It’s been a while since I posted a video. This one shows the process of the vendemmia, the grape harvest and wine-making at Il Bagolaro in Sicily. I wrote a post on the vendemmia below. Enjoy!
La Vendemmia, The Sicilian Grape Harvest
Cosechando uvas del viñedo de Il Bagolaro para la vendimia
The Italian word for the grape harvest and wine-making process is vendemmia, very similar to the Spanish word vendimia. In Cafayate, Argentina I participated in a vendimia, see posts under Cafayate. I actually never planned to participate in another grape harvest here in Italy, but it was just my luck that Il Bagolaro celebrated their first vendemmia during my stay. Their vineyard is huge, but very young. It was planted only 4 years ago and it takes that long for the plant to begin producing grapes.
Everyone at Il Bagolaro was excited for the big event. They invited their family and friends and we spent an entire day preparing a feast of Sicilian dishes, like zucca al’agrodolce and caponata. We even slaughtered one of our goats to serve to the guests! We were all prepared for an intense, never-ending work day.
At 8 in the morning we hiked up to the vineyard and started harvesting. By 10:30 in the morning we had picked all the grapes there were to pick! Around 300 kilos, much less than we had expected. Some folks seemed to be a little upset that the plants had not produced more. I, on the other hand, was thankful! Harvesting is the easiest part of the vendemmia, destemming is the most monotonous and drawn out.
Los musicos que nos entretenian durante la vendimia con musica típica Siciliana
We got to work destemming all the grapes by hand, and thankfully, by this time more people had arrived. We ended up destemming the grapes in about an hour and a half. Excellent! The next vendemmia duty is fun and easy: pressing, by foot! At first, one little girl was lowered in to the
tub, eventually everyone hopped in! One of the other WWOOFers beat his tambourine in time with a friend who played Sicilian folkloric music on his soprano sax. Both in Argentina and in Italy when grapes are pressed by foot the custom is to dance to music. A beautiful tradition. We ended up producing about 150 liters of juice that is currently fermenting and will be enjoyed next year.
pisamos la uva a pie!
Todos los amigos y familiares que nos ayudaron con la vendimia
We ate a glorious lunch outside and I was happy that the day’s work had gone by smoothly. Little did I know, that was only day one of the vendemmia! Just because there were no more grapes on the property didn’t mean we couldn’t acquire more. That week we ended up repeating this same process twice with three times the amount of grapes minus all the extra help from family and friends. Both other times we harvested from abandoned vineyards where weeds often grew taller than the grape vines! By the end of the week I was so sick of grapes. My fingers are still stained black from the pigment in the grape skins! But it was very enjoyable work and I’m happy to have been able to participate in such an important event for Il Bagolaro.
Mostarda Siciliana: un caramelo que se hace con jugo de uva, maizena, almendras y cenizas de las ramas de la planta de uva. Es rico, pero un poco extraño.
We actually ended up making much more than just wine with the grapes. We juiced one batch and bottled 225 liters delicious, bright red grape juice. We also set some grape juice aside and made
mostarda, which is not at all related to mustard! Mostarda is a candy-like confection made only during the vendemmia because it must be made with freshly pressed grape juice. The process is strange, as is the appearance of the end result, but it’s quite delicious. Grape juice is boiled with ash from burned grape vines (yup, ash is an ingredient in the recipe!). This dark brew is left to sit for a night and carefully strained the next day. Then the dark liquid is boiled once again, this time with the addition of a thickener like cornstarch, and lastly, toasted almonds, ground cloves, cinnamon and a touch of vanilla are mixed in. Once the candy has thickened it is usually poured into molds to cool, or in our case, into tea cups. The candy ends up being flexible like gelatin and can be stored for weeks and even months, getting tougher as time goes by. I liked it best warm, scooped right from the sides of the hot pan. It tastes like a smoky pudding with almonds. Indeed, an acquired taste for some!
Too bad I wasn’t able to taste the wine I helped make…I’ll just have to come back to Sicily next year!
The Real Eggplant Parmesan September 23, 2011
La primera vez que hize berenjenas a la parmesana lo hize con otro queso y tuve un largo argumento con un italiano que insistia que el plato no era berenjenas a la parmesana. Supongo que tenia razon...
