Gina Stipo, Author at attheitaliantable.com

March 9, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Making Salami in Winter

Italians eat with the seasons. That’s about the only way you can generalize Italian food, except maybe to say that their food is always fresh and simply prepared.Which is a direct result of eating what’s in season.What is seasonal generally is taken to mean local fresh fruit and vegetables, harvesting what’s growing in the gardens and ripening on the trees and bushes.But in the past, the winter season was pig-slaughter and salami-making time, fresh roasted meat was only available during the cold months, and eating with the season was more than just vegetables and fruit.

December, January and February was traditionally the time of year when Italians butchered their pigs to make salami, prosciutto, sausages, and other cured products because only then was it cold enough outside and in the slaughter house to butcher the meat safely, ensuring that it wouldn’t spoil or rot before they could get it cured.While today the butchering and curing goes on inside climate-controlled environments all year long, you do still find small operations and individual households that stick to the tradition of only butchering and curing meats in the wintertime.And if you only butchered animals in cold weather, that usually meant that for the mostly poor and agriculturally based population, fresh roasted meats were a wintertime delicacy.

I have several friends in Italy who always buy a pig in September and spend the winter fattening it up with table scraps and corn.Then after the first of the year, they schedule a weekend of sausage and salami making.The pig is killed on Thursday night, they pick it up on Friday and three days of cutting, seasoning and hanging meat begins, culminating with a big Sunday lunch of fresh grilled ribs and roasted pork loin. Friends pitch in and bring desserts and antipasti or fresh tagliatelle. A big fire is started early and by the time lunch comes it’s burned down to a nice bed of coals for grilling pig liver wrapped in caul fat, pork steaks and ribs.

March 9, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Vellutata – velvet vegetable soups

This is the time of year I always turn to soups. There’s a little chill in the air but you can tell spring is coming. You want something warming but light and reflective of the season, and a creamy vellutata that is basically sauteed and pureed vegetables is perfect.

Meaning “velvety” in Italian, vellutata’s were one of the principle dishes I learned on my first stay in Tuscany back in 1996. I was living on the estate of Spannocchia and working in exchange for a bed and meals. My job was to make lunch for about 20 workers and it was my first experience at planning an interesting and enjoyable meal on a daily basis. The Tuscan food I was learning was rustic fare with big overpowering flavors but the creamy veg soup that is vellutata is gentile and elegant, the opposite of the traditional cuisine. But just like all Tuscan dishes, it is simple with just a few ingredients, highlighting whatever was coming out of the extensive estate garden.

The most important thing in any creamy vegetable soup is that it should be thickened with the vegetable that is the main ingredient, not with potato. Unless it’s a potato soup, of course. That is to say, if you’re making a vellutata of broccoli or asparagus, use lots of broccoli or asparagus and just enough broth or water to cover the vegetable as it cooks. Let the vegetable simmer for at least 20 minutes then puree it with an immersion blender. You can add additional water if it’s too thick, and you can add a little cream, but the starring vegetable both flavors and thickens the soup.

Just saute some onion and whatever vegetable is in season in a little olive oil; this week my favorites are broccolli or carrot & fennel, and I can’t wait until the spring for asparagus to be in season. Add a little water and cook until the veg is really soft, then puree it with a handheld immersion blender. A shot of cream is optional. Nothing could be simpler or more warming!

Buon Appetito! Gina

Vellutata di Broccoli (velvety broccoli soup)
4 cups chopped broccoli
1 onion chopped
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth, or water
1/2 teas fresh rosemary, chopped
1/2 cup cream (optional)
salt
white pepper

Saute the onion in the oil until soft, add the broccoli and the rosemary and saute until the broccoli is cooked, being careful not to brown the onion. Add the broth and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer about 20 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and puree with an immersion blender, adding additional water if it’s too thick. Add the cream if you’re using and serve with a drizzle of olive oil on top.

January 25, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Faella, Pasta of my childhood

When I was young and we went to visit my paternal grandparents in Brooklyn, I would go with my Grandma to make her shopping rounds in the neighborhood. She stopped at the bakery to get the Italian braided bread topped with sesame seeds and at the butcher to get the right cut of meat for the braciole; then we’d go to the deli to pick up locally made Italian salami and mozzarella as well as dry goods brought over from Italy. I remember the package of pasta that she always chose: white paper encasing long spaghetti, simple blue and red letters and a clear plastic window so you could see what kind of pasta you were getting. It wasn’t a brand my mother bought and I’ve never seen it in a store since that time.

