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Ciao amici
We have just said "arriverderci" to another great group that spent 5 days with us in Tuscany. Check out our Facebook page (Ecco La Cucina) for pictures on our excursions and a glimpse of the fun we had during our mini-culinary week!
Do you think you can squeeze in a fall trip to Italy? We have some openings for the mini week in October. If you're interested, call us! Fares have dropped for the fall!
Gina will be posting blogs soon - stay tuned!
Hope you're enjoying the summer abundance.
Gina and Mary
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Mulberries and Silkworms...
The Tuscan countryside is covered with mulberry trees, a leftover of one of the most important industries of the Middle Ages: silk weaving. Italian silk was legendary and highly prized and Florence, Lucca and Siena were all major centers of silk weaving until the late 1800's.
Silk is produced from spun thread of the silkworm cocoon and the only thing a silkworm will eat is mulberry leaves. Over the last 4000 years of silk production, the silkworm has become totally reliant on humans for food and won't go search for anything to eat; they're still fed a diet of ground mulberry leaves. 
In the Middle Ages silk production in these parts was an important part of the economy and the trees that are left from it hundreds of years later have spread across the landscape.
The mulberries here are generally either the white variety, which are small and sweet, or the black, which are big and plumb and look like a
 | | Loaded Mulberry Tree! |
blackberry.
Mulberries are also native to America, but I've never found the berries there to be as big as what we get here.
My favorite way to eat them is cold out of the fridge, biting them off the stem, but the big black
ones also make a wonderful jam, perfect for
crostata!
So if it's mulberry season where you are, go climb a tree and enjoy!
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Crostata with Mulberry Jam
(rustic Tuscan tart )
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 3/4 cup butter, cold
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 teas baking powder
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3 egg yolks
- 2 tbsp milk
- fruit marmalade or jam
Preparation:
Cut the butter into the flour, then use your fingers to rub the butter with the flour until it forms pea-sized pieces and is well-incorporated. Add the sugar and baking powder and mix. Form a well in the center of the dry ingredients, add the egg and milk and mix together with a fork. Form dough into a ball.
Setting 1/4 of the dough aside for the latticed top, place the dough in a baking dish, pressing the dough out evenly along the bottom and 1" up the sides of the pan. The dough is too sticky to roll out and you will need to continually dust your fingers with a small amount of flour to keep them from sticking. The dough should be an even 1/8" thick. Spread a layer of jam about 1/4" thick on top of the dough then top with fresh fruit slices.
For the lattice top: taking a small piece of dough, roll into a long thin rope and lay on top of jam at a diagonal. Continue forming the lattice, attaching the edges gently to the sides of the crostata. Bake at 350� until nicely browned. Cool and cut into squares.
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