Il Forno

Event: Il Blog si mangia?

On June 9th Italian food magazine Gambero Rosso will present a roundtable dedicated to the future of blogs in general and foodblogs in particular. Gambero Rosso's co-Editor in chief Stefano Bonilli (and author of the blog Papero Giallo) will moderate the event interviewing the following five guests:

- Giuseppe Granieri, author of the book Blog generation

- Professor Gino Roncaglia, who counts the book Il mondo digitale. Introduzione ai nuovi media (The digital world. An introduction to new media) among his works.

- Giulio Perugini, founder and moderator of the forum theatre of dreams

- Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Journalist and author of the blog Giornalismo d'altri.

- And last but I hope not least, yours truly, in audio connection from Germany. I cannot help observing, I'm the only real food blogger in the bunch of serious experts, so I'll have to do my very best to represent the category.

If you're in Rome and would like to attend to the event it is free (and there will even be a little taste of pizza, which is more than what I will get ;-) ), but the number of places limited so just write an email to marketing@gamberorosso.it to secure a place. The roundtable will take place in Gambero Rosso's food gastronomic "citadel" Città del Gusto starting at 6 PM. "See" you there!

Mole Poblano... from scratch.

I love spending hours cooking in my kitchen, and so nothing could be more self-fulfilling than taking the best part of the day to cook one of those long time-consuming dishes nobody seems to prepare anymore. For once, instead of a tried and tested Italian classic, I decided to give Mole Poblano, one of Mexico's most notorious dishes a try. About a year ago I had my first taste of mole. It was great, but not enough I wanted to try and make it from scratch myself.

As it often is, laziness got in the way and so I procrastinated until the theme of the new eGullet cook-off was announced. If you haven't yet give those cook-offs a look; IMO a great idea to get a group of people to cook a dish virtually together. (Past themes included classics like Pizza, Fried Chicken and Gumbo.) Guess what the new theme was? Mole clearly! Time to use those tips for mexican chilies sources and get working. Remembering Petra's source tip I was the proud owner of a few bags of Mulatos, Anchos and Pasilla chilies in matter of days (from bottom left corner, clockwise).

Rosamarina, delicious and controversial

Let me give you a little quiz. If someone showed you an unlabeled jar containing a relish of tiny fishes fermented in salt and chilies and asked you to guess where it came from, what would you say?

Thailand...
... Mexico maybe?

IMBB15, Has my blog Jelled: sugolo, or better, grape glue

For the complete roundup of this IMBB edition, please go to Elise's summary.

...or "Never trust a recipe only because it comes from a three starred Michelin chef".

Sooner or later it had to happen. Having had a successful run of recipe tried and tested for IMBB up to now it was inevitable that a dud would show up.

Soon after reading what theme Elise had picked up for this edition, I decided to make a traditional sweet of the Italian Lombardy region, sugolo or suc. Sugolo is a pudding typical of vintage time, one of the many ways to use of any grapes left over from wine-making: a custrad-jelly relying on the gelling power of pectin, from the grapes, and starch, added in the form of flour.

It is one of the sweets my father grew up with, and he would occasionally prepare it for us, though me and my brothers were never huge fans. I thought that after so many years this would have been a great chance to renew acquaintances with this dish. So I decided to use the recipe appearing in dal Pescatore's cookbook: if I was going to do sugolo I would do one with a pedigree.

Staging (and dining) at Locanda della Tamerice

If you take some vacation from work and, instead of spending those days with your family, decide to use them to do a stage in a restaurant kitchen, would you say your food obsession has gone too far? I would probably say yes (but feel free to leave your comments about this below), though saying so I'm only hurting myself... because that is exactly what I did two months ago.

I travelled the about 1000 km I need to get to Italy not to dine at Dal Pescatore or to taste the culatelli at Al Vedel, but to spend a week working split shifts in the kitchen of Locanda della Tamerice in Ostellato, near Ferrara. I had gotten in touch with Tamerice's chef, Igles Corelli, through a chat I organized on the eGullet Society's Italy forum with him as a guest. I wasn't really looking for a stage at the time. Chatting about cuisine with Igles and his fantastic wife Pia I just mentioned my curiosity about seeing how a restaurant kitchen works from the inside. Well just drop by, was the answer. How could I miss a chance like this? Bags packed I made my way to Italy as soon as I could.

Digital Dish Released.

In the past few months a bunch of food bloggers went on along their blogging way, while we waited for something special to happen. Behind the curtains one of us, Owen, decided food and blogs would make a great theme for the first book ever published from his new company, A Press for Change. Owen asked us to join in this effort and submit a handful of our best posts. 24 of us did and today the book has finally arrived from the printer.

