MADE IN AMERCIA - BAGELS

Today's recipe is for BAGELS , thanks to Michelle at Bleeding Espresso. I've never made bagels before....they always seemed a little intimidating, but if Michele can do it, so can I! How about you?

If you've been following along, you'll know that Judith first came up with the idea of sharing some really good, really American recipes, mostly to show our Italian friends that we can do more than make delicious sweets. Every Friday we'll feature a new recipe in both English and Italian.

Judith also has a LIST OF ALL THE RECIPES HERE, just in case you'd like to see if one of our favorites might become one of yours! La vera Cucina Americana!

A NICE SOUVENIER IDEA!

Trevi calls itself "The City of Oil", as in olive oil. The city iself is surrounded on every side by thousands of olive trees, and we love the spicy oil that comes from this area.



On a recent visit to Trevi we saw this cute doorknob, complete with a tiny Italian flag. I want one of these for my front door!



You can see more pictures from our visit to Trevi on our FLICKR PAGE
in the folder entitled "Trevi For Lunch".

WE'RE PICKING OLIVES, AND LATER.....

Right now we're out picking olives with our friends, but here's a quick video of the process from our favorite little frantoio in Pigge....

LOOKING GOOD!

To be honest I think I'm a pretty good cook, with 'cook' being the operative word. I'm not a chef, have never taken any sort of cooking lessons, and learned most of what I know from my mom. Now in the age of technology I also learn from the computer and television. I can Google a recipe, or even specific ingredients to find a recipe. I can watch cooking shows on television and get new ideas, see how other people come up with new twists for old favorites. Honestly, I love to cook, but again, it's just cooking to me, and presentation has never been something I've bothered with. Yes, a beautifully presented plate certainly adds to the experience, but if the food doesn't taste good who cares how good it looks, right?

When we attended GABRIELLA'S COOKING CLASS after our morning of TRUFFLE HUNTING, I was snapping away while she was cooking. It wasn't until later when I looked at ll the photos in sequence that I saw how beautifully she had created the antipasto plate, layer upon layer.


When she began there was only one piece of bruschetta with tomatoes and a bit of lettuce on the plate. This looked quite beautiful to me, and I might have finished it off with a nice drizzle of new oil and served it proudly. But not Gabriella! She had more food to add to the plate, so she continued......



More slices of bruschetta were added, and again, I thought the plate looked beautiful - simple, inviting, pleasing to the eye and surely very pleasing to the palette as well.



But of course Garbiella still wasn't finished....she added this small polenta flan she'd baked earlier (and I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember much about it's origins, other than it involved, eggs, truffled polenta and maybe some parmesan cheese!)





And just when I thought it couldn't get any more beautifuk, she added a drizzle of honey over the polenta for the finishing touch!




What do you think..was it worth the additional work? I certainly think so! I can also tell you that it tasted as good as it looks!


The rest of the pictures from that lunch are HERE on our Flickr page.

OUR NEW OLIVE OIL CONTAINER!

Sometimes I can agonize for days, weeks, even months over a potential purchase. I've always been a cautious spender, but sometimes, especially when traveling, I've made mistakes. Sometimes I've bought things I later regretted, or realized were foolish. Other times I'd get back home and wish I'd bought a particular thing and wondered why oh why I'd hesitated!

When we first started looking at olive oil containers for our friend Damon I honestly had no wish to have one for myself. The first one we saw was waayyy too large, but later in Trevi, during the frantoi aperti celebration we saw a simple large glass bottle that would hold about 2 liters of oil. It had a spigot on the front and I thought "hmmmm, maybe I could use something like that." But the moment passed.

Later at one the the olive mills we saw a nice ceramic urn complete with iron stand and a small pitcher on a matching place to catch any drips. I took a picture of it for Damon and sent it to him. I liked this urn better than the first, not only because it was a little smaller, but also because the design was a little simpler. I'm not one for fussy designs, so this simple white urn with olives seemed perfect.

One of the reasons we'd dismissed the idea of buying even the smaller olive oil dispensers was because we didn't have any place to keep it. Yes, we have loads of counter space, but because of it's design, anything with a spigot would have to sit at the edge of the counter so you could easily fill a container for the table. Yes, I know, you could push it to the back of the counter, but I just don't believe in tempting fate with all the back and forth movement....sooner or later something bad was bound to happen!

And then one day as I walked into the pantry I realized that we might be able to sit the container on top of the wine rack. It's still easily accessible but has little chance of getting bumped. Although it wouldn't be in the main part of the kitchen, it would still be very much on display, especially when I'm cooking, so I'd get to enjoy looking at it as well as using it.

I found out the olive mill had simply had this piece on display for the maker, SPIGARELLI. Their website was in both Italian and English, so I wrote to them asking for information about ordering the set. I received a reply from their American distributor, ABBIAMO TUTTO. I exchanged several emails with the president of the company, Donna Marie Territo, who was very helpful. We put our Canadian friends in touch with her since this is the best way for them to order the container, but for us in Umbria, we could just go right to the source!

