Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part one...

It wasn't really planned. It just sort of happened...or at least that's what I told myself.

After years of traveling for both business and pleasure, my husband and I finally racked up enough frequent flyer miles to book a trip outside the country; at the same time. That had never happened before, one or both of our flights were always on our dime . And it would seem like the obvious choice that we would jump on the horn to Delta Airlines and arrange what we had been faithfully doing for the last ten years; a trip to Italy. As a matter of fact, we traveled to Italy so often that when I responded to my mother's inquiry of "where are you going on vacation this year?" with Italy, she would roll her eyes and say "ugh, again?". But there are no limits to my love of Italy. There were regions still to be discovered and our favorite places, like Rome and Palermo magically offered up surprises and new experiences with every visit. So why did we plunk those miles down on a trip to Spain?

Strangely, it had nothing at all to do with Italy, which is kind of like saying "baby, it's not you, it's me". For years, our neice has been extolling the virtues of Spain, having studied there for two semesters and travelled the entire country. She knew that the wine and tapas culture of Spain was a perfect fit for us, but we had previously been in such a passionate affair with Italy, that we couldn't concieve of a plane ride that delivered us to anywhere but back to her loving arms. Honestly, I blame it on Japan (needle scratch). Yes, Japan.

In September of 2017, my husband took a two week business trip to Japan. Accompanying him on this trip was a hulking a six foot six, bald headed, goateed giant of a computer programmer named Dale, who had never left the country before. Always one to immerse in the local culture and do his travel homework, my husband took it as his duty to introduce Dale to the sights sounds and tastes of Japan. In many ways, this posed new challenges to be solved and broke him of the comfort and complacency that we felt when travelling to Italy. Shortly after that trip, he started to tiptoe into research about Spain.

It all began very innocently. A YouTube video here, a dinner at a local Spanish restaurant there. We even took another trip to Italy in Spring of '18, which provided the mileage boost that we needed to get the free tickets. Before we knew it, we were on the seven hour flight to Madrid.

Sitting here, one month post-trip, all I can think about is how and when we can go back. I am completely torn between two lovers and definitely feeling like a fool. To be continued...

Mashing Up My Cocktails

Italy is my favorite place on the entire planet, bar none.  Not a day goes by when I am not daydreaming about my next trip. When I think about travel, it is always Italy first, but every now and then, I let my mind wander to other European destinations that are on my bucket list.

Lately, I have been thinking about Spain.  Like Italy, it has a relaxed way of life, centered around a cafe/bar culture with iconic food and drink. We are considering a run to Madrid in the winter, if we have enough airline miles to do it for low/no cost.  The very possibility of this has gotten us doing research.  And when we do trip research, we dive in pretty deep.

One of the things that came out of our research about Spain is a drink called the Tinto de Verano.  It is essentially a slightly sweetened red wine spritzer.  Similar to a sangria, but simpler and made by the glass, a la minute. This summer, I discovered that I LOVE a similar Italian drink called an Aperol Spritz.  The composition of an Aperol Spritz is equal parts Prosecco, Aperol and Seltzer.

This afternoon, my husband opened a bottle of red wine and started experimenting.  He threw a healthy glug of aperol into his glass of wine and topped it with a splash of seltzer.  It was unexpectedly delicious. I added a couple of slices of fruit and got the measurements down to a repeatable recipe and a cocktail was born.  It's kind of like the bad baby that resulted from a foolish night of passion between the Tinto and the Spritz.  We have named the love child "Bacio da Madrid" or Kiss from Madrid.  Give it a try before it's officially cider and whiskey weather.

BACIO DA MADRID

5 oz Fruity Red Wine (Rioja, Shiraz, etc)

1 and 1/2 Tablespoons Aperol 

4 Oz Seltzer (orange flavored seltzer works really well here)

1 Slice Lemon

1 Slice Orange
Ice

Fill a large wine goblet or tall glass halfway with ice.  Pour over the wine and aperol and mix well with a spoon.  Drop in the lemon and orange slices and stir again.  Top off with Seltzer.

Mommy

Daddy

Bad Baby

Like a Bad Penny

It has been a long time since I posted.  It has actually been close to two years since I made my last entry to this blog. It isn't because I have lost my interest in writing or cooking.   Quite the opposite, actually.   I have been writing like crazy, trying to catalogue all of our family's recipes for a family cookbook. Our family has been through some significant losses over the past few years and the need to chronicle and preserve the family legacy seems more pressing to me these days.

