Sapori d’Autunno

22 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Un po' di pepe in Italia, Italian language, Mangiamo!

Tags

Autumn harvest in Italy, Autumn in Italy, Dalla terra alla tavola, Dolcevitabloggers, Italian food

Dalla terra alla tavola, farm to table cooking has always been a thing in Italia. Food is prepared using local, seasonal ingredients which are at their optimum flavor. Each season features its own specialties. I sapori d’autunno, the flavours of autumn, feature the fruits of the harvest. Visiting Italia in the autumn will not leave you hungry or thirsty! This is also a time to seek out sagre-wonderful food festivals dedicated to local specialties. There are regional differences, and specialties are prepared according to local tradition, but I will provide a general review of what you might find on your piatto. I am also including links to related previous posts and recipes.

Castagne (cas·TAH·nyeh). Chestnut trees have been growing in Italia since at least 2000 BC, the oldest ones being in Calabria. Pushcarts selling castagne calde in paper cones will be found all over the country. Everyone I know has an old pan at home with holes punched out the bottom to use for roasting castagne. Don’t you have one? Castagne can also be boiled with bay leaves or made into soup or chestnut honey, miele di castagne. Chestnut flour is used to make pasta which is eaten with pesto in Liguria, and Castagnaccio, a chestnut flour cake with olive oil, raisins, pine nuts, rosemary and orange rind. This cake is originally Tuscan, but can be found in other areas too. I tasted some in Roma, but it did not last long enough for a photo. Below is a poster for a Sagra della Castagna this weekend in Potenza, Basilicata. Zucca (ZOO·kah) Zucca and zucca gialla are pumpkin and squash. I adore zucca!It is used to make delicacies such as risotto di zucca, gnocchi di zucca and tortellini, ravioli or agnelotti stuffed with zucca, cheese, nutmeg and amaretti. Mmmm. No food goes to waste, so any leftover zucca goes to feed the pigs! Speaking of decreasing waste, I like to recycle my Hallowe’en pumpkin into gnocchi. Here you will find my recipe for gnocchi di zucca.Cachi (KAH•kee) are called persimmons in English. There are 2 kinds, hard and soft and both delicious. They are mostly eaten raw on their own or in salads. I picked these ones from the tree in the upper photo. It is in the olive grove that belonged to my Nonno. Papà has 2 trees full of cachi in Vancouver. We will pick them all in about a week and let them ripen in the garage.The incredibly gorgeous colour of cachi make them equally desirable as a painting subject.

Funghi (FOON·gee) e tartufi (tar·TOO·fee). Funghi porcini are available dried all year, but only in autunno can you find the fresh meaty fungus. I also love funghi cardoncelli and any other kind of funghi on pasta or in risotto.Tartufi are truffles- but not the chocolate covered kind! Autunno is truffle foraging season. They are like underground funghi and are an expensive seasonal delicacy shaved onto pasta, eggs and risotto. I find too much tartufo gives food a moldy taste, so luckily you need a delicate hand and do not need to use much. They are only fresh from October to December, otherwise they are frozen or preserved in oil.

