Aroma Cucina

In the kitchen

Sorry for the lag in blogging, I've been in the kitchen and not near a computer. Hoping a few pictures are worth a thousand words, this is what we've been up to:

 

Our orto is producing massive amounts of lettuce and I believe we have the first tinge of red on one of our tomatoes!

 

Peaches are back! The Sicilian boys at the market have had wonderful small peaches which taste divine with vanilla yogurt.

 

I may be locked in my kitchen, but the sound of these young people rehearsing in the middle of the block was amazing! What a place to play.

 

While the band played, I made a cheese foccacia with my new, all Montone mother. (That's naturally grown yeast, I've have not been adopted by anyone.)

 

And this is the view from the kitchen  near the town of Preggio, where we've been cooking this week. Not bad at all!

Cocktails on the roof: 1920 v.1.Italy

I’ve said it before, but its wonderful to have a cocktail guru who comes through from time to time with needed bits of wisdom. That would be my friend Mitch who recently mentioned how good a 1920 cocktail is.

The “1920” is a hook up between a Manhattan and a Sazerac and the recipe goes like this: 2 parts rye, 1 part sweet vermouth, absinthe rinse in the glass and a dash or so of orange bitters, stirred, never shaken.  Here in rye-challenged Italy, we make do with whiskey and Pernod for absinthe and Peychaud’s bitters because I forgot the Fee’s Brothers orange bitters in NY. So we had 1920’s v.1.Italy on the roof last night to celebrate the long days and a sun that sets around 9:30.

Mitch’s other guru moment this week was telling me about a new bar in Philly: the Franklin Mint Mortgage Insurance Co or some such bizarre name. Word has come back that it is awesome, so if you are in Philly, check it out. I hear from a most reliable source that the Carol Gardens is outstanding.

And for those of you working. on cocktail 101, the NY Times ran a fine article break ing down a lot of the cocktail lingo. Cin-Cin!

Wheat in all its glory

Recently I’ve been rolling out a lot of fresh pasta.

And baking ovens full of bread.

And enjoying pizza with a young friend.

And driving by wheat fields that will soon be harvested.
It never ceases to amaze me what can be done with some flour and water.

Prosciutto e melone, does it get any better than this?

Somethings should not be tampered with, and I've come to the conclusion that prosciutto and melon is one of those things. That's not to say I haven't tried: melon ice cream, powdered prosciutto, wrapping the prosciutto  around little mouth size bites of melon, or wondering if a mint chiffonade would spark up the flavors, but in my heart I know none of this is better than a cut-able hunk of melon with some just sliced pieces of prosciutto.

So, I have to curb my temptation to fix what isn't broken and just not mess with the perfect flavor combination. (...but that mint idea is just calling me....)

Oh, and just between friends, ketchup is NOT an acceptable condiment on prosciutto and melon. We actually saw American tourists in Rome drown their plate of p and m in ketchup. A very stoic waiter stood nearby and I swear I saw a tear roll down his cheek.

Tomato Marscapone Soup and a Table for Two

I thought my love affair with tomato soup was a winter thing, but it turns out that it’s pretty satisfying on a coolish summer day when you have an abundance of tomatoes in the kitchen.

1 lb of plum or other meaty fresh tomatoes
1-2 shallots, finely minced
1 T pancetta, finely minced (optional)
4 T marscapone cheese
olive oil, salt, pepper

Garlic toasts
1 whole peeled clove of garlic
4-6 slices of baguette style bread
olive oil, salt

Place the raw whole tomatoes in a saucepan and cover with water, set on the stove to boil, when the water is boiling, shut the heat off and let the tomatoes sit for 10 minutes or until cool enough to handle.  Run the tomatoes through a food mill on a medium coarse blade, this will take off the skins, hold back the seeds and reduce the tomato to pulp. Alternatively if you don’t have a food mill, peel, seed and chop the tomatoes. Try to work over the soup pot so that you don’t loose too much of the tomato water.

