The Baboon Congress

Tiramisu & You

57 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee

I’m lucky enough to have a job with a very nice perk – travel. I’ve been to some fabulous places: Hawaii, New Zealand, South Africa, Paris, the Caribbean, Mexico. The dark side of this perk is that I never get to choose to where I’m traveling; I go where the client program sends me. This means that every now and then I end up traveling to a place that I’ve always wanted to visit but never been assigned to. So when a client chose Rome for their group destination, I was ecstatic.

Rome3

The site was exhaustive; we were on the go from morning until night. All the usual sites were visited, the Forum, the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica…. everywhere! If I had a bucket list, I would have been able to cross out two of the items on the day we went to Florence: Michelangelo’s David and the Uffizi Gallery.

But an outstanding time was the day we spent at Santa Benedetta winery, southeast of Rome. It was just four of us that day but the owners were as gracious as if we had been a group of 50. We walked the vineyard, tasted wine, learned about the wine-making process and then proceeded to lunch. Even with our group’s small size, they rolled out the red carpet, food wise. There were about 30 different vegetable dishes on the buffet tables (asparagus, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) as well as bruschetta and various cheeses. This was just the appetizer part of the meal. Homemade pasta with pesto and fresh parmesan cheese was the main course. It was mouth-wateringly good – it was amazing.

And then there was the dessert.

Now I’ve had tiramisu many times in my life. Alcohol soaked lady finger cookies, with mascarpone cheese, whipping cream and sometimes chocolate – how can you go wrong? When this tiramisu came out of the kitchen it didn’t even look like tiramisu. It looked a little like cinnamon-sprinkled glop on the plate – not the neat layers that I’m used to seeing. But after experiencing the other phenomenal food, there was no way I wasn’t going to at least try it. Oh my. My oh my. It was like eating good art – sweet, creamy, rich – all at the same time. It was so amazing that I don’t even have enough words to describe how amazing it was. I asked to meet the chef; she was a teeny little Italian woman with no English but a huge smile. I had my guide tell her that I would never be able to eat anyone else’s tiramisu ever again.

Of course, I have had tiramisu since that trip – when it’s been offered, I usually try it. But I was right when I was sitting at the table off the vineyard; I’m sure I’ll never have tiramisu that good again!

Describe an unforgettable meal.

57 thoughts on “Tiramisu & You”

  1. Good morning. Good story, VS. I hope to visit Italy some day. Once when I was working for a non-profit organization, the guy in charge of fund raising took myself and some other people to an Italian restaurant in Detroit where I had a very amazing meal. The restaurant didn’t look like much on the out side. Inside was a hugh selection of all kinds of Italian food.

    Apparently the fund raiser had a lot of spare money to use from a grant. We were treated a banquet that was served one course at a time. I think there were at least 5 courses. There were appetizers of all kinds, soup, a pasta course, a main dish, all kinds of side dishes, wine, and deserts. All of it was excellent. I think we were even able to try several kinds of main dishes and several kinds of desert. I was still young enough to have the capacity to try a big selection of the food, although I was not able to make it through every one of the choices. I’ve never had a meal like that any other place.

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        1. the brits had the same amount of time to learn how to overcooked bland versions of everything, no it has to be the light.. thats the only possible conclusion.france italy greece. yes. russia, uk bulgaria not so much

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        2. On my trip to Bulgaria to do volunteer work I enjoyed a number of good home cooked meals. Most Bulgarians don’t have much money and raise a lot of the food they eat. The food they cook from their own gardens and their small selection of livestock kept in their back yards is very good. The meals served to me started with some nice appetizers and rakia, a type of brandy that many people produce in their own stills. They will also usually serve home made wine from their own grapes. The appetizers might include home made pickles, sausage, and cheese.

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        3. While Italy worked on food and art the Brits worked on literature (Shakespeare, et al, economic systems, capitalism and banking, new forms of Christianity (Anglican, Quaker, Methodist), and the monarchy. No time to eat.

