Uva Fragola..."Strawberry Grapes"

Anyone remember that song "Strawberry Wine" by Deana Carter? I just remembered it, thinking about the delicious strawberry wine, called fragolino, this uva fragola I'm going to write about makes. Ahh... good music definitely goes well together with good wine, and good food.

So, as my title suggests, uva fragola literally means "strawberry grape." It is delicious, and I've been waiting all year for it! It's only in season in September through October in Italy. I tried it for the first time last year during a barbecue out in the country with my boyfriend and one of his clients. It has a thick skin and a bouncy ball of sweet flesh inside. Even before you bring the grape close to your mouth, you can smell its nectarous strawberry taste. They are perfect alone as dessert, but also make great gelato. I've been looking around on the Internet, and found some great-looking recipes.

Here is one that I will definitely be trying before the season is over... 

Risotto all'uva fragola 

I translated this recipe from GialloZafferano.it. Its description describes the flavor of this dish as "absolutely not too sweat, maintaining intact instead the typical fragrance of the uva fragola and its light, acidic taste."

Ingredients:

Vegetable broth

60 grams (4.2 Tbsp) butter

40 grams (2.8 Tbsp) grated Parmesan

Ground white pepper (black will do)

1 leek

320 grams (1.5 cups) parboiled rice

450 grams (3 cups) uva fragola grapes

1 glass of "fruity" red wine

What to do:

1. Prepare your vegetable broth and grate your Parmesan. 

2. Separate the grapes from the vine and rinse them well under running water.  Leave about a fifth of the grapes aside to later decorate the plates. Then put the rest of the cleaned grapes in a food processor and blend until you get a syrupy, dense juice.

3. Cut your leek into thin slices. Then, in a frying pan, melt 40g (2.8Tbsp) of the butter, and put in the cut-up leek to simmer a bit.

4. Add in the rice and let it brown just an instant, then add in the glass of red wine and let it eventually evaporate. Continue cooking the rice by then adding in ladles of the vegetable broth, one at a time, on a low flame.

5. Add in the uva fragola grape mix, except a few spoon fulls that you can use at the end to garnish the serving plates. Mix everything well until the grape juice is all absorbed, keeping the heat low. Continuing adding ladles of the broth until the rice is cooked (it should be "al dente," meaning cooked all the way through and tender, but not too soft and mushy).

6. When the rice is cooked, add salt and pepper to taste, take the pan off the of heat, and add in the rest of the butter and the grated Parmesan cheese to the risotto.

7. Serve decorating the places with a few uva fragola grapes and drizzled spoonfuls of the grape syrup.

You can check out the very well done, step-by-step photos on the original website here: http://www.giallozafferano.it/ricetta-stampa/Risotto-all-uva-fragola.

For other Italian speakers, or for anyone who knows how to use Google Translate, check out also the following web page of recipes: http://www.liquida.it/uva-fragola/. The pictures alone are making me drool!

This past weekend, as you can see below, I bought all the uva fragola grapes I could find in the market, and ate them up also in gelato form from one of my favorite ice cream shops in Torino.

In the spirit of this blog, this coming week I'll have to buy the wine called fragolino made from these favorite grapes of mine. Fragolino means "little strawberry"! I just love how cute everything sounds concerning these grapes. It's a sweet dessert wine. You can find it in specialty wine shops in the U.S.

I did a bit of research on the uva fragola and found that its origins actually go back to the  East Coast of the United States! It is unknown when exactly it was brought to Europe, but the exchange seems to have occurred in ancient times. In Italy it is known, therefore, in addition to uva fragola, as uva americana and also uva Isabella. On the web, explanations written in English of of grape call it the Fox grape, from the species vitis labrusca, or the Concord grape. It is apparently a wild plant, a sort of dandelion among the wine-producing grape varieties.

I hope all my readers have a chance to go out and find some fresh uva fragola before it goes out of season, or at least one of the products made from it! It is truly one of my favorites...