In the soup pot, before adding the tomato pulp, gently sauté the shallots and pancetta trying not to brown the shallots. Add the tomato pulp and let simmer for about 20 minutes. When the soup has been cooking for about 20 minutes, using either a stick blender or food processor, add in the marscapone cheese and return to the heat but only for a minute. You just want to have the soup be hot to eat, not to cook the marscapone. Check the flavor and add salt and pepper to taste.

For the garlic toasts: take your slices of baguette, day old bread is best and lightly toast them in the oven, when the bread is toasted, rub the garlic clove over the bread, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and a tiny sprinkle of salt.  This is called ‘bruschetta’ in Umbria and is some of the best garlic bread ever!

Serve the soup with a swirl of olive oil and garlic toast.

And the table for two part? I got tired of eating in the kitchen so I set up a little, romantic table for two at the entrance to our back balcony.  Our balcony is too small to sit on, but its just fine for the two of us to enjoy a tomato soup lunch. Who knew tomato soup could be so indulgent?

Porcini Pecorino Pasta and a Happy Father’s Day

 It’s not Father’s Day in Italy, but it is in our house. We have a strawberry plant on our back balcony and I’ve been carefully watching and tending so that Jeff’s first treat of the day was a handful of fragrant fragolini or frais des bois strawberries. I confess that I usually dole out a ration of one sweet berry every morning for each of us and it is something to look forward to.

For lunch, I was taking requests and the request was for pasta with porcini and pecorino cheese. The tricky part of this recipe is the pecorino as I’ve never found a good Sardinian style pecorino outside of Italy, so use a cheese that you or the Dad in your life enjoys, just be sure it has a low melting temp so that it will gets nice and soft as soon as it hits the warm pasta. We happen to have a ton of pecorino in the house as Jeff spent some time this morning with our friend and cheese maker, Francesco.  I ask for ricotta and I get ricotta and enough other cheese to last us…well, at least through next week!

These are not exact measurements because you are going to have to adapt this to the funghi or mushrooms that you have on hand and the moisture content will vary considerably.

1 handful dry porcini mushrooms
1 handful fresh or frozen mushrooms of choice
3T butter
3T olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large shallot, minced

1 nice wedge of pecorino

2T breadcrumbs + 1 clove crushed garlic + a little bit of olive oil

Egg pasta for 2

Using dried porcini will give you a stronger mushroom flavor, but if you have the option buy the cheaper broken up bits, you don’t need to spend money on whole slices unless you need them for presentation purposes, but for pasta…no way.  Cover the mushrooms with cool water and let soak for about 15 minutes or until soft.

Place the 3T of olive oil and 2T of butter in a sauté pan large enough to hold the cooked pasta, add the shallots and garlic and cook everything making sure not to let anything brown.  Add the fresh or frozen mushrooms (if you have frozen, let them defrost in a bowl of warm water before you add them to the pot). Let this mixture gently simmer.

Get your pasta water boiling. Nice size pot of water, add salt right before the water looks like it will boil, add be sure to add plenty of salt, the water should be ocean salty. Egg pasta cooks much quicker than dried spaghetti, so you are probably looking at only 5 minutes of boil time.

Add the porcini mushrooms to the sauce mixture and add a few tablespoons of the porcini juice to the mixture again keeping everything at a low cooking temperature.

While your waiting for the pasta water to boil, heat an additional teaspoon of so of olive oil in a small pan, add one clove of crushed garlic and let the clove gently fry in the oil, but don’t let it burn. You are flavoring the olive oil, once the clove starts to get brown and wrinkly remove it from the pan and add the breadcrumbs, thoroughly coating them with the oil and lightly browning the crumbs. Add a little sprinkle of salt and let cool on the side. This is the hardest part for me… I am famous for burning the crumbs, the croutons, the toast….I always have to have double the bread on hand because for sure I will burn the first batch.

