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Authentic Southern Italian Cuisine
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How to Make the Perfect Salad

August 18, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments

Carlino's-Salad_platter350dpiSalad looks simple on the surface, but a great salad is a complex and sophisticated balancing act. Too little of one flavor profile or too much of another can turn an otherwise great salad into a less than satisfying start to your meal. Conversely, the right grace notes transform lettuce leaves and dressing into a revelation. Salad can be exciting, but only when it’s done right.

The Basics of Great Salad

No matter which specific ingredients a salad contains, it should be a balance of a few key flavors and textures. A single salad doesn’t need to be overloaded with items, but it benefits from variety; aim for at least three or four different textures and flavors in proportions.

Green salads start with great greens. Whether you use iceberg lettuce or choose a more flavorful lettuce like red leaf, romaine or butter lettuce, the greens that make up the foundation of your salad should be fresh. With a few intentional exceptions, such as a wilted spinach salad with bacon or a steamed kale salad, you want greens that still feel as crisp as if they were freshly picked. Combining greens is an excellent way to incorporate variety into your salad, so don’t feel constrained to lettuce alone.

To many people, a great dressing is more important than the salad it graces. The classic Italian dressing blends oil and flavored vinegar with herbs and spices, but creamy dressings are also popular choices. As with the greens, the dressing should have top-quality ingredients. Using high-quality balsamic vinegar, a light olive oil and freshly ground black pepper will produce vastly different results than ordinary cider vinegar and common oil.

Toppings range from carrot slivers to croutons, but salad toppers still follow the logic of complementary flavors. If your salad has slivers of sweet citrus fruit or dried figs, shavings of tangy, salty Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese are a delicious match. Crunchy toasted nuts go well with creamy bits of Gorgonzola cheese. Bites of creamy Brie work beautifully with crisp, tart fruits such as pears or apples. Create contrast with your salad toppings to bring out the best in each of them.

Putting It All Together

Greens need washing, but too much handling will bruise them. Chefs get around this dilemma by washing salad greens a short while before serving instead of immediately before preparing the salad. After bathing the greens in ice water, they spin the leaves in a spinner or let them drain in a colander. Once the greens rest long enough to shed most of their moisture, the cook finishes with a quick pat from a clean, dry cloth shortly before serving.

When you dress the salad makes a huge impact on its texture and taste. Dress it too soon or serve it too late and it loses its fresh appeal. Wait until the last minute, and you may not have enough time to mix and toss thoroughly. The best time to dress a salad is a few minutes before it reaches the table. It’s up to you if you prefer to add some toppings before dressing the salad, but save items that could absorb the dressing or melt into them until after this step. Dried fruit, diced meats and nuts can go in early, but keep croutons and crumbly cheese out of the mix for now.

How you dress your salad makes a big difference in its flavor. Dressing by hand – adding a small amount of dressing, then turning the salad thoroughly to coat every leaf – gives the best results, but if you’re pressed for time, you can use tongs or salad forks. It’s always best to underdress the salad at first. You can always add more dressing, but you can’t subtract it once it’s in the bowl. After you portion the salad to individual bowls or plates, arrange additional toppings on each serving for a professional touch.

If you’re stuck for inspiration, try our Italian fruit salad and discover how sweet, tangy, salty and fresh flavors can work together to create a salad much better than the sum of its parts.

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The Flavors of Toscana

August 2, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments

If Rome is the soul of Italy, then Tuscany may be its heart. The birthplace of the Italian Renaissance that later spread throughout Europe, Tuscany – or Toscana, as it’s known to Italians – contains Florence, Siena, Pisa and the home of the world’s most beautiful marble, Carrara. The region’s rich cultural heritage extends to its culinary history, too; every time you enjoy a Florentine dish or appreciate the simplicity of great minestrone, you taste the fresh flavors of Tuscany.

The Tuscan Landscape

Like most Italian regions, Tuscany loves the sea. The region’s western coast provides a bounty of fresh seafood, including the calamari, octopus and mussels that form the basis of cacciucco, a hearty Tuscan seafood stew. One of the oldest fishing communities in the world is Castiglione della Pescaia. Even if you don’t speak Italian, you might spot the town’s fishing roots in its name; “Pescaia” loosely translates to “fishery,” and the people here have fished the Mediterranean since Roman times.

