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Everyone into the pool~

Going to a friend’s house for dinner is always a wonderful way to spend an evening. When that friend is someone you haven’t seen in 20 years, it can turn out to be an incredible evening. And when that long lost friend, his wife, and two kids happen to live in a small Italian town an hour’s train ride north of Venice, where you just happen to be vacationing—well, watch out. The evening is going to be spectacular.

We arrived later than expected (no thanks to a train strike in Venice), but my friend Mark picked us up at the Sacile (pronounced “sah-CHEE-lay”) train station and drove us along twisting roads at the base of the foothills to the Dolomites, through quaint villages, past vineyards and pastures, pointing out local points of interest and filling us in on the area’s history before finally arriving at his house in Budoia (“boo-DOY-yah”). After a few minutes in the car, the 20-year void in our friendship felt like it had only been a two-minute gap. Once inside, the rest of our visit was all about food and wine. 

Mark and his wife Lena are both US military and, after only three years in Italy, they have fallen into quite the Italian lifestyle—a cellar stocked with bottle upon bottle of local wine and a solid knowledge of Italian cuisine with fresh local ingredients.

Lena has taken some cooking lessons and she was really showing out for our visit. We started with several glasses of prosecco and a selection of two local, artisanal cheeses (Montasio, young but aged in beer, and a fresh Asiago). For the antipasto, Lena made ricotta, goat cheese, sun-dried tomato, garlic, and shallot crostini. She was not very thrilled with it because the phyllo shells she was pre-baking to hold the cheese mixture were not turning out as she had planned. Trust me, they were great. Mark served a Tocai Friulano made by local winemaker Valter Scarbolo.

From the antipasto we moved to l’insalata—the salad, which for Italians would have been served after the meat course, but Lena chose to go American and serve her lettuce, sliced pear, local Gorgonzola cheese, and walnut salad before the pasta course. Very, very good.

We continued drinking the white Tocai through the pasta course…Lena made a pumpkin filling for her handmade pasta. She allowed me to make the ravioli and it was great fun to roll up my shirtsleeves and jump into preparing this course. I rolled out the pasta, spooned on the soft and velvety pumpkin filling, before folding the dough over, sealing and cutting into individual ravioli. Her filling was very similar to a pumpkin gnocchi that Nonna taught me how to prepare in 2005. I love eating delicately spiced pumpkin in November. Lena served the ravioli in a sauce of brown butter and sage with chopped hazelnuts and amaretto cookies grated over the top. BUONISSIMI! The brown butter was nutty, the sage and hazelnuts were earthy, and the sweet but bitter almond flavor of the grated cookies put the dish over the top. I hope you enjoy the photo of it above. Pity you can’t smell the aroma or taste the flavor.

From here, Lena and Mark kept pulling out the stops. Mark has become quite the wine guy while in Italy and besides the Tocai, he also served one of Scarbolo’s merlots with Lena’s meat course of roasted pork tenderloin. Lena had really outdone herself by also preparing homemade potato gnocchi—similar to dumplings. We each took turns forming the pasta in our own styles—I used a fork, rolling each dumpling down the tongs leaving an indention on both sides for the sauce to adhere. Lena rolled hers with a grooved little paddle/board, curling up both sides of the dumpling like a seashell. Our gnocchi were indeed homemade. While Lena prepared the tomato sauce with mushrooms for the gnocchi, I cooked them.

The first time I cooked gnocchi with Nonna I was terrified that I had ruined them.

“Nonna, questi gnocchi non sono giusti.”

“Marco, pazienza, saranno nuotare.”

There is a mystic aura surrounding gnocchi…they are made from dense, starchy potatoes and yet they should be light and airy. If they are not made correctly they can be heavy, tough, and gummy. I was terrified of that as I placed the gnocchi Nonna and I had made into the simmering water and watched them sink to the bottom. I just knew that I had kneaded mine too long or treated them with too much force causing them to be tough—ruined. But Nonna reassured me, “Patience, Mark, they will swim.”

Sure enough, one by one, our fat little dumplings rose from the murky depths and started a little water dance at the top of the pot. They would swim, taking turns floating around the top before disappearing back down to only reappear again.

“Nonna, guarda!” (“Nonna, watch!”)

“Si, si Marco. Vanno bene, no?"

 “Si, vanno bene!”

As I placed the gnocchi that Lena and I made into the simmering water, her son came over to watch. I told him that this was the moment of truth. If his mother had ruined them, there would be no swimming in the pot. He looked at me oddly and I told him to watch and, sure enough, mystically, one floated up, then a second, and a third, fourth, fifth. Soon the pot was alive with the swimming gnocchi. “Well, looks like your mother is a great cook,” I said. “Yep, she is,” he said, with complete conviction, pleased to know that I had confirmed what he already knew as the Gospel truth. The gnocchi were tossed with the tomato and mushroom sauce and served along side the pork.

We sat at the table telling stories, laughing, eating, drinking…well, they kids had juice…and it could not have been more pleasant. Mark told how the kids had picked up the language pretty quickly so I tried to chat with them as much as I could in Italian. It was a lesson for the three of us. We all knew different words and phrases and tried to stump each other. It was fun.

