At a recent virtual wine dinner at Roma in Houston, befitting the wines from a top Barbera producer in Piedmont, the first course, the antipasto, was veal tonnato.  It was easily my favorite of the three courses that night.  Veal tonnato is a classic cold veal dish in a tuna sauce usually served as a starter, which I have long really enjoyed.  For those unfamiliar with the preparation, veal and tuna might seem an odd combination, but it is actually a wonderful pairing.  If you enjoy canned tuna, in a mild form, and mayonnaise, you will like veal tonnato.  Served chilled or almost room temperature, it works well during summertime.

With the often very warm weather throughout much of the year, veal tonnato would be a welcome sight nearly year round at many Italian restaurants in Houston, but it is rarely found.  There isn’t much veal on Houston Italian restaurant menus, for one.  And, veal in tuna sauce might seem a little obscure to many.  Not only here; veal tonnato has not really found too often on Italian menus around the country.  Looking at around 650 Italian restaurant menus over the years, veal tonnato showed up on just 4% of them.  The dish is a specialty of eastern Piedmont and that’s also found in the adjacent region south of Milan.  The cuisine of that area, lauded in Italy, hasn’t been found at too many restaurants here.  It’s shame that it’s tough to find when heading out.  You might need to make it yourself:
 
Veal:
 
Veal round or shoulder – 1 ¾ pound
Carrot
Onion
Celery stalk
White wine vinegar – 1 tablespoon
Olive Oil – 1 tablespoon
Salt – 1 teaspoon
 
Sauce:
 
Canned tuna, drained – 7 ounces
Anchovy filets, drained – 3
Capers, drained and rinsed – 2 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon for garnishing
Egg yolks, hard-boiled – 2
Olive oil – 3 tablespoons
Lemon – 1
 
Cook the veal:

1. Tie the veal with string.  
2. Add the veal, carrot, onion, celery stalk, vinegar and olive oil to the pan.
3. Add enough water to a deep pan to cover the veal, add the salt and bring to a boil.
4. Cover the pan and simmer over a low heat until the veal is tender, about two hours.
5. Turn off the heat and allow the veal to cool in the stock.

 
Make the sauce:

1. Put the tuna, anchovy, capers and hard-boiled egg yolks into a food processer and process for about 30 seconds.
2. Add in the olive oil, the juice of the lemon and about 3 tablespoons of the stock from cooking the veal and then turn on the food processors for about 15 seconds more.  The sauce should have the consistency of freshly made mayonnaise.
3. Untie the veal and slice fairly thinly.  Spoon the sauce over the veal.  Garnish with the remaining capers.  Refrigerate for at least a few hours before serving.

 
Adapted from The Silver Spoon cookbook.
 

A more artistic version of veal tonnato at a restaurant at the Enoclub restaurant in Alba, Piedmont a couple of years ago. Maybe a little bit blurry because of all the wine.

A few years ago, at a media dinner, I was seated at the same small table as Robb Walsh, the estimable former restaurant critic at the Houston Press and cookbook author.  It was a fun evening and during it Robb made the assertion that the chili at the longtime local hot dog chain James Coney Island served some very laudable chili.  I disagreed.  But, in ignorance I later realized.
 
At the time, my experience with James Coney Island – though it had included a great number of visits, well, drive-throughs over the years – was limited to their basic hot dogs, called Coneys, always ordered all the way.  These were somewhat a staple of youth and, in recent years, an order after a pint or two at happy hour.  My usual order since my youth was a few Cheese Coneys all the way.  These feature very basic hot dogs and similarly basic steamed buns along with the noticeable yellow mustard, a chili sauce or Coney Sauce, as it is monikered on the menu, then Kraft Cheese Whiz – dispensed by cheese gun – and chopped raw onions atop.  Though satiating hunger pains, for years, a meal of these were almost always quickly regrettable, often quite a bit so; even so when my taste buds might have been a little dulled.  The hot dogs, for years, have not seemed to be of particularly good quality, the buns fresh but cheap-tasting, and the thin Coney Sauce was not at all worth a visit, if helping the below average creations.
 
That Coney Sauce is not the chili I had long assumed.  That chili that Robb touted – and that makes its way on top of James Coney Island’s better hot dogs – is actually really good.  Thick, properly Texas-style chili that’s all-beef (unless ordered otherwise), long-simmered, it is nicely flavorful.  Not surprisingly it’s a bit beefy, and rich, and works extremely well with the Texas Classic All Beef Dog and the Chili Cheese Gourmet Hot Dog.  These are both worth ordering, as are nearly all of the Classic and Gourmet hot dogs.  I had given up on James Coney Island until I realized the quality of the Classic and Gourmet dogs.
 
The crux of the menu of James Coney Island is still the hot dogs.  The hot dogs come in three levels: Coneys, Classic, and Gourmet.  The Coneys are mediocre and worse basic hot dogs that range from $2.09 mostly unadorned to $2.09 plain to $2.59 with the lame Coney Sauce and Cheez Whiz mentioned above; Classics are made with fine-quality Nolan Ryan all-beef hot dogs at $3.99 with better potato buns; and Gourmet, with Hebrew National hot dogs, about the best the commercially available hot dogs, and buns from Slow Dough and the like.  I have really enjoyed the Classic and Gourmet versions.  The Gourmet ones are not worth the extra couple of dollars, though.  The hot dogs might be better, but only slightly so.  The pretzel buns sometimes used are certainly higher quality, but with the thicker texture, sometimes don’t work as well. 
 
If craving a tasty hot dog, or chili, do go to one of the James Coney Island outputs, the Classic and Gourmet hot dogs can be quite delicious.  The Classic ones are a fine value, too.  And, very nicely these days of needing to be safe, if not from excessive calories and cholesterol, you can get food at James Coney Island via a drive-thru.
 
James Coney Island
17 Houston area locations

​There is not a lot of Riesling grown in Italy. For example, in Friuli in the northeast – one of the leading areas for Riesling in the country – it accounts for only 0.16% of the total in the Friuli Grave DOC that makes up most of the region. But, where it grows it can be made into some very good wines.  I’ve had nice ones from Alto Adige, the Langhe in Piedmont and from the Oltrepo Pavese, south of Milan.
 
Italian Rieslings are usually drier and crisper than then benchmark ones, those from Germany or Alsace.  And, for me, the Italian versions have less of the signature flavor of the varietal that is not my favorite, is it beeswax?  Or petroleum (or maybe really kerosene), as I’ve also read?  My long ago work as an operator sampling those tanks in a refinery makes me think it’s beeswax, even if I’m only really familiar with the aromas rather than the flavor of the refined products.
 
An Italian Riesling that I very much liked recently was Aquila del Torre in its only expression of the varietal from Friuli north of the city of Udine and in the foothills of the Julian Alps.  With some citrus on the nose, the first sensation on the tongue was a bit of very nice effervescence from the noticeable acidity then some fruit, mostly lemon, a hint of minerality, some complexity, dryness with its 1 gram of residual sugar per liter, and well-balanced with a decently long finish.  Medium-bodied, it is just 12.5% alcohol, welcome in these days of heat-battered grapes often turning into blockbuster boozers, even whites.  Aquila del Torre Riesling is made with natural yeasts, stainless steel tanks, and is aged for twelve months on the lees, this giving it a slight bit more umph than the usual Riesling.
 
I found it flavorful and easily enjoyable.  It complemented a simply prepared sautéed white fish, though I probably liked it more as an aperitif, even as an aperitivo.
 
The wine is available in the US, at least in California and New York, but it might take some digging to find.  Prices seem to range from about $17 to $25 per bottle, very fair tariffs