Fruit Dazed

The market is bursting with color and vibrant with all the delightful fruits and vegetables here at the height of the season, as the produce stacks up and the shoppers become laden down. We've gotten enough cool weather to make even the most listless renew their interest to do more than just eat prosciutto crudo and melon or figs alternated with mozzarella and ox heart tomatoes(cuore di bui). Now people are beginning to cook a bit more, but there is still just so many fruits and vegetables to choose from, what's a girl to do.

Get to making stuff, time's awastin.....

So I have been peeling, slicing, dicing and baking; canning, freezing, gelato making and eating, eating and eating as much of this luscious fruit as I dare. 

Apricots, plums, the first of the pears, 
and berries of every variety.

Rose currants, blueberries, blackberries and red gooseberries

Did I say gelato making? I actually meant sorbetto. What a delight and revelation making fresh fruit sorbet of every persuasion has been this summer. The freezer is stuffed, we need some eaters!

Strawberry kirsch sorbetto

Before  and after...

Strawberry sorbet with a chorus of berries

And Peaches

 

to make a southern girl not even think about missing the peaches back home.

The little green ones are actually ripe and a local favorite variety, i persi d'le vigne, or the peaches of the vineyard. Who knows? it's a local dialect name. What I know is that for looking green and under ripe, they are quite tasty.

Huh?  Smashed peaches?

No, they are called Pesche Tabacchiere, or peach snuff boxes. Perhaps they are called this because they are small enough to fit in your hand and sweet enough to take away the sweet craving that hits frequently when we have these in the house. They have been around for a few years, but it took me awhile to get past my suspicion of their unusual shape and price to actually try them. The insistent urging of one of our market vendors finally had me giving in and now I almost regret it, as I can hardly resist them when I spot them in the market. They tend to be a bit pricier and most come from the south of Italy, but some of our local growers have started to have added them to the delectable array of peach varieties to tempt and treat us. Peach Blackberry amaretti crisp has been a favorite lately.

Then we get to the apricots and plums, yum...yes yum.

Ramasin and Claude Reine

We have the first of the local plums coming in, our Piemontese Ramasin, as a harbinger of all the colorful ones to follow before the end is nigh with the Santa Claras. Not ready for that just yet.

The greenish golden one on the right of the Ramasin are named after a queen of France. Silly me though they were named after the person who cultivated them and at one point even thought they were named after a before my time actor named Claude Rains. 

And what is summer with out tarts tarts and more fruit tarts. 

Sunny side up brioche apricot tarts

I just can't make enough of the variety of  tarts there are to make, individual, free form, galettes, pies and on and on..

Apricot Thyme Almond Tart

and  last but not least

 

Apricots in local moscato wine. 

Divine, just divine.

To finish off all those apricots after so many tarts and sorbets.

We will so enjoy this when these become a distant summer memory.

That's what I've been up to, what about you?

Puff Pear Tartlettes to the rescue!

What to do when the dinner guests arrive that your husband thought had canceled?

Pull out the home made ravioli that I try to always have tucked away in our freezer for just such occasions, while he makes his much loved standard cinghiale (wild boar) stew. Fab's mother contributes some porcini for pasta sauce and we're almost covered. What to do for dolci? Fresh out of the semi freddo I try to keep on hand also for the afore mentioned situation. Fab doesn't normally get mixed up that often, but we do have hungry guests drop in with little or no notice, no problem. We try to be prepared, as you do in the hospitality business. I certainly got more than my fair share of practice when I worked for Copper Mt Resort, where there were more last minute surprises to cope with than one could possibly imagine, unless you have been in the food business yourself. In a large resort with multiple restaurants, cafeterias, banquets and John Q Public, you can find yourself scrambling to facilitate birthdays, anniversaries, allergies, celebrities and ballooning banquet numbers at the drop of a hankie. Responding calmly and quickly has been a skill honed over the years and quite frankly, I tend to thrive on the challenge or at least don't get too ruffled,.... "e cosi".

So one of my favorite life savers is the fruit puff pastry tarlette.

Depending on the time of the year or what you have on hand I have found pear or apple to be a consistent winner. You can make your own puff pastry as it isn't as difficult as one thinks,
merely time consuming and the results are tasty and satisfying. I added a very easy to follow"How to Make Puff Pastry" video ( if you can just get past the introduction) from
Ms Glaze's Pomme d'Amour.
I do sometimes make up fresh past sfolgia into sheets to freeze, just like commercial bakers, but have found it to suffer a bit more from freezer burn a bit quicker than I like, so I tend to make it when I know I will have a number of occasions to use it within the period of a couple of weeks. Other wise, commercially made frozen sheets will work beautifully and offer a decent result especially when served warm.

