Italian Food Lovers

Don’t miss this year’s Seattle Cheese Festival! Academia Barilla will be showcasing its line of authentic Italian food products on May 16th and 17th in Seattle at the famous Pike’s Place Market for the one and only Seattle Cheese Festival.

A weekend packed with cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, and educational seminars, it will surely be an event not to miss. For cheese lovers, this is truly Read more…

Cyber Monday is a new tradition, brought by the web and the e-commerce world. The first Monday after Thanksgiving is now worldwide known as Cyber Monday, the beginning of the Christmas online shopping season.

This year Cyber Monday is next Monday, December 1.

Most of the online retailers and e-commerce shops around the web offer special online shopping discounts on Cyber Monday, and Academia Barilla couldn’t resist this year to propose some very sweet deals in traditional Italian gastronomy.

Remember: this offer is valid only on December 1, 2008!

Visit the Academia Barilla online shop on Monday, December 1, and shop to save big on great gourmet food products, plus get some nice season deals:

- 25% off the Sicilian Sea Salt kits

- FREE chunk of Pecorino Gran Cru with purchase of a 12-years old or 25-years Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena

- 1 can of Peeled Cherry Tomatoes FREE with purchase of 5 cans.

- 1 bottle of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena aged 3-years FREE with purchase of the Academia Bailla Extra Virgin Olive Oil Sampler

We remind you again that Cyber Monday discounts and deals are valid only on Cyber Monday, so hurry up to save on Season gifts and gourmet shopping on Monday, December 1, at the Academia Barilla Online Shop!

Happy Thanksgiving from Academia Barilla and Italian Food Lovers! We wish you and your families a nice and warm family day around some of the best traditional and innovative culinary eats of the year (at least in the United States, as in Italy we have several occasions to indulge in gourmet food all along the year!).

As you have noticed, this week we celebrated Turkey Day proposing a lot of gourmet recipes from our Italian Food Lovers Chef Network, but none of them with turkey! Well, we published a recipe for the tratitional Thanksgiving roasted turkey, but we left our guest Chef free to propose alternative, innovative Thanksgiving recipes.

Today we have with us Chef Doug D’Avico of Trattoria n. 10 in Chicago with a new Thanksgiving gourmet creation: Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Cinnamon and Orange Zest. Ready? let’s go to the kitchen!

SWEET POTATO GNOCCHI WITH CINNAMON AND ORANGE ZEST
A recipe by Chef Doug D’Avico
(serves 4-6)

INGREDIENTS

- 3 lbs light fleshed Sweet Potatoes
- 1/8 cup good quality ricotta, drained
- 1/8 cup Academia Barilla Pecorino Gran Cru, grated
- 1 ea large egg
- 1/2 tablespoon Academia Barilla Sicilian Sea Salt with Orange Zest
- 1/4 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 tablespoon nutmeg
- 3-4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
- 1 orange
- 1 medium size leek, white part only
- 2 tablespoon cinnamon-sugar mixture
- 3 tablespoon european style butter
- 2-3 tablespoon Academia Barilla Riviera Ligure Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- some fresh herbs for plate garnishing

PREPARATION

Take the 3 sweet potato, wash the outside well and bake in a 375 degree F oven till soft to the touch, remove from the oven and let cool. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle remove the skins and put the flesh though a potato ricer to break up any large clumps and place into a large enough bowl to mix all the ingredients in.

Mix all the ingredients, except for the flour, into the sweet potato and combine well with your hand.
Take 2 cups of the flour and fold into the sweet potato mix half a cup at a time, making sure the flour is thoroughly incorporated before adding the next 1/2 cup. Check the dough it should be a little sticky, if it is too wet add a 1/4 cup more flour and mix. Wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

After resting take the remaining flour and use some to dust the work surface. Take the dough out of the bowl and place on the floured surface, sprinkle a little more flour over top and knead a few times so you can handle the dough.

Flatten the dough out to about 3/4 of an inch and cut strips every 3/4 of an inch and then roll each strip a little bit to round out the corners, set a side and finish the rest of the dough. Use a little more flour if the dough starts to stick to the table. Use a damp towel to cover the dough strips while you work.

Have a corn meal coated tray ready to store the gnocchi’s on after they are cut. Using a small knife cut the strips into 3/4 inch pieces and you can use either the back of a fork or a gnocchi board to roll the gnocchi off of or just take your finger and poke a little indentation into each one and then place on the corn meal coated tray.

