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/

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...

Peperoni...Bell Peppers

Last weekend I ate the most amazing peperoni. My boyfriend’s colleague Enrico took us to a barbecue at his wife’s parents’ home outside of Torino, in the province of Cuneo in a little town called Sanfrè. During the short hour drive into the country, Enrico pointed out to us all the trucks and improvised vegetable stands by the side of the road full of beautiful red and yellow bell peppers. This area is known for its peppers, and that weekend there was the official festival celebrating the famous peperoni the nearby town of Carmagnola. We arrived to the family gathering, and after putting the meat on the grill, we sat down to eat the l’antipast as they say in Piemontese[i], or appetizers. The traditional cold cuts of salami and raw sausages were passed around, along with a plate of average looking, oily bell peppers. Cut into little rectangles, the peppers, however, had been prepared to taste-bud perfection. A little taste of olive oil, something sweet, and something salty. Cooked, yet crisp. I immediately asked how they had been prepared. In the “agro-dolce” (sweet-and-sour) method! I was told. Giorgio, the man of the house, showed us around his garden he’d been taking care of the last 20 years of his life in retirement, and his cellar full of even more peppers that could never be eaten before they went bad. Of course, nothing in his garden went to waste. While he, like unfortunately my boyfriend refuses to eat vegetables, he lets nothing go unused. Everything is preserved in jars, with methods learned from their mothers and fathers, so it can be eaten year round. 

During the week, I tried to repeat the magic, but my peppers didn’t turn out like the ones at the barbecue with the recipes I found online. They were, however, fantastic tasting! Like all my creations, the recipe you find below is the product of several of my attempts, mixing various recipes, to recreate some amazing pepper taste.

Peperoni in agro-dolce

Ingrediants:

1 red bell pepper

1 yellow bell pepper

1 cup water

1 cup balsamic vinegar

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 big spoon full of honey

A few mint leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

What I did:

Cut up the bell peppers into strips (easier to bring out of the pot with a straining ladle), or small rectangles if you can fit them all in their at once (and then use a colander to strain them). Bring the water, oil, and vinegar to boil. Add in the honey and mint leaves. Put just enough strips in at a time they they remain completely covered by the boiling mixture. Let them sit in there around 3 minutes and then take them out with the straining ladle and add in the next batch for three minutes. I put the pepper pieces separated in an aluminum pan to cool and then to store. Because food continues to cook even after you take it out of the heat, if you want the peppers to stay extra crunchy, you can prepare a bowl of cold water to drop the pieces into after they've boiled in the agro-dolce mixture.

And how I ate them:

A few I ate right away, seasoned with salt and pepper. In the next two days, I ate the rest in two very mouth-watering creations:

1. In a salad with cut-up tomatoes, thinly sliced red onions, and tuna canned in olive olive (not water), seasoned with salt, a little pepper, oregano, and freshly squeezed lemon. This definitely did not fill me up for lunch, so I ate it with a roll of whole wheat bread. Another more filling way to eat this salad would be to spread it over a nice thick piece of "red pizza," which means pizza cooked just with tomato sauce, oregano, and a bit of oil.

2. With scrambled eggs. I put a quarter of a yellow onion cut up with olive oil in a pan, added the peppers chopped up into smaller pieces, a few sliced up sun dried tomatoes that had been stored in olive oil, and then poured in a mixture of two eggs, grated parmesan and pecorino romano cheeses, salt, and pepper. AMAZING...

Bell peppers are in season in the United States in the summer and early fall.[ii] In Italy, its the same, from July to September.[iii] They are full of vitamins A and C, which in fruits and vegetables act as strong anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory agents.[iv]

*** 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] Piemonte, or Peidmont one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is in the northwest of the country. It’s biggest city is Torino, or Turin, where I've been living since June 2007.

[ii] http://localfoods.about.com/od/finduselocalfoods/a/natlseason.htm

[iii] http://www.bio-benessere.it/alimentibio.php?id=113&pp=120&lev=2

[iv] http://www.mothernature.com/library/ency/index.cfm/id/1962007