Use an egg pasta, like tagliatelle, you want something soft that will absorb flavors. When it’s about a minute from being done, spoon a ladleful of pasta water into the mushroom sauce. Drain the pasta and add to the mushroom sauce mixture, toss with the remaining tablespoon of butter and add the toasted breadcrumbs. Turn the pasta out onto a plate and immediately grate the soft pecorino over the pasta. Now eat it fast, while it’s steaming hot and enjoy with a worthy Dad.

Hotel Fortebraccio, Montone, Grand Inauguration!

After years of very hard work and effort, the Hotel Fortebraccio threw open their doors yesterday evening and welcomed the town of Montone to a grand inauguration party. It was a marvelous event, so well planned and organized with tables of dolce, tons of delicious nibbles, a huge porchetta that was being devoured by everyone, lovely wines, and even a gelato cart. But above all there is the feeling that this is a great addition to the town of Montone.  Bravi and Complimenti for all the hard work, and thank you so much for inviting everyone to share this moment.

The hotel is situated right outside the walls of a town and has 31 air-conditioned rooms (not something that is easily found!). They’ve wisely chosen a welcoming modern interior design that is clean and fresh without being overly austere. It also has a fantastic swimming pool with a jaw dropping view.

If last evening’s food is any sign of things to come, then we’ve got a great new restaurant in town. We’re very much looking forward to trying Lucca’s cooking at the Ristorante Il Gonfalone.

I have a feeling that based on the astounding hospitality and excellent food and drink that we experienced yesterday, a visitor to the Hotel Fortebraccio would be made to feel very, very welcome.

Hotel Fortebraccio
Via dei Magistrati 11
 06014 MONTONE (PG) UMBRIA
 tel. +39 0759306400
 fax: +39 0759306410 –
e-mail: info@hotelfortebraccio.it

Kaleidoscope Montone Style

The days are starting to blur together as the hectic summer life of Montone begins in earnest.

First, we sadly said good-bye to the last of the SADMO’s and the orto looks fantastic after all of John and Libby’s work and now its up to us to tend the garden and make us all proud of the ‘giardino americano’.

We shared a final glass of Prosecco with “the Dues” before indulging in one last full on meat fest of soctto ditto.   Scotto ditto is Umbrian style grilled lamb, simple rough cuts of meat, salted, grilled with a bit of rosemary and devoured while hot. At one point I was taking care of something at the stove, and all I could hear was sounds of ‘mmmm’’’ as everyone was grabbing a piece of meat. In the morning I literally swept up a carpet of rosemary bits from our feeding frenzy.

Well, Dues…. Both sets of you….you are missed already, so come back soon!

Summer weather is here, so Saturday afternoon we headed off to the Pietralunga pool, only it wasn’t officially open yet as it opens today, but they let us in for a swim anyway. We had this whole ginormous pool all to ourselves!

Then it was off to Citta di Castello for a little date night aperitivo and as usual that town puts on a fine show at aperitivo time. We actually bar hopped from Syrah to Café Latino and here’s the report: Syrah makes a better Manhattan and Latino has better nibbles, so clearly it pays to hop.

We knew there was a party going on in Montone, so we scurried back thinking that I would make us a quick bowl of pasta to fuel ourselves for a night of dancing in the piazza, but as we walked up the block, the smell of grilled meat came wafting down and literally dragged us up the street. The Aries soccer team was throwing its annual party and there was grilled meat and dancing for everyone!  But seriously do you have any idea how loud techno-disco music sounds at 1:00 in the morning bouncing off of medieval walls?

We bailed on the party at around midnight because we had to be up at dawn today to gather flowers for the Corpus Domini infioriate. That’s when the streets are covered in elaborate flower designs that we work on for hours and hours and then are destroyed not moments after completion. I’m still working on my Zen acceptance of the destruction of so much work, so quickly! It all happened so  fas….the band came down Via Garibaldi, the priests followed and the populace behind them. Next thing I knew… we were cleaning up and all that was left was the scent of incense hovering in the air. It’s a  marvelous morning’s work, and all in all its been a fine few days.

For the full set of photos from this morning's flower fest: clicca qui.

