June 3 – June 9, 2024

Monday:                  Grilled Mushrooms and Broccoli with Caesar Salad

Tuesday:                  Grilled Pork with Apples

Wednesday:          Rigatoni with Midnight Bolognese

Thursday:                Cape Cod Chopped Salad with leftover Pork

Saturday:                Dinner at Le Sam, Chateau Frontenac

Sunday:                   Dinner at Va Bene, Quebec, Lower City

Housekeeping note: This post is late and should have more photos of Quebec. The photographer, my son, just got the pictures to me this morning. Alas – I’m having trouble with the format. So here’s the deal – I’ll send along the photos in a re-edited version of this post. To tide you over, here is a photo taken by our friends Al and Laura at their home in Connecticut. He titled it ‘Bucolic Bluecoat’ (martini)

In Defense of Mortadella and Quebec City

Bonjours, tout le monde.  We have recently returned from three and a half days in Quebec City and the surrounding area where French is the predominant language, and the people are friendly and the food is wonderful and the land is vast, and the weather is variable (a bit like Pittsburgh) and there is the Chateau Frontenac: (Billy took several wonderful photos of this iconic hotel – I’ll send them along, soon)

Quebec City is a fine place to visit and as European a city as you will find in North America.  The upper city is built inside a wall – there used to be a lot of fighting between the French, the British, their colonists and Indians.  So, a guy who knew how to build strong walls could earn a good living back then. And they still have walls around part of the upper city and a fair number of cannons. I tried to tell them that Americans no longer want to invade – but my sense was that they’ll keep the walls in good repair and hang on to their cannons.

Quebec has the urban amenities of Europe which you just don’t find in large American cities – walkability, the beauty derived from bureaucratic attention to architecture and historic buildings (Chicago, DC, Savannah, Charleston and other exceptions notwithstanding), ubiquitously good food and drink, and people who look and walk differently than you.  Oh, and the Canadian currency is beautiful.  It is to the American greenback as the uniform of a Swiss Guard is to that of an American G.I.  And, of course, there are also frustrations – an insouciant approach to restaurant and bar service, a bureaucratic stiffness to all transactions with officials and clerks (hotel front desk,* airport personnel), and things opening and closing at strange hours. 

*Me – to front desk clerk after waiting for an elderly women to check in (she had more questions than the PSAT) and then for the clerk to disappear into a back room, reappear and make several adjustments on her computer until finally summoning me forward like a monarch condescending to a peasant – “Bonjour, I’d like to get $100 Canadian dollars, and please bill it to my room.”  Clerk: “Ah, non, I’m afraid I can only give you $50 dollars at one time.”  Me (resisting the urge to say, “Okay, I’ll take $50 now and then we’ll both march in place for a minute and then you give me another $50,” offering, instead, “Well, the front desk gave me $100 yesterday, have you changed the limit since then?”  “Ah, non, the limit is always $50.”  “Well, perhaps you could check with your supervisor?”  “She will not change it.”  “Well, just as a courtesy to me, perhaps you could ask her.”  “Ah, okay, but it will still be $50.”  Clerk, after disappearing for some time into a back room.  “Ah, so we have changed the policy and now I am able to give you $100 Canadian dollars.”  Me: “Merci (out loud), you officious little martinet* (under my breath).”

*Not the exact word I was thinking – but, hey, this is a family-friendly blog.

But, for the most part, the French of Quebec are much more spontaneously friendly (American?) than the French of France.  And most of them know English as well as you do.  And they are tall and strong and handsome and pretty and you should visit Quebec City.

And, if you have an extra day, you should visit the country around Quebec City.  You can see the vastness of the land from the boardwalk that runs below the Frontenac.  You’ll be seeing miles and miles eastward past Isle d’Orléans and up the St. Lawrence and the same miles and miles westward, and, across the St. Lawrence a small city and, beyond it, marching in enormous ridges to the south, the Laurentians, looking very much like our own Laurel Highlands.  So, you’ll naturally want to take a look at all this.

My suggestions (2/3 of which came from our friends Ann and Chris) are that you visit Montmorency Falls

– a whopper of a waterfall – and then Canyon St. Anne Falls the wildest water you will ever see.  It will take your breath away and be happy to take your life, if you fall in. 

On the way back to the city, stop at the Basilica of St. Anne de Beaupre – an enormous, wonderfully decorated Gothic structure with unique carvings and mosaics and much stained glass, including a window atop which you will see “Pittsburgh” and, in the basement, one of two exact replicas of the Pieta, and in the basement chapel a wonderful sculpture of Christ on the cross, but having freed his right hand, which he reaches down and out to the viewer as if to say, “come, follow me.”  The Basilica is a pilgrimage site and was built entirely with private donations.

Back in Quebec.  Stay at the Chateau Frontenac – one of the old grand railroad hotels.  You’ll recognize it:

And the city has many fine restaurants, including two at the Frontenac, as well as a fascinating bar.  For a local joint, try La Bouchette, a stone’s throw from the Frontenac.  Go for lunch or a snack and have a local beer and order the cheese platter which will include a goat cheese we’ll be looking for in Pittsburgh, a melted Brie, a fine blue, a nice Comté, wonderful bread and marmalade and a few greens as a nod to modern ideas of healthy eating.  For a great dinner, we recommend Va Bene in the lower city, near the port.  which offers fantastic fresh pasta.  Order a Plateau Milano antipasto to share.  And then have the Ravioli alla Mortadella.  Va Bene also has great meat – try their beef cheeks – and fish.

In lieu of a recipe this week, please accept our restaurant recommendations, above and, below, a defense of mortadella, a key ingredient of the wonderful raviolo served at Va Bene.

A DEFENSE OF MORTADELLA

In our house there are many controversies, none of them rowdy, but still many, oh so very many controversies.  How to load the dishwasher (common to all households I know of).  Whether or not to put good knives in the dishwasher [if you do that at my house you won’t eat here again].   How to organize the glasses in the cupboard, when to plant flowers, how to shovel the walk [completely, please, from one end to the other and from one side to the other], when to eat, and so on.  And, Beez is adamant that I should never, ever, under any circumstances, serve her the mortadella that Billy and I crave.

Mortadella is a cured pork product from Bologna, Italy.  An American knockoff, available from, God help us, Oscar Mayer, is called baloney.  But to  call mortadella baloney is like calling the Empire State a building or, or King Kong a monkey, or [and you will pay for this if you do it within my hearing] Sophia Loren a girl.

Imported mortadella is worth the price.  The flavor is as subtle as baloney’s is vulgar and brash.  Slice it thin and it will melt in your mouth.  Chop it into small cubes and you can make the best chopped salad in the world.  Top a pizza with it and it will change your life.  (Put the mortadella on the pizza after it comes out of the oven – it will nearly melt into it, becoming gauzily transparent, if you have sliced it thin.)

All of which is to say that Beez is, in this rare instance, mistaken.  Billy and I are correct.  And mortadella is the king of cured meat – but I’ll need to have a martini or two before I work up the courage to offer it to Beez again.  Come to think of it, a better approach might be to offer her two martinis before the mortadella.