Bella Baita Summer Vacation 2013

Just in case you have been wondering what we have been up to, well, I thought I just might give you a little sampling about how our 2013 summer season went. For any of you loyal readers out there that may have been hanging in here in spite of my occasional posting, first, I would like to say thank you and secondly it's been ever so challenging for me to keep up on all of the various aspects our little home business generates. I do love this blog and sharing things that we have been up to, but I must admit that the past couple of summers I have felt ever so slightly  run off my feet and it's been obvious where the "give", in the triage of "what to get done" here has happened. I enjoy writing about the goings on around here, but since we have taken over the big family garden and now have the whole run of this giant building along with refurbishing and maintenance, you can probably imagine  that it feels mighty good to just sit down and listen to the sounds of the caprioli barking or the insects crank up their musical offerings. 

So I thought I would give you a compressed seasons version of what we did on our spring summer vacation on todays blog post. Hope you enjoy it. 

Bella Baita in the distance and then with its view

First up. we moved our operation from one part of the building to another that had been previously occupied by other people. There was a lot of maintenance and winterizing to more modern standards to Fabrizio's family home that took a heroic effort on his part, working throughout the winter in more than frosty conditions so that we would be able to move in this spring. Bravo my hard working man!

Bella Baita Refurbishment

Our summer vacation at Bella Baita is all about you, our friends and guests' holidays with us. 

We find that in the summer we don't get out and about as much, but we enjoy all the activity around our home. We have plenty of guests to send out on adventures and to discover our wonderful neighborhood walks as well as occasionally helping out in our garden when they aren't too exhausted from all the activities of holidaying. 

Food is a big feature around our house and we enjoy preparing and serving local Piemontese specialties, as well as some of our personal favorites. Our pizza night that we offer from time to time depending on the interest and time of year so it's not too hot, we fire up our oven and have a good time making pizza to order and then we finish off a late night bake of my sourdough breads. Always love coming back to a table full of fresh baked bread the next morning. It's my idea of heaven.

Food Glorious Food!

We stay busy with jam and preserving all the wonderful fruits and vegetables our summer has to offer. We put up what we have extra that we grow but are might happy to have the local markets to stock up on all the lusciousness there is during the height of the summer season.  Who can resist the call of colorful veggies crying out to be taken home with you?

"Cooking Together" and our "Market to Table" Cookery classes are always fun and a tasty reward to all for everyones efforts. Nothing like a few laughs and some wine to make the elbow grease loosen up. 

Cooking and laughing together proceeds the best part, which is eating together. 

And just to keep it all interesting and moving along, we have several youthful volunteers through out the season that add all sorts of interest to our days and are a great source of help with all that weeding, wood cutting, cleaning, rearranging, moving, digging, mowing, watering, etc etc. that is plain ole hard work.  We thank you all sincerely. 

That is how we keep ourselves busy and out of trouble. We meet such wonderful people and have so many interesting conversations that we hardly remember that we're still here at home. I'll take another blog post in the not too distant future to maybe share some of the things that our guests get up to when they are out and about and I will be adding new recipes as we go along, I just have to remember where that scrap of paper that I scribbled everything that I did to the recipe on and then maybe I can get you  a recipe to make your own in your own home. Until then, happy trails and I'm off to the kitchen or the garden, oh well, that would be before I hang up some laundry, Oh yes, I need to make something scrumptious for dessert too. Woo hoo, better getting hopping!

"Tastes of Italia" Interview... of little ole me

Thanks to some help from a variety of young volunteers. We are starting to get things shaped up around here at Bella Baita.  The major move from upstairs to downstairs, figuring out where everything goes, only to arrange, and rearrange, all the tools and such to get the new space to feel like home. It truly is starting to feel like we are settling in and it is home. The garden is now deer and wild boar proofed these days and at long last the seedlings have finally decided to get a move on and grow. It has been a rather odd spring and summer, weather wise, so far. Lots of variations and temperatures, from cold to hot, to cloudy and muggy, which isn't all that common here, to downright thunderous and drenching, to hot and parching again. What's a garden to do. We are getting some things to eat and put up for winter, but have had the usual seasonal setbacks that most gardeners experience. Mountain weather is always fickled, but this year it has been quite capricious.

