seasonal vegetables Archives - Page 2 of 10

June 12, 2017 by Gina Stipo 2 Comments

Frying sage leaves in the spring!

If you’re lucky enough to have a perennial sage plant in your garden, you know that in the spring when it starts growing again, the leaves it puts out are huge! Perfect for dipping in a light batter and frying!

Super simple, the batter is unmeasured and a quick and easy combo of flour, salt and either white wine or soda water. Heat peanut oil in a skillet and dip each leaf in the hot oil, turning as they get golden brown on one side. If you want to get fancy, you can spread a little anchovy paste (the tube you brought back from Italy last time. What? You didn’t?? Well come with us and we’ll show you where to pick one up!) and sandwich two sage leaves together with it, dipping and frying.

This is a perfect snack while you’re sipping your negroni or spritz, dreaming of Italy! Buon appetito!

May 27, 2017 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Summer grilling the Tuscan Way

Memorial Day means filling the pool, cleaning off lawn furniture for al fresco dining and getting the barbeque or grill ready for a season of cooking outdoors. Welcome summer!

Grilling outdoors is generally a warmer seasonal activity. But in Tuscany, we grill inside as well. Show a Tuscan a fire and he’s at the ready with some meat to throw on a grill over the live coals – inside or out!

There is no comparison to the flavor that a wood or charcoal fire gives to anything you put on it. The recent article by Sam Sifton in the food section of the NYTimes attests to that. Gas may be more convenient, but nothing matches the flavor of grilling over live coals. I’m of the opinion that the reason we feel the need to use so many rubs and marinades in our gas grilling is to either to add some flavor that gas doesn’t provide or to mask the bad flavor that gas so often imparts to food.

At my restaurant in Louisville, we only grill outdoors over live coals. Using a Weber grill, and a special grilling chimney to start the natural hardwood charcoal, I can have a fire ready in 20 minutes. Sea salt, meat and live coals is all you need. My guests frequently ask “What did you put on this meat? It’s so delicious!” Sea salt and a real fire. That’s it!

In Tuscany, any indoor fireplace means an opportunity to grill dinner. In the dead of winter, in the smallest fireplace with a fire started with a small amount of wood and allowed to burn down to a bed of coals, the portable grill with little legs come out and dinner is grilled right in the living room! Nothing is more surprising but nothing beats it!

Next up I’ll give you a few tips on grilling meat over live coals.

Buon Appetito and Happy Memorial Day!

April 11, 2017 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Fresh pecorino cheese & new fava beans are heralds of Spring

In Italy, many things are done in old-fashioned ways – growing vegetables, caring for animals, cooking traditional dishes – that inevitably tie the people to the seasons. Spring is a time of renewal and many spring dishes reflect the season. Egg-rich dishes and desserts are a result of an abundance of eggs the chickens lay as the days get warmer and longer. Lamb shows up on menus more often, often with fried spring artichokes. In Tuscany, one of my favorite spring pairings is fresh pecorino, or sheep’s milk cheese, and fresh fava beans – cacio e bacelli in Tuscan dialect – that is the perfect example of how the simplicity of a seasonal dish belies the complexity of nature.

Most of us are far removed from the farm and little nuances of life tied to the land frequently escape and astound us when we learn of them. In the second year I lived in Italy, it came as a revelation to me that in order for a sheep, or any animal, to give milk, it has to have a baby every year. Tuscany is a big producer of pecorino, or sheep’s milk cheese, and I learned the facts of natural cheese making when my friend, Silvana, closed her dairy in the late autumn. She explained to me, as if I was a small child, that in late summer a ram is put in with the sheep to impregnate them; once the ram’s job is done, he’s put back out to pasture until the next year. (When a Tuscan is up to his ears in work he’ll say “I’m busier than a billy goat in September!”) The pregnant sheep are then slowly weaned off of milking, ending altogether in late October or early November, and the dairy is closed for the winter.

In the late winter, the sheep give birth to little white lambs and it’s another harbinger of spring when you see them frolicking in the fields. As you can’t keep every lamb born, many of them are butchered, and the mammas go to milking again.

