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Celebrating Your Inner Italian

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Simple Italy Greatest Hits

Posted February 6, 2018 by Sharon 1 Comment

Le cose cambiano. Things change.

SimpleItaly is evolving. Fresh posts will appear less frequently.  Our greatest hits, however, are always a click away. When we discover a new Italian regional recipe, destination, experience, or person, we’ll share the gems with our fellow Inner Italians.

Let’s re-visit some of our fondest timeless memories–encompassing cooking, wine appreciation, people, music, movies, art and serendipitous experiences–from a decade of SimpleItaly.

Bolognese-style lasagna

Lasagna alla Bolognese (Bolognese-style lasagna),  a dish that embodies the allure of slow food, has only four components–fresh spinach noodles, ragu, balsamella, Parmigiano-Reggiano–but each deserves attention.

Flavors of Friuli

Elizabeth Antoine Crawford traveled throughout Friuli for five years to research her new book.

 

Sauerkraut, poppyseed, and cinnamon-sugar on pasta. Is this Italian cooking? It is in the northeastern region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  These seductive ingredients and more are explored in Flavors of Friuli: A Culinary Journey through Northeastern Italy.

 

A truffle hunter with his prized partner.

On the Truffle Trail in Le Marche

Acqualagna is all about truffles. One-fourth of the residents are qualified truffle hunters and 70 percent of Italy’s truffle dogs are trained here. The white truffle is celebrated each autumn with the Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo Bianco. (This article first appeared in the November 2011 issue
 of the travel newsletter Dream of Italy.

Confetti Town

Lining the main streets of Sulmona, in Abruzzo, are shop after shop selling confetti, the confectionary for which the town is famous. It sounds simple: start with almonds, pistachios or hazelnuts and coat them with multiple layers of molten sugar cane syrup. This dessert artistry has been evolving since Roman times when almonds were coated with honey. The results are magnificent. They are edible mosaics, work so detailed, artistic and well-executed that they fool your eye. Of course these are real flowers . . . no, they are confetti.

Brides of Amalfi


Love was in the air during a visit to the Amalfi Coast.

Ragazzi Reminisce

The Leather School, tucked in back of The Basilica of Santa Croce, is the scene for this dynamic duo’s meeting.

C’era una volta. . . once upon a time. . . Max (Massimo Melani) met Wally (Walter Sanders) in Firenze. (Spoiler alert: An iconic Florentine panino plays a supporting role.) Here’s the story in their own words.

The Inner Italian Q & A: Melissa Muldoon

All of our Inner Italians shared delightful personal journeys but, so far, only one has gone on to become an Italian language and travel diva. Artist, designer, cultural conduit, and author Melissa Muldoon hosts La Studentessa Matta (The Crazy Student).

Whites for Summer

In his wine commentaries, Walter seeks out the best, most affordable, wine produced from Italian grapes. He hopes to raise awareness of indigenous varietals that deserve a place on your table.

Lemon Semifreddo

The spoon dessert semifreddo translates as “half frozen.” A cross between a frozen soufflé and gelato, a semifreddo delivers the plush mouthfeel of frozen meringue with the luxurious richness of cream. This lemon version pairs well with red berries.

Malika Ayane


Of this sensational pop vocalist, Paolo Conti said: “Il colore di questa voce è un arancione scuro che sa di spezia amara e rara.” The color of this voice is a dark orange with a dark and rare spice.

Cinema Italiana

SimpleItaly adores this hangdog comedy. What happens to those Italians left behind during Ferragosto, the national August vacation? One such scenario is brilliantly portrayed in the 2008 film Pranzo di Ferragosto released in the U.S. as Mid-August Lunch. Gianni di Gregorio, who co-wrote the script and directs, stars as the soulful Gianni who lives in the heart of Rome with his 93-year-old mother, exquisitely played by Valeria De Franciscis.

Do you have a cherished Inner Italian memory? Share it below.

Filed Under: Amalfi, Architecture, Art, Bologna, Books, Campania, Culture, Film, Florence, Food, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Inner Italian Q & A, Language, Lifestyle, Mediterranean diet, Miscellany, People, Travel, Tuscan cooking, Tuscany, Wine Tagged With: Italian cookbooks, Italian cooking, italian culture, Italian life-style, italian recipes, Italian wines, pasta recipes

Lasagna alla Bolognese

Posted March 25, 2015 by Sharon 3 Comments

Lasagne alla Bolognese

By Sharon Sanders

Lasagne alla Bolognese (Bolognese-style lasagna) is a dish that embodies the allure of slow food. It has only four components but each deserves attention.

Little language lesson:

Lasagna (singular) is one sheet of pasta.

Lasagne (plural) is more than one sheet of pasta.

The Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is the ingredient that takes the most time to produce—an average of two years. Luckily for us, the fine cheese makers of the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano shoulder that task.

