Today is my last day of summer vacation in Italy. I wanted to cook something special for my family to celebrate our amazing post-COVID vacation. Food memories always bring us back to Nonno's garden and the creations that Nonna came up with using the simplest and often most surprising ingredients. Today it's flowers. Zucchini flowers. Big orange zucchini flowers! I remember the first time I saw Nonna make them, it blew my mind! Who eats flowers? I'm a picky eater, so I was skeptical. Fried zucchini flowers, fiori di zucca fritti, ended up being one of my all time favorite things. They were a seasonal item, only made during the month of June when Nonno's garden was in full bloom. We were also limited as to how many we could make, so they were like gold, divided up evenly so everyone got their fair share of that pot of gold! As Nonno explained, you should only pick the male flowers because they are the most tasty (the female puts all of her energy into her baby). If you remove too many flowers, they won't be able to fertilize and produce more fruit. Check out the video below for a nice explanation on finding the difference between a male and female flower. Today I can get my zucchini flowers at the grocery store or the local produce market when I am in Italy. If I am really lucky, nice friends will give me flowers from their gardens. It's nice that I can even get them at the supermarket in August, but they are certainly not the same quality as Nonno's that came straight from the garden that morning. Fiori di Zucca Fritti Ingredients: Zucchini flowers Flour Cold beer Salt & Pepper Olive Oil If you are picking your own zucchini flowers, watch the video above to learn how to choose them for your best results. Try to pick male flowers. You should cook them within one day of picking them as they begin to decompose very quickly.
Create a batter using flour and cold beer. Note: I don't weigh/measure my ingredients. I go by eye., but the ratio of flour to beer is about 100 grams of flour and 200 grams of beer. I usually start with 200 grams of flour and 400 grams of beer. If I look like I'm running low, I just add more of the ingredients. Using a whisk, I stir until the batter is smooth without any lumps. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put olive oil in a fry pan and heat to a medium level. Be careful not to make it too hot or it will burn. Dip the flowers into the batter and place in the hot oil. It should bubble and brown within a few minutes. Flip over and fry the other side. If you notice that the batter just stays while and doesn't really turn golden brown, you probably need to add some more olive oil. I use a paper towel to absorb the oil and then salt them. They are best eaten immediately while hot. Buon Appetito!
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I’m the product of a typical California upbringing in the 60’s and 70’s. We bought our food at large grocery stores. Canned fruits and veggies and iceberg lettuce were as common as was white bread, PB&J, boxed foods and the frozen dinners that made life easier for large, busy families like ours. Meat was already butchered and packaged, ready to cook. Ground beef was the main ingredient of many recipes. We had lots of hamburgers, steak on special occasions, and mom made great lasagna. In contrast, Stefano’s parents grew up in the Tuscan hills outside of Florence. His grandparents and relatives were hunters and farmers that survived the hardships of war by growing and hunting their own food. Tuscan’s have a rich history of hunting, farming, and foraging the land. There is nothing that stands out more in the differences between our cultural upbringing than the way food is displayed, sold, prepared, and consumed in Italy. While beef, chicken, pork, and turkey were certainly common in my diet, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine to find wild boar, rabbit, porcupine, deer, and even cute little sparrows on my plate. This would be a challenging experience for a picky eater from California. While there were some large grocery stores in Florence, most families shopped at the local stores. For my in-laws each morning was dedicated to acquiring the food for the day. Nonno went to his garden and harvested his seasonal fruits and vegetables. Nonna visited the local mom and pop merchants...the butcher shop, the bakery, the produce kiosk, and other shops that provided her with the staples that she needed each day. Meals were prepared from scratch with fresh ingredients purchased right in their little neighborhood. For me, my first experience gazing into the display window of a butcher shop was a shock that I will never forget. It was like watching a horror movie. The whole chicken that was splayed out in the case stared back