Italy In SF

I am a bit late with my Fancy Food post, as the week has been a bit on the crazy side!! Nevertheless I explored the beauties of imported (and local!) foods at the Fancy Food Show this past weekend. I got the special treat of playing “apprentice” to the most amazing food blogger ever (thanks Amy!), and got to learn a ton about all sort of different and amazing new imports, existing imports, and local goodies.

A few of my favorites are below- mostly are from Italy, or used in Italian cooking (surprise!), and a few are just fun little great products!

I loved the colorful lay-out of the Etruria products, but even more than that I absolutely LOVED the honey vinegar- aceto di miele, a descendant of idromele (well, a quick search showed me the English name for it is none other than mead!), one of the oldest beverages in recorded history (and a dead one, at that!). Giuseppe, the owner/ producer/ chef of Etruria, was at hand to explain all about his products. The honey vinegar is made with water and homey, and let to ferment. Giuseppe produces honey vinegar from three different types of honeys he produces himself, and all three are impossibly OUTSTANDING. I can see them on puntarelle, or even mixed with soda water for a digestivo… delicious. You can find Giuseppe’s products online at Chefshop.com and also at several shops around the Bay Area. I am dying to get some samples to try out in my kitchen- will write more once I get them!

Oregon Growers and Shippers has a delicious, scrumptious cherry and Zinfandel jam I am dying to get on a crostata. My husband will be making me one with a sample I got from them, I can’t wait!! More reviews (and a crostata recipe!) to come.

Bertagni pasta was a delicious find. I am not a fan of refrigerated pasta, but sometimes I cave for convenience. (Fine, I said it!). If only I knew what I was missing out on when I wasn’t scouring out Bertagni!! Delicious dough texture, and really tasty fillings make of this pasta the next best thing to a rolling pin.

Ricotta is always a favorite, and finding a decently-priced, reasonably tasting ricotta is always a challenge (unless my friend Rosetta makes it for me!). I find Cantare’ a really good store-bought one- and each little package comes in a draining basket. The presentation they had at Fancy Food was beautiful!

Truffle salts were a big trend at the show, and I got a few samples to try out. I am not quite sure how to use them, but I am going to have a taste-off as soon as all the samples are in!

Now, this was one of the weirdest thing I have ever tried- smoked olive oil. The whole show was talking about it, and I found it kind of interestingly wacky!

A product I am looking forward to put to the test is Bread Armor: a plastic bag designed to keep your favorite artisan bread from getting hard as a stone (I am sure it happened to you too!). An innovative product with some unusual characteristics that make our lives easier. What’s not to like there?

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The never-stopping enthusiastic eruption that goes under the name of Donato has come out with yet another thrilling event: cooking classes at Enoteca lead by the man himself!!

If you have had a dinner at Donato Enoteca you know how enthusiastic Donato is, how charming when he goes through the tables, how commanding when he shows up in the dining room… imagine having him for yourself and nine other foodies, enthralled in the process of explaining the perfect risotto and the proper way to make a bruschetta. That is what he’s set up to do: a demonstration cooking series that starts with real Italian appetizers and ends with desserts, passing through pasta, risotto, scaloppine and fish dishes.

The classes are $40 each, and take place on Wednesdays from 2:15 to 4pm at Donato Enoteca in Redwood City while the restaurant is closed to the general public. Classes start on January 20th and will meet for a total of 8 sessions. Classes are organized by the Istituto di Educazione Italiana of Menlo Park and can be booked on their website. Each class will feature demonstration of several dishes in a course, and ends with a wine glass and food sampling! So, you get to eat, learn, and bring home new recipes- that’s a treat!

In my book, anything that teaches to make this is a winner:

Images courtesy of Donato Enoteca’s website, shot by diLuNa

DONATO ENOTECA
1041 Middlefield Road
Redwood City, CA 94063
(650) 701-1000

Book your classes

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Porchetta, an obvious derivative of the word porco, “pork”, is nothing more than what it seems: a roasted pork cooked on a spit for hours at times to create this delicious, moist and flavorful treat available almost everywhere in Italy. Porchetta is the quintessential Italian street food- very rarely you can order it in a restaurant or eat it in a closed space. Porks are roasted in the open air at street fairs, or in the Italian equivalent of Taco Trucks outfitted for the specific purpose of transforming a pig in a delicious treat!

