Archive for January, 2007
A song sung by de Crescenzo, and this midi is just a midi, but will give you an idea of the melody that goes with the words.
Ancora
Eduardo De Crescenzo
E’ notte alta e sono sveglio,
sei sempre tu il mio chiodo fisso
insieme a te ci stavo meglio,
e più ti penso e più ti voglio
tutto il casino fatto per averti,
per questo amore che era un frutto acerbo,
adesso che ti voglio bene, io ti perdo.
Ancora, ancora, ancora,
perché io da quella sera, non ho
fatto più l’amore senza te,
e non me ne frega niente, senza te
anche se incontrassi un angelo, direi
non mi fai volare in alto quanto lei.
E’ notte alta e sono sveglio,
e mi rivesto e mi rispoglio
mi fa smaniare questa voglia,
e prima o poi farò lo sbaglio
di fare il pazzo e venir sottocasa
tirare sassi alla finestra accesa
prendere a calci la tua porta, chiusa, chiusa.
Ancora, ancora, ancora,
perché io da quella sera, non ho
fatto più l’amore senza te,
e non me ne frega niente, senza te
anche se incontrassi un angelo, direi
non mi fai volare in alto quanto lei.
I’ll translate that for you later if you like.
It is up there with my top favorite Italian pop songs, possibly just behind “I Giardini di Marzo” by Battisti. I learn every week some more about the grand past and present of Italian pop music. Predictably, I like a lot of things from the Seventies or even the Sixties, but every year they come out with more, more, more to love. Gianna Nannini currently sings a lot of the things I have thought or felt over the years. Janis sang my songs in the US long ago, Gianna is sort of a clean Janis.
This is a page with a lot of files of Italian music, although some, like the Battisti one above, are flawed. Claudio Baglioni is my current heart throb. At least he’s old enough. My last one was Fiorello, who is a kid.
Many of the faces on that page are legends. Mina, Celantano, Battisti are all people who changed at least a part of Italy. Mina left, Battisti died, and only Celantano remains and occasionally makes highly politicized entertainment shows.
Popular music is at least one goldmine to explore here. It’s almost unjust that a country with so much natural and manmade beauty, so much history, so much great food, should also have tunesmiths who have written thousands of beautiful songs. And keep on writing them.
Unlike popular stereotypes, Italians don’t drop their burdens and sing at the sound of a limpid note. They turn on their iPods, stereos and car radios, instead. There really is music everywhere, in the piazzas, in the bars, on the beaches. I think they are singing our lives with their words.
January 11th, 2007
If you linked to Think On It when she was dirtpusher, can you change the link to this one? It is now http://expatsinitaly.com/judith as you may know. There were fifteen of you and now only 8. I will then update links to you. I can no longer see the old links, or I would already have taken care of it.
January 11th, 2007
I planned it. Every January there are a bunch of things, expensive things, that have to be done and paid. Getting even one of them done in a day is a challenge. There is no Italian government arm that will take a check, as far as I know. You can’t just mail things in. Why? I can’t explain it. What anyone does who is disabled or shut-in, I don’t know.
Most taxes and bills can be paid at the post office, which is also a bank. Does that sound easy? Sometimes it is. Choose the right post office and you might be the only one there. Choose wrong and you could stand in line with a combination letter and number code which may mean nothing to you, but you have to wait until that code flashes up in lights above a teller and go there. That does not mean that you have selected the right button and gotten the right code. Nor does it mean that some Italian won’t jump in front of you and ask to have some complicated thing explained and that your teller won’t do it for her/him. Honestly, it is usually a woman, but for me yesterday it was a man.
