Cold Cheese · Aug 25, 03:59 PM by James Martin
I was reading an interesting blog post on the come puoi non amarla blog this morning about a fabulous sounding goat cheese producer who also runs an agritruismo near Cuneo in Piemonte.
Anna Savino happened to sample the cheeses there and came away with a few tips. One of them was interesting and fundamental. It was about temperature, which is very, very important to Italians and to the enjoyment of food in general. It is this:
We eat cheese TOO COLD! He said as soon as we called in the morning to book they put all the cheese out on the table for us.
Yes, we do. One’s tongue doesn’t receive much taste when it is being frozen by the food—and it’s a sin not to taste something so you miss out on rejoicing in its laborious creation. One of the things I miss about Italy (or France, Spain, Portugal…) is the cheese course. I mean, when I ask for cheese at a California restaurant and they plop down an ice cold block of Monterey Jack on an ice cold plate in front of me, I dream of flinging the whole deal like a destructive Frisbee back to the kitchen, hoping without hope it will knock some sense into whoever thought it was a good idea to serve mediocre cheese at freezing temperatures. The thing is this: digging into a cold block of Monterey Jack is as close to eating a block of wax as you’ll ever get—blech! (unless you happen to have a candle-eating fetish.)
Piemonte has over 160 cheeses they told me when I was there, but I would have to guess that there are way more than that. In Italy, you don’t have to make cheese like everyone else makes it, so I bet there are folks just making something they’ve always called “formaggio” who haven’t had their style of cheese counted. After all, I used to think that Tuscany meant pecorino and basta! until I discovered the many cheesy delights of Naturalmente Lunigiana.
In any case, you want a link with pictures to the joint that makes and serves goat cheese right, eh? Here: Az.Agrituristica Lo Puy. The page is in Italian but the pictures are nice and will suck you in. They did me, anyway. You must reserve; they’re open Thursday through Sunday. Saturday is interesting:
Sabato sera (dalle 19,30): Piatti di capra o di capretto ispirati a ricette delle varie tradizioni pastorali.
We’re talkin’ ‘bout goat or kid with recipes inspired by the traditions of the shepherds here. Mmmm.
There’s also a blog
Andiamo! Throw down your American poison eggs and pack your bags!
[Related: Can you save a dying cheese tradition by taking a fab vacation in Portugal? Well, maybe. See Visiting Serra da Estrela: Saving Queijo do Serra]
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Food Shopping Slapdown: Italy vs. US · Aug 2, 02:54 PM by James Martin
I’m just back from the new grocery store we have in our little burg. It is named something like “Grocery Outlet.” It is supposed to save you money. We saved $23 on our $28.34 purchase. I have no idea how, but they said so with authority when we checked out, so it is obviously true.
In any case, I will attempt to describe the major differences between shopping at the Grocery Outlet in California and the Supermarket in Pallerone, Italy.
The Grocery Outlet attracts a certain kind customer. Numero uno are the oldies, a pair of which I encountered in the parking lot. The man, driving (or, at least holding on to the wheel and twitching uncontrollably) almost ran me over as I was trying to cross the street to enter the store. As I was looking glumly at his front tire, which had about 3 pounds of air in it, he turned the wheel, running the car up on the curb I was standing on. He was going about 2 miles an hour at the time, which I believe was his top speed. The car made that eerie screeching sound as the rails dragged on the cement curb. The driver did not grimace. I did.
In Italy, drivers try to get up considerable velocity before passing you so quickly your shirt collar turns inside out. It’s a major driving difference and pedestrian experience. Old folks resort to the public bus. Usually.
Once in the store, it was obvious that the other kinds of people this humongous emporium of crap-inside-cardboard-cartons attracted were the kinds of people who gleefully voted for idiots like Target-supported Tom Emmer of Minnesota who are out to trash minimum wage, thinking they will finally make a wage they don’t have to describe as minimum to their friends and neighbors. Good luck with buying groceries on that.
Here’s a conversation you won’t hear in Italy. Woman holding a can of Gravy Train is asking her companion if they make the stuff for dogs or humans. Companion strokes chin, “Well, I’m not sure, but I think dogs like it—but I dunno really…”
(It’s not all that good over fettuccine, so Italians gracefully decline the gravy train, no matter how much Berlusconi pushes for it.)
And, yes, there’s stuff advertised as wine. Odd colors, some half-nekid babes on the bottles. Wine from all over, mostly from places that don’t make much. Every once in a while you see something with a serious label that comes from France or some such and you shake your head in wonderment. “Where the hell did they come across that?”
People at the Grocery Outlet ramble on endlessly over how much they’ve saved on the large, 144 unit economy pack of toilet tissue they’ve snagged. There is no doubt in my mind that they can’t do the math required to actually prove that they’re saving money. (Hint: that’s why there aren’t packs of 100 rolls!)
