Cooking Tip | Italy Puglia cooking classes and wine tours

Should Italian food taste like garlic? 0

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Stile Mediterraneo

Our guests attending our cooking classes in Puglia are always surprised at the fact that in the Pugliese cuisine we use garlic in a very delicate way.

Our guests’ usual comment after the first bite is: “mmmh…but I don’t taste garlic in my food!“. And we use to reply that if it did taste like garlic, than it would not be authentic Italian food (at least not from Puglia!).

I and Marika are big fans of garlic! We like it because of its flavor and most of all, its health benefits. During our cooking classes Marika loves explaining how good and healthy garlic is for cholestorol, blood pressure, digestion etc.
We use it in many successful recipes. However, it is true that we use it in a very delicate way, without letting garlic cover our food.

Most of the times we sweat a whole garlic clove in olive oil and then we remove it after a few minutes before adding the other ingredients.

Very rarely we use garlic, if we are already using onion in a recipe.

Lastly, if we need to use garlic (as in our famous veal meatballs), we prefer to chop it with a knife instead of crushing it.

And you, do you like the garlic taste? How much garlic do you use?

What was your favorite food with garlic you had in Italy?

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Tags: Cooking tip Italy cooking Italy Cooking classes mediterranean cuisine Puglia cooking classes Puglia cuisine
Category Cooking tip, Mediterranean Healthy food, cuisine, traditions

Delicious figs year round 0

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Stile Mediterraneo

This is the perfect recipe for figs lovers!

Puglia is a big figs producer. Everywhere in the countryside you can see fig trees full of their delicious fruit!

Of course the best figs are those that you can eat just under the tree.

However, when you have picked and eaten too many figs, it’s also a good idea to start thinking about the winter season when you cannot find them fresh anymore.

You can prepare some delicious dry figs with toasted almonds and bay leaves.

This is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
fresh figs
almonds
bay leaves
lemon zest

PREPARATION
Cut the figs in half, without breaking them and let them dry in the sun on a wooden board for about 10 days. Turn them upside down very often.

When they are competely dry, place an almond in the middle and sprinkle some grated lemon zest. Close them up and bake in the oven at very low temperature just to dry them up completely.

Place them in a jar with bay leaves.

For more information about Puglia cuisine, our cooking classes and wine tours in Puglia Italy please write at info.stile@gmail.com

Tags: Cooking tip dry figs figs Italian cuisine Italy Puglia cooking Puglia cooking classes Puglia cuisine
Category Cakes & Desserts, Cooking tip, Favorites, Recipes, cuisine, traditions

Sweet Red Onion from Puglia 0

Posted on August 05, 2009 by Stile Mediterraneo

The sweet red onions from Acquaviva: they have a typical flatten shape and are renowned for their sweet taste. They are planted in September, with waning moon, and picked in July and August.
The production is at risk because everything is manual and not very profitable anymore for the small local producers.

Tags: Cooking tip onions Puglia cuisine Slow Food slow food presidia
Category Food markets, Mediterranean Healthy food, cuisine

How to have fresh and juicy tomatoes before the summer 0

Posted on April 01, 2009 by Stile Mediterraneo

In Puglia, to have fresh tomatoes when it is not the season we prepare the so called Pendola tomatoes. In the summer we pick the tomatoes with the vine. We hang the tomatoes with the vine on a rope and store them in a cool environment. The skin turns hard but the juice stays inside! Then in the winter, we simply roast them: the skin breaks down and the tomatoes release all the juice and the taste of the sun!