From my experience, Italy is not a beer drinking country. I may have only lived there for 6 months, but within those transformative weeks I guzzled far more Irish and Scottish beers than Italian brands.

It makes complete sense really. Why drink beer in a country with such an unlimited wealth of world-class wines, liquors, and cocktails? More over, it seemed the only locals chugging local beer were the gypsies suckling Birra Moretti 40′s on a stoop at 8am…Not the scene to wet one’s palette.

But change and variety is imperative to living a good life, not to mention lightly-buzzed, and Italy is now gaining some esteem and respect for it’s balanced and delicious brews. Craft beer stores are stocked with a catalogue of exciting new draughts from the boot, but today’s time-honored classic will forever be the flagship Italian pour:

Peroni Nastro Azzurro

Product Details: 5.1% Alcohol lager brewed in Rome, founded in Lombardia in 1846.

Appearance: Similar in many aspects to a Heineken, Peroni is bright blonde with a sparkling white foam and energetic bubbling on the pour.

Aroma: Fresh, lightly malty with a crisp whiff of hops.

Taste: Clean pilsners and lagers have always been my favorite beers. What they lack in over-saturated flavor they make up for in refreshment, clarity and simplicity. Peroni is exactly that: refined and balanced with a tip to classics like Pilsner Urquel and Grolsch (owned by the same company unsurprisingly). It’s a great example of the classic saying: ‘Quanto Basta” meaning just enough – it’s beer, with just enough of what you’re looking for to make it a perfect pint.

Food Pairings: The few times I enjoyed a draught tumbler of Peroni in Italy, it was accompanied by an oven-roasted pizza, fried calamari or small vegetables, and grilled meats. I’d raise the bet by challenging anyone to find a dish this clerical beer won’t accompany well.

Price: $8.99 for a six pack at your local grocer. However, my friends and I have been ordering kegs of the good stuff for special occasions, which runs upwards of $165…totally worth it. Peroni on tap is sublime.

Overall: I’ve mentioned this thought to a lot of craft brewers I’ve met over the years: if you want to change the game, make a beer like Peroni. Not only is it tastier than Sofia Loren in a bikini circa 1960, but it’s the ideal session beer with that unmistakeable thirst-quenching quality that ironically never quenches your thirst. Microbrewers take note: coffee stouts are great, but a seamless session pils will please the masses.

NOTE: Interestingly, Peroni Nastro Azzurro translates to Peroni Blue Ribbon or…oh my gahhhhh….PBR!!!

Happy Drinking & Salute!

Every lot is filled to brim with all of the summers biggest hits, including some new and unexpected items as well as the Carolina classics:

Yellow and white peaches, juicier than a pair of cycling shorts after a 60m ride.

Blueberries in various sizes begging to be cobbled.

Ripe baby eggplants perfect for a fresh summer salad (recipe follows below).

Fresh-off-the-vine green beans and broad beans for next to free.

Plump beets, not a particular favorite of mine but damn good when roasted or pickled.

The tomatoes are big, firm and ready to grab – you know what I’m talking about. A few heirloom varieties popped up as well this month, a new feature at the market.

Each stand and truck bed becomes a source of inspiration when the colors, shapes and aromas erupt during the summer market. My finds led to a grilled summer salad full of the day’s MVP’s:

Grilled Summer Salad
serves 2 as main, 4 as side

2 Large Ripe Tomatoes

2 Baby Eggplants

1lb String Beans

1 Handful Basil, chopped

1/4 Cup Pine Nuts, toasted

1 Cup Bocconcini Mozzarella

Salt, Pepper, EV Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar, Chile Flakes or Vesta

Start by prepping your veg. Slice your eggplant into 1/2 discs. Toss in a bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and coarse salt. Trim the ends off your string beans and toss in the same mixture. Dice your tomato into large pieces and add to a large serving bowl.

Bring your grill or grill-pan up to high heat and grill your eggplant slices first until golden and tender, roughly 3 minutes a side. When golden, slice in half and add to the serving bowl with the tomato.

