Villa I Tatti

Harvard has a research center which focuses mostly on Italian renaissance studies, but is really for anything Italy related. It happens that this place, the Villa I Tatti, is just outside of Florence (less than 20 minutes by bus) and I was lucky enough to find out about it and to be allowed to visit and go on a tour.

The area was unbelievably beautiful, and it was hard to believe that it was so close to the city! I was entranced by the bright colors in the ivy lining a house on the main road, and the walk up the hill to the villa was equally beautiful and pastoral:

 You tour the villa itself because it has a historically significant garden, as well as a spectacular collection of Byzantine art. I arrived early and met a grad student there who is studying there for the semester; besides him and one other grad student there are 15 post-doctoral fellows. He and I are going to do dinner sometime. Hooray for more friends!

The gardens were absolutely lovely. There were lots of plants around with lovely scents, including lemon trees at almost every corner, and so you were not only visually engaged in the garden but olfactory-ally as well. The way the garden was designed meant that around every corner there was a surprise. While the garden pictured here is lovely, can you see through the archway? That archway is for the limoneria, a barn for storing lemon trees through the winter, and as you pass through it there are a huge set of stairs dropping down into a completely different style of garden. Let me zoom in for you:

You see? Totally different garden around the corner. It was really lovely, and I got to enjoy the tour in the company of Charlie and Susan, friends of my family who live around the corner from us in Chicago. Our tour guide was also named Susan. Oh, the coincidences!

The art collection was lovely, but you'll have to go to I Tatti's website for more info on it, as I wasn't allowed to take pictures and can't remember much about it anyway. But it was a beautiful mansion, though it felt more like a few rooms connected to a lot of library (which we weren't allowed into, sadly). The research center was wonderfully relaxing, and definitely felt more like Italy than Harvard, though I imagine things would be different if I had seen people getting work done.

After the tour I got to stay for tea, which was done in a proper British style and was really lovely and fun. I got to talk with Susan the guide some more and met one of the other people who works there who I had been in contact with to arrange the tour. We discussed the differences between the Villa and the American Academy in Rome, and conversed about life in Italy for expats. I thought it was a lovely place, surrounded by lovely countryside (and some 80 acres of grape and olive farms, or something like that), and had a very academic air to it. How beautiful!

Here's a little more randomness

Dear people who read my blog,

Tonight I need your help. I have a couple of problems which I need responses for. Email me, skype me, or use the comments tool below to help me out (please!)

First question (medical): My ankle has been hurting when I walk for about two weeks now.  It has not been constant pain, and it is not related to my shoes (I've tried several pairs for several days in a row to no avail). There is no swelling, the hurt one is a little bit warmer than the good one, but that could be because I'm determined to find some symptom of the pain. Its been getting worse over time. I feel like if I go to a doctor he'll reply "there's nothing I can do". What should I do? I might buy a bicycle next week (I tried last week and this one to no avail--Italy!) which would get me using it less, but not by much. I need to be on my feet anyway for school. Should I go to a doctor anyway? Does anyone know of good ankle exercises? Should I use a brace? Should I just ignore it and hope it goes away?

Second question (culinary): There are lots of quinces starting to pop up at the market here. As this is not an ingredient I get to play with easily in the US, I'm going to buy some this weekend and use it. I was thinking of doing a jam, since there don't seem to be many other things to do with the fruit, but am not sure I want to just do an old-fashioned straight up simple jam. Any ideas on what quince might go well with? I saw a recipe for quince and vanilla, but would love any other ideas/suggestions.

Third question (mental health): I was in class almost continuously for eight hours today, cooking. I came home, did some shopping, and went back to cooking (dinner). I picked something trick just 'cuz. Then I thought about my whole baked goods project, and instead of making the easy scones I was going to do, I made an apple pie, complete with lattice top. I think I'm addicted to cooking. As you can see from my previous question, I'm already thinking about the next project. Is this healthy? I had things I was going to do tonight, like blog about my visit to Villa I Tatti and showering. (I was not going to blog about showering. That was a different thing I was going to do tonight.) I guess its good that I want to do this professionally, since I can't seem to tire of it....

Anyway, that's what's going on for now. If you have any info/advice about any of this, let me know! I'm going to go check on my pie to see if its cooking well.....

Also: Just saw this on the NYT blog. Its the 1st 50 rules for waiters, and it is really interesting to read. I definitely agree with it!

Random photos from a random person

In case you were wondering what I look like in class at school, a lovely visitor to class one day took some photos and sent them my way. Of course I had wanted her to send photos of the food we were making and some of the processes, but she instead sent almost all photos all of me. I figure someone might appreciate these too :) All credits go to Nordis.

The one photo of food. These were Italian meatloaves. We simmered them in tomato sauce.

I take notes in class. 

Sometimes we put things in pots and stir them. Annie turns the meatloaves.

When dishes get too hot we turn the heat down. Next to Annie is one of our instructors, Gabriella.

Pour!

Why are so many of my cooking memories actually of doing the dishes?

That's Maria next to me. She's from Poland.

Medhi and I chop.

Fattoria Le Fonti

Isn't Chianti beautiful? The foreground is a little blurry because I took this from a moving bus. The entire ride down to the countryside looked either like this or like small villages. It makes you wonder why people live in the city at all sometimes.

