Simple Italy – Celebrating Your Inner Italian

Grillo White Wine From Sicily

Posted May 15, 2015 by Sharon 3 Comments

Browsing in my local wine shop, a bottle of white caught my eye.

It came from Tenuta Regaleali, a name I recognized as the much lauded estate and cooking school in Sicily. It was founded by the late Anna Tasca Lanza, who did so much to bring Sicilian country cooking to wide acclaim. Tasca Lanza’s daughter Fabrizia has taken over the school. (This is off topic, but David Lebovitz published this gorgeous post about the estate.)

I also had never encountered the varietal Grillo, which means cricket in Italian, so I was doubly intrigued.

Golden in color, this vino is aromatic with hints of citrus. It’s a sumptuous dry Italian white for summer times.

I learned the back story of this indigenous Sicilian grape on The Wine Hub blog. Once the primary varietal used to produce fortified Marsala wine, it has largely been replaced by the higher yielding Catarratto. Happily, it’s being revived by modern vintners.

Cin Cin!

Tenuta Regaleali
Grillo
Cavallo Delle Fate
Sicilia DOC 2013

$13.99 for 750 ml. bottle in Pennsylvania Wine & Spirits Store

Do you know of an Italian white that veers from the standard pours list? Share it here!

Travel and Adventure Show

Posted April 27, 2015 by Sharon 1 Comment

Imagine yourself in a thousand magnificent destinations at a Travel and Adventure Show.

By Walter Sanders

John Golicz is the ring master of the nationwide Travel and Adventure Show series in seven U.S. markets. When the circus gets to your town, take advantage of it.

At the recent show in the Philadelphia Convention Center, all our senses were dazzled. Scrumptious aromas wafted across the exhibit floor as chefs prepared their specialties at the Taste of Travel Stage. We touched the brocaded robes of a tour operator from Nepal. We heard joyful music from Saint Lucia. And everywhere we looked was the colorful tapestry of global travel. You saw visitors trying out a Segway, and others scaling a rock wall.

Experts shared their wisdom at the Destination Theater. We sat in on the hour-long “Insider’s Italy” session featuring nostri amici Kathy McCabe—publisher of Dream of Italy and host of the upcoming Dream of Italy on PBS—and Italian authority and writer Susan Van Allen.

We enjoyed speaking with the engaging Patricia Schultz, author of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. She is like the Pied Piper of travel. We would follow her anywhere.

We spent some time with John Golicz to get a sense of how he shapes up the 2015 travel scene.

“What will be the hot international travel destination this year?” we asked John.

“Now’s the time to go to Europe. The dollar is strong versus the Euro—about 23 percent stronger than last year—and many analysts predict parity by 2016,” said John. “While the US economy is gaining strength, there’s softness in many European countries. That means better deals at hotels and restaurants as these vendors compete for tourist spending. Plus, with more transoceanic air competition, it is very likely that European airfares will drop as carriers have more seats to fill.”

“SimpleItaly fans would enjoy hearing about your Italian experiences. Anything you’d like to share?”

“We love Italy. We’re very fortunate to share multi-generational family trips with my parents and my children. One of our favorite trips was to Italy when the kids were younger. We started in Rome, then settled into a villa in Greve, right in the heart of the Chianti zone,” said John.

John Golicz

“The food and wine were exceptional, as usual. The kids enjoyed the pool, the hill towns of Tuscany. In Florence, we were smart enough to hire a guide who made the city and its art come alive. In the Uffizi, the guide told the back stories of some of the paintings and that really engaged the kids. They still enjoy visiting museums because they realize every work of art has a human story.”

The Golicz family does more than travel together. Son Jon is the mastermind of 1,000 Travel Tips a travel resource for the best tips, trend information and expert advice for any travel situation you can imagine. SimpleItaly looks forward to becoming a contributor.

The shows 2016 schedule is out, visiting seven cities between January and March. Whet your travel appetite by attending the show in your market.

Lasagna alla Bolognese

Posted March 25, 2015 by Sharon 3 Comments

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.

