Late summer grilling

Getting some creamy marinades for grilling in the late summer. A recipe off the Web involved blending a cup of coriander and mint together with oil and ground spices to slather over pork tenderloins. While you scrape off the marinade before grilling, it is enough to give the pork a nice dark crust and seal in lots of flavor.

Another recipe, from Feeding the Fire, was a "Cornell chicken," which entailed a mayonnaise-like marinade made from mixing 1 cup oil, 2 cups (!) cider vinegar, and an egg together with a poultry blend of dried herbs. The vinegar must have tenderized the chicken -- a small one from Broad Branch, cut into quarters -- because both white and dark meat were incredibly tender and moist, sealed into the nicely charred skin that was full of flavor from the herbs.

Bar Civita

This "casual elegant" restaurant has a kind of cucina rustica that is supposed to be Italian-inspired American but is, thankfully, heavy on the Italian. The menu is limited like a hostaria, and in fact none of the main dishes appealed to us, but both the antipasti/appetizers and pastas were delicious.

We had a pot of pork rillette with a crema mortadella that at $4 was a steal -- a generous portion with crispy crostini to spread it on. The crostini with feather light ricotta were as advertised -- feather light cheese topped with grilled melon on bigger slices of costini.

The part of Italy doing the inspiring, btw, seems to be Puglia, because my strascinati pasta is attributed to that region. This had a tomato sauce with the rich, deep flavor of long simmering, with spare rib pork ragu, house pancetta, basil and ricotta salata, served hot and a completely satisfying entree amount. Andrea's gnocci with a fresh summer vegetable succotash was a wonderful invention. The vegetables tasted like they were purchased that day at a farmer's market, and the corn in particular seemed to be from a fresh cob. We had a very nice Puglia red at an appealing price of $35.

We were quite happy with this newcomer and it was proof, if we needed it, that Tom Sietsema, who panned the restaurant in a First Bite column, has become cranky and unreliable in his reviews.