A cookie contest keeps friends together through the years

WEST PEABODY -- They call themselves the Agawam Babes, and for 16 years, these girlhood friends have been getting together in each other's homes for brunch and a cookie swap. It started as a way to stay connected despite marriages, kids, and jobs. The group has changed over the years, but the core has stayed solid.

The Babes include the Nascembeni sisters, Karen and Sandra; the Gatti sisters, Dina, Lisa, and Lynn; and Kathy Walsh Bautze and Pam Lombardini. They all grew up in the same neighborhood in Agawam, in Western Mass., attending the same schools and church. All in their mid-40s to early 50s now, they're still dear friends. Their annual event takes cookie swapping to new heights.

This year, Dina Gatti Bona, 44, dressed in a shimmery red top, is hosting at her home here. Everyone comes with several dozen cookies. They contribute confections to a common plate, and after brunch they have a contest -- a serious tasting, in fact -- to decide the best. There are rules: no one can help you bake, no mixes, when it's time to vote you can vote for yourself, and, of course, you have to be from Agawam.

By 10 a.m. on a recent Sunday, Bona's house is a flurry of activity. Bing Crosby is crooning Christmas carols and the friends are laughing, reminiscing, and grumbling about the packaging becoming a craft project. Lombardini, 51, is arranging cookies on a two-tiered platter. Karen Nascembeni, 44, is dramatically recounting how she shelled dozens of pistachios for her entry. Her sister, Sandra McArthur, rolls her eyes. Then Nascembeni notices large chocolate cookie sandwiches. "Who brought these big mothers?" she asks. "They look so unhealthy." Without skipping a beat, Lombardini says, "They are."
Lisa Gatti Whelan, 48, and her twin, Lynn Gatti Walton, share a photo album and charts of past entries. Bautze, 45, cutting bread, hears someone say that her husband helped print the recipe. Uh-oh. "You're disqualified," she shoots back.

Bona tells the group how her power went off, she almost had a nervous breakdown, and she was up into the middle of the night making cookies. No sympathy.

They toast with mimosa cocktails, and the 16th Annual Catty Cookie Swap begins. Cookies are placed on the table; each baker offers an explanation and gives her personal "year in review" -- heartfelt, funny, and bawdy stories about families, jobs, and life in general. Nascembeni, last year's Cookie Queen, wearing her feathery crown, starts. Her lemon pistachio wreaths go on each plate. McArthur presents Italian horn cookies.

Bautze offers lime-coconut snowballs; Whelan has made red-sugar-dusted poinsettias and her twin offers coconut-cherry chews. Lombardini talks about the effort it took to make her chocolate peppermint confections. Bona explains how to make hazelnut macaroon domes.

In addition to the crown, the winner gets a wire whisk scepter and a satin sash with stamped gingerbread men down one edge and "Cookie Queen" on the other. Over the years, the recipes have become more complicated, the packaging more elaborate. If one person's presentation becomes all glitz and glamour, everyone else follows.
After the tasting, it's time to crown the queen. Each participant writes a name on a piece of paper, ballots are folded, and placed in a bowl.

Hostess Bona opens the first ballot and shrieks out her own name: "Dina!" Next, "Karen!" Then: "Dina!" "Dina!" In the end, Bona's hazelnut cookies with ganache are chosen, and for the fifth time she is queen. With scepter and sash, she throws kisses and thanks the group in a queenly way.

The Agawam Babes roar with laughter.

And they seem to be planning how to unseat Bona next year.

Getting schooled in Korean cuisine

CONCORD -- Spatula in hand, prep cook Domingos Netos is frying dozens of sunny-side up eggs on the griddle in the open kitchen of Concord Academy's cafeteria. Hundreds more eggs are ready on commercial-size baking sheets. But this isn't breakfast. The eggs will top the Korean seasoned rice dish bibimbap. Dozens of bowls of this Asian classic will be served for lunch today.

The private school is hosting chef Hak Joon Kim of Incheon, Korea, who is participating in the Global Chef Program run by Sodexho, the school's food service. For two days recently, Korean kimchi, the fiery cabbage salad, shared space with the salad bar and cold cuts.
When Kim arrived, Sodexho's general manager at the school, Dennis Gallant, wanted the Korean chef to teach the staff how to cook short grain rice properly. The grain is already a menu staple, and the staff had been using a giant rice cooker, but the students -- six percent come from South Korea -- kept telling the kitchen that something just wasn't right. Kim immediately identified the problem. No one was rinsing or soaking the grains before cooking, resulting in very sticky rice. Yes, short grain rice is called sticky rice -- but it should not be sticky enough to elicit comments.

For this lunch, Kim seasons a fresh bone-in mackerel stew, called mugulguk, with a piquant sauce of red pepper paste scattered with scallions. A radish and oyster soup, along with kimchi, round out the menu.

Before students and faculty come in for lunch, food services manager Herb Read is helping spoon the now perfect rice into black plastic bowls for the bibimbap, while Kim adds a savory mixture of vegetables and beef, then tops each with an egg. The kitchen is filled with the aromas of sesame oil and soy sauce. Kim garnishes a big bowl of kimchi with a yellow rose carved from a turnip-like vegetable. Read, watching, says that Kim "treats all food with respect."

