Jus de Pommes Naturel...Fresh French Apple Juice

The best tasting apple juice I have ever had I drank two weeks ago at the chestnut festival in Cuneo. A French family squeezed out bottle by bottle. Check out the process:

cutting out worm holes (I guess) from any of the apples

grinding up the applies

putting the applies in the circular form used to press them

preparing the juice press

grinding the juice press

(look at the juice sliding into the bucket!)

pouring the juice 

cleaning up the used apple bits

displaying the product

 

Did you know that the majority of apple juice you find in the supermarket goes through a clarification process? Fresh apple juice actually has a more cloudy appearance - as you can see in my pictures above. The clarification process done to please consumers and give stores a product with a longer shelf life strips the juice of several of its nutritious properties. Cloudy, or natural, juice holds approximately four times the amount of polyphenols (antioxidants) and it is more successful at attacking "free radicals" in our bodies that can cause diseases like cancer. Processed or not, however, studies have shown that those apple nutrients are strong! Research has been done that shows that even processed apple juice helps prevent respiratory and heart disease.

Different varieties of apples can be found all year long. I've always enjoyed going down to Nebraska City with my family to enjoy all the treats the town's large apple orchards have to offer.

I'm going to refer you to a third party for this week's recipe. Check out my friend's blog - she recently included a really great looking apple crisp recipe:  http://ethivore.blogspot.com/2009/10/recipe-whole-wheat-apple-crisp.html.

To make your own freshly-squeezed, unpasteurized apple juice, just cut up a few apples and put them through a food processor! Leave the skin on, it gives you extra nutrients.

BACI

Funghi...Mushrooms

Last night I had one of those heavenly food experiences... and I just couldn't wait to write about it until next week. We went to our friend's family restaurant in Settimo Vittone, a little town at the edge of the Piedmont region, almost in the Valle d'Aosta region of Italy where the Alps are in full force. Every time we go to this restaurant we leave totally satisfied and extremely full. Check out their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Settimo-Vittone-Italy/Osteria-La-Sosta/112546454587?ref=ts. They specialize in Piedmont cuisine, but last night they prepared us a special dinner of funghi (mushrooms)!

Check out what we ate:

The Piedmont tradition involves many appetizers. Our first one of the night was a plate of affettati, or sliced cold meat. We were served  some real delicacies: fresh, sweet prosciutto, savory lard (the word lard sounds nasty but believe me, cut right and of good quality, it tastes amazing), and salami made of potatoes and cow's blood.

The next appetizer started the funghi theme of the evening: raw mushrooms marinated in oil and vinegar.

Next, we ate one of my favorite dishes that I have discovered since moving to Torino: Albese meat... coated with buttery, sauteed mushrooms. Albese meat refers to thinly cut beef served raw. It has to be of good quality and to retain its particular rosey-red color, must be served immediately. This tradition comes from the Piedmont town of Alba, a small city in the Langhe region of northern Italy. The Langhe area is one of the major wine-producing regions of Italy, and wines coming from Alba are internationally known. If you search "carne albese" in Google, you'll see that there's even a Facebook page dedicated to it!

When everyone dug their forks into the next dish, I noticed that there was that silence that sub-consciously comes on when eating something that totally wows you and you momentarily forget where you are and who you're with because all your mind can focus on is how good the flavors are that are sliding over your tongue.  It was described to us as a flan ai funghi. The crust was soft, but slightly crispy. The egg inside didn't have an egg-y taste, but rather a creamy, buttery taste. The mushrooms folded and baked into the mixture retained their freshly-picked-from-the-forest taste. And the sauce on the plate made of Fontina cheese, served at the perfect temperature, made us lick our lips.

I was already pretty full at this point, but who could refuse what you see in the next picture?!? Tagliatelle ai funghi porcini.... the pasta was freshly made that afternoon, the mushrooms were big and plentiful. I feel lucky to have this yummy plate digesting right now in my stomach.  Ahhh...

My dessert didn't have mushrooms in it, but I'm including the photo to complete my meal, and because it pertains to my last post on chestnuts. To finish up last night, I ordered bavese alle castagne con panna - bavase I can't find a translation for, but it was basically like a sweet souffle, and castagne con panna means chestnuts with cream. 

The end of the last week, we also went out to eat mushrooms. I have to say that although this first restaurant was more pricey, and we enjoyed our meals, it can't compare with La Sosta. Here's some of the dishes we ate there:

funghi e carciofi fritti (fried mushrooms and artichoke hearts)

gnocchi al pomodoro e funghi (gnocchi in red sauce with mushrooms)

more tagliatelle ai funghi (can you see the difference?)