The Tuscan coast is mild, but away from the warm waters of the Mediterranean, winters can be harsh. That’s ideal for developing great soil, which is why Toscana was the Roman breadbasket for centuries. Gently rolling hills are ideal for growing wheat and grazing sheep or cattle, so it’s no surprise that many of these ingredients feature prominently in Tuscan cuisine. Sheep’s milk cheeses such as pecorino and morello are fixtures on Tuscan menus, but they also excel at producing creamy fresh cheeses from cattle, including a regional version of mozzarella that replaces the traditional water buffalo milk the more familiar cow’s milk.

Tuscan wheat has gone to make semolina for pasta and flour for breads for centuries. Over time, wheat farmers have bred strains to handle harsher weather in the mountains and milder temperatures closer to the coast, giving rise to summer and winter wheats that can make anything from crusty Italian breads to a tender, fine-grained panettone studded with dried and candied fruits.

Olives also grow beautifully in southern Tuscany. Some trees that produced oil for Roman diners still bear fruit for olive oil today. Tuscan oils are regarded as some of the finest, but many of the region’s olives also wind up as antipasti or flavorful accents in a salad. Spinach, lettuce and cress grow well in the region’s low-lying areas while citrus fruits prefer higher ground.

Dining Alla Toscana

A region’s geography shapes its national palate, and Tuscany’s abundance has gifted it with one of the world’s most delicious native cuisines. When Caterina de’Medici married into Spanish royalty, she missed a taste of home cooking and imported Tuscan chefs to create the flavors of Florence for her. Today, dishes with spinach are still called Florentine in her honor.

Simplicity is the hallmark of Tuscan food. A Tuscan cook believes that too much ornamentation of a dish just gets in the way of appreciating the vibrant flavors of native ingredients. Given Toscana’s abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables, seafood and meats, it’s no wonder that natives embrace elegantly simple preparations. Sauces are used sparingly as accent flavors rather than to cover up a dish.

Tender veal piccata epitomizes the Tuscan attitude to food and embraces the best of what the region has to offer. Flavored with Tuscan olive oil, its crisp exterior comes from the area’s abundant wheat fields and the flour they produce. To keep any flavors from getting lost in the dish, the light sauce comes from deglazing the pan with a splash of white wine and a squeeze of local lemons to brighten it. Butter from the region’s dairy farms finishes and enriches the sauce without concealing the dish’s other flavor notes.

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Sophia Loren’s Favorite Italian Dishes

July 13, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
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“Sophia Loren makes no secret of her love of Italian food “

As Italy’s most renowned actress and one of the world’s most beautiful women, Sophia Loren didn’t need to do anything else to secure her fame. That didn’t stop her from honoring the cuisine of her native land with a series of cookbooks with titles like “In the Kitchen with Love” and “Eat with Me.” She makes no secret of her love of Italian food and has even generously given it credit for her astonishing beauty: “Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.”

Although she was born in Rome, the actress grew up near Naples in Pozzuoli. Born in 1934, she remembers having too little to eat during and after the war. Instead of feeling deprived, though, she developed a deeper appreciation for food in all its forms. From a humble bowl of seafood soup or pasta with fresh herbs to a full Italian feast with multiple courses, she enjoys it all and isn’t shy about showing it. While other actresses and style icons post blogs about vegan sprout sandwiches, Loren talks lovingly about ripe cheeses, homemade pasta and luscious sauces.

She’s no dilettante as an author, either; she speaks freely about her life, the movie industry and the concept of beauty in her books. Nowhere is she more eloquent than when she talks about her passion for cooking, eating and enjoying meals with loved ones. She accompanies her recipes for Neapolitan pizza, Tuscan ribollita soup and Bolognese sauce with personal anecdotes that bring her favorite foods to life and invite readers to enjoy the story as well as the dish.

It’s no surprise to find glimpses of the actress’ personal life interwoven with her favorite recipes. To her, as with many Italians, food is all about context – who grew it, where it came from, who prepared it and who sat next to you when it was served. Dining isn’t just a way to refuel; it’s a social occasion, an event, a cause for celebration. Her “piccoli secreti,” Italian for “little secrets,” add figurative spice to her descriptive recipes along with the fennel and sweet basil that make them special.

