The good fortune of good food

Fortune cookies are not what they used to be. I don’t want advice, I want a prediction, a portent, a promise that something really great is around the corner.

Luckily, this fortune cookie got cracked open after a meal at Grand Sichuan House in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and I couldn’t be too upset because that restaurant is seriously the Bomb.

Sometimes I worry that I’m getting jaded living in New York. We’re constantly surrounded by amazing food, from nearly every corner of the world. The other day, i was working in Rochester, New York, and I ended up eating Chinese food at a restaurant where my meal was preceded by fried wonton strips and a dipping dish of duck sauce. I felt like I had been sucked back at least 15 years in time, because here in New York, we no longer eat “Chinese food.” We eat food from Hunan, Yunnan, Shandong, Shanghai, Canton. I can think of half a dozen Sichuan restaurants of the top of my head in Manhattan alone. I’ll have lunch at a place life Cafe China and think, “Yeah, that’s good enough for a weekday lunch,” but not a weekend dinner.

And then, I eat at a place like Grand Sichuan House, where I have to travel all the way to the second-to-last step on the very slow local R train, and life feels full of possibility and surprise again.

Our favorite was probably the cumin beef.

You know how when you look at great art or the Grand Canyon, the pleasure is so much more when you can turn to a friend and say, “Isn’t that fantastic?” Eating the cumin beef with my friends was not quite like looking out at the Grand Canyon with them, but it might be close to gazing at Bryce Canyon. Salty, chewy, crispy, tingly, it had that peculiarly dry texture of food that’s fried with corn starch. It was endlessly fascinating.

A close second was the Chong Qing chicken. There is chicken in there, with a perfect, crisp edge. The tingly, almost sour aftertaste of Sichuan peppercorns was incredibly pleasant, sharp but as pleasant as the smoothness of excellent chocolate or port.

The jellyfish was a particular favorite of mine. Korean-style jellyfish is more elastic; this had a refreshing snap and crunch.

Of course, sometimes your good friends don’t always agree with you. They may not like a certain painting or song or ma po tofu as much as you do, but there’s still a sense of shared appreciation and cooperation. When the waitress took our order, she didn’t quite believe it — the six of us ordered 7 entrees and 4 appetizers. We ended up eating nearly everything.

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The only thing that’s predictable is its decor. It’s bare, with the most earnest effort to decorate represented by a string of chili pepper lights hung up in a corner. While we were there, the TV was showing an extremely depressing Chinese news story on babies in China that are lactating because of hormones in the food and water. And you get the feeling that despite the love it gets on Chowhound, most of its business is takeout “Chinese Food American Style” for the neighborhood.

But we all agreed at the end of the meal that we would like to come back. “You will return”: that would be a good fortune.

If it’s made by a Korean, is it Korean food?

Hot on the heels of my discovery of chipotle-flavored Korean seaweed, I read this article on Gustavo Arellano and his take on the evolution of Mexican-American food. I was fascinated, even if he does hate on Rick Bayless. (How can anyone hate on Rick Bayless? When I first read one of his cookbooks, I thought, “He must be such a nice man.”)

He’s also the Mexican of “¡Ask a Mexican!“, which was the inspiration for a blog I like called, “Ask a Korean!“

At the end, he says,

Here’s what I know. If it’s in a tortilla, it’s Mexican food. If it’s made by a Mexican, it’s Mexican food.

Do you agree?

(The photo is of a deep-fried and puffy sope, the only such sope I have ever seen, made by Yoshi, the Okinawan-Mexican chef at La Fogata in Salinas, California.)

Do you really want to know how to make seolleongtang?

At this point, I have to confess, if I had not already told the whole world I was writing a cookbook, I might just quietly slink away.

But since I have, and we must finish, I thought I’d share some of the difficult questions that have been paralyzing us.

Seolleongtang is one of my favorite Korean foods. To put it most simply, it is a soup made of ox parts, including bones, boiled until the stock takes on a milky-white color. Koreans eat it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, because it is so soothing. When it comes to the table, you might dismiss its weak flavor. But once you add lots of scallions, coarse salt, fresh pepper, and the sour intensity of radish kimchi, the soup comes alive.

That said, the first time I made it, I wondered, “Is this worth it?”

