Tag: street

Scaccia ragusana, tasty Sicilian street food – Italian Cuisine

That the Sicily is one of our greedy deposits where street food abounds can be said without hesitation. There is no corner of the island without ovens, delicatessens, simple kiosks offering tasty specialties traditional: from arancino / a – which with specific endings and variations is found throughout the region – to a myriad of oven-baked delicacies similar to pizzas and focaccias: from the Palermitan sfincione to the Catania-style cartocciata, to the Messina python. Also Ragusa has its own typical product, similar to no other: the scaccia, widespread throughout the area of the Iblei mountains. It is a thin layer of dough, folded several times and seasoned as the layers are made up. The ovens prepare it mostly in "maxi" format, to be cut into large slices, but it can also be single-portion and crescent-shaped, closed in pinches with the "rieficu", the typical cord.

Fillings in infinite variations
The popular cuisine of the past was teacher in combining a few, genuine products, easy to find and the Ragusa meat is no exception. As in most rustics, its seasoning is simple. The recipe recognized as more classic includes tomato sauce, extra virgin olive oil and Caciocavallo ragusano, today Dop cheese. From the unusual parallelepiped shape – which seems to have been made specifically to cut it into regular slices – this excellence of the area becomes more spicy after the first months of seasoning. It is certainly its flavor that gives the "zing", as a gastronomic criticism would say, to scaccia, bite after bite.
There are also a thousand other traditional fillings because, for the convenience of transport and consumption, the chase was once the meal that you brought with you when you went to work in the fields; so he stuffed himself with the vegetables, mostly eggplant fried and sautéed with tomato, or Fava beans is ricotta cheese, or again broccoli, according to the season. Just the type of filling has always been a controversial topic between Ragusa and the neighbor Modica, where the stuffing is also made with parsley and anchovies, and each city claims birthplace and original recipe of the scaccia. Probably, more than this diatribe, it is the infinite variations handed down in each family from mother to daughter that have not yet allowed the definition of a disciplinary that allows to register the Ragusan expulsion with the denomination – municipal or community – that would deserve a typical product and as old as bread itself, not yet fully valued and known outside Sicily.

The right wine
Nero d'Avola is the most important grape of south-eastern Sicily, widespread between the provinces of Syracuse and Ragusa, sometimes combined with pignatello, as in our case: the Eloro Pachino of the Salvatore Marino farm is the companion ideal of a rustic and immediate food, whose Mediterranean intensity and harmonious softness are shared by the blood and salty carnality of a simple, frank and generous red.

The word to the producers
For four years Fabrizio Occhipinti, with his wife Roberta, has started the artisan production of Scaccia ragusana, taking up the tradition of his grandmother Giovanna, on sale with the brand "le ragusane" at Delicatessen del Ragusa gastronomy, but the aim is to market it cooked and vacuum.
What ingredients do you use?
Quality raw materials produced within a radius of 20 km. I use stone-ground whole wheat flour from the soprano mill, which has selected local varieties of ancient grains such as Castiglione and Russello. As cheese I use the aged Caciocavallo ragusano, for the tomato sauce I get supplies from an important company in the area that processes cherry tomatoes.
How does the dough work?
I use whole wheat flour to get the flavors of the past. Being a "live" product, there is no need to add yeast. I work the dough without oil which I only add at the end, because first it would risk waterproofing the flour. After the rest, I divide the dough into loaves to obtain portion scaccia.
Tips for cottura?
In the home oven, the scacce by portion cook at 200 ° for 20-25 minutes, if the oven is ventilated 10 minutes longer.

Gourmand addresses
Giummarra bakery, Ragusa
Not far from the cathedral, open since 1950, it is among the most renowned bakeries in the city for bread and the wide choice of homemade scacce: stuffed with chard, spinach, aubergines, provola.
Distefano bakery, Ragusa
Selected grain bread, various types of scaccia, biscuits and party desserts produced by Giovanni Distefano which carries on the family tradition.
The baker Guastella, Ragusa
For generations, the Guastella family has been producing bread, scaccia, rustic and sweet specialties: breadcrumbs, cubaita, ricotta cake, cassatine, martorana fruit. The flours used (tinillia, russello, Senatore Cappelli and daisy), are zero km and stone ground. Sale also online.
San Giuseppe bakery, Marina di Ragusa (Rg)
Small restaurant in the center of the seaside resort offering bread, biscuits, arancini, pizza and scacce: with tomato and onion, tomato and cheese, aubergines and sausage.
Delicatessen in grocery store, Ragusa
Gastronomy also takeaway with sale of local products: in addition to fruit and vegetables at zero km, specialties such as bread, cheeses, salami and scacce "le ragusane" by Fabrizio Occhipinti

by Paola Mancuso
photo by Laura Spinelli
from Sale & Pepe Magazine April 2020

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South Africa's street surfers who recycle and save the ocean – Italian Cuisine

Thousands of kids, speeding through the streets of South Africa, collect and recycle tons of plastic waste, protecting the ocean. The documentary "Street Surfers" tells their incredible story

In South Africa only 10% of all waste generated is recycled while tons of garbage end up in the ocean, contributing to marine pollution and the global environmental impact. A few months ago the local environmental activists of The Litterboom Project, a project created to shed light on the seriousness of the problem and to convince the government to take action, shot and distributed a film made in the port city of Durban. In this video we see an alarming scenario, that is hundreds of plastic and garbage bottles that float in the waves and that cover a large part of the coasts. Although the resolution of this problem still seems far away, there are involuntary heroes who make a difference every day, or the so-called street surfers.

