Our Authors

Meet Teddy Menard

Teddy Menard
How To, Techniques
Leave a comment

How to Make Espresso in a Moka Coffeemaker

Components:

 

    • Boiler
    • Basket
    • Chamber

 

What You’ll Need:

  • Coffee ground to espresso setting or slightly coarser
  • Dish towel or oven mitt
  • Kettle or electric water boiler

 

Method:

Step One: Boiling (optional but strongly recommended)

Boil water
Boil enough water to fill the Moka Pot boiler up to its release valve. Starting with boiled water is beneficial to the extraction process – it limits the possibility of burning the coffee grounds, which produces off-flavors. But it is not wrong to just fill the Moka Pot boiler straight away with water of any temperature, it will just take slightly longer for the water to get to steaming temperature inside the mechanism. IF YOU USE PRE-BOILED WATER, THE OUTSIDE OF THE BOILER WILL BE VERY HOT. USE A DISH TOWEL OR OVEN MITT FOR ALL CONTACT WITH THE BOILER.

Step Two: Filling the Boiler

Fill boiler with water up to, but not beyond, the midway point of the release valve
Fill the Moka Pot boiler up to the midway point of its release valve, but no higher, with pre-boiled water. Overfilling will cause displaced water to leach into the basket containing the coffee grounds, water-logging them when the object is to extract solely through steam passing through the grounds. The water-log caused by overfilling will lead to off-flavors and an imbalanced extraction.

Step Three: Loading the Grounds

Moka 017Fill basket with coffee grounds, level out, and place inside the boiler
Fill the basket with coffee of your choice, ground to an espresso setting or just slightly coarser. You want the volume of the basket to be filled evenly. Once you’ve scooped enough coffee grounds to fill the chamber, lightly level out the surface of the coffee so it is flush with the lip of the basket. DO NOT TAMP THE COFFEE! The Moka Pot is equipped to withhold only a moderate amount of pressure, and tamping the coffee grounds can impede the movement of steam from the boiler through the basket and into the chamber. This will cause an uneven extraction at least, and at worst the results can be, literally, explosive. So just brush off the excess grounds, wipe away any that are clinging to the outside surface of the basket as well, and place the basket into its snug resting place inside the boiler.

Step Four: Closing the System

Screw chamber onto boiler until just tight – then give an extra quarter turn
Screw on the chamber until just tight, then screw another quarter rotation to firm up its connection to the boiler to avoid any pressure leaks. Remember the outside of the boiler will be hot if you’ve used pre-boiled water, so hold only with a dish towel or oven mitt. Once the chamber is screwed on, be sure to pop open the lid so you can monitor the upcoming action!

Step Five: Heating

Put your Moka Pot on medium-low heat
Place your Moka Pot on the stove-top and heat on medium-low. Be mindful of the placement of the handle, which is plastic – accidentally melting this is a tragic sensory compromise that strongly overshadows the coffee aroma you were hoping for, and the burnt plastic smell will linger in your kitchen for hours or even days. I always turn the handle to the outside of the burner.

Step Six: Extracting

Moka 016Watch Your Coffee!
As the water in the boiler turns to steam, pressure forces it to rise up into the basket. It continues through the basket, extracting vitamins, oils, caffeine, and all the flavors that are soluble at that temperature range from the coffee grounds. It rises into the small, dual-opening channel within the chamber, recondensed into liquid form as coffee!

The extraction occurs in a few stages: the first bit of coffee that escapes into the chamber is typically a bubbly, light-hazel honey colored foam. Quickly after this first spurt, the coffee will begin to stream through both openings, running down the channel in the chamber as a thin, cherry-dark, syrupy ink with a thoughtful constancy. Coffee will stream through like this and at this pace for almost the entire extraction process. As the extraction nears its end, the coffee begins to thin significantly and become pale, almost straw-colored.

