Frittelle di San Giuseppe
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The feast of St Joseph, earthly father of Jesus Christ and husband of Mary, is celebrated on March 19 in Italy, which is also Father’s Day. (Which makes sense really. He’s also the patron saint of anyone wishing to sell a home and homeowners desperate to sell their homes have been known to bury a statue of St. Joe in their front yard to help it sell – sometimes upside down, although I’ve never understood the logic of that – but that is all another story.)
As with any religious holiday in Italy, there are specific dishes and desserts to celebrate the occasion, differing from region to region and town to town. In Siena, from mid-February to mid-March the bakeries are filled with Frittelle di San Giuseppe, fried pastries made with rice and orange zest and rolled in granulated sugar. Sometime in February, a small wooden hut is erected in the Piazza di Campo in the middle of Siena and retired men and women of the community take turns frying the delicacies and selling them wrapped in cones of paper, 3 for a euro.
Originally a Sicilian custom, the Italian American community in the US actually celebrates St. Joseph’s Day with more sincerity than do the Italians; many churches and families of Southern Italian heritage build St. Joseph’s tables to honor the saint. The table typically has a shrine to St. Joe or the Holy Family and is decorated with baked goods, cakes and cookies and occasionally savory dishes as well. After prayers and blessings are said everyone partakes in the bounty.
Here is the recipe for Frittelle di San Giuseppe:
Frittelle di San Giuseppe (St Joseph Fritters)
1 lb rice
3 quarts water
1 teas salt
Zest from 1 orange and 1 lemon
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 egg
Peanut oil for frying
Granulated sugar for coating
Bring the water to a boil with the salt and cook the rice until it is really well done, stirring occasionally and adding additional water if necessary. Drain the rice, place it in a colander over a bowl and leave it to drain, then spread it on a sheet pan and leave it to dry out, at least 4 hours.
Mix the rice with the citrus zest, flour, sugar and egg until it becomes creamy. Heat the oil, scoop small balls of dough about 1” in diameter into the oil and fry until golden brown, turning for even cooking. Drain on paper towels and roll in sugar to coat. Served hot, warm, or room temperature.
I’ve been missing artichokes this winter. I’m in the US and while I see them in the stores, they just aren’t as fresh and beautiful as what I get in Italy, plus the price is astrological. So I’ve been missing them. Sometimes I succeed in talking the produce manager into discounting old artichokes he won’t be able to sell, but generally not. Apparently they’d rather throw them out than sell them cheap, but I keep trying!
So I was thrilled yesterday to find a beautiful pile of firm, fresh baby artichokes at a little produce store, and I snapped them up and ran home to preserve them, pretending I was in Tuscany, which I will be again shortly.
The Tuscans preserve most of their vegetables under oil, as opposed to southern Italy where they tend to preserve things in vinegar, pickling vegetables like eggplant or peppers, or the mix of carrots, celery, cauliflower and onions known as “giardiniera”. In Tuscany we preserve “sott’olio”, or under oil, grilled eggplant and zucchini and fresh porcini or chanterelles when they’re in season. But artichokes are especially good under oil and very easy to make, although a little labor intensive on the front end.
Baby artichokes are especially plentiful in the spring. Contrary to popular belief, they are not a variety of artichoke, but actually what any artichoke plant will bear after the adult bud has been picked. With almost no choke at all and with the exception of a few layers of outer leaves, the whole thing is edible.
Cut off the top of the artichoke, peel off and throw away the outer dark green leaves and carefully peel the stem. Bring to a boil a mixture of white wine vinegar (or cider vinegar), white wine and water, enough to cover the artichokes, add them and boil for no more than 4 minutes. Take them out and drain them upside down on paper towels. After a few hours remove them to a rack and allow them to airdry at least 12 hours.
