by Maureen | Jun 13, 2010 | Apartment, Church, Food!, Journal, Meals, People, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Sally flew over from Seattle a week ago to share the sights of Milano, the wonderful food treats available and the simple efficiency of my apartment. She came off the plane and out of customs beaming.
We took the Malpensa Express train from the airport into town, and got out at the Cadorna station. We walked out in front so she could see the “Needle, Thread and Knot” sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. The knot is across the street, as if the needle had taken a stitch under the roadway.
Our first breakfast was a caprese salad with mozzarella from the farm, lovely ripe tomatos, just-picked basil, served on a bed of songino – watercress – and some freshly sliced proscuitto. Not a bad welcome to Milano!
On Sally’s first day in Milano, we walked over to the Saturday street market where the vendors were selling fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat, fish, clothes and a few household goods. We stocked our kitchen with fresh basil, red pepper, asparagus, spicy salame with fennel, fresh eggs, cherry tomatoes, blood oranges, pickled onions, both “sweet” and spicy olives, burratina cheese, smoked mozzarella, dried figs from Calabria, prosciutto and bresaola.
With hot weather, we opened the french doors and sat on my “shelf”, as Sally called it. Not quite big enough to be called a deck, or veranda, or lanai, it held our two chairs while we put our feet up on the railing. We chatted in the sun and greeted neighbors as they walked past to go dump their garbage in the room below us.
No trip to Milano would be complete without going out for aperitivi. We walked along the Naviglio Pavese Canal and stopped into one of the many restaurants that were hopping and lively on the hot, muggy night. We selected from their buffet of pasta, cheese, meats, pizza squares… and ribs (of all things). Sally’s martini was oddly sweet and not at all martini-like.
Sally enjoyed online communications, keeping in touch with family through Skype and e-mail.
There’s a wonderful graffiti wall outside of a garden center between Corso Como and the Monumental Cemetery. What a great backdrop! This is one of my favorite photos of Sally in Milano.
We just had to take a stroll through 10 Corso Como, the city’s legendary fashion, accessories, art and design boutique. This is NOT the place to pull out your credit card, but rather just harvest ideas for garment design and construction.
We made reservations for dinner on Saturday at Malavoglia where you ring the doorbell to get in and are greeted by bow-tie-adorned owner, Aldo, and a complementary glass of bubbly prosecco. We shared a primo of fresh pasta with black squid ink sauce. It was delicious.
One of the highlights of Sally’s time in Milano was her visit to the Duomo. We spent time in the piazza, “the living room of the city”. We walked its circumference marveling at the variation in details and gloried at the cathedral’s interior. We topped off the tour with time on the rooftop, getting up close to the sculptures, finials and gargoyles, and looking out over the city.
by Maureen | Apr 29, 2010 | Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Meals, People, Photo of the Day, Photos, Quips
Boy! My two cousins come into town and a riot ensues!
Connie and Gerry arrived yesterday morning, crashed out for a nap then wandered the town for a while. I met them in the evening at their Duomo-close hotel and we goofed around the piazza for a while.
Connie succumbed to the bird food man, mistakenly opening his hand when the guy thrust corn at him. These guys offer you corn, the birds land all over you, your friends take pictures of you with the Duomo in the background and you give corn-man some money.
Our 8:00 dinner reservation was early by Italian standards, and we wanted to find a place for a little pre-dinner drink. We decided to head to the Porta Romana neighborhood and look for a place near the restaurant. Down, down, down, deep into the subway system to the yellow line. We rode 4 stops and ascended to an arch, an old wall, and one of the busy circle roads ringing the city. We walked. And walked. Nothing like a long stroll after a long plane flight. Though we passed several cafés along Monte Nero, it was a frenzied, noisy street and we had hoped for something more quiet. We didn’t find it.