I’m not the kind of cook that likes to make life difficult for herself for the fun of it. I like to cook more than the person who’s popping a frozen dinner into the microwave, but that’s mainly because that frozen dinner tastes terrible. I’m impressed by friends who make their own jam or bacon or croquembouche. But I am lazy, and my cost-benefit analysis is as strict as an economist’s. Unless my homemade version tastes a lot better or costs a lot less than a version I pay someone else to make, I’m generally not interested, especially if making it at home takes an enormous amount of effort. There are exceptions for foods that give me a great warm–and beneficial–feeling of nostalgia, goodwill, and righteousness. (The converse is also true, which means I generally don’t like paying for food that I think I could make myself.)

Seolleongtang in Korea is cheap. My mom occasionally made it at home on a whim, but it was so easy to go out and buy a hot bowl for $5, there was no reason to make it at home. You don’t even have to go out of your way to eat a fantastic version. I have a strong memory of being 8 years old, going to Seoul for the summer, and escaping the hotel’s overpriced and yucky Western breakfast to eat seolleongtang in an alley, and thinking it was one of the best breakfasts I’d ever had.

In New York, there is a famous restaurant on 32nd Street that specializes in seolleongtang. Gahm Mi Oak is good, not great, like most food on that street.

So the question for me was, is my homemade seolleongtang so much better than Gahm Mi Oak‘s that it’s worth making at home? Or given that this cookbook is meant for an audience of someone than than me, how good would homemade seolleongtang have to be for you to make it at home?

Don’t answer until you hear what it takes.

My cookbook on royal palace food lists these ingredients for a proper seolleongtang: half a cow’s head, 1 cow’s foot, 1 set of mixed beef bones, 2 knee bones, 1 beef tongue, 1 pound brisket, 1 beef shank, 1 spleen, and 1 quantity of some ingredient that is such an obscure cut of meat that neither my mother nor her friend, a professional dumpling maker, knew what was. Another cookbook called for a shorter list of meats, though still rich in offal: ox-knee bone, “gristle” (can you imagine asking the guy at Whole Foods for 600 grams of gristle?), ox-tongue, beef brisket and beef shank. This cookbook, published in English, had the awesome tip, “Ox-head meat, ox-hooves and/or breast meat may be added.”

My mother, on the other hand, said all we needed was brisket and a beef shank bone cut into pieces.

So we bought a giant bag of beef bones. We soaked the bones for an hour or so to drain the blood, which makes the broth clearer and cleaner. Then we put the soup bones in the pot with water, brought it to a boil, and let it simmer. After two hours, we removed the bones from the pot, trimmed the meat and tendon off the bones, set aside the broth, and then put the bones back in the pot with more water. After another two hours, we removed the bones, poured out the broth, combined it with the earlier broth, and put the bones back in the pot again with more water. After yet another two hours, we did it again. We also made a separate broth at some point with a good cut of brisket, which we combined with the bone broth at the end.

The end-result was a pale, milky color, though not as opaquely white as I’m used to. My mother said, “I think the restaurants color their soups.” Hmm. It was tasty, but not earth-shattering. I would rather take the subway to 32nd Street.

I wondered if it were possible to make it in a less complicated way. It’s one thing to boil a pot for hours, another to have to watch it constantly. So the next time, instead of following my mom’s careful boil and drain, boil and drain instructions, I just boiled the bones for 8 straight hours. It tasted pretty good, but the soup didn’t turn white at all.

Then Diane took over. She tried boiling bones and brisket separately, she tried boiling them together, and she tried combining them in complicated stages. She noticed that as she boiled the bones in stages, per my mother’s instructions, the broth got whiter and whiter. She wrote in her notes, “We wondered whether are truly no short cuts to this soup as was preached in Dae Jang Geum.”

And now, I am sitting here wondering if I should go try to find some ox knee bones and gristle and try yet again. But even if I found ox knee bones and gristle, and made an absolutely delicious and perfectly white seolleongtang that had to be soaked and/or boiled for 10 hours, would you be interested in that recipe? Or would you rather be provided a simpler recipe with more easily sourced cuts of meat that’s tasty but not really the right traditional color? And even in that case, would you be willing to boil the damn bones, shifting them in and out of the pot, every two hours for 8 hours? That’s practically like feeding a newborn.

You know that saying, “Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth?” That’s what writing a cookbook is like, sitting in a kitchen with hundreds of invisible cooks whose minds you are desperately trying to read.

We live in an amazing world…

Chipotle-flavored Korean toasted seaweed, marketed as a healthy snack.

