Tag: garden

Frisella recipe with oriental garden mix – Italian Cuisine

Ingredients

200 g cherry tomatoes
120 g small courgettes
100 g clean peas
100 g clean plates
80 g yellow cherry tomatoes
4 pcs friselle
new carrots
vinegar
lemon grass
basil
fresh cilantro
salt
extra virgin olive oil

Duration: 40 min

Level: Easy

Doses: 4 people

For the recipe for frisella with oriental garden mix, wet the friselle with a mixture of 100 g of water and 50 g of vinegar and let them soften. Slice a drum of lemon grass and blend it with 35 g of oil and a sprig of fresh coriander. Blanch the snow peas in boiling water for 2 minutes and the platters for 3 minutes. Cut the zucchini lengthwise and blanch for 1-2 minutes as well. Cut the red and yellow cherry tomatoes in half. Spread the cherry tomatoes and vegetables on the friselle, complete with fresh basil and new carrots and season with salt and aromatic oil.

When the garden goes under glass … is on sale in September – Italian Cuisine

There is ciambotta and there is donut. Do not confuse them, they are related, but not the same. The first is one of the best known dishes of the tradition of our South, a very tasty mix of vegetables that varies in composition, cutting and cooking from Abruzzo to Molise, from Campania to Calabria, to Basilicata.

The second is a preserve that prepare the women of Grottaminarda, a small town in the province of Avellino, alone and only there. They share the peasant origin and the vegetables from the garden.

Few ingredients are needed for the donut to acquire its exceptional flavor: tomatoes, preferably long type San Marzano, which were once collected and placed on the ground covered to ripen completely, basil, salt, chilli and above all a particular type of pepper that grows only on site and gives the preparation the quid which makes it unique. Small, spherical, 6-8 cm in diameter, dark green in color, it reaches the maximum fragrance and the right ripeness in this period.

Tradition has it that the night before i peppers are cut into not too small strips and left in a cool place. In the morning it's time for the tomatoes, cut into wedges and placed in the jar with the proportion of two wedges each piece of pepper and then a few leaves of basil, salt, chilli and so on up to the top. Once closed, the jar will follow the fate of the classic tomato paste, covered with water in a saucepan to boil over moderate heat for 60 minutes.

The beauty, or rather the good, comes later. Because his love marriage is with pasta (but nothing forbids new experiments with eggs and meat). The preserves poured into a pan with oil and garlic will be cooked for about half an hour and then will tastefully season the typical homemade Irpina pasta: cicatielli. That is i durum wheat semolina cavatelli that the tradition of "handmade" requires in several versions: one finger, two fingers, three fingers depending on the technique used for get out or cecare the various cylinders of fresh pasta. THE cecatielle with ciambuttèlla they were once served in the spasetta a large plate placed in the center of the table, often the only one in peasant families, from which everyone served. In the absence of the original cavatelli, industrial ones are also good, or other short pasta, including paccheri. As for cheese, it shouldn't be added, but who has tried a sprinkling of cacioricotta he has not repented.

The donut is now included in the list of traditional products of the gastronomy of the Campania Region, but it cannot be bought, it does not exist on the market even in Grottaminarda: it is made by private individuals and given to friends. So all that remains is to go there to make new friends … disinterested.

Laura Maragliano
on Sale & Pepe of September 2020

Terraced vegetable garden: boom in quarantine (and plants and seeds arrive at home) – Italian Cuisine

Sales of plants, seeds and equipment increased during the Covid-19 emergency with many activities being organized for home deliveries. Here's where to order and how to start your own home production

In this exceptional first part of spring that we are spending at home because of the emergency Coronavirus, we did not want to give up on ourselves flowers and plants beautifying balconies and gardens and not even planting sowing for vegetables, fruits and herbs that will sprout in this period and in the coming months. According to a monitoring carried out by Coldiretti, the weeks of quarantine have registered a boom of terrace gardens: sales of seeds, seedlings, fertilizers and domestic tools for cultivation have increased in supermarkets and nurseries (which have organized themselves with home sales). Who has enough space on the balcony or in the garden or even just on a windowsill has organized to start one home production of tomatoes, courgettes and lettuces, but also basil, rosemary, sage, thyme and mint.

Vegetable garden on the terrace: how to start

To start your own home growing, Coldiretti offers some tips.

Light, soil and anti-parasite nets

Consider the exposure of the balcony, because the seedlings need a good dose of light and heat to grow well.

Choose a suitable type of soil that must be sufficiently rich in nutrients, retain the water without creating water stagnation.

Do not use pesticide products, but to defend your crops with anti-insect nets or non-woven fabric, even by manually removing the insects.

If you are a beginner, choose seedlings to decant instead of seeds. They are more practical and allow you to see the fruits of your work first.

What to grow

Salad is the simplest cultivation (in fact it is the most requested) and guarantees the harvest after just 40 days with a cost of only a few cents.

Tomato seedlings are also very popular, even in miniature format.

Peppers, cucumbers, aubergines, spicy chillies with a thousand shapes, tomatoes with small and sweet fruits, green beans and any type of vegetable capable of growing in pots. It is – Coldiretti points out – in some cases of dwarf varieties obtained naturally through crosses, while other times they are normal garden products that adapt to growing even in small spaces such as pots, or in special supports that develop in vertical, making the most of limited space.

Home plants and seeds

On the company website Orto Mio, specialist in Forlì (FC) in the production of peat cube vegetable seedlings, in the Stores section there are the activities that deliver home delivery in your area (from north to south of Italy). You will also find a section dedicated to tips for growing the vegetable garden, one dedicated to cooking and one with the Live Garden where you can observe a vegetable garden in real time through a webcam.

Online plants grown especially for home delivery hobbyists are also found on The Garden of Wonders with nurseries in the province of Ragusa. From the site you can download guides on the cultivation of the vegetable garden and the sowing calendar.

If you are looking for certified organic plants you can buy them on The Ortofruttifero, a Tuscan company that with the University of Pisa has also started the "SuperBio" project to obtain plants which, in addition to presenting greater nutraceutical characteristics, also bring benefits to the vegetable garden.

The site piantinedaorto.it offers fruit, vegetable seedlings, various types of hot peppers, aromatic plants, berries and even ready-made kits with different types of plants and indications for planting them, from the size of the pot to the period.

To buy flowers and decorative plants to embellish gardens or balconies with an eye also to the social you can rely on Cascina Bollate, the nursery inside the Bollate Prison (MI) where prisoners learn a trade alongside professional gardeners. The large catalog can be browsed online and always with a click you can buy and order at home with deliveries throughout Italy (free of charge on Milan and neighboring in this period of health emergency).

On the Coldiretti websites you will find several lists divided by region of the companies that have organized themselves for home delivery: here, for example, you can find those of the Lombardy, here those Venetian.