Tag: fruit

How to decorate fruit for Halloween – Italian Cuisine

Ghosts of bananas, mandarins-pumpkin, apples-vampire teeth: here is the perfect snack for October 31st, even for intolerant or vegan people

Autumn rhymes with … Halloween! And if supermarkets are filled with industrial sweets and candies of forms, colors and ingredients that inspire fear, we think about make fruit scary too. Ready for "trick or treat"?

Why make scary fruit at home?

That is because there are details dietary needs (children with intolerances or vegan families, for example), because we prefer limit the consumption of packaged products or because we simply want to give one looks different to the fruit of the snack afternoon, making ghosts, monsters and enchanted pumpkins is quick and easy. In addition, by making the scary fruit we will have the opportunity to entertain and pass the time with our children, perhaps during the first rainy weekends of the season.

Frightening fruit: the ghosts of bananas

Peel the bananas and cut them in half. Sprinkle them with a little lemon juice so as not to make them blacken. Melt del dark chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave and "draw" on the bananas with a toothpick eyes and mouth wide open.

Tangerines-pumpkin

Cut some stalks celery in long and narrow rectangles. If you want you can also remove the celery filaments with a potato peeler before making the cubes. Peel i tangerines leaving them whole. Insert a rectangle of celery in the top of each mandarin: it will be the stalk of the pumpkin.

Apple-monster

Cut some green apples into four wedges and sprinkle them with del lemon juice, so that they do not blacken. With the help of a sharp knife, cut a pocket in each segment and stuff it with del peanut butter (pay attention to the ingredients, it should only contain peanuts). Then aligned inside the opening of the blanched almonds to recreate sharp teeth. If you want to make this snack even scarier, insert a Marshmallow into a toothpick and insert it on top of the dentures. Create the pupil by drawing it with del melted dark chocolate in a water bath or in the microwave.

Bella Dentro, the first anti-waste fruit shop arrives in Milan – Italian Cuisine

Bella Dentro: in Milan, in the Caiazzo area, has opened the first fruit shop that fights food waste by challenging the logic of the market

A project against food waste can it be "sexy" as well as useful? The boys of Beautiful Inside they succeeded. And they did so, thanks to an evident urgency and passion, a couple of years ago, traveling with their apecar covered with grass the streets of Milan and today opening, in the Caiazzo area, the first store with the Bella Dentro brand. Here you can buy them "ugly" but good fruit and vegetables, fresh ed dried, and also some excellent ones jams. All while saving – for now – 46762 kg of fruit and vegetables, as we read – green on white – in the LED sign that stands out on a wall of the shop. Food that otherwise would have been thrown away, just for not respecting those aesthetic standards that the market imposes, but what create enormous damage to farmers, the environment and the economy.

Bella Inside, this is how the idea was born

That Camilla is Luca they had courage, you can guess from their personal stories. Both are just over thirty. A few years ago they decided to leave a promising career in the advertising and business sectors respectively for throw themselves into an enterprise that not even they know where it will lead them. The only thing they are convinced of is that it is the right thing to do. They understand this by reading an article on food waste in the world: according to the FAO, 1.3 billion tons of food are thrown away every year, equal to one third of the total production destined for human consumption. The only waste of food in Italy has a economic value that wanders around 13 billion euros per year.

Bella Dentro, “in the field” against food waste

Thus was born the idea of Bella Dentro. Although before embarking on the enterprise, the two boys moved to Emilia Romagna where, for a while, they conducted investigations, also being laborers. "Going" to the field "was the only way to touch the dynamics that govern the agricultural supply chain. Over time we have managed to get in touch with almost all the players in the agri-food chain and even talk to some buyers from the large-scale distribution , explains Camilla, still almost incredulous that she had succeeded.

The two winning cards of the project

Bella Dentro's idea works because it absorbs a slice of the market that would otherwise be in total loss. In fact, they buy at a fair price directly from farmers or cooperatives that part of fruit and vegetable production that is good, but which is rejected by cooperatives and large retailers for aesthetic reasons. The fruit comes mainly from Emilia Romagna, apart from citrus fruits that come from Sicily and apples from Trentino Alto Adige. Vegetables, on the other hand, come from all over Italy, with Lazio in the lead. Another winning aspect of the project is the communication, captivating and ironic, which aims to deconstruct a rhetoric of the product (which must be aesthetically perfect to be also good) to which we are all a bit addicted now.

Shop and transformation workshop, now we think big

At the end of last year, Camilla and Luca started the second phase of the project, with the entry into society of the Social Veture Giordano dell’Amore Foundation, which made it possible to start thinking big. Not only for having taken root with a shop window in front of which the patrons and the inhabitants of the neighborhood stop curious, but also for another reason. With the shop – and the inclusion in the group of a new travel companion, Giuditta – the transformation laboratory, the real strength of their architecture, because it will allow them to collect ever-increasing quantities of fruit and vegetables without having to worry about them rotting in warehouses. "To save the product you have to free yourself from perishable: transforming it is the best way to keep it longer. This is how the line of jams was born, but above all of dried products .