To serve the students, the Korean chef takes a spot at the counter alongside an interpreter. Curious students ask questions and take some of everything on their trays. No one makes a face and all seem intrigued. Some of the Asian students chat with Kim in Korean.
Lewis Selas, a sophomore, usually has pasta for lunch, but today he is trying fish. "Holy mackerel! I don't eat fish," he exclaims. Senior Annie Lobel says "This is amazing. They should do it every day."

While one group of Korean students comments on the authenticity of the bibimbap, junior Hae Sung Kim is munching on a quesadilla. "The line was too long," he says.

Holly Fowler of Sodexho's Education Division is here to see how the program is working. "Typically you think students won't try [unfamiliar] foods," she says. "We do those programs in many schools and they eat until the food is gone!"

A few stragglers make their way to the counter. Not a grain of rice is left. Dinner tonight for the school's boarding students -- and day students who don't want to miss out -- will be dwaejigalbi-jjim (braised spareribs of pork) and doraji and oi-saengchae (seasoned bellflower root and cucumber). Rice is soaking and Netos is prepping vegetables.

Kim, energized by the response of the students, says, "It was an explosive experience for me."

Sharing the pleasures of real sushi

Hiroko Shimbo has been teaching Japanese cooking in her native Tokyo, New York, Spain, and England for 15 years, which has given her new opportunities in the restaurant industry as Americans become ever more captivated with the food of her culture. She was the culinary consultant for Taneko Japanese Tavern , which opened earlier this month in Phoenix . She is the author of ``The Japanese Kitchen," an accessible volume introducing readers to the basics of the cuisine, and "The Sushi Experience," published this month, which takes sushi-lovers from the simplest hand rolls to complex nigiri-zushi -- raw fish on finger-size beds of rice -- the real test of a sushi chef. Along with step-by-step photographs, Shimbo explains how to cut fish yourself.
We spoke by phone from her kitchen-office in New York, where she lives with her husband, James "Buzz" Beitchman , a telecommunications expert. Shimbo thinks Americans are becoming more sophisticated in their taste for sushi and sashimi and now want authentic dishes. There is a large repertoire of home-style sushi made for picnics, lunch boxes, and celebrations. Start with the basics and build up your skills, she advises, because information and confidence are key.

Q. What it was like growing up in your mother's kitchen?
A. My mother's kitchen was a wonderful busy, busy place. My father was a physician. His clinic was attached to our house. We had patients staying at the clinic so my mother always cooked a large amount of food both for the patients and then delicious dinners for our family. My sisters and I were always hanging around in the kitchen. We were raised with delicious food. We naturally developed a love to cook and eat.

Q. Did you help your mother?
A. Not when we were small, though we did carry the trays to the patients. When we grew up we helped quite a lot. But with my two sisters and mother in the kitchen, it became quite aggressive! Many women!

Q. Americans read that Japanese businessmen come home late after an evening out with co-workers and expect a hot meal. Did your mother have dinner waiting for your father?
A. My father was always there so my mother made breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He was a very lucky guy. But yes, most of my friends' husbands come home and eat with their families only once or twice a week. It is a very common pattern. I think the younger generation is changing. When the Japanese economy slumped in 1990, the companies cut back on entertainment budgets, so businessmen had to eat at home more often.

Q. We hear the complaints that younger Japanese women don't cook anymore. What are they serving their families?
A. It is true. They are feeding their families prepared foods bought at the supermarkets and food courts. Many buy frozen food they reheat at home. It is very disappointing.

Q. When we hear "food court" we think of cafeteria-style places in shopping malls. In Japan, though, these refer to boutique-style stalls on the lower floor of Japanese department stores.
A. While the presentation is wonderful and the taste is actually pretty good, prepared food contains quite a lot of additives so I don't buy them no matter how appealing it looks. It isn't everyday food.

Q. Can ordinary people afford this?
A. Yes, prepared food can be reasonable. You can choose the more expensive food in the boutiques or those sold at 7- Eleven or other convenience stores.

Q. How did you begin teaching Japanese cuisine?
A. I was a Japanese language teacher, but teaching language is teaching everything, from how to bow, culture, history, food. Language is based on these pillars. One day a student said, "Why don't you teach us how to cook a Japanese meal?"

Q. Did you teach from your own experience or go to culinary school?
A. Mostly from my own home training. Like most Japanese ladies, after graduating from university, looking for a future husband, I went to a cooking school. But I learned nothing at that cooking school. In Japan, students don't ask questions. We just receive whatever they teach us. I was living in Japan and had an American husband, and had many foreign students. They asked me how to make miso, how to make sake, how to make rice vinegar. I couldn't answer these very basic questions. I was frustrated, so I started to contact artisans and manufacturers and learned from them.

