Archive for October, 2008
I’m really used to bug bites. If you love the outdoors and live in an ancient house, you get a lot of experience. Which is why when I woke up with two big, red bites eleven days ago, I went upstairs, showered and slapped some Fargon on them. That’s a cream that takes the itch or the sting out.
Only this time it didn’t leave. Although the bite on my leg slowly dried and healed, it still itches sometimes. The more severe one on my stomach not only continued to itch and burn, but it started to look like it would consume me entirely, given time. So I ended up at Pronto Soccorso where, as usual, the doctor said, “Why didn’t you come right away?” If country folk went to the emergency room every time they were stung or bitten, they would be wall to wall with no room for car accident victims.
That’s who had moved in from the garden and got really teed off when he couldn’t find his way out. This article on Wikipedia explains more and also tells you which version lives near you. Cheiracanthium is someone you’d rather not see on your jammies, or hiding in your sheets or basically anywhere you innocently might make him angry.
He’s not innocent. He uses the same kind of poison as a rattlesnake, only a whole lot less, thank goodness. It destroys tissue at the bite site and both itches and hurts pretty much 24/7.
So don’t even ask what I am doing. I’m cleaning wounds and changing dressings.
October 31st, 2008
It’s usually apple crisp at my house, but Paola and I had stolen lots of white peaches from a tree on the mountain, so when she and Marcello came to dinner I made this. Big success. Really big success. I do think American cooks have a way with fruit desserts!
Fruit Crisp
serves 6 preheat oven to 375°F or 190°C
about 6 apples or peaches depending on the size, peeled, cored or stoned and sliced
sugar as needed– my peaches needed it and got 1/2 cup or 105 g
a good sprinkling of cinnamon
dots of butter
Crust
140 to 160 g (2/3 to 3/4 cup) brown sugar packed
65 g /1/2 cup) plain flour
43 g (1/2 cup) oats
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg (if freshly grated that’s too much)
75 g (1/3 cup) soft butter
Put the fruit slices into a shallow baking dish. Sprinkle the sugar if needed on top. Add the sprinkle of cinnamon. Add the dots of butter, not very much.
In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients with a fork, then add the soft butter and mix again. Hands work the best. Scatter the crisp crust crumbs over the fruit, making sure to cover all of it.
Pop it into the oven and bake it for 30 to 35 minutes. It should be golden brown. Your house will smell like heaven. Eat it as warm as you can, with cream or vanilla ice cream alongside.
In italiano:
Questo è un dolce casalingo che è considerato sano per i bambini, ma gli adulti anche lo vogliano. E’ tanto profumato e perfetto per i giorni di autunno, quando la frutta c’è e la voglia per la caldezza di una cucina redolente delle spezie inizia. E’ facilissimo a buonissimo.
Croccante di frutta
per 6 persone riscalda il forno a 190°
circa 6 mele o pesche, dipende la taglia, spellate, snocciolate e fettate.
zucchero qb — queste pesche bisognavano 105 g
uno spolvere di canella
pezzettini di burro
Crosta
140-160 g zucchero di canna dipende quanto acerba la frutta
65 g farina 00
43 g aveno
3/4 cucchiaio canella
3/4 cucchiaio noce moscato (penso io che se è gratuggiato fresco la quantità sarebbe troppo)
75 g burro morbido
Mettete le fette di frutta in una pirofila non tanto profonda. Aggiungete lo zucchero se volete, e poi la canella.
In una ciottola mettete gli ingredienti asciutti e mescolategli bene con una forchetta. Aggiungete il burro e mescolate bene. Distribuite la crosta per coprire tutta la frutta. Infornatelo per 30-35 minute fino a è imbiondito è la frutta è cotta bene.
Il profumo riempirà la vostra casa e gli appetiti nasceranno. Servitelo con la panna fresca o gelato sapore crema o panna. Buono!
October 31st, 2008
The last Friday supper party, the second this winter so far, I served a quiche instead of a pasta or risotto. It-s nice not to be rushed at the last moment with a dish that must be served instantly if not quicker. I Italianized it by using some of my favorite Italian products instead of the ones I used to use, like Swiss cheese, ham, short crust.
We liked it and I found that the leftovers reheated very easily and were good for several days.
Quiche is actually the kind of dish I used to make for my family on days when I was very busy and home late. It doesn’t take very long to cook and I just served it with a green salad so it was my version of instant food.
Quiche Bel Paese
I made a big one to serve 8 as a first course and used a very large silicon tart/pie pan
Preheat oven to 200″C or 400″F
1 packet of frozen puff pastry (pasta sfoglia) thawed
olive oil
1 good sized leek, cleaned and thinly sliced
4 ounces (100 g) grated Bel Paese or Fontina cheese
4 ounces (100 g) pancetta diced
2 eggs, slightly beaten
16 ounces (500 ml) milk
about 1 teaspoon (cucchiaino) salt
a dash or two of Tabasco or a pinch of cayenne
a few scrapes of nutmeg
Line the pie plate with the puff pastry, cutting and patching seams so that you end up with a pie shell effect. Use a fork to prick the bottom and sides to prevent bubbles.
