Dreaming In Italian

For whatever reason the Italians seem to have a long history of Carabiniere jokes. In some respects they are a lot like the ethnic jokes that we used to tell before we realized that it was really insensitive to tell them about ethnic groups – notably Poles. Does anyone remember Polack jokes? Almost everyone now feels that it is insensitive to make fun of a ethnic or disabled group so now we just go for lawyer jokes. Nobody seems to be worry about harming their psyches. Well, Carabiniere jokes are both different and the same as lawyer jokes. The difference is that while lawyer jokes depict lawyers as being heartless, cunning and overpaid (possibly occasionally true), Carbiniere jokes depict these stalwarts of Italian law enforcement as dumb (also possibly occasionally true). The similarity is that both groups tend to not be offended by the jokes directed at them and even collect the jokes. When I was at language school in Rome  the teacher delighted in telling some of these jokes. However the ones that she told were really all about physical humor. There were no actual words. I can’t illustrate them easily without a video camera and sadly there are none on YouTube but here is one you can probably visualize.

Question: How does a Carabiniere tie his shoe:

Answer: Go through these motions: Put your right foot up on a chair. Bend over and tie the shoe on the left foot that is still on the floor.

OK, that doesn’t do it for you? Well here are some that are more verbal that I found:

• There was this peasant who lived up in the mountains on a narrow road. One day, he saw a carload of Carabinieri driving backwards up the mountain. “Why are you driving backwards?” he asked. “Because were not sure well be able to turn around up ahead.” Later, the peasant saw the carabinieri driving backwards down the mountain. “How come you’re still driving backwards?” the peasant asked. “Well, the driver replied, we found a place to turn around.”
• Two Carabinieri are walking on a beach. One says, “Look, a dead seagull!” The other looks up, shields his eyes with his hands, and says, “Where?”

• Q. How do you burn a Carabiniere’s ear off?

A. Call him while he’s ironing.

OK, had enough? Well how about some real Carabiniere stuff. I was hoping to find some Carabiniere jokes on YouTube and instead I found this car chase. The Carabiniere are in an Alfa. Of course Italians are legendary for being wild and crazy drivers but these guys really bring it to a new level. They probably don’t tie the wrong shoe! It’s only 3 minutes but seems sooo much longer.

If you just watched the chase I hope your adrenaline level is now back to normal. I’ve never really had any contact with law in Italy, have you? How did it go?

I ate baccala at a place in Rome that a friend turned me on to. I really couldn’t remember the name of the place but I knew that it was close to Campo di Fiori. I used Google Maps to get oriented and then went looking around using the Street View feature and, mamma mia!, there it was, Filleti di Baccala. I was there in December and had the obligatory breaded and fried baccala along with a salad of puntarella with an anchovy-garlic dressing, which is a great combination. I’ve never seen that chicory kind of green anywhere but Rome and it’s only available in winter at that.

After that aside into puntarella land, on to the baccala. Baccala, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is salt cod. It is dry and almost stiff as a board and keeps forever without refrigeration which was a very desireable attribute. I wandered into G.B Ratto’s in downtown Oakland (to see more about Ratto’s click here) and there it was, a box full of baccala. I’ve eaten it as noted above and certainly read about it but never have given it a try myself. In the heyday of cod and especially the Grand Banks this stuff sold by the shipload all over the world and still is said to be the most popular fish in Italy. (Could that really be true when there is such great fish available there?) Still I like a challenge and decided to go for it. The stuff is no longer cheap like it must have been at one time. I selected a piece and the clerk wrapped it up for me. It was almost two pounds and at over $17 as pound there was a bit of sticker shock. Of course when I started preparing this stuff I realized (doh!) that since it is dried it takes about half as much as fresh fish since it gains all of that water back. So I only soaked half of it and that was still enough for 3 meals for me and the lovely D. First the soaking part. Soak for 2 or 3 days and change the water at least twice a day. The story is that some in Italy would put the fish in the water tank of the toilet and let the natural rhythm of usage take care of the water changes. Uh, not for me! I decided to do the manual changes. So after a couple of days I was ready to go. For the recipe I turned to another of my favorite Italian cookbook authors, Carol Field. The book is “In Nonna’s Kitchen”. What could be better than recipes from Italian grandmothers? The recipe actually calls for stoccafisso which is cod dried without the salting and is apparently hard enough to pound nails. You make this recipe in the oven by layering tomatoes, cod and potatoes and topping it off with a combination of parsley, garlic and breadcrumbs drizzled with olive oil and a little wine. It came out pretty good. The cod has an interesting consistency since even soaked and baked it is a little more dense than it’s fresh brethren. So it was good but was it worth all of that soaking? Maybe not. Still it was fun to try. I did another dish with the baccala cooked Venetian style, slow cooked with milk, and served over soft polenta but didn’t include the recipe here. If you’re interested I can direct you to the recipe or send it to you. It’s included in the photos below.

