Granita – Cool Off the Sicilian Way

by chefbikeski Posted on July 20, 2020
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During these hot summer days, dreaming of Italy travel that unfortunately won’t happen until 2021, I’m finding solace in my kitchen with favorite recipes. For Sicilians – and wishful future visitors like myself – summer is incomplete without the opportunity to enjoy the intense flavors and welcome coolness of a granita. Not an ice cream nor gelato; probably closest to a sorbet, a granita is typically fruit juice, water, and sugar, frozen and served with a grainy consistency – imagine a sophisticated slurpee.

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The origins of granita date back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia, where servants were dispatched to travel long distances to fetch snow and ice for cooling royal drinks. Eventually the Romans brought the practice to Sicily. During the warmer months, Sicilians would buy snow from Mount Etna and the Nebrodi mountains from the nevaroli, men who collected it in winter and stored it in caves on the mountain to prevent it from melting. Packaged in jute bags and covered with straw, the snow was transported down the mountain aboard carts or mules, ready to cool thirsty town-dwellers. With the Arab conquest of Sicily, sugarcane and lemons were introduced to the island, and the locals began mixing in honey, as well as aromatic herbs and spices, together with the snow, creating sherbet.

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In the 16th century, Sicilians came up with an early version of a ice cream maker for making frozen treats, called a pozzetto. A pozzetto was a wooden vat with a zinc bucket inside; water, fruit juice and honey or sugar would be placed in the zinc bucket, while a blend of snow and sea salt would go into the space between the two containers to freeze the mixture the bucket. Eventually, manually operated blades were added to the bucket to keep the frozen mixture constantly moving, to prevent large ice crystals from forming, and providing the perfect texture for a granita.

Today granita in Sicily comes in a wide variety of flavors and each region has its own specialty. There are so many ways to enjoy a cold granita, so I’ve selected two recipes to share with you which really demonstrate how diverse a dish this is.

One of the most widespread traditions across Sicily is to enjoy your granita with a brioche or brioscia, a sweet yeast pastry topped with a ball called a tuppo, calling to mind the traditional low bun hairstyle that Sicilian women used to wear. Once only served at breakfast, nowadays granita and brioche are enjoyed at any time of day. The granita is amazingly simple; you don’t need to use any special equipment. I left the heavy lifting of a great brioche/croissant to the expert bakers at a favorite pastry shop.

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Caffe di Granita

Serves 6

2.5 ounces (1/3 cup) superfine sugar
1 cup and 2 tablespoons water
3 cups extra strong coffee
1 cup whipping cream, whipped

Heat the sugar with the water in a pan over a low heat, stirring occasionally until dissolved. Add the coffee, stir and set aside until completely cooled.

Pour the mixture into a freezer-proof container and place in the freezer for 2 hours or just over, stirring every 20 minutes to give it a granular texture. Serve in dishes or glasses and decorate with whipped cream. If it freezes solid, you can just scrape it with the tines of a fork to create the preferred granular texture.

And now for something completely different. Researching recipes for our Newburyport Wine Club for this month’s food pairing – Oysters and Wine – I came across this wonderfully refreshing way to enjoy freshly shucked oysters. Enjoy with a Etna Bianco white blend from Sicily. The wines from Etna are garnering more and more international attention, the Etna Bianco are blends of several indigenous grapes from Sicily, including Carricante, Catarratto, Grecanico, Inzolia and Minnella.

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Cucumber-Lime Granita

Serves 4 – 6
 
2/3 cup (5 oz./155 g) sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lime
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (4 fl. oz./125 ml) fresh lime juice
3 mint sprigs, plus more for garnish
1 large English cucumber (about 12 oz./375 g)
4 – 6 lime slices (optional)
6 freshly shucked oysters per person
 
In a saucepan, combine 1 cup water, the sugar, lime zest and salt. Place over medium heat and heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves, about 2 minutes. Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil, then remove from the heat. Add the lime juice and mint and let cool completely.
 
Meanwhile, peel the cucumber, halve lengthwise and scoop out the seeds with a small spoon. Chop the cucumber flesh and place in a blender.

