The blog of San Lorenzo

Hi there.

I have been in Italy for half term with my little daughter and I have not written a single line for some time.

Very naughty, I know… but sometimes real life takes the lead and writing or blogging fades away in the background. Who doesn’t need a break?

I have come back to London, as I always do, with lots of thoughts. Lately I have been mulling over the massive difference between an Italian supermarket and an English one.

In the UK everything is mass market.  Supermarkets are all part of  the big chains (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Morrisons and so on).

Well, one of the beauties of Italy is that big shop chains exist, but they struggle to take over the whole market, as they seem to have so successfully done here. Take any city centre in the UK and you will see the same succession of shops. Edinburgh does not differ from London, and it is all SO depressingly the same… you certainly know what I mean.

Why it is so, I am not sure. Sometimes I wonder if it has got to do with one of the characters of Britishness: the love of being part of a group / community, where adehering to common rules is a great virtue. The passion for queues is one indicator. In one shop I saw a notice stating that each counter could have an indipendent queue (no need to do a big snake queue, it said). Believe me, they struggles to get the concept through, since people were still making the big snake queue, regardless. It’s like breaking a tabu, I suppose, you really cannot do it. One of my friends has a child in reception, whose class has just been awarded best queue of the school. And - to stick to children - how about the stress on school uniforms (pupils must all look the same)? Or the general concept that  ALL girls must love pink? Try and buy girls clothes without pink (unless you try Benetton or Petit Bateaux, which are not English brands) and you will see what I mean. Well, all this must do something to a child mind, in the long term. For the good and the bad.

I must admit I sometimes get very upset with Italian lack of discipline and general love of indipendence. It does bring a lot of negative consequences with it, like a tendency to disregard rules or take them as guidelines, a general sense of chaos and a State obsessed with detailed laws that just make citizens lives miserable.

But, one thing I do love of Italy, and it is the variety of choice you find everywhere you go. Variety of clothes, of shoes, of food.

A trip to any Italian supermarket to me is a hymn to joy. I go to the fish counter and I smile. Verona is not a town on the sea, nor it is a big city like Milan, but my humble local supermarket has much more fresh  fish than Harrods food hall with the added advantage of more acceptable prices. OK, maybe they do not have the huge lobsters on display at Harrods, but  I do suspect that those are more for the show, than anything else. And the bread counter and vegetable area (all fresh produce, including some great - and not already oxidised artichokes) or cheese… goodness me, the selection of cheese. I did count something like 30 different types of mozzarella, divided by brand, shape, type - that is fiordilatte or bufala - plus all possible variations, like burrata (with cream inside), and I could go on…

This is what I really miss of my Country and its hidden, unnoticed treasure that Italians tread upon without a second thought. Its variety and opulence. Hard to go back to my local Tesco…

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Scritto da admin alle 14:16, in Main category

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Have you ever found your larder full of bite-size cheese leftovers, wondering what to do with them?

In my house this is the typical result of inviting friends over for supper. I love having a generous dish of well selected cheese to close an abundant meal. It keeps people on the table nibbling, drinking some serious red wine and enjoying the happy conversations that flows once the palate and the stomach have been fully satisfied.

The problem with my Italian upbringing is that I have no sense of measure and I usually buy enough cheese to satisfy a small battalion of hungry soldiers, not a genteel lot of well behaved - and normally well fed - guests.

So, what now?

The best and easier solution I have found up to now to make a sensible use of my cheese left-overs is simply baking a sort of cheese quiche, which in Italian would be torta salata ai formaggi.

The great thing about any torta salata is that you keep the same recipe for the dough, but you can have any variation you like for the filling (any sort of vegetables you fancy, for instance, or cold meat or both) as long as you keep the basics, like using a couple of eggs to bind the ingredients possibly mixed with some milk and flour.

So, the only thing you really need to have is a good recipe for the dough.

Mine is just one of them, but I do like it a lot and treasure it since it is one of the family recipes passed on to me by my mother-in-law, Edda. Edda is not very well at present, so this is my small acknowledgement to her for the few, but very important cooking tips, she has been so kind to share with me. It is also a very easy and quick one!

