Calabria from Scratch

Cooking fresh sardines

by Rosetta on February 23, 2010 · 2 comments

This is the third week in a row that I have found fresh sardines at Monterey Fish Market in Berkeley so I decided it was time to write about them. Every time I put fresh sardines on the menu for my cooking classes not many people sign up! If you’re like these students, then I hope that this post will change your mind.

I grew up eating fresh sardines and fresh anchovies. These small fish, caught in the early morning around Scalea, were small enough to transport to my inland town of Verbicaro. We had them often when they were in season and prepared them in many different ways.

Sardines, anchovies and mackerel belong to the pesci azzurri family, literally translated as “blue fish” because of the blue tone to their skin. Fresh sardines in particular are very good for you. Not only are they high in omega-3 fatty acids, but they are also a good source of vitamin D, calcium, B12, and protein. They are also very inexpensive. Here in California I usually pay $1.99 a pound for them. They are sustainable, cheap, and delicious, so what is keeping you away from trying them?

You’ll want to buy fresh sardines ideally the same day they are caught; they spoil very quickly because of their high omega-3 fat level. For that reason you’ll also want to clean them immediately, unless you have a fishmonger that will do it for you. Look for sardines that are fresh looking and not smelly, with shiny silver skin, and are whole. They should look like they just jumped out of water. Avoid them if they are bruised or look dark in color. Don’t buy them frozen! Sardines do not freeze well; the oils in them turn rancid even in a freezer, and the flesh becomes a mushy mess when thawed.

In Calabria people cook fresh sardines in many different ways. One of the easiest preparations is sarde ripiene, stuffed and baked. I’ve given you the recipe at the end of the post; it was in the manuscript of my forthcoming book, but because it was removed (I had too many sardine and anchovie recipes because I like them so much) you’re in luck.

If I buy very small sardines I will prepare them whole the same way I do with fresh anchovies, just coated with flour and fried in olive oil, known as sarde fritte. Here are some more of the many ways we prepare fresh sardines in Calabria:

Polpette di sarde (sardine “meatballs”, with the fish taking the place of meat)

Cotolette di sarde (breaded like a cutlet and fried)

Sarde al pomodoro (braised whole with tomatoes and onions)

Sarde alla griglia (grilled with just olive oil, lemon juice and parsley)

And I can’t forget my other two favorite ways of cooking fresh sardines, from my husband’s hometown of Palermo: sarde a beccafico, stuffed and rolled up, then baked with fresh oranges slices, and pasta con sarde, pasta with wild fennel, fresh sardines, pine nuts, raisins, and saffron, which I plan to make as soon as the wild fennel is ready to be picked.

To clean fresh sardines:

Hold the fish under cold running water and rub off the scales with your thumbnail. By hand, snap off the head and pull down; most of the innards will come out with the head. Use your thumbnail or a small paring knife to slit the belly down to the tail. Remove any remaining innards and rinse the interior.

I spared you the pictures and will show you what they need to look like when they are clean:

Once cleaned you will need to butterfly the sardines for this recipe. To remove the backbone from each sardine grasp the end of the backbone closer to the head and lift it out. It usually pulls away cleanly from the flesh, although sometimes it clings. If it does cling, gently work the backbone free with your fingers, damaging the flesh as little as possible. Keep the tail intact.

Sprinkle the sardines on both sides with salt. Spread about a tablespoon or so of filling on each half butterflied.

Top it with another butterflied sardine. Drizzle with olive oil and bake.

Ready to eat! Yummy!

Sarde Ripiene

Stuffed Baked Sardines

1 dozen fresh sardines, about 1-1/2 pounds

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Filling:

1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs

1/4 cup freshly grated pecorino cheese

2 tablespoons minced flat-leaf parsley

1 tablespoon finely minced capers

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for serving

Lemon wedges

Preheat the oven to 400ºF .

Remove the backbone from each sardine by grasping the end of the backbone closer to the head and lifting it out. It usually pulls away cleanly from the flesh, although sometimes it clings. If it does cling, gently work the backbone free with your fingers, damaging the flesh as little as possible. Keep the tail intact. Lay the boneless sardines open “butterfly” style. Remove as many of the other fine white bones as you can. Season the fish on both sides with the salt.

For the filling: In a small bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, cheese, parsley, capers, lemon zest, garlic, and olive oil. Mix with your fingers until well blended.

Using 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, generously oil a baking dish large enough to hold six of the butterflied sardines. Arrange six of the sardines in the dish, skin side down. Top with the filling, dividing it evenly and pressing it into an even layer. Top each sardine with another sardine, skin side up. Drizzle with remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil.

Bake until the fish are sizzling hot and the flesh is white and flakes easily when prodded with a fork, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes before serving. The dish is best warm, not hot. Divide the sardines among serving plates, drizzle each portion with a little extra virgin olive oil, and accompany with lemon wedges.

Serves 6

Tagged as: sarde, sardines

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Coming soon “My Calabria”

by Rosetta on February 13, 2010 · 5 comments

in Calabria, My Cook Book

I just received a copy of my cookbook jacket and had to share it with you. It was such a surprise because I didn’t know which photo would be chosen. There were so many gorgeous shots taken by Sara Remington to choose from, but this really stood out. The cover says it all:

“Rustic Family Cooking from Italy’s Undiscovered South”.

Don’t try to order it yet because it’s not available until November 2010!

Tagged as: cookbook, My Calabria

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Our Annual Salumi-making

by Rosetta on January 25, 2010 · 9 comments

in Calabria, Foraging, regional specialties

My parents used to raise a hog in Calabria every year and right after New Year’s Day we would all get ready for the Annual Whole Hog Ritual. We don’t raise a pig in California, of course, but we still maintain the tradition of making our own salumi the old-fashioned way.

When it gets cold here in the Bay Area and it is drizzling we buy lots of pork meat and make salsiccia, sopressata, capocollo, pancetta and prosciutto. This year we made our first batch right after Christmas and we started eating the cured sausage this past week, since it takes around three to four weeks to cure. There is nothing like the taste of homemade salumi!

It is actually very easy to make fresh homemade sausage. But the making of cured sausage I leave to my father, the expert salumiere, who knows what he’s doing. Calabrians who make their own salumi at home use only salt and the perfect weather conditions to cure them. But all commercially-made sausage is required by government agencies to add preservatives and nitrates.

My cookbook will have the recipe for making fresh Calabrian sausage, but let me show you in pictures the basic method. We always use pork shoulder, and add more pork fat to raise the percentage to about 25%. We then grind the meat and the fat using the grinder attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer:

We season the ground meat with only the following ingredients: salt, wild fennel seeds, and pepe rosso dolce (sweet Calabrian paprika). We add peperoncino macinato (hot pepper powder) to some for the spicy version. Nothing else goes into the meat.

We make our own pepe rosso from the sweet peppers that we dried during the summer months and the hot pepper powder from our dried hot peppers. We forage for and harvest the wild fennel seeds, since it grows wild everywhere in California. If you want to give making the sausage a try you can buy the pepe rosso, the hot pepper powder and the wild fennel seeds online from these two sites that carry products imported from Calabria:

http://stores.ebay.com/Sausage-Debauchery

http://www.italianharvest.com

The meat is mixed until it is a beautiful red color. My grandmother used to say that it wasn’t mixed well until your hands were colored red from the paprika.

The meat is then stuffed into natural hog casings using my mom’s old fashioned sausage stuffer. But back in Calabria she and her mother would spend the entire day stuffing casings with a funnel and their thumbs!

Sausages ready to be hung in my dad’s wine cellar, where they will cure for three to four weeks:

A photo by Sara Remington of my dad in his wine cellar admiring his salumi:

We still have to make sopressata, but at least we are all done making this year’s sweet and spicy sausage, pancetta and capocolli. That prosciutto in the photo above was made last year. Since we still have some left, we are skipping making prosciutto and instead we may make more capocolli.

A close-up of our cured Calabrian sausage attractively sliced and ready for eating:

Tagged as: calabrian sausage, pepe rosso, peperoncino macinato, Salsiccia calabrese, wild fennel seeds

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A peek at my garden in January

by Rosetta on January 17, 2010 · 8 comments

in the Garden

I have been busy reading my upcoming book’s first layout. I can’t believe it’s almost done!

I always feel that not a whole lot happens in my garden in the winter months, as things grow fairly slowly compared to summer, but if you look back to the November post you will see that indeed a lot has happened. The peas are on their way up; in the photo below you can see the peach tree prunings that my father uses as their stakes. The netting is to keep the birds away.

The fennel is doing quite well:

The fava beans are starting to produce flowers, which will soon turn into pods:

Right after I took the picture below of my broccoli rape I picked a bunch of them. One of my favorite ways to cook it is to sauté it with olive oil, garlic and peperoncino.

Here is a picture of the cavolo broccoli; you can see the broccoli starting to come out.

The escarole is thriving in this cool weather. I will pick these later in the week for my soup class. One of the minestra (hearty soup/stew) we are making in the class is scarole e fagioli!

The citrus trees are loaded with fruit. I have oranges, Satsuma mandarins and more Meyer lemons that I can use. Take a look at the pictures below! If you are wondering where I was hiding my citrus trees: they fill in the space between my house and my neighbor’s.

Satsuma mandarins:

My Meyer lemon tree:

A close-up of the gorgeous Meyer lemons:

I have some work coming up soon, making candied orange peel and limoncello.

Tagged as: broccoli rape, fava beans, fennel, Meyer lemons, Satsuma mandarins

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2010! The year of Calabria

by Rosetta on January 5, 2010 · 4 comments

in Travel

Buon anno 2010! This is the year that you can learn even more about Calabria from me. First of all, my cookbook My Calabria will be published in November. But just as important, I will be leading a culinary tour of Calabria at the end of September. This trip is for all you foodies! Discover new foods that you can’t find in this country such as the famous ‘nduja di Spilinga, prized salumi and cheeses, the famous tartufo di Pizzo, the sweet red onions of Tropea, bottarga di Pizzo, local handmade pasta, traditional pastries, famous Calabrian liquorice, spicy peperoncino, foods made from local cedro and bergamot, and many more.

