1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (62 page)

Native to the area around Sorrento, these lemons are now also grown in limited quantities around Jamul, California, although the different terrain leads to slightly less exquisite fruit.

Mail order and recipes:
specialtyproduce.com
(search italian sorrento lemons).

The honeyed mass invites festive adornment.

Held together in merry mounds by a cinnamon-and-lemon-flavored honey glaze, these tiny golden-brown nuggets of lightly fried dough make for one of the sweetest and most delightful treats in the holiday canon. Like popcorn or salted nuts, the Neapolitan specialty is habit-forming—it’s hard to know when to stop pinching off bites of these chewy mini-crullers. Sprinklings of multicolored confetti candy and, often, pastel-iced Jordan almonds create the visual enticement that makes them favorites not just for Christmas and Easter celebrations but also as birthday cakes throughout the year.

Other delightful versions abound. In what’s known as a
pignolata
, the mound of tiny crullers is masked with a creamy chocolate icing. In Sicily, the nuggets are turned through cooked honey and studded with toasted blanched almonds, pignolis, and mixed candied fruits, which set like jewels and add crunch and interest to the finished confection. In the Portuguese city of Evora, long strips of dough are fried, glazed with honey, and arranged in Christmas logs called
nogados.

Bet you can’t eat just one.

Where:
In New York
, Veniero’s, tel 212-674-7070,
venierospastry.com
;
in Boston
, Mike’s Pastry Shop, tel 617-742-3050,
mikespastry.com
;
in San Francisco
, Stella Pastry Café, tel 415-986-2914,
stellapastry.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Naples at Table
by Arthur Schwartz (1998);
foodnetwork.com
(search struffoli batali).

Learn to order it in Italian as
sugo di uva.
Then learn to order it in German as
Traubensaft
, because you don’t want to pass up a chance to quaff this liquid jewel of cool, clear, freshly pressed grape juice. Gently sweet, with a teasing hint of
grapey tartness, it is the centerpiece of the Merano Grape Festival in the northern Alpine province of Alto Adige, most colorfully experienced in the charming garden of the Merano resort spa.

Still remembered as the South Tyrol, this stunning mountain area belonged to Austria before World War I and has struggled with its Austro-Italian dual identity ever since. Both languages are still in evidence, hence the dual names for the refreshing drink squeezed from newly harvested grapes.

Come late September, and all through October, big glass pitchers of the unfermented, nonalcoholic juice are offered to guests in hotel breakfast rooms and cafés, and at corner street stands decorated with vines and branches. One pitcher holds the winey-looking garnet juice of red grapes, the other the sparkling citrine liquid of pale green ones. Lightly chilled but not iced, both are thought to restore prime health to those who drink three glasses a day during the six-to eight-week season—equivalent to downing two pounds of whole grapes daily. Those with lustier palates and a preference for red wine will choose the red-grape elixir, while those who like life on the crystalline light side can opt for the green. Or, better yet, have one type at breakfast, another at lunch, and the one you prefer in midafternoon.

Assuming you do not faint from the sharply lowered blood pressure a large quantity of grape juice can induce, you will be in for a bracing, head-clearing experience.

Celebrated each afternoon with a parade through the pretty center of Merano as part of a companion music festival, the season also means marchers in lederhosen, oom-pah-pah brass bands, and fair young maidens decked out with vine leaves in their hair. Yet another reason to laud this coolly seductive cure.

Where:
In Merano, Italy
, many cafés, restaurants, and street stands from late September through October.
Special event:
Merano Grape Festival, Merano, October,
meran.eu/en
(search grape festival).

Difficult to find, truffles can be worth more than their weight in gold.

The fungi known as truffles are easily among the most subtly flavored, elusive, expensive, and mysterious foods of the world, not least because they grow entirely underground. Although there are some seventy species, two are most prized by connoisseurs: the black truffle (
Tuber melanosporum
), found in various parts of France, especially in Périgord and Provence, and in Italy’s Umbria region (see
listing
); and the white truffle (
Tuber magnatum
), a pale yellowish-beige mushroom found at its best in northwest Italy’s Piedmont region, near Alba. A lesser variety is found in the Marche.

White truffles are diabolically alluring, with a powerful fragrance that verges on the obscene, much in the way of a ripe and almost embarrassingly odoriferous cheese. But their aroma is merely a teaser for a profound and complex flavor so precious it is not to be tampered with—which is why truffles are almost never cooked, but are instead blissfully shaved raw into creamy risottos or fresh, delicate pastas such as fettuccine. White truffles also elevate a number of egg dishes—scrambled, poached, or fried—and shine, as part of a classic salad, with ovoli
mushrooms (see
listing
). Restaurants in Piedmont serve truffles simply grated over just about everything: taglierini (thin egg noodles traditionally dressed with butter and sage), risotto (see
listing
),
fonduta
(fontina cheese melted into creaminess; see
listing
), veal carpaccio, and even buttered bread.