Next, add the string beans to the grill, being careful not to lose any thru the grates (maybe use a fish tray on gas or coal grill) and flip often to lightly char on all sides. Slice in half and add to the serving bowl.

Tear the basil into large chunks, cut the mozz balls in half and toast your pine nuts lightly before adding everything to the serving bowl. Drizzle the entire mix with E.V. Olive oil, a light drizzle of Balsamic Vinegar, and season with salt, pepper, and chile flakes if you prefer (or better yet, Vesta).

Toss to combine, taste for seasoning, and serve at room temperature with crusty bread and a little extra olive oil for dipping.

PAULIE’S SPARK NOTES:1.PREP YOUR VEGGIES 2.GRILL 3.ADD SOME BASIL, PINE NUTS & MOZZ 4.TOSS AND SERVE WITH TOASTED BREAD

Raleigh’s Warehouse District is past it’s growing pains. Between the influx of new business, attractive renovations, and creative entertainment it’s easily the most exciting and inspiring corner of our tiny city. Nestled in amongst the paint-speckled brick and wrought iron is something unexpected, heartwarming and humble: Videri Chocolate Factory.

I expected to try a few chocolates, learn the process, and maybe score a couple quality photographs. Instead, I left the cocoa-infused factory with a new found respect for not just chocolate, but the reinvented Raleigh entrepreneur and all those in the Warehouse District working to strengthen and expand upon the city’s culture.

The following ‘photo-essay’ is a testament to the tedious work of the Videri staff – sourcing fair-trade cocoa from across the globe, touring customers thru the entire process, and crafting mouth-watering confections coupled with quality coffee in a cozy setting. Thanks to Sam, Thad, and the entire Videri staff for sharing your process and sweet with us.

Be sure to stop by and try everything you can get your hands on and enjoy a cup of Stumptown Coffee – currently the only location in North Carolina offering the Portland, Oregon favorite.

Warehouse District or Bust

The time you save reading this short post should be spent walking, driving, hopping, crawling, or pogo-sticking your way to it’s honoree: Trophy Brewing Co. 

Craft-brews are a dime a dozen in today’s beer market, but Les Stewart & Company of Trophy Brewing in Raleigh’s Boylan Heights neighborhood are doing things I’ve never seen or tasted. Sometimes that’s a recipe for disaster, in Trophy’s case it’s simply good drinking.

The options rotate, the ingredients and methods are uncanny, the prices are reasonable, the barkeeps are happy to serve one and all, and the location and space are sure to become a Raleigh legend. Not to mention the entire place is outfitted with plastic trophies and rich mahogany.

That’s it, stop reading and get your sober ass to Trophy for some premium pours. Cheers!

p.s. anyone know who did the branding for these guys? They deserve many high fives.

To be Italian-American is to be an amalgamation of sorts. Not quite American, not quite Italian, and sure as hell not French! Within that, one’s Italian roots may be an amalgamation. I, myself, am a dizzying mix of Calabrese, Napolitano, Parmigiano and Siciliano. The streets of 30′s and 40′s NYC seem to have been a hot-bed for regional love affairs…

And, to continue the confusion further, to be Sicilian is to be a the greatest of Italian amalgamations. Sicily, like so many islands before and after, has been ranshacked and transformed by dozens of invaders and crusaders. A cultural orgy if you will. The end result is something very much unique, not exactly Italian but certainly not African or Spanish.

History is interesting, but it’s also damn delicious as today’s recipe testifies. My god-mother’s mother is Sicilian, an incredible cook and Arancini, or rice balls, are her specialty. Every christmas for as long as I can remember has been graced with a large tray of these “little oranges” as they’re called in Italian. I also ate my weight in them during a 13 hour train ride from Palermo to Florence – something I do not recommend.

There’s no freaking chance I’m divulging one of my family’s most sacred and time-consuming recipes, that’s crazy talk, but I have recreated a version that I find more than suitable. Rita typically creates both the ragu filled and mozzarella filled but there’s something to the milky simplicity of fresh mozz I just can’t get enough of. So, without further rambling, I give you Arancini.

