Italy | Page 3 of 4 | The Rambling Epicure

Slow Food’s Salone Internazionale de Gusto Food Fair

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, October 25, 2012 Permalink 0

The 2012 Salone Internazionale de Gusto food fair started in Torino, Italy, today October 25, 2012, and will continue until Monday, October 29, 2012. Hope to see you there!

Carrot Crazy: A Recipe for Pickled Carrots

Published by Diana Zahuranec + Thursday, October 18, 2012 Permalink 0

by Diana Zahuranec

Why did I eat half a pound of carrots before tearing myself away from the refrigerator? It is not a Vitamin A deficiency. Nor was I hungry. It was this magic “pickled” carrot recipe with drugs in the ingredients – just kidding, of course, about that last part. I am not kidding about the magic part.

These carrots aren’t exactly pickled. I suppose they could be if the water-to-vinegar ratio was double-checked for optimum bacteria inhibition, and of course if all canning and preserving steps were followed. But there’s no point in actually canning these if they’re eaten in under a week (ahem, sometimes under 4 days). Anyway, they should keep for 4 weeks refrigerated – provided they last that long.

I first tasted these crunchy, addicting snackies during a University of Gastronomic Sciences potluck dinner. A jar of carrot sticks amidst homemade quince tart, cinnamon sticky bread, cheesy focaccia, and endive leaves filled with oniony salsa – who had time for carrot sticks? But all it took was two or three unsuspecting students to reach into the jar, get hooked, and munch through 2/3 of the supplies before they kindly, reluctantly, let me in on the secret. I tried two, glanced the other way, and the carrots were gone. My friend told me they were simple to make: “Just blanch the carrots and soak them in boiled water with vinegar for a while. And I add some sugar and spices.” How long do you soak them? What spices? How much sugar? I wanted to know. My friend shrugged.

Four months later, I googled “pickled carrots” and then created my own recipe based on a mix of the ones I saw. My friend’s casually imprecise directions are pretty much the whole idea behind making these, because if you’re not pickling them, just loosely follow these instructions with your ingredients at hand or of choice. There’s little reason to actually be precise. Here it is.

How to Drink Wine in Moderation

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, October 3, 2012 Permalink 0

by Silvestro Silvestori

La moderazione per chi lavora nel settore

I love wine.

No, I mean I really, really love it. I love everything about it.

I love the sound of cracking the scotch tape when unloading cases, of pulling spongy and squeaky corks, of splashing it into freshly-polished glasses, of that first sip of something unexpected; the way it fills my mouth as though the liquid were fermented from the late-summer fireworks of my youth.

I love spending Saturdays arranging my personal collection, of browsing stores, cantine and supermarkets the way women think of trying on clothing, with no intention of buying any, but just to be around the stuff: pleasure through osmosis. I love pulling out the horizontal bottles to read the labels, how my mind tries to predict, or if I’ve been lucky, to remember what the contents are like, whether it was sunny that year, cloudy, whether is came from places far away, where farmers train their vines in radically different ways and call their mothers words other than ‘mamma‘.

As a teacher, I love being asked about a favourite wine, of how I’ll adjust my weight in my seat, half surprised myself by the long and beautifully nuanced explanation that seems to channel through me, as welcome as an old friend.

I love books about wine, and have hundreds of them, crammed and jammed into a 17th-century bookcase, four doors wide, the books themselves, marked with my horrific hand-writing and years and years of faded purple rings.

I love the history of a very different Europe, when wine traveled by barge, by clipper ship, where it poured from countless clay pots, crystal decanters and leather pouches.

Of course an attentive reader will notice that I never mentioned the alcoholic effect of wine, which of course that is what this essay is really about.

I love that too, and maybe a little too much.

Food Art: Tuscan Food and Travel Adventures, a food photography exhibit by Linda Psillakis

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, August 20, 2012 Permalink 0

[Show slideshow]

Jonell eats her way through Trieste: take a culinary and cultural stroll through Trieste

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, July 23, 2012 Permalink 0

Trieste holds a unique place in European history and culture. Next to the Balkans (5 km from Slovenia and 10 km from Croatia), a port built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire on an ancient Roman site, for a short time an independent principality, now part of Italy: the influences are many. It has a mini-culture all its own, with influences from all these countries and periods. You’ll see it in the architecture, churches, food, and, we heard it in the language and names of dishes and foods. The author James Joyce lived in Trieste for 15 years, partially to get away from the “crowd” and get some writing done, and partially to be near his writer friend, the Italian author, Triestine Italo Svevo, whose statue you will see in this photo documentary, and who some say served as a model for Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom in Ulysses.

