In our new personas as shut-ins, there’s one place we can all head off to: the kitchen! Trade in the TV for the stove, the remote for a saucepan, and soon, a bright steaming bowl of week-long comfort awaits. So let’s make it: a hearty Bolognese sauce—or for the meatless, a marinara.

Gather a 28-oz can of crushed tomatoes—I like Redpack unless you can find San Marzano (the authentic Italian one). 3 or 4 garlic cloves, a medium onion, a carrot, one tablespoon of tomato paste, ½ cup of red wine, a few springs of parsley, oregano and basil (If you don’t have those, cheat with a tablespoon of dried Italian seasoning). And good olive oil, of course.

If you want a meat sauce, about a pound of ground beef or mix of beef/pork, some pork sausage, uncased and broken up, if you desire.
Peel strips of carrot with a vegetable peeler, and mince them along with the onion and garlic. Heat ¼ inch of the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat til shimmering and add the minced vegetables and tomato paste, cook, stirring often, til softened. Add meat if using and stir til browned. I usually pour off most of the meat’s fat after it’s browned. Now slowly pour in the wine, it’ll sizzle. Stir, add the crushed tomatoes, stir some more, add the herbs (best tied together with kitchen string for easy removal.) Tomatoes can be too acidic, so add some sugar to taste– I like a sweeter sauce and use about 1 to 2 tablespoons. You’ll want to add salt too, and black pepper. The key: stir, taste.. And you’re done! Let the sauce simmer for about an hour, stir in a tablespoon of butter to finish—it adds depth. And of course, you can add more wine as it cooks– I always do.

When dinner calls, boil some pasta, grate some cheese and mangia! Take your bowl back to the couch, hit the remote and watch anything but news– Unless you have a large glass of that wine alongside.

It was a Goldilocks bakeware dilemma: my pans either too big or too small for a three-serving nectarine crumble. What to do? Manically searching all cabinets, I spy it in a remote corner, a bit dusty but stalwart as ever: my clay Moroccan tagine. An idea bubbles….remove the conical top and voila: the perfect size baking dish!

The crumble was pretty perfect too, and so simple. Sliced nectarines below a crumb of 1/2 cup each flour and sugar, 1/4 cup almonds, 1/8 tsp salt all pulsed in a food processor with some ginger and vanilla. Add 1/2 stick cold butter in intermittent cubes, then bake in a 425 d. oven. For perfection overload, crown with some ice cream. I adore summer nectarines, but most any fruit will do. And with some ingenuity, any bakeware!

Friends feed you spiritually, and sometimes physically:  Thanks Elise G., for assigning me your weekly farmers’ bounty while you’re out of town.

What produce, what fun!  First, a riff on cold vichyssoise with peeled zucchini in place of potato, then a fava bean saute for pasta with my own basil-mint pesto. For dessert, a crumble with those exquisite cherries.

A perfect summer meal, but don’t despair, girlfriend: there’ll be plenty left for your return.

Proving cooking looks harder than it is,  an ideal example:  Roasted chicken thighs and sweet potato wedges.

Two steps:  Step 1: toss chicken and sweet potato wedges (don’t even have to peel the spuds!), with olive oil, salt/pepper and chopped sage.  Step 2: roast together on one foil-lined sheet pan in 450 degree oven about 45 minutes.

Consume! Preferably with a glass of chardonnay. Dine now, thank me later!

 

For the chronological narrative, scroll down to begin with Days 1 and 2

Slovenia is intent upon promoting its nascent wine industry, and we visited two of the most prominent makers in the regions of Vipavska Dolina and Brda. Rustic upstart Tilia Estates already exports its pinot gris and noir to many of our cities, and the Bjana label’s sparkling wine, of chardonnay and rebula (aka ribolla gialla in neighboring Italy) has won international acclaim- and mine. I sipped it in the family’s vast Brda cellars and elegant adjoining home, the wine modern, the buildings 13^th Century.

All that wine was tempered with a cooking lesson preparing, then consuming, frtalja, the Slovenian take on frittata. Assisted by cooks at Brda’s San Martino Hotel, happily back in my kitchen element, I added garden-snipped herbs, milk, egg yolks and whipped whites to old bread and was soon scarfing down the golden result with a patient, starving Andrew (an expert scarfer of frtalja and all foodstuffs, I found). Major scarfing continued at dinner, a contemporary tasting menu and wine-pairing at Kabaj (ka-by-a), a restaurant and winery known for its “orange” wine (white-grape skins left on for a longer time, I’m told).

Day 6 found me happily roaming with the Zoff family’s pastured cows, sad to soon be roaming  back to the airport. We were in Friuli, in Italy, where I’m always happy, sampling Zoff’s raw-milk cheeses and yogurt and wishing they’d export the delectably tangy Cormons herb-rind cheese I squirreled home and have selectively shared with my loved ones. Back in Brdna, the artsy ancient town of Smartno’s Culture House offered an olive oil tasting and lovely traditional lunch of white polenta with prosciutto and wine vinegar sauce. Dessert was a killer flourless chocolate-walnut cake drizzled with orange-infused olive oil. So sweet and filling: the appropriate finale to this intriguing, enlightening sojourn.

I say “pojdi”-  that’s Slovenian for Go!

 

Fueled with hefty slices of yesterday’s poteca, it was on to Croatia and Istria’s alluring stone hilltown, Groznjan (remember those silent j’s!).  My favorite draw was the expansive terrace overlooking the Mirna Valley and sparkling Adriatic, but tourists seemed to favor the warrens of craft shops and art galleries. I assumed the tourist mantle myself at Sandra Zagante’s truffle shop, one of several in the town, buying up carry-on-allowable vials of fungi-infused edibles. Stopping there was not accidental; Andrew had booked her as tomorrow’s truffle-hunt guide.

But first, tonight’s traditional Istrian dinner of sour cabbage and bean soup, and fuzi pasta with its ox-meat braise. All delectable remnants of the region’s centuries of Austrian rule, for which I say a hearty:  Danke schon!

And many thanks to Sandra for that next day’s truffle hunt, a new, though somewhat damp, experience for me. Deep-forest trekking not being one of my obsessions, I was grateful for her loan of rubber boots and padded windbreaker. I was obsessed, however, when her two trained dogs scented truffle with ebullient pawing and sniffing, and she dug to unearth a black golf-ball-sized sample. We’d later shave it onto her hearth-warmed farmhouse-kitchen’s lunch of truffle-cream-sauced pasta, the muddy boots and dampness fading to vague memory.

Nothing vague about the post-hunt visit to the five-century Venetian-ruled hill town of Motovun, sated with truffle and craft shops and infinite valley views. Afterwards, the fantasy enchantment of Rovinj, where we roamed serpentine alleys and sipped espresso from a rampart terrace perch, the Adriatic roiling below.

For dinner: my prior blog post mention of Balkan cevapcici sausage with its roasted pepper dipping sauce. Tomorrow, back to Slovenia for wine region tutorials.