Travel Experiences in Italy & the journey toward publication of my first book: "Beyond the Pasta: Recipes, Language, & Life with an Italian Family" by Mark Donovan Leslie
Mark Leslie works in professional theatre as a stage manager and is a member of Actors’ Equity Association. Currently he is busy submitting his manuscript to literary agents and publishers.
Every year, Mark vacations in Italy and lives to eat his way through every plate of pasta and cone of gelato placed before him. In 2005, he had the good fortune to live for a month in Viterbo, Italy with the Stefani family. There he took cooking lessons from Nonna, the grandmother of the family, and Italian language lessons from Alessandra, the mother.
That experience is the basis of his working manuscript entitled "Beyond the Pasta: Recipes, Language, & Life with an Italian Family." Currently, the manuscript is being queried to agents in search of literary representation.
THEATRICAL CREDITS: Mark is working on his second production for Opera Birmingham on their production of LE NOZZE DI FIGARO and his first with this season's production of Verdi's AIDA. Last September, he stage managed CABARET at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina in Hilton Head, SC. He also worked at the Arts Center in 2005 on its production of Evita in 2005. This past summer, he worked in Minnesota on Great River Shakespeare Festival’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Over the past 22 years, Mark’s regional theatre credits include: Denver Center Theatre Company (White Christmas, Noises Off, and a new adaption of The Unsinkable Molly Brown directed by Kathleen Marshall and authored by Dick Scanlon), Alabama Shakespeare Festival (resident stage manager on over 65 productions), Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival (D. Boone by Marsha Norman), Arizona Theatre Company (Amadeus, Loot, and Ain’t Misbehavin’ directed by Arthur Faria), and Maine State Music Theatre (Phantom, South Pacific, Jesus Christ Superstar, La Cages Aux Folles, and the world premiere of Chamberlain).
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.
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.
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.
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!
“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!
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.
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.)
The New Year has started and we are all in a deep freeze. It is time to warm up with a little video of Nonna.
To bring everyone up to speed: Nonna is the grandmother of the family that I lived with in Viterbo, Italy, in 2005 through a university program in Siena (http://www.dantealighieri.com/italian_language_school_viterbo.html). She is the reason why I have written my book (BEYOND THE PASTA: 28 Days of Recipes, Language, and Life with an Italian Family) and I hope it will be published so, at the very least, I can give her a copy. I really do enjoy cooking with her and I am crazy about the entire family.
The video is not very long, nor is it a full cooking lesson. It is a brief clip of Nonna explaining how she was preparing Riso con Cavolo—Rice with Cabbage. Both of us were a little preoccupied while I was shooting this. Nonna’s great-granddaughter was sitting in her highchair at the table, which had been set for lunch. Lillo, Nonna’s son-in-law, had pushed the highchair into the table because he thought we were about to sit down, but then he went upstairs to get something, and I started shooting the video. During the clip you will hear Thais, the baby, in the background and then you will see why we should always keep an eye on her.
Yikes! Thais waving around a steak knive—MAMMA MIA! We had no clue that Lillo had pushed her close enough to the table to be able to lean forward and grab a knive. Luckily, she didn’t hurt herself and Nonna noticed her quickly.
I hope you enjoyed seeing a glimpse of what my life was like with the Stefanis for the month of August in 2005. It should be easy to understand what Nonna was saying, even if you don’t understand Italian. There was nothing pretentious about my lessons and I really got to live a truly Italian life. Bellissimo!
Two more videos of Nonna are coming soon and I will intersperse them with the days of our most recent trip to Italy. Venice is the next city we visited and I can’t wait to share it with you.
Having worked at a theatre specializing in Shakespeare for over 20 years, it is no surprise that the first thing that comes to my mind when hearing “Verona” is the tragic tale of Romeo and Juliet. I know—predictable. Luckily, it was one of the last things we concerned ourselves with when we went there. Tragic love might be the most famous thing about Verona to the English-speaking world, but it is hardly the main reason to visit this ancient Italian city. Verona is an ancient town. It has a Roman arena that dates back to AD 30 which is still being used today for opera performances (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Arena).
With our brains swimming with images of hidden statuary, garden mazes, and sweeping views we headed over the Adige River by way of the Ponte Nuovo (New Bridge) and worked our way through the crooked streets toward the bell tower—Torre dei Lamberti.
One of the things I love most about Italy is the ability to climb ancient structures and towers. The climb up the 276-foot Torre dei Lamberti was a bit exhausting, but worth it. At the top, it provided a 360-degree view of Verona and an unexpected encounter with a very enthusiastic Croatian girl.
The tower’s belfry is split in two with the larger of the two bells being hung above the smaller and being reached by a separate staircase that continued up past the small bell to the top of the belfry. We had gone all the way up to the larger bell before making our way back down to the lower part of the belfry to kill time until the bells would strike 1:30 p.m. Regardless of where we are on vacation, Richard loves to stop everything to listen to bells ring, and we were only 10 minutes from having the bell next to us strike—we had to stay until he could experience the “strike” up close and personal.
“Hello. Do you speak English? Can you take our picture? I am from Croatia. Are you on vacation also? I am with my friends and my husband. We were married last month. This is our honeymoon. I am scared being up so high…”
“Smile,” I said, as this young, Croatian girl huddled next to her girlfriend against the belfry railing. “Say “cheese.” “Cheese!”
“Thank you for taking our picture. Have you been to Italy before? This is my first time in Verona. We have been to Germany and to Venice and we are going to Rome and to Florence. We are making a big trip. 3 weeks.”
She was tall, dark-headed, slim, and very pretty. She introduced herself, although for the life of me, I can’t remember her name. She had the energy and personality of a cheerleader or a sorority girl—better yet, a bow-headed Southern sorority cheerleader! I am sure she was in her mid 20s, but she was so bubbly that she seemed 16. We could hardly get a word in edgewise, because she rarely came up for air in her excited barrage of questions.
Her friends laughed as they headed up the stairs to the belfry’s second level to see the larger bell. They called to her to come join them, but she only took a couple of steps before stopping to continue her conversation with us.
“I hope my English is good. Have you ever been to Croatia? When you come, you will stay with us. We will show you around our beautiful town and country. Why have you never been to Croatia? You should come…” she said, as she finally stepped far enough away from us to take the stairs up to join her friends.
Richard and I laughed. She was a lot of fun. We imagined what her wedding night must have been like—with her never shutting up.
“BONG!”
The moment we had been waiting for: however, only the largest bell on the level above us struck, and when it did, our Croatian friend must have been standing right next to it—because she let out a shriek that could have been heard back in her homeland. Well, the bell might have caught her off guard, but her shrieking sent Richard over the edge. The clock struck, the girl shrieked, and Richard whooped. He let out a huge laugh and, even though the bell only struck once, she kept shrieking—and he kept whooping. “SHRIEK!” “WHOOP!” “SHRIEK!” WHOOP!” Finally, his whoop turned into a sinister laugh. “AH-hahahhaahaha!” The tourists on the upper level were laughing at her, and the ones around us had Richard for their entertainment. Between the two of them, they were an unlikely, yet in sync, comedy team.
We giggled ourselves down the tower and headed into the now sun-drenched Piazza delle Erbe to grab some lunch, “al fresco,” at one of the many ristorante. We ordered “Papparadelle con funghi e zucchine”—wide, handmade pasta served with porcini mushrooms and zucchini. The piazza sits in the shadow of the bell tower and is ringed with frescoed buildings. Many of the frescoes have not been restored, so, at times, the piazza seems haunted by its fading, once vibrantly-colored images. Reaching out from the past are the shadowy memories of heroes, both fallen and victorious, facades of villas and palaces, and the flora and fauna of the surrounding countryside.
A bottle of wine later, we decided to wander Verona’s streets, the ancient city center, to get a sense of the "vibe" and stopping to do a little window-shopping. Many of the old buildings throughout the center remained frescoed and the churches were as varied as they were plentiful. What struck us most about Verona were the rather posh and sophisticated Veronese people themselves. Italians, as a general rule, tend to be well dressed, but the Veronese, as a general rule, seemed even more stylish than the norm. They seemed to elevate this ancient town from the status of “old” to the status of “richly antique.”
As afternoon turned to dusk and into early evening, we decided to stay late and eat dinner in Verona. Biba Caggiano, the Sacramento restaurateur, has a list of Italian ristorante in one of her cookbooks (http://www.amazon.com/Trattoria-Cooking-authentic-family-style-restaurants/dp/0025202529/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262155796&sr=1-6 ) and luckily for us, she listed Al Pigna in Verona—the only trattoria she listed in Verona. Restaurants in Italy usually don’t open for evening service until 7:30 p.m. and most Italians don’t arrive for dinner until 8:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. Since this was the case, we decided to take the plunge and find Verona’s most touristy attraction—Casa di Giulietta (Juliet’s House) to kill some time before dinner.
Tucked down a little side street, with its buildings’ walls graffitied with thousands of love notes addressed to Giulietta, there is no doubt that you are in the center of a tourist trap. This papered street ends in a little piazza where a bronze statue of Juliet stands for all to capture on film—and to also capture a quick feel. Yes, this statue of Juliet has been groped to the point that one of her breasts gets rubbed daily by enough hands that it is as shiny and untarnished as the day it was created. Her other breast, like the rest of the statue, is dark and tarnished. Poor Juliet. Not only did she lose her love and poison herself, but her right breast gets groped and photographed daily. There is a marble balcony off of a second story door that is supposedly the place where she first dreamed of her Romeo. The house, now turned museum, originally belonged to the dell Capello family—never to the Capulets. We decided not to take a tour of the house and its museum. Having killed enough time, we headed for Al Pigna.
Our waitress suggested that I try the asino—donkey—but I passed on the ass. The day before I had ordered smoked horse—puledra, which was very good, but I thought that tonight I should leave alone the barnyard animals that we consider inedible in our country. I started with roasted radicchio with brie, pine nuts, and raisins, while Richard had prosciutto served with Roquefort and fresh local honey. My entrée was Baccalà (salt-dried codfish that had been reconstituted in milk) served over polenta. This is a very classic dish from this region of Italy. Richard ordered the gnocchi with duck. Both were wonderful. I finished with the homemade tiramisu and Richard rounded out his meal with biscotti that he dipped into a dessert wine from the Fruigli region. Biba’s list has never failed us and tonight was no different. Brava Biba!
On the drive home, we passed a stretch of industrialized road that seemed to be populated with a lot of scantily dressed girls standing alone, each about 100 yards apart. Each time we passed one of these lovely ladies, Richard would scream out to me “Look Mark, LOOK! Oh my God, LOOK!” Poor thing, I don’t think he had ever seen someone employed in the world’s oldest profession. Come to think of it, I don’t think that I have either. But after seeing people of both sexes and all nationalities grab the shiny right breast and smile while a camera flashed—maybe a girl has to do what she can to attract a Romeo of her own.
Since my return from our Italian vacation at the beginning of November, I have been working for friends at their quite popular flower shop in Birmingham, Alabama (http://www.flowerbudsinc.com/). We have been decorating houses for Christmas—the first house was on November 15 and today was the last house. There is complete disbelief and seasonal horror at setting up an artificial tree on that first day of houses in November, but today there was something very joyful about hanging a fresh mixed pine and fir garland over the doorway of a large, lovely stone home out in the woods of rural, but developing, Alabama.
In Italy, the Christmas season does not seem to begin until December 1. Here, in America, we can barely get the jack-o-lanterns blown out and the vampires back into their coffins before we are decking the retail halls with boughs of holly. Thanksgiving, naturally, is not an Italian holiday and, except for the literal day, it barely seems a holiday in this country. There is a build up to Halloween and then the immediate shift to Christmas on November 1. I sometimes think that Thanksgiving is just a gluttonous trial run, a kickoff, to the impending holiday season—if you can gastronomically survive Turkey Day you are given the falsely satisfying notion that you’ll be able to survive the four-week onslaught of eggnog, cookies, and parties which culminate in a SECOND turkey with all the trimmings. I feel like loosening my belt again just thinking about it.
Our vacation to Italy this year was the first two weeks of November and last year’s vacation was the last two weeks. This year, the Italians were just starting to bring out the civic street decorations to hang as we were leaving (November 15). Last year, the last few days of November were when shops started converting their windows to Christmas displays and city crews were still in process of hanging street decorations. At the beginning of that late Nov. ‘08 vacation, the already hung snowflakes, bells, stars, and strings of colored lights in the streets remained unlit until the end of the month. We rounded the corner the evening of November 28 and the Christmas tree outside the Fendi shop on Via Corso, previously dark on other evening strolls, was lit—as were all of the street decorations throughout Rome. It seems that December 1 is the retail start of Christmas in Italy. Brava!
So, as I sit here listening to “Frosty the Snowman” on Sirius radio on a relatively chilly “wintery” night in the Deep South, I am paging through my red notebook of recipes that I cooked with Nonna. She gave me a recipe for Biscottini di Natale—Christmas Cookies—which are made with dark chocolate, almonds, hazelnuts, amaretto or limoncello, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and lard. Ha! I think Nonna has one-upped Paula Dean’s fascination with butter by using lard. I have not made this recipe yet, so I have not converted it from metric. Maybe I’ll do that this week since I am in the holiday spirit—and my holiday shopping is done. If I do, I’ll pass it on; however, while living with the family in Viterbo, we did make two “holiday” treats—Crostoli and Ciambelline con patate.
Crostoli are diamond-shaped pieces of dough made with white wine and grappa, which are then fried in oil and dusted with powdered sugar. Ciambelline con patate are yeast doughnuts made with potatoes, marsala wine or limoncello, and fried in oil. They are then rolled in sugar while still warm. Buonissimi!!
Sirius is now “walking in a winter wonderland,” so I think I’ll start planning which of these Italian desserts to "walk" to some parties this weekend. Now that my belt has been loosened, post Thanksgiving, how can fried potato doughnuts be that bad??—Mamma mia!
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