Archive for October, 2008
La Buona Cucina America: Apple Pie – Torta di Mele
We couldn’t possibly compile a collection of American recipes without including apple pie–and here is my mom’s version (and yes, her hands feature in the photos below).
This is of course my all-time favorite apple pie, but I realize that everyone has their own tricks and secrets as to what makes a delicious apple pie, so please share your thoughts in the comments!
Apple Pie
Dough:
- 2 c flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2/3 c shortening/lard
- 5-7 tablespoons cold water
Filling:
- 8 tart apples
- 1 c sugar
- 3-4 tablespoons flour (more if apples are moist)
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons butter
1. Chop together flour, salt, and shortening until pieces of dough are the size of peas. Add water slowly, mixing with hands and being sure dough isn’t too moist or too dry.
2. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and put it in refrigerator for about twenty minutes.
3. In the meantime, peel, core, and cut apples into thin slices.
4. Mix apples, sugar, flour, and cinnamon together.
5. Remove dough from refrigerator and cut in half.
6. Roll one half of the dough between two sheets of wax paper until 1/8″ thick, and use the rolling pin to transfer to pie pan.
7. Fill shell with apple filling, and put butter in pieces on top (as shown).
8. Roll other half of dough until 1/8″ thick and transfer it to cover the pie.
9. Seal edges by pinching dough around the edges as shown.
10. Put small slices in top crust to prevent it from overflowing, and sprinkle top with sugar.
11. Bake in 400°F oven for 15 minutes, and then turn oven down to 350° and let bake for about another half hour. The apples inside will be soft when the pie is ready.
12. Let cool before cutting.
Torta di Mele
Pasta:
- 280 g farina
- un pizzico di sale
- 75 g lardo
- 5-7 cucchiai di acqua fredda
Ripieno:
- 8 mele aspre
- 200 g zucchero
- 3-4 cucchiai farina (di più se le mele sono umide)
- 1 cucchiaino cannella
- 28 g burro
1. Mescolate la farina, il sale e il lardo finché i pezzi della pasta sono la misura dei piselli. Agguingete l’acqua lentamente, mescolando con le mani assicurando che la pasta non è troppo umida ne troppo secca.
2. Mettete la pasta nella pellicola e mettetela in frigo per circa venti minuti.
3. Nel frattempo, sbucciate, togliete il torsolo e affettate le mele a fette fine.
4. Mescolate insieme le mele, lo zucchero, la farina e la cannella.
5. Togliete la pasta dal frigo e tagliatela a metà.
6. Stendete una metà della pasta tra due foglie di carta oleata finché la pasta stesa è circa 3 mm. Usate il matterello per trasferire la pasta stesa alla teglia.
7. Riempite la teglia con il ripieno, e aggiungete burro a pezzi (come è mostrato sopra).
8. Stendete l’altra metà della pasta anche di 3 mm e coprite la torta con la pasta stesa.
9. Chiudete il bordo come è mostrato sopra.
10. Fate piccoli tagli nella pasta stesa sopra e spargetela con un po’ di zucchero.
11. Mettete la torta al forno a 200°C e fate cuocere per quindici minuti. Quindi abbassate la temperatura a 175°C e fate cuocere per un’altra mezz’ora. Quando la torta è pronta le mele dentro sarà morbide.
12. Lasciatela raffreddare prima di tagliare.
Buon appetito!
love thursday: autumn love blooms
Even in Calabria we have falling leaves and some gorgeous autumn colors (albeit later in the season), but not everything is dying off right now.
This little group of hearts blooms along the path I walk several times a day with the pooches:
And they make me smile every time.
What makes you smile each and every time you see it (or him or her)?
Happy Love Thursday everyone!
important notice for americans voting from abroad
We interrupt today’s regularly scheduled What’s Cooking Wednesday (but do come back Friday for La Buona Cucina Americana and Mom’s American as Apple Pie!) to remind Americans abroad who want their voices to be heard, from the US Department of State:
If you haven’t received your ballot within three weeks of your state’s ballot receipt deadline, and you are required to return your voted ballot by mail, you should complete, sign, date, and send in a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (FWAB). Make sure it is witnessed, if required by your state. If you subsequently receive your regular absentee ballot, execute it and return it regardless of when you receive it. Court decisions sometimes require late counting of ballots voted by Election Day, but received by local election officials for a specified period of time following Election Day.
How can you get a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot?
You can find instructions here (PDF) at the State Department website, through the Overseas Vote Foundation here, or through VoteFromAbroad here.
Want something more interactive?
Check out this tutorial from the Overseas Vote Foundation:
And here is a great post from expat James at Wandering Italy on why he votes.
No excuses! VOTE!!!!!!!!