We went on to Osteria La Cala (Viale Monte Nero 63) a bit early, and were the first patrons. The menu review, selection and ordering that followed was every bit the best of comedies and tragedies. Certainly, we tested the patience of the woman serving us! She and I discussed the menu items, specialties of Sardegna, and Connie was sure we had just relayed our life stories twice over.
Finally (!) a wine selection was made, and the waitress made the decision to bring us a selection of hot appetizers, plus raw scampi and prawns for each of us.
The octopus was incredibly tender. The stuffed fish roll was topped with fava beans and delicious. The scampi crudi and gamberi rossi crudi were fresh and light.
Just TRY to get these two guys to decide what to eat! After much discussion and many more “relays of life stories” (according to Connie), we decided on the pescatrice, (that funny fish with the “lure” hanging off its nose), gnocchi with truffles and shrimp, and lorighitas with calamaretti and bottarga.
Bottarga is a dried fish roe sac, often served by being thinly sliced and/or grated over pasta. There are many bottarga variations depending on the fish roe used, place of origin and style of preservation.
We closed the place down. The few other restaurant patrons had left long ago, and we were, of course, undecided about whether to have any dessert or caffé. Our wonderful waitress saved us from ourselves by bringing us a plate of little sweets, a bottle of Mirto digestif right out of the freezer, and 3 little shot glasses. I’d swear that bottle was full when she brought it to us, but there’s surely no way we could have drunk over half the bottle! Apparently, it’s bitter flavor grew on us.
We exchanged handshakes, grazie and much laughter with the restaurant owner, our dear waitress and the kitchen staff. Just outside the front door, we waited for the cable car tram with the intention of riding it to a location near my apartment so the guys could see where I live.
.
It was the wrong tram. We ended up back at the Duomo, just as honking cars, canned fog horns and delirious fans started streaming in from all directions and clustered in the Piazza del Duomo, Milan’s living room. We were caught in the middle of it all. Milan’s Inter soccer team had just won against Barcelona and there was some serious celebration to be done. The local polizia hung back at the edge of the crowd to keep an eye on things. At the height of it all, Gerry and I lost Connie, consumed in the crowd.
.
.
We called him, found him and all headed back to their hotel room to get their better cameras. They wanted to come back out and shoot more serious shots, but got bogged down by their technology tethers.
.
Connie did his ode to Sir Isaac Newton.
It was fast approaching 1:00 in the morning and I hustled these guys out of their room to walk me to the subway stop at the Duomo. Good thing I did! I caught the LAST westbound red line run before they closed it for the night. I transferred to the green line, got off at Romolo and exited as a guy was standing there ready to lock the gate for the night!
I tell ya, those twins are trouble!
by Maureen | Apr 10, 2010 | Discoveries, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Shopping & Markets
THIS is the time to be in Milano. The temperature is warm enough (75 degrees) to be comfortable in light linen and cotton, and enjoyable having the windows open to fresh air, but not so warm that there’s any thought yet of air conditioning.
I had a wandering, leisurely ride through the farmland exploring roads I hadn’t tried before. Then I showered, changed and took off walking up along Corso San Gottardo. When I need a variety of miscellanea, this is the local area I frequent.
Last September, my local Bartell’s hadn’t given me enough of a thyroid medication. It’s a pretty simple and standard thing, but necessary. I needed to buy a month’s supply and expected the process to be complicated. (International prescription refill?!) I took the bottles into a local Farmacia, they looked up the chemical component of my prescription online and walked over to a drawer for a braille-embossed box of 50 pills for 2.90 euro, about $3.90. (Hmm. At that price, maybe I should stock up before I return to Seattle? Isn’t it about $33 for a month’s supply back at home?)
There’s also this notion in my head about buying some “cool” eyeglasses to take home as my “souvenir”…Glasses that you’d never find in the U.S.…Glasses that say “somewhere else”. On San Gottardo, I stepped into a centro ottico – optic center – that I had been in before. After looking around for a while, the man that owns the shop said that he remembered me. He wasn’t just flirting. He recalled the glasses I brought in two years ago when the little screw had fallen out of the hinge. In the summer of 2008 he had replaced that little screw at no charge, and simply gave me the glasses back with a smile. (To be here in a foreign country, a big city, and be remembered from two years previous…Remarkable and touching!)
