Tag: Apulian

Puccia meatballs: the Apulian sandwich with meatballs – Italian Cuisine

Apulian sandwich with Apulian meatballs: two traditional classics meet in a new fast food format in Milan. Here is the recipe!

Puccia is a typical bread from Salento, an area of Puglia. It is a classic street food made with pizza dough cooked in a wood oven and used to prepare sandwiches, then stuffed with local products.

It is an art, and from Puglia it arrived in Milan thanks to Puccia & Pasta, a new format that combines prices and speed of fast food with recognized local specialties such as the capocollo of Martina Franca (Slow Food – IGT), the caciocavallo Silano Dop, the Prosciutto di Faeto (recognized PAT traditional Italian agri-food products), the Stracciatella of Putignano the rare Podolica cow meat, Slow Food presidium. To make it better, they use mother yeast, type 1 flours (nutritionally more balanced: less refined, with more bran and wheat germ that make it digestible; moreover, dietary fiber helps to maintain good intestinal function and modulates the glycemic impact while taking food) and wait for a long leavening.

The puccia with meatballs

The puccia with meatballs brings in a sandwich a classic Apulian recipe, that of meatballs with sauce. Made of chopped pulp of minced beef, eggs, stale Apulian bread soaked in milk and grated canestrato cheese from Foggia. These are the simple ingredients of the Apulian meatballs, to keep them light you can avoid frying them and cook them directly on a very slow fire in a simple tomato sauce. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients for 4 people

400 g of minced beef meat
2 eggs
4 spoons of canestrato cheese (or pecorino)
1 clove of minced garlic
1 glass of warm milk
150 g of stale rustic bread
salt and pepper
chopped parsley

For the sauce
1 liter of tomato sauce
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic
salt and pepper
basil
Apulian extra virgin olive oil

Method

Soak dry bread in warm milk. Wring it out and mix it with the eggs, cheese, meat and crushed garlic. Season with salt and pepper, form the meatballs about 4 cm in diameter and leave to rest for half an hour.
In the meantime, in a large pan, sauté with garlic and onion and cook until it becomes transparent. Add the sauce and cook over low heat for half an hour.

Vermicelli alla Sangiuannìidde, the Apulian recipe – Italian Cuisine

Everything is based on the taste of hot sun tomatoes and a sophisticated alchemy between sea and land. Here is the traditional recipe (with some variations) of one of the cornerstones of Apulian cuisine

The June 23 all of Italy celebrates the feast of San Giovanni. But in Bari this day is associated with a very special dish: i Vermicelli (vermecìidde) alla Sangiuannìidde. Tomatoes, garlic, anchovies, capers, parsley and a little chilli pepper: a few simple ingredients, which taste of sun and almost of summer heat, to prepare a dish with an overflowing flavor.

No quantity, we are from Puglia

Typical dish on the eve of the feast of San Giovanni, Vermicelli alla Sangiuannìidde are not often found in restaurant menus, not even the traditional ones. They prepare at home when you don't want to rack your brains over what to put on the table. Yet to make them unforgettable, there are a few things to watch out for. «I leave out the quantities, because it is a dish that is made by eye and personal taste. Let me explain better: the normal dose of vermicelli should be around 80 grams, but often this dish is prepared with more , he explains the journalist and gastronomy Sandro Romano.

The ingredients

To prepare the Vermicelli alla Sangiuannìidde we will need 400 grams of vermicelli, 500 grams of tomatoes, three cloves of garlic, six anchovy fillets ("although it is better to use the alisce du spuranchovies put in coarse salt , underlines Romano). The list is completed by a pinch of dry spicy chili pepper and extra virgin olive oil. "The quantity of anchovies depends on how much we want to hear them", explains Romano. "The same is true for garlic, which traditionally must be chopped, but if you do not like it, it can be put whole and then eliminated."

Method

Prepare the sauté with garlic and anchovies (keep some aside). Then add the tomatoes to make a sauce. Better to cut them into pieces, leaving some whole, which we will then break with a spoon. "This will serve to add tomato pulp to the sauce, which will have shrunk, which, although cooked, has not lost its liquid, kept in its natural container," points out the expert. After 30 minutes of cooking, the tomatoes that are still turgid can be broken with a wooden spoon. At this point, according to the Bari tradition, parsley and anchovies are kept aside with a little chilli pepper. After boiling the vermicelli, they are skipped in the sauce, to allow the pasta to absorb the fragrant sauce. Serve at the table.