WAIT~

Do you think dinner was over yet? Hell no…there was still dessert, a local dessert wine, and caffè. Lena sliced her mango tart and topped each serving with shaved chocolate, raspberries, and a mango coulee. Mark’s fruity and sweet dessert wine, again from a local winemaker, really brought out the brightness of the raspberries and tangy mango.

Our evening was cut way too short by the fact that we had to catch the last train back to Venice, which we managed to do successfully.

I cannot wait to cook with Lena again and drink Mark’s wine cellar dry…problem is, they are soon to be transferred to Alaska. Mamma mia! I am not sure we’ll be visiting them again in November any time soon. But, come to think of it, that night in northern Italy last November was chilly and rainy and yet we were warmed to the core. Maybe we will give Alaska a try…but only if the gnocchi are swimming.

 Ciao e a presto~

Mark

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Nonna at her finest~

Here is the last of the three videos I filmed with the Stefani family in Viterbo. I think this one really shows her spirit. She makes me laugh—a lot. The month I lived with them in 2005 was filled with laughter. The entire family is very humorous and they all know how to tell a good tale.

In this clip she is telling me that her mother didn’t like to tell Nonna her secrets, so when she gave Nonna a recipe she would purposefully leave things out. Nonna caught on and started watching her mother cook and when her mother noticed that she was preparing the recipe WITH the left out, secret ingredient she said, “Why are you putting that in, I didn’t tell you to do that!”

I must admit that I am not 100% sure of the translation, but that is the gist of the conversation as I understood it. And until I am corrected, that is my story and I am sticking to it. Remember, even on a perfect day, I only speak Italian at a 2-year-old level.

Regardless—I love this clip because you get the true flavor of Nonna.

On another video matter~

I am currently being featured on the blog dishKarma with a video of my “Ultimate Italian Meal.” It lists the dishes, mostly from Italy, that I love to eat. They have a pretty impressive list of other “Ultimate Meals” videos by Ming Tsai, Christina Pirello, Hagan Blount, and Stephen Fried to name a few. They also feature links to food charities and organizations that are helping to bridge the hunger gap in America. I hope you enjoy my piece and, more importantly, their blog.

Some exciting news about my manuscript should be coming down the pike soon. I am looking forward to sharing all of the details with you.

Until then…enjoy Nonna’a story, my meal, and dishKarma. 

Buon Appetito!

Mark

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I Love You—now hush~

Yesterday Richard sent a book title to me that perfectly captured a lunch experience with a French couple that we had in Venice. But before that, let me tell you about one of our first lunch experiences in Venice—a very popular inn and restaurant that was ours alone one day.

Before we take any trip to Italy we always chat amongst friends to see who has been where and where they ate while they were there. Facebook had enabled this line of questioning to go far and wide. A friend of mine in New York mentioned that he had an incredible meal in Venice at Antica Locanda Montin. Best known for their outdoor garden dining area, covered by a huge wisteria arbor, this inn and restaurant is packed during the warmer months of the year.

We weren’t exactly sure of where the restaurant was, which ended up being par for the course for us in Venice. It is on the island of Giudecca, the island just across the lagoon, which has a more open-air feeling to it than the rabbit run atmosphere of Venice. Trust me, we twisted and turned, took the wrong footbridges, and doubled back before we arrived at the doors of Antica Locanda.

When restaurants are not open in Italy they appear to be much more than closed. They look as if they are out of business. Shutters are closed, curtains drawn, and sometimes, as in Rome, the protective garage door, which covers the entire restaurant front, is down and locked. Outside there are no tables or railing enclosures, no potted plants, and no appearance of any recent activity. The complete flipside of this is when an Italian restaurant is open. Magically, the non-existent seating tables with their chairs, potted plants, railings, and menu placards appear from nowhere crowding the front of the restaurant with life. The shutters and curtains are opened wide, and in warmer weather, the front door is propped open allowing the hustling waiters to efficiently serve their hungry clientele.

The front of the Antica Loncanda was neither fish nor fowl. The outside was void of warmer season dining and, although the shutters and curtains were open, there seemed to be a “we’re not open” atmosphere about it. We paused for a moment outside the door wondering what to do. We were starving and had no other options in mind. Suddenly a white-coated waiter opened the door and invited us in. In Italy, waiters, in addition to their table duties, are also street hawkers, who lure and entice passing pedestrians into becoming patrons.

In America, if you walk into a restaurant and there is no one there, I bet your immediate reaction is the same as mine—“Uh-oh, this place must suck.” We paused again, looking at each other trying to quickly assess if we wanted to eat here. We had been walking all morning and it was almost 2:00 p.m., so we decided we’d suffer through this restaurant and remind our friend that his recommendation was way off the mark.

There was one other customer, a round little man with a large lens camera sitting at a table with an Italian man who seemed to be the owner of this inn. The table was strewn with the remnants of a large, multi-course meal and several opened, but not emptied, bottles of wine. I wondered if the camera man was a photo journalist or a food writer for a travel magazine.

