Cucina I

Homemade food porn, anyone?

Eating out in a big city like Rome is so ridiculously easy (and mostly affordable) that it may come as a surprise to many that I am stubbornly, resolutely sweating in my own kitchen as often as possible. 

Of course, it may come as no surprise to those who know me best.  Give me great materials for a new project, and I get a little excited.  And I have been known to stubbornly fixate on making something properly, which can require multiple attempts.  The Spouse is a good test subject - especially if the test involves ham.

And Italians know the ways of pig.  

For me - and my friends will easily attest to knowing this about me - cooking is a creative act that is sometimes more accessible than diving into the studio to make drawings and paintings.

Cooking has an obvious end game; there is a time at which things must be completed, and an expected outcome.

The challenges are usually surmountable.  Usually.

In some ways, there is a gamified quality to the enterprise:  you have a set list of ingredients you must obtain, and often they are not all available from the same source (especially here!).  Select tools are required.  Rules are paramount, but also potentially broken for interesting results.  I sometimes have a great teammate to assist, and then at other times I am left completely on my own.  After an enlightening visit to my vegetable vendor, I can 'Iron Chef' something new that he's pressed me to try. Alternately, I am enjoyably forced to adapt a unique cut of meat I didn't quite expect to have to use.  (And for all my vegetarian readers, I'll try to warn you before you wind up reading a separate blog post all about Italian butchery).  

As I anticipated, Rome's food and wine markets are my new art supply stores.

Here are some of the things I've been making since we arrived in late June.  The earliest of these items were made with the least sophisticated tools, since I didn't have my full kitchen 'toolbox' until mid-August. 

stuffed (with an herbed risotto) tomatoes, buttressed by roasted potatoes (Barb Shadomy - this one's for you...I'll explain below)

I know I have to work on my food photography.  The lighting in my cucina is really awful.  And when we got a loaner fridge that was bigger than the Barbie-and-Ken Dreamhouse fridge we were first granted in this apartment, we gladly sacrificed some window light.  Sorry if some of these items don't appear to be as appetizing, color-wise, as they were in my (equally poorly lit) dining room.

pasta carbonara (a simple, WWII-era dish, where the pasta is tossed with rich egg yolk, dusted with parmesan and liberally dressed in black pepper - hence, the 'carbon' in 'carbonara')

sliced ham and eggplant rolls, dressed with chunky tomato sauce
(note the exotic Embassy-loaner dinnerware)

half Caprese, half Greek salad

I am happy to report that my diet here is far more enhanced by vegetables, generally speaking.

caponata on crostini- a spicy Sicilan topping made of eggplant, peppers, olives and garlic (and thanks to Sicily, I shall never want for eggplant as long as I'm here)

broiled salmon with veggie risotto
(cue the arrival of our own dinnerware - because just about everything looks good on black)

ravioli con funghi (mushrooms)

chicken cacciatore with sauteed spinach

Lest you imagine me as a walking encyclopedia of Italian recipes, here is my small arsenal of resources in printed form (sometimes when you have to 'Iron Chef' a new ingredient, you do break down and Googliama that thing instead):

Top to bottom:
I am a ruthless believer in (and thanks to a generous mother-in-law, a subscriber to) Cooks Illustrated, so I like to keep their little publications handy.  They issue bi-monthly magazines (sans advertisements!), country-specific collections of recipes that are slightly thicker than the bi-monthly issues, and also full-blown cookbooks.  Of course, you can also watch their shows on PBS.
The Gourmet Slow Cooker (yes, I got a 220 volt Crockpot, and I'm very happy about that) has one chapter devoted to Italian recipes (as well as English, Greek, French and Mexican). NO cans of cream of mushroom soup in these recipes.  I wish I had the sequel that was published some years ago.
The Tucci Table is handy because it appeals to the place we're living in AND it includes recipes for the home of The Spouse's soul (Tucci's wife is English).
Urban Italian is finally more fun to use because I'm in a place where I can access ingredients for Carmellini's pretty authentic recipes.  I didn't even know what bottarga was until I came here.  This chef is an amusing storyteller, too.
Tasting Rome is a recent gift from two very kind sisters-in-law, and the source of the first recipe I created in our time here (see the stuffed tomatoes above). Lots of small essays about Roman food, traditions and culture.
And finally, The Silver Spoon is allegedly the resource that is often given to Italian brides.  Consider it an Italian 'Joy of Cooking' equivalent.  I got the first edition.  Get the later editions for greater clarity and specificity in translations and labeled photos.  It is extremely thorough, and a great big-picture view of how streamlined and straightforward Italian cooking can be.

People who are trying out cooking on their own for the first time wind up often resorting to Italian cuisine because it is pretty straightforward and simple.  You boil pasta - and how can you screw that up? - and you put something on it, and then you put cheese on that, and you can deem it a Success. 