Next get large jars that have been sterilized in the dishwasher, and pack the artichokes in, layering them with whole garlic cloves and a sprig of mint, pressing them down to compact them in the jars and squeeze the air out. Cover them with good quality extra virgin olive oil, making sure that the oil completely covers every bit of artichoke, mint, or garlic, with a good ½” on top. If any food is exposed to the air, mold will grow and you’ll have to throw the whole thing out. Believe me, it’s a tragedy when that happens.
You don’t need to run them through a hot bath to seal the jars. That actually will cook the artichoke more and heat the oil, which changes the flavor. The oil acts as a natural seal, preserving the vegetable in the semi-crisp state that it was blanched in.
These will keep for months and are wonderful on an antipasto platter or in a salad. They make a wonderful warm dip pureed with garlic and a little mayonnaise, and the oil can be reused in a salad dressing.
This is just the beginning of the preserving season, followed soon by spring strawberries and early summer cherries and mulberries. But more on that later. Buon Appetito!
Making Salami in Winter
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Italians eat with the seasons. That’s about the only way you can generalize Italian food, except maybe to say that their food is always fresh and simply prepared. Which is a direct result of eating what’s in season. What is seasonal generally is taken to mean local fresh fruit and vegetables, harvesting what’s growing in the gardens and ripening on the trees and bushes. But in the past, the winter season was pig-slaughter and salami-making time, fresh roasted meat was only available during the cold months, and eating with the season was more than just vegetables and fruit.
December, January and February was traditionally the time of year when Italians butchered their pigs to make salami, prosciutto, sausages, and other cured products because only then was it cold enough outside and in the slaughter house to butcher the meat safely, ensuring that it wouldn’t spoil or rot before they could get it cured. While today the butchering and curing goes on inside climate-controlled environments all year long, you do still find small operations and individual households that stick to the tradition of only butchering and curing meats in the wintertime. And if you only butchered animals in cold weather, that usually meant that for the mostly poor and agriculturally based population, fresh roasted meats were a wintertime delicacy.
I have several friends in Italy who always buy a pig in September and spend the winter fattening it up with table scraps and corn. Then after the first of the year, they schedule a weekend of sausage and salami making. The pig is killed on Thursday night, they pick it up on Friday and three days of cutting, seasoning and hanging meat begins, culminating with a big Sunday lunch of fresh grilled ribs and roasted pork loin. Friends pitch in and bring desserts and antipasti or fresh tagliatelle. A big fire is started early and by the time lunch comes it’s burned down to a nice bed of coals for grilling pig liver wrapped in caul fat, pork steaks and ribs.
Vellutata – velvet vegetable soups
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This is the time of year I always turn to soups. There’s a little chill in the air but you can tell spring is coming. You want something warming but light and reflective of the season, and a creamy vellutata that is basically sauteed and pureed vegetables is perfect.
Meaning “velvety” in Italian, vellutata’s were one of the principle dishes I learned on my first stay in Tuscany back in 1996. I was living on the estate of Spannocchia and working in exchange for a bed and meals. My job was to make lunch for about 20 workers and it was my first experience at planning an interesting and enjoyable meal on a daily basis. The Tuscan food I was learning was rustic fare with big overpowering flavors but the creamy veg soup that is vellutata is gentile and elegant, the opposite of the traditional cuisine. But just like all Tuscan dishes, it is simple with just a few ingredients, highlighting whatever was coming out of the extensive estate garden.
The most important thing in any creamy vegetable soup is that it should be thickened with the vegetable that is the main ingredient, not with potato. Unless it’s a potato soup, of course. That is to say, if you’re making a vellutata of broccoli or asparagus, use lots of broccoli or asparagus and just enough broth or water to cover the vegetable as it cooks. Let the vegetable simmer for at least 20 minutes then puree it with an immersion blender. You can add additional water if it’s too thick, and you can add a little cream, but the starring vegetable both flavors and thickens the soup.
Just saute some onion and whatever vegetable is in season in a little olive oil; this week my favorites are broccolli or carrot & fennel, and I can’t wait until the spring for asparagus to be in season. Add a little water and cook until the veg is really soft, then puree it with a handheld immersion blender. A shot of cream is optional. Nothing could be simpler or more warming!