at me blankly, it’s clawed feet dangling grotesquely from it’s plucked body. The skinned cat was really a rabbit. And the severed head of a pig with it’s hollowed-out, charcoaled eye sockets and apple in its mouth, was strangely detached from the rest of its roasted corpse while the butcher sliced off pieces for a customer. It became an utterly confusing moment when I was engulfed by the enticing aroma of roasted pig, as I hurried past the open door, too afraid to enter. Though some of the culinary delights that I have experienced in Tuscany were not so delightful for my fussy tastes, I was blessed to have a front row seat to a genius in the kitchen. I will save some of my more challenging food experiences for another time. I wanted to share a classic Tuscan recipe from my mother-in-law. This dish is like coming home for our family. It’s our go-to holiday meal. If I were able to choose the first course of my last meal on Earth, this would be it. Lasagne! No offense to my own mom. She didn’t know any better! Hers is good for American lasagna. But you have never had lasagna until you’ve tasted it made from scratch by a Tuscan mother-in-law, who dearly loved to cook for her family. Making the pasta from scratch is a lengthy, strenuous labor of love and I am shocked at the stamina that this tiny woman in her 80’s had, the last time she was well enough to make it. According to my Apple Watch, I burned 300 calories in 70 minutes as I mixed, kneaded, and rolled out the noodles. I am forever grateful that Nonna had the patience to teach me and I know she would be proud that I am carrying on this tradition with my family. The sense of smell is known to be a trigger of memories, mood, and emotion. This could not be more true as it is for me today. Nearly 40 years ago, when I first went to Italy, my senses were aroused with new scents that were like a kaleidoscope to my nose. Walking by a restaurant, any open window along the street, or entering Stefano's house, brought new olfactory experiences that still invoke the happiest of memories. The aroma of freshly baked bread, pastries, grilled meats, and tomato sauces swirled around me. In fact, I was so impressed with these smells, that I wanted to compliment my future mother-in-law on them the fist time I was invited to dinner. I never lived down those first few words spoken to her in my broken Italian, "che bel puzzo!" I wondered why her sweet smile faded so quickly until Stefano intervened, "Mamma, she didn't mean stink, she meant that it was a lovely smell." When Mamma cooked, gli odori, were essential ingredients of every dish. I remember watching her curiously as she stuffed whole, fresh sage leaves and garlic into holes that she made in a roast or sprigs of rosemary in a pan with chicken. Gli odori, literally translates as "the smells" in Italian. She used a slang term rather than erbe aromatiche (aromatic herbs), in proper Italian. Where I grew up, herbs and spices came in a little tin can with the word Schilling on it. I'd never seen what they looked like in their original form. This past spring, I planted my own mini herb garden. It was a labor of love that brought me a lot of happiness during our pandemic lockdown. When I smell the aroma of the basil, rosemary, and sage as I harvest, I am drawn back in time to the wonderful memories of happy times, new love, and discovery. Here is a recipe in which "the smells" take me back. Mamma usually used zucchini flowers in this recipe, but I don't have any this summer. I have enjoyed fried sage in restaurants and they are a delicacy! Salvia Fritta (Fried Sage) Ingredients: 30-40 large sage leaves 100 g. flour 200 ml. cold beer Salt & pepper Olive oil Steps: Put flour in a mixing bowl. Pour the beer into the bowl and stir quickly until smooth without lumps. I used a whisk to stir the batter. You don't want it too runny or too thick. Add more flour or beer to the batter until you have the desired density. In a pan, heat up a table spoon or two of oil oil. Dip the sage leaves in the batter and place in the hot oil. Fry the leaves until they are golden brown. If the batter runs off of the top side, you can spoon on more batter. Flip over so they are browned on both side. Be careful not to have the heat too high to avoid burning. Cool and drain excess oil on a paper towel. Salt and pepper to desired taste. Eat the sage leaves while still hot/warm. One of the best treats was when Nonna had extra batter. Sometimes she dipped other veggies like zucchini, eggplant, or onions in the batter and fried them up, frittura di verdure. But my absolute favorite way was when she poured the batter in the pan and made pastella fritta, fried batter. Sometimes she even put ham and cheese in them sort of like a crepe. Ah, such memories...
