Italy, condensed – Pt.3 – Case Vecchie

30 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by julia chews the fat in Food Away From Home, Food Writing

When I first started this blog, there were really only three people whose food writing I read consistently – Molly Wizenburg’s (Orangette), Luisa Weiss’ (The Wednesday Chef) and Rachel Roddy’s (Rachel Eats). Whether they were writing about braised artichokes, or ham-bone soup, or a meringue cake gone to hell, their prose seemed effortless and fluid, heartfelt, but never saccharine. In a sea of food-related sites getting louder by the minute, they quickly became a special trifecta to me. I liked that food was at the centre of their writing, but not its singular purpose. I also liked that they never fetishised food, a welcomed shift from the norm, where the entire culinary world – in print, online, in restaurants – seemed to be suffering from a severe bout of excess, obsessed with everything from molecular gastronomy and celebrity chefs, to cronuts and the latest trends in bacon.

Thankfully, Molly, Luisa and Rachel were there to balance things out. By making the story the priority – instead of food trends and culinary styling – they completely changed the way I saw food media. In fact, their writing and approach to food was the reason I started this blog, and the reason I still keep plugging away at it, four and a half years after fumbling through that first post.

I tried to remember all this in April, when I spent an entire lunch break with my finger hovering over the “send” button to sign up for this year’s edition of The Language of Food, a writing workshop led by two members of the trifecta – Rachel and Luisa – at the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School in Sicily. The workshop dovetailed so flawlessly with the things I loved most – food writing, cooking, edible gardens, Italy – it felt like it had been plucked from a dream. I had savings set aside and vacation time banked at work. I could go. There was nothing stopping me. But there was still a small voice at the back of my head that rumbled each time I’d entertain the idea of going. Should I really be taking this workshop? Can I justify doing this? What if my writing is terrible? What if Rachel and Luisa think I’m terrible?

Finally, on that lunch break in April, I got a grip and pressed “send”.

I can’t tell you how thankful I am for that moment.

I arrived at the school in late June, after four days in Rome and one week in and around Palermo. Housed on the part of the property referred to as Case Vecchie, the school is run by Fabrizia Lanza, teacher, educator, and all-round force of nature who has become one of region’s most important proponents and protectors of Sicilian traditions, sustainable agriculture, and farm-to-table (or as she would call it, arm–to-table) living. I knew this woman was a phenom – that the breadth of what she’d taken on at her family’s estate was remarkable – but once meeting her, I also discovered that behind the illustrious persona was an exceedingly affable, delightful, lively woman who could put you in stiches with one wry, off-the-cuff comment. Knowing that she was going to be part of this week-long experience made me feel all the more lucky.

Throughout the first day, members of the workshop trickled in, some arriving from the UK, others from Berlin and the States, one originally from Victoria, BC, via Florence. We were a small group, nine in all, including Rachel and Luisa, a mix of former editors and journalists, published writers, and entrepreneurs. There seemed to be a collective giddiness about being there, all of us drawn to this one place, miles from home. It’s never a given that you’re going to get along with a group of strangers, especially when you teeter more toward introversion than extroversion, but it wasn’t long before I knew I was going to like our motley little crew. Nine women; nine eager souls, ready to soak it all in.

Over the course of the week, we read together, wrote together, and ate together; we chatted, strolled, exchanged stories, and wandered through the narrow paths of the garden, rubbing leaves between our fingers and lifting them to our noses; we visited the local shepherd and cheesemaker – Filippo – and watched him sculpt sheep’s milk into soft mounds of tuma – fresh, unsalted cheese made from the curds after they separate from the whey – before sitting down to a breakfast of homemade bread and jams and pecorino cheese.

Between writing sessions, we explored the grounds, collecting vegetables from the garden and fruit from the small orchard to use in cooking lessons with Fabrizia, where we made ricotta gnocchi, ravioli, cavatelli, caponata, and sweets like sour cherry cake and cassata, a Sicilian dessert made with whipped ricotta, homemade marzipan, sponge cake and candied fruit.

In the early evenings, at aperitivo hour, we’d gather around a table in the courtyard for platefuls of fried zucchini flowers, panelle, and cool glasses of sparkling wine, before convening around the dining table, usually adorned (to our collective delight) with one of Fabrizia’s vibrant wax print tablecloths.

The writing sessions were spaced out throughout each day. Often we’d sit around a big glass table, under the shade in the courtyard, or at the big wooden table in the library and read pieces selected by Rachel and Luisa – M.F.K Fisher, Molly O’Neil, Julian Barnes – before dicussing and then writing, pen to paper (not laptop).

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jittery at the start. The day I read my first piece aloud, my voice quivered so fiercely I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it through to the end. The next few times, I felt that my writing was shit. Just total shit. Sometimes I shared, sometimes I didn’t. In a message to my boyfriend back home, I remember referring to it as paint-splatter writing – a mess of words thrown onto the page, without coherance, structure, or good diction. I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I’d come all this way and I wasn’t able to produce anything decent. You’re here with Rachel Roddy and Luisa Weiss! You’re in the middle of the Sicilian countryside! You’re surrounded by incredible, inspiring people! Write, goddammit! Write! But something inside me froze. I was like a deer in the headlights, incapable of letting the pen move across the page without inturrupting every second word.

It was only after a conversation with Rachel, about two days in, that I realised how much I was holding myself back, how being wracked with self-doubt was sabotaging my writing and, ultimately, the experience. I spent the rest of the week trying to quell those doubts, letting whatever came out to come out, without (too much) judgment or second-guessing. What emerged was the piece on street food in Sferracavallo that I slipped in at the end of my post on Palermo (scroll down to the last story here). Was it perfect? No. Was it complete? Not quite. But it was at least something – pieces of a puzzle that could be reworked, rearranged and smoothed out. It was perhaps the only piece that I approached with complete abandon and, lo and behold, it yielded results. I try to remind myself of that when I freeze up in front of a blank page (like, say, when I sat down to write this post).

This workshop taught me, amongst many other things, that writing – good writing – takes massive amounts of perseverance. It isn’t the kind of thing that falls into your lap through divine intervention. You can have ideas, thoughts, limitless sources of inspiration, but they remain disparate pieces until you choose to weave them together with words. And even then, those words will need your time and effort to become something beyond “paint splatter”, something that will make sense, set a tone, convey a story, and resonate with the reader.

To persevere, however, writers – amateur or otherwise – need to learn to cast aside their doubts. I never realised the extent to which my self-doubt was crippling my ability to write, and it was only in doing the workshop that it came into clear focus. I’ve started to apply an attitude of “get over yourself and get on with it” in moments when I catch myself hemming and hawing over a piece of writing. And I can tell you, adopting that attitude has been imperative in getting things onto the page. I definitely have Rachel and Luisa to thank for that.

In the process, I also learnt that when you’re feeling self-conscious about the work that you’ve done, there will always be people who’ll have more faith in your abilities than you do. I’m realising how imporant it is to listen to them, to trust their sincerity. They can sometimes see the good parts of yourself that you might not, at least in the moment, because they’re clouded in doubt. In other words, let them bolster you so that you can eventually bolster yourself.

When I try to write and then falter, I think about the things Rachel and Luisa taught us – about being daring, about being self-aware, about making the time to work on your writing whenever and however you can. I also think about something Fabrizia said at our last round-table, when we were discussing the workshop experience, including our initial apprehensions. She sat with us, listening and sketching watercolour zucchini flowers, before pausing to say, “But why all this fear? I don’t understand. Why?”

She was more or less saying, why let fear stop you? Why give it space? And she had a point. There’s no room for fear when there’s so much else to let in.

—–

Big love to Rachel, Luisa, Fabrizia, and all the women of The Language of Food 2016. You are such wickedly smart, funny, warm human beings. If I could do it all over again, I would. A hundred times. x

Italy, condensed – Pt.2 – Palermo

06 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by julia chews the fat in Food Away From Home

≈ 8 Comments

This is part two of a three-part post on Rome, Palermo and Vallelunga (Case Vecchie), cobbled together from notes in my travel journal. To read Part One, click here.

Italy Part Two // Palermo, Sferracavallo, Mondello // 1 week

Seeing Sicily for the first time felt like virtual reality – the blues were so blue, the greens were so green, the mountains so immense, primeval and jagged they felt Jurassic. As our plane decended, I stayed glued to the window. There it was, Sicily in the flesh – in all it’s rugged, craggy glory. A place that sits on three tectonic plates and is home to Europe’s two largest active volcanos; an island that has been invaded and inhabited by Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, and Normans; a triangular nugget snipped from the tip of Italy’s boot, left to evolve and percolate off-continent.

Like a lot of people before me – and a lot of people to follow – I’d fallen head over heels for this beautiful chimera. Sicily had slain me and I hadn’t even left the tarmack.

—–

Sferracavallo, Palermo
Tuesday, June 14th
8:30pm

This afternoon, the airport shuttle bus dropped me off in a suburb outside Palermo, where I was meant to catch a second bus – the one to that little horseshoe-shaped speck on the map north of Palermo, with the promise of the sea – a town with the lyrical name, Sferracavallo. When I booked my trip, I remember thinking that it might be a bit tricky coordinating transit from Palermo centre to this small, sparsely-populated (read: off-the-beaten path) fishing village by the water. My concerns were confirmed once I found myself standing on that dusty meridian outside Palermo, in the middle of a deserted boulevard, far, far away from home.

Palermitan bus schedules – posted on large boards high above each bus stop – aren’t the easiest to decipher; to the uninitiated, they are a complete and utter nightmare. There was no conceivable way of knowing if I was on the right side of the road, or whether I was heading east, north, south or west, or if I’d been blown away by a tornado in Kansas and dumped somewhere along the yellow brick road. (sidenote: while most people travel with data on their phone to help them get around, I don’t. It’s a symptom of having a frugal octogenarian living in my brain. I promise to catch up soon.)

I wandered around for a bit, rolling my bulky suitcase over cracked sidewalks and nubby curbs, in search of a tabacchi where I could buy a bus ticket and possibly get directions – ones that would be more accurate than, say, sticking a wet finger into the wind. A couple passing by told me there was a ticket counter in the piazza, pointing to a large roundabout in the distance, with a tuft of palm trees sticking out of the middle. It was so far and hot, the trees were surrounded by wobbly mirage lines. I looked down at my suitcase, which looked more worse for wear than I did, wondering if I should just shell out for a cab. Just one more ticket. One more bus. Almost there. The ticket vendor directed me to the correct stop, a whole three blocks away from where the shuttle dropped me off, and on the other side of the road.

I waited a long time for that second bus – maybe 45 minutes – but it came, and I got on; I was so tired, I barely noticed the gum I stepped in and the cockroaches crawling around my luggage. A young mother and her two girls got on soon after me. One of them – the youngest of the two – stood facing me and started to stare. Not in a coy or curious way, as sometimes young kids are prone to do, but rather in this unflinching, scowling way, with a toughness I couldn’t quite place. She stared like this for a good couple of minutes. I pretended to ignore her. At some point she nudged her sister, glanced down at my mid-section and said to her quietly, “Ha una borsa la.” (“she’s got a purse there”, referring to my chic, beige, slightly sweat-damp waist wallet). We locked eyes and I inched forward, “Come stai, ragazza? Bene?“, making sure she understood that I understood, whatever her intentions might be, malicious or not. I’ll risk being perceived as a weirdo over having my fanny pack stolen on sweaty bus. The look on her face shifted from tough to stunned as her gaze dropped to the floor. The three of them got off at the next stop.