Through the luck of a friend, she put me in contact with another friend who owns the Fattoria Le Fonti in Panzano in Chianti. It is about an hour and fifteen minute bus ride from Florence up there, and in Panzano Sundays are market days. This meant that I was dropped off in the square in the middle of a market, where you could get everything you might need, from toiletries to clothes to food, though the most popular stand by far was the roast chicken stand. When Vicky picked me up we stopped there to get some rotisserie chicken, fried mozzarella balls, fried vegetables, and french fries. (we skipped the fried polenta. This menu makes the place sound almost American!) While waiting for the food she was stopped at least thrice to say hi to people she knows--Panzano is that kind of small town, where everyone knows everyone else. By the fountain in the middle of the square was a gaggle of old men, who were very clearly just hanging out in the middle of the square chatting about the comings and goings of country life. My guess is that they do this every Sunday and have done so for years and years.

We beat the kids back to the house--Vicky's husband Guido had taken them into the woods for porcini hunting. However a few minutes later they did come back, albeit empty handed. The season has been too dry here too. We all sat down together for a lovely lunch which Vicky had prepared, supplemented by our items from the market. The table was chaotic and large, with Guido's parents joining for the meal. The meal was relaxing and hearty, with lots of oven-roasted things and great, simple flavors. Roasted potatoes with herbs, a caramelized onion tart, wine from their vineyard, and everything finished with a caffe, of course. The kids came and went as they pleased, making lots of noise and enjoying themselves while the adults chatted. This felt exactly like a Sunday lunch should, relaxed, cheerful, and delicious!

Just as we were cleaning up some visitors came by to say hello. The men went off to the wine presses to talk and so Guido could work, while us ladies finished cleaning up the kitchen and then went to sit outside and chat. Guido's parents had left, so it was just me, Vicky, and Katya, but we chatted in the sun together and just relaxed. The kids ran around and played, and it was a wonderful way to spend some time. (This was a theme of the entire visit.) By the way, we chatted in Italian the whole time, and I was following quite well. I took pride in this.

Soon we were invited up to the presses to see what was going on with the wines. Here is where I apologize because I'm about to use some grape and wine terms inappropriately. But the gist will be right at least. Guido was hand-pressing some grapes, mixing the must (juice, seeds, and skins in an early stage, when fermentation has just really started) of some cabernet sauvignon around. At the bottom end of the pole was a big white paddle with holes in it, and he used this to mix everything around. He pulled the paddle up and had me try a grape--it was deliciously sweet and tasted a lot like chocolate, actually. His hands were stained with the juice and looked dark purple. I stuck my head a little into the vat to smell the grapes and was hit with a very strong chemical scent, which was the CO2 the yeast produces as a byproduct of converting the sugars into alcohol.

Showing me the whole process of early winemaking, they next poured me a small glass of their rosato. As these were all wines from the harvest which just passed a few weeks ago, they were in various stages of fermentation, none of them done. As you can see, the rosato is opaque and a very bright color--the skins were just recently removed from the juice. You could smell the yeasts in the entire room, and just a hint of that same smell was in the drink, though mostly it tasted like a wonderfully complex grape juice. Actually that is an insult to this wine, as I have never had a grape juice I liked. This was delicious, sweet, sort of bubble-gum like in flavor, though that could have just been the color which made me think of it. It also was a little bubbly, another byproduct of where it was in the fermentation process. It was something that would satisfy a thirst wonderfully on a hot summer day, and I really liked it. What Vicky said was that once the weather cools down a little further they will strain the rosato and put the wine (as at that point it will have turned from juice into wine) outside to cool and finish fermenting before bottling it in February. I also got to try another wine, which had just passed into the wine stage. That one wasn't as sweet as the rosato or the fresh grapes were, and you could taste the tannins in it. It was not bad, but it definitely had a ways to go before it would be good to drink. It definitely didn't feel as alcoholic as finished red wine though, which makes sense because it still had to go through the second (malolactic) fermentation. I think. If you really want to know about all these processes, buy a book. I have mine, but I clearly haven't done the reading yet.

A recent acquisition for the farm was Salami and Prosciutto. No, they did not just stock their fridge. These are the names of their two pigs. They have a wonderful mudhole, a sturdy shed, and all the scraps from the kitchen. With three kids in the house, these scraps are pretty good pickings sometimes. Today they got potatoes, carrots, pumpkin skin, chestnuts, and some lettuce. Yum! The kids all like to take care of the pigs, and Sophia, at 20 months likes to pull up grass to take over to them. It was very cute to watch all the kids get involved with taking care of the animals, and while they had wanted to name the pigs Ferdinand or somesuch, Guido insisted they have more realistic names instead. Once winter really sets in, they will fatten up further, and will be slaughtered sometime after Christmas.

I had a wonderful day at the farm, and in a week or two I will be lucky enough to go back--this time not for wine, but for olives. The activity will be olive picking, after which we will head over to the mill with the whole day's harvest, and at the end I will have some spicy and bold Tuscan olive oil to take home, picked by my own two hands! I really can't wait to labor and enjoy the fruits of it, and I am so grateful that Vicky and Guido are so generous! I feel like I'm getting the chance to see a different, but no less important side of Italian life out there: the side of production rather than consumption. And being able to participate in it is a really eye-opening opportunity.

