Pistachio is used as the litmus test of gelato sampling. It’s a standard flavor, along with hazelnut, at any serious gelateria in Italy. Gelatiamo co-owner, Skyler Locatelli insists that the true test of a successful gelateria is the ability to perfect pistachio or hazelnut gelato. When he travels to Italy, the first item he samples is one of those flavors. If they are good, he knows the other flavors will be good too.

Here in the United States, pistachios are synonymous with the golden rolling hills of California’s Central Valley. However, the trail of pistachio shells starts in the Middle East. During the heyday of the Levant trade in the Middle Ages, the Venetian Republic introduced the addictive nut to Italians. Soon pistachio trees began popping up along the fertile, volcanic-soiled hills of Sicily and beyond. In fact, Sicilians adore pistachios so much that they celebrate the rich, flavorful nut the second week of October.

Made in true Italian style using pistachios from the Mediterranean region, Gelatiamo’s Pistachio Gelato is a silky blend of Sicilian and Turkish pistachios. It’s sublime, verdant green color with just a hint of tan – what you’d expect the nut to look like – is full of pistachio flavor. Ideally, you’d pair it with another flavor, perhaps a chocolate or berry gelato, just like it’s done in Italy. But who’s saying you can’t eat the whole pint by itself?!

Gelatiamo’s Pistachio Gelato is on our menu through the end of March. The best thing about it: you get your pistachio fix without wrestling the shells!

Em Good, George Petrich and David Pearlstein with a fresh batch of Link Lab Sausage.

Otto von Bismarck is quoted as saying that “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” We would respectfully submit that Bismarck would change his mind if he saw the facility that David Pearlstein has built for his company, Link Lab Artisan Meats.

We spent the day with him a few weeks back and watched how he and his crew make the sausage that is the centerpiece of our latest seasonal, the Link Lab Sausage Primo. We thought we would share a few pictures from the day.

The process starts with breaking down pork shoulders from Tails and Trotters in Portland. Those big hunks of pork shoulder were actually still a bit frozen in the middle. That is good for 3 reasons. First, from a food safety standpoint, the colder, the better. Additionally, the colder the pork fat is, the more it stays together, which results in a juicier, more succulent sausage. And truthfully, it is a lot easier to cut!

After it is cut down into smaller pieces, it is fed, 25 pounds at a time, into the meat grinder. It is very similar to a hand-cranked grinder that you might see, except it is a LOT bigger. In the picture below, Em Good is actually standing on a stool so that she can get the leverage to push the meat into the feeder tube should it become necessary. After each batch of pork is ground, it is returned to the refrigerator to stay as cold as possible before the spices are mixed in. When all of the pork has been ground, the spices are mixed in by hand. The sausage is then loaded into the stuffing machine, which is essentially a big hydraulic press that stuffs the sausage into casings or bags. After that, the bags are vacuumed sealed and packed for shipping to our locations.

We are very excited to have partnered with Link Lab Artisan Meats for our latest seasonal pizza! Our Link Lab Sausage Primo spotlights their shiitake and sage pork sausage.

After watching Le Gourmand Restaurant’s Bruce Naftaly make fresh garlic sausage loaded with fresh herbs and using locally raised pork, Microsoft project manager David Pearlstein was struck by the realization that sausage, like all great cooking, can and should always be made with the freshest and highest quality ingredients available. David decided that he would try to replicate the sausage, and what started as a hobby using a friend’s hand grinder has now grown into a full time occupation. David quit his job at Microsoft in 2007 to spend more time with his daughter and soon found himself experimenting more and more with sausage making. He converted his family’s single car garage into a USDA Certified production kitchen and went from making 25 pounds of sausage a week to 275-300 pounds a week in his first year. David soon realized that if he were to increase production, he would need a bigger space. He found one not far away in the Maple Leaf neighborhood, and this past August he made the move from his 180 square foot garage to the spacious 900 square foot production facility that is Link Lab’s new home.