That’s when I met Roberto, the macellaio – an older man from Isola delle femmine with kind eyes and suspenders who said that my Italian was “proprio buono“. We chatted for a bit and at some point I admitted to him that I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to get off. “Non te preoccupare, te lo dico io“. I was glad to have him there, like a spry version of my grandfather, telling me where I needed to go. A couple of stops before mine, he mentioned that he worked in nearby Mondello, as a butcher, and that if I happened to make the trip out, that I should come and see him. I took down some notes – Mondello, Roberto, macelleria, near la sirena (the mermaid), open on Saturdays. Visiting him seemed like a long-shot, but part of me really liked the idea. I pocketed the notes and stepped off the bus, waving him goodbye from the sidewalk.

—–

With my suitcase safely deposited at my apartment rental, I headed down to the water to sit on the rocks and watch the sun slowly dip down below the horizon. It took me a train, a plane, two buses and a lot of broken Italian to get here. But I’m here – in Sferracavallo – that miniscule seaside town on the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea, sandwiched between a natural reserve and a craggy mountainside. The shore is populated with what look like pastel dollhouses, frozen in time. It smells of salt and seaweed, summer and infinity.

This is what you take a train, a plane and two buses for – a landscape so beautiful it sucks the air straight out of your lungs. It’s at this point you can pause, take a deep breath and know that it was worth every bloody step.

—–

Sferracavallo, Palermo
Wednesday, June 15th
8:50am

Sferracavallo only has one supermarket – a dusky little place with two aisles and a lot of vacant shelf space, with a charcuterie counter at the back, rows of sunscreen at the front, and one sullen cashier manning the checkout with her no-bullshit, frosty gaze. The thing is, even in dingy little supermarkets, in tiny nowhere towns, you can still find grocery gold – palm-sized balls of mozzarella for 50 cents; fresh ricotta spooned into parchment paper and sold by weight; long, thin slices of prosciutto cotto; yogurts with interesting flavour combinations (hazelnut/fig is brilliant), not to mention a selection of totally acceptable table wine for under 5 euros a bottle.

At the cash register, a woman noticed the bottle of San Benedetto iced tea that I’d plunked onto the conveyor belt. “È buono questo. Lo comprato anch’io”, pointing to the stash of iced tea bottles in her cart. She tells me that she sometimes makes iced tea at home from scratch – black tea, lemon juice, un po di zucchero – hinting that her decision to get the store-bought stuff usually depends on how much is in the bank account. We start talking a little about the increase in food prices and the economic difficulties in Italy, and more specifically Sicily. My Italian is rusty and stunted in dialect, but we seem to understand eachother. At some point she mentions arrangiarsi, or the ability to “arrange oneself”, to manage, to get by with what you have (in French, se débrouiller). We talk about how cooking at home is such an important part of arrangiarsi, as an expression of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.

As we talk, I think about the exorbitant 18 euros I spent on restaurant ravioli last night, at one of the few places in town whose entrance is plastered in Trip Advisor stickers. My stomach sinks a little just thinking about it. Apprehensive of making the same mistake today for lunch, I turn to the idea of arrangiarsi. Before the woman leaves with her groceries, I ask her if there’s a produce vendor in town. I follow her outside the store, where she points down the street, “dritto e poi a destra“.

There, under the shade of big, colourful awnings, are a series of fruit and vegetable stands. Vendors call out to customers and stride back and forth behind rows of wooden crates stacked with Sicilian produce – broad beans, peaches, vine-ripened tomatoes, eggplant, fresh garlic, onion and basil. It’s my first time encountering fragolini, delicate, wild strawberries that have centres closer to ripe, mashed banana. Then there is the mammoth cucuzza, a mild, Sicilian zucchini, grown several feet long, along with their silky, tender leaves called tenumeri, often used in soups. After selecting a few things, including a big bunch of basil that I haggled down from 1.50€ (astronomical, aka “tourist price”) to 0.50€ (closer to the norm), I ask the vendor for some garlic. He brings me a whole braid, with about ten bulbs on it. I laugh, “Oh no…solo uno per favore“, explaining that I’m only here for a few days. He says they don’t normally sell them a l’unità, but then shrugs and snaps ones off from the braid, tossing it into my bag. When I offer to pay him for it, but he shoos away my offer, “Va bene, signorina“.

Market freebies like this one are more or less common around Italy; I imagine they help vendors build a regular client base. It’s a simple, somewhat Pavlovian technique, but it works; I visited his stand every day after that, and every day something was tossed in at no cost.

Across the street from the produce stands is the Swordfish Man, who, I am told, arrives every morning with a new haul. It’s a fairly basic operation – a stainless steel counter, a cutting board, a cleaver, some fresh water and ice. You tell him how much you need – in grams, or for how many people – and he slices off slabs, eyeballing the requested amount. He sells a few other items, including bright scarlet gamberi rossi (Sicilian red shrimp) and some small fish with iridescent skin, but it’s the swordfish you really come for. As he prepares my order, I ask two women beside me how they usually prepare theirs. One of them says, “Solo olio, sale, e un po’ di pepe. Nient’altro”. She lowers her glasses and raises an cautionary finger when she says it. In other words, do not mess with the fish. Keep it simple. Capisce?

I return to the apartment with my spoils, feeling gratified and happy to be back in the kitchen, making my own meals. Over the next few days, I make my way through the different bits and bobs I picked up at the market. The peaches, added in slices to a picnic sandwich of prosciutto cotto, basil and mozzarella, are so fragrant and ripe they melt in your mouth; the tomatoes, sliced thin and seasoned with salt and Sicilian oregano are so flavourful they pinch the insides of my cheeks; the ricotta, smooth, cool and cloud-like, collapse gently on spoonfuls of warm minestra.

And the swordfish, well, the swordfish made me weep. Like, actually weep. I sat at the table, fork in hand, my eyes welling up with hot, fat tears, stunned at how something so simple, so seemingly innocuous, could trigger such a deep-seated feeling of unadulterated joy. It’s the kind of food that reaches into your chest, squeezes your heart and in some magical, unspoken way, changes you.

—-

Palermo, City Centre – day trip
Thursday, June 16th

It’s hotter than stink today. 45 degrees in the shade. When I opened the window early this morning, expecting a fresh gust of cool air, a blast of scorching air greeted me instead. It was only 8am. Had Mount Etna blown? Or was this the beginning of the apocalypse? Groggy and confused, I failed to find a reasonable explanation beyond those two.

A short time after, my host, Giusy (pronounced “Juicy”, short for Giuseppina) said, “C’è proprio un’fuoco oggi“. I thought she meant, quite literally, that there had been a fire. That makes sense, I thought. I asked where the fire was. “Ah, no – è solo un espressione, quando fa molto caldo.” So there’s no fire. It’s just an expression. In other words, we’re going to be on fire today. This also happens to be the one day I chose to visit the city centre, on foot, without reprieve of the sea or the occasional cold shower. Brilliant.

10:30am

I catch the first of two buses to Palermo centre. It’s packed to the gills; we’re a mound of sweaty, lethargic commuters, trying our best not to come into physical contact with one another, but failing miserably. About ten minutes in, a ticket agent steps on, requesting to see proof of validation from all passengers, one by one. He quickly gets into an impassioned argument with an old man standing next to me. Did he touch someone inappropriately? Did he steal something? No, the problem is he doesn’t have a ticket. A minute later, the ticket agent’s wrath is directed at a second passenger – a woman – who he also discovers is ticket-less. With a voice tht fills the whole bus, he tells them they’re thieves; he threatens to take their pictures and report them to the authorities. It’s a mess of words, of shouting, of veins protruding from necks. At the next stop, he orders them off the bus. They oblige, begrudgingly, telling him he’s a monster for forcing them off the bus in this heat. Once they’re off the bus, he catches my gaze; his face is now suddenly calm, the blood flowing back down from his temples and neck. He shugs, and with both hands cupped together in prayer pose, asks rhetorically – “Ma che posso fare? E il mio lavoro“. I’m not quite sure why I become the confessional, but I nod sympathetically before turning my head to the window, heart pounding, hoping in vain to catch a cool breeze.

—-

In Palermo I’m meeting a friend of a friend, a Palermitana named Fabrizia, who occasionally takes friends on food tours of the city. Of specific interest to her is Palermo’s street food, which you can often find in and around the city’s outdoor markets. In a string of online messages in the days preceding my visit, she asked me if I had any aversions or allergies, to which I answered an excited “Nope! [smiley-face emoticon]. I’ll try anything”. I knew that this would leave me open to a Pandora’s box of eclectic delights, many of which I’d never had before and most of which incorporated scraps, leftovers, rifuti from the butchering process. In other words, the bits that would normally be thrown away. I was curious about the different kinds of Palermitan street food, and I felt lucky to have Fabrizia – someone so well-versed on the subject – leading the way.

Our first stop is the Capo market – a narrow, winding alley flanked by vendors on each side. As we enter, Fabrizia points out the local specialty “babbalucci” – tiny, translucent snails in stripy, cream-coloured shells. Stacked high in sturdy crates, they look like piles of ornamental seashells (that is, until you spot the few that are wriggling around). Fabrizia says that to cook them, they’re normally tossed into a fry pan with olive oil, slivers of garlic and chopped parsley. The vendor doesn’t have any ready to eat, so we continue to meander down the alley, slowly squeezing between old ladies and pushy scooter drivers – not unlike the mound of babbalucci trying to squirm around eachother.

Soon after, we come to a cart on wheels with a heavily concealed wicker basket placed on top, draped in layers of cloth. “This is frittola“, Fabrizia tells me. “You know frittola?“. “The stuff leftover from the calves’ slaughter, right? Cooked in lard?”. “Exactly“, she says. The dishtowels are to retain the heat of the frittola, but I’ve heard that it’s also part of the tradition of shrouding the whole thing in mystery; Fabrizia confirms this, “Yeah…you never really know what you’re going to get. It’s a surprise every time.”

