Tag: island

Procida Capital of Culture 2022: what to taste on the island – Italian Cuisine


Next year we go to the island with many events to participate in, but also with many specialties to discover, from lemons, which grow large and sweet here, to artichokes, up to puff pastry tongues stuffed with cream

With the hope that in a year we will be back to normal leaving the Coronavirus behind us, on 18 January the Ministry for Cultural Heritage proclaimed Procida Capital of Culture for 2022. The smallest pearl of the Gulf of Naples, whose territory entirely covers that of the islands of Procida and Vivara, was chosen by a jury among 10 candidates (Ancona, Bari, Cerveteri, L'Aquila, Pieve di Soligo, Taranto, Trapani, Verbania and Volterra are the other cities on the list).

Procida, culture does not isolate

With the slogan "Culture does not isolate", the city will offer 330 days of events through 44 cultural projects, 240 artists, 40 original works and 8 renovated exhibition spaces. It will be an opportunity to discover this volcanic island at times still wild – often obscured by the more famous and worldly Capri and Ischia – under which, according to Greek mythology, lies the body of the giant Mimante and where the colorful houses, the narrow alleys, the breathtaking views, the sandy beaches and the rocky coves were the backdrop to cinema scenes (you see The postman with Massimo Troisi) and in which they were set short stories and novels (from Boccaccio to Elsa Morante).

The island of lemons

Procida is often called the island of lemons, a fruit that has been cultivated here since ancient times by practically all the families of the island and reaches very large size, with a light yellow coarse-grained skin and withalbedo (the white part between the pulp and the peel) very often. For this last characteristic, Procida lemons are also called "lemons bread ". THE lemons on the island they can be enjoyed simply sliced ​​as a dessert, with or without a spoonful of sugar – they are in fact less acres than the most popular lemons – or in chunks in the salad together with onion, oil, chilli, salt and mint, or they are used to make refreshing drinks and limoncello.

A lemon tree in Procida
A lemon tree in Procida

Fresh artichokes or in oil

Typical of Procida is also the artichoke, of the Roman type, which is proposed fresh or handcrafted in oil according to an ancient recipe that provides that the flower heads of the second and subsequent orders are cleaned, blanched in water, white wine vinegar and salt and stored in glass jars with the addition of extra virgin olive oil, garlic, oregano and hot pepper. After letting them mature for 2 months, the artichokes in oil are ready to be eaten and can be kept for over 6 months.

Pasta and sweets

The typical recipe of the island is the spaghetti alla Procidana, whose recipe involves dressing the pasta with octopus, cherry tomatoes, garlic, chilli, parsley and spaghetti with poor seafood with anchovies and fried green chillies. What sweets can you find once you've landed? The languages ​​of Procida, a puff pastry filled with lemon cream (but also pastry or chocolate), also known as Ox Languages.

the recipes that will make you feel on a tropical island – Italian Cuisine


Make your dishes more exotic with coconut and the holidays will take another turn!

If on the beach screaming "Coccobello coconut" taken at attention, perhaps you are true lovers of this exotic fruit. That's why we thought to offer you some ideas to prepare some recipes both sweet and savory with this extraordinary ingredient.

Coconut popsicle recipes

Fresh coconut and dry coconut: differences

You must know that the fresh coconut it is not what arrives on our table, with its hard shell and hard, crunchy pulp. In reality, the freshly picked coconut is green and has a very fresh energizing and moisturizing water and a sweet and creamy pulp inside.
Read the article The properties of coconut water to learn more.
To consume fresh coconut, just cut the shell and then insert a straw and a spoon inside to drink the water and eat the pulp. Unfortunately, this fruit hardly arrives on our tables because it must be harvested and consumed in a short time.
The coconut that we find more easily in supermarkets instead, is the dry coconut, the one that is broken with the hammer because it has a very hard shell and has inside a white to brown flesh to munch on.

You might be interested in: Coconut, nutritional values

Coconut properties

The coconut is a natural tonic because rich in potassium and thanks to the presence of vitamins B and C it is useful in case of weakness, nervousness and urinary problems. It also has a significant satiating effect and can be used to reduce appetite when following a weight loss diet. Beware of quantities, though, because it is very caloric. The coconut milk it does not contain lactose, but it is rich in lauric acid which maintains good bone health. Coconut also has cellular regenerative properties and helps strengthen the immune system.

Coconut sugar

For some time it has been possible to find a very aromatic sugar on the market that is produced with coconut nectar. Coconut sugar is not obtained from the fruit, but from the palm tree and the fluid obtained is very sugary but is not to be confused with palm sugar, much less known in Italy.
To produce the coconut sugar, the flower of the coconut palm is engraved, to then collect the nectar which is then dried at fairly high temperatures until the water is completely eliminated.
Coconut sugar is rich in vitamins, has a relatively low glycemic index, does not contain preservatives and is not treated with chemicals.

