeeze into).  More to the point, it came with a carb overload.  I've never been into the long crunchy breadsticks, and these were pretty much par for the course, but the little bread knots were brushed with olive oil and white wine (which probably cooked out) and were hard to stop eating.

Especially when more and more dishes kept coming out, none of which were my penne arabbiata.  As I said, the dishes were small ("Japan-sized," as Champ put it) so the fact that I ate waaaay too much bread kind of worked itself out, and I didn't go home starving (thankfully, since Engrish bought me a 6-pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups).

Besides carbs and MORE carbs (I don't care what you call them in Italian, Geek and Squeaker ordered fried taters), there were some soups (minestrone and cream of mushroom) which went over well, Engrish had a nice side salad (I don't know if it was as nice as she thought it was - probably she was just happy not to have to eat any more buuz), and - of course - pastas of all sorts.  We ended up with linguine, penne, and spaghetti all on the table.  I found them to be fairly authentic, which is to say, a lot lighter on the flavor than we Americans usually make it, but it was a nice change of pace.  They also had some paninis which sounded amazing, but since Blondie wasn't there to order a sandwich this week, we can only guess.

Grub Club: The Ivy (Finally!)

This week was the first time we had a repeat experience in grub club.  Engrish, Geek, and I decided, before even inviting anyone to join us, that it would be okay if one of our newbies chose a restaurant to which we'd already been, and I'm glad that The Ivy was our déjà vu.  See, last year I only missed one grub club, and that was when I was cheating on them with Five, Fire Marshall, and Domestic Goddess (she was making tacos!  How was I supposed to say, "No, I already have dinner plans"?), before they were invited to join us.  It got good reviews, but I never really cared enough to check it out on my own.

Well, luckily for me, Blondie decided she would, and as a result, she brought us along this Wednesday.  Engrish - who is doing a cleanse - pretended she was satisfied with her green salad, which was the same thing I started with, except hers didn't have dressing and was NOT followed by a scrumptious pasta dish.  The greens were fresh and the dressing was light - it was fantastic.

Blondie, on the other hand, went for the Ivy salad (I think it was the Ivy, anyways).  When she's not ordering a sandwich, she tends to go for a salad, and it was her delicious salad here a couple weeks back that made her decide to drag us along.  Thank goodness for salads!

This week we invited a couple more of the newbies along.  Our decision is still pending so I haven't given them call signs (ie, I haven't figured out what to call them, since I've already used PE and Lit), but one of them went for a pizza, which looked pretty incredible, while the other...

...went for the Ivy pasta, along with Geek.  Besides some luscious beef, spinach noodles, and parmesan, it had a bit of a spicy kick on the end, and since spicy stuff is my favorite stuff in the world, I was worried I'd chosen the wrong main course AGAIN.

Then my pasta arrived.  I ordered the garganelli, which had a creamy sauce with Italian sausage and mushrooms.  It. Was.  Amazing.  Each bite was better than the last, and it was probably only because I was on my bestest behavior in front of our possible inductees that I actually shared a bite with everyone (because you know how I can be).  It was so delicious and filling that I wasn't even that tempted by dessert, even though their chocolate fondant cake and cheesecake both sounded delicious.

The Ivy is about a half block west of the Circus on Seoul Street on the south side of the street, above the Ti Amo.  It's the same building as the Golomt Bank.  It's a pretty swank place, but we went in our jeans anyways, because we fly in the face of convention, and because dress codes are made for places besides Ulaanbaatar.

Grub Club: Rosewood Kitchen + Enoteca

What the hell is an enoteca?  I had to look this up.  According to Wikipedia, an enoteca is a wine repository.  It's an Italian word, which I guess is fitting, since Rosewood's "new" restaurant is an Italian place.  In other words...THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES - GRUB CLUB IS BACK! 

I wanted to take everybody to Rosewood Kitchen for my last choice before school let out, but they foiled my attempt to snatch the best restaurant prize from myself (Khajuraho for the win!) by not being open for dinner.  However, I saw a post on the UB Foodies Facebook page within the last month that said they were open now, and since Engrish was ready to start things again and I finally got paid (thank goodness the finance office didn't want to pay two groups of teachers on two different schedules!) I decided that it was the place to kick of Grub Club 2013-2014.

The staff were friendly as they moved some tables to seat the six of us (yes, we've shrunk a little - Engrish and I decided that we needed to limit our numbers, since ten people dining together was unwieldy, to say the least) and took our drink orders.  They brought the drinks with some delicious bread and even brought us oil and vinegar, which held us over until our first dishes started to arrive (not a long wait, I must say).  There were quite a few Caesars that came to our table, and mine was fantastic.  Engrish decided to order the bruschetta, which came piled with tomatoes at least an inch thick.  The flavor of it was incredible - savor and sweet and olive-oil-ish all rolled into one.  I'll definitely order that one next time.  Geek and Squeaker - one of our inductees - ordered garlic bread which was also nice, but not on the same level as the bruschetta.  And yes, clearly we needed LOTS of carbs.  Teaching damn well takes it out of you!

Mad Science went a little more out there.  She started with this fried artichoke dish.  I don't even have words to describe it.  There were so many layers of flavor in it...Bacon.  Artichoke.  Lemon. 

Yeah, I had you at bacon, didn't I?

She also went for the Australian Steak Tartare, and not just because she's an Aussie herself.  Mad Science apparently likes her food bloody and raw.  The rest of us were a little scared of this dish, but Engrish tried it and had to admit it was good, while Mad Science loved it so much that when it was time for us to assign ratings for the food, she gave it a 9, which is pretty great considering we're just starting back up.

Our other newbie, Blondie, ordered a panini.  She was a little ashamed of it, to be ordering a sandwich at a kinda nice Italian place, but we assured her there was nothing to be ashamed of - especially when Mad Science ordered parmesan fries on impulse and I had actually been considering the paninis myself because they had pesto on them.  It looked delicious, and she had leftovers for tomorrow.

I think the best dish by far was the orecchiette that Geek and Engrish both ordered.  I thought about that one, too, before deciding on the mushroom linguine.  I chose poorly.  The sausage was delicious and I would have preferred the orecchiette over the linguine, just because I don't generally care for stringy pastas.  We all ordered the small portions, which it turns out were huge, especially when we'd been loading up on bread all night.

The total for the six of us came just short of 200,000 tugrugs.  I managed to only spend 22,000 of that, mostly because of the fact that I don't drink.  I'm loving the conversion rate right now, because the school pays us in dollars, so even though my salary is spread out over 12 months this year instead of ten, I make about the same amount in tugrugs as I did last year.  That made my dinner tonight less than fifteen bucks, which is not bad at all for a salad, pasta, and two cans of coke.  My wine-bibbing friends didn't fare as well - the wines in this repository didn't come cheap, but seemed to be enjoyed by those that had them. 

Rosewood Kitchen is a little hard to find.  It's just off Seoul Street, but there's no sign.  There was a sign when they first opened, which is how I knew where they were, but you're going to have to take a leap of faith to get there.  On Seoul Street there's kind of a fenced ger compound on the south side of the street.  To the left of the compound is a light colored building, the Mandala Building (if you don't read Cyrillic, you might identify it by the shiny golden mandala on the top of the building).  On the ground floor is a row of tinted windows (which don't do a lot of good when the sun is going down right in your eyes), and a door on the right end of this.  When you go in the door, go through the door on your left, and you're basically there.  You'll know you're in the right place by the pig statue just outside the restaurant, which doesn't have a sign even in its immediate entrance.