Blogs About Italy · Mar 3, 07:18 PM by James Martin
Information. Isn’t there a ton of it online? What information do I like best? Cultural information. What are people around the world doing right now? Who’s making pasta? Who’s gutting a wild bore? Who’s stuck in the subway with a live lobster making odd noises in a paper bag?
For all this, these days, we have blogs. When Martha decided to create a list of Italian blogs for Italy Travel, she didn’t want to make one of those “Top Ten Italian Blogs!” lists that people fight and whine over but create constantly, as if there was a cosmic force behind the urge.
There are just too many good blogs out there. So, she let everyone submit a blog, and then weeded out the ones that consisted of only one blog post or had pictures of naked people handling snakes. There were some surprising entries among the old favorites of mine.
For example, there’s a whole blog devoted to Artichokes in Italy. It is called, oddly enough, The Artichoke Blog. It cracks me up how they get these names. Anyway, the blog has great pictures, and is a tribute to writers who can pick a narrow topic and wow you with what they can do with it.
Anyway, if you love things Italian, you will want to check out the compilation Blogs About Italy
Did you know there’s a blog done by researchers Blogging Pompeii? You can get right down in the trenches with them, in three languages yet.
Well done.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips Living in Italy
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Strangled Priests and Overindulgent Monks · Feb 24, 10:25 AM by James Martin
One of the things I like about Italians is their public recognition of hypocritical conduct by religious figures, especially around the issues of overindulgence. It’s food all over again.
The picture to the left is a Presepe figure of a monk. It’s my favorite. Tickling him with your mouse and clicking will make him much, much bigger.
Monks, you see, are supposed to live the simple life. They often take vows of poverty and of silence. But in their Christmas cribs, Italians have a way of reflecting life as it is, not as it was supposed to be. Our monk seems to have gotten used to living the good life.
Food itself can be the vehicle for this “knowing wink” of the faithful. I was reminded of this from Serena, who writes of The Priest Stranglers, a gnocchi dish allegedly given the name gli Strozzapreti because of the fervor with which a parishioner’s gnocchi were consumed by a visiting priest, who might shove enough of the free food down his greedy gullet to choke himself to death. Sure is a more colorful name for a dish than “Spinach Dumplings with Herbs” in any case.
In America, we accept greed as part of a modern “Christianity” which seems to have been built solely around selective misreadings of Leviticus. On television, religious figures sit on golden thrones, dispensing their vindictive advice to all who can stomach it. Whatever happened to the simple life, the turning of the other cheek, the love of neighbors?
In Italy, it’s all in the gnocchi.
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
On Tuscans Eating Cat · Feb 17, 10:25 AM by James Martin
Perhaps you have heard of the latest incident of Politically Incorrectness that has raised the hackles of Italians. It involves a television host who dared reveal the traditional eating of cats by those who didn’t have other meat to fry at carnevale time. By traditional I mean 60 years ago. Lean times in Tuscany. And the carne in carnevale means meat, remember, so these folks were being left out of the party.
(Yes, even Italians tend to kill the messenger, the storyteller. Shame. What will become of us?)
I have personally had dealings with cat-related eating issues. I made the mistake of inviting my Italian neighbors over for gumbo last fall. I didn’t want to make anything with seafood because one of them didn’t eat it. So I thought of rabbit. Rabbit is plentiful in Tuscan markets, so I went to the market and bought one.
Now, you certainly know by now that when Italians speak of food, they don’t hold anything back. By the time I was ready to dip the ladle into the gumbo, we had already had the discussion about rabbits…and cats.
You see, we were informed that the locals sourced their rabbit carefully, otherwise one might go home with something anatomically similar. Like a cat.
Of course, I remembered the old days, when any rabbit you might buy came with an intact, furry head with ears. If you even wondered why, now you know.
Modern folks, especially city folks who are getting more and more divorced from the source of what they eat, don’t like knowing that they’re eating rabbit or any other “cute” animal. So, the practice that assured them they were getting rabbit went away so more rabbit could be sold. But then it was much easier and more profitable to sell cat, I suppose, and Italy has more private entrepreneurs than you can ever imagine…
Returning to the original story, the television host was fired for revealing a tradition popular 60 years ago. Odd, isn’t it? But the video showing this unspeakable transgression is online, translated, and quite entertaining. You must see it: Italy and its gastrocraze over the tuscan cat expression
Buon Appetito!
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Popular These Days
Coffee Culture? · Feb 11, 07:47 AM by James Martin
When I wrote Will Starbucks Invade Italy I was amazed at the backlash. Lots of real Americans don’t see the culture in standing at a bar talking with your buddies while downing a quick coffee before scurrying off to other things. If you’re in Italy, you know you can’t start anything—a drive to the country, a business meeting, a talk with the neighbor—without strolling to the bar for a coffee. By that I mean a coffee in a proper cup from someone who actually knows how to make it so you don’t have to put gobs of pumpkin-cinnamon non-fat yogurt cheese in it to make it taste slightly better than swamp gas.
