seasonal vegetables Archives - Page 9 of 10

December 5, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

A visit to the olive press – my favorite things Part II

It’s not just the taste of new olive oil that knocks you over, it’s the smell. My second favorite thing to share with visitors to Tuscany in November and December is a visit to the olive press to see how extra virgin olive oil is produced. When you walk into the frantoio, or olive press, your senses are overwhelmed: the roar of the machinery hard at work macerating and centrifuging fresh olives into liquid gold and the heavy organic greenness of the air assaults you. While just tasting the bright new oil is a delicious experience, a visit to see the process is a chance to delve into a Tuscan tradition.

For a successful visit to the frantoio, you must be prepared. Make friends with the owner and you can be assured of having what you need for a delicious repast, mainly a roaring fire in the fireplace and a large pitcher of excellent new oil. To that you add a large loaf of bread, a bottle of wine and maybe some sausages.

Because we’re in Tuscany there will be a wire grate for grilling bruschetta and sausages, and you’ll need the wine of course to wash it all down. If you’re really prepared you can make pinzimonio, which is basically fresh veggies such as carrots, fennel or celery, dipped into a bowl of the new oil and salt.

You’ll want enough to share with the others, bringing them into the seemingly impromptu celebration at the mill. The best part is meeting the farmers, sharing our wine and toasted bruschetta.

If you’re lucky there will be a chestnut pan, long handled and riddled with holes, for roasting chestnuts, and all of you can happily sit and have a light snack while waiting for the oil!

The owners of the olives, having first procured an appointment, must accompany the olives and wait for their oil. They stand around, chatting, and there is an excitement in the air as the old farmers wait to see how much oil their olives yield this year. As with all farming, a good or bad harvest depends on the weather the trees were subjected to during the previous 10 months.

In all, I’ve enjoyed sharing this particular Tuscan pleasure with all my clients who come to visit in November. People ask me how long they can keep their new oil and I always say “Use it UP! We’ll press more next year!” And if you come see me in Tuscany during November I’ll be more than happy to take you to the olive mill and share my bruschetta and sausage with you!

November 19, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Sharing a few of my favorite things, Part 1

I’ve talked about wild mushrooms for years now and lots of people have asked me to take them mushroom hunting when they’re in Tuscany, but I’m not always able to oblige. The problem is, you never know when there will be mushrooms in the woods. It’s totally dependent on enough rain in the previous weeks. The ground has to get a good soaking with additional rain every now and then to keep it wet. In addition it should ideally stay warm to incubate the spores and often when the rains come, the weather turns cold. We had a really hot and dry summer and I despaired once again of having a decent mushroom season. We haven’t really had a great year since 2005.

Luckily it poured for the whole first week of September and, even though it interrupted a short beach vacation with my niece, it meant the beginning of a potentially good fall for fungus. Between constant soakings over the past two months and temperatures keeping relatively warm, we’ve had a plethora of all kinds of fungus. The mushrooms practically jump into your basket as you walk through the woods! I was convinced that I would finally be able to share a mushroom hunt with our November culinary group!

So after lunch two weeks ago, we put on sturdy shoes and headed into the woods. Two of the group had actually been mushroom hunting in the US and had an idea of what we were looking for. For the first half hour they each brought me every imaginable kind of inedible and poisonous mushroom that grows around here, and some were beginning to get disheartened that we weren’t finding anything good. Finally I took them to my secret area that I know to be rich with chanterelles and were rewarded with a treasure trove of the gorgeous, wavy yellow mushrooms. We also came across some porcini, leccini, hedgehogs and a few blewits. I let them know that the only reason I was sharing the location of my secret mushroom spot was because none of them live anywhere near Tuscany! Mushrooms come back in the same spot year after year and if you find a good area for mushrooms, you keep it a secret, even from your own family.

On the way back to the house to clean and saute our golden treasure, someone said “Why didn’t we just come here first?! Why did we wander all around the forest looking?”, to which I answered “Because then you wouldn’t have appreciated how difficult it can be!”