 

Tomorrow I head to the Villa I Tatti, Harvard's Italian research center, and the rest of the week is jam-packed with extra classes and an expedition to buy a bicycle. So I will probably (hopefully) be posting daily this week. It's great to be so busy, but it leaves me exhausted sometimes! 

On Olives and Olive Oil

Olive oil has been cultivated since at least 4000 BCE (the earliest amphorae were apparently found from around 3500 BCE), and while olives have been an important part of the culinary history of the Mediterranean, they were not always as important in Italy as today. One might imagine that the Romans simply imported the alimentary habit from Greece, but the turning point in the olive's position in Italy actually happened much later, during the mid 14th century.

As any history buff will tell you, there was really only one important event in Europe during the 14th century, and that was the black death. In Italy alone the population went from 10 million in 1340 to around 6 million by 1400 (for reference, Italy's population is now about 60 million and shrinking). Before the plague, Italy was a self-sufficient peninsula agriculturally speaking, growing its own grain and feeding its population through lots of hard manual labor. But much of Italy is very hilly, and thus not ideally suited to growing grain. Grain works better where you don't have to work so hard to get the water to the fields, and Italy ignored this fact through sheer numbers. However once the plague hit things needed to change. There were no longer enough people to grow all the grain that the country (I use the term for convenience, not because Italy was a single country at this time) needed, and it was necessary for them to manage their labor force with more care.

The solution ended up being to switch to a cash monoculture: olives. Olives need certain things to grow well: lots of space, soil with a certain PH and moisture level, lots of sun, a fair amount of rain, etc, etc. The Italian peninsula happened to be a perfect match, and with all the dead people there was suddenly a lot more space cropping up. So the survivors started to plant olive trees on these hills, and decided that growing olives was a lot easier than growing grain. They then pressed the olives for oil and traded it out to get their grain instead. The more efficient use of resources and labor led to an improvement in the quality of life in Italy, as well as the proliferation of the olive tree. (Much thanks need to go to Prof. Michael McCormick for teaching me all this and to Ellen Bryson for helping me remember it.)

On Monday our class took a field trip to the Fattoria Casamora, an agroturismo and olive farm. Here we were greeted by a man who would generally be referred to by his coworkers as "the architect", because not only was he the person who runs the olive farm and oversees the production of the oil, but he also happens to be a full time architect. He designed all the spaces inside this beautiful Italian farmstead, and also designs buildings all around Italy. His real name is Maurizio.

The architect first gave us a tour of the building, including a very large amount of public space used for the guests of the agroturismo. An agroturismo is essentially an Italian country bed and breakfast, which happens to also be a farm. They are usually known for their fabulous food, fresh from their land, and are definitely a wonderful way to experience the uniqueness of Italy and to learn about a less well-known facet of Italian culture.

The spaces were all minimalist and contemporary, very clean and comfortable. The giant lecture hall could have easily sat 70 or 80 people at least, and they even had minimalist solo piano music playing in there, just for the ambiance. This place was not a small operation, but despite that it felt like something unique and to be treasured, just 40 minutes outside of Florence.

The architect gave us a much more detailed description of the equipment than we really needed, and definitely more than I understood. It also didn't help that they had asked us to wear our chef jackets (photo op) for the day, so we weren't wearing our coats. This was the coldest day of the year so far, and inside these huge spaces with no heating it couldn't have been above 60 degrees. But what I gathered was that they use several different techniques to make their oil, though I couldn't quite understand why.

The farm actually grows six or eight different varieties of olive, and they make separate oils for each varietal. You can definitely tell that the olives produced different tasting oils--some were spicier on the finish, others milder, and we discussed what kinds of dishes and food you would pair with each variety. Oils of this quality, we were told, are never heated up; the heating process denatures the oil and ruins the subtle flavor. Rather these oils are for using raw, as a final garnish to a finished plate. And they were so wonderful and fragrant, I could definitely imagine the right oil bringing a dish to a whole new level. The picture to the side was of the casks where they store the oil over the course of a year: each one was labeled clearly with what kind of oil was inside and what the bin number was. Each bottle they fill of oil also has this same information on it, so if there is ever a problem with one of the oils, they can track it straight back to the source (or, more likely, if someone treats the oil wrong and complains, they can show that their oil isn't the one with the problem).

All of us took turns stepping out of the tour to warm ourselves by the roaring fire they had set up for us. Here Medhi takes his turn. It doesn't get this chilly in Casablanca! Despite the cold, it was a really beautiful experience.

While we are still unsure as to why we were being used for advertising purposes, Annie definitely looked great as a Vanna White for a 5 liter jug of oil. She took the job mostly because it gave her an excuse to stand by the fire.

Luckily for us, after the tour we were asked to sit down for a late afternoon snack of sorts, where the farm showed off one of its other specialty products: Tuscan beans. They made us a wonderful, hot tuscan bean soup, heavily flavored with rosemary, and then gave us a challenge: the soup needed to be dressed with olive oil to finish it off, and so we had to decide for ourselves which oil we liked best with this dish. They set a beautiful table with small bottles of all the oil their farm makes.

