briciole

gelato alla vaniglia variegato al rabarbaro

rhubarb-marbled vanilla ice cream

I grew up eating gelato, but nobody I knew made it at home. In August of 1999, after coming back from an extended stay in Italy, I purchased my first ice cream maker and started experimenting — with the book Frozen Desserts by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir as guide. The immediate reason for my new enterprise was my husband: he missed his daily dose of gelato, and I promised him I would do something to address his withdrawal symptoms. The first flavor of ice cream that I made was vaniglia (vanilla). Later on, I learned that vanilla is the most common flavor of ice cream in the US, and I found that it is most people's favorite.

If you are wondering about the difference between gelato and ice cream, Vanessa of Italy in SF recently published a very informative post on the subject. I don't know whether the fat and air quantity of what I make allow it to qualify as gelato. I know, though, that I serve it right out of the machine, without freezing it first, which is what recipes I have seen instruct you to do. I freeze what is leftover, but I make sure that the consistency is creamy before I serve it again.

Without further ado, here is how I currently prepare the basic version of the vanilla kind. The evening before, I warm up to below boiling point 1 and 1/4 cups of non-fat milk with 2 of tablespoons of agave nectar and 1/2 of a vanilla bean (baccello di vaniglia) split in half lengthwise to reveal the tiny black seeds inside. The beans I get in the bulk section of the stores where I shop are very flavorful and I have found that using half of a long bean is enough. As the milk warms up, some seeds start floating around. When I remove the saucepan with the milk from the heat, I cover it, let it cool and then refrigerate.

The morning after, I make the custard: I beat 1 extra-large egg and one yolk with a 1/4 cup of granulated sugar until the mixture is bubbly. In the meantime, I warm up the milk, then slowly add it to the beaten eggs. I pour the mixture back in the saucepan and put it on the stove over gentle heat, stirring. When a film forms over the back side of the stirring spoon (I use a wooden one), I draw my finger across. If the line stays clear, the custard is ready. (If it overheats, it will curdle.) The saucepan goes straight from the heat to a cold water bath, while I keep stirring the custard to bring down its temperature. When the custard is cool, I cover the pan and place it in the fridge until thoroughly cold.

When I am ready to churn, I take the custard out of the fridge, add to it one cup of chilled heavy whipping cream and mix. With a spatula, I retrieve the two halves of the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds off their inner surface, then mix again and finally pour the custard into the ice cream maker. I let the machine run until its content reaches gelato consistency. Then I stop the machine, scrape the ice cream from the sides and bottom of the machine bowl, stir briefly, scoop into small bowls and serve immediately. Only the very end of this process had to undergo some changes for the recipe under discussion, since the rhubarb is added to the vanilla ice cream after the churning is complete.

Although I had long wished to try adding rhubarb to my gelato alla vaniglia, I had never done it until now, for no particular reason. Rhubarb was unknown to me as food until my first vacation study in England, when I was 24. Then, I ate rhubarb pie (baked by my landlady) and rhubarb yogurt, and loved them both. However, a number of years passed before I managed to use rhubarb in my kitchen.

This year, I decided it was time I added rhubarb to my ice cream. To prepare it, I followed (to a certain extent) a recipe in the aforementioned book: I cut into 3/4"-long pieces half a pound of rhubarb and cooked it gently in a tablespoon of water until soft, then added a tablespoon of sugar and a half a tablespoon of agave nectar and stirred. I processed the rhubarb in the blender very briefly before putting it in the fridge to chill. Once the gelato alla vaniglia was ready in all its sweet, creamy glory (its smell is heavenly), I scooped it into a medium bowl¹ and added the rhubarb by spoonfuls, swirling it in with a spatula to create a marbling pattern. I then served the result, which was a resounding success, as certified by the head of my quality assurance department (a.k.a., my husband).

After almost 10 years, I still enjoy making ice cream and people who try it usually like it. When I see a person's face light up as the creamy delight starts to diffuse in his or her mouth, I feel I have the power to contribute to the world's happiness, one small spoonful at a time. By the way, when we visit Italy now, my husband misses my gelati and sorbetti (sorbets).

