Tag: shop

San Martino biscuits from the Delizia pastry shop – Italian Cuisine

On 11 November, in Sicily, the Saint is celebrated with cookies bearing his name: on the occasion of the party – and given the situation – the Delizia pastry shop delivers them directly to your home

In difficult times, such as the current one, we like to find refuge and comfort in popular and family traditions:11 November is the day of Saint martin, a popular festival associated, in ancient Sicily, with the opening of the barrels after the harvest and the tasting of the new wine. In Palermo and in the province, in this period, the custom of preparing i San Martino biscuits, to be dipped in Moscato or Passito. The cake has the shape of a large round loaf and in addition to the dry variant there is a soft one, with ricotta filling, and then another richer and more decorated one, with cedar preserves.

The legend

The feast of San Martino was deeply felt in the peasant world. The traditional sweets of that day were the sfinci di San Martino, leavened dough pancakes enriched with fennel seeds and sprinkled with honey, which were already sold in the stalls of Palermo during the Middle Ages. It was then the nuns who reworked this dessert, adding lard to the dough and cooking it in the oven. Thus they created a biscuit to be stuffed (in Sicilian viscotto chino, stuffed biscuit) with ricotta or preserves, intended for aristocratic tables. According to historians, it was the custom of the nuns to never miss a box of San Martino biscuits for their confessor on the Saint's day. In the archive of the monastery of Santa Caterina in Palermo, the expense notes are still preserved containing the biscuits of San Martino donated to the painters who frescoed the interior of the beautiful Baroque church. For the people, who could not afford the luxury of this delight, there was instead a simpler variant, namely a hard biscuit to be dipped in fortified wine. On November 11, St. Martin's Day, the cookies were usually given by the nuns to the poor, to remember the generous gesture of Martino: according to legend, the young man during a snowfall deprived himself of his cloak to offer it to a poor cold beggar, met on the street. God wanted to reward that noble gesture and suddenly the sun reappeared. Hence the famous summer of San Martino.

Biscuits of San Martino, Sicily, Palermo. — San Martino biscuits.

Pastry Delight

Giuseppe and Mauro Lo Faso, respectively father and son, are the owners of the renowned Delizia di Bolognett pastry shopto, a small town on the outskirts of Palermo. The two pastry chefs offer in this period the typical autumn dessert, to be purchased directly in the pastry shop or to be ordered at home. As for the soft version, you can choose between two sizes, mignon to mitigate the feelings of guilt and large for the sweet tooth, and two different fillings, classic ricotta or pistachio ricotta. The decorated variant of the biscuit is also available, with external icing and an internal compote of candied fruit, pumpkin and cedar. All the desserts of the Lo Faso have always been characterized by the attention paid to the selection of raw materials (they do not allow semi-finished products) and by the artisanal preparation techniques. For the stuffed San Martino biscuits, for example, they only use raw ricotta from the pastures of the area which is then sweetened in the laboratory. The dough, on the other hand, is double leavened (usually only one is made), one of the great passions of the young Mauro Lo Faso – one of the most talented pastry chefs in Sicily – along with panettone and chocolate.

Wine pairing

For pairing wine with this traditional dessert, we recommend an iconic label such as Ben Ryè, award-winning passito di Pantelleria produced by Donnafugata in the small volcanic island suspended between Europe and Africa.

To order the San Martino biscuits

The Delizia pastry shop is open every day – except Wednesdays – from 7 to 19 (break from 13:30 to 15) for take-away, while for the home the service is available from 9 to 20 by calling 091 8724324.

Pastry Delight
Corso Vittorio Emanuele 38 – 90030 Bolognetta (Palermo)
Tel. +39 0918724324

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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 flask shop has become 2 Michelin stars. Where fried food is a must – Italian Cuisine

Antica Osteria da Cera in Campagna Lupia serves only fish. For more than 50 years. A legendary mixed fried that has never left the menu. Since when for the workers of Mestre and Marghera …

Silence. You need the silence of the Venetian countryside to listen to the dishes of Lionello Cera, two Michelin stars in Campagna Lupia, on the Romea state road, the one that leads from Venice to Chioggia. "Simplicity is the most difficult concept to interpret," says a phrase at the opening of the menu, the only one for a two-Michelin-star restaurant across Europe to provide only fish. Meat does not enter, there is a vegetarian path, but here the philosophy "from bones to pulp" applies, which sounds a bit like the concept of nose-to-tail that has radically changed the way we eat and cook. Nothing is thrown away and not only of the pig, but without unnecessary complications. Raw or just seared fish. Cold, warm and hot fish. Fish enhanced by extractions, juices, sauces, comics and fish soups. Fish on fish, investigating the deepest soul of the lagoon catch.

From the flask to the stars

The history of Antica Osteria da Cera begins in 1966 when the Cera family opens a flask shop in the old grandparents' house. "Seasonal, with a demijohn at the center of the table and a few snacks for lunch and a little frying in the afternoon. The first years by renewing the license for three months in three months … we are now 53 years old , laughs Lionello. «My mother Silvana cooked, then ten years later we made the first room that only opened on Sunday evening: tablecloths and paper napkins and 350 people who took turns to eat the fry. There was only that, then over the years we have put the mussels, then the boiled shrimp. After 2 years of hotel accommodation, I retired and I came to help too, as my brothers did. " Together they transformed this place from a tavern into a gourmet restaurant, where however time has kept going back to its origins. "I am the son of fishermen, I don't do the kitchen of exasperation, I do dishes and techniques that I know. They are a restaurant more in matter than in technique . Work on bones? «A statement. If I cook fish with fishbone I have a taste, if I remove the fishbone I have another one, but in the fish restaurant it must be served barbed. Then working on broths and concentrations obtained from bones, we return the original, amplified taste . In the menu you can read preparations such as turbot milk or iodized water, or a comic book made of water and marinated clams passed in ice to obtain a water that smells like sea to be used as a base for various dishes.

The lagoon menu

The lagoon has a unique flavor, neither of sea nor of land, an ecosystem that was very rich 30 years ago. «By now, little or no fish are caught, just small bream, red mullet, scorpion fish, go, shrimp, shrimp, shrimp. It was the time when the mists cut them with a knife; today there are only mists, by comparison. The climate is changing and in ten years everything will change ". In honor of its lagoon and gods and fish from the Upper Adriatic, a 12-course tasting menu was born that changes in every season and that fishes in the sea of memory, returning them to the present. In spring Subioti appear with mackerel and zottoi juice in tecia, a type of handmade pasta prepared in Venetian palaces, the mullet-based Scarpetta with their thorns, left to marinate in seawater for 24 hours. It is played with Tramezzino with anchovies or grilled sardines. More classic are the Bigoi coe sardee, the Broetto of cod and puína and the inevitable fried, which has never left the menu. Crunchy, perfect, tasty, pure and light; ordered by all loyal customers in the area in memory of times gone by.

The new bistro, like a country bar

It is also for them that the Cera have opened a new bistro a few kilometers away. «A bar with local cuisine, open from breakfast to evening. Let's go back to what we were 50 years ago: a country bar. For lunch we offer a vegetable buffet and a small espresso card, easy things. And in the evening the aperitif, starting at 4pm. As my mom did who prepared it for the workers of Mestre and Marghera. All with a modern cut, but without missing Sardinian saor, creamed cod, black cuttlefish, Venetian liver .

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