Roadtrip, Italy:
7.22.06 to 8.13/06
July 23, 2006: Athens, Lake Maggiore
A Familiar Perch
It’s hard to know where to
begin, so I’ll just dive in at the
perch moment, on July 23. That’s the instant when we scoot our
chairs up to our special table at the Hotel Verbano on Isla de
Pescatori, a table which seems to float, suspended above the dark, still waters of Lake Maggiore
in full view of the marvelous folly that is Isola Bella. C.
thinks about lake perch all year long—and in this case, we haven’t sat
at our table for two. Our waiter, who remembers us from two years ago,
brings over an ice bucket containing a cool Piemontese bianco. The
flight and drive immediately began to recede into dim memory.
Although what a drive it was. If there is
any human out there who doesn’t already know or at least sense that it
would be a bad idea to drive for
seven hours after a transatlantic flight, please take note: It is a bad
idea. We emerged from the airport in Florence quite perky, due
to having been bumped into business class by Air France because the
flight was full. I had reveled in the magical extendo-seat, the choice
of civilized entrees, the champagne, extra-soft blankies, and dimmed
lights. Both of us slept for much of the flight to Paris. As I always
do on the infrequent occasions when I am lucky enough to be bumped, I swear never to fly coach again.
All the while, of course, knowing it’s a vow I simply cannot hope to
keep. Then, in return for a small fortune, Thrifty gave us an hilarious
car to call our own for most of a month. Hilarious as long as you are not the
one who has to drive it. The “Smart” car has several
revolutionary features, among them a back seat which is permanently
frozen at a slight forward angle, giving any unlucky passenger the look
of an anxiously uncomfortable back-seat driver. Appearances in this
case are not deceiving, they are
anxiously uncomfortable. Its claim to fame, however, is a combination
automatic and manual transmission. Huh? Don’t bother investigating. Like most new-technology boxes into
which too much functionality is packed, neither function works as well
as in the stand-alone incarnation.
Due to an
exceedingly
uncharacteristic lack of research (I was really busy with work before
we left), I’d assumed that the drive from Florence to Stresa was only 3
or 4 hours. Not. The last
time we drove there, it was only 3 hours because we
started from Venice.
Hello? Note to self: Different
city…much further north. (I’ve had road-warrior mishaps in the
past through confusing Venice (Venezia) with Florence (Firenze); you’d
think I would have learned by now.)
In fact, it’s
4 hours just
to Milan, then another hour to snake up into the lake district and over
to the west side of Maggiore. Then, of course, we had to have lunch on the banks of the river Po (Michelin offered a two knife-and-fork
just off the motorway, and who were we to disagree?) This
took two hours (compound bad-idea). I started with two different
examples of the locally-esteemed cured pork bottom (culatello; 12-month
and 18-month cures) and followed with a plate of flour-less gnocchi. C.
had the salad of gamberi and ravioli of asparagus. We shared a bottle
of rosé. When I woke up at the wheel on the A11
about 30 minutes after leaving the restaurant, I knew it was time for a
roadside nap.
Eventually we
dumped the
not-smart car at the garage of the massive, baroque Grand Hotel des Iles Borrommées,
just north of Stresa. and flagged a water taxi to the Isla di Pescatori
(Note to self: If ever struck by
an all-consuming sadness, come to this classic fin-de-siecle
hotel alone, and sit on the private balcony to weep, letting the tears
slowly, desultorily, descend. At
least until the cocktail hour).
Finally, we reached
the miniscule,
car-free island and our small,
simple hotel, which, over the last hundred-plus years has hosted the
likes of Andres Segovia and Mussolini, according to the absolutely engrossing guest-books,
which we sat shoulder-to-shoulder and read every page of on our
first visit.
First, before
any
unpacking: a swim in the cool
waters of the lake, paddling away from the rocky beach toward
the grey outlines of the Swiss Dolomites. Instantly, 99% of the journey
is washed away. Sliding into cool fresh clothes and descending to our table—with the
gentle anticipation of three alone-days full of perch moments--erases
the rest. Work, life, family, and friends are all now, temporarily,
banished.
This is our time.
The
menus around the
lake are dominated by lake-fish:
perch, lavoreno, etc, and they are either fried or grilled or poached
or pickled or served tartare-style. The perch to which C. is partial is
very lightly battered and then fried. It is delicate and just slightly
crisp, the crust a mere rumour,
rather than a real physical presence. For me, one bite is a
beautiful thing, but my antipathy towards frying (some might use a
stronger word) leads me to the trio of lakefish tartare. What is
missing for C. is a different sort of tartar (the sauce), so he
requests various condiments from the kitchen and mixes his own at the
table (this happens at two meals a
day for three days).