I took seconds, ostensibly to try a different oil and soup combination. It was a wonderful soup. Really highlighted the quality of the beans through a very simple combination. They served a lovely chianti red with the soup, and were extremely generous with all their portions.

Continuing with the theme of traditional Tuscan food, they ended the only way a proper Tuscan meal can: cantuccini and vin santo. Cantuccini are little biscotti with almonds in them, very sweet and crunchy, and vin santo is a white dessert wine, sort of similar to a moscato or a sweeter, white sherry. Of course they served a vin santo that they had made on the property, and had pulled out a bottle from 1991 to share with us. We were more than happy to help finish off every drop of it, and during the process were regaled with a complex story about the time the archietct had met the pope and been given something. At this point all the wine was getting to me though, and even if I could have understood the story in the best of shape, well I wasn't going to understand it then. The architect liked telling it though.

On the whole this was a wonderful outing, a chance for us to bond a bit as a class, learn more about a very special part of Italian culinary culture, and enjoy an evening outside of Florence. This really showed off some of the very best parts about Italy, and I couldn't help but want to stay there for much longer.

I've gotten my restaurant assignment!

It's official, I will be working at a restaurant called Alle Murate for my stage starting in late November. From what I've been able to gather, this place rocks. Not only is the food supposed to be modern twists on traditional Italian cooking, but it has gotten lots of great reviews. Its in a historically significant building (Florence has so many of them that even restaurants can have amazing space), and I'm going to presume that despite that the kitchen is not also historical. The restaurant is run by a woman, however she apparently scorns the title of chef, and so is just called the cook. I'm hoping that this translates into a sign that the kitchen is egalitarian and so I will not spend my whole time there chopping onions and crying (because of the onions, not because of anything else, of course.....). Anyway, I'm super excited about it, I hope it turns out great, and of course I will add any more information I get as it arrives!

Update: was getting complaints about the first link being in Italian. To go directly to the English page, click here.

Cute old ladies make bread

At the end of last week our class was visited by the Simili sisters, a pair of really old ladies who bake bread and write books about doing so for a living. They taught us an amazing amount of things about breadmaking, and together we made about eight or ten different kinds of leavened breads, from baked loaves to fried bread to Sardinian crackers.

What stuck with me most though was the way they kneaded the bread. As you can see from the photo, these are not exactly strong ladies. I had always thought that kneading bread was a thing to be done with lots of force and energy, an activity that can make your brow bead with sweat. But these ladies were manipulating the dough so easily, and they taught me how to be gentle with the dough and to knead it by simply folding and rolling it across the table instead of trying to force the gluten molecules together. A big part of their kneading technique is called "battere": it means to hit, like with a bat (or at least that's how I memorized the word). You lift the dough into the air and then slam it against the table three times, trying to make as much noise as possible. The louder the noise, the better (again, inferred, not actually how they explained it). This allows gravity to do the work of kneading, instead of your arms.

These women held an encyclopedic knowledge of bread: after we made each bread they would discuss how if we wanted to do the bread in the style of this town instead of that city we could just shape it differently, and how different flours absorb water at different speeds, and how other parts of Italy did things in entirely different ways.

One of the coolest (and most delicious) breads we made was a very simple dough, but the shaping of it was very complex. They rolled out very long, thin strips of dough, then rolled them up like a fruit roll-up, then let them rise. Next they cut them in half, and then scored the bread very deeply. Finally they put these little rolls in the oven, from which they emerged light, fluffy, and really beautiful.

And that was my experiment in storytelling via photography. Let me know what you think. Aren't these rolls just beautiful though?

While they weren't even 100% hands-on, the lessons we had with these sisters (twins, actually) were really some of the best lessons we've had so far. They were clear even when I couldn't understand what they were saying, I felt that we really gained an in-depth knowledge in a very useful area, and I already know that this will improve my cooking skills exponentially. I have a much better understanding of why my challahs never quite worked, and I imagine that I will be making bread a lot more often now that it has been demystified even more. I think I have entirely gotten over my fear of yeast now (I used to think I could do no recipe which involved the stuff), and that in and of itself is very exciting! Hooray for old ladies making bread!

 PS. I will be making pumpkin bread tomorrow! Thank you to the four people who voted!

Siena

So before I delve into the topic du jour, I want to note how the weather here is crazy. It isn't bad, just crazy. Tonight the low is a balmy 1º C, and by the time I am walking to school it will have hit all the way up to 3º. However, I will be wearing a t-shirt under my jacket and sweater, because by the time I'm walking home from school the temperature will have risen all the way up to 16º (60º F, if you're wondering). Oh, and weather for the upcoming weekend? Sunny and a high of 23º (73º F). And despite the low temperatures, mosquitoes are still eating me alive....

So yesterday I was eating lunch with my family, and they asked me if I had plans. I said none for the afternoon, but was thinking of going to a concert that night if any of them wanted to come with (or at least that's what I tried to say. I know they understood the part about me not having plans for the afternoon). They replied that for the afternoon they were going to go to Siena to see the Duomo there, and would I like to join them? (Jane got this one right) Yes!

