Tag Archives: Lucini Italia

Cooking at Home with the Schwartz Family

Posted on November 18, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Lulu Schwartz (11) fashioning her dough just right.

When Food & Wine Magazine approached us to include Michael and his kids in a cooking at home feature, the answer was a resounding um, YEAH!  With the deadline fast approaching, a quick scramble ensued, asking our friends @luciniitalia and @teenaspridecsa for some edible schwag to incorporate into two recipes for Sunday Family Pizza (& Salad!) Night, and… voila!  I dropped by their South Beach home to paparrazza the whole shebang and today the “Star Chefs’ Kids Cook” extravaganza is live online!  Read the Schwartz family’s Q&A about cooking healthy with kids at home, see my photos of pizza night, and get the recipes for Roasted Vegetable & Arugula Salad with Shaved Trugole, and Pesto Pizza with Homemade Ricotta, Heirloom Tomatoes & Pecorino, all here!  Do you cook at home with your kids and what do you like to make?

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Posted in Local Ingredient, News, Recipe

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Herron the Florentine

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | Leave a comment

So it’s a dream of ours, and Bradley Herron is living it.  Our chef de cuisine at Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in Miami is taking a much-deserved break, vacationing in Italy with his wife, and our friends at Lucini Italia were kind enough to hook him up with a bonus round.  In addition to a visit with one of Lucini’s producers while the couple is in Tuscany, the finishing drizzle is that Bradley will guest chef a Slow Food Firenze dinner for 54 featuring local, presidia ingredients including freshly-pressed Lucini oil direct from the source. According to Slow Food’s website, the Presidia program is coordinated by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, which organizes and funds projects that defend our world’s heritage of agricultural biodiversity and gastronomic traditions. Loosely translated into “garrison,” Slow Food Presidia (Presidium, singular) are local projects that work to improve the infrastructure of artisan food production. Click the flyer pictured for the menu, a collaboration with the kitchen at La Tenda Rossa, “one of the best italian restaurant” in Florence according to its most generous convivium leader Francesco Ranzani.  Many thanks to both Francesco and Lucini Italia President Renee Frigo Graeff for their time and effort in making this tremendous opportunity happen. We look forward to seeing photos of what will be an unforgettable Italian experience.  And bring back some oil for us Bradley, please??  Viva la dolce vita!

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Posted in Away Game, Special Event

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Finished in Italy

Posted on May 27, 2011 by | 4 Comments

From Italy, with Love: Our Burrata, our best local (for a little while longer!) tomatoes, now finished with Lucini's best olive oil.

Sometimes the best ingredients aren’t produced locally, like in the case of great olive oil.

We use a lot of olive oil at MGFD.  We cook with it, and, with an Italian sensibility, we finish dishes like Burrata with generous drizzles. We insist on finishing with oil that has great flavor; used raw for that last layer of seasoning, it needs to be of higher quality than one you heat as a cooking agent.

For finishing, you want a first cold press extra-virgin olive oil straight from the source. Traceability of a product made in Italy is especially important, and you must know and trust your source to ensure what’s in the bottle is what it says on the label.  In Miami, we’re fortunate to have a family-owned company producing and importing some of the best olive oil sold commercially, Lucini Italia. CEO Renee Frigo Graeff has just assumed the post as our local convivium leader at Slow Food, the international non-profit organization with Italian roots and now firmly rooted in cities across America in defense of good, clean and fair food.

We began purchasing Lucini Italia Organic Limited Reserve Extra Virgin Olive Oil, its premium pick and press, a couple of months ago for the restaurant and wanted to share a little with you about the company — who they are and how they make the product.  This is always the most important step for us in our relationships with suppliers. And who better to do so than the ultimate conduit, a native South Floridian who just returned from three years living in Roma and married an Italian chef with family olive groves.  Take it away, Ellie.

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Posted in MGFD_MIA

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