Simple Italy

Celebrating Your Inner Italian

A Taste of Di Palo’s Essentials

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By Tess Sanders

The Di Palo family’s shop has been a vital presence in Manhattan’s Little Italy for more than a century. It began as an unassuming latteria that Lou Di Palo’s great-grandparents opened to to serve immigrants mostly from their area of Montemilone in the region of Basilicata.

These days Lou and siblings Sal and Marie run a full-fledged grocery store. When visitors ask who owns the store, the current shopkeepers gesture to their great-grandparents’ photo on the wall. Di Palo’s moved only once at the turn of the 21st century and still boasts its exquisite dairy products. “Cheese is our life,” Lou says.

In the newly published Di Palo’s Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy, Lou shares generation-spanning stories that feature key Italian ingredients as their characters. For Lou, it’s a book about relationships. Relationships between food and people.

Lou worked with food writer Rachel Wharton to create a narrative that glides as smoothly as Di Palo’s signature cannoli cream–from the origin of the family’s life and shop in New York into the stories of the foods that form that life. The book tells the tale of eleven essential Italian foods, from ricotta to sea salt ending with piave and speck. Lou worked with Rachel to fold in many personal reminiscences “for other people, to invoke memory for them—their ancestors, what they did and how they did it.”

The tales of how these essentials are created and savored makes for a compelling and informative reader experience. An interaction not unlike the customer’s experience shopping at Di Palo’s where the staff prizes the sharing of flavor and knowledge above all else.

Speaking with Lou in the wine store Enoteca Di Palo that son Sam Di Palo opened next to the grocery, it became clear that he could pen another book’s worth of essentials right now. Working within the space confines of a printed book, Lou had to select the essential essentials.

 

Lou Di Palo continues the family business, located on Grand Street in Manhattan's Little Italy, with his brother, Sal, and his sister, Marie. Photograph courtesy of Di Palo Selects

Lou Di Palo continues the family business with his brother, Sal, and his sister, Marie (photograph courtesy of Di Palo Selects).

He revealed to SimpleItaly some other essentials that didn’t make it into the volume:

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Little Shop in Florence

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Just off the luxury goods trail in Florence, Sandra's little shop beckons with hidden "treasures."

Just off the luxury goods trail in Florence, Sandra’s little shop beckons with hidden “treasures.”

Ferragamo didn’t need to open its Salvatore Ferragamo Museo just for me. I approach all the luxury goods temples—Prada, Roberto Cavalli, Bulgari–on Florence’s stylish Via Tornabuoni with a gaze-in-awe-but-don’t-touch reverence. Owning these baubles is not for me but I can admire the artistry as I would the masterworks in a museum.

So, imagine my surprise on a blindingly sunny morning in April when I wandered a few footsteps east of the Salvatore Ferragamo Museo on peaceful Via B. SS. Apostoli to discover a shop called Sandra.

Gorgeous globe artichokes fresh from Sandra's garden.

Gorgeous globe artichokes fresh from Sandra’s garden.

At 41r, tucked into a street level space no wider than a train car, Sandra was honoring her store motto: “di tutto un pò un pò di più” (a little of everything and a little more). Surrounding the entrance were crates of fruits, vegetables, braids of garlic, copper pots, painted wooden plaques, bunches of dried flowers. Sandra said she had plucked the artichokes from her garden that morning.

Stepping over the threshold was like entering a time machine back to Florence of 30, 40, or 50 years ago. On the shelves and from the ceiling were household items, oils, vinegars, herbs, jewelry, collectibles, petite chandeliers. Every centimeter offered a new treasure.

Sandra occupied the space behind the glass refrigerated display case at the back. It was stocked with salume and formaggi, no doubt to fortify serious Sandra shoppers who might want to inspect everything on the premises.

Wild fragolini and their hybrid cousins.

Wild fragolini and their hybrid cousins.

I wondered to myself how Sandra could afford the rent in this alta moda area given the price points of the merchandise. As I paid for my lovely little olive wood mortar and pestle and fragolini (tiny sweet wild strawberries—the only strawberries that would have been in a Florence market 30, 40, or 50 years ago), I said a silent “grazie” to Sandra for having di tutto up pò.

Sandra, Via B. SS. Apostoli, 41r, Firenze, (055) 28.34.10

 

Flavors of Friuli

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

Elisabeth Antoine Crawford presents an enticing journey through an Italian region that’s not well known by American travelers.

I’ve longed to travel through the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. But the closest I’ve come is wandering through the seductive Flavors of Friuli: A Culinary Journey through Northeastern Italy by Elisabeth Antoine Crawford.

For that day when I do travel to the region, I hope Crawford will have created an app. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to lug her three-pound, 368-page tome with me. It’s an exhaustively researched guide to the mountains, meadows, vineyards, and coasts, all with their own distinctive foods, wines, architecture, museums, attractions, and festivals.

Most Italian regions don’t border anything other than other Italian regions or the sea but not Friuli Venezia-Giulia. It juts north and east of the peninsula. It’s bordered by the Veneto to the west, Austria to the north, The Republic of Slovenia to the east, and the Adriatic Sea to the south. Romans, Venetians, Austro-Hungarians, and Slavs have all ruled this territory over the centuries. Parts of the region weren’t incorporated into the Republic of Italy until after World War I and the cosmopolitan city of Trieste not until 1954.

