Tag Archives: Naples

Eating my weight in gelato in Italy

As you know from my previous post, I got a free trip to Zurich for work to give a talk at the Mycorrhizal Symbiosis Symposium.  The talk went well and I had fun at the conference, which was awesome scientifically and intellectually, but I found the food in Zurich lacking.  I am just not a heavy Germanic food kind of girl. Happily for me, my cousin Aaron and his wife Kate live in Naples, so after the conference I flew to Italy to visit. As you can imagine, I took my eating very seriously on this trip, especially when it came to gelato!  I knew you all would be interested in the gelato I ate in Italy so I kept a list of flavors I tried. So here it is!!  Another day another gelato..

gelato #1:  nocciolata and stracciatella – chocolate hazelnut goodness and creamy milk based gelato with chocolate strands thrown in – analogous to chocolate chip ice cream but so much better because the chocolate is melded throughout rather in discrete chips. Here I am enjoying a gelato in a gelateria in my cousin’s building before I even go upstairs to put down my luggage:

Enjoying Nocciolata and Stracciatella gelato before I even put down my luggage

Enjoying Nocciolata and Stracciatella gelato before I even put down my luggage

gelato #2: pan di stelle – After a disappointing Nutella festival with no nutella (What!?!?) and then walking a mile to the world famous pizzeria da michele, where allegedly pizza was born, only to find it closed, I definitely needed gelato!  I tried a mysterious flavor called pan di stelle, which I believe is an Italian chocolately star cookie. It was ok but not my favorite.

gelato #3: pistachio, baccio, straciatella – After a day of trekking around Herculaneum in the rain, which was a wonderful rainy day activity in fact and I highly recommend a visit, I decided I needed to go for a three-fer gelato this time. I tried pistachio, baccio, and returned to the delicious straciatella to make sure I had at least one familiar favorite.  Baccio is chocolate hazelnut, and is delicious, although I recommend nocciolata over baccio for you nutella lovers. 

gelato #4: ambroggio e fragola – Kate and I took a lovely day trip to Capri, which is a gorgeous resort island an hour ferry ride from Napoli. It is soo soo pretty and luxurious, but be prepared to watch the dollars drain out of your pockets. We spent nearly 40 euros to get 5 minutes in a cave called the Blue Grotto, which admittedly, was pretty cool:

Blue grotto cave in Capri

Blue grotto cave in Capri

But the real highlight of Capri as far as I’m concerned was the galeto. Hands down some of the best gelato I’ve ever tried..ever! It was sooo good!!! I tried a flavor called ambroggio, which as far as I can tell was ferrero rocher flavored gelato, and was to-die-for. I paired it with fragola, which is strawberry. Here I am living the life of luxury and enjoying gelati in Capri:

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Ecstatic after discovering the most amazing gelato flavor ambroggio in Capri

Kate also got the delightful ambroggio, but she paired it with after eight (mint chocolate candy for those of you who don’t know what this epic candy is):

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Kate enjoying gelato in Capri

gelato #5: torta caprese e melone- Kate and I decided that the gelato in Capri was so good, that after taking this seriously scary chairlift ride to the top of a mountain, we deserved to treat ourselves to gelato again. While scary (Aaron thought I was totally lame for thinking this was scary, but I’m afraid of heights, so it was scary for me!), the view was pretty epic:

Chairlift ride up the mountain in Capri

Chairlift ride up the mountain in Capri

The view from the top was just incredible:

View from top of mountain in Capri

View from top of mountain in Capri

While the view was gorgeous, I was still a little rattled from the chairlift ride up and was seriously dreading the ride down, which looked scarier. I decided I needed a little prosecco to calm my nerves before taking the scary ride back down the mountain:

Enjoying la dolce vita in Capri

Enjoying la dolce vita in Capri

And finally, back to the gelato! After surviving the ride back down the mountain, Kate and I enjoyed another gelato. I tried something called torta caprese, which really I’m not sure what it is, but it was the best gelato OF MY LIFE. Seriously, it was so good. If you go to Italy, go to Capri just for the torta caprese and ambroggio gelato. DO IT.

gelato #6: nocciolata e mandarlo- After several days of hanging out in Naples and enjoying day trips to Positano and Sorrento in the amalfi coast, Herculaneum, and Capri, Aaron, Kate, and I took a road trip up north to experience the Cinque terre. Cinque terre is five towns located about a 6 hour drive north of Naples on the coast. They are gorgeous picturesque villages with cute painted houses etched into the rocky coast.  We stayed in the largest and northern most village, Monterosso. Our first full day in Cinque terre we took the train to the southern most village, Riomaggiare, and enjoyed a gelato. I returned to an old fave, nocciolata, and paired it with a new flavor for me, mandarlo, which is almond. Mandarlo was delicious! Another flavor that I highly recommend! Here I am enjoying nocciolata and mandarlo in Riomaggiare:

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Nocciolata and mandarlo gelato in Riomaggiare

Here are Kate and Aaron enjoying their gelati:

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Kate and Aaron enjoying gelato in Riomaggiare

gelato #7:  stracciatella e cioccolotto – After relaxing in Riomaggiare, we took the train to Manarola and enjoyed an epic swimming hole.  Manarola was totally one of my favorite towns. Check out how cute it is:

The town of Manarola in Cinque terre

The town of Manarola in Cinque terre

After the relaxing day we were ready to check out the nightlife in Monterosso, which Rick Steves claims is the nightlife hub of the Cinque terre. Let me tell you, it was dead! We were walking around at midnight on a Friday night, and everything was closed! A middle aged couple saw us walking around and asked us where the nightlife was, and we had to let them down that we couldn’t find any. Luckily, one gelateria was still open and we got the last gelato of the day before they closed their doors. Since I wasn’t super inspired by the late night flavor options, I returned to my old fave stracciatella and paired it with cioccolotto, or milk chocolate.

gelato #8: mandarino e tiramisu – For our second day in Cinque terre, we decided to hike from Monterosso to Vernazza, the next town over. The hike took nearly 2 hours and was pretty hilly, but it provided us with gorgeous views of the Cinque terre:

View on the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza in Cinque terre

View on the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza in Cinque terre

View of Vernazza from the trail

View of Vernazza from the trail

After enjoying Vernazza, which was another fabulous town, we decided to take the train to Corniglia. We should have read Rick Steves’ account of Corniglia being for the “hermits, anarchists, and mountain goats” more carefully before we attempted to visit. You have to walk up a stair case of 365 stairs before even being able to enter the village! It was torture! Needless to say, Corniglia was NOT our favorite town. We were there for barely 45 minutes total but we did manage to squeeze in a gelato before we left. At least the gelato was delicious. I tried mandarino and tiramisu, which was delightful:

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Tiramisu and mandarino gelato in Corniglia

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Kate enjoying dark chocolate and coconut gelato in Corniglia

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gelato – the only part of Corniglia we enjoyed!

gelato #9: Fichi e caramelli e ciocco crok – After a heavenly 2 days in Cinque terre, we took a four hour road trip to Lake Como. What can I say about Lake Como other than I desperately want to go back? We were only there for half a day but I could easily imagine spending several days there. It was BEAUTIFUL. Warm weather, alpine lakes, and the Alps in the background. It was gorgeous:

Lake Como

Lake Como

While we were only there for half a day, we did manage to squeeze in a gelato. I had “Ciocco crok” which was chocolate with hazelnuts and almonds mixed in, and fichi e caramelli, or caramelized figs, gelato. Fichi e caramelli was really realy good!

Fichi e caramelli e ciocco crok gelato in Lake Como

Fichi e caramelli e ciocco crok gelato in Lake Como

gelato #10: Swiss chocolate and passionfruit mango – Kate was disappointed that I did not make it to number 10 while in Italy, but luckily for me, Switzerland also has good gelato :) I took the train from Milan to Zurich across the alps, and when I landed in Zurich I was ready to search for gelato number 10. Unfortunately, Zurich is a zillion times more expensive than Italy, and I had to shell out 7.90 francs for gelato in Zurich compared to 2 euros for gelato in Italy. Of course, francs and euros are both worth more than US dollars, so it was a freaking expensive gelato! Luckily I didn’t know the price before I already had the gelato in hand, because I might have backed out if I had known in advance it was nearly $9 for a cone. Then I would not have gotten to experience the joy of swiss chocolate gelato! You pay dearly for it, but man is it delicious. I paired it with passionfruit mango, which my sister Leslie claims is a weird combination, but I thought was great:

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Swiss chocolate and passionfruit mango gelato in Zurich that I paid nearly $9 for!

So there you go, gelato eating endeavor. Over the course of 1.5 weeks in Italy I ate gelato 9 times, with my 10th in Zurich, and then an 11th on the plane because Swiss Air served swiss chocolate gelato on the plane. So what do you think, did I get my gelato’s worth out of Italy? Could you have eaten more?

Chicken With Cardamom Rice

Drum roll please…my first ever meat meal that I’ve cooked from Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook Jerusalem!! And I made it in Italia!! Why am I in Italy you ask? Well, being a PhD student does have some perks. I traveled to Zurich for a scientific conference on Mycorrhizal Symbiosis, yes it was the most esoteric conference ever, and yes, that’s what I study :) For those of you who don’t already know, mycorrhizal symbiosis is the symbiosis between a fungus and plant root, and ~80% of plants have them.  They are responsible for delicious mushrooms such as porcinis and chanterelles :) While the conference was super interesting and my talk went well, the food in Zurich was not super exciting.  After a few days of eating heavy Germanic potato, bread, and cream based foods, I was ready to head to Italia to visit my cousin Aaron and his wife Kate, who live in Napoli AKA Naples.  Aaron is a lawyer for the Navy, and is stationed in Naples for 2 years.  After several days of eating my heart out of pizza and gelato (don’t worry I took pictures of all the food I ate in southern Italy and will be blogging about it shortly) I was ready to eat some home cooked food again.  I bought Jerusalem for Aaron and Kate and luckily it arrived yesterday right in time for me to get to cook for them before we leave for Cinque terre tomorrow.  I made the chicken with cardamom rice from Jerusalem, which I had been eyeing for a while.  You can find the recipe online here. My cousin Aaron and his wife Kate loved it – this was indeed a delicious one pot wonder:

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Chicken with cardamom rice garnished with cilantro, parsley, and dill.