I saved up all of mine to do yesterday. I set the alarm and when I woke up and saw the fog and the grim sky, I thought what the heck, it’s going to be a lousy day anyway. I had just had the biennial check-up done on my car (€103) so that now I could pay the annual tax for owning it. (€185 plus fee for paying) That had to be done at ACI, the Italian automobile club. In cash. I also had to pay the annual fees for health insurance. That had to be done in a three-prong attack: health office to see the one and only officer who can deal with foreigners; post office to pay the bill (in cash) that he would present me with, back to that fellow to show him the receipt. Then I needed to pay the annual subscription for television. (€104 plus fee) It does not matter if you ever watch broadcasts or not. If you own any television, you must pay the annual fee. You are given a number of ways to pay it, and every single one requires that you pay someone for the privilege of paying this tax. I don’t care what they say, it is a tax. In addition, I had received a fine for speeding from Gaeta, where we took our September vacation. This one I am convinced is a lie, because I am famously slow on the road and the street they named was always jammed with traffic and I don’t recall that you could ever even get to the speed limit. All my witnesses, of course, are in the USA now, and they don’t send the ticket until 60 days after the so-called infraction. I have gone completely off Gaeta.
So, first to the bank to get that pocketful of cash to do all this. I had to do a deposit in US funds to feel right about withdrawing this much money. That brought on a long conversation with some bank employees concerning their new quarters, the shuffling of staff and the possible long-term consequences of all these changes. I don’t know who hates it all more, but they may have the edge. In the new bank you have the impression you have walked into the back vault areas of another bank. First you enter through a glass tube that traps you for a short while so they can keep you in there if they think you are a robber or a terrorist. That’s normal here. Then inside everything is closed up. You can see one person behind bullet-proof glass. The rest is gray laminate or the backs of things like the ATM or Bancomat. Chilly, yes. What happened to “my personal banker” as they harp on about in their TV ads? Is she walled up in the machines? Why did they spend all that ad money and then change the bank to completely fly in the face of the commercials? My personal banker, once found, told me that the girl who shares her office is relatively new, here since October 2nd, and has never seen a single customer. I also learned that all the people I have depended on for six years have been demoted. Hmm.
As I left the bank, ripe for robbing, I paid the TV subscription using the ATM. One down.
I drove to ACI and toted in all the documents required, waited in line, found that although the permanent paperwork still hasn’t arrived, although I bought this car last January, it is in the computer correctly and has been printed, so they could allow me to pay the tax, without which I would be eligible for arrest if stopped and checked. Another down.
On to the USL,
the Umbrian health department. I had a nice chat with the foreigner fellow, whom I see once a year and am always glad to see. His name is Dante, but he’s better looking that Dante Alighieri. He is trying, but still doesn’t really speak English, and therefore kindly compliments my Italian. (That is pure relief, and his friend who is my doctor experiences this same rush every time he sees me.) Then off to the post office, where the clerk has no idea what I want to do. I explain and she still doesn’t understand. She finally gives me a generic form which required me to spend fifteen minutes filling in spaces that are already filled-in on the right form. It is getting close to closed-for-lunch time at USL, so I was a bit anxious, but I didn’t ask her which rock she’d been living under or question her IQ, I just did it. There are thousands of foreigners here, and every single one of them who doesn’t work for an Italian company has to pay this way, every year. She never heard of anyone having to pay for health insurance. I also pay the **** fine.
Back to Dante, who explains that since a recent change in regulations no one knows whether the health card he is giving me is any good or not. He calls Perugia to see what the word is on Americans getting the plastic card which health professionals say we now must have if we don’t want to pay for services, even though we paid for the insurance. Perugia says they don’t know and maybe no one knows. If they have to have a court case to decide this, it could take 15 years. I need to stay healthy, not cut myself while chopping, not have accidents and definitely not get flu or pneumonia. That latter is going around.
At one o’clock I had paid them all. I joined a friend for lunch. She left, so I went and talked about politics with another friend for a while, then I drove home. With the warm glow of accomplishment (and maybe it was also the red wine I had at lunch) under my belt, I packed up all the chocolates left from Christmas and an art book calendar, both for her granddaughter and went to Olga’s. She had been in her cantina, so she peeked around the corner and asked me to follow her up into the house. I did. For the first time in my life, I, at 5′-1-1/2″ knocked the bejeesus out of my head on a low door. Sparks, stars, gira la testa, and a huge lump rising like Yorkshire pudding on my downy crown. Is this the end to a terrible, horrible day?
No. In Olga’s kitchen there was a big box for me. Gifts! The postwoman saw Silvia in town and, knowing that she is my neighbor, said, ” I have this package for la signora Giuditta, take it to her.” My eyes are crossing at the very idea, but Silvia is a good girl and I was really happy that this day held a package of Christmas gifts. I opened them instantly.
