Franco,

I admire your culinary courage. I would not even think of trying to eat goat, but I second Ek's suggestion of roast lamb in Segovia. It is, if I can be forgiven the blasphemy, even better than Roman abbacchio. And I agree that Greek cuisine can give one pause. But the country is so rich in ancient culture and natural beauty that I would urge you to go. If you stick to freshly grilled fish, you will survive and perhaps even enjoy it for a time. I'm powerless to suggest what you should eat once you've grown tired of fish and calamari...

Many, many thanks for offering Perilli's coda alla vaccinara recipe. I'm not a gifted cook but I can follow directions reasonably well, and there is a Little Italy in Montreal where I can get the right cut. I'd be grateful for the recipe - and Ek could compare it to the one she has found - but only if it will not take you an enormous amount of time to translate and post.

Ek,

Here's Maureen Fant's cooking program at ContextRome. Would you believe 150 Euro for marketing and cooking in the small-group version?!?

http://rome.contexttravel.com/cart/reserve.php?p=STR678

And the annotated lunch is 70 Euro, <b>not</b> including the cost of lunch:

http://rome.contexttravel.com/cart/reserve.php?p=STR679

I seem to remember some fairly enthusiastic posts - presumably by people to whom money is no object -about the Checchino lunches, but I don't recall seeing anything about her new cooking program.

Eloise. Kind of ridiculous. Seventy euro for lunch that does not include the food! Now I have to try to dig up a post here from one of the people that actually took this food excursion with her.......

I honestly do not get the point of cooking classes unless you are a total beginner...maybe I am missing something but how much does one really learn when grouped around an instructor who prepares a few dishes? Yes, some interesting comments and maybe some background info, but I think those classes are more for socializing than for learning...maybe I am just crabby...but I can't you learn as much from reading cookbooks and practicing? Same thing is true when I read of tourists who hire a guide to take them wine tasting in Tuscany, for example. What does a guide give you that you will not get by tasting at a winery yourself with the winery person? Except maybe translation....and a ride if you have no car....

Ek, I don't think you're being crabby; I think you're being reasonable.

I certainly do not see any point in such cooking classes either. But I do admit to having taken - many years ago - a series of similar demonstration classes of cooking at the Gritti Palace in Venice, given by an Italian, a British and an American chef. But we're talking about 30 years ago, when the class, the lunch and the wine came to 20,000 lire in toto and one got umpteen hundred lire even for a Canadian dollar.

Eloise, ek - Franco's coda alla vaccinara cooking class is online, the food is not included as well, but otherwise - imagine! - it's free! I've permitted myself to post it on my Roman food thread http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34792415 since I supposed it would be easier traceable there for others who might not have been following our in-depth discussion of the quinto quarto and other specialties.
Eloise - for me, there's nothing at all courageous about eating kid/goat. I love it! It's just that very piece of it (the back), and that very recipe that didn't making it a really joyful lunch... Generally, I don't think there are ANY &quot;adventurous&quot; dishes ANYWHERE in the world - I'm always saying &quot;if anybody eats it, it must be good somehow&quot;, and try everything. And there have been very, very few ingredients that I really disliked... duck tongues, for example, which consist almost exclusively of small bones, fat, and gristles, and the taste is... ummm: rancid. But maybe they were just badly prepared? (Though I doubt it: the chief cook of that restaurant was once a personal cook of Deng Xiaoping.) Ok, so this was not successful, for me. But adventurous? Not at all. If Deng Xiaoping liked it, what should be adventurous about it? With perhaps one exception: originally poisonous food, made edible by special treatments - that's maybe really adventurous, like fugu, the deadly Japanese fish, or certain mushrooms that are actually deadly but are still eaten by some middle Europeans (Germans, Austrians) who cook them for 20 minutes and drain them; ok, the poison is supposed to dissociate during this procedure, but does the poison know that, as well? But I repeat, these is the one and only kind of food I wouldn't love to try...
As far as Greece, I know the country quite well from three visits, but the last one was in 1988, and I thought it would be time to go back... but of course, eating Greek cuisine, this IS courageous, somehow...
ek and Eloise, you've made me more than curious about the Spanish suckling lamb: I couldn't quite imagine ANY lamb could beat abbacchio, and if these lambs do, they alone should be worth a journey to Segovia!

Mille, mille grazie, Franco!

I've already printed the recipe and tucked it into my favourite Italian cookbook, where I'll be more likely to find and, above all, to use it.

