2010 Italian vintage: hot or not?

The 2010 Italian wine vintage got off to a rainy start, at least around our parts in northern Italy, such that this year’s nebbiolo was looking awfully green and acidic there for a while.

The rain has been such that my father-in-law was congratulating himself on an early and booming mushroom season. When it’s good for mushrooms, it’s bad for wine, and my father-in-law is of that bizarre race of Italian prepared to risk his life for a fungus (every year in Italy someone is injured or even dies for picking excesses during mushroom season and from what I understand my father-in-law could be a prime candidate).

Luckily though, things have fined up and we have been having above-average temperatures for this time, which at this stage bodes for a hot 2010 Italian vintage. The weather has so far proved what my adopted Italian grandmother had predicted – a hot summer.

But it’s a long way in the alpine Italian regions from June to August and September and anything could happen between now and picking. In the meantime, it’s time to get out the white wine and rosé.

Photo | Flickr

Homemade pavlova: in Italy!

This post goes out to my Auntie Heather who was generous enough to furnish me with a copy of a recipe for homemade pavlova, which in turn comes from the mother of my Uncle Mal. Proving that homemade pavlova is a family affair.

It turns out that my Auntie Heather is a very generous cook who shares some of her kitchen secrets with an admiring but ignorant niece. These secrets will not be published in this blog for questions of intellectual property should we ever decide to publish a family cookbook.

One thing my aunt didn’t tell me, though, was what the hell cream of tartar is. An entire Google research project ensued, before I decided that Italians wouldn’t know what it is either, not having the baking tradition we’ve got, that I’d never find it here, and that it wasn’t essential to the recipe anyway (an arrogant assumption but that’s what I do when I find myself stuck; I decided not to substitute with white vinegar, though , a result of a second Google search “cream of tartar substitute”).

In the absence of passion fruit, which again the Italians have discovered only recently but are happy to mention and adopt in cocktails as a sign of being more cultured, I covered our pavlova with seasonal strawberries which this year have been marvellously sweet.

The homemade Aussie pavlova in Italy was a winner, despite it’s contorted shape (my aunt did a much better job in spreading it out over the oven tray than what I did) and I reckon this could be a crowd pleaser in the future as a quiet way of showing a foreign wife can do just as well in the kitchen as the locals. All thanks to the mother of my Uncle Mal and my Aunt Heather ;-)

As an aside, we managed to polish off all the bottles of moscato at our wedding (and we had overcatered!), but if you're looking for a sweet wine match, this is what you want - light, fragrant and fruity. Don't go with anything heavy or with botytris or you'll drown the delicate pavlova flavours.

Photo | Flickr

My slice of the Dolce Vita

Living in Italy is hard. You can forget all your stereotypes of Tuscan villas and the Dolce Vita, because most of us living like Italians don’t enjoy many of the ideas people have about Italian life.

This is my protest post to all of those who think I’m a stuck-up expat living a European dream. You’re no longer welcome at home, and you’re not wanted in your new adopted country either; and you yourself start to wonder where you belong, fiercely creating a home for yourself while questioning how you come across to others.

I have found, once again, the reality of being a foreigner a tough one to deal with, and the future will never be as prosperous as “back home”. Australia is the lucky country, and most Australians have no idea just how fortunate they are. Many of my friends, rather than expanding their own world, do nothing but bitch about my supposed snooty bitching about my fantastic new life.

Aside from the riches we’ll never have, you find racism around every corner, self justification becomes a daily activity and you constantly struggle with communities that lack variety and hope and prosperity. You’re faced with the world’s worst television and sending your kids to inferior high schools.

It would be exaggerated to say I grimly married knowing this reality, but you do wonder what kind of love brings you to live in a place that makes life hard for you. And you hope you didn’t do it so you can eternally indulge in self-pity in the future.

It’s not all bad, of course. Some of the mono-cultural habits of Italy are just why I like being here. We also have a beautiful landscape (although that doesn’t get you a job and food on the table). And I sometimes feel like the struggle means that I’m making more of a home for myself and getting back to some values that I may have lost along the way in a life too easy.

Talking to an American colleague of mine last week, we wisely decided to turn these things to our advantage. In fact, she taught me a very good lesson, saying that dwelling on the tough things about Italy only makes it more painful for her to be here and not there. I talked of getting away from our capitalist tendencies and accumulation of wealth for wealth’s sake, and she mentioned just making your nest and sitting on it. However small that might be.

