Food & Wine Archives - Page 12 of 13

Even when we are not in Italy, we sort of are in Italy

We may have gone around the bend. Saturday was emails to and from Italy in the morning. Some in Italian some in English all on subject of Italy. About noon I signed off on all that BECAUSE We had a party to get ready for. Late afternoon on the beach in Ocean Park, by Saco, Maine. Both couples were people we have met through the wonder of the internet and one had a house in Italy and the other was considering a trip to look at same. To get ready for this, we were planning to spend the afternoon deep in anti-pasti preparation. Because this would be an all about Italy conversation, Italian and food and drink too. Just your traditional Fourth of July party.

So, about one pm the phone rings and a sweet voice says “Hi! It’s Lydia, and we are on Main Street a couple blocks from your house. We will be right over. Lets do lunch.” Yeah! Its Lydia. Stew running upstairs yelling “Lydia!” meets Midge, coming down the stairs yelling “Lydia?” Then we both got nose to nose and said “I thought knew“? Well, heck. We started throwing junk in far closets and revealing couches and tables we had not seen since before we packed our daughter off for camp at the last minute in the middle of the living room. And then the mystery Lydia called again, lost, whew. Momentary reprieve from governor and chance for all the pieces to fall into place. Oh, LYDIA. We are so dense, like we know a lot of Lydias. What WERE we thinking?

We know her as well as we know anyone. She is American and from nearby Connecticut. But we have only ever known her IN ITALY. Contextual issue. Even our fun drop-in guests are Italian related. Some times having houses in two countries is like having two separate lives. This was a fun case of the two blurring over and surprising us.

PETER POURS PARTIALLY POPSCICLED PROSECCOS AT THE PARSONS’ PARTY

Later, after that fun lunch with “Italian” friends, we were at the party on the beach and all those great minds were thinking alike and the world was in total harmony, because everyone brought bottles of the fun fizzy Prosecco. Forget champagne. Forget Spumanti. The real deal is Prosecco. Friends in the Veneto introduced us to it years ago and immediately got our full and undivided attention. Believe me, they don’t save it for special occasions up there. They plunk pitchers of it on the table like it was beer. Right thinking people. Prosecco is not as sharp and dry as Champagne, not as dessert sweet as Spumanti, but like baby bear’s porridge, juuust right. Somehow sitting on the beach watching the colors of the blue in the sky and listening to the waves crashing on the beach made all the bottles of bubbly go away. All, save one.

Peter turned to Joan and said “You think that last bottle I put in the freezer would be any good by now?“ She jumped up and said “Peter! That was two hours ago, it will be a Proseccoscicle!“ He ran up into the house to begin damage control. The rest of us slowly and regrettably dragged our rainbow colored canvas chairs off the beach just ahead of the incoming tide and tossed them into the tall grass at the edge of lawn. When we got into the long screened porch, Peter was gingerly holding the last bottle of Prosecco, or, should I say, block of Prosecco. And looking at it through squinty eyes with great scientific interest. Yep. Frozen. But the cork hadn’t blown. Whew. Peter made it his mission to keep that bottle near him for the next hour.

Ready yet? Nope? How about Now? Eventually, holding it up to the light we could see the bottle shaped baby ice berg melting a bit and producing some strange shaped chunks burbling left and blurbing right as the bottle was tipped back and forth. Finally, he of multiple MIT degrees, said that in his professional opinion, it was high time to try it. And you know that was the bestcoldestmostawesome bottle of Prosecco any of us had ever tasted. Now kids. Don’t try this at home. But we did live to tell the tale. All Is well that ends well and that night of Italy on a beach in Maine ended very well indeed.

Only six more days until Italy!

April ends. So does our time in Umbria. Parting Shots.

I have oceans of the Italian cult comic Dylan Dog. I can rationalize having my nose in a comic instead of Calvino by saying I’m doing it improve my Italian, my way.