As a well-traveled Italian actress, Loren has dined at some of the world’s best tables, so she doesn’t have a single favorite dish. Based on her recipes, though, she considers pasta an essential component of any meal. In an interview with Daily Mail in 2009, she talked about her love of cooking for herself and her passion for pasta. She generally chooses tomato-based southern Italian sauces over creamy ones and notes that “if you stick to a healthy sauce, pasta is fine.” When she indulges in a rich fettuccine Alfredo, she shares the dish with others so everyone gets a taste.

If she doesn’t pick favorites in her extensive culinary repertoire, she does list a few of her sons’ favorite dishes. Carlo, Jr. and Edoardo are in their 40s today, but she still cooks their favorite dishes when they visit, according to a 2010 interview with Parade magazine. She lists pasta Bolognese with its richly meaty sauce, cheesy eggplant parmigiana and peas with bacon as a few of the family’s most beloved dishes. She also feeds their friends: “I always keep something in the freezer, because they show up with four, five, six friends, and it’s much easier to make them happy by having different foods on the table.”

At 78, Loren still has that passion for life that made her one of the world’s most beloved stars on and off the movie screen. Still effortlessly elegant and phenomenally beautiful, she enjoys Italian food as much as ever. If she truly owes everything to spaghetti, then her long and joyous life is a ringing endorsement of it.

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The Great Italian Sandwich

July 6, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
"The secret to a great panini lies in the pressing"

“The secret to a great panini lies in the pressing”

The sandwich may have taken its name from an English earl, but the concept of wrapping delectable cured meats, cheeses and vegetables in bread reached its zenith in the hands of Italian cooks. Italy’s great salumi tradition and wealth of fantastic cheeses made sandwiches a natural evolution for Italian diners who wanted something to eat on the go. As Sicilians and Italians came to American shores, they brought their fondness for hand-held feasts with them, leading to unique regional delights.

Italian Subs

The classic sub, zeppelin or hoagie is so closely identified with its Italian origins that it’s called an Italian sandwich in many parts of the country. The Italian loaves used for sandwiches typically don’t contain eggs, so they have a crisp crust rather than the tender surface of a hamburger bun or roll. Italian cured meats, including salami, prosciutto, pepperoni and mortadella, complement a slice or two of creamy provolone or mozzarella. Think of an Italian sub as an antipasto plate on crusty Italian bread, and you’ll be right on target.

A classic Italian sandwich often has brined pepperoncini peppers along with the usual lettuce leaves and tomato slices, but toppings have as many regional variations as there are sandwich lovers. Some sandwich lovers prefer a drizzle of olive oil to marry the flavors and keep the bread from becoming soggy where it touches juicy tomatoes. Others prefer a dash of garlic-infused vinegar to add a bright tanginess to the sandwich. Some purists reach for both in the form of Italian dressing as a condiment.

Hot Italian sandwiches are like an Italian meal on bread. Veal parmigiana, meatballs and eggplant are just a few of the dishes that lend themselves beautifully to sandwich fillings.

Panini

In Italian, the word “panini” means “little bread” and refers to any sandwich on a traditional Italian small loaf such as ciabatta. Typically served hot, the Italian panini is only lightly pressed and grilled to melt the cheese and meld the filling’s flavors. In Italian restaurants in America, a panini might be served Italian-style or pressed and grilled more firmly into a compact shape that concentrates its vibrant taste.

You can order just about anything on your panini, but don’t skimp on the cheese. A pressed, grilled sandwich is at its best when the cheese inside it melts and fills every available space between layers of roast pork or bites of juicy marinated chicken. The melted cheese also holds the sandwich together nicely, making it easy to fit into a busy day. You may not have time to savor a traditional Italian sub sandwich with its thick, crusty bread and flavorful oil, but a panini’s slim profile fits easily in your hand when you’re eating on the go.

Regional Favorites

Throughout parts of the northeastern U.S., Italian sandwiches are synonymous with peppers and sausage. A typical sausage and pepper sandwich can be stuffed with freshly made sausage like our house-made Italian sausage or with a cured sausage variety, but it always has heaps of sauteed sweet peppers and onions. With the addition of an egg or two, a sausage and pepper sandwich becomes a classic weekend breakfast item.