It is very, very hot here,
and during the day a heat haze conceals the hills around the lake under
a white veil. So we have our tea at the special table, take a swim, and
then read for an hour. Eventually, the appearance of hunger will be
declaimed.
“But,” I say, “we must wait for our lunch until the
bells ring twelve times.” By the time the bells ring two, it is
time for
a long, deep, and delicious nap, with the lace curtains fluttering in
the slight breeze and the façade of Isola Bella just outside our
window. When I hear six chimes, I begin to ponder the nascent possibilities of a
swim and a little more reading before dinner.
On the Isla di
Pecatori,
the bells keep you always aware of the time of day. The difference is
that here, you don’t care.
Photos: Swimming with
the Dolomites as a backdrop; I do tend to get an inordinate amount of pleasure
from my food and surroundings.
July 24: Lake Maggiore, Florence
The Carnivorous Me
George Clooney’s pad and the
Villa d’Este notwithstanding, Italy’s Lake district is primarily a working class holiday destination.
Isla di Pescatori, in particular, largely attracts ferry-boat visitors
who are touring the requisite destinations in and around Lago Maggiore:
Stresa, Isola Bella, Isola Madre, Pallanza, Intra, and even, for the
hardy, on up into Switzerland.
They troupe on and off the ferries nonstop from 10am to 6pm, in
versions that are old and young, long and tall, short and squat; tattooed (clearly—and inadvisably--in
much younger days), pale, dark; with or without children, dogs,
and grandparents, and speaking every language and dialect under the sun
except for American English. In other words, Isla di Pescatori is not a spot on
today’s Grand Tour. This endears it to us no end. The flora of
the area is completely unexpected, at least for a place which features
the Alps as a backdrop: The micro-climate created by all that water
allows oleander, bougainvilla, palm trees, and even cactus to flourish
gloriously on the shore, and most especially on islands like Isola
Madre.
All of the
visitors walk
around the island (elapsed time:
six minutes). A few swim. Some stop for a lake-perch lunch, choosing from
five or six little restaurants, most suspended on stilts above the
water. All eventually re-embark, heading towards somewhere with more
than one hotel, more action.
And when the bells ring six o'clock, the island goes almost completely
quiet. The handful of permanent residents hang out laundry, shoot the
breeze in the cobble-stoned alleyways, and store away the touristy
clutter from their souvenir stands.
Thus begins
the Magic Hour. Sleepy, golden in
the waning
sun like a glorious backwater-on-the-water, our Isla
metamorphoses into a contented but dusty
Dulcinea, weary from the hot exertions of the day. The only
sounds are the wake-wash breaking on the rocks and the thin splash of
the ancient Italian man who swims
his way systematically around the whole island every evening.
If you should
ever go to
the Hotel Verbano on the Isla de Pescatori, remember two things: bring
a good book (or two), and tip the headwaiter to reserve table #15 for every
still and peaceful night and every sparkling morning.
After three days of blissful nothingness, it was
time to enter the more active
phase of the trip,
which we started by driving south back to Florence.
Uncharacteristically (because of traffic around Milan), we
did not stop for lunch.
Our first
dinner in
Florence, we had resolved after much discussion, would be at Alla
Vecchia Bettola, an old favorite and one that in Florence—or
anywhere--is hard to beat. Jared
had checked in and was,
presumably, napping, so we did the same, feeling a wholly
unfamiliar sensation that was soon identified as hunger.
It was a good
night to be
hungry.
First stop:
Harry’s Bar,
for a bellini (separate from the original in Venice but beautifully
pink and clubby), where our bartender Lucca had further stories of his
home renovation projects and delicious free snacks. I limited myself to
three pieces of fried
polenta and a delicate hunk of fatty finocchiana. From there we
walked across the bridge to the Oltrarno and then further south to the
Piazza Tasso. The corner
façade of Vecchia Bettola awaited us like an old friend, one you see only once a
year and yet with whom you can step seamlessly back into a familiar
rhythm. The warm, tiled room with its butcher-paper-brown menus, and
the faces, were the same, but I spied something unfamiliar on the menu:
Anchovies with Butter.
Helloooo???
Are you talking
to me?
When the dish
arrived I saw
the formula should have been phrased in the opposite, i.e. Butter with
Anchovies, but that just made me love it all the more.
Creamy-salty-soft-crisp-rustic-Yessss!
Being the meat maven
that I am, bistecca Fiorentina
has been a passion of mine for years. I once ate an entire,
full-sized bistecca, alone, at lunchtime (photos of the event show me
with what can only be described as a very red face). Tonight, Jared and I agree to split one (which
is what intelligent people usually do, sometimes even amongst three
people). We tacitly left the haggling over the bone for a later time.