Q. How did you learn how to make sushi?
A. I attended the Tokyo Sushi Academy. It sounds like the military. The president started this school in 2002. They offer expensive and intensive sushi training for one month. One month is so brief, but every day starts with cooking sushi rice and filleting fish. We also learn to make nigiri-zushi, the rice ball with a slice of sashimi on top.
After that I did research on all aspects of sushi -- tradition, history, culture, and recipes. This included interviews with sushi chefs, rice farmers, wasabi growers, knife makers, wholesalers, and fish mongers.
Because I was raised with real sushi, I was initially quite disappointed to see how sushi evolved in America. People started with unconventional sushi, like California roll [avocado, crab and cucumber] to suit the American palate. Then came sushi with mayonnaise dressings. However, sushi chefs can be more creative here. This is now even popular in Japan.

Q. Who is the audience you have in mind for "The Sushi Experience?"
A. Raw fish lovers and those who are not so keen on it -- which makes everyone! I want people to know that sushi is not just raw fish. Fifty percent of the recipes are made with vegetables, cured fish, seafood and omelet.

Q. Many skilled Japanese sushi chefs seem quite skeptical that non-Japanese can prepare this food. What do you think?
A. I agree in part. Take the Japanese chef who trained in Italy. They can cook pretty good Italian food but they haven't been raised as Italians. Food is not just preparation. The Japanese are very stiff in their mind-set that somehow a non- Japanese can master the Japanese language, or that a non-Japanese cannot really understand the Japanese mentality. These attitudes are too extreme. However, when it comes to sushi preparation, especially nigiri-zushi, there are so many things that you need to know about the fish, the specific way to make rice. It really takes long years of training.

Q. There is an impression in Japan that America has no food culture beyond hamburgers and fast food. Having lived in the United States, what is your impression?
A. Oversized! This is a country where things are always changing because of the addition of new immigrants. This has had a big influence on American food. One thing I don't like here is the concept that bigger is better and quality is not much of a concern. When people ask for larger sizes, food loses its quality.

Q. What do you think of the concept of an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet?
A. That is awful. I don't know what kind of sushi they offer, mostly rolls. When it comes to raw fish, it is expensive and if there is any place that says "All-you-can-eat raw fish sushi," I just doubt the quality of the fish. Certain expensive fish cannot be offered so generously.

Q. What advice do you have for Americans eating at a Japanese restaurant?
A. In Japan, restaurants are highly specialized. Here the Japanese restaurants aren't. Everything is on the menu like yakitori, tempura, teriyaki, katsu [fried foods], and noodles. But the Japanese food boom has finally arrived. In New York City and on the West Coast there are more authentic Japanese restaurants which serve more unusual dishes. Try what you haven't tried before.

Hiroko Shimbo will be at Boston University’s Seminars in Food, Wine, and the Arts on Monday from 6 to 8 p.m. The fee is $65, which includes tastings and a copy of her new book. Call 617-353-9852.

Competition cooks up at a 4-H county fairFood and Fun Club members put their kitchen skills to the test

WESTFORD -- Louise Donahue looks for an empty cake rack on her kitchen table, brimming with baked goods. "We've already had one disaster today," she says as she sets down the hot pan of butterscotch bars her 10-year-old son, Greg, has prepared for the 51st annual Middlesex County 4-H Fair. The bars go next to the "disaster," a plate of very flat cranberry cookies that taste great but don't have that blue-ribbon look.

The kids won't let them go to waste: "Dad will eat them," they chime.
With Donahue's attention focused on daughter Sarah's gingerbread batter, Greg pokes the top of the warm butterscotch bars, denting the once perfect crust. Uh-oh. Mom looks up. From under his brown curls Greg croons, ``I just wanted a taste." Mom sighs.

Sarah, 15, holds dripping beaters over a bowl as she walks from the counter to the stove to pour batter into a greased pan. Oops. The batter trails from table to hot stovetop like a sticky version of Hansel and Gretel's crumbs. The smell of burning gingerbread hits the air before the pan even gets into the oven. Just as the words "Sarah Donahue" leave her mom's lips, Sarah says, "Chill, Mom!" Twelve-year-old Shannon is at another table carefully measuring six cups of popcorn into a bowl for clusters she'll enter in the nutritious snack category.

It's good old-fashioned fun, the 4-H way, and the children are learning it from their mother, a freelance computer programmer who leads the 12-member Food and Fun Club in her spare time. Donahue was an active 4-H - er growing up in Woburn, and she relishes the chance to pass on the program's philosophy of ``learning by doing" to her children and club members.

Despite the occasional slip-ups and all the activity, Donahue, 48, runs a very organized kitchen andis a calm, cheerful, and patient teacher. She gently guides Greg's hand away from a cocoa cake batter to a waiting custard dish as he measures vinegar into a spoon. At the sink, he adds water into a liquid measuring cup and plunges a turkey baster into the cup. Before he is snagged for fooling around, he explains he's just trying to suction the water off to the one-cup mark. ``What a good idea," says his skeptical mother. But the extra water is just too tempting; Greg squirts it around the sink.

