Limoncello Sugar-bombs

River shrimp, the gift that tells her..

Or Meeting the Shrimp (The Wine and the Willows III)

If you’ve been reading “Carbonara” you’ve discovered two things: I have not yet published a recipe for pasta alla carbonara and my family really loves eating Italian river shrimp. We may not be culinary experts, but we love food, live in Italy, and above all, we are curious. Especially Silvia.

Silvia doesn’t just want to know how something is cooked, or the origin of a dish (she does teach Modern Italian History at the University of L’Aquila, after all). She wants to know the very basics – how do you tell if it’s a boy or a girl shrimp, for example, and where do they come from, and are they alive when you cook them, like with lobsters. This is what happened after eating the last of the platefuls of Italian river shrimp saltati in white wine at Il Salice between Capestrano and Bussi (http://wp.me/pfkhI-2G). We asked Fernanda, who runs the restaurant with her family, to come out of the kitchen, so we could express our appreciation for the wonderful meal. Then, Silvia started asking questions. When she got to “do Italian river shrimp have a sex and how can you tell?,” Fernanda, apparently, thought it was easier to bring out a little bowl of survivors. And yes, you can tell which are boys and which are girls. But, I wouldn’t want to date one.

Boy shrimp or girl shrimp?

Whenever, I meet my previous meals’ next of kin after a big dinner, I always feel a bit full and in need of a digestivo, the Italian name for an after dinner drink meant to aide the digestion. The choice is huge – sambuca, grappa, nocino, centerbe and limoncello are among the most common. The last four are often homemade. Limoncello, a chilled liqueur made from lemon peels, cane sugar and, of course, alcohol, is the most accessible to people who don’t usually appreciate drinking anything stronger than wine. Anyone with a relative in a place famous for lemons says their limoncello is among the best.

Looks like a boy

Fernanda offered us an interesting version of limoncello, –– sugar cubes soaked in pure limoncello. Usually, limoncello has about the same alcohol content as whisky (40%), the rest is aromas, water and sugar. When it’s made at home, lemon peels are soaked in pure alcohol until ready for mixing with sugar and water and bottling. In this case, water was omitted from the lemon-alcohol mix to prevent sugar cubes, in a jar, from melting when the liquid was poured over them.

Fernanda passed me a cube on the saucer of an espresso cup. I popped it quickly into my mouth and, following her

Survivor

instructions, crushed it immediately. Chewing gum commercials advertise “taste explosions.” This was the real thing. The fresh taste of lemons was everywhere, the aroma somehow snuck up into my nose from inside. I felt a little less heavy. And, glad I wasn’t driving.

by Joshua Lawrence

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Teo meets Teo Gambero

Presenting Teo, river shrimp extrordinaire

My finger is fine, why do you ask?

Dessert Pizza – Happy World Nutella Day

(today, February 5th)

Nutella is a national Italian icon of sweet addiction. It’s as common in the Italian pantry as peanut butter is in America. And this delicious concoction of vegetable oil, powdered milk and chocolate is addictive – at least psychologically. In Italy people tend to have smaller fridges so sneaking off at midnight to spoon ice cream directly from the carton to your mouth is out of the question.
You do not need to keep Nutella in the freezer or the fridge. I can be hidden anywhere – in your desk, behind books on your shelf, wherever.
It’s also versatile – you can eat it raw, bake it into brownies. It’s by far the most common spread for winter crêpe vendors (Sofia has one every Saturday afternoon in Piazza Salotto here in Pescara.).
The great writers who invented World Nutella Day (www.nutelladay.com), the unofficial annual celebration this chocolate and hazel nut spread have a long list of recipes.

Homemade Nutella and M&M Pizza

One great way to end a pizza dinner is Nutella pizza. Some pizzerias here serve it (but only order it if it’s on the menu, others feel offended by the idea). Our cousin Martina had us over to her house for homemade pizza two weeks ago. She topped it off with two Nutella and M&M pizzas with crumbled cookies sprinkled on top. The kids loved it, and the rest of us pretended to be kids.

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For a great article on Nutella: http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/dailyloaf/2009/08/10/lunching-with-nutella-and-a-recipe-for-nutella-ice-cream/

Flattened, Pressed, Crispy, Addictive

Italy’s answer to potato chips

One of the joys of Italian food is that the menu is massive. A stroll through an urban food market can be as full of eye-candy as a walk through the Vatican Museums. You can have a different dish at every meal and never eat the same food in the rest of your life. To make things even more interesting, and confusing, the names for what you eat can change from place to place. Part of the reason for this is that, although a dish may have the same name in different regions, recipes vary from region to region; from family to family. Take Lasagna, for instance. In Emilia Romagna, where it is most renown, Lasagna is usually made with a béchamel sauce. Here in the Abruzzo region, farther south, cheese–– fresh mozzarella to be exact–– takes the place of the béchamel. It’s still called “lasagna”, but with very different ingredients. And, those are only two variations for lasagna

Still Life - Onion and Rosemary Schiacciata and Wine

Then, there’s the issue of using the same ingredients, but calling the result by a different name. That’s what I found when I went to write about the addictive schiacciata our nearest bakery makes. The name is a minefield.

