Sometimes I feel inundated with facts, clues, offerings that pour in through my computer at plus or minus 50,000 bps.
Here, for example, is a really interesting look into international cuisine. The members are from absolutely everywhere, but most of the ideas are written in English of varying quality. It will not surprise you that some of the worst English comes from places where it is the mother tongue. Maybe familiarity does breed contempt. The quality is spotty, too. There are an enormous amount of semi-homemade and tinned soup ideas, none of which I even bother with. This morning there was a “Tuscan potpie” that I looked at just because I never heeard of any Tuscan eating potpie. Why is it Tuscan? It has canellini in it! Boh! But it’s made with canned biscuits which would confound any Tuscan I know.
Most of what is posted is derived from cookbooks, TV and blogs, but you might otherwise have missed it, so that doesn’t count that much. There are a number of professional chefs and caterers there, too. It’s all offered up free once you’ve registered. Maybe it’s Facebook for cooks. One interesting thing you can do is describe what’s in your kitchen, or describe what you feel like eating, i.e., spicy, sweet, hot; then the generator will serve you up a list of dishes that fit what you’ve got or what you want to taste. There’s even a page for Italian Speakers and their foods.
How can you keep up with the stream of that or any other changing content website? My answer is Bloglines. There are other agglomerators, but this was an early one and the one I use, although I turned down the new version because I couldn’t work it out in five minutes.
This is what I see, however. Bloglines will show 200 offerings per feed. Group Recipes will often go way over 200 in a single day. Even BBC World headlines can top 200. I choose to sift through and choose which ones to open in a new tab. When you newly subscribe to a feed it will show the latest 10 feeds. That feels a bit more manageable.
Then there are sales notifiers. Whoooo! And are they ever a sticky bunch. Miss the check off saying you don’t want email from them and you are their pal forever, with ads offering things you don’t want for prices that leave you breathless, and not in a good way, as long as there is life on Planet Earth.
It must be the 2007 version of those glossy catalogs that used to choke my mailbox in another country another time.
Yesterday was the completion of seven years of living in Umbria. In seven years, they say, all the cells of your body are changed except your brain cells. That means I am all Italian except my brain. Most of my friends could tell you that. Not that Italy hasn’t altered my brain landscape in seven years. It must look more like the Apennines than the Appalachians now.
Today is eg’s birthday and my gift didn’t get there. Internet commerce is terrific, but when it doesn’t work, it might as well not exist. So, will everyone please wish her a happy year full of success and pleasure?
And please, back me up and tell her that Delma wants her to go get her Italian presents, and she is making Delma weep.
I ate lunch at my local dive the other day, where they use printed place mats that change monthly. One of the items on the place mat is always a recipe. This is this month’s and it sounded good enough to tear that corner off the tableware. I’ll try to translate the quantities and come back to edit it.
Idromele
700 gr (25 ounces…about a fifth) pure alcohol (Everclear in the US) at 180 proof, or 90% alcohol
5 grams (1/5 ounce– I don’t know how to do that either, maybe a stick?) of cinnamon sticks
3 cloves
the skin of one lemon
800 gr (28 ounces) honey
2 liters of water
Zest the lemon or peel it thinly, getting only the yellow part.
Use a glass jar with a tight lid, and put the alcohol, the cinnamon, the cloves and the lemon peel into it. Close and leave it to macerate for ten days.
Open the jar and filter the contents. You can use a coffee filter for this, or a few layers of clean dish towel in a strainer.
Put the honey and the water into a pan and bring it to a boil, then boil until it has reduced by half. Allow it to cool somewhat, then mix the strained alcohol and the honey mixture. When the liquid is completely cool, bottle it and leave it for 2 months.
Use liberally to brighten winter days or cure colds and flu. It’s probably really good with cheeses as a dessert substitute.
N.B. When I say a clean dish towel, I mean no bleach, no fabric softener, no additives at all. You’ll taste that stuff.
