Archive for November, 2006
My fashion article is finished and published now. Just click on the words.
I am experiencing connection speeds from 12000 to 19000 bps, and as a result I am using an accelerator program at full speed which means no photos at all. Today I am making pies for Thanksgiving, anyway, so eat well!
My women’s club, “Le Ragazze” decided to have a feast tomorrow to make us foreigners feel at home, but alas, I had accepted an invitation away months ago. They are just the best, though. The hostess said, “I will make the turkey and the chocolate cake and hope it is genuine.” Chocolate cake? I think I better make some pies for them, as well.
November 22nd, 2006
Clockwise from the left are: pistachio, lemon, all-almond, chocolate covered coconut, and in the center coconut. All but the candy are made from almond paste.
Sicily must be stunning in early spring when the almonds are in bloom. I wonder if they have coconut palms as well?
November 17th, 2006
This merry-go-round was at the entrance to my town last night. Every year on November 13th Città di Castello celebrates her patron saint, San Florido. The whole town becomes a carnival cum market, spreading for half a mile outside the historic center. It goes on for four or five days, all day and most of the night, and vendors come from everywhere to sell thing never otherwise seen here. You can buy silly novelties, like balloonish animals with pleated legs that look like they are picking the ground for eats, to cashmere scarves from a “labels-only” shop from far away. Sicilians set up Sicilian sweets stands or stands with barrels full of varied olives or dried fruit or oil-preserved treats. Peruvians sell both pan flutes and CDs of pan flute music. Gadgets from the world abound. Further out from the center are truck showrooms showing fireplaces, stoves, windows, door and furniture. Water treatment systems are explained. Fortune tellers will predict that you really can afford all this stuff. The only thing missing is hootchy kootchy girls.
Sam and I went yesterday evening. The crowds were really tough for Sam and he had to be carried through the tightest parts, but he got a lot of loving attention from little kids and grownup ladies. One of my friends wanted to adopt him instantly and I had to protest that he has a mum already. A man who has interested me but been too shy even for my ebullient approaches actually had a conversation with me about Sam! And then in parting he held my hand for a long time. Go figure! It ain’t much, but more than I’d been able to accomplish.
We went to my favorite shop to take some photos for my fashion article and he was cosseted there too.
While we were there a girl came in with an elegant whippet, my second favorite breed, but this girl dog, named Margo, was way too interested in Sam’s privates and I had to lift him to preserve his personal integrity.
After a couple of hours weaving through the smells of burnt sugar and grilled sausages, the gaggles of girls and the family promenades we decided we’d had enough and came home to supper and Sam slept extremely well until morning.
November 16th, 2006
We had a lunch party Sunday, Sam and I. I was pretty much the same as I usually am, but Sam exhibited some behaviors that are all new in our relationship.
I invited a family with two teenaged boys who love animals. I thought it would be a nice change for Sam and that they would like him, too. They did like him, they took him out to play much longer than I do. They included the cats, as Sam does.
I cooked pot au feu, which is really simple food that gives you choices when you aren’t sure what people like. I started on Thursday by browning a rolled breast of lamb (pancetta di vitello) wrapped around minced garlic with coarse salt and centered by a rosemary branch, then tied up tightly in a sausage shape. I heated an iron pot to infernal, then browned the roast on all sides. I then threw in a carrot chopped into 3 pieces, an eight inch piece of leek, a big fistful of celery tops, bunches of herbs from the garden, including sage leaves and thyme, a couple of cloves and some peppercorns. Over it all went about four liters of boiling water. I lowered the heat to the lowest possible so that the water would move, but never boil, covered it and left it until it was tender to a fork.
It then was removed to a plate to cool, and the covered pot was allowed to cool and then was refrigerated. The roast went into a plastic bag and was chilled as well. This Sam liked. He wound through my legs and waited for an accident, but I dropped nothing.
Friday the pot of broth came out again. I took another heavy pan on high heat and browned a package of beef shortribs that weren’t very fatty. If they’d been fatty, I would have picked beef ribs that come off rib roasts and steaks. When those were browned very well, I took them out, poured yesterday’s broth into the sautéing pan and cooked it again, making sure it never boiled, with the shortribs in it until they too were just fork tender. Sam liked this. He waited. I dropped nothing, but as the shortribs cooled, I trimmed off the gristly bits and gave them to him. I took most of the fat off them, too, before bagging and chilling them. The bones went into the stockpot, which cooked until about an hour before bedtime, then cooled and got chilled.