Step Seven: Stop Extraction

Remove Moka Pot from heat, run boiler under cold water to halt extraction
Learning when to stop the extraction is the true art of the Moka Pot. The extraction will continue until all of the water from the boiler has passed through the grounds into the chamber. But the flavors change dramatically toward the end of the process, and knowing what taste profile you desire will inform how long you allow the coffee to extract. As a general rule, cutting your extraction short, as the coffee is still prominently dark and streaming, before or just as it becomes light in color and puffing bubbles through the channel, will produce a rich, robust, concentrated drink. BUT DO NOT BE FOOLED: THE EXTRACTION WILL NOT STOP JUST BY REMOVING THE MOKA POT FROM HEAT. To stop extraction, you must cool the boiler rapidly. I blast the bottom of the pot – the boiler component – under cold water for 5 seconds or so, until coffee stops passing through into the chamber. For more pure volume, you can allow the extraction to go longer, knowing that the tail of the extraction period is pulling less and different soluble components out of the beans. This will water down the overall flavor of your drink and can produce a less delicate, balanced tone in your coffee. Whichever way you choose, enjoy your drink!

Moka 015

Making the Perfect Espresso Read more

Components:   What You’ll Need: Coffee ground to espresso setting or slightly coarser Dish towel or oven mitt Kettle or electric water boiler   Method: Step One: ...

First We Eat, Our Family Table
Leave a comment

Drinking In Italy

Moka 019

It’s hard to contribute to a blog entitled “La Dolce Vita” (The Sweet Life) at a time when life actually feels quite bitter. The Coronavirus pandemic has levied incalculable hardship, despair, and uncertainty on such a broad scale, altering our individual psyches and the safety of entire nations. For the housing insecure, shelter in place order cannot easily be met; for the food insecure, grocery essentials and group meal resources are scarce; for the immuno-compromised and elderly, every human interaction carries great risk. Health and safety precautions have been meted out, landing us in quarantine. And yet, despite the closure of standard commerce, this is a time of great work. That is, there is challenging, creative, and necessary work to do with and for those who are most vulnerable at this time, whether by encouraging local governments to open vacant hotel rooms, providing food goods to shelters and community centers, or by maintaining physically distanced emotional and social connection with loved ones. It is also a time for self work, and for many, there has indeed been a lot of time. Exercising our mental and emotional wellbeing is a constant effort and is of utmost importance regardless of circumstance – at this time, we happen to be facing more as a more collective unit these challenges that we often grapple with in isolation.

The increased time spent at home has significantly restructured the paces and routines of our daily lives. For many, without the constancy of our jobs, time may feel it has folded upon itself and expanded in size. This is, in fact, a blessing – a resource we can utilize for greater work, both unto others and for ourselves. We have greater opportunity for unmitigated introspection, deep thought, and reflection. I have revisited memories through emotional recall, searching my mental rolodex for the soft, satiny, warm-glowing experiences of my life to buoy the current turbulence. Often, I find myself returning to the spray of wind biking Umbria’s rolling hillscapes, preparing a soffrito at Chef Simone’s restaurant in the quiet hours between late-departing lunch patrons and late-arriving dinner guests, the tip-of-the-tongue, tingly adventurousness of accompanying an Italian host on a seemingly straightforward errand only to find yourself in a fully unexpected and delightful series of cascading circumstances, often including free beverages and new friends made. I am saturated with the feeling of Umbria, my breath is enriched, my heart beats slower and more fully, my taste buds begin to salivate. I experience relief, gratitude, excitement, tranquility. For me, this is the happy place people tell you to think about in times of distress. In quarantine, I have discovered a tool that without fail allows me to remember these times spent in Umbria, re-center, and find some emotional sovereignty: the Moka Pot.

Moka 015I have never entered a home in Umbria without being offered un caffe by its resident. Most homes now have a Keurig or Nespresso machine that makes a concentrated shot out of a pre-packaged pod. Every home has a moka pot, or more typically several of varying size. The moka pot is an iconic Italian totem, an understated and finely elegant machine of great utility and exceptional function. The octagonal-designed stainless steel is ubiquitous there, and even to those here who’ve never seen it before, its shape and structure suggest it as innately Italian and absolutely coffee-related. The moka pot is my twice (sometimes thrice) daily ritual. Everything that goes into making coffee in the moka pot – the deliberate and structured pacing, the emblematic design and Bialetti logoman, the finger-smoothing of the grounds in the brew basket, the rich expression of color and movement as the coffee percolates, the essential smell of thoroughly extracted coffee – returns me to my experiences in Umbria. The roughly 10 minutes I spend in the morning getting water hot enough to steam through ground beans transports me in place and temporality to another country, and the few sumptuous sips I consume can extend my mental stay there throughout the rest of my day – or until I get the craving for another cup! And despite how good it tastes and what could easily be ascribed to a mild caffeine dependence, I insist that my drive to “bang a ‘spressy” in the morning is founded upon the ritual of it. I could get caffeinated from tea, or stoop so low as to reach for the fresh-brewed pot of “American coffee” in the carafe on the counter, right next to my beloved Bialetti. For me, such a simple thing as still having coffee in the morning – coffee the way I like it, the way I make it, to drink at my pace – builds an amount of certainty that helps soften and reframe the perilous situation we face. It is part of my self-work of preservation and comfort in tumultuous times, and it also illuminates the perspective of privilege from which I am able to be relatively safe in a time where great masses of people are not, the work for others that stands as an imperative. I endeavor to unbind my empathy, apply thoughtful circumspection, and generate actionable plans to help meet the needs of communities and individuals struggling through this global health crisis. There are few things like a good cup of coffee and plenty of time on your hands to help get work done.

