Eating New England from YankeeMagazine.com

A Toothy Tale From Nantucket

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Mon, 05 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100

I started my week off in the dentist's chair -- not the best way to begin. I really like my dentist; she's very nice and always compliments me on my teeth and my good flossing. I brush and floss only because I fear cavities. I wouldn't care if my breath were bad or if I had only one tooth in my head, just as long as there are no drills, or worse, pain. I just want to like Dr. Ponce and hear her say, "Good work, keep it up -- your teeth look great." But no such luck.

Not one, not two, but three cavities. It's been nearly 20 years since I've had a cavity filled, but still, I was crushed. One was an old filling that had cracked, the second was new damage, and the third was a cracked tooth that she'd been watching. It wasn't so bad. I demanded (calmly) extra Novocain, but you'd think someone would come up with a silent drill -- that's half the anxiety right there.

By the way, the cracked tooth came from eating a fried oyster five years ago at a restaurant on Nantucket (an otherwise great dining destination). Inside the fried oyster was a piece of the shell, big enough to shear the tooth in half (a wisdom tooth, by the way -- one of four that came in without incident, a fact I'm proud of) and crack what remained.

I'd like to "out" the restaurant that said oyster came from, not because of the shell, but because of the way my situation was handled. Accidents happen in cooking and restaurants do their best; they want our business, and they don't want to injure anyone. What got my goat was that when I informed the manager on duty, she looked me in the eye and said, "Wow, that's a bummer."

She offered no assistance, no apology -- they were even inhospitable enough to charge me for the oysters. I'm not litigious, but when they didn't care to pay my medical expenses, they heard from my lawyer. I was told that I visited the one dentist on the island, which led me to wonder how many dentists visit the island during the summer. (Turns out there are more than a dozen dentists practicing on Nantucket, so a perfectly good example of irony was not to be.)

By the way, I was on island for the Nantucket Wine Festival, which is a terrific world-class food event offering great seminars and tastings for all levels of wine admirers. The festival takes place every May, so if you're looking for a jump on the island season, hop on a ferry and get yourself to a bottle.

Where Did This Cheese Come From?

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Spring is becoming more real to me. I know, I know, I've been fighting it tooth and nail, but despite my unease with the process of New England spring, it's more concrete now, and therefore I shall acknowledge its presence. In a week or so, I'll embrace it and be full of all the joy it brings -- but for now, I'll just stick in my big toe.

One of the many things about spring that I do love is the selection of cheeses that are made from spring milk. It'll be a while before we start seeing them in the market, but I love the tang of these cheeses. You can taste the vibrant grasses, flowers, and herbaceous notes that sometimes border on floral. Obviously, the more these animals are allowed to graze, the more natural variations the cheese will express.

Speaking of cheese, I recently went to a press dinner sponsored by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. It's hard for the daughter of a Vermonter to say it, but those were some mighty good cheeses. (Mind you, nothing even came close to New England cheeses, of course.) Heather Engwall, our host, offered to send some more cheeses my way, and as a fool for dairy (and the dairy queen is indeed a cruel mistress), I couldn't refuse.

Twenty or more pounds of cheese arrived yesterday and is sitting in the employee lunch-room fridge. I have a lot of explaining to do. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Spring Into These 3 Cookbooks

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100

I'm still feeling the drag of the Daylight Savings time jump, but less so as the real spring weather seems more and more possible. Linda Clukay, our dulcet-voiced receptionist and den mother here at Yankee, swears that she sees signs of daffodils and tulips in her south-facing garden. So apparently there's hope indeed.

I've mentioned that good reading has kept me distracted from Mother Nature's fickle tricks, and a great slew of books has crossed my desk, including some advance copies of books that will make their way to bookstores soon. And do please visit bookstores, real bookstores that are owned by real people who care about bound pages.

Up here, we have a terrific bookstore in Peterborough, New Hampshire, called the Toadstool Bookshop, and there's also one in Keene and Milford, NH. In Boston (actually Newton Highlands), I love the New England Mobile Book Fair/Jessica's Biscuit and their online cookbook store, ecookbooks.com. If you love to pick up books and flip through them to get a feel for them, seek out a bookshop in your neighborhood -- you'll make some nice connections.

Back to the books...

