A NEW SERIES OF BLOG POSTS: FORAGING

In my opinion one of the pleasures of living in the countryside is getting in touch with nature in many different ways. 

I love having the possibility of meeting the little creatures that inhabit our world without us realizing. Today, driving along a white road by the farm, I saw a blackbird in the middle of the road carrying a huge worm and struggling to fly away when it saw my car. Hurrying to fly away it lost the worm and panicked, trying to decide between its prey and dear life. I slowed down allowing it to run back (blackbirds tend to run instead of flying), get the worm and run away. A few months ago I had the funniest meeting with a very cheeky dormouse who was as curios of understanding what kind of animal I was as I was of seeing how near was it going to come. 

The other great pleasure is redescovering the countryside traditions, things that people did for centuries and that we, contemporary town people, lost completely. I still remember my first sausage and the day that I made cheese using fig leaves as rennet (it worked perfectly but the cheese was dreadful). This also includes foraging: flowers, leaves, berries, sprouts, buds... and of course experimenting old and new recipes to prepare dishes, liqueurs, syrups, jams, jellies, preserves, medicines and much more.
This year spring is early, so elder is blooming right now here in Northern Le Marche. The first instalment of this new series about foraging (and preparing yummy goodies), after this long introduction, will be two links to gorgeous recipes using elder flowers. Enjoy!

ELDERFLOWER JELLY (AND CAKE)

ELDERFLOWER LIQUEUR

Photo of the day: cotechino, ciauscolo & salame

Sorry vegetarian friends!
Ciauscolo, cotechino and salame meats ready to go in their casings.
Cotechino will be cured for one week and then in the freezer to be enjoyed later, boiled along with other mixed meats or with lentils.
Salame and ciauscolo will be hung for a few months until they develop their amazing aromas. YUM!

Photo of the day: bitesize pickled sweet peppers

Photo of the day: PUMPKINS!!!

What can you do when, arriving at home after a long day, you find a wheelbarrow filled with pumpkins?
I guess that start thinking about how to wash and store them and look for recipes! :)

Photo of the day: Visciole (with recipe)

Sour cherries (a wild local variety called visciola) sitting in the sun.
To prepare an amazing syrupy preserve fill a jar with sour-cherries leaving some space between the cherries and the ridge, top it up with sugar, covering throughly. Close the jar and let sit in the sun for a couple of months shaking (during the hottest hours) during the first days to dissolve the sugar.
Serve with Panna Cotta!

Photo of the day: liqueurs, different stages

Left to right: nocino wine (two steps and it will become an amazing syrup for mascarpone cream), artichoke liqueur, uva fragola (concord grapes) liqueur, quince liqueur (2010, it will be ready for drinking in 2014...), tangerine liqueur (my great grandfather's favourite recipe), (front) apple pip liqueur.

Photo of the day: home-made salami, ciauscolo, sausages

Photo of the day: roses for jam

Marco's Way: Food and Wine tours in Le Marche

This is an important time of the year for wine producers, it's pruning time and pruning is basic if you want good quality grapes and thus good quality wine.

I have been willing to participate into one of Marco's food and wine tours for a long time, and a few days ago the occasion arose.

We started visiting Cantina Luigi Giusti that stands in the Lacrima di Morro d'Alba d.o.c. area (do not guess that this wine has something to do with Alba, Piedmont and read this article for more information).

The Lacrima is a very unusual wine that is only produced in Le Marche, after Luigi Giusti showed us how they prune the vines and explained why, the tasting began! 

We tasted different wines all made with the same grapes including 2 beautiful Rosé and Vino di Visciole (a yummy dessert wine made with red wine and sour cherries).

The second visit was Caseificio Piandelmedico in Jesi, they produce cow and buffalo cheeses including a beautiful mozzarella and more unusual buffalo blue cheese and taleggio style cheese. They are so good that I didn't even think about taking a picture!

After a good lunch prepared specially for us, accompained by wines from different cantine of Le Marche, at Antiche cantine del Porticello in Jesi we headed to the Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi d.o.c. area.

Vallerosa Bonci farm produce some of the most awarded Verdicchio wines. We tried classical and excellent spumante and also a great (and not too sweet) Verdicchio Passito.

I normally prefer red wines but I really enjoyed those Verdicchios!

The last cantina that we visited is located in the Conero Natural Park near Ancona and produces mostly Rosso Conero wine: Moroder is probably one of the best known wineries in Le Marche but it's still a family business and visiting it with Marco (who worked here years ago) is perfect,  actually everywhere we went we felt informally welcome, none of the officiality and stiffness, just people that show their love for what they do.

We visited the beautiful old and new cellar and tasted some wines sitting outside, chatting and drinking until sunset. 

Farms in Le Marche are family run, not big businesses, the wineries of Le Marche produce some very fine wines, most of them still little known, but very interesting.

With Marco you have the possibility to get to know people, farms, wines and other typical products (not only cheese but honey, extra vergin olive oil) that would be difficult to reach without his kowledge of the area and the people. 

Marco is a wine and olive oil producer himself, loves and knows Le Marche and speaks good English (he's been living in the UK and Australia for a long time) and he's the perfect person to show the best of Le Marche wines to experts and novices alike.

Visit his webpage for more information about the tours and have a look at the sunset that he prepared to finish our day with him! :)

Everything Elderflower 2: Elderflower liqueur

Winter 2011 is cold, it snowed for a couple of days and I'm snowed in, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get out of here!
Spring and Summer colours, smells and flavours have a great appeal when everything outside is cold and silent snow, so here's my Elderflower liqueur recipe: smells of Spring perfect for Winter consumption! :)
First of all you need to collect and dry your elderflowers, you can see how I do this here.
Once you have the flowers you need:

50/60 big elderflower heads
2 lemons
300 gr of sugar
450 gr of 95º alcohol
550 gr of water
(If you can't find 95º alcohol use a strong Vodka and reduce the amount of water accordingly)

Make a syrup by boiling the water and sugar for 1 minute.
Mix the syrup, alcohol, juice of the 2 lemons and the "leftover" rind in a glass jar that you can close tightly.