Sarah and Shannon, working independently, reach for plastic bags that hold the dry ingredients for herb bread, apple cake, banana bread, and biscuits, all pre-measured the day before and stacked in a corner of the counter ready for the wet ingredients. Sandra Lee may espouse the virtues of "Semi-Homemade" on the Food Network, but these girls are making their own cake mixes, from scratch.

MORE 4-H PHOTOS View a photo gallery at www.boston.com/ae/food.
A few miles from the Donahue house in a rural corner of Westford, the smell of fresh-cut grass and hay mingle at the Middlesex County Fairgrounds. On this Aug. 23 evening, crickets are singing, and 4-H-ers and their families empty the trunks of their cars and fill the shelves and walls of the brightly lit exhibit hall with their baked goods, art, photos, vegetables, wood working, sewing projects, and jars of jams, jellies, pickles, and honey. All are to be judged the next day. From the other side of the fairgrounds, you can hear a neigh, a baa, and a moo. This could be Kansas, except that most people are wearing Red Sox caps.

More than 700 families are involved in 4-H clubs in Northeastern Massachusetts, says Wendy Marcks, the region's 4-H educator, who on this day is sporting the program's four-leaf clover logo on finger- and toenails as she sets up a display in the exhibit hall. More than a century after 4-H began nationally as a collaboration among the USDA, land-grant universities, governments, and other private partners, more than 30,000 young people in Massachusetts are involved in some aspect of the organization. Projects here range from cavies (guinea pigs) to cooking, marine biology, and robotics.

In Donahue's club, members work on crafts, perform community service, learn about food and nutrition, and plan dinners for their families. Entering the fair is voluntary, but as Penina Buonsanto of Westford says, "it is nice to get ribbons and show people what you are capable of doing." Buonsanto, 15, who won a blue ribbon one year with her mom's apple pie recipe, says she has learned many useful things in Donahue's club, such as ``clean as you go," something most adults fail to master.

Kristiana Graves is making Oreo truffles, a combination of cookie crumbs and cream cheese rolled into a ball with a white candy coating. "I chose this recipe because everyone loves them," says Graves, 15, who lives in Littleton. "I always read the judges" comments because I want to do better next year."

Another club member, Jennifer Couture, says she learned about the food pyramid, how to read a recipe, and how to handle "dangerous kitchen tools." Besides practicing cooking with her club mates, she learned canning skills from her mother, Brenda Couture, also a 4-H-er. "I enjoy putting things together to get a final result," says Couture, who lives in Billerica. When this 12-year-old traces the process of making pickles or talks about attaining the proper temperature when making jelly so it coats a spoon, she sounds like a veteran USDA extension agent.

For this, the largest all-youth fair in the state, more than 150 entries compete in some 30 food categories, including drop cookies, cornbreads, single- and double- crust pies, refrigerator cookies, yeast breads, quick breads, and novelty cakes (for looking at, not for eating). The rules require a fixed number of items (such as six cookies) set on plain white paper plates and enclosed in plastic bags. No doilies or decorations. These items stand or fall on their own merit. Recipes are attached, and judges know only the category and age of the contestant. The members compete against one another in their age group: novice, junior, or senior. A novice's slightly misshapen chocolate chip cookie is not judged as harshly as one offered by a senior.

Everyone gets a ribbon -- blue (excellent), red (very good), or white (good) -- and a hand-written comment from a judge. Amy Herrick, chairwoman of the fair's Food Department, gives her team of judges guidelines: recipe cards must be complete, products appropriately sized, colors appealing, textures good, and the taste delicious. Herrick says the kids like the competition, especially with the small amounts of prize money, based on a point system. "Some kids are shocked when they have to do something right," she says. "The next year they try harder. They learn to do things correctly."

There is also a "challenge category," in which everyone enters with the same recipe, making it strictly a matter of execution and appearance. This year, Herrick has chosen peanut butter cookies. Fork hatch marks decorate one batch, a sprinkling of sugar embellishes a second, and chopped peanuts top yet another. It doesn't always go so well. One year, Herrick recalls, the challenge recipe was whoopie pies, and one child -- hopefully it was a mistake -- substituted cinnamon for chocolate. ``It was brutal for the judges."

On opening day, Donahue's club members head first to the food department and scatter to find out how their entries fared. Novice Brian Prato, 10, wins a blue ribbon for his peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. "Nice and crunchy," one judge has written, but added: "Need to get cookies in uniform shape." Graves earns a blue for her Oreo confections, and Couture cleans up in food preservation with Top Junior, Top Exhibitor, and Best Individual Exhibit for her blueberry lemon mint vinegar. Her baked goods get top honors, too.
As for the Donahue kids, Greg goes looking for those butterscotch bars -- and finds a red ribbon. ``Good color but tasted flat," one judge has written. (His mom suspects he forgot the vanilla.) But his banana bread wins a blue.


Shannon's apple cake also takes a blue ribbon, and she wins first place in the unfrosted cake category. Her sister, Sarah, takes Best Individual Exhibit with her Orange Blossom Coffee Cake, a fancy yeast bread. The judge writes that it had ``great shape, texture, and taste."
Some things, after all, never go out of fashion.