If you're digging the current infatuation people seem to be having with cupcakes, then Hello Cupcake by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson (Houghton Mifflin) will float your sweet tooth's boat. There are gobs of designs, ranging from beginner (as in ... you could make them for your kid's birthday party) to advanced (as in ... you could make them for your kid's birthday party if you don't mind staying up the night before placing individual chocolate Cheerios into frosting). It's a fun and truly inspired book.

Tracey Medeiros puts the spotlight on Vermont-made and -grown foods and the people who produce and raise them in Dishing Up Vermont (Storey Publishing). Sure there's cheddar cheese and maple syrup in this celebration of the Green Mountain State, but Tracey digs a little deeper, connecting with the Vermont Fresh Network, for recipes for honey from Champlain Valley Apiaries, quail from Cavendish Farms prepared at the Inn at Weathersfield, and local ale-braised beef short ribs from the Cliff House.

Wine guy Josh Wesson's suggestions for Big Macs and Twinkies, the best basil for pesto, and Queen Anne's pocket melons are all topics that Lynne Rossetto Kasper has tackled in her weekly PBS radio broadcast The Splendid Table. Like the foods she talks about and the people she talks to about food, Lynn's show is addictive. She has a gorgeous, rich voice, and she really knows how to tell a story or draw a story out of someone else. Delicious stuff. She recently collaborated with her longtime producer and pal Sally Swift for my favorite new book: How to Eat Supper (Clarkson Potter). This is a book full of great recipes, strong opinions, and fascinating stories.

Why I Read About Grilling in the Early Spring

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100

I love this time of year in New England, and I hate this time of year in New England. I love that the days are getting longer and warmer and that there are indeed signs of short-sleeve weather on the horizon. But I hate setting the clock forward. I really do.

It was getting lighter on its own, and why so darn early this year? I've traveled around the world and been put through the paces of jet lag in all its ugly incarnations, but this one measly hour messes me up for weeks. Clearly, I'm still puffing and red-in-the-face mad about it. And don't say, "Let it go." You let it go. I'm sticking my tongue out at you right now.

So there you have it: Spring kinda puts me in a bad mood. There, I said it. It's not supposed to, I know. I'm supposed to be thinking of the circle of life and rebirth and rejuvenation. I don't. I think about how nicely I've settled into my "fat jeans" and that those "winter 10" are harder to shed every year. In fact, I've held onto them for a few years in a row, and now I have 30 to lose. That puts me in a bad mood. I want more macaroni-and-cheese, please. I want lasagna Bolognese. I want short-rib chili with sour cream and corn chips.

I really like braised, slow-cooked foods. Big roasts. I think winter cooking shows what cooks are made of and whether they really have talent or not. In colder weather, you really have to cook the ingredients, whereas in summer it's about your ability to let the ingredients alone and not muck around with them too much.

In winter you have to saute, then add liquid, reduce it, and then pop it in the oven. In winter you have to build layers and make sure each layer is just right. In the summer you just need to slice the tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper, tear some basil over the top and you're a genius.

And right now, we're in between. Hothouse vegetables are poking up, but we won't see real stuff for a few more weeks. And ooooh when those morels, ramps, spring parsnips, asparagus, and shad start showing up, I'll snap out of this funk, but right now, I'm a little bored -- that "old ennui," as Cole Porter wrote.

So for now I'm reading, reading, reading about food. All the food magazines have me salivating. I can't wait to try all the beautiful pea recipes from the current Fine Cooking. Or some yummy spring milk cheeses from Vermont.

So to keep myself entertained, I've turned to Tom Parker-Bowles (British food writer and son of Camilla Parker-Bowles, now the duchess of Cornwall). His book, The Year of Eating Dangerously, is funny and engaging in that special oh-so-British way: self-deprecating, erudite, and full of good detail. Parker-Bowles travels all around the world looking for extreme eating experiences -- sometimes for love of the ingredients (such as barbecue in Tennessee) or sometimes for the sheer oddity (venomous snakes in China -- yuck). It helps take the edge off the 6:20 sunrise.

Other book news:

Chris Schlesinger and John "Doc" Willoughby, the duo behind Thrill of the Grill and eight other cookbooks, have a new book on grilling: Grill It (DK Publishing, 2008). Chris and Doc are two of my favorite people in this world. They're literally taking a bite out of this life, and they take having fun very seriously. Both are big advocates of live wood or natural charcoal grilling versus propane tanks -- and I think we all know where I stand on that issue (go to www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19506957).

