The American Farmer’s Table

Potatoes and peppers play heavily into the cuisine of Basilicata and the region’s vast landscape of rolling hills contain large fields dedicated to growing both staples. A marriage of the two vegetables makes for a satisfying lunch or a perfect side for grilled or roasted meats. To prepare, boil peeled Yukon Gold potatoes until tender. When cool enough to handle, slice them into rounds and place them in a large serving bowl. Saute long green peppers, such as Long Hots, in a generous amount of olive oil with garlic until golden brown. Add the peppers to the potatoes, drizzle the oil over the top and sprinkle with a generous pinch of salt. Its utter simplicity showcases the Italian kitchen’s panache of taking a few ingredients to make a wholesome and satisfying dish.

All I have to say about Calabria is Wow! What an amazing region.

The one drawback are the roads – they are either winding and steep

Or blocked with sheep!

But don’t let this stop you from visiting the region.

The region has a lot to offer from National parks, to ample coastline, and some of the tastiest cuisine, olive oil and wine.

And where have you ever come across a wild horse?  This one seemed to like Matt

I have a serious addiction to figs.  Not so much to the ones back home at our market for a dollar a pop that are soft and over ripe. But to figs that are plump and dripping with juice, picked straight from the tree.  Southern Italy is saturated with fig trees and driving through the countryside we have encountered thousands of them.  Our trips from farm to farm always include several pit stops whenever we spot a tree near the road with branches sagging with fruit for the taking.  This usually follows with an intense stomach-ache from my overindulgence, but it is so worth it.

The southern tip of Sardinia

Porto Ferro – Northwest Sardinia

Sand dunes on the way to Porto Ferro beach

We are visiting our very first farm in Sardinia named Sa Mandra, which is located in the northwest corner of the island.  This is the epitome of a true working farm with pretty much everything served to guests coming straight from their land. The owners, Rita and Mario, came from a long line of shepherds.  Today they continue this tradition and raise their own sheep, whose products are at the forefront of the cuisine served in their restaurant.  They produce many different types of cheese, from a sheep milk ricotta which they use to make ravioli, to a fresh sheep cheese that is paired with melon and drizzled with bitter honey, and an aged pecorino that is either served in wedges as an antipasti or grated over the many pasta dishes they serve.  They even make a cheese that is inoculated with maggots; however, this cheese is only served to the most adventurous guests.   My favorite is the breakfast, where a fresh basket of ricotta cheese is served each morning drizzled with honey and served with homemade peach jam.  If you can’t find sheep milk ricotta,  drizzle honey on regular ricotta, it is just as delicious!

There is nothing better than summertime in Connecticut, especially out on the waters of Long Island Sound. We have a seventeen foot motor boat that’s perfect for cruising around the Sound’s islands and inlets. All summer long we fish, swim and hang out on the boat.  In August, when the water heats up, we like to head into the salt marshes to hunt out the ultimate summertime treat, blue crabs. We had a successful outing the other day and after a few hours had a bucketful of beautiful blue crabs – plenty to make a classic Italian – American dish we both grew up eating and one of our absolute favorites – spaghetti with crab sauce.

Melissa’s father, Fran, grew up mushrooming with his father and grandfather, who brought his passion for foraging to America when he immigrated here in the early 1900’s from a small village in the Campania region of southern Italy. Fran in turn has been teaching us the finer intricacies and secrets of finding delicious mushrooms growing in the wild. Every fall we take the dogs and go deep into the woods and search for a variety of mushrooms on the forest floor. Wild mushrooms have a distinct earthiness to them that is pleasantly pungent and taste nothing like the cultivated varieties in our grocery stores. My first experience eating a NY strip roast that had been roasted with fresh wild mushrooms was a revelation as to why people become fanatical about seeking out their own in the wild.

Yesterday, on my drive home from work, I got a call from Fran whose voice was frantic and urgent. Chanterelles, thousands of them – were growing all over his friend’s back yard. We went later that day and it was no joke. Clusters of beautiful, yellow, trumpet shaped mushrooms were sprouting everywhere. New mulch had recently been laid made from trees that must have contained Chanterelle spores. The intense humidity and sweltering heat of this summer and this past weekend’s thunderstorms created the perfect micro-climate for the mushrooms to sprout. An hour was spent collecting all of them, leaving the roots and cutting them with a knife and scissors, in hopes that they will grow again in the future. We made a simple pasta inspired from the bounty in which the delicate and natural flavor of the Chanterelle shine. It’s a taste that resonates with old world, unadulterated flavor and a rusticity that reminds us of meals we’ve had in Italy.