We order a serving. The vendor smiles, bearing gaps in the places where his molars should be, the corners of his eyes crinkling. I can tell he’s eager to see me try it. He rolls up a strip of waxy charcuterie paper into a cone shape, then plunges his hand deep into the mystery basket. He mixes it together a little, then pulls out a handful of gnarly bits – toasty in colour, heady with fat. We add a squeeze of lemon, some salt and dig in. Some pieces are squishy, some are crispy. They all have the same deep-fried flavour, thanks to the lard; the taste is close to roasted chicken skin, but its texture is closer to tripe. Or maybe aorta?After a few bites, I’ve reached my limit. Fat saturation comes quickly with this kind of street food, which – unless you’re a construction worker – is best in small doses.

photo by Giulia Oddo

A little further along, we stop at two little shops – one that sells minestra with tenerumi, deep-fried potato croquettes with chopped mint (crocchè), thin chickpea-flour fritters (panelle), fish croquettes, and a salad with the fresh anchovies, marinated in oil and vinegar; the other, a piatto misto with sweet and sour caponata, fava beans, string beans, potatoes and chopped tomatoes – all of it scooped up with chunks of bread. For good measure, we also ordered the sfincione, a deep-dish Sicilian pizza, this one garnished with oregano and anchovies.

photo by Fabrizia Agnello

There’s one more thing just outside the Capo market that Fabrizia wants me to try. “Have you heard of musso?“, she asks. I had, but only because I did a bit of online research before coming to meet her. “It’s either pork snout or cow muzzle, right?” She nods her head and tells me there’s a man nearby that has a stand entirely dedicated to cow parts – utter, cartilage, bull penis, and, of course, musso. His products are laid out plainly on thick blocks of ice, ready to be carved and doled out to customers. Fabrizia orders some musso for us. “Un pezzo carnoso, per favore.” She specifies wanting the meatier piece without cartilage. The vendor is a man of few words; the only thing that slips out of his mouth is a sullen critique of what we’ve ordered. “Vi state perdendo la parte più saporita“, he cautions in a gravelly voice. Apparently we’ve chosen the less flavourful part. He prepares it for us, almost begrudgingly, laying thick slices of musso on a piece of parchment paper.

The flavour reminds me a little of roast beef, if roast beef were boiled and icy cold. It’s a nice counterpart to all the grease-laden (albeit tasty) bits of street food we’ve picked at throughout the market. The meat is chewy, cool, neutral tasting, and dare I say, a little like a palate cleanser.

A little futher along our walk comes Mercato di Ballarò, equally well-stocked with fresh produce piled high, different types of fresh and preserved fish, various incarnations of sheep and cow-milk cheeses (the baked ricotta was perhaps my favourite), as well souk-like stands with their myriad displays of nuts and spices. The offer of street food continues, with fried rings of calimari, stuffed whole squid, and bite-sized sardine saltimbocca, rolled up and fastened with toothpicks. In several spots, there are vats of boiled corn on the cob, potatoes and artichokes (carciofi), ready to eat. Everything before us – from the prepared food, to the squat Saturn peaches and fresh, fuzzy-skinned almonds – is astonishingly inexpensive. At least by North American standards.

I still can’t believe that whole basket of plums was one Euro.

It’s at Ballarò that I end up having my first taste of babbalucci. After asking for a sample, the vendor plucks one from the pile and hands it to me, its shell slicked in oil. These are not French escargot. There are no dainty two-pronged forks to extract them with; no crispy breadcrumbs adorning the top. These are babbalucci, my friend. No-nonsense food that you lift to your lips and suck out the shell in one go. They’re chewy, as you might expect, but not in an unplesant way – a little like cooked calamari. They’re also very delicious. The mixture of warm olive oil, sautéed garlic and parsley remind me of my Nonna’s pasta aglio e olio. Even minutes after we’d left the stand, I kept turning to Fabrizia, “Those were good. I mean, really good”. It’s extra special it is when something completely unexpected lights up your tastebuds like that. It’s exciting. I never thought that sautéed snails would be capstone of my Sicilian street food experience, but there it was – one of the world’s simplest, most modest foods – securing a place along some of my best food memories. Who knew.

—–

By the time we reach the third spot – Mercato Vucciria – the market day was winding down. Many of the vendors had closed up shop and the customers had returned home. “They’re going to re-open again tonight, for the night market.“, Fabrizia points out. Oh, right. The night market. In the little that I’d read about it, the Palermitan night market sounded mythical – late-night browsing, beers, more street food, like those spleen sandwiches (milza) cooked in lard and sprinkled with wispy bits of shredded cheese, or spit-roasted delicacies like stigghiola (lamb or calf intestines), dressed with a quick squeeze of lemon. I’m regretful not to be staying in the city centre that night, but am also looking forward to escaping the heat by heading back to Sferracavallo, that little safe haven of cool salty breezes, where the daily commotion is limited to church bells, seagulls, and the occasional motorino.

Fabrizia accompanies me back the the square where I’m to take the first bus home. On the way, we bump into one of her friends who says she’s been waiting for an hour for the bus. Apparently, some of the city’s bus drivers have refused to go to work because of the heat. This bodes well. It’s early afternoon and the air has gotten thicker and even more oppressive; the sun beats down hard, making my exposed forearms feel like they’re sizzling. There are strong gusts of wind, but they’re thick, not refreshing, hitting you like a wall. The sound of ambulance sirens can be heard throughout the day. There’s a man across the street lying listless on a bench, being fanned by his friend as paramedics arrive. At different points in the day, I’ve been told – by Giusy, vendors, Fabrizia – that even for Palermo, this kind of heat isn’t normal.

Mercifully, the first bus comes shortly after I arrive at the stop. As I wait for the second bus outside Palermo centre – the one I would eventually wait nearly two hours for – I see in the distance that a piece of Monte Pellegrino is burning. Later that evening, on the news, I’d find out that the whole island was covered in wildfires that day.

Sicily was, quite literally on fire. Giusy’s expression was now reality.

—–

Sferracavallo, Palermo
Friday, June 17th

After yesterday’s heatwave and the resulting brushfires, I was grateful to wake up in Sferracavallo this morning to cooler air. The sun was bright, but not oppressive; worlds away from yesterday’s inferno. I’ve decided to stay in Sferracavallo today, instead of returning to Palermo centre for more sightseeing. You can chalk it up to a mild case of post- traumatic stress from being stranded by buses in the blaring heat. My head still feels cooked and I’d much rather stay here, where the water is closeby and I can wander around at the slowest of paces.

I suspect I’ll have no regrets.

—–
1:30pm

Giusy is home for lunch today. She proposes we make a pranzo di rifuti – a meal pulled together from whatever’s hanging out in the fridge. I tell her I’m fully onboard. We each get to work in a different corner of the kitchen. I start by slicing onion and zucchini for a frittata, while she combines a mixture of ground meat, pine nuts, currants and mint in a bowl to make meatballs (polpette), while a small pot of leftover tomato sauce simmers over one of the gas burners. I mix some eggs with a fork and excavate a bowl of cooked green beans from the fridge – remenants from last night’s dinner – cutting them into smaller pieces before adding them to the eggs, along with a small handful of parmesan. Instead of frying the onion in olive oil as I usually do, before adding the rest of the fritatta mixture, Giusy suggests adding them to a fry pan with the diced zucchini, but without oil, then adding just enough water to cover them. With the heat, they bubble and soften; once all the water has evaporated, we add the olive oil and then the rest of the mixture – eggs, beans, parmesan which have all been beaten into a slurry.

We unwrap some muffuletta (bread stuffed with prosciutto cotto and cheese, covered in sesame seeds) bought from the bakery that morning, cutting it into little squares before taking it outside to the rooftop terrasse with the rest of our bounty.

We eat quietly and contentedly, in the shady corner of the terrasse, looking out at the water. It feels like a dream.

—–

4pm

Since arriving in Sferracavallo, I’ve quickly fallen into a daily gelato habit. On some days, it’s a twice-daily habit, for which – to be clear – I make no apologies or excuses. I don’t see this as something transgressive. Excessive, perhaps. But then again, isn’t excess the cornerstone of all good vacations?

It’s worth pointing out (possibly to justify my new-found habit) that Sferracavallo is known to have one of the best gelaterie in this part of Sicily. According to Fabrizia, some people make the thirty-minute drive all the way from Palermo with the sole purpose of having gelato at Gelateria La Delizia. They drive to Sferracavallo, eat gelato, go home. That’s a pretty solid endorsement for ice cream if I’ve ever heard one.

Each of the gelati and sorbetti at La Delizia are made in small batches with the freshest ingredients and no addditives. I know that sounds like a TV advert, but it’s true. What they make is artisanal, in the truest sense of the word. And it’s delicious. In the short week that I’m here, I partner up as many different flavours as I can, especially the ones that are hard to come by at home – pistachio and zuppa inglese; almond and cinnamon; mulberry and lemon; prickly pear and setteveli (based on a seven-layer Sicilian cake). On one occasion, I order the brioche, a well-known specialty in Sicily. It’s basically a soft, sweet bun, halved, then stuffed with an obscene amount of gelato. I ask for one with panna and stracciatella. As the the girl behind the counter stuffs the brioche, she tells me that people sometimes eat these for breakfast. I think about all the kale smoothies North Americans have choked down in the early hours of the morning before work. I wonder if a Sicilian brioche very so often wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

A visit to La Delizia is best followed by a long, leisurely (babbalucci-paced) walk through the streets of Sferracavallo. The town’s palette – mellow and creamy, interspersed with bursts of colours – are a little like gelato and sorbetto, mixed side-by-side, the whole thing flecked with terracotta and tile, stucco and wood, and pots of two-toned succulents.

—–

Mondello – day trip
Saturday, June 18th
12:20pm

Vendors call out “Aqua, Birra, Coca, Tè!”, trucking beverage coolers across the beach like deeply-tanned mules. Their chant is a melodic jingle; it bounces off the sand and enters your brain like an earworm, despite your best efforts to ignore it.

I’ve found a spot on a sunchair, under a parasol, at the far end of the beach. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to pay for the luxury of sitting elevated, off the sand, but in the absence of any signs telling me so, or some inspector-type person wagging their finger at me, I’ve decided to roll with it and see how the day unfolds.

The woman beside me is layed out on a sunchair, on her cell phone, plucking stray hairs along her bikini line with her fingernails. Beside her is a boy – maybe nine or ten years old – drenched in sea water, snuggling next to his mom. Everyone is Coppertone bronzed, as only Europeans manage to do with such exquisite consistency. Even the children look like they’ve been baking for weeks – true coast kids, like the ones out of Emanuele Crialese’s Respiro. They might as well have flippers for feet.

In the parasol area there are also batches of women in their 50s and 60s grouped together on sunchairs, hunched over and smoking, chatting, slathering themselves at regular intervals with bronzing oil. Teenagers monopolise the spaces closest to the water, the boys play boomboxes and splash the girls; there are neon-coloured Speedos and glow-in-the-dark rosaries.

Mondello, my friend, is where you come to see and be seen.

In my short time here, reclining on this chair I haven’t paid for, I’ve observed that if you’re a woman – and no matter what kind of body you have – the two-piece is what you wear. Woman of all ages, shapes and sizes with tapestries of stretch marks, cellulite, soft midriffs, vericose veins, all of it completely normal and on display. It isn’t often that I’ve seen women with pillowy limbs sauntering around with such blasé confidence in a two-piece. I come from a culture that tells us – constantly – to cover up our physical imperfections and work on our quote-unquote beach bodies. It goes without saying that Italian woman are sold the same superficial, body-shaming messages as women in North America (watch any Italian variety show), but the women at Mondello beach seem to let the notion of a “beach body” roll off their perfectly-oiled backs. And it’s fantastic.