Creatively, Cathy The other day when I was grocery shopping in a German store, I noticed that they had a lot of root vegetables that I had never really seen/noticed before. One time I found purple carrots, which were awesome, so I thought maybe these were red carrots. As it turned out, they are radishes. I had never seen them in that shape before. I am not a fan of radishes and their strong aftertaste, so I wasn't sure how I was going to use them. They were super cheap, so I thought about just tossing them into the bio bin. Then I asked myself, "what would Nonna do?" As children of WWII, my in-laws were very adamant about not wasting food. They found a use for every morsel that came into the house. Even when the cupboard/refrigerator was bare, Nonna would find a way to turn those simple ingredients into a feast. So, today, I channeled my inner-Nonna and decided to look at some of the ingredients that I had sitting around and come up with something. Often, when Nonna had a couple types veggies and some eggs on hand, a frittata was a great go-to meal that could be ready fairly quickly. If she had a lot of potatoes, she made a potato frittata. If she had an abundance of green onions or zucchini, she threw them into a frittata. Today I had an abundance of radishes. I also had some leeks and green onion already cut up and left over from another recipe. I had a small onion, a couple spears of asparagus, half of a red-pepper, and a potato that needed to be used. Now, I don't measure anything. I just made sure that all of the veggies were cut up into small chunks (*Tip: To speed things up, since potatoes take much longer than the other ingredients to get softened, I microwaved it for a few minutes to give it a head start...Nonna would have cooked them first and then added the other veggies). Here's the recipe: Frittata Ingredients: Olive Oil 4 eggs Splash of milk 1/4 cup Parmesan Cheese Salt Pepper Garlic powder Cut up veggies of your choice* into small chunks Some of the other combinations that Nonna and I have used included : potatoes, white onions, green onions, zucchini, red peppers, leeks, and artichokes. Directions: In a frying pan (non-stick is best), add olive oil and veggies over low heat. Saute until the veggies are soft. While the veggies are cooking, beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Add a splash of milk, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Mix well. Add 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese and mix well. When the veggie mixture has softened (after about 15 minutes), make sure that veggies are evenly spread across the bottom of the pan. Pour the egg mixture on top. Let it cook on low heat (uncovered) for approximately 15 minutes until the egg mixture has solidified. Note that having the pan on extreme heat will cause the veggies to stick/burn on the bottom of the pan and the top of the eggs will not be cooked enough. The secret is to cook it slowly. When the frittata appears to be almost firm on the top, take a handful of Parmesan cheese and sprinkle it on the top. Take it off the heat and cover with a lid. It will melt the cheese and solidify the egg. Italians consider the frittata to be a lunch or dinner item. Serve with some crusty bread and a green salad and you've got a tasty, nutritious meal. However, the American in me absolutely loves this as a breakfast food. I pair it with some toast and a piece of fruit and it's a great start to my day. It took me many years to master the art of frittata making. I have come to realize that the quality of the pan, cooking on low heat, and including the Parmesan cheese in the egg mixture were the secrets to making a great frittata. Buon appetito! Bonus Recipe: Radish PestoEven after using a bunch of radishes in my frittata, I still had a bunch of radishes left over. It made me think back to my pesto recipe in a prior post. What if I chopped up some radishes with a handful of basil that is growing in my garden? Since I had a lot of almonds on hand, I also included them to thicken up the mixture. Here's what I did: Ingredients: 1/8 c. Olive Oil 100 g of radishes Handful of basil leaves 25 g of almonds Salt Pepper Garlic Powder 1/4 c. Parmesan cheese Directions:
Chop up the radish chunks, basil and almonds in a food processor. Add olive oil and Parmesan cheese to the mixture and pulse it until the mixture has been reduced to almost a fine paste. You can add more olive oil to thin it out according to your own preferences. Add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste and mix again thoroughly. For a little spicy kick, add red pepper flakes. Pour over hot pasta such as spaghetti, linguini, penne. Top with some more Parmesan cheese. Buon Appetito! When my husband was little, Spaghetti alla Carbonara was one of his all time favorites. It's one of those comfort foods that reminds him of his childhood. I don't know how many times he has ordered this dish at a restaurant, only to be disappointed because it didn't compare to his Mamma's. It turns out Mamma took some creative Tuscan liberties with this traditional