Wandering Italy Blog: Food

Soup, Italian Style · Jan 29, 06:14 PM by James Martin

I made this Italian soup the other day. It was made from stuff in our back yard. You see, Martha had planted arugula a few years ago. Arugula is a weed, so it’s spread itself all over the place. We used lots of it in the soup. We also have some scrawny potatoes sometimes, but used a couple from our local farmer. He doesn’t put all that poisonous crap in them that industrial potatoes have to add in order to keep the little buggers from forming “eyes” on their long journeys in trucks across the globe. We had some bread that was about to get used as a doorstop, it was that dried out—so we used that in the soup, too.

Now I’ve made it sound like we made a junk soup outta stuff lying around that the vermin hadn’t gotten to yet. That’s not entirely true. We sort of used a recipe from Marcella Hazan out of her fantastic cookbook called More Classic Italian Cooking. We use this cookbook a lot. Its been to Sardinia. Its spine is in worse shape than mine, and I’ve labored in little square holes in the ground as an archaeologist armed with a dental pick. You can see what’s left of the book in the picture below.

The soup we made is cucina povera at its best, this concoction of chopped potato, torn arugula and stale bread, all cooked in water. (Yes, water, no broth.) But the kicker is that great drizzle of olive oil you put on top of the soup as the bowl in front of you steams up your glasses. Even the poor had olive oil, mostly. They might have had to hit the social circuit, cut a bella figura, did somebody a few big favors, but they could get the oil, you betcha. And olive oil that’s made by someone with a satisfaction motive instead of a profit motive can bring a dish of such “found” ingredients alive. If you are stuck in America it’s likely you’ve never had decent olive oil from Italy.

You have to know someone. I don’t mean one of those corporate “persons” but a real human who makes olive oil from olives.

Anyway, I was thinking about this ingredient. I mean the soup is outrageously good, better by far than the sum of its profoundly ordinary parts. It seems to me that a lot of cucina povera is like that; there’s one simple ingredient that surprises you because you can’t quite figure out why the dish in front of you is so damned good.

Like real life, you can’t have strong arbitrary prejudices or hate surprises or you’ll end up like one of my dig directors, who swore each and every day that if she ever found a single sliver of anchovy in a dish I made for her she’d rip my testicles off and throw them over the fence to the dogs. One day I made her a pasta different from everyone else’s and she got curious—so much so that she dug a fork into my pasta and declared it “delicious,” demanding that I make her some pronto.

So I took some garlic, some oil, about three anchovies, a tablespoon of tomato paste, some parsley and some red pepper flakes and made her the sauce, tossing some spaghetti into it and giving it a flip or two. After presenting it to her she slurped it down, licked the plate clean…and then licked the pot clean.

“What’s in this?” she demanded.

“Well, if you must know…anchovies. Lots of anchovies. It’s the star of the dish,” I explained.

She began to retch. It was a sort of fake retching, which is less pleasant to watch than real retching.

“You, you, you’ve poisoned me,” she said, holding her throat.

Americans are funny people.

Another surprise ingredient Italians use in their simple cuisine are the little capers you find on plants that like to grow between rocks in southern Italy. One of the reasons you can’t get real Italian food at a joint like the Olive Garden is that American diners there found capers “too unexpected.”

What’s wrong with unexpected? TOO unexpected? What’s that?

Expect some unexpected ingredient when you encounter real Italian food. I know it sounds funny, but really, make eating a Zen experience. Just let the food happen. Don’t give me any of this, “it’s too unexpected” or “it’s too green” as Olive Garden diners speak of pesto.

Really. I’m warning you. A cook might do you some harm. Watch out especially if you have testicles and there are dogs nearby.

How can a food be “too green” anyway? I give up.

Here’s something to read: Olive Garden Struggles With Diners Afraid Of Capers, Pesto

AFRAID?

Soup, Italian Style originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jan 29, 2012, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Italy Travel Tips

Italy Travel Toolbox

Winter Food · Jan 9, 04:32 PM by James Martin

Today, the internet has mounted an assault on my Italian food desires. Some days are like that. You’re thinking of those seasonal eats that Italians get and wham, suddenly the web is awash in people talking about such delectables as Puntarella and bollito misto.