Because the small pitcher was cracked, I wondered if the GAUDENZI
frantoio might sell me just the urn and the stand. The problem with buying the urn directly from SPIGARELLI was that we'd have to have the stand made separately. Lo and behold, yes! Gaudenzi would sell us the complete set, cracked pitcher and all, for the same price as the urn alone. Sold!

And so the other day when we revisited Trevi and Pigge with our Canadian friends we bought the olive oil container and brought it home! I'm still a little scared to wash it, and think I might put it in the bathtub where I can use the handheld sprayer to rinse it thoroughly. I had hoped to be able to salvage the pitcher but it has a hairline crack down the side. Maybe I'll just buy a plain white pitcher, but for now I don't have the room for the pitcher and plate underneath the spigot anyway, so I'll worry about that later.

And here it is......what do you think??? I'm so glad we bought it, and I'm sure this is one purchase I'll never regret!

LINENS FROM UMBRIA

When I wrote about our lunch in Montefalco, I mentioned PARDI LINENS. They’re based in Montefalco and according to their website are “the only weaving mill in Umbria.” I was confused by this since I knew our friend Giacomo had taken tourists to a mill in Perugia. And then my friend Mary, who’s lived near Montefalco for over 40 years wrote THIS POST (Be sure to click on the link to see the beautiful photos!) about BROZZETTI LINENS. Hmmmm.....

Well, I knew Mary would be able to answer my questions, so I asked her, “What’s the difference between Pardi and Brozzetti?”, and this was her answer:

“There really is NO comparison: Brozzetti is a 100% by hand production with no computer or electric intervention. The technique, the threads, the generation to generation passed on skills and dedication, the exclusive all by hand procedure makes for UNIQUE, one of a kind, exquisite textiles of the highest possible quality. The difference is clear when you have a Pardi in one hand and a Brozzetti in another and compare using all five senses.”

So there you have it, and for those of you visiting Umbria, you can tour the BROZZETTI facility in Perugia…..think what a great souvenir or gift a tablecloth or runner would be! Additionally they don’t weigh much and there’s no breakage to worry about! For those of you who stay at Mary’s beautiful country inn, GENIUS LOCI, located just outside Bevagna, she has a selection of the Brozetti linens available for purchase there, just in case you run out of time!

MAKING YOUR OWN PASTA - YOU CAN DO THIS!

A few days ago I wrote about truffle hunting with the BIANCONI's, but it was so much more than that. After we toured Citerna, we returned to the Bianconi's house for cooking lessons. While we watched Gabriella fix our lunch, we also learned lots of interesting tips and recipes.

One of the most interesting things for me was the pasta Gabriella made. The pasta itself is called frascarelli, and originally it was made with flour and water, back when eggs were a luxury for many people. Using eggs definitely makes this pasta richer, and it's so simple you might decide to make pasta even if you've never done so before. There's no hand mixing the flour and eggs, no rolling the dough or even putting it through a pasta machine.

Gabriella started out with half flour, half semolina, the golden, slightly coarser flour that's used here in Italy for pasta. I'd never heard of semolina before we moved to Italy, except as a type of flour. I'm not really sure if it's readily available in U.S. supermarkets, but surely specialty food shops carry it....or at least I hope they do! I like using at least part semolina when I make pasta because I think it makes the dough less sticky, and I'm sure there are many reasons, some traditional and others scientific to explain why you should use a blend. For now let's just go with these reasons: Gabriella said to do it this way and I've tasted the results, which were delicious. Why argue with experience or success?

Combine regular all purpose flour with semolina....I'm going to take a guess here and suggest using a generous amount of each, about 1 cup of each flour for six servings. Since I haven't yet made the recipe myself it's hard to know for sure. Using one egg for every two people to be served, whisk the eggs into a medium bowl. (To recap, that's a total of 2 cups flour and 3 eggs for 6 servings) Now comes the fun part.

Gabriella used what I would describe as a whisk broom (you can see it in the video), but you can also use a fork, or maybe even a silicone brush, which is what I'm going to use. Dip the broom/fork/whatever into the beaten eggs then drizzle the eggs over the flour, back and forth. Mix gently with your fingers or a fork. After three, maybe four drizzles, set your large sifter on an even larger tray and sift away.

Gabriella used a large setaccio (sifter) to separate the clumped up egg and flour pieces from the flour that was still loose. Once all the loose flour was sifted through, the process was repeated until all the eggs were finished. In the end you'll have tiny pieces of pasta, no bigger than grains of rice, and, not surprisingly, it will cook VERY quickly!

Cook in salted boiling water until the pasta floats, which will probably be just a minute. Drain. Gabriella then added some sliced celery she'd quickly sauteed and some summer truffles preserved in oil. She must have placed each serving in some sort of small container to give it it's shape, then simply inverted the container onto the plate. A few shaving if truffles on the top completed the dish. This was such a wonderful pasta: freshly made, simple to prepare, and absolutely delicious!

Here's a short video of Gabriella making the frascarelli...