The waiter asked,
anxiously, how we wanted it done. Being that we were American, I
suspect, he expected some sort of
ordering faux-pas, but when we replied “As the chef prefers,” he
heaved a palpable sigh of relief. You
don’t fuck with a bistecca. It’s rare or nothing.
When it
arrived, the
bistecca was beefy, bloody, and fatty in all the right proportions. We
developed a method of bone-sharing
that would serve us well in the weeks to come: one would carve the
extra bits from the bone, then give it to the other to actively gnaw
upon. On the next bistecca, the order would be reversed (C., being
unable to consume any meat with a hint of pink remaining, will remain forever unfamiliar with the
joys of bistecca). But no matter how superb this bistecca,
lingering in the back of my mind was the legend of the famous Chianina
beef, the reputed paragon of
bistecca. In the lore of Tuscany—a region that is no slouch when
it comes to food obsessions—Chianina
was the only true bistecca. For years it was almost impossible
to obtain, and I'd never eaten one. But now, I’d heard, more Chianina
beef were being raised, and deep in Tuscany it was indeed possible to
find The True Bistecca. While reveling in the perfection of the Vecchia
Bettola bistecca, I resolved to
do so.
As will
be seen
later, this endeavor was surprisingly easy to accomplish but ultimately
disappointing. After all was said and eaten, Alla Vecchia Bettola’s
bistecca would remain, for me, the true paragon of shockingly rare, fat-encrusted, beefy
carniverousness.
Photos:
Butter with anchovies;
The First Bistecca, partially consumed.
July 29: Chianti
Porkapalooza
The first trip to the Iper-Coop is always a doozy.
This time, we’re expecting nine bodies, total, in the casa by nightfall
and most of them are getting in late. So it’s The Three Musketeers
tackling the entire, huge list (generated by combining one of last
years’ lists with the e-mailed requests of this year’s players: “For God’s sake, try to get some vodka,”
wrote Lorri-from-Richmond. I couldn’t remember if the Iper-Coop stocked
spirits). I take the perishables list while C. and Jared head off to
the massive, four-football-field-sized non-perishable area. My job is,
of course, more complex, because I can’t just grab things off the shelf
and go long for an airborne pass
of, say, a 12-pack of large aqua gassata, the way the guys can. My shopping requires personal
interaction.
The deli
counter alone
takes me 25 minutes: white—and salted--anchovies, pesto, mozzarella di
bufala, truffled pecorino, capers in salt, sun-dried tomatoes, and
insalata di mare (an e-mailed request from Bobby Lupone). Only then do I start thinking about the cured
pork products.
Dinner
tonight, we’ve
decided, must be simple. Sausages, perhaps. Or pasta. OK, I can handle
that. I never eat pasta at home, which is sad because both of us make a mean pasta.
When I see the
guys again,
they’re shepherding two huge baskets overflowing with still and
sparkling water, canned white and garbanzo beans, wine of several hues,
vodka (yay!), Campari, sweet vermouth, gin, paper napkins (please guys,
don’t you know me at ALL?), coffee, pasta, cereal ($$$$), two kinds of
olive oil, balsamic and red wine vinegar, and four electric fans.
My basket
contains many
mysterious wrapped packages, as well as garlic, lemons, shallots,
onions, zucchini blossoms, flat-leaf parsley, radicchio, bags of washed
baby greens (yay!), fennel, radishes, yogurt, sheep’s milk ricotta, milk,
bananas, peaches, plums, three kinds of olives and three kinds of butter: one each
made from goat, buffalo, and cow’s milk.
We decide to
make two trips
to the register. The process of getting all this into the idiotic
“Smart” car--without having to leave a person behind--is best left
undetailed.
Then, of course, we
stop for lunch
and buy two cases of wine from Osteria di Rendola, which is a
white-tablecloth joint on the way out of Montevarchi back toward Monti.
First comes a
mad rush to
put away supplies, start the
never-ending process of making ice (J. has brought six ice
trays from New York), arrange flowers in all the bedrooms, and
partially unpack so we can sit back, cross our legs, and pretend we’ve been here for ages.
Right on cue, the Lupones trundle
up the dirt road and We Are Five. It transpires that
Barry-and-Lorri-from-Richmond have been bumped and will now
leave/arrive the next day, and the
other two have gotten their dates wrong and are actually
arriving next Friday. So now we are only five for supper, and there is
plenty of pasta. C. makes his
special trenette with ricotta, tomato, and basil, to give me a
break, but I can’t resist frying up a bunch of slivered radicchio with
pancetta and garlic, for an impromptu topping. It’s an early night for
Bobby, Virginia (“V”), and baby Orlando,
who at 4 ½ months old is so far enjoying his first trip
to the continent with gusto and no complaints.
