20 January 2018

Persimmon Tart


Persimmons, or kaki, are very particular fruits. They have a sweet, delicate flavour, somewhat like browned sugar with a slight floral aftertaste. Their season is quite brief, starting in late autumn and finishing before the winter frost sinks its teeth in. If you don’t live in an area where they grow, they can be hard to come by. When ripe, the plump orange bulbs swell with a golden goo and the thin skin easily splits apart. For this reason, they don’t do well in grocery stores and certainly can’t be shipped across the globe like apples. 

Growing up in Northern California, I never saw persimmons, nor ever tasted one. If it hadn’t been for my father talking about them being his favourite fruit, I may never even have known of their existence. Fortunately, they are very common in Italy and the hills of the Cinque Terre are speckled with these bare trees, branches weighed down by heavy orange fruits. My first experience was in Sicily when we bought a flat of ‘cacchi’ from a guy in a parking lot. This if often where you’ll get the best produce in Sicily--from the back of a truck in a random parking lot.

05 January 2018

How to freeze lemons to use year-round


It's the height lemon season right now, and if you have a tree of your own, you may have more lemons than you know what to do with. Well, not worry because one of the best things to do with all those lemons is also the simplest and most healthy.

Freezing your lemons is becoming popular now that research has shown it's the healthiest way to ingest the sour fruit. Lemon water is known to detoxify and alkalise the body, but beyond squeezing a wedge into the glass, the peel of the lemon is usually discarded. The problem with that is the peel is the most powerful part of the fruit!

Vernazza Updates:

Vernazza is well on its way to normalcy and while I no longer write updates on their status, you can learn about the devastating floods of 2011 by clicking the label "Vernazza Updates". For the latest information from the organizations in Vernazza and Monterosso, visit SaveVernazza and Rebuild Monterosso.

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