Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Ellen of Family Around the Table invited her blogging friends to share recipes and celebrate Italian food today. Well, you know me, I'm more Italian than I am Filipino. Well, maybe not genetically, but certainly by exposure and choice! Those thirteen months that I lived in Rome cemented my love of all things Italian. So, I was definitely participating in this party. The Italian Feast Baked Ziti with Meat Sauce by Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks Carpaccio di Tonno by Culinary Adventures with Camilla Comtesse d'Italia Cocktail by Bear and Bug Eats Eggplant Parmesan Casserole by Simple and Savory Homemade Marinara Sauce by Frugal Pantry Italian Cream Cake by Family Around the Table Italian Slab Pie by All that's Jas Italian Wedding Soup by Cindy's Recipes and Writings Low Carb Lemon Chicken Piccata by Everyday Eileen Pasta e Fagioli by A Day in the Life on the Farm Sausage and Pepper Sheet Pan Sandwiches by Jolene's Recipe Journal Being tha...

Click to read  my blogpost for Edible Monterey Bay  about Carmel's newest restaurant,  Il Grillo . We headed back there last night for a prix fixe dinner. It was a fantastic way to end a truly maddening week. For the dinner, we could choose one of the carpaccio plates, a soup or salad, one of their mix-and-match pasta combinations, and a dessert. Making a choice was agonizing. See! The boys read the menu over and over and over before deciding. We started with wine and Italian sodas. In very authentic enoteca style, you just pick red or white. There are no labels, there is no talk of varietals. Just red. Or white. Naturally, I picked red.  For our carpaccio selections, we had two plates of the octopus, watermelon, onion, chili oil, lemon, and mint. We tried the porchetta, summer melon, padron peppers, onion, anchovy, and colatura aioli. D ordered the halibut, cucumber, pole beans, capers, basil, and Schoch yogurt. Last time all...

Crì-crì-crì! Chi è che mi chiama? — disse Pinocchio tutto impaurito. Sono io! Le Avventure di Pinocchio , Carlo Collodi Click to read my blogpost for Edible Monterey Bay about Carmel's newest restaurant, Il Grillo . In the meantime, I will tempt you with some photos of Chef Brad Briske's gorgeous - and delicious - carpaccio plates!

While I am moderate in my food stances - okay, maybe not in my processed foods and processed sugar snobbishness - I am always up for trying something new. But I won't go overboard. So when I write "moderate in my food stance", I just mean that I am not anti-meat (vegetarian), anti-anything animal related (vegan), and I am not gluten-free or dairy-free. Dylan says, proudly, "but we are nitrite-free, Mommy...and mostly organic!" Yes, we are that. Most important to me is that we're eating seasonally and locally, as much as we can. And that we are supporting local farmers through a CSA and frequenting artisan foodsmiths who embrace the same food philosophies (seasonal, local, organic) as we do. And we - and I do mean all four of us - read labels. If, on rare occasion, we buy something in a package, it's typically an ingredient and it itself doesn't have more than five ingredients or any ingredients that we can't pronounce. A couple of weeks ago...

To celebrate the end of the school year, Jake and I took our new 2nd grader and 4th grader to Cantinetta Luca in Carmel. And despite the fact that they seriously need some Italian lessons (bread is pane - with one 'n' - not panne ; grapes are uve , the word they use is not any word I've ever seen, ever; bruschetta is pronounced brews-ketta, not brew-shetta) I thoroughly enjoy the food. Plus, how can you beat pizza or pasta and gelato for five dollars for the boys? The carpaccio appetizer is as gorgeous as it is delicious. Bresaola , air-dried beef, is served with arugula, shaved pecorino, and drizzled with olive oil and fresh lemon juice. From the two accounts I can find for the name of this dish, both reference a painting. Venetians claim that carpaccio was invented at Harry's Bar when, in the 1950s, a countess was told that she should only eat raw meat. The owner, Cipriani, named the dish - raw, sliced beef with a mustard sauce - after painter Vittorio Carpacc...