Annie Chun was the first, but clearly not the last to see a wider potential market for gim or 김 as a snack and not just as a side dish. This biography of the SeaSnax founder is kind of fascinating–a perfect blend of Korean obsession with “well-being” meeting the hippie-organic American demographic:

Jin earned her Masters in Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine at YoSan University. During her studies, she developed an interest in nutrition as a tool for prevention of disease, self-healing and self-empowerment. In her view, nutrition/food is medicine for the soul and body and the only lasting treatment for self-healing. While in school, she gave birth to her daughter Namu (tree in Korean). During her pregnancy and motherhood, Jin’s understanding and appreciation for nutrition and health gained more relevance as she realized that it was no longer about me, but we. She is committed to educating, empowering and serving children, mothers and families. She is also the founder of Acuparents, an on-line support community for parents in the health care profession sharing natural and holistic-minded parenting philosophies.

Remember Senora Soledad?

She’s been immortalized! I met Senora Soledad in Oaxaca almost five years ago, and wrote up an account of my adventure learning how to make mole negro with her. A couple years later, I got this lovely email from Neal Erickson telling me what a wonderful time he’d had with Sra. Soledad as well.

And now, Soledad Ramirez is in The Atlantic magazine! The author, Grace Rubinstein, found me through the grace of Google. There is a small, selfish part of me that wishes I had written the story myself, but the rest of me is just happy that Sra. Soledad is getting the recognition she deserves.

¡Brava!

Holiday Gift Guide for the Korean Food Lover & Cook

This is a totally shameless ploy for traffic but I couldn’t resist. And honestly, it can be a pain in the ass to get the right equipment and ingredients for Korean cooking, which means if you go to that extra trouble, you will be extra-appreciated.

Some of the items below are linked to Amazon. The others are linked to various other stores. Unfortunately, I’ve never ordered from them, so I can’t vouch for them. If you have a Korean grocery store of any serious size in your area, though, you should be able to find most of these items there as well.

Rice Cooker

A great cook should be able to make great rice with a pot and a stove, but when you’re juggling pots and pans on all four burners, it really sets my mind at ease to know my rice is cooking away perfectly, without a care in the world. I’ve never owned a super-cheap rice cooker, but I’ve been served good rice made with ones that look like this, and it’s still better than hovering over a pot on your stove.

If you want to splurge and get a gift that is hard to get yourself (if you are not me), it’s worth getting a fancy one that can make brown rice, rice with barley, rice with beans, etc. Zojirushi is the BMW of rice cooker makers, well-regarded and expensive. Somewhat cheaper, though still pricey, are the ones made by Sanyo. I can’t compare the two brands because I’ve never had a Zojirushi, but I cannot imagine living without my 10-cup Sanyo. 10-cup is better than 5-cup if you anticipate cooking for more than 4-6 people at a time.

Good Knife

As our recipe-testers have learned, Korean cooking requires a lot of knife work. All that chopping is infinitely more enjoyable if you have a good knife. There are others who can speak more intelligently about different kinds of knives, but for me, when you need to cut into giant Korean radishes and heads of Napa cabbage, the heft of a German-style 8-inch chef’s knife is the way to go. My mom bought me a Henckels knife similar to this one over 10 years ago and it is still going strong. That said, a knife is a very personal thing, so it might be best to get a gift certificate for $80-$100 at a nice kitchen store, and have the Korean cook in your life go and try holding different ones. This will also avoid the bad luck Chinese people believe you incur when you gift a knife.

While you’re at it, get a cheap honing steel as well, and if you’re feeling particularly generous, a knife skills class.

Mandoline

A mandoline is not an excuse for not developing knife skills, but man does it make your life easier! It will transform your feelings about making any sort of Korean salad that requires you to cut hard, rooty vegetables into thin matchsticks. The Benriner is cheap, sturdy, and does the job.

Korean Clay Pot

As much as I love a good dolsot bibimbap, or mixed rice and vegetables in a stone pot, the stone pot is not must-have home equipment since it’s really only good for that one dish. A clay pot is much more versatile. A small clay pot full of spicy tofu stew, or kimchi stew, or soybean stew bubbling away on the stove is really a beautiful sight. (Mmm, how about a lovely, jiggly steamed egg custard?) You don’t have to have a clay pot to make a good Korean jjigae, but it’s traditional and it’s practical since it means you can move the stew straight from the stove to the table. (Given how many dishes you have to wash after a Korean meal, one less pot is important!)

