Oh, how I love to eat here in Italy. What is it that makes it all so delicious? Unlike the misconceptions, “Italian food” is NOT all “pizza and pasta”. There’s so very much more!
The freshness of the ingredients is a big part. Also, the regional traditions and specialties, changing every 50 kilometers, makes exploration so tantalizing.
And, my trust in the food origin and quality makes a huge difference (…but perhaps I’m naive and mistaken?). I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten raw beef in the U.S. I wouldn’t trust it! But it was absolutely delicious yesterday, and I had no hesitation. The provenance of the meat is important and known here. I don’t find that in the U.S. except in very refined restaurants or meat sources.
Part of my reason for posting images of what I’m eating is to inform about the very broad world of what constitutes “Italian Food”. If you come to Italy, I encourage you to order the regional specialties… order something even though you don’t know what it is. It’s a great, wonderful, edible world here.
After you’ve devoured the images below, here are a few additional food smorgasbords to drool over:
Early Sunday mornings, (not bright-and-early because it’s pitch dark out at 6:00 a.m.) are flea market times. Loredano has been a “regular” for decades, and I’ve got the bug when I’m here. Yesterday, the day after Christmas, we headed to the flea market at Assago, on the southwest edge of Milan. The sellers’ stalls were sparse, post-holiday, but we found a few things nonetheless. I got an old, leather-bound, very heavy, blank ledger (€20) which may yield fodder for art projects. That book is so big and heavy, it’ll require a suitcase all on its own! And I brought home a beautiful boxed set of handmade paper stationery, labeled “London” (€5), each bundle of envelopes tied with a white silk ribbon. I will use these papers for special letters, and maybe even do some painting on that gorgeous paper.
From Assago, we tried for San Donato, this time on the southeast edge of town. Also slim pickin’s at that flea market, we browsed, and walked away empty-handed. Up for a drive, we decided to head east, to Caorso, in the Province of Piacenza, Region of Emilia-Romagna. (Like driving to the next state over.) Caorso is almost halfway between Milan and Bologna, not far from Parma. It was a foggy drive in the countryside, with farmlands and abandoned buildings from long ago in the muted, roadside scenes… plus a giant Amazon warehouse.
We arrived in the little town of Caorso, stopped to ask a couple of locals where the flea market was, and they told us that because it was the feast day of Santo Stefano, there was no flea market. Hmm. Now what? In the historic center of town, we stopped across from the Piazza della Rocca Mandelli,a renaissance castle; the theater that caught my eye, Cine Fox; and Casa La Madonnina, an elder care residence.
It was almost noon, a little early by Italian standards to stop for lunch. We saw a man walking along the street, stopped and told him we’d like to find a restaurant serving foods typical to the region. Where would he recommend having a meal?
Absolutely the best choice, he said, was Osteria del Morino. (@osteriadelmorinocaorso) He was right. A half block away, we called to check availability. Yes! There was space for two. (By the time we left two hours later, the place was packed. Amazing that we had gotten a table.) (Of course, named “Morino”, how could we go wrong?)
From the outside, the place looked small and worth little mention. But inside, we found the place expansive, charming, and comfortably-yet-beautifully decorated. We were seated in the upstairs balcony.
Always choose from the local specialties. In Italy, you can go 50 kilometres and find a completely different food culture, each area with it’s own traditional recipes. Ask for those! (Please don’t fall back on what you “think” is “Italian Food”, what you’re accustomed to ordering back home in the States. I often don’t know what I’m going to get… but that’s the whole point!)
Loredano and I chose, and shared:
Il tris di Carne Cruda di Garronese– Three different raw preparations of very special, high quality Garronese beef.
Pisarei e Fasò – “Pasta and beans”. Borlotti beans with bean-sized rounds of firm pasta, in a smooth, tomato-based sauce.
Melanzane marinate – Marinated Eggplant – Pickled in wine vinegar with olive oil and herbs.