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        4. I’ve actually had several memorable meals in Russia. I love borscht, shashlik, and chicken Kiev. For an appetizer you can’t beat a glob of shiny black caviar on a chunk of good Russian farm bread with a swig of vodka to wash it down.

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        6. pj. I wholeheartedly agree with you on Russian food (never had it in Russia, so will take your word for it on that). Any cuisine that can find that many uses for sour cream is ok by me.

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    2. italy is for food. the main focus in italy is that life is good. i had tiramisu in milan and it was the best i have ever eaten. the italian tradition is that the noon meal for business is a big deal. they get to show you how wonderful their favorite restaurant is and you chat and get o know each other a little better. the company i was traveling for had a guy in charge who didnt do lunch. it interuppeted his thought flow and made him tired so we didnt do it. one day the italian host company pleaded and we went to this nice little spot on lake com overlooking the alps and the lake and the restaurant had a beautiful view and the food was delicious and the wine, you have to have some wine with the lunch it was one of the beautiful meals in my life. then we returned to the hotel michaelangelo in milan across the street form both the train station and the best littel restraunt in all of the city had beautiful little gnocci and a tiramisu that rivaled sherrilees. i like italy

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    As a person who loves to eat and loves good food, this post leaves me with too many choices. Of the many wonderful meals I have experienced which do I choose? Grandma Hess’s Thanksgiving Feasts for 60 people? Three places in Rome, one of which was located in such a maze-like setting, that we could never find it again when we wanted to return? Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House in Savannah, GA? The hotel food in London that was so bad, I have never before or since seen anything so revolting? There is that kind of unforgettable, too.

    OK. I choose that memorable cook Grankma aka Josephine Newell Hess
    Thanksgiving Dinner 904 SW 4th Str. Pipestone, MN 1960-1970.
    About 50-60 people–8 children and spouses, 39 grandchildren, Grandma and Grandpa

    Appetizers: Grandma’s cornmeal flatbread kept in the old pink hatbox, layers seperated by waxed paper.
    Slather with butter (no oleo allowed)
    Relish tray with carrots, celery, radishes, homemade pickles, olives (suck out pimentos from center. Place one on each fingertip for eating slowly)

    Main Course
    2 Turkeys, 15 – 20 lbs each, roasted in the pink double oven in Grandma’s tiny kitchen
    Bread and giblet stuffing, made of several loaves of cubed white break
    Mashed potatoes -10 lbs potatoes
    Turkey Gravy
    Yams with marshmellows and butter
    White rolls
    Green beans with bacon
    Tapioca fruit salad (one year Uncle Jim’s cat got into it–Valient woman that she was, Grandma scooped out the part the cat touched and served it)
    Cranberry sauce–not from a can: 4 bags of cranberries, 2 apples, sugar
    Cranberry relish with walnuts

    Desserts:
    Egg Coffee from stove top urn
    Wild Plum Pudding with sauce
    Pumpkin Pie
    Apple Pie
    Cherry Pie
    Real Whipped Cream

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    1. Jacque, that meal is a lot like what my mother and her mother served at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Home made cranberry relish, roasted whole turkey or chicken, gravy from the poultry juices, mashed potatoes, various vegetables, homemade stuffing of a special kind, and various kinds of pie. Always well prepared as I am sure was case at your Grandma’s house.

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  3. Mmmm … Where to start. I’ve had so many great meals I can’t possibly pick the best of the best. If you put a gun to my head, I’d say the lunch shared with my wife, father, and stepmother at a Michelin two-star restaurant in Burgundy, France. It happened more than 25 years ago, so the menu is hazy, but I remember every dish being artfully presented, with superlative service and a serene, elegant atmosphere that was still comfortable, despite our struggles with communicating in French. We all came away understanding why those Michelin stars are so highly coveted. The chef and entire staff works to make each dining experience second to none in every area. The food is always perfect, so everything else is what earns the stars.