Italians don’t age their toilet paper. You get it when you need it. There’s one kind. It doesn’t have flowers on it.
There were giant packages of “brownie shooters” at the Grocery Outlet. They looked like little turds. Who would buy them? Perhaps the Gravy Train people. You could make quite a horrendous mess in the bathroom floor with that combo. No, listen, really: invite your friends over for a few gallons of fake lemonade (made from the [fresh! cheap!] pig urine contract farmers can’t get rid of due to those hideous laws the damn Democrats keep forcing on legitimate confinement operations so the nearby lakes don’t go all smelly and yellow [it’s just lemonade, stoopid!]) hinting that you’ve been feeling so unwell that there are times when you’re unable to find the toilet in time. You’d need most of the 144 rolls of toilet paper to clean your little joke up I suppose.
So, right on Grocery Outlet, you win! You give people the stuff they truly want and need! It fun! It’s educational! It’s…commerce at its industrial best!
The Enormous Price of Fake Convenience: Porcini Mushroom Risotto · Jul 26, 03:02 PM by James Martin
So here I am, in Palm Springs, wanting risotto. Poor me.
I go to the nearest market, which is called “fresh & easy.” It’s an odd market. All the produce is wrapped. You can’t buy just an onion. You must buy at least two double wrapped onions. I just don’t understand this.
I couldn’t get just risotto rice at the “fresh & easy” because they wanted me to buy a package dish they called Porcini mushroom risotto.
I suspect folks don’t understand Italian food because of markets like this. How do you add convenience to something so simple as risotto? I mean, you don’t even have to measure anything! How hard can it be?
Usually, if I’m in a place that allows me to, I buy a box of Arborio rice and some broth to make a basic risotto. If I was an Italian grandmother with time on her hands I’d make my own broth, which is why there is no canned broth anywhere in Italy I’ve ever seen.
Anyway, I’d maybe chop up some butternut squash and add it to the simmering broth while I browned 2/3 cups of rice (a big handful for me) in butter or olive oil. Then I’d add the broth until the rice was properly al dente, then the squash, give it a stir and it’s done. I might stir in a bit of butter at the end if the food police weren’t looking, and I’d dust with some real Parmigiano-Reggiano. This makes enough for 2 big servings.
If I were making porcini risotto, I’d soak a few dried porcini in warm water, strain the liquid into the broth, chop the porcini and proceed as before.
Simple, no?
Enter the American convenience movement; or, how to make something convenient into something expensive. The box you see in the picture is the epitome of this vile movement.
You see, I paid $2 for the box you see above. The box claims it makes 4 servings. Inside there’s 1/2 cup of rice for four. A paltry amount.
But there’s another half cup in the box. It’s a half cup of powder. The box claims nothing unnatural is contained within that powder packet. Of course, what’s unnatural and what’s unnatural in food happens to be two quite different things, unless you cook with Silicon Dioxide because you like the taste of it (it’s to prevent caking they say).
Folks, here’s the thing. In Italy I’d buy a whole box of good quality Arborio rice for 2 Euros. It would last a month. A few dried porcini I’d buy by the handful at any outdoor market. The cost would almost be negligible. Then I’d whip us a dish that would be completely free of chemicals and mighty tasty for a fraction of the cost of the American version.
I mean look at the container into which I’ve poured the content of the powder package. In the picture above, you see some nasty black specks.
Those specks, dear reader, are the porcini mushrooms. An amount that defines paltry. A rip off amount.
Really, cook right. It’s not hard. None of these rip-off packages, you hear?
Of course, at the fresh and easy store, they don’t carry the rice, just the convenient packages. They make you suffer. They make you drive around.
They make you mad….and poorer.
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The Post Office | PO'ed Again · Jul 6, 02:09 PM by James Martin
There are huge differences between the American Post Office and the Italian one. In our little post office in California, the folks manning the windows are kind, pleasant, and efficient. All decisions are binary: yes or no. What’s it cost? There’s a number behind a dollar sign for that. The number isn’t negotiable. It doesn’t change day to day—maybe once a year at most. Customers stand in lines crisp and neat.
In Italy you have to gird your loins for battle before ambling over to the Post Office. Well, maybe you have to gird your buttocks if you’re a sitter—it’s gonna be a long wait. It doesn’t matter what time it is or how many people are standing around—it’s gonna be a while and you’re gonna sit if there are chairs and complain if there are not.
Customers mill around throughout the closet our Italian Post Office is built into like molecules of gas, dispersing throughout the limited ether inside the Post Office as if by nature looking for equilibrium amongst the gathered mass. They have carefully noted, of course, their position in line—or they have asked and been informed when their turn would be. All is well, turn wise.
