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March 17, 2015 by Gina Stipo 2 Comments

Bitters, Amaro & Digestivos

I love the class of drinks known as digestivo’s. The perfect end to a meal, these sweet alcoholic bitters have long been used as a digestive aid in Italy but also throughout Europe, especially Germany. The basic ingredients are an array of medicinal herbs and botanicals that have digestive properties, preserved in alcohol and sugar. The flavor profile is a fascinating complexity of herbal, citrus and bitter tones.

Also know as amaro in Italy, which means “bitter”, these drinks are easy to find and often offered gratis after a meal. Some of the most common are Fernet Branca and Averna, but each region has their own and the best are small batch, artisan products rather than those mass produced on an industrial scale.

Bitter herbs help to stimulate the liver and gallbladder. Distillations and extracts of botanicals have been used for millennium to aid digestion and as medicine and tonic. Italy has a huge tradition of after dinner bitters. After all, the most important thing to an Italian is their digestion and whether the liver is working properly. They believe the proper digestion of food, or lack of it, is the root of a whole host of health problems, and they do everything possible to assure the digestion is working well.

By the way, that’s the reason that cappuccino is never drunk after dinner in Italy: hot milk hinders the digestion of a good meal!

I love tasting and collecting amaros from all over Italy and at last count I had over 30 different bottles! Some of them are hand-made and most of them are not available out side of their production zone.

Last night we did a small tasting of my vast collection. There were a group of New Yorkers at the Italian Table dinner last night and they were eager to taste and learn about bitters. With the table loaded with glasses and bottles, by the end of the evening each person had developed their own special favorites and left with new appreciation for this delicious and interesting Italian drink!

March 2, 2015 by Gina Stipo 1 Comment

Winter Blood Oranges

I tasted my first blood orange the first winter we were in Verona when I was six. They were newly arrived at our local market from Sicily, and we thought what a wonderful place Sicily must be to have such beautiful ruby red oranges when everyone else had snow. We looked forward to their arrival every year and greatly missed them when we moved back to the United States, where all the oranges were, well, orange.

Blood oranges, or tarocco in Italy, are a late crop and come to the market after all the tiny mandarins and clementines are finished. In Tuscany I see them as late as May, picked in the winter and held till the spring. While the skin can be orange or pale red, the inside is a beautiful dark maroon.

I’ve found them this winter at Trader Joe’s. They’re not from Sicily but from California, where they’re smaller than what we get in Italy, but just as tasty and beautiful. In Italy the Arancia Rossa di Sicilia is a registered DOP food product and is most often found as juice in the grocery store.

The skin of the blood orange is thin and sweet. I like to eat them like an apple, biting through the peel into the juicy pulp that’s as brilliant and colorful as a sunset. They’re versatile, just as wonderful in savory dishes like roasted rabbit with oil-cured olives, or sliced with fresh fennel in a salad, as they are for dessert.

One of my favorite desserts is crepes stuffed with Nutella and topped with blood orange slices that have been warmed in butter and Grand Marnier. I served it for dessert recently and after eating it, one of my friends at the table put his fork down, looked around and said “that might be the best dessert I’ve ever tasted.” The taste of orange and chocolate never fails to make a big impression!

So here’s a wonderful dessert for a winter night. The crepes are easy to make ahead and keep covered in the fridge for several days. You can use regular oranges, but for a special elegant look, try to find blood oranges. Buon Appetito!

Crespelle with Nutella
Crepes: makes about 25
2 ½ cup flour
4 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp melted butter
2 cups milk, more if needed
dash nutmeg
½ teas salt

Mix liquid ingredients together, make a well in the flour and add the liquid ingredients to the flour. Whisk together, add salt and nutmeg. Strain the crepes batter through a fine sieve to remove any lumps.
Using a non-stick skillet or crepes pan, heat a small amount of butter or oil, add a small scoop of the batter to the heated pan, tilting and turning the pan quickly to evenly distribute the batter before it sets. The crespelle should be thin and even. Turn the crespelle as soon as it is cooked through, before the bottom browns. Stack them on top of each other as they are done. They won’t stick together, cover with plastic wrap and keep in the fridge.

