November Porc - the movie

November Porc

It’s that time of the year again when the fog descends on the Bassa Padana (literally the ‘low Padana’ or put another way, the Po Basin), the locals brace themselves for the oncoming winter and pork mania takes hold. November Porc, a month of festivity dedicated to everything pork related, is held in the land of Giuseppe Verdi in the towns of Busseto, Sissa, Polesine, Zibello and Roccabianca, an area known throughout Italy for the outstanding quality of its cured meats. The festival was first held in 2002. It originated as a bet after a group of local salami makers returning from the October beer festival in Germany decided it would be a good idea to hold a festival of their own in November – hence, November Porc. 

The challenge for the organizers was how to sell a festival in November in an area that was renowned for its dense fog. Fog and cured meat products go hand-in-hand in the Bassa Padana. Local environmental, ecological and climatic conditions are considered paramount to developing the distinctive tastes and flavours of the area’s cured meats. Among the most renowned types of cured meat produced in the area are culatello – which many consider the King of Italian cured meats – various types of salami including strolghino (a type of thin salami made from the off cuts of the culatello), spalla cotta (a cooked ham), spalla cruda (a cured ham) and mariola (a cooked sausage).  

Amongst the highlights of this year’s planned festivities are a Mc Porc American-style sandwich van, several master classes in salami and Parmesan cheese making, the making of a gigantic mariolone – cooked salami – in addition to a world record attempt at making the longest salami strolghino – a title the would-be world record breakers held back in 2003. Other regular features will include street artists, live music and gastronomic stands. The official game of the festivities is the Tiro al Salame (throw the hoop around the salami), which was selected by a local youth cultural club known as The Connoisseurs of the Pig!

Yesterday’s inaugural ceremony was held in the town of Busseto in the Province of Parma. The streets were crowded, the air filled with the aroma of pork BBQ’s and in the early evening a dense, impenetrable fog made a dutiful appearance. I’ll be following future events throughout the month and reporting back every week. However, should you want to make a personal visit entry if free and the festivals are being held at the following locations:

5^th and 6^th November 2011 – Sissa, Parma

12^th and 13^th November 2011, Polesine, Parma

19^th and 20^th November 2011, Zibello, Parma

26^th and 27^th November 2011, Roccabianca, Parma

Espresso and cake

I drink 4 cups of espresso in the bar every day. A caffè macchiato in the very early morning followed by an espresso at around 10 a.m. I always go to the bar for a coffee after lunch and a final shot just after dinner. That’s my coffee regime and I’ve stuck to it religiously for 5 years. 

Italians drink a lot of coffee – estimated between 70-100 million cups per day. They rank first in the world for consumption, averaging 600 cups per person per year.  I figure I’m doing more than my fare share for the national squad. With 28 cups a week, I’m averaging in the region of 1,400 cups per year.

Italian coffee, as the world knows it today, dates back to the early 1900s when Pavoni began manufacturing coffee machines in Milan. Contrary to popular belief ‘espresso’ does not mean fast, but rather a drink prepared ‘expressly’ for the individual, deriving from the steam used to ‘express’ hot water through the coffee. The milestone came in 1948 with the introduction of the Gaggia Classic machine. The Gaggia used a hand operated piston to drive the water through the coffee under nine atmospheres of pressure resulting in a shorter beverage with a cream of essential oils – the Crema.

Espresso Cake

Torta di Caffé

Makes 1 loaf

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 35 minutes

80g butter (softened)

120g caster sugar

2 eggs separated

100ml strong espresso coffee (cold)

175g self raising flour

Preheat oven to 180ºC.

Make 100ml of espresso coffee and allow it to go cold. Mix together the butter and 80g of caster sugar until light and fluffy.  Next, as you mix, add the egg yolks one at a time. Now, pour the chilled espresso into the mixture, stirring as you do so. Finally, add the sifted self raising flour. 

In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with the remaining caster sugar until they are stiff. Gently fold the egg whites into the cake mixture and then pour into a greased lined loaf tin. Bake the cake for 35 minutes and check if cooked (you might have to give it an extra few minutes). Once cooked, remove from the tin and allow the cake to cool on a wire baking rack.