Remove the mint sprigs from the sugar mixture. Add the sugar mixture to the cucumber in the blender and process to a fine puree.
 
Pour the mixture into a shallow metal baking pan. Place in the freezer and freeze, whisking every 30 minutes, until semifirm, about 3 hours. Cover with plastic wrap and return to the freezer without stirring until frozen solid, at least 8 hours or up to 24 hours.
 
If you like, at least 1 hour before serving, place 4 – 6 ramekins in the freezer. To serve, using a fork, scrape the surface of the granita into fine ice crystals. Scoop the granita into the frozen ramekins. Place a lime slice on the rim of each glass, if you like, garnish with some mint and serve immediately, alongside 6 shucked oysters per person.

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Posted in Dessert, Gluten Free, Newburyport Wine Club, Travel, Uncategorized, Wine Pairings | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Herb-Roasted Olives

by chefbikeski Posted on July 6, 2020

One food that is essential to Italian cuisine from the top to the tip of the boot are olives – from tasty snacks to a key ingredient for many favorite recipes to the ubiquitous olive oil, guests on our Italy tours from the shores of Lake Garda down to Sicily and Puglia are enjoying olives in one form or another on a daily basis. Their complex flavor, a perfect combination of sweet, sour, salt and bitter make them an indispensable tool for any Italian cook.

Olives have been part of the Mediterranean cuisine since ancient times. Their cultivation dates back thousands of years, originally to Syria and Turkey. The Assyrians discovered that a flavorful oil could be pressed from this fruit. It became an important part of the culture of ancient Greece. In Greek mythology, Zeus pronounced Athena the victor in a competition because it was she who had bestowed upon mankind the most useful plant of all: the olive tree.

The Greeks introduced olive trees to Italy when they arrived in Sicily around 800 BC. Once Greek control disappeared and the Mediterranean came under the Roman Empire, olive oil production took hold throughout Italy. When the Roman Empire fell, the olive oil industry nearly disappeared. But the oil had gained a foothold within the Catholic Church, and religious communities in Italy were key to the continued cultivation of olives in the country.

Olives are cultivated in Italy almost from top to bottom; Sicily and Puglia are big producers in the south; Lake Garda and Bassano del Grappa in the pre-Alps to the north. There are over 500 varieties of olives, but there are no ‘green’ olives versus ‘black’. The color of an olive is actually an indication of its ripeness. Green olives ripen and become first light brown, then red or purple, and finally black.The darker the olive, the riper it was when it was picked from the tree. Green olives are picked at the start of the harvest season, typically in September and October in Italy. They have a firm texture and lovely, nutty flavor. Black olives are picked in November and December, sometimes as late as January, and they’re softer, richer, and meatier.

But pick an olive off of a tree and bite straight into it, and you’d never imagine that this horribly bitter fruit is something edible. It’s a process called curing that makes an olive something enjoyable to eat, imparting the texture, flavor and characteristic saltiness. Olive curing is similar to fermentation—it is the conversion of the olive’s natural sugars into lactic acid. Bitter components like oleuropein and phenols are removed from the olive by one (or more) of the following methods:

Brine-cure: Fully ripened black olives are gradually fermented in brine for a long time, up to a year. Brine-cured olives are sweet and full flavored.

Water-cure: Soak, rinse in plain water, and repeat again and again. This is the most time consuming curing method, and so is rarely used.

Dry-cure: Olives are packed in salt for a month or longer. The salt pulls the moisture and bitterness from the olives. The salt is then washed off, and the olives get bathed in olive oil to keep them juicy. Dry-cured olives have a wrinkled appearance (like a raisin) and are intensely flavorful. Oil-cured olives are dry-cured olives that are then submerged in oil for several months.

Lye-cure: Used by the large commercial olive producers, as it is quick and cheap. Raw olives are immersed in vats of alkaline lye solution. This process, as you can imagine, doesn’t result in the best tasting olives.
Sun/air curing: In some rare cases, olives are cured by simply being left on the tree to allow the curing to occur naturally, or, once picked, by allowing them ample time laid out in the sunshine.