Wild Mushroom Saute’

1 lb wild mushroom mix (you can get a few ounces of wild and mix with some portabello and dried porcini)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 tbsp chopped parsley

sea salt

Wash the mushrooms to remove and dirt or forest debris. Soak any dried mushrooms in room temp water until soft. Chop the mushrooms into the desired size. Heat the olive oil, butter and garlic together, add the parsley and the mushrooms, salt to taste, and saute until they give up their water. Continue cooking the mushrooms until the water all cooks off and they start to sizzle in the pan. They’re delicious on toasted bread (crostini) or can be used for risotto or pasta. I love them as a side to grilled Italian sausage or folded into eggs!

wild mushroom crostini — Wild mushroom crostini

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I love being able to share my favorite places and foods with people who come for vacation to Tuscany and recently I got to share two of my favorite things: hunt for wild mushrooms and taste the new olive oil at the oil mill! Part 1 of My Favorite Things, a new ongoing blog topic, is Mushrooming.
I’ve talked about wild mushrooms for years now and lots of people have asked me to take them mushroom hunting when they’re in Tuscany, but I’m not always able to oblige. The problem is, you never know when there will be mushrooms in the woods. It’s totally dependent on enough rain in the previous weeks. The ground has to get a good soaking with additional rain every now and then to keep it wet. In addition it should ideally stay warm to incubate the spores and often when the rains come, the weather turns cold. We had a really hot and dry summer and I despaired once again of having a decent mushroom season. We haven’t really had a great year since 2005.
Luckily it poured for the whole first week of September and, even though it interrupted a short beach vacation with my niece, it meant the beginning of a potentially good fall for fungus. Between constant soakings over the past two months and temperatures keeping relatively warm, we’ve had a plethora of all kinds of fungus. The mushrooms practically jump into your basket as you walk through the woods! I was convinced that I would finally be able to share a mushroom hunt with our November culinary group!
So after lunch two weeks ago, we put on sturdy shoes and headed into the woods. Two of the group had actually been mushroom hunting in the US and had an idea of what we were looking for. For the first half hour they each brought me every imaginable kind of inedible and poisonous mushroom that grows around here, and some were beginning to get disheartened that we weren’t finding anything good. Finally I took them to my secret area that I know to be rich with chanterelles and were rewarded with a treasure trove of the gorgeous, wavy yellow mushrooms. We also came across some porcini, leccini, hedgehogs and a few blewits. I let them know that the only reason I was sharing the location of my secret mushroom spot was because none of them live anywhere near Tuscany! Mushrooms come back in the same spot year after year and if you find a good area for mushrooms, you keep it a secret, even from your own family.
On the way back to the house to clean and saute our golden treasure, someone said “Why didn’t we just come here first?! Why did we wander all around the forest looking?”, to which I answered “Because then you wouldn’t have appreciated how difficult it can be!”
Wild Mushroom Saute’
1 lb wild mushroom mix (you can get a few ounces of wild and mix with some portabello and dried porcini)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large garlic clove, chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley
sea salt
Wash the mushrooms to remove and dirt or forest debris. Soak any dried mushrooms in room temp water until soft. Chop the mushrooms into the desired size. Heat the olive oil, butter and garlic together, add the parsley and the mushrooms, salt to taste, and saute until they give up their water. Continue cooking the mushrooms until the water all cooks off and they start to sizzle in the pan. They’re delicious on toasted bread (crostini) or can be used for risotto or pasta. I love them as a side to grilled Italian sausage or folded into eggs!

Wild mushroom crostini

Path:

October 15, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Mushrooms in the forest!

It was another hot and dry summer and I despaired of ever seeing a mushroom in the woods again. We haven’t had a really good mushroom season in several years, the last I remember was 2005, and I longed for warm rain that would guarantee good hunting. And after months of clear blue skies and intense sunshine, it suddenly started to pour down rain the beginning of September. It’s surprising how quickly Mother Nature can bounce back from dry, desert-like conditions. All during September and October we’ve been treated to substantial rain, usually at night so as not to ruin our sunny days, just like in Camelot. And the mushrooms have cooperated by springing up all over the forest. Most of them aren’t edible and some of them are really extraordinary looking, but with stealth and patience you can find brown and white porcini and leccini, and bright orange ovoli, or amanita cesarea.

