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Summer in the Alps, Val Gardena plus recipe for apple fritters

June 28, 2019 1 Comment Filed Under: Desserts and sweets, Food, Italy, Recipes, Travel, Uncategorized

  • sasso lungo pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com
  • South Tyrol pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

I’m usually more of a beach person in the summer. But having visited the Dolomites in southern Italy only a couple of weeks ago, I was keen to visit the northern end of the range up up towards the Alps. This area, Val Gardena, is one of the most beautiful Alpine areas (unlike the grim high-rise ski resorts in the French Alps). The visitor can enjoy rustically pretty pine chalet architecture, wooden window boxes with cut-out hearts, crowded with pelargoniums, reams of red and white gingham, women wearing ‘Sound of Music’ dirndl dresses and Italian food.

Who are the Ladins?

  • Ladino man in South Tyrol pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com
  • Ladin woman in a dirndl pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

In the South Tyrol, they speak Ladin, not to be confused with Latin. There are around 45,000 speakers, a newspaper and some TV programs. Ladin language and culture is similar to Romansch in Switzerland and Friuli in Austria, all of which were preserved due to the isolation of these mountain valleys.

The language is a kind of latin slang spoken by Roman soldiers. There are also hints of Bulgarian and Celtic.

What to do in the mountains in summer?

  • South Tyrol dolomites shepherd pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com
  1. Look at mountains.
  • dolomites pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

Before this trip, one mountain looked rather like another mountain to me. Mountain addicts don’t feel that way. Sassolungo is Ladin for long rock. The Dolomitian Alps are particularly steep and sheer-sided with plateaux at the top rather than the traditional pointy mountain shape.

  • pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

There are several ‘gondola’ lifts to summits but the most impressive must be the lift to Forcella Sassolungo at 2,685m. You are required to hurl yourself into a tiny metal cabin, aided by two assistants pushing your bum inside while it’s moving. The views on the way up are spectacular. At the top there is a mountain station where you can eat or drink.

2. Hiking:

Walking is now hiking, an American term. I went on a so-called easy gentle hike which turned out to be one of the most exhausting mornings of my life. I was with a group of hiking bloggers in day-glo yoga outfits led by a maniac Tyrolean guide who, living in the area and used to the altitude, ran rather than walked, up and down mountains. Five days later and my legs still hurt. The whole group was angry with me, I was kindly informed, for being so slow and getting lost, which was humiliating. It was interesting to see what ski slopes look like without snow however. It can be summed up in one word – steep.

But I am assured that there are easier ‘hikes’, more suitable to us less athletic types. The unfit walker could take a gondola or the Resciesa funicular lift to the top and walk along the flat enjoying the views. This way you won’t twist your knees or break your angle running down a pebble-strewn dormant ski slope.

For avoidance of doubt I really like walking. I just can’t run up mountains.

3. Biking:

Mountain biking has now been transformed into e-biking, which is a bike with a little motor in it. Oh I cannot recommend this enough. It’s cheaty cycling. When you go uphill there is like an invisible hand that pushes you up.

4. Eating:

  • Tyrolean food pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

The food is Italo-Ladin with a hearty mountain vibe. Expect lots of bread-crumb dumplings (canederli), strudel (but with shortcrust pastry rather than filo-style), stuffed pasta (ravioli stuffed with spinach called crafuncins), risotto, sauerkraut and goulash. Speck, a kind of bacon, is in absolutely everything. My absolute favourite was the apple fritters (recipe below).

Feur oven in the middle of a restaurant pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com  Tyrol dolomites

Many restaurants still possess a ‘feur’ in the middle of the room, a giant wood-burning oven. Previously this was how houses were heated: the whole family would sleep in the main room around this oven, and the children in beds on top of the oven.

Do check out the many mountain-hut restaurants, such as Val D’Anna or Ciampac, who serve very good food.

bircher muesli pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

Breakfast is bircher muesli, soaked in yoghurt (so much nicer than the dry stuff), cheese, meat, smoked salmon, pickles, large pretzels, fruit jams and cake. Just like the rest of Italy, they adore sweet cake for breakfast.