Arancini (Rice Balls)
Serves 4-6

For Risotto
2 Cups Arborio Rice
5-6 Cups Water
1 generous pinch of Saffron
1 Cup Grated Pecorino Romano
1 Handful Sage
Salt, Pepper, E.V. Olive Oil

Start by bringing your water to a simmer in a large pot. Once simmering, add the Saffron and a generous few pinches of salt. Stir and allow to simmer as the water turns golden from the Saffron.

Next, heat a large cast-iron dutch oven over medium heat. Once hot, add enough E.V. Olive Oil to coat the bottom. Add your rice and stir so every grain is coated in oil. Continue to ‘fry’ the rice in the oil until the edges turn lightly transparent.

Once the rice has turned transparent, ladle just enough of the simmer water/saffron mixture to cover the rice by 1/2 inch. Stir and allow the rice to simmer until you can pull a spoon thru the rice and see the bottom of the pan easily.

Continue to add the water to the rice in the same increment until the rice has become ‘al dente’ and the starch from the risotto coats the back of your spoon.

Once the rice is fully cooked, remove from the heat and add the pecorino and an extra drizzle of E.V. Olive Oil. Stir aggressively to emulsify the two into the risotto and add salt and black pepper to taste.

Place in a glass bowl, cover in plastic wrap making sure the wrap touches the top of the rice so it does not form a skin. Place in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours to cool and solidify.

For Rice Balls
3 Cups Vegetable Oil
1 Large Fresh Mozzarella
1 Cup Water
1/4 Cup Flour
1 Cup Fresh Breadcrumbs
Salt

To make the rice balls, start by heating your oil over medium-high heat. NOTE: Make sure to use a pot double the height of your oil to ensure you don’t burn your house down – not good eats.

In a large bowl stir the flour and water together to make a sort of paste, this will help the breadcrumb adhere to the rice ball.

As your oil heats, you can start rolling the arancini. Scoop up a small handful of the cooled rice, rolling it in your hands to form a ball.

Push a 1/2″ cube of the fresh mozzarella into the middle, rolling the rest of the rice over it to encase the mozz fully.

First, roll the rice ball gently in the rice/water mixture, and then into the breadcrumbs, pressing ever so slightly to help the breadcrumbs form a layer on the outside. Continue stuffing and rolling until there’s either no more rice or mozzarella.

Once your oil has reached 365F place a few rice balls into the oil and watch them very carefully as they fry. You do not want to burn them so gently roll them around with tongs or a spyder as they fry until they become beautifully golden.

Remove and place on a cookie sheet atop paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and continue frying until all rice balls are done.

Serve hot or room temperature as is or with a side of spicy marinara.

PAULIE’S SPARK NOTES: 1. MAKE SOME RISOTTO 2.ROLL IT INTO BALLS 3.STUFF IT WITH SOMETHING TASTY 4.FRY & CONSUME

If you follow my ramblings on the social satellites such as Facebook or Twitter you know that something big happened last week. Life changing I hope.

After 6 years of non-stop research, development, trials, tribulations, farmers markets, late nights burning over a 500 degree super kettle and more design explorations than I’d care to remember, we’ve finally done it. 6 years ago, my father and my family set out to create a product that would hopefully find it’s way into wide-spread distribution and just last week we did just that.

Benny T’s Vesta, the original dry hot sauce, has been reborn like a phoenix rising from a bed of molten-hot chile embers wreath in flame. We’ve officially partnered with Whole Foods to sell our jarred product in any Whole Foods location in North Carolina, starting with Raleigh and Chapel Hill.

I’m self pimping like Kanye at the Grammys, and I hate that dude, but this post is about more than dropping the mic in self-made glory, it’s about  spreading the word.

We’re ready and capable to send packages near and wide, especially within North Carolina, and ask for you help in spreading the spicy word of Benny T and his original dry hot sauce. Hang signs, stage a topless riot, or maybe just ask your local grocer to get in touch with us and place an order…either way really.