To learn more about UMass Extension 4-H, call Wendy Marcks at 781-891-0650 or visit www.mass4h.org.
To learn more about the Middlesex County 4-H Fair, visit http://www.middlesexcounty4hfair.org/.

Dress-up season in TokyoSummer spawns celebrations of season and spirits

TOKYO -- The passion in Japanese souls is never more evident than at a ``matsuri" -- a festival that is part Mardi Gras, part history lesson, and part food festival.

From local neighborhood fetes to large-scale city events, matsuri celebrate everything from rites of passage to changing seasons to local culture. They even are used to give thanks and help purge sins. Often associated with local shrines and temples, matsuri can last two to three days.

Dancing, archery, drum performances, and other traditional arts, as well as open-air food and game stalls can be part of the celebrations. The centerpiece of many festivals is a parade-like event in which portable shrines, called ``omikoshi," are hauled about on the shoulders of men -- and sometimes women -- dressed in dashing outfits.

During the summer, Tokyo is one big dress-up party. The trains are loaded with women dressed in colorful ``yukata," cotton summer -weight kimonos, and men in their ``jimbei ," or fancy pajamas. All are headed to the festivals and their wooden sandals make a slap-clapping sound on the pavement.

Not merely a colorful accessory, but a necessity, the ``uchiwa," summer fan, completes the outfit. They are handed out on street corners by merchants and local officials to help keep the crowds cool.

On a sizzling August evening at the Azabu Jyuban Summer Night Festival, the main attractions are the miles of open-air stalls selling favorite Japanese snack foods. Men and women hawk their wares, vying for the attention of the hungry crowd. Each booth is devoted to a single food -- and each is a delight.

There is ``tako yaki," morsels of octopus in batter, cooked in a cast iron griddle of half-circles. Once the batter is set, the balls are turned using a long pick and a flick of the wrist before they are sprinkled with shaved seaweed. ``Yaki soba" are fried noodles tossed with shreds of vegetables, meat, and ginger heaped onto plates. Next door, there are enormous round potatoes steamed in a stack of wooden boxes, served with a scandalous amount of butter. To beat the heat, there is ``kaki gori," a mountain of shaved ice infused with neon-colored fruit syrup. Roasted ``ayu," river trout, salted and cooked over charcoal, are presented on skewers; their aroma is irresistible. And the all-time favorite, ``okonomi-yaki," is a savory pancake fiilled with shredded cabbage, pickled ginger, and slathered with piquant sauces.

Interspersed among the food booths are carnival-like games of chance. Boys and girls with strainers made of paper squat next to troughs of water trying to scoop up goldfish or little rubber balls . It's not easy to do either before the strainer dissolves.

Follow the sound of drums through the thick crowd to a park on a side street. Glowing lanterns light the grounds where a local group is performing on ``taiko" drums. Their beat is primal and relentless. Nearby everyone is invited to join the folk dances. Dancers move as one, in a circle, to a story told in song and movements.

Later in the festival season, on a sweltering day in early autumn, the voices of revelers rise in unison at the Hakusan Harvest Festival in downtown Tokyo. Intermittent sounds of a leader's whistle punctuate their cries. The deep boom of a large drum trails the omikoshi, providing the cadence that slowly propels the bearers' syncopated shuffle forward.

Prior to the parade, the omikoshi are taken out of storage to the local shrine for a blessing that also allows the spirits of the deities residing within to enter before the annual neighborhood walk about. These bearers are members of neighborhood clubs and civic and business associations who gather to care for and carry the omikoshi.

``Wasshoi! Wasshoi!" -- ``All together! All together!" -- is their fervent cry as the marchers make their way though the streets. Their elaborate shrines, gorgeously handcrafted from heavy timber, can be simple or gaudy, but atop each sits a golden phoenix. Lacquered pieces of timber are set crossways through special holes to form the grid that rests on the bearers' shoulders. No padding here -- this isn't supposed to be easy. Even smaller omikoshi are heavy and need at least 40 bearers, and the larger ones can weigh more than a ton, requiring more than a hundred people surging forward in unison.

Various groups of marchers will relieve others along the route, each group vying to be the most spirited. The festival can actually become quite rambunctious, as the bearers become more focused and more frenzied. Several members of the team guide the omikoshi to stay on course and to keep it from careening into the crowd following along.

As the light begins to fade, the omikoshi is borne back toward the shrine where the gods will reside for the rest of the year. For the final push, a group of particularly brawny and boisterous men take their final turn and hoist the omikoshi high in the air with a huge roar before settling it back down on their shoulders.

By now their shouts are louder and rougher, their pace more feverish. At the base of a slope they stop in a flurry of patterned clapping and chanting. They have reached the entry way to the shrine and slowly , almost dirge-like, creep up the hill and bring the omikoshi to rest under broad gates, where a priest in full garb invites the gods to re enter the shrine.

Aching, but very happy, members of one club gather for a party in an apartment near the shrine. The wife of one of the bearers and her friends have prepared mountains of food, beer, ``shouchu," a potent potato-based alcohol drink, and sake for the men.