So here’s to my new married life and those kind of values – ragù on Sundays and attempting Aussie recipes at home with a lack of ingredients. Perhaps I should introduce myself to the not-so-mono-cultural ethnic grocery store in town....

Photo | The view from our flat at dusk in winter

Ragu on a Sunday for two

I am fast discovering that most recipes don’t cater for two people and such was the case this weekend on trying another of Armando’s gems, his version of ragù. Traditionally, for us Australians, this kind of dish would generally be called ‘bolognese sauce’ and would be made with mince meat, but there are actually many versions of ragù.

This particular version is more like a rustic, country-style version where you actually use chunks of pork and veal. The extra sauce can be used to do a first course of pasta with a touch of ricotta (we used Philadelphia cheese because I had forgotten to get ricotta when out shopping), which makes for a very tasty pasta sauce.

In the meantime, the ragù itself takes three hours of open pot, stove cooking but we ran out of gas so I can’t tell you whether completing the third hour in the oven changes anything about the recipe. It’s also not easy to keep the heat down on this, so if you have an electric stove, use it.

Otherwise, we finished with a very tender and fulfilling ragù that’s going on the list of our Sunday house specials. The slight touch of bay leaves and cloves gives just enough spice without being overpowering and the trick is not to under-do the tomato paste – it’s what gives the sauce its thickness. Any ideas for a food-wine match?

Wine for anniversaries and Champion's League finals: celebrating FC Inter

What a vintage, ragazzi miei! The grapes can do what they like in 2010 as so far I got married and FC Inter won the Champion’s League final, following its victories in the Coppa Italia and Serie A. In the future, my new husband and I will celebrate an anniversary on May 8th and memories of an emotional Inter victory on May 22nd.

I know of more than one sommelier and journalist who are die-hard Inter fans and I have yet to discover with what wine they celebrated the Champion’s League victory. I suspect the head of our branch of the Italian Sommeliers’ Association drank something very special.

We, on the other hand, in a sort of combined Italian-Anglo tradition (but don’t tell the Italians) stressed over pizza and later celebrated over beer. And then we joined the impromptu celebrations in the town, getting stuck in a traffic jam as people hit horns, played the Inter anthem loud from their cars and rang cow bells (nothing can ever make enough noise in a situation like this). It was bigger than the 2006 Italian World Cup victory when my husband and I were at the beginning of our love story.

Since we got married, we’ve got a few fine bottles of wine to keep and then drink, thanks to a dear friend of mine and a couple of purchases of my own so we’re well set-up for future reminiscing. And hopefully some celebrations should Inter ever make it a second time. None of its champagne, and most of its nebbiolo, but we can all celebrate in our own way. Thanks to Inter and, of course, “my Milito”.

Homemade semifreddo: Italian cooking disasters part one

You may think I’m on a mission to try every recipe in my Buon Ricordo recipe book and you’d be right, although it’s not actually a stated aim of mine (and I’ll probably skip the tripe – if there is one). But recently my friend Armando has abandoned me in full swing and I have discovered that my cooking skills, or instruction following capabilities are not quite up to the task.

The first home cooking disaster I’ve had is with homemade semifreddo. I quite like semifreddo and as Armando points out, it’s a great alternative to gelato which you really need an icecream making machine for if you’re going to do it properly.

Semifreddo is essentially cream and sugar (whereas gelato is made from milk) and shouldn’t prove too difficult to make. What happened to me, however, was quite unexpected. Firstly I had about triple the quantity I had expected and we only have so many containers and so much room in our bar fridge/freezer to fit stuff in. Secondly, while the semifreddo was not a total disaster, it did turn out less creamy and icier than I had anticipated.

I have thought this over and have concluded it could be the result of a couple of things. Firstly, over whisking of the cream which made it too light and fluffy, therefore stuffing up the semi freezing process, and secondly, addition of my own touch of fresh strawberries put through the blender which may have created extra water.

In any case, the bowl I had selected for the process wasn’t big enough and I had copious amounts of cream that I then had to alternate between freezer and fridge, and half of which got thrown out. And to think that Armando advises not using too much alcohol because it may interfere with the freezing process – he didn’t mentioning over whipping or strawberries though! My fiancé at the time, and now husband, said he quite liked it, and we still got married so I can only assume that for every culinary success, he has accepted there will be a failure in inverse proportion.

