ELDERBERRY

Notwithstanding the fact that supermarkets are best to be avoided, they still provide an interesting research ground as to what the industry thinks customers will be more attracted by. At least, that's how I look at them: they are a display of the industry's applied intelligence. Yesterday I paid a short trip to one of these medium size city supermarkets.
It was time of Christmas foods reductions. Small samples of cheeses packed together with a small bottle of truffle flavored oil apparently sold less well than expected.
To my surprise, I could not find wheat germ, yeast extract, corn flour. These are basics that are used for baking. The fact that they were not there tells me that very few people are busy with foods that take a bit of time to make and bake.
Anyway, at one point I caught the sight of a bottle of elderberry syrup. Elderberries grow a bit everywhere. In Italy there is an industrial cordial called "Sambuca", which is extracted from the plant, has a flavor similar to pastis and makes water turn into a milky liquid.
The flowers are white, very small and they grow like an umbrella. My mum tells me that they were used to make biscuits and that they are quite aromatic. I even found a recipe for covering these umbrella-formations in a sweet batter and frying them.
The berries are a bit more difficult to come by. The only time I remember tasting them was in 1996, in the Black Forest, near Freiburg. In Germany it is easy to find elderberry jelly, a dark jelly with a flavor with a very subtle flavor.
The reason why the elderberry syrup was there, next to an Alpine herbs cough syrup, is that elderberries are a mega source of Vitamic C. A closer look revealed that the syrup is mostly sugar and that elderberries are a mere 14%. Despite this (the fact that one is buying sugar for a pretty high price), two spoonfuls of syrup contain 100% of the recommended daily Vitamin C intake for an adult person.
Here below is a comparison between grapes and elderberries.

GRAPE

Nutrition values:
Vitamin A: 80 I.U. per 100 gm.
Vitamin B: Thiamine 0.06 mg.:
Riboflavin 0.04 mg : Niacin 0.2 mg.
Vitamin C: 4 mg.
Protein: 1.4 gm
Calories: 70
Fat: 1.4 gm.
Carbohydrates: 14.9 gm.
Calcium: 17 gm.
Iron: 0.6 mg.
Phosphorus: 21 mg.

ELDERBERRY
Nutrition values:
Vitamin A: 600 I.U. per 100 gm.
Vitamin B: Thiamine 0.07 mg.:
Riboflavin 0.06 mg : Niacin 0.5 mg.
Vitamin C: 36mg.
Protein: 2.6 gm
Calories: 72
Fat: 0.5 gm.
Carbohydrates: 16.4 gm.
Calcium: 38 gm.
Iron: 1.6 mg.
Phosphorus: 28 mg.

CHOCOLATE NEWS

Belgium's best chocolate maker announced a partnership with Nestlé. The goal is to open even more branches around the world. Nestlè will provide Marcolini with the know-how in terms of production, legislation, supply. What's not clear is what Marcolini will have to provide to Nestlé to pay them back.
PERPLEXITY is the least one can feel. After all, Marcolini had started off as the only chocolate maker who ground the cocoal beans himself. He was the first who worked with his own blend of beans coming from different countries, the first to celebrate the superior quality of Venezuelan beans and the difference that the concentration of cocoa will make to flavour. At the time, his Belgian colleagues worked with a big distributor and did not ask too many questions.
A lot has changed since then. Today every chocolate master worthy of this name is aware of the difference between a bean from Venezuela and one from Madagascar. Research has gone further, into Japanese flavours like Yuzu, gree tea and wasabi. But it's not sure that Japan alone will be able to save us.

Chocolate

A discovery: a black box containing a selection of chocolates by Guido Gobino!
Tourinot maximo is a small praline made with hazelnuts from the Langhe region, cocoa and sugar. It's a revised version of the original recipe for "giandujotto" from 1860 and this did not contain milk. Personally I do not see the point of milk within a chocolate praline but after tasting the Tourinot maximo, a ban of milk from gianduja pralines becomes almost necessary, especially when one wants to savour the top quality nuts inside it.

PANETTONE DI NATALE

By the 80s the Italian Christmas cake had become a sad industrial preparation. A fluffy dome-shaped cake with raisins and candy citrus fruit and a prominent taste of flavour-enhancers.
It was even hard to justify its popularity among the Italian crowds. In any case, these days a new kind of Panettone has sprung up. It's the old panettone, the one made with real stuff over a couple of days. This is a cake with real butter and especially with real lievito madre (a handmade rising agent which is prepared over a number of days).
I get mine at Paticceria Busnelli, in a small village called Arluno. They got a prize for it and since then people drive from nearby towns to get one.
I had to get there early this morning to secure a couple of specimens for Christmas. A freshly made panettone tastes best after a few days!

CITY TIPS

Wasabi, Corso Ferrucci 72, Torino
Sembra essere l'unico ristorante con chef giapponese a Torino. Si cena seduti sui tatami, con le gambe dentro "lo scavo" che sta sotto il tavolo, come accade nei ristoranti tradizionali giapponesi e nelle case di campagna. I decori (rose vere che sembrano finte, luci al neon filtrate da tessuti grezzi) appartengono allo stile nipponico anni 70 che ha fatto scuola in tutto il mondo e che, in fondo, è pure tornato di moda.
Ma alla fine al ristorante si va per mangiare. Da Wasabi le porzioni sono piccole e i piatti sguarniti. L'unico piatto ben eseguito è l'anguilla con la classica cottura nel mirin e salsa di soia, servita su un panetto di riso tagliato a pezzettono, pronta a dinoccolarsi come un giocattolo di legno. La bella glassa era un mix di mirin, zucchero salsa di soja e saké. Il sukyaki era approssimativo, il brodo privo di complessità, le fette di carne troppo spesse, la varietà di verdure limitata al numero di due...Insomma un disastro. Senza parlare della ciotola di udon (pasta in brodo) con tre pezzi di tempura, venduta obbligatoriamente in due porzioni e fatta pagare 20 euro l'una. Roba da sollevazione popolare!
Dulcis in fundo: al posto del solito gelato al the Matcha, dolcini al vapore, Yokan (gelatina) ai fagioli rossi, un paffuto wagashi e anche un dolce transculturale: il kasutaro, versione nipponica del pan di Spagna portoghese.