Ride the wave of change

Thousands of people in South Africa wake up at 3am every day they travel up to 50 kilometers, wandering the streets of the cities aboard a trolley with wheels, and rummaging through the rubbish they collect plastic and other materials to be recycled. rebaptized street surfer, as they dart with elegance and at high speed on the asphalt and in the traffic, there are over 100 thousand young people who, with their daily efforts, contribute up to 90% of the country's recycling. Yet these champions of the noble environmental mission are children who struggle to survive and who live in conditions of extreme poverty, without electricity, running water and sanitation. Recycling is their only source of income. Risking their lives every day, they do their best for a cleaner ocean and a paltry gain, or around 300 rand (15 euros) per 1000 kilograms of recyclable materials collected. Society snubs them and car drivers often try to impose themselves dangerously on the road, but this does not prevent these guys from finding energy every day to go on, without ever ceasing to smile.

"Street Surfers", the documentary by environmental surfer Frank Solomon

He told us about this incredible reality Frank Solomon, professional surfer and environmental activist of Cape Town. After learning about the work of these "surfers" he decided to make a documentary on their history, called Street Surfers. In particular Solomon decided to focus on the story of two of them, Thabo Mouti and Mokete Mokete. In the video we witness, in fact, the day spent together, first around the streets of Johannesburg aboard the trolleys, then in the collection center where the bottles and collected waste are sorted by them and finally in their humble home. Despite the stories about the daily difficulties to face, these friendly and welcoming kids they transmit energy, willpower, warmth and positivity and show the importance that family and a sense of community have for them.
To thank Thabo and Mokete for the welcome and for what they are doing for our planet, Frank Solomon takes them to see the ocean for the first time, and to ride that sea that every day help to make it cleaner. The documentary ends with an emotional gaze, lost in the waves of the sea, and a positive message: "In the world we are billions of people and if each of us, every single day, even collects just a plastic waste, we could live in a completely different world .

For some months now, the South African surfer has also launched a campaign, still active, on BackaBuddy for raise funds to be donated to Thabo and Mokete, in order to provide them with food, clothes and other basic necessities.

Photo: street-surfers africa oceans pollution_thesouthafrican.jpg
Photo: street surfer africa_documentary Frank Solomon.png

Hotteok: Korean street food pancakes – Italian Cuisine

Hotteok is one of the most popular Korean street food and consists of a sweet pancake served hot with a delicious stringy filling

You cannot take a trip in Korea without being tempted by one of the most famous e typical street food of the country, or the pancakes called hotteok (also called hoddeok or hodduk), particularly widespread in the city of Seoul and in general in the south of the country. These sweet and stuffed pancakes they are mainly sold in winter and can be bought on the street or cooked at home, as the preparation is not particularly complex. Let's then discover the characteristics and evolution of this special sweet snack for which Koreans are crazy.

A vendor cooks hotteok, a Korean sweet pancake, at a stall at the Seomun Market in Daegu, South Korea, on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. The disenchantment with President Park Geun-hye in her hometown of Daegu signals a wider shift in the nation's political landscape, where regional loyalties often hold greater sway among the electorate than policy platforms. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg — Street food in Korea: hotteok.

How Korean sweet pancakes are made

The hotteoks, introduced to Korea by Chinese immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century, are soft sweet pancakes, whose dough is made with a mix of flours, generally white flour and rice, milk or water, sugar and yeast. The original recipe provides that the dough is left to rise for several hours and that, before being cooked in a pan or on the plate, it is stuffed with a dark brown sugar filling, cinnamon and some ground nuts or seeds. The result is a thick pancake, from the outside slightly crunchy and a pleasantly juicy and stringy filling. Hotteoks cooked by street vendors are generally prepared on large plates and, once ready, folded in half and served inside paper cups, so as to avoid customers getting burned with boiling syrup. Koreans love to cook hotteoks even at home, following the traditional recipe or buying a ready-made mixture available on the market.

Characteristics and evolution of the hotteok

As often happens for street food, the traditional hotteok has also undergone several revisions and currently there are about fifty variants available. In the sweet version, pancakes can be prepared with a chocolate cream inside or with a typically Asian filling based on red beans. Even more recent and creative savory hotteok, with fillings of all kinds that go from vegetables to stringy cheese, up to those based on traditional Korean ingredients or dishes, such as those at kimchi (fermented vegetables with spices and seafood) and al bulgogi (a dish based on marinated and grilled beef). In some cases the white dough of the pancakes comes colored with Korean tea powder or with various aromas. Finally, there are also thicker variations that are fried, making them similar to our donuts, or cooked on the plate like waffles.