‘nduja di Spilinga

Calabrian cheeses

bottarga di Pizzo

authentic assorted pastries

tartufo di Pizzo

Our trip will start up in the Sila mountains where we will hunt in the woods for wild porcini mushrooms and prepare a dinner with the chef of one of my favorite restaurants, La Tavernetta. We will travel across Calabria to the Ionian coast and spend the next two nights at a beautifully restored farmhouse, Fattoria il Borghetto, and learn how to prepare some of the local fare. Next, a visit to the wine country of Ciro to spend the afternoon on the Dattilo estate to taste the owner’s wines and organic extra virgin olive oil. The evening will conclude with a dinner at the estate restaurant, one of the best in Calabria. Along the coast we will stop in Rossano and visit the Amarelli’s factory, world-famous for its liquorice.

We then move to the Tyrrhenian coast and have another cooking class while staying at the Grand Hotel San Michele near Cetraro. We will visit one of my favorite towns, Diamante, also known for its murals. Here we will taste various foods made with Calabria’s famous peperoncino and cedro and feast on a dinner based on local seafood. We will then head south and eat the famous tartufo di Pizzo ice cream. We will have a home-cooked dinner prepared by Signora Callipo herself at Casa Janca and spend the last two nights at a famous five-star hotel, the Hotel Porto Pirgos near Tropea. Our adventure concludes with a cooking class in this area where we will enjoy the famous red onions of Tropea, ‘nduja di Spilinga, and pecorino di Monte Poro.

Join me on this culinary odyssey to my native region of Calabria. To find out more details and reserve a spot, click on the Culinary Tour link.

Tagged as: Calabria, culinary tour, Dattilo, Fattoria il Borghetto, Grand Hotel San Michele, Hotel Porto Pirgos, La Tavernetta

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My vegetable garden in May

by Rosetta on May 15, 2009 · 0 comments

in the Garden

While I was in Calabria the first week of May, my parents planted tomato plants in my garden for me: 30 San Marzanos, a couple of Early Girls and few sweet red 100s, which are cherry tomatoes. The majority of the San Marzanos will end up canned in jars, although we do eat a few in salads and I bring them to use in my cooking classes when they are at their peak. (The tomatoes, not the classes!). All the other tomatoes we eat fresh off the vines.

Following the “from scratch” theme of this blog, my parents always start the tomato seedlings from the seeds they harvest from the tomatoes of the previous season. The original seeds were the ones they brought from Calabria in the 1970s.

This is what the tomatoes looked like a week after they were planted:

Tomatoes

My dad also planted zucchini, peppers (both the Italian sweet and the Calabrian hot), eggplants, and Romano beans. One of his secret is to give each plant a nice drink of “manure tea”. Yes, you guessed it: goat manure steeped in water, truly smelly stuff. He gives each plant about a quart of this tea and it acts like a booster shot. It is amazing how they take off.

He always places the seeds of the Romano beans directly into the soil in early April and as you can see from the picture below the plants are already on their way up the poles. My dad always uses old branches to make poles for the beans to climb on.

Romano Beans

Here are pictures of the zucchini, eggplant, cucumber and pepper plants.

Zucchini

Eggplant

Cucumber

Pepper

I also have a wonderful lettuce bed of mixed baby greens that are thriving:

And right next to the lettuce bed are some beautiful potatoes planted by my 14-year-old son, who loves to grow his own potatoes as his own little project. He put them in the soil back in March and here is a picture of them in May:

I will give you a garden update next month so you can see how everything is progressing.

Tagged as: peppers, potatoes, romano beans, tomatoes, zucchini

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What is all the talk about ‘Nduja?

by Rosetta on June 5, 2009 · 2 comments

in Calabria, regional specialties

In the last month I’ve read many articles about ‘nduja. I am happy to see that people are finally discovering it.

‘Nduja is a fiery, spreadable sausage of smoked pork that is unique to Calabria. The most famous is ‘Nduja di Spilinga, which gets it name from the town in Vibo Valentia that has the largest production of this delicacy. It is now also produced by salumifici (salumi factories) in other areas of Calabria, but the people of Spilinga and all around the Monte Poro area will argue that their ‘nduja is special. Why? Because the ingredients include the sweet and hot peppers grown only in the area.

‘Nduja is prepared with the parts of the pig that will produce 40 to 50% fat. The meat is ground very fine and then all that is added is salt, ground sweet pepper and ground hot pepper. It is well mixed and stuffed inside a natural hog casing of the large intestine. It is smoked for about a week and then dried for three weeks or longer, depending on the size of the casing.

This is what ‘nduja from Calabria looks like:

It is one the most famous foods Calabria has to offer and can’t be purchased as yet in this country.

Boccalone has started selling its own ‘nduja as of last month. It is different from ‘nduja from Calabria, but is very good. It resembles the French rillette, with the texture of a pâté, and has a lot more ingredients, like orange peel, wine, sugar, and vinegar. In contrast, Calabrian ‘nduja has only pork, sweet pepper, hot pepper, and salt. Simple but heavenly! Also, the Calabrian ‘nduja is coarser in texture, more intense in pepper flavor, and tastes much smokier.

So how do you eat it? I enjoy it just spread on bread or on a plate of fusilli (homemade pasta shaped around a knitting needle). ‘Nduja is wonderful on top of pizza, added to beans and soups, or inside a pitta (the stuffed Calabrian pizza).

Here is a plate of homemade filei, as fusilli are called in the Monte Poro area, tossed with ‘nduja and tomato sauce. I got to eat it last month right in the town of Spilinga:

If you want to try Calabrian ‘nduja in America you can come to my cooking class in September, when we will toss it with homemade pasta. You can also join me this fall in my culinary tour to Calabria; we will use ‘nduja in one of the cooking class held right in the area where it is made.

Tagged as: 'nduja, filei, fusilli, spreadable sausage

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‘Tis the season for zuccchini blossoms

by Rosetta on June 19, 2009 · 2 comments

in Recipes, the Garden

It is that time of the year again, when my prolific zucchini plants start producing beautiful blossoms. I picked the first ones last week and since I planted six plants I pick lots of zucchini blossoms on a daily basis. So far I have enjoyed them stuffed and fried, one of my favorite way to eat them.

In Calabria zucchini blossoms are very popular. In fact you can see from the picture below how they are sold at the market: in beautiful bunches, picked in the morning and brought to market that day.

The most common way to eat them in Calabria is coated in a batter and fried, or mixed in with pasta. Last year while in Calabria at one of my favorite restaurant, Dattilo, I ate them in spaghetti with clams. They are wonderful in a frittata or on top of pizza. I have a recipe for pizza with stuffed zucchini blossoms in my upcoming cookbook.

If you grow your own zucchini, you will notice that the plant produces two types of blossom, a male and a female. The female blossom is attached to the zucchini and falls off as the fruit matures. The male flower, with the long stem, serves no purpose other than fertilization, so these are the ones you’ll want to pick and cook.

I pick the male blossoms early in the morning while they are still open and place them in a glass of water if I plan to use them the same day. When I want to make a dish that requires lots of blossoms, I put them in a plastic bag, blow some air into it, and close it tightly. I then store the bag in the refrigerator upright until I collect enough flowers for the dish.

If you are buying them at the farmers’ market, look for flowers that are fresh and perky, and avoid the limp or wilted ones. Once they are closed it is very hard to open them (which you need to do to stuff them) without damaging the flower. You can use closed flowers in dishes where they will be chopped or sliced.

Here are the many ways I cook with zucchini blossoms:

Stuffed with mozzarella and anchovy, and coated in a batter and fried;
Stuffed with ricotta and fresh herbs and baked;
Mixed in at the last minute in a risotto;
Tossed with pasta;
Cut in strips and added to a frittata;
Stuffed with goat cheese on top of pizza.

If you are interested, please join me in my July 10 cooking class and we’ll prepare the blossoms picked from my garden with the following recipe:

Frittelle di Fiori di Zucchine

Zucchini Blossoms Stuffed with Mozzarella

Batter

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup cold water

Olive oil for frying

12 zucchini blossoms, stems attached if possible

6 ounces whole milk mozzarella

6 salted anchovies filets, cleaned, rinsed and cut in two pieces

For the Batter: Place the flour and salt in a bowl and make a shallow well in the center. Place the beaten egg in the well and mix it into the flour with a fork. Stir in the water, pressing any lumps with the back of the fork to remove. Mix to a consistency that resembles thin pancake batter. When you lift some batter with the fork, it should fall in a ribbon. If the batter is too thick, add more water, a teaspoon at a time. If too thin, add a little more flour. Set aside.

Heat the Oil: Heat about 1 inch of oil in a Dutch oven or frying pan over medium heat until it is hot enough to sizzle the end of a wooden chopstick (about 365 degrees F for olive oil).

Prepare the Blossoms: Just before frying, rinse blossoms, remove the pistil and any insects that might be hiding inside.

Slice the cheese into squares or “logs” small enough to fit deep inside the blossoms so that you can fold over the petals to fully enclose the cheese. Place a piece of anchovy in each blossom along with the cheese cube and fold over the petals to close the opening.

When the oil is hot enough, dip a flower into batter and turn with a large spoon to coat. Using the spoon, transfer the battered blossom to the oil, pouring any batter that accumulates in the bottom of the spoon back atop the frying blossom, making sure it is coated. Fry the blossom on both sides just until the batter is cooked through, about 1 minute total. When done, the batter will be lightly golden, not brown. Drain on paper towels and repeat battering and frying the remaining blossoms 2 or 3 at a time without allowing them to touch each other in the oil. As necessary, regulate the temperature to keep oil at 365 degrees F while frying. Be careful when turning the blossoms as they tend to splatter when any residual water spills into the hot oil.

