Italy

By John, 19 February, 2022

Insalata di Funghi

"Insalata di Funghi" You can make quite a pretty salad if you have access to good mushrooms, which is getting easier in New England now that several farms have started in Maine. This one includes Chestnut Mushrooms, Lion's Mane, Blue Oyster, and Button Mushrooms, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice with sea salt, fresh basil, and parsley.

By John, 17 November, 2021

Cauliflower Pizzaiola

"Cauliflower Pizzaiola" This is a simple, tasty dish that you can make whenever there are cauliflowers in the supermarket. The main flavors are cauliflower, tomato, and oregano. It's good enough as a standalone vegetarian dish or as an accompaniment to anything with an Italian flair.

I have also seen this prepared with the cauliflower sliced into steaks, with the sauce and cheese on top of each steak.

By John, 30 September, 2021

Italy All-Star Feast: The Middle

The antipasto platter On September 5, '21, we celebrated the cuisine of central Italy with our friends and summertime neighbors Lance and Lynda Hylander. For this project, one of three recorded on this blog, I defined "Central Italy" as the six regions north of Campania/Apulia and south of Emilia-Romagna and the Po River valley, to wit: Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Abbruzzo, Molise, and Lazio (Lazio is where Rome is).

As usual for these dinners, we started out with Vermouth in cordial glasses and an Antipasto course of a fine salumi platter that represented all of the regions featured in the dinner.

The Insalata course was a hearty Insalata di Lenticchie, or lentil salad, with delicious tender lentils from Umbria, an area known for its lentils. This also showed that not all Italian cuisine demands tomatoes! With the salad we opened a couple of local white wines, a Trebbiano d’Abbruzzo (from Abruzzo) and a nice Frascati (from Lazio).

Pasta Alfredo The Pasta course was a Maccheroni Chitarra Alfredo with a Chianti Classico (a red from Tuscany) & an Orvieto Classico (a white from Umbria). This was the hit of the evening!

By John, 16 May, 2021

Onions in the Neapolitan Style

These clove-studded Cipolle di Napoli made a great side dish for the Pork Roast in the Florentine Style. I expect they'd be good with any pork or poultry dish that's not too highly seasoned.

A funny thing happened: as the onions cooked and the water inside them expanded, the innermost part of the onions got squeezed out! You can see them in the photo, above the front left-hand onion like bunny ears and to the right of the front onion like a jaunty beret! The next time I make this, I will try cutting an X in the top of each onion to see if that helps.

By John, 15 May, 2021

Zucchini alla Scapece Napoletana

Zucchini alla Sapece This is a tasty summertime dish for hot weather. The scapece part of the name derives from the Spanish escaveiche and ceviche (raw fish marinated in vinegar) but the Neapolitans use it to describe many things dressed with vinegar.

This takes a long time, but it's not a time-consuming dish. You need to allow time for the cut zucchini to dry in the sun, and afterward more time for the vinegar to settle in and mellow. Drying the zucchini helps it to cook up crunchy rather than mushy, so it stands up better to the vinegar.

Note that this recipe is not an agrodolce; there is no sugar.

By John, 15 May, 2021

Schwammersuppe

Alpine Mushroom Soup Here's a delicious mushroom soup with Italian sensibilities applied to an Austrian ancestor, from Trentino-Alto Adige in the Italian Alps on the Austrian border.

Mushrooms are an important part of Alpine cooking and northern Italian cuisine in general. Note that this includes an opening saute in butter instead of olive oil seen further south.

This soup represented that alpine region in our Northern Italy all-star feast.

By John, 9 May, 2021

Italy All-Star Feast: The North

I described in Italy All-Star Feast: The South how a blog about New England food and drink came to focus temporarily on Italian traditional cuisine, wrapping it up with a trio of all-star feasts exploring the 20 provinces of that ancient foodie culture. This was a tricky one, as I had to squeeze in eight provinces, each with long and distinct culinary traditions!

For the Northern Italy feast, I included the big provinces of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna, plus the smaller Alpine border provinces of Val d'Aosta (on the French/Swiss border), Trentino-Alto Adige (Austria), Friuli -Venezia-Giulia (Slovenia), and little coastal Liguria, home of Genoa. Our companions were our old friends David and Diane Peck. Here's how we did it:

By John, 24 April, 2021

Italy All-Star Feast: The South

For about a year, from late March 2020 through April 2021, when our New England travels were limited by Covid-19, I focused on the traditional cooking of Italy. After Lorna and I were vaccinated, we celebrated with a series of 10-course Italian all-star feasts highlighting recipes from Northern, Central, and Southern Italy. I wanted to have something from each of Italy's 20 provinces.

For the Southern Italy feast, I included Campania (Naples), Basilicata, Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia. Our companions were our old foodie friends John Morse and Christina Cochrane. Here's how we did it:

Aperitivo: Limoncello brought back from Campania by John M's son.

Antipasto: On the platter there's some of the usual fare, plus Luchanico sausage from Basilicata, oil-cured black olives from Sicily, and 'nduja spicy sausage paste from Calabria in the glass sherbet dish. In the bowl are Cruschi, dried red pepper chips from Apulia (I had to order these online). The other sherbet dish next to the crackers has a veggie caponata from Sicily.

Then we moved into the dining room and opened a bottle of chilled Greco di Tufo white wine from Campania.

By John, 4 April, 2021

Chestnuts Braised with Thyme

Chestnuts braised with thyme This is a delicious cool-weather dish to accompany a rich meat dish, or just on its own. It's a classic accompaniment to roast goose, and it's fine with roast turkey, too, especially for a holiday table!

You can get perfectly good chestnuts in a jar, so there is no need to go through the tedious and finger-tearing process of peeling whole chestnuts.

By John, 21 March, 2021

Osso Buco alla Milanese

Beef shanks with gremolata sauce This Lombard classic is beef or veal shank slow-cooked until meltingly tender, and then served with a savory sauce and a contrasting zippy lemon gremolata. It is traditionally served with the beautiful golden Risotto Milanese.

Italy