Sliced bread and espresso

I went to Heidi land yesterday to do some food shopping. Anytime I have a craving or a need for something exotic – i.e. not Italian – I take a 90 minute drive north. I skirt around Milan on the always hectic and stressful tangenziale (ring road), past Como (with just a two-second view of the lake from up high on the motorway), down into the not so beautiful border town of Chiasso and, finally, into Switzerland, the land of good cheeses, chocolate, clocks and very bad coffee.

What brought me here, you might wonder? In just a few words, white sliced loaf.

Before you ask, and for those who are now thinking I’ve taken leave of my senses, good bread of the sliced variety in Italy is notable for its absence. What does come sliced is usually treated in alcohol and lasts for up to 3 months - not exactly fresh and certainly not something you want to put your Parma ham between! But hey, Italians don’t have a problem with that because they rarely eat sliced bread. I, on the other hand, can’t imagine life without the occasional BLT or little toasted soldiers to dip into my egg or a few slices of retro Melba toast to go with my thick autumnal soups. So, once a month, I visit the very Swiss Sermonata shopping centre in the border town of Mendrisio and stuff my boot with all manner of things I can’t get a few miles down the road in Bell’ Italia!  

A leisurely stroll around both the Co-op and Migros supermarkets resulted in a bill of just over CHF300. The exchange rate is awful at the moment so the bread wasn’t coming cheap! But needless to say, I didn’t just buy sliced bread! When in Switzerland, I like to take advantage of the very international shopping experience that Switzerland offers. You see, in my opinion, there’s no country in the world like Italy when you want a good restaurant. And there’s no country in the world like Italy when you want to do some Italian food shopping (as you’d expect). But, if truth be told, when it comes to buying anything let’s say, not Italian, well, suffice to say that I get into the car and drive to Switzerland.

Exhausted and with a pocket full of Swiss change and a boot loaded to the max with eight loaves of sliced bread, bagels, shortbread, assorted Chinese food stuffs, sweet potatoes, Swiss cheese and a basket of French cheese, pâté, madeleines and wine, I went into a coffee shop within eyeshot of the border checkpoint. I ordered a large café crème (coffee with cream), took a deep swig and almost choked.

As it happens I was standing next to a Swiss border guard who couldn’t help but notice the expression of disgust and incomprehension on my face.

“The coffee’s better there”, he said gesturing to the other side of the border. “I can’t”, he added by way of explanation, “we’re not allowed, not in the uniform”. I looked down at his cappuccino and immediately felt sorry for him. To work so close to the best coffee in the world and have to endure this every day: that’s some kind of punishment. I thanked him for the advice and left my drink unfinished. Life’s too short for bad coffee… besides, from where I was standing I could see a coffee bar in Italy that had a cup of espresso with my name on it! 

True coffee lovers, try out the following liqueur. It’s simple and I can guarantee you, it’s absolutely delicious!

Espresso Liqueur

Liquore al caffé

Makes 1 litre

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: N/A

500ml strong espresso coffee

500g caster sugar

5cm piece of orange zest

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla pod

200ml alcohol (a strong clear grappa or vodka will work just as well)

In a heatproof bowl add the caster sugar and the freshly made (very hot) espresso coffee. Stir the mixture until all the sugar has dissolved and then add the spices and orange peel. Leave the mix to cool (this is very important). Once cold, add the alcohol (or grappa/ vodka) and stir. Pour the mixture into a demijohn/ bottle with at least a 1.5 litre capacity. Seal and set aside for 3-4 days in a cool dark place. 

To finish, pour the liqueur through a fine sieve into a bottle, discarding the spices and peel.  Although it can be drunk immediately, the liqueur will improve if you allow the flavour to develop for between 1 and 3 months.

TIP: Serve chilled after dinner or, alternatively, pour a shot of the liqueur over vanilla ice-cream for a delicious and simple adult dessert!

The artisan baker

Back in the Balham neighbourhood where I once lived, the demand for housing barely faltered throughout the recent recession. I heard from former neighbours that this was, in large part, down to the reputation of the local school – people wanted to live in the area because their children were guaranteed a place. I can understand this. I chose my home town here in Italy because it has a great bakery!

