Mushroom & Cheese-filled Pesto Ravioli with Garlic Herb Bread at Chateau Papillon

Travel so often inspires me to cook, and the recent visit to Italy had yet to see expression in my cuisine due to a busy schedule--until this evening, that is, with a homemade meal of pasta and bread.  Today's cuisine de Chateau Papillon: Homemade pesto ravioli filled with mushrooms & cheese, with garlic-herb bread and, appropriately, Chateau Le Paws wine.

I started with a basic semolina pasta dough, made with eggs, bread flour, semolina, oil, and water, flavored with a bit of the last batch of last year's homemade pesto (which froze very well--now it's time to plant more basil in the Aerogarden!).  The dough had sat in the fridge for a couple of days, after providing some linguine the other night.  Lacking a pasta press, I rolled it out into thin sheets and gummed the edges with an egg wash--but I'm getting ahead of myself.  For the filling, I sautéed some finely-minced onions and mushrooms (or funghi, as the Italians would say) and then used the residual heat to melt in a blend of bufala Mozzarella and soft goat cheese, along with a tablespoon or two more of the homemade pesto.  This mixture went into the ravioli dough and then a pot of boiling water.  I served it with extra virgin olive oil, grated Parmesan, and some fresh basil out of the garden--the simple sauce let the flavors stand on their own.

The bread came from one of my most-used cookbooks, Bo Friberg's The Professional Pastry Chef, and thus required as all professional baking recipes do measurement of ingredients by weight.  30 grams of finely-minced garlic (about 5-6 cloves), several tablespoons of dried basil and oregano, egg, flour, a lot of salt... and several hours of rising.  Beth thought I bought the bread--apparently I don't bake fresh bread often enough!--and when I explained that no, I had in fact baked the three loaves of bread, she wondered how I'd gotten the "professional" slits on the tops of the loaves (just a sharp knife before the second rising).

Chateau Le Paws was the wine for the evening, one of our favorites and though not Italian (it's from California, if I recall correctly), it's very good and works with just about anything.

Paying Michael & Sam a Return Visit: On an Errand to Find Chance a Pink Bed, Part One

As packed as our March trip to Europe was--with visits to Frankfurt, Venice, Soave, Padua, Verona, and Vicenza--its brevity left so much unseen and undone even in the confines of northern Italy.  What to do, then, but to go back?  Watching air fares, I soon found an itinerary on sale, and under the extracted promise to return with the pink Italian leather dog bed for Chance I'd nixed on our original trip (we'd nowhere to put it!), I boarded a flight for another whirlwind tour of northern Italy.

I won't dwell upon the flight itself--I decided (with mixed results) not to use one of my remaining upgrades to business class since I planned to sleep through the flight--and after a rainy, overcast connection time spent in the lounge at Munich's airport, I was on the ground in Verona, where Sam met me at the train station.  We dropped my bags with a left-luggage counter and headed out for an evening on the town.

After a bit of shopping--we visited Caffee Cubino where Beth had admired the cups and china for sale in the window, where I picked up a set of hand-painted espresso cups and saucers for the great price of 10 euros each--Sam suggested a walk to the Castelvecchio, which we hadn't seen on our prior visit.  This small but impressive fortress was, if I understand correctly, built by the Romans as a deterrent against the Venetians and other aggressive neighbors and had changed hands many times over the centuries.  The late-afternoon sun really lit up the bridge over the Adige River quite well; the "magical hour" of photography came through and delivered.

Sam spotted the composition above; I'd stopped to photograph a pigeon sticking its head out of one of the little arrow slits in the fortress wall, and Sam remarked what a great photo it was going to make--referring to the shadows I only then noticed!

Michael is at the tail-end of his current job in Italy, and of course that has meant lots of little details which have  popped up.  The evening I arrived, Michael had planned to come and join Sam and me in Verona for dinner at their favorite pizza place, but he got stuck at the office late--then had the doubly-bad luck of a flat tire on his way to pick us up!  We ended up heading back to Vicenza, and as Michael had to work on Friday, too, we opted to eat in and enjoyed some great pasta at Sam's capable hands.

Friday morning, Sam and I set out to accomplish the one requirement of my entire trip: to pick up the pink Italian leather dog bed for Chance which Beth had spied out on our first trip.  And to be sure, the prospective costs of shipping for said bed plus the German coffee I picked up amounted to a decent chunk of my airfare (having sent Beth's friend Ursula a small thank-you gift, we're unfortunately all-too-familiar with transatlantic shipping costs!)--and instead of clicking on a web site to make an order, I got to go and visit Michael & Sam to boot.