In New Orleans, the Sicilian community developed its own  Italian sandwich, the muffuletta. The name comes from the round bread that forms the foundation of the sandwich, but the truly special part of the sandwich is the pungent, briny olive salad atop its layers of mortadella, salami and provolone. Workers who wanted a hearty lunch originally ate each element of the meal separately, but they quickly found that piling everything onto a round of bread transformed a simple lunch into a delicacy. While muffulettas are hard to find outside of their birthplace, topping an Italian sub with olives, peppers, onions and celery will give you a taste of this Sicilian treat.

Chicago’s contribution to the illustrious history of Italian sandwiches is the Italian beef sandwich. Loaded with chopped, seasoned roast beef and topped with pickled Italian peppers and vegetables, the Italian beef sandwich grew from the Windy City’s thriving beef processing industry. Italian workers bought inexpensive cuts of beef and made them delectably tender with long, slow cooking. The easiest way to eat the juicy meat was on a long Italian bun.

Try something better than a burger for lunch and go Italian with a panini or a meatball sub. No matter how you like your Italian sandwich, it’s authentic to somewhere.

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Making Lunchtime Special

July 2, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments

"For many Italians, lunch is the most important meal of the day, and it's treated as a feast"

“For many Italians, lunch is the most important meal of the day, and it’s treated as a feast”

Lunch, or pranzo as it’s known in Italy, is far from the hastily eaten midday meals that some Americans tend to eat. For many Italians, it’s the most important meal of the day, and it’s treated as a feast.

Traditionally, Italian businesses closed for a few hours for lunch. The pausa pranzo was long enough to let workers go home to their families or get together with friends for a leisurely meal rather than a quick bite grabbed between stacks of paperwork. In rural villages and towns, long lunches are still common, but in Rome, Milan and Naples, the pace of business has made a two- or three-hour lunch break impractical.

That doesn’t mean Italians have given up the pleasure of delicious, fresh food, though. A typical lunch, even if it lasts only half an hour or so, still consists of two courses followed by fruit or coffee. Working lunches are rare; instead, people move out of the office and into local piazzas and parks to enjoy some fresh air with their food. Convivial groups of co-workers and friends make the meal a social event, a hold-over from the old-fashioned, hours-long pausa pranzo that Italians are rightly unwilling to sacrifice.

Although they don’t have time to get home for lunch unless they live nearby, many Italian workers still enjoy home-cooked food for their mid-day meals. Local pizzerias and cafes know that they have to offer outstanding food to compete with Mama’s homemade bolognese sauce or ravioli, so they prepare pizzas in wood-fired ovens, panini with delectable salumi and other delicacies to tempt the lunch crowd.

Eating Italian in New York

Your workload might preclude a leisurely three-hour lunch, but by taking your cue from Italian diners, you can still make lunchtime something special.

Sometimes, people are reluctant to spend a little time away from their desks because they feel that working through lunch is more efficient. The truth is that taking a real break and getting out of the office, even if it’s for just a few minutes, refreshes you and makes you more able to concentrate. Instead of eating at your desk, take your lunch at a nearby park or somewhere away from the office. You’ll feel refreshed and enjoy your food more when you’re in the moment, not immersed in work.

Everyone who has a day job feels the time crunch around lunchtime. Traffic, long lines at fast food places and the time it takes to prepare your lunch can compress an hour-long lunch period into a scant ten minutes or so of eating time. If time is short, delivery is a great option. You’ll spend more time enjoying a leisurely meal and less time driving or walking to get it. Calling or faxing your order and picking it up is another great option, especially if you’re close to the restaurant; you get a chance to get out of the office and don’t have to wait around for your food.

We tend to be solitary diners for lunch in this country, but in Italy, lunch is meant to be shared. Take a page from the Italian way of eating and invite a co-worker or three to go in with you on a lunch order. It’s a great way to ingratiate yourself in a new office or reaffirm ties of friendship when you’ve been with your company a while. Getting together with friends from outside your office can also be a good plan; if you have a friend who works nearby, why not make time to reconnect by getting together over a slice of pizza or a sandwich?

While finding time for a true Italian-style pranzo may not be practical during the work week, you can make any lunch a little more special when you treat it as a reason to celebrate. Make your next lunch an occasion with good food and good company by coming in to Carlino’s or enjoying a lunchtime delivery special.