A few of Italy’s favorite olive varietals for table olives:

Castelvetrano: Hailing from Castelvetrano, Sicily, these olives are Italy’s most popular snack olive. They come from the olive variety Nocerella del Belice. They are bright green in color, and have buttery flesh and a mild flavor.

Cerignola: These gigantic green olives are harvested in Cerignola, Puglia. They are crisp and wonderfully buttery, and their large size makes them perfect for stuffing.

Liguria: Also called Taggiasca olives, this diminutive variety packs a whopping flavor punch for their small size. They’re grown in Liguria, a few miles away from France’s Niçoise olive region, and they are distinctly similar.

Gaeta: These small, purplish-brown olives from Puglia have soft, tender flesh and a tart, citrusy taste.

If you want to learn about olive oil, check out my article on Prunetti.

Here’s a flavor packed recipe for roasted olives, perfect to enjoy with a spritz (read my article on Aperol Spritz if you’re not quite sure what a spritz is…)

Herb-Roasted Olives

1 pound, approximately 2 1/2 cups mixed green and black olives, pitted
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon finely grated orange zest
1 Tablespoon coarsely chopped rosemary

Preheat the oven to 450°F. On a small baking sheet, toss the olives, olive oil, garlic, oregano, fennel seeds, crushed red pepper, salt and black pepper. Roast until fragrant and sizzling, about 15 minutes. Transfer the olives to a bowl and toss with the orange zest and rosemary. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Arancini con Mozzarella e Prosciutto – Sicilian Street Food

by chefbikeski Posted on May 30, 2020
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Guests on our Italiaoutdoors Food and Wine Italy tours, and students in my cooking classes, have made or tasted many types of risotto with me, as it is one of Italy’s signature dishes and everyone can find a flavor they like. But it is not a dish that reheats well, so what to do with your leftovers? My favorite solution – Arancini- deep fried rice balls, stuffed with something yummy.

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Reputed to have originated in Sicily in the 10th century during Arab rule, when large serving bowls of saffron rice with plates of meat and vegetables were shared by a table. Sometime later “rice balls” that were breaded and fried evolved as a way of transporting these foods easily on long trips. The first use of the word arancini (meaning “little oranges” in Italian) to refer to these stuffed rice balls dates from the 19th century.

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Today Arancini are a popular street food in Sicily, the most common style is al ragu, stuffed with a meat ragu (meat tomato sauce) and mozzarella, but you can find many specialty types – stuffed with mushrooms (con funghi), eggplant (con melanzane), even the famed Sicilian Bronte pistachios. In Palermo and Trapani, arancini are a traditional dish to celebrate the feast of Santa Lucia, on 13 December, commemorating the arrival of a supply ship carrying rice on that day in 1646, relieving a severe famine. For this holiday, you can even find sweet versions of arancini coated in sugar and cocoa.

In Rome, you will find a similar food called suppli, most typically stuffed with cheese. The melted cheese makes ‘strings’ as you pull it apart, “suppli al telefono“, or telephone wires. In Naples, they are known as Palle di Riso, literally “balls of rice.”

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A basic recipe follows here but I encourage you to create your own versions to complement your leftover risotto. I recently made an Apple Risotto for my wine club, the leftovers became Apple Arancini with Sausage and Mozzerella.

Arancini con Mozzarella e Prosciutto

  • 4 1/2 cups leftover risotto
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 2 tablespoons minced parsley
  • 1 cup freshly grated grana cheese
  • 4 eggs, lightly beaten,  two at a time
  • 4 ounces mozzarella, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
  • 4 ounces prosciutto, diced
  • bread crumbs or panko
  • flour
  • vegetable oil for frying

Place the risotto in a medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper, if needed. Add the butter, parsley, grana, two of the beaten eggs and stir gently to combine.

Lightly beat the remaining two eggs and season with salt and pepper. Place the flour in a shallow bowl, the beaten eggs in another, and the bread crumbs in a third bowl.

Combine the prosciutto and mozzarella. Take a small handful (about 2 tablespoons) of rice and begin to shape into a small ball. Press into the ball with your finger to make a small hole. Fill the hole with some of the mozzarella and prosciutto, and then close the hole with a little additional risotto. Roll between your palms to form a small ball, about the size of a small clementine. If they are too large, the stuffing inside will not get warm enough as it cooks. Place on a sheet pan, and form the remaining balls, attempting to keep them uniform in size.