Lunchtime

The beach food at Mondello is like the beach food you’ve had anywhere else – somewhere on the spectrum of deep-fried and nutrient-free, salty and delicious. I come back from the boardwalk vendors to my little nest on the sand, with a fizzy bitter lemon drink and arancino con ragù, a deep-fried, rice ball stuffed with meat sauce, peas and mozzarella. It’s nothing fancy – the equivalent of a hot-dog and a Coke – but it’s magnificent in its own way; the kind of stuff your parents would buy on a family vacation – the bad-for-you junk that was verbotten at home, but totally acceptable on say, a roadtrip. The stuff my mom would refer to as a treat.

Today, I’m referring to this as lunch.

After a considerable stretch of time in my shady nook, under the parasol, and a few dips in the water, I leave the beach to walk along the boardwalk towards the centre of town.

It’s at this point that I remember Roberto, the grey-haired butcher I’d met on the bus from Palermo, the one who told me he worked in Mondello, “Avvicina de la sirena”.

And lo and behold, there she was, in the middle of town – the mermaid.

Behind her, I spot the tinest macelleria, squeezed between two restaurant patios. I walk in, sheepishly ask if a “Roberto” works here. A few seconds later, he emerges from the beaded curtain at the back, with his butcher-stained apron. “Giulia! Come stai?!” He’s clearly surprised to see me. I’m just as surprised that I even found him. He gives me the tour, showing me the meat selection behind the glass vitrine, all of it carefully arranged onto aluminum display trays. We chat for a bit; then, before I leave, I ask him if there’s a place in Mondello that sells good cannoli. He tells me he doesn’t really eat the stuff, but that the place across the piazza called Antico Chiosco has some. He steps out of the shop and points me in its direction, “La, a destra della sirena” (I like that la sirena is Roberto’s compass). We say goodbye and I make my way toward a building with a long green awning facing the piazza.

I order a cannolo and macchiato, served by two very serious, no-nonsense men in bow-ties with salt and pepper hair. Professional barristi. Stone-cold barristi. I carry my spoils carefully to the bus stop bench, to wait for the AMAT bus back to Sferracavallo. The cannolo’s shell – toasty, crisp and light – is the perfect vessel for the smooth ricotta filling. Unlike some of the cannoli I’ve had before, this one is subtly sweet and remarkably light, despite its obvious richness.

As you can imagine, few pleasures in life compare to eating a fresh cannolo at a bus stop in Mondello. I’ve got ricotta filling all over my fingers and powdered sugar practically up to my nose, but it might be the single happiest moment of my day. Bless you, Sicily.

—–

Sferracavallo, Palermo
Sunday, June 19th
2pm

I’d seen them the day before – a handful of husky men, huddled around a barbecue along the boardwalk, knocking back bottles of Moretti. A group of comrades shouting, chuckling, exchanging insults in Sicilian dialect, of which I barely understand a word. Smoke, a deep, fiery dragon smoke billows from the grill, quickly swept away by the seaside wind. I keep my curiosity at a safe distance, watching from the other side of the street as an incognito bystander – the straniera (“foreigner”) hidden safely behind her sunglasses. They haven’t noticed me yet, but if I linger any longer, they might consider me an interloper, a loitering mouth-breather.

What are you waiting for? Go for it.

I step off the sidewalk and make a beeline for the barbecue and its makeshift vendor’s station – a wooden table outfitted with a hefty granite slab for prepping and serving, with pieces of green and blue tarp (the kind you use for camping) draped behind it like a wall, to cut the wind. As I get closer, I can finally see what it is – glossy, pink intestine. I have no clue what animal it comes from, though that question seems irrelevant now.

I get close to the counter, locking eyes with the barbecue man: “Questo è solo per locali? O posso provare?”, asking if I can have some. My request is met with equal parts confusion and reservation. I suspect he’s thinks I’m a bit of a naive kook, wondering why I’m not eating at the boojie seafood restaurants looking over the sea, like the rest of the turisti. The word “straniera”, that has been in big, bold imaginary letters on my forehead since arriving in Italy, are now glowing neon bright. I press further. “Posso?”, I ask, pointing to the coils of skewered meat, spitting and sizzling over the grill. The vendor shrugs, “Se vuole”, before adding, “Due Euros.”

As I reach for some change in my pocket, an older, mustachioed man – whose name I never asked – comes up behind me and waves off the vendors request for money. “Lo pago io per Lei“. He’s paying, apparently. He pours me some beer into a plastic cup and orders us a plate. At first I insist on paying my part, but he shakes his head, “No, no, no…è il mio piacere, signorina“. Eventually, I acquiesce. “Grazie, signore.” We clink our plastic cups together, along with those of his nearby friends. “Salute.”

While we sip our beer, I tell him about my street food experience in Palermo – about the frittola, the musso, the babbalucci. He can’t believe I ate the frittola, telling me I must have a cast-iron stomach. We’re within earshot of the BBQ man, whose ears seem to perk up at this. It is the first indication that I’m legit – that I know this is organ meat and that I’m not some dewy-eyed romantic looking for an Eat, Pray, Love experience. I just want some barbecue, BBQ man. And with that, the tension between us starts to melt. I ask him what animal it’s from “Maiale? Agnello?“. “No, è vitello” (veal). He explains that it comes from a nearby farm owned by his mother, which he and his son (pictured above) prepare for passerbys, whenever it’s available. He doesn’t dress them in anything before placing them onto the barbecue; they cook over the coals, unembellished. “Puro. Naturale.“, he says, explaining that he can do it this way because they’re so fresh. The fat around them keeps them nice and insulated, preventing them from sticking to the grill.

We keep chatting as he plucks one of the skewers off the grill and slides the seared pieces onto a chopping block, cutting it up into smaller chunks before piling them onto a plate lined with parchment paper. My dining companion, Mr. Mustachio, dresses our plate with salt and a squeeze of lemon juice. (I’ve heard that the latter is used in a lot of Sicilian street food, both for flavour and for microbe-killing properties.) We dig in. The pieces are chewy, but crispy and caramelised in that way that can only be achieved with a hot barbecue grill. The flavour is rich and smoky – a bit like a well-seared steak, with flavours of blood pudding and liver hanging out faintly in the background. “È buono“, I tell my companion. He seems happy that I like it. “Ti piace? Ah, bene!”

BBQ man smiles for the first time since I arrived, and it feels like a small triumph.

When there’s nothing left on the plate but a little pool of lemon juice and grease, I scrub my hands with a napkin and tell them I have to get going. They tell me to come back in a couple of days for another round; I tell them it’s my last day in Sferracavallo. “Oh, no, vero?” “Sì, sì. Devo partire domani mattina.” BBQ man asks me what time I’m leaving. I ask him why. He says, “Potrei accompagnarti“, telling me that he could drive me to the airport in Palermo, since he has to go into town tomorrow. I can’t believe what I’m hearing, considering that a mere thirty minutes ago I thought I was persona non grata. Our brief relationship seems to have done a 180. I also can’t believe how scary a prospect that is (solo female traveller getting into a car with a stranger? Can you hear the alarm bells ringing?), and so I of course decline, but thank him for the offer, and the expertly-cooked street meat. My dining companion, for his part, gives me a farewell pat on the shoulder and a handshake. “Arriverci, signorina. Buon viaggio.” I wave to his friends, who are now perched on chairs on the opposite side of the street, in the shade. They wave back, “Ciao, ciao!“, before returning to their beers.

And with that chance encounter, at a nomadic barbecue on the boardwalk that forced me be bolder than usual, I leave Sferracavallo with a full belly and an even fuller heart, feeling less like a straniera than I probably ever have.

Sogni d’oro, Sferracavallo. Grazie per tutto.

Italy, condensed – Pt.1 – Roma

16 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by julia chews the fat in Food Away From Home, Holidays

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How do you distill the most important bits of a three-week trip, without lazily listing the highlights and making your audience feel like they’re forced to watch an endless stream of blurry slide-projector photos? I’ve been back home for nearly three weeks and have quickly slipped back into the daily routine, making the memories feel like they’ve piled up into one, big messy tangle, as opposed to a clean, chronological narrative. There are blips of recollections that contain everything from the scent of citrus fruit and diesel, to the sound of swallows and broken plates.

Where do you even start?

Without quite knowing how to come at this, I decided to rely on my travel journal – that flimsy, grey blotter that I dutifully towed alongside me every day, to jot down notes on park benches, in noisy tratorrie, and on bumpy buses. For better or worse, the journal seemed like a good way to introduce these places to you. There’s a lot more information, images and ideas from the trip still percolating in my brain, but it’ll take a bit more time to coax them into the proper channels (recipes! oh god, all the recipes!). So in the meantime, I’ve selected a few journal entries (tweaked for the sake of coherence), along with some photos to help flesh things out. There will be a post on Rome, then Palermo (and surrounding areas), then one on the writing workshop with Rachel Roddy and Luisa Weiss at Case Vecchie (Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School) in Sicily.

I hope that these glimpses and echoes of stories will nip your wanderlust square on the bum and encourage you to explore more – be it geographical, cultural, gustatory, or in any way you see fit.

Baci, Julia x

—–

Italy Part 1 // Rome // 4.5 days

Testaccio, Rome
Friday, June 10th, 9:45pm
Tratorria Da Bucatino

Yelling. So much yelling. The Romans are having dinner and it’s as though each thought, each string of words is as important – if not more so – as the last. Their hands and shoulders move in gestural waves – broad movements in competition with their own voices for airspace. The spectacle is punctuated by peals of laughter, a roll of the eyes, or a fist coming down hard on the table to further prove a point. It’s like a playful exercise of sensory one upmanship, where the men – with presumably a fair amount of vino and/or grappa circulating through their veins – are definitely winning.

Da Bucatino is the kind of place that instantly draws you in, largely thanks to its one-part Godfather, one-part Twin Peaks mystique. There are several dining rooms, each connected by small doorways which the waiter guides me through until we reach a table in the centre of the room. It has a “riservato” sign on it, which he hastily removes and shoves into his pocket. He catches my eye and winks, Non l’ho visto, l’hai visto ? (“I didn’t see it, did you?”). I shake my head, “no”, wishing I had the words to compliment his impromptu magic trick.

After a quick glance at the menu (which is in both English and Italian, with a wine list bearing only two dubious-looking, albeit succint, descriptors: “red” or “white”), I can’t tell if this place is a total racket or one of Testaccio’s best kept secrets. After a little while, it becomes clear that it’s somewhere comfortably in the middle – not ultra-gimmicky, not sublime, but a lovely in-between. The neighbourhood tratorria, the kind of place you come to with your family or your friends on a Thursday night, to eat platefuls of gnocchi, veal coda, and stewed fagioli, all while getting nicely looped on a carafe of wine called “red”.

I order the pici alla gricia, hand-rolled pasta the size and shape of thick shoelaces, slicked in a savoury sauce of pan-fried pancetta, fresh baby artichokes and a dusting of sharp pecorino. The pici get twirled happily into clusters on my fork, until there isn’t a single slippery noodle left in the bowl. It’s the kind of simply-prepared, unfussy pasta dish that hits all the right buttons, especially for the weary traveller who’s had nothing to eat all day, save an in-flight, cellophane-wrapped slice of banana bread, an oily square of potato pizza and an apricot.

