Focaccia is the delicious flat bread that comes to us from Liguria region, the same place that we get Pesto! This bread is best served warm from the oven and can be served as an antipasta course or with your meal. Everytime I have made it here in Italy my Italian guests are delighted and dive in exuberantly!
As the world outside struggles to come to terms with the global pandemic, I also must come to terms with staying at home. I have always been a girl that likes to “get up and go” but as you know, I am “The Homestead Traveler”, so a part of me also loves to stay home to garden, cook and create.
It’s mid August and my vegetable garden is rewarding my earlier summer efforts with copious amounts of cucumber, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, green beans, eggplant, basil and parsley. I asked my neighbor down the hill how her garden was doing and she told me the Cinghiale got her garden! Cinghiale (pronounced: Chen-gall-aye) are wild boars that roam the forests using their snouts to forage for grubs in the soft soil, “The Cinghiale destroyed your garden?!” I gasp while asking increduolously. “The Cinghiale are around here?” “Si”, she responds with eyes wide open “A BIG one with nine babies!” “What?!?” I start thinking about my garden just up the hill from her, I imagine a enormous wild boar with big tusks rummaging through my garden followed by her nine babies. I ask her if the wild boar can be hunted because I also started to imagine a big bowl of steaming pasta in a rich Cinghiale Ragu. “No” she replies, the season for boar is closed but in the fall it will reopen.
Keeping with the theme of “Summers Bounty” and trying to keep up with all of the zucchini’s pouring out of the garden this time of the year, I offer you this classic recipe for Zucchini Bread.
I’ve been hearing about the Garden of Ninfa since I arrived in this part of Italy. It is a beautiful garden that thrives and blossoms on the ancient crumbling ruins of Ninfa, a settlement with a temple dedicated to Nymphs. Nymphs are mythological maidens said to inhabit beautiful mountain regions and lakes.
Even though my “Homestead” side of the family is squarely rooted in farming (read: my moms side from Kansas) it is my “Traveler” side (read: Italian Father) that fuels and inspires my love of gardening.
