After sitting inside all day working, by 6:00 p.m. I had to get out and take a walk from here to my beloved Duomo. I had arrived late Tuesday evening, spent Wednesday getting settled and hadn’t yet been to my favorite landmark in town, 2 miles away from my apartment. I must always go to the Duomo, do a pilgrimage to the great cathedral.
I stretched the 4 mile loop out into just under 4 hours, shooting 200 photos along the way, catching sights that amused my eye. Come take a stroll with me and see what I see.
A Milanese fashion faux pas. I really think this woman needs a good friend to pull her aside and suggest a different outfit. Those are actually leggings printed to look like denim with funky strap markings. Very odd.
Milan has an intense cover of graffiti all over town, some of it quite artfully rendered. When is it acceptable, and to whom? When is it ugly defacing of property?
I find frequent evidence of fascination with Native American representations here in Italy.
These are the locking mechanisms operated by my funky-looking house keys.
Retro Levi’s signage.
One of Milano’s MANY bike-share stations! Swipe your debit/credit card and ride.
I specifically timed my walk to catch the early evening sun on the west-facing facade of the Duomo. (Note the red banner over the main door announcing the Pope’s visit coming up on June 3.)
The Piazza del Duomo is the “living room of the city” of Milano. This is the place to meet friends, people-watch, riot and celebrate. This piazza is the city’s heart.
The Duomo, (building commenced in the 1300s), has something like 4000 sculptures all over it, including this disemboweled man. Macabre! (And the point is?)
Yesterday was pretty chilly, so a warmer day today brought everyone outside onto the sidewalks and piazzas. The city was teeming with nightlife. Some bars had a couple hundred people outside, standing around with drinks and cigarettes.
All over Italy you’ll find freely running water fountains from which you can drink and/or fill your water bottle. (Though I never have.)
The Galleria is smack next to the Duomo: two adjacent cathedrals, one to consumerism, the other to religion and spiritual foundations (among other things, too many to discuss in a photo caption.) At the intersection of the Galleria, under the dome, is a Louis Vuitton store, Prada store and a McDonald’s!
The Galleria floor is richly embedded with mosaic. Last year I saw some men working to replace stone pieces, repairing the mosaic. I politely asked one of the men if I could have a square of black marble and he gave me one! (How many people have a piece of the Galleria floor?)
Part of the Louis Vuitton window display in the Galleria. (Milano has tremendous window displays!)
Of course I had to stop and pay Leonardo a visit. (He lived in Milano for many years and made many contributions to the city in the realm of not only art, but science, architecture, science and engineering.)
This one took me a minute… I did a double-take.
Since I often sign my letters with an “M”, I like these Metro signs scattered around town.
Not the best choice for a small meal, but at 8:00 p.m., with low-blood sugar and in the vicinity of the Duomo, I just needed food. For 5,40 Euro, I got one slice and a bottle of sparkling water. If I could have kept walking a bit, away from the tourist hub, I could have paid 8,00 Euro and had an apperitivo buffet and a glass of wine instead.
Piazza San Lorenzo Maggiore is illuminated and offering a place to sit with friends.
Here’s the same Piazza, earlier in the evening as people relaxed after work.
The street name is “Corso di Porta Ticinese”, which someone has translated with a rebus puzzle: the door is “Porta” + the letter “T”, pronounced “Ti” (tee) + plus the caricature of a Chinese man, which is “Cinese” in Italian. There’s an additional sign which I’d like to know the story behind: “The Way of Irony and Apathy”.
The Piazza XXIV Maggio is about 3 blocks from my home, at the junction of Corso di Porta Ticinese and Corso San Gottardo, where the Naviglio Grande and Naviglio Pavese (canals) meet. Year 1815.
Bike repair and sales shop late at night, at Piazza XXIV Maggio.
Fruit Map of Italy. (I’ve been to all of the places shown.)
At 9:00 tonight I set off for a walk up and over and around the Naviglio Grande zone – The Grand Canal. It was a brisk and breezy 60 degrees out and it felt pretty chilly. But there were still lots of people milling around and the little restaurants were doing well with people cozy inside for appetizers or dinner.
I must say that I seem to have a hard time perfecting the “easy stroll”. I take on the “New York Pace” like a “man on a mission” and hot-foot it as if there’s someone with a stopwatch at the end. That said, I did stop enough times to shoot some photos of the hub-bub, and to browse old Italian books at a seller’s along the way.
Such dear, dear people. I feel so welcomed by Agnese, Ninni, their son Erik and Ninni’s sister Bea. They greeted me so warmly and then said goodbye with hints of visiting Seattle this year!
It was three years ago that I had “Warm Octopus with Potatoes and Olives” for the first time at the Carlotta Café here along the Naviglio Pavese canal in Milano. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since and longed to know how to make it myself. Almost a year ago, on Friday, the day before leaving to return to Seattle, I had hailed a cab to go to the restaurant for an Octopus-cooking lesson. Ninni and Agnese had offered to teach me sometime.
When I arrived, they were closed up tight. I didn’t know they were away on vacation.