Stoccafisso della Cantino Sociale di Valdinaevola

(that’s a mouthful but you’ll need to see Carol’s book to get the story behind it)

The recipe is for 4 to 6 (I halved it and still had plenty left over from feeding 2)

12 oz baccala soaked for 3 days

2 large ripe tomatoes – thinly sliced (she says cut in half but that makes no sense)

3 small baking potatoes – peeled and sliced

salt and pepper

2 garlic cloves – minced

1/3 cup minced parsley – minced

½ cup dried bread crumbs

1/3 cup white wine

1- 2 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

very little mile (so what does that mean? – I used about 1 tablespoon for ½ recipe)

Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly oil the bottom a a baking dish big enough for half of the fish in one layer. Lay down a layer of tomatoes. Cut the filets in half crosswise and put a layer of the fish on top of the tomatoes. Follow this with a layer of the potatoes. Put a little salt and pepper on each layer. Repeat with tomatoes, fish and potatoes followed by a final layer of tomatoes. Mix the parlsey, garlic and breadcrumbs and strew over the top. Season with salt and pepper. Mix the water, wine and olive oil and our over the top. Cover with foil and bake for and hour and 20 minutes. Remove from the over and sprinkle with the milk. Return to the over 10 minutes and you’re ready to eat.

Any experiences with baccala, puntarella or any other very regional foods? What about that statement about baccala being the most popular fish in Italy? Could that possibly be true or was the the salt cod lobbying association at work? By the way, I still have half of the dried cod left. Any recommendations about how I should use it?

La Serenissima – the most serene of cities. Certainly this is one of the most photographed and visited cities in Italy. Movies are made here, romance is in the air, as is the stench of garbage in the water during the summer. The beauty is undeniable and there is no reason to have a car. In fact, like New York, much of the population doesn’t really know how to drive. The showplace is the Grand Canale. And grand it is. The palazzos lining the canal vary from the truly magnificent to some that are starting to look like residence hotels due to the neglect they clearly are experiencing. Even the Italian writer famous for criticism (as well as adoration) of his native country, Luigi Barzini , wrote that it was “undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man”. As much as I have mixed feelings about it I certainly believe that to be true. (BTW you can click on any photo to see it enlarged.)

What a fantastic place it is. I couldn’t really find out anything definitive about when the Venetians got it into their head to start sinking wooden pilings deep into the lagoon to form the basis for building the city. Surely there were parts of islands already there as a toehold for the city but nothing like what exists there at the present day. So build they did starting over a thousand years ago, perhaps even as much as 1400 years ago. They were an aggressive bunch and the city became the master of the Mediterranean. Imagine that! One determined city controlling trade throughout the Mediterranean and thus providing the incredible wealth apparent in the city and monuments that still are there in all their glory.

