A Spring Feast + Grilled Artichokes with Garlic Aioli

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Spring Feast with Grilled ArtichokesLast week started with a half-foot of sloppy, wet snow and ended with 80°, sunshine, barbecues, patios, ice-cream, pansies, and pink wine.  Yes!  Spring!  Finally!

As you might imagine, after making it through 6 months of cold and snow, everyone in Minnesota goes bonkers on the first warm spring weekend.  Puffy down-jackets and boots are traded in for sundresses and sandals.  Patio bars overflow with warm-weather revelers.  Parks are packed with picnickers.  Ice-cream gets scooped like it’s going out of style.  You go from living and working in what was feeling like a really depressing ghost-town to being back in a city with a pulse, with people on the streets, instead of the skyways.  Everyone you encounter has unsnarled their face and regained the bounce in their step.

As for myself?  I celebrated the coming of spring as I celebrate any significant event, with food and drink. Yes, I had ice-cream.  Pink wine made an appearance.  I ate my weight in fish tacos.  Margarita?  Heck yes.  And I grilled to my heart’s content.

All winter, I’d been dreaming of my first grilling episode: grilled artichokes with garlic aioli.  I’m not sure which is better, the charred artichokes or the assertively garlicky, super rich homemade mayonnaise, but together, they’re enough to make life worth living.

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Clam, Chorizo & Chickpea Soup with Saffron Aioli

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Chickpea, Chorizo & Clam Soup with Saffron AioliI can hardly claim to be an “expert” on any cuisine, but based on my family name, my travels, and my resume, I am at least familiar with a lot of what Italian and French cuisines have to offer.

Not Spanish food, though.  Spain is a bit of a mystery.

I’ve been there, but it was brief and at the end of months living abroad on a student budget.  Sure, I remember having churros con chocolate (life-changing, obviously) and paella but my funds and timeframe didn’t allow me to dig in much beyond that.

So that’s my disclaimer.

That being said, I like to imagine if I’d stayed a little longer, turned a few more corners, stepped into a couple more restaurants, and eaten a few more dinners, I might have had something like this: a tomatoey clam, chickpea, and Chorizo soup, scented with smoked paprika and plenty of garlic, served with crusty, crunchy bread and saffron aioli.  Perhaps?  I’d like to think so.

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Endive, Olive & Potato Tiella

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Endive, Olive & Potato Tiella - Version 2

Oh, how I wish I could entertain you with some charmingly romantic story about my first encounter with tiella.  I’d love to say I was hiking between hillside villages in the Italian countryside and I stumbled upon the most wonderful, humble, little osteria.  A wrinkled old woman, cheeks dusted with flour, wearing a checkered kerchief, beckoned me in to try a piece of her legendary tiella.

Nope.  My first encounter was less exotic, far less romantic.

It was less fairytale and way more suburban mall food court.

It occurred to me as I was slicing into my homemade, wilted greens and garlic-filled tiella that it looked an awful lot like the spinach-stuffed pizza from sbarro that I’d splurge on with my hard-earned baby-sitting cash during my teeny-bopper mall-cruising days.

My more “authentic” experiences with tiella are hardly more exotic or romantic.  In fact, the last time I had it in Italy, it was from a gas station, eaten from my lap, as we frantically drove to our next destination, while I complained bitterly about Matt’s driving style and my extreme nausea.

That’s okay, though.  I don’t think tiella is supposed to be put on a pedestal.  All it is, really, is a double crusted pizza pie, filled with whatever tasty ingredients you fancy.  And while my old lady-osteria fantasy might exist somewhere, even in Italy you are way more likely to find yourself a piece of tiella at a convenience store or bar or take-away joint.

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