Comfort through the ritual of a morning espresso Read more

It’s hard to contribute to a blog entitled “La Dolce Vita” (The Sweet Life) at a time when life actually feels quite ...

Home and Abroad, Life in Italy
Leave a comment

Teddy’s Cannara

The small town of Cannara, my temporary home during my 3 month Italian sojourn, is undeniably small. And this is a great thing! The 10 or so minute stroll from the idyllic countryside farmhouse to town center brings you past the single supermarket, the pizzeria, the bank, the hardware/convenience store, the town monument, then plops you down at the bar. I’m using the definite (the) rather than indefinite (a/an) article here because, well you can be sure it’s the bar because it’s the only one in town. While on one hand this means fewer options, you don’t need anything else when you arrive to Bar Blue Sky and the baristas know how you take your coffee, or you start to pick up the rules of the card game that seemingly every male over the age of 60 in the town congregates to play in the late afternoon every day. For two weeks each year, however, this small town becomes the center of Italian cultural and culinary fascination during the Festa della Cipolla.
IMG_0439
Cannara is known throughout Italy, and to some extent even throughout Europe, as the place where the best onions are grown. The onion is the agricultural legacy of Cannara, and this two-week long festival celebrates the bulb by opening pop-up restaurants throughout the town with onion themed menus. All the cooking sends out the smell of onion through the town and beyond, drawing visitors in on the scent streams from far and wide. And a crazy thing happens – this small town suddenly becomes absolutely bustling! An estimate of visitors over the two weeks I received from every Umbrian I know was between 60,000 and 70,000. This is for a town that my own estimate would say has about 1,000 residents, so you can imagine the change of scenery!

 

At nights during the festa, the town is alive with dangling lights, live music, local artisan vendors selling their wares, and, of course, innumerable onion dishes from which to choose at the various temporary restaurants. Hiring a staff to work for only two weeks is likely a tall task, so they skip it altogether – the employees are composed of town locals, coming in pretty much any age imaginable (I’ve seen some 7 year old-waiters and some 70 year old-waiters) who volunteer when they can throughout the course of the celebration. And because everyone is excited to try the once-a-year food options, the lines are huge. Arriving late on the last night of the festival, Cal and I had no time to wait and instead pulled the real clever move of eating at the best actual restaurant in Cannara – Perbacco – with the talented chef Ernesto and his delightful wife and host Simona.
We ate roasted onion; we ate onion soup; we ate onion pizza; we ate onion cream; we ate onion ice cream (shockingly good). It was a full meal and a satisfying meal, and Ernesto made the perfect wine recommendation for two novice drinkers – he so casually explained that the bottle of wine satisfied all of the specific areas of our interest (from Umbria, dry, not heavy but with enough body, spontaneous fermentation) without us even giving him any criteria. And, lo and behold, two novice drinkers finishing a whole bottle of wine together (and a digestivo) led to a pretty fun evening! We stayed at the restaurant for about three hours, taking up conversation with the Dutch spouses seated next to us and reveling in the fashion choices of the visiting population ambling our typically sleepy streets.
IMG_0467

 

To end the night, we made our way to the Onion Disco Pub. To my knowledge, this outdoor bar and venue is closed for all but these two weeks of the year, so you have to know that folks make the most of its brief opening. The music bumps from here across town most nights of the festival, and it is where people gather after having dined on their onions and need to start – or keep – drinking. It was the largest – and youngest – crowd I’ve ever seen in Cannara, singing along to the band’s covers of classic Italian pop hits. Once tired, we left the scene and headed home, thankful for the short walk from the center of our small town.