It’s no longer straightforward finding a good bakery in Italy. There was a time, I remember, when you could walk into any town and buy freshly baked local artisan breads. Most popular were the huge country loaves – pagnotta - dark crusty wheels, crispy to the touch, chewy and full of flavour - baked in wood burning ovens throughout the country. You could buy a piece, wrap it in a paper bag, place it in the credenza [sideboard] and it would last a week.

These breads originated from a time when people would take their dough once a week to the local fornaio – baker. Each loaf would be marked with the family’s personal signature – usually a wooden stamp - and it would be baked for a small charge. The loaves were large and made to last. The forno was a communal hub.

Thankfully, you can still find a pagnotta in Italy, but you will have to make the effort to find it. Alternatively, a recent survey estimated there are something in the region of 1,500 varieties of bread made in Italy which, taking into account regional dialects and shapes, can be broken down into 200 main types. So, if you take into consideration the ones we all know - the ciabatti, focacce, pane di Altamura, pane pugliese and panini all’olio etc of this world – it means there are still a good 190 waiting to be discovered.

Back in my home town Franco, an experienced artisan baker, makes 20 varieties of bread daily – and they’re all worth discovering.  Needless to say he starts work early – about 3 a.m., every morning, 7 days a week. And he’s been going steadily since he was 13 years old. He’s now over 50! Hardly surprising, it’s a regime that not many of the younger generation are willing to endure. Luckily Franco reassures me that he has no plans to call it a day. “Baking’s a game I still love to play,” he tells me. Some neighbourhoods might well revolve around the school. Mine revolves around the bakery.

Chestnuts and mulled wine

There are 3 ways in Italy to tell that chestnut season has started:

1. Bakeries start selling a cake called castagnaccio – a Tuscan specialty, although it is made throughout the Apennines wherever chestnut trees abound.

2. The local newspaper devotes an entire page to the whereabouts of the countless chestnut festivals that will invariably be taking place throughout the month of October.

3. Chestnuts dominate seasonal restaurant menus.

The small osteria where we had lunch was offering specials of creamy mushroom and chestnut soup, handmade pasta with a chestnut stuffing served in a sage and butter sauce and escallops cooked in a brandy and chestnut butter. Desserts included a sweet fried tortelli stuffed with, yes, of course, more chestnuts.

The Italian culinary calendar is a cyclical pastiche of frenzied seasonal outbreaks. In-season bingeing is the norm and, as if to prove the point, after lunch we walked 2 kilometers from the restaurant to the stone hamlet of Scaria, deep in the heart of the Val d’Intelvi, in the mountains above Lake Como. I could smell the chestnuts roasting on the fire long before I reached the festival. We’d parked some distance from town as we knew the event would attract a good crowd (plus I wanted to try and walk off lunch!). Chestnut festivals – or castagnata, as it’s known – are always popular in Italy. Nothing draws crowds quite like nostalgia and chestnuts are one of those special seasonal foods that are always served with a generous dollop of the stuff.  As the aroma grew stronger I was already envisaging the open log fire, the flames towering around and through the pan, fingers and hands blackened, chestnuts hot to the touch.

We passed the church and joined the crowd in excited procession up to the playground above town. In the center of the car park three castagnoli – chestnut roasters, for want of a better translation! – were sitting in front of an open fire shaking blackened long-handled pans over the flames. Every town in Italy has a different contraption for cooking chestnuts. This was not entirely dissimilar to the domestic version. The handles had been elongated to create safe workable distance from the fire and they were hanging from chains attached to a scaffold to take the strain out of shaking. But other than that it was very much as anyone fortunate enough to have an open fire in their home would go about roasting chestnuts. 

Everywhere, people were standing, a bag of chestnuts in one hand, a cup of mulled wine in the other. It was chilly, as you’d expect in the Alps this time of the year and so the hot wine was particularly welcome. It also worked wonders with my appetite. Before long I’d finished one bag of chestnuts and was queuing for a second. After all, the season would be over soon. Better to eat them while you still can!