Buon Appetito! Gina
Vellutata di Broccoli (velvety broccoli soup)
4 cups chopped broccoli
1 onion chopped
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth, or water
1/2 teas fresh rosemary, chopped
1/2 cup cream (optional)
salt
white pepper
Saute the onion in the oil until soft, add the broccoli and the rosemary and saute until the broccoli is cooked, being careful not to brown the onion. Add the broth and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and puree with an immersion blender, adding additional water if it’s too thick. Add the cream if you’re using and serve with a drizzle of olive oil on top.
Faella, Pasta of my childhood
By · CommentsWhen I was young and we went to visit my paternal grandparents in Brooklyn, I would go with my Grandma to make her shopping rounds in the neighborhood. She stopped at the bakery to get the Italian braided bread topped with sesame seeds and at the butcher to get the right cut of meat for the braciole; then we’d go to the deli to pick up locally made Italian salami and mozzarella as well as dry goods brought over from Italy. I remember the package of pasta that she always chose: white paper encasing long spaghetti, simple blue and red letters and a clear plastic window so you could see what kind of pasta you were getting. It wasn’t a brand my mother bought and I’ve never seen it in a store since that time.
Until two years ago when I was walking through Naples, and in the window of a little alimentari, a small shop serving the needs of a typical Napolitano neighborhood, I saw a big display that looked so familiar I stopped dead in my tracks. FAELLA, the white packaging with blue and red letters said, and I recognized it immediately as my grandmother’s favorite pasta. Someone, somewhere, was still making the pasta I ate when I was a kid. I had to find them.
I talked to my friend SabatoAbagnale, the head of Sorrento’s Slow Food chapter. Yes, he said, he knew Faella well, it being one of the original artisan pastas from the nearby town of Gragnano (see a previous blog for more on this pasta town). So Sabato and I made an appointment to visit Faella’s production facility, where they still had in use some of the original machines from the early 1900’s.
We met Mario Faella, the 95 year old son of the original owner, who still came down to the factory every day to oversee operations—not because they needed him, he said, but because he enjoyed being there among the action. He’s a legend, charming and polite. Mario kindly took me on a tour, showing me how they made and dried spaghetti and it felt like coming home.
I wanted to tell him what drew me to his factory, why Faella pasta meant something to me and how happy I was to come to Naples and still see the same brand my grandmother used 50 years ago in New York. So I said, “My grandmother was originally from Montella (a town in the mountains an hour away) but she moved to America, and when I was growing up I remember she always used Faella pasta. I didn’t know it was still around, I only just saw it in a store last week in Naples.”
Mario looked me clearly in the eye, his finger pointing to the heavens, and he started his story: “There was a young man, who was the son of our manager, Domenico Letterese was his name, but he didn’t like working in the factory, he didn’t want to study. And my father said to him ‘Domenico, if you don’t want to study you have to take our pasta to America!’ This was before the war. So Domenico took our pasta on the boat in big trunks and sold it to a man who had a store in Brooklyn, and for years we sold our pasta to that one store in Brooklyn!”
“That’s where my grandmother bought it!” I said excitedly. “She lived in Brooklyn! My grandmother bought your pasta from that store!”
All those years, four degrees of separation between me and this charming old man whom I’d never met before, making delicious pasta at his family’s factory in a small town on the coast of Sorrento for my family to enjoy a taste of the old country in Brooklyn.
And now you can once again get Faella pasta on the shores on America, through www.gustiamo.com. Tell them Gina’s grandma sent you!
Buon Appetito! Gina
Artisan Pasta from Gragnano
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One of the most frequent comments I get after teaching a group to make fresh pasta is, “Fresh pasta is so wonderful, I’ll never eat that hard, boxed pasta again!” But fresh pasta, made with soft flour and eggs, is only one note in the symphony of Italian cuisine. Pastasciutta, the dried pasta from southern Italy, made with semolina and water, plays an important part at the Italian table and is in no way second fiddle to pasta from the north.