Between drinks, an exhausted Yutaka Yamaguchi, 54, a banker and omikoshi bearer for more than 20 years, says he has enjoyed building ``harmony with others while having fun." He and his buddies will travel to more neighborhoods to participate in other festivals where their shoulders are needed.

Sated, but still drinking, the men get louder and looser. They take off their coats and compare the size of their shoulder calluses, jokingly called ``tako."

``Looks like the head of an octopus doesn't it?" said Yamaguchi. The bumps develop from years of carrying omikoshi and are huge, permanent, and borne with great pride.

World of CookingArrive a tourist, eat your mistakes, go home with recipes for a feast

MENFI, Italy -- We weave our way out of the densely packed city of Palermo at rush hour and drive south through western Sicily. The road slices through a valley surrounded by huge rocky outcroppings. The sky is a deep blue and green fields stretch ahead like a velvet patchwork bordered by a riot of orange, red, and yellow wildflowers. On a hillside, a herd of sheep is so tightly clustered, it looks like a giant ball of moving yarn.

Our destination is the coastal village of Menfi, an easy 1 1/2-hour drive away, to attend a class on Sicilian cooking taught by Natalia Ravidà and experience an olive oil tasting. Off the highway, at the end of the main road, sits the family's 18th-century neoclassical villa. The sea is just beyond and the smell of salt fills the air. We enter the gates and park in the outer courtyard.

Ravidà is a former journalist and now cookbook author, entrepreneur in the family's award-winning olive oil business, wife, and mother. She will share her family's culinary heritage for the next several hours in flawless English.

Joining me is Nunzia Radenmeyer, a South African whose parents emigrated from Sicily when she was a teenager. Like me, she is a cooking teacher. We both thought it would be great to be the students this time.

On our way to the kitchen, we pass a long marble table surrounded by cast iron chairs where we will take our lunch. A large wooden frame window is splayed open so we can see into the kitchen. Across the courtyard, under a tiled overhang and atop a huge grinding stone cum table, we will do the olive oil tasting. Usually, the tasting is done on the Gurra farm, elsewhere on the estate, where students tour the olive groves and see how the oil is processed.

We will be cooking in the home kitchen -- well equipped but not commercial. Although you are in the hands of a professional, it feels as if a group of friends has gathered to prepare a meal. A wooden spoon is propped inside an antique crock of the Ravidàs' own sea salt from local salt flats. Well-worn copper pots hang from a cast iron rack on a long white wall. The ingredients for the dishes are organized by recipe and laid out on an oval marble island in the center of the kitchen. We gather around as Ravidà explains the day's recipes. She introduces Sicilian cuisine by tracing the influences of some of the many civilizations that came through this storied island -- Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, and Spaniards.

She stresses the importance of seasonal ingredients. With recipes in hand, we begin. Ravidà divides up tasks.

We start to chatter and to help each other. Tears run down Radenmeyer's cheeks as she cuts the onions that will go into a sweet and sour sauce. The pit of a black olive shoots across the table as I press too hard on its flesh with the broad side of my knife. Fresh sardine fillets lie glistening next to a plate of homemade bread crumbs, waiting for a light dusting.

Ravidà begins to fill a wok with olive oil to deep-fry hollowed-out eggplants. More surprising than finding a wok in rural Sicily is her using such an expensive oil for deep frying. She explains that good olive oil cooked at such a high temperature can be reused. And she reminds us that the better the oil, the less greasy the food. After several minutes, she removes the eggplants and prepares to stuff them with anelletti, little pasta rings, in homemade tomato sauce.

As we arrange our handiwork on platters, kitchen assistants begin to clean up and set the table. Our stomachs are rumbling, but lunch will have to wait.

First, to the courtyard and the tasting. Six bottles of olive oil and a bunch of little white plastic cups are on a tray on the stone table. Ravidà explains the differences among grades of oil and helps us to understand why one bottle may cost $5 and another $40. We learn about the proper storage of oil and how it can spoil.

She pours about a tablespoon of oil in a cup and demonstrates how to take the oil into the mouth -- sliding it to the back of the tongue where our taste buds register both bitter and spicy flavors. I don't think I mastered the right swishing motion, but I didn't get it all over myself, either.

The tasting begins with rancid olive oil. Whew, is that bad! She introduces successively higher grades, and we begin to discern differences. ''The better the oil the more peppery and bitter it tastes in the back of your mouth," Ravidà explains. By the time we get to her oil, with its peppery surge and light velvety texture, the difference in quality is clear. I cannot claim to have tasted ''a hint of fresh mown grass," as described in a review of Ravidà oil, but it was wonderful and I had an entirely new appreciation. The award-winning Ravidà oil is exported worldwide.

Finally it is time to eat. The atmosphere is informal and friendly. The table is laid with local ceramics. We begin with a crisp Sicilian white wine and the sardine fillets. We raise our glasses to Ravidà, who declares ''Buon appetito," and serve ourselves, family style. We enjoy the baked eggplant stuffed with pasta alongside a very colorful dish of roasted peppers with a caper, olive, and mint sauce. On another platter is pan-fried mackerel with a sweet and sour onion sauce. A large bowl of linguine is tossed with cherry tomatoes, olives, and capers, and a colorful fennel salad with black olives and oranges completes the entrees. For dessert, we enjoy a refreshing gelatin made from mandarin orange juice and its grated rind. The warm spring sun and the wine are working their magic. We could linger forever.

