Mama Margaret Newsletter
Ciao! Enjoy my latest Italy food, wine, travel & fun news!
Mama Margaret with
"100 Places In Italy Every
Woman Should Go."
Here
you’ll discover a really “simpatico” web site where you can learn to cook with
Italian grandmothers…and never leave your home.
Want
to cook with Italian families in Florence and Bologna and visit food markets
with them as well as sightsee? For a new way for food lovers to explore these
two cities, check out our two new, 4 night cooking tours in Florence and
Bologna.
I’ve
just finished reading a fabulous, fun, inspiring book, “100 Places In Italy
Every Woman Should Go” by Susan Van Allen. I think every woman going to Italy,
for the first time or the 20th time should read this book. See why
in my review.
If
you feel like creating an exotic pasta dish, you love this Sicilian one with
raisins, cauliflower, pine nuts, anchovies and more!
Enjoy!
Cooking Classes With
Italian Grandmothers In Your Home: No Trip To Italy Necessary
I’ve
found an excellent, “simpatico” website that makes me feel my favourite Italian
grandmother is teaching me recipes handed down through her family right in my
home in Vancouver.
At
cookingwithnonna.com 21 year old Rossella Rago of Brooklyn hosts “webisodes”, web
TV programs of cooking classes with a delightful variety of Italian-American
grandmothers—“nonne” from Nonna Rina whose family is from Emilia-Romagna to
Nonna Carolina whose family is from Basilicata.
In
each 12 minute webisode Rossella asks the nonna to tell us about her life and
as she talks, we see pictures from her childhood and married life so you get to
know her a bit. Each nonna is a lovely, outgoing, gracious woman who loves
cooking, the kind of woman you wish she lived next door to you.
Each
program takes place in a home style kitchen where the nonna shows you how to
cook one of her family’s recipes. The camera goes close in so you can see every
step clearly. No need to write the recipe down because there’s a link to it on
the site. If you want to know about the region in Italy the nonna or her family
came from, click on the link near the recipe to learn about the land and the
food. Troppo bello---too wonderful!
I
watched charming, accomplished Nonna Carolina cook a delicious tomato sauce where
she added anchovies, black olives, hazelnuts and walnuts—I could almost smell
it, taste it! Before the cooking lesson, like a friend over coffee, she tells
us about her childhood, big extended Italian family in Brooklyn and how she
learned to cook. We see photos of her first communion, big family dinners and
wedding so you really get a feel for who she is.
Since
launching in June 2009, Rossella has produced 28 “Cooking With Nonna” webisodes
which you can view on her site—a month of daily cooking classes with Italian
grandmothers!
Rossella
has been an avid cook since she was a kid with her food loving family from
Puglia and is an actress. She wanted to share Italian grandmothers’ recipes
with the “new generations” and preserve Italian heritage for Italian-Americans.
Cookingwithnonna.com is an outstanding site! Bravissima!
New Italian Cooking
School Tours: Cooking & Market Visits With Local Families in Florence &
Bologna
Garganelli Pasta with
Arugola, Prosciutto & Herbs in Bologna family’s kitchen
An
overwhelming number of those of you who answered our survey in December wanted to
cook authentic, every day dishes with local families. Many of you also like
visiting Italy’s famous cities like Florence and Bologna. So we’ve combined the
two for you!
These
two new, short break style tours in Florence and Bologna give you cooking classes
with excellent home cooks in their families’ homes and food market visits AND
sightseeing tours with free time to shop or hang out to soak up local life.
Check
out the new Florence Authentic Family Cooking, Market & Sights tour and the new Bologna Family Cooking with Parmesan, Balsamic Vinegar and
Prosciutto Visits tours.
Why
not combine these two tours for a week of cooking, meeting local families,
discovering food markets and sightseeing?
“100 Places In Italy
Every Woman Should Go”: A Book Every Woman Going To Italy Should Read
I loved Susan Van
Allen’s book! I’ve been traveling to Italy for 35 years. On my next trip, I’m
taking this little gem with me. It opens so many doors to new experiences that
excite me and deepens old experiences to enjoy again in a brand new way.
Susan has created a
gold mine of fun, stimulating mini-adventures in Italy backed up with “laugh
out loud” tales behind paintings, palaces, gardens and churches and insider
tips. Her lively, humorous, conversational writing style made me feel a close
friend was just back from Italy, eagerly regaling me with her travel
discoveries and stories over drinks. She paints such clear pictures I can see
myself right there in front of the art, buildings and people.
The
book of 100 chapters is divided into 13 sections:
Goddesses, Saints
& Virgin Mary (20 chapters), Villas & Palazzi (11), Gardens (8),
Beaches (7), Beauty Treatments (7), Indulge Your Tastebuds (5), Shopping (10),
Active Adventures (5), Cooking Classes (7), Learning Crafts & Culture (8),
Entertainment (5), Advice From Writers (4) and Family Travel (3). Something for
everyone!
Every author has her
passions and biases. You can see Susan’s biggest Italy passion is churches,
female saints and goddesses followed by villas/palazzi and shopping. Her
natural talent for storytelling really shines in those chapters. Venice,
Florence and Rome come up often in her suggestions.
Many chapters finish
with a “Golden Day”, mini itineraries of
her favourite places to eat, drink and stay in the chapter’s area. For
example for beaches in Scopello, Sicily, she sensually lists the ingredients of
the town’s famous panino, names a bakery making it and recommends a pensione
where the outgoing owners dish up fabulous, fresh, local seafood. Why not
immerse yourself in a series of “golden days”?