There’s something about the Italians and lingerie and hosiery. They do them well. With the warmer weather, I wanted some lightweight, little socks, just enough to provide a lining, but also interesting enough with lace and fishnet and other fun patterns. I’ve scoured shops in the Seattle area and just don’t find the selection there. (Yeah. In Seattle we’re usually bundling up, not going lightweight.) I bought several pairs of socks and hose (and will have to consider stocking up on those, too, before returning to Seattle!)
The whole street was filled with people walking their kids, their dogs and their lovers. People were seated and sipping caffé, vino or Campari. It was the time of the passeggiata, the evening stroll, and the weather had offered up a time so conducive to the ritual.
As I walked back home, I stopped at the little corner bakery that has my favorite trancio pizza – pizza that is cut to the size you want and charged by weight – and bought a piece with prosciutto, mushrooms and artichokes.
Across the street, at the corner flower vendor, I selected one fragrant lily stem and carried it toward home.
(What can’t I find along San Gottardo?!)
Veering off of Gottardo, and just blocks away from home, I saw my favorite, local bartender, Robbie, in the window of the Mayflower Pub and stopped to say “hello” and give him that European two-cheek kiss. We chatted for a moment. (“Favorite Bartender”? It sounds like I’m at the bar all the time. Actually, very rarely. But both NABA and Scuola Leonardo Language School have their student social nights there so I’ve seen Robbie enough to stop and say hello. He’s a sweet guy.)
I floated the rest of the way home. At almost ten months, I actually know people here, and am recognized by people here. I can wave at people as I walk past their shop windows or they stop me on the sidewalk to talk.
This is an indescribable and stunning time… I marvel at it all.
by Maureen | Apr 7, 2010 | Canals, Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Wednesday is “ricotta day”, the day they make fresh ricotta at the Cascina Femegro.
Even though I had just been there yesterday, a sunny afternoon and the thought of hours-fresh ricotta on some nice bread easily convinced me to hop on my bike. I headed south along the canal, and turned west into the farmland.
There are old, stone troughs spanning the drainage ditches that wind through the farmland.
The one-lane road is cyclists’ heaven. Add sunshine overhead on a spring day, and it’s perfection.
I bought 4 tubs of cheese: 1 for me, and 3 to give away to friends. I had no idea at the time that “friends” would include 9 cats in a lazy-but-playful huddle at another farm along the way home. They very cautiously came over to me as I crouched at the road side, did the “kitty squeak” and rubbed my fingers together trying to entice them. I’ve seen them there before, either on or under the roof of the small outbuilding at this historic building. The most affectionate was the tabby mamma cat that wallowed in the attention.
“OK”, I thought, “The ricotta was cheap. These kitties would enjoy it so much.” Yes. I unwrapped a domed mound of ricotta and split it up into several locations, allowing the timid cats to have a bite to eat away from the more dominant cats. After eating ’til their bellies were full, each found a spot in the sun and did their contented cat preening.
It was nice to get my “kitty fix” since I’m catless here in Milano (and since my kitty, Laddie, has died back in Seattle during my absence).
I wonder what the farmer will think when he finds the empty ricotta tub, and some remnants of cheese…
by Maureen | Apr 1, 2010 | Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Firenze, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
After the flea market at Piazza dei Ciompi in Firenze last Sunday, I walked a few blocks further and saw yellow-tented stalls. Hmm. A food market: cheeses, meats, breads and a few other goodies. Some from Toscana (Tuscany), Firenze’s region. Some spicier ones from the south.
‘Nduja is a casing-stuffed meat that is spicy and spreadable. Very nice with good bread.
“Do you have a problem with cholesterol? Diet? The solution is Tometta (cheese) of 100% pure goats milk. Lower fat content.”
