The Duke’s Feast, by Ensiferrum.
|
|
About: Jonell Galloway
Recent Posts by Jonell Galloway
Food Photography: Wine Merchant & Bicycle
An old-fashioned wine merchant in the Rue de Passy, Paris 16th, spreads his belongings onto the sidewalk
|
|
Swiss Food: Fribourg-style Saffron Bread
Swiss Food: Fribourg-style Cuchaule: Saffron Bread to Eat with Your Bénichon Mustard
From the archives
In my article, Bénichon Mustard, A Fribourg Specialty to Welcome the Cows Coming Home a few days ago, I talked about the brioche-like saffron bread cuchaule which is traditionally eaten with Bénichon mustard during the Bénichon fall fair in Fribourg, Switzerland.
I translated this recipe from the Delimoon site from the French and adapted it.
Photo courtesy of Moja Kuchnia with authorization.
|
|
Truffles in Black and White: Part One: The Truffles of Alba
Truffles in Black and White: Part One: The Truffles of Alba, or Italian White Gold
by David Downie, with photos by Alison Harris
The Truffles of Italy’s Piedmont
In the vaulted cellars at Tartufi Morra, the longest-established truffle dealership in Alba, a town of 30,000 in Piedmont 60 kilometers by road south of Turin, manager Alessandro Bonino fielded telephone orders while sorting white truffles still clotted with soil. “Truffles are hypogeous fungi,” Bonino said, waving his left hand, “meaning mushrooms that grow underground.” Of the 60 known species, 25 grow in Italy. Tartufi bianchi d’Alba—white Alba truffles—are the rarest, most aromatic and, the businesslike Bonino confirmed, by far the most expensive.
“White truffles only grow wild and only in a limited geographical area,” Bonino explained to me. “That’s why they’re so scarce and costly, and also why the statistics on them aren’t reliable—how do you tabulate them when their surrounded by secrecy?”
Alba’s Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufi (CNST), a government-funded research agency, estimates average Italian truffle production per year for all edible species at 400 tons, including about 40 tons of premium tartufo nero (Tuber melanosporum), the black truffles of northern and central Italy, half of which are farmed. In an exceptionally good year the southwest of France also produces about 40 tons of nearly identical melanosporum, the northeast of Spain 20 tons, in both cases 80 to 90 percent farmed. Harvests for the last decade or more for Italian, French and Spanish melanosporum have been small, with wholesale prices ranging between 650-1,200 euros per kilo.
By comparison white truffles occur only near Alba and in other parts of Piedmont, and, in far smaller quantities, in the Acqualagna area of the Marches, the province of Savona on the Italian Riviera, and in Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary. In an average year about 2 tons are found overall, though, as Bonino noted, statistics are notoriously unreliable. Wholesale prices in the 2010-2011 season range from an astonishing 3,000 to 4,000 euros per kilogram, about the same as Sevruga caviar.
As with caviar, demand far outstrips supply for prized white and black truffles. Bonino sells both.
Black and white truffles are not as different as apples and oranges, according to Bonino and others in the business. Comparing them is tricky. “All truffles are mushrooms. Preference is strictly personal, a question of taste, budget and use.”
White Alba truffles are actually pale to straw yellow. They look and feel like small, warty potatoes. Their scientific name is Tuber magnatum pico. Though unwieldy the name is widely used in commerce to avoid confusion with other pale-colored species.
The white truffle season runs from late September to mid-February. Except during the war years 1939-1945, in the second half of October since 1929 Alba has hosted the Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo (International Truffle Fair). The fair lasts two weeks, drawing tens of thousands of visitors. It has helped make white truffles synonymous with the town and the surrounding Langhe, a region of tuck ‘n’ roll hills where most white truffles are found.
As is typical, during a November visit to the Piedmont I experienced cold, damp weather. Wearing a woolen sweater the trim, middle-aged Bonino led me through the Tartufi Morra cellar to a room where an assistant in a blue lab coat hand-brushed white truffles, rinsed them under cold, running water and placed them on a drainboard. Bonino demonstrated how to gauge the firmness of a truffle, pinching one between forefinger and thumb. “When ripe, truffles white or black are as firm as tennis balls,” he said. “Too hard and they’re unripe. Too soft and they’re overripe.”
The smell and flavor of a ripe, healthy white truffle evokes mild garlic, honey, hay and fresh mushrooms. Scents of ammonia, humus or mold indicate rot.