Roman dish. Her ability improvise and create in the kitchen has always inspired me. Cooking was one of the ways that she loved on her family. The traditional carbonara recipe calls for mixing beaten, raw egg yolks and the hot starchy water from the spaghetti to give it a more creamy consistency rather than the scrambled egg consistency. Although the raw egg probably cooks a bit in the hot pasta, I'm not a fan of raw egg and am more inspired by my mother in-law's version. When I lived in the U.S. it was hard to find pancetta, so I used bacon or cubed ham, but it was never the same. In Germany, I have found Gourmet KatenschinkenIn, which works perfectly. Here's a recipe that I found in English for the more traditional take on this recipe. If you and your family are lovers of scrambled eggs and bacon, this just might end up becoming one of your favorites too. Creatively, Cathy I remember the days when our kids were little. After a long day of teaching, homework, and after school activities, who felt like cooking? My husband worked shift work, so most of the cooking fell on me. Sometimes it was just easier to go out and get McDonald's or order a pizza. Yet, my mother-in-law taught me the simplest recipes for pasta that could be created quicker than the amount of time that it took me to go to McDonald's or have a pizza delivered. One thing about Nonna's cooking was the simplicity of ingredients and her creativity in combining them. The simple, nutritious ingredients were a better choice than fast food. Of course, in those days there was no such thing as gluten-free ingredients, so you can make the substitutions as you see fit. Nonna's go-to recipes are always ones that I share with friends who are looking at a way to expand their home menus. Whether you are a busy parent, a workaholic with little time to cook, or someone whose looking for quick healthy options, I am hoping this can be something to help you. This Pasta al Pesto sauce is great because the only cooking that needs to be done is the pasta. This is a no-cook sauce that you can get on the table in 20 minutes or less. Getting Creative with PestoAt my house, olive oil, basil, pine nuts, and Parmesan cheese are staples and usually readily available. In Italian, the word pesto comes from the verb pestare, which means to grind. Think of a mortar and pestle, which is what my mother-in-law used. I use a food processor. You can get creative thinking about the kinds of ingredients that you could easily grind together to make an olive oil-based sauce. One time I was out of pine nuts, so I substituted the pine nuts with pistachios. Another time I did not have any basil so I substituted the basil with zucchini. There are so many different combinations that you could come up with different nuts, leaves, and veggies. Don't worry so much about measuring out exact amounts, just go by eye and taste. You can also adjust the amount of olive oil that you use, making the sauce thick or runny. Sometimes I make a big batch and have extra that I keep in the freezer, ready for the next meal. Sometimes I even use a little basil pesto to put in my tomato, mozzarella salad. I'd love to hear about any pesto innovations that you have come up with. Enjoy! One of the things that my husband missed the most when we moved 6,000 miles away from his family in Italy was his mamma's famous Torta di Mele (apple cake). Each time we came home for a visit, the house was filled with the sweet aroma of his beloved apple cake. It was the most requested dessert for gatherings with family and friends. There is a story of Stefano coming home from school as a child and eating the whole cake in one sitting. He was just cutting a little piece at a time. Each time he cut a piece from the rectangular pan he felt the need to go back and even out the crooked row...until it was suddenly gone. He explains that his mom must put some sort of addicting drug in it because once he gets started on it, it's impossible to stop. As you will see, the ingredients are quite simple. I have spent years trying to replicate Nonna's Torta di Mele with limited success. While my attempts were certainly edible, there was never a comparison to Nonna's. Even when I used the exact same ingredients and followed her steps to the "t", it never turned out like hers. It's now been about 4 years since Alzheimer's robbed her of the ability to remember. Being housebound during a pandemic gave me time to do more cooking and testing of recipes. I made a challenge with myself that I would perfect Nonna's Torta di Mele by June 2nd, Stefano's birthday. So, in April I started experimenting. Since I couldn't find my written directions anywhere, I just experimented with the quantities of the ingredients. Too cakey, not enough sugar, too greasy, too flat, too fluffy, not enough apples. With each iteration, Stefano pointed out where it went wrong, but also that I was getting closer each time. Don't get me wrong, the cakes must not have been that bad since he gobbled them all up!!! The ultimate goal was to replicate his mamma's cake. He resigned himself to the