You can either watch this as a slideshow, or if you want to see the full shot, just click on the photo.

[Show slideshow]

Sauce for Thought: A Non-Newtonian Suspension in the Kitchen

Published by Alice + Thursday, April 19, 2012 Permalink 0

by Alice DeLuca

Would you like to buy a few metric tons of tomato paste? For only $786 per metric ton you may purchase a minimum of 20 metric tons in 238 kilogram drums. That’s one of the interesting business opportunities that are dropped in the email box of a food blogger these days.

Food bloggers also receive lots of offers for coupons. The scheme goes like this: if the blogger will just agree to write nice things about Company X, the company will provide coupons to offer to blog readers as enticements for them to visit, thereby driving up the blog’s popularity as measured by page visits.

Instead of money and real compensation, manufacturers and marketers offer the food writing community coupons in exchange for the virtual currency of “visits”. Using coupons of very little value, and shamelessly taking advantage of blogger vanity, the company receives “exposure” without having to spend a single honest dollar for advertising. The problem is that this currency of “visits” and coupons is coinage that the blogger cannot spend or barter for things of real value.

Also common is the “free sample” offered so the hapless food blogger will “tweet’ about the product or perhaps “like” the product on Facebook, thereby starting a viral marketing event that companies dream about. I have found entire Styrofoam containers of frozen food products shipped to my doorstep, sent by a startup company hoping I will write favorably about their product and start a stampede of customers. Few of these products have been even as tasty as hospital food. In addition, since 2009, if a blogger receives a product in exchange for a review, the Federal Trade Commission requires the blogger to disclose the gift.[i]

Food Art: The Incredible Sensuality of Food, a food photography exhibit by Alessandro Guerani

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, April 4, 2012 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Alessandro Guerani‘s food photography approaches true art.

Lemon Still Life, Alessandro Guerani (C)

Photo courtesy of Alessandro Guerani.

Food is not, after all, only a story of taste. It is about texture and how it feels in your mouth. It is about whether it looks appetizing, how it is presented on the plate. It is about the smells coming from the kitchen, gently seducing you to the table, and the taste you have while it’s in your mouth and the aftertaste that lingers. It can even be about sound, for example, when the alcohol goes up in flames as they flambé your crêpes Suzette.

Guerani manages to bring all the senses together in a single photograph, even though the smells, texture and other senses are not concretely present. It remains, after all, a photograph, but a photograph like none other, because though visually beautiful, it takes you beyond the confines of visual.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

[Show slideshow]

You can see more of Alessandro’s photos on his website, Fotografia.

David Downie: Truffles in Black and White: Part Two, Truffle Hunting in Piedmont

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, February 23, 2012 Permalink 0

//
by David Downie

Truffles in Black and White: Part Two, Truffle Hunting in Piedmont, Italy

The scent of truffles is what draws trained dogs and pigs to them. Wild or cultivated, truffles grow at random around host trees and must be hunted out and carefully removed using a small pick or trowel.

Eighth-generation truffle hunter and dog trainer Renato Agnello, a wiry dynamo in his late 60s, teaches truffle hunting at Alba’s Centro Nazionale Studi Tartufi (CNST) and leads simulated hunts. In Alba’s main square, Piazza Risorgimento, Agnello opened the back hatch of a muddy FIAT Panda and introduced me to his aging truffle hound, Diana. We drove at breakneck speed into vineyards bordering the Tanaro River south of town. The smell of Diana, dirt and truffles was dizzying.

In Italy, truffle hunters must be registered, trained and licensed. Piedmont’s 10,000 are reputed to be secretive. Agnello was expansive. “I’ve been at it 61 years,” he laughed. “With people and dogs it’s genetic.”

Italian law states that truffles on public or private land belong to their finder. To keep truffle hunters out, private property must be fenced and posted “no trespassing.” Trespassing is common, however, particularly in central Italy’s commercial black truffle plantations (there are no white truffle plantations).