If it comes before judgment day that is.
In any case, lots of people, expats usually, spit venom over the PO in Italy. That’s understandable. We come from a place that doesn’t burn train cars full of Christmas cards rather than going to the trouble of actually delivering them at the busiest time of the year. That’s probably because we don’t use trains so much to deliver our mail in the US. We don’t use them much at all.
Once you get to the front of the line, it will appear that prices for mailing a package, it seems, can be negotiated. Or they change daily. Arbitrarily. You really can’t figure it out, even if you’re a journalist.
In any case, I need to come to my point, which is the picture you see just above this paragraph. It’s a “package” that arrived today at my California palace and Wandering Italy Foreign Nerve Center (WIFNC). Inside was Fred Plotkin’s highly anticipated tome Italy for the Gourmet Traveler brought up to date. We were salivating, but now, as you see, the contents of our package, sent US Priority Mail, seem to have been ripped off. They were nice enough to actually deliver the torn, official padded envelope.
So there’s something else you can add to your list of how Post Offices in the US are highly superior to those in Italy: the folks (or at least one “folk”) who “deliver” the mail in the US have great taste and aren’t afraid to show it.
We all have our priorities, eh? I’m officially PO’ed.
The Last Good Egg · Jun 26, 01:36 AM by James Martin
I have had my last good egg in Italy for this trip. Tomorrow we leave for Baden Baden, then home to California on the big bird.
The common chicken egg, it seems to me, is quite symbolic of my relationship with food on two continents. Here, each chicken egg I buy in the market is coded with not only the place where the egg was laid, but the way the chicken was raised that laid it. Folks slurp them down raw here without fear.
In the US we’re told that we need to cook the living daylights out of our eggs (and our chickens), because we don’t want a nanny state, which might come down hard on producers who produce poisonous food, thus lowering profits. That seems nuts to me, especially in a country where the owner of a peanut production facility riddled with rat feces complains that Salmonella testing was holding up his production, “costing us huge $$$$$ and causing obviously a huge lapse in time from the time we pick up peanuts until the time we can invoice.” ~ Stewart Parnell, happy damn Father’s Day – You should be in Jail
And you know the outcome don’t you? Yawn. 700 sick, 12 dead. Do you fear your peanuts? You might if they come from Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) of Blakely Georgia.
It’s not that I live in paradise when I live in Italy, it’s just that when I watch them make salami, I see the guys stuffing raw pork down their gullets. They’re still alive. I see them at festivals.
Compare and contrast the unflinching consumption of raw meat raised right by caring folks to ConAgra’s Marie Callender’s Cheesy Chicken & Rice Frozen Dinner Toll now 37. Well, dang, says a spokesperson, they didn’t cook it a gawdawful long time to kill all the pathogens in it! It’s their fault they’re sick!
Yup, who’d want to be protected from poison when you can get your fill of logic like that?
So that’s what takes the edge off of returning home to me. It should be a joyous rather than a scary thing. Thank God for farmer’s markets. Will free markets be ruined by the government’s insistence that responsible food labeling should be made illegal to protect the industrial crap food producers and their GM products?
I hope not.
You may also tolerate: Eggs in Italy | Eggs at McDonalds
War Stories in the Lunigiana · Jun 14, 04:11 AM by James Martin
Our little corner of Tuscany, the Lunigiana, was known for its tough resistance in WWII. In fact, the territory in the nearby Emiglia Romagna and its rough and tough mountain characters are celebrated in the book and movie “Love and War in the Apennines.” The author, Eric Newby himself bought a house in Fosdinovo in the Lunigiana.
There’s a resistance museum here, filled with the latest technology to give you an idea of what lives of the locals were like at the time. They weren’t, it reminds us, fighting for “politics,” they were fighting to keep their own way of life.
Reminders of the war are all around us, in the form of little memorials of folks who gave their lives to the cause. In fact, our own “apartment” became an attic home for the woman who now lives below us, when she had to give up her rooms to the Germans to avoid exposing her husband as a member of the resistance.
Stories of war time are not infrequently heard in these parts. Yesterday, as we basked amongst the dregs, huddled from the sudden rain which fell after the feast celebrating Sacro Cuore, we heard an interesting one which, of course, featured food.
One of the reasons the tough terrain like we have here is difficult to conquer is that the clever locals in places like the Lunigiana know the resources provided by nature. It’s darn tough to cut those supply lines. It’s also quite amazing that the all-conquering US army hasn’t learned about these attributes, but nevermind.
In any case, it’s only the industrial processed foods that could be put at arms length from the rural populations. So, when the war ended, as the story goes, “mom” bough an enormous bag of sugar and took to hiding the lot in all the furniture. Little bags of it went in the sofa, the overstuffed chairs, the mattress. She would never go though that again!