Large Wide-Mouthed Glass Jars

If you’re serious about making your own kimchi, you need some proper equipment. My mom says that kimchi made in a traditional clay jar, aged outside in the cold air of late fall/winter really does taste the best. That said, she uses giant plastic containers that fit perfectly into her kimchi refrigerator. I don’t make kimchi in such huge quantities, but if you’re going to make some, you should make more than a tiny jar for two reasons. One, the kimchi tastes better when it’s ripening in a large quantity, and two, it’s just too much work to do for so little output.

The containers need to be airtight. Plastic works fine, and I own a couple of big rectangular containers with lids that lock down. But glass looks better, and although I might be imagining it, I think it tastes better, too. I normally ferment two to three pounds of cabbage or radish at a time, and if I want to pack all the kimchi in one container, I need anything from a half-gallon to one-gallon container. These hermetic glass jars aren’t perfect, because the mouths are a little narrow, but they’re the best ones I’ve found so far in the U.S.. The 2.1 quart and 3.2 quart jars are probably most versatile.

Giant Bowl

It’s practically impossible to salt vegetables and add seasoning in a normal-size mixing bowl. I have a very broad, flat bowl that holds 22 quarts or so that I bought at a Korean grocery store for $15. It doesn’t fit in any of my cabinets so it sits upside-down on top of my refrigerator. It’s ugly, I don’t care. That’s how much I need it.

I have no idea what these bowls are like, or how reliable the online stores are, but it looks like restaurant supply stores are a good place to find 20-quart broad bowls if you don’t have a large Korean grocery store near you.

Plastic or Rubber Gloves

I find this image weirdly terrifying, and plastic gloves are the most unromantic gift possible, but they are so useful. I had a hell of a time finding them in regular grocery stores. I should probably just recommend that you buy a pair of rubber gloves.

Korean Ingredients

I can’t really recommend that you buy some fancy gochujang or soy sauce because even though the quality really matters, it’s not like you’re going to be able to find anything really special outside of Korea. Still, if you know someone who has no idea how to navigate in a Korean grocery store, it would be sweet to get a tub of gochujang and put a red ribbon on it! This was our favorite from our taste test. Other key condiments and pastes: doenjang or fermented soybean paste (this one is the same brand as our favorite from our taste test), Korean dark soy sauce, and Korean soup soy sauce. Maybe you could make a little starter Korean cooking set!

I would be pretty happy if someone bought me some fancy, expensive Japanese rice. Or if you want to be creative, how about a bag of black rice? If you add half a cup of black rice to 2.5 cups of white rice, you end up with gorgeous purple rice with a subtly new and exciting flavor. You can get a 2-pound bag for $8 at a Korean grocery store, or you can pay over $20 for 15 ounces of “forbidden rice” from Lotus Organic Foods. I am not pooh-poohing the organic stuff, which I have never tasted — it might be worth it!

Awesome Korean Mini-Series About Royal Palace Cooking

I lost a good chunk of my life to watching all 54 episodes of Dae Jang Geum, an epic Korean mini-series set in the 15th and 16th centuries. It follows a young girl who struggles between the need to avenge her parents’ death by becoming the Royal Kitchen Lady and the desire to follow her own dreams, including the possibility of romance with a young scholar who is so attractive, he looks good even in those traditional hats with the mesh screen across the forehead.

It’s melodramatic and riveting, with expansive scenes of hundreds of royal kitchen maids preparing elaborate and luxurious meals. The show was popular all over the world — just look at the names of the people posting to this Facebook group. (Serra Ozgiray, Paula Fernandez, and Devina Patel on the first page!) I think it actually says something about how universal her struggles are, especially to people in cultures that value collective traditions but who also yearn for greater individual freedom.

You can find it here, but do not only buy Volume 1. You will kick yourself when you get to the end of it and the next DVD is not ready to pop into the player.

Stocking Stuffers

If you don’t want to spend $100 on all 3 volumes of Dae Jang Geum, you could get a stocking stuffer or two.

Standing Rice Scoop

This is just genius. All nice rice cookers (see above) come with a little pocket on the side of the machine to hold the paddle. But if you don’t have such a wonderful machine, you end up putting the paddle down and the rice gets all over the counter. This standing paddle avoids the mess.