The
next day is Bobby’s 60th birthday,
and I have already volunteered to hit the Saturday market at Greve for
more supplies and fabulous pork chops from Macelleria Falorni, the porkiest store on the planet.
C. and I are the only ones up early, so we head off alone. In the
square, I stop briefly for a porchetta sandwich from the white porchetta van. This is
a ridiculously sublime flavor I simply don’t have the technology to
duplicate, and every year I pay homage by asking the girls for a few
extra bits of crackling and standing there spellbound while they carve
and serve it and I reverentially
consume it. Outside the pork store, a little English boy asks “Oh mummy, do we have to go into the smelly store again?” Wild horses
couldn’t keep me out of it.
The newly polished Italian
serves me well at the meat counter, or at least I’d thought it did,
until I unwrap the mondo chops at home and find there are only six, not the seven I’d
asked for. Because Now We Are Seven.
On the way
back, we find a
luscious chocolate and amaretto cake in a pastelleria in Panzano. I have brought a lawn-mower-shaped
candle, and six pink birthday candles, to crown it with.
The menu will include an olive bar, pecorino al tartufo, fried
zucchini blossoms, slivered fennel and lemon salad, and the big fat
pork chops, grilled over wood
embers in the oven on the loggia. (Moi: “Cinder-fella, I’d like
super-hot embers in a two-inch layer by 8:30, please.” Cinder-fella: “Yes’m. And I’d like a
Negroni.”) There is no shortage of food.
We have
secured three
magnums of the Rendola’s negroamaro, one for each of Mr. Lupone’s
double-decades. Bobby slides into
his
spotlight with the grace of a legendary performer. First, he
demonstrates song-and-dance moves from his first two decades (“One,
two,
three – Throw Patti!”),
then from his second (“Five! Six!
Seven! Eight!”). There are so many great stories to tell that we
postpone the third decade for the following evening.
We three
sleepy people
decide that we’ve succeeded in making him a pretty nice milestone
birthday party. And Barry-and-Lorri-from Richmond are getting an idea
of what they've let themselves
in for over the next two weeks. They don't seem frightened. At all.
Photos: So much pork to choose from!; Porchetta
truck at the Saturday market in Greve ; The Birthday Boy in his
spotlight.
August 3: The Maremma
Fish Shack
To say that I will travel for good food
would be like observing that it is dangerous to climb Mt. Everest.
But when, quite a few months back, Lorri drew my attention to an
article in the York Times Magazine that raved about a small but
fabulous restaurant in the Maremma--the coastal region of Tuscany--I’d
voiced two hesitations:
1. It’s reeeally far away from our casa, and
2. It’s just
been in the Sunday Times Magazine,
so we’ll
never get a table
I proceeded to
do extensive
research (read: work-avoidance ploy). In the forums at eGullet I
discovered an entire thread both wildly
praising this unexpected gem and bemoaning its wider discovery,
which, we were guaranteed, would now
cause its immediate ruin. I believe the line actually read
“Every American traveling in Italy this summer will be beating a path
to La Pineta’s door.” Virtually every mention of the restaurant warned
that it was hard—no, extremely
hard—to find. But who was I to rain on Lorri’s very first Italian
adventure—in fact, her dolce vita--just because of my own, slightly jaded,
dolce
far niente?
So, what the
hell. About a
month in advance, I booked a table. It was easy.
When the
appointed date
arrived, in classic American fashion we set out in three cars. Seven
adults and one baby Orlando, off for a long day at the beach.
Confident, map-reading-based predictions were advanced from the boys: “Hour and a half,” sang out C.,
“Easy-peasy!”
“Three hours,” I muttered,
having divined the inner reality of maps in Italy for far longer than
any of them. Kilometer-counting alone was, I had learned, not a good
formula. After all, we were about to traverse a mountain range on a
spectacularly windy two-lane road that first had to go past the
summer tourist mecca of Volterra even before it dropped down onto the
coastal plains to head south.
The drive was,
certainly,
challenging. Luckily we had entertainment: In the lead car, C. dangled
his hand out the window and used it, in true Italianate fashion, to express his disdain for the
tourist-laden cars that seemed always to be dawdling along in
front of us. (Have you noticed yet that I do not count myself among the ranks
of the tourists? You are correct.)