So to that end I took one sheet of puff dough cut it into 6 rectangles,
thawed but cold sheet of puff dough, roughly about
9"(23cm) by 12"(30cm).
When using your own home made dough, you want it about a 1/4 inch thick (1/2 cm).
1 tablespoon of jam, I use my apricot or plum usually, but chestnut cream is delicious also. Spread jam in the middle of the dough into a diagonal mound.
3 pears or apples (tart ones are my preference) peeled, halved, cored and very thinly sliced diagonally is nice, keeping the shape of the fruit as you place it on the prepared dough and fan he fruit out slightly.
Be sure to leaf sufficient dough uncovered to allow the dough to puff up around the fruit when baking.
Brush the edges of the bare dough with a bit of egg wash, (egg white mixed with a splash of water)
Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top of the fruit and bake at a 375*F 190-200*C till puffed and golden. Serve with vanilla or caramel gelato or sauce and serve.
Wait for the oohs and aahs to commence.

How to Make Puff Pastry

Unknown Fruit, Italian Aubergine? No try Calabrian Zucchini

Hello out there. I purchased this in the market the other day out of curiosity. I hadn't really seen one of these before and was intrigued. When I inquired about it I was told that is was a aubergine. Hmmm? And when I asked how to prepare it, I just got a shrug. I was with a group of women, whom were a whole lot less intrigued than I was and several had already wandered on , so I never really found any one to explain and naturally haven't seen it in the market since. I thought it was a chayote but when I started looking around on the internet, It does indeed look like a chayote but with prickly spines, so perhaps it is the family, but I haven't found any thing resembling this

So I am appealing to any of you out there who might know what this is and how to prepare it.

I'd be very grateful and intrigued.
Mille grazie.

Update, a couple of sources call them
Calabrian Zucchini or cucuzze spinusi or zucca centeneria.
This from Michelle of Bleeding Espresso
and originally from Rowena of Rubber Slippers in Italy

Eat a Peach or two and maybe a Crostata

It seems like berry season was far too short before it went straight into apricot and peach season. The peaches have been luscious and tasty of late and I can't seem to get enough of them. I have been making a variety of peach deserts like "pesche ripiene", which is a local Piemontese favorite. Peach halves scooped out and refilled with the fruit combined with ameretti cookies and a bit of this and that and baked soft. Also I have poached peaches and blackberries with a sprig of fresh rosemary added to the pot to add an intriguing "je ne sequoi" before ladling over fresh made vanilla bean gelato. Or one of my favorite standards, Crostata. Crostata is one Italian dessert that seems to unite the regional cuisines into a standard all time favorite. Most commercially made ones have a thick crumbly cooky crust, called Pasta Frolla, filled with a generous layer of apricot, plum or strawberry jam and topped off with a lovely wide criss cross top crust. Often the family Sunday lunches are graced by these homely tarts brought and made by one or more of the guests . I decided that since I needed to have the oven on to bake bread the other day, I might as well have a fresh peach crostata to complement our dinner.I have a couple of different versions of Pasta Frolla that I have collected from a few sources along the way. I've been asked what frolla means and as best as I can translate it seems to mean tender. So a tender dough, which is fitting for this particular version.
You generally find that pasta frolla dough can elicit a long winded discussion with all ladies present claiming to have the best version. We went to our annual Scopri Piemonte Bed & Breakfast Association Potluck meeting recently and the strawberry rhubarb version brought by our president of the association, was quite a good one and I was told that the crust was an "Artusi." For those of you not familiar with Pellegrino Artusi, he was a retired silk merchant that around the turn of the 20th century, at the ripe age of 71, wrote the first entirely Italian language cookbook that has become the standard by which all others are measured. (A bit like Betty Crocker or Joy of Cooking, although they arrived later on the food scene) He called it the "La Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene" (The Science of cookery and the Art of Eating Well). It is still the standard by which recipes are held up against in Italy. Check out the link to Kyle Philips of About.com/Italian Food for a wealth of information, stories and recipes all about Italian cuisine and wine. He's an American who grew up and settled in Tuscany and took on the challenge of translating the book into English. His translation is called the "Art of Eating Well".
Anyway, this frolla dough is quick and easy. My version can be quite fast when using some of my home made jam as a base, topped with thinly sliced fresh fruit, a sprinkle of sugar on top, a pat or two of butter or not, criss cross some wide strips of frolla or indulge your whimsical side with some cookie cut out shapes. Egg wash strips or cut outs and bake till brown and bubbly. Sits well overnight unlike flaky crusts and most Italians have it for breakfast with their cappuccinos if they didn't finish it all the day before.