My goal for the cookbook is to have it ready to distribute to family and friends by Christmas of this year.  I don't know if I will look to distribute it beyond the immediate family, but if not, I think that a good deal of the content will end up here.  And for that reason, I think it's time to come back to this forum and catch up.

When I put up my last post "Channeling my Inner Nonna", in December 2016, I was fresh off a trip to Sicily, Italy and London.  We have since gone back to all three, as the pull of Sicily is strong, due to our family heritage and we can't be in the region and not go to Rome. London, a relatively new discovery for us is just great fun.  I have to say, it is the most spectacularly drunk town that I have ever been to and it has THE WORST traffic.  I would say that the traffic problem in London is far worse than New York City, which is pretty rotten in its own right.

Our most recent trip to Sicily centered around Palermo, a city that was surprising to me on many levels.  I think I was expecting it to be gritty and dirty and tough, like Naples, but moreso.  I could not have been more incorrect.  Palermo is beautiful and elegant and full of history.  With side trips to Erice, Trapani and Mondello, the beauty of north eastern Sicily unfolded like a flower, revealing layer after beautiful layer.

So without much fanfare, I return to the place where I began the journey of chronicling my adventures in cooking and travel. I have new things to share and many reflections on the past that are currently bubbling under the surface. I never considered myself a writer, more of a kibitzer. Someone who makes snarky comments from the sidelines, but is never really in the game.  My goal is to change that and to jump in with both feet. Let's see where this goes...

Alcamo Beach Sicily

Teatro Massimo

Theater Horse

Dramatic Theater Horse

Horses that are probably jealous of the Theater Horse

Palermo Marina

Cannoli

The breakfast of champions

Channeling my Inner Nonna

You ever have one of those days where everything aches for no reason and you walk slow, deliberate and a little like you have a poop in your pants?  Think Fred Sanford, but less elegant.  No? Just me?

OK, whatever.

When I have those kind of days, I think of it as coming down with a case of "The Grandmas".  When you get a case of The Grandmas, everything aches, it takes forever to walk from one side of the house to the other and you forget how to use all your electronic devices.

But sometimes, instead of a case of The Grandmas, you get a case of "The Nonnas".  When you get a case of The Nonnas, you become an elderly superwoman.  You put on your housecoat, cook all day and all night, wash and fold 40 loads of laundry and pick vegetables from your beautiful backyard garden (even if you have neither a back yard or a vegetable garden, when you get The Nonna's they magically appear).

Last weekend, I got a wicked case of The Christmas Nonnas.  I was posessed by the impulse to make Struffoli.  For those of you that don't know what Struffoli are, they are little round balls of fried dough, soaked in a honey syrup and covered with non-pareils.  If you grew up with at least one Italian grandmother, you know what they are and you have warm memories of being shooed away from pots of hot oil, being covered in honey from head to toe and not being able to put anything down after you pick it up because everything sticks to your fingers.

My Nonna did not leave me a recipe for these delightful treats and honestly, I have not ever wanted to make them before because I hate frying.  I hate the smell it leaves in the house, I hate the mess and I hate spatter burns.  But, when the spirit of Christmas mixes with the spirit of Nonna, the compulsion for struffoli can outrun my more neurotic, Felix Unger-type tendencies. Being that I did not have a recipe from my own Nonna, I did what any red blooded Italian Grandmother would do...I used the Internet.

What I found is that there are no shortage of recipes for Struffoli.  Everyone who calls themself an Italian cook has a version - Giada DeLarentiis, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali.  They all look pretty good and the recipes are similar...flour, eggs, a splash of alcohol, honey, etc.  But since I was overcome with the spirit of Nonna, I went to the source, Cooking with Nonna.

If you have not seen this adorable series, a young Italian American woman, Rossella Rago, cooks traditional Italian and Italian American recipes with grandmothers.  Yours, hers, any Italian nonna that will sit still long enough to teach her a recipe.  It's quite charming and sweet and it spreads the joy of having an Italian grandmother to everyone.  The recipe that I used, along with a "how to" video can be found here.  Enjoy and Buon Natale!

A Tour of the Monte Testaccio in Rome

When my husband texted me in November and said that he wanted me to earmark time off at work in December for a trip to Italy, I did not question him.  His job has been giving him a sustained level of grief that would have killed me by now.  This was clearly an escape, a way to let the air out of an over-inflated balloon about to pop. I knew he needed the break.