On the way there my host mother complained about the roads. There were a few bumps, and she said that it was inexcusable for an Italian road--this was as bad as Africa! I laughed because in Chicago these roads would be praised for how smooth they were. She also asked if we have 10-lane highways in America.

This was a really beautiful duomo, and the first where I didn't have to spend the time staring up at the ceiling. While the ceiling was beautifully decorated with a star pattern, and the walls adorned in Siena's characteristic stripe, the most interesting parts of the duomo happened to be on the floor.

This was my favorite section of a floor image, pulled from a grand depiction of an intense battle. These guys are looking away from the fight, and there is something very intense about their eyes.

However it wasn't all floors. They also had a little "Library" which was not only full of illuminated manuscripts of gregorian chant, but had a beautifully decorated ceiling which absolutely made up for the lack of any other decorated ceiling in the building. I like this photo because you can see both bits of amazingness at once.

Siena was a beautiful city, it was lovely to feel included in the family, and I am so happy I went with them. Of course, after Bologna the day before I was very tired upon returning home, but at least I could keep this image in my head, of the wild pig with a sign around his neck saying "Porchetta Oggi" (Roast pork today)! (PS. More pictures in my blog album, link is at the bottom of my main page)

Bologna

Saturday Omri and I took the train to Bologna. Omri is a classmate of mine from Israel,  and since we had heard there was good eating in Bologna, we went. The train ride was only an hour, and I am so glad we went!

In terms of things to do in Bologna which are touristy, there really aren't many. It has a duomo which isn't as nice as some other cities' duomos, it has some towers (we climbed one, this picutre is of me at the top), the museums aren't great, and this meant that besides walking around to get a feel for the city, all we needed to do was eat.

And I would say we succeeded at eating. The day before in school had been all bread and pastries, and both of us were feeling a bit stuffed from all of that, so we decided to do a picnic lunch. The picnic was inspired entirely by this window display in a cheese shop of something that looked wondrous and unique and amazing. Yes, that is gorgonzola aged 12 months, to the point where it has turned brown. We got a bit of that as well as some fresh bread and prosciutto (after all, we were less than 2 hours from Parma, where the most famous prosciutto in the world is made).

When we opened up the cheese from the butcher's paper, we were both a bit dubious. It had a lot of dark colors in it, and we could smell it very easily. I placed a chunk on my piece of bread and inhaled the astringent pungency. I smiled at Omri, "buon appetito!" and took a bite. At first my reaction was revulsion, then I was overwhelmed, and then I noticed all the different flavors in it. The aftertaste was actually great, and I felt ready to try another bite. I didn't quite finish the part I had grabbed (about 1/4 or 1/5 of the total we got) but I made it most of the way and enjoyed it. However, it was so insanely strong that it really needed accompaniments, such as a strong glass of wine, a steak, and/or some very rich fruit. The cheese by itself was too much to handle. Omri didn't get through more than three bites.

The prosciutto was amazing. It was sweet and savory, you could taste an earthy woodsiness to it, and I need to get more of that.

After lunch we walked some more, and eventually we were tired again and hungry since we had only eaten a half meal with our picnic, and so we stopped at this place that looked fun and good on a street full of restaurants. Omri and I both thought one thing on the menu sounded best, and so we ordered it. It looked like this (sorry for the blurriness):

These are pumpkin tortelini with a balsamic-pancetta sauce. These are the best things I've put in my mouth since getting to Italy, and they definitely compete with many of the things I had here on my first trip over the summer. They were sweet on the inside, with a thick pasta to give the dish some bite, and the sauce was rich, creamy, and earthy without being at all acidic, despite the balsamic. You couldn't pick out the flavor of the pancetta either, but the whole was so much more amazing than any of the parts could possibly have been that I wouldn't want to have tasted any of the individual elements.Omri and I spent the rest of the day discussing this pasta dish, and exactly how it was done, exactly what could have been done better (the plating--this was a plate of lumpy brown), what made this dish the best ever, and I just kept laughing because I was so happy.

I asked for the recipe from one waiter, and he said, "sorry, its a secret." So I asked the female waitress, who at first explained that it was squash puree inside pasta with a bacon and balsamic sauce. I explained that that part was on the menu, and what else was in the sauce? Did it have any cream in it, because it was very "cremoso". She had to go back and ask the cook, and explained to us that there was both broth and the "tiniest bit" (pizzico) of cream, and that that was it. While the flavor and texture makes me think it was more than the tiniest bit of cream, the color would say otherwise. In the end, I don't really care. I need to figure out how to make these so I can have them all the time. I think I might email the restaurant for more information about this dish, if I can actually get it. I might actually go back to Bologna for this dish (though probably not, the train tickets weren't that cheap). For anyone who is wondering, the restaurant is Clive T Bistrot and Wine Bar, Via Clavature 17/c, Bologna.

So how can you follow that kind of meal? Yet both of us had passed one place on the way to this restaurant that we needed to visit. This was Roccati, a native Bolognese artisan chocolate shop, and the two of us had to get something. We split a soft chocolate bar (sort of like hard fudge) that had three layers: one of dark chocolate, one of pistachio white chocolate, and one of hazelnut milk chocolate. Was it fabulous? Yes. These guys know how to make good chocolate. I'm almost glad I didn't go to school in Bologna, because I would not have been able to resist these places and would be eating way too much! I guess that makes it a good thing that I haven't found equivalents in Florence (yet).....