Chris is the owner of East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Massachusetts. More than two decades ago, he helped open the Eastern Seaboard to the notion that grilling was a legitimate cooking technique, and that flavor and spice were nothing to be feared, by cooking up what he coined "equatorial cuisine": Thai, Caribbean, Mexican, etc., fun stuff that cries for good cocktails (which his bartenders excel at).

Doc is terrific writer and editor. He's the executive editor of Gourmet magazine, and his presence is really felt on those pages, with its provocative writing and rich recipes. Anyway, I haven't actually read Grill It yet, but it's really quite beautiful, with gobs of vibrant photography. I think I'll try the smoke-roasted oregano leg of lamb on page 206. The sweet and hot apricots that go with it are just what I need! (The recipe calls for dried apricots, and I know I have some in the pantry!)

Dinner with Guy and Mary Ann Esposito

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:00:00 +0100

I spent last Friday with Mary Ann and Guy Esposito. They are just loverly people. You probably know Mary Ann from her television cooking show, Ciao Italia, the longest-running cooking program on TV -- 19 years, I believe. If not, she's written more than a dozen cookbooks, so if you don't know about her, you might want to crawl out from underneath that rock you've been under. Mary Ann and Guy are just the best. And Guy, well, he's an incredible gardener, as well as an orthopedic surgeon, among other things.

Mary Ann's show isn't about celebrity or pomp -- it really is about cooking. Italian food for sure, but cooking. I think it does so well not only because Mary Ann is so good at what she does, talking and sauteing, but also because it feels like being in the kitchen with Nonna. What kids do that anymore?

I cook with the kids in my life, but not the way I did with my mother. Mothers (and fathers, for that matter) don't cook anymore, except on Sundays or special occasions. Mary Ann, Lidia Bastianich, Paula Deen -- they're women of a certain age, doing the regional food of "their people." I think kids go cuckoo for them. Rachael, Giada, Tyler, et al. are what they are and I suppose quite good at what they do, but I don't get the same parental authority from them, which makes sense, as we're relatively the same age.

Anyway, another digression. I wanted to take the Espositos out for lunch and talk about Guy's garden (you'll be able to read about it in the July/August issue of Yankee), but Mary Ann insisted I come to their house for lunch. Insisted. I called her stubborn, but she ignored me, so to her house I went and was happy to do so.

She fed us well on tomato soup (made from Guy's garden tomatoes, which she froze last fall), quiche, and pickled vegetables (also from Guy's garden, pickled last fall). And vanilla panna cotta, a gelatin-based custard that's really comforting. Guy is quite a wine aficionado, so of course we had wine, a Spatlese Riesling, which was crisp and perfect with the eggy quiche and the creamy dessert. Followed by an espresso with a crema that few home "barristas" can achieve.

Guy's seeds had just arrived from Italy, and he was like a kid at Christmas, telling me about the tomato varietals, eggplants, zucchini, peppers, basil, and on and on. As I said, you'll learn the details about his green thumb later this year. He can't wait to get them in the soil and under a grow light.

I had to hit the road for another appointment, but only after Mary Ann put together a bag of cookies, Easter bread (the kind with the colored egg in the center -- just like her mom used to make), pesto (the basil from Guy's garden), dried peppers (from Guy's garden), and a recipe for bread (Guy is an avid home baker).

I was meeting girlfriends for a knitting retreat, and I told Mary Ann this. She gave me a look, clearly "A knitting weekend? You'll never meet a good man." Only my own mother or Nonna could get away with that. Â

A Green Book and a Stowe Chef

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Ever wish you had staff? Maybe you have staff -- I don't.

I had dinner at a friend's house last week to celebrate our mutual friend Christie Matheson, whose 53rd book, Green Chic: Saving the Earth, has just been printed. It's not really Christie's 53rd book, but it is her fifth or sixth, and frankly, that's impressive. And she is.

The book is terrific. It's filled with a lot of common-sense approaches to keeping this planet of ours just a little healthier, as well as stuff you'd never think of on your own. Christie also manages to make it all seem cool and, well, chic. Brava, dear Christie.

