Dreaming In Italian

Just in case you’ve been hiding out far from any kind of media then perhaps you haven’t heard of “Eat, Pray, Love”. First it was a book and now is a movie starring Julia Roberts in the major role. OK, I admit it, I read the book. Sure, it’s “chick lit” but I’m a reasonably romantic soul and there was a lot of it that I liked. Here’s a thumbnail synopsis: female writer has marriage crumble and repeats with ricochet lover. She decides to feed her soul by traveling for a year with third in Italy (the Eat part), one third in India (the Pray part) and the last third in Bali (the Love part). That’s it.

So who do they choose for the role of the somewhat confused and even emotionally tenuous writer but (drum role) Julia Roberts – who is absolutely wrong for the role. First of all she is too old and second she’s not good at playing a vulnerable person. Did you see her in Erin Brockovich? This is a woman that kicks ass and takes names. I have nothing against strong older women. I mean Susan Sarandon still makes me weak in the knees and she’s definitely a strong older woman. It’s just that it’s the wrong recipe for this part. So what are my problems with the movie. She spends 4 months in Italy – ah, I loved the scenes and the feel of it – but she demonstrates her terrific grasp of Italian by ordering enough food to feed a herd of elephants. I guess they had to make the order really big so that enough Italian words would spill out of her mouth since that’s about the only time she uses the language at all. And big deal ( ! ) almost any serious foodie could do the same thing without knowing how to ask where the bathroom was in Italian.

Second dissappointment: in India, the most interesting part of the book for me, is given short almost cartoonish treatment in the movie. In the book she has some seriously profound experiences on her spiritual quest but it’s hardly touched on in the movie. I do like the character of the Texan though. He seems much like the character in the book. In Bali she runs into Javier Bardem who always seems to be good and naturally she is coaxed back into the realm of love. Not a bad ending but doesn’t come close to making up for all of the flaws in the movie.

There was one thing that I liked in the movie that took my breath away as the lovely D can attest. Early on in her stay in Rome she is walking along the street and sees a woman use one of the common utilitarian fountains found there.  I remember those fountains so well. They’ve probably been there since the Romans.  Water is constantly running out of the faucet into the drain. But there’s something special about it. If you put your finger over the opening of the tap then water is forced out of a hole and makes an instant water fountain. So Julia tried using it as a fountain using the woman’s example.  I think that she squirts herself rather than getting it into her mouth. So sitting in the movie I gasped when that brief scene occurred – but of course it’s not worth seeing the movie for just that. If you are in Rome give it a try – pretend you’re wearing a toga.

So if you’ve seen this chick squared flick (chick flick based on chick lit) then share your opinion. Maybe we can have a popcorn fight here.

We tend to think of pesto as just the Ligurian stuff with basil, nuts, garlic,etc. But really the word “pesto” simply means ground or crushed. It is the past participle of “pestare”, to grind, pound or crush. It comes from the same word root as pestle as in “mortar and pestle”. But so much for the Italian lesson. Any time you mush up a bunch of stuff then you’ve got pesto. It appears on lots of trendoidal menus in various forms using ingredients as varied as roasted peppers, arugula, spinach and (shudder) cilantro.

So I am hosting our monthly poker party tonight and was looking for something to feed the crowd other than the usual sandwiches without breaking my own personal bank and remembered this recipe from my old friend Carol Field. Well, we’re not exactly buddies but I do like her cookbooks. Again this comes from “In Nonna’s Kitchen” that I mentioned before – click here for the other post. A nice thing about this book that is so great is that as in all of Carol’s books there are the personal notes. In this case there is a two page description of the Sicilian grandmother (Antonietta, aged 83 as of the book’s publication) who lives near Trapani. This little aside provides a little view of life in this part of Italy, especially in times long past. I love these little stories. But back to the business at hand.

One note here is that the recipe calls for peeling and seeding tomatoes. I tend to use roma tomatoes for this kind of thing since they have good flavor, don’t have too many seeds and are cheap. I find that it takes a couple of minutes in boiling water to get the skin sufficiently loose that it comes off easily. After that it’s pretty much impossible to seed them but since there aren’t many anyway, who cares. I do find that if I crush them up a bit by hand and let them sit in a bowl for a few minutes I can also easily pour off the excess water so that the recipe won’t be too watery. I suspect that you could skip this whole peeling the tomatoes thing and use canned tomatoes but you’d really need to drain them well to keep the sauce from becoming too watery.

Now about the pasta. Carol (and presumably Antonietta) calls for spaghetti. I prefer some shorter extruded pasta and find that farfalle (butterflies) works well. I like the shape and feel of this pasta but it really needs a creamy sauce to stick to the relatively broad flat surface and this sauce is perfect for it. By the way the recipe does not call for cheese and I like it without but again, you’re the cook, do what you want. Experiment and see what works for you.

Another note. While some people wax ecstatic about the superior flavor of making pesto (this and the basil variety) with a mortar and pestle I will leave that for someone with way more patience than me. For me it’s a food processor all the way.

So here’s the recipe:

Spaghetti col Pesto alla Trapanese

¾ cup blanched almonds

1 teaspoon sea salt (I just use Kosher salt – seems good enough for me)

4 medium cloves garlic

1 cup basil leaves

5 sprigs parsley (please discard the stems)

1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 ½ pounds tomatoes peeled and seeded (see discussion above)

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound spaghetti (a note about this later)

Put the salt and the almonds in a food processor and grind away until it’s almost like a course flour. Add everything else but the tomatoes and oil and continue the process until it’s all smooth. I found that it works best if you also add at least half of the oil to lubricate things – it seems to work much better that way. If I had a big enough food processor I would just add the tomatoes and the remaining oil at this point and continue processing but don’t completely mush it up. It’s nice to have the tomatoes with a little chunkiness to them. Of course you’re in control here you can make it a little chunky or smooth – it’s your call. Given my smaller food processor I emptied out the bowl except for a little of the previously ground greens and other stuff and roughly ground up the tomatoes with the remaining oil and then mixed it altogether. You can use it right away or stick it in the fridge for up to several days if you can resist eating it all. I made extra for a nice lunch for me and the lovely D.