Il Ganassino – Pig’s cheeks, stewed in Barbera wine, served on mashed potatoes.
Vino Gutturnio – A lightly bubbly red wine, typical of Piacenza Province.
Un Caffè Normale – Every meal is finished with a sip of coffee.
In this neighborhood, Saturday is market day. A string of city blocks nearby is blocked off and filled to the brim with produce, fish, cheese, flowers, housewares, clothing… and people. It seems to be when everyone does their big marketing for the week, going home and filling their tiny fridges and cupboards with Italian veggies, fruits and cheese, mediterranean fish, and cheap sundries.
When I was first living here in 2009, it took me a few times to figure out “the system” for buying from the vendors, and then overcome my timidity with my then more-limited Italian. I know the protocol now for waiting in line off to the side, but I still get mixed up over exactly how many green beans come in a kilo… quite a few! Requesting my food in metric amounts is still a guessing game for me.
Then there’s the foxy game the vendors play to upsell a little each time. I ask for 2, they put 3 in my bag. I ask for a half kilo, I go home with somewhere between half and a whole kilo, even though they weigh each order.
And I have yet to find a produce vendor that handles the goods with a gentle touch. It matters with tomatoes, apricots, nespole, plums, figs and others! They use the open produce bag for target practice, flinging each tender fruit toward the bag’s gaping entrance. (Sometimes I’ll observe a vendor for a while and decide not to buy from one that throws the fruit around. It doesn’t leave me many options though.) By the time I walk home with my day’s purchases, I’ve got spoilage already.
All that said, the array not only offers edible delights but a visual one as well. I enjoyed shooting panoramas today to give a sense of the surroundings (those these don’t show the throng of people, nor the clothes and sundries.)
(Click on the photos to see them enlarged.)
Lovely fruits and vegetables.
All sorts of seafood, much of which I’d never seen until I came here.
Olives, canned tuna, pickled foods.
Produce galore.
Breads and rolls.
We need more olives.
Yet more produce.
Olives, pickles foods, dried fruits.
Nuts and olives.
Salted cod, olives, dried foods and others.
More produce, lots of greens.
Many different cheeses and meats.
A meat and cheese vendor.
Today I brought home erbette, rucola, lattuga, fagiolini, pomodori, olive, cipolle, cima di rapa. (leafy greens, arugula, bibb lettuce, green beans, tomatoes, olives, pickled onions, broccoli tops.)
This is real Italian food. They’re not over here just eating pizza and spaghetti. And they’re NOT eating “Fettucine Alfredo”! (If you see it on a menu, it’s only there for the tourists.) The range of Italian food is so vast. It truly does change every hundred kilometers. And most of it is nothing like seen in “Italian Restaurants” in the U.S.
When here, I eat everything that’s regional and typical to an area. I eat what I can’t get in Seattle. As I travel and seek out a meal, I always ask what the local specialties are and then expand my view of “Italian Food”. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve eaten in the last three weeks.
Soprassata Fiorentina • “Head Cheese” from Florence. I had this when living here a couple of years ago. Found it at a street market with no refrigeration, no running water. This is made of all the extra “head parts” that are cooked and congealed together with seasoning. Mmm. Yummy on a slice of bread. Must be 99% fat.
Fragolini • Little, wild strawberries found growing in the weeds in my courtyard. Actually, they had very little flavor, but I have seen them being sold at the market.
Lardo di Colonnata and Gorgonzola Dolce • Aged, seasoned lard (below, with a streak of meat), and creamy, mild “Sweet” Gorgonzola cheese (above). Both fantastic on a good hunk of bread. (Who needs butter?!)
Torta di Mele, con Gelato di Vaniglia • Apple Tart with Vanilla Gelato. A rare, sweet splurge for me.