The first thing that came out was a cute jardiniere with a sack of chocolates in it! We all laughed and laughed. Out with the old and in with the new! Lots of other clever things, plus some things I’d left at my friend’s house in the US, and almost all was well. I broke a nail right to the quick opening the package.
When I got home I discovered I had broken another nail on the other hand, as well.
That really is the end to my almost terrible, horrible day.
So this post is about Italy, preserving my sanity and wasting a bunch of gas and time. There is food in there, too.
January 11th, 2007
When I feel ill I eat spicy goods. I staved off gall bladder surgery for over a year eating nothing but Indian food . If I have a sore throat I eat something with hot peppers and what the Indians call the heating spices. If my stomach is upset it wants broth with a sprinkling of cayenne chili on top. Whether it is the mildness of green chilis or the smokiness of Anaheim chilies or the flat out nuclear pow of Scotch Bonnets or Caribbean Bird Peppers, there’s a lot of room in my life for heat.
Even foods that aren’t meant to be hot often get a pinch of peperoncino, not enough to make it hot, but to enlarge the flavors that lurk within. Vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate, scrambled eggs and omelets, corn on the cob, and the list could easily go on for pages.
Hot peppers and powders made of them can also soothe skin problems — or inflame them, so watch it. Plain old petroleum jelly with peppers added can be great stuff, but wear latex gloves while making it or applying it. Trust me. You’ll forget and hurt yourself!
I heard a decade or more ago that capsaicin contained something called substance P that was shown to affect joint pain, psoriasis, maybe Alzheimer’s and research was under way to explore why some people seemed to be able to survive high serum cholesterol with diets high in peppers. It seemed the pepper was a real power plant.
Now we have some wonderful news that I got via the BBC. A headline today read “How Spicy Foods Can Kill Cancers.” I don’t know about you, but I would much rather increase my already hefty consumption of peppers and pepper products than depend on apricot pits, which pretty much are and always were a sham.
Science is my friend, and when he comes into my kitchen we are a great bunch.
January 9th, 2007
Here is a start on artichoke or carciofi season for my friend Snowpea in Montreal.
This is the Violetta artichoke, and as you can see, it is very small. That is a teaspoon next to it, and even though the carciofo is closer to you than the spoon, and therefore looks bigger than it is, it still looks tiny. It has every bit of the flavor of its bigger cousins and is a bit easier to work with.
You start by snapping off the tough part of the outer leaves by bending them back with your fingers until they break, then peeling off the leaf and any fibers attached. You snap off leaves until you reach a point where only the ends of the leaves are colored. . Then you peel the stem with your trusty vegetable peeler, and it looks like this
If you haven’t many to do, you need do nothing else, but if you are cutting quite a few you need to toss them into some water with lemon juice in it to prevent oxidation, which makes them ugly and black. Then when you have them all trimmed, you must dry them, cut the end of the flower off to the lighter part of it, and then trim off at least an inch of the stem. Then cut the stem off about 1 cm from the blossom.
If you can only get the bigger globe artichokes where you live, you do the same thing, but when it is all trimmed up, you need to use your fingers to open the flower. Reach into the flower with a teaspoon and scrape away the fuzzy choke to bare the heart beneath. If some scraps of chokes remain, no worry.
In either case, once it is beheaded and de-stemmed, stand the flower onto its now flat head, and carefully cut it into thin vertical slices, like this. Cut the stem into thin diagonal pieces, too.
I worked pretty quickly, having done several hundred of these by now, so I didn’t acidify mine. I instead threw them as they were cut into a tablespoon or cucchiaio of olive oil in a hot frying pan. Once they are tossed around a bit, the oil keeps them from graying. What you see is two artichokes. I also salted them immediately, because it helps things sauté faster.
I started water boiling in which to cook pasta, which today will be sedano rigati, which means ribbed celery. I don’t see the resemblance, but it encourages me to develop one day a sauce made of celery so I can serve a food pun. These are slim and slightly ribbed macaroni that look like anorexic penne. I also grated a little more than an ounce or 30 g of Fontina cheese.