Ingredients:

300 gr of flour

4 spoons of olive oil

a pinch of salt

150 ml of cold water

Just mix all the ingredients very quickly, make a ball, wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge for half an hour. Prepare the filling. This time I cut in small cubes my selection of cheese: emmenthal, gorgonzola, a lovely smoked cheddar, pecorino sardo and taleggio with two eggs, salt and pepper, some milk and handful of flour. Than work your dough quickly into a flat, not too thick layer (about 3 mm) and put it on top of a suitable container. Put the filling in, fold the dough on top to partially cover the filling and put it in the oven at about 180/200 degrees for 25/30 minutes (keep checking).

Here was the result:

I suppose this rich dish is probably unsuitable for anybody on a diet, but if I may, a small portion of naturally good food, accompanied by good wine, has never caused any harm.

We enjoyed it with a bottle of Rosso Piceno, an unpretentious red from the Marche region, based on Montepulciano and Sangiovese grapes, which managed to cut through the rich filling with its generous body, leaving the mouth clean and ready for the next bite.

So much for a left-over dinner!

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Scritto da admin alle 9:57, in Main category

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Gruess Gott!

I feel I bit Austrian today. Thanks to Karin, the deus-ex-machina of curryhuhn I have a lot of Austrian goodies running thorough my bloodstream and giving me healthy energy, after pleasing my mouth with their delicious taste. By, the way, my visiting brother wants to join in and hail the arrival and tasting of our wonderful EBBP with a heartfelt: ‘God bless Austria’ .

There are many reasons to be grateful to this gentle Country: it has given birth to Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, the Strauss family (to whom we owe the tradition of walzer) and this is just the musical side; then we have great writers like Johann Wofgang von Goethe, Stefan Zweig, Thomas Bernhard and Ingeborg Bachmann, for instance; the universally known Sigmund Freud and finally who could forget one of the very best cake ever produced by human hands, the unrivalled Sachertorte!

So, little surprise that Karin decided to shower me with sweetness.

The postman arrived just before 11 o’clock  this morning and once I opened my long awaited parcel I found: a mouthwatering handmade jam;

some delicious Linzerschnitte (made in Linz, if you wonder):

 And a refreshing herbal tea, made with mint, raspberry leafs, dog rose, lemon balm, St John’s Wort and marigold, which has been used for a celebratory morning tea for two:

We are leaving the very tempting Manja chocolate and Mozart Chocolate Liqueur as evening pudding, while listening to a CD of the magnificent pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelengeli playing Mozart piano Concerto KW415. What a great way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth!

A final acknowledgement to Johanna for organising this EBBP number six and again, Vielen Danke Karin!

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Scritto da admin alle 11:21, in Main category

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This is a great period for celebrations. Halloween is at our doorsteps (having a little daughter means that I am heavily involved in the preparations, costumes, sweet bucket and all); soon enough most offices will start talking about Christmas parties and finally Christmas and New Year will arrive in no time.

So, you would think there is no need to make things worse by organising a BLOGGERS GET TOGETHER.

But indeed, this is exactly what I am thinking of doing.

As you know, I am hosted by the San Lorenzo web-site thanks to my friend Antonio Tombolini. The deal is that I get provisions of San Lorenzo goodies, which I am free to eat and write about in the blog, if I choose to. All very exciting! I am discovering the world of food blogging and I am loving it! I was getting enough thrills by writing and reading new entries in the web, until I decided to participate to my first EBBP. Packing food for another blogger  (Dagmar) and seeing the results of my efforts appreciated has given me such a great vibe, that I am know hungry for more action or, better, real life interaction with the members of the food tribe.

I am a big fan of science fiction, by the way. Almost every day of my busy life I wish I had a Star Trek style beam transporter  in my house. This way I could be very inclusive and invite the whole bloggers world. At present I will have to limit my invitation to whoever manages to be in London on the chosen date, which is still to be defined (suggestions?), but it should be around the week commenicing November 6th.

So, who wants to join in?

Here are the main guidelines:

- I want to make it a sort of regular event, once every two or three months, like a foody club get together, open to all the food/wine bloggers (and invited guests);

- Every event will have a regional Italian theme, but quirky twists or multi-etnic fusion elements are going to be welcome;

- It will have the format of a gourmet dinner in pure Italian (informal) style (something that good old Jamie Oliver would like, if you get the idea) and the participants will only pay a reasonable contributions towards expenses, while my friends at San Lorenzo will provide the core of the products that will be used and sponsor the location.