Photo | Flickr

Italian weddings: don't forget the moscato

You may wonder where I’ve been for the last month but keeping weddings simple is not as easy as it seems. After weeks of haphazard planning and then entertaining family, it was all over in one day and I probably didn’t savour it as much as I should have done, but I certainly ate and drank enough to remember a lovely lunch.

The biggest challenge for me was the menu and the wine but I have to hand it to my new husband. His instinct of keeping the menu simple, almost rustic, went down a treat with both Italian and English guests. Risotto is always appreciated and you can never go wrong with tagliata, so keeping the troops happy on that front wasn’t difficult.

For the non alcoholic drinkers we provided a fruit aperitif which I ignored on account of having chosen a nice Franciacorta for the sparkling wine. I can’t say whether it was a hit or not, but it should have given some guests something to think about compared to the usual sparkling wine consumed during happy hour. I forsook champagne because I figure I may as well start practising my new patriotism – not difficult to do when we’re talking wine.

I went into crisis on choosing the white wine because of recent tasting experiences on the pinot bianco front. You may remember I tried some pinot bianco recently that I quite liked (fresh and fruity), and then I tried another which I didn’t like as much. It seemed more like a hot climate wine, semi-aged and lacking in acidic structure. Other than proving that you need to taste lots of wine to get to know them, it also proved that I had no guarantees on choosing pinot bianco for my guests. So I went for an old favourite and picked a pinot grigio from Friuli (and you can never go wrong).

For the red obviously something local, meaning nebbiolo for us, and while my local wine merchant tried to convert me to Grumello, he didn’t quite manage. It was good, but Sassella still remains supreme for me, for its lovely perfume. In fact, our driver told us he was happy to be there given that it is his favourite wine which might bring you to ask what our driver was doing drinking but that’s another story (the night finished well with no drink drinking so things were fine).

My local wine merchant did manage to convince me that moscato is an indispensable part of an Italian wedding and he did have a nice one that we took to the restaurant the day before. Frankly, if you’re having a Saint Onoré cake, or practically any Italian dessert, this is the combination you’re looking for. And you can never beat bubbles for a wedding toast.

What do with leftover panettone: or making trifle in Italy

As part of the famous Christmas hamper, we have been left with a panettone which is slowly making its way towards its use-by date. Apparently, Tre Marie panettone is good stuff, but I’m not a big panettone fan (unless we’re talking about one handmade in a pastry shop and then it’s a totally different kettle of fish - like real sweet bread, it has so much more texture compared to the boxed stuff you get in supermarkets).

We are coming into the Easter period and generally in Italy that means colomba cake although really, panettone and colomba are not different in their essentials – it’s mostly the shape that changes. So before we get to Easter and someone gives us a colomba or does something equally silly, I want to finish our panettone.

So I’m going to try and make trifle. Now, while the Italians have their own word for trifle – zuppa inglese, or English ‘soup’ – it’s actually very difficult to get the ingredients for it. Jelly? Forget it – you can only get gelatine strips. Custard? Make it yourself or get a powdered mixture. Tinned fruit? It’s winter so perhaps pineapple is not really what we’re looking for. Liqueur? It’s marsala or nothing.

Anyway, I have procured an eclectic mix of ingredients and in the interests of not making a fool of myself on the internet (although it wouldn’t be the first time) I’m going to take a stab at making a trifle in Italy this afternoon and then I’ll let you know how it goes. The post will probably go along the lines of: “successful” followed by a full list of what I did, or “unsuccessful” followed by nothing. For other, less complicated things of what do you with your panettone, see Blogdolcevita and the chocolate sauce version. Yum!

Photo | Flickr

After the Christmas hamper wine

I’m on the last bottle of our Christmas hamper wine, excluding the bubbly that has remained which will hopefully be used at some stage to celebrate our engagement (just six weeks before the wedding, but we can’t be too picky). Which means I’m now back to buying wine after a month of free stuff my fiancé didn’t drink at Christmas.

Some white wine that I bought recently I have thoroughly enjoyed, although I must say the supermarket choice can be quite limiting if you’re looking for budget, but not too budget. A recently discovered varietal which I have known about since the days of my sommelier course is pinot bianco, with this particular example from Alto Adige.