By tossing the artichokes around a bit for about 10 minutes, I eventually got them to this point.
The pasta was in and boiling, so I took a heavy half-cup of the pasta water and poured it into the artichokes, so there would be something to carry the flavors into the pasta. That continued to simmer until the sedano rigati were cooked al dente. You can give yourself no greater favor than learning how to get pasta cooked to the very instant after it loses its cardboardy texture. Practice. Bite and look at where you bit. Al dente means there is still a microscopic white line left which will disappear in the time it takes to get it to the sink to drain.
When my pasta was seconds from that point, I added an ounce of butter to the pan and squeezed in about 2 teaspoons of lemon juice. Start conservatively, because all lemons are not equal, and in this dish it is easy to use too much or too strong lemon juice and get an unbalanced dish. That is considered a bigger sin than adultery where I live.
Drain the pasta and toss it into the pan, stir it all around for 30 seconds, and taste it. If it needs more lemon, now is your chance. You must always balance salt and acid when working with lemon. When it is right, your tongue says, “Yes, that’s it!” Put the grated cheese (it does not have to be Fontina, but something not hard like Parmigiano) on it and serve it smoking hot.
The ingredients for 2 people were:
2 small fresh artichokes (or one bigger one)
Olive oil
Salt
85 to 100 grams of pasta, cooked to directions
1 ounce butter
2 teaspoons or more fresh lemon juice
1 ounce or 30 g meltable Italian cheese
Time to prepare it was about 20 minutes.
Now people will tell you that you simply can’t drink wine with artichokes, but I had half a glass of a young Tuscan red, I liked it and I am still here, half an hour later.
January 8th, 2007
I was thinking about this the other day. Why? Because I saw Maine lobsters at the fish shop and I know that almost all of the people I know here will never get to taste them and will always think they are like astice or scampi. I at that moment wanted so much to buy enough of them so everyone I know could taste it once. They were €62 per kilo. Each lobster was about 700 g. That would mean it would cost €43.40 per person for one menu item, or US $57.29. It didn’t fit the budget.
Once started, however, I daydreamed about all the other things one could do if one were rich. Caviar doesn’t make my list, because I am convinced the whole caviar thing was invented by poor Caspian Sea residents who managed to create cachet for something that is actually nasty tasting and stains your clothes. Great wine? Well, yes, of course, but then one lives in a country where great wine is readily available for a lot less than lobster. There is a dried bean in Italy that sells for about €16 per kilo, which is pretty rich for a bean, but not impossibly expensive.
In truth, with enough application and energy and imagination, the menu could be as fantastic and delicious as you can imagine without spending enormous numbers on the food. The old Italian rule about seasonality and freshness goes a long way toward that– although insisting on zucchini and eggplant and tomatoes all winter has bruised for me that once unassailable stance.
So what besides food would I do? I think music would be lovely.
I fancy a string trio set some distance away to allow for conversation but also to inspire breathless interludes when a phrase caught the imagination of each soul at table. That would go with cucina alta or haute cuisine. For country food north of Naples and including France, I would have an accordion, the little squeeze box kind, playing tunes from before 1930. For the south of Italy I choose a mandolin, a fiddle and the squeeze box. For Hungarian food I must have Gypsy fiddlers and the Hungarian musical instrument that looks like a topless piano played with giant Q Tips. It is called a cymbalon, but the one I saw was enormous, and much bigger than the one shown on that link. That link also says the music is generally sad, which wouldn’t do at all, but I recall the cymbalon music I heard as quite spritely. If you want to hear it, go to that link and click on “The Gale” by Susan Conger, which sounds more like Hungarian music than the other choices.
I think Greek also means mandolin? Could I get the Stones for a British meal?
It didn’t take me long to get from music to massage. While I am sure it has been done before, I bet it hasn’t been done thoroughly since Roman times in Italy. In Hawaii it was traditional long before poi meant hula skirts and waving hips. Why haven’t people like Richard Branson and Bill Gates thought of this? Do they not entertain? Have they not read about the mini massage parlors that offer shoulder, neck and foot massage with your clothes on? They both look like guys with a different enough take on life to go for this. If they take it up, will they invite me? Could someone please mention it to them?