Head Case

When you have the chance, buy your fish with its head on and try not to buy topless shrimp. Seek out whole fish, ask your fish guy to leave your fish whole. “Eeewww!” I can hear my mother as clearly as if she was sitting next to me.

Simply put there is flavor in the head even if you don’t plan on eating it. If all you do is boil some shrimp, the end product will have more flavor. Ditto for bones, as it is damn hard to make a boneless, skinless fillet of fish taste like anything but generic cardboard.  If I ruled the universe, fish fillets would be outlawed (and my mother would give up fish altogether). 

If you are feeling virtuous about eating fish,  and you would like to eat fresh and buy local, consider this: that filet of halibut was most likely shipped to China, filleted and then shipped back to the East Coast.  That tilapia you bought? It probably came from China, which produces 50% of the world’s share of tilapia.

Here’s a quote from Sarah Murray’s excellent book, Moveable Feasts"  about how food has traveled throughout the ages:  “Today temperature-controlled shipping containers allow companies to send their frozen salmon to China, where it’s thawed, filleted, refrozen, and sent back to the United States for sale in supermarkets as “fresh” Atlantic salmon.’  Fresh fish indeed.

So, if you are making fish stock….just like with meat stock, you need the bones and there’s no good reason to throw the head away, its full of flavor.

Here are some simple tasks to get you started on the path to the full enjoyment of the underwater world:
Work on your fish seller to stock more whole fish. Start a revolt against fish sticks so that kids learn what fish is really all about. Do your fish the honor of being served whole in all its glory, and besides you have no idea how much fun it is to play with your fish head and scare the beejeezus out of my mother. The time we actually tricked my mother into putting a smoked trout head into her mouth is a moment that lives in family infamy.

I’m not picking on you Mom, you’ve actually become a very good fish eater over the years! But you have to admit the fish head incident was pretty funny.

And if you are serving a platter of ‘mezzancolle’ as these shrimp are called in Italy, they just look prettier with their heads on, sort of Busby Berkley style. If you have good shrimp and want to serve them cold try just a drizzle of excellent olive oil, some salt, pepper and a generous squeeze of lemon juice. You can’t go wrong, especially if you serve them with a nice rose’!

Montone News and Events

This is a public service announcement and breaks all rules of Italian event publicity.
Italian rule #456/section ‘a1’ formally states: “All billboards and publicity for local events should not be posted until the last possible moment and should not include ALL of the following: time, date, location, or event description. It is up to the event organizer to choose which detail is to be omitted and what will cause the most confusion in the general populace.”

This rule has apparently been on the books since the mid-14th century as it is observed without question.

So, just between us, here are some fun events in the area.

June 20 at 6:00 pm is the official inauguration of the Hotel Fortebraccio in Montone. That’s when the whole town comes to see our newly renovated Hotel Fortebraccio. Although people either love or hate the orange color of the façade (I love it), everyone in town is wishing them well as it has been a long haul to get the place up and running.

June 18-21 is the Calzolara Sagra de Pesce, or Fish Festival. No one really knows why a completely land locked little town throws a fish festival, but it is amazingly good and well organized. Saturday night there is music and dancing.

 June 20-21 is a Chianina festival in Pietralunga. Chianina is the fantastic beef of choice for a grilled ‘bistecca’ or steak. Info is a little sketchy but I think you need to make a reservation at one of the restaurants in Pietralunga.  If this is the festival we went to last year, there is music and dancing and big tattooed guys doing the two-step. Not to be missed.

July 4-5, Festa della Luce in Montone. The “Luccenese” or “Light People” are coming back for the 2nd annual event. As with last year’s event there is absolutely no way of knowing what will happen when or where, but it was pretty cool to stumble upon these wonderful light shows and events.

July 8-12 Umbria Film Festival in Montone. This is the event’s 13th year and it is a wonderful thing to be able to sit in our little piazza and watch films under the stars and with all of our neighbors. Films start when it gets dark, so figure around 9:00. If you come late, bring your own chair!


Now in keeping with Italian tradition, don’t tell anyone, ok?