Acquacotta ai Funghi

As the weather turns abnormally cold (we have already been having lows which are colder than a normal December here), thoughts by necessity turn to soup, and this is the one soup we've done in class that I continue to dream of. Since I wouldn't call myself a mushroom girl, this fact is especially surprising. But it has a lot going for it.

The term "acquacotta" literally means "cooked water", a reference to this soup's poor Tuscan background. Note the addition of a variety of elements to try and add some extra content and calories to the soup without much cost: eggs, cheese, bread; but it is these elements which make the soup so awesome.

For 4-6 people:
1 lb fresh mushrooms (preferably porcini)
2/3 lb fresh peeled and seeded tomatoes, chopped
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 yellow onions sliced thin
marjoram, pref. fresh (originally done with nepitella, an herb indigenous to Tuscany). Can also substitute with any other fresh herb.
4 T olive oil
2/3 cup white wine
one slice of toasted, crusty bread for each person
red pepper flakes
grated pecorino cheese (or parmesan if you don't have pecorino)
2 quarts stock (or water with some veggies thrown in if you don't have it)
one egg per person
salt

Sweat the onions on a low heat in the olive oil until tender. Add the wine and tomatoes and let reduce about halfway. Add the garlic and the stems of the mushrooms (if using mushrooms with harder stems than caps. If they're all the same, add all the mushrooms now). Let cook for a minute, then add 1 1/2 quarts of the broth, add the marjoram, and let sit at a low simmer for at least 10 minutes. Add the mushroom caps, if they aren't already in there, and let cook for another 20 minutes.

This soup ideally is served in individual bowls or ramekins. Place a slice of bread at the bottom of each bowl, top the bread with cheese, then soup, then crack the egg on top, then layer with more cheese and place the bowl in a broiler oven until the white of the egg has just set. Serve hot!

Brazilian night

So after my last post where I perhaps wallowed a bit in misery, only a few hours after putting it up my fate changed. So if you remember a post from September when I mentioned some people I had already met, including one Brazilian maid named Fernanda. Well I decided to text her to see if she was free, and she called me back. Our conversation (translated for your convenience) went approximately like this:

"Hey Jenny! I am so glad you called, me and a friend are going out tonight! Want to come?"
"Sure! When and where?"
"Well, where are you?"
"I'm at home near Campo di Marte."
"Oh, well can you do [garbled stuff I didn't understand]."
"Huh? Speak more slowly, it is hard to hear."
"We're doing [lost in the background noise]."
"Sounds fun. Where should I meet you and when?"
"What do you think? She keeps asking the same question, why don't you talk to her?"
"What?"
"Okay, here, you try."
[new voice] "Hi, Jenny? Do you know where St. Jacob's piazza is?"
"No, but I can find out. Is that where you are?"
*"No. That's where she lives. [More stuff in fast Italian blotted out by background noise. Clearly asking me a question.]"
**"I can't hear, I can't understand you, what do you want me to do already??????"
We went back and forth between lines * and ** until they gave me instructions to get ready to go out and leave now for the stazione, and then call them. Well I didn't know what kind of going out was going to happen (it was still way before dinner time even), and so I just threw some makeup on, threw the bread that I had rising in the kitchen into the fridge, along with a prayer (cinnamon buns, they turned out fine and my whole family really liked them, they're almost gone only a day after I baked them! More on baked goods after the story), and I ran out the door.

I got to the statzione and asked where they were, they told me, but because of the noise again I heard wrong, and so while I kept asking everyone where the Sabaionni was, apparently I was supposed to be asking for the Baglioni (a hotel). I even asked the doorman of the Baglioni where the Sabaionni was, and he said that he had no clue. The girls could have told me that I was looking for a hotel. That would have helped a lot. Stupid cell phones. Anyway I did eventually find them. We took a bus from the stazione to Fernanda's house, and she called lots of people and we all ate dinner together.

Then they decided that I wasn't dressed appropriately for dancing (I wasn't, I didn't bring clothes for that) and so Fernanda pulled a suitcase full of dressed out from under her bed and picked out an outfit for me. They dressed me, did my hair, did my makeup, and at the end I was in an all-black getup with my hair down and extra curly and lots of volume and eyeliner and glitter and perfume and I thought I looked like a jersey girl. They told me I looked like I could be from the south of Brazil, where people are white and pasty like me. I'm waiting for the facebook photos to go up, I will add them to this post for sure!

After finally getting ready we got into a car with some of her friends and drove about a half hour to the other side of the city to this place called Otel Varietie (or something near that). It was a dinner/theater variety show for the beginning of the evening, and at midnight they remove all the tables and turn the place into a giant discoteque. We caught the end of the show, which included dance acts, a woman with lots of hula hoops, someone singing aretha franklin who clearly didn't have an idea of what the words meant and hardly knew what the words were, and the charming announcer. Then when the club started they revealed that the stage actually had a gigantic bar behind it, and they opened the disco part by lighting the bar on fire while the barmen did crazy tricks and spit fire and juggled flaming bottles. It was pretty cool. Apparently all the bartenders in the club did those kinds of spinning tricks, or at least mine did. He was tossing ice into the air, spinning glasses, pouring from an arm's distance away, shaking with extra flourishes, and all sorts of fun stuff.