I have decided it is all about delight. From now on I shall concentrate more on delighting my guests than on feeding them. They always get fed here, sometimes better and sometimes … well… not. If it is even one person sharing the simplest meal of good bread, sweet butter and smoked wild Alaskan salmon, I want to add something that doesn’t always come with the food.
When you go to a fancy restaurant you may often be greeted with “We are so happy to have you dine with us tonight.” I am going to make an effort to show my friends that I mean that, too.
January 7th, 2007
It must be true, because Sognatrice of Bleeding Espresso loves her can opener! She even photographed it hugging a can of tomatoes.
In other Friday news , I have discovered the perfect breakfast in Italy for at least non-Italians. Cheese and mostarda. The Coop here in Umbria has a pecorino fresco on sale and whern I tried it, it was delicious. It reminded me of fruit, so I dug out the peach mostarda I made last fall and tried it. Wow! Mostarda is a sweet and spicy sort of pickle thing. My peach mostarda is a rough jam made with hot peppers, peperoncini, and has a sideswipe of balsamic vinegar. The balsamico is not mixed in because it would have made it an ugly color.
January 5th, 2007
Christmas Day I met a man named Lewis who said he wanted to know what things he needed in his kitchen and how to use them. He said, “People would pay to get a list of what they needed and to be told how much it would cost.” I’ve been thinking about that ever since. I used to design custom kitchens and it was one of my favorite parts of my work. I didn’t select clients’ tools, though.
It’s clear to me that it is impossible to tell anyone what equipping his kitchen would cost, because what one needs depends on what one cooks and for how many and how often. Quality varies usually with price, but not always. Sometimes you pay for a name or for looks that don’t affect the usable quality at all. Looks do count, though. I find it very difficult to bother to take good care of ugly things. If you don’t take care of things, they don’t last. With cheap things, even if you do take care of them they don’t last.
The other thing is that it is much more pleasant to spend time in the kitchen with things that you think are beautiful. I, for example, would have a very hard time cooking with things around decorated with teddy bears or ducks. Others love them.
So this is what I decided to do. I have made up enormous lists that include things I know about. I’ve selected the closest possible match to what I own and that has held up, although the color of things I bought in 1970 may be passé, in many cases the new color is even nicer. I am finding the things I use on the internet and making links to them. That will grow as this project grows. There will eventually be as many sources as I can find. If you click on the links in this post, it will take you to what I have already found.
In the meantime, if you like having the reviews of something you would buy but can’t afford what the online source charges, go out and scour other venues until you find a quality substitute. My things come from kitchen shops, from French street markets, from resale shops, from discount houses and lots were winning gifts.
If you want what is in my source selections, please click through and buy it in your choice of color and size and help support the online costs of this project.
I will start with the basics: non-electric kitchenware, the sometimes-boring necessities that everyone needs even if they only make soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Piece by piece we will move on to a kitchen in which you can make anything until we end up at the really esoteric. I will tell you why I chose the pieces I chose. Over the years I have cooked I have tossed out or given away enough things to furnish at least one other kitchen, and who know, maybe a couple.
I have some philosophies about this stuff. The aesthetics I have already explained. Another thing is that I don’t particularly like sets, even though I show some. The ones I show contain only items I have and use, but are not “complete” in the way that the manufacturers would have you believe.
Because I think high quality pans are the only ones worth a cent(esimo) I don’t like non-stick surfaces. They are better than they used to be, but not even the best last the lifetime of the pots they are applied to. I am disgusted that le Creuset, dependable for pots that last your lifetime, has put ephemeral coatings in so many of them. My le Creuset pieces are at least thirty-five years old. No one has ever seen a non-stick surface that lasted more than a couple of years before it started to gradually disappear – into your food.
Pots, gotta have them. I’ve got lots of pots. I am showing you a set of copper pots with steel linings, because the ones I have are the workhorses of my kitchen. The copper spreads heat really well so that even a small flame cooks all the food in the pot. Are they hard to clean? I don’t find them so. A half lemon and a liberal pile of salt scours the copper right back up to rosy and new, and I do not do it every washing, because I like the ruddy color they become a few days after polishing. I’m a pretty lazy person, so I believe that if I find it easy you will, too.
