As always, much of my time has been in the kitchen, so I don’t have much that is terribly interesting to report aside from a few kitchen highlights. As previously mentioned, I loved being able to use a chitarra earlier in the week.
Another exciting thing was a chicken liver pâté I made. I’ve never made one, but it was pretty simple. First I rendered a bunch of pork fat in a pan and then discarded the unusable scraps that hadn’t rendered. After toweling the livers dry (to avoid having them spatter as they came into contact with the hot grease), I dropped them into the pan and cooked them briefly on both sides, leaving the insides pink. Seasoning them after cooking helped prevent wicking out their tasty moisture and permitted them to brown just a little. Into the still-hot pan, I soften some diced onions, minced garlic, chopped sage, and a few anchovies, with a splash of water. Once cooked, I deglazed the pan with some marsala, which I reduced a bit and then poured over the cooling vegetables. Once the livers and the vegetables were room temperature, I pulsed them in the Robot Coupe (a food processor), leaving the consistency a bit coarse with the diced onions still quite perceptible. I seasoned the mixture to taste with salt, pepper and the smallest splash of white wine vinegar. In spite of all the pork fat, the pâté seemed a bit lean, so I pulsed in a half kilo of cold cubed butter. Served on little crostini, I thought it was pretty perfect.
Kitchen highlights of the week covered, here are some my tourism-related ones:
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I invented a fun new game.
I call it Spot the fat lazy Americans |
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| Service is pretty shitty in Rome. This place was being honest. |
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| This doesn’t need a caption, does it? |
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| This tourist couple was prepared: iPhone on a selfie stick, Canon, iPad, and a Nikon |
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Circus Maximus, where chariot races were held, with the Palatine Hill in the background.
In its heyday, it could hold 150 000 people! |
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The Pantheon
It’s impossible for me to begin to understand that this thing is nearly 2 000 years old. |
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| This remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. |
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I got a bit lost on my way home from the Pantheon.
What a great place to find oneself! |
