AUNTIE PASTA; Tiella di Gaeta

CHIAVARI, Italy - There may be a lot of things to see and do in Gaeta, but  the two main reasons for going there are the food and the beaches. Seeing that the town is equal distance from Naples and Rome, this little city on the sea is a major get-a-way destination for both of those metropolises.

 

Aragonese Castle in Gaeta  

Gaeta kicked off the summer season last weekend with a food fest that was really a love fest for the town’s most famous dish, the tiella. I’ve written about tiella before, that Auntie Pasta post was called Song of the South, (http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4191681270252851547#allposts), but that was the tiella from Bari. This is a whole ‘nuther thing.

So how can a tiella from Bari be different from a tiella from Gaeta? The secret to that little mystery is that “tiella” isn’t what you are eating, it’s what the thing you are eating has been cooked in. A tiella is a type of pot with a lid. It comes from the Latin word tegella, and it changes depending on where you are in Italy.

Tiella Fest

In Modena the original Latin tegella becomes tigella, in Puglia it’s tieed, in Lazio and Campagna it’s tiella and in Abruzzo it is tijella. The word has come to represent the things cooked in it, much like Americans say casserole,” which is actually a French word for saucepan. 

And not to go too far astray, just as the word changes from the original Latin, depending on the area you are in, what goes in the tiella changes as well. In some regions a tiella is a kind of focaccia, sometimes with a filling and sometimes without. In other areas it is complete meal that is layered in the pot, but without a crust.

Tiella, Tiella and More Tiella 

 

And then there is the Gaeta tiella, which isn’t like any of the above. In Gaeta, it not only has a crust, it has two of them, one on top and one on the bottom, like a pie except it isn’t filled with apples or cherries, but fish or vegetables.

 

There’s a humptydoodle story about the origin of Gaeta’s tiella that says it was invented by Ferdinand IV of the Spanish house of Bourbon. The Spanish House of Bourbon was a powerful royal dynasty that at one time or another ruled most of Europe. For that reason alone I find it hard to believe that good King Ferdinand put his lily white hands in the dough one day when he was out fishing with the natives, and made the first tiella. He just doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’s going to sit down and have a beer with you, let alone start messing around chopping fish and rolling out dough. 

Gaeta’s tiella is not hard to make if you are a cook. Because Gaeta is on the sea, the most popular fillings are octopus and squid, along with a few tomatoes to keep the filling moist. Other good fillings are fillings sardines, anchovies, escarole and cod as well as spinach, zucchini and onions. Not all at once, of course. The secret of a good tiella is to keep the filling soft but not soggy, the dough must be thin and well cooked and to use top quality ingredients, but you already know that.

  

Gaeta’s Tiella

500 grams of flour,

20 g of yeast,

3 tablespoons of olive oil,

200 ml of warm water,

1 kg of boiled octopus or squid,

50g capers,

100 g of Gaeta olives pitted,

100 g of peeled tomatoes,

parsley, pepper, salt

For the Crust

Combine warm water, yeast and oil in a small bowl.

Place flour and salt in a mixing bowl.
Stir in liquid mixture onto dry ingredients, mix well.
Knead by hand for 5 minutes on floured board.
Transfer dough into covered and oiled bowl.  Let rise in a warm, draft free place for 1-1 1/2 hours until doubled in size.

For the Filling

While the dough is rising, you can prepare the filling by chopping the boiled octopus or squid into small pieces and drizzling it with olive oil, parsley, pepper and tomatoes. Then add the pitted olives and capers, and mix.

When the dough has doubled in size, punch it down. Take half the dough and roll it out just as you would a pie crust, and layer it in a greased tiella pan (or deep dish pie pan). Add the filling, distribute it evenly, and cover with the second half of the dough. Then seal the edges of the two crusts together.

Let it sit (in a warm, draft free place) for about 45 minutes, then bake in a preheated 180°C oven for at least 30 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.

Let sit for about15 - 20 minutes before serving.