I was so proud when I made eggplant parmesan for everyone that I walked right up to Orazio, a pure-bred Sicilian and my house-mate, and said “oggi ho fatto la parmigiana per tutti!”
For some reason, he didn’t believe me. He asked, oh yeah, and how did you make it.
Earlier in the day I had asked his friend, Alfio, how to make parmigiana. I made it just like Alfio told me, by frying slices of eggplant in olive oil and then layering them in a pan with tomato sauce, basil leaves and cheese.
Orazio demanded to know what cheese I had used.
I had used the cheese Alfio told me to use that was in the fridge.
Was it parmesan cheese?
No, we didn’t have parmesan cheese so Alfio told me I could just use this other cheese.
WRONG! Why did you listen to that fool Alfio! What does he know about cooking? After over an hour of patient work in the kitchen Orazio killed my pride by simply saying, you did not make parmigiana Nicole.
But I did, I swear it’s all there I just used a different cheese!
Nope. Doesn’t count.
I suppose he was right. The name of the dish is eggplant parmesan after all… The worst part of this story is that as it turns out we did have parmesan cheese, it was just hidden in the back of the fridge. So before taking my dish out to the dinner table I quickly shredded some parmesan cheese on top and voilà! Parmigiana!
Nope. Still doesn’t count…
So folks, the moral of the story here is, if you are cooking for Italians you must make parmigiana with parmesan cheese. Otherwise, make it with any old, aged cheese. I mean seriously, how much does a chunk of parmesan cost these days anyway? A small fortune! Many Italians even use grana padano instead of parmesan because it is less expensive. Just use a nice, dry, salty cheese.
There are a million twists on this basic recipe. Some Italians add potato, prosciutto, even hard-boiled eggs! I like this simple recipe best.
Parmigiana, The Real Eggplant Parmesan
Orazio’s parmigiana recipe
- Several eggplants, enough to fill whatever dish you’re using
- Fresh basil
- A few garlic cloves, minced
- Passata, tomato puree
- Olive oil
- Parmesan cheese
- In a saucepan heat olive oil and cook garlic just until fragrant. Pour tomato passata in and cook for about 10 minutes.
- Slice the eggplant into 1cm thick discs, sprinkle with a little salt and fry in a wide pan with olive oil.
- Place the fried eggplant slices in a rectangular dish. Once you have one finished layer of eggplant, smother on some tomato sauce, cut up some fresh basil leaves by hand and sprinkle on top and then shred parmesan cheese over it all. Continue layering the eggplant into the dish in this manner.
- Now we come to a fork in the road. There are those who serve this dish cold without ever baking in the oven, and there are those who bake it in the oven for 20 minutes and serve it hot. I like it cold on a hot day and warm at night or on a cold day. You decide.
Zucca All’Agrodolce, Sweet & Sour Squash
Este plato de zapallo dulce y acido se hace con fetas de zapallo fritos en aceite de oliva y luego esfumados con un poco de vinagre
Like I’ve said before, Sicilians like sweet and sour combinations. This sweet and sour squash recipe is an excellent example. During our vendemmia (more on this later), we served about 5 vegetable dishes along with roasted goat; this was the only dish that disappeared! You can make this with butternut squash or any other winter squashes. It’s a bit time consuming because you have to peel the squash (winter squashes usually have tough skins), fry them, then sauté them all together with vinegar. But it’s worth it.
Zucca all’Agrodolce
From Giuseppe Coria’s Profumi di Sicilia
- 1 winter squash, peeled and cut into 1cm thick discs
- Olive oil
- White wine vinegar
- A tablespoon or more of light brown sugar or raw
cane sugar - A few cloves of garlic, minced
- Salt
- Heat the olive oil in a wide pan (the widest you’ve got) and fry one layer of squash discs at a time.
- As you finish cooking the squash, place the discs in another pan and on top of every layer of squash sprinkle some garlic and salt.
- Once you’ve finished cooking the squash, dissolve a tablespoon of sugar (or more if you like things a bit sweeter) in ½ a cup of vinegar. Place your pan full of squash on a medium high flame and pour the sweet vinegar on top. Now in Italian they say sfumare, an excellent verb meaning allow all that vinegar to bubble through the squash, turning now and then. This should only take a few minutes. We stored this in the fridge and served it cold the next day, meaning all the flavors had time to sink into the squash. Yum!