The menu was full of wonderful sounding dishes, mostly seafood, and our expectations for this meal started to change for the better. We ordered our antipasti: smoked tuna carpaccio, thinly sliced, served on a bed of celery greens with olive oil, lemon juice, and pomegranate seeds; polipetti (small baby octopus), grilled and served with the same oil and lemon vinaigrette and pomegranate seeds. WOW! The tuna was the most amazing thing. My grilled octopus were great, but the tuna was the star of the show. (Check out my guest video on dishKarma where I talk about this meal.)         

 We only ordered a primo (the first course, usually pasta), opting to keep lunch light by skipping a secondo (the second course, usually meat). Two plates of handmade tortelloni with arugula, tomato, and basil were brought to the table. Buonissimi! (*see the photo above)

After our meal, I poked my head out the back door, which revealed the famous garden arbor. There was something beautiful about its early winter desolation. I can only imagine what a wonderful place it must be to dine in the summer—under lush green leafed vines dripping with purple, grape-looking wisteria blossoms. We will definitely have to suffer the summer crowds to come back here and find out.

The biggest lesson I learned here was “Don’t judge a restaurant by the amount of filled tables.” Our lunch was so good and had we given in to our initial misgivings and left, we would have missed one of the best meals of our trip. Our friend in New York was spot on. Thanks David!

Now on to our next day’s lunch with the French couple:

We don’t always look for 4-star restaurants to dine at while we are on vacation. Many times we look for what is around us when we decide that we have seen enough sights and NEED to eat. Sometimes we stumble upon an amazing meal and if not, we always come away with a fun story.

We spent the morning wandering our way through the streets of San Marco, stopping to photograph a really cool building, and ending up at the Fortuny museum. A morning of modern art can make you hungry, so we decided to walk back to our hotel and stop for lunch when we passed something that looked interesting.

We walked for a while, window-shopping, before finally crossing over a footbridge, deciding we were starving, and passed a restaurant where the people seated at outside tables, along a canal, were mostly eating pizza. Pizza and a couple of glasses of wine sounded like a great way to spend lunch so we stopped at this trattoria/pizzeria and were tightly seated at a table next to a middle-aged French couple.

Richard ordered a pizza Napolitano—a simple red-sauced pizza with anchovies and capers. I had the pizza Diavolo…Devil’s pizza…a simple red-sauced pizza with spicy salami. Any time you see the word diavolo be prepared for spicy. The Devil likes it HOT!

We were enjoying our pizza, watching the gondolas pass by our outside table, using our Italian with the waiter—he was very patient—when the French gentleman, who might as well have been our dining companion we were packed that tight, leaned over and asked if he could borrow the olive oil bottle on our table. To say he “asked” really means that he leaned over and said, “Excusez-moi” pointing at the olive oil bottle and then to himself. Hand gestures truly are the one language we commonly share, regardless of our country of origin. “Certo, certo,” I said, answering in Italian since we had just been speaking to our waiter and my brain hadn’t made the switch to English yet. (I have to admit that when I meet someone speaking a foreign language I always want to answer them in Italian, since it is the only foreign language I know. If someone Asian were to ask me a question in their native tongue on the streets of Chicago my knee-jerk reaction would be to answer them in Italian. It makes no sense—I am just silly like that.) “Of course, of course,” Richard said to the Frenchman at the same time, his response was colored with a little Southern flavor.

This little exchange opened the floodgates of conversation with the Frenchman. He asked if we were Americans…that was an easy enough question to decipher from his French. We asked if he spoke English or Italian and his answer was “No.” His wife, a beautiful dark-haired woman, smartly dressed with a pashmina expertly draped about her shoulders said that she spoke a little English. She instantly became her husband’s translator. He started asking us questions, which at times we could get the gist of because the French was similar enough to Italian and English words. When we were utterly at a loss for what he was asking, we three men turned our gaze upon his wife who would pause, put her fork down on her plate, and translate.

Having lived with Italians for a month, I have learned that when speaking to someone who understands only a little English it is best to keep one’s responses simple and to the point—save the 3+ syllable words for someone who gets it. She was being a very good sport, but at one point her husband asked her to translate something into English for us and she paused, still holding her fork this time, considered his request, and answered, “Mon chér, il est trop difficile à traduire.” We all laughed. Even we could figure out that she was at a loss on how to translate his complex French question using her very simple knowledge of English. Slowly we all figured out that he was asking us how life had changed in America given the financial crisis. We answered and again he asked another complex question. We all gazed at his beautiful wife, who put down her fork this time, reaching across the table to kindly touch his forearm, and said,“Mon chér…” We all knew her difficulty and understood her touch—“I love you…now hush!”

The conversation continued on through dessert and caffè and continued to be peppered with her “Mon chér…” when he exceeded her translating capabilities. We said goodbye to our luncheon companions and headed off toward our next adventure, pleased with the fact that we had been good ambassadors between America and France. For the rest of our trip we used “Mon chér…” between ourselves any time we asked the other something beyond our knowledge.

