The NEW YORK ITALIAN FOOD & WINE GUY Blog is dedicated to many things, but mainly to three very GREAT ONES being NEW YORK, ITALIAN FOOD, and ITALIAN WINE. What's greater than these?
Friday, October 22, 2021
Pizza God Dom DeMarco Tee Shirt
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Godfather Sunday Sauce Gravy
The aroma of a garlic-laden tomato sauce spiked with Sausage, Meatballs, and rolled-up meat Braciola can bring tears to the eyes of many Italian-Americans.
Sunday Gravy, also known as Sunday sauce, evokes memories of weekend family gatherings in which mom or grandma presided over the constantly stirred pot of sauce and meat, and various relatives were tasked with procuring the essential provisions—the cannoli and sesame bread from the bakery or the wine from the cellar.
Sunday gravy was more than just a big, belt-loosening meal. In close-knit Italian-American homes, it was a virtual religion. “Each Sunday, we were constantly traveling to homes of different relatives,” says John Mariani, a New York food author whose books include How Italian Food Conquered the World. “It truly was a moveable feast.’’
The proprietors of Frankies Spuntino restaurant in Brooklyn, Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo, write that “Sunday sauce—the meal, the menu, the way of life—is the source and summation’’ of their restaurant business.
They recall how on Sundays their family kitchens would “start to fill with that hunger-inducing humidity, the tomato and pork simmering away in the pot.’’
Castronovo remembered that Sundays “even when I was a teenager and wanted to be a punk … I’d still stop and eat at my grandma’s house before the rest of the day went down.”
The best Sunday gravy simmers on the stove for hours, permitting the ingredients (the meat choices are seemingly limitless) to infuse the sauce with an unparalleled meatiness that no quickie marinara could ever hope to replicate. The long, slow cooking time was also time for families to spend with each other, reinforcing ties that could withstand the harsh realities of the outside world.
In a way, the history of Sunday gravy encapsulates the story of Italian immigration to the U.S. and the prosperity succeeding generations found in America. “Very, very impoverished Southern Italian women, whose only reason for living was giving birth to children and feeding them, suddenly found an abundance of cheap food in the U.S.,” Mariani says. “It radically changed their self image.”
The meats in the sauce became a symbol of plenty. Meat had been a rarity in the old country, and if there was any of it at all in a meal, it was usually pork. But in the U.S., immigrant women bought beef “because they could."
Before his father’s parents would bless the marriage, Mariani’s grandmother “demanded that my mom must learn how to make Sunday gravy.”
Along with the other staples of Italian-American cuisine, Sunday gravy has vaulted from family food to the culinary mainstream, even as a once-in-a-while treat for today’s health-conscious eaters. TV food stars Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis regularly feature touched-up variations on the classic Italian-American repertoire. And, although “The Sopranos” is widely despised by Italian-Americans for its twisted depiction of their cherished family values, the show often featured sumptuous Sunday meals with pots and pots of sauce, meat, and pasta—and the cookbook spawned by the show features a Sunday gravy recipe.
For better or worse, 21st-century America has made celebrating the Sunday tradition much more difficult for families. “Sunday is now a time for attending soccer games, getting in 18 holes of golf … or watching three NFL games without interruption,” Mariani says.
But Mariani and other Italian-American food advocates nevertheless remain intent on keeping tradition alive. “My family still gets together on Sunday afternoons just as it always has, and the food is as good as it ever was,” Falcinelli wrote in The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual. “Growing up, I didn’t see it as an amazing culinary tradition, but I did appreciate how good the eating was.”
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Negroni Cocktail Recipe Campari
A Brief History of Italian Wine
The Etruscans, who settled in central Italy, also produced wines. The Romans improved the techniques that the Greeks and Etruscans used.
Demand for wine increased greatly with the population explosion in Rome from 300B.C. to the beginning of the Christian era. It increased to over one million people and, as even the slaves drank wine, much more wine had to be produced.
The Romans loved their wine, drinking it with every meal. However, as the alcohol content was stronger than ours, they mixed it with large quantities of water. They preferred sweet wine and strangely enough their most prized wine was white. This came from the area that they thought was the best wine-growing region, the Falernian region near Naples.
Unusual flavors were often added to the wine. The Romans liked to mix honey with this drink to make an aperitif called mulsum. They often added herbs and spices, but were known to mix wine with salt water which must have given it an extremely bitter taste. Even chalk was sometimes mixed with wine to reduce acidity!
The many contributions the Romans made to the art of wine-growing included using props and trellises, improving the Greek presses used for extracting juice, classifying which grapes grew best in which climate, and increasing the yields.
The Romans exhibited good taste by deciding that aged wines tasted better and preferred wines that were ten to twenty-five years old. They discovered that wines which were kept in tightly closed containers improved with age and became the first to store it in wooden barrels. They may also have been the first to use glass jars and they also used corks.
They exported their excellent wine-growing techniques to other areas of Europe and these were not changed for centuries. But demand for wine decreased with the fall of the Roman Empire. Surprisingly Roman Catholic monks continued to produce wine during the Dark Ages but it only became popular again during the Renaissance.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Italian wine was often criticized for its poor quality and the government decided that steps had to be taken. DOCG or new wine regulations were introduced to improved the quality of the wine.
Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Caffe Reggio Cappuccino Coffee
Caffe Reggio
Greenwich Village
New York
by Bellino
"AMERICA'S 1st ESPRESSO MACHINE"
Monday, September 20, 2021
Bellino on Barolo
The aromas and flavours of Barolo
If you’re wondering “what does Barolo taste like?” the best thing to do is open a bottle and take a sip. Once you’ve tried it, you’re unlikely to forget the experience.
Barolo is a powerful wine with lots of tannins, and experts sometimes call its aroma “tar and roses”. Each mouthful brings a world of flavour. It starts with notes of liquorice, rose petals, blueberries and prunes, mingling with black pepper and cinnamon spices. This is joined by rich dark chocolate, old leather and sweet tobacco.
Barolo is a red wine with complex and powerful aromas. Dry, and very rich in tannins, this wine benefits from ageing as its distinctive taste gets even more refined and sophisticated over time. It is best to keep Barolo for at least 7-10 years after harvest before opening it.
Barolo is made from 100% Nebbiolo grapes, grown in a small area of Piedmont – or Piemonte in Italian – in North-West Italy. It is only made in and around eleven comunes (villages), which are shown on the map of the Barolo DOCG below. The most important villages, which are thought to produce the best examples of Barolo, are:
La Morra
Castiglione d Faletto
Monforte d' Alba
Serralunga d'Alba
There are 181 vineyards in Barolo known to produce wines of superior quality. They are officially called menzioni geografiche aggiuntive (additional geographic mention) or MGA. Their names can be added to the label to show superiority. Unofficially, they’re known as the cru vineyards of Barolo. We delve into key communes and crus later in this article.
As of 2018, there were 1,928 hectares of vineyards in Barolo. That year, winemakers produced approximately 11.67 million x 75cl bottles of Barolo wine. To put this number into context, there was eight times less Barolo produced than Chianti (91 million bottles), and slightly less than Amarone (14 million bottles)
Barolo DOCG wine must be made according to the winemaking rules, or “wine laws”, officially known as the Disciplinare Di Produzione[4]. They set out very strict rules: from how many grapes can be grown, to what’s the permitted levels of acidity, to how the Barolo wine must be aged, and much much more. You’ll find a whole section dedicated to Disciplinare later in this guide.
Best Bisteca TBone Florence Italy