Until two years ago when I was walking through Naples, and in the window of a little alimentari, a small shop serving the needs of a typical Napolitano neighborhood, I saw a big display that looked so familiar I stopped dead in my tracks. FAELLA, the white packaging with blue and red letters said, and I recognized it immediately as my grandmother’s favorite pasta. Someone, somewhere, was still making the pasta I ate when I was a kid. I had to find them.

I talked to my friend SabatoAbagnale, the head of Sorrento’s Slow Food chapter. Yes, he said, he knew Faella well, it being one of the original artisan pastas from the nearby town of Gragnano (see a previous blog for more on this pasta town). So Sabato and I made an appointment to visit Faella’s production facility, where they still had in use some of the original machines from the early 1900’s.

We met Mario Faella, the 95 year old son of the original owner, who still came down to the factory every day to oversee operations—not because they needed him, he said, but because he enjoyed being there among the action. He’s a legend, charming and polite. Mario kindly took me on a tour, showing me how they made and dried spaghetti and it felt like coming home.

I wanted to tell him what drew me to his factory, why Faella pasta meant something to me and how happy I was to come to Naples and still see the same brand my grandmother used 50 years ago in New York. So I said, “My grandmother was originally from Montella (a town in the mountains an hour away) but she moved to America, and when I was growing up I remember she always used Faella pasta. I didn’t know it was still around, I only just saw it in a store last week in Naples.”

Mario looked me clearly in the eye, his finger pointing to the heavens, and he started his story: “There was a young man, who was the son of our manager, Domenico Letterese was his name, but he didn’t like working in the factory, he didn’t want to study. And my father said to him ‘Domenico, if you don’t want to study you have to take our pasta to America!’ This was before the war. So Domenico took our pasta on the boat in big trunks and sold it to a man who had a store in Brooklyn, and for years we sold our pasta to that one store in Brooklyn!”

“That’s where my grandmother bought it!” I said excitedly. “She lived in Brooklyn! My grandmother bought your pasta from that store!”

All those years, four degrees of separation between me and this charming old man whom I’d never met before, making delicious pasta at his family’s factory in a small town on the coast of Sorrento for my family to enjoy a taste of the old country in Brooklyn.

And now you can once again get Faella pasta on the shores on America, through www.gustiamo.com. Tell them Gina’s grandma sent you!

Buon Appetito! Gina

January 12, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Artisan Pasta from Gragnano

One of the most frequent comments I get after teaching a group to make fresh pasta is, “Fresh pasta is so wonderful, I’ll never eat that hard, boxed pasta again!” But fresh pasta, made with soft flour and eggs, is only one note in the symphony of Italian cuisine. Pastasciutta, the dried pasta from southern Italy, made with semolina and water, plays an important part at the Italian table and is in no way second fiddle to pasta from the north.

It seems every year I’m drawn to the pasta factories of the south. I yearn to be in Campania, breathing the sea air in the shadow of Vesuvius. Last summer, on a visit to Naples, I went once again to Gragnano, the pasta town on the bay of Naples. I’ve long been interested in making pasta and studying its history, so when Slow Food friends on the Sorrento coast offered to take me on a tour of some of the artisan pasta factories in the area, I jumped at the chance.

Gragnano, along with neighboring town Torre Annuziata, has been a pasta-making center since the late 1800’s and was designed with pasta in mind. On the banks of a river lined with mills for grinding durum wheat into semolina flour, the main street lies perpendicular to the Sorrento coast to take advantage of the constant sea breezes that were used to dry the strands of pasta. There are many old photos from the early 20^th century showing racks and racks of long spaghetti lining the streets and balconies, drying in the open air.

It’s a more hygienic operation these days with the pasta being made and dried indoors.

But the most fascinating thing I saw was the pasta made by hand, like this woman making fusilli rolled by hand on a long metal spoke. Truly beautiful to watch, I have to go back with a video camera!

Buon Appetito!

Gina