Car number
two, containing
Lorri and Barry, sported its own version of arm-out-the-window
entertainment. The roads of Tuscany at this time of year (late July),
it must be said, are festooned with bicyclists. Gaily-clad, they
trundle up and down the hills with complete
disregard for the danger their presence poses to themselves and
motorists, already sorely challenged by the narrow roads and
radical driving of impatient Italians. But Lorri chose to see the
bright side of this hazard, i.e. the endless parade of delectable,
shiny nylon bottoms that passed by her window, only inches away, as
Barry endeavored to safely follow the lead car. Thus, any particularly succulent male buttocks
that Lorri’s car passed got enthusiastically ghost-goosed by her
outstretched hand.
We needed the
entertainment. Two and a half
hours after we’d set off, we pulled into Marina di Bibbona and
set about trying to find the elusive La Pineta. It took us five
minutes. Maybe. This was a
good thing, because the third car in the caravan, of course, contained
our youngest member, 4 ½ month-old Orlando.
After
walking some distance along a
dirt road roofed with a graceful, arching canopy of umbrella pines (in
the direction clearly indicated by the handily displayed—but hardly
brand new—sign), we came upon the suddenly dark and stormy, wind-swept
beach, and La Pineta. It appeared to be a shack made of cheap wood
siding, with beach chairs and umbrellas for rent at the front, a
scrubby tabacchi-bar at the rear. Inside, however, was another story. Apparently, I was about to eat my words.
For one thing,
we were the
only Americans in the place. And it was not full, just charmingly
peppered with the kind of people who are young enough to have fun but old enough
to care, deeply, about good food, good wine, and refined but
friendly surroundings. The linens were fine and white, the wine glasses
tall and delicate, and the cutlery felt heavy with promise in my hand.
Solid wood-and-glass windows cosily separated us from the dark and
stormy beach, with its lone occupant, swathed in a multitude of beach
towels and optimistically awaiting the emergence of the sun.
La Pineta is
all about fish, and
the hand that guides the
kitchen is sure and gentle, as a great fish hand must be. Pesca
Aqua Pazza (fish in crazy water)
was one of the sanest treatments of a fish I’d ever come across. It was
a
fragrant combination of the simplest ingredients melded into a colorful
dish, piquant without ever overwhelming the delicate flavor of the
fish. The Lupones scored big with
the tasting menu, and their premiere course was a rendezvous of
exquisitely fresh raw fish and shellfish that had experienced only the barest hint of restrained
preparation. Jared’s Ravioli di Baccalao were like salty little silk pillows on a
discerning diva’s bed. But the dish that stuck in everyone’s mind on
the long and victorious drive home was Pappardelle alla Trigle (red
mullet).
Red mullet is a fish that doesn’t travel well at
all. While you will
occasionally see daurade or other good Mediterranean fish on an
American menu, red mullet
sightings are exceedingly rare. So I eat as much as I can,
whenever I can. Rashly, I had volunteered to try to recreate the
voluptuous pappardelle using red mullet from the Iper-Coop, but as the
car wheeled, climbed, and dipped past Volterra and the muscular rears
of the cyclists on our return journey, I racked my mind for some understanding
of what the chef at La Pineta had done, or rather, all the things that he had not done, to create that luminous
dish. In the days ahead red mullet would come to haunt several others
in our small but earnest band.
Photos: The path under the umbrella pines on
the way to the elusive (not)
La Pineta; Jared fondles
his wine glass,
fondly, in a satiated moment at
La Pineta.
August 5: Florence and Castellina
Eating Stars
All of my adult life, I’ve
been led by the Red Michelin Guide.
My first husband taught me how to use it, then I showed two more husbands the ropes.
That’s how lore trickles down, you know. I was 25 when I
started and I’m, um, older now, but it’s still my Bible for European
travel.
In my Salad
Days in
England, I’d plan trips to France around how many stars could be
consumed. What’s a star? Well, in the guide they look more like little
rosettes, but everyone calls them stars. No restaurant gets more than
three, and eating three stars is like going to church and probably more expensive than any meal
you’ve ever eaten. Unless you collect stars.
Long ago I
realized that a
one-star place was probably plenty for me. I say probably because I
still, if a two-star place enters my current firmament, am tempted. The days when I could afford—or would
even want—to eat three stars have passed. Most of the time, one
knife-and-fork joints, maybe two, and--very occasionally--three
knives-and-forks are my daily fare. As I say, I’ve communicated this
affection to my partner, so it wasn‘t particularly surprising that when
I casually noted to C. that there were not one, but two one-star
restaurants in nearby Castellina, he immediately sat up and took notice.
“Let’s go to one
tonight!” was
what he actually said. Who was I to say no?