Variants and fake news

Just as it happens around all the dishes symbol of a territory – Tomato and bacon, bacon and egg and the pugliesissimo Rice potatoes and mussels – variants and fake news were also born around the Vermicelli alla Sangiuannìidde. Among the changes made to this recipe is the addition of an ingredient that anticipates summer on the plate and its fresh, herbaceous aromas: oregano. "I prefer to add pickled capers and a little chilli pepper."

Among the false news that revolve around this recipe, the most important concerns tomatoes. «It is said that the tomato to be used to prepare these spaghetti must be the hanging ones. But it doesn't make sense: if we prepare it according to tradition, or in June, fresh ones abound ", explains Romano. "The hanging tomato is a method of preserving the vegetable and in the period of the feast of St. John there are in quantity". This does not mean that they cannot be used. Someone uses those hung, peeled, even tomato sauce even if not provided for. But for real Vermicelli alla Sangiuannìidde it is better to use fresh tomatoes. The important thing is that that warm taste, a little acid and a little sweet, brings a pinch of summer to our palate.

Text by Stefania Leo

A "Joy" guaranteed for those who love authentic Apulian mozzarella – Italian Cuisine

We are the homeland of the mozzarella. And this is not discussed. Yet among the 299 Italian excellence food products protected by one of the two most severe indications geographical references (ie Dop and Igp) so far only one appeared: the Mozzarella di Buffalo Dop bell But now it is ready to expose the Dop sticker also the Mozzarella from Gioia del Colle, whose application for registration was published on Official Journal European. If there will be no opposition, the 2020 will open with the official assignment of the Dop. But what is special about this mozzarella cheese?

Apulian excellence
The characteristics of the Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle Dop are all reported in disciplinary deposited at EU and to which all companies that want to produce and sell this must attend product. First requirement: the exclusive use of cow milk full raw, eventually thermised or pasteurized, and coming from two different milkings of cows that live at the pasture at least 150 days and who are fed for at least the 60% with grass and hay of grass and up to 40% with carobs and by-products of cereal processing, such as bran and cruschello of soft wheat. The characterization is also essential "Autochthonous" of the "food" intended for cows: not less than 60% must be local. The link with the land in which it was born and the characterization of Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle Dop we also owe to another important factor: the milk is all collected and processed in a precise area, which corresponds to Murgia Bari and Taranto. Also the packaging of the mozzarella must take place in this area, which includes about twenty municipalities in the provinces of Taranto and Bari and a part of the province of Matera.

Flavors and aromas of Murgia in a cheese
In the Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle Dop the use of preservatives and additives or adjuvants, including selected lactic ferments or citric acid, is not permitted. In addition to milk the only others "Ingredients" used are the calf rennet and the native serum-grafting, deriving from previous work carried out in the same company or in the territory, and obtained by allowing the development under controlled conditions present microflora naturally in the serum remaining from the processing of milk from the previous day. This heritage of native microflore gives the Gioia del Colle Dop Mozzarella many of its details features, particularly intense in the cheese just produced, including the scent of milk, the pleasantly sour taste, with nuances of fermented, due to the presence in the mozzarella of lactobacilli is lactococci. Also the technique of processing milk into fine pasta filata it is recorded in every detail: the milk is processed within 48 hours from the first milking, the spinning must be carried out with hot water and salt, at least 85 ° C, and the soft and warm dough must be knotted with a single one, fast movement of the hands, born from the skill developed by generations of cheesemakers.

A mozzarella that amazes the palate
How to recognize the Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle Dop? From the indications in label and the presence on the packaging of protection logo and the Dop label. The Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle Dop is made in three different forms (ball, knot and braid), with a weight that varies from 50 grams to a kg. It is marketed immersed in a liquid of governance consisting of water, possibly acidulated and salt. Once removed from the packages, it is characterized by the white surface and shiny, smooth or slightly fibrous. The dough is elastic and, at the time of cut, presents a slight spill of white serum. To the taste the Mozzarella di Gioia del Colle Dop is characterized by the scent of milk or yogurt, sometimes with hints of butter, and the taste of milk delicately acidulous, with a pleasant fermented aftertaste, more intense in that just brewed.

Manuela Soressi
November 2019