If Marissa has learned one cooking tip from this whole vacation it's that if you could only have one ingredient in your kitchen it should be
sea salt. While Tai has been using it in their Malibu Cooking always -- Marissa now sees why. It makes everything better. Many chefs in Italy even use it instead of oil. They simply sprinkle sea salt onto a pan and grill veggies such as zucchini and eggplant. It's also great to soak many veggies to get the excess water out before cooking. Simply put, sea salt is delicious! And how appropriate that we, Bikini Bakers, who bake by the sea most love the "Salt of the Sea."
Sea Salt comes in an array of colors and from many locations. It can be purchased in speciality kitchen/cooking stores but also right in your local supermarket.
Tai's dear friend, Gabriella, once again picked us up from the airport in Geneva. One the way back to Talloires we stopped at Pont De La Caille. So beautiful!
Alessandra "Hot" hot pink sandals, Tai's hand made shoes from Positano and Marissa's Havaianas hand "blinged" by her mom!
First of all, our tremendous kudos to Chef Gianfranco Gallo and all of his staff for inviting us into their kitchen at Villa Marina -- it is a rare thing for chefs (especially in a 5-star restaurant) to do and we are so grateful for openness. Also we appreciate his assistance in making sure we had all of the ingredients he could find that we needed. We improvised on a few things. As I was making the soup there was no such thing as chicken broth. They had no idea what brown sugar was, nor baking powder. So we did the best we could with only one casualty -- the popovers popped. But the chocolate chip cookies, even without the brown sugar, were amazing!
We explored the streets, the cute stores, admired the gelatos...and dodged those boys who kept turning up.
We found all of our favorite things in Rome...