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What’s The Difference Between Northern and Southern Italian Food?

May 4, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
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“Both north and south contribute to classic Italian cuisine, but each has its own distinct set of flavors”

Italy’s a compact country about the length of California, but the culinary differences between northern Italian food and southern Italian dishes are tremendous. While northern Italians love their rich cream sauces, polenta and stuffed meats, people in the south embrace flavors such as tangy tomato sauces, olive oil and fresh steamed seafood. Both north and south have contributed their share to classic Italian cuisine, but each region has its own distinct set of flavors.

Southern Italian Cuisine

Southern Italian cooking features the bright, lively Mediterranean taste that most people associate with Italian cuisine. From salad greens to seafood, freshness is paramount to southern Italian chefs. Peppers,  eggplant and tomatoes thrive in the warm southern Italian climate, and they form the basis for some of the region’s most-beloved dishes. Eggplant parmigiana, tangy marinara sauce and minestrone enlivened with fresh herbs are southern classics. The wealth of great tomatoes led to the invention of Italy’s most popular food worldwide: pizza.

The Neapolitan pizza margherita combines the best of southern Italy in one delicious dish. Fresh tomatoes, creamy mozzarella cheese and a few leaves of peppery sweet basil turn a simply prepared crust into a feast. Purists can opt for the traditional pizza or choose some of the region’s other delicacies as toppings. Anchovies, freshly made sweet sausage, diced peppers and onions are practically made to go with pizza.

While northern Italy runs on butter, southern Italy makes the most of its abundance of olive oils. Olives grow beautifully in warm Mediterranean climates, but nowhere has olive oil become a greater culinary art form than in Italy. From deep green oils meant for salads to light yellow oils perfect for putting a golden crust on a piece of pan-seared fresh fish, olive oil is a southern Italian icon. You’ll find it in the kitchen and on the table as a dipping medium for the region’s crusty, open-textured breads.

Northern Italian Fare

Thanks to its mountainous terrain and its proximity to Switzerland, Austria and France, northern Italy loves the land. The Piemonte and Lombardia regions of northern Italy are prime cattle country, and their cuisine shows it. Butter-based sauces rich with cream grace northern Italian tables just as they do in France, but Italian chefs put their own delicious spin on them with fresh herbs and garlic. Stews and soups with the beef so abundant in the area are popular in the winter, but spring is for succulent veal. Thin breaded veal cutlets are as popular in Italy as they are in nearby Austria.

Hard sausages of every description helped northern Italians weather winters that came early to mountain valleys. Salami and other salted, preserved meats such as prosciutto are northern Italian delicacies that have gone worldwide. The Emilia-Romagna region of central northern Italy is home to prosciutto di Parma and another product synonymous with great Italian food: Parmesan cheese.

The mountainous terrain at the foot of the Italian Alps lends itself to pastures rather than fields, so cheese has been a staple for centuries. The sheep, goats and cows that graze there produce the milk that goes into Parmigiano-Reggiano, pecorino, asiago and gorgonzola cheeses. With their variety of textures and tastes, northern Italian cheeses complement northern and southern dishes alike.

Whether you prefer a dish inspired by northern Italian cooking such as fettuccine Alfredo or a southern delight such as a Neapolitan pizza, you’ll find the same commitment to bold yet balanced flavor common to all great Italian cooking.

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Love, Italian Style: Che Gioia Vivere

April 20, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
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“Italians use the phrase Che Gioia Vivere to describe every experience as one to be savored”

To the French, it’s joie de vivre; to the Italians, it’s che gioia vivere. Either way, it means the same thing: the joy of living. For Italians, the phrase describes the way they embrace every experience as one to be savored. From great music to fine art to outstanding food, every Italian considers certain pleasures a birthright. Love, Italian style isn’t just an ordinary romance; it’s seeing the romance in everything.

Art in Italy

If you were to list the world’s most exquisite artists, Italians would be represented more than any other culture. Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Botticelli, Michelangelo and others changed the face of visual art and sculpture. The Renaissance began in Italy’s studios and libraries. One reason for this artistic flowering is Italy’s natural beauty, but part of it might also be the Italian psyche. To create something beautiful, an artist must first be sensitive enough to see beauty. Their eye for beauty didn’t keep Italian painters and sculptors from unstinting realism, though. The simplest horse drawings in da Vinci’s notebooks had an earthy, muscular presence along with their grace.