Serve immediately with a napkin and a salt shaker, if desired. Be careful of the molten cheese inside when you eat these.

Serves 4 (makes 12 blossoms)

Tagged as: zucchini, zucchini blossoms

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My vegetable garden in June

by Rosetta on June 29, 2009 · 6 comments

in the Garden

I promised you in May that I would post some pictures of how my vegetable garden looks after a month. Compare the photos in the previous post to those below to see the difference a mere four weeks make. It is amazing to see seedlings change into fully grown plants and start producing fresh summer vegetables.

The zucchini are producing beautiful blossoms and fruit. The romano beans have grown to the top of the wood poles and the beans are ready to be picked.

The tomato plants are on their way. My dad builds the entire trellis with recycled material he has around my garden, like wood poles, metal posts left over from when we built my house, and left over irrigation tubing. He buys nothing and recycles everything from year to year.

The poles are about 6 – 7 feet high–that’s as high as we can reach to tie the tomato stems–and planted about 6 feet apart. These poles support the horizontal bars, which he makes out of wood sticks or tubing, are placed about 12 inches apart. When the plants start producing, the trellis looks like a wall of tomatoes. You will have to wait until August to see what I am describing. In the meantime, if you have planted San Marzano tomatoes and would like to use this time-honored Calabrian technique, please feel free.

Take a look at the picture below to see how my dad ties the tomato stems to the trellis. He uses strips of his old worn shirts!

We always remove all the suckers once the tomato plant is well on its way up the trellis. A tomato sucker, or side shoot, is a growth that appears between a branch and the main stem. Here is a picture of what it looks like:

We leave suckers on the lowest portion of the tomato plant, as many as five or six, and these become the main branches that will produce tomatoes. All the other suckers that are produced by these stems will be removed as the tomato stems climb up the trellis. You want to prune the suckers when they are small, no more than two to four inches. Suckers this size can be snapped off with your fingers, but suckers any thicker than a pencil should be cut with a pruner or knife to avoid damaging the plant.

The eggplant and pepper plants are growing well and my two cucumber plants are on their way to producing:

This is the best time of the year in my garden; I get to pick fresh vegetables on a daily basis.

Even my fig trees are ready to produce wonderful sweet figs. They will be ripe enough to eat right off the tree by next week.

I have two large fig plants, a Kadota (green-skinned and golden flesh) and a black mission tree. I’ll have more on figs in a future post.

Tagged as: figs, romano beans, tomato suckers, tomatoes, zucchini, zucchini blossoms

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Pane calabrese (my family’s everyday bread)

by Rosetta on July 8, 2009 · 3 comments

in regional specialties

I spent the day helping my mom make bread. We make it just as we did when we lived in Calabria; in fact, my mother brought the starter from Calabria in her purse when we moved to California!

In Calabria my mother would make a large amount of bread, as much as 40 pounds, to last for a couple of weeks. Nowadays she kneads only 25 pounds of flour at a time, all still by hand. (That’s one reason why at 75 she still has great arms.) We eat some immediately, and freeze the rest. This lasts for a couple of weeks for both of our families.

We always save a small amount of bread dough from the previous batch in the refrigerator. So the night before we bake, my mom refreshes this “starter” by adding some flour and warm water to it.

The next morning she mixes the now sponge-like starter with the flour and warm salted water. She kneads it for as long as 45 minutes to an hour, using her two fists. She then covers it and lets it rise for a few hours. Here is a picture of the bread dough after the first rise:

The dough is then shaped in either a long loaf (filone), a round (panetta) or a ring (cudduredda).

The bread is then allowed to rise for a second time for a couple of hours under warm blankets.

During the winter months and rainy days we bake the bread in my kitchen oven, but in spring and summer we bake it in my wood-burning oven on my deck. I have a Mugnaini oven imported from Italy and I use it to bake pizza and bread, as well as to roast food.

We use oak wood and cuttings from my grapevines to fire it up. (Check out those arms!)

Once the oven is at the right temperature we shove the loaves inside with a pala, each loaf laid right next to the other.

The loaves bake for about an hour. And here’s the finished product!

Some of the flat, ring-shaped loaves (see those in the front of the picture above) will be horizontally split in two after the first bake, and then are baked again at low temperature until they are fully dried. These are Calabrian rusks, called friselle, and meant for long keeping. Unfortunately they never stay for long in my home as it is my kids’ favorite snack.

They love to eat friselle by just softening them with a little water and topping it with olive oil, oregano and garlic. During the summer I love them topped with chopped fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil.

Our Calabrian bread is sturdy, with a tight crumb, and faintly sour from the starter.

The detailed recipe for making our bread will be in my upcoming cookbook, My Calabria, to be published in 2010.

Tagged as: bread, friselle, pane calabrese, starter, wood burning oven

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Crazy about figs

by Rosetta on July 18, 2009 · 0 comments

in Calabria, regional specialties, the Garden

When I lived in Calabria as a child I was surrounded by fig trees all around our farm, and I never could decide which type to pick from first. The best fig that is grown in Calabria is the “dottato” variety, known in this country as the “kadota” fig. These have a green skin with a golden interior. They are excellent fresh as well as great for drying, which is what my grandparents used to do with them.

When I moved to California as a teenager, my dad planted some cuttings from our friends’ trees. Then, when my husband and I built our house in the Oakland hills, the first thing we planted were two fig trees. One was a black mission and the other was one that my dad grafted into two varieties, the “kadota” and the “adriatic”.

Fig trees produce two crops a year. Here in Northern California the first crop lasts from late June to July and the second crop from late August through the beginning of October. The first crop is borne on the twigs grown the previous year and the second crop grows on the new wood. Here are photos of my figs:

Adriatic Figs

Kadota Figs. Note the drop of honey on the blossom end of the center fig. Perfection!

Black Mission Fig:

I have been picking my first crop of the Adriatic variety for the past two weeks. The black mission figs are just starting to ripen this week. My favorite way to eat them is right off the tree, fully ripe.

Most figs sold at the store are underripe, so try to go to a farmers’ market to buy them. A ripe fig is soft to the touch; you should see some cracks in the skin. If you see that little tear of syrup falling from the blossom end you have a perfectly sweet fig.

Calabrians don’t really cook with figs unless they are making jam or using them in a dessert. As for savory dishes, I will wrap some prosciutto around a cut fig, or slice them in a salad of arugula with some prosciutto.

The majority of the figs grown in Calabria are dried in the sun and are nowadays packaged in beautiful confectioneries. My grandmother would braid the dried figs in various shapes: coroncine (wreaths) around stems of fragrant myrtle; spinapisci (fish spines) in which dried figs are threaded around a sharpened reed in the shape of a fish spine, one fig to the left and one to the right; and crocette (crosses), in which two figs are split and stuffed with pieces of walnut or an almond and crossed in the form an “x”. These are then all baked.

There are two firms in Calabria around Belmonte Calabro and Amantea that do a beautiful job packaging dried figs: Colavolpe and Fratelli Marano. They shape them in the traditional forms, but also stuff them with almonds and a piece of candied orange peel, dipping them in dark chocolate, my favorite way to eat them dried.

If you can’t find a tree-ripened fig in your area you can still enjoy the dried figs of Calabria that are now available in this country. Here is a website where you can buy Calabrian fig confectioneries: http://www.italianharvest.com/subcategory.php?subcatID=13

Tagged as: Colavolpe, coroncine, crocette, Dottato figs, dried figs, figs, Fratelli Marano

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Foraging for wild blackberries

by Rosetta on July 27, 2009 · 6 comments

in Foraging, Recipes

This is the time of year that I forage for wild blackberries, which grow wild here in Northern California. Luckily I don’t have to go very far to pick them: they grow all over the sides of a trail right behind my house.

Picking blackberries brings back a lot of memories of growing up in Calabria. I would pick wild blackberries (called more in Italian), wild alpine strawberries and raspberries along the trails to get to my dad’s mountain farm. Going to the mountain farm was a fun hike, as I would fill my belly with berries. The ones I didn’t eat right away I used to thread on a strand of grass rush (Juncus tenuis); this way I could carry a lot more of them than if I kept them loose in my hands, and I could keep my hands relatively clean and completely free for picking other things!

I taught my son this trick last week when we went foraging. We took the pictures below to show you what they look like on the grass strand:

This is a great example of how in Calabria we always used what nature gave us. We had no plastic Ziploc or plastic containers; we were always green!

We’ll be picking blackberries at least once a week for approximately another month. We ventured out again yesterday and managed to pick the equivalent of eight pints in about 45 minutes. My son ends up eating more than he puts in the basket, just as I used to when I was a kid. I let him decide what to do with all the berries that he doesn’t eat right away, so we spent the entire afternoon making a crostata with blackberries and nectarines:

We also made gelato (see my recipe below)…

…a wild blackberry mousse, and pureed some as a sauce that we used on top of french toast for breakfast. Next week I’ll be making some jam with the blackberries I pick.

If you see bushes of wild blackberries, give yourself a treat straight from nature. Just be careful of the thorns: they like to scratch your legs and arms, so it helps to wear jeans and a long sleeved shirt.

Gelato alle more (Wild Blackberry Ice Cream)

1.5 cups blackberry puree (about 3 cups of berries)

2 cups milk

5 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups whipping cream

1 tablespoon Maraschino or Kirsch

1. Puree the blackberries in a blender and strain through a fine sieve to remove all the seeds. Measure 1.5 cups and set aside. If you have leftover puree, save it and make a sauce with it by adding sugar and some lemon juice to taste.

