This may be some of the best gelato I’ve ever tasted. The details:
gelatissimo (artisan gelato)
26 Forest Street
New Canaan, CT 06840
203-966-5000
they’ve reserved the url www.gelatissimo.net but there’s nothing there yet.

I learned about this place on Wednesday from a friend. He was able to tell me where it is, though he couldn’t remember the name, and we found it without much trouble. You should go find it too. It was a rainy and cold morning but Eric, Jeremie and I decided to head over there anyways. The shop was warm and charming and all of the gelato looked very good. Eric had some sort of cherry flavor, Jeremie had mint chocolate chip and I got half cappuccino/half lemon. Everyone liked what they got, but I think mine was the best. The lemon was to die for and the cappuccino wasn’t far behind.
For now, they’re open 12-10p every day so you should go get yourself some as soon as you can. You won’t be sorry.

I got up early this morning and instead of going to the gym, like I intended to do when I set my alarm last night, I made kreplach. Seriously, I’m nuts.

Greetings from beautiful Bethel, CT! We’re hanging out at Molten Java, a nice cafe with good coffee, eclectically painted tables, a good view of town and wireless internet. Today has been a very pleasant day. I woke up around 6:30, did some laundry, went to the gym and had breakfast on the terrace. Ok, fine. Breakfast on the deck. Delicious. Then we cleaned up and popped in the car, arriving here in Bethel around 40 minutes later. The drive up was very scenic. Later on we’re heading to New Haven to have dinner at Sally’s Apizza. Yum, yum, yum.

What I’m drinking: Turkish Latte – espresso and milk with cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla. I can’t decide how I feel about cardamom.

This morning I took my meds a wee bit out of order so that I wouldn’t forget to take them all and I got a big stomachache from taking the antibiotic without food. Totally gross. I had some peanut butter toast and made some Jasmine #5 that I got from Adagio and now I’m feeling much better.

Me & the tea are hanging out in the home office while the house is being cleaned. Worth every penny, my friends. Once the cleaning people are gone, I’m off to the airport. Detroit today, Grand Rapids tomorrow night. Ahh, Northwest, we meet again.

The highlight of Sunday was our special dinner at Blue Hill Stone Barns. I wish I could have taken pictures as it’s hard to describe just how lovely and pleasant the dining room is. The walls are cream colored with wood accent and the ceilings must be at least 12-15 feet high. The floors are a very rustic style dark wood and in the center of the room is an expansive dark wood console table with a large gathering of winter flowers and branches.

The menu had many differences from our last visit there in late summer but was every bit as tempting. We decided to do the three course tasting and picked out a bottle of Riesling, the exact name of which escapes me, that turned out to be fantastic. The amuse-bouche was a delicate cauliflower soup with a dab of basil oil floating on the top. Creamy and light, it was perfectly matched with the basil oil. Due to some confusion by the many wait people helping us, we were treated to this soup twice.

Course 1: mushroom tartlette. The bottom layer was made up of fingerling potatoes, followed by a mixture of walnuts and local wild mushrooms which was topped by larger slices of wild mushrooms. On the side was a generous helping of sauteed wild mushrooms and the slightest drizzle of basil oil and mushroom juices. Sumptuous without being too rich, it was a wonderful second-start and the wine complimented it quite well.

Course 2: I had the lightly smoked whitefish with baby greens, wild mushrooms and roasted squash seeds. Jeremie had the cavatelli. I had a little taste of Jeremie’s cavatelli and it was really good, but I thought my salad was fantastic. If I hadn’t overheard the couple dining next to us rave about this dish, there’s no way I would have ordered it but it was wonderful. The fish was velvet-smooth with just a hint of it’s smoky preparation and the richness was balanced with the sweet-salty dressing and the light salad greens. The mushrooms were not as much of a feature in this dish but their texture and earthy flavor brought an interesting dimension into this dish. I love roasted seeds of any kind and these squash seeds did not disappoint. They were perfectly roasted and seasoned with a variety of spices and just the right amount of salt. Crunchy, salty and delicious, they added a nice bite of spice to the salad greens.

I’m getting hungry just writing all of this.