Insalata di songino, pomodori e burratina con olio e aceto • Salad of “lamb’s lettuce”, cherry tomatoes and “burratina” cheese, drizzled with olive oil and a thick balsamic “cream”. Burratina is a small version of “Burrata”, a fist-sized ball with an outer layer like fresh mozzarella about 1/8″ thick, containing soft, creamy/runny, semi-solid cheese within. Heaven on a bed of greens!
Panzerotto Luini • Deep-fried bread pocket (filled with spinach and ricotta) from Luini’s by the Duomo. Inexpensive, hand-food that the locals all know about. Carry it around and eat it while walking.
Ribollita • Tuscan bread and vegetable soup, eaten in Firenze (Florence). The name means, literally “reboiled”.
Spiedina di carne mista • It WAS a skewer of mixed meats, in this case sausage and pork, eaten in Firenze.
Porcini • Two porcini mushrooms for 12 Euro at the street market (about $15!) All the time that I had lived here I never bought fresh porcini! I had to splurge at least once.
Porcini e Pomodori • Porcini and tomatoes (and brooms), cooking in my 35″ wide kitchen/broom closet. I brought the porcini home and cooked them up; also sauteéd some fresh cherry tomatoes.
Porcini with vegetable ravioli, and sauteéd fresh cherry tomatoes with meat ravioli, fresh from the street market.
Pastries from Spezia Pasticceria. My favorites are the Babá in the upper right: sponge cakes absolutely drenched with sweetened rum, with sweet ricotta filling in the middle. One bite and the rum sauce runs down your arm.
My favorite meats (clockwise from the top): Prosciutto (Crudo, di Parma), Bresaola, Mortadella with pistachios. It’s an art ordering your prosciutto cut! The bresaola is 100% lean (also available in horse meat). Mortadella: think “baloney” from when you were a kid, then multiply by 100. This mortadella has pistachios and peppercorns in it, and yes those are chunks of (white) fat.
Here’s the receipt for the meats above: 50 grams of Bresaola for 1,50 euro; 100 grams (“un etto”) Mortadella for 1,29 euro; 50 grams of Prosciutto di Parma for 1,35 euro. I had also bought “Gorgonzola Dolce”, the gooey, creamy, mild gorgonzola for 1,88 euro, and “Vitello Tonnato”, thin-sliced, roasted veal with a pureed tuna mayonnaise sauce on top for 2,47 euro. This was several days’ food for a girlfriend and me for 8,49 euro, about $10.66. (Makes up for the cost of the porcini.)
Bresaola, my favorite. An air-dried, salted beef that has been aged 2-3 months. Almost completely lean, no fat. Sliced paper thin, and when it’s very good, it is moist and supple, not dry and leathery. Note how translucent it is! I can’t buy Italian Bresaola in the U.S. Too many fears of “mad cow disease”.
Insalata con mozzarella di bufala, pomodori e basilico. Vitello tonnato • A salad with fresh mozarella di bufala (yes, buffalo milk), tomatoes, basil, served with “vitello tonnato”, the thin-sliced veal with pureed tuna/mayonnaise sauce.
Salsiccia e fagioli • Sausage and beans, a very Tuscan meal eaten in Firenze.
Verdure al forno • Tuscan oven-roasted vegetables, in Firenze.
On Saturday, three blocks from my house, is the weekly street market selling fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, cheeses, olives, preserved foods, household sundries and clothing. It’s a hub-bub of people buying their provisions for the week.
You have to know “the system” for shopping there. Decide what you want, then go stand in line at the side, and wait your turn to request your purchase. You do NOT pick out your own produce! And you do not simply ask one of the stall vendors out front for what you want; you will be cutting in line in front of others. (I had to learn this a few years ago through observation.)
My big complaint is that although the produce is displayed so beautifully, and the quality is so high, the handling of it all is so rough! Ask for such tender things as tomatoes and apricots and they will arrive home bruised and punctured from having been roughly pitched into the bag.