 

A dopo,

 

Teddy

Cannara Festa della Cipolla (Onion Festival) Read more

The small town of Cannara, my temporary home during my 3 month Italian sojourn, is undeniably small. And this is a great thing! ...

Adventure, Casa, Culture, Experience Italy, Home and Abroad, Life in Italy, People
Leave a comment

Teddy’s Letters from Umbria – Part 2

Blog post 20180917 5The adventures in Umbria continue, with a new featured player experiencing the rustic countryside for the first time. My best friend Cal arrived just about two weeks ago and, after a quick acclimation in Rome to Italian time (both the time zone and also the way hours work a bit slower here), we took the scenic train ride away from the city and toward Umbria, the green heart of Italy.

Cal and I went to college together, are rock climbing partners, artistic collaborators, lived together this past year in Los Angeles and, perhaps most of all, share a similar ethic around the joys of preparing food with and for those we love. What better place to delve into this passion than in Umbria? We settled into our routine of adventure with immediacy and great delight, reveling in our early morning exercise, followed by a long and slow breakfast preparation with the eggs from our lovely birds and produce from the orto at the farmhouse. We take turns brewing coffee in the moka pot – one as we start to cook and a second batch just as we sit down to eat, making sure to steam our milk only if the clock still reads before 11am. The food scraps from the morning meal get walked over to the birds as an extra treat, then we linger at an outside table to work on the day’s crossword. As usual, any number of thoughtfully planned or curious and improvised adventures await us.

A black truffle. The official fungus of Umbria.
A black truffle. The official fungus of Umbria.

In these two weeks, Cal has ascended the ranks (i.e., supplanted me) in the kitchen at le Delizie del Borgo, our friend Simone’s restaurant in nearby Bevagna, effectively serving as sous chef and doing a damn fine job: a guest sent explicit compliments back to the chef for the Umbrian classic uovo morbido, the elevated Italian brother to our scrambled eggs – not knowing it was l’americano Cal who had executed the dish flawlessly on his first attempt! Meanwhile, I’ve ventured into the server’s world which has proved a highly encouraging environment to hone my Italian and let out my inner sprezzatura, a necessary nonchalance that all waiters in Italy are seemingly dripping with.

Outside of Simone’s kitchen, we have been spending heaps of time in … our kitchen. At the farmhouse, every meal can be envisioned just by stepping out into the backyard. We’ve strung together all manner of immediately fresh, holistically healthy (if you consider using a lot of olive oil healthy), unreasonably tasty meals in a setting that Cal has been describing as “magical” – when he has the words the express the feeling.

On our day off last week we took the bike path from Cannara to Montefalco which, given the fact that we got slightly lost, ended up taking about two hours. After having scaled some serious hills, we luxuriated in the beautiful square, walked the entire circumference of the town, sat and had coffee and some time to draw, and ran into just about every person I know with even a loose connection to Montefalco along with making some new friends at some of the local businesses. Among these happenstance visits were assorted members of the Pardi family, all of whom had eagerly been awaiting the arrival of Cal to set into motion an opportunity for us to all spend time together. We made the obligatory stop at the family winery to say hello to Albertino, the man who runs the business, and we unexpectedly left with plans for him drive a 60 gallon stainless steel fermentation tank over to the farmhouse to assist in a batch of beer we will be brewing in October, as well as talk of him contributing an oak barrel as well to age our sure-to-be spectacular beer.

Speaking of beer, the hops that I planted last year in hopes of convincing a local winemaker to help me make a beer here (thanks Albertino!) have just been harvested! The hops are now dried, vacuum sealed, and keeping fresh in the fridge, along with some green Italian figs (known as both dotato or kadota figs) being stored in the freezer that will be added to the beer after it finishes its first fermentation. Instead of buying yeast, we are going to collect a sample of local ambient yeast from the rich biodiversity of our garden at la Fattoria del Gelso, and we will use local barley and other grains as the base. After running the brewing club at my college (yes, I know, pretty sweet) and working in a brewery right after school, this situation is what I would consider the ideal. More news on that to come with the arrival of my brewing partner from college and tour guide of one of the best sour beer breweries in the US next month!