He wanted to start the trip with a quick spin through London.  Long on my bucket list, I was thrilled with the idea of a visit to London.  It turned out to be another Rome to me; a place where I felt immediately at home and where the tug to return began the minute the wheels were up on the plane as we left.  But the bulk of the trip was about Italy.  We would follow our brief London visit with 4 days in Sorrento and 5 days in Rome.  The itinerary?  Find a seat at a cafe near something beautiful and drink wine.  That was it.  Relax, people watch and consume great wine and food. 

What's cuter than a red Mini Cooper?

This was our first time to Italy by ourselves. Each trip before had been with friends or family and we were always playing tour guide and working hard to keep the masses happy.  With the luxury of time and no agenda whatsoever, I spent a little time thinking of things that I had wanted to do in visits past, but did not follow through on, either because of group dynamics or lack of time. And then it dawned on me, I realized that I could take a private tour with Elizabeth Minchilli. 

As a long time follower of Elizabeth Minchilli's blog, it was somewhat astonishing that I hadn't booked a tour with her before this visit. I had been on a couple of tours before - The Vatican, The Colusseum, the Forum.  But what I wanted from this tour was to know the city and to learn what it was like to be a resident of Rome.  Elizabeth was the right person to go to for an inside look at the Roman way of life. 

Elizabeth had several styles of tours available; group, individual, day long, week long, all centered around the food and lifestyle of various areas of Rome. We were looking for a slice of Roman life, which lead us to the Insider's Tour of Testaccio, a real Roman neighborhood, just outside of the central tourist belt.

This private tour started in the Piazza Testaccio and took us through the cafes, storefronts, market and abandoned meat processing plant that are built in, on and around the Monte Testaccio. The hill and it's surrounding neighborhood are unique and interesting and Elizabeth peppered us with fascinating information about how it came to be and it's very long and distinctive history.

Beautiful and fragrant oranges

Romanesco

Artichokes that made me green with envy at their quality.

Amazing fried artichokes

 It would be very accurate to say that we ate our way through the neighborhood, making stops for coffee, wine, snacks, a fabulous lunch and ending with some delicious gelato. 

We ate lunch at Flavio Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally built into the Monte Testaccio. The food was otherworldly delicious. We enjoyed Caccio e Pepe, pillowy, herb and cheese stuffed ravioli and yes, even some "quinto quarto" favorites like lungs, liver and tripe. Elizabeth can claim accomplishment of being the first person to get me to eat tripe. Not just one bite, but two! This is a bigger accomplishment than she will ever know.

Gorgeous handmade pasta

Cacio e Pepe

This ravioli is what angels use for pillows.

Pizza Bianca with Mortadella

Gelato. A sweet ending.

After our tour ended, we walked along the Tiber as the sun came down behind the buildings along its bank. We reflected on our fabulous day, all that we learned and the stunning beauty and distinctive charm of Rome. We felt closer to it than ever before and had a warm and comforting feeling in our hearts and in our bellies. Elizabeth helped to further cement our love for Rome and fuel our desire to return and learn more.  Arrivederci Roma.  Until we meet again...

Full of Beans

December was a whirlwind month for us as we decided to take a trip to London and Italy during the first two weeks of December.  This was a wonderful experience as London, Rome and Sorrento are all towns that take Christmas very seriously, so gorgeous lights and decor ruled the day and the festive feeling was palpable.

This was my husband and my first trip abroad without a large group of family and truth be told, it was incredibly relaxing to not be responsible for the entertainment and sustenance of 18 people.  It was a trip made for relaxing.  Our game plan was basically, find something beautiful sit in the nearest piazza with a view of it and drink wine.   We did this over and over for the entire length of the trip, so objective met.  We came home very relaxed and went back to work the very next day.

Naturally, we were as interested in good food as we were in good wine and beautiful sights, so there were many memorable meals consumed and fabulous local products sampled.  The food alone could provide fodder for a dozen different blog posts, but where to start?  As a means of focusing and finding a place to start, I am going to start at the end...of the trip.

The way that I can tell that I have really enjoyed a dish in a restaurant is if the taste of it makes me want to immediately run home and recreate it.  This happened on the last night of the trip.  On recommendation of Elizabeth Minchilli (whose tour of Testaccio may need at least two posts of its own to capture effectively), we went to an adorable pizza place called Emma.  Emma is tucked away in a side alley just a few steps away from Campo De Fiori and thanks to the amazing streak of 60 degree weather that we had, we were able to comfortably dine outside.

