The only thing better than foraging for mushrooms here in the US is foraging for mushrooms in Italy!  I learned to forage for wild mushrooms from my grandfather, father and uncles so when we were in Calabria this summer, my brother, uncle, E and I hit the woods early in the morning to avoid the heat and try our luck. We walking through chestnut groves in the Calabrian mountains and brought home some porcinis and chantrelles… two of my favorites! Here are a few photos from our forage.

My brother and Uncle.. ready to go!

Yes, they were as good as they look...

I know many Italian Americans forage for mushrooms and a few days ago I received a few photos of some wild mushrooms from Don who recently went on a foraging expedition as well… thanks Don!  Who’s ready for a wild mushroom expedition in Italy??

The winners of the Tropea Onion Seeds are: Paula DeStefano, ItalyLovers and Chef Chuck… congrats and thanks to everyone for participating!

Back from Calabria and I wanted to send everyone l’auguri per una Buona Pasqua!  (Best wishes for a very Happy Easter.) Here are a few traditional Calabrian foods we will be eating tomorrow at our house. And here’s a recipe for Fraguni, which are my favorite!  What will be on your menu tomorrow?

I brought back a few special things for a lucky winner from my last post that I chose at random and the winner is Natalie from Love, Natalie. Congratulations Natalie! I hope everyone enjoys the holiday weekend.  Here a few photos from my trip.  I’ll post more soon.

In my last post on curing black olives I mentioned that I was making them 2 ways: sott’acqua (in a simple brine of salt and water) and al forno (oven dried black olives.)  The black olives “sott’acqua” don’t take much maintenance… once you make your brine and drop them in it’s a waiting game.  The dried black olives however, are more involved.

The olives we had were late season olives and were a little banged up so I separated the ones that were really bruised to use for drying.

Here’s what you need to do: Take your olives and place them in a large bowl with a lid.  Sprinkle salt over the olives (I used an entire 26 oz pack of salt) and cover them.  You do not need to refrigerate them.   Mix your olives twice a day for 2-3 weeks.  Water from the olives will start to collect at the bottom of your bowl but don’t remove it… just keep mixing them twice a day.  After a few weeks, you will have mushy looking olives in water and you’ll know they’re ready (I kept them in the bowl for 3 weeks.) Drain the water from your bowl and rinse your olives several times to remove the excess salt (otherwise they will be too salty.)  Once you have rinsed your olives, lay them on paper towel in a baking tray or cookie sheet and turn your oven on to 125 degrees F (50 C)  Place your olives in the oven for several hours and check them periodically until your satisfied with how dry your olives are.  This method can take up to 12 hours to dry them out, so you might want to consider leaving them in your oven overnight.   The key is to expose your olives to low heat over time so that they can dry out slowly.  Another variation is to preheat your oven to 200 degrees F (95 C) and once your oven is preheated, turn it off and put your olives in… that way you can leave the house and not have to worry about the oven being on.  You can repeat this process over several days as I did.

Once you have your olives at a level of dryness that you like and they have cooled, place them in a bowl, add a splash of olive oil, oregano, crushed red pepper and mix.  They’re ready to serve.  They also freeze very well. Enjoy and buon appetito!

Last year I posted on “Grispelle” and la Grispellissima festival that is held December 8th in Feroleto Antico, where my family is from in Calabria but I didn’t include a recipe… so here it is.  My family makes a fried potato-dough with and without anchovies every year at Christmas time: We call them grispelle & monacialli but they also have other names depending on where in Calabria you are from.  Grispelle are doughnut shaped without  anchovies and monacialli are small balls with anchovies inside.

Monacialli

Grispelle

What you’ll need:

• 5 pound bag of all-purpose flour
• 4-5 large potatoes (we use Idaho potatoes)
• Fresh yeast (about 2 oz)
• Salt
• Grated Parmigiano or Romano cheese
• Vegetable oil
• Canned anchovies in oil (for monacialli)

What you need to do: Peel your potatoes and boil them until they are soft enough to put through a potato ricer.  Once you have riced your potatoes, place them in a large bowl and add some of the water used to boil the potatoes.  Mix together until you have a thick potato/water mixture with no lumps (run your fingers through the water or strain the water to remove any potato chunks.) Let the potato water cool.   Place the yeast in a bowl of warm water breaking it up with your hands until it is completely dissolved and then add it to your potato water.  Now place your flour, salt and grated cheese in a large bowl and slowly add your potato water as needed to make your dough.  The dough should have a soft and fluffy consistency.