In any case, as someone who tries to understand the other side of every argument, I took to standing in front of cafes along San Francisco streets, peering inside to study the dynamics of the “only in America” coffee culture that was fomenting there.
What I saw, usually, was a claptrap sea of laptop screens aglow with oddly similar googly textboxes. Yes, people were sitting. But there was only one person and one laptop and one huge paper barrel of steaming coffee at each table. My thought bubbles were infrequent and off-color. Culture? Where in the world was it? If I were an alien from a planet of hairy, three eyed creatures with enormous brains the size of a big gulp cup, I might think this was the way Americans took pleasure, a sort of caffeinated, public masturbation.
But don’t mind me. Others have noticed. Yes, I was happy to read the news that:
A North Oakland cafe is trying something revolutionary this weekend. It’s not fat-free croissants or half-price lattes.
The owner is asking customers to leave their laptops at home and actually speak to each other. ~ Cafe owner asks patrons to log off, talk
So, all hail to Sal Bednarz, who opened Actual Cafe six weeks ago on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, Calfornia. He’s a revolutionary. Someday there will be an iTalk coming to a cafe near you. Don’t wait for it. Start the revolution yourself.
Howdy, you new here?
Filed in: Living in Italy Food
The War on Root Vegetables · Jan 12, 09:15 AM by James Martin
Perhaps I’m the only one in the universe, but I look forward to winter cuisine. I don’t seem to have the aversion to root vegetables that other folks have. Nor do I find a diet rich in them monotonous.
Then again, root vegetables seem to be the current focus of a backlash against eating local foods. You know, “who’d want to be stuck inside eating turnips all day?”
Full disclosure: I had chickpea and kale soup last night. It was good, especially with a drizzle of olive oil, a winter thing, too. Now on to the story:
“If you are determined to eat locally in South Dakota or northern Germany, you’re going to be eating a lot of potatoes, parsnips, and kale in the winter, and not much else,” says Anthony Fisher, professor of agricultural and resource economics at Berkeley in the article The Locavore’s Dilemma
I wonder if Mr Fisher knows how to cook. It’s not all about parsnips. Ever had shavings of parsnip with nuggets of pancetta over pasta? Winter dish.
Italians often jack up the flavors of things with a small amount of intensely flavored pig slaughtered in December, just in time for the root vegetables. In fact, if you tell an Italian waiter you don’t eat red meat and ask him what he recommends, I’ll bet he mentions at least one dish flavored with pancetta or prosciutto. In Italy, meat used as a flavor enhancer isn’t even considered meat. In small amounts, it’s a spice.
In any case, let’s see what kinda guy Mr. Fisher is:
“I enjoy eating two navel oranges every morning,” Fisher says. “Whenever possible, I prefer oranges from California—their taste is excellent. But in the summer, when the oranges are out of season in the state, I buy oranges from the southern hemisphere. Without global trade, I wouldn’t derive the enjoyment and nutritional benefit I get from oranges for much of the year.”
Well, ok then. Now we see the problem. The Hypocrite’s Dilemma. Yes, if you’re determined to eat the same goddam thing each and every morning then you’re gonna be a cheerleader for a humongous transportation network to bring you that thing from afar you absolutely must have. But then you can’t—or a reasonable person like me won’t let you—claim monotony at being forced to eat root vegetables in winter.
The article cited above is also oddly market ignorant:
“We did a study with Columbia University and MIT with one of our cafés at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York,” said Maisie Greenawalt, vice president of Bon Appétit, a Palo Alto–based food service management company that endeavors to buy at least 20 percent of its food from local producers.
The café served 1,500 students. The experiment was to feed them local foods.
“While it was clear that it was possible to feed them 100 percent from local producers, it also became clear that we would strip the entire region of local food if we did that,” Greenawalt says. “In other words, nobody else from the area would be able to buy locally if the café became the priority for suppliers.
Wow. Let’s get this straight. We have local producers of food who are perfectly able to supply 1500 people with adequate nutrition. Now, the moment the demand increases, the supply stays the same? Whatever happens to market economic theory when it screws with your argument? What about that supply and demand thing we all learned in school (at least if you “caught sense” in the 60s and 70s as I did—I have no idea of what kids learn these days of “supply side economics”)? Doesn’t the price go up when demand exceeds supply to encourage more folks to enter the market? Don’t they flock to plant ‘nips?
Final confession. I’m not a locavore, although when I’m in Italy I’m probably closer than anyone in the US has ever been. Besides the lunatic fringe I mean. I’ve eaten meals with my Italian neighbors composed of things from the area around our little village. Polenta and the wild boar that loves to chow down on the corn they make into polenta, for example. I’ve had sausage from a neighbor’s pig simmered in the local and highly touted cranberry beans of our area.
