Recently in italian products Category

Wild fennel, or Finocchietto Selvatico, can be found throughout most parts of southern Italy and is part of the staple diet for many Calabrians, Sicilians, etc.  My father tells romantic stories of foraging for wild fennel in the Calabrian countryside just southeast of Pellegrina.  Wild fennel, unlike domesticated fennel, doesn't contain a white bulb and is prized mostly for the fronds it produces in the springtime along with the edible seeds.  Wild fennel fronds can be chopped and used in minestra or as a flavoring agent for a pasta dish made with pork sausage, for example.

(photo:  The lovely Taggiasca olive from Liguria in northwestern Italy) 

Scordo.com has partnered with our friends over at ItalianBarber.com for a great giveaway, sorry ladies this one is geared towards men who can grow facial hair (but read on if you want to win a great gift for your boyfriend or husband!).

(photo:Italian durum wheat pasta made by Carlo)

With the above in mind, Pamela Sheldon Johns reminds us that there may, in fact, be some similarities in how we live in both the United States and Italy.  Pamela, through her new cookbook Cucina Povera - Tuscan Peasant Cooking, recounts her mother's days on a Midwest farm during the Great Depression, using everything around her and not wasting a single fruit or leftover.  Pam also describes the same tendencies in Tuscan women, having moved to to Tuscany to establish culinary workshops and write countless cookbooks.  So, maybe there's more in common between the two countries than we think!

(photo: the cover of Impariamo l'Italiano con l'Aiuto della Mano! <Let's Learn Italian with the Help of our Hand!> by Giuliana Sica)

When folks discover that I have an Italian last time and parents who were born in Italy they immediately ask if I speak Italian.  My answer is a definitive yes though I always qualify my fluency with the fact that I grew up speaking a regional, southern Italian, dialect (my Italian has become more formal since my childhood days, however).  

Dialects, of course, are examples of full blown languages with formal syntax and speakers of a Sicilian or Calabrian dialect, for example, should be proud of their ability.  In fact, the formal Italian spoken in Italy today developed from the 14th century dialect of Toscana (mostly because it varies least from classical Latin and the Floretine culture was, at the time, producing great works of literature via Boccaccio and Dante).

You have to love any establishment that sells over 200,000 pounds of Italian cheese in a given week, in turn we've fallen deeply in love with the Pittsburgh based, Pennsylvania Macaroni Company.  The Italian food store was started in 1902 by Sicilian immigrants from Trabia and they now carry well over 5,000 Italian specialty items, including an online business that will slice imported salumi and cheese for you and ship it anywhere in the United States!

(photo: note the wonderful golden brown color of the Colatura di Alici)

What takes 12 months to age and is extracted during an age old curing process, hint it's not a pork product (cue the Jeopardy music).  The answer is Colatura di Alici or anchovy syrup and is produced by Ittica Alimentare Salerno, located in the small village of Cetara, south of Naples, on the Amalfi coast.  Note, not all anchovy sauces or syrups age for 12 months; in fact, most only age about 6 months.  

(photo: spaghetti chitarra with tomato sauce, ricotta, and peas; see below for recipe)

The now immortalized copywriter turned French cook Julia Child remarked once that, "anyone can make a bowl of pasta but it takes a skilled chef to put out a fine French meal."  You can imagine my reaction to the quote and my thinking on Child's comment; namely, she's full of rubbish, to put in mildly.  

The act of making pasta, to address the specific attack on Italian food, is not a simple task.  Preparing a dish such as linguine fine with pesto requires that the home cook understands when to pick fresh basil (did you know basil becomes more and more bitter as you pick more leaves?), how much olive oil to add to the pesto mixture, how long to cook the pasta, how much starchy water to save and add to the condiment, how much extra virgin olive oil to add to the final step of marrying pasta with condiment, how much heat to apply to the mixing of pasta and condiment so as not to destroy the basil flavor, what sort of grated cheese to use, etc.  

My favorite Calabrian fruit is the fig and while we were lucky enough to eat a few figs during our last week in Pellegrina , we missed the prime fig season by a few weeks.  The Dottato fig variety (or Kadota in the US) is the most common in Calabria and is usually found from the 2nd week of August into September (it's also my personal favorite).  The Dottato fig has green skin and a white / golden interior.  The flesh is creamy, sweet, and bright tasting.  The dottato fig variety is also a good choice for drying.  

(photo: small block of Pecorino "Monte Poro" from Calabria)

Sit down for a meal at any restaurant or home in Calabria and you'll most likely encounter some variation of sheep's milk cheese; specifically, Pecorino.  During our recent trip to Calabria, for example, we ate Pecorino 4-5x per week and often mixed in a platter with local salumi and olives.