“Richard, how low did the water used to be in Venice?”

“Mon chér…” he would answer, grabbing my arm and shaking his head, as if he had been there 500 years ago.

“Mark, what is this incredible taste in my dish?”

“Mon chér…” I said shaking my head, as if I had the ability to identify some of the complex flavors in his simple pasta dish.

When Richard sent the book title to me yesterday and I discovered that the subject of the book was about the different natures of men and women. “I Love You—Now Hush” was the perfect translation of our lovely French translator’s care for and exacerbation with her husband.

 What a lovely way to tell someone to be quiet—“Mon chér…” “I love you…now hush.”

 Ciao e a presto~

-Mark

(* the photos above are of the outside dining garden at Antica Locanda, our tortelloni, the building on the way to the Fortuny museum, and the restaurant where we encountered the French couple--if you look close enough through the bridge railing, they are the couple seated at the first table. His back is toward the camera in the black sweater, and you can just see her beige pashmina.).

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Awaiting Spring~

It has been a colder than usual winter here in the South. Yes, I know those of you north of the Mason-Dixon line have certainly had your fill of it, too.

We have several potted citrus trees, which usually spend their winter outside; however, on the rare occasions where the temperature dips into the 20s and below, we bring the pots into the house turning our kitchen into an orangery.

Within a week of being brought in, they will bloom and perfume the entire house with their heady citrus scent—something that normally announces the coming of spring. But soon the blooms fade and drop, followed by leaves that are yearning for more than four hours of sunlight. They look rather anemic at the moment and it is always a race between their health and stable overnight outdoor temperatures above 30 degrees. Winter has lingered here longer than usual and I hope the trees can survive another week in our orangery.

Almost every villa or palazzo in Italy has an orangery. Long, narrow, terracotta-roofed, multi-windowed structures can be found toward the back of the properties. Here terracotta pot after terracotta pot of citrus tree varieties—orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, and pomegranate—can be found geometrically placed around the garden, covered in blooms in the spring and heavily laden with fruit in the fall. When the temperature drops, the pots are moved inside the orangery where the warm winter sun pours through the glass, drenching the plants with much needed light, and warming the terracotta pots and terracotta floor tiles. When scurvy and other diseases caused by malnutrition were all the rage, an orangery would provide fresh fruit, a much needed source of vitamins and minerals, well into the winter.

The orangery at the Villa Pisani, just outside of Padova, was beautiful this past November when we visited. The enormous garden outside the structure was full of potted, fruited trees. The building did have some plants in it, but the vast majority of them were still outside enjoying the pleasant weather.

Sometimes people ask how our trips to Italy influence us. At times the influences are subconscious and are never consciously realized, but there are many times when sights in Italy are put into practical application. The orangery in our kitchen is one of those literal and obvious applications.

If your fruit trees are still buried with a blanket of white, I hope the photos will remind you that soon the trees will be flowering, the birds will be singing, and the bees will be buzzing.

Ciao e a presto~

Mark

(**The first three photos are from the Villa Pisani and the last photo is our make-shift orangery in the kitchen.)

Click here to see another photo of the Villa Pisani.

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Una bella vista~

We were only there five nights, but Venezia made such a strong impression that it needs more than the previous blog posts to do it justice.

With Carnevale season here, I think it is appropriate to talk about the two sides of Venice that are reflected even in the weather. Previously, I have written about how people wanted me to notice the quality of light in Venice. When we first arrived it was overcast, drizzling, and grey. It remained that way for most of our time there. Life went on as usual, the Grand Canal was busy with boat and gondola traffic. However, we did have one incredibly sunny, clear, and warm day. That is when the other side of Venice showed its face, too.

With the weather perfect, we headed up the bell tower of San Giorgio Maggiore, designed by Andrea Palladio and begun in 1566. From here there is a 360-degree view of Venice, the surrounding islands, and the snowcapped Dolomites off in the distance. Every time the elevator opened at the top of the bell tower, the gasps of delight, each with their particular accent, from the exiting tourists were always the same~ 

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh~”

“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh~”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh~”

 When you are walking the streets of Venice the city seems an unending twist of rabbit runs, an enormous wild warren of shops, ristoranti, leaning towers, museums, and piazzas. From above, the warren is revealed as a small and finite “land,” contained, restrained, and threatened by its watery perimeter. Water is Venice’s master and it is only when viewed from above that one feels its crushing impact upon the city.

We did not stay in the bell tower long enough to hear the bells rings next to us. We descended and walked the adjacent boat landing, turning to face the tower as the bells struck twelve and noticing the moon still visible next to the tower. Venezia is magical even at high noon.