Finish the batch and then freeze the gnocchi or cook and serve.

To serve bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. In the mean time while you are waiting for the water to boil, remove the root end of the leek and cut the leek on a bias about 1/4 of an inch thick until you get to the green part, discard or use for homemade stock. Separate the layers of the leek and wash under cold water to remove any sand set aside.

Using a zester, zest 1 orange and set a side. Preheat a 12 inch sauté pan and warm over medium heat, when hot add 1/2 the butter and add the washed leeks to the melted butter, do not let the butter burn, and cook for about 3-5 minutes or until the leeks are tender season with a little salt and pepper and remove from the pan set aside. Remove the pan from the heat.

Check the seasoning in the pot of boiling water and adjust with the salt to taste. When the water is at a rolling boil add the gnocchi and stir well so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan. They will take about 5-8 minutes and are usually done about 30 seconds after they start floating. Just before they are done put the large sauté and back on the fire over medium high heat.

Drain the gnocchi and add to the sauté pan with the remaining butter. The pan should be nice and hot as you will want to add a little bit of color to the gnocchi. Cook for about 3 minutes then add the cooked leeks and cook for 2-4 more minutes and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar and add the orange zest and mix well, pour into a serving bowl and garnish the plate with fresh herbs, just before serving drizzle the Academia Barilla olive oil over the whole dish. Serve immediately. You can serve some extra Academia Barilla Pecorino Gran Cru on the side.

Thank you Chef D’Avico for this yummy Thanksgiving recipe. Thanks again also to Chef Tony Mantuano and Chef Mark Grimes for the gourmet recipe shared with us this week. Thank you also to our friends at BIGAB, the Academia Barilla Gastronomic Library, for providing us with the traditional Thanksgiving roasted turkey recipe!

And again, Happy Thanksgiving to all Italian food lovers from Academia Barilla and our Italian Food Lovers blog team!

Academia Barilla Italian Culinary Specialist and Iron Chef Judge Mario Rizzotti is back on TV for another educational session on how to recognize authentic traditional Italian cheeses from fakes.

TV Host Vince Gerasole invited Mario Rizzotti for a special extra insight on CBS2 Chicago’s popular food show Table for Two. You can watch the entire video segment from the TV show at this link - we couldn’t embed it, but we got some screenshots for you, and we can summarize the Italian food insight and tips shared by Mario Rizzotti at the show.

Mario started presenting Parmigiano Reggiano, the king of cheeses, as something totally different from what you get “in the green can”, as asked by Vince Gerasole. Parmigiano Reggiano, tells Rizzotti, has more than 900 years of history, as recorded by historic menus and publications. Parmigiano Reggiano is entirely made of specially-fed cows in the area of Parma, and shouldn’t be confused with “Parmesan cheese“, a sort of mass production product for the export markets.

To recognize the authentic Parmigiano Reggiano, as Mario Rizzotti reminds, it is enough to check the external part of the wheel, that must feature the “Parmigiano Reggiano” original print all around.

But the major revelation about the authenticity of the product comes with the tasting. Parmigiano Reggiano must be cut into blocks (chunks) to fully appreciate its crunchiness and sandiness, the latter created by the amino-acids released by the proteins of the high-quality milk used for its production.

The quality of the ingredients and its rich flavor make Parmigiano Reggiano a great choice for many applications: grated or shaved on pasta, as an aperitivo with a glass of wine and, as told by Mario Rizzotti, also as a “munchie” for young babies aged 6 months, because of the good milk, that carries great calcium and protein for kids.

Academia Barilla Italian Culinary Specialist Mario Rizzotti also introduced other Italian regional cheeses, focusing on all the varieties of Pecorino (Romano, Toscano, Sardinian, Sweet), the popular cheese made of sheep’s milk cheese.

To counterbalance the tasting of Parmigiano Reggiano, Mario Rizzotti invited TV Host Vince Gerasole to taste Academia Barilla’s Pecorino Gran Cru, which is the first sheep’s milk cheese produced with the same production technique and aging process used for Parmigiano Reggiano, making it… the king of sheep’s milk cheeses!

You can find Academia Barilla’s Parmigiano Reggiano (both in wedges or as a whole wheel) and Pecorino Gran Cru at the Academia Barilla online store, and at the best gourmet food and specialty stores in the United States.

