Episode 17 – Preserving the season: Summer

Both my mum and my grandma influenced my love for preserving.

It would be reductive to describe it as a habit or a hobby; I feel an ancient urge to bottle, can, or preserve whatever the season offers with abundance. It is my personal way to celebrate the passing of seasons: a hymn to seasonality, a respectful homage to the humble produce. 

Preserving is also one of my favourite way of procrastinating. When I am busy with deadlines and projects, this is when I try to steal time to preserve.

In this episode we will explore my mum’s pantry and my grandma’s memories, a walk through the best summer preserves, from tomato sauce to blackberry jam.

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Learn the Italian language of food word after word. Every year more than 200 people join our cooking classes. Speaking with them, I made a small dictionary of important words and pronunciations that can help you navigate through the immense world of Italian food. So, if you love Italian language as much as you love Italian cooking, these are a few words that can be useful for you.

Today’s words are confettura and marmellata.

I already mentioned that marmellata is marmalade, so a fruit preserve made with citrus fruit: lemon, orange, bitter orange or even citrons and bergamots. Confettura is jam, so you spread on bread a plum jam, an apricot jam or a blackberry jam.

Marmellata and confettura are easily confused, though, so in a restaurant menu you can read crostata con la marmellata di albicocche, a shortcrust cake with apricot jam, which is wrongly defined marmalade instead of jam! Bear with us!