Although they are billed as a pizzeria, Emma is a full service restaurant with salads, pastas, meat dishes, vegetarian options and of course, pizza.  Feeling like something simple and a little lighter, we decided to skip the pizza and order salads and pastas.  I went with the herbed ravioli and my husband got a steaming bowl of pasta fagioli.

When my husband's soup arrived, it was thick and glistening with a flourish of extra virgin olive oil and a snowy shower of grated Pecorino Romano.  It was filled with irregular rags of torn pasta sheets, floating on a creamy river of thick bean puree.  I impulsively jabbed my spoon into his soup and was overwhelmed by the savory depth of flavor that it had. It was so rich and flavorful that I forgot about the plate of steaming hot ravioli that was rapidly cooling in front of me. This was the very first meal that I cooked when I came home.  Here's my version, but first, a beauty shot of it:

That's some food porn, right there.

Pasta Fagioli

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 ounces of pancetta, diced
1/2 medium sized red onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
2 garlic clove, diced finely
1 sprig of  fresh rosemary (about the size of your longest finger)
1 dried bay leaf
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes
2 15.5 ounce cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed well
32 ounces of chicken broth (canned or homemade)
1/2 of a *1 lb box of lasagna noodles, bashed into small pieces with a rolling pin

Grated pecorino romano and extra virgin olive oil for serving (optional)

*Note: you could also use a 1/2 lb of small pasta like ditalini or elbows and bypass the smashing


Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven over med heat and add the diced pancetta.  Cook until golden brown, then remove the browned pancetta to a plate lined with paper towels. Set aside.

Lower the heat in the pan to med low and add the carrot, celery and onion.  Add a little salt and pepper to the vegetables to help them sweat in the pan.  Cook until the onions are translucent.  Add the rosemary, red pepper flakes (if using) and diced garlic and saute for about 30 seconds (or until you can smell the garlic).  Turn the heat back to medium and add the white wine.  Scrape up any browned bits of pancetta from the bottom of the pan while cooking the wine down and reducing by about half.

Add the diced tomatoes, drained chickpeas and pancetta to the pan and follow with the chicken broth. Raise the heat and bring to a good boil. Using a slotted spoon, remove about 2 cups the chick peas and set aside.  Once the soup is at a rapid boil, add the pasta and cook to 1 minute under the al dente instructions (ie. if al dente is 12 minutes, cook to 11).

While the pasta is boiling, put the reserved beans in a blender or puree with a stick blender into a smooth paste.  When the pasta reaches its time,  turn off the heat and stir the pureed beans back into the soup.  Cover and set aside for 5-10 minutes before serving (this allows the soup to thicken to a nice consistency).

Taste for seasoning and adjust salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with a sprinkle of romano cheese and a drizzle of olive oil.

Home Sweet Rome

Two weeks.  We are two weeks back from Rome and I am still in a blissed out state of relaxation from the memory of all of the amazing meals, cocktails and good times we had.


Rome for me is a centering place, a place that puts my internal compass in balance.  Maybe this is simply because when I am there, I am on vacation and the stresses and worries of work, home and life are dulled for the moment.  Or, maybe there is more to it, something deeper, like a spiritual, almost karmic connection.



Not one to pay attention to things spiritual or signs, I felt an unusual ease and comfort on my very first trip to Rome. With not a word of Italian in my vocabulary and nothing to guide me but a few streetviews on Google Maps, I stepped into the cobblestone lined streets of Rome as confidently as I did the street I live on at home. I had no fear and that alone was telling to me.



That first trip, which included a stay in a Tuscan villa, was a watershed moment for me.  I feel like I have spent the ensuing years since in an endless quest for the next trip to Italy.  In the years since that first visit, we have been to Florence, Sorrento, Naples and Capri, all of which were soul soothing and wonderful in their own right. But every trip has also included Rome.  It had to or I would feel the emptiness of an opportunity missed.  To be teased with the closeness of Rome and skip a visit would cause a longing that I would feel physically, an actual pain.  I know this because I felt it at the very suggestion that we maybe skip Rome this time.


This most recent trip was special because it was about the sweet pursuit of nothing but to bask in the essence of the city itself.  To sit in a piazza for hours doing nothing but drinking wine and people watching.  To be Roman, if only for a moment and to dream of a future where sitting in a piazza could be our primary job in life.  A job that I feel I was born to do.

Cornetto and Cappuccino - aka Breakfast.

 Veggies at Campo de Fiori - always beautiful enough to make me want to eat vegetables (no small feat).