2. Place the milk in a medium-size, heavy saucepan and bring it to a simmer over medium heat.

3. While the milk is heating, in a medium size bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the yolks are pale yellow and the mixture is thick and creamy.

4. Slowly pour half the hot milk into the bowl with the egg mixture, whisking until well blended. Pour the milk/egg mixture in the bowl back into the milk remaining in the saucepan, whisking as you pour. Place the saucepan back over medium heat. Stir constantly and cook until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.

5. Transfer the mixture to a large, clean bowl and let it cool for about 10 minutes. Add the blackberry puree, the cream, the liqueur and mix well. Place in the refrigerator to chill. When sufficiently chilled, transfer to an ice cream freezer and freeze according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Serve with some blackberries or with the remaining puree sweetened to taste.

Makes about 2 quarts

Tagged as: gelato, wild blackberries

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My vegetable garden in July

by Rosetta on July 31, 2009 · 3 comments

in the Garden

Since my last garden update in June a lot has happened in my garden. I have enjoyed fresh strawberries, zucchini, cucumbers, romano beans and baby lettuce every day, and lots of wonderful figs.

We have a small patch of strawberries that provide us with the best fruit all summer long; we manage to pick a basket every other day!

Look how wonderful they are below, fully ripe and sweet and juicy. Note the shape and size carefully so that you can buy strawberries that look just like them at a farmers’ market. Whatever you do, don’t buy those giant, perfectly shaped strawberries.

July is also the month when we start harvesting and preserving some of the garden bounty.

We picked our sweet Italian red onions (cipolle di Tropea) and as you see from the picture below we braid them and hang them from my apple tree, which is how we always kept onions in Calabria. This way, they stay in the shade and don’t sprout. Not that I have to worry about their sprouting–they don’t last past the summer months, because they make for great eating.

My 14-year-old son harvested his potato patch and was very proud of the results; from just a few cuttings he managed to pick 15 pounds. He has just planted another crop, this time of Yukon gold, to see if he can produce two crops in one year. I will let you know how his experiment turns out.

We also harvested my oregano patch. Right after it is in full flower we cut it down to the base.

We tie the long stems in bunches with kitchen string and hang the bunches upside down to let it dry in a shady spot in the garden. This is the oregano that I’ll use for the rest of the year for dishes that require it dried. But I always keep a small patch of fresh oregano in the yard; luckily here in California I am able to have fresh herbs all year round.

I also harvested lots of basil and made my first batch of pesto. I freeze it and put it away for the winter months.

The tomatoes are growing up their trellis. They are almost at the top of the poles and all the branches are loaded with tomatoes. In about a month I will have the juiciest, sweetest tomatoes.

The Italian eggplants are just starting now…

…as well as the sweet Italian peppers.

For the next update I will have a garden full of eggplants, tomatoes, romano beans, and hot and sweet peppers. August and September are the best time of year, loaded as they are with all my favorite vegetables.

Tagged as: eggplant, oregano, peppers, potatoes, red onions, romano beans, strawberries, Tropea onions

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Eggplant: Queen of Vegetables

by Rosetta on August 9, 2009 · 0 comments

in the Garden

Growing up in Calabria spoils you for eggplant. The soil and hot weather are ideal there for it, but luckily we have similar weather here in California and I can grow them in my garden. After tomatoes, eggplant takes the top spot in vegetables in Calabria, and there are hundreds of ways of fixing it. I could probably write an entire cookbook on it. My favorite snack as a little girl during the winter was preserved eggplant, or melanzane sott’olio: sliced, cooked with vinegar, dried out for a day and then packed in jars with garlic, hot peppers, wild fennel and olive oil. It is still one of my favorite vegetables.

You can buy seeds from GrowItalian of the “Violetta Lunga” and “Gitana” varieties, which are like the eggplant found in Calabrian gardens; I plant these because they are hard to find in the farmers’ markets. And the two varieties I usually buy are the “black beauty” or “globe” type, and the Filipino type. The picture below shows all three varieties. The Filipino is the light greenish purple one.

When you buy eggplant, look for firm, heavy ones free from blemishes, with a uniformly dark, rich purple color. The skin should be taut and shiny, not wrinkled or flabby. The fuzzy caps and stems should be green. As eggplant mature on the vine they develop seeds and their shiny deep purple color starts to fade. Eggplant are best eaten the day they are picked, but if you keep them, make sure it’s only for a couple of days, and keep them in a cool but not cold area; they go bad quickly in a refrigerator. If you notice black seeds inside the eggplant when you cut it open, throw it away; it has been sitting around too long and will be bitter.

Eggplant are naturally sweet when fresh, and do not need to be salted for a long time to remove bitterness. I typically salt and brush the slices with oil and immediately grill or bake them. The only time to keep eggplant under salt would be if you are frying it; then the salt will prevent too much oil being absorbed.

One of my students once dared me to teach a whole class using only eggplant. So, I created a menu using only eggplant from appetizer to dessert, and it was such a hit that I have been repeating the class every year during the month of August. I vary the menu for every class–except the dessert!

For instance, here is the menu that we prepared at the eggplant class last Friday:

Polpette di melanzane (eggplant fritters) for the appetizer.

Involtini di melanzane con ripieno di pasta (eggplant rolls filled with spaghetti, caciocavallo cheese and topped with tomato sauce and ricotta affumicata or smoked ricotta) for the first course.

Melanzane ripiene (eggplant stuffed and baked with ground pork, breadcrumbs and pecorino cheese) for the second course.

Insalata di melanzane (strips of cooked eggplant tossed with olive oil, garlic, peperoncino, mint and vinegar) as a salad.

Melanzane al cioccolato (eggplant layered and filled with ricotta and chocolate) for dessert.

Eggplant in a dessert?! Yep! It is not a Calabrian dish, but comes from the Amalfi area of Campania, and its ingredients vary from town to town. I created my own version similar to the one from the town of Maiori. It’s kind of like the dessert version of eggplant parmigiana, with sweet ricotta substituting for the cheese and chocolate sauce in place of the tomato sauce. This dish is always the piece de resistance in the class. The only way you can believe that you’re eating eggplant is if you make it yourself.

For the rest of the month of August I will share three eggplant recipes from the class. And since I know you can’t wait to try it, I will start with the steps of how to make this unique and delicious dessert. To whet your appetite, see below!

Tagged as: eggplant, melanzana

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Eggplant Dessert – Melanzane al cioccolato

by Rosetta on August 16, 2009 · 3 comments

in Recipes

As I promised you in the last post here is the recipe for the eggplant dessert that is prepared during August in towns along the Amalfi Coast. I’ll show you what all the steps look like, along with some commentary. The actual recipe will be below the photos.

First, the ingredients. Two eggplants, peeled and sliced thinly, and coated with flour:

A mixture of sugar, cinnamon and lemon zest will be used to coat the fried slices:

For the filling, you’ll need homemade or good store-bought ricotta:

Amaretti cookies, toasted almonds and candied orange peel complete the filling:

The first layer of eggplant will cover the bottom of the baking dish and also be draped over its sides. So, after you add the first layer of sweetened ricotta and chocolate sauce, the results should look like this:

You will be topping the third layer of filling with more eggplant, and then covering the whole dish with the overhanging slices. It should look like a package:

Here is a cross section after it’s been baked:

Give it a try…

… and let me know what you think!

Melanzane al Cioccolato

(Eggplant layered and filled with ricotta and chocolate)

This recipe, as is prepared in the town of Maiori, near Amalfi, is a slight variation from the one more widely found, in that it contains ricotta in the filling. To make the original version, omit the ricotta and egg from the filling and refrigerate to set, without baking. Just serve, accompanied with a small glass of iced limoncello.

2 eggplants, about one pound each

Flour for coating the eggplant

1 cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Grated peel of two lemons

Chocolate Sauce (see below for the recipe)

Filling

1 cup ricotta, passed through an extra-fine strainer

1/4 cup sugar

1 ounce amaretti cookies, crushed

2 ounces whole blanched almonds, toasted and finely chopped

1 ounce candied orange peel, chopped

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Butter and sugar for coating baking dish

1. In a large, shallow dish, mix the cup of sugar, cinnamon and lemon peel and set aside.

2. Peel and thinly slice the eggplants lengthwise, about ¼ inch thick. Heat enough olive oil in a 10-inch skillet to come 1/2 inch up the sides of the pan.

3. Lightly coat the eggplant slices in flour and fry until golden on both sides. Remove and place on a platter lined with paper towels. Continue frying until all the eggplant slices have been cooked.

4. While still warm, dip each slice of eggplant in the flavored sugar and press to coat both sides. Set aside until ready to assemble.

5. Make the chocolate sauce (see attached recipe).

6. In a bowl, combine the ricotta, ¼ cup sugar, amaretti cookies, chopped almonds and candied orange peel in a bowl. Blend in the eggs and set aside.

7. To Assemble: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a baking dish (9 x 9 x 2 inches) and coat with granulated sugar. Line the bottom and sides of the baking dish with slices of eggplant, arranging them so there are eggplant slices draping over the sides of the dish. Spread one third of the ricotta filling over the eggplant, and top the ricotta filling with a light layer of chocolate sauce. Without draping any eggplant over the sides this time, repeat the layering of eggplant, ricotta filling and chocolate sauce two more times, so you have three layers of each. Finish the dessert by topping with a fourth, and final layer of eggplant and fold the eggplant draped over the sides of the dish back over the dessert to close it like a package.

8. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, placing a cookie sheet underneath the baking dish to catch any sugar syrup that bubbles over. Remove the baking dish from the oven and allow it to cool.

When the dessert has cooled, it can be sliced and served with additional chocolate sauce or powdered sugar.

This dessert can also be made using individual ramekins following the same layering process as described above, spreading the ricotta filling to about ¼ inch thick. Turn the dessert out of the ramekin before serving.

Serves 12.

