Best 9 quotes of Nancy Verde Barr on MyQuotes

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 viewers, "You could also use a very good grade of hamburger." He poured in some milk, let it evaporate, and then added crushed tomatoes, red wine, and broth. "Now you must cook the sauce two, three hours until it is done," he said. The cameras stopped and we swapped the pan for an identical one with a finished sauce. We also poured boiling water and cooked spaghetti into the pot that had been sitting empty on the stove.

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 white enamel bowl full of water that sat on the table. She put the cleaned pieces on a brightly painted platter, chosen, I'm sure, with less deliberation than our Jonathan would have required. She poured olive oil into a large, slightly dented pot that sat on a small two-burner stove and then in a flash chopped a couple of onions and a good amount of garlic and put them in the oil. While the aromatics became, well, aromatic, she cut up a half dozen fresh tomatoes and a healthy amount of herbs and added them to the pot. She stirred everything around, and before long she had all the fish and shellfish in the pot.

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 studded with garlic, glistening with olive oil, and surrounded by rosemary sprigs.

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 shop on New York's Lower East Side. But nothing could compare with seeing them in the frescoed chapel where thirteenth-century Dominican friars had first experimented with elixirs and potions. Centuries-old apothecary jars and bottles sat on the shelves of carved wooden cupboards that swept almost to the top of a high, vaulted ceiling. I walked slowly around the room, taking it all in, as Danny spoke to a smartly dressed salesgirl. "What an incredible place!" I sighed, walking over to stand beside him. "It's so beautiful." "Pretty special," he agreed, putting his hand high on my back and turning to the salesperson. "I think mimosa," he told her. "A very good choice, I think," she said, dabbing a small amount of mimosa eau de cologne on my wrist and then my neck with a delicate applicator. Danny bent forward so he could smell my neck, then stood back. He drew his eyebrows together and put his hands on his hips. "I definitely think that's you. First, you get this oddly enticing tart kick, then you detect the sweetness. It's a subtle sweetness- not overpowering, but definitely there." "Hilarious," I said sarcastically and kicked him playfully in the shin. "Then you get the kick again," he winced, rubbing his leg.

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, but when there's time, I'd love to meet him." "I'll be sure to tell him. Right now he's a bit like a chicken without its noggin." "This salmon is delicious. Do you smoke it yourself?"I always like to compliment freebies from the kitchen. It usually keeps them coming. This time I was being totally honest; the salmon was incredible. "Aye, we do. And the other salmon fillet on the plate is cured in tequila and lime juice. We do that here as well. And we bake the brown bread that's with it. All of our salmon comes from Ireland, as well as the dark flour for the bread.

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.

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 to her, but I knew she wouldn't want to use it as it was. So I made another one. I melted butter on my hot plate and crouched under the skirted table with the butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and the blender. I waited for Sally to turn on the food processor to puree the trout, and then, knowing the processor would drown me out, I turned on the blender and whirred yolks, butter, and lemon juice into a perfect hollandaise and put it in a pan identical to the one Sally had handed to me. I saved hers just in case she was planning to discuss curdling, but when I handed her the newly made one, she just gave me that schoolgirl grin and said, "Nice work" and went back to the demonstration.

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 Sally to see. "Stiff, but not dry," she said. "But we'd better be sure." And she rested an egg on the whites and told the audience that it should sink in exactly one inch. "Perfect. Let's put the Baked Alaska together." Sally brushed the cake with rum-flavored sugar syrup while Danny explained what it was; then Danny turned the ice cream out on top of the cake and Sally pulled off the plastic wrap. They filled their pastry bags and swirled on the meringue. Sally beamed at Danny and said that everyone should cook with a friend. "It's so much more fun." Danny dusted the cake all over with powdered sugar and then reached under the counter and pulled out a blowtorch. Sally looked at it and said, "Huh," then pulled out a blowtorch twice the size and grinned at Danny. "Yours is kind of small. Can it do the job?" "We'll see," he said and together they torched the dessert.

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 that Mary said was "charmeuse" and I said was the next best thing to foie gras and white truffles. The neckline plunged into a deep V, revealing nothing but suggesting everything. The skirt ended midcalf and would have totally met Nonna's approval were it not for the slit to my thigh.