Category Archives: food

Puglia Food Products: Olive Oil, Capocollo, Wine, Cheese and Seafood

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Grindstone for a 17th century olive oil mill, a thousand-year old olive tree

Though some time was alloted in Puglia for activities not requiring mastication, the bulk of the trip was spent at food production sites, restaurants and agricultural lands. I realize that this must sound like the best foodie vacation ever, but eating rich foods nonstop for a week is not as pleasant as it may seem. Some of us had the added stress of documenting the trip in detail because there is a paper and presentation required after the stage. By the end, we were all thoroughly sick of cured meats, cheeses and each other. A few people actually became ill, though I cannot say whether this was due to food poisoning, general infection, or the stress of traveling and eating from 9 am to 1 am every day. My advice for anyone who goes on these trips is to ingest plenty of fiber and choose your roommate carefully.

Moving on to the actual food. Puglia’s dry, sunny climate makes it difficult to grow many crops, but the hardiness of olive trees in times of drought has resulted in their widespread cultivation. The trees dot the Puglian landscape with their graceful, twisted trunks and branches, akin to a pair of ballet dancers. We were told by one farmer that the trees twist according to the Earth’s rotation, and that olive trees planted south of the equator would twist in the opposite direction, similar to the rotation of water draining from toilets. This is a romantic idea, but since the Coriolis force has been shown to have a tenuous effect on toilet water, I am somewhat doubtful of the tree-twisting claim.

Still, the trees are majestic to behold, knotted and gnarly, reminiscent of the baobab tree in The Little Prince. The one pictured above actually belongs to a Russian who admired the unique shape of its trunk. So, he bought the tree for €5,000. In return, he gets to keep the olive oil milled from the olives of this tree, which comes to 10-15 liters of oil per year. He also comes to visit his tree annually. If you are interested in owning a piece of Italian real estate and having a lifetime supply of olive oil, you too can invest in one of the 50,000 available trees for the low price of €500-1,000 by contacting Olio Cazzetta.
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Confession: I Hate Italian Milk

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Here in Bra, the heart (and physical headquarters) of Slow Food-landia, people are raised from birth to eat locally, cook with raw, unprocessed ingredients, and buy from small, independent producers. Great, these are philosophies that I have tried to uphold all along, so it’s not like I have suddenly been told to wear a burka.

Well, today I am going to go rogue and fess up about something that has been irritating the hell out of me: Italian milk. It sucks.

To provide some background, there are two grades of Italian milk: intero (whole) and parzialmente scremato (similar to 2%). I’ve been buying the latter and it tastes good, but honestly I would be happier with skim milk. Also, Italian milk is sold in supermarkets in paper cartons or plastic bottles in either half-liter or liter sizes. When I first saw this, I was somewhat dismayed, since this is a quantity that would last me through maybe four bowls of cereal. Where is the gallon jug that is so ubiquitous in American grocery stores? Don’t they need to make lots of cappucinos every morning?

Soon afterwards, I discovered why the milk is only sold in tiny containers: it spoils incredibly quickly. Though the expiration dates on U.S. milk jugs are marked for about two weeks in the future (and oftentimes the milk is good even beyond this date), Italian milk cartons indicate sell by dates about 3 days away. And unlike with American milk, that date is Serious Business. On multiple occasions, I have drunk milk from a carton one day before the expiration date, only to discover the next morning that it has curdled. Sometimes this discovery occurs as I absentmindedly pour chunky milk into my bowl of cereal, and shovel a spoonful into my mouth.

The milk comes from local dairy farms in Piemonte, so shouldn’t it be even fresher and last longer than milk in the U.S.?

Spoilage speed aside, another reason milk is sold in small packages may be due to the size of European refrigerators. Like cars, refrigerators here are about half the size of their American counterparts, and there would simply be no space for a gallon-size container.

I was whining about the short shelf-life of my milk to one of my flatmates, who suggested the bricks of UHT (ultra-high-temperature processing) milk. This is shelf-stable milk that does not need to be refrigerated (until the carton is opened) and lasts for 6-9 months. It also tastes terrible, like the milk has been cooked.

Both American and European producers pasteurize their milk, so I don’t think that explains the milk spoilage speed. I mean, for chrissakes’ they invented pasteurization over here.

On the plus side, the yogurt over here is excellent, and lasts for at least a couple weeks.

Lunch, UNISG Edition

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In a previous post, I discussed what it was like to have lunch at the Fed, but there was no mention of the food, mostly because the Sodexo-run cafeteria, while competent and better than your average corporate cafeteria, mostly catered to the greatest common denominator and offered nothing of blogworthy interest.