It seems every year I’m drawn to the pasta factories of the south. I yearn to be in Campania, breathing the sea air in the shadow of Vesuvius. Last summer, on a visit to Naples, I went once again to Gragnano, the pasta town on the bay of Naples. I’ve long been interested in making pasta and studying its history, so when Slow Food friends on the Sorrento coast offered to take me on a tour of some of the artisan pasta factories in the area, I jumped at the chance.
Gragnano, along with neighboring town Torre Annuziata, has been a pasta-making center since the late 1800’s and was designed with pasta in mind. On the banks of a river lined with mills for grinding durum wheat into semolina flour, the main street lies perpendicular to the Sorrento coast to take advantage of the constant sea breezes that were used to dry the strands of pasta. There are many old photos from the early 20th century showing racks and racks of long spaghetti lining the streets and balconies, drying in the open air.
It’s a more hygienic operation these days with the pasta being made and dried indoors.
But the most fascinating thing I saw was the pasta made by hand, like this woman making fusilli rolled by hand on a long metal spoke. Truly beautiful to watch, I have to go back with a video camera!
Buon Appetito!
Gina
Winter Radicchio “tardivo”
By · CommentsWinter greens such as kale and swiss chard are plentiful at this time of year, but another greens family that is common in Italy in the cold weather is cicoria, or chicory. The chicory family includes many different greens, including puntarelle from Rome, but the most welcome and famous are the radicchios from the Veneto.
Known as far back as Roman times, there are many varieties of radicchio, the round cabbage-shaped Chioggia being the best-known in the US market. Grown in California, it’s a year-round staple in US produce departments. But in Italy the time of year between Christmas and Easter brings a welcome flood of winter crop radicchio to the marketplace. Most of them are known for the name of the town in the Veneto region where they are grown.
The oldest and most famous is the Treviso, which is long and shaped like romaine lettuce; it has protected status and can only be grown around the town of Treviso and a few towns outside Venice and Padova. There is also the Castelfranco, with variegated creamy leaves speckled with red, and the Verona with full shaped round heads. Chioggia also derives its name from a town on the Venetian coast.
But the rarest of all and the radicchio that you simply must be in Italy to find is the winter tardivo, which means “late”. Known for its chef-hat shape, strong white ribs and trimmed root, these heads are harvested soon after the first November frost. Labor intensive to produce, after pulling them up with the root ball attached, they are kept in circulating spring water, which brings on crisp new shoots on the inside of the head. After several weeks they are plucked from the spring water and the root ball is carefully trimmed, with the dead leaves pulled away. They seemingly magically appear in the markets in mid-winter and are wonderful, crisp and bittersweet.
All radicchio are great raw in salads or can be grilled or sautéed with a sprinkle of olive oil and sea salt. A delicious risotto can also be made with sauteed radicchio, a bright and warm risotto to warm you in the cold mid-winter.
Buon Appetito! Gina
Risotto con Radicchio
2 cups fresh radicchio, chopped
1 onion, chopped finely
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups white wine
2 cups arborio rice (1/4 cup per person)
6-8 cups rich vegetable or chicken broth
6 tbsp butter
¾ cup parmigiano or grana padana, grated
Make the vegetable broth with a chopped carrot, a celery stalk or two, half an onion, a few sprigs of fresh parsley, some peppercorns and a bay leaf; for chicken broth, add ½ a chicken. Simmer 60 minutes and after it’s cooked, discard the veggies and add salt to taste.
Heat the broth to almost boiling and keep hot.
In a large pot, sauté the onion in olive oil and 1 tbsp butter until soft, then add the radicchio and cook 2 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat with oil, allowing the kernals to heat up. Add the white wine and stir until well cooked off. Add the broth one to two cups at a time, stirring until the liquid is absorbed with each addition. The rice should be soupy after each addition of hot liquid; as the liquid cooks off and is absorbed, the mixture becomes drier, at which point you add liquid to the soupy stage again. Continue this process until the rice is cooked, with the interior of the kernels being slightly al dente, about 15 minutes. Check for salt.