However, Link Lab is not only about the equipment that they use. David believes that fresh, quality meat is by far the most important part of his sausages. The pork that he uses to make the sausage for our pizza is from Tails and Trotters in Portland. David chose Tail and Trotters because of the unique way that they feed their pigs. In Spain, the pigs that provide the meat for the famed Iberico hams thrive on a diet of acorns, which actually lowers the relative level of saturated fat in the meat. Similarly, the pigs from Tails and Trotters are fed hazelnuts (they are much more plentiful here than acorns). This gives the fat a wonderful white, clean color that David just can’t find in most pork. In addition, it tastes delicious! Try it for yourself. David’s sausages are available at Ken’s Market on Phinney Ridge, Ken’s on Queen Anne, Pete’s Wine Shop, Sunset Hill Green Market, Full Circle Farm, and SPUD.com to name a few. And of course, you can try David’s Shiitake Sage Pork Sausage on our Link Lab Primo, where it is featured along with shiitake mushrooms, roasted leeks and fresh mozzarella on an olive oil base. It is available now through February 26th.

Vrooooom!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages!  Racing season is back! Get ready to rev your engines for the return of the Zucchini 500!

Every year, the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance holds its annual Zucchini 500 races at a few Farmers Markets around the city and we are proud to sponsor this year’s event. On race days, a veritable mountain of local zucchini awaits children of all ages. They can take as long as they like to make their own custom-built zucchini racers to compete against each other on the Market’s track.  The Market provides the zucchini, wheels and decorations. According to Claire Leamy from the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance, the first Zucchini 500 was held at the Columbia City Farmers Market sometime before 2002 (no one can remember quite when) to celebrate the bounty of the local zucchini crop. It has since become a highly anticipated and very popular part of the summer market season.

We’re very excited to be sponsors of this fun event. We’ll be joining the races with a hands-on tossing demonstration.  You will have an opportunity to learn how to toss pizza dough like our cooks do. It’s great fun for kids young and old! After you build your Zucchini 500, why not try one of ours? We’ve created a special pizza to celebrate the races. Our Zucchini 500 Primo is only available for a limited time.

This year’s races will be held at the Lake City Farmers Market on Thursday, August 16^th from 3 pm to 6pm, the Magnolia Farmers Market on Saturday, August 25^th from 10 am to 1 pm, the Columbia City Farmers Market on Wednesday, September 12^th from 3 pm to 6 pm and the West Seattle Farmers Market on Sunday, September 16^th from 10 am to 1 pm. We’ll see you there!

Much like its cousin the truffle, morels are some of the most elusive mushrooms around.  They have never been successfully cultivated and their short growing season means that when they’re gone, they’re gone, so they can fetch a high price at area Farmer’s Markets.  However, mushroom lovers prize their musky, loamy taste no matter what the cost.

It is true that sometimes you can find them in great quantities. For some unknown reason, they grow very well in areas that have recently been affected by forest fires. However, many times novice mushroom hunters can be standing in the middle of a morel gold mine and not realize it.  It’s not hard to see why. It takes a practiced eye to spot them among the roots, rocks and other plants out in the woods. John Cage, one of the most influential American composers of the 20^th Century was once asked how he would go about foraging for morels.  His advice was to “Go into the woods and look, and if you don’t find any, don’t worry.”

Fortunately, our friends at Foraged & Found Edibles have their own secret spots where they collect the delicious ‘shrooms. After they bring us the rewards of their hunt, we roast them with a bit of olive oil and some spices. We pair them with the delicious chicken sausage made by Isernio’s here in Seattle. This light, fresh sausage perfectly complements the rich, earthy mushroom.  After you taste it, you will see why people spend hours out in the woods hunting for them.  We’ve made it easy, though. Just give us a call and we’ll deliver this treasure of the forest to you. No foraging required!

Rosmarino at DeLaurenti's

Like many Seattleites, we’ve developed an affinity for Salumi Artisan Cured Meats. We patiently waited with bated breath for them to receive their USDA certification. The moment that happened in 2005 we could barely contain our excitement and built a seasonal around their Finocchiona salami.

Consequently, we have been looking for an excuse to feature more of their products. We are overjoyed to announce that we are starting Salumi specials that will spotlight a rotating Salumi product throughout the year. It is similar to our seasonal offerings, but will be available for a longer period of time. We have started with a favorite, the Salame Picante, which features their rosmarino salami.