This is the time for that Roman favorite puntarella—a type of chicory, a bitter green that sprouts in cold weather. It’s the harbinger of spring, a winter salad dressed with anchovies, spiky tastes the Romans relish.

Puntarella is the perfect foil for a bollito misto like the one Kyle Phillips reminded us exists at Trattoria la Baracchina, which I’ve spoken of before and put in the Tuscany for Foodies mobile app. Bollito Misto is one of those dishes that are deceptively simple. It seems you just toss in a great variety of meats and vegetables into a pot of simmering water. Not nobile meats either, the old hen and some cuts of beef that have to cook forever to be palatable. But timing is everything. It’s when you slide that particular meat into the simmering broth that’s important. A dish of a certain genius…

And the great thing is that when you go into a restaurant with your family and friends and an entourage of waiters ferries out this enormous wheeled cart atop which sits a silver pot with all this richness of flavor, these cuts of meat set like jewels in steaming broth, and the head waiter starts cutting pieces, and everyone is calling out what they want, what they lust after, and what the waiter doesn’t have to bother putting on the plate. You are witnessing the Italian contradiction, these throw-away meats in a deceptively simple peasant concoction served expertly with a flourish from a gleaming silver vessel by a waiter who’s been doing this forever and with pride. A grand richness from low off the hog. A social occasion calling for celebration; a dish you’d feel silly ordering alone.

I’m really hungry now. I wish there was an Italian bus from California to Italy. It would be fast and cheap. But when you wanted to take it, the drivers would be on strike.

The Italian contradiction. You gotta love it.

Winter Food originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jan 09, 2012, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Living in Italy

Sexy Food · Dec 13, 08:51 AM by James Martin

The term “sexy food” is trending upwards in Google’s walled garden (we web-and-word-wonks live and die by those trends, unfortunately). Steven Poole, writing in The Guardian, evidently noticed this, too. He doesn’t particularly like the trend.

Nigella Lawson covering her face in caramel is the latest example of the sexualisation of our eating habits. Isn’t it time we abandoned this fetish and put our minds before our mouths? ~ Let’s end our obsession with making food sexy

I have to agree with Steven—despite the fact that I am often seen in restaurants with food running in multicolored rivulets from the corners of my mouth and have yet to notice a single person of either sex swooning in unholy rapture.

The thing is, I find simple, Italian food quite sexy. I yearn for it. I’ve written about Sexy food in Piemonte before. But now I’m wondering, is that pile of shellfish in the Guazzetto actually sexy to anyone but me?

Martha and I recently ate the “Weekly Beast” at the Michelin starred One Market Restaurant. The beast was goat; four courses of it. The main course was “Spit Roasted Goat Leg.” Your mouth waters. Spit is a sexy word, no?

Then it came to the table. Thin slices. Pink. Juicy. A tantalizing hint of smoke.

Are we masturbating yet?

But then there was this dollop of green on top, “ramp salsa verde.” Cheap perfume. Harsh on the tongue. Dollop-trollop.

And those slices? Lying in a puddle of red wine reduction—like the unfortunate characters of today’s murder mysteries (trending up!): pornographically displayed flesh, draining life-blood…

Bottom line: you couldn’t taste the goat.

So I’m thinking age has something to do with it. I mean, the younger folks to the left of us, when they weren’t taking pictures of this colorful assemblage with their cell phones (“Timmy’s never going to believe we’re eating goat!”), were fawningly rapturous over the meal.

Eroticism, sexual and otherwise, changes with maturity, it seems to me. When you’re a boy of 12, any ‘ol (ok, young) trollop with humongous breasts spilling from a too-tight bodice will make your head spin. Body parts, artfully squeezed, colorfully painted and perfumed, are characteristics that make the blood surge. In television as in life. In goats as in humans.

But then—to many—these characteristics become less tantalizing as maturation occurs. Maturation doesn’t look pretty in a mirror, but oh, what you can get out of it if you try! Suddenly you want to taste the real thing. You want to get to the heart of the matter. The end of pretty wrappings is the beginning of a deep relationship with the things that matter. The thing itself. Its unique qualities. Its shimmering perfection.

