At the beginning of November I had the chance to return to Italy after all these years of Covid and curtailed travel. I met up with two of my favorite people in the food world—Rolando Beramendi and Jeff Bergman, both from the importing company Manicaretti—and we spent the week visiting producers…all of whom I’d now consider close friends. A few of them I might be lucky enough to call family, too. In short it was an amazing, inspiring trip and most everything you’ll taste in your installment came from that wonderful tour.
In this installment
Nocciola Hazelnut Spread from Il Colle del Gusto
This is a love story that’s about more than hazelnuts.
Antonio delle Corte met Anna-Marie Conti in 2013. He was working in Rome and had came to be known as the “Mixologist of Gelato.” Some called him the Willy Wonka of ice cream.
She ran a Bed & Breakfast out of her family farm in the Sabine Hills outside of Rome, surrounded by groves and farms and natural beauty.
He stayed at the B&B, they fell in love, and they figured working together would be the easiest way to spend more time together, so they started Il Colle del Gusto (translation: the hills of taste) and have been growing ever since.
That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the love story. Back to the gianduja.
That’s what this is: gianduja. That’s a northern Italian confection made from ground hazelnuts and chocolate and popularized the world over thanks to Nutella. But the real stuff is something special and that’s what we have here, except Antonio and Anna-Marie have given the recipe a bit of a twist. Instead of using dairy/butter to create their confection, they use olive oil from the neighboring farms as the texture contributor of the recipe. The result is an ultra-lux, ultra-smooth, rich, chocolatey spread that hums with the flavor of hazelnuts with a long, lingering finish. For years I’ve been telling folks to spread this on toast or gelato/ice cream, or on top of cheese cake, or even with some light desserts like pane cotta or something. But the easiest, most delicious way I’ve found is just to dunk cookies or biscotti right into the jar and eat it that way. We enjoyed a wonderful, lounging three hour lunch with Antonio and Anna-Marie after we visited their production facility and we finished it all off by dipping crisp cookies into the jar and crunching away. I suggest you do the same.
Yellowfin Tuna in Olive Oil from the Amalfi Coast
I’m presenting the products I found during my Italian trip in the order in which I fell for them. Our trip started in Rome. We took the train up to the Sabine Hills to visit Il Colle del Gusto, then we left Rome and took the train to Salerno, a port city on the Amalfi Coast a couple hours south of Naples. Pompei is halfway between the two cities and during the summer months the area is filled with tourists and beachgoers since the Amalfi Coast is one of the most picturesque, raw, rocky, beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The two lane road that runs along the cliffside is so narrow you have to wait for buses and larger vehicles to slink past before venturing forward. The towns are carved out of the mountainside—or at least they seem that way.
But that’s heading along the coast. Salerno is a bit larger and has a rather busy port. Ships come up from Sicily at night, pick up cargo then head to Sardinia before heading for other ports in the Mediterranean. It’s been an important port city for centuries, and it’s from here that local fishermen head out during the Yellowfin tuna season (April through September) to line catch fish and bring it right back to port to be cooked and (in the case of IASA) tinned. At least that’s how it’s been happening since 1969 when IASA was founded by Francesco di Mauro, a former Navy officer that had a few ideas about the best ways of preserving the bounty of the sea. His adult children run the company today. Vincenzo focuses on production, Salvatore handles distribution and Lucia—the youngest and only sister—leads sales and marketing as well as exports.
(She’s the visionary. Lucia charms everyone in the room with her ever present laugh and warm smile. Rolando told me Lucia and I would hit it off and boy was he right. We were instant friends and even shot some tasting videos for social media—when we could contain our laughter for long enough.)
Back to the fish. When the tuna are in season, IASA takes the fish to their factory where the whole fish is steamed in large (6 feet in diameter) and long steam ovens. They look like long steel tubes that run half the length of the building. The fish are loaded into metal baskets on trollies that are rolled into the steamers.
“My father was the first in this area to do this technique,” Lucia told me. “It’s a better way to cook the fish because it’s more even and doesn’t hurt the meat of the fish.”
After the cooked tuna has cooled, it’s trimmed, cut to size, and hand packed into tins and jars…usually in olive oil but sometimes in brine or sauce.
All the work is done by hand and all the workers are women. I’ve noticed this before in the factories of Ortiz in Spain. 99% of the workers are women and they spend long hours doing miniscule handy work…and they do it quickly.