For me really the most striking thing about the city is one of those things that I so often find going to a new place – a revelation that I really could not have without the visit. This seems so obvious but, after all, water is the only road. So everything, and I mean everything, moves by water as the series of photos shows. Once a delivery boat is near it’s destination then hand trucks must be used to take those cases of Coke, olive oil, laundry detergent and diapers to the stores. Garbage boats must take the refuse away. Police boats, water borne hearses and, yes, UPS are all afloat. While it seems that everyone is familiar with the vaporettos, basically buses on the water, there are also little traghetti (ferries) to take you from one side of the Grand Canal to the other. These “ferries” are really just gondolas that the locals stand in for the short  trip but tourists like me are glad to take a seat. Meandering around the city the lovely D and I were in competition to find the smallest street (calle) if you can really call it that. We found several that required that you walk single file because they were so narrow. Of course there is also the Rialto Market (oh, I love Italian markets) complete with one end of a swordfish.

I know that the lovely D would love to revisit the place but I’m not quite as enthusiastic. True, we were able to visit in the fall so it was not quite so awash with tourists and the canals didn’t smell but still it is a place where tourists seem to outnumber those that live in the city and I generally have an aversion to such places. Still, it is really beautiful and I urge you to see it. For all of the talk about it sinking, it was clear to me that while the acqua alta is truly a pain in the ass, the place is not going to disappear anytime soon so there’s no rush to get there before it slides under the water.

Have you visited Venice? If so, what did you like or dislike about it? Come on, even the most ardent lover of Venice has something they dislike.

I was having coffee with a friend (who actually reads my blog!) and he asked “when are you going to post something on Italian cars?”. Hmmm, I hadn’t really thought about that. “So,” he continued, “maybe something about Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfa’s and that kind of thing.” Well, if you are one of the few others that reads things here you probably might think that is not particularly my style. Not for me those glamour pusses of the Italian autostrada. But how about one of the workhorses, the veritable backbone, of the Italian countryside and small towns. The Ape!

It’s also a vehicle that you’ll probably never see unless you go to Italy and then will curse when you are behind one on a road somewhere. They’re really a very practical vehicle in a lot of ways; inexpensive to buy and operate, capable of hauling stuff around better than anything on two wheels and correctly sized to go through almost the tiniest street in those cute little hillside towns. I’ve looked inside one and was surprised to find not a steering wheel but the handlebars for a scooter. It has been great fun researching this thing. It was first built in 1947 just in the aftermath of WWII and answered the need for  a really cheap and functional vehicle for the economic recovery of (cliché alert) war torn Italy. It was made by (surprise!) Piaggio, the same company that made the Vespa. So Ape (pronounced “ah-peh”) which means “bee” in Italian joined the Vespa which means “wasp” in Italian. One need only look at the proliferation of both vehicles to this day to see how wildly successful they were. It didn’t have an enclosed cab until 1956 – it must have been a real adventure before that. For a fascinating slide show of Ape photos click here to look at these photos from the Italian website Megamodo.

The Ape came in models from 50cc to 150cc originally and have had engines as large as 500cc. I found a video that is pretty cool of a 50 cc version of modern manufacture. This little speed demon accelerates from 0 to 25 mph in a scorching 21 seconds (unloaded). Of course that’s not the whole story because it will go all the way up to 30 mph but probably not with a load of olive oil in the back.

Aside from the takeover of roads in Germany as mentioned in the video they are taking over other parts of the world. India is being overrun apparently as shown in the photo below.

Ah, the wonders of the web. Who would have thought that someone would come up with a camper based upon the Ape? But here it is in all it’s glory. If you think that these photos are amusing you can click here to look at the rest on this site.

But wait, there’s more. I’m not sure that even the Italians can invest the Ape with sex appeal but that hasn’t stopped them from trying. Get a load of the spiffy vehicle below. Can’t you just picture yourself in this beauty?

If you want still more pictures, some quite bizarre, of Apes and Ape activities (like races) just put this into your Google Search for Images “ape 3 wheel”. Someday it would be great to ride in one or even get behind the handlebars and explore in one of these myself. Has anyone else out there had any Ape experience? How about other unusual transportation?