And the food on your plate, if wild in temperament, if joyously unafraid in its eating habits, if perfect in its succulence—will come to you perfectly unadorned. You will revel in its uniqueness, its character. If you dare. What could be sexier than that?

Sexy Food originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Dec 13, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Living in Italy

Popular These Days

Don't go to Italy--Unless it's Thanksgiving · Nov 24, 11:17 AM by James Martin

That’s right. You heard me. Don’t go to Italy. It will corrupt the very fiber of your being.

I know, maybe because my being was very fibrous, but I know it very, very well.

I spend half my time in a country which is preparing to lie to its children by telling them that pizza is a vegetable. Yes, the corporations that have the big machines that spit out nasty industrial pizzas for American school lunches have argued that since the glop they put on top of the cardboard crust consists of “two tablespoons of tomato paste” then these monstrosities should be called “vegetables.” Never mind that the tomato is a fruit, as are most of what Americans call vegetables.

In contrast, Italy protects the very idea of good, artisan pizza from trained people who know how to do it best. Don’t go because you might lust over the best of these.

And here’s something just as interesting. In my country pepper spray, used to burn the eyes of people who dare sit down while protesting the public financing of rich people who’ve crashed the economy and demanded money from the sitters so they can do it again and again, “is a food product, essentially.”

Holy crap, why don’t we just cut circles outta some cardboard boxes that our Black Friday crap came in and spray it with pepper spray and hand the result to our kids and call it pizza? Or maybe pizza puttanesca, a spicy, hot….well, never mind. That plan of action would balance the budget in no time. Fiber. That’s the answer. And there’s plenty in cardboard.

But today is Thanksgiving. Turkey day. Yup, dad comes home with a thirty pound bird nobody would ever think of eating outside this holiday—as if you could declare a “tripe day” and everyone would rush out on a single day to wait in line to exchange their hard earned cash for huge plastic bags bulging with cow stomachs.

On Thanksgiving we become lemmings, which are also good to eat I’ve heard.

I never have turkey for Thanksgiving. Not since industrial scientists have succeeded in “enhancing” the most tasteless part of the turkey by bolstered the titty genes so that those lilly-white breasts grow so large the turkey can’t really walk. Honestly, they drag on the ground. Nobody’s interested in developing a turkey bra because they’d likely become the laughing stock of their country club. So turkeys suffer. And people who like tasty food suffer. I know this because I’ve tasted my Italian neighbor Armando’s turkey. Mmmm. Small breasted, big thighed, running wild in the barnyard Turkey. Out to raise hell Amazon turkeys. The way God intended.

But yes, Americans are big on breasts. Americans, I should say, are allowed to be big on big breasts. As long as they’re on a Turkey.

Listen to this, “A new television commercial for the Fiat 500 Abarth is expected to be banned in both the US and Australia.”

Why? Breasts, here referred to as “cleavage” as one might find between big ‘uns.

The Fiat advertisement opens to a man caught staring at a beautiful woman fixing her shoe. The woman confronts him in Italian, accusing him of undressing her with his eyes. She continues pressing closer to the man, finally dipping her finger in his coffee and letting the foam drop on her cleavage. ~ Fiat 500 Ad too Racy for US and Australia

Yup. Our government doesn’t want you to see seduction, eroticism, cleavage, or a woman who turns into a car that can be driven fast without tipping over. For anyone who thinks Italian government is crazy, look at the one in Washington. Sheesh.

I’m outta here. I got a duck to cook.

—-

The truth about Turkey: Butterball this

Don't go to Italy--Unless it's Thanksgiving originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Nov 24, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Living in Italy

Big Coffee · Nov 10, 05:33 PM by James Martin

UNESCO recently declared Viennese Coffee House Culture as “Intangible Cultural Heritage” which evidently means the practice is somewhat special and worthy of mention (and perhaps preserving).

But, come to think of it, where folks take their coffee is really and truly a sign of the values of a culture. I was thinking this as I was awaiting my simple cappuccino at Koffi, a wonderful Palm Springs coffee house. The reason I was thinking while waiting was because the waiting part was so much longer than the waiting part in a caffe in Italy, and thus the flood gates to my active imagination were opened by the rusty mental wrench of boredom; dangerous, to be sure.