And while the dinner was very much about Christie and her book, let me get back to the idea of staffing ... Lorin, our host, is working on the Stowe (Vermont) Mountain Lodge development, so to kill two birds with one stone, she asked the Lodge's chef, Sean Buchanan, to cook us dinner at her house.

The project won't be open for several months, so she figured it'd be a good exercise for chef Sean. We all have big mouths, so we'd talk about how well we dined. And Lorin is very pregnant (as were two of the guests), so the thought of preparing and serving dinner on a Monday night was overwhelming. Clever, that Lorin. Very clever.

The meal was really terrific. Sean has an affinity for local ingredients, and so his Vermont-centric meal worked well in celebrating our Christie, and yes, it was a chic meal, too. We began with an amuse-bouche of smoked mussels, then moved into dishes that included local honey and cranberries, farm-raised barramundi, polenta with pungent Tarentaise cheese, and maple-braised short ribs with cranberry beans. We finished with crepes and honey cakes ... yum.

As we blabbed about the food and the book and skiing and cashmere and sexy yoga instructors and possible honeymoon destinations, the kitchen was scrubbed down and the food put away, as if Sean and his crew had never been there. I could get used to having a staff ...

Oh, by the way, I was up at Stowe in February and saw \[Stowe Mountain Lodge\]\[2\]. It's going to be really gorgeous, and the plans are quite ambitious and luxurious, while being ... guess what? Green. So chic!

[2]: http://www.stowemountainlodge.com/ Â

Read more of Annie's Eating New England.

Prosciutto, Cheese, Honey Make the Day

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Depending on where you live in New England, you got either a big hype about "many, many inches of snow" or a load of actual snow last weekend. We got snow, but it wasn't the hassle I was anticipating. I was really looking for an excuse to avoid the shower. I was disappointed when I woke up Saturday morning and could open the front door. And it took only about 20 minutes to shovel out the car. I was hoping to have to hunker down in my jammies all day. So was Joel.

He decided to get up and get out of the house and make a run to his favorite cheese shop in Wellesley, Massachusetts -- Wasik's -- and then pretend that we were snowbound. His son Jacob made fondue (he's such a cool kid -- he really will eat just about anything and loves to cook). Amy made mulled cider.

There was prosciutto (Canadian and Italian). Great cheese. Fruit. Bread. Honey. A biodynamically grown Gruner Veltliner wine. A roaring fireplace. I didn't do a thing except eat, pontificate, and plan food trips to exotic places like Thailand and Patagonia. I didn't get to stay in my pajamas, but it was still a very good day.

Read more of Annie's Eating New England.

Strawberries in February?

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100

This is no place for the horrifying details that led to 143 million pounds of beef being recalled from the market last week. Just the words "143 million pounds of beef" ought to be enough. How did this happen? Not just to the cows, but how did our food supply run so amok?

I think everyone ought to think really hard about the food choices that we make every single day and what making those choices means. Especially if we're making food choices for other people, like our children.

Most often it's about ourselves and our bodies. We're driven by our wants and needs. As simply as, "I'm tired, I need a pick-me-up -- this can of soda has 50 milligrams of sodium and 140 calories and no nutritional value, but I want it."

So what do I do? I'm hungry and overtired; I don't think I've had a soda in the last decade, save the emergency Fresca I had two summers ago (as I've written before, that's another story for another time and certainly not a story for everyone's ears). I digress, sorry.

But in that state, how am I supposed to come to the conclusion that an apple is what I ought to eat? Thankfully, I have people around me, and I might say out loud, "What should I eat?" Or I might poke around Polly's or Lori's office and see whether they've got something to nibble on.

This weekend I hunkered down at home to get some work done. On Saturday at around 2 p.m., while I was still in my pajamas, hunger pangs set in, and if I'd had soda in my house I'd have poured one -- it would have staved off the immediate need without slowing me down. Luckily I had peanut butter -- really good natural stuff. Yes, I did stick the spoon into the jar and eat it like a popsicle, but I have a choice.

Sometimes it's about season. How about eating strawberries in February? I saw some gorgeous strawberries yesterday -- all red and freckled with silly, green, frilly hats. I thought, "Wow, what a nice treat that would be." But I knew they would disappoint, because they'd been picked a while ago, maybe at some huge agribusiness farm in Chile, and packed, loaded, flown, and trucked to the East Coast. Then sold to a produce distributor, loaded again, then shipped and packed to a Portland, Maine, grocery store, where they were unpacked and put on a shelf in the produce aisle.

