La Scarpetta on a Sunday

Cathy at A Blithe Palate surprised me with an e-mail asking me to participate in a food blogging event about a new cookbook that she and Ivonne from Cream Puffs were organizing. Last week, Adventures of An Italian Food Lover by Faith Hillinger, arrived by snail mail. Adventures of An Italian Food Lover is a recipe in itself: 1/3 cookbook, 1/3 coffee table book and 1/3 a local tour guide's Italy. It's not only about the recipes, it's about relationships and experiences. Her sister, Suzanne, painted exquisite watercolor drawings and each recipe has a foreword about a person or place she is intimate with in Italy. If you have no intentions of being in Italy anytime soon, you can still enjoy it while drinking a few glasses of wine and pretending.

My plan was to choose a recipe and cook it with Geneve, the woman who is responsible for enlightening me with blogging back in April '06. We have been meaning to cook together (and watch Barefoot Contessa marathons) for months since she has arrived here from LA for the summer. Her summer has been very productive; she is a recent grad of the French Culinary Institute's Techniques class and just completed a stage at New York's #1 restaurant. Adventures of an Italian Food Lover is very us. We met seven years ago while both of us were on semester abroad. We bumped into eachother while walking along Tamarama Beach in Sydney and discovered we were both McGill students. A 24 hour flight to Sydney to find a friend at school in Montreal?

Last Sunday, we went to Whole Foods in Union Square and picked up the ingredients for Scquacquacio di Mare, a dish that Hillinger explains is from a wine bar in Venice called Mascareta. She vividly decribes the eclectic sommelier, Mauro Lorenzo, who owns the Inoteca.

Geneve taught me that when you make mussels, all of the mussels should be closed before being cooked. When they are cooked, they should all be open, any closed mussels should be discarded.

We enjoyed the simple and light Watery Seafood Mess and some vino blanco. There was something very European about dunking our baguettes into the zesty sauce of tomato, white wine vinegar and chili peppers. The Italians call it "La Scarpetta", I call it heaven.