Um, how do you feel about sheep's eyes? Before I went to Jordan, I read somewhere that they were particularly prized by the Bedouin. I wasn't exactly offered them, and my guide/driver did not even allow me to get out of the car at the Bedouin camp we came across, but even if given the opportunity. I'm sure I would have never dared to indulge in them.

Roast lamb - and suckling pig - in Segovia are much more my type of thing...

I hope not to shock you, but sheep's eyes are actually one of the dishes I'd really, really love to taste one time... again, I'm thinking: if it's the utmost delicacy for the Beduins, what should be wrong or strange or disgusting about it?

Shocked, not really. For lack of a wittier comment, &quot;chacun &agrave; son go&ucirc;t&quot; - as long as I'm not requird to partake as well.

Well here's something I've tried: sheeps eyes. 26 years ago on a Sunday afternoon in Delphi, Greece, we were invited to someone's home for their Sunday feast. As the special guest I was offered the eye. I tried it but I gagged - couldn't quite manage it. The texture is just as you'd imagine. I don't recommend it!

Eloise I am not sure I would do well with being offered the sheep's eyes on a platter! But I think it is quite an insult to the host if you refuse, right? So you really have to do it, I guess; you were lucky you did not have to!!....(Some time we are going to have to discuss your Jordan trip...)

I have only had goat once or twice..in Mexico I had it and have to agree that it was tough going with lots of bones and little meat. But that was in some kind of market eatery so it was not a good representation. In West Africa I did have stewed camel several times, as it was about the only thing on offer at night!

Franco, I had lamb tongues at Mario Batali's restaurant here in NYC; they are a very popular first course in a salad. I did not care for them all that much, but they were better than the chicken penis I ate in Saigon! How could I NOT order that??
I took a copy of the menu from that place home with me and wish I could find a way to reproduce it here! Chicken penis was just one of many, well let's say, unusual, offerings at that restaurant!

Anyway, thank you for posting the coda recipe and thanks to both you and to Eloise for being such entertaining and informative companions!

Also, Franco, I ate the abbacchio once in Rome, but not in the spring so maybe that does not count. With all due repect, the dish I had does not hold a candle to those roast baby lambs in Segovia province. So start searching around for flights!

Ek, You're perfectly right: It would be extremely offensive to an Arab if you refused the pi&egrave;ce de r&eacute;sistance, so it's just as well I was not offered the sheep's eyes.

Chicken penis? Are you sure it was the penis? In Hungarian, the fatty tail piece is called the &quot;puspok falat&quot; (can't find the right accents) or &quot;bishop's bite.&quot; Considered a delicacy, but yet another that I stay away from.

Eloise, I couldn't swear to it but that is what it says on the menu:

NGOC KE XAO TOI (sauteed chicken penis with garlic)

Also on this menu for Resturant 31 are:

CHIM SE ROTI (fried roasted sparrow)
CHIM CU DAT NUONG (grilled turtle dove)

and the piece (I think that is the wrong spelling..) de resistance, CHIM CU DAT NUONG LA CHANH (grilled turtle dove with lemon leaves)

Now if any one here can translate, that would be fun!

I have seen photos of those sheep's eyes; also have seen the whole heads of goats with the eyes even in markets here in the US...I think goat's head soup, besides being an album title, is a favorite West Indian dish... To tell you the truth, I have never made chicken soup with the feet cause they look so creepy to me in the market...in fact I cannot think of anything more cringe-ey than raw chicken feet..

But lamb tongues can be a GREAT delicacy, simply boiled (for hours, of course, or they won't be tender, and with some vegetables), served with the stock, like a soup, and eaten with that paper-thin kind of Persian bread whose name doesn't want to spring to my mind at the moment. I've never had them as a salad, however.
Chicken penis, of course, is a sensation - I've never heard that this is being cooked anywhere on earth! Should I book a flight to Saigon now? For sparrows and turtle dove, however, you don't need to go as far as Saigon; turtle doves are a regular ingredient in the cookbook of Apicius, and sparrows can very well be among the Italian uccelletti allo spiedo, singing birds skewer (unfortunately forbidden, and therefore never available at restaurants). Also in central Europe, sparrow soup was quite popular until well into the 20th century. Anyhow, I truly envy you - three more things I've never eaten and would really love to!
Kid is really excellent if you get the rump (the shoulder is a little tough, and the back, see above). I have a Roman (!) recipe for it that I love dearly, with cheese and truffles, and weird as it sounds, it tastes delicious (no traditional Roman fare, though, it's a creation of some famous Roman chef of the 1950s or 60s).

