Rome Calling · Jan 17, 09:32 AM by James Martin
After a fine meal with friends and a new acquaintance at Olea Restaurant in San Francisco I was itching to go back to Rome. Yes, we discussed the Eternal City, its secret gardens and some interesting places to view Rome from above.
Rome is one of those cities that divides folks. Orderly folks will hate it as they might hate Naples for some of the same reasons. For those of us who like surprises, cacaphony, and life lived in the midst of surreal oddness, Rome is the motherland of vacations.
Anyway, this occasion, a fine meal presided over by a waiter who understood our desire to communicate unabated while he worked in the background tirelessly, gave me an opportunity to drag out one of my favorite pictures taken last year at the Christmas Market in Piazza Navona. Call it performance art if you wish. It was colorful. Dazzling in its serenity. There was also a little eye candy in it. So shoot me.
Which also reminds me of a page I wove together yesterday on Rome Taxis. It includes a widget that allows you to find what the real fare is to wherever you’re going, just so you don’t get ripped off I mean. There are many sides to Rome.
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Who Will Be Gracing the Presepe this year? Surprise! · Dec 15, 09:48 AM by James Martin
For those of you who just have to know which figure the artistic folks of Naples’ Via San Gregorio Armeno have selected for 2009—he’s over there to the right. Michael Jackson.
Yes, we’ve just spent the last few hours walking the streets of Naples, talking with the artists who produce the best of the figurines for your holiday presepe or nativity scene. We’ll have a picture gallery soon. But I know many of you who will want to see a sneak preview of one of the current faves on the famous people shelves of the not-without-a-political-sense-of-humor artisans that line the famous street of nativity scene figurines in Naples, the Via San Gregorio Armeno.
Once the miniature duomos start crashing into skulls, it doesn’t take much longer for the presepe folks to document the act than it does for those newfangled digital news photographers, as you can see by the picture on the left.
Click the presepe figures picture to see them in all their gruesome detail.
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Christmas in Rural Tuscany · Dec 9, 07:11 AM by James Martin
Yesterday, December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception day, we went in search of Christmas fairs near us in the Lunigiana. We ended up going to Fivizzano, then taking the scenic back roads to Carrara, lured by the intriguing propaganda the tourist bureau put out. Yes, they told us we’d witness a more or less “Felliniesque” carnival of Christmas in Carrara.
Fivizzano was a pretty darn laid back affair. A palazzo on the main square had been set aside for artisan crafts; there were three floors of some pretty nice stuff. The hostel was also loaded with Christmasy things to buy.
They also had an ice sculpting contest. This evidently didn’t go over too well. There were two sculptures and I’d say only one of them had survived—unless the other one was meant to destroy itself when heat was applied. It was 68 degrees F when we left for Carrara.
We noticed a new sign at one of the bars which advised us to order an Italian flavored hot chocolate in an edible cup. What a concept. The “cup” was a sort of ice cream cone with a wide, flat bottom. The orange cinnamon hot chocolate, Italian pudding-thick, steamed inside it. By the time you were done scooping it out, the cup was a soggy mess. Re-engineering was definitely advisable.
Then we headed off to Carrara. The roads were empty. Carrara was pretty full. See the video. Felliniesque? Hmmmm. You decide.
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Pilgrimage to Bobbio: Snails and a Christmas Fair · Dec 6, 01:27 PM by James Martin
I had wanted to go to Bobbio for a long time. Bobbio is the start of the Via degli Abati, the Abbot’s Way pilgrimage trail, an alternative way through the Appenines for pilgrims on their way to Rome .
The La Via degli Abati connects to the Via Francigena in Pontremoli and was considered an alternate route to the Cisa Pass across the Apennines…It used by the monks of the Abbey of St. Columbanus of Bobbio to visit the Pope. The Abbey was founded in the year 614 by the Abbot and Irish Saint Colombano. ~ The Abbots Way
So, Bobbio seemed quite the town to visit, what with all its history as a religious center in the middle ages. Besides, who celebrates Christmas and the eating of snails at the same time? Perhaps it was even worth a two and a half hour drive on a chilly December day to find out what kind of people the Bobbiese were.