A final note: the flavor of ice cream and sorbet depends heavily on the quality of the ingredients. I use organic milk and cream (latte e panna), pastured eggs (uova) and organic fruit as ingredients.

¹ I used a lidded plastic bowl, which then went into the freezer with the leftover ice cream, after I covered the surface of the ice cream with a square of wax paper.

This post is my contribution to the current edition of Fresh Produce of the Month, an event created by my friend Marta, An Italian in the US, that this month focuses on rabarbaro. Here you will find the roundup of the event and the announcement of the next edition.

Hear me pronounce the words on the gelato alla vaniglia variegato al rabarbaro audio file [mp3] or go to the gelato alla vaniglia variegato al rabarbaro audio page for more listening options.

strudel di mele

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

A few months ago, I wrote a post on a traditional dessert from my home region (Umbria, Italy) called rocciata, which I introduced thus: "A thin layer of dough envelopes pieces of apple (mela), nuts and raisins. It looks like a strudel, but it isn't." I think it is fitting that this month, to fulfill the Daring Bakers' challenge, I baked rocciata's kindred dessert. By the way, the similarity between rocciata and strudel is the subject of interesting speculations, but, as far as I know, there are no certainties. Strudel is a delicious dessert of Austrian origin and it is part of the tradition of the Italian regions that border Austria and were once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. 

The hosts' only requirement was to make the strudel dough. We were then free to fill it as we wished. I decided to stay close to the original recipe and made strudel di mele, with apples bought on purpose at the farmers' market, from a vendor who has a bin labeled "uglies." I honestly don't care about apple beauty contests, probably because as a child I was told that often the least esthetically appealing apples are the best ones in terms of flavor. And in any case, apples with a dent make perfect filling for strudel.  

You will find the recipe provided by the hosts here. While I followed the instructions for the dough to the letter, as required, I approached the filling from my usual low-sugar and low-butter perspective. Hence, I added only 1 tablespoon of sugar to the apples. I also decided to use only half a cup of breadcrumbs, toasted in 1 tablespoon of melted butter. I make breadcrumbs using my homemade bread and with the help of my grattugia (grater). Finally, I melted only two more tablespoons of butter to coat the inside of the dough and the finished product.

Making rocciata had already exposed me to the challenge of getting the dough to be really thin. I am proud to report that I did not tear it and I made a rectangular ellipse (a kind of geometric figure that I invented for this purpose) 32" wide and slightly over 2 feet long. I did all the rolling with my two matterelli (rolling pins) and did not try the hand and forearm method described in the recipe. 

I did not cut away any dough around the edges, because my dough was uniformly thin. I also departed from the given instructions in the distribution of the filling and subsequent rolling of the strudel. I basically did what I do for rocciata, spreading the filling over the entire surface of the dough, minus a ring all around, and rolling from the longest side.

I spread butter on the dough first, using a pastry brush, then distributed the toasted breadcrumbs (these two steps are not in my recipe for rocciata), then the apple slices and raisins (uvetta), and finally the chopped walnuts (noci), leaving a a 2"-wide ring all around. I then folded the free dough along the two short sides, as I saw it done in this video mentioned by a fellow Daring Baker (the filling part starts at about 4:20), then rolled from the longest side, using the cloth as prop (photo above).

Once the strudel was formed and settled on the baking sheet, I brushed the surface with the remaining melted butter. I baked the strudel for 40 minutes. The result looked nice and received top rating from my husband.

A special thank you goes to our hosts for their efforts and support: I enjoyed the challenge. I hope you will take the time to go around and look at the gorgeous creations of my talented fellow Daring Bakers.

Hear me pronounce the words on the strudel di mele audio file [mp3] or go to the strudel di mele audio page for more listening options.

sale

salt

The photo on the left shows the following kinds of salt: sel gris (grey sea salt, top left), sale grosso (coarse sea salt, right), sale fino (fine sea salt, bottom left).