Here are some if you are a coconut lover idea to use it in the kitchen!

Forno Tondo, on the island of Milan there is a new neighborhood bakery – Italian Cuisine


Forno Tondo is the new bakery in the Isola district in Milan. To open it Silvia Cancellieri, young promise of bread-making

A single showcase, discreet as the character of its owner. The street is also slightly secluded, but along the perimeter of one of the most dynamic areas of Milan. Silvia Cancellieri, after various explorations, eventually chose theIsland to open his Round oven. Born in February with the idea of ​​becoming a neighborhood bakery, it is already a meeting point for the inhabitants of the area. The name chose it because «it is short, easy to remember. But also because it reports to loaf shape and expresses well the sense of cyclicity: of bread, of living processes and, as a woman, I also say of the moon. In fact, as a personal reading, I see in the logo. I like the overall image of femininity .

At school of bread from Verdickt, Longoni and Grazioli

She says it with a touch of pride, she who, as a "stubborn" young woman, chose a profession often still tied to the singular masculine (or at most plural). After a respectable cursus honorum, in which names like Verdickt, Longoni is Grazioli, Silvia managed to land with her small shop on the island: a single, clear environment, with a note of color given by some Ustica tiles, a large wooden table, on which Ligurian focaccias and some Sicilian inspirations rest – in honor of their roots -, a shelf that frames the shapes of bread e a large window with a window, behind which the decisive or delicate movements of his hands on the doughs can be glimpsed.

Forno Tondo, new neighborhood bakery

When Silvia first raised the damper it was the end of February. After a week Milan would have entered a tunnel from which the city, people and the whole world came out decidedly changed. Months in which the bread has become symbol of life and resilience. And the baker's craft he stripped himself of worldliness to return to the essentials. In these three months, his "neighborhood bakery" has become reality without his realizing it.

Milan, on the island the new neighborhood bakery is Tondo and speaks female
Milan, on the island the new neighborhood bakery is Tondo and speaks female.

An essential baking idea

"Now the challenge will be to maintain relationships with all those people who found a point of reference in my shop in those strange days." But it won't be difficult, because Silvia knows how to listen and above all because she likes to tell her bread, which is as essential as the idea behind it: "Baking means bringing together the whole chain in something that takes shape in your hands, it means playing with transformation".

Silvia's bread: round, large format, with mother yeast

From this "simplicity", "Which is not the starting point but the arrival point", as stated in the quote that welcomes its clients, was born Silvia's bread: round. Large format. With sourdough is organic stone-ground flours. A honeycomb leavened product, slightly moist and with an imperceptible acidic note. There are the daily classics: the Tonda, a 3 kg form of type 2 soft wheat flour; there is the 1 kg durum wheat semolina bread and the mixed seed bread, also 1 kg. Then, on rotation, there is always a different integral on the shelf, "to try flavors, aromas and textures. This is bringing many customers closer to the idea of ​​wholemeal bread, because everyone finds their own. "

Every day an integral in rotation

The Tuesday is the day of the rye (Piedmont), the Wednesday of the Margherito, a variety of durum wheat (Sicily), the Thursday is located on spelled (Umbria), the Friday it's up to Sicilian evolutionary blend of soft grains, which has a slight licorice aftertaste. And to finish the Saturday there is what Silvia calls the Moro di Sicilia, «A mixture of mainly hard grains, which contains tumminie very dark which give a particular color and crazy aromas . More there is also a special bread every day, enriched with fruit or other ingredients. "That is no longer the daily bread, but a whim."

Bread is certainty, but also research

The choice to have three "classics" and of rotate the others it was dictated by the awareness that bread must be certainty. Customers must be offered a good, stable and pleasing product. To do this you need to know the flours, perhaps use less aromatic and easier to process. But bread is also research. Especially for a girl who graduated in Gastronomic Sciences before being hit by the so-called "bread disease". In the three years of studies he learned a enhance the complexity of the food, to recognize quality not only in the artisan gesture of those who make transformation, but also in the agricultural act of those who cultivate the raw material: "For me, giving value to the supply chains is not only a gastronomic priority, but also an ethical one".

Silvia receives the "Cultivate and Care" award

For all these reasons, Silvia is among the winners of Cultivating and Preserving, a appointment, scheduled until June 27, created by the Ceretto Wineries and the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo to enhance the good practices of the area. Now in its third edition, the theme of this year is bread, a symbol par excellence of the peasant tradition and today also of an ability to make innovation that focuses on the territoriality and sustainability of the entire agri-food chain.

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