sapori-saperi
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Resources
  • Tours
    • Small Group Tours >
      • Celebrating Sardinia
      • Tuscan Heritage
      • Giants of Sardinia
      • Autumn in Tuscany
      • Tastes & Textiles: Woad & Wool
      • Tastes & Textiles: Hanging by a Thread
      • Tastes & Textiles: Wine to Dye For
      • Tastes & Textiles: Sea Silk in Sardinia
    • Tastes and Textiles
    • Day Adventures
  • Courses
    • Advanced Salumi Course Tuscany
    • Advanced Salumi Course Bologna-Parma
    • Art & Science of Gelato
    • Artisan Bread Course Tuscany
    • Theory & Practice of Italian Cheese
    • Mozzarella & its Cousins
    • Mozzarella Consultancy
    • Olive Oil Tree to Table
    • Truffle Course
  • Booking
    • Enquiry
    • Booking Conditions
    • Covid-19
  • What people say
  • Blogs
  • Contact

Moments of Glory

30/1/2013

0 Comments

 
Three times every winter we organise an Advanced Salumi Course. During the course participants learn the theory of Italian salumi from Giancarlo Russo, Slow Food consultant, and work alongside Italian artisan norcini (pork butchers) making sausages, salami and other traditional cured pork products. Here are some proud moments from our course that ended yesterday.
Picture
TJ Crowe, Irish pig breeder, slaughterer and butcher at Crowe Meats, with his salami
Picture
Rachael Home, English wild boar rearer at Home Forestry, with her salami
Picture
Tim Wilson, English chef at the Groucho Club, London, and his salami
Picture
Tim McCarthy, Irish butcher of McCarthy's of Kanturk, filling salami casing
Picture
Fingal Ferguson, Irish pig breeder and smoker at Gubbeen Smokehouse, with his sausages
Picture
Brian Kingsford, American chef at Bacaro Restaurant, and his sausages
Picture
Rachael again, this time with a handful of sausages
Picture
Our maestro Ismaele Turri holding a mondiola, salami typical of the Garfagnana
0 Comments

Fare La Scarpetta

22/1/2013

2 Comments

 
Scarpetta means slipper, but fare la scarpetta doesn’t have anything to do with making slippers. It means to wipe your plate clean with a piece of bread, something all my Italian friends do on informal occasions.
Picture
Fare la scarpetta — before
There are several opinions about its origin. It seems to come from southern Italy. Perhaps it’s a metaphor likening a shoe scraping along the ground picking up whatever it finds to the crust of bread mopping up the sauce in the plate. Or maybe it refers to ‘scarsetta‘ or poverty which obliges people to content themselves with whatever there is, usually very little.
Picture
Fare la scarpetta — during
A third opinion suggests that the fingers pushing the bread around cleaning up the plate looks like a shoe with a leg coming out above. Take your choice.
Picture
Fare la scarpetta — after
2 Comments

Seasonal Eating 4: Cardoons

21/1/2013

0 Comments

 
If you see something in Italy in winter with stems like giant celery, it’s probably a cardoon. The cardoon is the same plant as an artichoke, except that artichoke cultivars have been selected to have large edible flowers and cardoons to have large edible stems. In Italy they’re called or cardo or gobbo, depending on where you are, or cardo-gobbo if you’re in Piedmont and grow the Slow Food presidium Nizza Monferrato variety. Gobbo means hunchbacked and refers to the curved stems.
Picture
Cardoon at the farmers' market, Lucca
One month before the cardoon is mature, the farmer bends the stems over and covers them with soil to blanch them and give them a sweeter flavour. It’s very labour-intensive and now you see many straight stems because commercial market gardeners just slip a paper sleeve over the stems to make them turn white.
​
The stems taste very similar to the flowers, and since you get much more to eat from a stem, a cardoon makes a more economic and equally delicious side dish. Cardoons are usually steamed or boiled. You pull off the strings; I find a carrot peeler does the trick. Cut them into finger-length chunks, boil them in salted water (with some lemon peel to keep them from discolouring) until not quite tender and drain them. They’re then ready to stew in oil with some Italian sausage meat scattered over the top (Tuscans never missing a chance to add meat to a good vegetarian dish), a bit of stock and a sprinkling of parmigiano. Cover and cook on a gentle flame until done.
0 Comments

The road to Bagni di Lucca

13/1/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
The way to Bagni di Lucca
This monumental road sign stands at the intersection of Borgo Giannotti and Via San Marco just to the north of Porta Santa Maria, the main northern gate to the city of Lucca. Borgo Giannotti was a meeting and resting point for merchants on their way from the port at Viareggio to the Garfagnana where they sold their wares. There are many other interesting things to be discovered in Borgo Giannotti and I’ve written about some of them in my blog on the Slow Travel Tours website:
http://slowtraveltours.com/blog/outside-luccas-walls-borgo-giannotti/
0 Comments
    Email Subscription
    Click to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    RSS Feed

    Subscribe

    Author

    Erica Jarman

    Categories

    All
    Advanced Salumi Course
    Agriculture
    Artisans
    Baking
    Beer
    Boat Tour
    Celebrating Sardinia
    Cheese
    Cheesemaking
    Chestnuts
    Cooking
    Courses
    Festival
    Food
    Gelato
    Giants Of Sardinia
    History
    Italy
    Italy Vacation
    Life
    Lucca
    Makers
    Milk
    Mozzarella
    Music
    Olive Oil
    Olives
    Prosciutto
    Salumi
    Sardinia
    Seafood
    Slow Travel
    Small Group Tours
    Textiles
    Tours
    Tradition
    Travel
    Tuscany
    Wine

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    January 2019
    December 2017
    November 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    May 2011
    March 2011
    September 2010
    April 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009

Subscribe to Newsletter
Enquire about Tours
Picture
We acccept
Picture
Read about us
Picture
International passenger Protection
Picture
contact us | terms & conditions | privacy policy 
copyright 2017 sapori-e-saperi.com | all rights reserved
Website by Reata Strickland Design
  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Resources
  • Tours
    • Small Group Tours >
      • Celebrating Sardinia
      • Tuscan Heritage
      • Giants of Sardinia
      • Autumn in Tuscany
      • Tastes & Textiles: Woad & Wool
      • Tastes & Textiles: Hanging by a Thread
      • Tastes & Textiles: Wine to Dye For
      • Tastes & Textiles: Sea Silk in Sardinia
    • Tastes and Textiles
    • Day Adventures
  • Courses
    • Advanced Salumi Course Tuscany
    • Advanced Salumi Course Bologna-Parma
    • Art & Science of Gelato
    • Artisan Bread Course Tuscany
    • Theory & Practice of Italian Cheese
    • Mozzarella & its Cousins
    • Mozzarella Consultancy
    • Olive Oil Tree to Table
    • Truffle Course
  • Booking
    • Enquiry
    • Booking Conditions
    • Covid-19
  • What people say
  • Blogs
  • Contact