Primosale - Easy Fresh Cheese To Make At Home

freshly made Primosale, almost ready for it's first flipWhen testing my rennet before making mozzarella, I found myself with a cup of fresh curds on my hands. Not wanting to toss them, I decided to try to make primosale (pronounced pre-mow-sa-lay, means "first salt") using the small molds we had brought back with us from a lunch in Puglia. It was really simple to make and actually yielded enough to fill 2 of the single serving molds.

They looked great and tasted even better! Inspired, I decided to make a few more to take as a thank-you treat to our friends who had watered our plants while we were away... and then I decided to make a few more the next day as a birthday present for one of our CSA friends... and then of course I needed to some extra for our breakfasts! I was just a little obsessed. The fun of Primosale, other than the sheer ease of making it, is that it lends itself to any flavor combination you could dream up. On it's own it has a fresh, delicate flavor.

Read More

Twenty Mile, Three Day Hike with 300 Sheep - You Call that a Honeymoon?

I can hardly believe that it’s already been a week since we were with the sheep. Anversa degli Abruzzi is a small town tucked neatly into the Sagittario Valley between the picturesque mountainsides of Abruzzo, Italy. It was our mission to take Nunzio Marcelli’s sheep flock from Anversa to the top of the mountains in Chiarano. It was a ~20 mile, three day journey, full of cured meats, aged cheeses, many gallons of wine, bottles of moonshine grappa, and 300 sheep friends that we will never forget. Click on the thumbnails to see a rough approximation of our route.  

Click each image to enlargeTranshumance RouteTranshumance is the ancient practice of moving ruminant animals to fresh pastures on a seasonal basis. Before feed could be imported to the farm, shepherds would walk with their animals to faraway pastures in order to graze at various times of the year (see our previous transhumance post). Nunzio Marcelli has been practicing this tradition for many years and has recently opened it up to visitors who would like to participate. Check out his site at www.adottaunapecora.com for more information. Even if you can’t go on the transhumance you can still adopt-a-sheep! For the final three days of our honeymoon we decided to join him and his shepherds on the trip, it was a great decision.

The night before we set off on transhumance we celebrated with the townspeople of Anversa in a “Sagra degli Gnocchi del Pastore”, which is basically a Shepard style gnocchi-fest in the town piazza. The whole town of 300 was out in full effect. Tables lined the plaza streets,

Read More

Got Heart - Eating The Offal


pig-pork-heart-cleaned-freshPig Heart - freshly cut on the right, cleaned on the left

That's right - Heart! Another offal nutritional superstar, heart is rich in iron, niacin, pantothenic acid, phosphorous, riboflavin, selenium, thiamin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and zinc. You can check out heart's nutritional information here. Handling and cleaning the actual muscle was interesting - more like theater than cooking!  I really wanted to stage a shoot of me pretending to rip the pig heart out of Scrapple's chest, Indiana Jones style, but then decided it might be best to wait until AFTER we were legally married to broach the subject of acting out strange mock ritual reenactments. Maybe next time?  

When contemplating how to make the tastiest first attempt at cooking this noble muscle, we asked the dudes behind the butchers counter at The Meat Hook for their advice. The general consensus was

Read More