Back here in Milano for these two months, I’ve been traveling quite a bit, and have only gone to the Café for one meal, with a big group of friends. With my departure imminent (next week!), I just had to get down there for my Octopus Lesson!
Today was the day. I packed my apron, hopped on my bike and was there in 10 minutes to hang out in the kitchen for the afternoon. I had called ahead and arrived during a quiet lunch hour. Ninni immediately asked his son, Erik, to pour me a glass of prosecco. Bea, (short for Beatrice), Ninni’s sister, works at the restaurant and showed me step by step what I needed to know.
Piovre Tiepida con Patate e Olive Warm Octopus with Potatoes and Olives
Octopus – previously frozen, thawed. 2.5 – 3 lbs. each.
Have a BIG pot of water boiling and ready. Put the octopus into the boiling water, tentacles up, with two fistfuls of coarse salt. The octopus will cook for an hour to an hour-and-a-half until it has the tenderness of a cooked roast when poked with a 2-tined fork. No other ingredients are added to the water. (No onions, celery, pepper, etc.)
These octopus are bigger than the ones I’ve found at the Pike Place Market in Seattle.
THE OCTOPUS SHOULD BE COOKED AND THEN COOLED THE DAY BEFORE SERVING (or at least earlier in the day). This is a big key toward its tenderness. (Today, to show me the preparation, Bea used octopus that had been cooked yesterday.)
Potatoes – Moist, yellow potatoes, such as a Yukon Gold, are best.
Cook the potatoes ahead of time and let them cool to room temperature. When ready to prepare the dish, peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks and set them aside.
Italian Parsley – Take a handful of Italian Parsley and chop it finely.
Oil/Vinegar Dressing – 1 liter Extra virgin olive oil, about 1/2 cup of red wine vinegar, 1 large clove of garlic, about a Tbsp. of salt. Put all of these ingredients into a deep, narrow mixing jar and use a hand blender (or similar) to pureé it into a smooth dressing. This dressing will suffice for quite a while and can be stored in the fridge for later use.
Olives – Use the very small, distinctive, taggiasche olives (from Liguria).
Assembly – When ready to prepare the meal, take the octopus from the fridge and cut the body/head away from the tentacles and set it aside. If it hasn’t already been cleaned out, at the junction of the body and tentacles is a round sack about the size of a quarter (depending on the size of the Octopus) and the beak, both of which should be removed and thrown away. Cut the tentacles apart from each other up at the thick ends. The skin is NOT peeled off. The thickest part of the tentacle can be cut crosswise if desired. Cut into 1/8″ thick rounds, cutting the whole tentacle, suction cups and all. Take the body/head, like an empty pouch, and peel away the outer skin. Cut into bite-sized pieces.
(The body/head is the rounded, fist-sized piece sitting at the edge of the cutting board in the picture below.)
Depending on the number of people being served, gather octopus chunks, potato chunks and a good handful of olives and place them into a sieve. With a pot of water already boiling on the stove, place the sieve and its contents, into the boiling water. Allow the food to heat for only about 3 or 4 minutes just to warm through.
Remove from the water. Drain well and toss everything into a bowl. Add a handful of chopped parsley and a good glug-glug-glug of the prepared oil/vinegar dressing. Serve with a wedge of lemon, if desired.
Bea finished prepping the octopus, Ninni plated it and gave me a delicious lunch. Out of this world. So very tender. From now on, everyone that comes to my house for dinner will be served octopus.
Surrounded by such kind people: Ninni, Erik, Bea and Agnese
A pigeon wandered into the other bedroom, twice, off the balcony.
A child was practicing lessons on a recorder flute, playing “Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)”. The sound was amplified through the courtyard, allowing us all to “enjoy” the practice. It actually wasn’t too bad.
The neighbors next door must be good cooks, or at least they use aromatic ingredients. Our corner balconies are just 10 feet apart and I’ve been enjoying the scent of their meals wafting through the balcony doors at lunch and dinner.
– – –
I arrived in Milano yesterday after my southern tour, and got into my apartment at 5:00. After a bit of a breather, I launched into nesting, making it mine. This is a “student-grade” apartment, for 19-to-22-year-olds, and they’ve cleaned it about like one would expect of 19-to-22-year-olds. I scrubbed grime until 1:30 in the morning. I had bought groceries, but couldn’t put them away until I cleaned the fridge. I couldn’t clean the fridge until I had a clean sink and counters to work on. And so it went. I couldn’t go to sleep until I had a clean bed to sleep in.
This apartment building is two blocks away from the apartment I had when I lived here, but that one was on a quieter, dead-end street. This first floor (one floor up from the ground) apartment has one balcony that looks out onto a four-lane road that dumps right onto and off of the highway. At 1:15 in the morning, just before heading off to sleep, sure enough, the street cleaners – my nemeses – were out pressure-washing the streets and sidewalks, as if to say “Welcome Back.” The traffic noise is a constant “white” in the background, but I actually slept well last night.
