Food & Wine Archives - Page 9 of 13

Pane e vino Vino e pane

This is an interesting book, seventy years old but there are parts of it that seem to be talking about where we are today. A classic Italian story from WW2. By Ignazio Silone who was born Secondo Tranquilli but had to write under a pen name to keep out of the clutches of the Fascists. My copy is the 1962 re-edited version of the 1935 original. It is an anti war book in a sense, certainly a book that refuses to glorify or glamorize war. It shows the futility of blindly and illogically following the crowd whether politically, religiously, or any other way. Considering Silone himself was in exile for years and that the Fascists beat and tortured his brother to death, this was a calm, considered book. Maybe a bit bleak, but not totally hopeless. Close. But he made his points.

Here’s the general plot: The protagonist, Pietro Spina has lost his faith in religion and has become a sought after Communist fugitive. Like the author, he is in exile, but the main character of the book risks it all and comes back to work in the underground resistance. After almost dieing from the rigors of his clandestine re-entry into the country, Pietro hides in plain sight as Don Paulo Spada, a cranky priest recovering from a serious illness. I liked the Robbing Pietro to Pay Paulo first names he chose for his main character. And the last names too. The radical politician was a mere rose spine (Spina) while the small town priest was a more war-like sword (Spada). The book goes along in a complicated, what-the-heck-is-going-on vein for a while. To me anyway. And I will admit, I set it aside as preachy and political, several times. But yesterday, I read the last chapters and found it all came together in a well thought out way.

Here’s what motivated me to pick up the thread and follow it to the ending: I was working in the yard when our friend Gail stopped to invite us to dinner. She and Midge are directors of Spannocchia the non profit estate outside Siena. “It is just a We Love Italy Dinner” she said. “Pot luck”. I asked what we could bring. Knowing we’ve been a bit under the weather (all better now, thanks) she evidently took pity on us and gave us The Easy Out. “Bread” she said “and maybe wine”. I knew what she meant. But I also knew I had to finish the book. I had to bring her wine and bread and “Bread and Wine”.

Wiley has arrived.

I’m 31 days and counting,

See you in Italy,

Stew

Ah, Siena. Ah, Spannocchia. (A Wiley Report)

At an hour and half away from Panicale, Spannocchia , is just far enough away to feel like a mini vacation and just barely far enough away that you can rationalise spending the night. The drive there is easy and really it wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t. We’d go anyway!

SIENA, TUSCANY—How do I love Siena, I couldn’t possibly count the ways. So when Erin, our friend at Spannocchia, just outside Siena, invited me to come stay the night I was beyond excited. Erin is the director of the foundation there. She is also our neighbor in Italy and in Maine!

This grand AgriCultural estate sits atop over 11,000 acres and includes a castle, a major villa, a chapel and lots of interesting and original farmhouses, a classic Medieval Tuscan hilltop community, in short. We have definitely written about Spannocchia before. Here is a Siena/Spannocchia blog from this time last year. But it is just so amazing I want a whack at it, too . . .

Note from Stew:
the photo above can be clicked on to see it in enlarged form.

When I was 13, my family went to Italy for two months. As I said, I was 13, it was the end of eighth grade — I would be missing eighth grade graduation!! Now I was not completely upset about the missing school situation, but foreign countries are scary and/ or boring when you have no idea what you’re doing, where you’re going or what you’re looking at and what people are saying.

But something special happened in Sienna and at Spannocchia. It was all just so pretty, so calm and dream like in its simplicity and elegance, with such amazing history and a great sense of fun. In Sienna it was the Duomo’s Piccolo Uomini Library that captured my heart, at Spannocchia? Pizza Night!

Now, nearly 10 years later, I had never been to Spannocchia for any other night except for Pizza Night. So when Erin emailed and asked if I would come on a Monday (pizza nights are Wednesdays) of course I said YES!

Between Italian class, webpages and phone calls that followed me literally up to the gates of Spannocchia I was definitely ready for some of Spannocchia’s white wine to empty my mind on the terrace before moving on to the official pre-dinner drinks, -Red, this time- in front of the fire.

Then dinner. It started out with Ribolita, a Tuscan, twice-boiled, vegetable and bread soup that seems to warm your insides as soon as you look at it. Of course totally enough for a meal on its own, but true to Italian form, we were literally just getting warmed up. It was followed by their own thin, succulent, pork filets, little cakes with pine nuts, limoncello and huge amounts of laughter.

After dinner we gathered back in front of the fire to see all the pictures from Spannocchia’s last batch of visitors, this is an annual group that includes Erin’s parents Gail and Peter, that goes to Spannocchia in order to continues the rescue and restoration work on “The English Garden”. This year a highlight was a woman from Maine helping everyone make animal statues out of pine needles and branches including a set of wild boars.