When I saw the first 20 chapters dealt with churches dedicated
to female saints and paintings with Maria, Venus and goddesses, I must
admit I took a deep breath, “I’ll plod through this.” I hail from a Scottish
family of non-church goers.
But I got so
engrossed in the entertaining, inspiring tales that I read all 20 chapters in
one sitting! I found myself laughing at her cute humour in her flamboyant
description of Titian’s painting of the
Assumption in the Venice church, I Frari. Mary dances joyfully in the heavens
supported by 22 putti as “God swoops down like Batman”. The painting “caused quite
the sensation like the opening of Star Wars”.
The church refused to pay Titian for such a provocative painting but
when the public praised it as revolutionary, Titian got paid and became a
superstar. I Frari will come alive for me next time I’m in Venice!
In the villas and gardens chapter, she says to
let your imagination run wild and picture what they happened to the people who
lived there. Her storytelling really helps your imagination flow in places like
Rome’s Villa Farnesina, built in 1506 by Chigi, a banker. Imagine standing in the villa now museum,
reading about his opulent parties when they threw china into the Tiber, and the
tangled love affairs of Chigi and painter Raphael, both in love with the same
courtesan.
The “Indulging Your Tastebuds” chapter will
make your tastebuds willingly work overtime: cafes, gelato, chocolate, wine
bars, and women owned wineries. She recommends gelaterias with helpful hints
like going to ones with signs like “produzione propria”—our own production.
Chocolate lovers will drool over seven chocolate centres from Turin to
Tuscany’s chocolate valley, to Modica in Sicily. The chapter on women owned
wineries in Tuscany and Piedmont with tales of passionate, accomplished owners
add a lovely feminine dimension to your winery visits.
Want to get active outdoors
so you go home weighing the same? The
Active Adventures section covers biking, hiking, boating, skiing and yoga
& pilates. As a nature lover, I
would have liked to see more of the less known hiking paths covered, beyond the
popular Cinque Terre and Amalfi Coast ones. She glosses over paths near Spoleto
in Umbria and National Parks in Piedmont, Abruzzo and Sicily before giving
longer details on a hiking tour company. Downhill skiers will be delighted with
her detailed information on great runs in Bormio in Lombardy with spas and
grappa to celebrate après ski and in Alto Adige with pretty mountain hamlets to
explore.
The cooking classes section envelopes you
in a delicious array of experiences with local women from Parma to Calabria.
She paints sensual pictures of the food (Roman veal rolls stuffed with pureed
pumpkin and smoked pancetta), of beautiful cooking spots (in Calabria…a hilltop
cottage surrounded by lemon trees and figs and tiny gardens of red onions, fava
beans, chard…). She describes the cooking teachers and local women and tells
you their stories so you feel you’re there, like Judy Witts “market mamma” in
Florence’s central market, a 70 something (Sicilian) woman with dyed, jet-black
hair piled high in a fifties bouffant style on her tiny head.” I read these chapters and feel like reserving
right now!
I’m a creative soul
so the “Learning Italian Crafts” chapter
really excited me. I never knew I could make masks and mosaic art in Venice,
leather book covers and jewelry in Florence, or ceramics in Deruta right with
the artisans.
Her chapters on advice from writers like Marcella Hazan
were enlightening and useful. Want to get treated like a celebrity in Venice?
She lists three restaurants Marcella Hazan recommends. If you tell them, “Marcella
sent me”, you’ll get the red carpet treatment. I wonder if they’ve read this
book.
I highly recommend
Susan Van Allen’s “100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go”, a light, 434
paged paperback, published fall 2009, at $18.95 U.S. available on Amazon.com
What
are your favourite suggestions for places in Italy every woman or man should
go? See my blog and add your suggestions!
Sicilian Cauliflower
& Bucatini:Pasta With An Exotic Mix
Of Flavours
Palermo market cauliflower vendor
Bucatini
is a thick, tubular pasta with a small hole in the centre.
This
dish is classic in Sicily with this cauliflower sauce. If you can’t get bucatini, substitute
linguine.
A
green spinach linguine makes a nice colour combination.
Contributed
by Annie Mansueto to the website inmamaskitchen.com that offers a feast of
wonderful Italian recipes.
Servers 4-6
- 1/4 cup raisons
- 1 large head cauliflower florets, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1 large onion, roughly chopped
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, smashed
- 8 anchovies (1 small can), rinsed and chopped
- 1 pound Bucatini
- 3 tbsp toasted pine nuts
- 1/4 cup minced parsley
- freshly milled black pepper
Soak
raisins in warm water for 15 minutes.
Fill
6 quart pot with salted water to boil pasta. Bring to a boil while preparing cauliflower.
Steam
cauliflower for six minutes. Set aside.
Cook
onion in olive oil over medium heat until just beginning to brown. Add garlic
and anchovy, breaking apart
anchovies with a wooden spoon.
Put
in pasta to cook. Bucatini takes 10 - 12 minutes.
Drain
raisins and pat dry. Add with reserved cauliflower and pinenuts to onions. Pour
in a scant 1/2 cup water.
Cook for 10 minutes, mixing well to coat cauliflower with pan juices.
Sprinkle
with parsley, and season with a generous grating of black pepper.
If
pasta is not ready, keep cauliflower warm on very low heat.
When
pasta is al dente, about 10 to 12 minutes, drain in colander, pour into a
serving bowl, and dress with
cauliflower sauce.
Enjoy cooking, eating, drinking and traveling to Italy!
Ciao for now,
"Mama" Margaret.