It still feels like high-pressure shopping to me after several years. But whether I stock up for the week there or not, the Saturday street market is always an opportunity for gathering beautiful images. In addition to the gorgeous berries, lemons, olives and fish, I enjoy the “Street Market Script” used to write out the quick signs. (Some have begun to use computer-generated signs and they’ve lost all character.)
It’s no joke that I’m in the “presidential suite” at the Palace Hotel, in the region of Calabria, the town of Catanzaro Lido. The waves of the Ionian Sea are rolling in just off my private balcony. I could throw a stone (hard) and it would land in the water, on the other side of the Via Lungomare – the road along the sea. I will sleep with the sound of incoming saltwater tonight.
When one “leaves their options open” or “plays it by ear” sometimes there aren’t many options left, thus, the Presidential Suite, with it’s brocade-clad, padded walls. But after the raucous three nights in Cefalu and Taormina Sicilia, I needed some quiet and something unlike Disneyland.
Last night I slept a much-needed, holy sleep. Today I amused myself with exploration. First thing, I went to the little travel agency next to my hotel to buy my ticket for a long train ride tomorrow. At the agency, I met Valentina and Aurelia, and a man they know from Naples. We all laughed and talked for half an hour and it was the kind of personal connection I needed. (When I returned to my room tonight, Aurelia dropped by a beautifully packaged gift of some homemade soppressata. How dear! I happened to have brought some “Seattle Spices” along with me in case I needed a gift, plus some personal note cards, so I wrote out some notes to the two women and stopped over to drop them off.)
Aurelia’s Soppressata is delicious, with a slight smokey flavor:
After the travel agency, I hit the road… and then stood there. I found the newsstand where I could buy a city bus ticket, then I found the bus stop and asked a young guy if I was in the right place to go to the city of Catanzaro (the part up on the hill). I was at the right stop and the bus was “10 minutes away”. Hopeful and anxious passengers started gathering, and waiting, and complaining. Congested traffic on narrow streets in Catanzaro Lido was almost comic. (Imagine two cement mixers passing each other! They did so in the extra width of an intersection, likely well-practiced.)
As I waited with everyone else, I was pleased that I was having a snippet of REAL daily life of a Catanzaro citizen. (There wasn’t a tour group in sight.) An hour after waiting, I got on the bus with just a small, general map of the two Catanzaros, and absolutely NO idea where I was going, what I would see or when I would get off. How lost could I get? I could always get a cab if it came to that.
I marvel at the systematic chaos that is traffic in Italy, and especially here in the south. It all seems to work, but slowly. There are very few stop lights and much bravado, and it took forever for the full-size city bus to make it through Catanzaro Lido. We stopped at the train station, then through little pocket towns like beads on a string that seem to comprise greater Catanzaro.
We kept winding up toward the hill top. What was I looking for? People. Curious sights and signs. Something to catch my eye. History. I could find the duomo – cathedral – on my little map, but couldn’t determine where we were in relation to each other.
I rode until the near-northernmost point of the city and got out at lunchtime. In a little grocery, I bought toothpaste, shampoo, 50 grams of mortadella and a sliver wedge of some lovely blue cheese. At the neighboring baker’s, I bought a square of focaccia with tomato sauce, which they heated for me. I carried my stash through the city amidst 10-story apartment buildings and scrawny, stray cats, and found a little park bench in a windy spot. I lay the meat and cheese onto my focaccia, folded the whole thing in half and had an amazing sandwich, washed down with San Pellegrino.
Since it had taken nearly 2 hours to get UP to the top, by 3:00 I figured I’d better start heading back down to the hotel. It was a quicker journey somehow, and I got off at the west end of town to walk, look, shoot and shop for dinner and my train lunch tomorrow. It’ll be a 7-hour journey tomorrow, with one shuttle ride, three coarse, regional trains and two quick train transfers. There’ll be no time or place to buy food, so this afternoon I stopped at the bakery for a couple of fresh rolls, at the meat shop for fresh buffalo mozzarella, at the produce vendor for fresh peas in-the-shell, datterini tomatoes, two mandarins and a pear, and the pastry shop for a couple of biscotti. That ought to be a lovely train lunch!