The word Schiacciata means crushed, pressed, squished, flattened. Wile Coyote is regularly schiacciato by Anvils, for example. In some areas, rectangular slightly risen crackers may be called schiacciata, but in much of Toscana (the region of Florence, Siena, Pisa, etc.) it means low focaccia bread. And then focaccia itself, in some places, is a synonym for pizza, but in other places, is similar to pizza but is either higher and fluffier or lower and denser. Focaccia is almost always without tomato sauce. Almost always.

Onion Schiacciata

Il Gemello, the bakery nearest our house, does not make the large hearty loaves of bread we adored in L’Aquila, but we console ourselves with its thin, salty variety. Unleavened, spread paper thin, it is so crispy it can only be sold in sheets the size of a small television screen. Il Gemello sells several varieties: “semplice”, its simple, basic form with olive oil and large grained salt; rosemary with toasted rosemary needles sprinkled over it; and, my favorite, onion schiacciata –– sweet onions cut thin as hairs and baked in fare. The anchovy schiacciata must also be great, because it’s always sold out when I get

there.

Buying schiacciata is easy. The hard part is getting it home. The temptation to break off a corner is easy to cave into. However, it’s so fragile that it often breaks on its own, so why not help it along. Alas, one little bite leads to another…and I have to go back to the bakery.

Schiacciata

We always seem to be out of sciacciata.

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by Joshua Lawrence

Mr. Louis is a Welcome Dinner Guest

Don Luigi Riserva 2005, Di Majo Norante, Molise (Italy)

Unless it’s a gift to a collector, it’s usually good manners for dinner guests not to bring a wine that has to be decanted an hour before. You should bring wine that your hosts can open and serve right away, if they desire. Which is why Rita dropped off her bottle of Don Luigi Riserva two days ahead of dinner Friday

Don Luigi Riserva and rosemary schiacciata

Don Luigi is a dark, ruby-red wine aged oak casks. This wine if from Molise, the small regione just south of Abruzzo. Just like the region itself, Don Luigi Riserva is a blend of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo grapes (Abruzzo is just north) and Aglianico (also common in the regions just south). It was a the perfect, textured wine for Silvia’s famous meatballs and with aged Parmesan. And the two glasses leftover in the bottle danced with the salt and rosemary schiacciata we had at lunch the next day.

What are schiacciata? Well…

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Don Luigi Riserva

Names, Places, and a Little Pink Lie

A rosé by any other name…..

Blinded by my enthusiasm for a new way to pleasantly pollute Prosecco, (http://wp.me/pfkhI-2Z), I overlooked one little detail.  Prosecco can’t be pink. Or, can it be?

Names and definitions are no small matter in Europe, especially when tied to food, wine and their place of origin. With some justification. Just as the best parma ham is from Parma, as is the best Parmesan, you would expect the same with wines. The French spend a lot of time, money and political clout assuring that cognac and armagnac come from the regions that bear their name, and Champagne from any other place is not Champagne.

Through the Wine Glass

The Prosecco can get even more picky. Prosecco must be made from the prosecco grape varietal (with maximum 10% exception for three local varietals) and vinification, bottling and the sparkling process must all be carried out in only a few DOC towns.

In my defense, most of those criteria were satisfied. The producer, Val d’Oca (www.valdoca.com) is famous for its Prosecco. And, the Punto Rosa we drank Saturday night is a great wine to serve with a meal –– from start to finish. Paola and Carlo made sure it was flowing from the antipasto of abruzzese pecorino cheese with a selection of flavored honeys (green apple and lemon), all the way through to the little balls of fried dough filled with zabaglione (a pudding made with Marsala). Its perlage – persistent little bubbles – and slightly floral bouquet, never fought with the food on our plates.

So, I’m sorry I called it prosecco, but not that sorry. I realized my mistake looking at the label at dinner on Saturday, but the sense of guilt sliped away with every sip of Punto Rosa.

Salute!

What a spread!

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Skewered Liver & Onions

The Revenge of Happiness on a Stick

Montesilvano, the beachfront modern extension of Pescara is mainly know for two things – summer hotels for families and arrosticini. Even though we spent 4 months there following the L’Aquila quake, we never did get around to seeing if the latter was a reputation well deserved.