Art in Italy has never meant frescoes and sculpture alone. Every building, landscape or wardrobe is another occasion to make something beautiful. From vintage Venetian Carnevale masks to the latest Milanese fashions, opulent Italian style is a delight to wear and to see. Unlike the heavy, brooding Gothic architecture that evolved in other countries, early Renaissance architects designed piazzas and public buildings filled with light and clean, simple lines. These Italian artists in plaster and stone paid homage to the simple elegance of Roman architecture and added their own sophisticated polish. Modern Italian buildings still evoke the grace of their Renaissance roots because Italians still appreciate the beauty of a Mediterranean sun slanting through Venetian glass windows.

Magnificent Music and Movies

No other country could have created the pageantry and passion that is opera. Combining the best of a stage play with music as memorable today as it was when it was written hundreds of years ago, opera is still dominated by the Italian influence. That Italian gioia di vivere makes itself known in every soaring aria. Like all Italian art forms, opera combines refinement with a rustic charm that shines through in comic operas.

Opera isn’t Italy’s only contribution to great music. Great Italian, Italian-American and Sicilian-American performers like Louie Prima, Connie Francis, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra brought Italian passion to everything they did. The legendary Tony Bennett is still thrilling new generations of fans.

From Federico Fellini to Roberto Benigni, Italian filmmakers have become famous for their richly complex movies. Kaleidoscopic art-house films and emotionally moving masterpieces like “Life Is Beautiful” are equally emblematic of Italy’s thriving and varied movie industry.

Great Italian Food

An Italian dinner doesn’t just fill you up; it fills your senses. Peppers, tomatoes and fresh greens let you feast your eyes before you taste the first courses of your meal. Even the textures of crunchy bruschetta or creamy mozzarella in an insalata Caprese contribute to the diner’s delight. The Italian love of food is an appreciation for how it pleases every sense. Home cooking – or restaurant cooking that comes from the heart – is better than any overly precious plate of nouvelle cuisine to an Italian because it’s made with love.

Every Italian believes a meal is incomplete without at least a little time to savor food, wine and conversation – even for a quick lunch. Even when pressed for time and grabbing a quick bite, Italians chat as they eat. Whenever possible, friends and family gather for dinners, turning them into convivial events. As great as the food tastes, it’s improved with good company. It’s okay to leave food on the plate because you’re busy talking and laughing; Italians believe it’s more important to live in the moment. Dessert is just another reason to spend time in the company of those you love best, so linger over that slice of tiramisu.

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What Did Joe DiMaggio Eat?

April 10, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
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“Joe’s life was a rags-to-riches story in the greatest American tradition”

One of the greatest baseball players in history and a cultural icon off the field as well, “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio was an American legend with Italian roots. Born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio, he eventually Anglicized his name, but he never lost his appreciation for the home-cooked Italian food he ate as a child. His reputation for staying close to his fans meant he often visited the same restaurants and sidewalk food stands they enjoyed, a fact that must have stunned other diners who recognized the handsome athlete at a neighboring table.

Joe’s early life as the eighth son of first-generation Italian-American parents meant he grew up on a combination of traditional southern Italian fare and classic early 20th-century American dishes. During the first World War when he was still a toddler, his family observed the same “meatless Mondays” that most families did to conserve resources for the war effort. The colorful Sicilian and southern Italian meals his mother made kept meatless Mondays from becoming dull and helped the young DiMaggio grow into the promising young athlete he would become.

Today, professional athletes depend on a team of nutritionists and dietitians to counsel their eating habits, but Joe came from a different era. The previous baseball great, Babe Ruth, was famous for his dietary indulgences, but DiMaggio ate a training diet that plenty of present-day athletes would find fairly familiar. With plenty of meat and eggs for protein and pasta or other carbohydrates for fuel, Joe’s usual menu during his career wasn’t too far off from the training tables in today’s MBA or NFL facilities, albeit with more red meat and dairy foods. He also appreciated an all-American New York hot dog or three.