You don’t hear much about their rosmarino salami. That’s because back in 2007 DeLaurenti’s Pat McCarthy contacted Armandino Batali asking Salumi to develop an exclusive DeLaurenti product. They batted around a couple of ideas, and then Pat hit upon the thought of a rosemary salami. Armandino found a fresh rosemary source that he liked from Vashon Island. The rest, as they say, is history. Pat is extremely proud to say that DeLaurenti remains the only place where you can buy Salumi’s Rosmarino salami. You can’t even buy it at Salumi. The only exception is on our Salame Picante. It will be available through the spring, or until we run out of it!

We are still working out what will be featured next. Early indicators point towards Salumi’s mole salami. We’ll keep you posted!

Mama's Meatball Combo

Occasionally, a topping that we love fails to do as well as we think it should.  Such was the case with our Meatballs.  We had wanted to offer meatballs as a topping for quite awhile, and thanks to CasCioppo Brothers in Ballard we finally found a meatball that we felt suited our pizzas.  We thought we had a sure winner, and it did have its fans.  But they never really took off like we hoped they would. So, we took them off of our year-round menu, much to the lament of meatball lovers. Now they are back for a limited time. We are featuring them on this month’s crew pie, the Mama’s Meatball Combo. They join Mama Lil’s Peppers and ricotta on top of our whole milk mozzarella and seasoned pizza sauce.  You can also create your own meatball masterpiece. Be sure to satisfy your meatball cravings before they disappear on the 27^th.  Who knows when they will reappear.

Pagliacci co-owner Matt Galvin recalls that when he initially proposed the idea of pumpkin gelato to Gelatiamo’s founder Maria Coassin, she was struck by the audacity of his idea. A gelato traditionalist, Maria did not see how there would be a demand for this very non-traditional flavor.  In Italy, pumpkin is not really used in desserts. As Maria was not very familiar with pumpkin pie, she did not know how traditional it was in the US. Matt persisted and they had a friendly argument over it for a couple of years. One time when Matt was visiting her store in downtown Seattle, Maria marched him outside and pointed to her sign.  “See what that says? ITALIAN ice cream! Pumpkin is not an Italian gelato flavor!”  She finally relented and made a test batch. “I didn’t think it would go anywhere” she remembers. To her surprise, everyone who tasted the batch loved it. It debuted as our seasonal gelato flavor in 2003.  Maria admits that she totally underestimated the demand. We quickly sold out of our supply in the first two days. Pumpkin alone doubled our gelato sales and became a best seller at Gelatiamo as well. The warm flavors of ginger, cinnamon and clove are perfect for the holidays. It remains one of our top seasonal gelatos and opened the door for other non-Italian flavors like blackberry, salted caramel and Whoppers.

When we started our Mushroom Primo this year, our hope was to feature wild mushrooms exclusively and to use a new variety for us, the lobster mushroom. Its firm, dense texture, rich interesting flavor and bright color really stands out on the pie. Unfortunately, shortly after we started the pizza, we couldn’t get them any more. Our seasonal pizzas are made with the idea of using what is available locally. The late summer heat wave made for a less then bountiful supply of both lobster mushrooms and the perennially popular porcini. Professional foraging is an art, and even the pros have had a hard time finding enough lobsters and porcinis to keep up with the demand. We’ve had to change our mushroom mix a few times this season. While Foraged and Found Edibles has kept us well supplied with chanterelles, we are currently featuring them with cultivated shiitake and oyster mushrooms for a pizza that a mycologist, or anyone else for that matter, would love! It’s the last weekend to enjoy the pizza. We’ll take advantage of the abundance of chanterelles with our next seasonal, Chanterelle Prosciutto. Starts November 3rd.

Topping with bacon

Congratulations to Page Harader for wowing us with her little slice of heaven! Page and her family have been 85th Street customers for several years. When we called with the good news she was clearly elated. She was actually eating a Pagliacci pie when we called. We asked her permission for a few slight modifications (after all it is “her” pizza) and she quickly agreed. Now Page and her family will get a year of pizza on the house. Not a bad return on her one recipe!

Page’s creation is currently on our seasonal menu. It features smoked bacon, leeks, breadcrumbs, white cheddar and mozzarella on olive oil finished with arugula. While she creatively came up with a wonderful winter name, “By The Fire,” we’ve had a change of seasons so we are simply calling it Bacon Leek or Page’s Pie. Buon appetito!