Italians seem to have gardens tucked away everywhere. When we are in Rome, we are notorious for stopping as a car exits a palazzo or an alley from behind a large wooden door. While the door is open, the gate light flashing, and the car slowly pulling out, we are usually bent over or standing on our toes to see past the car into the now revealed courtyard. Without fail, a lush green garden with statuary or a fountain, or both, is on display for a brief and shining moment. Sometimes the security guard will give you a dirty look, thinking you are plotting a way in, but after the car leaves and the door starts to close, you catch their eye and say, “Bel giardino—Beautiful garden.” They smile, nod their head, and are secretly proud that you took a moment to revel in what they protect. Italians appreciate beauty and the acknowledgement of that beauty.

The cloister on the grounds of San Giorgio had a sweet garden—tucked behind locked gates and iron-barred windows. As well-dressed Italians, seeming more like dignitaries than everyday employees, let themselves in and out of the gates, I was lucky enough to capture a glimpse of the cloister. As I took my photo, one of the “dignitaries” stopped, caught my eye, gave me a nod of approval that said “Yes, it is beautiful, isn’t it?”—allowing me to snap the photo before he continued on. 

The rest of the sunny day was spent much the same way…churches, buildings, towers, museums, hidden gardens as small as a window box, and an intimate lunch at Antica Locanda Montin.

There is never enough time to talk about everything one does in a day while visiting Italy, so I will end this post here knowing that there is always domani—tomorrow—to tell the rest.

The next posting will be about the restaurants in Venice and then we might move on to another town…maybe. 

Ciao e a presto~

Mark

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Clang, clang, clang went the trolley~

Standing on a platform waiting for a train in Rome can be a nerve wracking experience, especially when you are alone and don’t speak the language. When I first traveled to Viterbo, Italy in August 2005, I had to change trains in the outskirts of Rome in order to get to Viterbo. The hour wait seemed unending. I had been up for over 24 hours and I was a little anxious about meeting the Stefanis—the family that I would live with for an entire month.

Now, five years later I am still anxiously waiting with regards to the Stefanis. It was for a train back then, now it is for a book.

My manuscript “Beyond the Pasta: 28 Days of Recipes, Language, and Life with an Italian Family” is in the process of being submitted to publishers and literary agents. I am waiting for the “literary train” to arrive at the “publishing platform”—sadly, there is no timetable posted for this track.

Submitting a manuscript for approval is somewhat comparable to auditioning for a role in theatre. I stopped being an actor in college because the angst of having to wait for the casting notice to post after an audition stretched my patience to the end of my last nerve. In college theatre the wait was usually a week and that was too much for me. When it comes to publishing the wait can be up to two months—eight weeks. Ugh! You might just find me in the front yard, spinning in circles, while I try to survive this wait.

Time is culturally different for Americans and Italians. As Americans, we want everything now. We are young and impetuous—time is fleeting. For Italians, whose culture has been around for thousands of years, there is always tomorrow—domani. Time plods forward leaving room to savor life, because what doesn’t get done today—“Eh? C’è domani sempre—There is always tomorrow.”

While I wait and spin, my impatience losing the battle against Time, I am looking into ways to increase this blog’s profile in the blogoshere. Soon I will be adding podcasts. I am excited by that medium. Recently I have registered this blog with Twitter. You can add it to your Twitter following list by searching the user name “beyondthepasta.”

Things to look forward to in the near future:

-I was asked by  www.dishKarma.com to do an “Ultimate Meal” video for their blog. I have done the video and it should be posted on their site later this week. I’ll post here when the video is on dishKarma and you’ll be able to go to their site and check it out. 

-Podcasts. I hope to get the first one done this coming week, so look for that link. I am excited about bringing Italy, its food, people, and culture to podcast listeners in addition to the blog community.

-There is one more video with Nonna. That should be coming toward the end of February.

-And, last but not least, maybe by the end of this month there will be some encouraging news on the publishing front—whether it is an agent or a publisher. Buona Fortuna!

This past weekend has been all about Italian food here in the Deep South:

-Friday night I went over to some friends’ house where we ate pasta with black truffles, butter, and cheese. The Guests of Honor at the party are going to Rome, Florence, and Venice in late March and we provided them with as much knowledge of sights, restaurants, and transportation as we could—especially after lots of wine and two bottles of port. Oddio!

-Saturday’s lunch was at a friend’s house…she is Italian and is from Rome. Her fresh pasta was made with her hen’s eggs. There is nothing more beautiful than the orange yolks of a fresh egg—or the deep golden yellow of pasta made with them. The pasta was served with three different sauces: (1) pancetta, parmesan, peas, and onions, (2) pancetta and onion, (3) eggplant, ricotta cheese in a tomato sauce. Buonissime!  She also made chicken cooked with rosemary, wine, and cream and, for dessert, a large serving platter of tiramisu—which also used her hen’s fresh eggs.

-Sunday, in keeping the weekend all about Italia, I made fettuccine alla puttanesca (whore’s pasta) and involtini. The pasta sauce is tomatoes, capers, black olives, anchovies, garlic, and parsley. Involtini are meat rolls...thinly sliced pieces of sirloin rolled around a mixture of carrots, onions, arugula, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. They were cooked in a garlic, tomato sauce.

Everywhere I went this weekend was perfumed with the heavenly scent of Italian food and standing outside the front door of Saturday’s lunch reminded me of standing in Nonna’s kitchen in Viterbo—buono profumo!

