Category Archives: Italian food

Holiday Treats – Italian Seasonal Goodies

March 19, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Any excuse is good for eating sweets, but seasonal treats that are only available during certain holidays are the best excuse of all. (No, I’m not talking about pumpkin-flavored coffee from Starbucks.)
Italy has one or more special sweets for every holiday. For Christmas, it’s panettone (a leavened cake with canditi – candied fruit – and raisins) and pandoro (a yellow cake cooked in a tall, star-shaped mold).

At Carnevale, it’s tortelli and chiacchere. Tortelli are fried, hollow balls of pastry, sometimes filled with cream, chocolate, etc. Chiacchere (literally, “chatter”) are deep-fried crackery things, liberally dusted with powdered sugar. These very fattening items were meant to be a sweet indulgence before the privations of the Lenten season, but nowadays, for the weight-conscious, oven-baked chiacchere are widely available.

My favorite seasonal sweet is coming up soon, for Easter: the colomba, a dove-shaped cake (as the name implies), similar to panettone but, instead of canditi and raisins incorporated into the batter, it features a cracked glaze topping with sugar grains and almonds.

Easter also means chocolate easter eggs. These are commonly about a foot tall and hollow, with a “treat” of some kind rattling around inside – sometimes more chocolate, but often a trinket or toy or, in the expensive versions, a piece of jewelry. There are plenty of crass commercial eggs available, themed with the latest kids’ obsession (yes, I am trying to find “Eggolas” for my daughter). But the best eggs are generally hand-made at your local pasticceria (bakery) from good-quality chocolate. Sometimes they are elaborately decorated with hard icing, but most often they are wrapped in pretty paper and decorated with frothy ribbons, flowers, etc. The bakery eggs also have treats inside but, to me, the treat is on the outside. Break off shards of a good-quality dark chocolate egg for the perfect accompaniment to a really good colomba.

Crotasc – A Winery Restaurant Specializing in Wild Game

March 15, 2004 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

We’ve discovered a new treasure, Crotasc, a restaurant attached to the Mamete Prevostini winery in Mese, just outside Chiavenna (a town north of the northern tip of Lake Como). Their specialties are salumi and insaccati (dried meats) and wild game (including salumi made from wild game), and of course their own wines.

The house welcoming nibble was thin slices of slinzega, a dried beef similar to the Chiavennasca specialty, violino di capra (“violin of goat’ – salted preserved haunch of goat, traditionally carved by holding it under your chin and sawing towards you with a long knife), along with several kinds of excellent bread, ranging from pure white to the traditional pane di segale (rye) – I wish I could buy the bread the restaurants get!

My husband had the 30-euro wild game menu, which started with a small selection of wild game salumi, followed by ravioli with fagiano (guinea fowl). I had home-made papardelle (wide pasta ribbons) with duck breast. Both were wonderful.

Enrico’s secondo was a medallion of venison with a sauce of Sfursat (the local “fortified” wine); I had a venison cutlet. Both were served with a dollop of polenta and a vegetable “foam.” My cutlet was excellent, but Enrico’s with the sauce was even better.

For dessert I had a chocolate pudding in vanilla sauce, Enrico had an orange semifreddo (semi-frozen), which again I liked better than my own – maybe I’m just envious.

We accompanied everything with a Grumello 2000 by Mamete Prevostini, also excellent. We could probably have bought some of their wine while we were there, but they were disappointingly out of the lovely white called Opera that we had tasted last summer at Lanterna Verde – they’re waiting for the new vintage to be ready. I guess we’ll just have to go back for it.

The restaurant is divided into two rooms, one traditional with a huge fireplace, and big dark wooden ceiling beams. We ate in the non-smoking room, which looked as though it had been recently done or re-done, in light wood with lovely modern fountain chandeliers and stone paving. There is also lots of outside seating, so the place is probably even more delightful during daylight, in good weather.

I warmly recommend this restaurant to anyone who’s visiting Lake Como – it’s well worth the trip.

via D.P. Lucchinetti 67,
23020 Mese (SO)

American culture, food, Italian culture, Italian food

Italian vs. American Diet

November 14, 2003 Deirdre Straughan 1 Comment

^ ravioli at Lanterna Verde – yum!

One of the most boring things in the world is listening to people talk about their diet (hearing them complain about their weight runs a close second). However, in America today there’s nothing to discuss, because everyone is on the Atkins diet (no carbohydrates, but you can eat as much of anything else as you want).

Food companies and advertisers have been swift to adapt. In the supermarket I saw “low-carbohydrate bread.” I did not read the label to learn how they accomplished this miracle; I had a feeling it would involve chemicals I’d never want to put into my body.

