The Cooking and Cuisine of Umbria

[Pontormo]

Arrivederci!

Judith, thank you for making this month's thread particularly special.

It's a good day for zucca, remembrance, flowers and lighting candles to whomever one calls upon for rain, temperate weather, fulsome grapes on the vine, olives, peaches, heavy hams, happy lambs, and bread with perfect crust, crumb, speckled with pockets of air.

Some day I will spring for little birds, but they're rather dear here. Between your quail, Kevin, and Klary's rhapsodies elsewhere on guinea fowl, I am feeling not so very Saint Francis today.

Franci, I have to say your treat from Assisi is beautiful and so much like a strudel it was perfect for the occasion. I was planning to use the same combination of raisins, nuts and apples to make a crostada-like speciality from the city since Nick Malgieri includes a recipe in his book on Italian desserts. However, what I didn't like is the fact that the fruit becomes a kind of syrupy jam to spread over the pastry.

Well, on to panforte and schiaciatta...

[hathor]

So beautifully said, Pontormo.

[Franci]

Franci, I have to say your treat from Assisi is beautiful and so much like a strudel it was perfect for the occasion.  I was planning to use the same combination of raisins, nuts and apples to make a crostada-like speciality from the city since Nick Malgieri includes a recipe in his book on Italian desserts.  However, what I didn't like is the fact that the fruit becomes a kind of syrupy jam to spread over the pastry.

Thanks Pontormo. I'd like to write more (and better) but sometimes writing in English could be painful for me.

About the nut filling...

What you do mean? That you planned to use the filling in the crostata (closed on top I immagine) and you didn't because the filling came out a syrupy jam or because you thought it would might come out like that?

I didn't think it had a jam thickness

[Pontormo]

And were I clearer, I would have said that the recipe for the crostada did not suit me at the moment since I was looking for something that combined nuts and chunks of apple.

Instead, the dessert from Malgieri's book involved making a kind of reduced raisin-applesauce that is spread on top, I guess with the nuts. (I borrowed the book from the library, so don't recall all details.) So, I popped over to a different forum and baked a cake from the Southern United States instead.

[Franci]

(I borrowed the book from the library, so don't recall all details.) 

That is the thing I miss most about NY: the public library!

[Franci]

  Mosto is the first pressing of the grapes, and then the wine has its fermentation blocked at a very early stage, resulting is a mildly alchoholic grape juice. I've got a 5L bottle of it, so if anyone has any mosto recipes, please! let me know!   

I am guessing your have a mosto syrup = vincotto. In Sardinia and Emilia they also add quinces to the mosto reduction to get sapa or saba. In Emilia, if it is thick as a jam, it is called mostarda bolognese and savor, it's used to make a fruit cake for Christmas: il certosino, or cakes as Pinza, le raviole (with dry chestnuts).

In piemonte they use the mosto for cogna'=mostarda d'uva (also with quinces, figs, pears, nuts, sometimes squash).

With vincotto you could make : cartellate, pettole, mostaccioli, sassanelli, su pan e saba, etc.

Edited November 1, 2006 by Franci (log)

[Franci]

And I almost forgot. For i morti in part of puglia vincotto is used to dress a wheat berries dessert with pomegranate seeds, chocolate and spices: grano dei morti. I cannot find the picture of last year

[hathor]

I reduced the mosta down to a fairly liquid syrup. I'm going to do it again and reduce it even more. I love the taste of vin cotta, I've been known to eat if from a spoon. I didn't realize that saba/sapa had quinces in them...quinces have been around the markets lately. I'll give that a try. Thanks!

[Franci]

I didn't realize that saba/sapa had quinces in them...quinces have been around the markets lately. I'll give that a try. Thanks!

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Yes, this was made by someone from Sardinia

[hathor]

40 liters??? And I was whinging about 5 liters???

Thanks for the link, Franci.

[Scarpetta]

"Gobbo" is dilect for "hunchback", so the varity of cardoon called "Gobbo di Nizza" means "Hunchback from Nice". Not sure if all cardoons are "gobbi" or just some types though.

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Farmers from Nizza invented the tecnique of tieing and bending over the cardoon stalks, covering them with earth so that they become white, crunchy and... yes, bent, else "gobbi".

BTW, a good site for Umbria recipe is http://www.webumbria.it/Ricette&Cucina/default.htm, though it's only in Italian.

[hathor]

I've had good luck making a batch of saba. A friend gave me some quinces and I was good to go!

Cool bit of info about 'gobbi'. I keep turning my guests on cardoons....maybe I can get a gig with the cardoon promotion society!