To avoid the dearth of vegetables that’s beginning to slink into my tourist diet, I also order a 6 Euro plate of stewed chicory with the pici, which the waiter is quick to clarify will only come after the pasta, “Dopo il primo piatto, okaaye?”, as per Italian dining customs. I try to act with blasé assurance, “Sì, sì…perfetto“, but secretly wish he’d bring it all to the table at one time so that I won’t be stuck eating a mound of chicory meant for 2-4 people, all on its own (and all on my own). When it comes – a large, conical pile of tangled greens, swimming in garlicky stewing juices – the undertaking seems larger than expected. I dig in, like an obedient child, forkful after forkful, until the mound slowly diminishes, using the bread from the bread basket to mop up as much of the leftover juices as I can. It’s really tasty; just far too much for one person.

Right around the time I start to feel like John Candy in the steak scene from The Great Outdoors, a new batch of patrons rolls in through the front doors. It’s 10:45pm. The waiter asks if I want a dolce; I clutch my chest, “No, grazie, non posso” and ask for the cheque instead.

After heading out – or perhaps more accurately, rolling out of Da Bucatino, I make my way down the block to Piazza Testaccio a block for a gulp of fresh air. The piazza is nearly empty, except for a family of four with two gangly kids out for a late-night stroll. I notice they have cones of gelato in their hands. My midriff – the one that, just moments ago, felt like it was bursting at the seams, the one that said, “No, grazie, non posso” when offered dessert by Mr. Magic-Trick waiter – is suddenly keen for a frozen slurry of milk, cream and sugar. Not too far away is a gelateria, glowing in a halo of neon lights.

As I make my way over, I start to wonder how many times I’ll be able to use the excuse “when in Rome” before I fall flat on the floor.

—–

Testaccio, Rome
Saturday, June 11th
Caffè Barberini, Nuovo Mercato di Testaccio, former Mattatoio al Testaccio

Breakfast starts with a cornetto and macchiato at Barberini, on Via Marmorata. In Italy, a lot of cornetti (the Italian interpretation of a croissant) are made with vegetable shortening, but Barberini is apparently one of the only places in the city that makes theirs with real butter. No mucking around.

This hot tip came from Natalie, when I mentioned I was heading out for breakfast near the apartment in Testaccio. She also said they made good coffee – which they do. Like most Italian coffee bars, the baristi are exclusively men, decked out in white button-up shirts (some also wear grey vests and bow-ties), expertly navigating the line between flirtation and professionalism with their female clients. Regulars breeze in at different intervals, greeting the barista with a quick salve! as they lean up against the bar. Seconds later, the barista slides their espresso toward them. They don’t even need to order; he knows them that well. They chit chat for a couple of minutes, the client knocks back the final sip of their espresso (there are about three total) and they wish eachother a buongiorno! goodbye.

I’ve been to Italy before; I’ve seen this dozens of times. But it’s a ritual that never fails to impress me with its simplicity – the two minutes spent chatting with your local barista while you sip your coffee, before heading off to work or running errands. To the Italians, there’s nothing precious about this routine – to them it’s just that – routine. And that, I suppose, is what makes it all that more alluring to the outsider.

Around lunchtime, Rachel takes me round the Testaccio market (Nuovo Mercato di Testaccio). Nuovo, because it opened in 2012, migrating from its original location in Piazza Testaccio, where it stood since the 1920s. The new building has the same squeaky-clean brightness that causes a lot of modern architecture stick out in older, urban settings, making it feel strangely anachronistic. Rachel tells me that the new market was initally met with a good dose of skepticism, mainly because of the squeaky-cleanness of the new structure and the additional walking distance from the more central square where it used to reside. I can empathise with Romans who are resistant to change when it comes to their markets; when I think of my own outdoor market back home – Marché Jean-Talon – I realise how apprehensive I am when changes are made to the stalls and producers (where the heck did my Madame Laitue go? Why have they replaced the produce stalls with bougie artisanal products?). I feel like the rug has been pulled from under me on those days. Some Romans probably do too. Because when something so important to your daily life gets shifted around like that, it can throw you for a loop (especially for all us octogenarians at heart).

As we move along the pathways of the market that connect each stall, Rachel points out her favourite produce man (one of the few remaining farmers at the market that sells the produce he actually grows himself), her fish monger (he might be the most vocal vendor there), and her bakery, Da Artenio, which makes these lovely little pizzette – small, oval-shaped pizzas no bigger than the size of an out-stretched hand, with simple toppings like tomato sauce, or sliced potato, or red onion. In provision of lunch later in the day, I order a half loaf of bread and a bag of ciambelline al vino e finnochio, circular biscuits made with wine and fennel seeds and a coating of sparkly sugar crystals. They’re meant for dessert, but I like to dunk these in wine or beer (like the Moretti that’s quietly chilling in the fridge back at the apartment).

After visiting the market, we stop for a quick espresso at a nearby tabbacchi. Rachel tells me it’s one of the last remaining tabacchi that also has an espresso bar. I wish I had a better photo to show you – one with a view from the inside, through the beaded curtains that dress the front door. Like the woman who runs it, this spot is an utter gem – time-worn, modest and lovely.

Adjacent to the Testaccio market is a series of buildings that used to house the neighbourhood’s slaughterhouse. After it shut down in the 1970s, the spaces have been restored and reappropriated by different institutes and collectives dedicated to art, culture, and education, the largest ones being the Macro Testaccio, University of Roma Tre, and Città dell’Altra Economia, the latter featuring a small bio-agricultural market on Sundays that sells fresh produce, cheese and small-batch food products. (It pained me to leave the market without one of those jaw-dropping wheels of cheese in hand, but I had to remind myself – four days. You’re only here for FOUR days.)

From Città dell’Altra Economia, you can see Monte Testaccio (or Monte dei Cocci), a hill made almost entirely of fragments of discarded earthenware (amphorae) used by the ancient Romans to transport olive oil. It’s quite a fantastic sight – a carefully engineered, ancient garbage dump of sorts. If you look closely (squint, maybe), you can make out the pieces of broken pottery covering the hill:

When we leave the old slaughterhouse district, it’s mid-afternoon and I realise I haven’t had any lunch. Rachel and I part ways and I head back to the apartment with my market spoils to cobble together something that will sustain me for the rest of the afternoon. In a couple of hours, I’ll be heading out again, this time for a long walk along the Tiber to Latteria Trastevere, to meet Natalie for pre-dinner drinks and salumi (i.e. aperitivo hour).

I can think of worse ways to spend a day.

—–

Vatican City, Rome
Sunday, June 12th

I have to buy Nonna a rosary at Vatican City today. That was my mission when I left the apartment this morning.

I head out, smeared in sunscreen SPF 110; my skin is still a shade between “snow-capped” and “Canadian-ivory”, which doesn’t exactly help me blend in with the locals. I take it a step further by fashioning my trusty cotton scarf into a makeshift headscarf, to protect my scalp from the hot sun, which by 10 am is already beating down something fierce. (Anytime I try to channel Ava Gardner in Night of the Iguana, I end up looking more like Edie Beale in Grey Gardens. It’s inevitable.). Since I don’t have enough hair to achieve a regal-looking Nefertiti situation, I end up looking vaguely infirm. That, or bat-shit crazy, if you consider the oversized sunglasses that swallow half my face and the canvas bag I’ve decided to cart along – you know, the one that has the outline of a naked woman lounging solo on a shag rug, smoking a bong. Oh and did I mention I went bra-free too?

Way to make an impression there, tourista.

It’s safe to say that sartorial choices such as these will not make you go unnoticed in Vatican City. One positive offshoot is that it tends to ward off the souvenir hustlers, possibly because they don’t quite know what to make of you. If you’re travelling alone, and don’t mind staying alone, I highly recommend it.

(Sidenote: before my Catholic-raised mother has a heart-attack reading this, I should mention that when I was actually in Saint-Peter’s Square (I didn’t go inside the Basilica or the museums), I had the good sense to turn the canvas bag inside out and toss on a long-sleeved shirt.)

—–

Among the vendor stalls outside Peter’s Square, all of them strewn with various forms of religious paraphernalia, I was able to find a couple of things that Nonna might like, namely a plastified card emblazoned with a smiling Pope Francis and a silvery medallion, and a rosary – a simple one made of white beads, with its own nifty pewter case.

I like to imagine grandma keeping these tokens by her bedside, making her feel safe.

1:25 pm

About a twenty-minute walk from Vatican City is Bonci Pizzarium – a pizza-by-the-slice counter discreetly located on a sidestreet across Cipro metro. Knowledge of their proximity wasn’t a fluke, or dumb luck; I’d planned these two excusions back-to-back after hearing from a handful of reliable sources (including two Roman-dwelling food pros I’d met – Katie Parla and Natalie Aldern Kennedy) that Pizzarium has some of the best pizza-by-the-slice (al taglio) in town.

I enter and take a ticket; with every rotation of the crowd, I get closer to the vitrine. Once it’s my turn, I’m face-to-face with large sheets of pizza splayed out with every topping imaginable. There is no menu; what you see is what you get. It’s buy-by-eye – roasted red pepper with pine nuts, tomato and anchovy, mortadella and marinated eggplant, zucchini, ricotta and almonds…

I finally settle on four kinds before they call out my number: potato and rosemary; headcheese (coppa), shaved celery and orange zest; chicory, ricotta, and nutmeg; and mushroom with caciocavallo. I collect my bounty and head to a standing banquette outside. The first few bites trigger contented grunts; the slice with the coppa garnered a couple of under-the-breath swear words. An American tourist standing next to me nudges his wife, “OMIGOD OMIGOD, have you tried this one?! This one might be the best”, only to repeat the same statement with each subsequent piece (they all win “best”).

His enthusiasm is warranted. It’s the kind of food that sparks deep-belly felicity; the kind of food that makes you happy to be alive.

Viva Bonci Pizzarium.

—–

Rome // Conclusion

Four and a half days in this city hardly seems enough. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Some things I’ll miss and hope to re-visit again: the public fountains that double as drinking fountains, the banter between neighbours that echoes off the walls of interior courtyards, the screeching swallows, the clinkity-clank of noisy tratorrie, the smell of pizza bianca wafting from stone ovens, the homicidal scooter-drivers, the way the ancient bits of the city meld with the modern, laundry hanging from windows, 1 euro macchiati, aperitivi in the piazza, and, of course, having some of the most beautiful, fresh (and wildly inexpensive) food products right at my fingertips, every single day.

Ah, Roma – spero che ci rivediamo subito.

Mal d’Italia

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by julia chews the fat in Food Away From Home, Holidays

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“We all have it in some way, that desire to return to an impossible elseware.”
– Adam Leith Gollner, Saveur, April 2016

I’ve been awake since 5:30 this morning. Not because I had to – or particularly wanted to – but because the butterflies in my stomach kept fluttering around, making it impossible to sleep in, the way I had intended. So I’m here, with you. Eyes half-mast and looking a little rough.

I hope you don’t mind.