I'd rather wait until June, when they're in season here -- I can pick and eat them while they're still warm. I'll eat more than my fill and I'll make jam if I can so that I can have strawberries here, in February, when they're not in season. I confess I didn't make any jam last summer, but my neighbor Sarah did, and it was so good that it didn't last past October. (Note to self: Ask Sarah to make more jam this year, offer to help.) I have a choice.

Or it's about taste, which often fits into the seasonal argument, but when it comes to say, corn, the less time from stalk to table the better. The natural sugars in corn quickly convert to starch once the corn is cut, so even if you can't eat it right away, cook it right away. If you've ever had the pleasure of eating an ear of corn in the field, you know it doesn't even have to be boiled -- same with peas. Unless I'm desperate, I won't even buy corn from a chain supermarket. Do you think it was picked that morning? That week? I have a choice.

It's about supporting the local economy. You may or may not know how much I love oysters. Well, I do, and now is the time to be eating them. I can buy oysters from New England and support people who do the backbreaking work under difficult conditions and enjoy a fresh product that tastes of where it came from. Or I can buy Tomales Bay oysters from California (which are delicious). I have a choice.

It's about national security. If we don't support our local growers and producers and our precious farmland and dairyland disappear, we'll be completely dependent on outside sources for our food. I worry already about how so much of our food comes from outside New England. What if, God forbid, a hurricane half the size of Katrina were to hit the Eastern seaboard, or worse, a military situation were to occur? How long would we be able to sustain ourselves without outside food sources? Heavy stuff, right?

It's about ethics, too. For the last few decades, most of the beef in America has been raised under questionable circumstances. Cows are fed a diet made of mostly corn and other grains (again, this may not be the place to go into what else these harmless animals are fed). Cows by evolution aren't designed to eat corn -- it makes them sick -- so they're given drugs (and antibiotics to keep them alive while living in unsanitary conditions under close quarters). You don't have to be an animal-rights activist to feel for those poor animals at that meat factory, or to understand that nothing good can come from a steak or burger from an animal that lived such a sorry life.

Vote With Your Fork

Here are some good books for more information:

A Year of Eating by Barbara Kingsolver
Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe
What to Eat by Marion Nestle
Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma, and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution by Alice Waters

Read more of Annie's Eating New England.

Learn Something New in Pizza-Making

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100

A few years ago, I went through a pizza phase -- a significant pizza phase. I was cooking and eating pizza a lot. Thin-crusted, brick-oven, Margherita-style -- fresh tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil. From Boston to New York to New Haven to Naples to Nantucket (favorites in order of location mentioned: Figs, Pizza Napoletana, Pepe's, Da Michele, and Pi).

I lined my home oven with a pizza stone and bricks (I found out later they make hearth-oven kits, but that's another story for another time). I grilled them. I became consumed with water-buffalo-milk mozzarella (and yogurt and ice cream). Then the pendulum swung back to the center, and I'm now a big fan, but down to a once- or twice-a-month indulgence.

The point? I thought I knew all the tricks to making good pizza at home. Nope -- there's always something to learn. I went skiing this weekend in Vermont with my friend Molly and her husband, Mark -- and despite snow squalls and whiteouts, the conditions were pretty good. When we got back to their place, tuckered but happy, Molly whipped up a quick dough and we got to chopping a few things and making a quick sauce. (When I say "we," it was really all Molly. I was reading the Sunday papers and smooching with Deets, their black Lab.)

Molly used Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes for the sauce, which added a lovely, light smokiness that mimicked some of the flavor from a wood-burning oven, and then she added a roasted red pepper (our intrepid Molly just put the pepper right on the gas element of her cooktop and charred it until it was black all over), fresh mozzarella, and locally made Vermont sausages.

One of the tricks to making pizza at home is getting the temperature hot enough and then keeping it that way. The masters cook in 900-degree ovens, and their minimally topped pies are done in two minutes or less. So you may be able to get your oven up to 500 degrees, and if you put a flat, ceramic pizza stone on one of the grates and really let it heat up for 20 minutes or so, you'll have a good shot.

