Il Forno

Sword(fish) and Dolphin(fish)

Don't you just love beginnings? Is there anything nicer than the smell of the first days of spring, the way her/his eyes look at you when you've just fallen in love, the first sip of wine after a hard day? It doesn't matter that you're allergic to pollen, that you'll soon dump your new Romeo or Julia because he/she is an idiot that prefers frozen TV dinners to your gourmet dishes and that the wine will give you a gigantic hangover during that important meeting tomorrow: that second of bliss is worth it even if you might regret it later. One of my favorite "firsts" is having my first meal during my travels, especially when in a new country. The only regrets I might have are those regarding my weight back home. At least there's always diet.

Fine, Italy is not exactly "abroad" for me, still whenever I travel back the first meal has a special taste really marking the change in flavors and aromas. The first Italian meal we had on our last vacation was even more than that. Just the previous afternoon my parents had gone fishing in the Gulf of Naples with some friends who own a boat and came back with a few small tunas, a young dolphin fish and a small swordfish. If that was the start of our vacation, I was looking forward to the rest! The tunas had been frozen already but we had a delicious meal with a swordfish pasta and dolphin fish main course.

Goodbye sunny South

After two weeks spent enjoying the sun, atmosphere and food of Southern Italy here I am blogging again. Our little vacation was spent between the are of Cilento in Campania, famous for its beautiful beaches, ancient Greek heritage (like the temples of Peastm above), and fantastic mozzarella, and the south-east of Sicily, a Baroque stronghold (below one of Noto's famous balconies) and home to fantastic wines, olive oils, cheeses, sweets and you just name it. Our bags were much heavier on our way back, my camera full of nice memories and... I still haven't been brave enough to step on those scales.

I have to mention a special thank you for Ronald and Katia of  Via Ritiro n.7 (and loveSicily). They're both even nicer than what one could assume from their on-line attitude and their eating and shopping tips were a gold-mine which made our nice stay even nicer. All I can say is that both me and Daniela hope to be back as soon as possible.

Italy, here I come!

It's ciao ciao from me. During the next two weeks I'll be off to Italy for some nice seaside relaxation, great mozzarella eating, and a quick but very intense architectural and gastronomical blitz to SE Sicily to meet my favorite Sicilian food bloggers.

There will be a couple of posts popping up in the next week or so and you might get some info about my whereabouts if you give Italian food blog Peperosso a peek from time to time (let's say in a week or so).

On a much more dramatic note you might have noticed the banner on the left calling for donations to help the victims of hurricane Katrina. The more times goes by the more the sheer enormity of the tragedy is becoming evident and everything that can be done to help those who have lost a home, job, or even worse a close relative should be given all the possible help to rebuild a life after the disaster.

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.

Dal Pescatore

As Italian I have progressively developed a suspicious attitude towards the Michelin Italy red guide, with its inconsistency, at times inexplicable evaluation parameters and their striking undervaluation of Italy’s best. After all it is French (OK British now, even worse!). Yet, it was not without some sensation of awe that I made my way towards what very probably is Italy’s longest standing Michelin three star restaurants: dal Pescatore in Runate, a tiny location on the river Oglio, still in the Mantua province, but only just. Once a simple countryside trattoria serving fried fish and Lambrusco wine, it has evolved through the years, without compromising its character, to become one of the recognized centers of finest Italian cuisine and hospitality. Critics from all over the world have praised the work of Antonio and Nadia Santini, owners and respectively maitre and chef of this Relais and Chateaux restaurant. Still, occasionally, I would read less than enthusiastic opinions on dal Pescatore’s cuisine. Insignificant, brainy and heartless, old fashioned would be some of the criticisms, followed by lamentations at the little changes in the menu over the years and finishing with accusations of the food being French (as opposed to Italian), by now the stereotyped and often extremely superficial attack used to dismiss Italian fine dining establishments. A question was hanging in the air: would dal Pescatore be a treat, “the best restaurant in the world” as US critic John Mariani called it back in ’99, or THE disappointment of my relatively limited carreer as starred restaurant customer?

Al Vedel, Part I: The Culatello Files.

After a stop in Munich to see some friends and a few hours drive to Parma I was ready to start my little tour of Emilia Romagna in the best of ways: seeing how the king of Italian salumi, Culatello di Zibello D.O.P., is made. For this I would rely on the fantastic help of Ore Dagan. For those who don't know him, let me spend a few words on a great guy: Ore is a CIA Culinary Arts B.P.S. who, following his love for Italian food, moved to Italy to successfully complete Slow Food's Master of Italian Cooking, writing a great blog about it on the eGullet forums in the process. He's now staging at Al Vedel, both a restaurant and a salumi producer, learning the Italian art of transforming pigs into delicious cured meats. (If you want to read more about Ore's Italian adventures do not miss his nice blog, Potential Gold.)

