CINQUE DI MAYO

We are just back from a short vacation in Puerto Rico where we enjoyed a few relaxing days of sun in the tropics before a busy season of Seattle Cheese Festival, the Summer Fancy Food Show, and the usual RITROVO intense work schedule.

In spite of our occasional cravings for a pour of Trampetti Extra Virgin Olive Oil or the crunchy goodness of Primopan Cookies, or perhaps a Tenuta Cocevola Fennel Cracker to munch beside a mango smoothie, we reveled in the local flavors of tropical Puerto Rico. At Casa Lola Criollo kitchen in San Juan, we feasted on tuna ceviche with plantain chips as well as their signature crispy coconut–sesame calamari.  On Vieques Island we feasted on a complete locavore dinner in the port town of Isabel Segunda featuring locally-fished rock lobster and conch salads, dense plantain pancakes (with purely imported bottled French dressing), and one of the best dessert flans we have ever eaten. And we watched unforgettable island sunsets while sipping pineapple, mint, mango, and other tropical-flavored drinks.

So before we dive back into container-loads of Italian food sales, marketing, and importing we want to savor our holiday-in-Puerto-Rico feeling with a few recipes that will also fit in perfectly on this Saturday Cinco di Mayo.

RITROVO® Fennel-Citrus Salsa

1 jar Peccati di Ciacco Grilled Fennel
1 large orange
¼ cup fresh mint
2 Tbsp. Acetorium Gewurtztrainer Vinegar
2 Tbsp. Casina Rossa Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Piranske Soline fior di sale to taste

Remove fennel slices from jar, reserving liquid. Place in a glass bowl. Chop fennel finely and place in a bowl.  Remove all peel and white pith from orange and dice finely over the glass bowl, allowing juice to drain in the bowl. Add oil, vinegar, and salt to taste.  Chop mint and add to salsa just before serving. Great with seafood or grilled chicken or pork.

RITROVO® Pineapple-White Balsamic Drink

2 cups fresh pineapple chunks
2 Tbsp. RITROVO SELECTIONS™ White Balsamic Vinegar
2 Tbsp. Dr. Pescia Acacia Honey
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice

Process all ingredients in a food processor. Taste for sweetness. The lime juice and honey can be adjusted for a sweeter or more tart drink.  Add still water, sparkling water, or spirits to your desired drink strength, and serve over ice.

 Ceviche di Pesce Bianco with Feudo delle Ginestre Rosato Abruzzo Wine Vinegar

1 lb white fish such as tilapia or sole
1/2 cup Feudo delle Ginestre Rosato Abruzzo Wine Vinegar
1 small piece ginger, chopped
1/2 cup lime juice
Casina Rossa Fiori & Salt  to taste
pepper to taste
1 clove garlic
chopped cilantro
Optional: Michele Ferrante Controne Hot Pepper sprinkled over the top!

Marinate fish in lime juice & vinegar, with ginger and garlic, salt and pepper, and cilantro, for 15-20 min. Serve with Tenuta Castello Rubata Grissini with Rice Flour.

Ritrovo Recipes for Easter

 

On Easter morning, a fresh-baked sweet seemed to be in keeping with a Ritrovo foodstyle. Fresh baked goods remind us of all the simple yet flavorful baked goods that are so much a part of Easter in Italy. There are the sweet colombe–light risen dough breads shaped like flying doves and topped with granular sugar, the cookie-like crostate, dense citrusy pastiera napoletana, grain and ricotta filled sweet pies, and savory loaves filled with nuggets of cheese and smoky prosciutto. These are always shared around a large table filled with friends and family, at the end of a meal that includes some roasted meats and potatoes and of course fresh spring produce like the very first of the season artichokes, agretti, or even fresh fava beans.

Our RITROVO® Easter baked good is half way between cookie and cake. As it is adapted from an Italian recipe, it makes enough for 3 whole rounds (enough to serve a festive Italian extended family), but you can easily halve the recipe. It is a great way to smell and taste the nuances of the current harvest extra virgin olive oil. This year’s Tenuta Cocevola is fruity and bold, with less butteriness than in previous harvests. When the cake is baking in the oven, its aromas and those of the vin santo left our warm Easter kitchen filled with notes of fennel, dried raisins, and even a little vanilla.