Camilla and Luca, faithful to the line from start to finish

A curious choice is that of drying courgettes, aubergines and cucumbers, but which perfectly reflects the philosophy behind Bella Dentro. «While defects are hidden with jams, those imperfections remain visible in dried products, as if to remind us once again that to be good, vegetables or fruit don't have to be beautiful. In addition, no other ingredients are consumed and the nutritional values are maintained unaltered . Even that of the transformation laboratory was not a random choice. This is located in Codogno and is managed by The Workshop, a social cooperative that for various reasons is also… beautiful inside. “It was theirs that convinced us inclusive approach: in the laboratory they work approx a dozen boys and girls with disabilities. They do with people what we try to do with fruit and vegetables .

The great book of peels, how to consume 100% fruit and vegetables – Italian Cuisine

And neither the external parts of the fennel or the rind of the pumpkin should be thrown away. The new book by environmental scientist Lisa Casali explains why (and health has to do with it too)

If they told you that the peels and rinds of fruits and vegetables are rich in nutritional properties, often more than pulp itself, would you be willing to question your eating habits and change your cooking method? It is the challenge launched by The great book of peels (Gribaudo) and its author Lisa Casali, environmental scientist and blogger, who wants to unleash a revolution from our tables to those of restaurants through the supermarket shelves.

Why consume (also) the skins

"Why do we discard 50% of every fruit or vegetable we buy?", "Are these parts really inedible or are they dangerous for our health?", "And what would happen if we ate them?". Lisa Casali started asking these questions in 2005 and hasn't stopped since. In recent years he has experimented and written a lot, giving himself and giving us (not a few) answers. But if until now the question revolved mainly around theenvironmental impact and to moral question – or consuming even the less noble parts of fruit and vegetables helps to fight the climate changes and it food waste – this book also investigated the health implication of this good practice.

The book is based on three key principles: more vegetable ("The more our diet is based on food of plant origin, the greater the contribution we are making to the fight against climate change, the reduction of environmental impact, the consumption of water"); more technical ("Knowing the techniques to enhance the properties of each ingredient is a precious secret to avoid wasting anything and get the most out of what we eat"); less waste ("Using everything and wasting nothing, not even a peel, is not just a question of saving, but also means not depriving ourselves of the richest parts of phyto-compounds and fibers, which play an important role in our well-being and health").

Rich skin, you can stick it in!

And here is the discovery. With the help of Other consumption, Lisa Casali analyzed the properties of some of the fruits and vegetables most commonly used comparing the pulp with the peel and i conventional products with organic ones. The presence of phytocompounds, organic compounds useful to the body because they perform, for example, antioxidant or anti-inflammatory actions, and then of vitamin C, polyphenols, fiber and much more.

An apple a day (but with the peel)

What turned out? Take, for example, the apple: from the analyzes it emerged that the apple peel is richer than the pulp in both vitamin C (+ 700% in the conventional, + 359% in the organic), and polyphenols (+ 68% in the conventional, + 74% in the organic), and fiber (+ 209% in the conventional and + 320% in the organic). Not insignificant percentages therefore that should lead us to no longer peel an apple when we eat it or in any case to reuse the peels for example by doing, as the book suggests, candied chips or one purifying herbal tea. And if we want to be really thrifty we don't even throw away the core (we can throw it in the centrifuge) and i seeds (with which to prepare a liqueur).

Why not peel the carrots

Again, analyzing the carrots, it has been discovered that, for both organic and conventional products, the part of the skins is richer in polyphenols than the heart and that also the fiber content it is greater in the skins than in the heart and is slightly greater in the organic than the conventional.

Organic and Italian fruit and vegetables whenever possible

For the problem pesticides, which mainly concerns the skins, the author's advice is to wash fruit and vegetables well with water and to choose them, when possible, from organic producers and of Italian origin (from the analyzes the foods with the greatest presence of pesticide residues were found to be fruits, in particular those of foreign origin).

Pumpkin ravioli with zest and seeds

For each ingredient in the book there are a descriptive sheet, the results of the analyzes and then many tips and recipes for use it 100% without wasting even a peel!

Here is the pumpkin ravioli recipe to use rind of the pumpkin, which contains more carotenoids and fibers than the pulp, and seeds.

Ingredients

300 g of pumpkin peel (preferably Violina)
2 eggs
100 g of flour 00
100 g of durum wheat semolina
1/2 l of cooking water (or broth)
2 tablespoons of shelled pumpkin seeds
80 g of cottage cheese
4 tablespoons of grated cheese
1 pinch of nutmeg
60 g of butter
Sage leaves
salt and pepper

Method

1. Form a fountain with the flours, break the eggs in the center and start working with a fork; proceed kneading with your hands until you get a soft and elastic dough. Let it sit for about 30 minutes.
2. Cut the zest into sticks, cover it with the broth and cook for about 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, toast the pumpkin seeds in a pan.
4. After the time necessary for cooking, drain the pumpkin and blend it. Add the ricotta and 2 tablespoons of grated cheese. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and leave to cool.
5. At this point, roll out the dough with a rolling pin or a sheeter.
6. Place half of the dough on the work surface and brush it with very little water: you will need it to make the two overlapping sheets stick well.
7. Arrange teaspoons of filling on the pastry, well spaced, then close by placing the other pastry on top, press well around the filling to seal the edges well and cut with a toothed roller or a pastry cutter.
8. Cook the ravioli in boiling salted water for a few minutes.
9. Melt the butter with the sage leaves in a pan.
10. Drain the ravioli and sauté them in butter.
11. Top with the remaining grated cheese and a sprinkle of pepper.