It had already
been a big
day. We’d driven up to Florence in the morning so I could sit for my portrait by the artist Antonio
Ciccone, something I’d never done before. In four or five years
when we have saved up enough to buy the lovely charcoal drawing of us
both together, it will look stunning in the Hudson Valley house.
We had lunch
at Santo
Bevitore in the via Santa Spirito and then, to kill some time before driving back
down south in good time for the dinner hour, we walked around
the Boboli Gardens, went to both the porcelain and gold-and-silver
museums, and took a nap on a
piece of lawn near a fountain. It was exceedingly, alarmingly
hot. Europe was, evidently, in the grip of a “Heat Storm.” Another couple
might be daunted by such a tiring day and opt to head home for some
soup and an early night. But not us.
Now,
I ask you, what exactly is the
point of a water list? I am seated in an ancient subterranean
passage of honey-gold stone, open at both ends for light, air, and a
view of the Chianti countryside. The restaurant is the one-star Al
Gallopapa, and I’m starting to get the feeling that they are bucking
for a second star. We opt for a
sparkling water from Umbria.
The three
amuses bouches
say it all: zucchini reduction with anchovy mousse, perfect white and
yellow melon dice on a balsamic reduction, tomato gazpacho with avocado
tartare.
Next, the Due Risotto di Acquerello are a
pair of clean and bright risottos--one of tomato and basil, the other
of Buffalo mozzarella—that are made
with water instead of stock. Brilliant! The flavors of the
ingredients are right there in your mouth, un-muddied by stock. Rolls
and focaccie are exotic and obviously just out of the oven. The
grissini are made with chestnut honey, no doubt from a local bee. In
spite of some lovely flavors, it was starting to feel a little
precious. But the bathroom was
to-die-for. It’s one of the first things to go stellar when a
restaurant is amping up its Michelin bid. The service was excellent,
and there was none of the usual hovering encountered in starred
establishments, but the food was seriously slow to emerge.
A plate of sheep’s cheeses with chestnut honey
gelée (made
without the aid of gelatin)
finished us off.
And I do mean
that
literally.
Driving home,
we vowed not
to eat any more stars on this particular trip. It was a vow I’d made
before--a vow I had always broken.
Photos: In Antonio's studio; At Al Gallopapa, Castellina.
August 7: Radda-in-Chianti
On the Trail of
the True Bistecca
Those
of you who follow Roadfoodie will know that I wasted no time in getting myself outside a large bistecca
Fiorentina (the undisputed national dish of Tuscany; on the very
first night in Florence; see The
Carniverous Me). But as the days passed that little voice that
beleaguers me from time to time kept yammering away in my subconscious “But it wasn’t a true bistecca, was it now, darling?
Because a true bistecca is
only cut from Chianina beef.” Raining on my parade, damnit.
For some reason, this voice always has a shrill,
lower-middle-class
British accent.
It was
becoming
clear to me as I perused menus in
and around Chiantishire that Chianina was certainly more
available than it had been on my past visits. Or at least many menus claimed it was Chianina. So not
long after we'd eaten our one star, solo, all seven of our number met
at a white-tablecloth joint in
the middle of
Radda, with the purpose of once-and-for-all eating a true
bistecca. For Barry, Lorri, Bob, and Virginia, it was the first
bistecca of any description, pretender or not. Jared had shared one or
two with me over the past few years. C., of course, is unable to partake in the carnivorous
carnival of consumption that is eating a bistecca because no
chef would ever agree to cook one well-done. Myself, I will not be so
gauche as to reveal the number of times I’ve eaten a bistecca. Some things, a girl just keeps to
herself.
I wouldn’t say
we were
sitting at the table expectantly
clutching knives and forks in either hand like characters out of
Rabelais, but the description’s not far off the mark. When the
cart bearing three humongous steaks rolled over to our table, the
restaurant went into a flurry. (It’s
rare that more than one bistecca is ordered by any given table.
Many things were rare about our table that night—from the meat to the
decibel level.) As our waiter began the ceremonious task of carving the
steaks and distributing the thick, bloody slices around the table, a
little discreet bone-negotiating
went on. One (very large) steak, two people: only one bone.
Sometimes, life just sucks.
I resolved to
be analytical for few moments
before becoming gluttonous. The meat appeared a
deep, purplish-red, rather than pinky blood red. There was no
visible fat, which shocked me. The first bites were hacked off.
Silent chewing followed. It was good. It was beefy in a sort of basic,
primeval way. I thought of open
fires and hairy men with clubs. I thought of blood in dark,
mysterious pastures. I kept chewing. So did everyone else. Later, there
was indiscreet bone-gnawing by the winners of the bone-negotiations. The mood at the table was subdued,
satiated, sanguine. Now, it was quietly understood, we knew.