2. showy desserts that you can make trouble free (no cooking, almost!)
3. the modern ragù
4. using chestnuts in splendid foods– this takes longer than you think!
5. Italian bread– no worries
6. Good things to have around through the holidays
It’s moving slowly but forward. It’s hard to cook lots of things when you have little appetite, and that can make you a poor judge of what you made, too. I actually tried to make 1/2 cup of risotto the other day. It doesn’t work.
7. The autumn column on what they’re wearing in Italy is submitted, and is being formatted for publication.
Yesterday while returning from getting a temporary tire affixed to the permanent car, the sluicing rain suddenly turned to big old fluffy snow. At noon time. This is really unusual here, snow in November and particularly snow in the middle of the day in November.
I was instantly grateful that it was midday Wednesday and not one in the morning last Saturday night.
Olga and I started our fitness drive today with a climb up a mountain to the house she grew up in. Next to her old home is a defensive tower from hundreds of years ago, and it’s in much better shape than the 17th century house. Next time I’m taking the camera. This photo is not me and not my mountain, but it is a mountain and someone I know. You can see his photos at the Fellwalker site listed on the right.
It was a bit of a struggle up, over and around the mountain you can see from our homes to the one behind. It was easier coming down, because it required sliding down most of it on your rear end.
Two in one: Elizabeth, cook and entertainer of many, and Martin, everyone’s favorite local artist and all-around great fellow. How can you celebrate two such exceptional people? Melchiorre knows. You roast a suckling pig in the kitchen fireplace.
The place is Melchiorre’s family home in Umbria. The festive ones are expatriates from many countries, and the chef is said Melchiorre, Sardegnan by birth and Umbrian by rearing. The man has a way with meat.
The first course was raviolone, or big ravioli, stuffed with potato and cheese and sauced with piquant honey from his own bees and chili peppers. There’s no photo of the finished dish, because I decided to be the assistant and waitress.
This capable and generous woman always seems to be the helper, and it seems like it might be time for her to a bit more the guest and a bit less the worker bee.
But what is Melchiorre doing in the kitchen? Why he’s talking the piglet through rehearsal.
Where shall we eat this feast?
Maybe this table set for twenty six will do.
Who is Martin, again? Right over there in the corner among his friends.
After dinner, Brian played the accordion for us as we pretended to know the words to the songs. At the British sea chanties, we gave even the pretense up.
Then I drove home and 2 miles from my house had a flat tire. It was dark, there were 80 kilos of salt in the trunk on top of the tiny spare and I hadn’t so much as a match to light the job, so I took off down the road in my party heels and halfway there I was rescued and given a ride the rest of they way. Did you know your cellphone makes a decent warning signal to approaching cars? Now you do. And who gave me a ride?
The Samaritan was the chef of a local restaurant, and I call that serendipity.
Saturday night, for the second time in my life I was serenaded by an Italian man. If you think about it as I do, it’s extraordinary to be serenaded twice. Once, even, was memorable. It was on the hillside near Bar Zodiac in Rome, and I don’t remember the song, but I remember the man, Pasquale, in Rome from Bari to take his bar exams. It was 1973 and for an American girl it was both a little unnerving and absolutely wonderful.
Saturday night I was serenaded because I’d been helping the chef in the kitchen plate the food and take it to the table. And I am a female and wore a skirt, because I’m sure in small ways it helps to be female if you like being serenaded.
This is the song he sang, an old timer by Domenico Modugno who is most famous for creating “Volare” and “Ciao, ciao bambina.” Modugno is no more, but his legend and his music lives on, at least in Italy. Most everyone here can sing along to those two songs, but the fellow who sang “L’uomo in frac” is the first I’ve known who can sing that sad song all the way through, and perhaps the only man I know who would. Especially who would sing it in front of a crowd of people picking up their bits and preparing to go home. I’ve translated the words for you below.
