Something we gut-wrenchingly miss about Italy: the plentiful celebratory festivals that take place in small towns across the countryside. A typical Saturday in Piedmont would consist of Jonas and me revving up the Alfa to hit the hills in search of a gathering of townfolk united in their reverence for classic Fiat 500’s, white truffles, esoteric antiques, gelato, formaggio, vino, et cetera.  One of our favorites was the Festival delle Sagre, translated that’s the Festival of Festivals.  It takes place in the town of Asti, famous for great wines (Barbera d’Asti, Asti Spumante), horseracing (The Palio), and its close proximity to the heart of the best white truffles on earth, tartufo bianco d’Alba.  The festival is a great place to sample rustic Piedmontese cuisine in a large-format, entirely informal setting.  It is also a great place to drink plentiful amounts of wine poured directly from large glass damigiane (carboys, casks, huge glass vessels used to store wine) and have a sinfully good time.

One of the more memorable dishes on hand at the Festival delle Sagre is carne battuta, which means (now get your mind out of the gutter here) beaten meat.  The longer version, carne battuta al coltello just means beaten with a knife. In other words, you cut up chunks of raw, very high quality beef or horsemeat, then beat it into submission (and tiny little pieces) with a super-heavy meat cleaver.  It’s like the Italian version of the French dish Steak Tartare, only with different flavors.  Typical Piedmontese additions would be lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and perhaps some herbs. I have seen people add cream as well, though rarely.

In my case, I wanted to top my battuta with a quivering quail egg because I thought it would add a nice, carbonara-like texture to the finished plate.  I started with extremely fresh Wagyu filet mignon cut from the center of the tenderloin and trimmed of any oxygenated pieces just before preparation.  Then I roughly chopped it before going to town with my man-sized meat cleaver. I beat up half a pound of filet so much my arm is sore today, no kidding. Perhaps I am just a big wimp!

Once I had my perfectly beaten cubes, I used a fork to stir in lemon juice (one small lemon for half pound of meat), olive oil-to taste, ½ c of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, ½ tbsp chopped fresh oregano, and Maldon salt.  I then plated the battuta using a cookie cutter as a form, topped it with a sous vide quail egg (you could just soft boil too), and sprinkled on some fresh pepper.  I served the battuta with celery and carrot ribbons because they are nice to break up the mouth feel of the meat.  It’s a great appetizer for a more adventurous dinner party, of course you’d want to be sure everyone was ok with raw meat before you wasted all that delectable filet.

Burrata. I love to make it, love to eat it, love to serve it.  I heart it in Italy the most since it’s often made from water buffalo as opposed to the plain ol’ cow we tend to use here in the US.  I resorted to learning how to make it myself last year after a particularly poignant visit to Piedmont that was bathed in burrata superiority.  I returned stateside, tasted one rubbery bite of store-bought burrata and avowed I would satiate my desires by making it myself from now on. It’s just one of those things that really should be eaten virtually the second it’s made, and that’s too hard to sort out for an esoteric cheese in this geographically-vast country.  In Seattle DeLaurenti occasionally makes it, and will certainly make you some if given a bit of notice, but you could just learn how to make it from me, then you’ll be swimming in creamy divinity from now until forever.  You can read about how I learned to make burrata here, and I’m always happy to put together a class if you’re local and interested. 

Burrata has a very neutral taste. Its splendor lies in its texture more than anything, which makes it a versatile centerpiece for an appetizer tray.  I prepared each ball of burrata quite differently and both plates were synergies of ingredients, just in varied ways.  I’ve been marinating some thinly sliced rhubarb in a tad of maple syrup mixed with the juice of a tangelo and a sprig of rosemary for two days.

I like raw rhubarb because it holds its form and has more flavor than after it’s cooked to unrecognizable mush.  It softens a little from marination, and also loses the bitter kick present if you simply gnaw on a stalk.  In short, try it, it’s one of those perfect foods you’ll wish you’d discovered sooner.  I served the first burrata ball with rhubarb slices and fava froth, which I simply whipped up using an immersion blender, favas, mint and meyer lemon.  You may be blanching at the word “froth.” Well I certainly can’t call it a “foam” in the current post-WD50 culinary climate, but the texture is far from a “puree” which is a bit of a tired way to serve favas, IMHO.  Froth seems an ample adjective because it remained light and airy but still managed to distill every ounce of fava flavor and bring it straight forward on the palate. 

My second burrata plating consisted of homemade pita triangles and fresh chickpeas shelled and lightly sautéed in butter and Portugese flor de sal.  Because the initial serving suggested sweetness with the maple-rhubarb slices, I wanted to deliberately showcse burrata’s ability to land on the savory side of the spectrum. 

Fresh chickpeas are a revelation of nature; shell and taste a raw one sometime and you’ll forever attempt to recreate the innocent perfection that hit your tongue.  They are in the throes of ripeness right now in the Western part of the US; if you can find them at your local farmer’s market I suggest you buy up a hefty stock.  They can be served raw drizzled in lemon and good olive oil, lightly sautéed, even steamed and added to pasta.  In this case a quick sauté in a bath of butter proves just right to match the satin decadence of burrata (which incidentally means “buttered” in the mother tongue.) Piping pita triangles just out of the oven complete the dish.

As some of you may have suspected by now, I have a wee obsession with salt.  I have a slightly larger obsession with Italian leather high heels, but my husband prefers me to cultivate the salt fixation, so here we are. It really is a fairly practical passion- much easier (both from a luggage and a pocketbook perspective) to bring back five varietals of artisanal salts in every shade of the rainbow from last January’s visit to Eataly in Torino than the same number in heels from 10 Corso Como in Milano- it was during the sales, however, so I had to push my luck and try both!

Stores like The Meadowin Portland make it easy to access the salts of the world under one roof, which is great in a pinch (pun intended), especially with some of the interesting products they have unearthed, like Himalayan Salt Slabs you can heat directly in your oven and fry eggs upon, among other uses.  With online ordering enabled, the Meadow can satisfy even the most rarefied salt craving in a matter of days, however my true pleasure lies in the hunt.  Read more