Visit our temporary site at vestatoppings.com to contact us via Twitter or Facebook and help us turn Vesta into a kitchen staple. IN VESTA VERITAS!!

p.s. Mille mille grazie to Jonathan Botta, Mike Thor, Travis Sears, and Coleen Speaks of PoshNosh Catering for your collaboration and generosity.

Things have been busy in the Giusto kitchen, but that’s hardly an excuse for neglecting to tell you what kind of hooch I’ve been drinking lately. I forgot to mention it in February so consider todays booze/recipe duo my slurry apology.

Our irrational, unpredictable, no-sense-making cluster*ck of a weather system continues to push the limits of my patience. Not because it’s cold, because I’m sick of wearing shoes and eating soup. Last weeks KitchenTunes had me dreaming of warm waves but the winds want to wip, so I’m coping in new ways: Chianti and stolen recipes.

Let’s start with the salad. Pizzeria Toro, new to the downtown Durham circuit, is an overwhelmingly awesome place to grub out on Napolitano style pizzas with toppings both traditional and trendy. The pizza’s great, the drinks are top notch, the antipasti are lipsmacking, but something about their kale salad keeps me going back for more. That sounds hippy as shit, I realize, but it’s rare that a salad sticks with you after 2 hours of pizza, pints and profanity.

The following is my  attempt at recreating the dish at home, a great late winter meal coupled with warm bread and plenty of Chianti:

Insalata di Cavolo Nero alla Pizzeria Toro
serves 2

1 Head Cavolo Nero (Tuscan Kale, black or dino work as well but the smaller the leaves the better)

2 Red Chiles (serrano or red hot, habanero if you’re feeling nuts)

1/4 Cup Pine Nuts (toasted)

Handful of Italian Olives

Wedge of Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano

1 Lemon, honey, olive oil, salt and pepper for dressing

Start first by slicing your Kale into 1/2″ ribbons, this makes the woody green much easier to eat raw. Add to a bowl and cover with water, the ribbons will float to the top and the dirt will sink to the bottom. Drain, rinse, and dry thoroughly. Add to a large bowl.

Slice your chile into super-thin slices and add to the salad. Toast your pine nuts lightly and add to your salad. Try not to burn them when toasting, it happens to the best of us…

Grate 1/4 cup of the pecorino right onto the salad as though it were pasta, this will act as the salt for the dish.

For the dressing, whisk together the juice of 1 lemon, equal parts extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp of honey, and a lot of cracked black pepper. Add to the salad, toss everything together and allow the salad to sit at room temp for atleast 15 minutes. This helps to soften the kale and take away some of it’s earthy bitterness.

Toss once more before serving, adding the olives and shaving additional Pecorino or Reggiano over the top. Serve with crusty warm bread and….

Chianti Classico

Product Details: From the province of Chianti in Tuscany. Marked on the bottle with a pink DOCG label and a black label with a rooster insignia. No rooster, no Classico.

Appearance: Not as deep, velvetty red as it’s Barolo or Barbera cousins to the north, Chianti is pale purple with intense clarity and originally bottled in a whicker-wrapped ‘fiasco’. Sadly, that tradition is long gone from the American wine merchant scene, leaving only piss-poor phonies in whicker bottles now.

Aroma: It’s aroma is all it’s own, a unique and bold waft but hard to describe in words. Opening a bottle of Riserva Classico from 2003 or earlier smells like rubbing wine grapes together in your hand. Deep, earthy, and full of the rich fruity pungency of Sangiovese grapes. There’s something almost dry or tongue-snappingy clean to it.

Taste: At it’s youngest, Chianti Classico is uniform, dry, and spicy just like the olive oil of the region. But invest in a Riserva, time to decant and you’ll experience something all-together enlightening. At it’s best, the flavors range from sharp black pepper and muddled fig to black currant, raisin and plum. The variety is it’s signature because each hill, valley, farm and family mixes and ages their Chianti as they see fit. The best way to learn is to just start drinking, so start drinking!

Food Pairings: Follow Tuscan tradition – tagliatelle with boar ragu, bistecca alla fiorentina, ribollita, spinach ravioli in browned butter, minestrone or funghi bruschetta.