Chestnuts ‘alla vampa’

Castagne alla vampa

Serves 4

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

500g fresh chestnuts

50g caster sugar

100ml grappa or brandy

Make a small incision with a sharp knife on the flat side of the chestnut.  Don’t worry if you don’t have an open fire for roasting your chestnuts, they can be cooked in the oven.  Simply place them on a baking tray and roast in a preheated oven at 180ºC for about 15-20 minutes.  Give them a squeeze to see if they are cooked. If they feel soft they are done. Once cooked, peel the chestnuts and arrange in serving glasses/bowls.

Make a caramel by placing the caster sugar in a heavy-based saucepan and add a teaspoon of water.  Cook over a medium flame.  The caramel won’t take long to make so keep your eyes on the pan. When it turns a golden colour it is ready.  Pour a small amount of caramel over the chestnuts.

Finally pour a shot of your chosen alcohol, gently warmed in a saucepan, over the chestnuts and set alight!

TIP:  The caramel is very hot when you pour it over the chestnuts, so make sure your serving dishes are heat proof.

Turnip tops and veggies!

My sister’s in town. When she visits it’s always a trying time for me…because she’s a veggie. She turned green about 15 years ago, after a bet.

It’s a trying time because I live in a land where vegetarians are a rare breed and often misunderstood! A few years back when I was organizing my son’s christening party I specifically told the restaurant that there would be one vegetarian in the party. ‘No problem’, they said. ‘We’ll do a torta salata (a quiche) with the antipasto, mixed grilled vegetables and fish for her main and, of course, there’s the classic anolini (ravioli) with a cheese stuffing for the pasta’. All sorted, or so I thought.

On the day, however, the menu wasn’t quite as green as she would have liked. The torta salata was studded with pieces of ham. ‘But it’s only a little ham’, the waitress pointed out ‘to give the quiche some flavour’. She actually suggested my sister pick it out! And as for the pasta, the fact that it was swimming in chicken broth didn’t appear to phase our host either – ‘that’s how we serve them’, she pointed out. Even the grissini sticks were fried in lard! 

This is why, no doubt, my little sister likes to spend most of her time down south, in Puglia in particular. “The garden of Italy”, as it is known, owes its green reputation to fertile soils, hot summers and mild winters. A region that is segregated from the rest of the country by natural land boundaries, the Pugliese have developed their own distinct culinary culture, one that shares as much in common with Greece as it does with its regional neighbours.

For vegetarians, Puglia is a ‘garden of Eden’. Broad beans, pulses, artichokes, olives, tomatoes, aubergines, turnip tops, various kinds of chicory, wild and cultivated herbs are just a few of the local highlights. And they all work perfectly with the local varieties of pasta of which the most famous is orecchiette – literally, little ears. If you prefer ‘big ears’ you could always ask for pociacche or for little, little ears ask for chiancarelle. In fact, whatever variant of the local dialect you use to ask for your plate of orecchiette (and there are many), the one dish that best symbolizes the region’s cuisine is, of course, orecchiette con le cime di rapa – orecchiette with turnip tops. It’s one of those ritual dishes that I make every year to celebrate the arrival of turnip tops. Traditionally a couple of anchovies are added to the sauce along with the garlic but personally I prefer to leave them out.  

Orecchiette pasta with turnip tops

Orecchiette con le cime di rapa

Serves 4

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes

1kg turnip tops

300g orecchiette pasta

1 or 2 fresh red chili peppers

4-5 sun dried tomatoes

2 garlic cloves

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt & pepper

Wash the turnip tops.  Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add the turnip tops.  Boil for 5-6 minutes until tender.  Drain the turnip tops, but retain the cooking water.  Bring the cooking water back to the boil and add the orecchiette pasta.  Boil the orecchiette for 10-12 minutes until al dente (check packet for exact cooking times).  In the meantime, place 3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a large heavy-based frying pan and add the garlic cloves which have been finely sliced.  Cook the garlic for a few minutes.  Roughly chop the turnip tops and add these to the pan along with the chopped sun dried tomatoes and chili.  Fry over a gentle heat until the pasta is cooked.  When the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the pan with the turnip tops.  Stir everything together well and taste for seasoning.  Serve immediately with a good sprinkling of aged pecorino cheese and a drizzle of olive oil.