This makes me very hoppy.
This makes me very hoppy.

Not to miss out on the climbing while we’re in Italy, Cal and I managed to find one of the most unexpected experiences one could imagine. In the town of Serra San Quirico about two hours away, there is a yearly climbing festival that takes rope climbers onto the high cliff walls that surround the town. However, the locals also curate much shorter routes throughout the medieval architecture of the town, climbing on the old tower, in a brick archway tunnel from maybe the 1300s, or up the face of the town fortress wall to a window that was once used to shoot arrows at approaching enemies. We spent the day touring this unbelievable historic town while also climbing all over it. For many climbers, there is a challenging balance between spending time in the city and getting to climb outdoors – we got both at the same time!

We spent another day harvesting grapes, this time for our friends the Pardis. Seemingly, the crew didn’t account for what naturals Cal and I would be because all together we finished a supposedly 5 hour job in just under 3 hours. Thanks to a very early start, this left us with pretty much a whole day ahead and no real plans. With time to kill, one of our fellow harvesters, a friend of Albertino’s named Kwan, whom I had met last year at a lunch party in the winery offered to give us a ride to his parents’ property just on the outskirts of town. Although it was only a few minutes away, the ride transported us to a different place. We arrived to the gates of a reasonably sizable but very humble property and were greeted by a horde of dogs. Looking to the right, there were three comically obese Thai pigs that were very sweet and devoured whole apples with their hairy snouts. Out from the garden ambled an older man with a pronounced back hunch, leathered and weathered fingers, jet black heavy eyebrows and a frayed baseball hat with the bill torn off to fit as a skull cap. He looked like the idyllic Italian garden in late summer, in fact, much like the one from which he was just exiting. We proceeded to be inundated with generosity, sharing thoughtful and slow conversation across three languages, being taught how to crack a walnut with one hand (as evidenced by Kwan’s older father being much more capable than us two strapping young climbers, strength is not so much a matter in the equation as finesse), sampling and eventually being sent home with a bag of the best figs either Cal or I has ever tasted, and convening with all sorts of animals besides the pigs. Kwan’s father, it seems, spends every waking hour tending to one aspect of another of his farm, which includes the aforementioned pigs, figs, and walnuts, as well as a vibrant and active orto for produce, about two dozen goats, 100 or more birds, including turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens of varieties I never knew existed, and three donkeys. Sharing that space, that time, and that company was a true lesson to me in the ethic of sharing – it was the kind of experience that keeps your breath stuck somewhere between your lungs and your mouth, a distinctive warmth that has your sensations fully tingling but your mind at complete ease and drawing out every moment. It really was hard to leave, but sure enough, we ended up back there the next day.

Blog post 20180917
Farm living is the life for me . . .

The routine adventure continues, and we continue to learn from getting lost, improve our finesse when ordering caffe at the bar, and make more genuine and generous conversation with the people we come by. Next week we set off on a climbing adventure in Croatia, taking off up the sea summiting cliffs of Split and Hvar and hoping to ascend to the top or face the humiliating splash of failure in the late summer ocean. Until then,

Buon viaggio!

More Adventures in Umbria Read more

The adventures in Umbria continue, with a new featured player experiencing the rustic countryside for the first time. My best friend Cal ...

Experience Italy, Home and Abroad, Life in Italy, Uncategorised
Leave a comment

Teddy in Umbria

Teddy here, writing from the farmhouse in Cannara. I am two weeks into my three and a half month stay in Umbria and have quickly been reminded why I couldn’t wait to get back. I wake up to the light activity of our 18 birds (mostly hens, as well as a couple of geese, ducks, and guinea fowl) and say hello to these healthy ladies (and their bountiful eggs!) as I give them their morning meal, along with all of my leftover food scraps as a special treat.

In very un-Italian fashion I prepare a big breakfast – how else can I get through these eggs fast enough? – and a caffe to wash it all down. And now, in the words of caretaker Marco, I commence on the day’s “program”, and this is where things get really exciting. Every day feels like a choose your own adventure, depending on who I’ve seen recently or who has heard that I am in town.