A highly specialized treasure with a short season that runs from September to December, white truffles will grow only beneath certain trees (usually oaks, but also lindens, willows, hazelnuts, and poplars), but not with any consistency: Neither farmers nor scientists have been able to predict which trees will grow truffles, but they do know that the soil must be chalky and that the most efficacious weather conditions include a rainy spring, a hot summer, and a stormy August.

Because of this lack of predictability, truffles are hunted rather than harvested—and traditionally, the best truffle hunters were sows. No coincidence, then, that German scientists have found truffles to contain a natural chemical similar to the pheromone secreted in male pig saliva. The helpful swine tend to eat the truffles, so now dogs are more often deployed.

Mail order:
Urbani Truffles, tel 212-247-8800,
urbani.com
; D’Artagnan, tel 800-327-8246,
dartagnan.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Food of Italy
by Waverley Root (1992);
More Classic Italian Cooking
by Marcella Hazan (1982).
Special event:
White Truffle Festival, Alba, Italy, December,
fieradeltartufo.org
.
Tip:
A good truffle should be intensely pungent and firm to the touch, not spongy when pressed with the finger. The most prized specimens are uniformly round in shape, but a truffle is good as long as it isn’t broken and has no holes.

Nose-to-tail cookery has been in vogue over the past few years, presenting undaunted chefs with the worthy challenge of leaving no part of the animal unused. It’s an idea whose time has come—once again. Down on the farm, especially in olden days, very few parts of any slaughtered animals were wasted. Blood became a filling for sausages; cleaned intestines morphed into sausage casings; and scalded stomachs were handy sacks in which to poach chickens and steam or roast ground meat mixtures.

Since everything old is new again, it should be no surprise to see today’s succulently moist, luxuriously rich cheeks, tongues, and creamy brains of lambs, goats (kids), or calves served right in the heads to which they belong. Yet many diners are shocked when first served this
testina
, meaning head, or
capuzzelle
in the dialect of southern Italy.

Those heads, one might argue, are nature’s own tureens for this poor man’s treat and gourmand’s delight. To prepare this rustic feast (often served at weddings in southern Italy), the cleaned and scraped craniums are split down the middle, right through the bones (with eyes intact, as the most authentic Italian recipes demand), and then roasted. Splitting assures that the brains can easily be dipped into and that the tender, pink, and gamy tongue can be slipped out and shared, as can the juiciest, plump cheek meat.

Sheep’s or lamb’s heads are favored in southern Italy, where the testina is prepared in several regional variations—the most delicious being in the Marche, Apulia, and Abruzzo, where the meat is aromatic with rosemary, prosciutto, garlic, salt, and pepper. Basilicata cooks add a nice touch with a coating of bread crumbs and grated sharp pecorino cheese that crisps up in the oven, and in Sicily the split head is gently stewed in a pungent tomato sauce sparked with grated lemon peel, sage, and cloves. The least embellishment is preferred in Calabria, with only olive oil, parsley, salt, and pepper added before the head is roasted along with unpeeled new potatoes that absorb the elegant pan juices.

Calf’s heads are more generally served in northern Italy, but they often are boned and cooked as terrines or soft, gelatinous stews in the manner of calves’ or pigs’ feet.

As for the eyeballs, passionate aficionados claim them as the best parts of all.

Further information and recipes:
Italian Cuisine
by Tony May (2005);
gourmet.com
(search a brain is a terrible thing to waste).

Creamy layers on display.

Delectable squishes of spongy ladyfingers or eggy genoise layered with chocolate, coffee, and cloudlets of creamy mascarpone cheese, all heady with the scent of rum, brandy, or bittersweet Marsala wine, indeed explain the name of the irresistible dessert
tirami sù
, translated as “draw me close.” Basically a modern riff on Naples’s
zuppa inglese
, tirami sù is also set in a big bowl, preferably of glass, to attain the texture of a pudding-cake. The English trifle (see
listing
) was the inspiration for that Neapolitan derivation.

Now a much overworked menu item, the Italian dessert takes on a luscious new meaning in its best-ever version, surprisingly found in the charming Napa Valley restaurant Terra, where it is presented in individually made portions. Five-layered, featherlight, it’s the perfect balance of textures and flavors.