The news around Bella Baita has been that the latest July/August 2013 issue of "Tastes of Italia," The Steak Issue", included an interview of me and an article about Fabrizio and my endeavors here at Bella Baita, along with a simple zucchini and tagliatelle pasta recipe. Pretty exciting stuff.
Susan Van Allen, author of "100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go" interviewed me last March for her article about the Flavors of Piedmont, based on our interview. I met Susan virtually, when she came across us in her research about some of the less well known places and experiences of traveling in Italy's Piedmont region. She invited me to write about what I thought was a "golden day" in our part of the Italian Alps. You can read my "Golden Day Fifty Three: A Little Piece of Heaven in Serre Marchetto"  blog post on her blog here.
Oh yes, back to the original story. Tastes of Italia is a beautiful magazine that I wasn't familiar with before recieving this latest copy. Looking back through their archives, I think it is well worth ordering a few back issues on CD as it seems to be part travelogue, food tips and recipes and advertisement of quality products. Susan's article also included a recipe from me for my Spaghetti with Zucchini, you can find that recipe here. I love this ever so simple recipe for its sheer simplicity and flavorfulness, but if you want to enhance it a bit and punch up the dish here are a few of my favorite additions. Add slightly sautéed batons of parma ham or smoked ham with a diced clove or two of garlic, or add some sun dried tomato pieces and a sprinkling of crumbly goat's cheese to the top for a lightly salty finish.

Zucchini pasta

It is exciting to not only have one's efforts to bring a business to life in an area that is not well known and off the beaten path, but to have one's effort acknowledged in a gorgeously glossy print magazine.  We love showcasing traditional food and artisan products as well as carrying on the tradition of making food by hand, from scratch, with love. It is deeply gratifying to have other people, besides our ever so lovely guests, appreciate our efforts to bring attention to food that is flavorful, grown or produced by people that diligently work at unglamorous jobs to bring great food to our tables year round. What can I say, but thank you Susan VanAllen, thank you.

Marla and her bread fresh from the wood fired oven

Fresh Pickles Makes it Summer

Bella Baita Garden View

I don't know about you but when I was growing up in southern Illinois, our family dining table usually had two items that graced the center of the table for almost every lunch and dinner for the duration of the summer season. What would that be, you might be wondering, unless it was on your table as well? Invariably we had big juicy slabs of deeply red tomatoes on one plate and a glass bowl or the appropriate sized tupperware bowl with cucumber and a few onion slices, languishing in an ample amount of apple cider vinegar. There probably was a touch of sugar and a bit of water to tame the tang. I loved those sides of the summer and rarely tired of them, my folks certainly didn't. They had a way of elevating most luncheon cold cuts or filling in around the edges of light suppers, that I rarely have replicated since living in the higher mountain climes.

Refrigerator Pickles and Cuore di Bui Tomatoes

However recently we have been getting some great "cuore di bui" (ox heart) tomatoes, at the market, and I greedily snatched up some slender, what I have always called "pickling", cukes, when I ran into them in the market last week. I planned on putting up a couple of jars of my favorite "Blue Ribbon Dill pickles" for my winter stash, but, as fortune would have it, my rss feed from Food In Jars arrived and there was a recipe for a big bowl of overnight refrigerator pickles that were destined for a potluck.  I knew that those slender pickling cukes had a new destination coming right up. If you like to can and think that you need to make large batches of jam or pickles or whatever and are put off by it, then this is a canning blog for you. I ran across Food in Jars on Facebook quite a while back and fell in love with author Marisa's straight forward approach to putting any and everything up on a small scale so that your cupboard  is overflowing with beautifully filled jars of tasty treats to brighten up meals after the flush of summer bounty is just a memory.  I have always enjoyed canning (which in reality is jarring) and managed to put a few jars of this, that and the other up, over the years. My mom and grandmothers did too, of course,, and although I only canned with my mom a few times, and never with my grandmothers, I did enjoy many a jarred green bean, piccalilli, fruit preserves and jams from all of them over the years. I, so vividly, remember eating myself sick, literally, on my grandmother's dill pickles and yet still was able to enjoy the gallon jar she sent home with me. I think I fell in love with the old ball jar with the lead lid almost as much as the pickles. Over the years I  have almost always had my home jarred dill pickles on my shelves no matter where I have been, if I could get the ingredients.  Living in Colorado, I religiously put up several varieties of salsas over the year and still sorely miss the aroma of roasting of chiles that can fill the air in the autumn. Sigh....