I was pleasantly surprised. The pinot bianco is fresh with plenty of fruity bouquet and decent acidic structure. Apparently it has been getting some good results as a sparkling white as well, and I’ll be interested to try it if I come across one in the future.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to do much food and wine matching recently, especially given that my fiancé rarely drinks wine and I’d be stuck finishing off anything that turned out to be a little too experimental for our tastes. We’re also a little hamstrung in our finances in that department, which could be a lasting reality for us so I may as well get used to it now. However, I’m looking forward to choosing the wines for our wedding lunch and there could be asparagus on the menu, so that means a nice white. More on this later (when we actually get the proposed menu).

In the meantime, I can enjoy a short period of cheap wine before my parents get here and I’m required to buy something a little more decent for my Dad. Which hopefully he will pay for, and then I can enjoy a short period of good wine before he goes away again and I’m back to budgeting.... Life is difficult and short for wine choices.

Homemade cotoletta

Cotoletta is really just another word for schnitzel, but while the idea is the same, there’s a difference between commercial schnitzel and the homemade variety. Given that a recent trip to the supermarket resulted in the lady getting my bread order wrong and therefore an excess of the stuff, I thought the best way to finish it and try another experiment in Italian cooking, was to make my own cotoletta.

Luckily I had the opportunity to try one at home last night myself, meaning this time around I was the guinea pig and not my fiancé. I bought some veal scaloppine, although I actually don’t know if the Italians use veal or another white meat. Chicken or pork would probably do as well, as long as they’re thin slices.

I was pleased with the bread I was using, although I would have to make cotoletta again in the future with different bread to see if it makes any difference. The bread was a golden loaf made from corn flour, and while it didn’t grate easily for breadcrumbs, I felt it made for a tasty option. It had a few seeds in it, too, but they either got grated as well or didn’t stick properly.

So on grating the bread, I dipped the veal into raw egg and then into the breadcrumbs. Generally, I’m not a fussy person but stupidly I tried all of this without getting my hands dirty with egg. I was halfway through before realising that this was an impossible endeavour, and that not only this, the breadcrumbs wouldn’t stick properly unless pressed onto the veal by hand.

Later, into a pan with a little bit of oil and you have a very nice homemade schnitzel which beats any of the pre-cooked stuff you get at the shops. On the other hand, I could actually discover a butcher who might do this all for me, but that would take the fun out of it.

PS While my suggestion of cotoletta was first met with scepticism by my fiancé, I managed to conquer the man via my breadcrumb technique. Very nice, crunchy cotoletta, I believe was the response. The fact that the bread was difficult to grate might have less to do with the type of bread, and more to do with the fact that the bread should be quite dry....

Photo | Flickr

My friend Armando

In my campaign to be more culinary competent for the next big step in my life, my father came to the rescue at Christmas with a very handy gift in the form of a recipe book. I had suspected that Armando Percuoco of the legendary Buon Ricordo Italian restaurant in Sydney was originally from southern Italy, if not Naples. Luckily though, I escaped northern Italian prejudice for long enough to read the recipe book and the recipes, and be inspired to know that they will work just as well in my northern Italian home with my northern Italian (prejudiced) fiancé.

As it turns out, my fiancé is so impressed with the recipes and my first baby steps in making them, he refuses to believe my friend Armando is from Naples (impossibile! He must be a northerner). I have put it down to the steadying influence of Australia, and am anyway pleased to say that Armando is a man who loves Australia and Australian produce.

In honour of Armando’s southern Italian origins though, the first recipe I made was that for his napoletana sauce. I ignored the fact it is still winter and he recommends making it only in summer with fresh, sweet tomatoes, or otherwise using tinned tomatoes. I bought fresh tomatoes, sticking to Italian hot houses, and it still turned out better than tinned tomato pasta sauce. I even used garlic.

The second and third recipes though, were the real winners in the house. A kind of aperitif snack with red chicory is perfect for the season, and combined with prosciutto crudo and mozzarella (my addition), has fast become my fiancé’s favourite and only homemade happy hour snack.

That was followed by two beef fillets and Armando’s fiorentina sauce with beef stock and balsamic vinegar. I don’t have proper beef stock, but I do have proper balsamic vinegar – the slightly expensive stuff although it’s still a supermarket purchase. I did thicken this with a little flour and ended up with a couple of lumps, but it was still lovely. What’s more my Anglo roots have come through and been accepted by my fiancé in the most unlikely form of Brussels sprouts.