I moved to Rome after college with not much of a plan but to try and learn the language and find some type of work to immerse myself in Italian culture and I got really lucky.  Two brothers who owned a small furniture restoration shop in the heart of the city (Campo dei Fiori) took me into their lives and gave me an opportunity to live like a Roman artisan.  The work itself was not for me. Growing up, I deservedly earned the nickname the “bull” from my father for my full steam approach towards things and my personality and the painstakingly tedious craft of restoration was a recipe for disaster.  The brothers learned quickly about my way of doing things and there was always a watchful eye over every move I made inside the cluttered shop and, “Matteo, che cazzo stai facendo?”  (Matteo, what the hell are you doing) was pretty much a daily expression in the bottega.  But while I definitely lacked a burning passion for learning the finer nuances about restoring European antiques to their splendor, I became enamored with the Italian lifestyle.  My absolute favorite part of the day were the elaborate lunches we would create at the shop.  They would begin with a walk to the outdoor market to shop for ingredients that usually included a stop at the neighborhood bar for an espresso.  Back at the shop, a makeshift dining area would be fashioned from whatever furniture we were working on, and lunch prepared over a one burner stove that always included some type of pasta, fresh cheeses, cured meats, and wine.  Friends and family often stopped by to say hello and have a bite and a bit to drink and animated conversations would flow, transforming the dusty room into a trattoria-like ambience.  I remember always being in awe at how food was such an integral part of Italian culture and how much passion Italians shared for their local ingredients and the sacred daily rituals of eating.

During my second year there, Melissa and I began hanging out, and our shared interest in Italian food and wine brought us together on culinary journeys throughout the country.      Our travels exposed us to the wonders of authentic rural regional cuisine and I was blown away by the simplicity and goodness of it all.   After experiencing the authentic rustic cuisine in towns and cities outside of Rome, I came to the conclusion while Roman cooking as a whole was good, there was another world of Italian food to explore that went way beyond Pasta Carbonara and Pizza Bianca.  This early discovery of the bounties of Italy’s regional delicacies became the guiding light and focus of the next ten years of our lives that continues today.  On a recent trip to the Eternal City however, we were reminded of perhaps the pinnacle of Roman cuisine: Spring vegetables.  At our favorite wine bar, Cul de Sac, near to Piazza Navona, we were served a medley of stewed Spring vegetables in a small crock.  They weren’t vibrant green in color, rather a dull green / gray, but their flavor resonated with everything that makes Spring great.  Creamy fava beans, tender baby artichokes, and slightly bitter local greens awakened our palettes from their winter slumber and made us excited for the arrival of warm weather back home.  In our version of this Roman inspired dish we took advantage of whatever green vegetable we could find at home and paired it with a creamy buffalo mozzarella.  It makes for a great lunch for living la dolce vita wherever one may be.

We recently returned from a much needed, culinary inspired, vacation to Madrid.  Neither of us had been to the Spanish capital and we wanted a full immersion into the pulse of Madrid’s vibrant city life and to live and eat like a local for a bit.  We rented an apartment with high hopes of checking out some markets and cooking in a few nights; an idea that was quickly squashed after wandering around the maze of streets of the city center and seeing just how many enticing looking tapas bars and restaurants Madrid has to offer.  We immediately fell in love with the open air plazas, beautifully maintained parks and gardens and overall cleanliness of the entire city and it didn’t take much to fall into the relaxed pace of Spanish life.

Going out to eat was an ongoing education.  Their whole approach was much different than what we had experienced in Italy, and light years away from how we eat in the States.  At sharply two o clock, and not a minute before, the cities tapas bars burst into life as hungry patrons cram into the eateries to consume their main meal of the day.   Whether bellying up to the bar or properly seated at a table, course after course of tapas, small plates, salads, and full entrees, are consumed over a two hour leisurely long lunch that are washed down with numerous small glasses of cold draft ale or carafe’s of the house wine.  The Spanish zest for life transpires through their appreciation and passion for eating and drinking in good company, and the loud and chaotic bars and restaurants emblematic of a vibrant food culture that’s a whole lot of fun to experience and be a part of.