    Otherwise, I tend to remember individual dishes I’ve had at certain restaurants (or towns if I can’t recall the restaurant name). The beet mousse with raspberry sauce at 510 Groveland in Mpls. The best lamb shank I ever tasted in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. Grandma Norbury’s roast pork dinner in 1982 at her home in Eldon, Missouri. The sea bass Veracruz and the wood-roasted chicken on successive nights at different restaurants in Cancun, Mexico. The roast chicken paired with Domaine Serene Pinot Noir at the old Dakota jazz club in Bandana Square. The incredible chicken pot pie at Retro Bistro in suburban Chicago (YES, chicken…pot…pie!)

    If I sit here all day I’ll remember a dozen more great meals or dishes. But it’s important to remember that the greatest food in the world becomes tasteless if not shared with someone you love. For those of us who live to eat, rather than eat to live, the sharing IS the living.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    2. One of the most exquisite meals I’ve ever had was at Ristorante Luci in St. Paul. I had their prezzo fisso tasting menu, and every morsel of food was heavenly. Unfortunately husband is not an adventuresome eater, and feels intimidated by a menu where you have to choose each component of the meal separately. Part of the problem is, I think, that he reads the menu from right to left, i.e. sees the price before anything else; the last of the big spenders he’s not! At any rate, while I was enjoying my repast he was poking with his fork at the few handmade, and very beautiful raviolis that made up his meal. I would have been rather annoyed at him if it weren’t for the fact that it struck me as funny that he actually calculated what he had paid for each handmade piece of pasta. Priceless memory of a memorable meal, but I have never gone back there with him.

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      1. I’m lucky. My wife loves great food as much as I do, and she’s usually never the least bit concerned about the price. She figures if we can afford to go to an expensive restaurant for great food, we can afford anything on the menu.

        I’m the one who groans occasionally over the price of an item, but only if it’s way above what I’d consider “normal” for that quality of dining experience. Like ultra expensive Kobe beef from Japan. Is that really twice as good/expensive as the best US beef in a fine steakhouse? Probably not. And to me, once you’re past the freshest ingredients, the real art of a chef is combining flavors and textures in sauces, seasonings, and the accompanying side dishes so each bite is an explosive orgy of tastes and textures.

        Chris

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  4. On a totally rained out Memorial Day, 2002 or 2003, my husband, sister and I braved the interminable and torrential downpour and went to Fhima in Downtown Saint Paul to use a gift card we’d been given when we moved into our Lowertown condo. I think we got there at about 4:00 and, not surprisingly, given the hour and the weather, they weren’t busy. We put ourselves in the hands of Joseph, the most amazing waiter I have ever met. He guided us through the most exquisite meal any of us has ever experienced. I don’t recall every course but the seared tuna appetizer stands out along with several carefully chosen bottles of wine. I think we were there about 3-1/2 hours, advised and catered to by Joseph the whole time. When we left, we found that the gift card had expired, but it probably wouldn’t have covered the tip anyway. Joseph had made the meal a relaxing, delicious, unforgettable adventure, and I’ll bet he wasn’t over 20. A few months ago we went to Faces on Mears for my birthday, David Fhima came to our table to chat. My sister was with us again and we told him about the excellent time we’d had on that Memorial Day and asked if he knew what had become of Joseph. He is working in NYC, no longer a waiter but no doubt very successful in whatever he’s doing. The young man was obviously going to be good at anything he put his heart into.

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  8. I have had lots of memorable meals, the details of which all run together. I loved the Thanksgiving feasts we had at my Aunt Elaine’s when I was a child. The smells and anticipation were intense.

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  9. Thanks for the virtual trip to Italy, VS! Confirms the reason for the “Eat” segment in “Eat Pray Love.”
    We were vacationing on the Big Island of Hawaii in ’91 – my sister had joined us for the first week, and taken son Joel home with her for the second, so Husband and I had the week to ourselves. (!) First night we headed into Kona for a meal (wish I could remember name of restaurant) and both ordered the Mahi-Mahi – this might have been the first time we’d had tuna that wasn’t from a can. Exquisite! We came back the next night, it was that good, although whatever we had that second night couldn’t top the Mahi.