Price: Your average, 3-5 year old Classico will cost anywhere from $12-24, but a respectable Classico Riserva for a special occasion could run up to $50. I prefer the $15 bottles for a balance of both age and humility.

Overall: The cyclical trends of wine and food always seem to ignore Chianti. I don’t know if it’s the fact that it’s so well known, that it’s been around since the 1700′s, or people’s poor experiences with lesser impostor Chianti’s. Whatever it is, it’s nonsense, and I hope Chianti’s from smaller family vineyards will become more redolent in the local restaurant scene.

As I learned from my friends and family in Italy so long ago, Chianti is the life-blood of Tuscans and whether it’s a baby or a riserva, a good bottle is enjoyed no matter what the menu – most of all at the end of the night, dipping the remains of crusty bread into small glasses, sopping up every last drop.

Salute e buonappetito!

The clouds have parted, February’s done for, the world sprang ahead and there’s plenty of sun-soaked tunage to warm your hibernating bones. Between the welcomed heat wave and gnarly swells pumping this weekend, I’m pulling the trigger on a Spring set list in anticipation for the coming season. Open your windows, grab some flip flops, and blast your nips because things are warming up:

Two Wounded Birds - Self Titled

This album, the one and only from the UK group spearheaded by Johnny Aries, has been on repeat since the day I found it 2 weeks ago. Aries & Co. channel 50′s surf vibes, echoing reverb, energetic treble and a voice as smooth as eggs into an etherial summer soundscape I can’t resist. “To Be Young” is my definition of a perfectly written song, from start to finish you want more of everything. “My Lonesome” has a bass line and ride-symbol groove that won’t quit, while wammy-bar vibrating tunes like “Midnight Wave” and “Night Patrol” crave a green room and 5’9″ retro fish. Best album of the year so far (even tho it’s a year old).

Cody ChesnuTT - Landing On A Hundred

My amigo Chad clued me on to Cody ChesnuTT a few months back, but I’ve been grooving out to this most recent album at an unsettling rate. Tracks like “What Kind of Cool” or “Till I Met Thee” would have Mother Theresa cracking into her chastity belt like McGyver, spell bound and swooning. Aside from ChesnuTT’s soul-laced voice is a freestyling, poetic ability to narrate on current events on tracks like “Scroll Call” or the aggressive “That’s Still Mama”. What I dig the most about ChesnuTT’s new-motown stylings is his funky, swervy guitar strumming atop horns and back up vocals, bold and refreshing.

Real Estate – Self Titled

This New Jersey band has put out another incredible album, Days, since their 2009 self titled release but there’s a level of respect that this original deserves. Tracks like “Pool Swimmer” and “Lets Rock the Beach” sound like a summer fling on Malibu in 1955, full of delayed reverb and the friendly thump of single-coil picking on a Fender Mustang. The songs are easy, mellow and crammed with maritime nostalgia that begs for a long board and Katin trunks. Best of all is “Suburban Beverage”, a head-nodding ballad with only one line: “Budweiser, Sprite, do you feel alright?” Yes, yes I do.

Fool’s Gold – Leave no Trace

If you ever need a pick me up or something to blast on the way to a morning session then reach for Fool’s Gold. This California group combines the surfer tunes of the west coast with the percussion of Africa and vocals in Herbrew. Sound crazy? You’re right, it is, but crazy is responsible for incredible tracks like “The Dive” and “Tel Aviv”. The combination of vibrato vocals, shaking gourds, languages I don’t understand and the melodic guitar solos of Lewis Pesacov are tantalizing. Tittilating even. “Mammal” showcases each members abilities with fretboard-sliding licks, belting vocals, half-timing drums, and harmonizing back up vocals in glorious unison. Left-Coast stylee mixed with African beats, like driving a 70′s station wagon full of shred sticks with a Djembe strapped to the hood.

Megs and I have been talking about moving downtown (or ITB meaninng Inside the Beltline) for almost 3 years, but selling a house by owner is not the easiest of tasks. Nevertheless, we managed to get that ish done and we’ll be in our new diggs as early as this weekend.

