I had a conversation with a woman in the market this morning. We were talking about which plums were the best to cook, and I mentioned having made the torta with plums and goat cheese.
Said she, “Oh, a savory torta. As a side dish?”
I assured her that it was a dessert.
“But with goat cheese in it? How can that be?”
All I could do was shrug, because the American taste for salty with sweet makes what are to me winning desserts, but most Italians think if it isn’t all sweet, it isn’t dessert. I fight them all the time to prevent them changing pie crusts to sweet crusts. When I make the original American pies, like lemon meringue, apple, peach, they love them. Swept away. But give them the recipe and they will make the crust sweet, cook the meringue separately so that it is dry and crunchy, they have a hard time breaking away from their kitchen culture.
I suspect that we do, too. I think you could tell me lots of ways in which my Italian recipes sound wrong from within your kitchen culture. I hope you will tell me, because this fascinates me at the moment.
September 15th, 2007
I have lived here for just short of seven years. For all those years I have shopped for vegetables and fruits in the street markets, on Thursday and Saturday, and the covered market everyday but Monday. Local stuff abounds in growing season, but although we’re warmer, we are at about the same latitude as Maine, which means the days shorten and things stop producing very well if at all.
I was kicking myself because for one reason or another, I’d missed a lot of the season’s produce. Tomatoes are just about over, even though we’re still far from frost. But a couple of weeks ago when there was a market displacement due to a feast for St. Bartolomeo, I found that the trucks that sell outside the walls are from Puglia. They may be bragging, but Puglia says they have a seven month summer. I dropped by today and goodness gracious, great balls of fire! What incredible produce!
I dragged home three different kinds of plums, a small sack of hot cherry peppers and three kilos of tomatoes. Everything is being washed now in preparation for various preserving techniques. I was also given a beautiful bunch of the most honey-like grapes I’ve ever tasted. I tried to buy them, but the boy shrugged me off with a smiling, “Enjoy.”
Just yesterday an old man at the parking in Pienza let me out without payment. Was it just the joking about why he wasn’t there when I drove in? Or am I becoming a cute little old lady who is given things as she moves through life? I’m really not sure what to wish for.
September 15th, 2007