RITROVO® New Olive Oil Crumbly Cookie-Cake with Tuscan Vin Santo

2-1/3 cups RITROVO SELECTIONS™ Ultimo Forno “00” Flour
1 cup organic sugar
½ tsp. RITROVO SELECTIONS™ Piran Fior di Sale
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 cup RITROVO SELECTIONS™ Tenuta Cocevola Extra Virgin Olive Oil
½ cup Vin Santo
rind of one lemon
1 jar (1.7 g) RITROVO SELECTIONS™ 100% Italian Pinenuts

Line the bottoms of 3 8-inch pie tins or 3 round springform pans with cooking parchment.

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Mix together dry ingredients. Add olive oil, wine, and lemon rind to the center of the dry mixture and mix until well blended and uniform.

Divide the mixture evenly into the three pans and press down to form a smooth top. Using a fork, make a design in the edge around each cake using the tines of the fork. Press 1/3 of the pinenuts into the top center of each cake.

Bake in oven until lightly brown around the edges (or a little browner if you like a more toasty flavor), about 25-30 minutes. Allow to cool. This is great topped with a vanilla, crème fraiche, or other simple ice cream or whipped cream.

Be sure to share with friends of family in the spirit of Easter in Italy.

The Upside Down Fork

Over the last few weeks we have stopped drinking wine at our house. Two certified sommeliers have decided to live a different way for a few months, eschewing alcohol. This decided change has not only impacted our drinking behavior but also focused our mealtime energies in a new and mind-opening way.

• without our formerly daily Happy Hour, we have more time to relaxingly cook and prep together
• for now we focus our flavors only on the foods we bring together, without consideration of wine-pairing. This has made for some new creative food combinations
• we have saved a lot of money at restaurants by not buying wine
• we have less distractions at mealtime so that our conversation and just being together time is enhanced
• we have begun to make mixes of juices, mineral water, and RITROVO® ingredients for our dinner beverages. This has been very creative and fun
•  we have discovered new ways to enjoy the foods at some of our favorite restaurants. At Joule Restaurant in Wallingford we enjoyed an amazing sensory-rich meal with no alcohol. We were amazed to find that they offered a non-alcoholic fruit and vinegar-based drinking shrub on their menu that—like a good wine—paired beautifully with their food and enhanced the whole meal.

Naturally, we don’t ask or advise anyone else to make these or any other changes that we have. If we go out to dinner with friends, they can drink whatever they please. But for us it has been a growth experience to make a small change in our daily behavior that we hope will bring us a new and different appreciation of our lives.

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The Real Italy, Part 2

Dried porcini mushrooms, like Italian truffles, are another controversial “Italian” product, often requested by RITROVO® customers. To understand Italian porcini mushrooms better, we were directed on one of our visits to Italy to drive through the bucolic hinterlands around Borgotaro, Italy, a tiny village tucked in a geographic niche between Liguria, Piemonte and Emilia-Romagna. Its quirky location means it is the gastronomic home to a mixed regional bag of food sources like croxetti (typical of Liguria), vacca rossa cows whose milk is used to produce parmigiano reggiano, and IGP porcini mushrooms. While the IGP status ensures that porcini mushrooms are grown and harvested in this zone, it does not guarantee that they are the ones used to make dried porcini mushrooms.

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The Real Italy, Part 1

Recently, treatises like Tom Mueller’s book Extra Virginity and a 60 Minutes episode on Italian truffles have brought to the forefront issues of which food products coming out of Italy – and other countries – are real and which are not.

As importers of real 100% Italian Pine Nuts– a banner of our commitment to seeking out and importing real Italian raw materials– we have always sought to clarify our commitment to importing and portraying the real Italy and its real food products. The consumer world can blur perceptions and information about real Italian foods so much that even we ourselves occasionally begin to shake our heads and feel the need to go back to our Italian sources for clarification.

