Sorry to be sending out two issues so closely spaced, but I wanted to wish Italia Filippone a happy 102nd birthday. Her grandson Joe is married to Peggy Towbridge, About.Com's Home Cooking Guide. Great site, and some of Peggy's culinary talents must be through genetic transfer -- of Italia she writes"She's an awesome lady, who made fantastic Italian cream pie that no one seems to be able to duplicate, no matter the instructions and/or recipe."What was it Thomas Wolfe said? "There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves..."Auguri!

Peggy also sent me a note from the Los Angeles times, which announces that, following the introduction of Mortadella this February, Americans will soon be able to enjoy bresaula (salt-cured air-dried beef or horse, sliced paper thin, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, dotted with other delights of choice, for example Parmigiano shavings or shredded arugola, and served), and should be getting cotechino and zampone by the end of the year (both are pork sausages). Just in time to enjoy the Italian tradition of greeting the New year with cotechino or zampone and lentils!

On Limiting Genetically Modified Foods, EEU Trickery, and choosing Parmigiano

In local Italian food news, they announced yesterday that all foods containing more than 1 % genetically modified ingredients must now say so on the labels. A great many companies immediately announced their foods are GM-free, and on the face of it this would seem to be a victory for consumers. However, as a newspaper article pointed out, Italy imports a significant percentage of the American soy bean crop, much of which is GM, and therefore GM materials are certainly entering the country. Where do they go? The answer lies in a loophole in the law, which says that the final producer must warn about the presence of GM ingredients, but the suppliers are not required to say if something is GM or not. Thus, if a company grows its own GM seeds it has to say so, but if it buys flour there's no telling what's in the flour. The law also apparently doesn't require companies to tell how they may have processed non-GM ingredients. In the final analysis, we're looking at slop thrown to the consumers, while industry can pretty much do as it wants.

And it's doing some interesting things in Germany, where dairy farming is huge, and now they're pressing the EEU to certify one of their classic cheeses -- Parmesan. Yes, you read right. They've copied Parmigiano, which is in theory protected, and are now trying to get the imitation recognized. I suppose one could say the German surrogate will be unique in more than name, because it certainly won't taste anything like real Parmigiano, which owes its flavors to the grasses of the meadows grazed by the cattle (Grana Padana, made across the Po valley in Lombardia, tastes different because of differences in forage). One would hope, given Parmigiano's renown, that its producers could rest easy, but the EEU's recent decisions to allow chocolate to be made with cholesterol-rich palm oil rather than the more expensive cocoa butter, and to equate industrial honey imported from who-knows-where with the honey lovingly harvested by beekeepers out in the European countryside (new labeling laws make it more difficult for artisans to distinguish their products) leave ample room for worry. When you buy Parmigiano, buy it whole (a wedge is best), selecting a piece cut from the central section of the wheel so as to avoid the top and bottom crusts. Avoid preground because it rapidly looses its aromas, and there's no telling what went into the container.

One way to protect oneself from these surrogates is to contact the Cheese of Choice Coalition; Kaye Noble kindly sent me this announcement:

The American Cheese Society, a nonprofit organization of American cheese makers, and Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, an educational group, have joined to form the International Coalition to Preserve the Right to Choose Your Cheese, or Cheese of Choice Coalition. Its goals are to counterbalance efforts by industry and government to standardize cheese, support safe and hygienic methods of cheese making, encourage the production of artisanal and traditional cheeses and oppose the requirement that all milk used for cheese be pasteurized.

More information about the coalition can be obtained from the preservation trust (e-mail, oldways@tiac.net; fax, 617-621-1230) or the American Cheese Society (e-mail,ljwelch@elknet.net; fax, 262-728-1658).

On Limoncello

Moving in a different direction, it's now lemon season in the northern hemisphere, and that means, among other things, limoncello. Here's the recipe on the site, from JB, who kindly posted it to the BBS:

Here is a Limoncello recipe from the food section of the San Francisco Chronicle of several months ago.