In a frying pan, heat some oil then fry the leek until it is quite softened. Add the pancetta and continue to cook until the pancetta has flavored the oil and leek and the leek begins to brown. Grate the nutmeg over the mixture. Use a spatula to put it all in the bottom of the pastry shell you’ve made.
In a bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk, then stir in the milk and the Tabasco and salt. Add the grated cheese and blend. Pour this over the leek and pancetta mixture in the pastry shell.
Put it in the hot oven and bake it for about 35 minutes, or until a table knife inserted 1″ (2.5 cm) from the center comes out clean. Allow to cool a bit before eating. When serving it as a first course, I usually let it cool almost to room temperature.
To reheat it I put it into a non-stick pan over a low dlame with a lid on it. In no time it was warm again.
October 30th, 2008
This is one of the things that has led to dieting. It was worth it. One night we were to be seven at table and four ended up not being able to come. We remaining three ate most of the potatoes! They are crusty on the outside and creamy on the inside and I can’t explain the flavor. You just have to try some.
It’s a simple thing if done just right. There are only three ingredients: potatoes, salt and duck fat. Goose fat may be even tastier, but a goose is a bigger undertaking than a duck. They tell me that in British supermarkets you can buy tins of duck fat, and I call that civilized. Otherwise you can buy the back half of a duck and remove the considerable amount of fat from it and then render the fat at a low temperature. Pour it into a very clean hot glass jar and cap it. It will keep a long, long time. Or buy a whole duck, go crazy. Frozen duck fat has been found in Egyptian tombs and it still made great potatoes. Truth!
Potatoes Just Ducky
For four people
Before the potatoes are finished boiling, preheat the oven to about 175°C or 350°F
1 kilo (2 lb) potatoes, cleaned, peeled and cut into chunks
Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are tender, then drain them. Shake them about in the pan to rough them up.
Put about 70 g (1/3 cup) of duck fat in a wide and shallow baking dish. Add about 1 teaspoon herbed salt. I used the perfumed salt I called Summer in a Jar that I made in August. Throw the potatoes on top of the fat and stir them about as it melts, getting them all coated, all around.
Put the dish in the oven and cook them about an hour. It’s more efficient to bake them when something else is in the oven, too, and they will easily accommodate a different temperature. Just adjust the time to reflect the new temperature.
When they are golden, just remove them to a platter with a spatula and stand back. Even my somewhat anorexic neighbor ate them.
October 28th, 2008
My latest fashion column is published at Slow Travel. Run over and see why I am on a serious diet.
It was so refreshing to finally see beautiful things that are not the same old things nor denim.
October 27th, 2008
It had to happen. Apple pie is the single best-known item of la cucina americana here in Bel Paese.
Michele of Bleeding Espresso has limbered up the rolling pin and the paring knife and pie is it.
October 24th, 2008
more animals
October 23rd, 2008
I have sent pasta dishes off to Presto Pasta Night so many times that I can’t recall how many. When I go every week to see what there is, it’s the Asian pastas that catch my eye. It’s all too easy when you live in Italy to forget that Asia turns out some of the most luscious pastas in the world. So I decided that this week the week after my turn to host it, my offering will be both invented and Asian.
The broth is the ordinary chicken broth that I always make. I bet it’s pretty much like yours. The noodles are rice noodles, thin and long as my driveway and transparent when cooked. The sauce comes in a foil packet and was carried to me by a friend who lives in Hong Kong. The mushrooms create some real fusion confusion, because they come from a big jar of mixed mushrooms under oil that I bought in an Italian supermarket, and they are not Asian at all. I’m betting, however, that any one of the people who blog from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and various neighboring countries would love them. The little green disks are thinnest slices of green pear tomatoes, of which we have a ton right now.
This afternoon I soaked in hot water as many rice noodles as I could get my hand around. These are very loosely looped and bent, so it isn’t as much noodle as it would be if they were those neatly cut and packed kind. A few minutes before supper, I heated three-fourths liter of chicken broth to a boil. I dropped the drained noodles into it. I then scooped a fat tablespoon of Szechwan black pepper sauce into the broth, then 125 ml or ½ cup of the mushrooms without their oil. When the noodles were cooked in about 3-5 minutes, I dropped the tomato slices on top.
I used a spaghetti fork to pull the noodles into the bowls, then added scooped up mushrooms and then some tomato slices. One added some more black pepper sauce to the bowl, the other just used some soy sauce. If my broth were saltier one wouldn’t need anything.
Was it good? Yessiree. Was it great? Uh, no. It was a nice change from prosciutto and tomatoes, although I am not yet tired of them. This is just the kind of dreamed up quick and easy food made from what’s around the house that almost everybody eats a lot. Including me. And maybe you, too?