PANICALE, Umbria— Parting is such sweet sorrow. Especially when swallows are swirling overhead having a bug fest / breakfast / airshow that starts early and goes on until after sunset every day. And even harder to leave when your rascally roses are only moments from blasting into full sunshine yellow bloom. The buds were numbering in the millions and getting fatter by the hour. Yes, that is how often I was checking. It is almost a cruel local joke here how I fuss over my roses all year long, but have yet to see them in bloom, missing them on one side or the other of their usual full month of glorious (so I’ve heard) bloom. Note to self: schedule trips to Umbria for first of May. And May is generally a more dependable weather month in Italy than April anyway. Duly noted.

IN THE GARDEN. MAYBE READING A LITTLE DYLAN.
Enjoying the garden in spite of the spite-full reluctant roses. I know they are teasing me. I love it all back in the garden anyway. It is just becoming so alive at this time of year. And one of the nice things about cleaning up a garden for company is that once they arrive I can quit cleaning, weeding and fussing. And do lazy things, like dragging out a chaise and reading in the sun.

Nothing like some Dylan in the garden. Of course, when I say Dylan, you know I mean Dog, not Thomas. I’ve always been a sucker for comics. I have oceans of the Italian cult comic Dylan Dog. I can rationalize having my nose in a comic instead of Calvino by saying I’m doing it improve my Italian, my way. Anything with pictures is a big step up and after a while you realize any author has a certain way of writing and a certain vocabulary and it gets easier with each new reading. I’ve learned a lot of conversational street talk from Dylan. To each their own. Its what works for me. My daughter Wiley is all about pop culture and her favorite guilty pleasure is gossip magazines, both in the states and in England where she goes to university. She and her favorite Italian language teacher here in Italy use the Italian version of those awful tabloids as text books when they do their lessons together and it seems to really work for her. All I know is Wiley’s Italian was better after every lesson. Again, with the words and pictures.

SOLVING THE AGE OLD DESERT DILEMMA

The other fun thing about having company in Italy is that it gives us an excuse to have fun picnics in the garden, drink wine watching the sun go down and to look forward to going out to eat next door at Masolino’s. I’ve cleaned out the frig so that is my excuse to wind up the trip eating every meal there. Three times in two days. Not counting breakfast coffees. They are so busy at night we can’t chitchat properly at night at all so I will stop in on my way into the piazza in the morning and really catch up. Anyway, I was there for lunch on Wednesday with fun clients I had been writing to for a year and was dying to meet in person. Kept thinking, pace yourself Stew, don’t have to eat everything on the menu right now, you’ll be back again in a few hours. Temptations abound.

Later that same day, at a different table I was eating with our long time friends from Colorado. They had just arrived and they wanted Masolino’s to be their first stop before even unpacking. Visions of panicotta and creme carmels danced in their heads.

Then sweet Stefi one of the owners and the pastry / desert chef came out and started listing all the goodies that were on the desert menu for the night. Choices, choices, choices. Hate to make decisions? Don’t. We finally we cut the Gordian Knot. And ordered six different deserts for the five of us and just kept passing them around. A desert buffet. You know how places often have AntiPasti Misto? Same thing but sweeter. Dolce Misto?

Call it whatever you want we made them all go away, didn’t we? Its kind of a trick in Italy as the deserts are often kind of a let down compared to the terrific antipasti and pasti lead ins to every meal. Stefi keeps it fun and light and is determined that even after a big meal everyone should still be looking forward to one of her treats to finish it all off.