How did I pick Catanzaro in the first place? I was in Sicilia and just had to get out of Taormina. I was heading east to Puglia and Catanzaro was in between. It’s also the hometown of my first Italian “professoressa”, Enza. And… quite simply, I was able to find a hotel room available.
Tomorrow, from the ball-of-the-foot here in Calabria, to the heel in Puglia.
Coming back from a day trip up the hill to Monreale, I got off the bus at Piazza Indipendenza and started walking home to my B&B. Off on a low side road, I saw smoke and smelled grilling meat. “Milza“? (Sicilian, cooked organ meats.) No. It was skewered veal intestines and they smelled great.
The guy had a little cart on the sidewalk in a torn up construction zone. NOT the kind of place any germophobe would eat! No running water, but rather a gallon bucket with water that had oil floating on top.
The bowels had been zig-zag plucked onto the metal skewers and partly precooked. I ordered one: “Budello… Stiglione”
The grill was smoking hot… A good sign.
The “chef” cooked the skewered gut until it was hot through, then skimmed it off the metal rod onto a cutting board that’s been working all afternoon. He motioned me to stand aside while he cut the fatty gut into bite-sized chunks, splurting grease as he did so. He swept them with his knife onto a plastic plate, added a wedge of lemon, then showed me the tub of salt that at least a hundred hands have visited just today.
I wagered the risks, paid my 1.50 euro, then started eating with my post-public-bus fingers. A mouth experience much like fatty liver: that consistency and flavor with pockets of hot, grilled grease.
My Siciliano-Palermitano adventure left veal guts in my teeth and a smile on my face. Italy has made me far less cautious about the foods I eat, and the FDA would think I’m tempting fate by trying it all. But bring it on! Yum.
How can there be any other way to eat? The Saturday market is now just one block away from my apartment and it goes on for blocks. The selection of meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, and other delicious things makes the market a must-stop. Apparently everyone local thinks so, too.
Ahh! Grana Padano! Note the pattern on the side of the cheese wheel. When you see that diamond-shaped imprint, you know it’s the real thing.
Why have butter when you can have lard (or olive oil)? Yum! A slice of lard on a good hunk of bread: Yes!
My purchases today included:
Bouquet of anemones for my friend, Ewa
“Sweet” Olives from Puglia – Green and meaty
Cherry Tomatoes from Sicily
Pomodori di Pachino – Green and red skinned, crisp tomatoes
Pickled Artichoke Hearts and Onions
Ravioli stuffed with asparagus and fresh ricotta
Basil – dirt still on the roots
Eggs – handwrapped
Peas – fresh in the shell
Mozzarella – freshly made
Mortadella of Wild Boar with Black Truffles and Pistachios (!!!)
I couldn’t wait to get home and shove it all in my mouth!
Oooo! The Mortadella with truffle!
The pickled onions and sweet olives!
I cooked the ravioli while I cut up the tomatoes, basil and some of the mozzarella. When the pasta was finished, I shelled the fresh peas right onto the hot ravioli, then dumped everything together and drizzled it all with bright green extra virgin olive oil and some crema di balsamico, a reduced balsamic vinegar from Modena.
Oh… Wow. Mmm.
…And this food is not “gourmet”. And it’s not being sold at high-priced, specialty grocery stores. This is daily fare.
Friday, April 29. The Milanese are still wearing their winter jeans, puff jackets and scarves. I’m wearing black linen capris and sleeveless blouses. I arrived in Milano Wednesday at 9:00 a.m., to a morning warmer than Seattle… yet I’m glad to have brought a little summer jacket.
Robin-like birds started singing early this morning. By the time I looked at the clock, it was 5:00 and they had already roused a chorus. I slipped back into sleep, and when I awoke, it was then the doves I heard, cooing in the courtyard trees.