Fichi (FEE·kee). The second harvest of figs is ready in September/October, depending on the weather. Other fruits of the autumn harvest include bitter, spicy radicchio, mostly used in salads, but also cooked alla griglia and added to risotto and rapini which is used to make the Pugliese favourite orechiette con cime di rapa. Trees are full of noce – walnuts and nocciole-hazelnuts. Stay tuned for Corzetti with walnut and mushroom sauce recipe in an upcoming post about my new Corzetti stamp from Vernazza. My favourite winter salad is Insalata Purtuall’ made with finocchio-fennel, oranges and black olives with a drizzle of olive oil and salt. Read about my interesting history with this salad in the link. Melograna-pomegranate adds extra flavour and colour.Uva (OO·vah). La vendemmia, the grape harvest, usually happens in September and then it is vino making time! A glossary of viniculture terms in Italiano can be found in this post on vino. Each region has their own traditional dishes made during this time, including schiacciata con l’uva, a focaccia made with grapes.I made this schiacciata from a recipe on Luca’s blog. It was delicious, but I would recommend using a smaller, seedless grape! Vino cotto, which is technically actually mosto cotto is grape must boiled down to a sweet molasses type syrup. Vino cotto is used for Christmas dolci, sweetening snow cones, and poured on cooked wheat berries with walnuts and pomegranate to make muscitaglia for All Saints’ Day November 1st.Olive (o•LEE•veh). Late October and November is la raccolta delle olive-the olive harvest. This is an incredible experience, if you ever have a chance to participate. Everyone who lives in a rural area participates and it usually involves a picnic with many of the ingredients I have mentioned. I wrote a post describing the entire olive harvesting/oil extraction process-La Raccolta delle Olive.Nothing compares to the flavour and aroma of olio novello, fresh pressed olive oil. It is ‘liquid gold’. Even if you do not have access to freshly pressed oil, you can make the Olive oil limoncello cake that I made at Casa Berti in Lucca after harvesting olives.November is also hunting season, which means pappardelle al cinghiale and pappardelle al lepere, pasta with a wild boar sauce and pasta with wild rabbit sauce. As the temperature drops, warm comfort foods increase. Polenta is found mostly in Northern Italia, but in the cold months, it is made in homes all over the country. Other autumn comfort foods include pancotto e patate, pasta e fagioli and risotto made with almost any of the ingredients mentioned in this post-even radicchio. Drool over my November street food-fire baked caciocavallo in its own little terracotta dish. Mmmm!

‘Italy in the Autumn’ is the topic for the final Dolce Vita Bloggers linkup. Since I already published a post about travelling to Italia in the autumn called Autunno in Italia, I wrote about the wonderful food available in autumn instead!

Grazie mille to Kelly, Jasmine and Kristy for hosting the Dolcevitabloggers linkup for the past 2 years. It has been fun participating! Check out the rest of the posts here.

Hopefully I made you hungry! Buon appetite e buon viaggio, Cristina

Autunno in Italia

30 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by Un po' di pepe in Firenze, Italia, Orsara di Puglia, Photography, Roma, Travel tips

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

Autumn in Italy, Casa Berti, Catalyst Art Retreat, Falò e Teste del Purgatorio, Firenze, Gugliano, Italy travel tips, Lucca, Orsara di Puglia, Piazzale Michelangelo, Roma, Tutti i Santi Festa

Returning from my short trip to Italia, as usual I was back to work the next morning. This did not help with the cambiamento di fuso orario. I have so many posts to write, but now they will have to wait until after Christmas. Until then, here is a quick summary with some highlights from my viaggietto. It was a bit of a blur….at 17 days, I think this was my shortest ever trip to Italia!

I had not been to Italia in autunno before. The fall weather was mostly clear and sunny, with a few days of serious rain. I envisioned myself having every piazza practically to myself….was I ever mistaken! My first few days were in Roma the last weekend of October. The Pantheon was packed with more people than I have ever seen in July! I could barely make it through the crowd to throw my coin into the Fontana di Trevi! I found out that some European countries have their school midterm break around this time. In Italia November 1st, All Saints’ Day, is a holiday and many Italians take ‘il ponte al primo novembre’, an extra-long weekend. Even so, the guard at the Pantheon said ‘Qui non c’è bassa stagione’-there is no low season here. My 2 partial weekends in Firenze were similar. Smaller places, especially the seaside are quiet at this time of year, but the cities always have a lot of visitors, especially on the weekend. Despite my utter shock at the hoardes of tour groups I was not expecting, Roma was glorious as usual. One day I want to spend a whole month in Roma.

