Couscous

Photo by Jacob L. Silberberg, chicken, couscous with sun-dried tomatoes and roasted vegetables by Mr. Silberberg and Scott Mayerowitz.

Sweet potatoes, raw

Why didn't someone tell me sooner that you can eat sweet potatoes raw? Clearing out our fridge the other night, Keryn had me grate some (raw) sweet potatoes into the (raw) carrot and (raw) red cabbage slaw that she later served with lightly breaded tofu and broccoli. The sweet potatoes added a subtle and fresh sweetness to balance out the spicy spices and heavy sauces.

Contrasts in Connecticut

The brunch menu at O'Rourke's Diner, in Middletown, Conn. (728 Main St.), is exhaustively extensive. Just contemplating the specials must give nervous breakdowns to hung over Wesleyan students on Sunday mornings.

Meeting up with our cousins there last weekend, Keryn and I explored the extremes, though we did not sample everything in between. (I liken the strategy to the Simpsons montage that shows Patty spreading a rumor around Springfield by calling "A. Aaronson" and later "Mr. Zykowski." "There," she says, looking spent, "Aaronson and Zykowski are the two biggest gossips in town.") I, not surprisingly, opted to sample as many of the absurdly long list of meats available, ordering "The Irish Embassy," with corned beef hash and bacon (I substituted Irish bangers), alongside home fries, a poached egg and Irish "brown bread."


Keryn had the yogurt, with granola and fresh fruit.


Everyone munched on the incredibly moist and mind numbingly flavorful pistachio bread and lemon poppy seed pound cake, both complimentary.

Medford feast

The last time I had a meal in Medford, Mass., it was at the Carmichael dining hall at Tufts University, an all-you-care-to-eat affair that most likely involved pizza, lasagna and soft-serve ice cream memorable more for the quantity than the presentations or flavors. Needless to say, the feast prepared by our friends Randi and Jeff the other night made me feel like I may have grown up a bit after all.


The vegetable soup was garnished by sage, oregano and parsley plucked from their Medford garden; the peas in the baby spinach and goat cheese salad, grown at Verrill Farm in Concord, Mass., had that energizing crunchiness their frozen cousins simply can't deliver; the ricotta ravioli, served alongside roasted asparagus, tomatoes and black olives from Whole Foods (Rt. 16, Medford), was baked at Bella Ravioli (369 Main Street, Medford).




The ground sole, served with a homemade Parmesan and pine nut pesto, swam in from Captain Boston Fish (377 Main St., Medford). (I wish I could say the bananas in the bananas foster, halved atop heaping portions of vanilla bean-flecked ice cream, also grew in a Medford backyard rather than Honduras, and you know what, maybe they did. Randi and Jeff would not disclose the secret recipe!)

Scungilli (snail) salad, crawling over R.I. tables

Ever nibble on a snail salad? Me neither. I didn't even known it existed until this weekend. Apparently, however, I'm living in the snail salad capital of the world.

The hungry, roving correspondents behind The Splendid Table's "Where We Eat" stopped by Champlin's Restaurant in Narragansett, R.I., for the July 4 episode. There, they not only guzzled gallons of clam chowder -- creamy New England style, red Manhattan style and Rhode Island style ("Briny, sweet, grayish colored clam broth is loaded with clams, potatoes, salt pork and some seasoning") -- but also feasted on some scrumptious snails. (A side order sells for $7.) The way they made it sound, in Rhode Island, snail is the new caesar.

I don't fully buy it, having lived here for a few years and only heard of snails sightings, if anywhere, at the great French restaurants Chez Pascal, on the East Side, and Pot Au Feu, downtown. But a quick search through The Providence Journal archives shows that, indeed, one can stumble upon snails on a Rhode Island menu. In June, the Projo wrote about the $8 snail salad ("something you don't find at a lot of restaurants") at Silvio's, in Johnston. Snails have apparently also crawled on the menu at Carrie's Seafood Restaurant, in North Providence, and the Atwood Grill, in Johnston. The Projo's food writer, Gail Ciampa, even featured snails in 2005, writing about the "snail-salad king," Al La Greca, owner of Rome Packing, where his majesty sells 4,500 pounds of scungilli (snail) salad every week.

"Of course, there aren't really snails in scungilli salad. Everyone will tell you it's conch. But in fact, scungilli are whelk, and the word even means whelk in Italian," Ciampa writes. "While both are saltwater mollusks that live in spiral shells, conch come from tropical waters, while whelk live in the cool waters off New England. Both are essentially marine snails."

If that made you hungry, Rome sells two version of its snail salad, traditional and marinated. Both include, "the finest fully cooked New England cold water conch, freshly chopped celery and Spanish onions, 100% pure corn oil, blended garlic vinegars, salt, crushed pepper, sugar and selected spices."

(For New England fans of Jane and Michael Stern's food finds, the pair have also bestowed their quirky endorsements to the wieners at John’s New York Systems and the stuffed clams at Mike's Kitchen, both in Cranston, R.I.; the ginger flavor at Gray's Ice Cream and the chow mein at Evelyn's Drive-In, both in Tiverton, R.I.)

Photo of Rome Packing's snail salad by Providence Journal photographer Sandor Bodo.