Saturday I took out the big pot of stock, then plunked in a whole chicken. I was going to use marrowbones, but then I recalled I had invited conservative eaters, so I didn’t. If I had, they would have been tied into a cheesecloth bag before cooking. I added some more peppercorns and a couple more cloves, and about 2 teaspoons of coarse salt. Notice that I had not previously salted the stock other than what salt might have leaked out of the veal breast roll. By now the stock was taking on a deep mahogany color and smelled heavenly. As soon a leg moved freely, out came the chicken to cool. When I could handle it, I skinned it and cut it into neatish pieces, removing as many of the little bones as possible. It was then refrigerated. Sam liked this. Sam got some small chicken pieces. The cats got all the rest, so they liked Saturday, too. Then Sam and I went to the party while the stock cooled and the chicken chilled.
Sunday morning put the stock on to simmer, made an aioli with bread, and I tore up about eight pieces of stale bread. I minced about a cup of celery and of onion, then heated about 2 tablespoons of butter in a frying pan and sautéed the vegetables until they were soft and transparent. I added the bread cubes and a couple of pinches of dried thyme leaves, a couple of minced sage leaves and then I ladled boiling stock over it until it was dampened. I broke an egg over the mixture and used a fork to blend it in. Some of my precious cheesecloth was laid over a chopping block and the stuffing was piled onto it. I gathered up the edges and tied it tightly with butcher’s string, leaving a longish tail. Five carrots were peeled and cut into three-inch pieces. Two big leeks were cleaned and cut into similar lengths. I wished I had a pair of rutabagas, but they were not to be had. I put the leeks and carrots into the stock and then lowered the bag full of stuffing into it, leaving the tail to trail over the edge of the pot, held in place by the lid.
I took the meats out of the fridge to come to room temperature. I peeled and cooked eight potatoes in a separate pot.
When the vegetables were all cooked, I arranged them in a huge low bowl and put them into a warm oven, while I put the meats into the stock to gently heat. As soon as they were warm, I removed them and carved them and put them onto a platter. Sam didn’t so much like this as he seemed to think that it was at last time and more that he eat this stuff. He started to run back and forth through the kitchen. Our guests arrived and he went outside briefly with the boys, but soon was barking at the door.
Now Sam is a polite enough boy that he will stay down after a few demands that he do so, I will give him credit for that. After lunch, however, he decided he’d had enough. I gave him a little of the meat, but he’s not supposed to eat very much, so I didn’t give him all he wanted. The boys went outside, but Sam wouldn’t go. He ran around the kitchen and sometimes barked. I finally decided that was enough and I went to the door and called him. Nothing. He would not come, he would not go out, he was determined that it was dinnertime. It was hours before his dinnertime! It’s the first time he wouldn’t do as I said. We did the best we could to ignore him, but he was a naughty boy.
At his real suppertime, he was fed more chicken meat.
Today he didn’t want to go where I was going on his walk. He has become a hardhead. I have been here before with other guys. There is only one empress in my kitchen. Unless he equips himself with a hobbyshop and locks himself away to wile away the hours, Sam is playing a game he can never win. I can open the food tins and he can’t! I can open the fridge and turn on the stove and Sam can’t. I can drive to the supermarket and Sam doesn’t drive. It’s about 10 kilometers from here and he might be able to walk it, but he doesn’t have a cash card nor money and he can’t carry much back.
There are leftovers, except for dessert and stuffing. Call.
November 13th, 2006
The article is up at Slow Travel, or at least the shopping part is.
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/fashion/2006_fall.htm
November 13th, 2006
I have a friend named Alberta who has a B&B not far from my house. I like her so much that I often drop by on my way home just to peek in and she’s usually there working at something. They have a huge farm as well as the B&B, and there’s always something doing. She is as slim as an arrow, and small wonder.
The other day she rang at my door and asked me to a party for last night, a little party to which her B&B guests would also be invited. I said yes before she finished the sentence. Sam came to the top of the stairs to bark at her, and she said, “Oh, bring the little dog too, but bring a leash just in case.”
So Sam and I got all cleaned up and put on mascara and high heels and went to Alberta’s. The little party was the 18th birthday celebration for her son and there were 100 guests, from 7 to about 85 years old! At first we were outside in the mild night having aperitivi and cheezy crunchy stuff. Sam was in Sam Heaven. People gave him cheezy crunchies! When my arms got tired of holding him up at face level, two girls offered to hold him. Wow! Crunchy cheezies and girls!
Then we all went inside for supper. I found a seat that was nicely out of the way with a clear stair area behind me, so if he wanted Sam could sit up at our seated face level. Sam wandered under the tables and around peoples’ feet, so I leashed him and kept him near. But that just made him want to get in my lap, so he was clawing at my satin pants. So I tried him on my lap, but he placed his little chin on the table, nose a micromillemeter from my plate of crostini, my napkin over his back. That was clearly not going to work, so down onto the floor he went.
Have you ever dined with 99 Italians, at least 40 of them aged 17-20? The noise level built. Corks were popping. Balloons were exploding. The laugh of a hyena rose above the roar of the crowd. Sam became ever more confused and frantic and I understood completely. We walked to the car and I lifted him in, and unlike Sam, he was happy to settle down and see me go! I checked on him several times and he was peacefully napping.