This crust is from Kyle Philips translated "Artusi" version.

Artusi Pasta Frolla

• 2 cups flour(200 g)
• 1/2 cup sugar(95 g)
• 2/3 cup (150 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 egg and 1 yolk
• The grated zest of a half a lemon or a quarter of an orange

Mix the flour and sugar. Cream the butter, then add the egg and yolk before gingerly adding the four sugar mixture. Handle the dough as little as possible to keep the butter from melting. You can make the dough a day ahead, as it will improve with age, other wise refrigerate the dough for about an hour.
Preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C). Choose a 9-10 inch tart pan with removable bottom, or pie pan if you don't have a tart pan. You can use a cake pan as well and perhaps line it with some parchment paper to make it easier to remove if you would like to serve it without the pan. Otherwise grease and flour your pan or use a nonstick spray.

Divide your dough into two parts with one part being about twice the size of the other, using the larger part for your bottom. You can roll your dough between two sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap if you don't feel confident, making sure to work quickly without warming the dough too much so that the dough gets soft and sticks. Roll the dough out about a half inch thick circle. If it does stick, just pop it into the fridge or freezer for a few minutes and you're ready to roll again or to place the rolled out dough into your desired tart or decorative pie pan. Fill the tart shell with a thick coating of jam.

I used my home made plum and then added thinly sliced peaches. I also like apricot with apple slices and if you want your very own home made fig newtons, this crust is perfect for that as well. I love it with pretty much any of my home made jams. Italians tend to just use straight jam and make sure the jam is about 1/2 inch thick before adding your top. I generally prefer a thinner amount of jam and sliced fresh fruit to cover.

Roll the second round of chilled dough into more of an oblong round, slightly longer that your pan and cut into wide strips with a fluted pastry wheel if you have one. Make wide criss cross lattices on your tart. or use decorative cookie cutter shapes to finish off your top. Brush with a bit of egg white thinned with a splash of water for added shine and sparkle. I didn't do that in the tart pictured here, so it will turn out fine without the wash also.

Bake the crostata for about 20 minutes, or until the dough begins to brown, being careful not to over bake. You want it to just start to bubble and brown lightly. Enjoy day or night.

Torino/Turin Window Displays

Continuing on with the theme of big city Torino/Turin outings. I have been enjoying wandering around somewhat aimlessly, naturally drawn to all the food displays, whilst I have been making weekly trips to Torino to see my dentist. This week is the last appointment for a long while I hope. Paolo is a wonderful dentist, but dental work is never as much fun as window shopping.

"Frutto Permesso" The Permitted Fruit

Staying on a theme from the whole Slow Food/ Terre Madre experience.... We made a visit to Il Frutto Permesso while my nephew and niece where here.
In addition to my nephew being a full time artisan baker, the family has a small organic vegetable production operation, "Little Hands Organic Vegetables" which the whole family works together and and they also oversee their local community garden that is adjacent to their operation. Their young daughter is quite the experienced little hand, general organizer and trainer of people new to their little operation. She knows where all the tools are kept and helps identify some of the pesky pests that need to be persuaded that this isn't the right place for them. But I digress...

We took them to have a look around this wonderful cooperative, Il Frutto Permesso, just out of the mouth of our valley in Bibiana. What a welcome we received and a great tour during this busy time of the year. Dario took the time to show us all round their operation even though they were still in the thick of harvest time, and they were hosting 20 Ugandan farmers that evening for a tour of operations and dinner featuring their fabulous products. The original 4 families of the cooperative started in 1987 to meet the EU standards of certifiable organic and have picked up more farms and families during the ensuing years making a total of 12 farms. We continued our tour over to Michele's farm, where he has been in the apple business on this family land his whole life. I asked him how it was the first few years when they started to make the switch to organic. He said the first year was devastating as they didn't know enough about how to control the pests and they lost almost all of their crop. The next year improved as they got a handle on how to control the pests naturally. Now he says it's so rewarding to see his vigorous apples and other fruits flourishing again. The changes in the environment have been very rewarding also. It was contagious to see their genuine enthusiasm for their organic way of farming now.
Between the 12 farms all aspects of food production are covered from cereal, fruits and vegetables to animal husbandry. They make a wonderful line of juices , fruit and vegetables, cheeses, salamis and mush more. They have added a very far reaching education program mainly aimed at children from day trips to summer stays. They was a double decker busload of high spirited children there during our visit. Tomini production was well underway (a local ricotta style specialty) and a long line for the pony rides. It looked like some place I would have loved as a kid!
Well, come to think of it I wouldn't mind staying there and enjoying dinner as well.
That too is possible.