One day I am accompanying Jennifer McIlvaine and one of her groups on a summer tour of Montefalco – visiting a dairy farmer who makes cheese, yogurt, and gelato, followed by a walk through town, then lunch at another farm, this one biologico (essentially the Italian version of organic certification) and dotted with all manner of fruit-bearing trees, an apiary, grape and olive production, and an assortment of animals. Lastly, a requisite wine tasting of one of Umbria’s crown products, Montefalco Sagrantino at Cantina Fratelli Pardi.

And from having seen the Pardi family, I get a late afternoon invite the following week to accompany them for dinner. Patriarch Alberto – who is one of the most engaging, excited, and kind people I’ve ever met (despite not speaking much if any English!) – arrives to pick me up in the early evening. He asks if it’s okay to make a quick stop and I watch him collect the season’s finest harvest from an azienda agricola that is no more than 5 minutes from the farmhouse but I doubt I will ever find again amidst these labyrinthine roads. Onward to Montefalco, and when I ask where we will be going he laughs confusedly to tell me that of course we are eating at the family home. Another stop at a gas station that also serves as a macelleria (meat and cheese counter) to pick up the evening’s secondo: stinco, a very Umbrian pork dish. Another stop at the winery to pick up assorted members of the family and finally I arrive at their incredibly lovely home, right in the heart of the town. What followed was one of the finest examples of family care I’ve ever witnessed, and by the end of the evening it truly felt as if I was not just a witness but a member. We drank late into the night discussing cousin Marco’s love life, the moments and laughter in the house warming brightly as the light outside faded.

Another day, I resend an email that I discover had not gone through the previous week. A response is returned within the hour – an invitation to meet and discuss work opportunities the following day with Roberto di Filippo of his eponymous, biodynamic winery. This is the driving force behind my return to Umbria: I have a fairly compelling fascination with the relationships between soil, seed, plant, and food and beverage products, and I’ve endeavored to learn deeply but also broadly about the elements that comprise these processes. These expeditions have led me to an interest in fermentation, which has been marked mostly by working with beer, some hard cider making, a lot of sourdough bread-baking, and some vegetable lacto-fermentation projects. But the grail of fermentation is wine, and there are few opportunities that exist for me to not only learn about wine and its production, but to examine wine through the holistic lens that drives my curiosity. Roberto’s philosophy on farming is so rich and deep, to the point that the wine seems almost a happy bi-product of the balanced, interwoven relationships between organisms microscopic (in the soil) and fairly large (the draught horses he uses for tilling) on his property. It doesn’t hurt that he happens to make exceptional wines though! Upon receiving my interest in learning any and all things related to his wine production, Roberto kindly extended the offer for me to help out. The only requirement he dictated, though, was that it could not be work for just one day. His justification was loosely as follows: “To understand, you need to touch and feel as much as you can. And you have to share the labor with your peers – there is a unity between the land and the animals and the grapes and the workers, and you must share.” I was truly taken by the quality of his words, and replied simply, “Roberto – `e una bella filisofia.”

My first day of work I helped on a couple of horse-drawn carriage tours through several of Roberto’s plots, serving as a translator for a couple from Canada and trying to actually learn Italian on the following tour of ten locals. Lunch for the employees in the main room of the cantina, and new friend Giovanni was excited to share an oregano digestivo he had made with everybody. It was a delicious way to prolong our midday break! In the afternoon I helped bottle last year’s white wine blend before taking my leave for the evening.

The following morning I joined a ragtag group of helpers to harvest the season’s first grechetto grapes, to be used in a spumante wine that I believe will be new to Roberto’s arsenal. The group was old and young, hailing from France, Senegal, Romania, or just five minutes up the road. All the other foreigners, however, actually speak Italian. I became Los Angeles! to them, or Lau-rence of A-raab-iah because of the bandana I wore draped from the back of my hat to cover my neck (Teddy is a very difficult name for Italians to pronounce). We made it by thanks to some very friendly and patient Italian and also French speakers, which sadly has become even worse than my Italian, but the composite of options helped make most things pretty clear. The other benefit was that the work is really straightforward – you cut clusters of beautiful grapes, put them in a basket, and trade out your basket when it’s full for a new one. Lots of heat, lots of singing, lots of laughs, lots of words I didn’t understand, and lots of grape-juice-sticky gloves. Overall, a truly memorable day!