How about some deer meat salame?
I sampled gorgonzola mixed with black truffle and bought a little tub of that to take home. Sampled from a big round of pecorino. Then walked up to a meat vendor that fed me enough samples that I didn’t need lunch. They offered huge, cased, cured meats from which they’d shave a piece and use the knife to hand it to me: prosciutto, porchetta, salame, soppressata. I tried them all, peppered and mild, whole, ground and chunked and knew I wanted to buy a piece. After all the samples, I was indecisive because I liked them all, but I bought soppressata.
In the photo below, soppresatta is the large-chunk round near the black-rind cheese.
In nine months this is one meat I hadn’t tried yet because it’s a Tuscan meat and not so common up north. My markets don’t offer it. Soppressata is made of the left over parts of the pig: cartilage, tongue, head scraps… you name it, nothing’s wasted. The head is boiled for a few hours then picked of meat, skin and all “edible parts”. All of the picked bits are chopped large, seasoned, and stuffed into a casing about 10″ across. The broth from cooking is poured into the casing to cover the meat parts. It is then hung and the liquid thickens and binds everything into a solid. (In the U.S., it might be called “head cheese”.)
The soppresatta that this vendor offered had a nice peppery bite to it. Soppressata omelette? Soppressata burger? “They” are saying that soppressata pizza is the new big thing. I believe it.
Here’s the front end of the porchetta – roast pig.
With gorgonzola and soppressata in my bag, I continued walking. I should have bought a nice Tuscan bread to bring home on the train, but didn’t. I’ve always marveled at these HUGE loaves I see at the markets. Ask for some bread and they just whack off a chunk. These loaves are about 4 feet long.
And look at this green olive bread!
This Toma cheese is so beautiful to look at.
by Maureen | Mar 30, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Firenze, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, Photos, Shopping & Markets
If you haven’t been to Firenze (Florence), put it on your “life list” of must-see places in the world. Really.
Two years ago I spent a couple of afternoons exploring Firenze, but I hadn’t been back since I returned to Italy last June. So I hopped on the train late last Friday morning, and less than two hours later, at 1:00, I arrived in Firenze and smiled. I walked from the train station to my hotel shooting photos along the way because I couldn’t wait until I put my bags down. I checked in, changed my clothes for the bit of humidity under the partly sunny skies, then left and took off walking for the next five hours.
If I were to move to Italy NOW, or want to relocate to another spot, I would pick Firenze.
Excerpts from my journal Friday night, 26 March 2010 , while resting my feet and having a delicious dinner:
“I love Firenze! At this point, with what I know and with my familiarity and my language, I’d move to Firenze. Milan was a great place to land and gave me anchors. I find much to interest me there. My camera is always at my side and I can stay as busy as I wish, but in just an afternoon, Firenze has thrilled me with its visuals, much the way that Venezia does.
“It’s very definitely a tourist town! I think that Spring/Easter vacations have begun because the clustering tour groups are everywhere and unavoidable. (I thought that, late March, I’d still be missing them all.)
“Firenze – Florence – is ‘tighter’. Narrower streets close into the center of town around the Duomo, and many ‘pedestrian-only’. the selection of little shops, restaurants and curious places gives much to explore without going far. The antiquity is a saturated wash over the town and gives it a texture that is lush across-the-board. Like Venezia, I could photograph here forever.
“I’m sitting at a table for two at Zá-Zá, a lovely, dar, funky, delicious trattoria just blocks from my Hotel Caravaggio. There’s been a table of four sitting near me having their meal, their drinks and their desserts. I smiled at them once… As they were leaving, the woman that had been nearest to me said goodbye – ‘Arrivederci‘. That tickles me.” (I highly recommend both the restaurant and the hotel.)
Excerpts from my journal Sunday afternoon, 28 March 2010 , on the train heading home to Milano:
“I had an incredible, full time in Firenze. So glad to have gone back, and with only an hour and 45-minute train ride, I could come for a day if I wanted to, or just an overnight.