The sky is overcast. There’s a bit of a breeze, and we had both sprinkles and sunshine by day’s end. The church bells just started chiming. It’s a quarter-til-6:00 in the evening. Why aren’t they waiting ’til the hour?
– – – – –
On Wednesday, the short train ride from the airport brought me to Cadorna Station in central Milano. I caught a cab to the apartment I’ve rented for this week, in the hip-and-artsy Navigli district, just blocks away from my old apartment and one of the grocery stores I always used to shop at.
Late morning, drowsy from the long travel and a little hungry, I went across the street to Trattoria Madonnina with its city-wide reputation… for coffee and lunch served by an unhappy waitress. I sat on the courtyard-side, jasmine-covered patio, with red-checked tablecloths and red, plastic chairs. (The WC is an old-style pit toilet with white, ridged ceramic foot pads for accurate positioning.) The morning was slow and relaxed with a cool, mid-spring sun and Milano’s classic hazy-blue sky. Neighborhood locals passed through the courtyard with their big, round “ciaos”.
I stopped in to the grocery to see my friend, Justine, cutting prosciutto in the meat department. She’s the meat cutter at the store and has the most beautiful smile. It touched my heart that her face lit up to see me and we gave each other an excited, european, two-cheeked kiss and chatted between customers.
It feels as if it’s only been 2 weeks since I was last here. As if I was back in Seattle just to check on a few things and see family, friends and clients. Actually, 9 months have passed since I packed up and left Milano, but it feels like I’ve come home, as I walk these familiar streets and hear the city’s sounds of sirens and courtyard conversations, soccer cheers and scooter accelerations.
In planning these two months, I gave myself the luxury of a fairly unplanned first week here in Milano. I haven’t even told all my friends that I’m here yet, because I haven’t wanted this week to be a full flurry of gatherings. I’ve taken my naps and slept as needed to get over the late-nights’ crush to leave Seattle, the long travels and resulting jet lag. I’ve focussed on getting systems up and running. I reactivated my Italian cell phone with its rechargeable SIM card, unlocked my ancient (1st generation) iPhone (thanks to Luigi) and transferred the SIM card from one phone to the other. I was allowed use of the wifi at the Design School and have spent hours online, sitting amidst design students in the computer lab while I booked air and hotels for Sicily and Puglia for the coming two weeks.
Connectivity-hooked that I am, with no wifi in this apartment, and inconvenienced by only being online when the computer lab is open, I bought a “chiavetta” – little key – from TIM, one of the Italian carriers and the supplier of my cell phone SIM card service. Very patient Valentina at the TIM store on Corso San Gottardo explained my options and then waded through setup with me. I can now use the key modem independent of wifi availability throughout all of Italy (though it won’t work on my iPad because of device power issues).
Logistics. Though vastly less disruptive to my “life system” to come abroad for “just” 2 months rather than packing up and moving here, it’s still a big effort and taxing. How often do I figure on doing this? Once… twice a year? Would two weeks satisfy me? Will I always want a month or two or more? And to what end? Am I naive in feeling I have some sort of tie to Italy and her people, the friends I’ve made here? Am I holding a glamorized, fantasy of living partly in Italy? And where does that come from?
It’s Friday evening and there’s chatter in the courtyard, an enclosed canyon of a space between several of this big city’s 5-story apartment buildings.
Still moving slowly, I’m not compelled to go out tonight. Rather, I’ll make myself a salad of fresh greens, Sicilian tomatoes, long-missed bresaola, scamorza affumicata, some oil and vinegar. Maybe this weekend I’ll head down the bike path on an already-borrowed bike for some fresh ricotta cheese, and then later meet up with a girlfriend to check out the latest art museum show.
Here just two days so far, I’ve shopped for olive oil and intimates, cured meats and internet keys. At a quarter-til-eight in the evening, the doves are cooing again.