Potato Water

Let the dough rise for 1.5 – 2 hours.  We cover the bowl with a dish cloth and a blanket in order to keep the dough warm and speed up the process.  When the dough is ready it should be soft and airy.

Once your dough is ready, you’ll need to oil down a large area (table, counter top, etc.) with vegetable oil.  This is done so that the uncooked grispelle and monacialli don’t stick to the surface before you cook them as the dough is very sticky.  Also set aside a bowl of oil to dunk your hands in while working the dough.

For monacialli, grab a small piece of dough and stretch it flat in your hands, then add a whole anchovy fillet and wrap the anchovy with the dough (see video below.) Place the monacialli on your oily surface while you make others.  This will allow the dough to rise slightly before frying.

For grispelle, take a small piece of dough and poke a whole through the middle to create a doughnut shape and lay them on your oily surface while you make others.

Heat some vegetable oil in a large sauce or frying pan (use enough oil so that the grispelle and monacialli float while frying.)  Add your monacialli or grispelle and cook on both sides until golden brown.  Let cool and eat!

Grispelle are great on their own but you can also sprinkle sugar on them or dunk them in honey or maple syrup… as you can imagine, the kids love them this way.  I’m a monacialli kind of guy.  Whichever you prefer, enjoy and buon appetito!

PS – BUON ANNO A TUTTI!!

UPDATE: Just to clarify: I certainly realize that Italians eat packaged foods and other “porcheria” like anyone else and that Italian companies make (in my opinion) junk (like Barilla sauce, which we also have here) My point is this: Regardless of what you name it or who makes it or where you may have learned it (Olive Garden) it doesn’t make it authentic. Barilla is an Italian company in every way…. but jarring ready to eat pasta sauce is not authentic Italian (profitable maybe but not authentic) Olive Garden may send it’s chefs to Tuscany to learn the secrets of Italian cooking but one glance at their menu and there’s nothing authentic about it. Bertolli’s sauce in a microwavable bag…. well, as Maria from Philly would say, “WTF is that??” So to any company who emails me or any other blogs to ask us to promote your products, I say this: Take a look around, what do we post about? How are we branding ourselves?

Original post:

For the second time this year, I’ve received an email from a company asking me if I would mention their product on Italyville and in exchange they would send me some of their product for free. I don’t have a problem with mentioning products or services that I use or am interested in or products that are authentically Italian…. but they have to fit in with brand Italyville.

So let me just list a few things that authentic Italians would NEVER DO.

1. We don’t buy ready to serve jarred tomato sauce regardless if it’s “Old World Style” or “the way Mama used to make” or “Nonna’s secret recipe” …. We’ve all thought of starting our own brand maybe but WE DON’T BUY IT.
2. We don’t understand how in the world ANYONE could think that a sauce like Prego or Ragu is good or how in the world anyone would eat it. Seriously.
3. Some of us may use microwaves to heat up leftovers or for popcorn but never as a primary cooking appliance. (My mother uses hers to store bread)
4. We don’t buy or eat frozen dinners. We plan life meal to meal… so why would we waste one on a frozen entree?
5. We’ve changed many of our friends’ habits and lives by having them over for dinner. I guess they just didn’t know what food was supposed to taste like ????
6. We often describe pre-packaged products as schifo or porcheria.

Traditional? Who’s tradition are they talking about?

In addition, I would like to add a few Italyville “Brand Italy” facts:

• Just because your company or brand was originally Italian, started by an Italian, has an Italian name and makes a product that you think is Italian…. doesn’t make it Italian.
• Chances are, if you’ve been bought by Unilever, CSC, Kraft, General Mills, etc….. you’ve probably lost some Italianess.

Here are a few examples of “sorry but your brand trying to be Italian isn’t working”

• Burger King’s Italian Chicken Parm Sandwich (really? stick to burgers BK)
• as mentioned above, Prego and Ragu (enough said)
• Bertolli’s microwavable sauce in a bag…. (what the? a double negative doesn’t make a positive in this case and believe me, there are no real Italian chefs getting upset at any of Bertolli’s products ANYWHERE.)
• Olive Garden (first of all, I don’t believe there is a cooking school in Tuscany that their employees go to…. and if there is, who’s running it? not a real Italian chef!!)

Those are just a few, I would love to hear about your favorite “Trying to be Italian” brands.