“The city of Firenze, though packed with tourists, seems to have a quite comfortable parallel world of locals that go about their days and their work. With transportation and services so readily available, Firenze seems quite livable and pleasant.
“I very quickly got the-lay-of-the-land and covered much of the “Centro Storico” – the historic center of town – in my two days there, walking close to 20 hours overall.”
Yesterday evening, a friend asked by e-mail, “Should Florence be on my to-do list? What did you especially like about it?” I responded with an off-the-cuff, spontaneous list:
Everyone’s on foot or bike! The whole historic center, large radius, is almost all pedestrian-only with very few cars and some half-size, mini-buses. Walk everywhere. (I don’t think there IS a subway, but lots of public transportation.) Streets are narrow and closer in for easy strolling. NO traffic to even have to think about.
Absolutely fascinating art, history, culture, architecture at EVERY turn!
Historic sites. Historic art: Michelangelo’s David. Botticelli. Caravaggio. Dürer. Giotto. Leonardo. Lippi. Raphael. Rembrandt. Rubens. Titian. And so many more!
Visually lush. Vital, Small-city-energy.
VERY tourist-oriented (which I didn’t like having the vacation tours already swarming) but it felt like there was a parallel universe happening of people just going about their lives.
Florence doesn’t have the crazed-busy-frenzy of business-minded Milan.
Cool stuff for curious kids and adults alike. Sundials and crenulated towers.
Good gelato.
Neat bridges.
Street markets selling you-name-it.
Good cow-stomach sandwiches. (Lampredotto.)
The heartland of the Renaissance.
Oh. And they have curb-cuts designed for uninterrupted walking.
by Maureen | Mar 24, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos
They call it “Cavolfiore” or Cauliflower here, but Americans call it “Romanesco Broccoli”. Either way, it tastes great, it’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s math on your plate.
The Romanesco is a clear example of fractals and the fibonacci number sequence.
See how the whole head of Romanesco is made of smaller heads that mimic the shape of the bigger head, and each of those smaller heads is made of even smaller, duplicate heads? Fractals!
FRACTALS: “A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole… Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex (in informal terms).” (Check Wikipedia for cool examples and further explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal)
And you see the ever-expanding spiral emanating from the center point along which all the smaller heads are arranged? The Fibonacci sequence and the Fibonacci spiral!
FIBONACCI: “In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers, starting with 0 and 1. Thus the sequence begins 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 etc.” (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci)
Click HERE for a beautiful video by Cristóbal Vila about numbers as they establish patterns in nature.
*TWO words are Italian!
by Maureen | Mar 21, 2010 | Cheese, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Meals, People, Photo of the Day, Photos
Would you let 30 random strangers eat off your plate? Would you, in turn, eat off the plates of those 30 strangers?
The Uovo Performing Arts Festival included one “performance” yesterday of 30 individuals, by reservation only. “Mangia che ti fa bene”, “Eat that you will feel well.” For 10 euro, or about $13.50, I walked into the room to a very long table with 30 place settings, and a variety of ingredients:
- bread
- water
- eggs
- grana cheese
- cabbage
- parsley
- apples
- beets
- sesame seeds
- pumpkin seeds
- fennel
- olive oil
- garlic
- spices
- cooked peas
- oats
- radicchio
- spinach
- fresh ginger
- lemon
- leeks
- carrots
- walnuts
- fresh herbs
We were given limited, very loose guidelines.
We each grabbed a plastic apron from the group taped to the window.
Our project was to gather whatever combination of ingredients we desired, blend them and put the mix into a paper-lined, 3″ x 5″ foil pan. The 30 of us were elbow-to-elbow at the table and we were being filmed. We had graters, sieves, knives, bowls, half-moons and cutting boards at our disposal. Notes were provided about the health-inducing properties of each food item.
