Italian Cooking for the American housewife

Excerpt
The trip of a lifetime, going to Italy as eighth of nine culinary students, in a cultural exchange program to learn Italian cooking skills from Italian instructors in Italy, suddenly opened up to me while I was near graduation from the Great Lakes Culinary Institute in Traverse City, Michigan the culinary arts school affiliated with Northwestern Michigan College. A spokesman for the Italian Semester Abroad program was speaking to administrators at Great Lakes Culinary having traveled to many campuses promoting this cultural opportunity for college students across America. Originating in 2004, the Marco Polo organization first reigned in students from Monroe College in New York City, and soon thereafter from Paul Smith’s College in New York on the 90-day Italian Culinary Tour of four regions.
Over a period of three months, from August 27th to November 27th, we lived in Italy and became immersed in their language and culture. The itinerary called for 4 weeks in southern Italy, 3 weeks in northern Italy on the eastern coast, followed by 3 weeks in the mountains, and finishing with 10 days in the city of Parma. The first region, Puglia in southern Italy, referred to as the heel of the boot was the host for our first months’ stay as we learned the Italian language, attended professional cooking school, worked at restaurants in the city of Otranto, and took numerous fieldtrips along the Aegean Sea coast as far as the Ionian Sea.
This book, Italian Cooking for the American housewife, contains recipes from the Puglia region translated out of Italian into English. These are recipes we tried out at the cooking school, with the addition of selected dishes from restaurants in the local region. Menu plans from the school, from our resort and from the going away party have been included to provide the reader with a notion to pair certain courses together. At a going away party, the school gave us certificates for “A Course in Mediterranean Cuisine.” For me, realizing how much I wanted to share this experience with others gave me strong feelings of motivation while making this translation. So each recipe may be simple enough to follow, while both the verbs and expressions are left with the sense of being straight out of the Italian. I wanted to bring Italy back with me, and try to bring a sense of familiarity to Mediterranean style Italian cooking.
… In matters of the kitchen, our group had to agree with each other about dividing the labor, and reach a conclusion-to create a dish we wanted to set out on the table. To begin with an idea of what groceries have been placed on the counter, we use fresh chopped meats from the butcher which we might push into a meat grinder: veal, lamb, pork and beef were the most commonly used meats for this purpose. In this seaside hideaway, there are many different merchants selling fresh fish, octopus, squid, cuddlefish, black mussels, specialty clams called vognoles and other seafood catch. Farmers markets are open a few times a month where you can find whole cheeses, cured meats, eggs, fruit & nuts, vegetables, and fresh cut flowers. While the Italian city has a supermarket or two, the restaurant Smile at our resort has a pantry full of dry goods that are delivered by a commercial distributor at regular intervals. The wine is served chilled in glass pitchers; no need to open a new bottle, this wine is bought in bulk from a dealer who dispenses into your own jug.
Our host at the resort has a side operation, as owner of an olive oil production facility in a nearby location, the olive oil on our table is his own brand. As described in “the letter from the principal” the two main ingredients of the Mediterranean diet are olive oil and wine, grown and produced locally, used to supplement their daily pasta and bring together the various ingredients which make up these recipes. On the table is olive oil with red hot chili pepper flakes warmed by the sun and slightly reddish in color.
A typical Mediterranean meal begins with fresh bread and olive oil for dipping, choice of pasta and meat or fish. Oftentimes the menu is set up for you to pick two dishes, one first course selection, and one second course selection. More elaborate meals include salad as antipasto and sometimes small plate portions as antipasto. Lunch and dinner beverages are bottled water, both natural and fizzy, and wine usually red wine; although Americans often ask for Coke and orange Fanta. Dessert course may be cake, custard filled pastry, panna cotta or seasonal fresh fruit. Meals are finished with expresso or cappuccino. For anyone who wants gelato that is a reason to stroll along the city lane to the gelato shoppe.
In the cooking school we had to make a few cultural adjustments to fully appreciate making fresh pasta daily as part of our routine, and to understand how the Italians make risotto and why they go to such great lengths to do so. Every day ingredients: the dairy, cheeses, and flour used in baking are all a little different from that in the United States. The milk is a little creamier; the cheeses are famous and made by artisans regionally; the flour comes in grades similar to cake flour, pastry flour and all purpose plus the yellow grain wheat flour known as semolina. There is also the appreciation of Italian culture, as we lounged for long hours taking in the family style meals, eating the six to seven course meals we prepared, one course at a time, sipping water and drinking the wine, talking and laughing as the hot days turned into warm cool evenings.
After school and a refreshing meal, we would walk down the city streets of Otranto exploring the shops and night life for an hour and a half before meeting at the taxi stand where our chauffeur would pick us up in the Mercedes.