Pecorino - The Grape not the Cheese…
The rare grape series is back!!!
Today’s subject is Pecorino. The Pecorino grape is yet another case of a variety that was literally brought back from the brink of extinction. There’s a story that goes that just a few examples of Pecorino (but at the time of “re-discovery”, as yet unidentified) were found in a nearly wild state in a narrow gorge in Italy’s Marche region. Clippings were taken, and eventually identified as the Pecorino variety, which was indeed known to “the literature”, but was thought to already have been extinct. A few local growers eventually took up the torch of re-establishing the variety as a missing piece of the local viticultural quilt. There is also some indication that Pecorino is the parent of all of the white Pinot varieties, but this is still not a proven fact. The origin of the clearly odd name is still controversial, but the most common story is that the variety was a favorite snack of the sheep that were often driven through vineyard lands on their way to lower pastures.
To get a bit more into specifics, Pecorino is primarily associated with Marche, and then with Abruzzo, though very small plots of the variety are also to be found scattered in Umbria, Lazio, Toscana, and Liguria. Pecorino is a white-skinned variety, and speaking of skin, Pecorino’s is a thin (one of the things that surely contributed to its slow fade into obscurity - thin skin=problems with rot, splititting, etc.). The variety is only medium-productive (fruit yield) in general, but it is also known for inconsistent yields from harvest to harvest. The berries usually reach full maturity by the middle of September, making it quite a precocious ripener, and therefore well-suited to the often harsh climate in east-central Italy. Pecorino appears as a component in two DOCs, namely the Offida DOC and the Falerio dei Colli Ascolani DOC, as well as in Abruzzo and Marche IGT appellations.
In the glass, Percorino is quite full bodied with only moderate acidity, often showing flavors and aromas of yellow fruits, ground white spices like ginger and white pepper, and nuts, especially almonds and hazelnuts. The structure is usually quite firm with a marked vein of minerality. Not surprisingly, Pecorino pairs quite well with all types of sheeps’ milk cheeses, especially softer ones, as well as simpler preparations of fish and poultry. Below is a link to the two examps that WL currently stocks. As always, I encourage you to post tasting notes here as comments if you’re so inclined.
Fregola - One of Sardinia’s many culinary gems
I have always loved to cook, and I do so EVERY weekend (I love it too much maybe - I’m actually trying to cook less, but thus far with little success), and since my philosophy is that wine and food should never be separated, I thought that I’d begin doing a bit of writing about food, and its interface with wine…so here’s the first…
I like to cook themed dinners. Not ones where all of the food is red, or begins with the letter “g” and ends with “n”, or re-creates a particular meal depicted in a Hemmingway novel, but rather, and probably more concisely, regionally themed meals. Yesterday’s region was Sardinia.
Sardinia is an island region off of Italy’s west coast. Culturally, liguistically, as well as culinarily, Sardinia is only nominally part of Italy. The Sardi speak a language that though related to Italian, has been determined by linguists to be a distinctive and separate LANGUAGE not just a dialect of Italian. Sardinia is a place that has seen the influences of many cultures across the millennia: Phoenicians, Carthagenians, Greeks, Romans, North Africans, Catalans, etc. These influences, coupled with the insular nature of the place, have made an indelible mark on Sardinia’s kitchen.
One such departure is the Sardinian speciality called fregola (or fregula). Fregola clearly illustrates the Arab influence in Sardinian cooking. Fregola is essentially Sardinia’s answer to, or version of cous cous. Fregola is/are small, dried pellets (for lack of a better word) of semolina that are rolled, dried and then toasted and sold in bags like pasta. Though most fregola currently available is made by machine, there are still those intrepid souls who make it by hand. The classic dish including fregola is is called fregola con arselle AKA fregola with razor clams (which can be very difficult to find, even at EXCELLENT fish mongers). Unlike true “pasta”, fregola is more frequently encountered in a wetter environment than its more shapely cousins - in dishes like soups, “dry soups” and stew-like affairs.
So what I made for our first course was a dish of fregola with chick peas, rock shrimps, and tuna. Now I rarely cook with strict attention to the tyrannies of a recipe (though they certainly have their places as didactic introductions to new ingredients and techniques) but this recipe is forgiving enough to “fudge” it here for you:
INGREDIENTS:
- 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil (Sardinian if you can find it)
- 2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
- 3/4 cup of dried chick peas, soaked overnight (or one can of chick peas). If you use dried chick peas, boil to cook, drain.
- 1 heaping cup of fregola
- pinch of good quality saffron threads, soaked in a couple of ounces of water for several hours
- home-made, or best quality fish stock or chicken broth (about 1 quart or less)
- pinch of red pepper flakes
- 1/2 pound of rock shrimp
- 1 jar of Italian or Spanish tuna preserved in olive oil, drained.
- a few large sprigs of mint, leaves only, chopped
- salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat.
Fry the garlic until it begins to take on a lightly golden color (do not burn!).
Add the cooked chick peas and cook for two minutes.
Add the fregola and cook for two minutes more.
Add the saffron threads and soaking water and the red pepper flakes.
As you would make a risotto, add the broth little by little, only adding more when the previous few ounces have been absorbed. Unlike making risotto, the broth does not have to be boiling since fregola absorbs moisture and softens much more readiliy than does dried rice.
When the fregola is almost done (taste a few to know - they should ultimately be served al dente like pasta is.) add the rock shrimp and the tuna.
Cook until the shrimp are almost done, then add the chopped mint and adjust salt and pepper. Continue to cook until the shrimp is cooked through. Serve hot, if necessary, adding a bit more broth to achieve the correct liquid level.
IMPORTANT NOTE #1 - The final product should be wet but should NOT be a soup nor should it be sticky or gummy (too dry) - the dish should be JUST liquid enough to warrant using a spoon to eat it.
EVEN MORE IMPORTANT NOTE #2 - DO NOT PUT GRATED CHEESE ON THIS DISH!
So I guess you’re all wondering what one might drink with a dish like this. My thinking on selecting a wine pairing for this went as follows: You’ve got a Sardinian seafood dish, so a Sardinian white is the place to start. But despite the delicateness of the shrimps, one also has to contend with the heartier flavor of tuna as well as the earthy flavors of chick peas, saffron, and the fregola itself, so I opted for a complex, beefy, and slightly exotic IL NURAGHE SEMIDANO DI MOGORO “ANASTASIA” 2005.
Not to toot my own horn, but I and my dinner companions though it was an excellent match…Just FYI, Semidano is an exceedingly rare white grape from southwestern Sardinia, so if you can’t or don’t want to pick up a bottle of this wine through us, choose a complex, balanced, and fairly burly Italian white wine like a Verdicchio or a good Frascati.
If anyone takes a stab at making this dish (poor choice of words?), with or without my wine pairing suggestion, let us know how everything comes out!
TOM CIOCCO