“For security and conservation the bulk of our truffles are cellared,” Bonino added. “With all truffles the soil stays on until we prepare them for shipping. They’re 80 percent water. Soil preserves humidity.” Unbrushed, unwashed truffles last 7 to 10 days in a cool, dark room. Brushed and washed, they should be used within a few days. “Diamonds are forever, truffles are for now,” Bonino quipped, nostrils flaring.
Upstairs in the retail shop a few fresh white truffles covered by a moist cloth were in a refrigerated case. Canned or bottled whole truffles, truffled purées, pâtés, chocolates and olive oil filled shelves. Such transportable, long-lasting products appeal to many consumers, especially tourists, and allow truffle sellers to work year-round. Natural truffle essence, derived from fresh truffles, is the Holy Grail of researchers and retailers but has yet to be perfected. Most top-end shops like Tartufi Morra do not sell artificial truffle flavoring, an ersatz substitute scorned by serious Piedmontese chefs and food lovers.
Outside in the medieval tangle of streets, truffle scents wafted from restaurants and food shops. The enjoyment of white truffles is primarily an olfactory experience. During white truffle season Alba is a delight to the nose, and the scent is free for the taking.
Formerly plentiful and cheap, since at least the 1300s truffles, particularly white truffles, have been prized in Piedmontese cuisine. Scarcity and cost have not thinned the ranks of cultish truffle lovers. The half-dozen chefs in and near Alba I met during my 5-day visit concurred that white truffles lose potency and flavor when cooked and therefore should be eaten raw.
At Villa Tiboldi, a restaurant and B&B where I stayed, near Canale, equidistant from Alba and Turin, chef Stefano Pagagnini dressed fresh tagliolini with melted butter, set a digital scale on my table, weighed a white truffle then quickly shaved approximately 10 grams off it onto the pasta. “The heat releases the raw truffle’s scent,” he explained. “Smell is most of the experience. Simple food like pasta is best because it doesn’t overwhelm the truffle.”
Pagagnini was right. The luscious simplicity of the dish exalted the truffle’s aroma, which subtly evoked garlic, honeysuckle and mushroom. Flavors and aromas melded. I was unable to separate them. Even when I lifted a truffle shaving off the pasta and tasted it alone the sensations came almost entirely through my nose.
The photos in this series of articles on truffles were taken by Alison Harris. You can see the entire set as a slide show in Food Art: Behind the Scenes of the Noble Truffle, food photography by Alison Harris.
Next segment: truffle hunters.
See also: David Downie: Truffles in Black and White: Part Two, Truffle Hunting in Piedmont, David Downie: Truffles in Black and White: Part Three: the Truffle Heartland of Southwest France, The Truffle-hunting Pig of Lalbenque
Related articles
|
|
Swiss Food: How to Make Raisinée
Swiss Food: Raisinée: The History and the Recipe
The French Vaudois word raisinée refers to a syrup made of the must of apples and pears. It was originally cooked in grape juice, thus the name — raisin means grape in French. Often called vin cuit, or “cooked wine”, it is in the form of a dark brown, viscous liquid. In still other parts of Switzerland, another concoction similar in consistency to jam and using the same ingredients is called cougnarde and probably dates back to at least the Middle Ages. Raisinée was used as a sweetener in many regions in Europe, and the tradition has lingered in Switzerland, especially in the cantons of Vaud, Fribourg and Neuchâtel. Today, it is mainly used for cakes and pies, and is not fermented, so it not technically a wine.
History
In the 17th century, raisinée meant a thick fruit jam, generally made of apples and pears, and slow-cooked in concentrated grape juice. According to the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, published in the 1770s, raisinée was made from the must of very ripe green grapes cooked until reduced by two thirds, then kept in barrels. Drinking it was said to give energy to people of a frail nature.
Raisinée is no longer drunk as a cooked or fortified wine, although in the 18th century one finds recipes for fruit must syrup made from apples and pears (dropping the use of grape juice) and used to replace sugar. Like today, the apple and pear juice was cooked until thick, until a drop on a plate didn’t run anymore. During periods of scarcity and hardship — for example, during and after World War II when sugar was low or not available — it was and still is used as a sweetener.
Cantons like Fribourg and the Vaud have kept up the tradition more than elsewhere, partially because they have a history of orchards. Recipes had been maintained and they were brought back to life in the 1980s.
Traditions similar to this were to be found in Mesopotamia and Ancient Rome.