On the way home from the restaurant last night, our friend and adopted grandfather born and raised in Piedmont claimed he could recognized at least 100 species of mushrooms. Then he brought the number down to 60. He managed to list off six different types and their various characteristics: color, taste, level of poison.

In Italy, there are over 900 species of mushrooms![i] And there are a bunch of laws, permits and rules on how and when mushrooms can be harvested. They sprout in the humid and chilly fall months. Just be careful about mushroom hunting on your own because many are toxic and you should be accompanied by an expert to be able to tell apart the toxic ones from nearly identical-looking yummy ones.

Apparently, according to our trusted Piedmont friend, most mushrooms have low level of poisonous substances inside, and too many mushrooms can really wreak havoc on your system. You know you're eating among Italians when everyone is talking about how what you're eating affects a certain organ or function of your body. Last night, everyone made comments on how all these mushrooms were going to be giving at little hit to their livers. My (very brief) research shows that mushrooms can be very good for you. Studies have shown that they can prevent certain cancers, are good for the immune system, and were part of the first antibiotics.[ii]

In the States, and also in Italy, you can find dried mushrooms yearlong. Just make sure they didn’t package them with any special chemicals!

For this post, I would like to suggest a recipe I cooked up two years ago to win over my current boyfriend (because as they say not only in Italian but in many languages, “the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach”).

Polenta al forno con porcini e gorgonzola 

Ingredients:

polenta

Parmesan cheese

butter

shallots

porcini mushrooms (fresh or dried)

cream for cooking or whole milk

white table wine

gorgonzola cheese

salt and pepper 

Instructions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350ºF.

1. Boil about three times as much water as the amount of polenta you want to cook (the amounts for the cheese sauce that follows is enough to cover small amount of polenta for about 4 people).

2. When the water starts boiling, slowly pour in the polenta, constantly stiring and making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot. My good friend suggested that I add in a bit of grated Parmesan cheese at this point to give the polenta a little extra kick of flavor. I tried it with another recipe and it was great! Turn the heat down and keep stiring until the polenta becomes denser and pulls away from the pot.

3. Pour into an oven-proof pan and spread out evenly. Put in the oven the bake around 15 minutes. This will give it a more tender texture and make it possible to cut into little bars. (You can see in the picture that I didn't do this to mine the first time.)

4. If you have dried mushrooms, let them soak in warm water until mushroom-like again, probably around 20-30 minutes. Cut mushrooms into slices, I prefer them length-wise.

5. Melt 1.5 tablespoons of butter in a large pan.

6. Add the mushrooms and chopped up shallot, season with salt and pepper and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are softened and golden, around 7 minutes.

7. Add some wine, around 1/2 cup, and simmer until reduced by half.

8. Add the cream (or whole milk) and Gorgonzola cheese and cook over low heat around 7 minutes again. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

9. Pour on top of the baked polenta and serve!

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[i] http://www.funghiitaliani.it/angizio/LibroGiunti_02/Preview.pdf

[ii] http://www.health.pon.net/nmh.html

Castagne...Chesnuts

This past weekend, I did one of my favorite things to do in Italy... I went to one of the frequent, local sagre, or food festivals. They are particularly common in the fall, like 4H or county fairs in the United States. Only in Italy, they are usually focused on one food item. Searching a bit the etymology of the word sagra, I found that it can be traced back to the Latin word sacra, meaning sacred - more proof supporting my theory that eating can be a truly spiritual experience. Sacra originally referred to a religious liturgical ceremony, which was always followed by a popular festival involving lots of fresh, seasonal goodies. The label sacra, and its modified-over-time form sagra, eventually was used to recall the more joyous part of the day, the food celebration.

So where was I and what did I eat? I went with friends to the town of Cuneo for the "Fiera Nazionale del Marrone," or "National Fair of the Chestnut."

Getting to Cuneo takes about an hour and a half in train from Torino. It's half way between Torino and France. The day was sunny, but brisk.... perfect for eating bag fulls of roasted chestnuts. How many times did I sing when I was little at Christmas time "chestnuuuuts roasting on an open fair, Jack Frost nipping at your nose"? And I had never even eaten roasted chestnuts! Two years ago, when I moved to Italy I had my first roasted chestnuts experience. I'm embarrassed to say that I ate the smokey, black shell a few times before I figured out that you peel it off to eat the naturally sweet flesh inside.

