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"Siccome la casa brucia, riscaldiamoci." (Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves.) Welcome to another recipe edition from Angela's Organic Oregano Farm! This week's Italian recipes:
"La fame muta le fave in mandorle." (Hunger makes hard beans sweet.) Enjoy your recipes. Thanks again for subscribing! Yours Truly,
Peas with Pancetta
Ingredients: Directions: Cook the peas in salted, boiling water for 15-30 minutes until tender, then drain well. Melt the butter in a pan over a very low heat, add the pancetta and cook until golden brown and tender. Add the peas and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Transfer to a warm serving dish. Serves 4. That's it!
Scrambled Eggs In Nests
Ingredients: That's it!
Italian Beef Burgers
Ingredients: Directions: Tear the bread into pieces, place in a bowl, add the milk and leave to soak for 10 minutes, then drain and squeeze out. Mix together the beef, soaked bread and parsley in a bowl. Shape the mixture into meatballs, flatten slightly and dust lightly with flour. Heat the olive oil and butter in a frying pan, add the patties and cook for 6-8 minutes until done to your liking. Season with salt and serve. Serves 4. That's it! Printer Friendly Version :: Submit Your Thoughts
"Only In Italy" is a daily news column that translates & reports on funny but true news items from legitimate Italian news resources in Italy. Each story is slapped with our wild, often ironic, and sometimes rather opinionated comments. And now, for your reading pleasure, a sample of today's edition: USA Will Let Brunello Wine Back Into The Country Rome - April 30, 2010 - Italy's agriculture minister says Brunello di Montalcino wine has regained U.S. trust and no longer needs special approval for shipment to American markets. Two years ago, Italy created a panel of experts to check if the wine, one of Italy's best known, meets production standards. There had been fears some of the wine might have been cut with other grape varieties instead of only sangiovese grapes. USA authorities required special documentation indicating that Brunello coming into the country had been inspected to ensure quality. Minister Giancarlo Galan said Thursday that starting May 1 that special approval will no longer be required since Brunello has "won back" Americans' trust. About one-quarter of the Brunello produced each year goes to the U.S. How did all this Italian brewhaha begin?
Look, Italian wine law governing the Brunello brand stipulates that Sangiovese wine must be 100 percent Sangiovese and come completely from the majestical "Sound of Music" hills surrounding the ancient, walled, hilltop city of Montalcino. So the idea that Brunello might be blending grapes like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah to soften, darken, and round out its Sangiovese is considered by many Italians to be scandalous and sacrilegious.
Well, in Tuscany there's a bunch of local vineyard yahoos who formed the growers' consortium (Consorzio di Brunello di Montalcino) and monitors the entire Brunello production. Supposedly, the consortium performed a three-year-long investigation of their vineyards, from 2004 to 2007, and uncovered a staggering 42 acres that did not conform to their DOCG (authenticity and guarantees) rules...BUT that's just around 1 percent out of the 4,118 total acres of Brunello vineyards.
Those nearby 42 acres hilariously threw the entire production into a tailspin and forced Italy's fiscal police (Guardia di Finanza) to launch an exhaustive examination of all documents relating to the Brunello production at the estates involved, sequestering the wines if they discovered any apparent irregularities.
However; it is not as if opium poppy plants were being grown by Afghanis on those 42 acres.
Let's take a look at Italian restaurants in the USA.
The truth is there are few genuine Italian restaurants. About 70 percent of the Italian restaurants are not Italian at all. "Cazzarola", we don't know what the hell is going on in those kitchens but Italian is not a pizza with a red-purple sauce with large dispensers of garlic gunpowder nearby or an overweight jackass in a sweaty tank top eating spaghetti with meat-ball sauce.
All this seems quite ridiculous and unnecessary. After all, there are people starving in Southern Italy.
We are seriously thinking of putting a stop to all this idiocy by flying up to Montalcino, Tuscany, and walking around these sacred 4000 acres while munching on Sicilian grapes and spitting the seeds onto the ground.
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