    More recently, I’ve been to Fika (at the Amer. Swedish Institute) a couple of times, and every single dish is absolutely delicious – interesting combinations of tastes, and beautifully presented. Not huge portions, but not skimpy considering the price – just right.

    As C in O so eloquently mentioned, the people accompanying you can definitely enhance the dining experience, which was true in both cases above. We also used to have evenings with friends in Winona that were dubbed “great moments in gluttony.” Ate at some local out of the way place, nothing gourmet about it, just good solid midwestern food – but the experience with these people elevated it to something else.

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    1. My friend, Tuula is from Finland, and has lived in France a couple of years. Her meals are a tasteament (not a typo!) to the fact that good food need be neither expensive, complicated or fancy; she excels in peasant fare. And she and her husband have some of the most interesting friends to boot.

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  10. Greetings! Oh man, a food blog today — and now it’s starting to get sexy, too. Unfortunately, I don’t travel or get out much, but there’s a couple memorable meals. In high school, a teacher took a group of us on a trip out east. We had to work concessions for a couple months to earn the money, but it was great fun. We were in this rustic restaurant in Woodshole, MA with mismatched furniture, sawdust and peanut shells on floor and a great ocean view. BEST clam chowder EVER.

    While working The Pillsbury Bake-Off at The Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, we had several amazing meals. Well, because the Bake-Off is all about food and is attended by all the major food editors in country. The Sunday Brunch was the most amazing assortment of finely prepared foods I have ever seen. Truly incredible.

    Another time in Southern California when I was there training for Biosync bodywork, they took us to a raw food restaurant . Totally amazing and different. Gourmet raw food preparation is a glory of tastes, textures and freshness that has to be experienced. And they weren’t salads. In the hands of a creative raw food chef, we are talking a whole different level of gustatory delight without feeling overly full and sleepy afterward. The desserts alone are worth the trip.

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  11. Damn! WordPress betrayed me again.

    Reading these posts has made me hungry. But I’m in a bit of an odd position. I can’t afford restaurant meals, and have not bee able to do so for many years. Still, I have memories. We dined once at the Sooke Harbor House in British Columbia, a place offering scenery as spectacular as its food. That’s the only place I’ve eaten a fresh green salad that included flower petals. We had wonderful meals in London (not British food, of course). The meals we used to get at the Caravan Serai were so good I can barely imagine anything better.

    Strangely enough, my most memorable meal is one I cooked. I used to entertain a young couple from time to time. Elizabeth had been my daughter’s best friend in high school. She married Andrew, who is a rising star in publishing. We used to cook for each other.

    The meal I remember came from a cookbook given me by my erstwife, who lives in Belgium. Everyone Eats Well in Belgium is a great book. And the meal I served in 2004 was the only time I’ve done a whole meal from that book. The centerpiece of the meal was chicken braised in Belgian beer with assorted vegetables. It seems all Belgian meals include potatoes, and ours did. We had a great grainy baguette of European bread spread with Hope Creamery butter. Desert was pears poached in an astringent, fruity red wine. After the meal there was little conversation, just a lot of significant looks.

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  12. Like most of you, I am having a hard time choosing just one memorable meal. Do I go with the fancy cuisine? The excellent atmosphere? The terrific dining companions? The amazing chicken and noodles as they can only be made on a Danish-American farm from a rowdy rooster past his prime?

    I gonna go with location. When I was very small, we went to Gooseberry Falls. This is long enough ago that I can tie this trip to no specific vacation or even where we were living at the time. Most likely before I was 8 years old, as I don’t recall my youngest brother as any part of it (we will not go into other reasons why that might be). In any case, I remember we had gotten some smoked white fish and saltines and some little shop where my dad probably also got some bait worms. We had that fish and saltines out on the rocks at the top of the Falls and I have been trying to make time to re-create that meal ever since I moved to Minnesota.