INGREDIENTS:

• 15 thick-skinned lemons (Eureka, Lisbon or Citron) Organically grown will be best.
• 2 bottles (750 ml each) of the best 100 proof Vodka
• 4 1/2 cups sugar
• 5 cups water

INSTRUCTIONS:

Wash the lemons in hot water before you start. Remove the peel with a vegetable peeler, removing all white pith on the back of the peel by scraping with a knife, and put the peels in a 4-quart Mason jar.

Add 1 bottle of Vodka and stir. Cover the jar, date it, and put it to rest in a dark cabinet at room temperature.

After 40 days, take out the lemon-Vodka mixture. Ina sauce pan set over high heat, stir the sugar and water together and boil for 5 minutes. Let the sugar syrup cool completely in the pan, about 10 minutes. Add the sugar syrup to the lemon-Vodka mixture along with the second bottle of Vodka.

Stir well to combine. Replace the cover on the jar and note the finish date. Return it to the dark cabinet and store for 40 more days.

At day 80, remove the limoncello from the cabinet. Strain the mixture and discard the lemon peel.

Pour into clean, unused bottles with caps or decorative corked bottles. Store the bottles in the pantry, but put one bottle at a time in the freezer until ready to use.

Makes approximately 3 quarts.

There it is. Enjoy.

Roger recently sent me a nice commentary to the recipe:

I started a batch of limoncello last December using the lemons in my back yard and following the excellent recipe I got on your website.

Most of the lemons in California gardens are Meyers (or Meyers improved), which are actually a citrus hybrid, or Eureka lemons. With their thin, not particularly zesty skins, neither is really suitable for limoncello.

I am blessed with an Italian strand known as Ponderosa lemon, planted in the yard in 1932 by Italian workmen building my house. It bears year round lemons the size of grapefruit or bigger: thick skinned lemons with juice sweeter and more flavorful than that which is commercially available.

I experimented with several vegetable peelers before find the best one to remove the peel in long, wide strips while not picking up any of the bitter white pith. The recipe starts with one bottle of 100 proof (50 percent) vodka, but my lemons generated so much peel that I added a bit more vodka from the second bottle to cover them completely. When it was time to add more vodka and sugar, I used the balance of the second bottle rather than a whole new bottle, so the total volume remained the same.

While the limoncello steeped, I experimented a bit with a lovely bottle of Luxardo limoncello, about the best brand available in the States. I had already wowed friends with Macedonian salads laced by a subtle splash of Maraschino liqueur, but when I substituted the limoncello they were really taken.

My lovely, velvety, brew was ready last week. We decanted the liqueur through cheesecloth (probably unnecessary, but we wanted to be absolutely sure of sparkling clarity) and divided the quarts into small gift bottles I am painting and labeling.

The moment we opened the jug of limoncello, the house was filled with the most incredible lemon aroma. If American cooks interested in limoncello are able to get their hands on Ponderosa lemons, I highly recommend they try your recipe. Mine results in a spirit that is a bit thicker, more aromatic and more flavorful than the commercial offerings. But they should start soon: right now the trees in California are laden with heavy, ripe fruit from the cool weather, but the rising temperatures will soon carry the lemons past ripe and turn the rinds a disagreeable orange.

You'll find other home made liqueurs and syrups on site.

Trofie

Winding down, Ian recently asked for trofie, which are Ligurian gnocchi made with flour, water and a little bran; they're made between Camogli and Bogliasco, and are a specialty of Recco. They're hand made, with pointy ends, and Alessandro Molinari Prdelli notes, in la Cucina Ligure (Newton Compton, Editore) that Ligurians don't use the back of a cheese grater or the tines of a fork to shape gnocchi with hollow fronts and decorated backs, but wrap the bleb of pasta around a finger so as to obtain a small tortiglione with pointy ends. To make trofie for six he has you assemble:

• 4 3/4 cups (475 g) glour
• An ounce (25 g) bran
• Warm water
• A pinch of salt.

