Archives: Newsletter

As Luigi explained to me, with great enthusiasm, mushrooms are amazing!  There are three types of mushroom: the pathonogenic, the saprophyte, and the symbiotic.  The pathonogenic, kill the host and generally are not edible.  The saprophyte mushrooms feed on decay; they digest the medium on which they grow.  These mushrooms can be farmed in manContinue Reading

There are so many things to know about finding truffles and most if the information rests with people.  It is a tradition passed along from person to person.  I remember clearly a friend, who wanted to go hunt mushrooms with me, on a specific date and at a specific time.  She was busy and sheContinue Reading

Fall is here and it is time to celebrate root vegetables, dried beans and hardy greens.  We have some great items to accent all of those buried gems and brassicas.  We have vinegars to help punctuate flavors and oils to ground them.  A special new product, coming from Stony Brook Wholehearted Foods, of Geneva, NYContinue Reading

Maybe you have heard of Steve Sando, or maybe you haven’t.  Steve started Rancho Gordo in 2001 and has since skyrocketed to success.  As the story goes, he was selling his beans at a farmers market in Napa when one of Thomas Keller’s cooks bought his beans and brought them back to the kitchen… theContinue Reading

Most of our products are very hard to get a hold of, and some days it is like a three ring circus here at Great Ciao.  The good thing is that we are juggling very tasting hams, cheeses and chocolates.  Many of the producers we work with are small and so our supply chain isContinue Reading

Salame (s) or salami (p), like cheese, is a product that requires a select few ingredients.  Traditionally salami depended on the simple combination of: protein, fat, salt and fermentation.  Salami producers used wines, vinegars or the natural yeasts, to ferment their salami.  These are still common ingredients, but the introduction of starter cultures, dextrose, nitritesContinue Reading

Folks have been calling for truffles and they are available, summer truffle season is just finishing, while winter and white truffles are just starting.  Pricing is determined Sunday morning each week to provide estimates for the following week, click here for the order form. The intense aroma and flavor of the truffle captivate the palate; itsContinue Reading

Sherry vinegar is a perfect combination of sweet and sour, it’s warm tones lend depth to cooked beans, lentils and punch to vinaigrette’s.  We carry a number of sherry vinegars and the Alvear vinegars are some of the best.  Alvear S.A. was established by Don Diego de Alvear in 1729.  It is still owned andContinue Reading

Jabugo or Salamanca? We had to wait until 2008 to get the famous black hams imported into the United States.  The only producer certified at that time was Fermin, and they make a great product as many of you can attest.  We now have the opportunity to import another producer from Spain, Sánchez Romero CarvajalContinue Reading

It was a confluence of shared interests, fortuitous meetings, and chance encounters that inspired Patricia Rain to start The Vanilla Company and to become the “Vanilla Queen”.  TheVanilla.COMpany is a group of farmers, processors and distributors who care about maintaining the relative diversity and health of tropical forests, and who see an opportunity to accomplishContinue Reading