The first step is to caramelize the onions. Slice them up thinly then saute them in olive oil for a while. The recipe calls for 10-15 minutes but I left them in there for at least 25. It took a while for them to get properly browned, but luckily they don’t require much attention so you can do other things while the onions are browning.

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Slices onions about to be caramelized

While they are browning prepare the barberries or equivalent. I could not find either barberries or currants, which Ottolenghi suggests as an alternative, so I used dried cherries. I soaked them in fresh squeezed lemon juice while the onions were caramelizing. I’m not quite sure what a currant or barberry tastes like, but the dried cherry was really tasty in the dish!

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Caramelized onions

While the onions were caramelizing I rubbed down the chicken thighs with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and pepper. I could not find whole clove pods but I found online that 1.5 tsp of ground cardamon can be substituted for 10 pods and it tasted really great so I recommend going with that since the dried spice is so much easier to find. Once the onions are caramelized remove them from the pan and replace them with the chicken.  Sear the chicken thighs on each side for 5 minutes. You really want to make sure you get the bone in skin on thighs for this. The thighs came out super juicy and also even if you don’t end up eating the skin (we didn’t because I couldn’t get it to properly crisp) I think cooking the meat with the skin on adds a lot of flavor and helps keep the meat super juicy.

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Chicken smothered in salt, pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves searing in the cast iron skillet

Remove the chicken thigh for a minute, then add the rice and caramelized onions back in the pan with salt and pepper and the dried cherries. Kate and I could not find basmati rice at the Navy commissary so we used long grain white rice instead.

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Basmatic rice with caramelized onions, dried cherries rehydrated in lemon juice, salt and pepper

Getting into the navy commissary was a bit of a trick. The sales clerk at the front needed to look at my passport and was not happy with it and almost did not let me in since I’m not a part of the Navy, but Kate assured him that she was the one shopping and I was just accompanying.  He didn’t seem quite convinced but he begrudgingly eventually let us enter! Once the rice, caramelized onions, dried cherries/currants/barberries are in the pan, nestle the chicken back in and cover the pan and cook for 30 minutes. Since we had some free time we opened up a bottle of wine to drink while waiting for the meat to cook and I made some antipasti. Here is a fresh baguette we found at the grocery store and toasted with some olive oil in the oven:

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Baguette toasted in the oven

Then I sauteed some green peppers with garlic and Aaron added a balsamic vinegar paste thing on top of the bread that was really tasty.

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Antipasti of toasted baguette with olive oil and balsamic vinegar paste, sauteed green peppers, and garlic

The chicken ended up taking quite a bit longer than 30 minutes to cook. We had a really large cast iron pan and the flame was not that large, so I guess you just have to check and make sure the chicken is properly cooked.  Unfortunately the skin never quite got crispy but after about 50 minutes the chicken was cooked properly and tasted really delicious and juicy.  I chopped up fresh cilantro and parsley but since I could not find fresh dill just added some dried dill for the garnish. Here is the final dish with the cilantro and parsley and dill garnish:

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Chicken with cardamom rice, caramelized onions, cherries, and cilantro, parsley, and dish garnish

Here I am in Kate and Aaron’s super cute Italian kitchen:

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Me cooking in Aaron and Kate’s cute Napoli kitchen

It’s way cuter than mine, I know. I’m also super jealous of their giant cast iron skillet. Did I mention that they also have an awesome view of the Mediterranean right outside their window?

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View of the Mediterranean from Aaron and Kate’s living room window

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View of via Napoli from Aaron and Kate’s apartment

Yeah, I think I might have to move to Italy. Damn it is beautiful here. Kate made a light salad to accompany the chicken and cardamom rice. Ottolenghi suggests adding some olive oil to Greek yogurt and mixing it up and using it as a garnish. I highly recommend it – the yogurt really sets off the dish! It is so creamy and yummy mixed in with the flavorful cardamom rice with caramelized onions. Here is the final meal:

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Chicken with cardamom rice accompanied by salad and Greek yogurt

The meal was a big hit! Kate and Aaron loved it and I have to say it was quite tasty. My first meat meal cooked from Jerusalem went off without much of a hitch even though I had to make a few substitutions to make it work in Italia. It’s also a pretty low key dish since it’s just one pot and you get to do other stuff while the onions are caramelizing and while the chicken is cooking, so it’s not that high maintenance. I’m having such a fun time visiting Italy perhaps I should move in with my cousin and his wife and Aaron suggested that I could earn my keep by cooking for them as their personal chef – seems like they liked my cooking :)