Despite his fame as one of the best athletes ever to play the game, DiMaggio wasn’t content to be a hero on the baseball diamond. In 1943, he enlisted in the Air Force. Although he didn’t see combat duty and mostly participated in exhibition games and morale-boosting events, he still played a key role in the war effort and sought to do more. When he realized his relatively soft life had actually put ten pounds on his lanky frame instead of whipping him into shape, he requested a combat rotation but was declined. Just before the war’s end in 1945, DiMaggio was discharged for stomach ulcers, a problem for which doctors of the time recommended drinking plenty of milk and forgoing spicy foods.

If the Yankee Clipper was famous for his incredible performance on the field, especially his still-unbeaten 56-game hitting streak, he later married someone else at least as famous for her performances on the silver screen: Marilyn Monroe. She was initially reluctant to meet him, but when they met in 1954, her reservations about his being a typical athlete melted away; he was gracious, humble and gentlemanly. Their marriage lasted less than a year, but despite their incredibly high-profile personas, they tried to lead a normal married life, often cooking dinner together when their schedules permitted. One of their favorite foods was a simple broiled steak with a salad or some carrots on the side.

All of Joe’s life was a rags-to-riches story in the greatest American tradition, but he never lost the humility that kept him grounded. He frequented the meat-and-potatoes men’s club Toots Shor’s rather than Sardi’s and purportedly preferred a hot dog from a street vendor or a plate of garlicky spaghetti to the overly refined fare that was considered stylish in the 1950s and ’60s. After he ate, he’d often give interviews or sign autographs, never tiring of his fans; in turn, they respected the great man enough to let him eat his chops or meatballs in peace.

With his natural grace and quiet humility, DiMaggio was an American legend, but his Italian heritage helped endear him to the Italian-American community.

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Easter in Italy and Around the World

March 24, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
carlinos-easter
“Easter Sunday brings thoughts of egg hunts, Easter bonnets and chocolate bunnies”

For us, Easter Sunday might bring thoughts of egg hunts, Easter bonnets and chocolate bunnies, but the holiday has a different feel in other parts of the world. Marked with the solemnity of its religious origins and the lightheartedness of spring’s rebirth, Easter has a long and colorful history that even retains elements of ancient Roman festivals.

Russia and Eastern Europe

Russian and Eastern European countries’ Easter celebrations are most famous for their incredibly detailed decorated eggs. These aren’t the simple hard-boiled and dyed eggs most of us know for Easter; these works of art are often meant to be displayed for years. The eggs are a hold-over from the earliest celebrations of spring’s renewal. They represented new beginnings and fertility, and adorning them with festive decorations is a practice that predates not only Christianity but also recorded history; no one’s quite sure when the practice began. However, the Romans almost certainly contributed to the custom, carrying it to all corners of the far-flung Roman Empire.

While Easter Sunday is solemn, the Monday afterward is celebratory throughout Eastern Europe. It’s tradition to spank others with decorated willow switches – think of the friendly swats you might get on your birthday or the affectionate pinch you’d get if you forgot to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. Water-fights are also common, especially in Poland.

The dinner table almost always includes a ham, eggs and bread, often marked in the shape of a cross to honor the religious roots of the celebration. Some traditions also include cracking boiled eggs with a nail to symbolize Christ’s suffering.

Greece

Greek Orthodox traditions start with celebrations on Great Thursday with eggs dyed red and placed on altars or ikons. Easter is a more solemn holiday than it is elsewhere; traditional and devout households consider the next few days a period of mourning. On Holy Friday, church bells toll in funereal tones and flags fly at half-mast. Saturday’s observances have a distinctly modern twist; the Eternal Flame travels to Greece from Jerusalem by jet, a trip that used to be considerably longer. Each church gets its own flame that remains lit throughout the remainder of the week.

On Easter Sunday, the somber tone of the holy week is transformed to a joyful celebration. Whole spit-roasted lamb is a traditional centerpiece to an Easter feast, but any kind of lamb dish can work for those who don’t have time or space for a whole lamb. Heaps of delicacies grace every table, and the retsina and ouzo flow freely throughout the day. It’s no wonder, then, that Easter Monday is a time of restful contemplation in the Greek tradition.

Italy

The home of the Roman Catholic Church and of pre-Christian Roman celebrations of spring naturally has its own rich Easter traditions. It’s second only to Christmas in its importance socially, and for many devout Italians, it’s the most solemn feast in the liturgical calendar. Good Friday is filled with more solemn observances, including blessings from parish priests and meatless Lenten meals, but Sunday is a day for celebration.