The disco played American top 40 hits for the beginning of the evening, which I enjoyed because I knew them, and then slowly transitioned into the stereotypical Eurotrash house stuff. By that time my feet were starting to hurt because the shoes weren't quite right for me and had no padding, so I was perfectly happy to sit a few dances out, enjoy my caipirinha (I was with Brazilians, after all), and watch the festivities. Of course I was in one of the most scantily-clad groups of the whole club (again, I was with Brazilians, after all), but luckily I had borrowed a big, bright, flashy ring which happened to fit right on my ring finger, and showing that off was an easy way to keep the casanovas at bay.

The night ended with us stopping at a roadside truck for hamburgers (or at least ground beef on bread with condiments) and I spent the night at Fernanda's house since we got back after 3 and I didn't want to make my way home at that hour. I got up the next morning too early and made my way home.

When I got home, after a long, hot shower I finished the cinnamon buns I had started the day before. They turned out terrifically, and my host mom told me twice that she liked them and needed the recipe. So after the success of the banana bread and now this, I've decided I will keep up a rotation of baked goods to keep around, at the very least so I have something to eat for breakfast, and also because it seems to make people happy. So I'm taking advice and suggestions for what to make! Vote in the poll on the right, and use the comments section or email me with other ideas.

Socialization, Speaking, and Library

The day I made banana bread this week, two members of the house I'm living in asked, independent of each other, "so, are you making friends here?" While I don't think that was meant to be a probing question into why I was baking on a mid-week afternoon instead of socializing, it still made me think about how I am adjusting to life here.

One goal I have while here is to meet locals and get a taste of the real Italy behind Florence's all too popular tourist facade. I feel that with the apartment I chose I have done part of that, and I do feel like I'm starting to get to know the city in a very different way than most do. However, in terms of meeting lots of locals and getting to know them, learning what they do with their time, I have been less successful. I'm making friends at school, but most of them are other foreigners who don't quite have the perspective I'm looking for.

The question is, how do you meet locals? If I went to a bar alone tonight, I would be more likely to meet locals, but they would probably be single cassanovas looking for girls to take home, and that's not the kind of person I want to meet. Some 99% of the people at museums are tourists, and while I would probably get along terrifically with that other 1%, finding them is probably an impossible task. Once I start work I hope I'll make friends, but by then I'll be working 60 hour weeks with them during the nights, and I don't imagine we'll have much opportunity to socialize outside of work. Furthermore, I don't want to wait until my last month here to meet people--what will I do until then?

So that's my situation, and I'm trying to figure out ways around it. I'm in need of advice and suggestions about what to do. Maybe I'll try to find a concert schedule and see if I couldn't meet people at those kinds of events--that would probably be a crowd I would get along with, and lots of tickets here can be found for just about 10 euros. That would be fun even if it wasn't successful!

In other news, I'm feeling great about my progress in Italian. I bought Twilight in Italian, just because its something I'm familiar with, and have been reading it, at times without a dictionary. This is so exciting for me! When I would read Chinese, it could easily take a half hour to an hour to get through a page, and while I'm probably reading at about 6 minutes per page in Italian, which is definitely not fast, its still really great. Its helping me a lot with both my confidence level and my ability to recognize verbs despite them being in different tenses and conjugations. Verbs are definitely my achilles heel of romance languages, and so I've been focusing a lot of my studies on them. I'm creating a cheat sheet for verbs, which, when completed, will have one page for every tense, including how to conjugate them, what the tense is used for, and what verbs are irregular in that tense. I'm hoping that by doing that and studying it I can improve how I use verbs...right now I pretty much am doing it in the Chinese style, where I say: "Yesterday I go to the store", speaking in present tense and explaining the actual action through auxiliary words. However speaking improperly is not really the best way to communicate, and so I'm working hard to correct it. Its definitely exciting!

I definitely feel like I'm doing well here, and as if I've found a good groove. I also found a library right around the corner from school, and if I show them my passport they will give me a library card so I can borrow books, CDs, and DVDs. The building the library is in looks like it used to be a monastery or cloister, with very simple but beautiful architecture and a beautiful, large courtyard with some statues in it. You can sit outside overlooking the courtyard at some tables they have, or you can sit inside where the wood-beamed ceilings and comfortable couches make a great atmosphere. Obviously I have found myself a happy place, and will definitely be spending afternoons there when I have breaks between classes!  

Torta di banane

I did my grocery shopping for the week and got bananas. Surprisingly, though they were green at the stems when I bought them yesterday afternoon, they had already begun to brown by the time I got home last night. So I did what any sane person would do with bananas going brown too fast, I decided to make bread when I got home from school today.

Generally speaking this wouldn't be anything to write home about (literally, in this case), but the only recipe I had was my mothers, and it had words like "cups" and "sticks of butter" and "sour cream", which are all words that don't exist in my neighborhood grocery store. So I had to improvise my recipe, adjusting the amounts as I thought they might work, playing it by ear. Did I mention that I also had no mixer? I am just glad I figured out how to cream butter with a whisk...the secret? Time. Luckily I have too much of that!