Selfish me, I was eating six different kinds of crostini and pecorino with honey. Then we had an exquisite pasta with a pink sausage sauce. Fantastic. We were treated to homemade tigelle, which are 3″ round flat breads, split and filled as you like. We were given homemade sausages and uncured pancetta, both grilled over wood outside, and zucchini agro dolce. Red and white wine from just outside the door were served as well as the sweetest well water I have tasted since my own West Virginia farm well water.
There was then an elaborate distribution of the gifts from Riccardo’s friends outside. He is studying to be a geometra, so he was asked potential exam questions and if he answered correctly he got one of the gifts to open. Probably because of the prosecco, it took quite a long time to open all the gifts! Forty handsome young men and only two girls. One could sigh for all the girls who stayed home last night.
Riccardo then came into the room family and friends were in and opened the presents they’d brought. I thought it was an interesting range, from black designer briefs to riding trousers, with some supposedly tigerish colognes along the way. There were some sweaters that were almost as handsome as Riccardo.
I helped bring out no less than four lemon panna cotta, that Umbrian cake that looks like a snake and whose name I can never remember, a Tira mi su, and then three people carried in the birthday cake. It was one meter long and half a meter wide! Sweet red sparkling wine called Brachetto d’Acqua was served. Tanti auguri a te was shouted, sung and smacked onto Riccardo’s cheek. I was tired. A lot of the guests spoke only dialect and it wears me down. So I kissed everybody whose name I knew, and then Sam and I slipped off to home and bed. He wanted to sit in my lap while I was driving, but it’s too dangerous for him, so he had to wait until face and teeth were washed and the fancy pants hung up.
And today he had another adventure, but this time he stayed firmly in the driver’s seat. We’ll tell that one when the leftovers are all stowed.
November 12th, 2006
A day that starts out gray or maybe even sits in the middle of a bunch of them doesn’t bother me nearly as much as a day that starts with the sun then fogs up, clouds up, flips the switch to off. Fog is a reality of November in Umbria. There’s always a hope it will burn away. Today it slithered in under the sun and then lifted up a few hundred feet and became a cloudy day.
I am dogsitting and he needs to go for a walk. Everyday we have walked a bit further, accompanied by from four to six cats. They hide under tufts of grass and leap out at Sam, the dog, who is unfazed. I am not sure he really knows he is a dog. Maybe he thinks he is a person, because when people talk it drives him crazy until you pick him up to face level. Anyway, cats, chickens and rabbits are just normal parts of the landscape to him. He hasn’t yet negotiated a rapport with the neighbors’ dog, Rui, but we visit everyday and I’m sanguine about it. Then Rui will be able to walk the fields, too. Rui is more robust whereas Sam is longer-legged. The cats are just cats.
This is what Sam looks like, sort of. He has a kennel clip so he isn’t as hairy.
That photo comes from a charming article at Seattle Agility Center, which describes a sport I never heard about. The last team entries are from 2002, so did all her pups get old and lose their agility? It doesn’t accurately describe Sam. Sam has to be lifted up onto the bed. Sam sleeps about 22 hours a day. He is all waggy and cute and sweet, though. When we wake up in the morning he jumps off the bed and leaps around, wagging everything he can move and looking happy-face at me.
Most people think of the hairless one when they hear Chinese Crested, but Sam’s a powderpuff. Sam eats about one-fourth what any one of the cats eats. He shivers at 18°C. He is afraid of the brush, so he can never ever look like this one at http://www.sam-the-man.net/breed.html . Do you see what I mean about the hairless one?
Sam arrived with luggage. Sam has appliances, a pleather coat lined with faux sheepskin, a retractable leash, eye cleaner, butt cleaner, a passport, toenail clippers and packets of the only dog foods he will eat. Sam thinks he wants to eat what you eat, but given a sniff he usually changes his mind. The only food Sam cannot resist is cheese. Cheese is off the menu for a while, because he is a raging nutball when he smells it.
Yesterday was a week he’s been here and we do very well together. We have only one problem. If I have to go out without him, he starts howling and barking the instant the door closes and he doesn’t stop until I come inside or let him out. He does not want to hear that he cannot go into the supermarket or the doctor’s office. When I came back yesterday the neighbors met me with murmurs of “Povera bestia!” He had not stopped once for three hours. It’s a miracle he isn’t hoarse today.
So here we are, Sam and I, under a dim sky and late for our daily walk. I’m building him up for the mountain across the road, a favorite hike of mine and there’s a trail so Sam can surely make it once he’s fit. He may already be fit for it, but I don’t want to carry him home, so I am doing the stages.