Ciao e a presto~

Mark

(*) The photo is of the clock tower in Montepulciano in Tuscany. The tower is topped with the Commedie dell’arte character Pulcinella—a character that is famous for being mean and crafty, often beating people to get his point across. Interesting that here he is beating time. If only I could do the same.

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Nonna cooks Pollo con Limone~

Recently, I received an e-mail from Alessandra filling me in on all the happenings back in Viterbo. I mailed the Feb House Beautiful with the article on our house (http://www.mark-leslie.net/2010-starts-with-a-bang) to them back in early January and, when I hadn’t heard from them, I sent an e-mail making sure that they had received the magazine.

Of course, they received it and loved the house and article. Alessandra had to translate the interview for Nonna and Lillo, who don’t speak English. Alessandra also reminded me that I hadn’t spoken to them since our visit in November… “Marco, sei un molto cattivo ragazzo—Mark, you are a naughty, naughty boy.” That is how Alessandra scolds me when I fall short of expectations. We both laugh and laugh when she says this, as if I have been caught sneaking a cookie out of the jar.

There are times when I miss being with the Stefanis—their humor, laughter, and good-nature. The video shows how much fun we have together. The first lesson I posted (http://www.mark-leslie.net/lesson-number-1) showed Nonna making the cabbage risotto that was served as the first course before she served the Chicken with Lemon.

In this video clip, she is telling me how she prepared the chicken:

            -Roast the chicken pieces in oil (sunflower oil). Nonna cuts her chicken into small pieces (2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 wings, and each breast half into 2 pieces— for a grand total of 10 pieces).

            -Add salt.

            -Add white wine and cook until it is almost evaporated.

            -Add water and cook until it evaporates.

            -Add fresh sage.

            -Finish the dish with the juice of 1 lemon, a teaspoon of raw sugar, pinch of salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

Nonna reminds me that she did not teach me this recipe when I lived with them in 2005, which is true. This was a new one for me. She said it is a recipe from her old house and the name of the dish is “Pollo con salsa piconnoti.” Now, I will admit that I did not understand the last name she said. It sounds like “piconnoti” but it could have been “biconnoti” as well—or some other variation. When I was living with them, I always had Nonna spell out every recipe title for me. I should have done that here, too. She and Lillo got into a discussion of what the name means and, sadly, I can’t understand what they were talking about. Remember, I only speak like a 2-year-old, so plenty still escapes me in everyday conversation.

Lillo and I go on to have a laugh about me having a restaurant with Nonna’s recipes and then we joke about me making a film of her cooking.

As I said earlier, they are great fun and I miss them. I hope you enjoy hearing what life is like when you are a student in a full emersion program (*). At times, it can be daunting, but being served wine with every meal certainly helps take the edge off!

Buon appetito!

Mark

(*) Here is the link to the full immersion program that I enrolled in: http://www.dantealighieri.com/italian_language_school_viterbo.html

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Zu, Zu, Zu~

“Scusi, Senore.”

“Si?”

“Una domanda. Conosce il ristorante Cantina Do Mori ?”

“Mmmm, no. Ha l’indirizzo?”

“Si, si, si.”

Asking for directions in Italian can be a daunting task. It requires you to remember the words for “left”  “right”  “around the corner”  “across”  “in front of”  “the next block.” Of course, in Italy each of those words comes with a hundred hand gestures and gesticulations. 

In Venice, asking for directions is even more complicated, because sometimes the “streets” only run the length of a building before taking a jog to the left or right and changing names. I have yet to find a map of Venice with every street name on it. Of course, that assumes that every street has a name—at times, I wonder.

Venice is a life-size, living labyrinth—an urban maze created by buildings and canals instead of the hedge mazes that were popular Renaissance garden follies. Envision the garden labyrinth in the movie “The Shining.” In Venice, you get the feeling that Jack Nicholson could round the corner with an axe at any moment—

“Heeeerrrreeee’s Johnny!”

WHACK!

For the past three or fours years, Richard and I have started taking along a list of restaurants from the back of Biba Caggiano’s Trattoria cookbook (http://www.mark-leslie.net/biba-restaurant-premier-italian-restaurant-sa). We have never been disappointed by any of the restaurants she has listed. Usually, it has been very easy to find the restaurants for whatever town we are in. During past pre-trip preparations, I would diligently search out each location, bookmark them, print maps and menus for every choice. Inevitably, we never used them because we would end up passing by them during the course of our daily sightseeing excursions. So this time for Venice, I decided not to bother with pre-printed maps or the research—it had been easy enough with just the name and the address. The list for Venice was not so easy. Biba’s information was correct, but trying to find the named streets in Venice was an entirely different ball of wax.   

When I would stop a Venetian and ask, “Una domanda, per favore. Conosce il ristorante Cantina Do Mori?” (“A question, please. Do you know the restaurant Cantina Do Mori?”), the Italian response was always the same—“Mmmm, no. Do you have the address?” I would pull out my map and together, as if trying to plot the invasion of Normandy, we would all try, first, to find where we were on the map and, second, to find the area where the restaurant might be.