How do you distinguish what’s good to eat from what will kill you, cause you to need a liver transplant, or at the very least give you an upset stomach? That is of course the most important point: knowing what to pick and what to leave in the forest. I’ve been studying it for years, hunting with experts, asking the old people’s advice and consulting professionals. It’s such an important question that each community throughout Tuscany staffs a licensed mycologist, or mushroom expert, at various health facilities around town who have an open door policy: anyone who has collected mushrooms is encouraged to come and verify whether what they’ve found is edible or not.

Encouraged by various accounts of surprisingly big porcini found nearby, I headed into the woods yesterday and came up with several members of the boletus family, namely leccini and porcini.

I took my trove of 12 mushrooms in and the mycologist confirmed my leccini as being excellent, even photo worthy! So here’s the photo before I cook them!

It’s raining even as I type this. That means the mushroom season continues; constant rain and warm weather ensures that porcini and leccini continue to sprout, and when it gets too cool for those funghi, the chanterelles and black trumpets start coming up. As long as it rains and the ground stays damp, and until it freezes sometime in late December, we’ll have a variety of mushrooms in the forest. And that’s where you’ll find me this fall when I’m not in the kitchen: heading out the door with my mushroom basket in hand!

August 20, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Summer Eggplants and Fried Peppers

Even though eggplants can be found all year long, they’re actually a summer vegetable and August is when they’re the most abundant. I remember when the only eggplant you could find was dark purple, oblong and pear-shaped. Then suddenly a wide variety of eggplants started appearing in the stores and range from small, white eggs, to mottled green and white balls, to long, thin fingers. Whether pale or dark purple, round and fat or long and skinny, the diversity of shape, size and color is truly astounding.

Originally from India, eggplant is a member of the nightshade family, along with tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and tobacco. The raw seeds are bitter and contain a form of nicotine.

Make sure you pick eggplants that are firm to the touch; the long,thin ones tend to have less seeds. Eggplant is like a sponge, made of cells filled with water and air. Salting eggplant causes the cells to release the water which collapses them, making the eggplant less of a sponge to absorb oil.

Eggplant is more commonly used in southern Italy where it seems almost to be used as a meat replacement. They have a myriad of ways to incorporate eggplant into a dish and they all seem to begin with frying it.

One of my favorite antipasti in the dog days of summer is fried eggplant and sweet Italian peppers, served with fresh mozzarella. If you have some nice cherry tomatoes, you can toss those in the hot oil as well. Then serve the whole thing with some fresh mozzarella, a good loaf of bread and a bottle of Primitivo or Negroamaro from Southern Italy. Buon Appetito!

Fried Summer Peppers, Eggplant & Tomatoes

2 lbs sweet Italian peppers, tops broken off & seeded

2 small eggplants, rectangular cut w/ skin on

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

Extra virgin olive oil

2 cups peanut oil

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt

Mozzarella

Heat the oils in a large sauté pan, about 1 inch deep and fry the peppers in batches until they are cooked and their skins are lightly browned, tossing and stirring every so often to cook evenly. If you can’t find the long sweet Italian peppers, you can use red bell peppers cut into thick slices. After you’ve fried all the peppers and placed them to drain on paper towels, add the eggplant in batches and cook until nicely browned, removing them to paper towel. Make sure the oil is very hot before adding the eggplant, you want them to seal and fry, not absorb oil. Be careful to drain the vegetables over paper, not on top of other pieces of eggplant or pepper. Add the tomatoes to the oil and fry for a few minutes, until their skin starts to crinkle, then drain on paper. Toss all the vegetables together, sprinkle with sea salt. A flaky salt like Maldon or Cyprus is really good and gives a nice salty crunch that pair well with the oily vegetables. Serve as an antipasto with the freshest, best mozzarella you can find.

A note on frying: it’s important for this recipe that the oil is very hot when you put the vegetables in, but not to the smoking point. Adding the vegetables lowers the temperature so you may need to allow the temperature to come back up before continuing with other batches.