This is totally out of left field because first of all they are green and my fiancé generally doesn’t eat anything green, and secondly “cavolini” in Italian rhymes with “caccolini” which means ‘little shits’, or something to that effect. They have become his new favourite vegetable, although I have been told not to go telling anyone he eats them. So just for the record, I’m putting it here on my blog. My mum has also furnished me with another way to cook them – sliced in butter with a little salt and pepper – which I think could be more appreciated than boiled. Thank you Mum!

The world's great white wines

It’s a grand title, but that’s the focus of our new wine tasting seminar at the Italian sommeliers association, and we’re already halfway through. This post is in case you thought I was no longer talking about wine, but I figure I need to expand my focus a little and mix wine with food with life.

In some ways I came back to Italy with my priorities a little out of whack. Number one, go to wine tasting seminar on “i grandi vini bianchi”, and number two, get married. Perhaps not quite but there was a reason to get back in February at least for the first evening of the wine tasting seminar.

It involved an evening of sauvignon blanc from the Loire, and nothing short of remarkable for me. I will go out on a limb and say the vast majority of New Zealand sauvignon blancs leave me unimpressed and many of Australia’s don’t quite make the grade either. To be sure, they are two very different creatures, the French and New Zealanders, but I was thrilled with the elegance and acidity of the Loire sauvignon blanc. What’s more, I finally got to understand what that overused English description of “cigar box” is all about. It might be overused but it’s certainly accurate.

Last night, we moved locations and tasted the world’s greatest chardonnays from the Cote de Beaune in France. Unfortunately the example from 1989 didn’t have much success among the punters, but for the rest it was truly a great experience. More on the Italian chardonnay ring-in later.

Coming up for the next two evenings in the seminar are rieslings from Alsace and bringing it home in May is Chablis. We won’t have strayed from France, but then with the wines on offer, we really don’t need to. An example of some of the wines tasted so far:

Dider Dagueneau Poully Fumé Buisson Renard 2002
Nicolas Joly Coulèe de Serrant 2004
Louis Jadot Batard Montrachet Grand Cru 1997
Baron Thenard Montrachet Grand Cru 2006

The walnut cake and the mother-in-law

Call me naive, but I had thought that baking a walnut cake, mostly for my fiancé but with a quarter going to the future in-laws, would be a nice gesture as a kind of thanks for all the Sunday lunches and mid-week dinners so far enjoyed by myself at the effort of my future mother-in-law. I was wrong.

The baking of the walnut cake was a rare time when my fiancé was not in the role of guinea pig but was in fact, the beneficiary of a successful attempt already made at this recipe back in Australia. As I’m soon to embark on my journey of an Italian married life, I have figured that I should get my culinary skills up to speed; although I should already be assured of the affections of my fiancé without having to re-conquer him via the kitchen. As it is though, we’re still not married yet and he has often been subjected to various culinary experiments resulting in various degrees of success.

There was no way, however, that I would ever consider passing on a piece of cake to the in-laws that was not already a stalwart in my paltry recipe book (which has a heavy emphasis on cakes and sweets and not much on savoury main courses. This is something to be remedied in the future). I bought an electric cake mixer on purpose for my walnut cake, being equipped with only a wooden spoon and wonky egg whisk.

The cake was a roaring success with my fiancé and over at the in-laws I only got a hint of how it was received. I understand my future sister-in-law was the first to try it, because being “so dark” in colour my mother-in-law seemed loath to jump in first. On discovering that it was, in fact, a very good cake, I’ll never know if the piece set aside for my father-in-law ever actually got to him. The reaction from the mother-in-law was a mix of surprise, suspicion, pleasure and envy and I’m not sure which won out in the end.

I will admit that the choice of the walnut cake was a calculated one. It should always prove a crowd pleaser for the Italians with nothing too Anglo to confuse them. Whether the next cake on the list – a carrot cake – will have as much success is anyone’s guess. At least I now actually have a set of scales and a cake mixer to do this, although I don’t recommend splurging before a wedding to anyone else. Use it to your advantage – we can’t because we don’t have anywhere to put the stuff from a gift register at this stage.

In the meantime, any cake offers to the mother-in-law will have to be carefully considered in the future because I’m not sure that it’s done us any favours in not inviting certain aunts to the wedding, saving on elaborate bomboniere, and getting married at the local council and not in the church. In fact, I suspect all I did was prove that I could make a cake that she can’t, although the real virtue here is not in my culinary skills, but in following a recipe (the cake mixer helps, too). Never steal a son and offer a quarter of a cake in return....