Krik's Picks

I was in Washington early in October on just an overnight trip. I owed my DC staff a celebration in appreciation for the hard work on all of the fly-ins we conducted this year. So I set something up for after my meetings. I wanted to try someplace new, and came across Fiola . I made a reservation, and it was the perfect choice. It was a quiet, relaxing, somewhat elegant venue. The service was friendly, knowledgeable, attentive, but not intrusive. And the food … So often my reviews of an Italian restaurant in DC begin with the words: “Why can’t we have Italian restaurants like this in Minnesota?” I didn’t want to do that again. So I tried to think of a different reason to rave about Fiola’s food. Then I had a revelation. It was sort of like the dog that didn’t bark. (Sorry if the literary reference isn’t obvious. Click here to read about a Sherlock Holmes story where the clue that solved the murder was the dog that didn’t bark.) When you look at Fiola’s web site, there’s no hyper...

I mentioned in an earlier post that I went to the Minneapolis Farmers Market at the end of September and bought a bunch of tomatoes. It’s part of an annual end-of-summer tradition. This year, I bought a basket full of tomatoes. It might have been more than we usually get. It was a lot of tomatoes. But they were right at their vine-ripened peak and perfect for the combination of recipes that I usually use. One recipe is for oven roasted tomatoes. Click here for my previous blog post on that. The other recipe is for tomato jam. I’m kind of surprised I haven’t posted it previously. It’s really delicious. I got it from the New York Times, back when Mark Bittman was the food editor. (When Bittman was the Minimalist. That was before he became the Opinionator (which he is now) and became shrill, shallow, and tedious.) So here’s the link to the recipe. Tomato Jam (NYTimes, August 20, 2008) 1 1/2 pounds good ripe tomatoes (Roma are best), cored and coarsely chopped 1 cup sugar ...