Food Blogs might have been a little niche phenomenon over a year ago but they are now a full fledged part of gastronomic sources on the web. They (we) have been in newspapers, magazines even TV in the past year. Congratulations to Owen for having the guts of taking a risk bringing Food Blogs into books first. Inside Digital Dish you will find the passionate and original writing and cooking of Food Bloggers from around the world. Reading the book you'll be carried away around the globe by the stories or will die to try out those special recipes.

A word about ordering the book. You could easily order the book from amazon, but it would be great if you didn't. Digital Dish hopes to become a yearly collection of the Food Blog writing. To do this it A Press for Change, being a new company, needs to make some profit from the sales. By buying the book through the buttons present on the left column a greater share of the book's sale price will go to A Press for Change (and you'll also be supporting this site).

So what are you waiting for go on, place your order and enjoy the read!

The old fashioned pasta cutter.

I confess: I'm an absolute softie when it comes to old-fashioned kitchen tools. I'm no big fan of stereotyped images of Italian cuisine such as "mamma's cooking", but I admit that whenever I see an old chitarra pasta maker or a garganelli comb I give in and start musing about the old times gone, when the whole family would make pasta at home instead of buying it. Not that I ever lived in a family that made pasta every week, but it's still nice to be a sentimental sucker from time to time.

Nonetheless, since most of my family comes from Northern Italy, making fresh stuffed pasta has remained a tradition we follow on special occasions. Be our guest for Christmas and you'll be strongly encouraged to help shape hundreds of tortelli, tortelloni and anolini. It's that or washing up, you see. Having practiced for years, I can say I'm getting quite good at this. Or better at everything except cutting the pasta dough into the regularly shaped squares needed to have a batch of tortelli where each one looks identical to the next. To do this free hand you really need  special skills. There are those who could cut series of equally spaced parallel lines without breaking sweat, ending up with perfect tortelli every time. I've always been in awe of these people. I, on the other hand, am one of those who would probably finish with a bunch of psychedelic curved patterns guaranteed to give you visions if you only took a moderate dose of hallucinogenic substances. And definitely crappy looking tortelli. A good reason to be on the lookout for new pasta cutting tricks and tools.

This little blogging pause...

...was brought to you by my new ISP .

Since the technician who came to get my conection back up has been incredibly nice, I won't waste your time moaning about the poor tech-hotline. Just happy to be able to post again after four days of blackout: more tomorrow.

Much ado about nothing...

... or: Italian journalists and schadenfreude.

Over in Britain: Yesterday the Guardian published this article on Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck bad results after a food inspection. It should be noted that the tests were carried out on 13/2/04 and released recently under the UK's Freedom of Information Act. Not a good result for Mr Blumenthal, yet not something he ignored:

Mr Blumenthal promptly re-organised his kitchen, improved his thermometers, and cracked down on possible cross-contamination. He also hired an independent food safety consultant.

As it is, further test carried last May and July showed no problems whatsoever.

Enter the Italian press: La Repubblica decides to report the news. After all the Fat Duck has won the "Best Restaurant in the World" award from UK Restaurant Magazine. Repubblica reports the news, complimenting The Guardian for their honesty (Blumenthal writes for the paper), but makes a laughable mistake, calling him Sidney. Or does Heston have a twin brother?

Had this been the end, it would remain a silly mistake in an altogether not memorable article. Instead the news gets picked up by Stefano Bonilli, Editor in Chief of Gambero Rosso magazine, on his Papero Giallo blog and Paolo Massobrio of Club di Papillon, a rather important gastronomic society in Italy, in their newsletter. Both do a really bad job in reporting the news. Massobrio writes that Blumenthal's test results are from a few days ago and Bonilli titles his post "Disqualified". Great job for giving the false impression that The Fat Duck has serious food safety problems. All this ignoring, willingly or because of ignorance, the successive thorough measures introduced in the restaurant's kitchen to overcome this problem, something that would deserve a praise in my book. Bad journalism? Or just schadenfreude?  The Fat Duck winning the Best Restaurant award and Italian restaurants faring pretty badly probably still burns.

The Italian gastronomic press often accuses foreign reporters of being superficial and not well informed when writing about the Italian food scene. What should one say if some of the most important Italian journalist in the field behave the same way towards news coming from across the Alps? Maybe they should take a lesson from the people over at gustoblog.it who criticized the article with clear arguments.

Baerlauch - Wild Garlic

As soon as spring arrives German markets and groceries fill up with wild garlic products, or Bärlauch, as it is called here. In the past four years I have noticed an impressive increase in wild garlic dishes in restaurants too. Whether a food fad or real fashion this plant of the Allium family, formerly considered a weed to a certain extent, is a real pleasure to eat. Other bloggers certainly think so too: just have a look at Johanna's wild garlic gnocchi, Petra's risotto or Maki's ravioli.I was dying to prepare something wild-garlicky too, so I was really content as I managed to find some fresh wild garlic leaves for once (you don't eat the bulb of this plant).