Roll each arancino first in the flour, then dredge it in the beaten egg, and roll it well in the breadcrumbs. Place on a sheet pan.

Fill a heavy sauce pan with the vegetable oil to a depth of 3 inches. Heat the oil over medium heat to a temperature of 350°. Carefully place a couple of arancino in the pan and fry until a deep golden brown, turning occasionally. You want to make sure you cook them long enough so the cheese in the middle melts. Using a slotted spoon, remove from the oil and drain on a dish covered with a paper towel. Feel free to taste the first one, to check that the cheese has melted! Continue cooking until all are fried. Keep warm in a heated oven, and serve warm.

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Sugo all’Arrabbiata – “Angry” Red Sauce for Pasta

by chefbikeski Posted on May 8, 2020
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A popular pasta dish from Rome and the Lazio region is the simple but tasty Sugo all’Arrabbiata. The name “Arrabbiata” comes from the Italian word for angry, referring to the red face one would get as a result of eating this spicy pasta. But certainly as the chef, you are in control of how spicy you make this dish, and having whipped up a wonderful meal with very little effort, anger will be far from your mind.

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Arrabbiata sauce is of relatively recent origin, some suggest from the late 1800s or early 1900s. Now we think of tomatoes as a traditional ingredient of Italian cuisine, but in fact the plant is not native to Italy, or to Europe for that matter. Tomatoes originated in South America, the name “tomato” coming from the Aztec word for the plant, “tomatl.” Tomatoes found their way to Europe following the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes, as colonists sent home samples of this strange new plant. Tomatoes reached Italy in 1548, but it took hundreds of years for them to become a commonplace ingredient in the Italian diet. Dishes with dried pasta and canned tomatoes – which many recipes for Arrabbiata use – weren’t really popular until the 1950s or 1960s. But by the 1970s this dish had become a staple of Roman cuisine, featured prominently in two films of that era, Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe and Federico Fellini’s Roma.

Ingredients for your authentic Sugo all’Arrabbiata:

Tomatoes:

You can use fresh tomatoes when in season and tasty, or canned diced tomatoes when not. San Marzano canned tomatoes would be the favorite choice in Italy, but any good canned diced tomato will do.

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Fresh tomatoes will be nicer if peeled and seeded. With a sharp knife, cut an X just through the outer skin on the bottom of each tomato. Immerse the whole tomatoes in boiling water for about 1 minute. You should see the skin around each X begin to pull back; remove the tomatoes from the water and peel off the skin. Cut the tomatoes open, push the seeds out with your thumb and discard. Cut the remaining pulp into 1/2 inch chunks.

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Hot Chili Peppers:

Recipes vary as to using fresh or dried; use fresh if available, but still great with dried.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil:

Use a generous amount. You are flavoring it with garlic and hot red peppers, so it doesn’t need to be the highest quality, but it provides nice mouthfeel and balance to the acidity of the tomaotes, so you want to use more than just enough to coat your saute pan.

Garlic:

Adjust amount according to your taste.

Cheese:

Grated pecorino is the traditional choice. A hard grated cheese can substitute.

Pasta:

Penne is the traditional shape of choice. Other short pastas like ziti or rigatoni would substitute nicely.

Wines from Lazio region to pair with your Arrabbiata would be Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone, a white blend of Malvasia and Trebbiano or a red Cesanese, an indigenous varietal dating back to Roman times.

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Penne all’Arrabbiata

Serves 4 as a main course, or 6 as an appetizer

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 fresh red chile, seeded and minced OR 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1-28 ounce can diced tomatoes OR 4 fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced
1 pound penne pasta
1 tablespoon fresh flat leaf parsley, minced

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the garlic cloves and red pepper, cook until the garlic browns. Remove cloves from oil and discard them.

Add the tomatoes to the saute pan and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Salt water generously. Add the penne and cook until al dente, with still a bit of resistance when you bite into one. Drain the penne, reserving about a cup of the cooking water. Add the penne to the tomatoes, tossing to combine. Add a little of the pasta water to the tomato sauce if it seems too thick to coat the penne well.