What can we all look forward to? The answer is two-fold:

1. It’s a 5 minute walk to the Raleigh Farmers Market, home to all things local and delicious and the subject of so many @TheFarmersMarket posts. This will inevitably have a prominent role to play in the seasonality of my recipes, good news all around.

2. The new GiustoGusto kitchen is huge compared to my current crotch-rocket of a catering hall. But what I’m most excited about is the ample light provided thru the ginormous 15′ windows and the 150 year old floors acting as a photography backdrop. No more dimly lit plates on the edge of the table begging for character, no more I say!

It will take a few days to settle into our new home, organizing and reorganizing the kitchen as I become more comfortable, but I expect the wheels to spin uncontrollably thanks to the inspiration of a new kitchen and a world-class farmers market an arms-length away.

It’s sad to leave our first home together with so many memories built at the dinner table, breaking bread and passing wine behind the hum of a rolling pasta pot. It’s almost improbable to think nearly every recipe on this site was born over uneven electric coil burners or on a 5′x5′ patio/grill holder. It’s been a rad journey and I’ll miss this little kitchen (kind of), but it’s on to bigger and better things and new memories to be made and retold until the next venture. Cheers!

Food is an endearing and inspiring subject to write about. There are no universal rights or wrongs, no static opinion or public standard, and especially no one way to do anything. Every ingredient, recipe, cook and region is worth it’s weight in literature and scribbled praise.

I’ve only dabbled in the art of the charta gastronomica, a mere 3 years of writing this beloved site I call GiustoGusto, but I’ve recently drawn substantial envy and awe in the writing of others. Cleverly detailing a recipe or meal is one thing, but reading another’s perfectly descriptive tale that mimics your personal experience so well is – well, f*cking frustrating. But it’s food! Not even, it’s writing about food, which I can neither scoop nor spin onto my fork, and so I take note and enjoy the eerily-similar feelings of my fellow gastronomes and aspire to their level of narration:

Cereal Magazine
readcereal.com

Cereal is a brand-new magazine from the UK focused on world-wide cuisine. It’s inaugural volume visits places like Ravello, Copenhagen, and Westonbirt, England to name a few. The combination of casual writing and incredible photography is hard to put down, lets hope the next volume comes out soon.

Diner Journal
dinerjournal.com

Diner Journal is an awesome resource for recipes, sometimes as many as 30 in a single volume. That may not sound like a lot compared to Food Network Magazine, but the two are working on different wave lengths. Diner Journal’s recipes are warm and styled after home-cooked traditions, Food Network Magazine is built for quantity and the recipes suffer in quality. I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

Gastronomica
gastronomica.org

This magazine is incredibly worldly, with as many as 25 articles per volume, most of which detail ingredients or cuisines I know next to nothing about. If there was an encyclopedia gastronomica to start building, this is where I’d start. The addition of Chef’s Pages in each volume, including an interview with a worldly chef, is rad too.

Lucky Peach
mcsweeneys.net/luckypeach

Lucky Peach is the punk rock, subway bombing, take no shit little brother of the culinary magazine world. The cover art is insane, the articles are outside the box, and the entire editorial experience is fun, whacky, but informative. Articles by Bourdain, volumes on Chinatown, and the ridiculously cool design of it all makes this magazine one the most entertaining of the lot. It’s just food, and they know it.

Kinfolk
kinfolkmag.com

Last but not least is Kinfolk, a beautifully written, photographed, designed, and executed devotion to small gatherings. It’s first 3 or 4 volumes were a tad on the feminine side for my taste, but that does not detract from the quality of writing or photography. Since then, each issue has had a great balance of things relatable to both men and women including surf-trip camp meals, chef interviews, and great recipes. The authors and photographers are spread out around the world, giving each article a distinct perspective into something food-related. What I appreciate most about this magazine is the editors choice in top-notch authors and their ability to describe what I wish to describe in a way I never knew possible. Maybe I should spend more time planning my words? Ah, maybe next time.

Happy Reading folks.