LIFE: All Roads Lead to Rome

CHIAVARI, Italy - Rome was the first city in Italy I ever lived in, and like a first love, it holds a special place in my heart. I was there to study Italian. Through the school I found a room to rent on the Via della Vite, near the Spanish Steps. The apartment was owned by an old woman named Niola, and her only other ‘tenant’ was a girl from Argentina who was also going to school in Rome.   

 

S[panish Steps

I don’t know what she was studying, or anything else about her as she didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Italian. But we got along ok, she didn’t take up space on my shelf of the refrigerator and I didn’t take up space on hers.

Every weekday morning I would take the bus from Piazza San Silvestro out to the school on the Via Nomentana and spend four grueling hours trying to get a grip on Italian grammar. It was torture trying to wrap my tongue around all the complicated verb forms, but thankfully, from one o'clock on, the day was my own and oh how I treasured it. 

Via Condotti 

I loved living in the center of Rome.  Every afternoon as the stores re-opened from their mid-day break, the narrow streets of my neighborhood, which included the famous Via Condotti, would slowly fill with people of every age, Romans and foreigners alike. I used to spend hours walking those streets, window shopping and dreaming of the day I would live in Italy forever.

It was great fun to look in the windows of the oo la la fancy shops on the Via Condotti, but more interesting were the small open air markets that seem to sprout up from one day to the next like giant mushrooms after a rain. I found them irresistible, especially the food markets.  Growing up in a country where most foods come pre-packaged and shrink-wrapped, I loved being able to buy three egg, six carrots or just one potato, if that was all that I wanted.  No one cared. It didn’t matter. Everyone shopped that way, and they still do.

Trevi Fountain 

On days that I didn’t have school, I would walk to the small outdoor market near the Trevi Fountain to do my weekly grocery shopping.  I would cross the Via del Tritone, go up Via del Stamperia, then turn and head toward the vendors. It was just at that point, near the corner bar, that I would be greeted by a Rudolph Valentino look alike who bow ever so slightly and say,  "Buon girorno, Contessa."  I'd stutter and stammer and finally come out with what I hoped was "and a good morning to you too." 

Now I know that in Italy everyone calls everyone else cara or carrissima, or caro if it’s a guy, or Contessa or any of the other hundreds of endearing names and it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Even my slightly senile landlady, Signora Niola, used to have imaginary conversations that always started with ‘ciao cara’ and continued as she walked around the apartment  talking to ‘her.’ At first I thought she was talking to me, but she wasn’t, so I got out of her way.

 Trevi Market Looked Something Like This

But I liked the Trevi market and if having this guy call me Contessa was the worst that was happening to me, it didn’t seem bothersome enough to worry about. The Trevi market was not organized like most of the other markets in the city, it was more of a meeting place where farmers sold their produce and goods like honey and jams and wine. You had to bring your own bottles if you wanted to buy wine, and they would fill them from the barrels they had on the back of their trucks.

My favorite stall was run by a very old woman who sold live chickens and eggs. She would wrap the eggs, one by one, in torn off squares  of newspaper, hand them to me to put in my shopping bag, and then hold out her wrinkled hand for the money. She never spoke to me. I later figured out that it was probably because I was actually asking her for two or three grapes, confusing the Italian words for grapes and eggs and she realized any attempt at conversation would most likely be a complete waste of time.  

Daily Market at Campo Dei Fiori

There are open markets in most of the city's neighborhoods. One of the best is the one at the Campo de'Fiori. There are two very different versions of how the Campo got its name. The most obvious is that before it became part of the city, it was a meadow of flowers. It's a nice story but I prefer the Roman legend which says the Campo was named after an actress named Flora, who lived during the time of the Caesars. Her theatre, which was the largest in ancient Rome, used to stand on what is now the northeast corner of the square. Or it could very well be that both stories are true. In Rome anything is possible.

Some of my favorite Italian memories come from those early experiences in Rome, and every once in a while I get a hankering to go back and walk the streets and revisit those early days, which is what is going on right now.