Many are dedicated to stainless steel, and I have those, too. It doesn’t rust, but it does stain, and unlike most materials, once discolored it is discolored forever. I have some restaurant quality aluminum, as well, but there is so much misplaced sentiment against them, they’re hard to find.
Which are the best pots? Depends on what you are doing with them. It is almost impossible to sauté something well in a thin, cheap pot. At least some of your pots ought to have heavy, thick bottoms and be large enough so that there’s room to do the job. You can cook a little in a big pan, but you can’t cook a lot in a little pan. If you can have only one sauté pan, make it a wide one with a substantial bottom, a sort of Anna Magnani of the pan world. I show a couple on the two kitchen shop sites, because the one called a steak pan (what is that?) in the copper set is lovely, but it just wouldn’t do for sautéing enough artichokes for a pasta dish. So I selected also this steel one, heavy enough and wider.
The many-sized taller pots with lids are often called saucepans, and they can be used for sauces, but you will use them more often for cooking vegetables or rice. The tiny one is called a butter warmer, but it is actually very useful. You can heat milk, make sauces, poach an egg, do anything that works better in little space and might scorch or fail if spread over a larger surface. I use mine many times a week and it is exactly like that one.
For me a stockpot isn’t just a big pot. It is a huge pot, so that you can start out with lots of ingredients and water that gets gradually cooked down to become rich stock. Because it is large, it doubles as a pasta pot even if you are cooking for a crowd. Most pots called stockpots in sets bring forth only a hollow laugh from me. A stockpot doesn’t need to be heavy or thick. It doesn’t, strictly speaking, even need a lid. If, however, it has one, it makes it useful for other things as well, like cooking lobsters or crabs or corn.
Now you need something to stir those pots with. I love silicone spatulas and wooden spoons. Something to grate cheese with? The gift of a Microplane for grating hard things into fine dust changed my life. For soft things, try this box grater with which you can grate larger pieces, which you would want for potatoes or soft cheese or onion. Another epiphanous gift was a vegetable peeler like this one. Out into the woods went all those lame ones from before! Who knew that that chore could be so pleasant and easy? The same great friend gave me a Benriner Japanese mandolin. I sliced and shredded continuously for a winter after getting that jewel.
I like to have a set of steel mixing bowls. That nest. They don’t weigh a lot, they don’t take up too much room and they have a thousand uses. Unlike plastic, they have no poor affect on egg whites, and unlike glass or Pyrex they don’t break. If you put something in a big one and upturn the next size down, you create a protected atmosphere for salad greens or raising dough.
I haven’t mentioned knives although you must have them. I am very unhappy with what’s available now and spend time poking around old-fashioned knife shops trying to find high carbon steel knives to take the place of the stainless steel knives that are everywhere. In addition, I can say categorically that you should try a knife you are thinking of buying. It should fit your hand and feel good and balanced. It should cut accurately, and that does not mean a piece of paper. Who does that? My current big-mistake handmade Japanese knife cuts paper beautifully. It doesn’t cut onions. Or rather, it cuts them, but in an uncontrollable fashion because it is ground on only one side. I will probably pay as much again to get someone to regrind it to have two bevels as I paid for the knife. Why did I buy it? It is high carbon steel. Next step will probably be to buy a custom knife from a gentleman in Finland whose work is sold in Florence. If you have never had anything different, you may like what’s on the market. I can’t get them to keep an edge! I could have chosen to make dinner or shave my guests with my now-disappeared carbon steel knives. Now I moan.
We’ll venture further and get you past the meat-and-two-veg stage next week. Have a look at what’s in the UK and the US shops in the link list. The lists are not the same, because what is available isn’t the same. I’ll do a post like this once a week unless that Japanese knife wins.
Please jump in and comment if you have another idea or disagree. This series covers ONLY what I know, have used or tested, or in some cases, eg has done so. Just don’t get ahead of us, because this is just the first step in a long journey.
January 3rd, 2007
to take more chances, not worry so much about being good and use more spicing in every part of life. In short, I wish to return to a time when I didn’t know what would happen next.
I have behaved myself a bit too much. New year, new life, new ideas.
January 2nd, 2007
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