You watch Modugno sing this song by going to YouTube. The film is in black and white because it predates color television in Italy, but it’s a wonderful piece, I promise. On that page there are a number of early Modugno performances you may never have seen. Do yourself a favor and listen in.
L’uomo in frac
Domenico Modugno
È giunta mezzanotte
si spengono i rumori
si spegne anche l’insegna di quell’ultimo caffè
le strade son deserte
deserte e silenziose
un ultima carrozza cigolando se ne va
il fiume scorre lento
frusciando sotto i ponti
la luna splende in cielo
dorme tutta la città
It’s reached midnight,
the noise is gone,
even the sign of the last cafe is off.
The streets are empty,
a last creaking carriage goes off,
the river flows slowly,
murmuring under the bridge
the moon shines in the sky,
all the city sleeps.
solo va un uomo in frac
ha il cilindro per cappello
due diamanti per gemelli
un bastone di cristallo
la gardena nell’occhiello
e sul candido gilet un papillon
un papillon di seta blu
There’s only a man in tails,
wearing a top hat,
two diamonds for cuff links,
a walking stick of crystal,
a gardenia in his buttonhole
and over his white vest, a bow tie,
a bow tie of blue silk.
s’avvicina lentamente con il cedere elegante
ha l’aspetto trasognato malinconico ed assente
e non si sa da dove vien
ne dove va
chi mai sarà
quell’uomo in frack
He nears slowly with an elegant yielding.
He looks dreamy, melancholy and distracted,
and one doesn’t know from where he came
or where he goes
but who can he be,
that man in tails?
Buona notte
va dicendo ad ogni cosa
ai fanali illuminati
ad un gatto innamorato
che randagio se ne va
Good night
he says to everything:
to the lighted street lamps
to a cat in love
who strays and goes away.
È giunta ormai l’aurora
si spengono i fanali
si sveglia a poco a poco tutta quanta la città
la luna si è incantata sorpresa impallidita
pian piano scolorandosi nel cielo sparirà
It’s already become dawn,
the streetlights go out,
little by little the all the city wakes.
The moon is enchanted, surprised, faded,
slowly fading in the sky to disappear.
Sbadiglia una finestra sul fiume silenzioso
e nella luce bianca galleggiando se ne van
un cilindro un fiore e un frack
galleggiando dolcemente lasciandosi cullare
se ne scende lentamente sotto i ponti verso il mare
verso il mare se ne va
chi mai sarà
chi mai sarà
quell’uomo in frack
A window yawns on the silent river
and in the white light float away
a top hat, a flower and tails,
floating softly under the bridge toward the sea.
Toward the sea it goes away
who could he be,
who could he be,
that man in tails?
Addio al mondo
ai ricordi del passato
ad un sogno mai sognato
ad un attimo d’amore che mai più
ritornerà
Goodbye to the world,
to memories of the past
and a dream never dreamed
and a moment of love that will never more return.
In a week when the edges of my love affair with Italy have been seriously scuffed, it’s a wonderful thing to be reminded once again that they have some thing exactly right.
Everybody has his own idea about how much space it takes to be happy. I live alone in 100 SM or 1000 SF and I need another room for all the messy things I like to do but whose messes I can’t live with. My daughter is used to living in an apartment much bigger than my house with two balconies and is looking for an affordable real house that doesn’t feel squished. Another friend here recently moved into a two story apartment so much smaller than her old one that she had to buy a flat TV. We’ve all heard about the 10,000 SF houses the young and successful require in the big city suburbs.
But what if you want to live in the heart of a city where real estate costs as much as white truffles? What if you want to rear several children in the middle of London or New York and you don’t have and can’t get you hands on four million bucks? I find these stories inestimably more interesting than all those beige marble quasi-palaces in Architectural Digest.
And here they are. Three biggish families in three expensive cities, with three different ideas about how to get living room. They are really different from each other, too. The only things they have in common are kids and urban souls.
My only complaint is that they didn’t say enough about the kitchens.