5. Drinking:

The wine is simply fantastic. My favourite white wine, Gewurztraminer, originated here in the village of Tramin. Both the red and the whites are good. Local liqueurs and grappa are made from fruits, herbs and alpine flowers.

cows in South Tyrol dolomites pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

6.Spa:

My hotel had its own spa including an outdoor heated pool and jacuzzi. This must be a boon in the winter to soothe tired ski-legs. I did lengths while gazing up to the jagged mountains of Sasso Lungo.

7. Alpine flowers:

  • alpine flowers pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

If you are interested in gardening, plants or botany, the beginning of summer, mid-May to mid-July, is the moment to walk among alpine flowers.

“From this point, and for a long way up, the pasture-land is like a lovely park, rich in grass, and interspersed with clumps of firs and larches. As the path rises, however, the trees diminish and the wild-flowers become more abundant. Soon we are in the midst of a hanging garden thick with white and yellow violets, forget-me-nots, great orange and Turkscap lilies, wild sweet-peas, wild sweet-William, and purple Canterbury bells. Here, too, we make acquaintance for the first time with a grotesque, ugly flower bearing a kind of fibrous crest, like a top-knot of spiders’ legs. They call it “Capelli di Dio,” or God’s-Hair. The forget-me-not is here called Fior di Santa Lucia, or Saint Lucy’s flower; and the white clover, known only as a wild-flower in South Tyrol, is the Fior di San Giovanni, or Flower of Saint John.”

From Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys by Amelia B Edwards 1873

8. Architecture:

  • Ortisei pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

Ortisei, the main village in Val Gardena, is the ultimate in chocolate-box architecture – ice-cream painted 19th century buildings, coronated with wooden filigree trelliswork. Rooves and spires in several villages are green and yellow ceramic.

9. Wood Carving:

  • the studio of Ivo piazza, wood sculptor pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

I visited the workshop of Ivo Piazza, who gathers lightning split tree trunks from the Resciesa forest. Ortisei is known for wood carvings, often religious. There is a wood sculpture gallery which is free to visit.

10. Sunsets:

Although the Dolomites are known as ‘the pale mountains’, there is a local phenomenon known as ‘the burning Dolomites’ when the mountains turn crimson.

  • gingham in sud tirol pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

I stayed at the five star Alpine Royal hotel, rooms in summer are from £134 a night.

The Val Gardena card gives you access to all the lifts and gondolas, costing 93 euros for 6 days.

E-biking (sometimes referred to as ‘Fat Bikes’) from the Rental Selva shop is 49 euros for one day and 227 euros for 6 days.

Nearest airports are Verona (2.5 hours away) and Innsbruck (1.5 hours away).

apple fritters pix: Kerstin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com
Print

Italian Apple Fritters

Course Breakfast, Dessert
Cuisine Italian
Serves 10

Ingredients

  • 4 apples, cored, sliced crossways thickly
  • 100 g sugar (caster)
  • 100 ml rum

For the batter

  • 250 g plain flour
  • 2 tbsp caster sugar
  • Pinch sea salt
  • 3 eggs, separated
  • 250 ml whole milk

For Frying

  • 250 ml vegetable oil, clean
  • Icing sugar

Instructions

For the apples

  • Prep the apples, leaving on the skins
  • Leave the apple slices to marinate in the rum and sugar

For the batter

  • Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl
  • Add the milk and egg yolks
  • Just before frying, whisk the egg whites till stiff and add to the batter

For the frying

  • Lay the apple slices on a clean tea towel to drain
  • Dip the apple slices into the batter
  • Carefully lower into the hot oil
  • Fry. until golden both sides
  • Lift out and sprinkle with icing sugar
  • Eat immediately

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Comments

  1. Margo

    July 22, 2019 at 8:37 am

    Maniacs? I agree. I never learnt to ski until I went to America where they really want you to succeed. In the Alps and the Dolomites the teachers were show offs who wanted you to see their skills and not develop your own.
    The young blonde with the cute bottom was likely the only one who got attention and tuition.?