We tour the rest of the house and it is obvious that this was once a grand villa. While it is still elegant, some rooms need repair. Costly renovations to the chipped frescoes on vaulted ceilings and fading wallpapers are underway, and there is scaffolding on the rear of the house. Ravidà's explanation of the project is fascinating. The layers of the family's history peel away before your eyes.

You can spend anywhere from a day up to a week at Villa Ravidà. They are flexible and willing to accommodate your interests. Besides cooking classes and olive oil tastings, there is pizza making at the farm, and guided tours can be arranged to visit surrounding towns and local markets. You will be given a quote based on the package you choose and on the number of people in your party. There is a two-person minimum. Classes run April to July and September to November.

The villa can accommodate up to 10 people. We didn't stay overnight, but the rooms, some of which are in what once were stables, are spotless, if somewhat spare and on the small side. All have a private bathroom with shower. A continental breakfast, served in the villa's dining room, is included. There are many places to sit and sip an aperitivo or read a book when you are not cooking or tasting. This is one kind of rural tourism that is changing the way we think about taking an Italian holiday.

SPRINGTIME IN SICILYIn the markets of Palermo, vendors share deliciously imprecise recipes

PALERMO, Italy -- Nestled among the faded gray and peeling concrete buildings, some still cratered by World War II bombings, sits one of the liveliest markets in Sicily. Bright red and blue awnings cover hundreds of stalls in the colorful Ballarò, the most extensive of many markets in this charming, chaotic city.

I traverse the warren of vendors and happen upon a butcher selling all the cuts of beef you don't recognize, as well as the innards. A fishmonger cuts thin steaks from local Mediterranean swordfish for a popular dish made with seasoned breadcrumbs. Giuseppe Bronte grabs the stem of a gigantic green-yellow broccolo, a variety of cauliflower, with his rough hands and hacks off the thick stem. Bronte belts out a rhythmic call, letting everyone know what he's selling, his voice joining the cacophony of shouts and sounds.

My husband and I are spending two months in the seaside town of Mondello, just 20 harrowing minutes (what drivers!) from Palermo. Our studio apartment in a wisteria-covered stucco house, set on a steep hillside facing the Mediterranean Sea, has something that approximates a kitchen, with a briefcase-size four-burner stovetop. Two narrow shelves hold sea salt, olive oil, and dried wild oregano, all local staples. A few pots and pans are in the cabinet. In other words, a basic but sufficient setup for exploring Sicilian cooking and the recipes shared with me while foraging through markets.

In Sicily, as in the rest of Italy, if you buy something from a vendor, you're almost obligated to hear what a wife or mother or sister would do with that particular ingredient. Here, everyone has an opinion about cooking. And no one has an exact recipe for anything.

This is a friendly place, and vendors are luring you over to try his goods. A roly-poly baker is selling sesame-studded loaves and pita-like breads with spongy interiors from Monreale, a town famous for its cathedral and bakeries. A few steps away, I encounter a hill of black and green olives, then wheels of pepper-studded pecorino. ''How about a taste?" asks the big-bellied proprietor.

The kind and patient Providenza Di Noto has become a favorite. Her 70-year-old shop is on the periphery of another open-air market, the Vucciria. ''Più o meno" -- ''more or less" -- is how she describes measurements for minestrone soup. Her brother, Sandro, interjects. After a heated exchange about onions, she turns back and says triumphantly, ''One. Big one." Then her usual ''more or less." She puts her index finger to her cheek and twists it -- the gesture that describes anything delicious in Sicily. ''Buonissimo," she says, eyes cast upward.

Di Noto's mixture of dried chickpeas, green and red lentils, white beans, cranberry beans, and split favas sits in a sack near the front of her shop. As she dips her scoop in, she continues her impromptu cooking lesson. I understand about every fifth word, but I do catch how to break the spaghetti into the soup because she mimes it as she goes. The low tables at her stall are covered with hand-labeled packets of mixed spices, sun-dried tomatoes, salted capers, and glass jars of anchovies. Little bags of a currant and pine nut mix, a sampling of the Arab influence on Sicilian cuisine, hang on one wall. Beans in hand, I navigate the narrow lanes to gather the remaining ingredients for my pot.

Later, while the soup is simmering, I get a call from friends of friends. Palermo resident Ludovico Ziino, a retired pediatrician who loves to cook, asks if we can join him and his wife, Giulia, for dinner the next week (like most Sicilians, the invitation is for 9 p.m. -- often my bedtime). Dinner, he tells me, will consist of ''specialties from Palermo -- my grandmother's recipes."