Then it was time for bed, but I’m sorry, I just can’t sleep. Why? Because it has started to rain, and when I say rain I mean it is pouring buckets out there. Y’know how you count between the thunder and lightning to see how far away the storm is? Well, that storm was right over us, directly over us, and it just would not budge. The windows were rattling, the shudders were shaking, it was loud and it lasted all night. But it felt kind of nice to be in this big all- weather, weathering castle and snuggling under the duvet listening to the rain as I eventually drifted off to sleep.

After breakfast the next morning of yogurt and muesli, hard boiled eggs and coffee lots of coffee, I swam down the road and back to Panicale, canceling house viewings along the way, and wishing I had another week, another lifetime to stay at Spannocchia.

Michelangelo. Of New York.

The hotel is very cool, very downtown and quite Italian. Coming in late Saturday night, I saw bound-up stacks of ”La Republica” next to stacks of New York Times. And get this: they carry Rai Uno on the TV’s in their rooms! Our satellite dish in Umbria is so out of whack that we can’t get Rai Uno in Italy. And they get it in NYC? How DO they do that?

NY, NY— Let’s see, how can we contort being in the Big Apple for the Country Music Awards into something Italian? Could be tricky. No. Wait. I think I see an opening. OK . . . how about this: we stayed at the Michelangelo Hotel and saw works by the real Michelangelo at a gallery?

We blame our problem on Moonlight. Our satellite TV guy, who we could not find on our last trip, is poetically named Marco Lumadiluna. Marco Moonlight. Could there be a more evocative name for the person in charge of bringing moving pictures down from the heavens? Allora, non fa niente.

GALLERY SLAVES

The art by Michelangelo was in the Salander-O’Reilly Gallery up by The Frick on Central Park. Our son, Zak, is the librarian at the gallery and master of what looks like hundreds, maybe thousands of art reference books. So, we had to go see him, in situ, in this new-ish job. What a place. Sculptures by Bernini, paintings by Tintoretto, carved life sized madonnas, rooms full of them, in fact. Crucifixs? What size do you want? We went to the Salander Gallery after seeing the Fra Angelico exhibit at the Met and before going to the Frick and before we saw the illuminated Italian manuscripts at the Public Library.

As you enter Zak’s domain in the fourth floor Salander library, the first thing you come to is a Cellini sketch. And a signed letter from old Benvenuto, himself. In the totally, non-public reference library! I guess I can, make this about Italy. Yes. Yes, I can.

LA DOLCE VITA, LA DOLCE VINO

We ate at several fine, fine Italian places in the city including Scalinatella which is just down the street from the Four Seasons on the Upper East Side on East 61st. Hyper hip. All the waiters spoke Italian to each other. Loudly. And in an accent I had never heard, so I got a case of timid and didn’t get into it with them. Food was off-the-chart good. Waiters were suave, funny and engaging. And the wine. Aces, truly aces, 1999 red wine from Montalcino, which is near us in Italy. Just velvet.

You know, this shoehorning Italy into New York is pretty easy, once you get into it. We also had great Italian Proseccos and pastas at Orzo. On west 46th in the Theater District. We ordered all kinds of fun anti pastas for the table and dived in and liked it too.

What with cappucchinos every morning and Italian food almost every night, it was rather like being in the old country. And the Fra Angelico show I mentioned at the Metropolitan was Really like being there. I did not previously understand, or fully appreciate how articulated and gilded his backgrounds are. From studying him in art history I knew he was amazing, in person and in quantity it was really overwhelming. The detail, the etched lines in the gilding in the feathers of the angels was just too wonderful for words. He could paint on wood in a way that would make that wood turn into surreal, luminous, precious metal, fabrics truly fit for angels to wear. And consider, if you will, these pieces of art are hundreds of years old. My mind boogles and reels at seeing them. Imagine the people of the times seeing these when they were new.

SHOW ME SOME STARS

We were lucky enough to tag along to party where James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano. How Italian/American can you get?) was hanging out in the middle of the night in a big party house on Gramercy Square. We did not speak, omerta and all that, but for a moment, we were so traveling in the same circle.

Oh? The Yoko thing? OK, she may not be 100 percent Italian, but as long as we are name dropping here . . . we had finished our Italian sausage sandwiches and I was shooting some photos near Zak’s gallery. A pretty Japanese bride was walking to her wedding photo session in the park, her formal, hoop’ed wedding gown hitched up to mid thigh over white Nancy Sinatra type boots. I was focusing on that, when Midge poked me in the shoulder and said See the Purple Jacket that just went by? Yes. You just missed it . . . That was Yoko. Oh, no!