Italian cuisine can be very forgiving, also.  I have featured a sauce (pasta alla puttanesca) below that I enhanced with what I had...which could be considered true to the original mindset of the dish, if the original maker of the dish had more money than she might typically have had. 

 

Some individuals resolutely feel that any Italian dish can contain no more than 5 ingredients.  While I think that this is technically untrue, I would instead state that Italian fare truly celebrates ingredients. There are few fatty sauces or elaborate processes for a food item to endure before being considered 'done,' because both would cloak the Good Thing(s) and their very essence.  Just stick to showcasing the wonder of what's in season, and allowing it to be front and center. 

And here is a rule one should always observe in Italian dining: conversation at the table should be about those Good Things, or other good things, like an upcoming journey, art of any kind, or pleasure as you happen to define it.  Leave work out of the picture.  

Because it's true:  you will enjoy what you're eating much, much more if you are talking about eating.

(probably not so Italian) skillet corn from the cob, with peppers, zucchini and onions

rigatoni con salmone

spaghetti alla puttanesca ('pasta the way a prostitute would prepare it' - in a sauce with black olives, capers, hot pepper and enriched with sausage) with a more-than-healthy topping of fresh grated parmigiano-reggiano (because CHEESE)

sauteed asparagus with portabellas (and those meaty/creamy portabellas are a REVELATION here...I don't know why)

And my crowning achievement (only because I failed to shoot my first frittata, mind you):
my first - ever - whole roasted chicken.
I've always found it tough to work with chicken skin.  It's slippery and fragile.  Kind of flabby, too.  It's tough to keep it on the bird or - if the recipe calls for it - completely remove it. But it turns out that I was struggling with American chicken skin.
Italian chicken - on a smaller, more compact bird, to begin with - is dressed in a more substantial skin that is not too wet or fatty.  And so, when a recipe like this one called for a nice pouch of sauteed herbs and garlic to be inserted between the skin and breast (that's the large dark spot you see on the top of the bird), I could actually pull off making the slit in the skin and inserting the mixture with no trouble.  TA-DAH. 

I didn't include images of 'Clean Out the Fridge Pasta' or a few other inventions here, but rest assured, this is just the beginning of what will happen in this cucina.  Just keep thinking cool thoughts for me, as I've got no a/c in that room - just a ceiling fan, a strange little 5 burner stove (pictures to come later) and 1.5 fridges.

Oh, and a fierce determination to find butternut squash.  

My tribe

Nine times out out of ten, I am not mistaken for someone who either knows the local language OR is a resident here - before I ever open my mouth.  I will assume a slight level of urbanized disdain, feigning a degree of weariness with tourist crowds and the challenges of being here, leave the backpack at home and travel super-light, and before I utter a single word of carefully rehearsed Italian, some Roman is speaking English to me.

Could it be...my shoes?  They always say that outsiders can be spotted immediately by their ultra-comfy footwear.  Perspective:  I have a thing for not spraining my ankle anymore.  I have seen very stylish Italian women scampering around in their 3- inch stilettos - in the Roman forum, and I'm so sorry, but that's a risk they alone can take.

To be fair, though, I have also seen some pretty tough-looking lady feet.

Feet like velociraptors'.

I wonder if it's a Roman trait.  Imagine people in thinly soled sandals (you know, the ones we've all seen on ancient sculptures) along with the military gear, the gladiator costume, the Vestal Virgin attire (which was rather bridal)...marching to war, wrestling with a lion, dancing around a fire in a temple - all on these impossible surfaces, which defy standard definitions of stability.  And they've been doing it for about 2500 years.  Imagine that.

These 5"x5" paving stones are everywhere in the historic center of the city.  They are not flat-sided, and they are not flush in the surface of the streets.  Sometimes the mortar is intact.  Sometimes it isn't. And there are these maddening gaps, if not outright holes. To stay upright and uninjured, it's typical to often look down while walking.  A day's long trek on these things leaves you with aches in joints you didn't know could be affected. 

And my under-padded soles begin to hurt.  The mental image alone is enough to make that happen.

Could it be...my whiteness?  The toasty-skinned Sophia Loren would say that in order to keep looking fabulous, she needed several minutes of direct sun a day. Of course, I do not thrive under such conditions - even with the need to get my Vitamin D.  I am not brown.  I am not bronze.  I am like the belly of a fish.  Bianco, baby.

Squinting in Tuscany, while wearing 50 SPF.

Could it be my size? A petite American acquaintance told me recently that in a local Roman store, she tried on something that she truly thought was more or less 'muumuu - equivalent' in size, and found it unbearably snug.  I saw a shoe sale in a shop the other day, with little signs attached to each sale item, indicating which sizes were remaining for a given shoe.  The little pre-printed signs didn't even include my size.  Living in a world where you're simply not allowed to have feet that size is alienating and frankly, irritating.