Add the butter and grated cheese and vigorously beat them in. The risotto will stiffen quickly, so serve it immediately, adding additional liquid as needed right before serving to maintain the characteristic creaminess of the dish.
New Blog Address
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I have a new blog address: go to “buzzing around Italy”. I’m in the process of getting this new blog spot imbedded into my website, but until that happens go there to read what’s new!
Thanks and have a great day! Gina
Tortellini and a history lesson
By · CommentsI spent some time with my good friend, pig farmer and professional olive oil taster, Daniele Barufaldi, and, as Italians are wont to do, in the course of the day we started talking about food, our favorite dishes and how to make them. Daniele is originally from Emilia Romagna, the region north of Tuscany, and while he has lived near Siena for over 20 years with his Venetian wife and sons, he still maintains a freezer full of homecooked specialities, lovingly made by his mother.
As he says it, he’s from Emilia.
United as one region today, Emilia and Romagna were separate regions until the 1860’s when the unification of the country of Italy took place. But the people still think of themselves as either “Emiliano” or “Romagnolo”. Divisions run deep in Italy and people relate more to their hometowns and families, and less to the regions they live in. What is oftentimes so difficult to understand about regional Italian cooking is, it isn’t regional. It’s local. It’s so local that neighboring towns will go to war about the right way, the only real way, to make a particular dish. Any dish. I have learned about Italian cooking from both working with the old ladies in the kitchen as well as listening to the old men at the table, who don’t actually do the work but are there to critique it. Or should I say I have gleaned what I can about Italian cooking from talking with the people.
So it should have come as no surprise when Daniele started arguing with me about the correct way to make tortellini. Tortellini in brodo is the pride of the Emilia Romagna table and one of my favorite dishes. The broth is satiny and complex tasting, yet simplicity at its most earnest. The pasta is rich and silky, stuffed with meat and redolent of nutmeg and pepper. Cooked in the broth and served with a dusting of parmigiano reggiano on top, it is heaven on a spoon.
Now, I’ve made tortellini many times. Learned to make them in Bologna years ago and the recipe I use is from a friend’s mother who was born and raised outside Bologna. Yet when I tell Daniele that I cook the pork and veal before pureeing it with mortadella, prosciutto, parmigiano and nutmeg, he raises such a fuss you would have thought someone peed in the ragu.
“NO!” he yells, “the pork and veal must be raw in the stuffing!”
“OH, Calmati!” I yell back at him. That’s the only way to hold your own in a food discussion with an Italian: you have to yell back. And there’s no better way to get a discussion going than to yell at the other person to Calm Down. “That’s how I was taught by two old women from Bologna who have made more tortellini in their lives that you have!” I rush to the defense of my education and honored teachers.
“Well, obviously your teachers were Romagnolan”, he concedes, “that’s how they make it in Romagna. In Emilia – where they REALLY know how to cook – the stuffing is raw before making the tortellini.”
I did not know that.
Then he puts the loaded question to me, with the raise of an eyebrow: “And how big do you make them??”
“Very small”, I answer. “A square inch of pasta wrapped around a tiny amount of meat stuffing and formed around your littlest finger.”
“No!”, he yells. “There can be no less than five (5) tortellini on a soup spoon!”
“Oh”, I say, really getting into the argument, “and how big is this spoon? Soup spoons come in all different sizes!”
“No! All soup spoons are the same size!”
Really??? I go to his cupboard, pull out the drawer and fish out three different sized soup spoons. “There”, I say, laughing. “You didn’t think that in Italy tortellini would be all different sizes but all the spoons would be the same!?”
We ended by agreeing that very soon we have to share a plate of tortellini in brodo. I hope he pulls out his stash of his mom’s tortellini. And if I can’t get five on my spoon, there’ll be hell to pay!
