Translating Italian From A Chocolate Bar

It's easy to find word for word translations of another language on products such as food. For example, I just had a piece of chocolate from a bar bought earlier this year from Gelupo, an Italian ice cream shop in London, England.

Chocolate from Sicily
The chocolate was kept in a freezer so it came out hard and crunchy, which made the first bite like sandpaper. So I cannot tell or recall how it would taste or the texture when you eat it fresh or on a hot day when it is maybe starting to melt.

The texture and flavour seemed to me closer to American dark chocolate made by Hershey, less like the milk chocolate of England's Cadbury's. The range of flavours is more like Green and Black's chocolate bars (widely available in UK supermarkets such as Tesco).

The packaging had warned:
Conservare in luogo fresco e asciutto
They translate as Store in a cool and dry place

Conservare - conserve/store
in - in
fresco - fresh / cool (in this context)
e - and

Cioccolato alla vanighlia
translated by them as Dark chocolate with vanilla.

cioccolato - (dark) chocolate
vaniglia - vanilla

peso netto - net weight
netto - net

ingredienti - ingredients
zucchero - sugar
massa di cacao - cocoa mass
aromi naturali (they translate as vanilla flavour) - aroma natural
cacao - cocoa


tipica - typical
preperazione - preperation
tradizione - tradition
diretta - directly
discendente - descended
populazione - population
introdotta - introduced
Europa - Europe
spagnoli - Spanish
secolo - century
metodologia - methodology
antiche - ancient
culture - civilisation

They translate Best before end as
Da consumarsi preferibilmente entry la fine.
consumarsi - consume
preferibilmente - preferably
fine - finish/end

How delightful to learn Italian as well as eating chocolate, or to eat chocolate as well as learning Italian.

You can order chocolates and biscuits (biscotti) online and watch a video. And if you are interested in translating Italian, their website is in Italian with translations into England and several other languages.
www.bonajuto.it











If you want to try the Italian ice cream and other products in London, go to
Gelupo
7 Archer Street
London WID 7AU
tel: 020 7287 5555.
www.gelupo.com
They are open 11-11 Monday to Thursday
Friday and Saturday 11 to midnight
Sunday mid-day (noon) to 11 pm.
Go to their website to check the list of gelati and sorbets.

Photos by Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury B A Hons
Travel writer and photographer, author, English teacher, speech trainer, speaker.
See Angela Lansbury author and like my page on Facebook, connect with Angela Lansbury author on LinkedIn, watch videos of Angela Lansbury author reading comic poetry and teaching English grammar and spelling on YouTube, and look at and perhaps buy books from Angela Lansbury on Lulu.com and Amazon.com

Shopping For Food For Dinner & Dinner Parties In London

Dinner party with napkins depicting grapes. Paper napkins bought from one of the vineyards and museum shops in the Rioja region of Spain.

Dinner Party Checklist

I recently attended a family and friends dinner party. First find recipes you like using seasonal foods. Some people think red wine is warming in winter. It certainly is, in colour, although for years I served only white wine because I was allergic to tannins and wanted to save my white tablecloths from stains.  

Our starter was salmon en croute, home made. We used salmon bought from Waitrose supermarket and readymade roll out fill pastry but added the butter sauce between the salmon and cooked the salmon and sauce in the pastry fresh for the dinner party. Make sure you buy plain salmon, not lightly smoked.

Use dill butter. Add lemon zest (from a fresh lemon) in the dill mayonnaise sauce. Mayonnaise is only egg yolk and vegetable or olive oil. You can make garlic mayonnaise with fresh garlic. A short cut if you are short of time - use bottled dill mayonnaise.

We served the salmon with three dips, wholegrain mustard, mayonnaise.

On the subject of meat vendors, our chef/cook, call the host what you will, says the rack of lamb was from The Ginger Pig. This amazing shop is in Moxon Street, Marylebone, near Baker Street station, which is conveniently on the Metropolitan, Circle, Jubilee and Bakerloo lines. (The pig breeds are on the Ginger Pig shop website.) 

Herbs included rosemary from the garden. Rosemary is a shrub which grows all year. 

It's very easy to grow. You just pick off a bit from a plant and stick it in the ground and water it. We've had so much rain in England that unless you plant your cutting in a hot, dry summer spell, you hardly need to look at it again. But then, I probably would go out watching anxiously over my cutting for a week to check it still looked all right. And I'd plant half a dozen cuttings. Then if one failed, or only one succeeded, I'd be certain of gaining at least one new plant. 

If you live near me and know me, just ask, and I'll let you take a cutting. Better still, I'll cut off a piece, I will feel generous, you will feel favoured, and I will put it in a plastic bag for you to take home.

In addition to rosemary, the family bought fresh basil and thyme from Waitrose. I'm not sure it added anything to the flavour of the food. But it does give aroma to the kitchen and home to welcome guests.

The Suffolk Charlotte potatoes, carrots, Italian grapes and cheeses (Petit Taupiniere and not Brie de Meaux but Brie de Melun) were from La Fromagerie next door to the Ginger Pig, in Moxon St.

We ran into a problem with our dessert of hot pineapple in syrup contrasting with cold vanilla ice cream. One of the guests was allergic to pineapple. So the cook quickly put an apple in the oven to bake.

We forgot that you have to make a horizontal cut around the middle of the apple to stop it bursting. So we hid the fact that the apple had burst by hiding it in a large bulbous cup. Bulbous meaning a large round shape cut which looks as though the top is cut off, so just the top of the apple shows.

You put sultanas and a sweetener in the middle. Our traditional family recipe required you to cut chunks out of the middle of the cored apple. You can mix in chopped nuts, flaked nuts, almonds (not if your sensitive guests are allergic to nuts - best to ask first. For sweetness, honey, marmalade, best of all your own syrup made from brown sugar dissolved in hot water with added flavours such as cloves or star anise. You could add juice from tinned fruit. Purists add chunks or puree from any other fruit.

On this occasion we served a gritty chocolate. The smoothest, milkiest chocolate we've found is Lindt. Green & Black's do lots of bars of dark chocolate with fruit flavours and spices.

The chocolate brand we used on this occasion was Dolceria Bonajuto which our cook buys at Gelupo, Archer St.  They do a great affogato too!

For more about ice cream see next post.

Angela Lansbury is a travel, food and wine writer, author of 20 books (10 by traditional publishers, 10 self-published). You can watch Angela talking about table etiquette on YouTube. (Angela Lansbury the actress is likely to pop up first, so type in Angela Lansbury author or Angela Lansbury poet or Angela Lansbury speaker Toastmasters.) You can read posts by Angela on her other blogs, also on Facebook and LinkedIn.

London Wishlist Ice Cream: Gelupo Ice Cream & Late Night Coffee

The Gelupo ice cream and coffee bar for a late night coffee was visited by a member of my family. They were looking for somewhere for coffee after 10.30 at night and Costas had all closed at 9 pm, catering mainly for the office crowd.
It's in the Soho area, not far from Piccadilly.

Gelup had a wide range of granites (flavoured water ices) as well as gelato (ice cream). At the back are seats.

'I had one scoop of blood orange and one scoop of bitter chocolate.'

I was promised, 'I'll take you there one day!'

Promises, promises.

Gelupo
7 Archer St, London W1D 7AU
020 7287 5555
www.gelupo.com