 A closer look at Chariots in the Sky.

A closer look at the Colosseum.

Ingredients for a cooking class. Ingredients like this kind of stack the deck in your favor for success.

The city is full of dogs, which is awesome.

This was the meat sweats waiting to happen but worth every bead on my brow.

 Drinking by the Pantheon by day...

... and night

A beautiful day in Piazza del Popolo.

 Porchetta sandwich and beer from The Angry Pig (consumed at 11 am, so technically the breakfast of champions).

The Tiber by night...

...and day.

And just to spice things up, a day trip to Orvieto.

Italy Haunts my NY Soul

I have tweeted it, Facebooked it, emailed it and proclaimed out loud; "Italy, I wish I knew how to quit you." And much like when a confused and thoroughly addicted Ennis said it to Jack Twist, it is a hollow wish that is in direct contradiction to what is in his heart and soul.  It's more of a lament about not being able to have what you truly want, all the time.  For me, that desire is Italy.

These days, my desire for Italy has escalated to a level that has me questioning whether I have crossed the line from interest to obsession.  Have I made the leap from fan to stalker? Is this a pathological interest?  When I can't make it through the Italian Grocery store without ripping open a box of Kleenex to dry my tears.  Or when I sit at the bar of one of my favorite NYC restaurants in a trance, listening to the bartender yell directions to the busboys in Italian.  Or when I have an almost complete breakdown at a cooking class  given by a famous Italian chef, I start to wonder, are these the warning signals letting me know that that my train is about to jump the track?

All of those examples really happened.  What is even more disconcerting is that they happen often.  The most recent of them happened just this past Thursday night.

I had made a reservation at Eataly for a cooking demonstration/dinner with Chef Cesare Casella as an anniversary present for my husband.  After 23 years of marriage, you start to run out of ideas for gifts and as my husband also loves all things Italian and had enjoyed the black and white Rome episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, where Chef Casella made an appearance, I thought he would enjoy this.

The menu was pure Tuscany and Eataly delivered on its promise to match wines with all of the dishes that Chef Casella prepared.  The dinner included :

Pappa al Pomodoro:  A tomato and bread soup, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and a generous grating of Parmesan.  They paired this with an Italian Chardonay (did not know such a thing even existed).
Risotto: Prepared with pear, scamorza and walnuts.  Again, liberally dosed with Parmigiano Reggiano and paired with a lovely Rosato.
Chingale alla Cacciatora - Hunter style boar stew, marinated in red wine and cooked with rosemary, tomatoes and vegetables, which they matched with a Tuscan Chianti.

Every bite of the meal was delicious and Chef Casella spoke with passion and pride about his upbringing in Italy, his life in the restaurant business and the Italian food principal of simple, local and fresh.  I listened in rapt attention to his tips about when to use a white vs a red onion, why you should use and not discard the stems of the parsley, how if the rosemary is young, you can chop and use the whole thing, but if it's old and the stalk is woody, pluck the leaves and leave the stalk behind.   Every detail was consumed. Not a crumb of food or information was left behind. There is nothing unusual about that, I suppose.  What was unusual though, was that on at least three separate occasions during the course of the demonstration, I burst into tears.  Not sobs, mind you, but bouts of teariness that had me running for the ladies room to compose myself.

The first and most significant wellage came when the introductions of the sommelier, sous chef and star chef himself were being made.  I got hit with a thunderbolt of jealousy and that I wasn't the sous chef that got to stir the risotto next to the chef.  I have certainly never felt that way about anybody or anything EVER before.  I was quite taken aback by it.  As the night progressed and the stories of Italy continued on, I was overcome with emotion over my desire to be in Italy and to use the amazing ingredients that chef spoke about with so much love and joy.

As a "woman of a certain age" I am definitely suspicious of any emotional dis regulation.  I suppose I could short circuit at any time and if I were crying over cat food commercials and information security training that I took at work, I would definitely go the hormonal route.  Such is not the case however.  I am, I believe, truly and deeply Romesick.   A condition cured only by my first glass of wine in front of the Pantheon or a slice of prosciutto from Roscioli or by witnessing a sunset from Isola Tiberina.


The pictures which follow are from the class at Eataly, which I highly recommend and some of my favorites from Rome.  I offer them as an excuse,  for my emotionally charged and possibly irrational behavior.  Or maybe, they are more of an explanation and my behavior makes sense.  Total and complete sense.

 "It's difficult to be simple." #truth

LA DOLCE VITA