Anyway, a long trek to a minor festival seems nuts, but remember, there were snails on the other end of the drive.
Yes, the picture shows you exactly how the Bobbio snails served us at a restaurant in Bobbio looked. Pictures seldom lie. I even have the recipe for Lumache alla Bobbiese. Well, not the real recipe with amounts of the ingredients and such. You have to feel the cooking, not enslave yourself to a recipe. But here’s the list:
You need some snails, of course, and then there’s the supporting cast, which consists of carrot, celery, leeks, onions, tomato paste, olive oil, butter and salt. I assume you cook this quite a long time before dumping it artistically upon some polenta and serving it to tourists for a great deal of money.
But the Bobbio Christmas fair didn’t just consist of vats of snails. I know, snails are festive enough, but there were booths of woodworking, miniatures, Christmas ornaments, art, and even tables with cheeses and salami and…
Yes, they had salame di lumaca, snail salame. Imagine. But you can’t, because the snails inside the salame were but tasty placeholders, like the black pepercorns in American salame. The base of the salame was pork, like normal salame. The snails pepper the salame, more or less. Yes, they even pepper the pate or galantina as the Italians say. The more or less green bits you see in the picture represent the slimy things that destroy your garden but are just made for pate seasoning. They make you feel good, don’t they? It’s like you’re recovering the salad they’ve stolen by eating them. Revenge.
But that’s not all. Not by a long shot. There were lots of dried porcini. Many different “grades” of porcini. Some just tops. Those were the costly buggers. Some with bottoms. They cost less. The cheapest were shriveled up bits of mushroom that seemed more like attic insulation than mushrooms.
We didn’t buy those.
No, we bought an etto of the porcini priced just a bit more than the sickly looking bits, that’s .22 pounds or nearly a quarter of a pound. They filled a pretty big bag. It cost €8.
And they had truffles, too. Little black ones. They didn’t cost much. You could get 4 dinky ones for €5. Any time you can impress someone for a mere €5 is a bonus I figure. I’m thinking I could nickname myself “Tiger” and start luring hot babes into my SUV by grating a trail of truffle bits along the pilgrimage trail and they’d be lured to the sensual scent mixed with the noxious fumes of my Overly Large Vehicle That Inexplicably Mangles Fire Hydrants.
It’s worth a shot except I don’t have an SUV. We have a Citroën, which seems like something you’d squeeze over a fish. I’m pretty sure you can’t get hot babes with a Citroën.
But you can get to Bobbio.
Filed in: Italy Festivals Living in Italy
November: It's Truffle Time in Emilia Romagna · Nov 15, 10:24 AM by James Martin
I’m always looking for new roads and new experiences. The drive from our Lunigiana digs to the Emilia Romagna to the town of Calestano required a fair amount of driving some darn curvy roads. I let Martha do it. She needs the practice.
The colors were marvelous on the trip out. We didn’t stop to take pictures on the way because we’d be coming back the very same way. But alas, it’s November, the height of winter truffle season, and the fog set in with a vengeance in the afternoon, subduing the fall colors. You’ll have to settle for these.
In any case, the road from Berceto (a nice little town on the Via Francigena with a very interesting Romanesque church to visit) to the village of Calestano, where the truffle fair is held, had our necks craning at every turn. It was purty.
Despite the fact that Calestano was under the fog all day—and a bit nippy—we found the place hopping. There was an arcade full of truffle vendors selling the famed black truffle of Frango, packed with tables like you see on the right. Each table had an example of the class of truffle (on the right of the picture) and a basket of truffles for sale. Each class had a set market price. Class is largely determined by size. Bigger is better. We all knew that.
Winter truffles have more flavor than summer truffles. White truffles, the kind you find in Piemonte for example, are usually more pungent than black truffles—and cost a whole lot more. After all, we picket up a golfball sized beauty you see on the left for a mere €5.
