Sapori e Bonta’: Della Cucina Regionale Italiana
By Chef Franco Brigandi
In my humble (and admittedly biased) opinion, the flavors and goodness of Italian Regional cooking cannot be surpassed and is among the healthiest cuisines in the world. Unfortunately, many do not perceive it that way.
A few years back I was recommended for a job as a personal chef. The biggest requirement to the job was to understand the dietary restrictions of the person I would be cooking for. I spoke with the potential client and explained that I worked many years providing food for several nursing homes with dietary restrictions, and that I was a advocate for fresh natural foods and low fat cooking methods. But when I said that I focus on Italian specialties, I was ultimately rejected on the grounds that Italian food was not the cuisine they were looking for, and therefore not acceptable to the client. I tried explaining how wrong their perceptions were, but unfortunately their preconceived notions prevailed. However, this incident always stayed with me, and now I continuously look to open people’s eyes and let them know that Italian food is more than just greasy pizza, fattening pasta sauces, and meat balls.
Just the other day, I went to a local store which is the only store in town where I can purchase Italian cranberry beans and Italian semolina flour at a decent price, to make my fresh minestrone and my homemade breads and pastas. This store carries a very large variety of organic dried beans, and I wanted also to get some fava beans. I asked one of the employees if he could help me find them. He did not know what a fava bean was, and when he could not find any, he asked another employee if they had them in another section. When I mentioned I was an Italian chef, she made a comment under her breath, and I quote: “I would not touch Italian food with a ten foot pole.” As shocking as that sounds, this is yet another example that some people are convinced that Italian food is devoid of healthy options.
In Italy, we use only the freshest fruits and vegetables, freshly picked herbs, that also have medicinal qualities and an abundance of fragrance, as well as Extra Virgin Olive Oil, an oil that is good for the whole body and its ailments. The best and healthiest form of olive oil must be a rich dark green, the darker the better, which means it is the cold pressed, or “first squeeze” of the olives, and it is not cut with other oils. The flavor is out of this world! It gives every dish such a superior flavor. Now you can find this form of olive oil in most American stores. In Italy, meats and cheeses are more wholesome because the cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry are raised without chemicals and stress, and fed the best grains. And Italy is a peninsula, surrounded by pristine waters with an abundance of fresh fish to choose from. The artisans that create our cheeses, bake our breads, and make our wines, have love for what they do and use many centuries of wisdom to make their healthful and fabulously delicious products. When you put love into your creations, they become noticeably the best. This may be the main reason why food always tastes better in Italy than elsewhere.
As a Sicilian, I grew up with a mostly vegetarian diet, which I believe can be attributed to having great health most of my life, and everyone in my family has lived to be in their 90′s.
The region where I lived was truly blessed with an abundance of nature. Even in the hardest of times, It seems as though God allowed us to eat like kings on what we could find outside our door. At a very early age, I learned the hiding places, and the value of all the natural foods I used to go out and pick for my mother. Those times are gone, but the knowledge has stayed with me as a treasure longing to be shared.
My goal is to do whatever I can to change the misconceptions of the health benefits of regional Italian food, and to teach the healthy methods of cooking that will dispel that myth.
Settembre, all over Italy is the month of Vendemmia, the harvest of the grapes and the beginning of the wine making process. In Sicily, when I was growing up, every first week in September I looked forward to these festivities with great anticipation. Whole towns and communities participated in the Vendemmia each year. I remember they invited all the students in my school to come out to help gather grapes. Filling large baskets of the freshly picked fruit, we carried these heavy loads over our shoulders to deposit the contents into very wide half sized oak barrels called “tinozze”, where there were always two or three people stomping the grapes with their feet. All of us would take turns crushing the grapes in the tinozza. I was good at stomping, because my feet were hard like mallets! I was always barefoot, everywhere I went, as I only had one pair of shoes and could not afford to wear them out; and, I played soccer barefooted all the time which made them tough. So I was able to demolish every grape under my feet. The sweet juice that was created when we crushed the grapes went through very long hose attached to the side of each tinozza which extended all the way to a giant oak barrel inside of a nearby wine cellar. When full, the barrel was sealed, and the juice was kept there for 2 months to ferment into wine.
There was a very large paved area located near the grape harvesting, that had a big stone receptacle on it used for grain harvests, called the “Aia”, The tinozze were placed all around the receptacle. During Vendemia we used the Aia for grape stomping, and then in the evenings, they would move the tinozze out, and we would all celebrate and dance until our 9 pm curfew. I recall how fun it was to dance the Tarantella, the Waltz, Mazurca, and the Fox Trot. Back then our Sicilian culture still bound us to not have any physical contact with the opposite sex, unless you were married or engaged, so it was mostly boys dancing with boys and girls dancing with girls. Our feast each night was roast lamb or roast pig on the spit, infused with lots of garlic, olive oil, rosemary and marjoram, basted continuously until so succulent that it fell off the bone. The semolina wheat bread was incredibly good, and of course we could have all of the grapes we wanted.
After a week of harvesting and squeezing the grapes, they took the mash of skins and pits left in the tinozze, and made “grappa” which is a very strong Liquore, originated in Bassano del Grappa in the northern region of Veneto. For a century it was the poor man’s drink in Italy, resembling moonshine, but since the 1960′s, grappa makers have refined it to the point that now it is for sale in trendy establishments.
Traditionally every year on November 11, the feast of San Martino, they taste the new wine from the Vendemmia to see if it is good to drink yet. If not, they leave it in the barrel a little longer. Of course, today wineries have state of the art equipment to smash the grapes, and test it for consumption.
Please continue to Ask Chef Franco any questions you have about food, my recipes, or even where to find certain Italian ingredients in Las Vegas. I will get back to you as soon as possible. For anyone who is interested, I also would love to give private cooking lessons in your home. cheffrancofoods@yahoo.com
Q: Dear Chef Franco, In your July article, you mentioned fresh fruit “granita”. Can you give me a recipe for it?
Sue Marino Summerlin
A: Dear Sue,
To make granitas in Italy they use a labor intensive process of boiling water, fruit and sugar until it forms almost a paste, then they strain the fruit from it and freeze the liquids for a minimum 5 hours, all the while having it churned or stirred at least every 30 minutes, then they would shave the ice by hand. Luckily you don’t have to do all that, you can just use your blender! Of course it all depends on what fruit you prefer, but I first put fresh fruit (3 cups worth) like berries or peaches, then a complimenting fruit juice, nectar, or flavored syrup (1/3 of a cup), sugar (1/3 of a cup) and ice cubes. Make sure the liquids are about halfway up the ice level, and adjust it later with more juice or syrup, if necessary. Then pulse it until the ice is crushed and the fruit blends smoothly into the ice. You will know you have it right when you see the ice looking like little grains of sand- hence the term “granita!”
You can add water to it to make it more like a frosty drink too, just remember to adjust it for sweetness and flavor. If you want lemon ice, use lemon juice, lemon zest and sugar. Try adding grenadine syrup for berries or peaches, and of course coffee granita is my absolute favorite!
For the best coffee granita you’ve ever tried, blend 2 cups of espresso, 1/3 a cup of sugar, a pinch of lemon zest, and ¼ cup of Amaretto liqueur in with ice.
Buon Appetito!