Coincidentally, at this
exact time I had been listening to Bill
Buford’s recent book “Heat” on the i-pod. That very night as I
lay propped up in bed giving my
digestive system a little extra time to cope, Bill spoke to me
about his own experiences with Chianina beef. As it happens, he had
spent a year and a half working for the "Most famous butcher in the world,"
a guy
by the name of Dario Cecchini, whose shop lay not a twenty minutes
drive from our casa. “Chianina beef,” Buford told me, was “rarely tender, never fatty, and
possessed of a base, bloody flavor that was not to everyone’s liking.” Including,
it seemed, quite scandalously, the most famous butcher in the world!
The consummate warrior for Tuscan authenticity! Dario felt that today’s Chianina was not as it should be,
and so he obtained the bistecca for his shop from a small farmer in
Spain. Spain? Helloo? Some
Italians were understandably pissed-off about this, and it was
certainly not advertised at Cecchini’s shop. But if you asked, they’d tell.
My, my.
So,
I'd pursued and eaten a dream and found it wanting.
I had, in some way, become a hunter-gatherer, my hands dripping with
blood.
In future, I decided, my bistecca
would be thick but not tough, pink, fatty, and mildly--rather
than deeply--beefy. Perhaps not, again, cut from Chianina beef. Who was I to argue with the most famous
butcher in the world? Later on our trip, I went to see
Dario about some pork chops. At first, he saw only a diminutive, sarong-clad,
pearl-wearing American woman. But when I spoke,
asking him in Italian, for “seven of the biggest, thickest pork chops
you can cut, with the skin on,” he
looked me up and down with sudden new respect.
As he hauled out a brand new side of pig from the walk-in and began to
carve, we spoke as men about the
meat.
It was a good feeling.
Photos: A man with a cart o'
beef; Virginia gets the bone.
August 9: Monti and Montevarchi, in
Chianti
Bone This!
As our sojourn in the land of the whispering
cicadas
wound it’s slow and easy way towards an end, I realized I’d have to
make good on the Red Mullet with Pappardelle commitment. Readers may
recall that after our lyrical
journey to La Pineta, the Maremma fish shack, I’d vowed to
recreate the mellifluous dish.
I still had no idea how I
would do this, but I’d spied red mullet at the fish counter in
Iper-Coop, so at least we could assemble the ingredients. A method would surely be revealed.
The Lupones
volunteered to
make the two-hour hegira: Virginia hadn’t yet been to Iper-Coop, and
Bobby wanted to share the experience with her.
I wrote out a
detailed
list, including the following entry:
5 or 6 red
mullet
(depending on size)
Not keen on
spending valuable cocktail-hour
time with
the dull boning knife that was lurking in the casa’s kitchen, I wrote
this question directly underneath--I thought helpfully--in very large letters:
“Potete Disossare?”
I explained to
Bobby that
this translated as “Could you
bone this?” Proud of my burgeoning Italian skills, I added that
I had used the respectful, formal version of “Could you ________?” We
sounded it out together: "Po-TAY-tay diss-oh-SAH-ray."
But
in the way that married
couples have of not actually sharing information with one another,
he didn’t mention any of this to Virginia. And unbeknownst to me, it
was Virginia who was the designated speaker.
When they got
to the fish
counter, she marched bravely up. Without
pointing at any of the luscious fish, she simply sang out:
“POTETE DISOSSARE!”
There ensued
not only a
period of intense confusion between the fish-tendant and the Lupones,
but also an exchange of increasingly heated words between the two Lupones. Blame was traded. Tempers flared.
(In the Lupone partnership, this has a habit of
happening. It also
recedes
into dim memory within a few minutes--perhaps, sometimes, hours. This
developed into one of the longer temper-flaring periods.)
“Brigit wants
red mullet for
making pasta!” Bobby yelled at Virginia.
“It says right
here she
wants “Potete Disossare”!, yelled Viginia. And, evidentally, a great deal
more along these lines.
One can only
imagine the mind-frame of the
fish-tendant.
“No red mullet.” She had eventually managed to communicate. Or at least
that's was understood. “But this
one here is good for pasta.”
When the
Lupones returned,
they were both crestfallen and also not speaking to one another. As the
story unfolded, I gently shared with them that what they had
said was:
“BONE THIS!”
Certainly,
with great and
admirable confidence. But without
actually indicating what it was that should be
boned. Everyone except th Lupones found this erstwhile
cultural faux-pas to be profoundly,
belly-laughingly hilarious.