We asked for ingredients to be passed. We reached across the table. We laughed and chatted and mixed with our hands until our concoctions looked just right to us. Some pressed the ingredients through sieves for a uniform consistency. Others left chunks for spikes of flavor. Some formed loaf-like logs, while others patted their mix into flat casseroles. We bound up our creations in oven paper, scrawled our names on the wrap and sent the little tins off to be baked for 30-45 minutes.
While our dinners were baking, we were served lemon-slice salad, celery sticks with honey, and braised celeriac root. For our 10 euro, we also got a glass of red wine and some herb tea.
Trays of foil tins emerged from the oven, and the hostess called out names. One-by-one, the “performers”, the dinner guests, opened and tasted their creations. There were 30 recipes at the table. Like a groundswell, the sampling started. People reached over with their forks and sampled their neighbors’ meals, and everyone started passing their dish around for others to taste. It was remarkable the range of culinary directions we had each taken. I realized later that I could have gone in the sweet direction and combined bread, egg, apple, ginger, lemon and arrived at a dessert to contrast with all the savory gratins at the table.
I looked around, tickled, chuckling and amazed. Would this happen in the U.S.? Could it? How could I bring this experience to Seattle? To Burien? I easily tallied that the 30 people at 10 euros each only brought in 300 euros. And I looked at all the food, and the utensils, and the wine and thought that surely this was not a money-making proposition. In the U.S., liability insurance alone for a one-day event of this nature would probably be prohibitive.
And would people in the U.S. be willing to pass their dish for their unknown neighbor to sample from, and then fork a bite from their neighbor’s plate and relish the combination of ingredients different from their own?
This does give me ideas for an uncommon Thanksgiving dinner… but many in my family would likely balk at the idea. (But they wouldn’t be random strangers.)
– – – –
Here’s the official, “as advertised” description of the event:
The aftermath was a mess of a table!
by Maureen | Mar 16, 2010 | Discoveries, Food!, Journal, Meals, Shopping & Markets
The other day I noticed the section in the meat department at the grocery store where they sell the “ends” of the prosciutto, mortadella, salami and other meats. I bought a prosciutto end for just a couple of euro; it was about the size of my fist.
Much of the meat was pretty dry, so without being sliced paper thin as is typical, it wasn’t optimal for eating. So: Prosciutto Soup! Besides. It was Sunday night and I hadn’t gotten to the grocery store in time so the pickins in my cupboard were slim.
I sauteed an onion and some garlic in olive oil. Cubed the prosciutto and threw it in the pan. I opened a can of fagioli borlotti, a bean that is white and speckled with deep magenta when freshly-shelled. I added a spoonful of vegetable bullion, but probably wouldn’t have needed to; it was WAY too salty, especially with the salt of the prosciutto. So I just kept adding water to the pot until the salt leveled out.
Everything simmered for about 3 hours and melded nicely while I sat here at the computer. The meat softened up. The beans thickened the broth a bit.
I’m probably breaking a lot of “rules” here, putting foods together in combinations quite atypical. But I came here without the food foreknowledge and preconceptions, so I simply see everything as an ingredient free-for-all. (That’s just how I cook, wherever I am.) Would a traditional cook make a soup such as this? I don’t know. If you know, please tell me!
by Maureen | Mar 14, 2010 | Featured Articles, Food!, Graphics, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Yesterday morning I went to the local Saturday market on a mission: gather as many different citrus tissue wrappers as I could find. From each stall that had some of the paper-wrapped fruit, I bought two oranges, and mandarins if they were also wrapped. After cruising the whole market, I ended up toting home a lifetime’s supply of oranges, two heavy bags of citrus, plus a few wrapped pears.
At this time of year, most of the oranges seem to be the “Arance Tarocco“, the blood orange. Some I’ve purchased have been a very deep purple in color, fading to a classic, clear orange hue. Gorgeous, tasty, sweet.
The papers are such a study in design and imagery. I think my favorite is the Formula 1 Ferrari race car with the quintessential black and white checkerboard pattern. (What does any of that have to do with oranges?)