November 9th, 2006
From July until December, good things just pour into the markets or grow in our gardens. The prices are down, the quality up and there’s more than you can put on the table. Come January those tomatoes, figs, chestnuts and peaches will be only a dream. Most of us will be faced with out-of-season and not-quite-mature fruits and vegetables that come from far, far away and are not improved by the trip.
I used to think preserving was a big deal, something done only by those domestic goddesses with more time than money, and required a hefty original outlay for equipment and containers. I used to think that I could buy everything that those goddesses made at home. I was wrong.
It turns out that at least some preserving is easy and doesn’t require special equipment. Anything that has a lot of acid or sugar is dead easy to do, and anyone who cooks pasta should have a pot big enough to do it in. If you also have a stockpot, you are in clover.
How do you know what is safe to preserve without a pressure canner?
http://www.fcs.uga.edu/pubs/current/FDNS-E-39.html is your resource. If you want to see a prettier version, the United States Food and Drug Administration site on food safety is http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html
http://southernfood.about.com/od/canning/ is another site that also includes some recipes.
I don’t know of any other site in the world that is so thorough and well-researched as that site. Sure, you can ignore their standards and perhaps get away with it, but what’s in and on your food these days is not what Grandma knew, and I consider that site my encyclopedia on preservation.
If you have a freezer that stays cold enough, the possibilities expand to include foods that are not high in acid or sugar. Freezing is easy enough for a four year old to learn. You just need some information on how to get rid of natural enzymes that make foods unpalatable and how to exclude air from the packets, and then you need some cheap plastic bags made for freezing and some coated metal twist ties. A vacuum sealer would be a nice thing to have, but I have never had one.
I make do with very simple equipment. My freezer is not self-defrosting. I use a combination of preserving jars and jars that things came in from the shops. I use my stock pot, my pasta pot and a big, lined copper pan for jams. For dehydrating I have only my fan oven. I therefore do only the simplest processes, but what I make isn’t always so simple when it’s done.
In August I froze both tomato juice and tomato puree. Why? Because I am not equipped to can them and the frozen products taste fresher, plus I can buy good canned tomatoes here. I completely forgot to go out and pick hazelnuts this year, but usually I would also have picked those and have frozen the shelled nuts. I went blackberrying and froze those because I was too involved in something to do anything else and I still have blackberry essence (blackberries marinated in 99% pure alcohol) from last year. In October the peaches came in, they were scarred and blemished, but I made jam from some, froze even more, and invented a peach mostarda with balsamic vinegar to use with cheese for desserts. Right after that the figs screamed for attention, so I followed my friend Jane’s directions for a fig and lemon conserve, also for cheese plates. We tried the figs last week with Gorgonzola and Pecorino, and it was fabulous.
Nothing I made was difficult or very time consuming. I also didn’t make a lot of anything. I think I have a pint and a half of the figs and the peach mostarda.
Parsley and celery leaves were dried in the fan oven and packed into recycled glass jars because it is so humid here.
Come late October the meats that are somewhat seasonal start to be on sale and I start to buy at those prices and re-wrap them for the freezer. Late lambs come to market now so that they don’t have to be fed over the winter and end up mutton. Pork is available year round now, but the traditional season is fall and winter, so there are both a wider variety of choice now and sale prices. I’ve started asking around to find a farmer who grows his hogs organically and who may sell me a quarter or a half that I can have butchered into cuts not usually found here. I have always wanted to corn a ham, but I know of only one small county in one state of the USA where such a thing can be bought around New Year’s. (Considering the size of my fridge, that should be an adventure in itself.)
Two weeks ago I actually made something from part of my frozen store of peaches.
Gnam! as we say here.
For most of us, this bountiful season is almost over. If you live in the southern hemisphere, it is soon to come and I hate you anyway until April. It is, however, still apple season and the oranges and lemons are coming into the market. Pumpkins and squashes decorate every green market. Just like strawberries, they won’t be here forever. Does anyone recall the last piece of watermelon he had? Tomorrow I am going with Olga to find an apple orchard before they all look like this
When you open up a book on preserving, the first thing they say is to “choose only the most perfect and ripe you can find.” I disagree. As long as I patiently remove any sorry parts or blemishes, I see no reason at all not to use the less beautiful for things that are going to be sliced, diced, chopped or otherwise altered from their usual form. Organic produce is rarely perfect, but would you rather have peach pie filling with nicks in the slices where you cut away a blemish? Or would you like a side of bug spray with that? Just don’t expect to make anything with that apple above.
I am a real amateur on this subject. I think there are friends out there with a lot more information and ideas on this subject than I could imagine. So, what do you know? What have you done? How did your mom approach the saving of the harvest for the dead days of winter?
Talk to me!
November 8th, 2006
I just finished a long “Waste Not” article, photos, links and cherries on top, then pressed publish and whoosh! It disappeared forever.
November 7th, 2006