Also, I baked them off in a silicone muffin pan, because I wasn't sure my family had anything for baking cakes and such in (they didn't, as far as I could see) and so I needed to borrow something from school which was easy to transport, and this won.

So how did it work? Well, they were too sweet because the yogurt was sweetened (couldn't find 100% plain), and they were more like cake than bread because the batter was too thin, but they still had that moist banana texture, and my host family likes them, apparently. They find the concept a bit strange (bananas aren't for baking here), but it didn't phase them. My host mom asked me for the recipe, at which point I made up some weights in terms of grams and some volumes in terms of milliliters, and I wish her the best of luck in reaching anything approximating my approximation of the real thing!

Little slices of Italy

This recipe is one of those that could be overwhelmed by too much symbolism, nonetheless, here goes. It uses some of the ingredients most common in Italian cuisine (tomatoes, eggplant, basil, olive oil, cheese) and makes them into a little mini-pizza like object. The flavors are simple, and combined together its really delicious. Plus, because of the vibrant colors (green, white, and red), it makes each piece look a little like an Italian flag! I wish I had taken pictures in class of this one. Also, the recipe originally calls for the eggplant slices to be pan-seared stovetop, but I changed it to grilled for this recipe, as I think it makes for better flavor.

2 oblong eggplants (violet or dark, not Japanese, Chinese, 8-ball, graffiti, or any of those other specialty kinds)
3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and cubed
8 oz taleggio cheese (or any other cows cheese that's of medium softness and mild flavor), cut into cubes

for the pesto:
lots of fresh basil
half lots of parsley (aka 1/2 the amount basil)
3 cloves garlic
a large handful of peeled almonds
some parmesan cheese (optional)
1 tablespoon of dijon mustard
salt, pepper, olive oil

Cut the eggplant into discs and soak in saltwater for 45 minutes. Dry, coat lightly with oil, and grill until 2/3 of the way cooked. Place flat on a sheet tray. Make the pesto by combining the almonds, oil, and garlic first in a blender. Once those have been ground up add the rest of the ingredients. This pesto should be thick and spreadable, rather than a sauce. Spread a layer of pesto on each slice of eggplant, then sprinkle liberally with both tomatoes and cheese. Broil in the oven for about 6 or 7 minutes or until cheese is mostly melted. Enjoy!!

Pisa

Saturday I took a daytrip to Pisa. I was going to go with a classmate, we had plans to meet at the train station. When our train was supposed to leave in 5 minutes, I called him only to have a girl pick up. Turns out she had loaned her phone to my friend the night before, and she was already on the train as it pulled out of the station. She didn't even know what I looked like to tell me that my friend was sick, and since my phone had been out of money, there was no way to tell me. So I caught the next train to Pisa instead and met up with them that afternoon (they also neglected to mention that they were stopping in Lucca first).

Pisa is known for almost nothing besides its leaning tower. The most popular thing to do with the tower, besides climb it, is to take a photo so it looks like you are either holding it up or knocked it down. While I somehow managed to miss out on this tradition, I did see lots of people looking like idiots with their hands in the air. If you look at the two people in the bottom left corner, you'll see that they actually are trying to pinch the tower in their hands rather than lean on it. Hooray for the nonconformists!

Not to miss out on all the fun, we did go up the tower. It was strange walking up it, because even though we were on the inside without windows, you could still feel the tilt. I kept praying that I wasn't going to be the straw that broke the camel's back, the one to send one of the 7 wonders of the world toppling to the ground. It is really a beautiful structure, though not as tall as I had imagined.


A little history about the tower: it actually was not built incorrectly, nor knocked over. Turns out that not so long ago, Pisa was part of the sea, and so the top layers of soil are very soft and pliable. When the architects decided to build a tower, they put too much weight on one single spot of land. Anywhere else it would not have been a big deal, but after building more than half of the stories of the tower it had noticeably sunk into the ground and began to tilt. The building ceased and discussion began about what to do. After no changes for a while, they decided that a little tilt never hurt anyone, and so they continued building upward, but again had to stop because of tilt. However, at this point they had completed all but the bell tower top. To correct things, they then actually built the bell tower at an angle relative to the tower itself so that it sat just about flat on top. However, history ever repeating itself, the tower tilted more, and so now even the very top is uneven. They actually had to do emergency tower-saving in the early nineties, as the stone had weakened enough that some supporting columns were at risk of collapsing. Luckily they figured out how to amend the situation enough that it seems it will remain standing for longer.

Pisa was terribly hot, and I feel like I got sunburned on the back of my neck. I have come to the decision that Pisa has more bookstores per capita than any other city in Italy (it had one or two a block, everywhere I went!), and I really like the architecture in Pisa.

To see more pictures from my trip, you can check out the web album at the bottom of my main page. There are a couple other cool photos in there, including one of a mural put up on a construction wall that was made with mirrors, creating a really cool effect. It reminds me of the same kind of mural put up underneath LSD at the Foster exit.

The trip was exhausting, and when I got back to the main train station I extended my trip by getting on a bus going in the wrong direction. Lets just say that I was very happy to reach my bed that night!