Today I woke to find that everything was covered in a pristine blanket of fluffy, white snow. It was the first snowfall of the season in Bra.
Townspeople gather to read town notices on the bulletin board outside the church.
In Italy, umbrellas are commonly used by pedestrians to shield themselves from falling snow.
Continue reading Winter in Italy
No cranberries. No pecans. And forget the canned pumpkin. Celebrating America’s most foodie of holidays while abroad certainly poses its challenges. But by jove, we were going to try our darndest. The email was sent out to the class: “The 4th Thursday of November is a national holiday in the USA, a day originally to remember and celebrate the hospitality that the Native Americans showed the pilgrims during their first winter. Without the Native Americans sharing their knowledge of native crops, of squash, corn etc, the pilgrims may not have survived. (Whether the Native Americans may have later regreted this generousity is another story.)” A list of suggested dishes was provided, with the invitation to choose one and bring it to the Thanksgiving potluck. Without giving it too much thought, I volunteered to make the stuffing. After all, the StoveTop version takes six minutes to make; how difficult can this possibly be?
I should mention that my family has never done a Thanksgiving dinner with the classic roast turkey; we think it’s too dry/flavorless to merit 20 hours of roasting time. In the past, we have made curry turkey or deep-fried turkey, or deviated entirely away from turkey to lobster, soft-shelled crab, duck, hotpot…you get the idea. I did suggest hotpot for Thanksgiving dinner to my classmates, but this was met with strong cries of resistance. Ah well.
As it turns out, for many people, stuffing is the pinnacle of the Thanksgiving feast. (And here I thought it was all about the turkey.) Immediately after I announced my intent to make the stuffing, people began barraging me with questions on what kind of stuffing I was making, which recipe I was using, whether I was using drippings from a turkey that I’d freshly slaughtered in my backyard, etc. Okay, I am kidding about that last point, but the onslaught of concerned inquiries made one thing quite clear: stuffing is Serious Business. I assured everyone that yes I have made stuffing before (um, sometimes I toss rice with pan drippings?) and I would be using my grandmother’s traditional recipe (actually, my grandmother has never eaten stuffing in her life). Then, I started scouring the internet for stuffing help.
Continue reading Badass Sage and Sausage Stuffing, or a UNISG Thanksgiving
A bone-chilling wind whistled across the water, as I huddled on a boat with fingers tucked into my armpits. We were sailing across Lake Trasimeno, the second largest body of freshwater in Italy. Aurelio, our captain and president of the local Trasimeno fishermen’s cooperative, explained that the maximum depth of the lake was about 5 m, and the area we were currently in was only 1,8-2 m deep. Moreover, this is an endorheic body of water, a lake with no natural outlets that is entirely rain-fed. Essentially, we were rocking our way across a giant puddle.
It may not look like much, but Lake Trasimeno is actually the cleanest lake in Italy, according to tests conducted by environmental agencies. There are no industrial zones located nearby with potentially polluting run-off, and the surrounding areas are sparsely populated. The lake boasts a healthy population of plankton, which results in clean and fresh-tasting fish.
Continue reading Gone Fishing on Lake Trasimeno
The stillness was broken only by the sound of breathing. All around us, rolling foothills and oak-covered peaks stretched into the distance, a gently shimmering tapestry of fall foliage. But the outward peace of this halcyon setting masked a burning secret. Beneath the roots of these forests, there was buried treasure–truffles, worth millions of euros and sitting in the cross-hairs of Italy’s legions of truffle hunters.
What is it about these warty fungus lumps that makes them so coveted? Is it their beguiling scent, an indescribable mixture of musk, mushrooms and earth? Is it their ability to make unremarkable dishes, like pasta or eggs, instantly pop with flavor? Or it is perhaps simply the cachet of unobtainability that drives their demand?
Their appearance may not be particularly eye-catching, but these small grubby morsels are one of the most expensive food products on the market. During bad harvest seasons, the price of white truffles can easily rise above €6000/kg. (For reference, this is about one-fifth of the price of gold.) And so, to better learn about this jewel of Italian gastronomy, we ventured to the king of truffle purveyors, Urbani Tartufi.
Continue reading Cash, Lies and Truffles at Urbani Tartufi
Inspired by the plethora of kakanin rice cake sweets at Dia de los Difuntos, I decided to make some glutinous rice flour treats of my own. Enter the red bean mochi.
Mochi is a Japanese sweet with dough made from sticky (glutinous) rice flour, filled with red bean paste, strawberries, ice cream or other fillings. Traditionally, mochi is made in a ceremony called mochitsuki, where glutinous rice is soaked overnight, then pounded with a large wooden mallet. While one person wields the mallet, another person turns the mass of rice. They must keep a steady rhythm to avoid injury! You can check out a high-speed demonstration of mochi pounding in this video.
Making the dough is quite simple, and requires only glutinous rice flour, sugar and coconut milk. You can substitute regular milk or water if you don’t have coconut milk, but the results are definitely better with coconut milk. For the filling, I used canned sweetened red bean paste that I picked up in Brussels. If that isn’t available, you can make red bean paste from scratch by cooking red beans until they are softened, mashing them until smooth and sweetening them, preferably with rock sugar.
Continue reading Recipe: Red Bean Mochi
“This is one of the most important products in the panorama of Italian wines. Are you familiar with it?” I was haplessly ignorant as Eleonara Marzi began her presentation on sagrantino wines. Over the next week though, we would drink the hometown favorite of Umbria more times than I could remember.
Sagrantino is a native grape variety that has been cultivated in Montefalco for over 400 years, and sagrantino secco is recognized as a DOCG wine indigenous to Umbria. However, until the 1970s, most Umbrian wineries focused on producing merlot and cabernet sauvignon. Sagrantino was mostly relegated to the production of passito, or sweet dessert wines. This was due in part to the intensity of sagrantino grapes, which are higher in tannins and polyphenols than any other grape. To combat the persistence of the tannins, farmers generally added sugar to increase the softness of the wine and make it more drinkable.
In the winemaking world, the Arnaldo Caprai winery is credited with promoting and elevating sagrantino to the vaunted world-famous status it holds today. After the phylloxera fungal plague of the 19th century, most sagrantino vines died out and only a few hectares remained under cultivation. Through their collaboration with the University of Milan, the winery selected and propagated the best sagrantino clones, while retaining variability within the sagrantino variety, thereby safeguarding an important part of Italian ampelography. Plants were tailored to match the soil composition, microclimate and altitude of their vineyard.
Continue reading The Bottled Poetry of Arnaldo Caprai