Leave in a warm place for 6/7 weeks.
Drain, discard the lemon rinds and filter the flowers using a clean cloth. "Wash" the flowers with 100 gr of alcohol and filter again squeezing as much as you can.
Add a syrup made with 100 gr of water and 50 gr of sugar.
Let rest for 4 months minimum (1 year is better).
ENJOY!

Alimentare in Cagli

Alimentare opened in Cagli on August 5th 1999, a place to buy or taste the best foods and beverages from Le Marche.
It's a shop where you can buy amazing cheeses and salamis, yummy sauces and preserves, the best pastas; it's a wine shop with the best local and Italian wines (and artisan beers); it's a friendly café for a coffee or an aperitivo; it's a restaurant for home-made lunches made with local quality ingredients.

Ketti and Ale will help you choose the right product and cuddle you with their recipes and attentions. Visit their brand new website.

Preparing cooking classes for 2011

NEW!
 We will start offering cooking classes at Locanda della Valle Nuova!

At the moment I'm planning, studying and experimenting and more information will be available soon.
The photo below (Piadina a flat bread that is typical in the coastal area of Northern Le Marche and neighbouring Romagna) is part of the process, I'll post more soon.

Please leave your suggestions below if you wish.

Persimmon

Photo of the day: preparing liqueurs

Some of this summer's liqueurs, left to right: artichokes, dandelion, elderflower (back), herbs, orange with coriander and anise.

Recipes will follow soon!

Peperoncini ripieni (stuffed peppers)

Here goes my family recipe of these traditional Piemontese delicacies.

STUFFED PRESERVED PEPPERS
For about 50 tiny round peppers (can be hot or semisweet, as you prefer)

Half a litre of white or apple vinegar
Half a litre of white wine
1 1/2 tsp of salt

About 200 gr of good canned tuna
80 gr of very good quality anchovies
50 capers
Good Extra virgin olive oil

You will need plastic gloves if using hot peppers!

Wash the peppers and take away the stems. Wear your gloves and empty, so that you get rid of all the seeds and white bits inside (I use one of those tiny scoopers normally used for melon or watermelon).

Now bring the wine, vinegar and salt to a boil and cook the peppers for 5 minutes (calculated from the moment when the liquid boils again after adding the peppers). Drain and let cool upsidedown over a cloth.
Prepare the filling by putting the tuna & anchovies (desalted if needed).
When the peppers are dry and cool fill each of them with about 1 tsp of the filling and add a caper on top, pressing a bit.

Pack as tightly as you can without squeezing the filling out of them in glass jars and top with as much olive oil as it takes to cover them completely. Make sure that there are no pockets of air!
Close the jars and wait 3 or 4 weeks before eating them!
ENJOY!

Before and after: sour cherries

Tonns of sour cherries this year!

We made jelly, put them in syrup, preserved with sugar in the sun, ate and we even made juice!

Beautiful colour and even better taste!

Before and after: zabaione (recipe included)

Fresh organic free-range egg yolks from our hens.

Beat with 1 tbsp of sugar for every yolk, mix with a half egg-shell of Marsala or Vin Santo or your favourite Passito, cook the mix at bain-marie wisking constantly until the lines that your wisk marks stay for a while. Cool quickly in a cold bain-marie.

Eat hot or freeze it!

The organic farmers' shop in Urbino

The season started and time for long posts is long over. Nevertheless I really want to write about a fab new place that opened just over one month ago in Urbino.
Farmers are having a hard time everywhere and Italy is not an exception. Agriturismo (farm inn) is a great way to increase farmer's incomes: not only for the farmers who actually run an agriturismo who have the possibility of making the most of their own produce by transforming it into breakfasts and meals for their guests, but also for other farmers of the area who have the possibility to sell their products directly to the agriturismos. Yes, direct sales are the other big deal for farmers these days: farmers markets, farm-shops.. not having to deal with middlemen and shopkeepers makes products cheaper for the consumer and more rewarding for the seller.
This is why a group of organic farmers from Pesaro Urbino province, in northern Le Marche, decided to open their own shop.
It's located in the courtyard of the Collegio Raffaello, an imposing building by the main square of Urbino that hosts, along with other interesting places, an art gallery, Piero Guidi shop (famous handbag designer from Urbino), Caffé Basili (where you can sip a cappuccino in the quietness and the refreshing shadow of the portico) a bookshop and soon other shops.
Back to the Galleria AE (Gallery of the different economy), producers sell their gorgeous products there (cheeses, vegetables, salamis, jams as well as wine, pasta and legumes, all farmed organically within a few km of Urbino) and you'll also find FairTrade and ecological products such as soaps and more.

A great initiative that every farmer and every person concerned with the environment and the wellbeing of nature should support.
I hope that you'll shop at the Galleria AE when you visit Urbino!

Before and after: apricots

A new series of posts showing you our farm product "before and after": from beautifully fresh from the field to transformed into scrumptious compotes, juices, jams, pickles and much more.
Hope you enjoy it!

Sweet and sour apricots (to be served with cheeses and cold cuts) and beautiful apricot juice for breakfast.

Photo of the day: home made liqueurs anyone?

In the store-room trying to arrange all the home-made liqueurs.
Un assaggio?