[Judith Umbria]

Here is my late 'intro' to Umbria. My apologies for being so late!!

That was lovely, Judith! Your photos were so evocative of Autumnal Montone.

One thing I think is unfortunate is that visitors get exposed to the cuisine as expressed in restaurants. A restaurant menu is restricted to what is practical and not necessarily what is typical, although the two cross, there are still many wonderful things eaten in homes that you won't find or will rarely find in a restaurant.

One of my favorites of this genre is oca in umido. The restaurant needs to know enough people will order it to justify cooking a whole goose. I still haven't convinced the two that do serve it occasionally to phone me the day it is on the menu!

I still don't like that saltfree bread. I don't buy any of the excuses they make for it.

Another is local version of panizza. And all the enormous variety of sformati.

A person could be very very fat here.

[Judith Umbria]

The other night was roast stuff squash. The guy at the market really talked up this squash, but it left both of us unimpressed. Pretty to look at, but not very flavorful.

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I bought one of those squashes a couple of weeks ago. Since I didn't know it, I cleaned it and cut it into big chunks and then slow roasted it with only salt and oil until it was tender enough to taste. I tasted. Ginger and garlic came to mind, so I minced some up, put it on the cut sides and returned it to the oven for half hour or so. It was terrific. If I had put the minced garlic on at the beginning, I think it would have scorched.

[hathor]

Ciao Judith Umbria! I totally agree with you about 'at home' food, and restaurant food. Sometimes I feel as if the menus are government issued...they can be very, very similar.

Glad you had success with that squash...it was just too starchy for my taste. Don't tell anyone, but I don't like chick peas either!

[Swisskaese]

Swisskaese, if you are around, we went to the Morra chestnut festival yesterday. What a lovely festa. These guys were out in a field with these huge chestnut roasters, hand cranking them. It looked sort of....pagan....if you ask me. When the chestnuts were done, they were sorted, put into little white bags and run up the hill to waiting hoardes.

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Judith, I just saw this. I am so jealous. Thanks for sharing the pictures.

[hathor]

My cooking for the holidays was sort of 'pan-Italian'.

This Christmas Eve dish is something that is certainly Umbrian inspired: roast quail stuffed with sausage and chestnuts...roasted on a bed of potatoes and fennel. Had to use bacon instead of pancetta, but otherwise it tasted pretty close to home.

Oh, and befpre that dish I served some celery root soup...another one of those nice central Italian dishes.

[Domestic Goddess]

Judith - that picture of the quails lying on that bed of potatoes and fennel makes me wanna dive into it. Have eaten a huge sandwich but now my tummy is growling again.

[Pontormo]

Judith, this is also my favorite of the recent spate of posts. One of the things I really like about your meals is the simple elegance of your Italian home cooking. Nothing seems fussy or effortful even when we know how much time and work went into it.

[hathor]

Aw shucks....Domestic Goddess and Pontormo...you made me blush.

Its not me, its the nature of Italian cooking. Its not fussy cooking, its all about pleasure and satisfaction. Italian cooking is more about the heart, than the mind. (uhmm....I think I've spent too much time in the yoga studio the past few days. )

[Kevin72]

A rather nasty computer virus and hard drive rebuild has limited me from the boards lately, so I have a backlog of meals. First up, and Umbrian-inspired favorite of my wife's, which I've mentioned before.

We start with a variation on umbrecelli, which I toss with sheep's milk feta, incredibly pungent wild arugula from a great new farmer's market I found, and grape tomatoes:

Then we had "Umbrian style" spareribs. This is a variation on the ribs in Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Italian Country Table cookbook. I punched up her simple seasoning recipe with ground fennel seeds, loads of black pepper, and rosemary, to crust the spareribs.

Underneath were some frozen favas I'd lucked upon, tossed with bacon. A problem with frozen favas: they tend to break down very easily, so they're kind of a cross between fresh and the dried kind in flavor and texture.

Edited July 28, 2007 by Kevin72 (log)

[hathor]

Welcome back!!

Those ribs look delish... I have to make a run to the store and that just might be tomorrow's dinner. I'd forgotten about those ribs. I'm in love with fennel seed at the moment...ground fennel seed to be precise. I just used it for lunch on some roast chicken, and it's amazing on duck (that I roasted with an orange stuck inside it.)

There is wild fennel everywhere, or there was....no rain in a very long time is making everything prematurely .... dead or crisped. Wild fennel has such a beautiful, strong, but nuanced flavor.

And I was just given yet another load of zucchini and told to roast it with fennel and potatoes. Where did we do that before? I remember Elie made it....

Nice looking meals, Kevin!!