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Pane e Amore

We have fallen in love with Matera IGP bread since first slicing its massive crust and dough during the Winter Fancy Food Show. From the first time we cut thick slices off of the loaf, starting from the rocky, crusted end through to the first small slices and on into the hulking inner tender and golden interior, it was like passing through the stages of life or delving into the geologic strata. There is something epic and awe-inspiring about a bread baked into an 8 kilo form. To think of all the meals it can make, all the people it can feed, all the bits that will remain after it is sliced to make into pazanella, bread crumb topping, croutons or French toast. One bread will be like a small life, well-lived, full of intense flavors.

And with the show behind us and the last thick slices of leftover 2-week old bread still lingering in the pantry, we are living the last moments of this bread’s lifespan.

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Fancy Food Show 2012 RITROVO® Highlights

 

In Italy Ferragosto is the mid-August holiday where people return to their village of birth or travel to some vacation site to gather with all their closest friends. There they share good food, good company, and good times.

For RITROVO®, the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco is a bit like a “Ferr-Gennaio”, a January festival: it is an energy-filled – if demanding – gathering where we get to meet and share our latest food and news with returning and new customers. During the rest of the year we can only talk to these people on the phone, without seeing their faces or tasting products convivially together. At RITROVO® it is a highlight of the year when they can join us in our booth for this social January event that is a true RITROVO® event, which we can call “Ferr-Gennanio” in imitation of Ferragosto.

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42 New RITROVO SELECTIONS™ for 2012

Happy New Year 2012!

At RITROVO® we will be celebrating well into the New Year having brought to you 42 New RITROVO SELECTIONS™ for 2012. These selections include products in each of our 10 product lines and feature 5 new RITROVO® producers:

• L’Ultimo Forno – Artisan Baked Goods from Basilicata
• Madonna Dell’Olivo – extra virgin olive oil from Campania
• Pasta di Aldo – egg pastas from LeMarche
• Piranski Soline – sea salt from the Piran saltpans
• Tavolozze – the delicious new snacking cracker from the Veneto

View a selection of these delicious products on the “NEW PRODUCTS” page of our website. At the bottom of each webpage is a link to our new 2012 Product Catalog. Please be patient for the catalog download as it is full of product photos, recipes, and information about each of our producers.

Buon Anno Nuovo and Buon Apetito!
RITROVO® ITALIAN REGIONAL FOODS LLC

 

Revering the Holiday Season

 

One of the best Christmas holidays we ever spent in Italy was trekking out of  Montalcino. On that Christmas Day, under a somber sky we left the nearly deserted village for a walk to the venerable church of Sant’Antimo. Built in 1120 to honor a healing visit of Charlemagne, it stunned us with its simple design and location in the midst of rolling hills and typical country vegetation like scotch broom, olive and cypress trees. Since in Italy on that day most families are either at home or in church, we could walk through the countryside with only birdsong and the sound of our footfalls. After a couple of easy hours’ walking, we arrived at the solid exterior of Sant’Antimo. Stepping into the candlelit interior we were surprisingly greeted with the sonorous and reverent sounds of Gregorian chanting. Though a winter chill pervaded the heavy-walled stone church, we stayed mesmerized by the chanting until it was done, imbibing the resonant sounds inside stone walls permeated with centuries of faith and worship.

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SPECIALTY FOOD IMPORTERS – AND MORE

We created RITROVO^® almost fifteen years ago, upon our return to the United States. Six years of living, working, and studying regionally focused, Italian foods had led us to the perfect stateside career: specialty food importer. The term seemed to say it all – evoking the exotic, alluding to the transformative, and hinting at the lucrative.

And we love what we do. Nevertheless, we have learned that importing specialty foods is a demanding, multi-faceted occupation. It requires a can-do attitude, in a variety of capacities, to complete the voyages of every RITROVO SELECTION™. Our many roles at RITROVO^® include:

Passionate Travelers and ‘Interculturalists’: We have traveled tens of thousands of kilometers throughout the Italian countryside and elsewhere to explore new possibilities. We also do this to connect with our producers and their families, where they work and live, in their own language. This deepens our connection with them and enriches our collegiality. It also fortifies our commitment to each other’s success and rekindles our passion for what we at RITROVO^® do. All the while, it increases our knowledge of Italy’s cultural and culinary diversity.

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