Growing up in Italy, a store I visited often was the tabaccheria across the street from the apartment building where I lived. Vanessa of Italy in SF just published a post with a nice photo of the sign that marks the presence of such a quintessential Italian store. The sign tells you that in the store you can purchase: sali, tabacchi and valori bollati, i.e., salts, tobacco products, mail stamps, stamps for documents and stamped paper sheets. The last two articles are necessary in Italy to make bureaucracy work (this is a long story, which I may one day tell you to make you laugh — if you are Italian, though, it is no laughable matter).

Sale grosso is what my mother adds to boiling water to cook pasta and sale fino is what she uses to season food. That is the simple world in which I grew up. To be honest, there is another kind of salt, salgemma (rock salt), but I don't think my mother used it, so I don't. Sea salt is harvested in saline (salt works). The two white salts in the photo were harvested in Sicily, in the province of Trapani (a city located on the top left tip of the triangular island).

The language corner — The word salario (salary) has its root in the allowance paid to Roman soldiers to buy salt. A food lacking salt and/or flavor is described as insipido.

The history corner — In 1540, my home town of Perugia fought a war against the Pope called Guerra del Sale. Forced to purchase salt from the papal state's salt works at a high price, people tried to limit their consumption. Bread without salt — the famous pane sciapo — is a type of bread still enjoyed today, whose flavor surprises visitors.

Sel gris (unprocesses sea salt) and other so-called gourmet salts are described on this page. When I visited the San Francisco Fancy Food Show last January, I saw an incredible array of flavored salts. One of them caught my fancy: vanilla salt. I will talk about it in a future post. The only flavored salt I have ever bought is matcha salt, which I purchased a while ago (together with the grey salt) from the company where I get my loose leaf tea, and which I have been using mostly to decorate and flavor Lavash crackers.

Hear me pronounce the words on the sale audio file [mp3] or go to the sale audio page for more listening option.

purè di fave e bietola

fava (or broad) bean and chard purée

This dish was created with the help of Ms Serendipity, that nice companion of many adventures in the kitchen (and elsewhere). It all started at the farmers' market, the day after I got back from a week of vacation, earlier this month. I saw fave fresche (fresh fava beans) and bought a pound. I got the beans out of their pods and blanched them briefly, plunged them in ice cold water, let them cool for a few minutes, then removed the outer layer.

From my market tote bag out came a nice leek (porro), and I decided to marry it to the fave. I cooked the thinly sliced leek in a frying pan with olive oil and the leaves of two sprigs of thyme (timo) until quite soft, about 10 minutes. I put a lid on and added some water, as needed, to keep the leek moist. I then added the blanched fave and warmed them up for a couple of minutes. After seasoning with salt and freshly-ground black pepper, I put the content of the pan in the food processor and started the machine. The consistency of the resulting mash was not to my liking, so I started thinking, and that is where Ms Serendipity came into the picture.

From the already-mentioned tote bag out came a bunch of bietola (also called bieta, chard). I have never seen rainbow chard in Italy (literally, bietola "arcobaleno"), i.e., chard whose stalks are of a color other than white. I usually buy rainbow chard, because I like the colorful stalks. I washed the chard leaves (about 3/4 lb) and let some water cling to them, then cut away the stalks (which I used to make another dish: more on this in a future post). I sliced the leaves into ribbons (no more than one inch wide), then wilted them for a few minutes in a covered pan. Finally, I added the chard to the food processor and started the machine again.

This time, I liked what I saw and tasted. Dinner time was fast approaching, so I decided I would let my guests give me feedback on the dish. The feedback was positive and, as a result, I have made this purée a couple of more times. Here's how I served it:

• as is, as a side dish
• as a filling for a frittatina (thin one-egg frittata) that I garnished with crumbled fresh chèvre (caprino)
• as sauce for gnocchi di ricotta.

I am sure I will find additional ways to enjoy this dark green, highly nutritious dish.

This is my submission for My Legume Love Affair - Eleventh Helping, the popular, legume-centered event that is the brainchild of Susan, The Well-Seasoned Cook and is hosted this month by Lori Lyn of Taste with the Eyes.

Here is the roundup. Check also who is hosting the next edition of the event.