Every food festival has some common features here in Northern Italy. First, in addition to the produce of the day, there's always an abundance of small local farms or family producers of regional cheeses, salami, honey, and chocolate. These products can be sold all year round, but because, well, let's just say, they're not the lightest of snacks, they're much more appetizing in the sweater-friendly weather of the fall and winter. I will go into detail about all these food items in future blog posts - this week the star is the chestnut. For now, I'll just let your imagination run with the following image.

In Italy, they call the chestnut a fruit and a nut. Maybe that's because like many fruits, it's high in water content. Also unlike many nuts, the chestnut is low in calories and fat.[i] And like many citrus fruits, chestnuts are a good source of vitamin C. In the southern Mediterranean, they have been used for centuries as a subsistence food. Chestnut trees only grow in a narrow strip of the Earth’s latitude. Most died in the United States at the beginning of the 1900s, however, it seems they are slowly coming back onto the market.[ii] The majority, however, are imported into the States from Italy, China, and Korea.

A (slightly, unfortunately, outdated) study from the Department of Food Resources and Economics of the University of Florida notes that “the development of new American x Chinese hybrid chestnut cultivars -- which are resistant to chestnut blight and produce large, sweet nuts -- have helped to make possible expansion of the domestic chestnut industry in the United States, including in Florida.”[iii]

What does it mean that the hybrid produces sweet nuts? Are they engineered to have a higher sugar content than the norm to appease the American market? I have not yet found the answer, but it’s a good question to ask. It’s very hard to determine what’s better for you and for the environment: chestnuts flown over from Europe in carbon-emitting jets, or locally grown, but genetically sugared chestnuts? I need to do more research in order to give out any concrete facts on chestnuts.

The National Chestnut Fair of Cuneo started in the 1930s.[iv] There one can find all the millions of ways people have inventively consumed this staple food for generations. In the pictures here, you can see how the chestnuts are mass-roasted in these parts.

Two weeks ago, at a smaller gathering, to celebrate the first chestnuts of the season, we used a more single-family method. You can find these pans with holes in the bottom, specially made for roasting chestnuts, in every grocery store and market right now in Italy.

This year, I gorged and tried a bit of everything: freshly roasted chestnuts, chestnut beer, crepes made from chestnut flour - a sweet one with chestnut spread instead, and a savory one with speck, gorgonzola and crumbled chestnuts inside. Here are some of the chestnut treats we tasted...

For this post, I'm going to suggest my chestnut stuffing recipe. My Italian friends here know that Thanksgiving is around the corner, and they've already started dreaming about my stuffing. This dish is by far everyone's favorite at my annual cena del giorno di ringraziamento (Thanksgiving Day dinner).

Ripieno americano alle castagne 
(my new name for my stuffing, hehe "American chestnut stuffing")

Ingredients:

1 loaf of (fresh) bread

3/4 lbs fresh chestnuts, or slightly less of pre-peeled chestnuts

a fist-full (1.5 cups?) of pancetta or fatty sausage cut into cubes or slices

1/2 cup butter

1 large onion

3 celery stalks
2 carrots

8.5 cups chicken stock

salt and pepper

fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, savory

2 eggs

Instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 350º F. 

1. The night before, or even two nights before (depending on the humidity where you live) slice your bread up, and then cut the slices up again into cubes. Spread over paper towels on your kitchen table or counter, lock your dog out, and cover with paper towels to protect the bread from dust, etc.

2. If you didn't manage to find your chestnuts already peeled and a bit boiled, make one or two little cuts in each chestnut and drop them all into a saucepan with enough water to cover the chestnuts. Bring the water to a boil and let the nuts simmer for about 25 minutes. Drain them like pasta, rinse with cold water, and wait until they're cool enough to handle before starting the peel them. Then cut and quarter the nuts.

4. Prepare the chicken stock. Set aside to cool down.  

5. Put the pancetta in a frying pan and cook till golden and crispy. Then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Don't get rid of the grease!

6. In the meantime you should have sliced the onion, celery, and carrots into little pieces.

7.  Add the veggies and butter to the grease and let simmer for around 10 minutes, definitely until the onions are pretty translucent. Add in the fresh spices and a 1/2 cup of the chicken stock and let simmer again until about half of the stock has been reduced. Stir in chestnuts, cooked pancetta, and add salt and pepper to taste. Take the pan off the heat and let contents cool a bit.

8. Mix eggs into the remaining chicken broth - only if your broth is completely cooled! Otherwise you're going to end up with egg-drop soup!