What do you do at a truffle festival besides buying truffles (or a whole range of artisinal food items sold from open air booths that fill the streets)?
Well, you eat. Every restaurant in town and a few agriturismi out of town were serving a special truffle meal. They were nice enough to give us a table at the bar in the Albergo Mantovani since Italians had the sense to reserve their tables in advance and thus filled the restaurant. We had the fixed-price truffle meal, which was all they were serving unless you asked real nice for something else.
First we had polenta covered with a river of truffled fonduta (hot, molten cheese) over which truffle was grated in thin slices as you see over there to the left. That was the antipasto. Then we had the primo piatto; we both chose risotto with truffles. Then came a wonderful dish of slow roasted veal with a cream truffle sauce, the salad was radicchio with walnuts, and the sweet was a selection of the house cakes. Martha declined the meat course. With wine, water and service the bill came to €60.
Find out more about a small town truffle festival in the Emilia Romagna south of Parma: Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo Nero di Fragno
Filed in: Food Italy Festivals
The Best Sardinian Festivals · Sep 28, 03:41 PM by James Martin
Where’s the best place in Italy for festivals? There is no doubt in my mind: Sardinia, plain and simple.
I don’t mean to send you to the Costa Smeralda, the Emerald Coast, where rich, rowdy politicians hang with their Mafia buddies and a beer costs more than your rental car. You have to go inland.
Yes, the dusty heart of Sardinia is where the action is—and it seems like it’s getting a lot of play lately. The Herald de Paris offers us: Mamuthones: soul of Sardinia, heritage of humanity
Yep, that’s a dummy Mamuthone on the left up there. He guards a shop that offers masks and other traditional things for sale in the heart of Sardinia. Nobody exactly knows what the symbolic overload in their costume stands for anymore, but anyone willing to carry 30 kilos of oversize sheep bells on their back is ok with me. They do that and more at festivals, including roping unsuspecting tourists who thought they were going to be only passive viewers of the weirdest parade they’d ever seen. It’s Sardinia. You don’t just stand there with your hands in your pockets.
The festival closest to my heart is: L’Ardia di San Costantino. I saw it five years running. I even saw it on television once. You can’t imagine how deeply a religious horse race can resonate with a culture until you’ve witnessed such a thing while you were living with the 2000 or so people of the little village of Sedilo. Well, not until you’ve shared a glass of Vernaccia with every darn one of them. The same glass I mean.
And just today I discovered some coverage of the Ardia a piedi. I have fond memories of a foot race I and my archaeologist compatriots lost miserably.
If it seems that these festivals are the festivals of a people lost in an ancient culture, I’m reminded that the very first talking cash register I ever heard was in a little vegetable stand in Sedilo. “Vente mille lire per favore!” it would cry out so you could empty your wallet.
That was over 25 years ago, an idea that just didn’t seem to catch on…
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The Italian Sagra vs. the American Country Fair or Festival · Sep 26, 02:31 PM by James Martin
I’ve just attended the Kelseyville Pear Festival here in California. It’s really not all that different than an Italian Sagra. I was thinking about that because in a week or so I’ll probably be attending our first sagra of the fall season.
We didn’t have a lot of time to make a scientific study out of the whole deal because we only stayed at the pear festival until slightly after noon, since the temperatures that morning had shot up faster than a CEO’s salary during a recession.
We walked the streets past food booths and tables groaning with hand-made art and other useless things—except for the soap. We bought a bar.
I can tell you that there is a lot more emphasis on food in the Italian sagra.
You see, after smelling them, I couldn’t help but order a tri-tip sandwich. After all, there were all these herbed tri-tips smoking on a grill over real, smoldering oak. You can’t beat that with a stick. So, thinking that I’d mosey on over to where they sold them I was surprised not to see someone slicing the meat for all to see. You know, there should have been a big ol’ bucher block out there on the street and as the guy draws his extraordinarily sharp knife through the meat for your just-ordered sandwich, the juices gush out with such force you feel inclined to jump back as if you’d put your ribs smack in the trajectory of a Nolan Ryan fastball.