reality that we would probably never be able to replicate it, but we could make our own version that would still be good. The week before Stefano's birthday, I was on Pinterest looking at recipes and one caught my eye. The photo looked almost exactly like Nonna's cake. I studied the recipe and made a couple adjustments based upon what I remembered from Nonna teaching me. Bingo! It was the closest that I had gotten and Stefano was convinced that I had hit the mark as close as I could! By the time his birthday rolled around the following week, I made one more tweak and nailed it. He now claims that my cake is better than his mamma's. Somehow that is hard to believe, but I'll take it for the win. There is no greater gift that I could have given him than the food memories from his mamma and his childhood. I know that she would be proud of me for carrying on her tradition and making her boy happy. I hope that you enjoy it as much as he does! Creatively, Cathy While the purpose of food is to provide the body with energy to carry out the functions in life, I think that the role that food plays in life does just as much to nourish the soul. The taste or smell of a food can bring back distant memories and feelings of comfort (or disgust) all the way back to childhood. To this day, when my mom makes potato salad it reminds me of time with my grandma. A certain broccoli casserole will always make me think of my dad and some funny memories over the holidays. The smell of chocolate chip cookies (and the taste) give me warm and fuzzy feelings of coming home from school to warm cookies and a glass of cold milk. Due to some childhood trauma with tunafish casserole, the smell of tuna (and really any fish) make me queasy. The point is, food helps us to create long lasting memories. As a child, I was in 4-H and learned how to cook a recipe called Corn Beef Dandy (ground beef, stewed tomatoes, corn, and cheddar cheese). I was a Corn Beef Dandy expert and relished in the occasional opportunity to prepare my dish for the family (to my siblings' dismay). When I left for college, I added rice pilaf and macaroni and cheese to my list. Once I left dorm life, my apartment cooking was limited to those staples and supplemented mostly by Quarter Pounders with Cheese from McDonald's. When I took my summer study abroad trip to Florence, Italy during college, my taste buds were suddenly jump-started. During those few summer months I gained a new perspective on food. Sure, the pizza, pasta, and gelato eclipsed any that I had ever tasted back home, but I came to realize that there was more to it than that. Food was always part of social experience and the way food was used was nothing short of artistic. I ended up marrying an Italian boy that I met on that trip. For over 35 years, I have been blessed to learn about food from my in-laws. In my husband's family, cooking is an art form. They don't see it that way. To them, it's the norm. Food and mealtimes are special...tutti i giorni (every day). Quite often the aroma of espresso at breakfast intermingled with the likes of garlic, basil, rosemary, and tomatoes as Mamma created pranzo (lunch). It was amazing to watch how my in-laws took the simplest and sometimes most unexpected ingredients and turned them into a masterpiece. Mamma was a true artist in her cucina (kitchen) and expressed her creativity and love in the form of food. My father-in-law did the same by toiling in his expansive orto (garden), growing most of their fruits and vegetables himself...and even raising chickens and rabbits from time to time. Our children spent most summers of their childhood hanging out with their Nonni (grandparents) in the kitchen and the garden. They hold treasured memories that are so often brought back to life with the food we share. Over the years, I have expanded my cooking repertoire, much to the relief of my husband. Our first years of marriage were tough on him. Let's say that he does not have many fond food memories of our early years together. Over the years, I have been able to mimic or adapt much of what Nonna taught me about cooking. She spoke so fondly of her grandmother who taught her the recipes that she never wrote down. She just knew how to work with food like an artist knows how to glide a paintbrush across the canvas. Sadly, Nonno is now gone and Nonna is 90 and suffering with Alzheimer's. Her culinary specialties are at risk of being lost. I am taking advantage of this time that I have had at home during the pandemic to attempt to re-create some of her recipes. I decided that this blog would be a great way to document these recipes so that our kids can carry on the food memories that their Italian grandparents helped them create. Maybe these recipes will even inspire someone to create some new food memories for their families. I think Nonna would like that. |
About CathyI'm a wife, mother, friend, educator, traveler, creator, tech lover, (and much more) inspired by Brene Brown's call to being vulnerable and daring greatly. Archives
September 2020
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