9. Put bread cubes into a buttered, oven-proof pan. Mix the chestnut mixture in with the bread crumbs and then pour over the egg mixture. Toss everything together to get it evenly coated.

10. Cover with aluminum foil and and stick it in the oven and let cook for around 25-30 minutes. Take off the foil and cook another half hour until golden brown.

Enjoy!

For more chestnut recipes in English from the National Chestnut Fair committee of Cuneo, check out their recipe web page at: http://www.marrone.net/index.php?id=7653&L=1.

I hope you've learned something about chesnuts, and I hope you have the chance to taste them fresh and roasted too!

BACI

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[i] http://www.chestnutsonline.com/unnut.htm

[ii] http://www.cambridge.org/us/Books/kiple/chestnuts.htm

[iii] http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/HS1155

[iv] http://www.marrone.net/index.php?id=7643&L=1

Pere...Pears

Pears, originally from western Asia and now cultivated throughout Europe and the Americas, are in season most of the year both in Italy and in the United States, although the varieties differ by season. In the fall and winter, you can buy them a little tougher because they continue to ripen off the tree, while in the summer you should get them when slightly soft. Right now in Italy, the Kaiser, Decana del Comizio, Williamas Rosso, Abate Fetel, and Santa Maria varieties are in season.[i] They are a good source of vitamin C, potassium, and high in fiber.[ii]

Last weekend, I was up the hills outside Torino at our friend Genio's country home. As dessert, Genio prepared some very simple poached pears.

Last December, at a fancy restaurant back in the center of town, I had a eaten a similar dish with Camembert cheese at a work event... and this past Valentine's Day I decided to make it as an appetizer for my boyfriend. It's simple but incredibly tasty. Try it for yourself...

Decadent Roasted Pears

Ingredients:

sliced almonds

one package of brie or Camembert cheese

fresh thyme or rosemary

honey (natural and organic!)

quality olive oil

white table wine

one or two small or medium-sized pears

aluminum foil

Instructions:

1. Start pre-heating the oven on a high setting.

2. Put the sliced almonds in a pan over medium heat. Shake every 30 seconds or so to move them around so they don't burn. When they are golden brown in color and you can smell them roasting, take them off the heat.

3. Prepare your cheese: first, put the entire block (if you slice it like mine in the picture for littler portions, it's ok, it just might end up a little messier) on a sheet of aluminum foil around four times its size, enough to crunch up the sides and make a little enclosed cheese packet so the cheese and its garnishing don't get everywhere when you put it in the oven.

4. Cut a little design in the top of the cheese to let the herbs, olive oil, and honey seep in a bit. Over the cheese sprinkle the fresh thyme, then drizzle over it a big spoonful of honey and just a bit of olive oil, and lastly toss on the roasted almonds. Close up the aluminum foil and wait to put the cheese in the oven with the pear.

5. Next, put 2 parts white wine and 1 part water into a pot large enough to hold the pears. Place the pears in the pot, making sure that they are covered by the diluted wine. Turn the heat on high. Once the wine mixture begins to boil, leave the pears to cook for around 15 minutes.

6. After the 15 minutes, take out the pears carefully to avoid bruising and run them under very cold water. Then peel off the skin with your fingers.

7. Cut the pears in half, leaving the stem on, for decoration. Cut out the seeds.

8. Place each pear on a sheet of aluminum foil around three times its size, enough to fold up the sides so its liquids don't get everywhere when you put it in the oven. Drizzle over the pears a tiny bit of olive oil, fold up the sides of the foil, without closing it like you did with the cheese (let them breeze and roast a bit!) and put them in the heated oven with your cheese packet.

9. After ten minutes, take out all the foil-wrapped goodies in the oven. Remove the pears and cheese carefully from the foil onto a plate.

10. Enjoy alone, or with a piece of toasted bread.

By chance, a few days later last week, on my friend Jill’s balcony (which, side note, has a gorgeous view of the city and is the perfect place for eating, drinking, and having fun with friends), I ate another great cheese and pear combination. This time the pears were served fresh and crispy with gooey, sweet Gorgonzola from the local market.

I re-created the platter at home a few days ago because we ate the first one up too fast to take pictures!

That’s all for this week. I hope you’ve been inspired!

*** Remember to try and buy organic produce from your local farmer's market free of pesticides and full of natural nutrients!***

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[i] http://www.sistemafrutta.it/prodotti.html

[ii] http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/products/articles/pear-culinary-file/