If you want to catch up with Mario Rizzotti, you have two choices: check your local listing to see him in action as a Judge for Iron Chef America, or meet him in person for an Italian food demo at the Barilla Italian Cooking Weekend at the Chicago Botanic Garden this weekend!

Though the famous popular Acquacotta soup has a very mysterious and unusual name, it is a well-known soup dish that originates from the Maremma area of Tuscany. The Italian name of this soup literally means “cooked water”.

Legend has it that the inventors of this dish, the herdsmen and coal men of Maremma, were accustomed to frequent journeys, and thus normally traveled with stale bread, dried meat, oil, garlic, onion, and a few herbs, in order to prepare acquacotta.

A more poetic version of its origin can be traced in the short movie “La Zuppa di Pietra“ (Stone Soup) by Christian Carmosino, winner of the First Prize at the latest Academia Barilla Short Films Festival.

In the short film director Carmosino tells a story staged in the 19th century in a village in rural Italy, where the metaphore of a stone soup stands for the pleasure of getting around the table for a rich meal all together by sharing ingredients, big smiles, and a big heart.

You can discover more about award winning director Christian Ambrosino by browsing his online channels on YouTube and MySpace, from where we got the embed code (with Christian’s authorization) to republish the beautiful “La Zuppa di Pietra“ short film here below in full. Enjoy it!

Contrary to its origins as a peasant dish, made simply of water and a few flavors, acquacotta is a very hardy soup. There is an assortment of recipes for acquacotta amongst the different areas of Tuscany, yet acquacotta is distinguishable from other Tuscan soups due to its use of eggs and stale bread at the end of (and not during) its preparation.

We found several book tracing the origins and tradition of acquacotta at the Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library in Parma, such as “Cucina e vini della Toscana” by Flavio Collutta (1974 Mursia Editore), “Il grande libro della cucina Toscana” by Paolo Petroni (1991 Ponte alle Grazie), and Sara Vignozzi and Gabriele Ganci’s cookbook “Tuscany – Flavour of Italy” (McRae Books, 1999), from which we picked the traditional recipe here below (image taken from the same book).

ACQUACOTTA
(serves 4)

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: about 1 hour
Recipe grading: fairly easy

INGREDIENTS

- 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 onions, thinly sliced
- 2 cups (10 oz - 300 g) fresh or frozen peas
- 1 and 1/4 cups (l7 oz - 200 g) freshly hulled broad beans
- 1 medium carrot, sliced
- 1 stalk celery, thinly sliced
- 1 crumbled dried chili pepper
- salt to taste
- 12 oz - 300 g trimmed young Swiss chard or spinach leaves, washed and shredded
- 10 oz - 300 g firm, ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped
- 6 and 1/2 cups (2 and 1/2 pints - 1.5 liters) boiling water
- 4 large fresh eggs
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup (2 oz - 60 g) freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino cheese
- 4 slices firm-textured white bread, 2 days old
- 1 clove garlic

Suggested wine: any dry white wine

PREPARATION

Pour the oil into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the onions, peas, fava beans, carrot, celery, chili pepper, and a dash of salt.

Sauté for about 10 minutes until tender and lightly browned. Add the chard or spinach and the tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes.

Pour in the boiling water and leave to simmer gently for 40 minutes, adding more salt if necessary.

Using a fork or balloon whisk, beat the eggs with salt, pepper, and the grated Parmigiano or pecorino cheese.

Toast the bread and when golden brown, rub both sides of each slice with the garlic. Place a slice in each soup bowl or in individual straight-sided earthenware dishes, and pour a quarter of the beaten egg mixture over each serving.

Give the soup a final stir and then ladle into the bowls. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and add a pinch of pepper.

Serve immediately and enjoy acquacotta sharing it with others, as in Christian Carmosino’s award winning short movie!

CHEF TIPS

Our Chefs at the Academia Barilla Culinary School suggest to use Academia Barilla’s products such as Toscano IGP extra virgin olive oil, Peeled Cherry Tomatoes, and Academia Barilla’s traditional Parmigiano Reggiano or the Sardinian Pecorino Sardo Gran Cru, which you can all easily find at our gourmet online store. also, try Mantecarlo Bianco as dry white wine for better recipe results.

Buon appetito from Academia Barilla and Italian Food Lovers!