Cooking in Italy

October 14, 2006 So, as you know we were to meet up with Felice to go through the mushrooms, cook them, and eat them. Larry was very apprehensive about trying the mushrooms because Felice doesn't see very well so how would he be able to see if they were good or bad? We decided we would just not go over there unless he came looking for us and guess what? He did! Larry went over there with my advice not to eat too many. He was back home in just a few minutes with his mushrooms wrapped up in a newspaper. They had sorted through the mushrooms and Felice sent him home to cook his own. And he was told by Felice not to throw them away! He told Larry to boil them for 5 minutes until there was foam on top and then to cook them in olive oil and garlic until they were done. Surprisingly, he did cook them and also ate them! Well, he ate half of them and if he isn't dead tomorrow, he will eat the rest of them! He said they weren't all that good, but he was living the Italian experience! His only regret was that he wanted to learn to speak Italian before he died! Then, AFTER he ate them he got on the internet and researched wild mushrooms. Unfortunately, the news isn't good! You can not tell by the way it tastes if it is deadly or not. I was going to save this for tomorrow so I could let you know if he survived, but we found out that it can take 8 days to get sick! So, I'll let you know next week! BTW, he will not be eating the rest of them!

I also had an interesting experience with cooking today. The sun stayed hidden and the house was cold, so I decided to bake cookies. I ran into a few interesting developments. First, there was no shortening to be found. When I asked at the store for the fat you use for cookies they told me it was in the refrigerated section. That seemed rather odd until I found out that it was LARD, not shortening! OK, I said to myself, people cooked with lard for years so it will be fine. I had brought baking powder and vanilla with me so I thought I was good to go. Wrong! I brought measuring cups but no measuring spoons! When I went to see Carlo, he told me that when a recipe calls for a spoonful of something it is the "cucchiaio tavalo" (literally table spoon). But, I said, what if you need 1/4 of a tablespoon? Ah, you need to use your eyes! So with that knowledge, I went home to bake cookies! I eyeballed the vanilla, salt, and baking powder and accurately measured the flour, sugar, and lard. I can tell you right now, the dough did not taste like my regular sugar cookie dough! Which is probably a good thing as I only made 1/3 of a batch and I usually eat that much dough! The finished cookies were not quite what I had hoped for, but then I thought, if I iced them it would mask any difference in taste. Larry went to the store for me to ask for powdered sugar (and to buy wine) as I had not seen any when I was there earlier. He brought home this tiny foil bag of "zucchero al velo" (powdered sugar) which is why I hadn't found it--I was looking for a box! I looked up an icing recipe and was able to make a small batch with the 1 cup of sugar in the package. No food coloring so they are pretty boring, but at least they warmed up the kitchen!

** Interesting note. . I found a very helpful hint on the internet for making sugar cookies. After making the dough instead of making balls and putting it in the fridge for an hour and then rolling it out (while it is hard), roll it out on wax paper (on 2 or 3 sheets or whatever is needed for the amount of dough you have) and then put it in the fridge. When you are ready to cut the cookies you just leave them on the wax paper and cut them out and then transfer to the pan. Then take the scraps, roll them out, and put back in the fridge. This was so easy! An added bonus for me was that I couldn't find wax paper so I bought "cartaforno" which is like parchment paper, and I just transfered the whole thing to the pan so I didn't even have to wash it!
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