Franco joined me for the first 9 days-this was only confirmed a week before leaving! He had not been to Roma in a very long time, so we decided to visit the Colosseo and Foro Romano. I took way too many photos of this. I was obsessed with the way the sunlight struck this green door on the Tempio di Romolo in the Foro Romano. The rest of the day involved a lot of walking. It was centered around a visit to Poggi to buy Fabriano Rosaspina paper for my art retreat, and meeting a friend in Monti. We ended up doing everything on my Un Giorno a Roma itinerary and a few extras.

Monti

Spending just 4 days in Orsara di Puglia was a mad dash. This was not enough time to visit family and friends, so I greeted a lot of them in the street. I heard the same phrase from anyone who was not expecting me ‘Ma sei fuori stagione!’. I guess I was out of season, but technically so were they! It was hard to recognize people bundled up in their puffy piumini. November 1 is a holiday, and in Orsara also the festa Fucacoste e Cocce Priatorje. In Italiano this would be Falò e Teste del Purgatorio (bonfires and heads from purgatory). Sometimes we simply call it ‘Tutti Santi’. I wrote about the festa in this post, and now that I have been there myself, I will add photos or write a new post. There were zucche and bonfires everywhere. My balcony was decorated with zucche. I took so many photos I am still going through them, but here are a few.

Il fuoco e le zucche di Antonella e Domenico

The festa was absolutely amazing and also a moving, sprirtual experience-for me and 20,000 others. The weather was clear and crisp, but it was very cold at night. My little casa has no heat, so I borrowed an electric space heater. Brrrrr.

I encountered a lot of olives on this trip. It seemed every road near Orsara was full of parked cars and people with crates and olive nets. I was not used to seeing the trees full of ripe olives! I enjoyed spending a day at my Nonno’s olive grove. One evening we walked past the frantoio, the olive mill, which is always closed the rest of the year. The divine smell of pressed olives lured me in. I photo-documented the entire olive oil extraction process for a future post. Then it was arrivederci Orsara until July. Unfortunately, I missed my family’s olive harvest by one day, but I was able to pick olives in Gugliano.

Next was Firenze for 2 half days. I had not been for several years and it felt good to be back. A spectacular view was the reward for a long morning walk along and across the Arno to Piazzale Michelangelo. A torrential downpour started just as we arrived, so the return trip was very wet. I had to blow dry myself, then got back out in the rain to catch the train to Lucca. We arrived in Lucca just as thousands of attendees were leaving the Lucca Comics and Games Convention. For security reasons, the front of the stazione was closed off. My ride was waiting out front, so by the time we got there, I looked like I had been through the spin cycle. The imposing medieval walls of Lucca were barely visible through the rain and the mist. Next came the bumpy half hour ride to Casa Berti near Gugliano for the Catalyst Art Retreat.

Casa Berti

Luckily a fire was waiting. Franco was in charge of roasting castagne, then he caught the last train back to Firenze to fly home in the am. The retreat was wonderful and the location stunning. My fellow artists were an inspiration.

My corner of the studio at Casa Berti, looking out over olive trees

Artist Mary Cinque working on a woodcut in the studio

The retreat ended with an exhibit at Villa Coloreda near Pietrasanta

I also found time to visit Lucca, pick olives and cachi, make limoncello cake with freshly pressed olive oil and finally try Bistecca alla Fiorentina. Lots of material for future posts.

#cooldudesroma

So much for a ‘quick’ summary! I’ll end with a few notes about travelling to Italia in autunno:

-It may be ‘low season’ for airfares, but unless your destination is a small town or a seaside area, do not expect to be alone! This is especially true on weekends. In the cities, midweek hotel prices are lower, but they go up on weekends.

-Dancing around an almost empty Piazza Navona is possible……before 8am!

-The days are shorter. It gets dark at 16:30 to be exact. Take this into account when making plans for the day.

-The weather can be variable. Even if the days are sunny, nights are cold. Dress ‘a la cipolla’, in layers like an onion, and be prepared for rain too!