Near to our apartment, we discovered a real gem of a place in the wrought iron covered San Miguel Market.  Once a bustling indoor neighborhood market has today been transformed into a thriving gastronomic destination.  A few of the original vendors remain, selling fish, meat, fruits and vegetables, but the real attraction here are the numerous tapas bars paying homage to superior quality Spanish ingredients. A true feast for the senses, San Miguel offers the best of Spanish cuisine put on display in an unbelievably cool setting, that hums with energy from patrons fueled by good food and drink. We hit San Miguel nearly every day during our trip, whether it was for a quick beer and a plate of jamon, raw oysters and sparkling cava, or an extended crawl throughout the entire market, sampling tapas and small bites at nearly every stall.  One of our favorite spots was a center island marble bar specializing in seafood that served a delicious cold poached seafood salad shimmering in olive oil and loaded with octopus, mussels,  and green and red pepper that made the dish bright and vibrant.

We tried our own version last weekend where we grilled the seafood instead of poaching it, and the smoky charred flavor added depth.  Everything got tossed with some quality olive oil and red wine vinegar for kick and then refrigerated to bring all of the flavors together.  That night while eating the salad and reminiscing about our trip, the Spanish inspired flavors took us back to Madrid, and the San Miguel market, and the undeniable conclusion about what a great city Madrid is.

In our time spent living in Italy, Easter never brought out adults dressed as a bunny or baskets filled with that annoying plastic grass, or sickly sweet yellow marshmallow candy. Easter in Italy means a celebration of family and life and a time to get together and eat what they have always eaten in Italy on Easter Sunday – succulent, baby lamb. Being of Italian descent, both of our families have also always eaten lamb at Easter. My grandmother’s version resembled and tasted something like a roasted pair of my grandfather’s shoes and growing up I always thought that’s what lamb tasted like – old and leathery and dry as sand. That’s until I spent my first Easter with Melissa’s family, whose annual tradition included a marinated leg of lamb grilled over a wood fire that was meaty and juicy with a hint of gamey flavor.
We had been hearing a lot lately about spring baby lamb and we thought that it would be fun to try out. After some research online, we quickly discovered that we weren’t the only ones thinking about eating baby lamb on Easter Sunday, as all online purveyors seemed to be sold out. We gave a call to Ron, our local butcher, and he was able to track one down for us from a small sheep farm in Massachusetts. It was a 40lb four month old baby lamb that had been milk fed its entire life. I jumped on it and made an appointment with him to show me how to break down the carcass.

In our small Connecticut town, we are extremely fortunate to have great places for sourcing excellent, top quality food. We do our grocery shopping here the old-fashioned way, avoiding supermarkets all together, by patronizing our local fishmonger, bakery, farm market, and butcher. Each has their own personality and character and shopping there gives us a greater sense of community and place as well as a connection to what we are eating.
Ron’s shop, Forte’s, has been in our town since the eighties, and his family has a long history of butchery. His grandfather originally had a veal slaughterhouse a few towns over from ours and Ron’s father built the business up into a thriving enterprise, becoming known for their superior veal. Once a week they would head to the cattle auctions where they would purchase their animals and truck them home and break them down the carcasses and prepping them for distribution. The meat would then be sold to supermarkets and small grocery stores throughout the northeast. Towards the early eighties the landscape of grocery shopping in America began to change with the arrival of the behemoth one stop shopping supermarket. These new mega stores did their own purchasing of livestock and butchering, slashing their costs and eliminating the need for the mom and pop slaughterhouses and butchers. What soon followed was the rise in inferior meat from grain fed fattened animals injected with steroids and hormones and the American diet became hooked on cheap meat.
Today, Forte’s thrives as Ron and his family, continues to do what they have always done by providing high quality meats and service. I met with Ron the Friday before Easter and was greatly impressed with both his patience and skills as he deftly broke down the baby lamb while explaining each step. The lamb was broken down into a variety of cuts and pieces and in less than an hour; I had an entire baby lamb vacuum sealed in individual bags and ready for cooking.
For Easter, we marinated one of the legs overnight in Melissa’s family’s traditional recipe of white wine, garlic, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and lemon zest. The next day fresh lemons are sliced thinly and placed on top of the leg for a few hours before grilling it over a wood fire. The meat was excellent and tender but its flavor was what really struck us as something great. It was lean and not at all fatty, sweet and aromatic and not at all gamey, and definitely different than any lamb we had ever eaten. Surprisingly, we had some meat left over that was close to the bone and the next day we made a hand cut lamb ragu with peas that got us excited for Spring. We hope it does for you too.