Inevitably, the directions were always the same… “Va a destra qui, poi va a sinistra qua, poi gira La, e poi zu, zu, zu, zu, zu.” (“You go right here, you go left here, then turn there, and then zu, zu, zu, zu, zu.”)

The “zu, zu, zu, zu, zu” part involved the Venetian making a series of left/right hand gestures. The gesturing back and forth with the sound “zu, zu, zu” reminded me of how you might describe to how you saw a rabbit running for its life through the backyard while your dog chased it. The rabbit cuts left “zu”, then right “zu”, then farther right “zu”, back left “zu”, around in a circle “zuuuuuu”, left “zu”, right “zu”, left “zu”, right “zu”, and disappears into the high weeds “ZU”—the rabbit hole never to be found. That is how one gets directions in Venice. When finished describing how you, the dog, must go, everyone locks eyes, shrugs, and laughs—knowing full well that the directions are impossible to explain and impossible to understand.

“Buonasera.”

“Grazie, grazie. Buonasera, anche.”

“Buon fortuna.” (lots of laughter from everyone)

“Grazie!”

And off we would go into the Venetian night, waiting for the rabbit to lead us on the chase so we could go “zu, zu, zu, zu, zu!”

We never found Cantina Do Mori. We tried—and failed—three different evenings, each time canceling out a different section of the San Polo neighborhood. The piazza San Polo was where the rabbit hole was thought to be each time, but, once there, other Venetians indicated that the rabbit hole was “zu, zu, zu, zu” in another part of the neighborhood. Usually piazzas are the thriving heart of a neighborhood—crowded, brightly lit, shops, restaurants, and gelaterie bustling with action. The piazza San Polo was a ghost town—a huge, deserted, scaffolded, unlit, graffitied, lifeless square with no fountain, no people, and no gelato.

Each night when we entered, the only light, the only business, the only sign of live was on the far side of the piazza. We walked toward the light the first night—a pizzeria. It was not the restaurant we were looking for, so we went elsewhere. The second night, we avoided it all together and continued our “zu, zu, zu” in a different direction. The third night, disheartened by our failed attempts at trying to find Cantina Do Mori, we decided to go into this pizzeria.

There was a long line of people waiting to be seated—a good sign. Richard was concerned that the crowd was “too young” for the likes of us, the over 40 set, but he changed his tune when a 70-year-old-ish couple rounded the corner out of the dining room.  “Good, I am not the only OLD person here,” he said, as if being under 50 made him a geezer.

We waited about 20 minutes and were seated in the bustling dining room. This place was slammed—a mixture of college students, families, couples on dates, a middle-aged birthday party, and the old folks.

The pizzas were coming out of the ovens, slightly blackened, smoldering, and covered in toppings. We ordered water, wine, and our pizzas. Richard ordered a prosciutto, mushroom and had arugula added to it. This is actually a very classic pizza in Italy. I went out on a limb and ordered the pizza with tuna and arugula. I had never had a pizza with tuna on it before and I thought I’d see what I got.

In Italy, pizzas are thin, crunchy, slightly blackened crusts, topped with a little sauce, some squares of fresh buffalo mozzarella, and then your toppings. Some people might consider the crust burnt on some of the edges, but there is a difference between burnt and blackened. The Italians are experts at blackened…but only on some of the crust. It isn’t as if the entire edge is a burnt tree trunk after a California fire. None of it is like that.

My tuna and arugula pizza was incredible, BUONISSIMA! The tuna was canned tuna—yes, Italians eat a lot of canned tuna, packed in olive oil. The pizza’s sauce was slightly spicy, which Italians love to do with seafood, and it was piled high with fresh arugula, not cooked, that had been added to the pizza after it came out of the oven causing it to wilt slowly from the residual heat of the pizza. I really wasn’t expecting to like my pizza, but the combination seemed interesting and I always like to try something new. The canned tuna was not fishy tasting and with the slight spicy heat of the sauce combined with the peppery arugula—Wow! STUPEFACENTE! (http://www.mark-leslie.net/la-parola-del-giorno-the-word-of-the-day) I would order this pizza again in a hot minute.

Later, I discovered that the pizzeria we stumbled upon was a very popular and highly recommended place—Birraria La Corte (http://www.birrarialacorte.it/ENG/index.html). It was a beacon of great food in that abandoned, dark, barely breathing piazza, which upon first sight seemed to be only a last resort of a place to eat.

Venice is a city of hidden treasures and it has reminded me to never judge a book by its cover. Sometimes, the most unassuming things turn out to be the best surprises. Luckily, this time, the surprise wasn’t Nicholson with an axe!

Ciao e a presto~

Mark

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It’s all a ride~

My father was in the Navy when I was very young and for a couple of years he was stationed in San Diego, CA. While my father was away in the Pacific for months at a time, my mother was at home with my sister and me. I am sure that was a daunting task to have been 23 and home alone raising two children under three. 