Emily's blacktruffle pizza

I was not in much of a hurry – Abruzzo itself is famous for the little mutton skewers. Anyone with a place to grill out has one of the characteristic long and thin arrosticini grills, and I’ve become good at them myself -but much of the credit for those goes to the butcher in San Pio delle Camere. If you’re in a place where a flock of sheep can block the road, the mutton is usually pretty good. Here on the Adriatic coast it’s a common follow-up to pizza, at Sofia’s parent-student Christmas pizza party they served arrosticini in terra-cotta vases to keep them warm.

(By the way, if find yourself stranded in a swarm of sheep in Abruzzo, do not get out of the car to take pictures until after you talk to the Shepherd. There are probably a few of the beautiful, massive and overly protective Pastore Abruzzese sheep guard dogs blending in with the flock).

So last night Piero, the father of one of Emily’s friends took us to one of his favorite places, the Locanda di Crocitto. La Locanda, is a noisy neighborhood pizza joint in a modern, inland part of town, is not Montesilvano’s most famous place for arrosticini (I’ll write about them when we go there), but it did have a few pleasant surprises. Emily enjoyed her black truffle pizza, and Silvia’s huge ravioli with ricotta from the ancient buffalo breed were excellent.
Piero, however, had called ahead to make sure they had enough of the liver arrosticini set aside for us.
Arrosticini, as a general rule, are made from some form of mutton. Usually adults, not lamb. Part of the reason they are cut into little cubes and roasted over red glowing coals is to turn tougher meat into tender, greasy addictive tidbits you can pull off the stick with your teeth like a viking. Fun and primordial. And that’s what Emily and her friend did with a dozen of the mutton ones, forgetting half their pizzas.

Arrosticini di fegato, stage front, ravioli backstage

Piero and I had a few of those, per devozione, to “keep the faith”, as they say in Italy. But we made room for scores of the liver ones. Choice chunks of liver alternating with laurel leaves, diced pancetta and quarters of baby onions. You don’t actually eat the laurel, but I did discover they joy of nibbling at the toasted corners.
It aint just chopped liver.

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What Do Italian River Shrimp, Saffron, and Pink Grapefruit Have in Common?

The Wine and the Willows – The Prequel

A pack of italian river shrimp predators

Il Salice, the little family run restaurant just outside Bussi, is all about trout and italian river shrimp. Their pasta dishes are delicious and genuine, but that was only part of what made that lunch so memorable.
The antipasti (starters) were even better. Slices of trout cold with sweet red local onions and olive oil, a sample of trout and river shrimp stewed in tomatoes, grilled eggplant and red peppers. Wonderful food but other great little places in the Tirino river valley can do the same. But thee creative masterpieces blew us away.

Their prey - stragglers

The first was a hot, steaming stew of trout, white beans, porcine mushrooms and saffron. A dish that was both refined and hearty, mixing flavors that I would have expected to wrestle with each other but instead sung like a friends singing Christmas carols.
But it was not my favorite.
Then there was the river shrimp salad. A crisp, colorful mix of cool, sliced apples, tarocco blood oranges, fennel, pomegranate seeds and delicate, shelled italian river shrimp. We fought over seconds and thirds, but still it wasn’t my favorite.

"Faux" river shrimp sauce and fresh river shrimp salad

But I’m still suffering a crisis of abstinence from the faux shrimp sauce. Served in little terracotta dishes, at first glance it looked like a dip for celery. A white cream with little pink dots and a generous garnish of crushed roast pistachios. You were supposed to spoon it over fireplace toasted slices of bread. The texture was similar to tapioca pudding with sliced of almonds (not visible from above). The little pink pips gave the impression of being tine little pieces of boiled shrimp, at first, but it was manly because of the fresh water crustacean them of the entire day. I thought plucking the seeds from a pomegranate were a pain, here someone had peeled and separated each tiny tip from a sweet, pink grapefruit, swirled it into fresh yoghurt with almond slices, and sprinkled the tiny green nuts that I love on top. I felt like a kid who had just discovered a huge, unguarded jar of Nutella.

So what do italian river shrimp, saffron and pink grapefruit have in common?
I love eating all of them.

Fresh river shrimp salad

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More....more...more....

Happy as Clams

Before the quake we had a regular carbonara date with a group of friends. We shared the same row of season tickets for the Thursday night comedy theatre series at San Filippo, a deconsecrated downtown. Afterward we would all walk over to Rita and Massimo’s for carbonara and a few more laughs.

Spaghetti with clams

The theatre is off limits, like most of downtown, although it is trying to keep producing and bringing in shows whenever they can. The same goes for the buildings most of us lived in – and we are spread out from the outskirts of L’Aquila to Pescara. But spaghetti is the ultimate Italian comfort food and friendship can resist even crumbling walls.  But even though it is a chilly winter here on the coast, spaghetti with clams seemed more appropriate. (And other forms of seafood stood in for cabaret.)

