This little piggy went to the MARKET (in mid-May!)
and can you recommend Food On Film candidate?
While the winter market brings a bichromatic green sea of chicory and root vegetable leaves interspersed with the tans and oranges of dirt-smudged potatoes, pale papery onions, and chubby balls of persimmon and arancie, spring bursts onto the scene like nature’s candy-colored Skittles rainbow bomb. New hues and textures at our local Como market in May include:
bouquets of fuzzy tipped green, white, and purple asparagus,
yellow seed-flecked red strawberries,
shiny dimpled wine-hued cherries flanked by,
orange ombré peaches and apricots with bright yellows and reds only dampened by their fuzz, and
sweet goblin-green peppers just waiting to be fried friggitelli.
May change-over scene at the Como market:
New arrivals: peaches, apricots, new varieties of tomatoes (I’ll show you next week!), squash blossoms, ‘baby’ zucchini
In full season: strawberries, peas, asparagus, novelle potatoes, arugula
End of season: fava beans, artichokes, kiwi
Seasonal spring recipes for you to try
Here are some tasty recipes to take advantage of this bountiful season:
Giulia Scarpaleggia’s wonderful fava bean pesto which spoke to me and my lonely bag of fava beans this rainy week. It’s like she knew.
“How many times do I buy whole bags of fava beans at the market, with the idea of eating them with fresh pecorino, and then I forget about them? More than I would like to admit. This is when I make pesto: shelled fava beans, a bunch of fresh herbs, extra virgin olive oil and at the end some grated aged pecorino. It is a spring pesto, which first requires some patience and meditation in shelling the beans, but then you can make it while you cook the pasta. It has all the fragrance and taste of a seasonal picnic, even when it is raining outside.”
PS if you don’t know Giulia and her Letters from Tuscany, you should! Giulia poetically and tirelessly shares her passion for seasonable, sustainable Italian cucina povera, which inspires my life and blog. She’s the OG. And is also the first Italian to have a podcast in English about Italian culinary traditions. Check her out here!
Food On Film
Reaching out for your thoughts on a topic from my amazing Slow Food course this week! Can you recommend any high schools or licei that might be interested in participating in FOOD ON FILM a brilliant new Slow Food classroom activity for youth ages 16-19?
The interactive and structured program culminates in students realizing their own short movies to enter into an international contest! The schools that will write the best screenplay will win a filmmaking workshop to make their films (two schools for each country). The two winning schools in every country will participate in a filmmaking workshop. The film-making workshops have the goal to teach kids how to write, shoot and edit a one-minute short film on one of the topics addressed by the project.
The international launch of the project will take place on May 31st in Pollenzo, Italy. Please drop me a comment if you know a school that might be a good fit to participate and I can get you in touch with the Slow Food team.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, please share and spread the seasonal food joy!
x Lolly
Lolly Martyn
instagram.com/lollydipastabuona