Pretty much every region in central Italy claims this dish as their own. There are Sagre della Porchetta in Umbria, Lazio, Abruzzo and as far North as Tuscany. In the area around Rome in May you can venture out to i Castelli and grab a porchetta sandwich from the street vendors before heading to one of the wine pits (choice of word is not casual!) where they only serve local wines. The history behind porchetta is long- it traces back to medieval times, but there is evidence that even Romans prepared porchetta very similarly to the way it’s done today. Every place you’ll have it will claim it’s the real thing, and beware that if you’re sitting in the warmth of a restaurant and sitting down you are probably not getting the real gist of porchetta.

To make porchetta, you start with a big pig- some rule it should be at least 120kg, over 250lb! This is not a suckling pig we’re cooking, it’s the real thing! The pig is carefully a pig is deboned and dressed with abundant rosemary, fennel and garlic, and filled with its own offal minced. It is the cooked over a wood-burning flame for anywhere between 6 and 8 hours. By the time it is done, what really draws you in is the smell- the delicious aroma of porchetta can travel several miles and make you salivate before you even lay your eyes on the object of your desire! You don’t want to mess with porchetta: country bread, and a flask of wine are your only companion to experience this long-lasting Italian tradition!

Notes: First and second images courtesy of Sagra Della Porchetta di Costano

Filed under: Culinary Culture, Traditional Foods, italy | 6 Comments »

Pizza is the exact balance between science and art when it comes to food. first of all, for the same ingredients (water, flour, salt, oil and yeast) you can come up with several different types of dough- Italian style, New York style, Chicago style, and everything in between, so even a small variation can land you in a completely different place. Artisan pizza is not the same fried junk you can get from big chains- it is an art backed by science. That’s why finding Howie’s Artisan Pizza right behind the corner was a great find!

I thoroughly enjoyed my pizza from Howie’s- it was chewy and crunchy at the same time, with great toppings and very flavorful! I headed to Howie’s after hearing rave reviews from other bloggers, and since it is quite literally walking distance from my house I set up a dinner and brought a pizza home. I was quite positively impressed by the fact I am finally able to eat a pretty good pizza in my neighborhood! While it is not properly an Italian style pizza, it’s pretty close! A thicker crust makes it more New York than Italy, but the satisfying burnt patches were definitely giving the right flavor to the pizza!

We ordered a sausage and broccoli pizza- the sausage is homemade, and Howie’s has a reputation for making sure the ingredients are local and sustainable. I can always be behind that- and I am willing to forgive a few menu misspellings for that! So, Mr Howie, “Puttanesca” is spelled with two ts!

Howie’s Artisan Pizza
Town and Country Village
855 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, CA 94301-2326
650.327.4992

Picture credit: Both pictures are from Bay Area Bites, taken by Stephanie Lucianovic. Thankfully Stephanie decided to order the same pizza we did, and her pictures turned out a lot better!

Filed under: Peninsula, Pizzerie, South Bay | No Comments »

I am lagging behind with my updates, please forgive me, but today I have the first hands-down recommendation for a place, well, very much outside the Bay Area! I am talking about Locanda dell’Arco in Cissone, Italy. In the heart of Langhe, the wine-producing area of Piedmont where all the big reds come from, you will be absolutely enchanted by this small restaurant with rooms.
Today I would like to entertain you with what I believe was the most delicious lunch I have had in a very long time: a six-courses truffle based dream!

A tortino of porcini mushrooms with shrimps and black truffles in a saffron sauce for which I don’t have a great picture…

A porcini mushroom salad with black truffle

Carne battuta al coltello con scaglie di tartufo bianco, aka, a knife-cut tartare with white truffles:

Tajarin with white truffles, one of the most delicious plate of pasta I have ever experienced!

Braised rabbit in blackberries sauce, which as hard as it is to explain, was absolutely out of this world! (sorry, no picture again!)

To finish, a traditional Piedmont dessert, a hazelnut cake, served with a zabaione sauce and a small pear poached in moscato- wonderful!

We could only wrap up such a lunch with a generous serving of grappa, otherwise we would never have been able to digest such a lunch! Sibona carries the seal of the first distillery authorized in Italy- quite a history!

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