Hear me pronounce the words on the purè di fave e bietola audio file [mp3] or go to the purè di fave e bietola audio page for more listening options.

gnocchi di ricotta

For the first Daring Cooks challenge, esteemed founders Lis of La Mia Cucina and Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice, of Daring Bakers' fame, have chosen Ricotta Gnocchi, a recipe from The Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rodgers. I have had the good fortune of eating at Zuni Café (in San Francisco) a couple of times and have good memories of those occasions. Thanks to our gracious hosts for a great challenge.

I am thrilled to be part of this new enterprise by Lis and Ivonne, which, if history is any guide, will be wildly successful. Last, but not least, I could not miss a chance to use my homemade ricotta (ricotta fatta in casa). You will find the recipe chosen for this challenge here. A while ago I wrote a post on gnocchi, where I mentioned gnocchi di ricotta: it is about time I made some.

Having just come back from a week vacation and being a bit behind on several fronts prevented me from making cheese and from then making my preferred ricotta using the leftover whey as main ingredient. So, for the task at hand, I used a recipe I had tried in the past, as recounted here, from the book The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. From one quart of milk (I used 1% fat this time) and one cup of cultured buttermilk I obtained 9 oz. of ricotta, enough to make half the given recipe, or gnocchi per due (for two). I drained the ricotta for two hours the day I made it, then the morning after I placed it on a piece of cotton cloth a few hours before using it for the task at hand.

To flavor my gnocchi I used a hint of grated lemon zest and a hint of nutmeg (noce moscata). For the sauce, I let the farmers' market decide. This time of the year, each week brings new products to the tables. When I visited it, the first zucchini were available and, with them, the first zucchini blossoms (fiori di zucca): I yielded to the temptation of splurging on a nice bouquet of them to be used promptly. While the gnocchi were resting in the fridge, according to the recipe, I cooked a thinly sliced leek in a pan with olive oil and the leaves of two sprigs of thyme (timo) until quite soft (adding some water, as needed, to keep the leek moist), then added nine zucchini blossoms, washed, stem and stamen removed (they were all male) and cut lengthwise into 4-5 pieces. I let them cook for a couple of minutes, then set aside the pan, covered.

I cooked the gnocchi as directed, 8 at a time (I had 24 total, so I made three batches), keeping the cooked gnocchi in a covered bowl until they were all ready. While the last batch was cooking, I added a tablespoon of the cooking water to 1 oz of ricotta that was left over from what I had made and mixed it into a creamy paste, then added it to the leek and zucchini blossom mixture. I adjusted salt and pepper and then added this to the cooked gnocchi.

The whole enterprise was a lot of fun and a resounding success. While my dish met unqualified approval from the quality assurance department of our household (a.k.a. my husband), my photos of the dish were almost all unfit for showing and hence were deleted. You can barely see what my gnocchi looked like, but you'll have plenty of opportunity to admire the beautiful creations of my fellow Daring Cooks. I will definitely make gnocchi di ricotta again soon. 

Hear me pronounce the words on the gnocchi di ricotta audio file [mp3] or go to the gnocchi di ricotta audio page for more listening options.

cioccolato

chocolate

In a post I wrote last year, I revealed that I eat a small piece of extra dark chocolate (un pezzetto di cioccolato) every day as part of my breakfast. I should add that I eat at least another small piece later on in the day as well. My piece of chocolate comes from a chocolate bar (in Italian: tavoletta di cioccolato). (The expression fair trade chocolate in Italian is cioccolato del commercio equo e solidale.)

Chocolate has been part of my diet for as long as I remember. Being born in Perugia, a city with a renowned chocolate factory, Perugina, had definite advantages: chocolate was very much part of life. (If you are interested, in this article there are a few tidbits about Perugina and its famous Baci.) [The photo on the left shows a chocolate rendition of the griffin, one of the symbols of the city, displayed in the window of a pastry shops in downtown Perugia.]

The passion for chocolate, born early, has stayed with me: I am always eager to try a new bar of chocolate, provided it contains at least 70% cocoa (cacao) and only natural ingredients. I may go as low as 68%, if I become convinced that the reward will justify making an exception. I am usually not enthusiastic about added flavored ingredients. In any case, when I try a new brand, I go for plain chocolate.