And it was still there when they found it in 1968.
Processed food. Get over it. It’ll get you in the end.
La festa del Sacro Cuore · Jun 12, 10:04 AM by James Martin
Our little village is preparing for La festa del Sacro Cuore tomorrow. It’s the biggest feast day of the year for little Piano di Collecchia. For weeks, folks have been sweeping, cleaning, pruning, weed-wacking and thinking about food.
Right now, 24 hours before the big event, folks are cooking like you wouldn’t believe. Francesca is making her mother’s chinghiale recipe for over the tagliarini. Wild boar. They bought about a quarter of one. Leg and ribs. Francesca let us video the whole deal.
The community wood oven is going. Angelo made the fire. He was in charge. Well, he was in charge until this humongous wasp-like thing came by and decided to stay near the oven a while. Angelo warned us that Alcede had been bitten by one just like it only smaller, and had to go to the hospital. We men have reverence for such bugs.
Angelo’s solution? He called in Gabriella. She ignored the beasty and moved stuff around like you have to do in a wood oven. There’s no knob to twist to set the temperature you know. You put things in certain places and shove them into different places if they get too hot or cold. Gabriella used a shovel. Folks here don’t use fancy equipment.
I am going to give you my theory, which has always been true in my experience: The taste of the food is inversely related to the cost of the equipment used to make it. Folks get too wound up on the subject of untensils, and the industrial empire is ready with the gold plated. motorized pizza tongs to sell to all the fools who think they need one to take the place of skill in the kitchen.
It doesn’t matter. I can’t wait. These dinners go all afternoon. It’s life celebrated to the max. Be back later with the results.
Food We Waste · May 27, 04:27 AM by James Martin
There’s been a lot of press lately about how much food Americans waste. Lots. 40% some say:
Americans throw away over 40 percent of all available food each year. Production of that wasted food accounts for more than one-quarter of the U.S.’s total annual freshwater consumption and equates to 300 million barrels of oil, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). ~ Study: American food waste rising along with obesity rates
“Food”, when transformed into crap by the hands of the industrialists who provided the bulk of it to Americans, has become too cheap. Its cheapness benefits no one in the end. Nessuno. (Well, maybe the financial wizards that made home mortgages into gambling instruments and crashed the market; they’re certainly doing well on our bailout money.) As anyone with some market savvy knows, as the average family food budget shrinks, housing becomes more expensive, taking up the slack. It’s darn simple—a house is priced at what you can pay. If it costs less to eat, you can pay more. It’s a zero sum game.
But food’s cheapness means that you can afford to make sure you buy plenty more than you need. As my grandparents said when I’d left something on my plate, “your eyes are bigger than your stomach, eh?” No harm, no foul.
And this callous attitude causes more waste, more methane gas, more warming of the earth.
In a way, it’s why I like living in rural Italy. I don’t have to buy a huge loaf of bread, I can buy just a piece in exactly the size I specify. It’s sold by weight.
Most small markets here have a real butcher. I can buy a single sausage, or a pair of pork chops. It’s not like I’m facing a 5 foot high pile of styrofoam trays, each having exactly 5 pork chops in it. In other words, my market doesn’t encourage—or force me—to buy too much at a time.
Plus, Italians, like top chefs, are just more frugal than most Americans. It’s not just about the food we throw away when we cook up a big heap of something, it’s also about the stuff we throw away thoughtlessly in the process.
I was thinking about this when I came across a blog post on making Risotto con le Canocchie, which has a very interesting story by Carmelita about acquiring a big ol’ bag of shrimp heads on the waterfront in Charleston, South Carolina. Seems they just up and gave them to her because they usually throw them away. Every foodie worth the cost of his blog hosting knows that the heads and shells of shrimp have way more flavor than the flesh. Every Italian does too. That’s why you don’t find many peeled shrimp in the markets of Italy. You’d be letting someone else have all the flavor. Dumb.
It’s simple, of course, to tap into this flavor by making a broth of them—or a flavored butter. I just let a pot of shrimp shells wallow in butter for a while in a warm oven and add it to the seafood risotto pot at the end instead of butter from the fridge. Yes, fats are a flavor carrier.
You know, there’s something nice about living in a country where even the stuff that’s left over from wine making is made into grappa and then turned into fertilizer for the vines.
Ever noticed that organic wine seldom costs more than non-organic. You save the fertilizer cost, you know?
We’ve gotten away from this clever use of nature to decrease waste and increase flavor in our food, haven’t we? Methinks it’s time to learn it all again. And yes, there seems to be a revolution brewing as we interact.
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Interact! Cuss and discuss this article on the Wandering Italy Facebook Page and maybe learn a bit about the food of the Schist Villages of Portugal. The world is an interesting place if you poke around in it a bit.