The salsa besciamella (béchamel) can be whipped up on the stovetop in 10 minutes. I enrich my besciamella with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (salsa alla Parmigiana) which makes it technically a Mornay sauce.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Bologna, Books, Culture, Food, Language, Miscellany, Recipes Tagged With: Domenica Marchetti, lasagna alla Bolognese, lasagne alla Bolognese, Lidia Bastianich, Lynne Rosetto Kasper, Marcella Hazan, Maureen Fant, Michele Scicolone, Oretta Anaini DeVita, regional Italian pasta recipes, regional Italian recipes

The Inner Italian Q & A: Linda Dini Jenkins

Posted March 14, 2012 by Sharon 7 Comments

One in an occasional series of conversations with those who try to “live Italian” wherever they are.

"La Principessa" in Perugia

Linda Dini Jenkins is a freelance travel writer and photographer and the author of Up at the Villa: Travels with my Husband (more later on how to win a free copy!). She also blogs regularly about travel and travel writing at Travel the Write Way and teaches creative writing and journaling. She enjoys taking small groups of friends, to explore what Italy has to offer beyond the Florence-Venice-Rome triumvirate, and she can pack her suitcase in 15 minutes.

◊ ◊ ◊

Q: Living “Italian”. . . Is it a great way to live or the greatest way to live?
A: Well, I think it’s the greatest way to live. When you take into account the slower pace of life (outside the big cities!), the immersion in history and art, the fantastic cuisine, the love of design and music, the respect for taking time out to enjoy the simple things . . . whether it’s Italian or Mediterranean or European, it’s how I want to live.

Q: Why?
A: Are you kidding? Start with the food, the design sensibilities, the language, the arts, the vino, the pausa, the passeggiata . . . need I go on?

Q: When did you discover your Inner Italian? What is your Inner Italian named?
A: I always knew about my Inner Italian but, like other children of first-generation Italian-Americans who desperately wanted to assimilate, “being Italian” was something that just happened and was never really encouraged. In fact, I’d heard stories growing up of how hard it was for my father to be Italian in a New York suburb in the 1930s and ‘40s; even being Italian in my first job in New York in the 1970s was something of a liability. And I was always a little ashamed after that of being part Italian (my mother’s side of the family was English/Irish/German) until I met my husband and he took me to Italy in 2000. Since then, I have been a proud and vocal Italian-American. If my Inner Italian has a name and it needs to be something other than Linda, I suppose it’s Principessa . . .

Q: What does “living Italian” mean to you?
A: My grandparents came over from Italy in the late 1890s and they were anything but rich. So for me, living Italian has to do with cooking and eating together, always having crusty bread and wrinkled olives and green olive oil on the flowered oilcloth-covered table. It means not being afraid to be emotional—even if that involves fists and things flying when you’re angry. It means loving music and feeling the arts very deeply. It means trying to have a sense of style—of la bella figura—even if the clothes or table settings come from Target. And it means being a storyteller and a traveler and something of an adventurer.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Abruzzo, Amalfi, Architecture, Art, Bologna, Campania, Culture, Film, Florence, Food, Inner Italian Q & A, Language, Lifestyle, Miscellany, Rome, Travel, Tuscany, Venice, Wine Tagged With: Inner Italian Q & A, italian lifestyle, living like an Italian, wannabe Italians

Ragú

Posted February 16, 2010 by Sharon 1 Comment

raguRagú is the Italian term for long-simmered, mellow meat sauce that dresses pasta or polenta. It varies from region to region, sometimes prepared with large chunks of meat, sometimes with ground, or more properly, finely minced meat.

I’ve sampled ragú of duck, rabbit, mixed meats, and sausages and have never encountered one that failed to satisfy my appetite. Arguably the most renowned of Italian meat sauces is ragú alla bolognese from the storied food city of Bologna. It is classically prepared with a combination of chopped beef, veal, or pork, and, in the good old days, was finished with heavy cream. Milk is now more often used.

Finely chopping onion, celery, and carrot into a mxiture called a battuto is the first step in making a ragu.

Finely chopping onion, celery, and carrot into a mxiture called a battuto is the first step in making a ragu.

Ragú alla bolognese is not as tomatoey as the meat sauces of the south that influenced Italian American sauces. The tomato acidity in a bolognese is balanced by the sweetness of the sautéed aromatic vegetables—the soffrito, or flavor base.

The soffrito should be lightly caramelized but not browned. This sauteed vegetable mixture is the flavor base of ragu.

A properly cooked soffrito is one of the secrets to a divine ragu.

It’s essential to cook the soffrito slowly to lightly caramelize the vegetables without browning them. I like to remove the soffrito from the pot so the meats can brown without the steam created by the veggies.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Bologna, Food, Recipes Tagged With: Bologna, italian food, Italian meat sauce, italian recipes, ragu, ragu alla bolognese

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