Tortellini in Brodo
This recipe, given to me by Grazia’s mother, cooks the meat with celery and onion before pureeing it with the other ingredients. If you use raw meat, as they apparently do in Emilia, leave out the celery and onion.
½ onion, chopped
1/2 stalk celery, chopped
½ lb veal in chunks
¼ lb pork in chunks
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup white wine
1 slice mortadella
2 slices prosciutto di parma
½ cup grated parmigiano
¼ teas nutmeg, freshly grated
1 bay leaf
Salt, pepper
Saute the onion, celery, veal and pork in the oil until cooked through, add the bay leaf and white wine and cook off completely. Let cool. Place the mix in a food processor with the mortadella, prosciutto, nutmeg and parmigiano and puree completely. If mixture is too dry to mix, add a small amount of milk. Salt to taste.
Brodo
½ chicken
2 large beef short ribs
2 carrots, cleaned and cut into large pieces
2 celery stalks, cut into large pieces
1 onion, cut in quarters
1 whole tomato
3 parsley sprigs
10 whole black peppers
2 bay leaves
2 whole cloves
Cover all vegetables with fresh water and bring to a boil, add the chicken and beef and simmer for two to three hours, covered. If any foam rises to the top, skim off and continue cooking. After an hour you can add a tbsp of sea salt to taste.
Wild Fennel
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Autumn is finally here and it gets cool as soon as the sun goes down, but the days are still bright blue and sunny. This summer and fall we haven’t had rain at all and that means no excursions into the woods to hunt mushrooms. But there’s always something to harvest in Tuscany and right now the countryside is loaded with bright yellow wild fennel flowers turning to seed. I know that if I wait a month there will be a great crop of wild fennel seed, but as soon as it gets cool I start thinking about roasted pork and pancetta, how great they would be dusted with fresh fennel pollen and I can’t wait.
Fennel pollen has become a big hit with chefs in America. It sounds so exotic and carries a big price tag. Which I find amusing, really, because wild fennel plants line the country lanes in Tuscany and cover the meadows, free for the picking. The wild fennel flower is basically a dot of yellow pollen on the end of a small stem, surrounded by miniscule petals, almost too small to notice. A dozen or more of these form the flower, so when you’re collecting fennel pollen you’re in effect collecting the flowers.
Fennel is great for digestion and intestinal ailments and the locals frequently make a tea to drink after dinner. It’s also a main ingredient in digestivi and bitters, Italian liquors drunk after dinner to aid digestion, and bowls of the seeds are often found in Indian restaurants for you to snack on after dinner.
Of course if you don’t have wild fennel growing in the fields where you live, just grind cultivated seeds for the same effect. Fennel marries beautifully with pork and Italians put fennel seed, both wild and cultivated, in lots of pork products. You find the whole seeds in fresh sausage and the Tuscan salami known as finocchiona, while ground seeds are rubbed on the outside of cured pork products like guanciale and copacolla.
Buon Appetito! Gina
Maiale Arrosto con Finocchio (roast pork with wild fennel)
pork loin roast, with fat if possible
extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp wild fennel seeds and flowers, whole or crushed
1 sprig fresh rosemary
5-7 fresh sage leaves
4 garlic cloves
salt
white wine (dry)
Salt the roast. In a heavy sauté pan, heat a small amount of oil and brown the meat over a high heat, turning to brown all sides and ends. Remove and place it in a roasting pan.
Rub the fennel all over the pork, place the rosemary and sage underneath the roast and scatter the garlic cloves around it. Pour in enough white wine to cover the bottom of the pan. Roast it in the oven at 425° until the internal temperature reads 150°, turning the roast over once. (An instant read thermometer is indispensable for this.) Remove from oven and let it rest 15 minutes before slicing. Slice the roast and serve it topped with the pan juices, with a sprinkle of fennel pollen on top. Garnish with fennel fronds.