Last March, I visited the San Francisco Chocolate Salon at Fort Mason, hoping to find hitherto unknown bars to add to my list of favorites. I was interested in the so-called bean-to-bar manufacturers, i.e., chocolate makers that buy cocoa beans (chicchi di cacao or fave di cacao) and process them to make chocolate bars, cocoa powder, cocoa nibs, etc.

At the Salon, a lot of the exhibitors offered cioccolatini (chocolates), some beautifully crafted and decorated, some that included interesting ingredients. I admired them without tasting, as they are not really what I like. Laura of Tiramisù was there as well, and she wrote a nice report on some of the products. (We didn't know each other back then, we have since met in person.)

What I look for in a morsel of chocolate is an intense, interesting and pleasant flavor that develops as the chocolate melts in my mouth and then stays with me for a little while afterward. I left the Salon with no new addition to my shortlist, a couple of Neo Cocoa truffles (tartufi) for my husband and a gorgeous antique book on cocoa, a temptation I was not able to resist. In fact, Omnivore Books on Food had a table with chocolate-related books, both new and from the past.

The chocolate bars in the photo come from my current little stash and are: Ezca bar (78% cocoa) from Escazu, a manufacturer in North Carolina that hand writes the batch number on each bar [bottom], and Tcho "Fruity" (68% cocoa, one of the exceptions I mentioned above) from Tcho, a manufacturer in San Francisco, whose factory store I am planning to visit soon. A bar of Apamate (73.5% cocoa from Venezuelan Caranero beans) from Chocolates El Rey, a manufacturer in Venezuela was nearby, but it was still unopened and I decided to leave it that way and not include it in the photo.

Hear me pronounce the words on the cioccolato audio file [mp3] or go to the cioccolato audio page for more listening option.

formaggio e ricotta

cheese and ricotta

For several years and until recently, my usual contribution to a dinner at friends' houses has been gelato or sorbetto. Vanessa of Italy in SF has just published a very informative post on gelato and ice cream. I don't know the fat content and percent of air of my products, though I know that when I adapt a recipe I usually decrease the amount of fat. 

Cheese making has changed this custom. Now, I often bring a piece of my homemade cheese to share. For example, to this birthday party, I brought some Manchego that I had made in early March. After reading of Nocciola (which means hazelnut in Italian), a goat cheese made in Oregon by Tumalo Farms that includes pieces of hazelnuts, I decided to do something similar.

I made Manchego, as always according to the recipe in the book Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll (which uses cow milk) and added to the curds, as I was putting them into the press, some toasted chopped hazelnuts (I used a mortar and pestle to break the whole toasted hazelnuts into small pieces). I let the cheese age for 40 days. I like the result, which is interesting both to look at (photo on the left) and to taste.

I have also tried adding caraway seeds to Monterey Jack cheese. This is still in the aging phase, so I don't yet know how the experiment turned out.

Besides adding variations to recipes I am already familiar with, I am trying new recipes from my guide book. The most recent new cheese I made is Derby, for which an interesting technique is used to process the curds after heating and before pressing.

I also continue making ricotta using whey (siero di latte) as the main ingredient. With the whey left over from making Derby I made ricotta according to what I called recipe #2 in this post. It coagulated nicely and was easier to drain than in previous occasions. I then used the output to make pane alla ricotta. This time I did not halve the quantities and therefore made two loaves, one of which I froze for later consumption.

In the area of ricotta-making I have recently realized that I need to start measuring the whey's pH. According one of the recipes I follow: "If too much acid is added, the curds will sink to the bottom and the cheese will not be sweet." For the most recent batch of ricotta I made (using acidified whey), the curds did not sink to the bottom of the pot, but the result was rather bland in flavor. I need to be more conscientious about taking notes of what I do and about measuring the pH. I take all that happens as part of my learning curve: I still enjoy the process and the results.

Hear me pronounce the words on the formaggio e ricotta audio file [mp3] or go to the formaggio e ricotta audio page for more listening option.