Recipe
Use apples and pears not suitable for eating. The fruit shouldn’t be overly ripe. You should be able to crush it and press it, but it mustn’t turn into a purée. The juice is filtered to get rid of hard bits. It is then decanted overnight (no more).
Unlike industrial fruit concentrates, the juice is not clarified. It is simply brought to a boil in a large copper kettle over a wood fire. Try to use up any bits of wood not suitable for a regular fire. A coil-type steam burner can be used to prevent risk of overheating, especially when making large quantities.
|
|
Elatia Harris’s Top 10 Food Books 2013
Elatia Harris’s Top 10 Books 2013, on Cooking, Food History & Food Politics
by Elatia Harris
For this list to be coherent, I have to have actually read and truly admired the books on it. Check! If they are cookbooks, I have to have cooked from them with great results. Check! I want to hear what your entries would be – it was a great year for books about food and cooking, and I’ve had to leave many good ones out.
1. Cuisine and Empire, by Rachel Laudan
20,000 years of the great movements of history, written with the kitchen at the center. If you want to take a very long view, and think hard about power – getting it, keeping it, getting it back – then the intimate and often surprising relationship between food and power, in Laudan’s telling, will astonish you. The historical counterpart to Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, this is a supremely important book that is a great pleasure to read. Don’t be afraid of its bigness, for it’s a truly manageable length. Read it fast, think about it forever.
2. Three Squares, by Abigail Carroll
How did the American Diet evolve? We’re not eating like they did at Plimouth Plantation, or like Thomas Jefferson ate – what ARE we eating like? For a fresh view of what’s uniquely American about our foodways, this book is a treasure.
3. Foodopoly, by Wenonah Hauter
The activist Wenonah Hauter has written Foodopoly to take on, and urge readers to take on, the dark side of our food systems, and it’s a very dark side indeed. Can there be reclamation? Can the trend towards domination by fewer and bigger companies ever be reversed? “Yes, but…” Hauter tells us, and then she tells us what that would take.
4. Behind the Kitchen Door, by Saru Jayaraman
The author is a labor organizer who believes that the maltreatment of food service workers need not be the ugly secret of the US restaurant industry. But right now, it is. What would have to happen, for food service workers to be paid a living wage and given paid sick days? One in every twelve people in the USA works in food service – how should they be treated? In its way, this is a companion volume to Foodopoly, asking all the right questions, answering not a few.
5. Raising Dough, by Elizabeth U
A guide to using other people’s money to finance your socially responsible food business, this is a hard-headed book for mostly young idealists. Brilliantly thorough, if you are on a mission but lack for practical knowledge of the business world. Especially valuable are the ideas for working around a financier’s natural unwillingness to lend money to anyone hoping to do good.
6. Arribes: Everything Else is Noise, by Zev Robinson
Film maker and painter Zev Robinson could turn Arribes, a DVD, into a commanding book, so I’m counting it in. Arribes is a rural area in northwestern Spain where people are 80% self-sufficient. One of those places where life is both simple and difficult – and movingly sustainable. Robinson’s eye for Spanish classical painting serves beautifully here. If by magic Zurbaran and Murillo could see Arribes, they would recognize their own lineages instantly and with pleasure.
7. Mushroom, by Cynthia D. Bertelsen
Confused about the world history of mushrooms? Wondering about foraging for them or choosing them or storing them? And what about a few recipes? Culinary historian Cynthia D. Bertelsen has solved all your problems in this tiny, indispensible book, a delight from beginning to end. You will read it in a snowy evening, you will consult it forever after. And if you’re still not satisfied with the mushrooms in your life, you’ll have instructions for growing your own.
8. Celebraciones Mexicanas, by Andrea Lawson Gray and Adriana Almazan Lahl
Andrea Gray and Adriana Lahl have a winner in this charmingly beautiful cookbook that focuses on the food of Mexico’s festivals. As well as recipes, there is abundant material about history and folklore, much of it highly visual and appealing to children – it’s a perfect family gift. Professional cooks as well as writers, Gray and Lahl know their way around the Mexican kitchen. It’s a labor-intensive cuisine, and the streamlining here is as intelligent as any I have ever seen – no false notes, some truly helpful simplifications. If you want the best ever recipe for Nogada Sauce, one of the signature paradisal items in Like Water for Chocolate, buy the book and turn to page 257.