Buone Feste! And Happy Holidays too!

Witchy Woman, part two: We all get the blues.

How rude of me. When last we blogged, I had left you, mid-party, in Citta’ della Pieve. Picking up the pieces of the party here, where we left off.

. . . the discovery that we were partying with a third generation witch was naturally an unexpected twist. And, what fun, Wiley had just done a short film on Modern Witches. And imagine, yes, she does have the prerequiste yellow-eyed black cat, in addition to the decorative Maine Coon Cat, but she had never heard of Strega Nonna series of books by Tomie dePaola. Does every American, with kids, know these books? Well, we did. But the Italians didn’t. Not even the one sitting beside me who actually had a real live Calabrian Strega Nonna in her family. But she was soon trading emails and business cards with Wiley and making plans for meeting the next week to film an interview and have yet more Witchy Woman fun. And fun we were having. And then the food starting coming. And coming. The most excellent wine, which we’d already been liberally sampling was Vino Rosso Doc CORNIOLO Duca della Corgna ”Cantina del Trasimeno” Castiglione del Lago. Super slick wine. But look at this souffle’! with pomegranite in it. And chunks of parmigiano with balsamic vinegar on them for side garnish. I said I had never had a souffle’ in Italy and our new best friends said they had not either! Oh, Waiter! This bottle seems to have gone empty.

The restaurant staff has given up on the remaining two people scheduled for our table and have taken away their place setting now that we are though one course already. But what’s this? Another very pretty blonde and her big, tall guy. “Are THESE the long lost Americans, mayhaps?” I whisper to our new best friends? But the angelic blonde is asking Permesso and launching into a ferocious description of why they are so late in warp speed Italian. We all sort of exchange glances again and say Sit, sit. Hi I’m Daniel says The Big Guy. Which explains ever so much the US link. Finally. Code is broken. The American has arrived. But for a Texas guy, he speaks really eloquently. And does so in actual English and actual Italian.

So we carry on as we had been. In loud noisy Italian and totally bring them into our circle of new friends. Now, the new girl, was not a witch. But her name was Sabrina which she doesn’t think is a witch name, so we had to explain the Teen Age Witch Thing on tv. And to re-explain the title of Wiley’s Witch movie, which was Out of the Broom Closet. Try that in Italian sometime when you can’t remember the name of, you know, that tiny room where you keep the broom? Big times. And then the food started up again. A thick chick pea and tiny postage stamp pasta, then a collection of golden yellow, big, thin Tortellis, evidently a specialty of the town.

And in between courses the experts went on talking about the wine. And we went on drinking it. They swirled, they smelled, they talked about hints of vanilla. Don’t have to tell me twice how good it is, I’d already figured that out. Hey, Waiter, I said again, holding up the most recent casualty.

And then there was duck. Supreme Duck Imperial, it said, to be specific. I have never been served so much supreme duck or such good imperial duck. And all of it exquisitely and decidedly Non-Fat Duck. To add to the magic, it was served on a bed of incredible vegetables. . Vegetables that weren’t, I don’t know, not fried not anything I recognized. If they were fried, it was in a new way to me. Delicate, thin, crisp, almost transparent, every piece a different size and shape and color. The menu said they were ”glassate”

By this time, Folco Orselli the blues singer is at the ivories or guitar, accompanied only by a trumpet player. Cameraman with a huge news camera is filming him right from the start. And we are all stunned how good he is. Think Tom Waite, Bruce Springsteen, Paulo Conte, Zucchero Fornace all rolled into one. What an artist. Raspy voice but young and playful. He seems to be checking out the young witch, peering around the trumpet player to give her a smile after every song. Flapping the cowl collar of her black sweater she said It is getting a bit warm in here, isn’t it?

Blame it on nerves, or incompetence, or the wine with the long name, but my brava mini recorder totally failed me. Or I, it. But, I find I have nothing when we boot it up after getting home at 1 am or so. Nothing. But here is a sample of Folco Orselli’s music I found on the web. Click on it, in a few beats the music starts and then stand back, because in a few more beats, the singing starts. Folco can flat out hit a lick. I want that new album, now.

Then desserts, multiple desserts. Then coffees, then fond good nights, and we paid our 25 euros and we headed back, happy as larks at what a fine night this turned out to be. Thank you DOVE magazine, thank heavens I can read enough Italian to get us here, thank you Trasimeno Blues. And i think we need to especially give thanks that they were only celebrating the red wines of Umbria that night!

SOMETIMES, YOU HAVE TO JUST JUMP IN.