My assorted fresh herbs

Anyway, this is a fast and easy recipe that doesn't have any real concrete measurements and lends itself to countless variations depending on what you have on hand. Food in Jar's Marisa used fresh mint and cilantro. I had an abundance of mint and basil, so that is what I used. I also used a couple of stems of horse radish leaves to not only give a little kick, but it also helps keep your pickles crisp, according to a surrogate grandmother of mine.  I will give you  some rough idea of what I used and if you would like an excellent visual step by step guide guide giving you a better idea of amounts, you can find that recipe on Food in Jars' blog here . I must insist that if you like pickles you are going to love these, as they are quick and delicious, not too tart, ever so slightly sweet and impossible to stop eating. I should know!

Pickles after one night in the fridge

Fresh Cucumber Refrigerator Pickles  

Makes approximately 2 quarts of pickle slices in brine

Ingredients:

1kg /2.2 pounds  or about 10 or so medium sized cucumbers(the spiny type used for pickles)

1/2- 1 small red onion, or shallot, or spring onion, chopped up, but not too fine

4 garlic cloves, sliced

2 tiny hot peppers, I used dried ones that I crumbled 

handful of mint, I like spearmint,  rough chopped

half handful of fresh basil, tear or chop into medium pieces 

2 horseradish leaves and stem, I cut the leaves and stems into long thirds 

Brine:

2 c / 16oz / 475g apple cider vinegar 

2 c / 16oz / 475g  water

1/4 c / 1 3/4 oz / 45-50g sugar

1-2 tsp / 5-10 g salt  (I tasted my brine till it seemed right to me)

Method:

Wash the cucumbers, slice into the thickness you like. I hovered between 1/4- 1/2 inch sized rounds.

Place everything except the cucumbers in bottom of a glass or metal bowl. 

Top with the cucumber slices.

Mix your brine ingredients in a sauce pan and heat till the salt and sugar melts, but don't boil.

Pour the hot brine over the cucumbers and all.

Set aside to cool.

Once cooled to room temperature either cover the bowl as is 

or put into a plastic container with a well sealing lid and

place in the refrigerator to do its magic over night.

They will be ready to eat the next day.

They will last at least two weeks, probably longer in the refrigerator, but I bet they won't last that long. 

You can count on it. 

Fresh refrigerator pickles

Ch_ch_ch_changes here at Bella Baita

We've been busy bees here at Bella Baita!

 If you have been wondering what we have been up to (and I am sure you have been holding your breath), we've been working on multiple projects all at the same time. Sound familiar? Yes, that is what we are usually up to and I am quite sure it is probably the same around your house too.
The big news however is that after all our years of teaching our cooking classes  and feeding our guests from the "not all that long ago", remodeled "disco" room, come "Olympia" room, we have finally moved down to the ground level of our building. Now we have our guest rooms, dining room and spacious outdoor patio all on the same level. Confused? Well, I think I would be too if I had never visited our Italian mountain retreat. So perhaps a little history is in order.

La Baita

Fabrizio's parents built and ran "La Baita", restaurant and their home, the original building shown here in the front, for many years before retiring to hunt wild game and mushrooms. Fabrizio was off to the UK to perfect his English, and so they rented the restaurant out to other people. As the years past Fabrizio and I met and decided to return and make a B&B with the rooms that were just idling along from the addition that his family had added over the years when they were busy with the restaurant and never really had time to develop. The restaurant continued on for several years and several renters till times changed and the restaurant was no more. We had been running the B&B from the top of the dining room addition that had once been a "disco" during the hey days of the 70's and early 80's. Fabrizio remodeled it to suit us for our dining area and cooking classes, where we have been working from these last 5 years as our business has grown. So with the freeing up of the entire building,  yet another renovation was needed to be able to use the space for our new and improved Bella Baita B&B, Italian Alps Retreat, cooking classes, mini culinary tours, and all the other things that have come along. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the family garden, over by where Fabrizio's granfather Guistetto grew up,  that his parents have tended all these years, then fell into our hands to continue on with as his parents have started a new garden in the valley in the garden of the home where Fabrizio's mother grew up. That garden location produces tomatoes that just aren't possible up here in our fickled mountain weather.

So Fabrizio has been insulating, changing out the doors and windows, painting, and fixing all the many things that have not been working, as well as finding functional equipment and such to use in the space, all on a shoestring budget and his hard labor. We have had some help from various friends and cousins to rewire, plaster walls and on and on, that you can never tell was part of the long process once it's done, but it all takes time and money and there usually is never any extra heaps of either. Oh yes and did I mention the grand over haul of the garden to replace the fence with a rock retaining wall and heavy duty fence to keep those pesky wild boar and fleet footed roe deer out. The deer completely wiped out the garden last autumn. So Mr Fab (ulous) has been on a mission to fix, repair, remodel and redo the lot. 