Magazine articles, books, and news items give alarming statistics about obesity, and offer ways to combat it, both in yourself and your children. It seems to me that maintaining a healthy weight is not rocket science, and doesn’t require a diet plan that you have to buy a whole book about, let alone pre-packaged diet meals with counted calories etc. etc. Didn’t we all learn the basics of nutrition in school, the four major food groups and all that? The major lesson I remember is that it never hurts to eat more fruit and vegetables, especially when those replace starches, fats, and sugars in your daily intake.

Perhaps what Americans really need is to revise their attitude towards food. Food seems to occupy two diametrically-opposed places in American consciousness. On the one hand, food is simply fuel – you shovel in whatever comes to hand, to keep you going. It’s this attitude that leads to families rarely eating together, as everyone is rushing off to their extra-curricular activities, grabbing whatever they can to eat along the way.

But food also has a psychological role. Cookbooks, menus, and people tout the concept of “comfort food,” which, when eaten, is supposed to make you feel secure or loved, perhaps by reminding you of your childhood. (Never mind that most of us never had this mythical comforting childhood or that kind of food with it.)

Comfort is a very dangerous role for food to play. You hear the same story over and over again: “I wasn’t overweight, but then I went through a rough patch and felt depressed. I turned to food for comfort, and became a blimp.” At the blimp stage, food is re-cast as the enemy, the secret sin, and the indulgent reward for good behavior (most often, diet-related good behavior: “I was good today, I only had salad for lunch, so I’m entitled to have a brownie now”).

The attitude towards food is one area where Italy really gets it right. This attitude is made explicit by the Slow Food movement, but I think is pervasive throughout Italian culture. In Italy, a meal is neither mere refueling nor comforting self-indulgence. It’s a time for a family to be together, to enjoy good food and each others’ company. It’s not something to be rushed through, neither in preparation nor in consumption. So dinner is eaten far later than in the US, usually around 8 pm. Meals are spread over at least two courses, which also slows you down. You have time to appreciate the food and wine, and to talk to each other. And there’s no rushing through the meal to watch TV afterwards. (I have never heard an Italian, not even a child, leave the table on that pretext.)

The Italian style of family meal has several beneficial side effects. On the nutritional side, everyone tends to eat a more balanced diet, in part because parents are at the table with their kids to ensure that they eat what’s good for them. Taking your time over a meal also ensures that you digest it better. And spending time together is good for families: you know what’s going on with each other.

Needless to say, the Atkins diet is not taking off in Italy, the home of pasta, risotto, polenta, and tasty, crusty bread. Thank god.

Italian food

Slow Food, Good Wine, Hot Baths

April 16, 2002 Deirdre Straughan Leave a comment

Last September I joined the Slow Foodassociation, dedicated to the appreciation and conservation of good food worldwide. We’ve been to three dinners so far, two of which emphasized wine, and one in which every dish somehow involved chocolate. The wine dinners also featured excellent food, and vice-versa. The international Slow Food association is divided into local groups, in Italy called condotte. Outside of Italy they’re called convivia, which fits: after you’ve been drinking good wine together for an hour or so, everyone does get very convivial!

The most recent dinner we attended began with a tasting of Sfursat, a wine from Valtellina, an Alpine valley northeast of Lake Como. Sfursat (dialect for sforzato – “forced”) is made by drying the harvested grapes for three months before pressing, so that their sugar content – and therefore the percentage of alcohol in the wine – is high, at least 14.5%.

The best of the four Sfursat we tasted that night was Sfursat 5 Stelle from the Nino Negri vineyard, and we had the privilege of sharing a dinner table with Casimiro Maule’, the vintner who created it. He told us a great deal about winemaking in Valtellina, most of which I can’t remember (too many glasses of Sfursat and other grand Valtellina wines!). I do remember that it’s difficult to grow wine there; the terrain is steeply mountainous and the soil not extremely fertile. But Sig. Maule’s Sfursat, and other excellent wines from the region, prove that it can be done, and done very well indeed.

I’m not sure how easy it is to obtain Valtellina wines outside of Italy, but if you love good wine, it would be worth the effort to track them down or demand them from your local supplier. A more common type is called Inferno – yes, it’s a hell of a wine. A good example of this is Giuseppe Rainoldi’s Inferno Barrique, which has a wonderful complex flavor because it’s aged in small wooden casks.

In the spirit of Slow Food, last week Enrico and I explored Valtellina, making our first stop in Morbegno at the renowned shop of Fratelli Ciapponi. We spent two hours there with one of the senior brothers Ciapponi, taking a tour of the shop and its underground wine and cheese rooms, and got a complete explanation of how the local bitto cheese is made and successfully matured. (“I caress these cheeses more than I do my wife,” said Sig. Ciapponi, probably not for the first time.) We tastedbitto of various ages. There were noticeable differences at one, two, and six years, partly due to ageing, but also because this is a handcrafted cheese that depends heavily on environmental conditions: more rainfall means better grass in the high Alpine pastures, and tastier milk from the cows and goats who produce the raw materials.