And here is the recipe for the chocolate sauce.

Chocolate Sauce

8 ounces good quality bittersweet chocolate, cut in small pieces

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1. Place the chopped chocolate in a small bowl.

2. Place the heavy whipping cream in a small pot and bring it just to a boil. Remove from the heat and pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate. Let set for two minutes without stirring, then gently stir until the chocolate is melted and smooth. Let the sauce cool until it reaches the desired thickness and consistency.

Tagged as: eggplant, melanzane al cioccolato

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Eggplant Recipe #2: Involtini (rolls)

by Rosetta on August 23, 2009 · 0 comments

in Recipes

Here is the second recipe I promised you from my August cooking class menu, the one that uses eggplant from appetizer to dessert. This dish is a clever way to combine eggplant, pasta, and cheese in a beautiful presentation. It was supposed to be in my cookbook, but I already had too many recipes, so you’re in luck.

The recipe calls for frying the eggplant slices, which is how I had it in Calabria, but for the class I decided to grill them instead, and I’ve grown to like it better that way. You can also bake the slices, if you prefer. For this dish, I use large globe eggplant. Here is what the slices look like on the grill:

Once they are done you place on each eggplant slice some spaghetti that has been lightly tossed with tomato sauce, and then you top it with a piece of cheese:

Roll the eggplant slice around the pasta and cheese. You now officially have an involtino:

Then you finish with some more tomato sauce and grated cheese, such as ricotta affumicata (ricotta that has been smoked) or grated pecorino. This is what the involtini look like in the baking dish:

And here they are, ready to eat. Yummy!

Here is the recipe:

INVOLTINI DI MELANZANE RIPIENI DI PASTA

Eggplant rolls filled with pasta, mozzarella and tomato sauce

In Calabria, caciocavallo cheese or provola is typically used in place of mozzarella, for their stronger flavor. The eggplant can also be grilled as a light alternative to fried.

Serves 8

2 eggplants (1 pound each)

2 teaspoons kosher salt

Olive oil for frying

3 cups of fresh tomato sauce

1/2 pound of spaghetti

20 fresh basil leaves, chopped

8 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup freshly grated pecorino crotonese or ricotta salata

1. Slice the eggplants lengthwise into 3/8-inch thick slices. You should get 8 slices from each eggplant. Lightly sprinkle the slices with the salt on both sides and set aside. Heat enough olive oil in a 10-inch skillet to come 1/2 inch up the side of the pan.

2. Pat the eggplant slices on both sides with a paper towel, drying thoroughly.

3. When the oil is hot enough to sizzle, add a few slices of the eggplant and fry until soft and golden on both sides. With a slotted spoon, transfer the cooked eggplant to a plate lined with paper towels. Add the remaining eggplant to the skillet and fry as before. Set aside the cooked eggplant.

4. Prepare the tomato sauce using your favorite recipe.

5. Bring the water for the pasta to a boil, add salt to taste, and cook the pasta until al dente, slightly undercooked, as it will continue to cook in the oven.

6. When the pasta is ready, drain, and toss with half of the tomato sauce and half of chopped basil, stirring until the pasta is well coated.

7. Preheat the oven to 400 F.

8. Coat the bottom of a baking dish with a thin layer of tomato sauce. On a plate or a cutting board lay flat a slice of the cooked eggplant. Place a few strands of spaghetti on top of the eggplant slice; the strands should drape over the slice on both sides. Add a slice of cheese over the pasta and make a roll of the eggplant slice around the pasta and cheese. Place the roll in the baking dish, making sure each roll sits snugly next to its neighbor. When all the rolls are in the baking dish pour a little of the sauce over them and place another slice of cheese on top of each roll. Dot the top of each roll with a little more sauce, sprinkle the remaining basil, and dust with grated pecorino or grated ricotta salata.

9. Bake for 20 minutes until the cheese melts and forms a light, golden crust.

10. Serve carefully with a spatula so that each involtino doesn’t unroll.

Tagged as: caciocavallo, eggplant, melanzane, mozzarella, pecorino, ricotta salata

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Eggplant recipe #3: Stuffed and baked

by Rosetta on August 28, 2009 · 2 comments

in Recipes

In Calabria, eggplant is stuffed with different kinds of filling and cooked in different ways. If you’re serving it as an appetizer or side dish, you would use a simple filling. But a hearty filling, like the recipe below that we prepared in my last class, makes a substantial main dish. Most cooks fry or blanch the eggplant shells before stuffing them, baking the filled shells for only about 20 minutes. Because this recipe uses a filling with raw meat, and therefore requires a longer cooking time, it’s not necessary to cook the shells before stuffing them.

I typically use the small Italian eggplant variety when I make this recipe, but very small Globe variety eggplant will work as well.

Here is the cooked pulp:

Here are the rest of the ingredients that will go into the filling:

And this is what the eggplant look like after they are filled:

Right before you put them in the oven:

And here they are, ready to eat:

Enjoy!

Melanzane ripiene

(Baked stuffed eggplant)

8 small Italian eggplants

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced

1 pound ground pork

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs (see note below for the recipe)

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1/4 cup grated pecorino cheese

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Fresh ground pepper to taste

3/4 cup water

2 cups simple tomato sauce

Grated pecorino cheese for topping eggplants

1. Cut the eggplants in half lengthwise. Remove the pulp, leaving the shell about a quarter inch thick. Be careful not to tear the sides or bottom. Chop the eggplant pulp finely and set aside.

2. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the chopped eggplant pulp, garlic and parsley. Sauté for a few minutes until the eggplant pulp is tender.

3. Remove from the heat and add the ground pork, breadcrumbs, basil, pecorino cheese, and egg. Add the water and mix all gently by hand. Add the teaspoon of salt and season with pepper to taste.

4. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

5. Lightly salt the eggplant shells and fill them with the stuffing. Spoon a layer of tomato sauce in a baking dish and place the stuffed eggplants alongside each other on top of the sauce. Spoon a little more tomato sauce over the eggplant and sprinkle with pecorino cheese.

6. Loosely cover the baking dish with foil, and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes. The eggplant can be served hot or at room temperature.

Serves 8

For the breadcrumbs:

How to Make Fresh Breadcrumbs

Use a dense, day-old Italian or French loaf. Do not remove the crusts. Cut the bread into 1-inch cubes and process them in a blender, filling it no more than halfway, until they are as fine as possible. You can freeze the leftover breadcrumbs for future use.

Tagged as: eggplant, melanzane

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My vegetable garden at the end of August

by Rosetta on September 8, 2009 · 13 comments

in the Garden

In the month of August I’ve been able to enjoy eating romano beans, cucumbers, zucchini and eggplants, all from my own garden. Even my apple trees and my two grapevines are loaded with fruit. But because August was unusually cool here in the Bay area, some of the vegetables, like the tomatoes, didn’t start ripening until the end of the month, which you can see in the photo below. They’re growing on two trellis rows, and are so high that we can no longer tie them down–they are now taller than we are.

The majority of the tomatoes are the San Marzano variety. We brought the seeds from Calabria with us in the 70s when we moved to the Bay Area and my parents have always kept the seeds from year to year, so you are looking at real heirloom tomatoes! I will write a post soon on how to harvest the seeds so that you don’t need to buy them every year.

There are three other tomato varieties I planted along with the San Marzano: an early girl variety, a cuore di bue, or “ox heart”, and sweet 100s, which are cherry tomatoes.

The early girls:

Cuore di bue tomatoes, this one with a cute little horn:

Cherry tomatoes:

My pepper plants are also abundant. We have two varieties: sweet Italian peppers that we eat fresh as they mature in the next few months, and the peppers of Senise that we dry and make into peperoni cruschi, or grind into sweet pepper powder.

Sweet Italian peppers:

Peperoni di Senise:

Peperoncini (hot Calabrian peppers)

When I tell my students that I buy no vegetables during the summer, I can about 80 quarts of tomatoes, and I still have enough produce to use in the cooking classes they attend, they think that I have acres of land. But the length of my back yard is only 50 feet, and the garden is six feet wide. There are also three other sections 20 feet long and three feet wide. We extend the garden a bit by using large pots on the patio, which hold basil, hot peppers, strawberries and even an extra cherry tomato plant that I had no other place to put.

So how does it produce so much? It’s the care and work that my dad puts into it that makes it so abundant.

Here are two pictures that give you a view of my garden, the left side and right side where you can see the pots on the patio. We have another section on the side of the house with a lettuce bed, my zucchini plants, my citrus trees, and a nespolo (loquat) tree.

Here is the left side of my garden:

Here is the right side:

Not bad for an urban metropolis like Oakland!

Tagged as: cuore di bue, ox heart tomatoes, peperoncini, peperoni di senise, San Marzano tomatoes

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The first tomato harvest of the season

by Rosetta on September 15, 2009 · 5 comments

in the Garden

I am so happy with the tomato harvest that I want to share some of the photos of it. I will be using the tomatoes this Friday for my cooking class, “A Tomato Dinner from My Garden” and my students will have a chance to taste every variety that I grow. The rest of the tomatoes my mother and I will can on Saturday.

Here is a shot of my favorite tomato this year: “the little horned one”, there on the vine in the lower left corner, ripe and ready to be picked.

The plant is of the “cuore di bue” or “ox heart” variety that my dad planted along with the San Marzanos and it produced more tomatoes that I thought it would. I didn’t want to pick it, because it was so cute, but it finally ended up in the box along with its mates.

Here is my mom picking the San Marzanos. Look how many tomatoes each cluster produces.

I made lots of trips from the garden to the house yesterday; I think I probably picked about 100 pounds of tomatoes!

My mom likes to keep them on a flat surface, not in a box, until we are ready to can them. We usually keep the tomatoes in my basement for four or five days. The temperature is cool there and this will maximize their sugar content and turn them a deep red.

