Edible Italian Garden by Rosalind Creasy

Author:Rosalind Creasy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 962-593-294-1
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Seasonal Dining

Of all the modern cuisines, I find Italian the most married to the garden. The Italian diet is still blessedly seasonal. This truth came home to me the first time I visited Italy, when nearly every restaurant we went to for three weeks in April offered artichokes, spring greens, and peas. There were no roasted bell peppers or pears or snap beans on the menu—the vegetables offered were spring vegetables, period. Further, Italian cooking relies upon a variable harvest. A hurried garden harvest can always produce a fabulous meal. The meals are suited to what a garden produces—a small handful of spinach, a few small heads of broccoli, and the season’s last two carrots would work in a salad, or they could be sautéed and served with polenta or pasta and sprinkled with cheese. Most recipes don’t call for a pound of this and a pound of that; often the ingredients list is fluid.

One final thought: while much of Italian garden cooking strikes us as rustic, or home cooking, in Italian cuisine more than any other, fresh vegetables and herbs can also be haute cuisine. In Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Italy, for example, you can find recipes for vegetable compote with dry zabaione, pepper salad with capers, and carabaccia “of the full moon,” made with fresh peas, carrots, and fennel. Bugialli goes on to say, “Vegetables, even more than pasta, are the cornerstone of Italian cooking.” With the produce from your Italian garden, you can now truly create the tastes of Italy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.