The butterflies are equal parts nerves and excitement – in a few hours I’ll be on a plane crossing the Atlantic to spend three weeks in Italy. It’s a solo trip, one that, the more I think about it, was probably long overdue. The first few days will be in Rome, then one week in the fishing town of Sferracavallo in Sicily and then another week further inland, in Sclafani Bagni, where I’ll be taking a food writing workshop with two of my favourite writers – Rachel Roddy and Luisa Weiss. The workshop takes place at Case Vecchie, which houses the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking school, nestled among the rugged fields and vineyards of the Sicilian countryside. If the online photos do it any justice, then yes – it might actually be paradise on earth.

Given that the workshop itself has been something I’ve had my eye on for awhile – it still seems a bit surreal that I’m actually going, even in the few short hours leading up to departure. I’ve never felt this wired – in both the good and adverse sense of the word – for any trip I’ve ever taken. It’s quite impressive as a feeling, part of it stemming from the anticipation, but also from things as banal as transit logistics (charting out an itinerary in Sicily has been tricky, with entire trainlines suddenly going out of order. It seems that David Lebovitz has even experienced the peculiarities of Sicilian transit), unexpected technical issues (my computer), as well as my (perhaps archaic and ill-advised) decision to use paper maps instead of GPS or Google maps. (This should be interesting.)

Most of all though, I think that the churning in my stomach comes from something a little more abstract than the kind of excitement I’ve had in the past when planning a vacation. And in that sense, it’s more charged, too. I recently read an article on Sicily in the April issue of Saveur, where Adam Leith Gollner talks about the feeling of mal d’Africa, the “heartsickness” for Africa that Sicilians have when they’ve been travelling away from home (North Africa having had such a remarkable impact on their food, culture, and architecture, that’s it’s inextricable from Sicilian life and sensibility). My mind went back to those words when I thought about the reasons I wanted to visit Italy again. Not because I consider it home necessarily, but because – being the product of a Canadian father and an Abruzzese mother – there’s part of me that will always be Italy. It sounds clichéed to lay it out like that, so plain and saccharine, but it’s true. There’s a sort of mal d’Italia that lives inside me.

In that way, Italy has often felt like a phantom limb. Its presence is there – in the minute details of gesture, of speech and of sensibility – when I share a joke with my grandmother in broken dialect, or lift a peach to my nose at the market, or place my hand on a stranger’s shoulder (and wonder if touching them was the acceptable thing to do, in the cool anonymity of urban North America). Italy is in there, all the time, in some way shape or form. And I suppose that travelling back to terra madre is my way of restoring the bits that I feel I’m beginning to lose or forget, as my grandmother slowly enters into her mid-nineties and I come to the realisation that she, in fact, has been the one thread that’s kept me connected to that sense of Italian-ness, that sense of patria, as she calls it. When she’s gone, I’ll have to find ways to reconnect to it when I can; I suppose this trip is part of laying that groundwork.

—–

There’s lots more that I’d like to tell you about – not the least of which is this workshop with Rachel and Luisa (a total dream). But aside from not having the wherewithal to get into that now, I should probably tie up a few more things before I go, like weighing my bags to make sure they meet the airline requirements.

As a parting gift, I’m leaving you with this photo of the seafood risotto that my boyfriend made me this past weekend, with celery, fennel, white wine, homemade fish stock and a handful of mussels, shrimp, and cod. He wanted to make something in the spirit of Sicily, and I think he succeeded. (even if we committed the ultimate act of Italian food sacrilege and added parmesan to it.)

See you here again soon – hopefully more well rested, a little less wired, and with a lot of good stories to tell.

Baci x

100th

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by julia chews the fat in Cooking For Your Peeps, Food Away From Home, Lunch & Dinner, The Basics

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We began the New Year by discovering a smattering of mold, a constellation of green and black across a metre of bubbled paint, on our living room wall, right behind the couch.

Yey, a new year! A fresh start! With some health-compromising fungus! Cool!

I’m trying not to see it as a bad omen, a bad start to the year; trying not to think about the fact that this nagging cough from my cold has hung on longer than usual; trying not to think about the cost of a dehumidifier in the days after the financial haemorrhage that is Christmas; trying not to be annoyed that our landlady’s solution to the humidity is to Pfft, just turn up the heat!, which only makes things worse by turning our place into a sauna any time we cook, hang laundry and shower within the same 48 hours (partly because our apartment wasn’t outfitted with a bathroom fan, nor a kitchen fan.)

But I’m trying – really hard – not to think about any of that, right after my man bleaches down the wall and sets up the rotating space heater, and I recount the time someone I knew had to be operated on because he had fungus growing under his cheeks, in his sinus cavity. La la la.

To distract myself, I’m writing this post, which WordPress tells me is my 100th. They even sent me a notification with an image of a miniature trophy and an exclamation mark. So I guess that means we should celebrate? You, me and this 100th batch of words? Let’s forget about fungus. Let’s instead turn our attention to tacos. Because in an ideal world, I think most celebrations would start with tacos. Don’t you?

I’ve actually been hanging onto this recipe for a few weeks now, from early December, when we had a bunch of people over for a two-cake, Planter’s punch, tacos-with-all-the-fixings-fiesta for my man’s birthday. It seemed fitting seeing that at the same time last year, we were in Tulum, beach combing, laying under palm trees, speaking broken (very broken) Spanish, and eating our weight in tacos.

We were partial to one thatch-roofed taqueria/bar right off the beach called La Eufemia; what they offered was straightforward, cheap, and more authentic than the Italian and Asian-fusion stuff the guys down the road were shilling. So it became a bit of a daily ritual – 2 Coronas and three or four tacos each, then a walk on the beach, or along the tiki torch-lined road. Simple, but perfect.

The fish tacos (pictured above) might have been La Eufemia‘s crowning glory, but their al pastor were pretty great too – pork shoulder rubbed in a mix of chiles, then slowly grilled until tender, served on tortillas with chopped onion, pineapple, and cilantro. We wanted to re-create something at home along the same lines, but without a grill or rotisserie, char-grilling the meat didn’t seem feasible. The other option was to slice the meat, then grill it, but seemed like a sure-fire way to dry it out. So instead, we left the pork shoulder intact, marinated it overnight (in the traditional al pastor spices), slow-cooked it, then once it was out of the oven, pulled the whole thing apart with two forks, and served it with fresh cilantro, onion and the pineapple it had been cooked with. The whole thing was smoky and sweet, tender and caramelised. We had leftovers for the better part of the week, but we didn’t complain because each time we put one together, it was like a little party, a fiesta, a miniature escape…

(…like the one this blog post gave me from that fuzzy, fungal surprise we found behind the couch. Thanks for bearing with me. Now you will be rewarded with tacos.)

Slow-Cooked Pork Tacos – marinade from Food & Wine
Serves 8

Notes:
1- this recipe easily doubles if you’re cooking for a crowd
2- the pork needs to marinate overnight, so plan accordingly

Ingredients

1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for brushing
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
4 fresh guajillo chiles—stemmed, seeded and cut into 2-inch pieces
1/3 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons chipotle in adobo, chopped (original recipe calls for achiote paste, but I wasn’t able to find any)
Sea salt
2 pounds boneless, whole pork shoulder
1/2 medium pineapple, peeled and sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 medium red onion, sliced crosswise 1/2 inch thick
Warm corn tortillas, chopped cilantro, thinly sliced red onion, lime wedges for serving*

*Other (possibly inauthentic al pastor toppings): queso (or feta), shredded red cabbage, quick-pickled radishes, chipotle powder

DIRECTIONS

1) Preheat the oven to 325°F

2) In a medium saucepan, heat the 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the garlic and cook over moderately high heat, turning occasionally, until lightly browned, about 1 minute. Stir in the oregano, cumin, pepper and cloves and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the chiles and cook, stirring, until blistered in spots, about 30 seconds. Add the pineapple juice, vinegar and achiote paste and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes.

3) Transfer the chile mixture to a blender and purée until smooth. Season with salt. Scrape the marinade into a large, sturdy plastic bag. Add the pork and turn to coat. Set the bag in a small baking dish and refrigerate overnight.

4) Preheat a grill pan. Brush the pineapple and onion with oil. Grill over medium-high heat, turning once, until lightly charred and softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a roasting pan.

5) Remove the pork from the marinade. In the same pan used for the pineapple, grill the whole pork shoulder over medium-high heat until browned on all sides. Transfer to the roasting pan, nestling it among the pineapple and onion wedges. Pour remaining marinade from bag on top. Cover loosely with foil and bake in the preheated oven for approximately 3 hours (let the pork cook undisturbed for 2 hours, then begin checking it every half hour. The pork is done when it is fork-tender, in other words, when it easily falls apart.)

6) Shred pork with two forks; season with salt. Serve with warm corn tortillas, chopped cilantro, sliced red onion and lime wedges (and/or any other toppings of your choice).

City Reprieve

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by julia chews the fat in Food Away From Home, Lunch & Dinner, Vegetarian

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My bus stop to and from work is positioned right off one of Montreal’s busiest highways, the 40. It’s a strip of steel and pavement that moves all day long in inexhaustible waves of blaring horns, blaspheming drivers, exhaust pipes spewing gasoline fumes, and every so often, the crunch of metal-on-metal resulting from a driver eyeing their cell phone instead of the road. It’s a purgatorial feast for the senses, to say the least. But it’s also a daily necessity, getting me to and from my place of work. I try to remember that with convenience comes sacrifice, sticking my nose in a book to distract me from the highway and its noxious offerings. Sometimes, though, it’s a hard beast to ignore.

Not unlike the man behind Whole Larder Love and others of his ilk, I’ve become more sensitive to the drawbacks of city-living. This isn’t say that I intend on becoming a tree-dwelling hermit, or have what it takes to walk around in cold cow muck each morning at the crack of dawn, in a uniform of denim overalls and wellies. But there are days when those things sound much more appealing than ingesting smog and hurrying around with commuters who’ll toss you to the curb if it means getting to the bus faster. Frankly, on those days, real cow muck sounds like the better kind of bullshit.

Since I will likely never become a farmer, or goat-herder, or cultivator, I rely on intermittent opportunities to take a break from the city. Like the one that presented itself out of the blue in late August, when my friend Rose asked if I wanted to spend a three-day weekend on a farm in the Eastern Townships. A three-day escape to the country? Man o man,

sign

UP.

It just so happens that Rose’s mum (the lovely and talented, Gwynne Basen) operates a small-scale farm in the hamlet of Dunkin, near Mansonville, Quebec. True to its name, every inch of Abbondanza is plentifully bestrewn with plants and produce – from the keyhole garden overflowing with squash and the colossal heads of cabbage lining the garden path, to the long tendrils of heirloom tomatoes, greenhouse peppers and bright patches of nasturtium flowers, it is a sight to behold. A plant nirvana.

If there was ever an antidote to city-fatigue, this would be it.