Take a look at the table covered with them all and then, if you really want to be impressed, check my previous post to see the size of my garden.

Can you believe how many tomatoes you can grow in a small area? The next harvests will be somewhat smaller, but I will end up canning more than 80 jars for the season and still have plenty to eat every day, as well as enough to bring to my cooking classes.

I have been picking cherry tomatoes for weeks on a daily basis, and from only two plants, but I still pick more than I’m able to eat raw everyday…

… so I roast the ones I can’t keep up with, and then add them to dishes during the days following. You can keep roasted tomatoes in the refrigerator for up to a week. They are very easy to prepare. Just place them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper, sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Roast them at 300 degrees for a couple of hours until they are wrinkled and look like this:

The roasting concentrates their flavors by caramelizing the natural sugars that they taste like candy. They are good to place on top of a bruschetta with ricotta, or toss with olive oil, garlic and lots of fresh basil in some pasta. They are also tasty on top of pizza, along with other roasted vegetables.

I will continue this post next week with picture of my canning day.

Tagged as: cherry tomatoes, ox heart tomatoes, San Marzano tomatoes, tomatoes

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Canning Tomatoes: the entire process

by Rosetta on September 28, 2009 · 3 comments

in the Garden

The detailed recipe for canning tomatoes will appear in my upcoming book, My Calabria, but I think you will get a good idea of what is involved by just looking at all the photos below.

We picked over 100 pounds of tomatoes in the first harvest and ended up canning 32 jars, not counting the tomatoes I brought to my cooking class. It takes on average 2.5 to 3 pounds of tomatoes to fill a quart jar. The canning took only three hours, with my husband, my son, and my mother all helping out.

Cleanliness is extremely important when canning. The first step is to clean the tomatoes well and make sure your jars are also clean.

We put the tomatoes in boiling water for about 30 seconds:

and quickly chill them in ice water:

Once they are cooled the skin is peeled:

Each tomato is then cut in half:

The seeds and core are removed:

The tomatoes are then placed in colanders to drain until we have enough tomatoes ready to be packed in jars. Here my mom is packing them:

Then she is pushing them tightly with a wooden spoon to remove all the air and gaps:

Once packed and sealed the jars go in a water bath, where they are boiled for one hour.

Here is the finished product to be put away for the winter months, so that throughout the year we can enjoy the taste of fresh tomatoes. There is nothing like it!

Since last week, I have picked even more tomatoes in a second harvest and will be canning about 25 more jars tomorrow.

Tagged as: canning tomatoes, San Marzano tomatoes, tomatoes

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How to save tomato seeds

by Rosetta on October 6, 2009 · 0 comments

in the Garden

I have had some students ask me how to save tomato seeds for next year’s planting. Last week when my mom was collecting tomato seeds I took a couple of pictures so you can see how she does it. It is actually a very easy task.

My mom has saved our tomatoes seeds ever since we moved to the Bay Area from Calabria in the 70s. We still grow the same San Marzano variety that we brought with us. Every year she picks the best-looking tomatoes from which to harvest the seeds.

Cut a ripe tomato in half and using only your fingers remove the seeds with the gelatinous stuff around them and place them in a fine mesh strainer.

Rinse the seeds under running water. Move them around to remove any of the gel that might still be clinging to the seeds.

Once the seeds are clean place them on thick paper, like a grocery bag or a paper plate.

Spread them evenly and make sure they are all in one layer.

Allow them to dry thoroughly, keeping them away from direct sun. Three or four days should do it, although my mom usually lets them dry for a week. The seeds will stick to the paper, so carefully loosen them.

You should store the seeds in an air-tight container, like a small glass jar or paper bag or even a plastic 35-mm film container. Make sure you put the containers in a cool, dry place. Also, remember to label and date your seeds so that you will have them ready for next spring’s planting.

Tagged as: tomato seeds

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How to make mosto cotto

by Rosetta on October 9, 2009 · 8 comments

in Recipes, regional specialties

This past weekend we had our annual wine-making day. We buy Zinfandel grapes from a farmer (no, we don’t grow our own grapes here in the Bay Area) and then crush them in my dad’s basement, which is where he makes and stores wine, and cures salumi.

My entire family works for a couple of hours until all the grapes are crushed. I then steal some of the juice to make mosto cotto.

The ancient Greeks in Calabria were the ones who began cooking grape juice and using it as a sweetener. In fact the original mostaccioli cookies were made with flour and mosto cotto. People in Calabria would even drizzle it on top of freshly fallen snow for a scirobetta. It is very sweet, with a concentrated grape flavor and a taste of caramel. Nowadays it has been replaced with honey. In other regions of Italy mosto cotto is also known as sapa.

There are many traditional desserts still made in Calabria that use mosto cotto, most of them at Christmas time. People use it to sweeten cuccia, a porridge-like dessert of cooked wheat berries for Santa Lucia Day, December 13. It is also used in the filling of petrali, cookies filled with dried figs and nuts, as well as a tossing for turdilli, a sweet fried dough.

I think it’s wonderful to drizzle on top of pecorino cheese and pears, or ice cream, or homemade ricotta. You can use it wherever you would use a dark honey.

To make mosto cotto you must buy wine grapes that are high in sugar, which means that ordinary table grapes won’t work. After crushing them, you get unfiltered grape juice:

You can see the seeds and skins still in the juice. After you filter it, bring the juice to a boil in a pot, then skim it:

Slowly cook it until it is reduced by 2/3 the original volume.

This will take close to 2 hours. Watch it carefully towards the end so you don’t over-reduce it or burn it. It should have the thickness of maple syrup:

Cool the syrup, strain it through a fine-mesh sieve, and decant it into clean bottles with a cork or clasp seal. Store it in a cool, dark pantry or refrigerate. It will keep for at least a year.

I hope that some of you who have access to wine grapes will try this out; making it has become a lost art, even in Calabria.

Tagged as: cuccia, mostaccioli cookies, mosto cotto, petrali, Sapa, turdilli, wine grapes, Zinfandel grapes

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Peppers and more peppers

by Rosetta on October 19, 2009 · 10 comments

in the Garden

We harvested lots of peppers during the months of September and October!

I have the same three varieties in my garden that we always grew in Calabria: sweet Italian peppers, peperoni di Senise and a couple of corno di toro yellow peppers. The peperoni di Senise are ideal for drying, as they have a thin skin and dry quicker than the Italian sweet peppers. Because September in the Bay Area is also our Indian summer, we are able to dry them outside.

Here are some pictures of my dad stringing all the peppers from our harvest:

He hangs them out in the open until they are fully red and dried. This can take up to a month or so, depending on the weather.

Each string of peppers is called a ristra:

And this is what the peperoni di Senise look like when they are completely dried:

We grind up these peppers into pepe rosso, a mild, sweet paprika-like powder, that we use in making Calabrian sausage. The ones that we don’t grind we keep whole and use during the winter months in many braised dishes. There is a winter snack made in my town of Verbicaro made with these dried peppers, called pipi arrusckuati in my dialect and peperoni cruschi in Italian. They’re like potato chips, but made with peppers instead. I will tell you more about this snack when I make them during the upcoming winter months.

Although some of the sweet Italian peppers end up dried, we use most of them fresh in various dishes. One of my favorite ways to eat sweet Italian peppers is to remove the stem and seeds, put an anchovy inside, and pan fry them whole in olive oil. We also use them fresh in frittate, pan fried with potatoes or with eggplants and tomatoes, stuffed and baked, grilled and peeled with olive oil and garlic, tossed with pasta–you name it, we make it.

In the next post I will include a recipe that you can prepare with red and yellow bell peppers, which are more readily available in this country. The recipe will be one that didn’t make it in my cookbook. For all the other pepper recipes that I’ve mentioned above you will need to wait until next fall, when my cookbook, My Calabria, will be published.

Tagged as: corno di toro peppers, pepe rosso, peperoni cruschi, peperoni di senise, ristra, sweet italian peppers

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Roasted peppers Casa Janca Style

by Rosetta on October 25, 2009 · 3 comments

in Recipes

Here is my newest favorite pepper recipe that escaped my mom’s repertoire. I learned this recipe just last year when I was staying at Casa Janca, a rustic agriturismo near the fishing village of Pizzo, just northeast of Tropea. The owner, Rita Callipo, is a highly regarded cook that runs a restaurant out of her home. Eating there is like eating at my aunt’s house. She makes the best Calabrian dishes, and always bases her meals on what she finds that day at the market. Every time I am there I barge into the kitchen to see what she is cooking. I have included a few of her recipes in my book, My Calabria, but this one was too late to submit, so you can try it out now in anticipation of additional delicious recipes when the book is released next year.

I watched her make this dish; she just sprinkled “a little of this and a little of that” of what was available in her kitchen. I took notes so that I could duplicate it at home and it has become a favorite at our house. It’s very easy to prepare and has all the flavors of Calabria.

Peperoni ripieni della Casa Janca

(Roasted peppers Casa Janca style)

1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs (see note below)

1/4 cup grated pecorino cheese

1 clove of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons of fresh parsley, finely chopped

4 large red or yellow bell peppers

6 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt

1 tablespoon capers, chopped if using large capers

6 anchovy fillets cut in small pieces

18-20 small cherry tomatoes, cut in half or quarter if large

In a small bowl, mix the breadcrumbs, pecorino cheese, garlic and parsley.

Cut the peppers in half lengthwise. Remove the stem and seeds.

Coat a 9×13 baking dish with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and place the peppers cut side up. Sprinkle ¼ teaspoon of salt evenly over all the peppers. Add chopped capers, anchovy pieces, chopped tomatoes and a nice coating of the breadcrumb mixture inside each pepper.

