Piemonte

A lot of people are familar with this region because of the famous wine that they produce. We will talk about wine a little later, but I think it is important to understand the history behind each region and the reasons they eat the things that they do. Piemonte is made up of very high mountains, but also very low lands where the Po Valley begins. There are very few hills except for in the Langhe region, where they produce a lot of excellent wine.

The Liguri people went to Piemonte from Ligiuria and they stated autonomous for many centuries, even after being dominated by the Romans. After the barbarians cam though, they began to be divided into smaller counties, seperating the region. It was not until the Savoia family, who started to unify Piemonte, which took many years due to wars and other factors. Eventually, the Savoia family were the ones who began speaking about unitying all of Italy with the aristocracy, which happened in 1861. The Savoia family is as important to Italy as the Medici family is, setting the trend for Italian art and cuisine in Piemonte. Although the region is located geographically close to France, the cuisine has very little influence from them. Unlike other populations, the Piemontese people have always felt Italian and never wanted to be apart of France. 

Fun Fact of the Day 
List the DOP and IGP products of Piemonte. 
This region has a ton of DOP and IGP products including salumi and cheeses. Here are a few you may know!

- Mortadella di Bologna IGP 

- Gorgonzola DOP

- Grana Padano DOP 

Due to their rich traditions and proud spirit, it is to no surprise that in Piemonte, there are a lot of Slow Food procedure products. The headquarters of Slow Food is actually located in this region because of their attachment to their roots. From meats to cheeses and vegetables, Piemontese people really are the definition of the world of Slow Food. I believe that the US should take note from this region about the ability to be organic and eat traditionally. Unfortunately in the US, a lot of sub industries that make up the food industry lobby to get their products promoted on things like the food pyramid. The dairy industry, meat companies, and many more lobby to make sure their products do not get put into a bad light, even if they should. Anyway, sorry about the side rant, but Slow Food is something vry important to combat the effects of climate change and the use of chemicals on products. Eventually, the way we life and eat will be forced to change, so why not work on making a positive impact now! 

Here are a few of the Slow Food Procedure products of the Piemonte region: 

- Aglio di Caraglio: Garlic made in Caraglio 

- Castelmagno D'Alpeggio: A cheese still produced from the Middle Age 

- Mustardela delle Valli Valdesi: A sausage, traditionally made with donkey meat, but is now made with pork meat instead 

- Paste di Meliga del Monregalese: A type of cookie (One of the first baked items I have seen protected by the Slow Foods Movement) 

- Roviola di Roccaverano: A soft cheese made with 2-3 different types of milk that are made in the Langhe region where wine is produced. 

There are a lot of unique traiditonal dishes from the Piemonte region that I find to be very interesting; here are just a couple:

- Pera Martin Sec: Small pears with a very tough skin that stand up when they are cooked; they are baked, they become grinzosa, but stay compact. The triaditonal preparations are slowly cooked in Barbolo wine and baked in a pie 

- Tajarin: Long pasta made with 20 egg yolks per kilogram of flour; the pasta is very thin, but slighly thicker than angel hair. It is usually eaten with truffles. 

This dish brings me to my next topic, truffles. Before today, I really did not know too much about truffles. Often, white truffles are used as a garnish on a fatty dish, like something with eggs, cheese, or butter. These truffles are found in the Marche and Piemonte regions of Italy. The other type of truffles, black truffles, are used to cook with and are mainly found in Bordeaux, France. One must remember that truffles are a mushroom and what do mushrooms have a lot of? Water! Therefore, when you store truffles, this is an important thing to keep in mind. When you drop your phone in water, where do you put it? In rice, but then why do people store truffles in rice? This was a great point that Chef brought up today. If you store the truffles in rice, they will shrink because it removes the water content from them. Some chefs do store them this way, but make sure you use the rice because it will make a great risotto! 

Piemonte is known for producing the king and queen of the wine world: Barolo and Barbaresco. These wines are made with the Nebbiolo grape, making it the most important in the region. Although this is the case, the barbera Nero is the most produced grape in the region.  

There are a lot of important DOC and DOCG wines of Piemonte, but what I find even more interesting is the usage of hazelnuts in the region. You may be thinking that I am crazy for going from wine to hazenuts, but I promise it will make sense! Phyloxera is a bug that came to Europe from North America and destroyed millions and millions of crops around the 1930s. Because of this outbreak, the farmers had to figure out what to replace the crops with. The began planting hazelnuts because they were the best fit at the time. Now, they produce a lot of products with hazelnuts, like Nutella, but Novi was the first company to produce a spreadable hazelnut paste. Gianduia is also produced with hazelnuts and in the 1800s the pastry chefs from Torino became replacing cocoa powder with hazelnut flour because it was too expensive. Napolean began taxing them for the cooca powder, so they found a cheaper (and delicious) way to still do what they loved. 

Today was a very busy, yet fun day in class. We made ouvo in Raviolo, which is a large raviolo with a filling made with spinach and cheese, then an egg yolk is placed in the center. When you cut it open, the runny egg yolk runs out. It was absolutely delicious! Chef Odette worked at San Domenico in NYC at the executive chef for 15 years and perfected this recipe, which made it very cool to learn how to make it from her. I would make this recipe again and try different sauces to serve it with. We made a truffle butter, but I think it would go with many different herbs and light sauces. I enjoyed this expereince immensely. 

                   

I also made chocolate salumi, which was a little crazy, but absolutely delicious! Here is the very simple recipe: 

Ingredients - 

180 grams crumbled dry cookies 

30 mL rum 

6 pasteurized egg yolks 

225 grams granulated sugar 

112 grams soft, unsalted butter 

112 grams bitter cocoa powder 

Directions - 

1. Soak crumbled cookies in the rum and set aside.

2. Mix the egg yolks, sugar, and butter until fluffy with no lumps. 

3. Add cocoa powder to the bowl and mix well.

4. Once creamy and mixed well, add the cookies to incorporate. 

5. Put this dough on a piece of plastic wrap and roll it to form a sausage shape, you decide the thickness (I did about 3 cm) 

6. Freeze until solid, about 2 hours. 

7. Unroll the dough and on a clean piece of plastic, sprinkle powdered sugar to get the "mold" look like salumi. 

8. Cut to about a 1 cm piece and serve. 

Here are my tasting notes from the Piemonte Region: 

- They use a lot of cheese in their dishes. 

- Cream, milk, and butter are used also, different from a lot of other regions in Italy.

- Herbs are important, especially sage. 

- Meat is used, no much fish, other than anchovies! 

- Vinegar & wine are used when cooking often 

- Hazelnuts are important to this region! 

- Much more elegant and rifined compared to other regions. 

With love, 

Baylee