La Tavola Marche - Organic Farm, Inn & Cooking School, Italy

Sausage Making 101: Cooking in Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Ashley Bartner) — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:31:08 PDT

Have you ever wondered what is in the sausages your eating & how they are made? Many times I get the response - "I don't want to know what's in it." Well at La Tavola Marche it's really very simple & delicious: fresh pork shoulder, salt, pepper & white wine with a clove of garlic soaking in it - basta! So how to make it - well take one of our sausage making classes & learn first hand! Jason teaches you how to de-bone the meat, grind it in our restored meat-machine, hand mix the meat with the salt, pepper & wine. Then using a sausage-stuffer, we fill & twist the sausages in the casings - that's it! After the class, we fire up the grill for the best, freshly made, grilled sausages!

The class is about 4 hours in total, meat's not the only thing on the menu - the class also makes a few side dishes like local lentils with spicy tomatoes, salad & of course dessert and plenty of red wine! (125 Euro/person)

Here are photos from our most recent sausage making adventure where we made 15 kilos of sausages!

Here are a few stories from our sausage, salami & charcuterie past:

Home-made / Home-cured Charcuterie at La Tavola Marche

For more information on our sausage class visit our web site: www.latavolamarche.com or email info@latavolamarche.com

Creating Balanced Flavors: Stuffed Lemons in the Oven

noreply@blogger.com (Ashley Bartner) — Wed, 23 May 2012 01:43:09 PDT

Stuffed lemons with tomatoes, anchovies, basil & mozzarella is a delicious antipasto and perfect example of balancing flavors. We first tried this mouthwatering two-bite bit of heaven on the Amalfi Coast and have been recreating it ever since. Even though it is not a traditional dish of Le Marche, Jason likes to use it in his cooking classes to teach how to balance flavors in the kitchen: fat, acid, sweet, salty & aromatic. The creamy mozzarella subdues the tartness of the lemon; sweet cherry tomatoes go perfectly with the aromatic basil; and salty anchovies round out the dish. All five of these ingredients work together harmoniously so that none of them are overpowering creating a balanced flavor.

This dish is also fantastic because you can make it your own very simply. Don't like anchovies? Try some capers or olives instead, better yet go meaty and throw in a little prosciutto to get that salty component that is needed. In Autumn, when the basil is gone and the frost have taken the tomatoes use the ingredients of that season to substitute (Gorgonzola, pear and walnuts sound good to me). Be creative! Keep this philosophy in mind and you can adapt any recipe to fit the season.

Lemons Cooked in the Oven
Limoni Cotti al Forno

2 Large unwaxed lemons
1 or 2 balls of buffalo mozzarella, sliced into 1/4 inch or 1/2 cm thick pieces
4 fresh basil leaves
2 anchovy fillets
2 ripe cherry tomatoes, halved
salt & pepper

Preheat your oven to 400 F / 215 C

Remove the ends of the lemons & discard them (don’t cut in to deep - you want to keep a closed bottom). Then cut the lemons in half crossways, giving you little lemon bowls.

Using a small knife, remove the lemon flesh, leaving you with 4 hollow lemon rind bowls. (Again you don’t want to break-into the rind)

Cut a piece of mozzarella to fit inside, then lay a basil leaf, half an anchovy fillet and half a cherry tomato on top with a pinch of salt & pepper and a little drizzle of good olive oil. Put another slice of mozzarella on top - the lemon should now be filled up. Do the same to the rest of the lemon bowls.

Place on a baking sheet & cook in a preheated oven for 10 - 15 minutes, until golden & bubbling.

Remove from the oven and serve immediately. To eat: scoop the mozzarella out and eat with the bread to soak up any juices!

Farm Update: Fresh Eggs & Frosty Nights

noreply@blogger.com (Ashley Bartner) — Tue, 22 May 2012 07:33:27 PDT

It's time for an update from the farm & what a few weeks it's been! First the good news, I am happy to announce 2 (out of 18) hens have begun laying eggs! (That's their handy-work in the photo above.) And what a hoopla it is in the hen-house with the birds squawking about, proud & somewhat shocked of their new production. I think the ladies got Jason's memo: "start laying or you'll be broth soon...."

Now to the fields, Pierangelo has been passing in his tractor cutting the thick fields of alfafa as we've been busy in the garden. Here is what is already in the ground as of a week ago: garlic, fava, onions, potatoes, corn, radishes, different types of chard & lettuces, peppers, eggplant, cucmber, tomatoes, ruccola, zucchini, squashes, carrots, celery, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and all the herbs. We were feeling pretty good & ahead of the game. Jason & Dr. Gaggi painstaking placed all the bamboo poles for the tomatoes to climb as well -

Then came the unexpected late May frost, 2 nights in a row.....it killed 500+ plants in total: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplants & potatoes. Che disastro! What a disaster! These vegetable plants can't survive a hard frost. As soon as sun comes up the leaves turn black & the plant dies. Thankfully we've got a great group of guests here, eager to help & we've already pulled-up and replanted half the tomatoes with a back-up reserve of seedlings in-case the temps drop again.

We still have to plant beans & melons: barolotti, solfino, green beans, melon, watermelon and a handful of other veggies we'll add in as we go. To avoid everything coming up at once - we are planting a few rows, every two weeks or so - that way as we blow through & eat our lettuces & herbs for example, the next batch is ready to go. Things that replenish such as lettuces & bietola can be cut down to about 6cm above the ground & will regrow throughout the entire season.

The late garden will go-in in August: cabbages, fennel, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, winter lettuces, escarole, etc.

Guests at work in the garden