There are lots of recipes for spaghetti with white clam sauce. If I was following one, it would always be Marcella Hazan’s. But we usually don’t follow the rules in these nights out. But the basic gist of most ricette is this:

- soak a half pound of small clams in a basin of salty water a few hours before, changing the water every half hour or so to clean them and purge them of sand

- seer a clove or two of sliced garlic in a few big spoons of olive oil in a skillet large enough to host the pasta you’ll be adding.

- add a half cup of white wine and slide in the small clean clams in their shells and simmer covered as you like. Add if you want: diced parsley or diced basil, chopped cherry tomatoes, and/ slices of fresh hot peppers. It’s all up to you. Cover and simmer until the clams open.

- cook the spaghetti al dente, slide the pasta into the skillet with the clams, salt, mix and serve to smiles.

What is this? Spaghetti con le vongole?

Of course there are more precise ways to do this, and you can also shell the clams after cooking for guests that don’t want to spend dinner eating the clams by hand – but that’s at times just what children and raucous dinner guest enjoy. And the constant tinkering of clam shells raining into spare bowls can be as uplifting as a glass of good Prosecco sparkling white wine.

I wonder if this is how we got the saying “happy as a clam”.

We were.

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Messing Up a Good Thing and Getting Away With It

Thinking back on it, drinking pink bubbly with red seeds is not the most macho thing to brag about. When the bubbly is good Prosecco di Vadobbiadene, it’s hard to decide. The small, delicate bubbles and flavors make it a joy with antipasti on it’s own, a great way to move on to the smoked salmon on toast and dried anchovies. Why mess with a good thing?
But then someone before dinner Saturday went through the hard work of separating the seeds from a Pomegranate, and I respect the hard work that takes.

The Bull waiter

Prosecco has a long history of being doctored up into cocktails – the Bellini’s that Hemingway and Orson wells would sip at Harry’s Bar in Venice (a Bellini is a cocktail made from Prosecco and white peaches from the Veneto region) is the Prosecco best know outside of Italy, but there are other variations. So I did the only honorable thing possible, I scooped a tablespoon full of the red seeds, gave the glass a quick swirl.

If mixing fruit with bubbly is manly enough for Hemingway….

Prosecco di Valdobbiadene, pomegranate seeds and me

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The Wine in the Willows

Teo loves freshwater shrimp. I really don’t know if they are what I used to call crayfish or crawdads or a european cousin, but here they are just gamberi di fiume, or “river shrimp” to most of us.

Teo is part of the gang of kids that my daughters hang out with when we are in Navelli for the holidays. Is father is from a nearby town of Bussi, just downstream on the Tirino river from Capestrano (the original one) and finally we were able to accept his invitation to their favorite restaurant in the area: Il Salice.
The restaurant’s name means willow, recalling outdoor summer feasts when this tiny eatery’s tables multiply out into the garden and overlooking terrace. In the winter it’s a cozy, reservation only, family run trattoria with a fireplace in the corner and black and white photos of the town Bussi in the twenties and thirties scattered along the walls.

Read tasties

Bussi, like Capestrano, Popoli and other towns along the Tirino and the nearby source of the Pescara river are famous for trout and freshwater shrimp, often so fresh they were swimming in the untreated water from a nearby brook just a few hours or even minutes before reaching your plate.
Some of my friends who are passionate about seafood frown upon fresh water fish and crustaceans, and they are right that there is much more variety in the salty sea. But why close your options.
Fernanda runs the place with motherly care and Francesca, her daughter, adds skill and passionate creativity in the kitchen (more on her creations in later post). Freshwater shrimp look a lot like their counterparts in the sea, and the taste is similar, just a little more delicate. After a huge, tasty and surprising (more next time) tableful of antipasti we were off to the first course: homemade maccheroni alla chitarra (Abruzzo’s most famous pasta form, similar to thick, spaghetti) with either a light tomato sauce with stewed shrimp. For those of you who can’t or don’t eat tomatoes, Fania loved the tomatoless version they served her.

Pino serves Maccheroni con Gamberi di Fiume (sugo rosso)

Then, stuffed to the gills, came the colpo di grazia, platters full of shiny red shrimp, saltati in white wine, olive oil, and laurel. As a kid I would have hated it, all that work cracking them open for so little food. But Teo is not like I was, or anyone at lunch yesterday.
The wine was one of my favorite: Cataldi Madonna’s Cerasuolo, the local rosé made from Montepulciano D’Abruzzo grapes in the nearby town of Ofena. Good rosés are not compromises, and in the winter I think they sometimes go better with seafood.

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Maccheroni con Gamberi di Fiume in Bianco