I asked Lucia why it was that women always seem to work in canneries like this and she had a pretty good theory. It’s basically the same thing my friend Maria from Ortiz told me and it boils down to being a fisherman’s wife. Traditionally, the men were (and basically still are) the ones in the boats. They were gone for long periods of time trying to catch enough fish to feed their family and make some money. While they were out to sea, the women back at home had to run everything else. They took care of the kids, they managed the fish sales, they kept the home and ran the business. And to their credit, when the men returned to shore they didn’t try to take over and tell their wives what to do. On the contrary. On terra firma, the women ran the show. The men were the kings of their little domains on the water, but when they were home they took orders from the person in charge: the fisherman’s wife.
It’s a universal thing, apparently. So much so there’s even a tinned fish company called Fishwife for basically the same reason. (Their packaging is awesome, by the way.)
IASA makes other preserved fish products, too, like anchovies and their traditional by-product “colatura,” but that’s for another club.
To my mind, this is the first Italian tinned tuna we’ve sold in more than twenty years. This fish is a different species than the “Bonito del Norte” tuna that Ortiz fishes out of the Atlantic, and its flavor and texture reflects that. It’s toothsome, rich, with a nice meaty flavor made even more so by being tinned in oil. I’m not sure what alchemy occurs, but it seems to enhance the fish’s flavor, not dilute or overpower it.
You can eat it straight from the tin if that’s your thing. I do. I also toss the whole tin—oil and all—with just cooked pasta and chunks of parmigianio-reggiano and some olives for good measure. I wouldn’t turn it into tuna salad because it’s so flavorful. Instead, try putting the whole tin in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes to heat the fish, then carefully remove it from the water, carefully open the tin, and serve over a bed of rice with a squeeze of lemon and a crack of black pepper. Instant and impressive!
Hot Peppers in Olive Oil from the Amalfi Coast
One of the innovations that Francesco di Mauro, founder of IASA, brought about early in the company’s tenure was the addition of fermented chiles to tins of anchovies and tins of tuna. Francesco grew up with the method when he was young, but no one in Salerno was including anything like chiles in their products. Francesco thought he could “invent” a new product and really stand out in the marketplace. Boy was he right! People loved the chiles so much, they eventually wanted to buy them plain and not tinned up with fish!
You can even add Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingerman’s Deli to the list of fans. That’s how I found out about them in the first place. According to my traveling companion, Jeff Bergman, Ari “buys these chiles by the case.” You see, “no one at Zingerman’s is selling them.” Jeff explained, “so I sell and ship Ari a case whenever he needs some. And he seems to need a new case every month!”
After one taste I could easily see why. But don’t worry about Ari. We’ll be stocking these chiles on our shelves as a standard item this spring.
The chiles are grown nearby and they are spicy, let me tell you. The older I get the more I enjoy spicy flavors, though, and what I find so alluring about these is how the heat hits you first in the cheeks, then on the tongue, but it doesn’t mask every other flavor you’re eating. To whit, the spicy peppers make your tastebuds perk up like spikes, punching through other rich or buttery flavors and bringing the whole arrangement back in play. They’re bright and they’re fun.
The spicy chiles (called ‘Amante’ by locals) are mashed and mixed with olive oil and allowed to hang out for a few months till their ready for spice loving folks like us. Start slow when you begin to experiment with these chiles. A little goes a long way.
Whole Hand Peeled Tomatoes from Basilicata
After the beautiful vistas of the Amalfi Coast, we rented a car and drove further south to the Basilicata region of Italy—pretty much the arch of the ‘boot.’
Let’s say this is (roughly) my 20th year traveling around finding food for a living. And ever since my first tour of Italy, I’ve loved but have never truly figured out the best way to use and sell whole tomatoes in a jar. It’s a simple product: beautifully red, sweet, delicious. But what would I use it for? Can’t I get fresh tomatoes from the farmer’s market? And so—unable to make a decision one way or the other—I punted. I knew they had a role to play in our pantries, I’m just embarrassed it’s taken me so long to figure it out.
It all finally clicked for me on this trip. I get tomatoes in a jar now and I think you’ll love ’em, too. I learned a quick and easy recipe for them I think you’ll enjoy. But first, let’s talk about how they’re made.