When my aunt would come out to visit us, keeping my mother company, we would go to Disneyland. I can vividly recall riding the teacups, or sitting in Dumbo as he rose up and down as we twirled in a circle, or pulling down the brim of my Donald Duck hat and making it squeak as we plummeted down the rushing water of the Pirates of the Caribbean. But the ride that seemed to ground us back in reality and return us to our sugarcoated, picture perfect lives was “It’s a Small World.”

Why that ride and this blog entry, which is about Venice, are connected in my head at the moment is beyond me. I think it might be the vibrantly bright colors that I associate with those singing peoples of the world and the colors bursting from the shop windows in Venice. It could also be that, like the ride where everything seems so small and compressed together, the streets of Venice feel more like sidewalks bordered in shops than actual thoroughfares where traffic blurs the window displays. In Venice, if you are not in a boat, then you are on foot walking everywhere. There are no bicycles, motorcycles, or mopeds. You either float along, like the Disney ride, past the brightly colored buildings and people, or you are walking through tight and narrow streets crowded full of people who “float” you by the displays of masks, trinkets, and restaurants.

Displaying how fresh and beautiful your food is happens to be what the Venetians do. Window after window, restaurant after restaurant, bar countertop after bar countertop had food displayed on it. Sometimes raw, sometimes cooked, it is always there for your viewing.

It is midnight, as I sit here finally eating my first meal since lunch earlier today—after a very long day at the theatre where I listened to beautiful singing, in a foreign tongue, by 80 people dressed in a wide array of clothes. Now if I was just sitting in a boat and wearing my Donald Duck hat…

I am looking down at my blandly cooked chicken over romaine lettuce that I quickly threw together and thinking of all the beautiful food I saw and ate in Venice. How I would kill for some calamari, prawns, sea bass, or cooked octopus right about now. I need some vibrant color--that is what I really need.

It might be a small world, but tonight my dinner plate and the plates I experienced in Venice are worlds apart.

Ciao e a presto~

Mark

**Enjoy the photos of some of the food sights of Venice.

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“Venezia, Venezia…Chi non ti vede non ti prezia”~

What can I say about Venice that hasn’t already been said over the centuries by people more brilliant than I? Nothing.

The above quote is from Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost and translated in the play it means, “Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not.” Shakespeare obviously loved Italy and Venice. He set many of his plays in Italy’s Veneto region…Verona, Venice, Padova (Padua as it is called in The Taming of the Shrew).

I was excited about finally traveling to Venice—Venezia. It had been on our list of cities to visit in Italy for years, but we held off until this past November. Part of the decision had to do with economics. Venezia è una molto cara città—Venice is a very expensive city, which is why we decided to travel there off-season. Hotels are a lot more affordable—not necessarily cheap—during the off-season. We stayed at the Hotel Paganelli (http://www.hotelpaganelli.com/hotel-venice/chisiamo.php?szLang=en) and had a room overlooking the lagoon—where the Grand Canal connects to the Lagoon. It was a perfect location.

Several Italians friends in Montgomery were thrilled to know that we were going to Venice in November. “The light on the city is so beautiful that time of year. The light is more gray and does wonderful things with the marble. It is much more magical in November than in summer.” I believed them. Venice is notoriously hot, crowded, and displeasingly aromatic during Summer’s high tourist season. I am glad that we were able to avoid the sweltering throngs and go in November.

When we arrived on that Friday morning, it was chilly and rainy in Venice. Gray light, indeed! Arriving into Venice is like no other place in Italy…the train pulls into the station and you are almost immediately at the water’s edge waiting for a valporetto—a water taxi—to take you to your destination along Venice’s canals of “streets.” There is nothing glamorous about the valporetto. It is an inexpensive way for the masses in Venice to get from point A to point B. In a sense, it is Venice’s “on water” subway system. There are private taxis for hire, but those boats can be expensive and, sometimes, just as unglamorous.

Our room at the hotel had tasteful, golden fabric-covered walls, rich woodwork, and a nice marble bathroom. The room wasn’t terribly spacious, but we could fling our window wide open and, standing side-by-side, lean on the sill and gaze out over the lagoon. Directly across from us sat Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore and gondolas bounced with the waves in their moorings directly in front of our hotel.

There is something magical about this city and, as the title of this entry points out, there seems to be two views, two perceptions, two atmospheres of Venice. Even in the mist of the afternoon’s overcast sky there was a richness about Venice. It was a friendly elegance. Sophisticated, but elegant. At night, walking through the narrow, twisting, rat-maze-like streets one could imagine the masked and cloaked figures of the Carnevale turning the corner and making you gasp, only to disappear into the misty, yellowed streetlight night. Here, Venice was mysterious, ominous, and disorienting.

I will write more about Venice, its people, and its food over the next several posts. Enjoy the photos and maybe put on some opera—Don Giovanni—to get into the masked and cloaked mood!

Ciao e a presto~

Mark

(**The photos: Statue is in the courtyard of the Doge's Palace, view from the Hotel Paganelli, and San Giorgio Maggiore at night.)

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