It’s Columbus Day, so let’s celebrate a great Italian cheese. Here’s a favorite cheese of professional cheese buyer and guest blogger Jeff Shearer, of Mandi Foods:
As the long summer days turn over to the cooler nights of autumn, our food choices move away from the fresh cheeses and lighter dishes to more of the hearty cheeses, roasts and casseroles. Fall is a great time to enjoy Havarti, Gouda, Cheddar, Brie and Camembert.
Piave Vecchio pairs well with polenta and risotto, and as a table cheese with Zinfandel, richer white wines (such as Chardonnay) and medium-weight reds such as Merlot and Pinot Noir. Beer drinkers can enjoy it with amber, nut brown or IPA ales.
Piave Vecchio, a terrific Italian mountain cheese. Photo courtesy PiaveVecchio.it.
The cheese gets its name from the Piave River, which flows through the mountain valley in the Italian Alps where it is produced. The name means old (aged) Piave cheese. If you find one called Piave Stravecchio, it is “extra-old,” the extra aging creating a cheese that tastes like a young Parmigiano Reggiano.
Grate it over fried polenta and soups, add it to grits or a risotto, shave it over a green salad or include it on the cheese plate.
Piave Vecchio is a gem often hidden in the long shadow of its very famous cousin, Parmigiano Reggiano. Piave Vecchio deserves its own time in the spotlight.
October 11, 2010 at 5:54 pm
· Filed under Beverages
The Tea Top Brew Mug makes brewing the
perfect cup of tea a snap! Photo courtesy Mighty Leaf.
Ever wish you could find a travel mug that made it easy to remove the tea bag when you’re finished steeping?
Whether you’re on the go or relaxing at home, the problem has been solved by this week’s Gourmet Giveaway sponsor, Mighty Leaf Tea. They’ve created the Tea Top Brew Mug, which features a patented Tea Top lid.
To use the mug, simply fold the tea tag in half and thread the tag and string through the underside of the slit on the lid. Add hot water. Once the brew time indicated on the tea tag is reached,* just pull up on the string. This squeezes the flavorful oils from the tea into the infused beverage below and pulls the spent tea bag into a domed area, where it won’t continue brew and release bitter tannins into your cup.
*All Mighty Leaf tea bags provide this helpful advice.
The bag stays mess-free in the dome until you’re finished with the tea and are ready to clean the cup and toss the bag.
This terrific travel mug comes with a generous selection of delicious, top-quality fall teas in silky bags. The winner will enjoy a box each of Bombay Chai, Rainforest Maté and Chocolate Mint Truffle.
You may love the Tea Top Brew Mug so much, you’ll order them as holiday gifts.
Retail Value Of Prize: Approximately $47.00.
To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gourmet Tea Section and click to enter your email address for the prize drawing.
For more information about Mighty Leaf Tea, visit MightyLeaf.com.
You can juice up for one-fourth the calories and carbs by turning your juice drink into a sparkling juice “spritzer”:
Just fill the glass 1/4 full with fruit juice and top off with club soda or seltzer. You also can:
Mix the recipe by using 1/2 juice and 1/2 club soda if you want more juice flavor.
Use flavored club soda to add more flavor to the drink.
Add a garnish of fresh fruit—lemon or lime is fine for a squeeze of citrus flavor; apple, peach or other favorite fruit provides a mini snack. A sprig of mint is another option.
“Spritzer,” by the way, comes from the German “spritzen,” to squirt or spray. Americans adapted the word around 1915-1920 to refer to adding sparkling water to give carbonation to a beverage. A wine spritzer adds club soda to wine.
Add some spritz and a wedge to your fruit
juice. Photo by Torsten Schon | IST.
Fizzy Lizzy began with founder Liz Morrill’s love for spritzers. At the time, there were no fizzy juices on the market, so she started a line. If you don’t want to make your own juice spritzer, try Fizzy Lizzy, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week.
Make pasta with pesto to celebrate
Columbus Day. Photo by Shyman | IST.
Most people don’t think of Columbus Day as an eating holiday, like Thanksgiving or Easter.
Yet, Columbus Day begs for an Italian dinner.
Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506), an explorer from the Republic of Genoa in northwestern Italy, voyaged four times to begin a colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. This initiated the first widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans and was the beginning of European exploration and colonization of the Americas. (The term “pre-Columbian” refers to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and successive Europeans.)
Perhaps Spanish food should be enjoyed today as well, since Columbus’ voyages were financed by Queen Isabella of Castille, and Columbus Day is celebrated in that country as well as throughout the Americas (except for Canada).
So choose Spanish cuisine if you like; we’re planning an Italian dinner tonight—most appropriately, pasta with pesto.
Why make pesto? Liguria, the region of Italy that is home to capital city Genoa and the birthplace of Columbus, grows superb basil; the making of pesto began there. Learn the history of pesto.
October 10, 2010 at 8:00 am
· Filed under Beverages
Yesterday we discussed what it takes to brew a great cup of coffee. Today, we focus on a great cup of tea.
A cup of fine tea is so delicious, it requires no milk or sugar—like a cup of delicious black coffee. Milk and sweeteners are used to give a more pleasing flavor to bland, bitter or otherwise unattractive tea flavors.
So spend more and start with good tea. While the price per pound may seem high, no home needs that much tea. You can start with a few ounces.
While all tea comes from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, the terroir (microclimate, soil, etc.) and how the tea is finished after plucking creates many hundreds of different flavors (think of how varied “red wine” is).
Fancy packaging and silken tea bags are no guarantee of the finest tea. Look for a store or tea salon that sells loose tea and learn to use a tea ball or a other infuser. Our favorite is the Ingenuitea, a small plastic pot that infuses the loose tea and then is placed atop a cup or mug to release the brewed tea, straining out the leaves. We also like Bodum’s YoYo Personal Tea Set with a built-in removable strainer in a double-wall glass mug (no coasters required) and lid to keep the heat in.
Photo by Sara Sang | IST.
When choosing teas to try, consider this “system”:
Choose hearty teas for breakfast. Assam, Ceylon, Earl Grey, English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast are examples.
Go lighter for afternoon tea. Try Chinese blends, such as Darjeeling.
Stay light for after-dinner tea. Decaffeinated tea or caffeine-free herbal teas (chamomile, hibisucus, rooibos and rosehip, for example) won’t keep you awake.
Store tea in an airtight container away from light, moisture and aromas that can alter its delicate flavor. Green and white teas can be refrigerated for freshness, but don’t “store” tea. Buy only what you’ll consume in a month or two.