Here’s what we had:

Panecotta. Yes. But which kind? With frutti di bosco? Chocolate? Or carmel? Questions within questions. I’m in a horrible rut. I run with a pack that is honor bound to keep trying panecottas with fruit everywhere they go just to compare them to Stefi’s. Tiny little wild forest fruits. Berries that look like raspberries and blue berries? Awful good whatever part of the fruit kingdom they below to. But then Jeff of Colorado swears by the chocolate and it is awesome. Wicked good, almost black chocolate swirled and drizzled about over the snowwhite panecotta and it just takes the panecotta to a whole different place. And, ok, I sampled someone’s carmel and I liked that too. Still a sucker for the fruit. Oooh, oooh. There are two panecottas in each order. They come out of a mold and have a pretty depression on the top to hold fruit or chocolate. Order one each with friend and divide them up. Don’t have to wait till you have a big smorgasbord group feed.

Tiramisu. Tira. Mi. Su. Get it? Pick. Me. Up. Because in my understanding of its traditional form it should have two caffine delivery systems, one coffee and one of chocolate. There was a debate raging as Stefi patiently waited for us to get over it and order already. The debate was more or less this: is Tiraminsu just too much of a clique? Is it only on the menus of Italy for the amusement of low brow American tourists? Hey, its Italy. Its Italian. Lets eat it. We did. It was a beautiful thing, it was light, it rocked and earns its fame. And its name. Quando a Roma.

Torta Fragola. Strawberry cake. Hmm. The other night I thought, “gosh if I order that it. . . means I’m not ordering Panecotta.” What to do? What to do? Will I like it, Stefi? She assured me it was worth the risk. Because I had so happily had it already, I lobbied for it to be in the mix. No one quite believed it. She called it cake but I don’t know what it was really. It just about floated off the plate. True fact. Fresh strawberries in almost cream/cake arrangement. Light, but not limp, it holds its slice-of-cake shape, but a fork just sighs and slips through it by gravity.

Cookies in Holy Wine. The VinSanto classic. The cookies are homemade of course and are of multiple shapes and ingredients and have a hint of citrus to them. I usually don’t get this because I’ve had enough wine by this time and I think I see Andrea pouring some complimentary experimental thing for us over by the bar. (turned out to be an excellent light yellow grappa based liquor. The next night the surprise Umbrian desert wine was a dark communion grape juice colored Vernaccia. I hope I spelled that right. Very much of the grape flavor. Loved it. I will see if I can get a picture of the bottle on here some time soon. But I digress from the deserts.

Crema Catalana. How about something flamable in carmel so everyone in the restaurant will look up and think “that does look like fun, maybe we DO have room for desert”. Flames of liquor burning bright, a foot or so in height. Just wait. They burn down and out and ok, NOW you can stick your spoon in there. Why wait for your birthday to have your desert set on fire? Our friend Harry had this flaming concoction two nights running and for all I know he is there tonight ready to potentially sacrifice his eyebrows once again over this showy treat.

THAT’S IT. PACK IT UP.

Well, as we know, all good things must come to an end. We did a final night with friends from Maine stirred into the equation to good effect. They seemed to be settled into the good life Villa LeMura and looking like they could get quite use to that. The next morning came, I coffee’d and hugged my way around the piazza, took this photo of Katia (Giancarlo’s new assistant) and her family by Panicale’s fountain, gave my rascally roses one last look and said until next time –

See you in Italy

Stew Vreeland

ALERT: STRANGE SEGUE AHEAD!

Bear with us. We know this isn’t Italy. Going there in a very few days. Giancarlo tells me he has a huge list of new houses to see and report on.

In the meantime we are using that Iowa mention from the previous bit as a transition out of the Pacific Time zone and into Central. This time next week we will be on Italian Time!