- The first night will be a blend of two great neighbouring culinary traditions in Italy (Liguria and Piedmont), because I have already in mind a list of great Autumn food we can create using the produce of these beautiful and challenging regions.

Have I managed to tempt somebody? I have already the green light from Antonio, all I need is your (hopefully) enthusiastic reply. Don’t be shy and let me know.

Remember Horace and his seize the moment!

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!

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Scritto da admin alle 14:22, in Main category

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I have just taken part to my first real life experience as a food blogger: sending a carefully prepared food parcel to another blogger like me.

It has been a lot of work… almost like having another full time job for a couple of days; maybe because I already have one full-time job, plus a family to look after and I often struggle with time; or maybe because I am a first timer and I still have a lot to learn.

Anyway, I did love it! Oh, yes!. Dagmar, the recipient of my package (A cat in the kitchen) has been soooo good to me and has done such a wonderful blog on my package, that I feel like I am walking one metre above ground. I was a bit nervous about the feed-back, I must admit… yes I was!

So, thanks to Johanna for making everything happen and thanks to Dagmar for giving me such a boost of self-esteem. Also thanks to San Lorenzo for the pesto and trofie generously provided. Dagmar will tell you how good they are. I am still patiently waiting for my package to see what I will get now!

In the meantime, I thought I would give to Dagmar (or anybody interested), the recipe of my sbrisolona, the hand made part of my package.

I cannot state that this recipe is my invention: somebody taught me how to do it a long time ago and with time I added my small personal changes, as it always happens.

Sbrisolona is a very special type of cake, born in the province of Mantova, Italy (a neighbouring town of my home place, Verona), which due to the simplicity and availability of its basic ingredients has quickly spread to all the nearby provinces. It’s like an English crumble (briciole in Italian means crumbles and sbrisolona, in the dialect of Verona, is something which, or somebody who makes a lot of crumbles).

The main difference you find in the Italian version is the blend of white flour and corn flour, in the proportion you prefer. If your corn flour is very fine, you can use more of it. If, like me, you use the traditional corn flour to make polenta, with rather big grains, it is advisable to use a little bit more of the white flour.

Here are the ingredients to make either one big sbrisolona or two small ones (as the one in the pictures).

300 gr of white flour

200 gr of corn flour

2 egg yolks

200 gr of golden brown sugar

150 gr of unsalted butter

150/200 gr of almonds

a generous drop of grappa

I like a peasant style of sbrisolona. That’s why I use ‘polenta bramata’ or ‘macinata grossa’ which simply means that it is not ground too fine. I like to use golden brown sugar (possibly fairtrade, but this has nothing to do with the taste!) and I do not peel the almonds (buy the organic ones, if you can).

Now, the recipe.

Beat the butter and sugar together at room tempeture to reach a creamy consistency. Do not melt the butter on fire! Add two egg yolks and a generous drop of grappa. Than slowly add the mixed flour and the almonds partly crushed (you can use the blender, but with moderation: you still wants to see big chuncks of almonds and whole ones too).

Here is how the final mix  should look like.

At this point, simply put it in a suitable mould, like this:

And cook it in the oven at 180 degrees for about 45 minutes. The time of cooking depends a lot on the oven you have. I use a gas ventilated oven (you cannot imagine through how much trouble I went to find it). If your oven is not ventilated, it might take longer. Just keep checking or simply accept the fact that your first trial will put you on the right track for the next attempt.

Here is how it should look like, when ready.

Do not try to cut it in slices. Use the point of the knife to break it in irregular crunchy chunks and if you want to follow the tradition of Verona, pour some grappa (a good one please, do not go cheap) on top before serving it (not too much!).

The cake will absob it and get an additional lovely flavour.

And now I will probably shoot to the kitchen and make one for myself. Be careful. It’s addictive stuff!

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Scritto da admin alle 9:18, in Main category

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This is how it looks, in the double white and purple version, the official logo of the sixth edition of the Salone Internazionale del Gusto Torino 2006, as always promoted by Slow Food. Whatever you might think about Slow Food, this food and wine exhibition marks a turning point in the perception and diffusion of quality foods, and a visit to the Salone è is an absolute must for any foodie. It will be held from 26-30 October 2006…
Just a thought: what if we go together, or at any rate meet up there? Let’s try and arrange something…
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Scritto da Antonio Tombolini alle 15:28, in SL blogs, Main category, Appointments

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