After our adventure to see the Shanghai acrobats, Tom surprised me on Friday by taking me out to dinner. He took me to Sangria. It was pretty good, we had a nice peach sangria. We also had some chicken and spinach empanadas, which came with a very tasty sauce. We didn't think it was as good as Cafe Ba-ba-reeba though, I think that's our favorite.
Sunday was a very very fun day. We got up early and took the 8:35am train with our bikes out to the start of the forest preserve trail. We rode almost 20 miles up to the Botanic Garden. The ride was really nice because it was shaded and the trees kept in a lot of cool air. It was pretty uneventful until I got a bug in my eye. We had to pull off and Tom had to help me get the guts out. Gross.
When we got to the gardens we found out that Academia Barilla was in the Vegetable garden doing cooking demonstrations and doing olive oil and balsamic vinegrette tastings. We were just in time for an olive oil tasting so we decided to check it out. The "teacher" was a judge on Iron Chef (Tom and I love Iron Chef, it's so suspensful!). He is also a teacher at Academia Barilla. He started the class by telling us how to tell what kinds of oils are from Italy. Only the bottles that say "Product of Italy" are actually made in Italy. All other kinds may have some very small amount of Italian olives, but for the most part come from Spain or Canada.
We then went on to the tasting. He gave us two different kinds of olive oil, both were Academia Barilla brands. They came in small plastic cups. The way that you taste olive oil is to wrap your hand around the whole cup and cover the top with your other hand. Then you move your hand around in a circle to swirl the olive oil around. Then you get it close to your nose and smell the oil. These two in particular smell like tomatoes right off the vine. He made a good point in saying that if your food doesn't smell like anything, it won't taste like anything. I never thought about this in relation to my olive oil. Then, and this is kind of gross, you take a small sip of the oil and make a sucking noise through your teeth. You should taste the flavor of the oil and then shortly after that you'll feel a peppery burning sensation in the back of your throat. A good olive oil should smell good, and have a bit of a bite.
Then on to the balsalmics. Did you know that there's a consortium that certifies authentic balsalmic? The modena consorsium de balsamic puts a seal on all those balsalmics that are "real", kind of like how champagne can only be made in the Champagne region and has all of these rules, balsalmic vinegar has many regulations around it. Authentic balslamic also will only have an age range on it. The reason being that they keep many barrels at one time, as one gets low they use the one next to it to fill it up, thus the barrel at one end may be 12 years-old, while the barrle at the very other end may be 25 years-old. We got to try some balsalmic vinegar, as well as some balsalmic must. The must is very sweet, and extremely tasty. The instructor mentioned that it tastes excellent on desserts. Especially vanilla ice cream, fruit and chocolate cake. He mentioned that Vosges Chocolates uses the Barilla must to make a balsalmic truffle. He said he's also used it for making filet mignon. He poked four little holes in the filet after he finished cooking it, and then dropped a little drop in each hole, he said it's delicioius. A little bottle of that must is like $50, crazy. A 3oz bottle of the really super old and concentrated kind could cost around $300. The lesson was very interesting and educational. I have a whole new appreciation for olive oil and balsalmic vinegar.
After the tasting we wandered around a bit until we found a place to stop and eat our sack lunch. We had a great view, and sat at some cute tables. We then went to the Japanese garden, which was very neat and interestingly organized, and then to the Englished walled garden. I LOVED the Englished walled garden. It looked like it came directly out of a Jane Austen novel. So cute, with a little portico that had circle windows on either side, and the chairs under them had high backs, with half circles cut out of them to match the window. So quaint! The rose garden was in full bloom as well, and smelled wonderful. We spent the entire afternoon wandering around and enjoying the pretty sunny day, until it came time to leave the garden. But since this post is getting really long, I'll continue the rest of Sunday's adventure in the next post, so,
To Be Continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment