AUNTIE PASTA: Back of the Box

SARONNO, Italy - Even before the idea for this blog was fully developed, I knew I wanted the Auntie Pasta page to be about food, but not about recipes. But since then I have included some recipes on this blog, and in going through my collection of recipes the day, I found there were others that I would like to share with you as well.

What got me thinking about recipes was the review of the new summer cookbooks in the Sunday New York Times last week, including one that claims to teach you what your grandmother never taught you. Grandmothers seem to play an important part in the cooking lives of a lot of people, me for one.

My Grandmother was a very good cook but I never saw her open a cookbook, in fact I don’t think there were any cookbooks in her house. She just seemed to know what to do. She, like most women of her generation, had learned to cook by watching and doing what she was told when she was a kid growing up in Italy.

Preparing food was serious business in Italy at the turn of the 20th century, there wasn’t a lot of it and there was no messing around in the kitchen. She carried that philosophy with her to the New World, and when she told me to watch the pot of boiling snails on the stove and make sure none of them escaped, you’d better believe my five year old eyes were glued to that pot lid.

By the time I was given that responsibility I had eaten, and helped prepare all types of greens, tripe and snails, rabbit and venison, rolled meatballs, cut fresh pasta into strips of fettucine, chopped parsley and knew the difference between regular mint and the mintuccia that Aunt Mary sent from Italy. I was a cook in training and didn't know it.

Sometimes it was difficult not to start playing with the gooey mess that water and flour make before it becomes pasta dough, or pressing ground meat around my ten little fingers and playing an imaginary hamburger piano. It wouldn’t take much to keep me in line though; a look would usually do the trick. That was the culinary discipline part of my training.

As a young bride I would often call my mother and ask her for recipes. She was not a patient person and her instructions were short and to the point. Sometimes I would get recipes from my aunts, scribbled on scraps of paper with vague proportions and approximate instructions. They were my mentors, and even though I was young and had a lot to learn, they treated me as an equal, cooks talking to another cook.

In those days before Gourmet (unfortunately now defunct) and Food and Wine, before Julia Child made culinary history with her French Chef television series, and long, long before the advent of celebrity chefs, that is how we all learned to cook. A certain amount of knowledge was always assumed and the key points of a dish were often all you needed, i.e. clean and boil artichokes before you season them and put them in the oven to bake - a small, but crucial detail that results in being able to eat them rather than throw them away, as I did on my first solo flight into the wonderful world of artichokes.

I use quite a few recipes I find on the back of boxes of pasta and packages of things here in Italy but I’ve hesitated to include them in this blog because the instructions are often vague and the measurements approximate. But I’m wrong. You are cooks and if we speak cook to cook, I think it will work out. With that in mind, here is a Sicilian fish recipe that uses frozen codfish, but you can use any firm, white fish, fresh or frozen.

Fiori di Merluzzo di Capperi (Filets of Cod with Capers)

Defrost the fish. Chop a bunch of parsley and two garlic cloves. In a frying pan heat 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil and when it is barely hot, add half of the chopped parsley, garlic and the fish. Season with salt and pepper. When the fish filets have cooked on one side, turn them over. Add ½ glass of dry white wine and when it has evaporated add a can of chopped tomatoes. Let the fish and tomatoes cook for about 15 minutes and then add the remaining parsley and garlic, a pinch of dried oregano and two teaspoons of capers. Cook for an additional 5 minutes. The recipe suggests serving the fish with mashed or boiled potatoes but I prefer serving it over white rice.

Two suggestions: One, use capers that have been preserved in brine, not in salt; and I found that if you fry a sliced onion in the olive oil before you add the parsley, garlic and fish, it gives the dish another layer of flavor.

If you try this recipe I would appreciate knowing how it worked and what problems you had, if any. You can write to me at thisitalianlife@yahoo.com. Buon Appetito.

LIFE: Most Livable City in Italy? Really?

SARONNO, Italy - The Italians are mad. Il Sole 24 Ore, the country’s leading financial newspaper, recently published its annual list of the 100 most livable cities in Italy and their number one pick was Trieste. What a shock. Trieste sits on the border between Italy and Slovenia and is probably the least Italian city in all of Italy. Last year it was number five on the list and irate readers wanted to know how it managed to move up five slots in just one year. Actually what they wanted to know is why it was even considered in the first place.

Piazza Unita' D'Italia, Trieste

One reader, complaining about the editor’s choice, asked how it was possible for Trieste to be the most livable city in Italy when the Triestini have the highest percentage of suicides in all of Italy. And, wrote another reader, to add insult to injury, they don’t even speak Italian. They speak a variation of the Venetian dialect in the city and just one kilometer outside of the city they speak Slovene.

I can’t argue with that, but in all fairness Trieste is very nice. I was there once, a long time ago back in my travelin’ days. We took the train from Venice to Trieste on a whim. It’s about a two hour ride, and what I remember most was that the train was practically empty. Of course there was a war going on not too far away from there at the time but still, you wouldn’t think that would drop the tourism rate to zero.

Rotonda Panzera, Trieste

The city is elegant, the café’s are beautiful, especially those around the port, but truthfully I didn’t feel like I was in an Italian city. What was missing was that Italian frisson, that special, elusive something is that makes me so happy to get back to Italy after a weekend in Lugano, Switzerland. And I’m not saying that Lugano isn’t nice, it is, and they also speak Italian, maybe not better than but almost better than the Triestini. The truth is that in spite of its Roman heritage, Trieste wasn’t part of Italy until 1954. Up until then it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is where other readers thought it should have stayed.

Perhaps the readers of Il Sole didn’t realize the survey wasn’t the usual “best city to live in” kind of survey that measures school quality and parks, but rather a snapshot of the most eco-friendly city in Italy which only makes sense when you know that the survey was done in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment. What was measured was the quality of the air and the number of days the cities sustained acceptable pollution levels.

Arch of Ricardo, Roman Gate 33BC, Trieste

It's a wonder Milan is on the list at all but it somehow managed to jump nine points from last year’s list and come in fifth beating out Rome which was eighteenth on the list after having dropped five points. The majority of the top ten cities were in the central-northern part of Italy, except for Bari. Here’s the list:

1. Trieste
2. Florence
3. Parma
4. Trento
5. Milan
6. Venice
7. Reggio Emilia
8. Padova
9. Bari
10. Modena

Because of the number of angry emails the editors received they decided to print a small editorial that said that the end of the year classification is really just a pastime they print for the amusement of their readers. They know that every year the small towns walk away with all the high marks while the big cities like Milan, Rome and Turin, which are in a constant state of change and flux trying to better themselves, end up on the bottom of the list. It’s normal, they said. Look at the New York Times. When the Times editors tried to put together a list of their own, New York came out as the least happy city in America.

Fountain of Neptune, Trieste

That was as much a surprise to the New York editors as Il Sole's list was to the Italians. But if nothing else at least now I know why Italians shrug their shoulders so much.

AUNTIE PASTA: Artusi

SARONNO, Italy - The other day my favorite young Italian TV chef Mario Bacherini started talking about one of Italy’s culinary superheros, Pellegrino Artusi. Artusi wasn’t a chef, he was a silk merchant who didn’t have any connection with the food industry at all other than he loved to eat. He gained his superhero status by being the first to recognize that the everyday food Italian mamas and grandmas prepared for their families was one of Italy’s greatest treasures. After he retired from the silk business he spent several years traveling and collecting their vague cooking instructions and suggestions and turned them into recipes anyone could follow.

While Artusi's recipes are still a far cry from the detailed Gourmet and Food and Wine recipes that most of us know and love, he did a good enough job that even the most inexperienced of cooks can use his book. It’s called La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene. A translated version, The Art of Eating Well, is published by Random House.

Casa Artusi

At the time, the idea that home cooking was of any value, let alone national value, wasn’t particularly widespread and no publisher was interested in taking on the cookbook project. After many frustrating attempts to get the book published, in the end he published it himself.

What I love most about the book is the window it gives us into Italian life in the late 1800’s, which was about the time my grandparents immigrated to the United States. In reading his recipes I better understand what my Grandmother went though just to put a meal together.

One bit of advice I particularly liked was this: When you buy a wild duck at the market, pry open its beak to look at its tongue. If it’s quite dry, you know the animal’s not freshly killed, and then you should sniff it to be sure it doesn’t smell.

In this age of shrink wrapped skinless animal parts we sometimes forget where our food actually comes from. The day Bacherini was talking about Artusi he was chopping cocks combs into little bits for a classic Piedmontese dish and saying that if an animal has to die so we can live, the least we can do is not to waste any part of it. It made me think that he should see, or maybe he shouldn’t see, the reaction some of my visitors have had seeing whole prosciuttos hanging from racks at the delicatessen, or the skinned lamb heads and shiny pink pig’s feet in the display counter at my local butcher.

But Artusi’s book is not just about buying meat on the hoof, so to speak. Some of the cooking advice he doles out is just as valid today as it was back then. For example: if you want to make broth start cooking your meat in cold water and keep the water at the lowest simmer. If you want good boiled meat bring the water to a rolling boil and add the meat.

Cooking Demo at the Casa Artusi Cooking School

Artusi was born in Forlimpopoli, a small town in the province of Emilia Romagna and every summer the town hosts a Festa Artusiana. This year the festa will take place from 19 to 27 June. In addition to the cooking contests and the crowning of the best male and female cooks, the town’s restaurants will serve menus based on the 790 recipes found in Artusi book. While you are there visit the newly built Casa Artusi cultural center/food museum/restaurant/and cooking school. It sounds like a foodies dream to me.

For more information:
COMUNE DI FORLIMPOPOLI Ufficio Cultura Comune di Forlimpopoli tel. 0543/749234-5-6 e-mail:info@festartusiana.it • info@pellegrinoartusi.it CASA ARTUSI Tel.0543/743138 - cell 349/8401818 http://www.casartusi.it/ • info@casartusi.it http://www.festartusiana.it/, http://www.pellegrinoartusi.it/

AUNTIE PASTA: Chi Chi Cicheti

VENICE, Italy - One of the Venice’s best-kept secret are the homey little wine bars called bacari. For the most part, the rustic bars are hidden away in the warren of calli and alleys that run from posh Saint Marks’s square to the working class neighborhoods of Santa Croce and Castello. You can buy wine by the glass and snack on cicheti, the Venetian version of Spanish tapas or Chinese dim sum, and the Venetians have been doing just that since the days Venice ruled the seas. They are the culinary oases the locals head for when they get hungry.

Streets of Venice

Cicheti vary from bar to bar, and from season to season, and you buy them by the piece or portion. Tasty offerings may include tender braised baby octopus, fresh sardines, cleaned and stuffed with a savory filling, silvery anchovies that have been marinated in lemon juice, all culled that morning from just beyond the Venetian lagoon. In the spring and early summer, delicate zucchini flowers, still attached to miniature green zucchini, are transported across the bay from the vegetable farms on the island of San Erasmos. The zucchini, and their flowers are dipped in an air light batter and flash fried in hot oil. As the languid days of summer pass and the weather cools, white cannelloni beans, marinated with onions and olive oil, and lemony artichoke hearts may make an appearance. Spicy slices of tongue, savory strips of tripe, little meatballs, bits of cooked salami, purchased from the Rialto market vendors, may make it to the bacari counter as well.

Hungry Gondoliers

Cicheti are served at room temperature and each bacari owner prides himself on having at least one cicheto that he does better than anyone else. Al Portego is known for tuna cakes, Alla Vedova for peppery meatballs, and at Da Pino there are two seafood specialties; boiled cuttlefish eggs drizzled with olive oil and parsley, and whipped cod made creamy by the addition of olive oil and milk.

Cozy bacari

Most bacari are small and cozy. The tables are ricety, the marble floors old and worn, and over your heard you'll probably see battered wood beams that run across the ceiling. Locals stand at the bar, order a cichetto or two and an ombretta, a small glass of local wine, or a bicherino, a small glass of beer. After catching up on the latest gossip, they move on to another bacaro and start all over again. The custom of going from one bacaro to another is called un giro di ombre, and it is a long-standing Venetian pastime.

Salute!

Some bacari offer more substantial fare making them a favorite with the working crowd. The young gondoliers sitting next to me at Osteria al Diavolo l’Aquasanta, ordered the house specialty, a portion of boneless boiled calf’s head, which they devoured with gusto before heading back to another afternoon of transporting starry-eyed tourists through the watery Venetian streets.

Mmm, mmm good.

Venetian sailors may have picked up the cicheti habit while opening trade routes in the Middle East where the ritual of serving guests many dishes with each person eating a little from each, is part of an ancient Muslim custom of showing hospitality to strangers. Sinister minded historians suggest the custom was introduced in the courts of Constantinople (Istanbul) to prevent Ottoman potentates from being poisoned; others think it was simply a convenient way of sharing what the host had to offer. Either way, this centuries old tradition continues still in Venice.

Happy Barcari owner

Most bacari open around 9 AM and close around 8:30 PM or later if they also serve meals. It is a savory, satisfying and convivial way to enjoy lunch, especially for the gastronomically curious.

Expect to pay about one euro ($1.20) for most cichetti selections. An ombretto of local wine or a bicherino of beer, cost about the same. Most bacari close around 8:30, unless they serve meals. Look for signs that say Cicheti Venexiani, that means it’s the real deal.

AUNTIE PASTA: Zuccotto

SARONNO, Italy - I’ve been obsessed all week with the idea of making a zuccotto. I’ve got company coming for dinner next week and I thought it might be a good dessert to make since I can make it ahead of time and freeze it. I started looking for a recipe on Monday - and that’s when things got complicated.

Zuccotto with sponge cake

It seems there are as many variations of zuccotto as there are stars in the sky. Every town in Italy seems to have it’s own version. There’s the Tuscan zuccotto, the Sienese zuccotto, the Florentine zuccotto, the Neapolitan zuccotto, the chocolate zuccutto, cherry zuccotto, ricotta zuccotto, ice cream zuccotto, whipped cream zuccotto, zuccotto triffle and even baby zuccotto. There were so many recipes from so many people I was beginning to think I was the only person in the world who had never tackled this Italian speciality.

In non-technical, non-cookbook terms a zuccotto is a molded cake filled with both chocolate and vanilla filling. Now the cake part can be either cut up sponge cake or ladyfingers that have been brushed or dipped, depending on the recipe, in a variety of liqueurs or flavorings. The cake part is used to line a dome like bowl or mold which is then filled with…. and here you have your choice of ingredients. Then the whole business is put into the freezer for at least 3 hours, unmolded upside down on a plate and decorated – or maybe not.

While the word zucca actually means pumpkin in Italian, it is used in other ways as well. For example you might call someone a zuccone or pumpkinhead if you though they were not particularly bright. But in the case of this cake the name probably comes from it's resemblance to the domed, metal helmets 15th century soldiers wore to protect their heads (zucca) when they went into battle. Or the name may have come from the skull cap priests wear to cover their “zucca”. Both sound reasonable and very Italian. It all made sense and I was happy until I came across some recipes for Sicilian Cassata that sounded very much like the recipes for zuccotto.

Sicilian Cassata

From the recipes it seems cassata and zuccotto are very similar in construction and ingredients. Two major differences are a cassata isn't shaped in the form of a dome, which zuccotto is, and secondly it is covered with marzipan and heavily decorated, which zuccotto is not. But I must resist the temptation to digress as the ingredients for zuccotto are on the kitchen table waiting for me.

Here is the zuccotto recipe I used. It’s a compilation of the many recipes I found on the internet.

Zuccotto
Line a bowl (approx. 9-inches wide by 4-1/2 -inches deep) with plastic wrap. Allow several inches of the wrap to hang over the sides of the bowl.Lightly brush each of the ladyfingers with liqueur (I used rum because I had some in the house) as you add them to the bowl, placing them sugared side outwards. Fill the bottom and any gaps with liqueur-soaked trimmings so that the lining is completely solid. The tops of the ladyfingers should be even with the rim of the bowl. Chill for 30 minutes.

I used whipped cream for the filling, it seemed the easiest choice. I whipped one pint of cream with some powdered sugar and vanilla and divided it into two bowls. In one bowl I added candied citron and bits of shaved chocolate. In the second bowl of whipped cream I added cocoa powder (bitter) and chopped pistachios. It looked disgusting. I put the whipped cream with citron and chocolate bits in the bowl first, then I put the chocolate whipped cream on top of it. I closed the plastic wrap around it, put it in the freezer and crossed my fingers.

Three hours later I took it out of the freezer and unmolded it on a serving dish. The minute I did I knew I was in trouble. The cake part, because it had been soaked in rum, was still mushy. It makes sense: alcohol does not freeze. I let it sit out for about half an hour, technically it is a semi-freddo, and then because I was dying of curiosity I cut a wedge and put it on a plate.

Zuccotto with cherries

It looked okay but the first bite of the crust confirmed my worst fear. The taste of alcohol was overpowering. I should have brushed the ladyfingers with rum, not soaked them. Then I tasted the filling. That was actually better than I expected and when I put the two together, the rummy cake and the filling, it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but….it wasn’t really bad.

I don’t know if I’ll make it again next week for my guests, but if I do I think I’ll try the sponge cake instead of the ladyfingers, and most certainly I will use a lot less rum. If any of you have ever made zuccotto, your suggestions to better zuccotto making would be greatly appreciated.

LIFE: By the Sea Side, By the Beautiful Sea

GENOA, Italy – This is the weekend of the Garibaldi Tall Ships Regatta 2010. It’s the kickoff event for Italy’s 150th anniversary (in 2011) as a united country.

When the ships set sail today out of Genoa for Trapani in Sicily, they will follow the historic sea route Giuseppe Garibaldi and his 1,000 Red Shirts took back in May 1860. Regardless of your politics, the journey and its political consequences was a turning point in Italian history, the beginning of a new and different Italy, a unified Italy.

The tall masted sailing ships that are taking part in this year’s Regatta will be open for on-board visits. That’s always a lot of fun. The sailors are adorable, eager to please and even more eager to try out their English on visitors, especially American visitors. 

This is just another one of those times I wish I still lived in Genoa. How anyone who grew up in land locked New York State could develop such a bond to the sea a mystery to me, but it happened. I can’t even be cool about it as a spontaneous and melancholy ohhh always slips from my lips at any mention of Genoa, or Liguria.

It was on a tall masted Italian ship one balmy summer night that I first had my hand kissed by a handsome Italian naval officer. It was a magical moment in a magical setting with the Mediterranean Sea spread out before us and the stars twinkling high above. He smiled, bowed from the waist and said "buona sera Signora." Then he took my hand and brought it up to his lips.

I say kissed, but it wasn’t actually a kiss, it was more of a close encounter. Apparently hand kissing protocol requires that the gentlemen’s lips never actually touch the lady’s hand. It would make a better story if I had been on that ship alone, but truth be known I was part of a group, the American Women’s Club of Genoa. Most of the ladies of the Club were married to men with juice in Genoa so we were always invited to the big events; it was one of the perks of belonging to the Club.

The ship we were on was beautiful, much like the Italia, one of the ships in the Regatta. The Italia is owned by the Yacht Club Italiano and it is the largest brigantine sail ship in the world. It was built in 1993 using an historic 19th century design which produces an incredibly agile and fast ship with excellent maneuverability. 

The Brigantine design is so good that the ship soon became a favorite with pirates. It's hard to imagine now as you look out over the peaceful Mediterranean Sea, but during period between 1519 and 1780 Barbary Cosairs prowled the waters of the Mediterranean in search of ships coming back from the New World, their holds filled with silver and gold and other treasures the pirates wanted to get their hands on. 

Another Italian ship in the Regatta is the schooner Oloferne. The Oloferne was built in Messina (Sicily) in 1944 and did service as a cargo vessel carrying different kinds of goods between Sicily and the small isles of the south Tyrrhenian Sea.

In 1967 she was transformed in a gaff schooner yacht, sailing between the Ligurian and Aegean seas. With a very narrow hull and shallow draft, the Schooner also has all the features the pirates that sailed the North American Coast and the Caribbean had on their wish list. A 100 ton schooner can be loaded with eight cannons, 75 pirates and four swivel guns, make up to 11 knots in a good wind and be small enough to navigate shoal waters and hide in remove coves. Who could ask for anything more.

It is always a party when the tall ships are in town. Genoa comes alive with music and entertainment, sailors in summer whites parade up and down Via XX Settembre, other groups in medieval costumes carry tall banners through the streets of the historic center. At night there are firework displays down in the Old Port. Food and wine will flow, the Italian Navy Band will play, the kids will eat focaccia and oooo and ahhhh at the model ship exhibit at the Galata Museo del Mare. the sea museum, and a good time will be had by all.

The event is organized by the Sail Training Association-Italia, a non-profit association founded in 1996 by the Italian Navy and the Italian Yacht Club. http://www.garibalditallships.com/
Photos courtesy of Sandro Bagno, Garibaldi Tall Ships

LIFE: Snap Shot

SARONNO, Italy - On Tuesday Tatiana brought me a copy of the catalog for an exhibit of photographs by Uliano Lucas that will be featured in a gallery in Bari starting next week. Uliano Lucus is her father. He's a well known Italian photojournalist and the collection of black and white photos in the exhibit are some of the photos he has taken in Puglia over the past 30 years.

We have that connection, Tatiana and I. She knows I love photographs, especially black and white photographs, and the first time she came to my apartment she was delighted to see photographs hanging on my walls.

“Just like in the movies,” she said. 

Italians watch so many American movies their brains are full of American images they have never seen in person. So when they come face to face with the real deal, there is a flash of recognition. 

Italians don’t hang photographs on their walls, not unless they are photographs of their wedding or their children. Even then those photographs are usually confined to the hallways or entryways of their apartments. They prefer paintings. Landscapes are good but portraits of relatives are better. And the more the merrier. Of everything. 

The first time I saw this apartment the previous tenants were still living here. There was so much big heavy furniture and so many paintings and family portraits hanging on the walls that I didn’t even realize the woodwork and doors were painted lavender, and as for the second bathroom, well I discovered that after I moved in.

For the Italians my decorating style is a bit too sparse. Too minimalistic. And horrors of horrors, I don’t have drapes on my living room or dining room windows, or on any windows for that matter. I don’t even pull the tapperelle down at night. Don’t I know the gypsies are watching and waiting for just the right moment to scale the building and rob me? Apparently not. 

Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini spent a few years in Washington, DC and writes about his experiences in a book called ‘An Italian in America’. He talks about not being able to relax in the living room of his rented house in Georgetown because there were no tapperelle to pull down. Actually there were no blinds or shutters even worthy of the name, and the curtains, sheer and gossamer, were only there for decoration. People could actually walk by, look in the windows and see him sitting on the sofa watching TV. 

Roba da matti, as they say. It’s just crazy. Not that he ever saw anyone actually looking in his windows but, well you know, it’s the idea of the thing. And as for being able to sleep without the total black out and prison-like atmosphere those vertical slats of the tapperelle covering the windows provides, well he never did adjust. 

There are always adjustments to be made when you live in a foreign country, don’t get me started on that one, but truth be known after twenty years my list is shrinking. However, I had to promise Tatiana that her father’s photographs would not end up on my walls, torn from the catalog and hung in some springtime redecorating frenzy.

Lucas' Puglia photographs are particularly interesting to me. I’ve only been to Puglia once, to Bari and Lecce, and I loved everything about it. Maybe because I had such a different idea of what I would find. One of my first Italian teachers was from Bari and she always talked about the city as if it was a mile and half from hell. For years I carried around the idea that Bari was dirty and dangerous, a place to avoid at all costs. And then I went there to work on a project for the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It was nothing at all like the city she described. And as for Lecce, what I found was a city of extraordinary architecture and beauty that completely blew me away. 

Looking at the photographs in Uliano Lucas' catalog brought back those memories, and while it will be difficult not frame them, a promise is a promise. And I promised.

Photos: (1) Catalog cover; (2,3) A couple of photos I especially like from the catalog.

AUNTIE PASTA - Festa Siciliana

SARONNO, ITALY - There was a Sicilian festa in Saronno last weekend. For some reason I never seem to know when these special events are going to happen, although by the number of people who were in town that day, it was obvious I was in the minority. It was just by chance that I went into the center to pick up a few things from the soap store and found the Via Roma lined with colorful stands selling everything Sicilian from bread and olive oil to wine, arancine and oranges to brightly painted ceramics and Sicilian puppets.

At the beginning of Via Roma, up near the pink church of San Francesco, a bandstand had been set up and a group of young kids were singing their little hearts out. It’s moments like these, when I find myself unexpectedly caught up in the essence of this Italian life, that I am the happiest. 

It was obvious that the delight I felt turning the corner and finding Sicily was being felt by everyone on the street. There is no denying it, there really is something special about Sicily, something in the intensity of the colors that flash hot and cold against the blue sea, the blue sky and the green trees. Yellow lemons, blush tinged blood oranges, pale green prickly pears called fichi d’India, deep purple eggplant, passionately red tomatoes and chili peppers all play their part in the Sicilian kaleidoscope of flavors and love. Sapore and Amore. And it was not lost on the Saronnese. 

The crowd was at the bread stand. Stacked up on one side were the largest loaves of bread I had ever seen in my life. They were, without exaggeration, five feet long and two feet wide. I would have liked to have seen the oven they came out of. Next to the giants lay torpedo shaped regular size breads made with olives that had been schiacciato, or crushed, and stacked next to them were regular loaves of bread studded with whole green olives. 

I ended up buying two large hunks of the big bread and half a loaf of the whole olive bread. How could I not? They were still warm from the oven. When I got home I saw that the girl who waited on me had ripped off the crustier pointed end of the olive bread, giving me only the tender middle. That was nice of her. 

The arancine at the next stand caught my eye, but I resisted. Arancine and I go back a long way, back to the days when I was in Rome studying Italian and having a hard time adjusting to the rhythm of Roman life. The problem was by the time I got back to the center of Rome where I lived from the Via Nomentana where the language school was, the banks were closed. Dare I say it was before ATM’s were introduced to Italy? That wouldn’t happen for another ten years. As a result I was chronically short of money, which greatly affected my eating habits. Per fortuna there were a couple of bars in my neighborhood where I could pick up a panino or an arancine or two. 

Arancine are rice balls that are stuffed with meat, flavored with saffron, coated with a light, crispy batter and deep fried. The recipe for arancine, along with the art of deep frying food and pastries, was brought to Sicily in the tenth century by the Arabs when the Kalbid ruled the island. Their Italian name comes from the word for orange - arancia, which are typical of western Sicily. The ones I saw yesterday were conical, which indicates they were made by people from eastern Sicily, specifically from the area around Catania. 

I walked down a little further and found a stand selling olives. There were cracked green olives with flecks of hot red pepper, whole green olives, shriveled up black olives shiny with oil and regular black olives. Above the stand the owner had hung half a dozen or so Sicilian puppets. I’m not sure if they were for sale or just decoration.

Another stand was selling Sicilian sweets. Lots of cannoli and honey and nut filled pastries called mustazzola, fried pastries called pignuccata and those delicate rice finger cookies known as zippuli were being sold next to mounds of pale cream colored torrone studded with almonds.

It was all so beautiful to see. For one mad moment I wanted to be Dorothy and start singing somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. After a week of heavy cloud cover and unseasonably cold weather it was as if the skies had opened up and a little piece of heaven had come down to give us gray soaked Northerners a little reminder of what wonderfulness lies less than an hour (by plane) south of us. Sicily.


Photos: (1) Ceramic plate with symbol of Sicily, the Trinacria; (2) stand loaves of bread about half the size as those I found in Saronno; (3) Arrancini; (4) tray of cannoli.

AUNTIE PASTA: The Besto Pesto

SARONNO, Italy - You won’t believe who won the last Pesto World Championship in Genoa. Out of a field of more than 100 chefs, most of whom were born in Liguria, a 25 year old Korean-American cook named Danny Bowien was crowned the winner. Danny works at San Francisco’s Farina Restaurant and his secret weapon was that the restaurant’s executive chef, Paolo Laboa, whose family is Genovese, taught him how to make pesto. Not just any pesto but the secret Laboa family pesto recipe that had been handed down from generation to generation of Laboa women, starting with the chef’s great-grandmother.

And now, as I write this, 100 chefs from around the world, professional and amateur, are polishing their marble mortar bowls getting ready to compete in the third Pesto World Championship that will be held in Genoa on March 20, 2010.

Competitors, young and old, will have 40 minutes to prepare their recipes, all using the same ingredients and the same technique, i.e. pounding the bejeebers out of it. Pounding is what pesto is all about. Even it's name comes from the Italian verb pestare, which means to pound, which perfectly describes the basic pesto making technique.

Since all the competitors are all using the same ingredients you’d think they would all come up with the same taste, but the truth is most pesto makers claim to have “secret” techniques, so technically no two cups of pesto are ever the same. And there is a difference. Some pestos do taste better than others. I always thought it was the oil and the quality of the cheese used, but if everyone is using the same ingredients, it must be some other kind of basil voodoo.

If you’re thinking what’s the big deal, how hard can it be to throw everything in the blender and press pulse, read on. Here’s the official competition recipe. 
 
World Cup Pesto Recipe

 4 bunches of fresh PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) Genovese basil
30 grams of pine nuts (2 tablespoons)
445-460 grams of Parmesan cheese,(a little less than 2 cups to – 2 full cups)
20-40 grams Fiore Sardo cheese (Pecorino Sardo) (4+ teaspoons – 3 tablespoons))
1-2 garlic cloves from Vassalico (Imperia)
10 grams coarse salt (Kosher salt) (2 teasp.)
60-80 cc PDO extra-virgin olive oil from the Italian Riviera (4.2 tablespoons– 5 1/2 tablespoons).

Preparation:Marble mortar and wooden pestle are the traditional tools used to make pesto.
Wash the basil leaves in cold water and dry them in a kitchen towel, but do not rub them.
In a mortar, finely crush the garlic cloves and pine nuts until they are smooth. Add a few grains of salt and the non-pressed basil leaves. Then pound the mixture using a light circular motion of the pestle against the sides of the mortar.

When a bright green liquid starts to ooze from the basil leaves, add the Parmesan cheese and the Fiore Sardinian cheese.

Pour in a thin layer of PDO extra-virgin olive oil from Liguria, which blends the ingredients without overpowering them.

Work as quickly as possible to avoid oxidation of the leaves.

It's best to use your pesto right away but you can keep it in the refrigerator for a few days if you float a little oil on top of it, or put it in the freezer. I freeze mine in small cups and just defrost what I’m going to use, and just as a by-the-way, it is better to let it defrost at room temperature than zap it in the microwave.

Photos: Courtesy of Associazione Palatifini www.pestochampionship.it