But back to Culatello di Zibello. Why does it deserve the title of king among Italian salumi? The simplest way to explain this is to take a slice of Culatello on a buttered slice of bread: the taste alone should be enough to convince you. Thanks to the choice of meat, its preparation and its aging, first in dry then moist rooms, Culatello is a deliciously mellow, sweet yet aromatic cured meat. It's usually aged 12 to 14 months minimum but older Culatelli are for my taste even more seducing. Add to this the fact that to make a Culatello you have to waste a Prosciutto, and you'll have a further economic reason to name this salume as "the king".

Back... with some news

With just under 1000 km spent behind the wheel, here I am back from my Italian culinary experience. It has been a ten day eating and cooking marathon. I'm definitely lacking sleep, but I really don't care: I had the time of my life. I've met with some great people, eaten in one or two nice places, spent a week covered in fish scales, guts and the like in the kitchen of La Locanda della Tamerice working together with Igles Corelli, one of Italy's most experienced chefs, and his very professional and friendly brigade. In the next few days I'll be posting my Emilia Romagna adventure, with reviews, posts on products, books, and the like. The opening picture, salami gentili made by Ore, is just a preview of things to come.

Trinacria amore mio

I try, from time to time, to spend a good word on producers, chefs, winemakers, which I have tried and particularly liked. I don’t know if this does these people any good, but if even one person follows my suggestions and tries these products out, I’d be happy. For once I’d like to spend a word on something that I haven’t yet tried, it would have been impossible to since it will start operating next year, but which I’ve been following in its evolution with great interest in the past few months: Love Sicily, the tourist service run by fellow bloggers Katia and Ronald.

You might know Katia and Ronald from their Via Ritiro n.7 blog, and, if you’ve taken part to one of the last IMBB events will almost certainly have come across the incredibly useful Is My Blog Burning Website Ronald put together to keep track of the various food and wine blogging events. . Some months ago Katia and Ronald started putting together an Internet based travel service, called Love Sicily . As the name says, the region their service specializes in is Sicily, while Love comes from Katia’s last name, Amore.

Black, Bitter and … pink: the wine of Salento

If you travel around the Salento countryside wherever your head turns you will see either olive trees or vineyards. There’s only a bunch of regions in Italy that can match the amounts of olive oil and wine produced here. Quantity is not tantamount to quality, especially for wine and this has been true for some time but is rapidly changing.

Puglia’s wines, like those of other Southern Italian regions, were prized in ancient times, and many Roman documents record their high prices and reputation. Up to a few years ago these wines had a reputation far from their once glorious splendour. The roots of this situation were only partially to be found in the poor work of local wine makers. The grapes coming from this region had been used, in the past mainly but still in some cases today, to improve the alcoholic grade of quite a few Northern Italian reds. Some of these additions were and are legal, in table wines for examples, while in some cases, like DOC wines (Controlled Denomination of Origin), such enrichments were nothing less than a fraud. Wine growers would often earn more, with less effort, growing grapes for this market, than they would producing their own wines. Puglia’s wines are finally making a come back and some producers are showing the excellent levels these wines can reach when properly grown and processed with correct wine making techniques. I wouldn’t be surprised if this region would become the next Sicily-like phenomenon abroad in the next future.

Salento, part II: too many fishes…

I don’t know how often I’ve moaned on this blog about the lack of really fresh fish here in Jena. Probably too often. It should come to no surprise then that one of the first things I wanted to see in Puglia was the fish markets. I was slightly disappointed at first. The nearest market; in Gallipoli, was about 40 km away and not such a big one even. I was a bit confused about this, so I asked around.

Although Puglia has hundreds of kilometres of coast, traditional cooking here is more centred produce, cheese and grains than on fish (and meat). Sea was, for centuries, a source of danger because of the Saracen raids and general wars and pirating going on all the time. The many towers spaced throughout the Southern Italian coasts are the reminder of those fearful times. So, still today, many years later, fish is not consumed as often as one could think. In addition to that, a lot of the fish caught here lands on sale in bigger cities. All that results in the relatively small markets one finds.

What lacks in size is more than made up from the technique, sorry I meant quality, of the fish. We went to Gallipoli’s market twice and on the first occasion we saw how the two small ships, just arrived, quickly sent their catch to be sold. Some of the fishmongers invited us to test the freshness of their goods by eating some of them raw: sweet giant shrimps, tasty anchovies, and incredibly delicate sea urchin roe… I just couldn’t refuse any. And all were great.