Ok, the correct answer is the house on the right is in Sausalito on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and the one on the left is in Vinton, Iowa. We saw Vinton’s Victorians while visiting my sister Mary in her new home there. The town was very nice, her home and all the Victorian homes were great, but the high point of the afternoon had to be when the high school across the street let out at two thirty. We are so not in Umbria or San Francisco here friends and I can tell because here in Vinton’s Washington High it was the final day of Ag Week and therefore Bring Your Tractor to School Day. Take that Sausalito. You may think I am kidding but that is specifically why I carry a camera with me. What parents trust their sixteen year olds to take their behemoth rubber tired tanks to school? Yike. I’m from an Iowa farm background but I didn’t remember tractors following us to school. Or tractors THIS big. Maybe they look bigger when there are packs of them roaming up and down Main Street in the rain, smoke billowing from stacks and kids with seed corn hats waving from the cabs. So glad our timing worked out for all this. I put this in the pantheon of wonders with Day after Easter Cheese Rollthru the streets of Panicale in Umbria.

ITALIAN DOVE FLIES IN FROM FRISCO
This bird took the long way to its final destination. We bought an Italian Easter Cake called Colomba (nominally shaped like a dove) at Ferry Plaza on the Embarcadero. And brought it to Iowa to share with the family on St Paddy’s Day. The Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk Cheese didn’t go over as well as we hoped but that Italian cake was crumbs in a heart beat.

——————

There was something kind of nice and completing the circle in this trip that made me especially glad we stopped in Iowa. 68 years ago my then teenage dad made the Iowa-California-Iowa trip with a bunch of guys in a 1930 Model A Ford coupe with rumble seat. They shot gophers and tin cans with a pistol from the open rumble seat going across the Nebraska and those other wild and wooly states.

They were in San Francisco when the Golden Gate Bridge had just opened and was in its first coat of Golden paint. Dad said they had no money and just kept getting closer and closer to bridge but did not want to spend the money and pay the toll to actually go over it. At a certain point they got a bit too close, could no get back out of the on ramp and tried to explain their way out of it to the toll booth guard. But any explaining that was going to happen was done by the guard holding out his hand for their money saying Oh, yeah, you ARE going to see the Bridge. And pay the toll, too boys. They were glad they saw it and so were we.

That is all for the moment folks. We are headed off going east to Bella Italia and our home in Umbria during school vacation in mid April – so watch this space. Until next time

See you in Italy,

Stew

MIDGE AND STEW DID NOT STARVE IN SAN FRANCISCO

san francisco. We basically ate our way across this town. Stopping only occasionally to shoot the food.

We basically ate our way across this town. Stopping only occasionally to shoot the food. We ate AND took pictures in Chez Panisse and Boulevard and Rose Pistola (the Pink Pistol seems to almost be its Italian name, though I saw nothing in the way of firearms motifs, pastel colored or otherwise) and ate twice at a really high art kind of RetroTechno Japanese restaurant named Ozumo

Some times we think we’ve done it all. You know, the blase yeah, yeah been there done that sort of thing. Travel Note: You haven’t really done it all until you’ve chopsticked your way thru a Bento Box full of sushi and wasabi while watching Godzilla vs Mothra on a big flat screen TV. A small thing maybe, but you really know you aren’t on duty when you’re doing this in the middle of the afternoon. Great food, great casual but attentive service. And classy as they were they didn’t mind me taking a few snaps. I do try to be subtle.

But yet. We got our subtle shutter bug knuckles wrapped in a dippy ice cream shop in the middle of otherwise perfect sunny afternoon in Berkley? Sigh. I may do that story next. We’ll see.

But back to the Boulevard. Boulevard Restaurant was right next to our fun (BAY Bridge view) Harbor Court Hotel. Swell, chic fun to eat food, at Boulevard, amazing really. We dropped in about 10 pm and said Food Please. They shrewedly isolated our roudy late arrivals away from their regular customers in a private room. That room was a barrel valuted and floor to ceiling mirrored wine cellar two steps off the main dining room. The barrel vault appears to be ancient, ancient brick. All very slick and grown up, but still lighthearted. Doesn’t take itself desperately seriously. Food, yes, self, not so much. I don’t know about you but I’m willing to pay more to not be stuffy. Is it just me?

