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4d8d89a
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Now we're going to one of the coolest places in Florence." "Where's that?" "A pharmacy." "You're taking the princess to a drugstore?" "I said a pharmacy. Climb on." Profumo Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella is a pharmacy only in the ancient sense of the word. As soon as I saw and smelled what "pharmacy" it was, I recognized it as the origin of the exquisitely wrapped, handcrafted soaps, colognes, potpourris, and creams I had seen in their..
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florence
kick
mimosa
pharmacy
italy
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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5fd5b1c
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That night, I wore a dress that Mary had picked out for my trip. I had told her that I wouldn't need anything that dressy, but she'd convinced me otherwise. "You don't know who you'll meet, since you'll be with Sally and American TV. It could be a count or a prince or Marcello from 'Under the Tuscan Sun.'" As soon as she'd mentioned Marcello, I'd put the dress in my "take it" pile. The pinkish-brown dress was a very thin, satiny silk weave ..
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charmeuse
marcello
dress
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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7463a25
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I popped the tape into the VCR and watched a pretty, middle-aged Italian woman in a flowered housedress and frilly apron hold up various fish and shellfish as she spoke to the tape in rapid, enthusiastic Italian, espousing the virtues of the seafood. She was standing at a battered wooden table in what appeared to be her own kitchen. After she finished showing off the fish, she beheaded and eviscerated them, and then washed them in a chipped..
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ravenna
video
seafood
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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4ec5681
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I bought several bars of pomegranate hand soap for gifts. The salesgirl explained that the soap was made with aged milk and all-natural ingredients. Much of it was still done by hand and always with great care. She could have been talking about food.
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casey-costello
soaps
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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6894acc
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Do you make pizza dough?" "Yes." "This is the same thing. Very easy." When the yeast was foamy, she added flour, olive oil, and salt and handed me a large wooden spoon. "Now you stir it hard until it comes together. Then we knead." She floured the counter and I stirred until the ingredients came together and then turned the dough mass out onto the flour. Rosa divided it in half and we each kneaded a piece until it was smooth. We shaped them..
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dough
fillings
italian-cooking
ingredients
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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a6ca145
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We'll be in Parma, Bologna, Florence, Ravenna, and the hills of Chianti with our own 'Morning in America' chef, Casey Costello, who will cook in the kitchens with real Italians. We'll show you how true parmigiano-reggiano is made and see the fat pigs that give us Parma ham. You'll learn how to cook a Tuscan steak the size of a cow, make a real Bolognese sauce, pasta the Italian way"- she leaned forward and gave the camera a coquettish twink..
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sally-woods
italy
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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af57b28
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She told the audience that they were going to make a fine old chestnut, Baked Alaska. "First you have to have a soft meringue, at just the perfect stage." The camera went in for a close-up of the meringue. "We have six egg whites, superfine sugar, and vanilla, with some cream of tartar to keep them stable. Are they ready, Danny?" "Not quite," he said and ran the machine for a few seconds. "There." He removed the bowl and held it out for Sal..
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blowtorch
meringue
sally-woods
danny-o-shea
dessert
ingredients
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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af25dbc
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He took a moment to regain his composure, but he got it right on the next take and finally began to make the Bolognese sauce. The pan on the stove had butter that we had already partially melted, and he poured in some olive oil. Then he stirred in the previously identified chopped vegetables, and after several minutes (which would later be edited out), the vegetables were translucent. When he added the finely chopped beef, Sally told the vi..
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italian-cooking
sauce
improvisation
sally-woods
ingredients
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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53c34b3
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Sally was demonstrating trout mousse rolled inside salmon fillets and napped- such a nice word- with hollandaise sauce. She made the hollandaise on her hot plate and handed it to me to keep warm on our back-table hot plate. When I took the pan from her, smiling for the audience, I could see that it had curdled; little bits of hard yolk were visible up close. I wasn't exactly sure what to do about it. I certainly didn't want to point it out ..
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curdled
hollandaise
improvisation
replacement
sally-woods
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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b7c7272
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Put on bibs, shake the lobster for the camera, tickle its swimmerets, remove and crack the claw, dip and eat. Cut open the stomach, taste tomalley and roe, remove body meat, dip, and eat. Suck and nibble on legs and tail flaps.
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lobster-dinner
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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e8391ac
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One platter held two fillets of salmon, each thinly sliced and surrounded by appropriate garnishes and small rounds of dark bread. The other platter had a lush assortment of appetizers. "Why, that's perfectly lovely," said Sally, who immediately had a brioche round swathed with foie gras on the way to her mouth. I attacked the salmon. Between chews, Sally managed to say, "Please thank him for us. I'm sure it's a sweatshop in the kitchen, bu..
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imported
salmon
smoked-salmon
irish-cuisine
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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43f4ad7
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Chef Danny O'Shea had truly outdone himself. In addition to the two types of salmon, and the foie gras brioches, of which Sally had just taken a second, there were artichoke bottoms filled with chervil-laced lobster, potato gaufrettes slathered with creme fraiche and topped with caviar, and wedges of hot fingerling potatoes coated with melted cheese and sprinkled with crumbled bacon. Carefully trimmed vegetable crudites garnished the platte..
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danny-o-shea
irish-cuisine
chef
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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0efcfb7
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Gravy is what Italian-Americans call tomato sauce, the three-hour kind with enough meat to feed a small country. My mother makes a huge pot of it every Sunday. It isn't so much about cooking as it is about connecting with her heritage. She likes knowing that generations of her maternal ancestors spent their Sunday mornings stirring what they called 'ragu' in their own kitchens. Even when we ate Sunday dinners at Nonna's, my mother made her ..
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italian-american
italian-cuisine
tomato-sauce
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Nancy Verde Barr |
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51b8bf4
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My mother had just finished kneading a large mass of pasta dough and was patting it into a nice round ball before putting it aside to rest. That meant ravioli. We always began Sunday dinner with either ravioli or lasagne. The homemade pasta meant ravioli, because we buy the large sheets of dough for lasagne from Constantino's. Sitting on the stove, waiting for the oven to get up to temperature, was a roasting pan holding a large pork roast ..
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ravioli
roast
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Nancy Verde Barr |