jelly sandwich

I love going to food fairs for a lot of reasons. I discover new products, meet new people, schmooz with friends and colleagues. But then there’s the down side to taking off for three days. First of all, I get WAY behind on work (although food fairs are work for me). And secondly, I come back with WAY too much food, some of which I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with. (Yes, I still have at least six different kinds of salami in the fridge I got at the Salone del Gusto last October)

I was up in Florence for Taste last weekend. This is an amazing food fair organized by Davide Paolini (a.k.a. Gastronauta) that brings together what is really the creme de la creme of Italian food producers. More about this in the next post.

Being away for three days was great, but it also meant that by the time I was back at my computer on Tuesday, I barely had time to breath, much less get up and make lunch. But lucky for me I had a pantry full of goodies picked up at Taste. What could I whip up quickly, and eat while working at the computer? Something like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich popped into my head for some strange reason.

Lately exotic jellies have become very trendy. They often come, dabbed on cheese platters, in wine bars. They are usually brightly colored, ‘flavored’ with things like hot pepper, berries and wine. Although buying them to serve at home seems like a good idea at the time, in reality how often to you put together a fancy cheese board?

So I was not really overly excited to see these jellies at Taste. Until I actually tasted them of course. La Fucino di Merlino had one of the prettiest stands at Taste, full of jewel like bottles and jars. And instead of insipid, bland tasting sugary jellies (which is what I was expecting) their small jars packed a wallop of flavor. I tried almost all of their jellies, including one with Vino Ippocrasso (Wine infused with herbs) and another, Vellutata di Fiori di Sambuco (Elderflower). And of course I bought some to take home with me, to join the other jars in my pantry.

But then came lunch, with my idea of peanut butter and jelly. Without the peanut butter, of course. And lucky me, I had lots of sophisticated jelly.

Pane di Lariano (from Roscioli) toasted. Then a schmear of Robiola di Roccaverano, which is a fantastic fresh goat milk cheese from up North. (Hard to find in Rome, so of course I picked up some in Taste). Dotted with brilliant dollops of jelly: Pere e Moscato on one, and Mirtillo e Moscato on the other. I gobbled it up in less time than it took me to make it, trying my best to keep crumbs off the keyboard. But since I’m thinking this is good enough to migrate from desk to dinner table, I might be sharing this with company sometime soon.







Robiola di Roccaverano is available at Formaggio Kitchen. And while the jellies from La Fucino di Merlino aren’t available in the States yet, they said that William’s & Sonoma had stopped by right before me. In the meantime, just use your favorite jelly.