The pupsters also got some fruit-flavored dog treats, and Neptune received a packet of "grasbits"--catnip and grass-flavored kitty treats. Sam and I hiked around Vicenza a bit, hoping to hook up with Michael as soon as he got done at the office, but alas, Michael got stuck at work again, so Sam and I caught the train for Venice on our own--after a stop for a cold glass of German beer.

Traveling Home: Great Trip, But It's Going to Be Good to Be Back, Too!

It was a great few days visiting Michael and Sam again before the two return to the states in a few weeks, but now I'm headed home, and it's going to be great to see Beth and the Pupsters and the other pets again.  As I write this, I'm sitting in the Lufthansa Business lounge in Frankfurt-am-Main airport, cursing the Germans who seem to feel the proper temperature for an airport is somewhere around 30 Centigrade (86 degrees for most of my constant readers), and the humidity best likened to a sauna's.  Seems a bit weird, in that traveler's sort of way, for it to be mid-morning to me and only 4:00am back home.

Lots of good food and drink the past five days, and lots of good times with my great and gracious hosts in Michael and Sam.  Now, if I could only get some friends & family to move to the next few places I want to visit so I can have a hotel-free experience complete with seasoned tour guides, I'd be set.  Anyone want to volunteer?

I've got tons of photos, of course (above and beyond Verona's Castelvecchio, pictured above), which I'll work on processing as soon as I can and will post in bits and pieces--but priorities are as follows:

1. Watch the series finale of LOST.  (And avoid spoilers!)  Yep, that is the absolute #1 priority for me--and let me reiterate to the majority who have already seen it: NO SPOILERS.
2. Watch the series finale of 24, airing tonight.  I know 24 has really gone downhill, but I've got to at least see how it turns out.
3. Rehearse my presentation for work; it's going to be tough to get back into the office mindset so quickly, but I've got a briefing and demo to several muckety-mucks which I had just barely finished up before going out of town--which now needs polishing and practice, practice, practice, before I get to brief the real audience on Thursday (and several people higher up my food chain on Wednesday).
4. Process and post photos.
5. Put together a real blog about the trip--and finish the blog from the March trip to see Michael and Sam, for that matter.

I'll sign off with the photo above of the view from the Castello Superiore in Marostica.  Ciao!

Catching Up the Travelogue: March's European Vacation, Part One

Back in mid-March, Beth and I took our first real vacation since our engagement trip way back in December of 2003 (that's right: we hadn't even taken a honeymoon after getting married in 2005!).  We made a lightning visit to friends in Germany and family in Italy, packing the brief week with visits to Munich, Frankfurt, Venice, Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and Soave, along with a drive through the Austrian and Bavarian Alps.

The trip began at Dulles International Airport, my home away from home.  I was happy to finally have an opportunity to drag Beth over to the Lufthansa lounge over in Concourse B; even though we were flying United, as a Star Alliance Gold flyer (thanks to my 100,000 miles a year on United and my 1K status), we can use any Star Alliance Gold lounge--and the Lufthansa lounge at Dulles is 100,000x better than the United Red Carpet Club.  Whereas the latter has a few apples, some prepackaged cheese, individual-serving crackers, and a cash bar, the Lufthansa lounge has a nice selection of hot soup, salads, pasta, hors d'oeuvres, and even cheesecake for dessert.  Plus free beer--good free beer, including a nice Belgian white ale Beth and I enjoyed during our late lunchtime visit.  We did trek back over to Concourse C for our flight and stopped by one of the Red Carpet Clubs, where I accepted the correct number of bar "drink chits" (2 required for anything above the level of Bud Light) from the front desk--this is something frequent flyers grouse about to no end, mind you--and headed down into the dark, crowded, noisy, and hot lounge, where Beth and I couldn't even find two seats.  What a contrast!

As another benefit to making 1K last year on United--I flew several "mileage run" trips with no purpose other than to get the necessary miles!--I'd used my "systemwide upgrades" to book us into business class instead of economy.  The flight attendants all wondered over Beth's "Asian Vegetarian" meal selection (you have to pre-book anything out of the ordinary), which wasn't bad at all and consisted of several different Indian dishes.

The flight crew couldn't get the business class lights to go out overnight (!!), but an Ambien and I slept until breakfast anyway--and found an "apology" $250 certificate on my seat when I woke up for the trouble.  After breakfast, on approach into Munich's airport, I heard the dreaded news on Channel 9 (United's air traffic control broadcasts onboard): "Attention all stations: due to braking coefficient, Munchen Airport is closed."  Yep, snow on the ground had shut down the airport.  And sure enough, once we finally landed, it was indeed snowing in Munich.