In the shadows of the ancient (and I mean ancient) city of Matera lays Masseria Mirogallo, the Belfiore family farm and production site. It’s in the Basilicata region of Italy, which isn’t exactly a popular place for tourists (it still doesn’t have a train station there), yet humans have continuously lived here for more than 100,000 years. Seriously. Matera is considered the third oldest “city” in history behind Aleppo and Jericho. It was named European Capital of Cultural in 2019, so I’m sure it’s about to enjoy some popularity now that the pandemic is over, but we’ll see. They filmed “The Last Temptation of Christ” there because it still looks like its 2000 years ago when you go there and it’s amazing. Right outside this ancient city sits the farm where these tomatoes were grown. (What a segway.)
They’re all hand picked at the peak of freshness—which sounds like a marketing line, I know, but they told me a story about a failed apricot endeavor that made me believe they’re not just words to the Belfiore family. The tomatoes are quickly blanched then hand-peeled by a crew of about twelve women and hand-packed into the jar with a leaf of basil. That’s it. No water or salt is added, just all hand-peeled whole tomatoes—and a leaf of basil. It tastes like summer and smells like it, too. When you open the jar you’ll see what I’m saying.
As far as how to enjoy them—well, I’ve found a simple recipe from my host and guide and friend Rolando Beramendi, who got the recipe from the matriarch of the Belfiore family. (The recipe also appears in Rolando’s cookbook titled “Autentico,” which is a must have if you love ingredient focused cookbooks that help you produce traditional Italian recipes.) She made it for lunch for us the day we visited and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s fresh, it’s flavorful, and it’s really easy to make for a lunch or even as an appetizer before a meal or with wine.
Spaccatelle di Pomodori – Broken Tomato Halves
Ingredients:
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
1 jar whole hand-peeled tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbls salted capers, rinsed and drained
sea salt to taste
crusty bread, semolina if possible
Put the thinly sliced garlic in a shallow but somewhat wide bowl. Top with the tomatoes and drizzle with the olive oil. Season with salt and sprinkle the capers over the top. Serve immediately with fresh, crusty bread and let people scoop/sop it up. This is a dish that’s meant to be eaten by using your fingers so don’t by shy. Sop it up, take a bite, close your eyes and think of summer.
Taralli with Raisins and Onions from Puglia
From Basilicata, we drove further east till we hit Puglia, the rocky, craggy, home of Italy’s most important olive oil producing region. What? You didn’t know Puglia was the literal home of Italian olive oil? Probably because Tuscany has waaaaay better marketing. The truth is Puglia is responsible for something like 2/3rds of Italy’s total olive harvest. Ancient trees stretch out for miles and miles across the rather flat land till you reach the sea and the oil is just as prickly and wild and rustic as the area where it grows. If you like grassy, peppery, and bold, reach for a Pugliese olive oil.
Access to all that olive oil means there’s a tradition of using olive oil in pretty much everything you make or even bake. That’s where taralli (plural of tarallo) come in! These little circles of a cracker are made from local wheat, a touch of salt, and a whole lot of olive oil. They’re the signature snack and baked good of the region. They have an amazing texture that sort of melts/evaporates in your mouth as you chew—even though they look like they’ll be crisp and crunchy. If you’re into cheese and charcuterie boards for entertaining or just for eating, you’ll want these little rounds of (mostly) olive oil cracker at the ready.
We visited Daniele’s shop in the town of Bitonto and tasted through nearly twenty different flavors of taralli. There were sweet taralli, savory taralli, and my favorite: sweet and savory taralli. That’s what we have here: Raisin (Sultana) and Onion Taralli. A little sweet, a bit more savory, easy to eat and even easier to eat more. They are essential with a glass of crisp wine or even something bubbly, especially as the day turns from bright and pleasant to cool and mysterious.
Blood Orange Olive Oil from Abruzzo
Our final stop on the week long tour was to Agrumato in the Abruzzo, the region east of Rome. In a way, this was a homecoming—even though I’d never visited the region or the producers before!
I’ve been selling Agrumato Lemon Olive Oil since my first day working “dry goods” on the floor of Zingerman’s Deli…let’s call it 1995. Maybe I’m off by a year or two, but I can’t remember a time when we didn’t sell Agrumato Lemon Olive Oil (and at other times the Citron and even the Tangerine). Still, Agrumato has only been in existence for thirty-five years so in some respects, it’s still a new kid on the olive oil block!
The people of the Abruzzo and Molise regions (the east coast of Italy) have been making this special combination of olives and citrus fruits (usually lemons) for centuries at the end of the harvest in late fall.