Japanese Grater

Most of our recipes call for grated, not minced, ginger. It imparts nicer and juicier flavor. I don’t own this one or this one, but I wish I did.

Chopstick Rests

Chopstick rests are pretty useless, but they can be so fun. I got these “peas in a pod” chopstick rests for Diane last year. As a Korean who loves Korean food, she can attest that she loved them!

The elephant in the room, of course, is the question, “What is the best Korean cookbook?”

Diane and I wholeheartedly hope and believe it will be available next year!

The bodice-ripping romantic hero of tofu

The Bridge: Firm, yet Tender.

(New tofu at my grocery store–it’s a little too firm for my taste, but the lack of moisture means it’s very easy to stir-fry.)

 

The advantage of August

August is not the best time to be in Rome. The sun still beats down relentlessly so that when you’re standing in the Roman Forum and your audio guide says, “Now, let’s walk toward the tomb of Julius Caesar,” you think, “No f*&king way.” And more importantly for us, many restaurants are closed for vacation. Technically, we were only there for the last day of August and the first week of September, but Italian restauranteurs are not so exact. One restaurant we were hoping to try had a sign up saying they would be open Saturday, September 3rd. When we tried to make a reservation, we were told, “Sorry, we’re actually coming back September 5!”

But there is one very good reason to be in Italy in August: summer markets. We were staying in an apartment right by Campo de Fiori and its market, which was described as touristy but to me seemed just sort of puny. There were many more people hawking T-shirts and dried pasta than actual fruits and vegetables. I did like watching vendors use the fountain as a giant public sink.

The market that felt much more workaday was the large covered market in Testaccio. These tomatoes, so uniformly red, were not very sweet, but they had a lot of tart flavor. If we’d had more time, I might have cooked them down into a sauce.

With all the pizza and pasta we were eating, I was eating mainly fruit for breakfast and snacks. I love plums that are a little hard, that you really have to bite into, but that yield very sweet, just faintly tart flesh. Italy has many different kinds of plums just like this, all with varying perfumes.

I gravitated toward these dusky grapes that looked nothing like the grapes I find at home. They tasted as you would imagine they would, sort of lightly floral and fleeting.

When you buy fruit in a market, you can wash and eat it right away because there are those ubiquitous fountains spewing forth clean, fresh water.

Testaccio market also had butchers, salumi and cheese shops, pasta shops, all the little things you might need. It reminded me a bit of the markets I loved in Mexico. The man at this salumi/cheese shop was very eager for us to taste his cheese. He sold us way more fresh mozzarella and salami than we had asked for, with a corresponding surprise in price, but the mozzarella knots (which he urged us not to refrigerate) were so good, we forgave him.

Just a few blocks away is the famous food store Volpetti. It’s not very large, but every conceivable space is filled with something you would like to take home. It’s worse than a pet store with puppies in the window.

I had been warned that it was very easy to rack up an enormous credit card bill, so I limited myself to two smallish chunks of cheese, a pecorino with pistachios and a similarly hard cheese studded with truffle bits, and some wild boar salami. I may or may not have finished eating everything before I went through customs. The guy who helped me clearly saw “starry-eyed tourist” written all over my forehead. I think he was disappointed I didn’t buy more. He clearly didn’t see “nonprofit worker” also tattooed on my forehead.

Even though my purchase at Volpetti was my second-biggest in Rome, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the prices there and at the market in Testaccio, even with the exchange rate. The cheeses were around 30 euros/kilo, or about 15 euros/pound. The fruit at the market was so cheap, I felt almost like a thief. (I have since heard the European Union subsidizes organic food.) In New York, most cheeses at fancy shops seem inevitably to hover around the $25/pound mark, and I don’t even want to think about how much my local farmers market charges for Italian prune plums (which really do not taste so sweet outside of Italy).

What pizza means in Rome

I am not a pizza connoisseur. I don’t really know what makes a pizza Neapolitan, or even New York-style at this point, given how saturated New York has gotten with fancy pizza. But I do love it, and even though I ate pizza probably over six times in five days, I didn’t even come close to getting sick of it. It helped that pizza has a multitude of meanings in Rome; all incarnations are delicious.

There is the famous “pizza bianca,” which looks like a rather plain and dry piece of focaccia. It was one of the first things I ate in Rome, at Forno Campo de Fiori, which is consistently named as one of the best places for pizza bianca in Rome.