But then you also have to get a pizza peel -- a long-handled wooden paddle that you make the pizza on, then slide into the oven on top of the pizza stone. With some practice you may be able to get the flick of the wrist just right, so that your carefully made masterpiece lies flat on the pizza stone. But that rarely happens -- the ingredients slide, and the dough folds over -- and, well, it's messy.

Molly, culinary genius that she is, slides raw dough onto the stone and cooks it about five minutes, then pulls it off the stone onto the peel and flips it over! Brilliant. From there she builds the pizza -- sauce, cheese, sausage, herbs, and back into the oven -- and that thing slides it easily back onto the stone.

Yeah, yeah -- old dog, new tricks -- I know.

BONUS: For your next pizza party, here's a great menu, with recipes.

Read more of Annie's Eating New England.

The Making of a Wine List

Yankee Publishing (rss@ypi.com) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Do you feel as though your life has a soundtrack? How many times has a song popped into your head at just the right time? Or how many times have you burned a disc for a dinner party or road trip? Or Sinatra's "Summer Wind," or Bare Naked Ladies' "Pinch Me" for an outdoor dinner party?

When I was a young adult on a sailing trip with my parents, we got caught in a nasty squall (although luckily we were securely moored). My dad put Mahler's Symphony No. 6 into the CD player, and despite the raging thunder-and-lightning storm knocking us around, I never felt so safe and secure. For one of the first times in my young life, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. All those brooding oboes, bassoons, and trombones were the perfect fit for the storm and the cocoon-like berth I curled into. At the same time, I do remember being disappointed that the only reading material I had was People magazine and not one of the works of the great masters.

As much as I feel as though my life ought to have a soundtrack (how fun to make the ultimate collection), perhaps a wine list might be more appropriate.

Like music, my wine tastes have enjoyed phases of obsession and total dedication.

Early on, I confess (not proudly), American Chardonnay was my thing. You know those big, buttery balls that hurt the back of your throat? Yeah, I loved 'em. How I could taste food was a miracle. I think, though, that it brought me to the table. And I learned about the different growing regions of California, and why tracks of land in Napa and Sonoma could be so different, and how soaking the grapes in burnt-oak casks could make it all taste the same. I learned about winemaking. It opened my mind and palate. It was less an obsession than a diving board that gave me the impetus to learn and know more... like background music.

I think the first real breakaway wines for me were the whites of Southern Italy -- Campagna specifically. I took a whirlwind wine trip with a friend who's an importer. And I mean whirlwind: We landed in Naples, flew to Sardinia, then Sicily, then back to Naples; then drove south through Campagna, Calabria, Basilicata, and Puglia; then headed north via Molise and Abruzzo, and ended in Rome/Lazio -- in less than 10 days.

We tasted a lot of wines, red and white, good and bad. I think people think of Italian wines as the reds of Tuscany or the Piedmont, but it was the indigenous varietals of Campagna that charmed me -- Fiano de Avellino, Greco di Tufo, and Falanghina caught me in their cunning trap. They're sexy wines, dating back to the times of Nero and Pompeii, and when made by reputable producers (Feudi San Gregorio being my first love), they sing.

And as much as I truly appreciated them for their great balance, bright flavors, and approachability (I still have an affection for them), part of their appeal was that nonwine folks didn't know them, and I got to be the cool kid turning them on to these reasonably priced ancient varietals.

Then it was Northern Italy and a trip to Friuli Venezia Guila, and the Friulian vineyards specifically. Cool-weather Pinot Grigios, Picolit, and Tocai Friulano from Felluga (both Marco and Livio) -- are crisp and clean in the bottle, but enough fruit and terroir to be intensely interesting and food-friendly. I couldn't get enough.

I'm lucky to be in this industry and to have had access to great wine writers and educators, as well as wine tastings and other events. I've tried everything and I've gone through still other preference phases. There was Malbec from Argentina. Ice wine from Canada. Chardonnay from Burgundy. Rose from Provence. Sparkling wine from Champagne. Then back to Campagna and Friuli. A mixed tape.

But last Monday, as I sat with my friend Marj (a.k.a. Magpie) trying to decide whom to vote for (I live in Massachusetts), it was Gruner Veltliner's leitmotif I chose.

Read more of Annie's Eating New England.