Anenomes
When I can stroll through my garden
Lavender
on the second day of November
Daisy chrysanthemums
and commune with flowers that are laughing at the calendar,
Cat mint
my Inner Italian has to celebrate!
Rose
What’s nurturing your Inner Italian today?
Torta di pesche in a tender butter cookie crust.
I’m living in a kind of peach frenzy.
Peaches and ricotta for breakfast. Baked peaches blanketed with pastry cream. Peach sorbetto. Peach tart in a sweet cookie crust.
Pondering how long my supplies will last, I just spoke on the phone to the friendly clerk at Bechtold’s Orchard in Bucks County, PA. She said peaches will be available for about one more week. O-N-E week? Sadly, the days of peaches dwindle down to a precious few.
Like a squirrel frantically stashing nuts for the bleak days to come, I’m stockpiling peaches in my freezer. It’s easy enough to do. Submerge the ripe but firm peaches in a pot of boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds. Transfer them with a slotted spoon to a big bowl of ice water.
A Bechtold's Orchard peach emerging from a refresing ice water bath.
Start peeling with a sharp paring knife at the stem end and the skin slips off as easily as a satin robe gliding off the shoulder of a 1930s glamour queen. Halve or quarter the peaches and lay them on a tray lined with plastic wrap. Place in the freezer for a day and then pack the frozen peaches into a resealable plastic freezer bag or plastic freezer container.
Peeled peaches ready to be flash frozen.
And, while you still have the chance, you can bake a homey Italian peach tart with the following recipe. It’s sweetened with fruit preserves to intensify the flavor of the fresh fruit filling. Sometimes I replace half the preserves with ginger-peach chutney from Tait Farm Foods in Centre Hall, PA. It makes a sweet, slightly hot filling that’s bliss.
I was surprised when I read the sticker “produce of Italy” on the kiwi fruit I’d popped into my bag at the local supermarket. It was so unexpected . . . like encountering Andrea Bocelli at the dry cleaner. The context seemed all wrong.
The kiwi got me to thinking about fresh food imports from Italy. I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered any before, with possible exception of blood oranges. The familiar foodstuffs from Italy that I know and buy (and consider essential for “genuine” tastes) are cured, dried, or preserved in some way: Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, canned San Marzano tomatoes, salted capers from Pantelleria, dried pasta from Abruzzo.
Yet, here was this fresh Italian kiwi, now in my kitchen. Not a typically “Italian” ingredient but, then, neither was citrus fruit when it came to Rome from southern China during the time of Emperor Augustus.
Kiwi probably also comes from China but didn’t make an impact on Western cooking until it was cultivated in New Zealand in the early 20th century. During the 1970s in France, kiwi became the darling of nouvelle cuisine, probably in large part to its startling green color. It’s been a constant in U.S. supermarkets since then.
I actually have seen kiwi growing in Italy. In June of 2002, while visiting an olive grower in Tuscia, a historic Etruscan area that comprises southern Tuscany and northern Latium, I noticed a verdant field of plants that I didn’t recognize. “Kiwi,” my host explained. “Wow,” I thought, “I didn’t expect that answer.”
A visit to the Italian Trade Commission Web site produced a link to a consortium Kiwi Latina (IGP). Latina is a province south of Rome. I doubted my kiwi could have been cultivated in March in central Italy unless in a greenhouse. On Italian Google, I searched the other name on the sticker “Star” in conjunction with “kiwi” but all I got for my effort was a link to famous movie directors from New Zealand.
Guess I won’t know where my Italian kiwi came from and I’m still uncertain whether it’s a good thing that it came so far. The 3-ounce kiwi cost 50 cents. If the kiwi were an 125-pound person flying one-way from Rome to New York, its air fare would be $334.
Have you seen any fresh foods from Italy in your supermarket? Tell us about them.
As I sprinted by my herb garden this morning, shivering and mentally cursing the weather because the temperature was still in the 20s, a perky little voice caught my attention. “Psssssst. Down here. Look at us. We’re coming to save you.” It was my chives, always the first green volunteers in the barren brown soil patch between the garage and the sidewalk.
My spirits warmed as I remembered my intention to spread the word about a brilliant book I just finished reading: In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, the award-winning journalist (and for you celebrity buffs, brother of actress Tracy Pollan, Michael J. Fox’s wife).
Pollan, a contributor to the New York Times and professor of journalism at UC Berkeley’s graduate school, has been writing about food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture, for the past 20 years.
That Pollan felt compelled to write a book to convince us to eat real foods is, well, an indication of just how ludicrous and anxiety-ridden our relationship with food has become.
He fearlessly challenges the scientific-governmental-journalistic triad of “nutritionism” which is adept at isolating nutrients from food and preaches to the public that mere humans are not capable of feeding themselves.
And, at the risk of disappointing Mr. Pollan’s literary agent, I doubt that he’ll be able to sell foreign publication rights to the Italians. They already eat . . . no, make that savor and value . . . real food and have been doing so for thousands of years.
I hope that after you read Pollan’s sensible, good-humored, well-researched advice, you’ll feel as I do. We, the earth, our food crops and domesticated animals are all parts of a whole.
No one part can be healthy without the others.
You may just find yourself wanting to stick some chives in your garden-whether that’s an acre, a patio container, or a windowsill flowerpot.
Just got back from a whirlwind trip to “Bella Italia,” the 2009 Philadelphia Flower Show produced by The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The show, which runs through Sunday, March 8, supports the many greening programs of the Society.
Stepping through the main doors, I felt like Dorothy when she was transported from drab Kansas to Technicolor Oz.
A massive fantasy rendition of an ancient Roman garden, created by J. Cugliotta Landscape Nursery, brimmed with roses, ageratum, delphinium, wisteria, pink marble walls, imperial columns, statuary and reflecting pools, crowned with a stage where acts from opera singers to Italian folk musicians perform.
Wow, and that’s just the grand entrance.