Sated with cheese, we continued on our way to Bormio, a ski resort town. I don’t ski, and it’s been a bad season for skiing anyway, so why did we go there? For the natural hot spring spas. These date back at least to the Romans; Pliny the Elder described the baths in the first century AD. The Bagni Vecchi (“Old Baths”) have been expanded and refurbished over 2000 years to their present glorious state, which includes:

a 30-meter y-shaped tunnel dug into the mountain, debouching into a natural steam room on one side and a channel full of very hot (46 Celsius) water on the other
pools with hot waterfalls – natural massage!
mud baths
steam rooms and saunas
an outdoor hot water pool with a view of the mountains all around

It was heaven. We spent all afternoon there, and I went back the next day while Enrico went skiing. If you love to get into hot water, this is the place to do it.

Caveat: The Bagni Vecchi are closed in May, and in the summer the water is not nearly so warm – for some odd geothermal reason, when the ground freezes, the water gets hotter. Best and least crowded times to go are probably November before the ski season really gets underway, and March/April when the season is ending.

Italian food

How to Eat Like an Italian: Fundamentals of the Mediterranean Diet

August 19, 2001 Deirdre Straughan 3 Comments

You’ve probably heard about the “Mediterranean diet”, and know that it involves a lot of carbohydrates, olive oil, tomatoes, and other fresh vegetables, as well as lots of good red wine.

So what does a typical Italian meal look like? A restaurant meal may involve up to four courses: an antipasto, primo (first course), secondo (second course), and dessert. The antipasto and dessert are optional and often skipped, but to make a comfortably full meal you’re likely to want both the first and second courses. The first course is where you get the bulk of your carbohydrates, in a dish of pasta or rice (in the form of risotto).

A word about pasta: I have occasionally (reluctantly) eaten in trendy Italian restaurants in the US, at the behest of colleagues who thought it would be a treat for me. I do appreciate their kind intentions, but… It’s positively alarming what Americans will do to pasta! No matter what the menu claims, any single pasta dish that involves too many ingredients (sun-dried tomatoes, olives, tomato sauce, artichoke hearts, etc.) is not likely to be an “authentic” Italian dish. Furthermore, Italians don’t eat much chicken, and I have never seen an Italian put chicken in pasta. And feta cheese, being Greek, is not typically found in Italian pasta dishes.

…where was I? Ah, yes. The second course is where you get your proteins. It usually consists of meat or fish, very simply prepared, for example grilled over a log fire. You will also want to order one or more contorni (side dishes), such as vegetables, salad, or potatoes, since the meat usually arrives completely unaccompanied.

If you’re vegetarian, there’s not a lot of choice at most restaurants, but grilled scamorza (smoked cheese) and grilled vegetables are often available, and always yummy. There are some traditional vegetarian dishes such as melanzane alla parmigiana (eggplant parmesan) but, if you are a very strict vegetarian, you should ask, as often apparently vegetarian dishes do involve meat, e.g. a risotto with mushrooms will likely be cooked in meat broth.

Italian cooking is mostly very simple. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, because the basic ingredients are so good that it would be a shame to cover up the foods’ inherent flavors with heavy sauces and spices.

You can also have a cheese course after the second course, then dessert and/or fruit, then coffee. Coffee is not served with the dessert unless you specifically ask. Caveat: ordering a cappuccino after dinner is the sure mark of a tourist (if the waiter offers it, you’re in the wrong restaurant!). Italians rarely drink cappuccino after 10 am, and never after a meal.

A friend in Milan on business went alone to a restaurant for dinner. He overheard the couple at the next table – clearly Americans. When he answered his cellphone, they realized that he, too, was American, so they said hello. “The food is good here,” they said, “but the servings of pasta are really small!”

Yes, portions are small in Italy. Or, from the European point of view, portions in America are enormous! (And Europeans often add: “No wonder so many Americans are fat!”) That’s why in Italy you generally order a first course and a second course, as well as side dishes. A meal made up of a single course is called piatto unico (single plate), but these are not common.

Countries Beginning with I

Category Archives: Italian food

Holiday Treats – Italian Seasonal Goodies

Crotasc – A Winery Restaurant Specializing in Wild Game

Italian vs. American Diet

Slow Food, Good Wine, Hot Baths

How to Eat Like an Italian: Fundamentals of the Mediterranean Diet

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia

You might also like:

You might also like:

You might also like:

You might also like:

You might also like:

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia