As I chomp on a piece of homemade pizza, from scratch, cold from the frig, I thought about my perhaps ten favorite meals.
In no order of importance, they include:
- A perfectly roasted chicken with sausage/apple/sage stuffing and mashed garlic potatoes and veg and Mom’s gravy with a beef consomme base;
- Bistecca Fiorentina aka steak Florentine made from Italian Chianina beef, with chips (french fries) that are thinly cut and fried in olive oil;
- Concord or green grapes, fresh off the vine or any fresh fruit like marionberries, blueberries, strawberries, cherries, cantaloupe warm and just brought home from the farm stand;
- a good deli platter of Nova smoked salmon, a perfect NY sesame bagel with cream cheese, capers, onion and tomato, washed down with cranberry-raspberry juice;
- My own fresh salmon filet or steak either en papilotte on a bed of braised leeks and topped with lemon and butter, or on the grill with salt and pepper, and grainy mustard on top;
-Jacque Pepin’s Lamb Robert, boned and butterflied and grilled with his signature marinade;
- Cassoulet a la “Simca” Beck;
- Scottish mussels from Loch Etive mariniere with toasts to get all the juice;
- the pear I ate 15 years ago for breakfast from a market in Florence, that my dad bought as they don’t sell ripe pears in the US; and
- my mother’s Viennese Chocolate Torte, that she made for birthdays with a nut biscuit, milk chocolate buttercream and dark chocolate glaze. That’s something I will miss as I do not have the recipe and Mom is gone now.
That’s the best I can do for 15 minutes of thinking. Think about your top ten – Dee