But no. The high school lass taking the money went back into a tent where there was a pile of sandwiches made heaven knows when by heaven knows who and left to sit there in their tin foil coffins. She brought me out a shiny, silver one. It was cold.
I don’t know why folks in the US have to do everything ahead of time. I mean, I cooked at a fairly high end restaurant in Napa for a while, and the other cooks would show me how clever they were to have made a whole bunch of things up ahead of time that would have been much tastier if they were made to order. Doesn’t anyone here have a desire to do the absolute best when serving a customer—even if it means they would have to wait a couple more minutes for their food?
Ok, maybe we don’t want slow, good food. And that’s what I like about Italy. They want that. Heck, they demand that.
At an Italian sagra in the Lunigiana the old women cook their hearts out in a big tent or something while the men and kids run with the finished product on a bee-line toward its eventual owner and consumer. It’s a circus of hot food, made to order. If it smells good, it will be.
And it won’t cost much at all. You’ll sit at communal tables and eat it, remarking how good it is to your neighbors who will wonder how an American found their little celebration of spring onions or some such…
And, oh, there will be wine or beer.
But this was a pear festival and it was about 100 degrees so, as you’d expect, they served pear ice cream. Here’s something you won’t hear in Italy (from an Italian at least), “hey, you see that? Pear ice cream! What will they think of next?”
The pear ice cream was good, but it suffered from what gelato doesn’t—too much cream. Fat is a great flavor carrier, so more cream makes sense sometimes. But for fruit, cream clogs the taste buds so that the true, fresh flavor of it doesn’t come through as well. That’s why we go all gaga over gelato. Fresh, ripe fruit and some milk, frozen.
And the music. If there’s music, you’ll be interested to know that, according to my unscientific survey, you’re slightly more likely to hear jazz in Italy than in the US. They’re nuts over it. Gritty blues tunes? The US gets a big nod there. Country-Western Fiddle with humongous tattooed dudes singing songs glorifying life in a trailer park rife with mind altering substances and lost loves? Safe to say that’s a US thing, too.
Here’s another thing you won’t see at an Italian sagra: a “20 ounce, triple espresso”. No, Italians haven’t slid into that “big gulp” swamp yet. You want 20 ounces of espresso you order about 30 of ‘em, one at a time, so they’re all at the right temperature.
I gotta go pack. You carry on now.
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Don’t know how to find one of these Sagra deals? Look for the Sagra Posters.
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Best place to have an espresso? Naples. Hands down. Why there’s even a blog from Naples I’ve recently discovered that sounds mighty good and is loaded with information about Naples and food with the name: The Espresso Break
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And finally, did you know you can read Wandering Italy Blog
Filed in: Food Italy Festivals
Happy San Lorenzo Day · Aug 10, 06:34 AM by James Martin
Another feast day I’ll miss. Dang, these are the best of times in Italy, when your neighbors gather to eat and drink—and you make wishes upon shooting stars as they fill the skies. (If they don’t appear, there will most likely be fireworks.)
San Lorenzo Day is celebrated on the tenth of August. Today. According to arttrav:
Traditionally, on August 10th there is a night of falling stars – really a meteor shower – that is interpreted as San Lorenzo’s tears. This year (2009) the astronomic phenomenon is lasting between August 8th and 12th; this last day it is predicted to be at its height at 10pm towards the north-east. Apparently the moon being in the fourth quarter is making the show somewhat less spectacular.
In addition to good foods and good wines to go with them (see the arttrav link for more of that), you’ll be able to head over for evening listening to bird and insect sounds under the star-studded skies to some of Italy’s protected wildlife areas. We particularly enjoyed Oasi LIPU Massaciuccoli near Torre del Lago Puccini.
Yes, we took pictures
More on San Lorenzo Day: la notte di san lorenzo: make a wish!
Happy San Lorenzo Day, wherever you are.
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