Being a journalist, I used the time to analyze the actions of the Barista at Koffi. And there he was before me, flailing away, elbows flying like a fiddler’s at a dance. All this motion to make a coffee drink was new to me. There wasn’t the elegant flow of an Italian fronting the gleaming machine with a tiny cup of perfect brew cradled in his hairy sausage fingers.

What caused all this animation? Well, it’s the choices. You can’t, of course, get a single cappuccino at Koffi. No, the small is a double. This is America. We have big coffee. Live with it.

So here’s the thing. The Barista can’t just shove the Koffi cup under the spigot like an Italian would do. You’ve got to direct two streams of coffee into two metal containers, one for each dose. The humongous cup you’re about to receive with your cappuccino lolling about in it is the size of something maybe destitute giants would demand at their local soup kitchen. It could double as a helmet, in case of enemy fire or heavy rain. In any case, it couldn’t be shoved under those delicate spigots without doing them grave harm.

Once the coffee is unloaded into the big cup-pot from its two cute metal holding pitchers, it’s time for the foaming milk stage. In Italy, the barista has a big pot of warm milk with foam by his side, a tiny portion of which he instantly nudges into a cup on request, stopping to give the pot a shot of steam if you ask for your cappuccino “caldo” or hot. Impossible in America, where folks ask for low fat, non fat, one percent, two percent, fat, soy, and other things only remotely related to a cow’s teat-squeezings (or not at all). Sometimes folks ask for a combination of the real and the imaginary milks. (The three calories they save with this strategy means they can have an extra half-teaspoon of Budweiser with their next meal, which will undoubtedly consist of something deep fat fried.) In any case, the coffee guy has to lift gigantic containers of real milk and fake milk as the customer has demanded it, checking the ticket to get the right proportions, and pour them into the foaming container. Then he foams away, a fresh foam for every order.

All of this takes much time, of course, which is probably why you need a coffee so large you can hardly gather the strength to lug it to a table. Nobody would want to go through such time-consuming nonsense again.

So, anthropologically speaking, we can draw from this the conclusion that real Americans value choice over, well, tradition. If I were a real coffee curmudgeon, I’d say they valued choice over the taste of coffee.

Well, ok then: I’m a real coffee curmudgeon.

Really, my coffee was fine. Next time I might try the half goat milk half yak butter with sprinkles version though.

I suggest you dip your toes into the various types of coffee culture in Europe, from the elegance of Vienna’s Coffee Houses, to the um, elegance of Turin’s Historic Caffes. Then stop in a working man’s joint and have a coffee. It’s different. And we celebrate differences, don’t we?

Shouldn’t we? Because coffee is big all over.

Filed in: Food | Italy Travel Tips

Tuscan Barnyard Fry · Oct 16, 09:43 AM by James Martin

I don’t know what made me think of this. Perhaps it was a conversation with my mother who lives in rural Illinois, where you can’t get butter in a restaurant and have to settle for some chemical glop called “Shedd’s Spread” because, you know, butter has fat and that nasty thing in it that patches cracked arterial walls called cholesterol—and then (surprise!) everything else on the menu is deep fat fried. Tradition. You can’t beat it.

But if you are yearning for fried and happen to find yourself in Tuscany, you need to try the Barnyard fry called “fritto dell’aia” on menus.

You get all the stuff my Italian neighbors have in their backyards: chicken, rabbit, and vegetables, fried up in a crisp shell that keeps all the juices in so they can escape and run down your arms after you pick up a piece and apply your incisors to it.

Below is a picture of a good one. Its from the Osteria del Vecchio Pazzo, an old olive mill converted into an interesting restaurant outside the walls of Lucca and very close to some interesting Lucca villas worth visiting, especially Villa Reale, Villa Oliva e Villa Grabau. (The room we ate in is shown in the picture on the left.) Precede this dish with some tordelli and you can’t go wrong—and you might not want to eat for a while after, I can tell you!

fritto dell'aia, barnyard fry

Filed in: Food | Tuscany

Getting Fed by the Big Boys: High-End Dining in Italy · Oct 4, 02:09 PM by James Martin

Every once in a while you have to step back from your position that the be all and end all of food was developed by penniless housewives whose husbands could only afford to bring back a bovine gall bladder or testicle or some such after a week of hard labor at the mine. Sure, it’s amazing what those women have done over the years with the internal organs and hanging bits. But you have to wonder, “what can big money buy that’s significantly better than mamma’s carefully conceived testicular meat balls?”

