207.6 What 's Old is New Again

Today was the day I was going to have mandoline practice, the slicer not the musical instrument.  I made arrangements with my friend Elaine, who was willing to take this project on.  I arrived with several zucchinis, and two kinds of Italian cheese in an effort to recreate the appetizer we had enjoyed so much in Italy.  (My husband and I belong to a wine group that is featuring Italian wines which is why I am so set on taking this appetizer as our contribution to the gathering tomorrow night.  If you are remembering that I have quit drinking wine, you are right.  I did, but I love this group of folks and so I go with my bottle of sparkling water.  It works!)

Elaine is a wonderful cook and has all the gadgets any woman could possibly want. For fun, she worked part-time at William of Sonoma for a few years.   As we were getting started, she reminded me that we had to cut the zucchini into shorter pieces so that the mandoline could handle it.  We did that and the results were very thin, rather short pieces of zucchini.  We curled up the 2 - 3 inch zucchini pieces, added some chunks of cheese and a little olive oil and congratulated ourselves on how good it tasted.  But I wasn't satisfied.  In Cortona, the pieces were 6-9inches long.

Suddenly Elaine's eyes lit up and she asked me if I thought a meat slicer might do the job!  They had a very old one that had been hidden away in her husband's father's garage for many years and had never been used until recently.  She dug it out of a kitchen cabinet and set it up and viola, or should I say prego!  We had long, thin slices of zucchini, looking exactly like it had in that wonderful little restaurant called FuFluns down a side street in Cortona.  As I was leaving with the meat slicer, she called out that if we had some salami to slice this would be a good time to do it.  Salami?  Me? The queen of the 40 pound weight loss?  Nope, but I may try it on tomatoes, cucumbers, fennel, and anything else I can think of while I have her slicer.

Now I have this little whirly-gig that makes radish curls that I bought at Sur la Table recently (see 10/11 blog), and I am wondering  how I can swap that out for a meat slicer of my very own!