The Friday we arrived, Rose and I busied ourselves prepping produce for the Saturday farmers market. At the kitchen table, we took turns sorting, packing and weighing fresh leaves of kale, spinach, mesclun, as well as different types of Romano, fava, and string beans in a spectrum of colours, ranging from iridescent-purple ones, to slender, aubergine-coloured ones that magically turn green when they’re cooked. Every so often, for, ahem, “quality-control” purposes, we’d sample the mustard and mizuna leaves, letting them warm our mouths with their peppery bite, as we continued to make our way through the mounds of greens laid out on the table.

Once all the produce had been sorted and tucked away for the night, we all sat down with some wine and a pre-dinner plateful of crisp, tempura-battered zucchini blossoms, inspired by Ottolenghi’s recipe and served alongside his (totally brilliant) spicy-sour lime dipping sauce. After dinner, and a couple more glasses of wine, we each sauntered off to bed, falling asleep to the sound of crickets.

The next morning, we packed up the car and headed to the market with Gwynne. Alongside the beans and greens, Rose and I arranged pint-size baskets of heirloom tomatoes and fingerling potatoes, a few heads of lettuce, and twine-bound bundles of carrots, onions and turnips. Local residents came by in batches, chatting with Gwynne and selecting produce to take home. By noon, there was nary a piece of produce left on the table.

Clearly, the locals have good taste.

Back at the farm, I helped with lunch by assembling a quick salad of Gwynne’s heirloom tomatoes, layered with shreds of milky Buffala mozzarella, basil, dill, nasturtium flowers, and sprinkled with crunchy salt flakes and a thin drizzle of olive oil.

We ate it on the porch steps, between two willowy hydrangea bushes fluttering with honeybees. After soaking up the last of the tomato juices from my plate with a heel of crusty bread, I sat there, toes in the sun, my heart filled with gratitude.

It was a weekend of perfect, quiet moments; a weekend of deep, clear breaths and introspective calm; a respite from the smog and the concrete, and an introduction to true farm-to-table living. Gwynne’s gardens and greenhouse are not only stunning, but also a testament to her commitment to real food. It’s thanks to dedicated people like her that we’re reminded of what food should look and taste like, and how something so seemingly simple – the flavour of a perfectly ripe tomato, for instance – can be profoundly enriching.

—–

If you’re interested in visiting the farm, Gwynne offers a variety of workshops – from sustainable gardening practices to stone-wall building. For details, you can visit the site here.

I hope autumn has been good to you, lovely readers. Be well, eat well xx

Stuffed Harvest Squash – serves 2 as a light main, with a side salad

2 medium-sized squash (pattypan work quite well)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped (or 1/4 bulb of fennel)
4-5 leaves of Swiss chard (stems on), finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (or 1 ½ cups cooked) white cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 tsp. fresh thyme (stems removed), chopped
1/4 tsp. fresh sage, chopped
1/4 tsp. chili flakes
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions:

1) Place the squash flat side down in a large pot. Add about 1 inch of water, cover, and bring to a boil. Cook for about 8 minutes, until a fork easily pierces the top of the squash. Remove from the pot and set aside to cool.

2) Preheat oven to 375° F. When cool enough to handle, slice off the top of the squash and scoop out the flesh (leaving a wall of about a 1/4-inch of flesh on all sides of the squash). Chop the scooped out flesh coarsely, and set aside.

3) Heat a glug of olive oil in a large skillet on medium-high heat and sauté the onions and celery for about 5 minutes until softened (but not browned); add garlic, diced squash, and remaining seasonings and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the white beans and cook on low heat for about 5 minutes, stirring from time to time.

4) Place the squash in an baking pan or dish. Spoon the stuffing into each shell, packing tightly (don’t worry about over-stuffing). Return the “caps” of the squash back on top and bake for about 20 minutes in the preheated (375° F) oven. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before serving.

Note: if you have additional stuffing, let it cool, then pop it into the refrigerator. It’ll last a few days and might come in handy for weeknight dinners – reheated with a bit of oil and parmesan, tossed into pasta, or heated up and lightly mashed as a topping for toast.

Overnight Oatmeal for Late (and Early) Risers

21 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by julia chews the fat in Breakfast & Brunch, Food Away From Home, The Basics, Vegetarian

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Can you see that, dear readers? That cool, steely blue daylight stretching out onto the tablecloth above? That means it’s 6am on a weekday. 6am on a weekday, and I’m up. That’s a WHOLE HOUR AND A QUARTER EARLIER than my alarm.

This is a Monday-morning miracle.

When you’re not in the habit of being up this early, there’s this overwhelming sense that you’re the only person on the Earth who’s awake. You’re not quite used to the quiet because living in the city means you’ve become acclimatised to a morning soundtrack of cars honking, people yelling, toddlers crying and two-ton delivery trucks rumbling perilously down potholed streets. Admittedly, it’s a soundtrack that mimics the chaos of my morning routine. I fiddle with the snooze button far too much; I tumble over power cords on my way to the shower and almost systematically end up putting on one item of clothing inside out (yesterday it was a shirt, maybe tomorrow it’ll be underwear! Only Lady Fortuna knows!).

But early mornings like this one are different. I walked slowly to the kitchen. Casually, even. Right now, the only thing within earshot is the muffled sound of coffee brewing in the percolator, punctuated not by the shrill screech of a construction drill, but by the bright chirps of sparrows perched outside. It’s like a scene out of an old Folgers commercial. And it turns out I could live inside a Folgers commercial forever.

Sitting here, sipping coffee between bites of oatmeal, I decide I’ve got a little time to do some computer clean-up. I soon come across a folder of photos marked “Ireland/Berlin 2013” and it dawns on me that one year ago, almost exactly to the day, I was on a plane heading to Ireland for my brother’s wedding. I can hardly believe that it was a whole year ago. The details of those memories are still so vivid.

In the days leading up to the wedding, we stayed on a 17th-century estate owned by the bride’s family – an astonishingly beautiful and meticulously preserved cluster of buildings with guest houses that looked out onto a floral courtyard and green acreage, all of it surrounded by a hand-built stone wall and dense forest. You’d wake up to the sound of starlings and water trickling down the courtyard’s fountain. Afternoons were spent navigating the twisting paths of the forest. Wild deer would come out to graze at dusk. Over dinner, the bride’s uncle would regale us with the estate’s ghost stories and we’d all head to our beds with goosebumps, secretly hoping we’d have our own otherworldly encounter to share at the breakfast table the next morning.

The wedding itself was so fairytale-like, it would put any Martha Stewart magazine to shame. There was a heartfelt ceremony under a big willowy tree; bouquets made with wild flowers from the fields; Celtic dancing and a Viennese waltz; late-night fireworks in the yard and (because my sister-in-law is from Hamburg) elegant, well-dressed Germans everywhere.

The day after the event, my parents and I set out on coastline road-trip that took us from Sligo, to Dingle, down to the Ring of Kerry and Cork, up to Drogheda, through Belfast and all the way the northern-most tip of Ballycastle. We made ascents up treacherously thin, coastline roads that led to the most beautiful vistas – endless stretches of rocky beach, verdant hills dotted with sheep, vibrant pink sunsets, and strings of ancient stone castles that sat soulfully along the landscape. In the mornings, we walked through dewy fields and cobblestoned paths, before heading inside our B&Bs for breakfasts of black tea, Irish soda-bread, freshly-churned butter (oh, the butter), marmalade and warm oatmeal. Sometimes there’d even be a full Irish breakfast waiting for us, complete with fried eggs, bacon rashers, black pudding, a grilled tomato and toasted bread, each slice neatly arranged in a silver toast rack.

Mornings there were quiet and tranquil; they made me feel happy, hopeful, serene and, perhaps more than anything else, settled. All of it was like a dream – the mist, the smell of earth and grass, the mellow baying of barnyard animals.

I wanted to stay forever.

—–

Today, on this early Monday morning – without the usual clamour of the city – the gentle magic the Irish countryside doesn’t seem so far away. It’s in the wind and the leaves. And in a quiet breakfast that doesn’t need to be rushed.

Happy (One-Year!) Anniversary to my brother and his bride. Hearts to infinity, plus one. ♥

A note on the recipe: knowing how my mornings usually devolve into complete bedlam, I made myself a pot of overnight oatmeal. It’s a nice thing to wake up to, particularly if you feel like a chicken with its head cut off between the hours of 7:00 and 9:00. Cold pizza for breakfast can be fun, but trust me, homemade oatmeal is better. One caveat: you MUST MUST MUST use steel-cut oats, nothing else. Otherwise, you’ll end up with nondescript sludge, instead of nice, toothsome, nutty bits of oats. Steel-cut oats are normally a bit of a nuisance as they take 45 minutes to cook (I know, yikes) – but if you use this overnight method you can avoid waiting around for breakfast because it cooks while you sleep. *Poof* Magic!

Overnight Steel-Cut Oats (3-4 servings)

4 cups filtered water
1 cup steel-cut oats
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Topping option:

a handful of quartered strawberries, macerated in maple syrup overnight
a handful of smashed pistachios

Directions:
1) In a medium saucepan or Dutch oven, bring the 4 cups of water to a rapid boil.
2) When the water comes to a full boil, pour in the steel cut oats and salt.
3) Give a quick stir and let the oats cook for 1 minute.
4) After one minute, turn off the heat, give the oats a quick stir, cover and then let them sit on the stove overnight. Go catch some well needed zzzz.

The next morning: open the lid and observe the magic of perfectly cooked overnight oatmeal. Oooh ahhh. Bring the oatmeal back up to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until warmed through. There will be a bit of water in the mixture still, but the oats will thicken up as they sit (but if you feel it needs to be thinned out some more, add a little bit of milk or water to the pot). Ladle the oats into a bowl and spoon over the mascerated strawberries and pistachios.

Orchard tale, apple tart

26 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by julia chews the fat in Breakfast & Brunch, Cooking For Your Peeps, Food Away From Home, Sweet Tooth, Vegetarian

≈ 4 Comments

It was mid-October when Shane, Margaux and I went apple picking in Oka. We walked through dewy grass, relishing the cool, fresh air that smelled of earth and leaves. Everything was misty and moody and gorgeously still.

It being late in the season, and drizzling, meant that we were the only three people in a large, rolling orchard surrounded by flame-coloured trees. We wandered through the rows, plucking apples, some as dark as plums and others as large as grapefruit. From time to time, geese flew overhead in squawking, V-shaped strings.

We carried our bounty back to the house to be weighed, where our host served hot cups of carrot-apple soup. Our plans to go for a short hike were overheard. “You can reach the National Park through the orchard, you know.”

Grateful for the advice, we followed the long path through the orchard to the point where it met the Park, stepping into a tree-filled landscape dotted with yellow leaves that fell to the forest floor like snowflakes.

On the edge of the forest came a clearing, leading us to a look-out over the River of Two Mountains. In a miraculous change of weather, the cloudy mist had given way to full sunshine, beaming and hot.

—–

The only consolation for leaving this enchanting place was the batch of round, red beauties we got to take home with us – four kinds, each with a personality of their own.

While all were delicious, I had a soft spot for the crunchy, plum-coloured Empire, which were used in this tart. I wasn’t sure they would survive the heat of the oven, but they held their shape, fanning out elegantly along the crust and bejewelling the top of the custard with their beautiful, dark skins. It sounds chic, but it’s actually very simple. And a nice way to pay homage to the familiar flavours of apple, vanilla and butter. If you close your eyes, you can almost smell the orchard.

