Cocoa, Curry and Italian Meringue

Unique and disparate flavors make for exciting and adventurous eating.

Francesco Carletti, a merchant of Florence, traveled around the world from 1594 to 1602, and wrote about the paste and beverage made from the cacao bean. The Medici, the chefs of Turin and the confectioners of Perugia all found cocoa a favorite ingredient. Curry, not so much. However, accord to About Italian food expert Kyle Phillips, it does appear, often in recipes designed to excite the passions of the diners. So when I saw this recipe for Cupcakes Cacao e Curry con Meringue Italiana (Cocoa, Curry and Italian Meringue Cupcakes) on the Italian recipe blog Sweet Life I knew I had to put it on my recipe radar.

The Italian meringue is the icing on the cake. A hot sugar syrup is whipped  into foamy egg whites  to create a satiny, stiff, bouffant frosting. These cupcakes look amazing and I plan on this being a featured Fall go to dessert that pairs perfectly with a change of seasons.

Shake it Off – A Glass of Wine at 30,000 feet.

We’re always looking for ways to improve our in-flight airtime when traveling to Italy so when we found this post from Quartz news we thought we’d follow Taylor Swift’s advice to keep cruising and shake it off.  Frequent flyer wine lovers and those of us who need a take the edge off in-flight glass need never miss a beat with this hackful hint about how to make airline wine taste better. Those insipid little 4 ounce bottles just need to shake it off or in this case shake it up. Wine naturally tastes more alcoholic and bitter in-flight because of the altitude and the dryness of the cabin air. Aerating a glass at 20,000 feet can get messy. A simple way to vastly improve the taste of wine on an airplane. Shake it up. Start by pouring a little wine out of the bottle and into a cup, recap the bottle and shake it for 45 seconds to a minute. According to the article, the acerbic flavors that were there before should have floated away and you’re ready to enjoy your wine and your flight.

Spaghetti Specs

Arguably the most popular pasta shape in the world, spaghetti are the strands against which all other pasta is measured. Pasta purists know that the proper combination of durum wheat and water and the extrusion of the pasta through traditional dies create the taste and texture that separates a premium pasta from a sticky glob.

Spaghetti (spaghetto sing.) means”thin string” or “twine” in Italian. Traditionally, most spaghetti was 20 inches long and .07 inches in diameter. Shorter lengths became popular during the latter half of the 20th century and now spaghetti is most commonly packaged in lengths of 10-12 inches. Variations in shape, length and diameter account for over 350 recorded types of pasta. Spaghettini, a variant of spaghetti with a thinner diameter, is perfect for quick sauces that are light so as not to weigh the pasta down.

St. Joseph Lover of Zeppoles

In Italy Father’s Day is celebrated in March rather than June. Observing the Feast of San Giuseppe (St. Joseph) on March 19th Italians celebrate sainthood and fatherhood with a larger than life Italian doughnut-like pastry known as the zeppole. Regional designations include the fritelle, sfinci  or bignè and are generally variations of a fried sweet eggy batter filled with custard, jelly or a cannoli-style pastry  cream. Every family has their one and only favorite recipe for this gigantic cream puff said to have originated on the island of Malta.

 Zeppole were popularized in Sicily during the Middle Ages when after a severe drought the  people prayed to St. Joseph to bring rain and he complied. Apparently there was only one catch  – prepare huge quantities of zeppole every year on my feast day and Italians have been licking their fingers ever since.

 

 

Further Down the Boot- Blue Beaches and Cittáslow

We usually focus our posts on Northern Italy, Tuscany and Umbria but today we’re going further down the boot to the Italian village of Acciaroli on coast on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the Province of Salerno. One of Italy’s 284 Blue Flag Beaches (an award given for water quality, beaches and marinas) the village may also have found the key to a longer life where 300 of its residents are over 100 years old with impressively low rates of Alzheimer’s and heart diseases.

An ancient maritime village, Acciaroli is also part of “Cittáslow“, a philosophy of  municiple living that follows the succession of seasons, respectful of the health of its citizens, the authenticity of artisan products and good food, with places for the spirit, unspoiled landscapes and respect of traditions through the joy of a slow and quiet living.

The Codex of Pizza

I think we just don’t get Italian pizza. One summer when my friend Luca from Perugia stayed with us he was severely traumatized by an American pizza. He went so far as to say “it frightened” him. Overloaded, over indulged, American pizzas are far from the true interpretation of the Italian pizza; thin crust, simple toppings, fresh ingredients.

The classic version of the Italian pizza was first created in Naples in 1889 for Queen
Margherita of Italy. A pizza was made in honor of the Queen’s visit with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil (representing the colors of the Italian flag; red-white-green). The mozzarella cheese was made from buffalo’s milk which had never been used to make a pizza before. The Queen was pleased and the pizza was named Pizza Margherita in her honor.

Up to that point, pizza had been considered peasant food and could not be made in the royal ovens. But Queen Margherita loved food and was not to be denied, after all why should the peasants have all the good food to themselves. She wanted to eat in the common way as evidenced by this catchy little rhyme my cousin Lidia made me memorize on my first trip to Italy ” la regina Margherita mangava un pollo con ditta” translated loosely to mean even the Queen eats (chicken) with her fingers so relax . . enjoy Italy and its food!

Try to find an authentic Italian pizzeria for a Pizza Margherita. In Italy neighborhood pizzaioli (pizza makers) follow strict guidelines for ingredients, making dough and cooking. The dough must be kneaded by hand or mixers which do not cause the dough to overheat and the dough must be punched down and shaped by hand. Only wood-burning, bell-shaped brick ovens are used to cook the pizza on the surface of the oven (often made of volcanic stone) and not in any pan or container, with oven temperatures reaching at least 400-430° C (750-800° F). These ovens often have to heat up for hours before the first pizza is cooked. My friend Luca says that if a pizza takes longer than 10 minutes it’s not a true Italian pizza!

La Forchetta

The widespread use of this most basic utensil can be credited to the Italians through the tablescapes of Venice and a Medici princess. From the 10th through the 13th centuries, forks were fairly common among Venice’s wealthy trading partners in Byzantium. In the 11th century, the Byzantine wife of a Doge of Venice brought forks to the tables of  La Serenissima however it wasn’t until the 16th century that forks were widely adopted in Italy and beyond.

The epicurean tastes of a Medici princess were transferred to France  in 1533 when Catherine de’ Medici wed King Henry II, bringing with her Italian recipes and cooks, confectioners, distillers and the fork! French tables and travelers seeing and savoring Italy in the 1600’s were enamored by the slender handled 2-tined instrument that allowed food to slide more easily into the mouth.

In later centuries larger forks with 4 curved tines were developed and soon after the fork became more than a once criticized “excessive delicacy, a luxury of habits” that sufficiently offended the likes of St. Damian,a hermit and ascetic,  who criticized the Byzantine-born Venetian princess for her use of the fork at the table that when she died of the plague, he regarded it as a just punishment from God for her vanity.