Sex, Lies, Handwriting, and Presidential Candidates
A few months ago, I was working on an article about graphology, or handwriting analysis, and I came across the website of Michelle Dresbold, author of Sex, Lies, and Handwriting: A Top Expert Reveals the Secrets Hidden in Your Handwriting. Dresbold is one of the country’s top experts on the subject of handwriting interpretation and analysis, and has been helping law enforcement agents solve cases for a decade.
In fact, go HERE to enter to win a free copy of Dresbold’s book!
Hurry! Contest ends October 31!
OK, I don’t know about you, but I find this sort of thing fascinating. I find it most interesting that people can’t really “fake” their handwriting consistently without their “true” handwriting revealing itself. No, graphology doesn’t predict the future, but it can reveal a person’s motivations, intellect, idealism, vanity, honesty, psychological strengths and weaknesses, and even emotional and physical health.
And all of this is nothing new. Confucius philosophized, “Handwriting can infallibly show whether it comes from a person who is noble-minded or from one who is vulgar.” Aristotle wrote, “Just as all men do not have all the same speech sounds, neither do they have all the same writing.”
So why am I bringing all this up now? Well other than to give you a chance to win a copy of Dresbold’s book, I also want to point you to some analyses that Dresbold has done on signatures that you might find interesting about now:
Interesting, no?
Have you ever had your handwriting analyzed?
NaNoWriMo is back! are you in?
But first, I want to thank everyone *immensely* for the birthday wishes! It was a lovely weekend made even lovelier by all the fabulous, happy thoughts coming my way. Grazie mille!
And now, the winner of a free, signed copy of Justin Catanoso‘s My Cousin the Saint: A Search for Faith, Family, and Miracles from the commenters on my blog is:
Leanne of From Australia to Italy
Congratulations Leanne! I’ll be in touch!
Now, on to the NaNo stuff.
I’ve gotten several emails asking whether I’m going to be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. So I’m making it official here and now:
Yes, yes I am NaNo-ing, and you can find me here:
bleedingespresso
For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It’s more international than national, but it *is* all about writing a novel–or at least 50,000 words throughout the month of November.
Last year, I got up close to half that mark, but sadly, haven’t worked much on those 21,000 words since. So here’s my question to you: should I bend the rules of NaNo and continue that story, or should I start anew with a whole new idea (yet to be thought of)?
In some respects, I’m excited to get going on something new and interested to see where it takes me, but then, well, last year’s characters have been running around in my head lately too, and I’m wondering whether they don’t have more to say.
But on the other hand, they could also say things in, say, January and make room for new faces, no?
Can you tell I’m a Libra? Balancing, weighing, difficulty deciding….
So what do you think? How about an excerpt of last year’s unfinished novel, so you know what, and who, we’re talking about? Here are the first 450 words or so:
——–
“All I want is a coffee…strong, bitter, small!” yelled Saliha Abu Al-Fadl, her deep brown eyes glaring at the only man who could give her what she wanted.
It felt good to shout. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done it.
Nearby Salvatore Amato’s head was pulled from an article on military spending. He sought out the raised voice. Behind him to his left, was, as he expected, a damsel in distress. Always a sucker for such a thing, he folded the Philadelphia Inquirer under his arm and rushed, as much as an 83-year-old man can rush, over to the coffee counter.
“Excuse me, can I help?” he said as much to the woman as to the barista.
The woman wearing a burkha turned around and looked straight into a pair of coal black eyes framed by bushy white eyebrows and a rather pronounced nose. She glanced down and took quick note of his dark grey suit, white shirt, and black tie with small white crosses on it.
He topped off the look with a black derby, white band of course, that made her think of the old American gangster films. Her son, an increasingly famous movie producer, had sent her hundreds of his own favorite movies so that she could share his passion while learning English.
And now this animated gangster was waving a wooden cane back and forth at the young man behind the counter.
“She’ll have an espresso doppio,” said Salvatore. A smirk sneaked out from underneath a wild white mustache as he turned to Saliha. “My kind of woman,” he said as he looked into the woman’s pools of espresso for eyes and added a wink for good measure.
Saliha looked to the man behind the counter, hoping that the stranger had spoken the correct words. The coffee on the plane from Iraq had been watered down and weak, and she needed something much stronger to get through the day ahead.
“Well that’s all she had to say,” said the barista and turned away. He slammed the metal container holding the last brew hard against the end of the drawer that holds the old grounds.
“They have a strange language at these shops,” Salvatore said. “You may speak perfect English, and complimenti, it seems like you do, but it certainly doesn’t help you get a coffee here.” He took a black handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and wiped his forehead clean of the sweat that had formed on his walk over.
“Thank you sir,” Saliha said and turned back toward the counter to await her first coffee on American soil. As the machine hissed and gurgled, she could no longer contain her anticipation. Her lips curled into a broad smile that only she knew was there.
———-
So what do I do? Start anew? Continue? Help!
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
Calabria Guidebook
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