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The Great Flood of Florence

Posted March 16, 2015 by Sharon 2 Comments

Among those cleaning up the Santa Croce courtyard after the flood are Marcello Gori (left standing on the ground), who was my employer at The Leather School, and Padre Franchi (second from right) who became head of the Franciscans at the Basilica.

Some of the men who would become my friends in Florence labored to clean up the Santa Croce courtyard after the flood. Massimo “Max” Melani’s head is just visible (third from the left on the truck bed). On the ground are Marcello Gori (left), who was my employer at The Leather School, and Padre Franchi (second from left) who later became head of the Franciscans at the Basilica.

By Walter Sanders

When I moved to Florence in 1971, the city was still recovering from the disastrous flood of November 4, 1966. High water marks—stained by mud, heating oil, and gasoline—stretched like taut ropes across building facades near the Arno.

It was harsh stuff that floated to the top. And below the crest mark, on walls around the city, were murky shadows of flood residue.

These ugly reminders faded with time, but have been memorialized with plaques designating the height of flood waters throughout the city. Five floods from five different centuries are noted by these marble plaques; none are as high as those commemorating 1966.

I worked at the Scuola del Cuoio, the Leather School, from 1972 through 1975. The workshops and showrooms were located in the old Franciscan monastery attached to the Basilica of Santa Croce, one of the hardest hit victims of the flood. I still remember the stains, and even the faint smell of fuel, on the exterior and interior walls of the courtyard.

Kayla Metelenis and Diane Cole Ahl

Those memories rushed back when I attended a presentation “Looking Back at the Flood of Florence in 1966: Disaster, Recovery, and Cultural Conservation,” sponsored by the Art Department and The Ideal Center of Lafayette College, Easton, Pa.

Sharon and I had met the one of the presenters, Diane Cole Ahl, Rothkopf Professor of Art History, when she curated a traveling exhibit of “Offering of the Angels” from the Uffizi at the Michener Museum, Doylestown, Pa.

Ahls’s student Kayla Metelenis ’15, art history major, was co-presenter.

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From Italy to Your Table

Posted February 26, 2015 by Sharon 5 Comments

La cucina l’italiana is rooted in the land.

My food-loving friends in Italy may live in towns or cities, but they all ‘know someone’ in the country. Someone like il cugino who cultivates olives and shares the olio with family. Someone like lo zio who preserves his sweet garden tomatoes and always has too many. Someone like l’amica who prepares divine apricot marmellata and loves to spread the sweetness.

Phil Noto knows someone: his cugino, Giuseppe “Pippo” Calantoni. Pippo lives in Motta d’Affermo, Sicily, in the province of Messina, in the house where Phil’s father was born in 1924. Pippo raises olives. He shares the olio with Phil and Phil is sharing the olio with us. Phil is a partner in Santisi Imports, a wholesale and retail Italian specialty food purveyor based in an office complex in Easton, Pa., about 100 miles west of NYC.

Like any self-respecting buongustaio, Phil not only knows where the olives are grown and the oil is pressed; he also knows the varieties of olives– Sant’Agatese, biancolilla, and nocellara Messinese.

Santisi oil is produced in Motta d’Affermo on the northern coast of Sicily about 24 miles east of Cefalù.

This level of authenticity extends to all the products offered by Santisi. Phil began the business in his garage in 2005 with olio and origano but now has dozens of products that boast as genuine a pedigree as the oil. Phil and partners Vince Sciascia and Mario Vicidomini scour the Italian peninsula to secure the best of the best: aceto balsamico, dreamy pistachio spread, saba, canned cherry tomatoes that melt in the skillet, assorted condimenti, and colatura d’alici (the ‘secret’ seasoning of so many Italian dishes).

As for dried pasta, partner Mario happens to be co-owner of one of the oldest, most-respected pasta makers in Italy. Mario and his brother Luigi are the fifth generation of Pastificio Vicidomini to carry on the family tradition (Luigi’s son is the sixth generation). Situated in Castel San Giorgio, Campania, the pastificio has been featured on Italian television‘s Linea Verde and is the darling of chefs and food critics.

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