Now, we had quite an itinerary planned out for our short six days on the ground: we would drive up to Frankfurt-am-Main to visit Beth's college friend Urusula, then drive down to Italy to spend the rest of the trip with my cousin Michael and his wife, Sam.  And, time permitting, a stop or two in the Bavarian Alps on our drive back to Munich for the flight home.  (Erika and Brooke will probably commiserate over the pace we endured on this trip: my sisters were "victims" of my vacation planning and draconian cracking of the schedule whip on the visit to London we all took in 2002, in which we managed ever single tourist attraction in London plus a trip to Stonehenge and on to Bath.)

The drive up the Autobahn was largely a pleasure, due not to the speeds per se but the fact that people simply knew how to drive!  The roads were largely four lanes--I'd always imagined the Autobahn some 8-12 lane freeway--and drivers used the left lane only to pass and always gave way to faster drivers.  Still, a few construction zones were limited to 2 meter lanes (that's more narrow than a lot of American cars, and white-knuckle driving at 110 km/hr), and after a short redeye flight I was struggling to keep my eyes open toward the end of the nearly-four-hour drive to Frankfurt.

We arrived in Frankfurt in the early afternoon... but that's Part Two of our travelogue (and one loaded with photos, I promise!).

Cooking Up Some More Tastes of Italy

When we visited Michael and Sam in Italy, we had some really great meals, and as someone who spends a fair amount of time in front of the range myself, I found good inspiration from the cuisine we enjoyed abroad.  Last weekend, I put together some homemade pasta; today while out grocery shopping, I came across some "Bufala" Mozzarella, and decided to bake up some bruschetta.  (It's amazing, really, what you can find at Costco.)

I started with some halved flatbread rolls--normally, I'd make my own crusts, but I was on a constrained schedule. The bread went into the broiler for a few moments, followed by a rub-down with a half a clove of garlic when out and just toasty.  Then, a thin layer of tomato sauce (maybe 1-2 tablespoons each), topped with some sautéed onion and mushrooms (or "funghi" in Italiano).

A layer of fresh Mozzarella topped the bruschetta, followed by some of the Bufala Mozzarella, which has a creamier, "fluffier" consistency.  I added some prosciutto di parma (thank you, Costco) to mine, and finished each with a few grinds of pepper before putting them under the broiler again.

I also prepared a bit of breakfast ahead of time, juicing several oranges by hand to be chilling overnight in the fridge.  Costco has had some fantastic Sicilian Tarocco oranges--yes, we're not being very good localvores right now, I know--which are very sweet and often have the distinctive "blood orange" flesh that gives some extra color to our morning glass of OJ:

And, of course, we had espresso.  It wouldn't be an Italian meal without some Joe.

Five Things I Miss About Europe

Beth and I are back from our too-brief European vacation, a trip which took us to Germany, through Austria, and into northern Italy, and already I have a hankering for what we left behind.

1. The Autobahn.  Yes, the fabled "no speed limit" highways of Germany (and their fast-but-limited cousins in Austria and the Autostrade in Italy).  It wasn't so much that the Autobahn's speeds--and curvy sections, construction zones, and busy metropolitan stretches did actually have speed limits, typically between 50 and 70 mph--but the fact that everyone knew how to drive.  For a frustrated American driver, what a breath of fresh air to see cars yield to overtaking vehicles, to use the left lane for passing, not cruising, and to refrain from typical passive-aggressive road rage machismo.
2. Coffee.  Real, honest-to-god, Italian coffee.  Beth and I are both coffee junkies and to a lesser degree connoisseurs (we've done the slurp-from-a-spoon coffee tastings), yet we rarely drink espresso in and of itself at home.  After a week of some of the best espresso and espresso drinks we've ever tasted, I'm off shopping for a quality machine that goes beyond the typical steam-driven "espresso" machine built into our coffee maker.
3. Wine.  Yes, we've our share of fantastic wine in America, and Beth and I are downright European in our wine-with-every-dinner habit, but we visited Amarone country.  (A bit of tangential wine trivia: in the novel Silence of the Lambs, it's a big Amarone Dr. Lecter enjoys with some fava beans and his victim's liver, not the Chianti from the film--the screenwriters felt no one in the US would know what an Amarone was.)
4. History.  We've got our share in the United States, but to be fair, as a nation our past stretches hardly more than a handful of centuries.  Europe may not have been the cradle of civilization, but Western civilization does go back millennia in Europe.  Ancient buildings, buildings reconstructed after World War II in their original style, Roman ruins... well, we were quite inspired by some of the colors and architecture and techniques and brought back many great ideas for our "wine bistro" we're going to build at Chateau Papillon.
5. Friends.  Last but not at all least, we miss the great friends we left behind, and who played such great hosts to us during our trip.  Ursula, we'll have to make a trip just to Frankfurt sometime.  Michael & Sam, it's too bad you'll be heading back from Italy so soon yourselves!  I'm tempted to give you two a hand bringing some of your stuff back... by flying over with a couple of empty suitcases.  Yes, I think I could stand to do that, indeed.