Easter Sunday is for feasting on pork, lamb and veal as well as sweet treats in the shape of eggs. Chocolate eggs are as beloved in Italy as they are here for Easter, and the Italians have turned decorating the candies into an art form. Bakeries try to outdo each other with lavish confections and iced cakes. The colomba pasquale, or Easter dove, is a special sweetened, yeast-leavened Easter bread that is Easter’s counterpart to the traditional Christmas panettone.

Florence has a unique tradition, the Scoppio del Carro, loosely translated as the Bursting of the Cart. A cart filled with fireworks is paraded through the streets and set alight with flints from the Holy Sepulchre, bringing together a religious tradition with one that predates Christianity in a unique event that celebrates spring with a bang.

Whether you celebrate Easter as a traditional Christian holiday or as a celebration of spring’s arrival, Carlino’s wishes you Buona Pasqua!

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Olive Oil: The Secret to Great Italian Flavor

March 15, 2013 Carlino's Restaurant no comments
Carlinos-Olive-Oil
“Understand olive oil, and you’ll understand the roots of Italian cuisine”

Italian food is famous for its luscious tomato-based sauces and endless variations on flavorful pasta dishes, but both tomatoes and pasta are relative newcomers to Italy compared to the olive. Olives have been grown throughout the Mediterranean since antiquity, and the oil they produce is at the heart of some of Italy’s most beloved foods. It’s everything from a salad dressing to a condiment for bread to the secret ingredient that makes a grandma-style pizza crust so delicious. Understand olive oil, and you’ll understand the roots of Italian cuisine.

Types of Olive Oil

As you go down your local grocery’s oil aisle, you’ll notice that olive oil, unlike other vegetable oils, varies tremendously in color and viscosity. Pick up a bottle and hold it to the light; you’ll see shades from a lush emerald green to chartreuse to topaz yellow and even pale straw. Color doesn’t indicate quality, but it does usually show how much an oil has been processed. Pale olive oils have usually been more refined and don’t have the complex flavor and lower smoke point of darker oils.

Olive oils are also graded based on how the manufacturer produced them. The grades include:

Extra-virgin olive oil

Only oil physically pressed from the olives without chemical treatment, heating or refining can bear this “extra virgin” label. Fine Italian olive oils also pass a rigorous taste test from experts whose palates are as sensitive to nuances in olive oils as a wine taster’s. These experts ensure quality and uniformity; every extra-virgin olive oil sold in the U.S. has gone through this quality check.

Virgin olive oil

Virgin olive oil is functionally similar to extra-virgin olive oil, but it has a less pronounced flavor. Virgin oils contain no more than 1.5 percent acidity.

Pure olive oil

Blended from pressed virgin olive oil and high-quality production oil, pure olive oil is an economical choice for general use. With less than 2 percent acidity, it has a relatively mild flavor.

Olive oil

Produced with heat and solvent extraction as well as physical pressing, refined olive oil has very little of the oil’s characteristic flavor but has a much higher smoke point.

Olive Oil in the Kitchen

The key to using olive oil well is in choosing the right oil for the dish. The pronounced flavors, high cost and low smoke point of unrefined extra-virgin oil are perfect for dressing a salad, drizzling over crusty Italian bread or adding a grace note to a lemon cake, but it wouldn’t be suitable for oil-poaching fish or pan-searing a veal cutlet.

A good guideline to remember is that the less processed the oil, the closer to serving time the oil should be added. The fresh, grassy notes of an extra-virgin oil are perfect to dress a salad just before it reaches the table, while pale refined oil is best for low, slow cooking techniques. For dishes that fall somewhere between those extremes, a good pure olive oil is perfect. A grandma-style pizza doesn’t need to stay in the oven long to develop its uniquely delicious and crispy bottom crust, so it takes a high-grade pure olive oil or a good virgin oil that lets its taste shine
through.

Extra-virgin olive oil has complex flavor notes that some aficionados have compared to fine perfumes, and the best of them are as valuable to connoisseurs as fine wines. Heating them destroys the volatile components that give them their nuanced flavor, so save your best oils for the table, not the stove.

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