You needn’t wait; the end of the spectrum opposite my beloved Cucina Povera was recently represented in the NYT: Cucina dell’Arte: High-End Dining in Italy, which takes us on a culinary tour of a handful of high-end restaurants.

I was happy the author included Combal.Zero, a restaurant I’ve had the great pleasure to have eaten at and enjoyed. David Scabin in still at the helm, still playful, and still playing around with the idea of turning tradition on its collective ear. (I disagree, though, with the statement, “Both Combal.Zero and Cracco put Italian traditions through the paces of Mr. Adrià’s so-called molecular gastronomy…) as David Scabin told me specifically that he had no interest in molecular gastronomy, but then again that was in 2006. Still, the article offers no evidence for the claim.

In any case, what magnified my giddiness was the idea that the restaurant was still open and chef Scabin was still, evidently, on his game. When you write about food in Italy, you have to live with the fact that unless someone writes you and that email manages to get past the spam filters, it may be that you’ll never hear of a restaurant closing, or getting bought up by a corporate entity focused on profit and meatless meatballs. You can’t possibly eat at every restaurant you’ve ever written about every year—and live to tell about it I mean.

So tonight I’ll make a little toast to Mr. Scabin, who never lost the notion that food should be fun, especially high-end food which tends to be served, at least in America, in rather morgue-ish environments with a confusing plethora of stabbing and cutting objects designed to befuddle the user who is made to use them to keep the food from ever touching his fingers, a dubious goal for sure, especially when it pertains to food.

Know what I mean? If not, why not read my review from 2006 (and be aware prices seem to have gone up): Combal.Zero Review

Fun food. Beaucoup Bucks. Can life get better than this?

Getting Fed by the Big Boys: High-End Dining in Italy originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Oct 04, 2011, © James Martin,

Filed in: Food | Italy Travel Tips

Learn Italian - Cook Well · Sep 28, 01:43 PM by James Martin

I have a very interesting—and embarrassingly limited—comprehension of the Italian language. Yes, I’ve taken classes. I’ve had a tutor. I’ve even attended l’Universita per Stranieri in Perugia for a summer.

It’s not that I don’t know a whole lotta verbs and how to conjugate many of them. It’s that my vocabulary is heavy on food words. Ponderously heavy.

I go to markets. I read the signs. I see where things come from. After a few years of living in Italy my food-word vocabulary has skyrocketed. I didn’t even try to learn. It just happened.

But today I thought of another way to learn the important words in Italian. You can watch TV, of course, but why not watch somebody explain a recipe? I mean, it’s perfect; some guy dressed up like a real chef points to a toe of garlic and spouts, “aglio” and wham! It occurs to you that garlic is aglio in the Italian Language. And you also know not to pronouce that “g” like you would in English.

As far as I’m concerned, the best way to learn nouns is to see a picture and then listen to someone pronounce the word. No English words are slaughtered in such a practice. Your mind is always firmly planted in the Italian space.

You know what got me to thinking about this? ItalianFoodNet. You load the site and—wham!—the recipe of the week starts playing and a guy describes in slow, well-spoken Italiano a dish that looks (and sounds) delicious. If you switch to the English side of the site, the vid will still be in Italian, but there will be subtitles. Try it first without subtitles if you know a little Italian. Following along is easy.

This week’s recipe is for “Italian Hamburgers.” Don’t get me wrong, they look great—but the chef seems to have put a whole lotta stuff on those simple hamburgers. The first time I saw it I’m thinking something along the lines of “gee, when we Americans hear of an Italian pasta sauce, we can’t wait to gussy it up will all manner of new ingredients until that simple recipe turns into something unrecognizably bastardized. Do the Italians do the same with American food icons like the hamburger?”

You want una cialda di parmigiano with that burger, Bud?

Filed in: Food | Living in Italy