Citrus fruits were added to the olives for the final pressing of the year in order to freshen the equipment before setting it aside for the season. Citric acid from the fruits was a great way to clean off any bacteria or mold that could grow while the stone wheels used for pressing were stored. Plus pressing the late-harvest olives—which weren’t the most interesting flavor-wise—with citrus was also a way utilize and appreciate an otherwise unappetizing oil.
Because it’s one of those things locals take for granted and never think worthy of mentioning to anyone else, the resulting citrus olive oils remained a local secret. That is until Francesco Ricci and his brother decided to spill the beans thirty-five years ago and start Agrumato! Their grandfather originally suggested they revive the old method, but to improve the flavor by using high quality extra virgin olive oil, not the dregs from the last of the harvest!
Over the years, Francesco has built up relationships with olive oil producers from Abruzzo that he trusts. Formulating the balance of citrus fruits with the different olives they’ll use that year takes skill and practice. The flavors from the olives change in intensity and complexity every harvest depending on the conditions where they’re grown. The true art comes from Francesco’s ability to blend it all together in his mind before it ever gets bottled. It’s amazing that the flavor is so consistent year over year even though there’s nothing consistent about the olive harvest. That’s the work of Francesco.
When it’s done well, the oil is smooth, with citrus notes that tickle your nose like the bubbles of a fine Champagne. It still tastes like olive oil (undoubtedly so), but there’s a light and fun character that comes from the sweet yet acidic blood oranges. You can do most anything with blood orange olive oil that you’d do with other oils, and then some. Pour it on freshly cooked pasta and toss with chopped arugula, roasted peppers, toasted pine nuts, and some hot red pepper flakes. It’s fantastic brushed on top of almost any broiled fish. If you want something interesting for a quick first course, we enjoyed an appetizer of mortadella topped with barrata and drizzled with blood orange olive oil. It was rich and sweet and bright and incredibly delicious.
Dill Pickle Sprouted Almonds and Pepitas from Tennessee
Have you heard of this term before? ‘Sprouted’? I first heard the term years ago when a friend was starting to make bread from sprouted grains.
That was a big deal at the time (and today) because a lot of folks were dealing with sensitivities to wheat and thinking they may be suffering from celiac disease. In the end, far fewer folks actually suffered from celiac than the self-diagnosis might have claimed, but many people realized there are more than a few health benefits associated with sprouted grains.
The short version is sprouting grains makes their nutrients more accessible to digest and use. You can sprout a grain, seed, nut by soaking it in water for a short amount of time. This tricks the grain/nut into thinking it’s time to sprout and grow into a plant, so its own chemical make-up starts to change. It sheds phytic acid, which can interfere with human digestion. With the phytic acid gone, nutrients are better absorbed into the body.
Once they arrest the sprouting, they dehydrate the nuts and seeds to give them a super-sized crunch by removing any water left inside.
Health benefits aside, I can’t stop eating these dill flavored almonds and pumpkin seeds (pepitas) so I thought I’d share them with you. I didn’t expect to like them as much as I did and once I shared them with folks in the office, I got the same reaction from them. Even if you don’t count yourself a fan of dill, give ’em a try. They’ve won over many a convert.
Plus the “green” of the dill pickle seems to compliment the other reds in this installment and that sort of feels appropriate for the season. Put ’em out as snacks when friends and family come over or keep ’em in your office for those moments when you need a pick me up. That’s what I do.
Pickled Asparagus from California
I’m a sucker for cheese and charcuterie boards because they all (should) have pickles on them. Pickled cucumbers, pickled carrots, pickled beets, pickled jalapenos…I love ’em all. They always add unexpected flavor with a big bright crunchy texture to boot.
We had the pleasure of tasting more than a few samples from Last of Seven and we thought Elizabeth Osterman and her small crew were doing something special. They pickle in small batches and they only use fresh picked produce to do it. They recieved a bit of recognition for the pickled carrots last year, but I’m a sucker for asparagus and I really fell for this one. Even fresh asparagus can get mushy and soft awfully fast, but amazingly Elizabeth and her crew are able to capture that just picked ‘snap’ of the stalk you’re hoping for. If you have cause to entertain this holiday season, include these pickled treats on the charcuterie board or in the relish tray (assuming folks still do a relish tray). Your guests will gobble them up.