Rose Pistola rocked too. We had so many good Italian appetizers there including tiny zucchinis razor thin sliced and fried like potato chips but green edged and dime sized. Shredded artichoke and parmesan cheese on the next plate over. Aces as a salad, served room temp. And wood oven pizzas. Oh, my. Did we really eat all that? The crowd was somewhat dressy like a lot of people had just ditched the office and forgotten to go home yet. The jazz was cool. The food, like we implied, was to die for.

In the photos at the top here: Desserts, Dates and Clementines at Alice’s, Prosecco with Paulette at Rose Pistola, and appetizers from the deep blue sea at Boulevard shot by our friend Steve, with Martin doing the forklifting.

SIENA COMES TO LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO

Siena did come to the West Coast for a few days. And it was good. The Spannocchia parties were a great success with the LA event even getting mentions in the LA Times.

ALICE’S RESTAURANT. AND EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD

Siena did come to the West Coast for a few days. And it was good. The Spannocchia parties were a great success with the LA event even getting mentions in the LA Times. Blizzard-bound Mainers, noses pressed to the windows of the Portland Jetport trying to see even a hint of the runway — well, we didn’t have a snowball’s chance of making that party. But we were all present and accounted for in San Francisco. We met up with Randall Stratton, from Siena, Italy and Gail Cinelli and Erin Cinelli, both from Maine at Alice Water’s famous CHEZ PANISSE in Berkley. How famous is it? Someone just gave me the book “1,000 Things to See Before You Die ”. (Morbid-ish title, if you ask me, which they didn’t) Anyway, under “San Francisco” in the book, there are basically two entries: Cable Cars and Chez Panisse. What a fine and legendary place that is. Oh my. That was a wonder. Freshest ingredients, freshest presentation, nicest people running it. And the building is so fun. Like a tree house for grown ups. Very funky, even for fun Berkley.

The Spannocchia estate outside Siena is all about sustainable agriculture, so an interesting side shoot of the visit to Alice’s Restaurant was that the manager encouraged us to make a few block jog in our trip around Berkley to visit a foundation started by Alice Waters called the Edible Schoolyard .

This was really a demonstration of what one person with a good idea can accomplish. With her vision and guidance the people at Martin Luther King Middle School dug up a concrete parking lot and made a one acre kitchen garden. The kids dig this garden. They dig, plant, weed, harvest it. Then they eat their results and compost anything left over. We took a nice tour with the director who had been a student there herself in the early days of the garden. Another fun part of the tour is when Rusty Lamar former Internship Program Operations Manager at Spannocchia biked over to join the tour. He’s traded the good life in Siena for the good life of Architecture School in Berkley. He’s show in the photo here, at the right, with Spannocchia Foundation executive director Erin Cinelli.

At the party later in the Noe Valley part of town near Mission Dolores Park at Incanto Restaurant, we wined we dined most excellently with old friends and new and then Randall Stratton introduced the newly translated book by Delfino Cinelli about life on a large Italian agricultural estate in the 1920s – with many parallels to today’s farm life. Randall is Spannocchia’s General Manager so he was the perfect editor of his wife’s grandfather’s book.

The book’s translator Archie Stone spoke and both he and Randall were signing copies later. They sold every copy they had with them before we could get to them. The books can be ordered by calling the Spannocchia office in Maine (207-871-5158), and they will ship them as they get shipments in from Spannocchia.

Eventually, Erin says they will have an option for ordering online, but not quite there yet. This is the first ever English language edition of the book: “Castiglion che Dio sol sa” – The Castle that only God knows. Midge later pulled the name of the lucky raffle winner out of a hat and announced that Berry Stafford had won a week at the Castello. Good times indeed.

In the photo here we see Gail Cinelli, Randall Stratton, Sarah Chironi and Erin Cinelli. Sarah is a Spannocchia intern program alum. She and Erin were interns together in 1994. Today, Sarah owns an olive oil production company and mail-order business in St. Helena, California called Elixir Olive Oil.