Middle European influences abound in dishes such as sauerkraut, buckwheat pasta, liptauer, goulasch, and torta Dobos. Yet, the region also produces foods that are recognized around the world as quintessentially Italian: prosciutto di San Daniele, Montasio cheese, and Illy caffè.

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Abruzzo Green Tomato Pasta

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Chopped green tomatoes are seasoned with parsley, hot pepper flakes, garlic, celery, and olive oil in this unusual pasta sauce.

Chopped green tomatoes are seasoned with parsley, hot pepper flakes, garlic, celery, and olive oil in this unusual pasta sauce.

Since I wrote about Miriam Rubin’s delightful cookbook Tomatoes back in May, I’ve been intending to try her recipe for Green Tomato Pasta Sauce from the region of Abruzzo. I was intrigued because I’d never eaten anything like it or even seen a recipe for an unripe tomato sauce.

I panicked recently when the weather forecast predicted an overnight frost. I hadn’t tried the green tomato dish and time was running out. Unlike Rubin, who is a dedicated home vegetable grower and pens the “Miriam’s Garden” column for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, I do not have a patch from which to pluck tomatoes. A generous gardening friend donated some green fruit to enable the test.

onthevineThe sauce is easy to prepare. It’s a lively blending of tart fruit, hot pepper, rich olive oil, and plenty of garlic. I believe it would be a good recipe to use in the winter months with pale, firm supermarket tomatoes. I’m going to give that a try, too.

I’m curious if any SimpleItaly readers have relatives or friends who live in, or are from, Abruzzo who prepare a similar sauce. Please share a Comment if you do.

 

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Passato di Pomodoro

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In September, when you can buy 20 pounds of pomodori pelati (plum tomatoes) for $15, you’ll know what to do.

Simmer the pelati in a big non-aluminum pot until they fall apart. Pass the contents through a food mill which purees the fruit but screens out the skin and seeds.

Passato di pomodoro in the freezer will make the change of seasons a little sweeter.

Reduce the passato (puree) in a large pot until excess water evaporates and  it thickens to just the right consistency to cling to strands of pasta.

Cool and freeze in 1 cup bags.

In January, you’ll say, I did the right thing.

Passato di Pomodoro
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Cuisine: Italian
Author:
Serves: 12 cups
Adding some vodka to the passato brings out the sweetness of the fruit. The alcohol, which evaporates during cooking, dissolves certain flavor compounds that neither oil nor water can release. If using vodka, add ½ cup to the puree (step 4) as it reduces.
Ingredients
  • 10 pounds very ripe plum tomatoes, cut in into lengthwise quarters
Instructions
  1. Pack a large non-aluminum pot with as many tomatoes as will fit, pressing with clean hands or a large spoon to squash the tomatoes to release some juice. Set on medium-high heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 to 12 minutes or until the tomatoes start to release more juice.
  2. With the back of a large spoon, press the tomatoes. Gradually add the remaining tomatoes until they all fit in the pot. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 25 to 30 minutes or until tomatoes are very soft.
  3. Set a food mill over a large non-aluminum pot. Working in batches, ladle the tomatoes and juice into the food mill. Pass the tomatoes through the mill to puree. With a silicone spatula, lift out and discard the skin and seeds after each batch.
  4. Set the puree over high heat. Bring to a boil; reduce the heat to medium and cook at a brisk simmer for 5 minutes. If the puree is too thin, continue to cook until it is reduced to the desired thickness. Skim and discard any light-colored foam that rises to the surface. Cool to room temperature then refrigerate for several hours to chill thoroughly.
  5. To freeze, ladle into 1 cup containers. Store in the freezer for up to 6 months. To use the sauce, thaw the amount needed overnight in the refrigerator or microwave on the defrost setting for 10 minutes. Heat the sauce in the microwave for 6 to 8 minutes or transfer to a saucepan set over medium heat.

 

On the Truffle Trail in Le Marche

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This article first appeared in the November 2011 issue
 of the award-winning subscription travel newsletter Dream of Italy

By Sharon Sanders

Acqualagna truffle hunter Giorgio Remedia assesses his treasure.

Acqualagna truffle hunter Giorgio Remedia assesses his treasure.

Acqualagna, Italy–Two dozen miles southwest of the Adriatic coastal city of Pesaro, the placid plain morphs into picturesque hills near Acqualagna with 5,000-foot-high Monte Nerone and other peaks in the distance. The terrain gets rugged quickly.

Our bus struggled up a winding dirt road to deliver us to truffle hunter Giorgio Remedia’s azienda. Although we’d been advised to have proper footware, the sight of Remedia’s knee-high rubber waders gave some of us pause. He had a no-nonsense demeanor that could perhaps be attributed to his other job as chief-of-police in Acqualagna.

Remedia explained that this area is rich in truffles. He said that they’re a symbiotic fungus that grow on the roots of oak and poplar trees. The Acqualagna area yields different varieties of tartufo bianco (white truffle) and tartufo nero (black truffle) almost year round.

This community is seriously all about truffles. It’s said that 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 year’s event begins at the end of October.

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