In a natural setting, where the farmer allows his animals to live as nature intended, fresh cheese – aged less than 30 days – is available only so long as fresh milk can be obtained. The industrial food complex has developed to give us fresh cheese all year round, the natural process is controlled with hormones and a sheep never even sees a billy goat.

When they begin milking the sheep in the spring, the first cheeses made are fresh pecorino – soft, buttery yellow and aged less than a month. Its arrival is welcome after a long winter of eating only aged cheeses. It coincides with the season of new fava beans. Sold still in their furry pods, they were planted in the fall and have ripened with the spring warmth. Cacio e bacelli, the classic pairing that is a perfect example of Tuscans honoring the seasonings.

At the Italian Table we’ve been thrilled to get our hands on both imported fresh pecorino and cases of fresh fava beans and have been making little baked custards with the cheese and serving them with blanched fava beans and fresh thyme from our herb garden!

Happy Spring, a blessed Easter and Buon Appetito!

February 25, 2016 by Gina Stipo 2 Comments

Trusting in Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil

There has been a lot of press lately regarding authentic vs adulterated extra virgin olive oil. Especially Italian, which everyone considers some of the best. In both taste and health benefits, extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany, Sicily and Puglia can’t be beat, and you feel good about buying it for yourself and your family.

Until they tell you it’s all fake and you can’t trust the label. Then what are you supposed to do?!

In some respects, it’s true: there is a lot of adulteration going on with extra virgin olive oil. You need to know who you can trust, where you can turn for good information. The label on the bottle says “Italy” or “Italian”, but the small print gives a key to where the oil comes from: ES -Spain, TU- Tunisia, GR-Greece, etc. Often the small sprint says “bottled in Italy”, which means the olives or oil can come from anywhere and are bottled in Italy. Berio and Bertolli, two of the only Italian olive oils available until about 25 years ago, were famous for this. At any rate, it gives a bad name to one of the most delicious and healthy products we have access to. That’s why a little knowledge can protect you and make you feel confident when purchasing olive oil.

In Italy, there are hundreds of comestible products that carry a seal of approval from the corresponding consortium governing that product. Think Parmigiano Reggiano DOP cheese, Aceto Balsamico, Brunello di Montalcino DOCG wine (in fact, all the hundreds of DOC/DOCG wines coming out of Italy). In short, there are governing bodies that control and regulate the growing, production, packaging and geographic area of hundreds of foods and drinks produced in Italy.

In America there is only one product that can carry its name only if the rules for ingredients, production and geographic area are followed. Anyone?? Bourbon: Must be 52% corn, aged a minimum of 2 years in brand new toasted oak barrels and must be made in the USA. One, out of all the things the US makes. By comparison, Italy has literally hundreds.

The consortiums that govern Italian DOP and IGP/IGT olive oil have a process they follow to determine that the product has followed all the rules for producing that oil: only the right olives that are grown, pressed and bottled in the given territory are given the seal that the producer proudly puts on the bottles. This seal has a serial number that can be used to see who grew the olives, where they were pressed and bottled. The process of pressing the extra virgin oil is also controlled to avoid heating the product, which deteriorates the oil and affects the acidity. That’s how important food is to Italians, that is an example of how seriously they take their olive oil.

Search out and purchase extra virgin olive oil that has either a DOP or an IGP/IGT seal on it. Make sure that the bottle has the year that it was made: olives are picked and pressed in November and December of each year and the oil should be as young as possible.

Look for a dark green bottle. Extra virgin olive oil can be very green when pressed if the olives used were predominately green. But it loses the green color over just a few months and will be golden yellow by the next summer. So avoid any green oil in a clear bottle; chlorophyll has most likely been added.

Italian extra virgin olive oil is one of the best products you can use and it is possible to get some really great stuff without traveling to Italy. Where to get the product? Gustiamo is an Italian import company that is very good and has several DOP oils to purchase. Costco brings in an excellent IGP olive oil from Tuscany and it’s available now. And obviously you can join us, Ecco La Cucina, on one of our culinary tours to Italy, which will give you many opportunities to purchase excellent oil to carry or ship home! I hope this information helps you to feel more comfortable in buying olive oil!