At Ziino's house in the heart of the city, at a table laid with heirloom linens and silver, we dine on large shell pasta tossed with the green-yellow cauliflower I've seen all over the markets and a saffron-scented, slightly sweet sauce made with pine nuts and currants. This dish is typically made with bucatini (pasta straws), but Ziino used shells to better cradle his aromatic sauce. Everyone is chattering about how the dish is made. When I ask how much saffron, Ziino looks at his large hand, puts his thumb to the top joint of his pinky, and in his deep bass tells me, ''About this much -- more or less." I add the cauliflower and pasta dish to my list of meals to try.

Visiting the fish stalls on the pier in Mondello early one morning, I listen as shoppers bargain with the fishmongers. The miniscule, opalescent neonata (newborn fish) glisten in a pile. I turn to the gentleman who has just bought a bagful and ask how to prepare them. Make a little fried fish cake, he tells me emphatically, with olive oil, salt, pepper, an egg, and just enough flour -- more or less! -- to hold it all together. Fry in a spoonful of oil, he continues, and when it turns white, sprinkle with lemon juice and eat right away. This, he says, is ''the end of the world." Then he sighs, dreamily, slightly shaking his hands, which are cupped, prayer-like.

Across the street at the Schillaci family's shop, wooden crates of oranges, pears, artichokes, those handsome giant green-yellow cauliflowers, and eggplant spill out onto the piazza. I buy two pounds of cipolline -- tiny, squat onions -- to prepare in a sweet and sour sauce. This is a recipe that the entire Schillaci family -- and several customers -- gave me the week before.

Offering their advice in loud voices, everyone speaking at once, they instructed me to balance the wine vinegar and the sugar. The amount of each, of course, is several spoonfuls.
That is, more or less.

An American burger in Tokyo

TOKYO -- Pass the neighborhood shrine, pass the smell of charcoal-roasted fish, pass the sushi shop, pass a noodle spot. Then comes a surprise: The unmistakable aroma of grilled burgers and fries from a restaurant a few doors down.

In Tokyo, anything culinary is a possibility. Yes, there is American fast food here -- McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken are both a presence. But well-made hamburgers and a side of crisp potato wedges is another story.

Daimon Yoshida, 32, was born in Japan but spent eight years in California and Oregon, beginning when he was an impressionable teenager. When he returned home and had a hankering for burgers, he couldn't find any that thrilled him. With a loan from his mother, this handsome entrepreneur opened Fire House seven years ago, and the place is a hit. The restaurant is tuckedamong more than two dozen Japanese eateries along a 150-yard stretch. And while sushi and soba shops on the street have plenty of empty seats at their counters, the hamburger joint boasts lines out the door. Every day, Yoshida and his staff send more than 500 burgers out of the busy kitchen.

Fire House is a step down from the street, where a deck and the outer walls of the shop are laid with wide planks of 150-year-old American wood. With old tools, board games, and lithographs part of the decor, thanks to Yoshida's mother, who dealt in American antiques here, the 30-seat spot feels like a real American establishment. Country music plays and customers linger over lunch -- a rarity in Japan, where the midday meal is often inhaled, while standing, in 15 minutes.

Yoshida's burgers, one-quarter pound each before being cooked on a flat griddle, are hardly lean. ''Perfect ingredients create great food," says the restaurateur, who adds fat from the famous and highly prized Japanese Matsuzaka beef to Australian ground meat because Japanese diners prefer their beef well marbled. Several years ago, Yoshida had to stop using American beef when imports were banned after an instance of mad cow disease was discovered. He won't use Japanese beef, he says, because ''it's too good."

To find the perfect bun, Yoshida taste-tested hundreds until he found the right bakery. Sesame seed buns, something like brioche, are placed on the griddle just before cradling the burgers. The patties are liberally sprinkled with a salt and pepper seasoning mixture that Yoshida made up. Then burgers are constructed: mustard on the bottom bun, lettuce, a slice of tomato, chopped onion, sweet pickle relish, the patty, and finally, mayonnaise.

The stacked burger is tucked into a paper wrapper covering half the bun. On the plate are wedges of deep-fried potato with the skins intact, the outsides crisp, the flesh soft. Some customers use a knife and fork on the burgers, others eat them holding the paper wrapper to catch the drips.
A burger with fries and a pickle starts at around $9, cheap for Tokyo but not as inexpensive as McDonald's, where a Quarter Pounder with fries and a drink costs just over $5. Fire House offers bacon cheeseburgers, chili burgers, and a few Japanese twists: burgers with fried eggs and the hamburgo, served with stewed apples.

Yoshida doesn't want customers to think all Americans eat enormous quantities of food, so he offers a bit more than regular Japanese portions, but doesn't overdo it.
The cooks and the wait staff are in constant motion. So is Yoshida, who has muscular forearms from scraping the griddle with gusto after each order. In addition to the 350 burgers he serves daily on the premises, the shop delivers another 200-plus to neighborhood homes and businesses.

The restaurateur does everything -- both work and play -- with zeal. Now that the shop is running smoothly -- it's open daily -- the chief cook has finally been able to take time off. He spends three months a year in the Caribbean while his staff carries on.
And oddly enough, he doesn't miss the griddle.

Fire House, 4-5-10 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 03-3815-6044, or go to http://www.firehouse.co.jp/