AUNTIE PASTA: Color Me Yellow

SARONNO, Italy - Here’s a bit of midsummer madness I picked up the other day. The word sorbet comes from the Arab word sharbet, which means sweet snow, which in turn comes from the Arabic verb sherber, meaning to sip. This interest in sorbet stems from a super easy recipe I found for lemon sorbet, my favorite, that I'd like to share with you today. Sorbet, as you probably already know is made using only sugar, water and flavoring, and is so easy to make it

 The Appian Way to Rome

is not surprising that it has been around much longer than ice cream. In the 1st century A.D. it’s said that the Roman Emperor Nero positioned his slaves along Rome's Appian Way  and they would pass  buckets of snow hand over hand from the mountains to his banquet hall where it was then mixed with honey and wine. It sounds a little farfetched to me as it’s a long way from the mountains to the center of Rome, which is very hot in the summer, and unless they could pass those buckets faster than lightening it's highly unlikely the snow would have arrived in any condition to be used for anything edible. But they do mention putting snow and ice in storage rooms below ground so that they could use it in the warmer months of the year. That’s a bit more plausible.

 Watermelon Granita

The Italians also came up with granita, which is sort of like sorbet but different. The difference is in how it is frozen and in the texture you end up with. In the recipe below it says to stir the sorbet with a hand whisk every 10 minutes or so if you are not using an ice cream machine, in order to avoid ice crystals from forming.  If you want to make granita instead of sorbet, stir the same mixture with a fork in order to get a more coarse texture – which for granita is the desired consistency.

 Fluorescent Colored Water Ices

And then there is water ice or Italian ice which is basically the same thing but with a higher water content which results in a texture somewhere between sorbet and granita. If Italians spoke English instead of Italian they would all be called snow cones or shaved ices, which are basically cups of crushed ice topped with a flavored syrup, but since they don’t, every little change, no matter how inconsequential, in the texture of frozen water with added flavoring gets its own name.

 Lemon Sorbet

Lemon Sorbet

Ingredients

Serves 8

•    2 lb lemons (1 kilo)

•    2 cups water (1/2 liter)

•    ½ lb sugar (250 grams)

•    2 egg whites (optional)

Prepare a simple syrup with the water, sugar and thinly-sliced lemon peel, taking care to avoid the white part of the peel as it is very bitter.  Boil the water, sugar and lemon peel for 5-6 minutes, then cool completely. Strain the syrup into a bowl, using a thin mesh strainer. Squeeze the lemons, strain the juice and add the strained juice to the simple syrup. 

If you have a ice cream maker, add the sorbet base to the machine and run the machine until the sorbet has reached the desired consistency.

If not, put the mixture into a bowl and place it in the freezer for 10 minutes. Then remove the bowl, and use a whisk to break apart the ice crystals. Return to the freezer for 10 minutes and repeat the whisking process every ten minutes to avoid ice crystals forming, until you reach the desired consistency.

If you want a fluffier sorbet, you can add two egg whites, whipped to form stiff peaks, when the mixture begins to solidify. Fold in the egg whites carefully using the whisk from the bottom up.

I don’t know why but lemon sorbet makes me think of long, lazy lunches under leafy chestnut trees somewhere in the hills of Tuscany, sitting around the table, talking about the this and that of daily life, and enjoying a beautiful day in the country. Sigh.

LIFE: Bilingual Brains

SARONNO, Italy – The joys of speaking another language, any language-  are many and now  researchers at Northwestern University have documented differences in how the bilingual brain processes the sounds of speech compared to those who speak a single language. The study, which was published by the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the biological difference in the auditory nervous system appears to enhance attention and working memory among those who speak more than one language.

 Amalfi -  A Good Reason to Speak Italian

What I don’t understand is if what the scientists claim is true,  how come after spending my formative years in a bilingual home, and 20 years of living and working in Italy, I can’t grasp those linguistic pop- it beads the Italians call pronouns? You know, the la, lo, le’s and the ti, vi, gli’s, not to mention  ci and ne, the ones they string together at the drop of a hat with frightening ease.    

And let me just add that not only do I have the problem of trying to figure out which of the umpteen pronouns to use, forget about snapping them together, but there is also the daunting task of trying to figure out what sex they are. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a dish would be masculine – piatto, but a lamp is feminine – lampeda. Somehow, the visual reasoning part of my brain thinks it should be the other way around, but it’s not up to me.

Somewhere on the Amalfi Coast -

Another thing that has always confused me are the pronouns the Italians keep in a linguistic storage box and only take out sometimes. I’m talking about the egli/esso/ella/essa/essi/esse that I have never heard anyone use, but yet if you look at any published list of personal pronouns, there they are. I say the Italian language is in serious need of a good cleaning out, if you don’t use it, lose it.

I can still remember listening to my father and my grandmother deep in conversation and wondering who this ‘Louie” was they kept talking about. I remember wracking my five year old brain trying to figure out just who that guy was. Of course I had not yet been introduced to the full range of Italian grammar and my knowledge was limited to the spoken word, so there was no way for my five year old brain to know that their ‘Louie’ was actually ‘lui’, the pronoun for ‘he’. And whoever ‘he’ was, my grandmother was less than happy with the guy.

Who can resist? I'll take two.

“Because you have two languages going on in your head, you become very good at determining what is and is not relevant,” says study team member Dr. Nina Kraus, a professor of neurobiology and physiology at Northwestern.  “You are a mental juggler.”  Juggler is right, especially when you  - I mean me -  is trying to do a crossword puzzle and my brain keeps slipping into Google translate. Let’s see, what’s a four letter word for shelter – oh I know, casa. Oops, that’s not right – it’s tent.

But its more than just the pronouns. Sometimes even the most simple of phrases become a linguistic Rubic’s cube in Italian. Choice may be a good thing, but frankly, there are times when there are too many choices. It’s a daunting process to say the least, made even more difficult by those words that are bi-sexual.

Piazza della Rontunda Rome - My Favorite Place in the World

Take the word table, for example. That one really is sneaky. Keep in mind we are talking about the same thing here, a plain, old run-of-the mill- table, except if the table is not set for breakfast, lunch or dinner, it is called a tavolo. But lay one place mat, one dish, a fork and a spoon on it, and it undergoes  a sex change and transforms from the masculine tavolo into the feminine tavola.

“We have determined that the nervous system of a bilingual person responds to sound in a way that is distinctive from a person who speaks only one language,” Kraus says. Could this be doctor speak for nervous breakdown?

 Nothing Like a Summer Night in Rome

But the good news is that some preliminary research suggests that people who speak a second language may have enhanced defenses against the onset of dementia and delay Alzheimer’s disease by an average of four years.  After studying older people who spoke multiple languages, they concluded that the more languages someone could speak, the better: People who spoke three languages were three times less likely to have cognitive problems compared to bilingual people. Those who spoke four or more languages were five times less likely to develop cognitive problems. 

So if you are struggling trying to find your way through the labryith of Italian grammar, think of the long term benefits, the longer, healthier and happier life you will lead with the roll of a few R’s and the joy of knowing what sex your carpet is. And admit it now, didn’t you really always want to know that?