LA Baby

Los Angeles, August 2010

Please welcome my guest contributor, Elanore. Her credentials include dining at Ginos on a weekly basis in her childhood and eating eggs on maggi noodles when she arrived in London. She now resides with her partner Del and hummingbirds in Santa Monica, LA. We thought we'd pop in on our way home from europe and as it happened to coincide with my birthday, we went out for Italian. No surprises there. Elle chose a lovely spot called Picollo in Venice Beach and we both went for the pasta while the males ate meat. Elle had a cabonara with quail meat (spew) and quail eggs (spew). It's possibly my worst nightmare but she loved it and didn't want it to end. She's given it 8/10 but can be quoted as regretting her score and wishing she gave it more. Quite the satisfied customer she was. I on the other hand gave my venison ragu with fresh egg pasta a comfortable 7/10. The pasta was obviously fresh and the smallish portion was perfect.

I've included the hot dog stand photo mainly so that you can chuckle at the rollerbladers.

Spaghetti Pie

Townsville, Australia 2010

You may remember him from such antics as 'The Rejection Line', now Mark Allen is back at it discovering 'The Spaghetti Pie'. Known to cure hangovers and rival the beloved Tin Spaghetti Jaffle. It's controversial to say the least, I can't really comment until I taste it. Can you morph two Aussie favourites and get a winner? Only Mark can say.

Hot Dog, Schmot Dog

New York, August 2010

There are over 20,000 restaurants in New York. According to The Health Department anyway. When you only have 4 nights in town, it's pretty tricky to choose what to waste your stomach space on. Much to my horror, I actually fell asleep early on the first night and missed dinner. A sin in many peoples books when I'm in the most exciting city in the world. But there you go, we had flown in from Dublin and the time difference, rah rah rah. Anyway on the second night we hit John on 12th St. A restaurant recommended by Onagh in Dublin which caught my eye when it said 'old school Italian' and that it had featured in the Sopranos. Surely they wouldn't have sub-standard pasta. Turns out they didn't but they did have sub-standard waitstaff. It was quite funny, the guy rattled off the specials list and then we heard the older dude telling the table behind us the specials too. Sounds boring except that the two recitals were completely different, it was like they just made them up. I guess you have to do something for kicks. Anyway it was all old and lovely, bit too much sugar in the sauce but hey, it's America. 6/10

PS. Cool spoon hey

Ich liebe spaghetti

Berlin, August 2010

Rosh, Ricey and I went to visit my cousins Nick and Dord in Berlin. Two spaghetti events followed, much to my delight. One was when I cooked spaghetti for them at Nicks place but I forgot to take a picture. The second time was the final night when Dord took us to their favourite Italian. What she didn't mention was that they had THE biggest pizza EVER. Check it out, I couldn't get over it. It took four hungry people to polish it off. My spag was good, except they put peas in it. Who puts peas in spaghetti bol? The germans just have to be different don't they. It was alright, I couldn't really taste them to be honest, it was just a little random. Like the pizza, the spag was enormous. 6/10

Every. Single. Time.

Time doesn't seem to be helping. No matter how much spaghetti I eat I still get it on me. Spaghetti knows when you're wearing white. It does, it knows when you're wearing any light colour. If you wear black you actually won't get any on you. Promise. Oh well this batch was worth yet another stain, 7/10.

Seafood sabotage

Sardinia, July 2010

It's still Italy right, Sardinia, but it's not. It's a trick. There's no spag bol in sight. Not even a trace of 'ragu'. I turned to Pomodoro and even tried some random Sardinian sausage pasta (middle pic). Seafood reigns, I guess it is an island. Seafood restaurants serving pasta means fishiness is never far. I'm always a little sus on flavour contamination, thus the low scores but check out the beautiful water and the crusty Italian.

Soccer world cup final spaghetti.

Casole D'Elsa, Tuscany July 2010
We were so lucky to get a table on final night. There's only 3 places in the town that have a TV to show the final and we scored a prime table at the pizzeria, right in front of the telly. Pity it was such a crap game in the end but anyway, the spaghetti was good. Pomodoro with sweet, sweet Tuscan tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh pasta and some tasty house wine. 7/10

Gingham tablecloths, olive oil and conversations that sound like arguments.

Casole D'Elsa, Tuscany July 2010
Fresh egg pasta. Made that morning by a large italian nonna with flour on her forehead. I'm guessing...You do see fresh pasta shops around Tuscany. They are like our versions of bakeries. So the sauce went something like this - ground beef (meaty not mincey) with nutmeg, garlic and a touch of something I can't put my finger on. This is the real deal, the traditional recipe. While I nang away on it happily, it's not my ultimate (as in Il Barretto Sydney) but it's good. 6/10

Spaghetti related. Kind of.

Giant nutella! I wish I put something near it so you could see that it was seriously bigger than my head. I also wish it would have fit in my suitcase.

Inspired by the great tomatoes I was writing about below, here's one of my drawings from the art course in Casole D'Elsa.

Healthy rivalry

Casole D'Elsa, Tuscany July 2010

Bruchetta. It's made of the same stuff as spag bol really, isn't it? I know I keep going on about it but the tomatoes in this town were so damn good. We ate bruchetta every day, sometimes I even preferred to have bruchetta over spaghetti. Here's the bruchetta pomodori from the 'sophisticated' place is our little town. It rocked my world. Think this is a first but it was 10/10.

PS. Photo in the middle is from outside, that's Ryan and two of the guys from the art course.