For the sauce: Slice 2-3 oranges, enough for each person to have 2-3 slices. Melt 2 tbsp butter with 1 tbsp sugar the juice of one orange in a sauté pan, add the orange slices and tbsp Grand Marnier or Cointreau and allow to cook for 2 minutes. To serve, place two crepes on each plate, arrange 2-3 orange slices on top and pour a small amount of sauce over all. The orange slices should be eaten peel and all.
To warm the crepes: Place a teaspoon of Nutella on a crepe, fold in half, then half again so the crepe forms a triangle. Place the triangles on a baking sheet like shingles, one overlapping the other, and put in a 350° oven for 5 minutes.

February 13, 2015 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Colatura – Italy’s Umami in a bottle

The current issue of Saveur magazine has a short feature about the town of Cetara on the Amalfi coast and colatura, the special anchovy sauce they produce there. An important ingredient in many of the dishes of the Amalfi coast and southern coastal towns of Italy, colatura is the juice drained off of anchovies that have been salted and aged in a wooden barrel for several months. It is a concentrated fish sauce that both disgusts the nose and delights the palate and is undoubtably Italy’s best answer to the fifth taste, umami.

Based on an ancient Roman staple called garum, colatura has been made in this quaint fishing village for centuries. Whenever we take groups to Naples and Campania, we always make a stop to see the women and men who labor at the task of cleaning the fish, salting them and then when they’ve been cured, removing the skin and bones and packing the anchovy filets in small jars. The process of cleaning, salting and packing in large plastic bins, or in the case of colatura, in small wooden barrels, takes place when the anchovies are running, generally from spring through early summer. The process of cleaning and packing filets in jars is year-round. Watching them work will make you grateful for whatever job you have!

It’s difficult to get in to see the process anymore due to hygiene controls in place, as with any food production facility. But it’s Italy and if you know the right people long enough, it’s possible to get a pass to see the work done.Cetara is a beautiful coastal town, with a small quaint beach on the Amalfi coast. It’s quiet because all the buses and cars are frantic to get to better known towns and destinations, like Positano, Amalfi and Ravello. I love stopping in Cetara long enough to lay on the beach and listen to the waves on the sides of the little fishing boats.

Most of the anchovy production is done in non-descript buildings under the bridge just after the town of Vietri sul Mare.

February 5, 2015 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Lasagna di Carnevale – a rich treat to see you through Lent

There is a big celebration all over the world in the days leading up to Lent, in what are, or formally were, Catholic countries. Called carnevale in Italy, the word literally meant “a removal of meat”, and began as an acknowledgment that they would soon be faced with 40 days of fasting before Easter. It evolved into a decadent celebration of masked parties and rich foods, before Ash Wednesday reminds us all that “man thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return.”

Italy abounds with many special dishes that show up in celebration for any number of feast days and holy days, some more regional than others. The fried and sugared pastry strips of the last blog, cenci, lattughe and chiacchiere, are found throughout all of Italy, the only thing changing is the name; but in Naples you also find struffoli, those little chickpea size fried balls with colored sprinkles.

It is also in Naples that you will also found an especially rich lasagna dish called Lasagna di Carnevale. Chock full of meat balls, sausage balls, mozzarella and ricotta, this rich lasagna is a celebration of the Napolitano kitchen. It is the origins of what Americans typically copy for lasagna and has become common at any important celebration in Naples. But it was originally a rich expression of eating well and fully before the privations of Lenten sacrifice and penitence.

The directions are simple: make a simple red sauce, make tiny meatballs, make tiny sausage balls, make fresh pasta. Combine the lasagna layering all the above ingredients, adding pieces of mozzarella and teaspoons of ricotta throughout. Basil leaves are optional.

For the red sauce:

Brown a piece of beef in olive oil. Chop and onion and 2 cloves of garlic and saute in the same pot. Add 2 quarts of tomato puree and sea salt and put the beef back in. Allow to cook 3 hours.

For the meatballs:

Mix a pound or two of ground beef with 1-2 eggs and 1-2 cups of parmigiano. Form into tiny meatballs 1/2 inch in diameter and brown in olive oil. Form the sausage meat into tiny balls and fry in the same pot.

Make pasta and roll out the sheets very thin. Cook the sheets one or two at a time in boiling salted water for 20 seconds, remove to cold water to stop the cooking. Don’t cook all the pasta at the same time and leave it in the water, but make a layer of lasagna before cooking another sheet of pasta. Do it as you need it, another words.

In a pan spread a small amount of the red sauce and some olive oil. Lay pasta sheets down to cover the bottom and begin to layer everything. The top layer should be tomato sauce. Drizzle a little olive oil over the top and the sides and bake at 375 until bubbling and browned.
Buon appetito!