In
an effort to please, they’d brought back two different kinds of fish:
the one recommended by the fish lady--nice pinky-white boneless fillets
of something I couldn’t identify—and six small, completely intact whole
fish with reddish skin, identified on the package as “Triglie.”
“Guys, triglie are red mullet,” I piped up,
after consulting the dictionary. This
earned me a matched pair of withering glares. I left them to
make up and
proceeded
into the kitchen to gut, bone, and SCALE the red mullet. Hey, if I’d
wanted to drive to Iper-Coop, I could have asked the lady to bone the
red mullet myself. Net loss of time: two hours, either way. But who’s
counting? Why I hadn’t consulted
the dictionary before
writing the offending shopping list was not clear.
I still had no
firm plan
for the dish, but I did have some
luminous bits of fish, two boxes of lanky, yellow-rich pappardelle, and in the fridge, the goat butter.
In the end, this is about all that went into it. I very lightly
seasoned the fillets with good sea salt and freshly ground Malabar
pepper. In a very large skillet over
almost non-existent heat, I sautéed them in a nut of the
butter for about two minutes.
When the pasta was al dente and well drained, I
lowered it gently into
the pan and added more nuts of butter. Quite a few, actually.
I tossed the mixture reverently, and briefly eyed a lemon.
I considered
squeezing a touch of its juice into the blushing pasta, but in the end
just sort of waved it over the pan,
the way Churchill did with his
vermouth
when concocting a bone-dry martini.
Fish. Goat butter. Noodles. Sublime.
Photos: Me
and Cinder-fella
settin' the table for a mullet dinner; Those Lupone's can't stay mad for long.
August 11: Monti-in-Chianti
I’ll Fry for
You Brigitina….
Most people I know—perhaps, by this time, everyone—are familiar with my reluctance to immerse any foodstuff
in exceedingly hot and deep oil. Soon after our arrival in
Chianti the words to the classic Evita song were altered to reflect
this sad situation:
I’ll fry for you Brigitina,
The truth is,
you hate the
splatters,
It doesn’t matter,
Just bring the platter….
It’s not necessary to document the reason here
(hint: the word
“splatter” would indeed be used), but let us just say that for me, a lover of the product but not the
process, a willing fryer is a good friend indeed.
This summer in Italy Cinder-fella (Jared) was in the
midst of his
heartening transformation from eater to cook. There, he embarked on a
steep learning curve, perfecting his fire-building, fire-roasting, and
fire-grilling skills as well as graciously frying anything that
was in need, creating new and enticing ways with fennel, and just
generally raising the bar.
There was one night, however, when Cinder-fella
lost his cool.
It was the night the allure of the wood-fired oven
on the loggia drew us both in too
far, too deep,
and too bloody hot. First on
the menu that evening were zucchini
blossoms: dredged in a light batter of flour, soda water, egg
yolk, and smoked paprika, and (thankfully) fried by my friend.
I’d secured four somewhat scrawny, head-on
pullets, whacked off their
heads and spatchcocked them out flat. What can I say? I may be
small but I’m not shy. The menu was rounded out by roasted baby
potatoes and grilled zucchini. Of course we decided that all three dishes could be cooked in the
wood oven. The logistics of this, it transpired, were
exceedingly daunting, if not to say permanently off-putting.
First, the earthenware
dish of
oil-slicked potatoes was pushed to the back of the large oven,
out of the way of the chicken-cooking area. Then, near the door for
easy accessibility, a bed of hot coals had to be raked into a 2-inch layer so
that the two footed wire grill racks, each bearing two spatchcocked
birds, could be placed on top of them. After a time, I observed that the nicely-seared pullets were now
cooking too fast, so the heavy wire grills were removed and the
coals raked into a thinner layer. At the same time the potatoes were
shaken and shoved around to promote even roasting. The chickens were
replaced over the now-cooler coals. Then the potatoes had to be shoved
around some more. Finally, 
when it came time for the chicken’s chilling-out period,
they had to be transferred to a platter so we could use our only two
wire grills to grill the zucchini. Of
course, now the coals were too thin and too cool, so hotter
coals had to be shoveled up front from the rear of the fire box. Does listening to this litany make
you tired? Imagine how we
felt.
When we were finished, both Cinder-fella and I retired to the olive grove with
two very large, very cold Negronis. We watched the happy people digging
in to their smoky repast and toasted two things: the warm and loving feeling one
achieves by cooking for their loved ones, and the fact that we
would never, ever schedule more than one dish per dinner in the wood
oven.
Then we ate.
Photos: Cinder-fella
turns his hand to frying; Why We Cook.