The Greeks, like the Italians, treat ingredients with great respect and they do very little in the way of manipulation when preparing dishes.  Take, for example, the way Greeks consume yogurt with a simple fruit conserve or compote.  Often the yogurt is served in a bowl with some conserve, often cherry, fig, or a berry variation.  The dish is wonderful as a quick breakfast or even as a simple dessert following a large meal.  

(photo: beautiful bread is a work of art and our reader Dr. K is a maestro!  photo courtesy of Dr. K.)

I have to admit that I get very jealous of folks who bake with great success as I've been slow to experiment with baking bread, for example.   And it's also why I'm incredibly thankful for skilled Scordo readers like Dr. K. who specialize in whole wheat bread baking and other, from scratch, food products and homemade goods (Dr. K., for example, makes his own yogurt, roasts his own coffee beans, produces his own goat cheese, and whips up homemade Nutella)

(photo: Sangaspano extra virgin olive oil from Messina, Sicilia)

On the morning of December 28th, 1908 a massive earthquake and associated tsunami hit the western province of Calabria and moved across the Stretto di Messina into Sicilia destroying city after city (including Reggio Calabria and Messina).  In Messina alone 60,000 people were killed and in Calabria our family lost many people, including small children.  In total, over 100,000 people were killed in 1908 making it the deadliest earthquake in European history.    

(photo: some of the items in the Cento Italian Pantry Giveaway, including pasta, olive oil, hot peppers, etc.)

Last summer I espoused the virtues of the Italian pantry and the concept of being prepared to cook and eat well every day of the year regardless of access to "fresh ingredients."  Specifically, I suggested lovers of Italian food keep a well stocked pantry including varying dry pasta shapes, canned fish, cheese and salumi, beans, etc. so that a quick meal can be put together on the fly and, more importantly, independent of visiting your local restaurant or take out establishment.  

(photo: 2010 Olio Verde extra virgin olive oil from Sicilia, I had to scramble and take a photo before I consumed it all!)
 
Any time I'm asked to taste a product from the southern provinces of Italy I get excited, very excited.  There's of course a sense of pride knowing a product is made from an area you know well and have a connection with; in fact, I get the same sensation when I taste anything made with care from New Jersey (e.g., tomatoes, beer, diner food, etc.).  

If I haven't mentioned it here on Scordo.com my father is a dyed-in-the-wool grappa fanatic.  In fact, he's grown so found of the elixir made from sugar and grape stems he produces a limited quantity batch for his immediate family and select friends.  So, it wasn't with great surprise when I brought over a bottle of Amaro Nonino Quintessentia on a recent weekend that my father proclaimed it to be the best amaro on the planet!

(photo: packaging is first rate, if not a little wasteful) 

We've covered the pasta shape tagliatelle here on Scordo.com in the past (via the Scordo Pasta Challenge) but we decided to review the pasta shape one more time given the quality of Caponi Pontedera tagliatelle and the fact that it's an egg based pasta (pasta all'uovo).  

(photo: Averna on the rocks with a slice of orange)

Averna, the amaro and aperitif/digestif from, and still produced in, Sicilia, is a bona fide rock-star.   Yes, like Bono, Freddie Mercury, or Roger Waters, Averna makes you tingle all over and has you wondering how anything can be (taste) so damn good.  

I've always stuck to the claim that you can make pretty good pizza at home.  My critics argue that making "pizzeria" type pizza in a home environment is impossible given that a home stove cannot reach the 900+ degree Fahrenheit temperature a proper wood burning stove can and, moreover, impart the appropriate flavor and heat to pizza dough.  I think my critics are, in theory, correct but in a pragmatic sense entirely wrong.  That is to say, of course one can make fantastic pizza at home without a wood burning oven.    

One of the most important aspects of a product claiming to, in fact, be "sun dried tomatoes" is that the tomatoes are indeed dried by the sun.  We're so adamant about proper sun dried tomatoes because we produce our own variety cured in extra virgin olive oil.  The sun dried tomatoes hail from Pellegrina, Calabria and are dried by the intense Mediterranean sun.  Specifically, my grandmother lays out hundreds of hand quartered roma, plum or San Marzano tomatoes on large woven baskets with a bit of sea salt and lets mother nature do the rest.  The tomatoes dry in 2-3 days depending on the intensity of the sun.  

One of my favorite ways to consume olive oil is via the simple and humble tomato salad.  Our tomato salad is prepared with red onion, basil, dried oregano, Kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper and the best extra virgin olive oil we can get our hands on.  

Recently, we've fallen in love with two extra virgin olive oils that seem to have been made just for tomato salads (and, by association, whole milk mozzarella).  Specifically, we're talking about Pace da Poggio Etrusco and Laudemio Frescobaldi.  The Pace de Poggio Etrusco hails from Siena in Toscana and has a slightly sweet character along with floral and herbal notes.  The Laudemio Frescobaldi (first pressing, 2010) from Chianti Ruffina has peppery notes and reminds me of the many spring vegetables such as artichoke, asparagus, and peas.