Was it good? Why yes, those dishes were so darn good I’ll likely never forget them. The foods preserved for winter and a bounty of root vegetables are nothing for the Ivory Tower Wizards of Spin to sneeze at. I won’t let them.
——
Endnotes: Twittered from Bologna just today by @cookitaly: Beautiful winter produce in Bologna market today: cardoons, red ribbon radicchio, Puntarelle, artichokes both round and pointy, citrus…
Lordy, what a monotonous diet those Bolognese must suffer in the winter! Turnip your noses at that!
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Bread · Jan 7, 06:55 PM by James Martin
We’ve been back in California for a week now. I’ve done some things I didn’t do for the last three months we were in Italy. For one, I barbecued hamburgers on the grill. Turkey for Martha, beef for me. Sure, I could have done this in Italy. But, it isn’t done so I didn’t. It’s an American thing. So I fired up the grill on our California back porch.
Martha bought the buns. Some buns! I tried cutting through them. They collapsed. Gently I drew the serrated knife, sawing as if I were performing surgery on somebody I wanted to live, plumping the buns to keep them “inflated” as I slowly drew the knife through.
I had already noticed that the buns had no substance; they were almost lighter than air. I thought if I didn’t have a good grip on them, they’d end up plastered to the ceiling.
My head is now filled with fantasies about the corporate bakery these buns came from. I’m imagining a board meeting. There are scientists in white lab coats and the corporate schmucks in thousand dollar suits. They are discussing how the cellular wall of the bread has been miraculously thinned out so that more air can be contained inside. We’re not talking the usual scientific measure of “half an RCH”. Nope, thinner. Much thinner. Impossibly thin. The suits like that. The shareholders will like that. “We’re happy to report that we can get 2 million buns from a pound of flour with our advanced technology” will be repeated at the shareholder meeting and there will be lots of clapping.
I miss real bread for all. I miss Italy. There are no suits controlling the bread in Italy. Well, maybe some bread is controlled by suits. But in the little villages there’s bread. Real bread. Real bakeries.
(Yes, I know I can go to Whole foods and get a loaf of flavorful real bread for $5! I do! But I can also get real bread in Italy, pane al forno, for a tiny fraction of the price. I can buy it by weight. As much as I want. “Gimme half of that piece” I can say, although in Italian. Why does American bread cost so much when someone has the big idea of actually putting wheat in it? Why do we need corporations to stuff more air in our bread? It’s one of the great mysteries of our time.)
Filed in: Food Living in Italy
Mechanical Presepi - Presepe Artistico di Pallerone · Dec 23, 09:48 AM by James Martin
The village of Pallerone is where we shop on most days. We could walk there if we wanted to squeeze ourselves between the guardrails and the road, a slice of safety about 20 cm wide, but declined due to, well, imposing girth I suppose.
We looked for an overland route, but to no avail.
In any case, Pallerone has a fascinating Nativity Scene, Crib, or what they call in Italy a Presepe Artistico located right in the heart of town, which is to say the small stretch of houses along the main street. The peasants within the presepe scene go about doing their business like good peasants, day and night hacking away at trees, sewing, fishing, and generally banging at things with hammers or sledges. In a corner, away from all the hacking, hammering and swatting, Jesus lays calmly in a manger and as the sun descends the angels fly in to dangle overhead. When they’re done dangling, a star with a flaming tail bravely moves across the sky to settle over little Jesus. All this occurs with a mechanical precision that is both fascinating (engineering-wise) and campy.
Which is to say I liked it a lot.
Along with the presepe comes a little museum which shows how the figures are built and animated. That’s the clickable pic over there to the right. Also on display is the original motor that controlled the 1937 version of the presepe that was built for the “Salone delle Feste” and shown at the Castello Malaspina in Massa. From a newspaper article on display in the museum I learned that:
the current structure was inaugurated on 22nd of December, 1968, in the presence of the Bishop of Apuania and of the leading local authorities. In just 12 days it was visited by over 15,000 people and a special train from Genoa was even hired for the occasion.
Now 15,000 people represents 15 times the local population. So, in other words, it was a big hit.
The presepe is on display in an artificial grotto on the side of the church. You can visit it year around. It condenses a day into 7 1/2 minutes. An even more condensed version of the presepe day is shown in our little video below: 3 minutes and 11 seconds worth. Enjoy and…Merry Christmas.
Filed in: Living in Italy The Lunigiana
Snow in the Lunigiana! · Dec 18, 07:39 AM by James Martin
After making sausage, mortadella, and salame toscana, we sat down to eat what seemed like the rest of the pig prepared by Armando’s mother: chiodo (pork sausage cooked on a terra cotta testa heated in the kitchen fire), spaghetti al sugo di maiale, maiale in umido, salad, cheese, desert, and coffee. Then, the snow came down.
This is the view out my back window. Who would believe it is a color picture?
Armando’s pig is no more. Enrico’s garden is no more.
Filed in: The Lunigiana Living in Italy