And I'd love to show off these long, non-velociraptor-ish feet, but they're clad in sensible shoes from somewhere else.

Could it be that I'm a little tall?  At home, I'm a couple inches above the height of the average woman.  I don't think that fellow citizens would assess me as either tall or short.  Just average.  But here, I feel bad when I have to reach up to hold a railing inside a city bus.  Someone is going to get an armpit in the face; it's just an ugly fact.  And these long legs are struggling in almost every public seating opportunity around here; the average distance between rows is for an array of small people.

Could it be my resistance to...the puffy coat?  Our Good Neighbor told us weeks ago to look out for Puffy Coat Day.  It's September 15.  That is the day when Romans get out their coats and start wearing them - even in 80 degree weather.  And they do this because the calendar date is what it is.  It is, quite simply, time to wear the Puffy Coat.

And just as predicted, they arrived on that day, and they've been present ever since.

Actually, I shot this window display in August.

Saw this on the bus - on a 76(F) degree day.  From my coveted seat (see below), I watched him walk the length of the bus interior, resolutely shutting all of the little windows that some well-intended soul had opened because it was a humid day. Just performing what he felt was his civic duty, I suppose:  to keep everyone ULTRA warm.  Ugh.

I break out in a sweat from just standing next to the Puffy Coat Brigade at the bus stop on a day like today, where the mercury topped out at 81 F.  I get an itchy neck from looking at people swaddled in scarves (a future post will be dedicated to the pervasive concern here for the perceived risks of an exposed neck).  It actually makes me anxious to see people wearing ski slope attire on a balmy morning.  And in a distinct way, it also makes me jealous.  I want to be one of those people who could always wear another layer because they are slightly chilled - in a mild Mediterranean climate.

But I am not genetically qualified for this.  'My people' stood on wind-swept cliffs well north of here, braced against the cold - maybe in kilts, maybe with horned helmets on their heads - shielding their blue eyes from the glare off of a sea that was peppered with ice-capped waves.  You get the picture.

So in case you don't get the picture, here is a picture of a part of the coastline of the Isle of Man.  'My people' are, in fact, from here.  They actually are a mix of those kilt-wearing AND horned helmet-sporting folks.

And here we are, shivering on the southern coast of the Isle of Man...in June.

And because pictures of people wearing funny hats are funny, here is The Spouse, wearing one of those horned helmets (at Il Localino, our favorite Italian joint in Atlanta, where things get a little nutty in the dining room by about 9:30, when the DJ puts on The Village People, the smoke machine fogs the room a bit, and everybody sings 'YMCA' while sporting a variety of funny hats.  The food at Il Localino is authentic and killer, too.  How many places have you been where the owner rolls a cart to your table to fulfill your cheese and olives antipasti order, and he slices off hunks of aged parmesan from a wheel approximately the size of one of your front tires?).  Wine was definitely involved in this scenario.  Good wine. 

The weather in Rome has recently broken, to some degree, and the temperatures are more to my liking, but there is still humidity.  So when my language teacher sees me arrive to class with my standard-issue, shiny face at 9am, he closes his window and cuts on the air conditioner.

Bless him.

And at 9:59, he cuts the machine off and re-opens the window.

This is not the first time I've witnessed this practice.  As soon as the American is exiting the room, the a/c is shut down and the windows (usually screenless) fly open.  Any variety of winged insects, the rare, moist breeze, even the occasional bird be damned:  that window must be open.

The Spouse has tried to comfort me by saying that my (excessive?) sweating indicates that my internal cooling system is working properly.  All of these barely glowing Italian women around me (shoulder height, to me, with wasp waists ensconced in puffy coats) seem to be comfortable, and they're not shvitzing like crazy.  All I know is that I will never have to buy makeup as long I live here because it's wasteful to try wearing much or any of it.  It's gone in minutes.

The fact that I don't fit in is not really so new to me.  If my appearance doesn't set me apart, either my personality or brain will, in a lot of cases.  So, fine.

This is my reality.

Until, however briefly, it isn't.

If you asked me which generation of Italians I appreciate the most so far, I would offer up the ones who are anywhere from slightly older than me to my parents' age.  They mostly seem to give less of a flip about any of my differences.  And they treat me like an ordinary human being:

The nice woman who gave directions - in decent English - to a lost tourist, as we stood at the bus stop: who then turned to me and said - in rapid Italian - that she didn't know why she appeared to be a likely candidate for giving directions.  And yes, she affirmed, we should both stand strategically so that the bus stop sign could cast a shadow over both of our faces while we waited that interminable wait in the noon sun. She gestured to me, welcoming me to stand beside her.