The nice voice on the phone said all the tables were sold out. But, they could squeeze us in with some people at a non-full table. OK, sign us up and we’ll be right over. Gosh, Citta della Pieve IS as close as Wiley said it would be. How about that? We are early. Early as only uptight foreigners can ever be.

CITTA’ DELLA PIEVE, Umbria— C’est la vie say the old folks. Goes to show you never can tell. Sometimes you just have to jump right in the waters. Instead of forever testing them. One thing is certain, you will never know unless you try. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Two nights ago, it didn’t. We took off for a restaurant not too far away because we had heard friends raving about it. Not our night. Cook must have been MIA because it was not up to usual Italy standards.

But last night! We decided to try to call for very last minute reservations at an event we had read about in DOVE magazine. Part of the Umbrian wine and music series cleverly called Bianco, Rosso and Blues. Why, it almost sounds Patriotic and American. But no, it is part of the Trasimeno Blues this autumn.

This particular night’s event was in Citta della Pieve starting at 8pm. At 7 pm Wiley had just woken up from a cozy late ”afternoon” nap. Too early a depart time for Cortona this morning and too many late nights, both of us hunched over our respective computers doing web things. It finally caught up with us. The nice voice on the phone said all the tables were sold out. But, they could squeeze us in with some people at a non-full table. OK, sign us up and we’ll be right over. Gosh, Citta della Pieve IS as close as Wiley said it would be. How about that? We are early. Early as only uptight foreigners can ever be. Too easy to get to. Piccolo Eden’s name was on two successive signposts as we pulled into town and there we were. Oh, no. it’s a rather boring looking medium-sized hotel, and it is well outside the historic center of town. Sigh. Turn around? It is 8 pm, starting time. And. No one there. Us. What have we gotten into Now? We hemmed. We hawed. Or at least I did. So we killed some time reading a brochure about the night’s entertainment that we picked up off a counter in the totally empty hotel reception area. Nothing but corn. ”Musical Voyage, mix of theater and concert, is it a dream or is it reality?” the more we translated, the deeper in corn we got. Then we thought, what the hey. Got to eat anyway, right? OK. We stay.

PARTY TIME IN CITTA DELLA PIEVE
Hey, wait, this might work out. This is good! The staff in the dining room was expecting us and waved us to one of the many, many empty tables. Empty of people, but decked out in linens, metric tons of silverware (how can one get a spoon THAT sized in one’s mouth?), bottled water, bottles of red wine. They were seriously expecting company. And us. They told us we were welcome to hang out on the terrace by the pool or whatever we liked. Which we did. Eventually, it started to fill up inside and we made our way to our table. Way in the back, by the kitchen and as far from area set up for the music as physically possible, without being in the hallway. What did we expect at last minute? Exactly. They waved us again into a couple seats at a round, six person table and gave us the happy news that the other Americans would be right along. Oh. No. They’ve sequestered us the other foreign dogs. Poverini.

So, we just grin and bear it and settle in to wait our table mates, and Fate. But it was a full moon that night. And Miss Fate was in that kind of playful mood she can get in when you least expect it. Why, Look. It is our waiter, again. Parli Italiano? He asks. Sure, why not? Good, he said. Follow me. I look at Wiley. She looks at me. Both shrug. And follow the nice man in the black pinstriped apron with flashy red zipper pockets. He led us to a table right next to the improved sound stage. Coool. I guess. But our being here seems to have irritated the mamma/head bouncer/owner lady. We say We’ll sit anywhere. Really. No, no. Stay, stay. Ok.

HERE COME THE AMERICANS?

Funny. They don’t look particularly American. A serious, slender blonde and a bouncy auburn-haired imp glide up to the table, and say ”Possiamo”? pointing at the empty seats. Well, yes, of course, we responded. But are you Americans? Ma, no. We live here in town. I teach Italian to foreigners. And my friend is a photographer. So, where are you from in America? Oh, you’ve never heard of it, I said. The State of Maine. Ma Certo! I have a Maine Coon Cat! Get out of town!

We are soon looking at cell phone photos of the feline in question and there is no question. He is a big silver Maine Coon Cat. The coincidences of our lives just went on and on and we decided we were at least long lost cousins of some degree. Destino! They both said. We were destined to meet. One of the many highlights was when I was being the annoyingly proud father that I am and was ”mentioning” that Wiley was a new graduate from college in London, with a degree in Broadcasting. Complimenti! And what sort of things have you done there? She mentioned her biggest film project to date which was about witches. Modern Witches of London and Salem, MA. And, at that our new table mate said Brava, and did Wiley know that she, Galezia, was a witch, too? As was her father. And his Calabrian mother, was an especially good witch. Wait! A real Strega Nonna? Che coincidenza. Ok, let us do the rest of this story tomorrow. To be continuted. . . .