Drizzle generously with the remaining four tablespoons of olive oil and bake at 400 degrees F for 45 minutes or so, until the peppers are soft and fully roasted.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Serves 4

Note: to make fresh breadcrumbs use day-old bread (good Italian or French loaf), cut it up in cubes and place it in a blender. Puree until you have fine, even breadcrumbs.

Tagged as: Casa Janca, Pizzo, Rita Callipo, Roasted peppers

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My garden in November

by Rosetta on November 2, 2009 · 0 comments

in the Garden

I received an e-mail from a friend the other day asking me for advice on what she should plant for the winter months. This request prompted me to write about what is in my garden at this time of the year. It is fall in California but the days are still warm and some of my summer vegetables are still going strong; I am still picking tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. Take a look at these beautiful corno di toro peppers that will be ready to be picked as soon as they get fully yellow.

If the weather holds up I will have tomatoes on my vines until December.

The garden is also loaded with fall fruits. I have wonderful apples, of the golden delicious and fuji varieties, and lots of fuyu persimmons, which are almost ready.

Here is a fruit you would not expect to find on a tree during the month of November!

Can you believe it? A peach tree that doesn’t mature until November! This is a special peach tree that made its way from Calabria. We call them pesche sanguine, which means “blood peaches,” and the color is just like that of a blood orange on the inside. I peeled a couple so you could see the intensity of the red color.

They are so good, both sweet and tart. What a treat to have this time of the year!

In the past week my parents planted fennel, sweet red onions of Tropea, and cavolo broccolo, also known as spigariello, a cross between a broccoli rape and cavolo nero (Italian kale). As it grows I will show you more pictures. The peas, fava beans and broccoli rape have already sprouted. Here are some pictures of the baby plants.

My lettuce bed is just coming up and my arugula bed is growing quickly enough to give me baby arugula on a daily basis.

The vegetables that we plant in the fall are: peas, fava beans, fennel, red onions, cavolo broccolo, broccoli rape; and soon we will plant more escarole and chicory.

Tagged as: arugula, blood peaches, cavolo broccolo, corno di toro, fennel, Fuji apples, fuyu persimmon, Golden delicious apples, Pesche sanguine, spigariello

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A Feast of Wild mushrooms

by Rosetta on November 11, 2009 · 0 comments

in Foraging, Recipes

When I was growing up in Calabria my family never purchased cultivated mushrooms from the supermarket. My parents mastered the secrets of mushroom hunting at an early age. They knew where to look for them and which ones were edible and which were not. We foraged for porcini, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms and many other varieties. Although we live in the San Francisco Bay Area now, my father still manages to find the same mushrooms.

In Calabria we cooked wild mushrooms in many different ways. We grilled them, baked them with a sprinkling of fresh breadcrumbs and herbs, layered them with sliced potatoes, cooked them with tomatoes, and preserved them in oil. I can still taste my grandmother’s wild porcini dish; she would slice them thickly and quickly sauté them with olive oil, garlic and parsley. It is still one of my favorite ways to cook wild mushrooms; I will give you a variation of this recipe below.

A couple of years ago a student asked me to teach a cooking class based entirely on wild mushrooms. The class was so successful that I now offer the class annually at the beginning of November called “A Feast of Wild Mushrooms”. In this class I bring my favorites: porcini, chanterelles, and oyster mushrooms. Here is a basket that I brought to class last week filled with these three types:

This is the only time of the year that they are available at the market, so try them now. For my all-mushroom class I like to purchase them at Monterey Market in Berkeley. They have an extensive selection of mushrooms foraged in California and Oregon.

And please please PLEASE–don’t venture out to pick mushrooms unless you are trained to identify them or are with a mycologist. Some wild mushrooms are poisonous and can lead to severe illness or death.

Here are the porcini mushrooms:

…and some beautiful chanterelles:

…and wild oyster mushrooms that my dad foraged last week!

My cooking class features wild mushrooms from appetizer to dessert. Well, not quite. The dessert just looks like a truffle; but it is a dessert specialty of Calabria called “tartufo di Pizzo”. You will have to wait for the recipe for when my cook book comes out next year. In the meantime, I will share with you, the recipe for an appetizer from the class, that I had in Rome many years ago at a “bruschetteria”, a restaurant where all they serve are large bruschettas and salads. The “appetizer” was an over-sized bruschetta called a “crostone” topped with melted taleggio cheese and mushrooms. I created my own version by topping a bruschetta with wild mushrooms cooked the way my grandmother used to. With this simple technique you can create many dishes. You can toss the sauteed mushrooms in pasta or risotto, or eat them as a side dish with grilled meats.

To make the appetizer as a crostone I like to use Acme Bread pain au levain or as a bruschetta their Italian loaf . As a crostone it is great for a lunch with a nice salad of winter greens.

Brush the bread generously with olive oil and grill or broil on both sides.

Rub with garlic and top each toast with a slice of Taleggio:

Melt the cheese in the oven

Saute the wild mushrooms

and top the crostone with them:

Give it a try and enjoy it as an appetizer or as a light vegetarian meal!

Crostone con i Funghi

Grilled Bread with Sautéed Wild Mushrooms and Taleggio Cheese

Four 3/4-inch-thick slices crusty Italian bread
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic: 1 cut in half, 3 grated on Microplane or finely minced
4 ounces Taleggio, cut into four 1/8-inch-thick slices
1 pound assorted fresh wild mushrooms (chanterelles, porcini, shiitake, oyster) cleaned and cut into 1/4-inch slices
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preheat a charcoal, gas, or stovetop grill to high heat or preheat broiler with an oven rack positioned about 6 inches below the heat source.

Generously brush both sides of bread with about 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Grill until toasted with a little color on both sides. Transfer to a baking sheet and rub both sides of toast with the cut garlic. Discard garlic. Top each toast with Taleggio and set aside.

Heat the remaining olive oil in a 12-inch skillet over high heat. When oil is hot enough to sizzle a mushroom, add mushrooms and salt. Don’t stir until steam starts rising from sides of pan. Sprinkle with grated/minced garlic and sauté quickly, stirring frequently, just until mushrooms soften, about 3 minutes. Add parsley, stir, and taste for seasoning–add more salt, if necessary. Set aside. (Recipe can be made ahead up to this point.)

Just before serving, place toast under broiler just until cheese melts. Transfer to individual dinner plates, top with mushrooms, and serve immediately with a knife and fork.

Serves 4

Tagged as: chanterelles, crostone, oyster mushrooms, porcini, tartufo di Pizzo, wild mushrooms

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Zucca (Winter squash): My favorite autumn vegetable

by Rosetta on November 19, 2009 · 2 comments

in Recipes

This is the time of the year when I have to buy some vegetables at the market. (My family lives off what we grow in our backyard until November.) All the summer vegetables are winding down in my garden, and I can start buying my favorite fall vegetable, butternut squash.

The easiest way to use butternut squash is to peel it, cut it in small cubes, and toss with salt, pepper and olive oil. Then roast the cubes at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes until soft.

How do I love butternut squash? Let me count the ways: tossed in pasta or farro, added to a risotto, as a filling for stuffed pasta, tossed with arugula for a salad, pureed as side dish, or on top of pizza. Another of my favorite ways to use it is to make a simple roasted butternut squash soup for Thanksgiving. I will share this recipe with you next week in time for you to make it for the holidays.

Two of my most favorite methods of preparing butternut squash are the Calabrian, as zucca con la menta, and the Sicilian, as zucca in agrodolce. They can be served as a side dish or part of an appetizer buffet. I can’t give you the recipe for the Calabrian version word for word as it will be included in my upcoming cookbook, but I can show you with pictures and, it being a simple dish, you can make it right now rather than wait until next year!

Peel the butternut squash, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds from the lower half, and slice it into ¼ inch slices. You will get half moon slices from the upper section and C shapes from the lower section.

The slices are fried in olive oil until golden.

As you fry them, place them on a platter and sprinkle them with salt. Drizzle with red wine vinegar, and add some sliced garlic and fresh mint. Continue this layering process until done. Drizzle with additional olive oil if it seems dry. Let it marinate for at least a couple of hours.

If you want to make the Sicilian version, zucca in agrodolce, meaning a dish that is sweet and sour, which my mother-in-law makes, do the same layering processing by adding the garlic and the mint, but skip the vinegar on each layer and do the following instead: keep two tablespoon of olive oil in the pan in which you fried the squash, and add 1/3 cup of red wine vinegar and three tablespoons of sugar. Heat until the sugar is dissolved. Pour over the fried pumpkin slices.

Tagged as: butternut squash, zucca con la menta, zucca in agrodolce

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Zuppa di Zucca (Roasted Butternut Squash Soup)

by Rosetta on November 24, 2009 · 1 comment

in Recipes

As I promised you last week, here is my recipe for butternut squash soup, a dish that always shows up on our table on Thanksgiving day. It is extremely simple to make because it has only a few ingredients. If you can, make your own chicken or vegetable broth for it; it will make a world of a difference in the taste.

Cut the butternut squash in large chunks, removing the seeds. Place the cut-up pieces in a baking dish along with an unpeeled onion cut in half vertically and an unpeeled head of garlic, with its top cut off to expose the cloves.

Sprinkle with some fresh thyme and drizzle with olive oil

Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake at 400 for 1 hour or more until soft.

Once cool, using a spoon remove the squash pulp from skin and place in a food processor with the onion (remove outer skin) and squeeze as many garlic cloves as you like into the bowl.

Puree until smooth.

Place in a pot and thin it out with 2 cups of chicken or vegetable broth.

Sprinkle with a little bit of chopped parsley; or you can fry a few sage leaves and place them on top of the soup.

Enjoy a Happy Thanksgiving!