Combine the flour and bran on your work surface, salt lightly, and add just a little water. Not too much, because the dough should be smooth and quite firm. Knead it thoroughly, then break off bits about the size of chickpeas, and roll them under your index and middle fingers to obtain little spirals shaped like cork screws. Those less expert, he suggests, should wrap the pasta around a knitting needle or a wooden skewer.

Let the trofie dry on a floured work surface, boil them in abundant salted water, until they rise to the surface, drain them, and serve them with lots of pesto sauce.

As variations, you can add a handful of boiled beans to the trofie after draining them, or season them with walnut or meat sauce (you'll find recipes for both, and pesto sauce, on site, from the pasta sauce page, http://italianfood.about.com/blind8.htm). As a final variation, boil 6 ounces (150 g) each potatoes and string beans, dice them while the trofie are cooking, and combine everything, with a healthy dollop of pesto sauce.

Trofie di Camogli are somewhat different. To serve 6 you'll need:

• 3 cups (300 g) flour
• 12 ounces (300 g) potatoes
• An egg
• Salt

Boil or steam the potatoes until done, peel them, and put them through a potato rice. Combine the pureed potatoes thus obtained with the flour and the egg, and work the mixture to obtain a firm dough. Prepare them as above and cook them, removing them from the boiling water with a strainer as they rise to the surface. Season with pesto sauce, meat sauce, or grated Parmigiano and unsalted butter, and serve.

Another couple of variations:

1) With chestnut flour.

• Begin with 2 cups wheat flour and 3 cups chestnut flour, which should be fresh and smell chestnuty sweet
• A live-yeast cake (baker's yeast from the super market) the size of a walnut, dissolved in a little warm water.
• Salt.

2) With Bread Dough

• Begin with 5 cups (500 g) flour
• 2 ounces (50 g) live-yeast cake (baker's yeast), dissolved in a little warm water.
• Salt

Combine the ingredients, kneading the dough well, and let it rest in a bowl, covered by a cloth -- the chestnut flour trofie dough for about an hour, and the bread dough trofie dough for several hours, in a warm place. In either case, make your trofie, boil them, and serve with pesto sauce, walnut sauce (the chestnut trofie), or agliata.

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

Agliata is a garlic sauce that dates to the middle ages, and is simplicity in itself: As in all simple things there are many variations, but here is the basic idea:

• 6 cloves garlic
• An ounce of bread crumb from Italian bread (weighed after removal of the crust)
• 3/4 cup red wine vinegar

Dip the crumb in the vinegar and grind it to a fine paste with the garlic. Whisk in the remainder of the vinegar, and it's done. Should you want something a little less pungent, dip the bread in the vinegar, grind it with the garlic, season the mixture with salt and a dusting of freshly ground pepper, and work some olive oil into the mix. Then dilute it to taste with a some vinegar.

In any case, though Mr. Pradelli suggests it with trofie, agliata is perhaps more common with fried fish, boiled meat, and fried vegetables. Spread on crostini, it also makes a nice antipasto.

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

Winding down, Giles writes,

India in Fiesole

Kyle, that I was in Florence this past week and enjoyed the experience.

Maybe I enjoyed it so much because I spent sunsets and evenings in Fiesole (Hotel Villa Bonelli, great people). What I heard up there is that La Reggia, on the hike up to the Franciscan Convento, is considered by the townsfolk to serve up the best steak Florentine around.

The interesting phenomenon, however, is the Indian Restaurant"Tandoori."

Every night the place is packed with adventurous Italians trying what must be quite strange stuff for their palates. And the entertainment is a free part of the package. Monday nights features a belly dancer from Florida who studied the art in Egypt and shows it. Shows a lot, actually. On Wednesdays they have a "magician"who is really an amazing psychic. The management was quick to tell me that he isn't full Italian; his mother is Turkish. I'm still trying to get over my palm reading of last Wednesday night. Really incredible.

Anyway, what a weird idea for Florence. And it is working, big time.

I'm going to have to go. This winds it up. Again, Happy Birthday Italia!!

Kyle Phillips

PS -- Send a card from the Italian Cuisine Post Office!

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