Course 3: Jeremie had lamb but I can’t remember any details about the preparation. I had breast of duck, sliced and perfectly moist, served over sauteed thinly sliced carrots and parsnips in a sweet reduction of wine and pan juices (I’m guessing) with spatzle on the side. I had a similar dish last time we dined here and enjoyed this permutation just as much. Secretly, I’m a sucker for spatzle.

We were pretty full and quite content at this point, but the dessert menu proved too tempting for us to resist. I opted for a nice pot of darjeeling tea and Jeremie chose the chocolate bread pudding with banana ice cream. Now, if I were assigning names I’m not sure that I’d have called this dessert bread pudding, but a rose by any other name would have tasted just as fantastic. There was a thin, crunchy top to the bread pudding portion, almost like the top on creme brulee. The banana ice cream was perched on top and was everything that banana ice cream should be. I definitely need to try making banana ice cream. I think it would go really well with the walnut cake. Anyways, the bread-cake part was rich, moist and chocolatey but it was the center of the dessert that I enjoyed the most – delicious, thin caramel sauce with whole warm, salty peanuts. The combination of the sweet and salty and the otherworldly flavor of good chocolate was just incredible. I’ll have good dreams about the caramel and the peanuts for days to come.

I wonder if we can go there for just dessert? Nah. I couldn’t resist the rest of it.

We had the oven on for almost 7 hours today. I can’t remember doing that, like ever.

Ben and Mandy came over this afternoon to bake cookies because they don’t have a mixer and it’s more fun to bake with people. We made two kinds, both recipes from the Food Network. The first dough we made was for Alton Brown’s “The Chewy” chocolate chip cookies. Now, when I think of chewy chocolate chip cookies, I think of slightly puffy and thick chewy cookies. This recipe required that the butter be melted, which should have been my first red flag but as I trust in Alton, I overlooked this peculiarity. Since we needed to chill the dough for an hour before baking, we went on to the second type of cookie, Raspberry Lemon Thumbprint Cookies from Emeril Lagasse.
I’ll tell you the truth. I really wanted these cookies to be horrible, because I’m not a fan of the Emeril, but these were fantastic jammy morsels. Ben and Mandy made this dough while I cleaned up a bit and sat on the couch for awhile. I helped a little at the end by filling the jammy hole with jam, but that’s the extent of my involvement with these ones. They did seem to be fairly easy and quick to throw together but require some ingredients you may not usually have around the house. Though the recipe calls for Chambourd or Kirsh, Ben and Mandy brought along a delightful framboise liqueur and a little of it went into the jammy mixture and lots more went in to us. I remembered that I had a bottle of framboise from our visit to Chamonix in October 2002 so I brought it up from the cellar and we had a little tasting. All in the name of science. Both were very good but different from each other.
Anyways, the thumbprint cookies baked up wonderfully and tasted even better once they’d cooled. The only thing to note is that the recipe says you’ll get 4 dozen cookies and we got about 20 cookies total. I think that we could’ve stretched the dough a bit farther but there’s no way we’d come close to getting 4 dozen.
Back to The Chewy. After hanging out in the fridge for an hour, the dough had firmed up nicely and we had high hopes of perfect chocolate chip cookies coming our way. This was not to be the case. The cookies spread a lot in the oven and came out quite flat and much more greasy than I usually care for. But here’s the thing – they do taste good and even though they’re quite possibly the thinnest chocolate chip cookies to come out of my oven, they are indeed chewy. In my opinion, they’re not pretty enough to serve to company and I wouldn’t make them again. They’re just not what I’m looking for in a choco chip but they are interesting. I think I’ll try Alton’s recipe for “The Puffy” and see how that comes out.

You thought I was done? Ha! Then we made homemade pizza. But now I’m too tired to tell you more about it. Perhaps tomorrow.

I just heard the most awful recipe on the radio: Trailer Park Tiramisu. Chips Ahoy cookies, Cool Whip and Kahlua all layered on top of each other in a dish.

Cool Whip freaks me out.

I’m working in the ci-taay, we went to Pret for luuunch, Pret tastes so gooood. Ooh, ooh, ooh. I had a sandwich comprised of poached salmon, baby spinach, whisper thin slices of cucumber and a touch of dill dressing; the combination was fresh and delightful. I also enjoyed a small cup of butternut squash soup and bought a little piece of carrot cake for a late afternoon snack. I wish we had Pret in Connecticut. Pret, you are so fabulous.