Season with salt, sprinkle with the parsley and serve with grated pecorino cheese.

Posted in Pasta, Tomato, Travel, Uncategorized, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Pasta alla Puttanesca

by chefbikeski Posted on April 15, 2020
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The origins of this dish, translated as “whore’s pasta”, are commonly attributed to the working ladies of Naples looking for a quick and easy dinner. In his Naples at Table (1998), Arthur Schwartz shares several anecdotes that point to Neapolitan prostitutes as the creators of this dish, including one well-known nineteenth-century courtesan, Yvette “La Francese” (Yvette the French), a native of Provence, who created the dish to soothe her homesickness.

But Italians love to create these colorful histories without concerning themselves too much with the facts. Italian food historian and translator Jeremy Parzen suggests that this risqué history is unlikely: “the noun puttana and the adjective puttanesco are derived from the Italian putto, ‘boy.’ By the sixteenth-century (long before tomatoes and dried pasta were popular in Italian cuisine), the term puttanesco was already used in Italian to denote something belonging to a ‘lesser station in life,’ so to speak, ‘boyish’ or ‘girlish’ or even ‘whoreish,’” He continues: “the qualifier alla puttanesca refers to the fact that it is not a rich dish. In other words, it’s not a meat sauce or a sauce flavored with stock. It’s a dressing for pasta made savory by combining ‘humble’ ingredients (another related word, puttanata means ‘rubbish’ or ‘crap’ in Italian, as in the expression, non dire puttanate, ‘don’t talk crap,’ and has nothing to do with prostitutes).”

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The birthplace of this sauce, sugo alla puttanesca, probably lies in the area of Naples and south along the Amalfi coast. Here the ingredients tomatoes, capers, olives, anchovies, and garlic are staples in the local cuisine. Dishes prepared with dried pasta and tomato-based sauces did not really become popular in Italy until the 1950s and 1960s. According to a study commissioned by the Italian Pasta-Makers Union, Pasta alla Puttanesca first came into fashion in Italy during the 1960s. As prostitution was outlawed in Italy in 1958, it likely originated elsewhere.

Whatever its origins, this is an easy and quick dinner prepared straight from your pantry. The perfect combination of sweet tomatoes and salty capers, anchovies and olives, with a bit of heat from the red pepper flakes. Enjoy with a bottle of Aglianico, a great red wine from the Italian region Campania, home to Naples and the Amalfi coast.

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Pasta alla Puttanesca
Serves 4-6

6 whole fillets anchovies; salt-packed preferred
3 tbsp. large capers, salt-packed preferred
1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 whole large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 whole 14-oz. can diced tomatoes
3⁄4 cup olives (3 ½ oz.), sliced
1⁄2–1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 sprig fresh oregano
Kosher salt
1 lb. dried linguine
Italian parsley, coarsely chopped for garnish

If using salt-packed anchovies and/or capers, rinse and soak in water for 15 minutes. Remove and rinse again. Remove bones from whole anchovies if using. This is still a great recipe even if only oil-packed anchovies and brine-packed capers are available. Coarsely chop the anchovies.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When shimmering, add the garlic and anchovies and cook until fragrant but not browned, 30 seconds. Stir in the canned tomatoes, olives, capers, red pepper flakes, and oregano; bring to a simmer, then lower the heat to medium-low. Cook until reduced slightly, 5-7 minutes. Remove from heat.

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Salt the water well; you want it to taste salty. Add the linguine and cook until just barely al dente, 8-9 minutes. Drain, reserving some of the pasta cooking water. Return the sauce to medium heat, then add the pasta to the skillet. Add a bit of the pasta cooking water to loosen the sauce if you think it needs it. Toss to coat, stirring to finish cooking the pasta, 2-3 minutes.

Transfer to a large serving bowl or individual serving dishes if desired. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve immediately. Grated cheese is an option, but the combination of fish and cheese is often frowned upon in Italy.

Posted in Pasta, Tomato, Travel, Uncategorized, Wine Pairings | Leave a comment