So, the pesto dish was a hit with the guys (and one woman who always seems to take my money). Unfortunately my luck wasn’t as good but the damage was minor.

On one of my first trips to Italy many years ago I visited a friend who was living a few miles south of Rome. One evening he said, “You’ve got to see this TV show, you won’t believe it!” Well, he was right, it was hard to believe. On this show women would willingly “pop their tops”, i.e. take off everything above the waist for the world to see. If that happened here the Moral Majority would probably be marching in the streets with pitchforks and torches. This is one of those unique differences between Italian and American TV. Of course Italian TV has a bunch of “spazzatura” (trash) TV, much of which seems to have originated in this country. There are shows that cause confrontations ending in fights – hello, Jerry Springer. They have a show “Grande Fratello” which is, of course, “Big Brother”. Sadly we have exported the trash from here to clutter up Italian TV. Then of course there are the really unique, crazy shows like the one that I described above. I happened across a YouTube video of a similar show. The title says it’s from the 90s. Here’s another pitchfork and torch show. It’s a game show with two couples as contestants. The host asks a question and one of the men answers the question. If wrong, then his spouse has to remove an article of clothing. I don’t know how far this goes but bare breasts are not ruled out. In this clip the couple that is the focus is the couple on the left. I can imagine him as a junior accountant and her as a 2^nd grade teacher in the local school. How they get these people to come on the show must be a story in itself.

Of course there are a lot of interesting and amusing commercials in the world, mostly they seem to come from beer companies. I’ve found Italian ones for beer as well but the most amusing is the one below that seems to be for a telephone company.

Italians are, of course, famous for being passionate football fans. I have witnessed this myself when I attended a game (partita) in Rome between Lazio (that’s Rome’s region, i.e. state) and Naples. Lazio lost and it’s hard to describe the expressions of despair and actions (tears, gnashing of teeth, etc.) of the surrounding fans. Fans is short for fanatics of course and this is exhibited more by Italians than anyone else that I’ve ever seen. Of course in Oakland we have the Oakland Raiders fans so we can’t really mock anyone else’s fans. Still, this announcer is really something else. Not only that, the suits in the studio get into the act. You’re not going to see this on ESPN anytime soon.

Surely someone else out there has seen crazy TV, especially amusing foreign commercials and wacko fans. Please share.

“Lighter fluid”. That’s the way I used to describe grappa. Between getting better stuff and my taste developing, I’ve  come to really  love it. If anyone is at a loss of what to buy me for a birthday or Christmas present there is always that answer. I really don’t know why it should be expensive but it is and it’s definitely worth getting something that costs a few dollars more. Otherwise you may have the urge to use it to start the charcoal on the barbie. In some ways it’s part of the Italian genius for making do (what is the italian word/phrase for this?) with what meager ingredients are at hand. If you were a contadino (farmer) who grows and presses grapes to make your own wine, then after you press the grapes there’s all this stuff left over after you pour off the grape juice. It’s basically the seeds, stems and peels from the grapes. It is important to then separate the stems and seeds from what remains. You might ask why but of course I’m going to tell you anyway. If the woody stems and seeds are fermented along with the rest, the pomace, then the distillation process will then produce wood alcohol as part of the mix, which is poisonous. Italy finally made a law requiring farmers to sell their pomace to grappa makers because so many of them were killing themselves off.

When the lovely D and I traveled to the Veneto we made a pilgrimage to the mother lode of grappa – Bassano del Grappa. It’s a truly beautiful place on it’s own and worth a visit regardless of any lust for grappa.

A fellow by the name of Nardini started making grappa here in 1779 and they’re still at it – probably in the same place. Visiting their tasting room just at the end of the magnificent wooden bridge was quite a trip. I didn’t have good sense enough to take photos of the room, perhaps it had something to do with the grappa that was not very expensive there. You could tell this because of the locals hanging around and doing grappa shots. So of course I snagged some from their website. They must have gone through quite a thorough cleaning before doing the photos for their website because it was much more, well, earthy is probably the right word. My kind of place.

We also visited the Poli Museo Della Grappa where the Jacopo Poli folks have made quite a high style environment to show the history of grappa and Jacopo Poli history in particular. They showed a variety of early grappa stills and other little bits of history and, naturally, we tasted and bought a bottle of their fine product. It’s a good thing that we were taking the train back to Padova!  It is a beautiful place as well but my heart belongs to Nardini.

So don’t be shy, give that grappa a try! My friends that live near Frankfurt certainly are not shy about their taste for grappa as you can see in the photo below.

By the way the French make this stuff  too, but call it marc. They have not elevated it almost to the art form as you find in Italy. The extend it from the liquid itself to very special bottles. At almost every store that sells any kind of alcohol you will see quite fanciful bottles like those in the photos below.

By the way, while at Nardini we bought a bottle of the Riserva Grappa which was terrific. I have yet to see it in this country but if anyone has a clue about where I could buy some I would be eternally grateful.  You can take a look at the Nardini website here and the Jacopo Poli one here. Any opinions about grappa or any other Italian alcohol specialties?