Breakfast and Lunch Italian Style

When Michele and I are in Italy we tend to eat breakfast and lunch, but skip dinner. This way we can have a big breakfast, usually involving pastry, and later a long leisurely lunch so we can eat whatever we want.

We try to follow a similar plan at home, too.  

On a recent morning, we started with blueberries and strawberries with a touch of honey.

Followed by cappuccino,

with cornetti and ciambelle (donuts) from Pallazone Pasticceria of Wayne, New Jersey.

For lunch we opened a bottle of:

Monte di Grazia Rosso 20011 The wine is made from 90% Tintori di Tramonti from very old ungrafted vines and 10% Piedirosso. The Tintori di Tramonti grows almost exclusively in the Monte Lattari Valley. The grape is harvested at the end of September, which makes it an early ripener for this area. This indigenous red grape variety belongs to the Tienturier family. Tienturier means dyed or stained in French. The flesh and the juice of these grapes are red in color. The anthocyanin pigments accumulate in the grape berry itself. The free run juice is therefore red.
This is a complex wine with earthly aromas, red fruit and a slight hint of black pepper and spice with good acidity that makes it a very good food wine. This wine has aging potential.

For lunch we had Italian cold cuts,  mortadella  with  pistachios,  porchetta,  prosciutto,  finocchiona  salame with  Sardinian  pecorino  and  green  Castelvetrano  olives.

W

We also had some warm bruschetta topped with burrata and anchovies, a combination that I first had in Rome.

Spanna Riserva 1967 Francoli the wine was mostly Nebbiolo (also know as Spanna in the Novara-Vercelli area of Piedmont) with some Vaspolina, or as Wasserman says  in his book Italy’s Noble Red Wines, whatever other grapes they had handy. He also says that back then Aglianico from Campania was used to give the wine more body. The wine was showing some age but still had some fruit with balsamic notes. This is a wine that goes very well with food.

After the appetizers, we had my favorite pasta, Bucatini al’Amatriciana.  Though  my  dining  companions  said  they  would have preferred mezze  maniche shape pasta,  I was  very  happy  that  they  indulged  my  preference  for  bucatini.  It  was  excellent.

For dessert, there was espresso and two different Italian biscotti made by Michele

Today is a holiday in the U.S – Happy Labor Day and I wish I was spending the holiday in Naples/Rome