Any given morning, I can expect a text message on my phone saying, “hi baby, could you come in this afternoon?” It’s a message from my extra sibling, chef Simone Proietti Pesci. In ten minutes I can be at the restaurant where I may be enlisted to de-stem rosemary picked on a walk earlier that morning, prepare a soffrito (the Italian mirepoix of carrot, celery, and onion), or wait tables, the latter of which displaying the deep trust Simone has in me and my very insufficient Italian. No matter the task, work with Simone is always easy – not that I don’t work hard, but Simone runs the most calm, organized, and efficient kitchen I’ve ever witnessed. He is a true master within his space, and just being around him  suffuses me with skills that have improved my own abilities in the kitchen. Already in these few weeks I’ve been a helping hand in some truly impressive dining events – a 60 guest, seven course fixed menu inspired by Argentina with live tango performances between courses, and another 60 guest baptism celebration with a lavish buffet spread and many bottles of regional wine. It’s hard to count the times a guest walks directly into the kitchen to say, “complimenti a chef!” and then stay to chat for another ten minutes or so, Simone carrying on the conversation while plating the next course.

In less than a week, I will be joined by my dearest friend and former housemate, who will stay along throughout the remainder of my adventures in Umbria. I find myself constantly grinning with excitement, not only for the value of having someone I love to share with these people, places, and experiences that I’ve known, but at the thought that, despite the head start of my experience here,  there are countless new opportunities and moments that await us.

Ciao!
Teddy

Teddy here, writing from the farmhouse in Cannara Read more

Teddy here, writing from the farmhouse in Cannara. I am two weeks into my three and a half month stay in Umbria ...

How To, Recipes
Leave a comment

Teddy’s Cannellini Semplice and Radicchio Brasato

Here’s a meal I prepared recently: fagioli cannellini semplice e radicchio brasato. This meal combines a staple of my Italian cooking experience and a new recipe that is applied from the techniques and approach I’ve come to learn in my time cooking in Umbria.

 
FAGIOLI CANNELLINI SEMPLICE
INGREDIENTS

1 can/jar cannellini beans
1 yellow onion
1-2 carrots
1-2 stalks of celery
Parmigiano reggiano
Salt
Pepper
Fresh herbs/seasoning
Optional:
white wine, chicken/vegetable stock &
lemon zest
      DIRECTIONS

Start by preparing a classic soffrito: dice your onion, carrot, and celery, and let them sweat on low heat with a bit of oil, butter, or both. Cook until translucent.

Once the onions and carrots are soft, you can add a pinch of salt and the rest of your aromatics (typically I’ll go for some crushed red pepper to give the dish some heat, or you can add herbs like rosemary and thyme).

Once the pan is smelling fragrant, add your rinsed beans. Cook until you’re satisfied—if you want the dish to be dry, cook until the beans are warm and you’re done! If you want a stew-like quality, keep the temperature low and add some white wine, chicken/vegetable stock, or even just some water. Option to toss in more butter to get a rich, velvety texture.

Once you have the consistency you’d like, pull the beans from the heat and top with some parmigiano and, if you’d like, some lemon zest. This is the dish I always cook for myself on the elusive rainy day in Los Angeles.

radicchio

In Umbria, radicchio is typically roasted over a fire then finished with salt and oil, maybe some lemon juice, and it is a delight. I hadn’t been using the oven recently, however, and wanted to put it to use:


RADICCHIO BRASATO 
INGREDIENTS

1 whole head of radicchio
1 yellow onion
Red wine
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
      DIRECTIONS

Preheat to 450-500—you just want it to be hot.

Quarter your radicchio lengthwise. Put a pan on medium-high heat, add a splash of olive oil and a small pat of butter. Place the radicchio into the pan to sear its outside—it should brown and even start to blacken before you flip it, about 2-3 minutes a side.

Once the radicchio is seared, transfer the quarters into a baking dish. Slice the onion and add into the baking dish.

Take your bottle of red wine and pour into the dish until the radicchio is about 1/4 submerged, then add just a bit of water to bring the liquid level to just under 1/2 of the radicchio.

Season with salt and pepper and place in the oven for about 30 minutes, flipping halfway through. Once it’s out of the oven, feel free to drizzle with some good olive oil!

A staple of my Italian cooking experience Read more

Here's a meal I prepared recently: fagioli cannellini semplice e radicchio brasato. This meal combines a staple of my Italian cooking experience ...