    Reply

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

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Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
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Galette des Rois, made yesterday in 12th night. Mi Galette des Rois, made yesterday in 12th night. Minus Crown and king as I cannot find either. This one is made with Tonka bean. Plus homemade puff pastry (well worth the effort). According to ike delorenzo at The Atlantic:  The tonka bean, a flat, wrinkled legume from South America with an outsize flavor that the US government has declared illegal. Nonetheless, it proliferates on elite American menus. The tiniest shavings erupt in a Broceliande of transporting, mystical aromas.
The taste of the tonka bean is linked strongly to its scent. "Scents," I should say, as the tonka bean has many at once. I register the aromas of vanilla, cherry, almond, and something spicy—a bit like cinnamon. When served cold—say, in tonka bean ice cream—the taste is like a vanilla caramel with dark honey. When warm, perhaps shaved over scallops, it moves toward spiced vanilla. Additionally, the aroma of the tonka bean shavings (it's almost always shaved) is so affecting that it seems like an actual taste in the way that opium, which has no taste in the traditional sense, "tastes" like its rich, flowery smoke.  Here is the recipe: 

Tonka bean galette des rois

Serves 8
Ingredients
* 140 g caster sugar
* 125 g salted butter, softened
* 100 g ground almonds
* 2 eggs, medium
* 1 tonka bean, grated
* 2 packs ready made butter puff pastry on a roll
* 1 yolk for brushing the pastry
Instructions
* Preheat your oven to 200c.

* Blend the butter with the sugar then add the almonds. Make sure it’s well mixed. Add in the 2 eggs one at a time, then add the tonka bean.

* If using a block: divide the puff pastry into two and roll out to 5mm thick. 
* Make two circles about 15 cm’s each in diameter. Lay one circle on a silicone mat/parchment paper on a baking tray and fill with the almond cream leaving a 3 cm border around the edge. 
* Paint the border with the egg yolk. Then lay the other circle on top, sealing the edges with a fork. 
* You could then carve designs into the top. Make a little slit in the middle to let steam escape then brush the top with the egg yolk
Mapo tofu is probably my favourite Sichuan dish. T Mapo tofu is probably my favourite Sichuan dish. This is a vegan version. ***

Ingredients:
- 400 g box of soft tofu not silken
- 5 soaked dried shiitake mushrooms, diced, keep water
- 1 red bell pepper, finely sliced
- 400 g fresh shiitake mushroom, sliced thinly
- 400 ml vegetable stock
- 1 thumb fresh ginger, minced
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 tbsps groundnut or vegetable oil
- 3 tbsp fermented bean paste
- 1 or 2 small red chillies, minced or a spoonful of Chinese chilli paste
- 1 tsp heaped sichuan peppercorns, finely ground
- 2 tbsps soy or tamari sauce
- 2 tbsp cornflour in 3 tbsps water, mixed into a slurry
- 4 spring onions, finely sliced
- large pinch fresh coriander leaves

Prepare the tofu by cutting it into one inch cubes and soaking it in hot but not boiling salted water. Drain after 15 minutes.
Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms, covering them in boiling water. Leave until soft, then dice the mushrooms. Retain the mushroom soaking water and add to the vegetable stock water.
Prepare the other ingredients so they are ready to stir-fry: red bell pepper, fresh mushrooms, ginger, garlic.

Using a wok or deep frying pan, add the oil and heat to frying temperature. Add the bell peppers,fry for a couple of minutes, then add fermented bean paste, chilli paste or chillies, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sichuan pepper.
Add the mushroom/vegetable broth and simmer on high for a couple of minutes.
Carefully add the cubes of tofu, taking care not to break them too much.
Add the cornflour slurry, stirring for a couple of minutes.
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