French Apple Tart – makes enough for one large tart + one small

Shortbread pastry – adapted from a Laura Calder recipe

2 ¼ cups flour
½ tsp salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1 cup butter, cut into pieces
‎ ⅓ cup ice-cold water

Put the flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor; then add the pieces of butter. Pulse until you reach a coarse crumb texture. Keep pulsing while slowly adding the cold water through the feed tube until the dough starts to come together (if you don’t have a food processor, you can also do this with your hands.)

Turn out the dough onto a floured work space and work it gently until it comes together, being careful not to overwork it. Flatten into a disc and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.

Filling – adapted from The Encyclopedia of French Cooking, 1982

juice of one lemon
1 ½ lbs crisp apples
⅓ cup milk
⅓ cup heavy cream
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (or ½ tsp fresh vanilla, from the pod)

Pour the lemon juice into a large bowl. Cut and core the apples one by one, slicing them thinly (about 1 cm thick) and adding them to the bowl of lemon juice, stirring to prevent discoloration.

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface into a circle large enough to line the base and sides of a tart pan (preferably with a removable base). Roll the rolling pin over the top to remove the access dough off the sides.

Arrange the apple slices in a tart pan in a circular pattern, working from the edge of the dish inwards, and overlapping the slices slightly. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the remaining filling ingredients in a bowl and whisk together.

After the 10 minutes, remove the tart pan from the oven and reduce the oven to 375ºF. Pour the egg mixture over the apple slices. Return to the oven and continue baking for an additional 30 minutes at 375º F. Serve warm.

Verger écologique d’Oka
445 Rang de l’Annonciation
Oka, QC J0N 1E0
(450) 479-6464
www.vergerbrabantvincent.wordpress.com

(Orchard photos by Shane, Margaux and me)

Learning to grin and bear it

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by julia chews the fat in Cooking For Your Peeps, Food Away From Home, Sweet Tooth, The Basics, Vegetarian

≈ 11 Comments

“One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.” – Julia Child

A couple of weeks back, I took a short viennoiserie class with the lovely people at La Cuisine Paris, where pastry chef Guillemette guided half a dozen of us through the different techniques and steps required to make croissants, amandines and chocolatines. It was a bit of a surreal experience (pastry class, in Paris, in the springtime – pinch me), and despite not really being in my element, I ploughed away and left the class with a palpable sense of accomplishment. However minimal that accomplishment may actually be in grand scheme of things…still…I MADE CROISSANT. High five.

Arriving back in Montreal, I knew that if the information was left to hang out in the dusty recesses of my brain, I was sure to forget the details and subtleties that Guillemette had imparted to us. Not wanting to waste the potential of the experience, I stocked up on supplies and found the first available weekend to make a go of it. To my surprise, I also had volunteers willing to roll up their sleeves and do it with me – which was perfect, because not only would I have additional man-power, but I’d also have (other) inexperienced people to blame if it all went to hell.

Just kidding ♥

—–

The start was promising – I had my yeast from the baker, my electronic scale, my mise en place. The whole set-up was disturbingly perfect. Even the starter dough, the thing I was most worried about, seemed to look and feel like it should when I tucked it into the fridge to rest overnight. I began to feel a little like Maria in that scene from the Sound of Music.

But soon, I was brought back to the reality of my amateurism. And things got ugly. Fast.

On the second turn (folding) of my puff pastry dough, the underside was showing signs of tearing. At first, it was just one tear, which I quickly (sloppily) patched up. But then the more I rolled, the more the dough started to look like it was suffering from third degree burns. The butter began to ooze out from air pockets that had formed during rolling, resulting in a pot-marked dough that looked nothing like the one I had made in class. Family was in the room, so I restrained from swearing aloud, but in my head there was a foul-mouthed sailor blaspheming on repeat.

Distracted by my ugly, ugly dough, I forgot to add a slick of egg wash to the first batch of croissants, which may explain why they turned out more like overcooked dinner rolls. My ~~guinea pigs~~ taste-testers assured me they were good, but I’m pretty sure I heard someone compare them to the kind that come in the blue tube – you know, the one with that freakishly upbeat, miniature weirdo made of dough. With that as the barometer, I can’t say the croissants came close to the real deal. But while you wouldn’t pay good money for them, you’d probably eat them if they were hanging out on your aunt’s brunch table…and you were bored.

Then came the amandines, which looked promising before going into the oven, but then for some reason, decided to get their freak on: as they baked, the almond paste flowed liberally off the pastry, causing these pretty little “baskets” and “pinwheels” to morph into nondescript blobs, some of them binding together and making Siamese twins (I blame this not on the recipe, but rather my decision to make the almond flour from scratch. Bad move…).

The saving grace in this whole process were the chocolatines. They (miraculously) turned out flaky and delicious and even looked normal. Not perfect, not the best…but good. The taste-testers even took seconds, which is usually a good sign. Right at the moment when my faith in this experiment was sinking, the chocolatines bolstered my confidence and gave me hope that it is possible to make good croissant at home.

Phew.

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I suppose the bigger lesson in all this is that sometimes our expectations in the kitchen are shot down; sometimes the bread hasn’t risen or the cake has stuck to the tin or, in the words of Ms.Child, “the cat has fallen into the stew”. C’est la vie, mes amis. What would be more tragic is if these kinds of experiences turned us off from ever trying these things in the first place…

…ultimately causing us to miss out on moments like these:

Because, let’s be honest – an afternoon in the company of apron-clad men is time well spent.

On that note, I whole-heartedly encourage you to try making your own croissant. Here are a few things I learned (the hard way) and that you might want to keep in mind:

1) Give yourself plenty of time. No matter what recipe you end up using, all of them will require you to rest the starter dough (minimum 6 hours for mine) and the rolled dough between “turns” (folds).

2) If the dough seems warm or sticky or springs back a lot when rolling, put it back in the fridge. Along the lines of the point above, you’re better to err on the side of caution and rest your dough, even if it’s for a longer period of time than the recipe suggests.

3) When rolling the dough, be firm but gentle. The final result you’re aiming for is a light, flaky croissant that has several airy layers. It won’t reach it’s potential if you start getting rough with it – you’ll end up tearing the dough and making holes in the layers. NO BUENO.

4) Chill out. You are not a pastry chef, nor trying to be one. If things start to look scary, step away for a minute and take a deep breath. The Earth will not stop turning if your croissants aren’t perfect. Even if they’re inedible, you get a gajillion food-nerd points just for trying.

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One last thing: Guillemette has kindly allowed me to share her almond cream recipe with you (merci Guillemette!). It’s traditionally used as a filling for almond croissant (amandines), but it’s also wicked in coffee cake and probably most places you would normally use marzipan.

Almond Cream (makes about 2 cups) – from La Cuisine Paris

55g sugar
55g softened butter
1 egg (also about 55g)
55g almond flour
15 g all-purpose flour
almond extract or rhum (to taste)

Combine butter and sugar in mixing bowl and mixwith a wooden spoon until creamy. Add egg and mix until completely combined. Add the almond flour and all-purpose flour and mix well. Add flavoring and stir to combine. Cover and place in fridge 10-15 minutes before adding to amandines (can be kept in the fridge for up to 4 days or frozen and defrosted in the fridge).

Finding warmth in the 3rd

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by julia chews the fat in Food Away From Home, Lunch & Dinner

≈ 5 Comments

Arriving in Paris on a Wednesday afternoon after a sleepless, overnight flight and a long bus ride from Charles-de-Gaulle, I haul my luggage half-way around town, up and down metro stairs and along narrow side-walks until finding the apartment I rented on a small street in the 20th. Once inside, it’s difficult not to be seduced by the comfort of the bed, an open invitation to a (frankly, well-earned) nap. But I quickly remember the brevity of my stay and instead opt for a quick shower and change of shoes so that I can step out and start exploring.

I walk a bit. Quite a bit, actually – along the street that runs parallel to the high walls of Père-Lachaise cemetery and down the long rue du Chemin Vert, both of which are nearly deserted. As I quickly discover, today is a holiday in France. Nearly everything is closed, save a couple of supermarkets and tabacs. Shops are armored in anti-theft grates. The sidewalks feel barren; a solitude sets in as the sky becomes grey and the wind picks up. It starts to drizzle and I cling to my street-map, hesitant to admit that, even with all the pretty around me, I feel adrift and a little lonesome.

At some point between the 11th and 3rd arrondissement, Chemin Vert meets boulevard Beaumarchais, a wide, four-lane drag peppered with shops and restaurants and bars. Regardless of the holiday, patrons spill out of cafés and onto the sidewalk – smoking, talking. They may not know it, but to me and my crumpled little street map, they are welcomed signs of life.

A short way up Beaumarchais, I come across a boxy structure with long, industrial windows sticking out from the base of a traditional 19th century apartment. Despite it’s unassuming silhouette – sleek, monochrome, rectilinear – it’s an eye-catching extension of the building, crowned with a clean string of marquee bulbs. As I get closer, I recognize the furnishings of a restaurant. It’s packed with the hum of a dozen conversations that can be heard through the glass.

I step in and ask for a seat at the bar. In an instant, I’m led to the the far end, right next to the kitchen and its large stone pizza oven. Unlike the weather outside, the whole place bathes in a warm glow – a mixture of candlelight, soft incandescent and the phosphorescent embers of the oven. I order the house Negroni, which comes in an old-fashioned champagne coupe and is infused with walnut. This is my introduction to Grazie. And it’s a lovely one.

The place bustles like mad. A little bit of Italian hollering bounces between kitchen and waitstaff, but none of it feels frazzled. The back-and-forth is harmonious and focused. There’s also enough playful banter in the mix to remind you that they are still camarades, joshing eachother until the first one cracks a smile.

Ethiopian jazz plays; the bartenders swing from one end of the bar to the other. Everything seems to work with effortless synergy. The bottles of booze on display sit on an arrangement of wooden crates, back-lit with a few twinkle lights. A regal-looking stuffed peacock is perched at the very top, surveying the patrons below.

It’s easy to get woozy fast at Grazie – a combination of the Campari and the heat off the oven’s stones. There’s more yelling from the kitchen. The energy is intoxicating. You sweat. You sip your Negroni. You feel a warmth head to toe. Life is good.

The pizza arrives, splendid and bubbling – anchovy, escarole, grape tomato and a few shavings of parmesan on a beautifully blistered crust. The crunch of the escarole with the smoky anchovy and sweet tomato is an impeccable mix, all of it anchored by the crispy chew of the crust. It’s not complicated food, or fancy food. But it’s the kind that makes you happy to be alive.

The pizzaiolo stretches new pieces of dough and glides them into the rotating belly of the oven. They refresh your drink and chit chat with you between rushes. It’s only 8pm on a Wednesday, but you get the feeling it’s going to be a late night.

Ristorante Grazie
91 Boulevard Beaumarchais, 75003 Paris, France
+33 1 42 78 11 96
http://graziegrazie.fr/

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