Viva Vesuvio!
I am so pleased with your article in the paper today (“Exploding with Flavor,” Uncorked, Oct. 4). As a former cook in an old Italian restaurant in Michigan, [chicken] Vesuvio was always my favorite recipe. Personally, I prefer scampi Vesuvio, but chicken is the Chicago way to go.
You’re right, this is a bold dish that requires bold wines. My wife and I love Santa Margherita pinot grigio. The wines you listed will of course deserve a taste test.
Mike Shotwell,
Lake in the Hills
Half-baked approach
I read your column on cooking chicken Vesuvio and I must differ from the way you advised readers to prepare the dish. Baking the chicken is taboo. Baking does not give it the crisp fresh flavor that this dish should have. When I make this dish, I saute [it] in olive oil in a skillet on the stove top over high heat.
When the chicken and potatoes are crisp, I take the chicken out of the pan, pour off some of the fat and deglaze the pan with vermouth or some other white wine. This makes a nice sauce. Then I return the potatoes and chicken to the pan for a minute of two and serve. Sometimes I cook peas with the dish but not always.
The real secret of chicken as you describe is sauteing the chicken in small pieces and not baking it.
Ralph Bernstein,
Highland Park
Vinegar detective
Reading your pages on vinegar in today’s Tribune(“Pucker up . . . and say ahhhh,” Oct. 4)–which I enjoyed very much, by the way–suggested to me a subject I had been thinking about for 50 years. That long ago I ran across a reference in an early Wisconsin pioneer account about a maple-sugar vinegar. I was then director of the Rock County Historical Society in Janesville, Wis. That means that I was interested in history both from the point of view of academia and of tourism. It occurred to me that rendering maple syrup into vinegar would be another way of making a product related to local resources and history, and it probably wouldn’t taste too bad either.
Just now Googling “vinaigre d’erable” in French in Google’s advanced mode, I’ve found 544 Web pages relating to maple vinegar. Now I need to find the product itself. Boston-type baked beans are practically a national dish in Quebec, and my Vermont-derived grandmother always served baked beans with a cruet of apple-cider vinegar on the side so a splash could be added to the beans as a condiment. I can’t wait to try baked beans with maple vinegar.
Robert L. Hall,
Libertyville
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