Here at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, you can avail yourself of the midday meal service plan for €1000, and be assured a hot lunch every day that you are at school. For the first week of classes, everyone can dine at the canteen, which gives you a chance to try the food and determine whether or not you want to bring your own lunch instead. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but figured that this would be a nicer, more intimate version of Cornell’s dining halls (which were actually pretty good compared to the institutional slop served at most other universities). I definitely did not expect a 3 or 4 course meal, complete with full table service.

The canteen is housed adjacent to the chapel, and features lovely high ceilings with Tudor-style wood beams, fresh flower arrangements and round tables for ten. It opens at 12:15 pm and classes officially resume at 1 pm (though most of the time this doesn’t actually happen till 1:15 or so), which doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to eat four courses.
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First Pizza

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For an informal pre-start of class get-together, the UNISG May 2010 cohort gathered for beers/aperitivo at the bar on the premises of the Slow Food headquarters. In the courtyard, there is a small restaurant named Baladin, with a small bar outdoors that serves wine and a couple beers on tap. On this particular night, the Isaac and Nora beers were available, the former being similar to a Belgian white beer and the latter an “Egyptian” style lager.

Of the 25 people in the class, I met about 17 or 18 of them tonight, and presumably the rest will be present at class tomorrow morning. There are five men, 5-6 Americans, two Italians, a Thai, a Mexican, an Ecuadorean, and some Aussies. As you can imagine, everyone is fairly cosmopolitan and speaks many tongues, but the winner for linguistic diversity might be Luca, an Italian who speaks English with a perfect British accent who studied Chinese in Beijing for several years.

Post beers, we trekked around the corner to Aqua Pazza Pizzeria, which was described by Luca as being a reasonably priced, cheap pizza place. Much to my surprise, the pizzeria was decked out with nice wine racks, track lighting and white tablecloths–Papa John’s this was not. On the other hand, the menu was filled with about 20 types of pizza, all between €5-8. That is definitely cheaper than the American equivalent. Also, I was amused to see some creative naming in the Pizze Baby section.

After scanning the menu carefully, I decided to go with the Basilica, topped with grape tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. The crust was thin but not cracker-like, with enough chew and durability to support the toppings. It was also a pretty hefty serving for one person, unlike some other Neapolitan pizzas I have had, where you walk away hankering for another half a pizza.

Time to go to bed, so I can bike to class bright and early in the morning.

Recipe: Matcha Green Tea Mochi Cupcakes with White Chocolate Ganache

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Matcha green tea mochi cupcakesA couple months ago, I embarked on a mission to clear out my freezer and cupboards before moving. I stopped buying pantry items, and only allowed myself purchases of produce, dairy products and occasionally starches, like rice or pasta. Within weeks, I had finished all the random cuts of meat in the freezer, and had baked through all my bread and all purpose flours. This Iron Chef-esque exercise also forced me to come up with new ways to use esoteric ingredients like harissa (a North African chili and red pepper paste), chickpea flour (for Indian pakoras) and pomegranate molasses (a byproduct of my one-time obsession with tagines). Some of my experiments were successful (horseradish-sharp cheddar bread was a win), and others were not as good (horseradish cream and pomegranate molasses sauce was pretty fail). But hey, I was the only one around to witness my mistakes, and I never botched a dish so badly that I was unwilling to eat it myself.

At any rate, my kitchen is currently looking quite bare. If I didn’t know any better, I would look at my cupboards and call myself food-insecure. I am out of staples like flour, milk, butter and salt. Yes, salt. Actually, you’d be surprised at what you can do without salt in the house. Though my first impulse was to panic and run out to buy salt, after a few moments, I realized I had plenty of other salting mechanisms, like soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, nuoc mam and salty cheeses. And so, I’ve been getting by on a low-salt (but not low-sodium) diet for the last week or so.

All this is simply background to explain the engineering process that went into the cupcakes pictured above. I wanted to make something for my economists as a parting gift, and this recipe for strawberry mochi cupcakes caught my eye. Some further digging turned up this recipe for matcha green tea mochi cake, which was supposed to be a bit chewier and less cake-like than the previous formulation.

Baking is one of the most precise of culinary arts (second only to candy-making), which is why I don’t do it often. Here, my improvisatory ways tend to backfire and all that is left is a crest-fallen soufflé. However, I was adamant in my obsession with not having leftover ingredients, so I studied the two recipes carefully and combined them. And hoped that my gamble would work.
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