So, off this goes to Ruth of Once Upon a Feast and originator of Presto Pasta Night.
October 23rd, 2008
There’s just as much news everyday here as there is where the towers of Wall Street of New York and The City of London are tumbling on top of innocent and guilty passersby alike. Even with no election, there’s a lot of interest in the US one. Italians really seem to like Colin Powell, so they are particularly perked up over his emergence with an endorsement for Obama. Not that most weren’t already taken by Obama, if only because he wasn’t Bush and clearly had nothing to do with him.
Inflation is a worry here based on the higher costs of fuel and grains. Some essential food products in Italy experienced raises in price as high as 40%. Now that primary costs are down, will the end prices go down? Nothing of the kind is showing yet, but the futures markets will probably show us better what is to come. The thing is, many Italian families were barely making it or not really making it 3 years ago or more, so inflation in things like flour, bread and pasta hit hard. If they don’t have the money to eat and heat, what can they do? It appears to be a very large group, too. There are elderly living on as little as euro 400. How? I cannot even guess. The bargain priced plain white flour I used for a lot of basic purposes went from 24 centesimi to 38 centesimi in one year. That is more than 50%.
Schools and their failure to educate kids are in the news. There are demonstrators everyday with signs expressing passion against single teachers, single as in they are the only teacher, not that they aren’t married or engaged. At least I am pretty sure of that! If you look harder at the problem, however, you will see that schools are only part of the problem, with inactive and uninterested parents making up another large part– does that sound familiar to anyone? A third part is endemic cheating often not only allowed by but also encouraged by and paid for by parents. Dierdre Straughan wrote extensively about this problem on her excellent website when her daughter was still in school. The first thing you will see is that she has moved recently, but the last two year’s writing are still at that address. She has many interesting insights to Italian culture, but she has the most convincing experience of parenting here, having married and lived and reared her child entirely in Italy until her child took her last year of high school in India.
On the other hand, I saw something pretty cool yesterday. There is an ancient Sunday afternoon program called “Domenica In.” It goes back to the Seventies and airs for hours every Sunday after lunch when presumably most Italians are watching football/soccer/calcio. They play around with the show from year to year, and this year the center portion of the show is a quiz for high school students or recent high school graduates. It’s called 100 e lode and comes on at 14:38. The subjects range widely and the answers required are specific. It might be history of any era and even of other countries. It can be gastronomy. It is often science, cinema, theater and literature. These kids have to have an encyclopedic packet of facts in their heads. And then the finish is that the top two have to explain their opinions of some issues as varied as prostitution, religion or plastic surgery. This is Italy, so they are pretty good looking kids and fairly cool, too. They have cheering sections that come along to support them. The single winner among the four wins euro 10,000.00.
I remember competitive academic quizzes in the US. They were broadcast Saturday morning or some other time no one watched TV. They were team efforts and at most they might win something for their school. Although they certainly were better at encouraging study than high school sports broadcasts, they weren’t cool, they weren’t well-distributed nor promoted. The idea that being smart and well-read might pay did not ever come into it as it does in this show. These kids come on and rip off answers about Verdi, about space travel, medical advances and things that were in last week’s newspapers. Then the one who does it the best gets 10,000 euro. And then she comes back the next week and can win 10,000 more. The current champ has won 20,000 euro and says her aim is to win enough so that when she graduates from college she will be able to buy a house.
Lest you think this is Italian TV at its highest, I rush to admit that there are two intervening dances done by 7 half-naked girls and 3 clothed men. The dances were distinctly sensual in nature. I don’t understand that, either. The hostess wears one unflattering but very sexy outfit after another… does she not have a stylist? The people posing the questions are not intellectuals of the highest order, but one presumes the questions and answers have been vetted by researchers. I haven’t caught them in an error yet, which I have several times on “L’eredità”. (Tabasco is not a Mexican sauce, Rai!) It would have to be a glaring error in a field I know, so they can make hash of astronomy and get away with it.
I do think it is a respectable effort to reward kids for being studious. In a world where some of the really big earners are 15 year old models wearing tarty clothes, I appreciate that. Sure, learning may be its own reward, but in an age when there are so many contestants for the time and attention of teenagers and the eventuality of reward seems eons away, 10,000 euro just might inspire someone to stay awake and stay in school.
October 20th, 2008
I can’t think of a thing. And yet this morning the BBC headlined a story, “Gray Power, will aging America vote McCain or Obama?”
I think it is a fantasy that aging people suddenly become conservative, or careful or stupid or silly or racist. I think we are just as we were, only perhaps more experienced and well-read, if we lived right.
As a matter of fact, I am getting a little steamed at the idea that anyone thinks my age might change my intellectual capacity or my character. I feel like what I always was only more so. Certainly the vote I cast is based on the same foundations and beliefs as always.
Tell me, young or old, what do you think? Is there a gray power vote?
October 18th, 2008
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