Lavash! The name of that paper-thin bread is lavash!

Franco here is your routing:

Departure: City X
Arrival Madrid. Drive to Sepulveda, Pedraza and Segovia then back to Madrid.
Departure: Madrid-Saigon

I wonder if sparrows are those things the French call ortolan that diners ate with blindfolds over their heads?

I have very little memory of the chicken penis..we ordered it kind of as a joke and I tasted it, I remember that. If you did not know what you were eating it was not odd at all. I suppose it is silly to be squemish about any animal part...why is it revolting to eat a brain and not a thigh? And we eat fish eyes all the time if we order a whole roasted or fried fish, so why is a sheep's eye so much worse, aside from the fact that it is VERY BIG and staring up at you?

But I don't think I would eat that smoked monkey I have seen in pictures of central Africa......

Oxtail is on my list of things to prepare here at home before my trip in January. So I thank you for the recipe and wish I had some way of pasting that Hesser article...I am way too unskilled in my computer skills to attempt anything so complicated!

Hello, Ek,

After this thread has gone as far afield as Saigon, I’m bringing it back to Italy.

Someone just asked on SlowTalk about Dario Cecchini’s new restaurant, and Diva replied with links to her Web site. Her rather effusive remarks about him and the restaurant are here:

http://www.divinacucina.com/code/dario.html

http://divinacucina.blogspot.com/200...olociccia.html

Eloise, thanks for getting this back on track, and for posting the links. Just what we need, Sushi, Chianti style! From an Etruscan Rennaissance butcher no less. The Divina website is.....well let's just say that I don't have a burning desire to sign up for one of her tours...
Interestingly, there is mention of a restaurant in Panzano in a recent post on www.chowhound.com. the name of the place is Vescovini but I have no information on it... Funny in one morning I see mentions of two places in that town....

Ek, I know what you mean about Divina Cucina...

I looked up the Chowhound reference; it seems Vescovini buys its beef from Cecchini. I wonder if the Chowhound poster knows that it's not Italian beef.

It's fun to look at these things, but as someone who doesn't own a car or even know how to drive - at the beginning of the 21st century! - I'm unlikely to go meandering in Tuscany again. I did it several years ago with a friend who both drives and owns a car, and that will have to do for me.

Please keep your eye peeled on/in Rome! I can and do get to Rome, so you can imagine with what interest I will read all about your stay there.

Eloise, I tend to like cities myself. I will certainly do my best to take notes report back. You have been a tremendous help and also greaat fun to &quot;correspond&quot; with. I hope you have a chance to return to Rome soon. Do you have a next trip planned?

Thank you, Ek. I've very much enjoyed this rather wild ride through several parts of the globe, too.

And yes, the next trip is already planned. If it weren't, I'd probably be in a blue funk. It'll be the fourth or fifth time that I indulge in what has become a very pleasant habit. Two weeks in Sicily (4 days at my favorite B&amp;B in Palermo, 10 days at &quot;my&quot; personal agriturismo, where I do nothing but eat, drink, read and sleep and whose details wild horses could not drag from me) and one week in Rome in my favorite room at a convent near Navona, where the good sisters, after several visits that puzzled them, now realize and acccept that what I do in Rome is also mostly eat, drink, read and sleep. Mind you, being in the Eternal City does nudge sufficiently at my conscience that I do occasionally do something touristic and/or cultural as well, preferably including something that I haven't done before in the 40 or so years that I've been going to Rome more or less annually. In May, I think I'm going to take another stab at getting into the Palazzo Farnese (I always leave it too late to book...) and also try to join one of the groups visiting the newly discovered necropolis at the Vatican (not the St. Peter's Scavi necropolis but another that they found when they were building, I think, a parking lot). It's all very relaxed and undemanding, nothing like the &quot;stressful&quot; trip to Venice and Ravenna.

Eloise, I love it! My favorite thing, as you have probably guessed, is to just walk around and plan where I am going to have my next meal (lots of menu reading on my walks!)

You are certainly our resident Rome expert with all of your time spent there. Your Sicily plans also sound lke my type of travel, despite all the obsessive restaurant researching I do...I have never stayed at an agriturismo...so many things to experience, so little time.... Someday I will try one in Umbria, a region I have been to only once; many years ago I spent one night in Perugia but all the talk about that region here has sparked a desire in me to go and explore.

If you wrote a report on your recent Venice trip, I would love to read it. Thanks and talk to you soon, I am sure. All the best...