Photo of the week: Sardegna June 2010

Photo of the Week: Levanzo, Italy September 2009

Photo of the Week: Favignana, Sicily, September 2009

Photo of the Week: Verona Bike Fest January 2011

Photo of the week: Lago di Resia, South Tyrol, Italy. April, 2011

Alternative Cranberry Sauce

For a Thanksgiving holiday some time ago, we had wanted the typical cranberry sauce used to go with poultry.  The commercial canned stuff was not available in Italy, nor were there any fresh cranberries to be found.  But... we did have some packages of dried cranberries we had brought over for Queen Bee to use in salads.  So I made an attempt to change dried cranberries into sauce.  It turned out surprisingly good.  In fact we now prefer it to the normal versions.

As usual, I did not write it down at the time (actually I did "tweet" the list of ingredients but not the amounts).  So for this Christmas I experimented a little to replicate it.

Required time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

Dried cranberries - 10 ounces 

Port - 1 and 1/4 cups

Allspice - 1/2 teaspoon

Brown sugar - 1 and 1/2 tablespoons

Place cranberries in a small sauce pan.

- Add 3/4 cup Port and simmer on low

- Add Allspice and brown sugar and stir well

- Monitor and stir occasionally, adding more port as needed to keep the mixture moist.

- When the remaining port has been absorbed by the cranberries, the cranberry sauce is ready to serve.

Serve warm or chilled.  It is good either way.

2012 Condove Cheese Festival

We spent yesterday morning preparing for the Condove Toma Cheese Festival.  The preparation consisted of making two pounds of ghocchi (mashed potatoes, flour, etc...) by hand, so we could have a proper gnocchi and toma cheese dinner in the evening.  

There was the usual range of stands selling various regional foods and crafts.  There was also a lot of antiques, old books, etc.  But, of course, the cheese is the coolest item and the star of the show.  Stand after stand with great wheels of mountain  and regional cheeses.  This area is absolutely wonderful for exploring interesting cheese variants; mild and strong; fresh and highly aged.  While there, we got our typical range of goodies... nearly four pounds of various mountain cheeses, yogurt, apples, a variety of hand made salami, honey, and bread.  Some of the cheese went in the dinner, and the apples were baked for desert served with the honey and yogurt.  All very good!

As well as picking up provisions, we ran across a lot of our friends from Condove (our former town).  The cheese festival is sort of a Susa valley equivalent of the Plymouth (Michigan) Fall Festival.  An opportunity to get out and see a lot of old familiar faces.  It was very nice to be back in Condove for a few hours.

Queen Bee will be going to Venice on Monday for four days of Italian lessons with her cousin who is coming in from Switzerland.  I guess that leaves me alone with the remains of our haul... not so bad.