Later in the trip, I had some pizza bianca from Roscioli that was a little too old and almost too much work to chew, but that first piece I had at the Forno was still warm from the oven. People often put a little prosciutto in between two pieces to make a sandwich, but when it’s fresh, it’s amazing how delicious plain food can be.

We had a piece of pizza with mushrooms and that was tasty, too, as were the cookies I bought for my sister my last morning in Rome.

And then there is pizza al taglio, or pizza by the slice, which in Rome means by weight or, if you speak Italian as poorly as I do, by a wave of your hand and a grunt or two. Pizzarium is famous for their luxurious toppings, but it’s as casual as most pizza al taglio places, a gorgeous counter with an array of pizzas and then just a couple of places to stand with big stacks of napkins. You’ll often see people eating pizza with a fork and knife, but not pizza al taglio.

Zizou found the caponata topping too sweet, but I love sticky-sweet eggplant and pinenuts. The bread was a little doughier than I would have liked, but I would happily have stuck around for a few days to try some more toppings. There was one that was snowy with layers of lardo — I regret a little not trying it.

My favorite Roman pizza, though, was the Roman or Lazio-style pizza, which features a thin and crisp dough, almost like a cracker. It can fool you into thinking you haven’t really eaten that much. We did often see Roman families sitting around, one pizza in front of each person, so maybe they feel the same way. The pizza we had at Dal Paino in the Centro Storico was tasty and certainly convenient, but the pizza we had at Pizzeria da Remo in Testaccio may have been my favorite meal of the trip.

I know a huge part of it was just the atmosphere. It was a Saturday  night and the sidewalk was packed with clusters of friends and families. It’s been discussed on Chowhound, but for one reason or another, there wasn’t a visible tourist presence. It was one of the rare moments in Rome where we felt absorbed into regular Roman life. The crowd was pretty boisterous — kids running around, people talking and laughing — but not at all impatient. The big-bellied owner pacing up and down past the sidewalk tables, almost willing people lingering over their pizzas to leave, so at least we knew the restaurant was trying to seat us.

We didn’t have time to go to a fried fish restaurant, so I insisted we try some of their fried baccala which was hot and wonderful.

But look at the pizza! We got a plain margherita, another with sausage, and then a third with zucchini blossoms and anchovies.

Look how thin the crust is! I thought it was really the perfect complement to the cheesy, salty toppings. It may be blasphemous to say this, but as a kid, I really liked the Pizza Hut Thin Crust pizzas, and these pizzas reminded me why.

We were too full to try any “ice cream to the coconut” or “coffee chocolate italian soft cheese,” but it always gratifies me when I realize non-Korean people also have serious trouble with English translations.

Pizza and beer on a Saturday night — so familiar and yet so new.

Gelato + fountains = the perfect Roman combination

For a city of such obvious, monumental accomplishments, Rome felt a little poorer than I expected, even a little backward. But the city is overflowing with riches in two important areas: gelato and fountains.

Gelato, of course, is on almost every other corner. Most of it looks terrible, cheap, and artificial. My first cone was too sticky-sweet and shallow in flavor, and to top it off, the surly woman at the register tried to charge me for a gelato my friend had already paid for.

But good gelato abounds as well. As we walked into Gelateria dei Graachi, we saw Italian men in their well-cut suits walking out, happily eating ice cream cones. The gelato there is good, still a tad too sweet, but the flavors are pure and clean. I love that almond is such a typical flavor in Rome — why isn’t that true in New York?

But my favorite gelato, the gelato I liked so much I ate it three times in five days, including twice for lunch, was at Il Gelato di Claudio Torce. (You can find a nice interview with the man himself at Katie Parla’s blog).

I tasted mora (blackberry), a sesame-almond, lemon-almond, fior di panna, crema di limoncello, and one of at least 10 different chocolate flavors at the outpost in the Spanish Steps.

When asked if you want your gelato “con panna,” you should say, “Si!” The whipped cream is held in place with a jaunty little bonus cone.

Just when I thought I couldn’t eat any more gelato, I found myself standing in front of Gelateria Corona, a garishly colored gelateria in Largo Argentina that defies expectations and serves delicately flavored granitas. I cannot get enough of almond-flavored iced desserts! If only I had had more time…

And when you are feeling sticky and thirsty from all that gelato, the fountains of Rome are not only good for photos and wishes — they are overflowing with potable water. Really.