An older woman who gingerly alighted on the bus and looked for a seat - because she really deserved one.  Since the two tourist girls across the aisle wouldn't look up from their cellphones or move their bags from two otherwise perfectly good seats (and seats are at a premium to begin with, here, with a far greater percentage of standing room than places to sit), I hopped up and gestured for her to take the window seat next to me.  After sitting, she delivered a long, long diatribe - in what I am learning is Roman Italian - on the rudeness of that generation.  How they are missing the world outside the windows, she ranted, not even looking at the beautiful ruins we are passing.  No respect for older people! No sense of paying attention to what is important!

Taxi drivers of a certain age are also a source of both hilarity and sympathetic inquiry.  While cursing mildly at tourists who step into the road with no warning, sounding the horn at other drivers, and crowded among other motorists, five abreast, at a two lane stop, they will ask you about yourself. Sometimes, the interview is the third degree.

You're a tourist- from where?  What - you live here?

Hey! Don't walk in front of the car when I have the green light! What do you think you are doing?!

*Honks horn*

Where are you working? How long will you be here? What do you think about American politics? The (insert the name of one of umpteen Italian political parties) are staging a protest march this weekend.  And there is a strike today.

There they go again - trying to get hit by a bus. Gah! Mamma mia! 

*Honks horn* 

Yes, Rome is a tough place to live.  It costs too much and it has too many foreigners. Do you see that building over there, with the balcony in the center of the wall that faces Piazza Venezia? That's where Mussolini spoke to the crowds. Wait, my wife is calling me. Pronto! Yes, dear, I am working.

What number is your building again? I must park here because I cannot park there.  Mi dispiace.

Have you got exact change?

Arrivederci & 'byee-byee.'

*******************************************************************************

Within the last 10 years of visiting here, mostly with student groups, I'd come to feel almost invisible.  No longer young or thin enough to be occasionally flirted with by Italian men of a range of ages (it used to be a kind of sport when I was young and single...and I've seen it play out for numerous college-aged female students on study abroad trips, too..it's great, heady fun, if not taken seriously). And just plain judged by young women (oh stop it with the 'how do you know they're judging you?' stuff:  you know what you know). Things have shifted. The means of attracting attention for anything - the need for directions, the need to know the cost of something, the permission to enter or exit anything - have vanished.  And in place is...nothing special.  A void. There are plenty of authors who comment on this phenomenon, regardless of the country.

But with the advent of middle age comes something else I either didn't expect or forgot was possible:  a fledgling sense of belonging.  There is a different kind of sensibility now.

It is possible to actually be taken seriously.

It is possible to be taken seriously by a tribe of Others.  We're not pretty.  We're not young. We mostly wear intelligent footwear. We're dressed for our age. We've stopped looking too hard at one another because that was how we conducted ourselves when we were younger and dumber.  We're done with that stuff now.  We're just busy being real people with real problems and complaints. It's not so much that we kindly forgive one another our faults and foibles.  It's more that we've stopped paying such critical and irksome attention to them.

We think that we know what matters.  And we probably do.

Sure, right now, with my language limitations and utter cluelessness about so many things involving my new home, this tribal belonging is fairly fleeting and pretty superficial.

And I'll take it, just the same.

The First Pearl

For a short weekend getaway, we traveled with new friends to the Amalfi coast.  Vietri sul Mare, or just Vietri, is the 'first pearl' of the coast.  Many more towns dot this beautiful part of Italy.

Bucket list check point: staying in one of those hotels that hugs the cliffside.

This was our first view of the town and the water from the hotel, upon our arrival just as dusk was closing in.

Good morning!

Obligatory panorama

This guy needed a break from the workweek.  He looks...anticipatory. 

The walk into town is mostly downhill.  

I don't know why, but a lot of these Amalfi coast towns have little miniature vignettes of themselves somewhere.

When it became apparent that the bus into the upper part of town was not going to appear for some time, we hoofed it.  Note the local resident, in her 4 inch wedge heels, walking with no apparent effort up the long slog to the main thoroughfare. She'd already bypassed us, and quickly overtook our friends up ahead.
Show-off.

Once in town, we poked around. Every one of the Amalfi coast towns is known for locally made ceramics.  You can buy plenty of it for yourself, and you can see how the town itself incorporates it into buildings, here and there.

The local church.

It has a ceramic tiled dome.  Beautiful.

He finally looks relaxed.

'Yeah, seafood for dinner would be nice. Whenever.'

A tiny church closer to the hotel - with a beautifully tiled floor.

And, I'm sorry to say, a slightly cross-eyed Madonna.

So maybe I liked the view a lot. Sue me.

The return to the hotel.  Steps down to terraced landings.  

Nisa Blackmon alert:  what is this?

Will this help with identification? 

The primary building of the hotel.  

Which even has tiled steps.

Rain rolled in...sadly.

So that meant that we had to have breakfast from a tray on our balcony.  Shucks.
Do you think the The Spouse looks torn up about this?

Even paradise needs rain.