Zuppa di Zucca

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

2 pounds butternut squash, unpeeled, seeds removed, cut into 10 pieces

1 unpeeled garlic head

1 large onion, unpeeled cut in half, vertically

3 tablespoons olive oil

8 fresh thyme sprigs

2 cups (or more) chicken broth or vegetable broth

Minced fresh parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400F. Cut 1/3 inch off the top of the garlic head, exposing the cloves. Arrange the garlic, squash and onion cut side up in large baking dish. Drizzle the vegetables with olive oil. Scatter the thyme over the vegetables.

Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake until the squash is tender when pierced with a knife, about 1 hour. Uncover the vegetables and cool for 10 minutes.

Scrape the squash from the skin into the processor work bowl. Peel outer layers and trim root end from onion halves. Add onion to processor. Separate 6 garlic cloves from head and squeeze the garlic in the bowl. Puree the vegetables until smooth. Add more roasted garlic if desired.

Transfer the puree to heavy large pot. Wisk in 2 cups of chicken broth. Stir over medium heat until heated through, adding more broth if thinner consistency is desired.

Season with salt and pepper.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with parsley. You can serve the soup with crostini (toasted bread) spread with the remaining roasted garlic.

Serves 6

Tagged as: butternut squash, zucca

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Peperoni Cruschi

by Rosetta on December 8, 2009 · 2 comments

in Recipes, regional specialties

December is a month of many celebrations, both religious and secular. Often each celebration is accompanied by the serving of a particular food or dish. December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic Church, and marks the beginning of the Christmas holiday season and its wonderful dishes in Calabria. My town also has a non-religious celebration that day, known as “Perciavutta” day. The word “percia” means “to make a hole” and “vutta” means “barrel”; therefore “put a hole in the barrel”, and as I remember it when I lived in Calabria, Perciavutta is the day when all the townspeople that made wine that year would go to each other’s cellars and taste the new wine. Two snacks are traditionally served to the guests. One is grispelle, in which dried peppers are softened and folded in yeasted dough. I’ll be writing more about this Calabrian specialty as the holiday season continues.

The second snack that is brought to the wine cellars is peperoni cruschi, called pipi arruschkati in my dialect.

For peperoni cruschi, you need sun-dried sweet Italian peppers. Peperoni di Senise are ideal but any dried sweet Italian pepper will work. In future posts, you will see how we use these dried peppers in various dishes throughout the winter months.

To make peperoni cruschi, first remove the seeds and stems from the dried peppers and cut into pieces. Place the cut peppers with some extra virgin olive oil in a pan. Toss to coat with the olive oil and place the pan over medium heat.

Keep on stirring them with a fork as the oil in the pan warms up. As soon as they puff up and become crispy you can remove them from the heat; be careful not to burn them. Add a sprinkle of salt and you’re done. They are sweet and smoky, unbelievable good and downright addictive!

If you have bought peperoni cruschi that are packaged and exported, you’ve wasted your money. They need to be eaten as soon as they are prepared, not months later out of a cellophane bag. So plan to dry some sweet Italian peppers next summer or buy the whole dried peppers and then make this easy dish yourself.

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Traditional Christmas Desserts of Calabria

by Rosetta on December 15, 2009 · 10 comments

in Calabria, regional specialties

December is the month for desserts in Calabria. Every year the season starts on December 13 with the festa di Santa Lucia. This is the day that many cooks start the fritture, the annual frying of yeasted dough for desserts. In some towns people prepare la cuccia, which is cooked wheat berries with nuts, mosto cotto and spices. In the area of Calabria in which I grew up, Christmas meant grispelle, yeasted dough-and-potato fritters, shaped long and drizzled with honey, and cuddureddi, which are ring-shaped and served plain or with honey. Up in the Sila area, especially in the town of San Giovanni in Fiore, you find the traditional pitta ‘mpigliata, baked pastry rosettes filled with walnuts, almonds, raisins, cinnamon, cloves and drizzled with honey.

Another Christmas dessert found in the Cosenza area are the scaliddi or scalille, meaning “little ladders”. These are fritters made with a sweet dough, but shaped either to resemble a ladder, with two long parallel sides and shorter cross bars, or a long spiral made by wrapping a rope of dough around the handle of a wooden spoon and then dipping the spoon into hot oil.

My two favorite desserts at Christmas were always the cannariculi (or cicirata) and chinule. The cannariculi are a sweet fried dough shaped like gnocchi, fried and drizzled with honey:

The cicirata is the same dough but cut in the size of a chick pea and fried and coated with honey. Those of you who are Neapolitan know them as struffoli. In some towns the cannariculi are coated with mosto cotto. They are also known as turdilli or crustoli. The chinule are shaped like a ravioli or half-moon turnover and filled with a puree of chestnuts, raisins, chocolate, cocoa powder and spices and then are fried and drizzled with honey.

As you go further south in the boot you will find many other types of traditional desserts at Christmas time, like petrali, half-moon shaped cookie dough filled with dried figs, nuts, chocolate, mosto cotto and cinnamon, and then baked and covered with a glaze. And there’s the pignolata, tiny fritters covered with either a chocolate or lemon glaze.

I know that you are all waiting for the recipes for these desserts but unfortunately I can’t include them this year–all the ones that I mentioned are in my upcoming cookbook, and I am not allowed to give them out. But I promise you that I will give them to you next Christmas!

All the photos in this post were taken by Sara Remington for my book. I will add more pictures to the blog as I begin my own fritture.

Tagged as: cannariculi, chinule, Christmas desserts, cicirata, crustoli, cuccia, Cuddureddi, Grispelle, petrali, pignolata, pitta 'mpigliata, Santa Lucia, scaliddi, turdilli

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Il Cenone: A Calabrian Christmas Eve Feast

by Rosetta on December 22, 2009 · 5 comments

in regional specialties

Il cenone is the highlight of Christmastime at my house just as it is in Calabria.

A Calabrian Christmas Eve dinner usually includes thirteen dishes, and is always centered around seafood. The fish is mandatory because the Roman Catholic church made the day before Christmas (la vigiliа) a day of fasting and abstinence from meat, and some authors speculate that the thirteen dishes represented food for Jesus and his twelve disciples.

In the old days fresh fish wasn’t available in rural areas and people could afford only baccala (salt cod), stoccafisso (dried cod) and dishes like pasta with cured anchovies. These are humble dishes but are so delicious that people still continue to keep them on the menu, even with their new-found affluence. Today they also use all the fresh fish available and make great seafood extravaganzas from them.

This morning I have started soaking the baccala so it will be ready on the 24^th. On the morning of Christmas Eve I will make my run to the fish market early in the morning and depending on what I find I will create my menu on whatever fish is available. I might prepare spaghetti con vongole (pasta with clams) or spaghetti with Dungeness crab or with swordfish. Following the pasta course, we may have baccala (salted cod) either fried, braised with potatoes and dried sweet peppers, or in a salad with potatoes. I may also make a seafood salad that includes calamari, clams, and mussels, as well as lots of vegetable like cauliflower salad, broccoli rape sauted with garlic, and escarole salad.

My mom will be busy in the late afternoon making grispelle and cuddurieddi (fried leavened dough with potatoes), cannariculi and cicirata. (See my previous post for the photos.) I usually add some non-traditional desserts, such a tronchetto di Natale (chocolate Christmas log) or a semifreddo di torrone. (See below for the link to the recipe). Of course panettone is always on our table and this year as in the past two years my friend Fanny always brings a panettone made by Colavolpe in Calabria, which is studded with dried Calabrian figs and dark chocolate.

Below is a typical menu that would appear at my home on Christmas Eve. The highlighted dishes have links for recipes that were published in Sunset Magazine in December, 2007. For the others you will have to wait until my cookbook is published next fall 2010.

Wishing you all buon Natale! Happy holidays and a great 2010!

Grispelle e Cuddurieddi

Tartine al Burro con Bottarga di Pizzo (Crostini with bottarga butter)

Spaghetti con Acciughe e Mollica (Spaghetti with anchovies and breadcrumbs)

Involtini di Pesce Spada (Grilled stuffed swordfish rolls)

Baccalà alla Verbicarese (Salt Cod with sweet red peppers and potatoes)

Insalata ai frutti di mare (Mixed seafood salad)

Insalata di Baccalà con Patate (Salt cod and potato salad with red onion and capers)

Broccoli Rape (Sauteed broccoli rabe with garlic)

Insalata di Cavolfiore (Cauliflower salad)

Chinule (Sweet Christmas ravioli with chestnut filling)

Cannariculi e Cicirata (Fried ridged pastry with honey Glaze)

Panettone

Semifreddo al torrone (Semifreddo with Almond Nougat)

Frutta e dolci (Clementines, hazelnuts and walnuts, roasted chestnuts, chocolate coated figs and torrone)

Tagged as: baccala, cannariculi, Christmas Eve dinner, Grispelle, Il Cenone, seafood

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← Previous Entries

Cooking fresh sardines

Coming soon “My Calabria”

Our Annual Salumi-making

A peek at my garden in January

2010! The year of Calabria

My vegetable garden in May

What is all the talk about ‘Nduja?

‘Tis the season for zuccchini blossoms

Batter

My vegetable garden in June

Pane calabrese (my family’s everyday bread)

Crazy about figs

Foraging for wild blackberries

My vegetable garden in July

Eggplant: Queen of Vegetables

Eggplant Dessert – Melanzane al cioccolato

Eggplant Recipe #2: Involtini (rolls)

Eggplant recipe #3: Stuffed and baked

My vegetable garden at the end of August

The first tomato harvest of the season

Canning Tomatoes: the entire process

How to save tomato seeds

How to make mosto cotto

Peppers and more peppers

Roasted peppers Casa Janca Style

My garden in November

A Feast of Wild mushrooms

Crostone con i Funghi

Zucca (Winter squash): My favorite autumn vegetable

Zuppa di Zucca (Roasted Butternut Squash Soup)

Peperoni Cruschi

Traditional Christmas Desserts of Calabria

Il Cenone: A Calabrian Christmas Eve Feast

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