9. Spice and Kosher, by Dr. Essie Sassoon, Bala Menon, and Kenny Salem
The Jewish community in Cochin, in the South Indian state of Kerala, was intensely lively for 2000 years. It has dwindled now to a few souls, but its culinary traditions belong to the world, many having partaken of, and been absorbed into, mainstream Indian cooking. Knowing that, soon, the cuisine will have outlived its people, the three authors, all originally Jews of Cochin, wrote this excellent cookbook — full of fascinating history, good recipes and directions for good practice — as a testament.
10. Paris to the Pyrenees, by David Downie, with photos by Alison Harris
Travel and food writer nonpareil, David Downie, mounts an interior and a physical struggle against middle age and fading health by walking 750 miles across France – the famous Way of St. James. Well, it’s no saunter. Even the companionship of his wife, the wonderful photographer Alison Harris, whose photos here are a revelation, cannot inure him to the hardships of the pilgrimage route. Readers will ponder how much in this volume is deeply spiritual – to my reading, seeking something you cannot define, yet seeking it body and soul, is a spiritual journey. One that is intermitted, David Downie being David Downie, by some of the most gorgeous repasts I’ve heard tell of.
Related articles
|
|
The Real Facts about Calories in Junk Food vs. Real Food
Here are all the facts you need to know about how your body uses the calories from junk food in comparison to those from real food. This article is a fascinating read, and a keeper! See Precision Nutrition.
Here’s an excerpt:
Remember:
- Real food regulates appetite – so you don’t overeat
- Real food controls blood sugar/insulin – so you can avoid energy swings and diabetes
- Real food provides the best nutrition – so you can remain healthy for life
- Real food has a sane amount of energy – so that you can’t accidentally overeat
- Real food has a longstanding relationship with our body – so that our bodies know what to do with it
Related articles
|
|
Food Art: Apple in a Cage, food photography by SandeeA
SandeeA is a top-notch food photographer and she runs the popular blog La Receta de la Felicidad, where you can find many of the recipes appearing in these photos.
|
|
Kate Middleton Diet References
The eating habits and diets of Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, spark the interest of many. Here are some reference links.
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/advice/a3557/the-dukan-diet-kate-middleton-weight-loss/
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/advice/a3557/the-dukan-diet-kate-middleton-weight-loss/
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/kate-middleton-dukan-diet-extreme-pre-wedding-creator-article-1.1954094
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/487734/Kate-Middleton-diet
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/nutrition/kate-middleton-diet-plan
http://www.ibtimes.com/kate-middleton-pregnant-anorexic-91-pounds-losing-more-weight-report-1624366
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2772507/The-Duchess-Cambridge-Controversial-feminist-Germaine-Greer-launches-scathing-attack-pregnant-Kate-says-royal-family-crushed-personality.html
|
|
Potatoes: Endless Varieties in Switzerland
Potatoes: Endless Varieties in Switzerland
Potatoes: an essential part of the traditional Swiss diet
If there’s one thing we have plenty of in Switzerland, it’s potatoes. I didn’t even like potatoes before I came here and discovered all the subtle differences of texture, taste and all the ways of using them in cooking.
Potatoes are an essential ingredient in almost any traditional Swiss meal. This year’s crop is already starting to show up in local markets.
Large Number of Varieties of Potatoes in Switzerland
The official 2007 Swisspatat list (provided by Agridea, the Swiss agricultural research station) includes 31 different varieties, along with lists for various seasons and types of potatoes, as well as recipes for everyday use as well as for special occasions.
You can take a look at the 31 varieties in the table at the bottom right on the last page of the Swisspatat article to get an idea of which potatoes to look for at what time of the year.
Different Types of Potatoes for Different Uses
There are basically 4 types of potatoes, according to Swisspatat:
- Firm or “salad” potatoes. These potatoes do not burst open when cooking. They are moist, fine-grained and not mealy, and can be used in most dishes, with the exception of mashed potatoes and purées.
- All-purpose medium-firm potatoes. The skin on these potatoes opens only slightly on cooking. They are somewhat mealy, on the dry side, and have a fine, grainy texture. They are tasty and can be used for most all purposes.
- Mealy potatoes. These potatoes burst when cooked, but they are tender, mealy and rather dry. They have a large grain and strong taste and are used mostly for industrial purposes.
- Extra-mealy potatoes. These are basically not for cooking and are used for feeding livestock or to make starch, due to their dryness and hard texture.
|
|