Ta da!!!!!

Our wood fired oven and granite work surface made the move intact

Our new/old spacious, downstairs digs

We're back to where Fabrizio started out and happy to be settling in to our culinary space.

Fabrizio making us lunch

We still have much to figure out as far as shelving and curtains and such, but it's starting to feel like home.  Putting things on the walls, when your walls are concrete takes some thinking and are not to be added willy nilly, so those may just stay a blank canvas a little while longer.  

Our "Market to Table" and "Cooking Together" cookery classes have resumed and flourishing and always a great source of fun for all of us and naturally the test is in the eating of course!

Australia, USA and Italy unite around the table 

Our outdoor options have increased and become down right comfortable.

The great outdoors is accessible just outside your bedroom door, more or less on one level, except for the front steps that help to keep all those home cooked meals in check. Naturally there are still several options for hiking up or down to suit most everyones desire to get out of the indoors and into the mountains.  As Fabrizio, Silvano and C.A.I. continue to clean trails and map them out via GPS, we're increasing those options as well. So if you haven't been to visit us and if you already have, it's time to come back and have a good look round to see all the changes that have been happening here. We're looking forward to showing you around. 

Family garden

We'll be waiting for you...or maybe, we'll be working in the garden. Ciao For now!

Spring fling with Asparagus

Spring has finally not only sprung, but is well underway here in the Alps. It has gotten a cool and very soggy start. I think many of our normal blooms are a bit behind schedule this year not only up here but down in the valley as well. Now that it is here I don't mind so much, but certainly am enjoying the spring green everywhere and all the tiny blossoms and color that springs forth this time of the year. I know everyone enjoys the quickening of our natural world coming back to life after a long winters sleep. 

Our self adopted cat Misha frolicking in our garden

We finally have been able to put our early season window flower boxes out as we wait for our geraniums to wake up and get going. Still a little cool for their taste. They certainly prefer a warmer clime before they give up their blossoms. So we enjoy what is here at the moment, drinking it all in.

Looking up toward Merla peak,  from our balcony

And what is in season now, is what is probably my favorite vegetable, the elegant leggy Asparagus. I adore asparagus in just about every way I have ever had them, I think. And if truth be told, as a kid when Mom served them, even from a can, I still thought I had died and gone to heaven. I still pretty much feel that way whenever I have them even now, but the days of opening a can of asparagus are a very distant memory. It's fresh all the way for me. Even if the season is short, it certainly is sweet. So when I recently found I had some smoked sliced salmon waiting for just the right occasion, it didn't take me long to pair them up with the tender fresh spears I got from the market. The soft smoky flavor of the salmon pairs perfectly wrapped around rosemary infused, oven roasted stalks. I've made them a couple of times lately and I find myself pining for more as I type this blog post out.  So do make sure you try this easiest of treats or even if you find you don't have or want any salmon, oven roasting asparagus is a treat. I think oven roast most vegetables is a wonderful treatment for most vegetables as it concentrates the flavors and adds a natural sweet to their flavor. So do have a go. I added a cheese and prosciutto crudo filled piadina (an Italian tortilla- like flat bread from the Romagna countryside of the Emilia  Romagna region), to fill out this simple lunch. I served the bundles as a side dish for supper the other night and it pretty much upstaged everything else on the plate. I hope you enjoy them as much as we did. Buon appettito!

Oven roasted Asparagus Salmon Bundles

4-5 bundles

Ingredients
500 g or 1 bunch asparagus , ends trimmed (about 20 spears, more or less)1- 2 lengths of fresh rosemary or about 1 T chopped fresh rosemary leaves
Pinch coarse salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper
2 T olive oil

4 to 6 ounces thinly sliced smoked salmon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400* F/ 190* C.
Lay the asparagus on a paper lined baking pan. Tuck the sprigs of rosemary under the spearsor sprinkle the chopped rosemary, salt, and pepper over the spears.Drizzle with olive oil.
Lay the asparagus on a paper lined baking pan. Tuck the sprigs of rosemary under the spearsor sprinkle the chopped rosemary, salt, and pepper over the spears.Drizzle with olive oil.
Roast until cooked and starting to brown around the edges, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool enough to handle.
Gather about 4- 5 spears together and wrap each bunch in a slice of smoked salmon. Arrange on a serving platter and serve at room or warmish temperature.