    It’s right up there with the lunches we would pack in the little plastic sand bucket we would carry in our teeth while climbing the rocks next to a small waterfall that fed into the Big Thompson River in Colorado. Must have been younger than 12 when we did that. We would make the climb, hike around a little, then sit by the stream and have lunch, wash our hands in the stream, read a story and eventually climb back down.

    I love food, really enjoy it for all its diversity, but I guess for me it is location, location, location.

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    1. I think you’re right about location being a huge factor. Meals consumed around a camp fire after a day of paddling and portaging canoes with a bunch of good friends, the best. As a kid, eating the sandwiches we had brought to the beach brings back memories vivid enough that I can almost smell the salty water, sea weed, and the tar from the fishing yarns strung out on nearby posts.

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  14. I have a dessert for you all. It won’t compete with VS’s tiramisu but Mini-sota Donut Ice Cream is somewhere in this state. The folks at Kemp’s tell me that the billboard advertising the flavor is up on 494. You can see it on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/bethann.bloom
    Thanks to all the faithful denizens of the Trail whose votes made this possible!

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    1. OK… this is big news for me as I made a point to vote from my home computer, my work computer and the library computer on a regular basis every day last summer!

      I have a set of ice cream soda classes in a rainbow of colors. I’m thinking that some weekend in August (after we’ve gotten our hands on the Mini-sota Donut Ice Cream), we should have a little party to celebrate our own famous baboon and her ice cream!

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  15. Shore lunches of just caught walleye on Savant Lake, Ontario. My dad was a pro at fishing and frying. Buttermilk Channel in Brooklyn last New Years Eve with my son. I had the lobster tart, duck meatloaf, and pecan pie sundae. Glorious!

    Click to access newyears.pdf

    Wonderful descriptions of food, all. I want to taste Sherrilee’s tiramisu tonight in my dreams.

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  17. I once had a very perfect beet salad and a bowl of heavenly french onion soup at Meritage in downtown St. Paul. The food was a little on the pricey side, but redeemed itself by being really, really good. I checked their menu again a few months later and both those items had been removed, and I haven’t eaten there since, so I don’t know what the rest of the food is like.

    I second BiR’s endorsement of Fika. They do the same kind of exquisite presentation, and everything is uncommonly fresh.

    Another of my favorite meals was at a restaurant called Il Fornaio Cucina in Del Mar, California. I was traveling with a friend and we had spent the day hiking along the ocean. We had dinner on the patio – it was December, as I recall, and a little chilly, so they had those outdoor heat lamps going. We split a couple of dishes, a plate of spaghetti with marinara sauce and an order of asparagus drizzled with butter and sprinkled with grated parmesan, and we each had a glass of wine. It was very simple, just the right thing at the right time in the right place. I think we had the patio to ourselves, perhaps because the natives thought the weather too chilly to sit outside. They were wrong.

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    1. In Denmark, virtually every restaurant that has outdoor seating also has wool blankets draped on every chair. Because winters are long, dark, windy and damp, Danes relish spending time out of doors when they can, so a chilly summer temp isn’t enough to keep them inside.

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  18. Many years ago, husband and I visited New Orleans. We stayed in the French quarter in a rather quant little hotel, and had many enjoyable meals in well known eateries. Commanders Palace for brunch; dinner at K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, and a midnight snacks at Cafe Du Monde stand out. Each a delightful experience and not outrageously expensive. K-Paul’s didn’t accept reservations, so as dinner hour approached, people would line up on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. Drink orders were taken for those standing in line, and pretty soon everyone was chatting with everyone standing near them. This was a good thing as seating at the restaurant was communal, you were seated with whomever you were standing next in line with. I had met Paul Prudhomme shortly before our trip at a book signing at Dayton’s in downtown Minneapolis, and he actually recognized me and invited me into the kitchen where husband took a picture of me with Paul. Five days isn’t nearly enough to explore New Orleans, but that’s all we had, and we made the most of it.

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