Everything got scoured: floors, counters, stove, dishes, fridge, desktops, sheets, bathroom fixtures, shelves. I couldn’t put things away until I had clean places to put them. I took all of the unneeded items and stashed them out of sight in the other bedroom, or decoratively on the wall storage units. I rearranged. Then I bought some string and tied the two scrawny-thin beds together to get an approximately queen sized bed. Ahh. Room to turn over at night! I also bought a new shower curtain, and a few other cheap details that add a little character.
“My Room”, with shelves, desks, string-tied beds, closets:
The other bedroom, with my attempt at “art” of 4 fans and 3 lights. (My towels and toilet paper are similarly arranged in “My” room.) The poster was already on the wall, and I decided to leave it:
Of the shower curtains readily-available for cheap, this was the best option. (The old one was torn and mildewed. Being here for 5 weeks, I can afford to buy a new shower curtain for the pleasure – relief – it will give me!)
I’m 4 doors away from the best pastry shop in the city, Pasticceria Spezia Milano. Too bad I generally don’t like pastries. I make an exception for their “Babá” though. That’s the sponge cake that’s soaked in rum such that the rum runs down my arm to my elbow when I take a bite.
The apartment’s also only 2 blocks away from my treasured Naviglio Pavese Canal, along which the paved bike path runs! I’ve got a bike in the other room waiting for a ride tomorrow.
(If I told anyone that I have a two-bedroom apartment with 4 beds, 2 balconies, fabulous kitchen, full bathroom and ideal city location I’d probably have a crowd flying into Milano Malpensa Airport for a visit! What a great apartment, all to myself. Shhh. Don’t tell.)
Now that I’ve cleaned, organized and gotten settled in for my 5 weeks here, I can breathe easy and get back to work on my clients’ projects, and I can post some of the 1600 photos I’ve shot in the last 3 weeks. Stay tuned.
Always an exercise in “packing light”, I keep removing things from my one-and-only carry-on bag for two weeks in the south of “The Boot”. After a week in Milano, I’m heading to south to wander around. First, I’ll explore Sicilia for a week. Then I’ll take a train along the “sole of the boot”, to Puglia, right at “the heel”. I’ll stay for a couple of nights in a traditional Trullo in Alberobello (Google: trulli alberobello italy), then a couple of nights in Lecce, close to the tippy-tip of “the heel”. (I always like going to the most distant points of a place. What is there about that?)
After Puglia, I’ll train up along the Adriatic sea coast to Le Marché, and stay in Marotta for a couple of nights. Swimming pools and the seashore. Ahh.
During this time, I’m leaving my laptop and external harddrive behind. (Gasp!) I’ll be mostly unplugged and “off the grid”. (Double gasp!) But I’m experimenting with an iPad and will see what kind of wifi reception I have and whether I can get online or not. If so, there may be blog posts from the south. If not, there’ll be a loooooong silence.
After this two week flurry, I’ll head back north to Milano and get settled into an apartment for a month. I’ll be back to doing my client work, riding my bike along the canal, AND having twice-weekly tennis lessons!
Time to pack away the computer and zip up the suitcase. I’m off and away.
Given a beautiful, 70-degree, blue-sky, springtime day in Italy, it was a joy to get out on a bike again for a ride along the canal! It’s been 9 months, and I’ve missed it. That ride, and being on two wheels, invigorates me and makes me feel so alive. And I love the still and vast farm fields in contrast to the intensity of the city’s stimulation. One provides balance to the other.
The red poppies are blooming here and there along the canalside stone fences, and the rapeseed is sporadic, not filling the fields as it was last year. The distance of the bike path is fragrant with all sorts of blooming things and the cottonwood fluff is thick in the air and on the surface of the canal.
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?
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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.
Saturday. Past 10:00 in the evening and the house smells good of octopus cooking since 9:26. A few garlic cloves, a dozen peppercorns, a tablespoon of salt and maybe a gallon of water in a pot with an octopus that stretches out a couple of feet.
How DOES one cook an octopus? Yearning for my favorite dish at the Carlotta Cafe in Milano, the Piovra con Patate (Octopus with Potatoes. Octopus is also called “polpo“.), I set off on my first octopus-cooking experience. I’ve been watching videos on YouTube to get a sense of technique and the general consensus is, like squid, either cook it really short, or cook it really long. In between would be like eating rubber bands.
I trundled into holiday crowds at the Pike Place Market today to my favorite fishmonger, Pure Food Fish. (Ask for Rich and tell him I sent you.) For $3.99 per pound, I went home with a small octopus and excitement to try my hand at the simple, yet delicious, Sicilian dish. (When I got home and unwrapped my catch, I found a tiny little octopus in the bundle.)
While at the Market, I bought Yukon Gold Potatoes and Italian Parsley at a vegetable stall. I had a wonderful conversation with Theresa, the seller, and we exchanged some contact information and wild stories about my bold decision to pick up and move to Italy for a year.
Next, I went to Seattle’s Italian food fixture, DeLaurenti, and bought a few other ingredients. I needed taggiasche olives, which they didn’t have except in a jar, so I bought the celina olives instead. I stepped upstairs and sampled vibrant, green olive oils at their tasting bar and selected the Partanna Sicilian oil for its full flavor. While I was at the store, I couldn’t help but buy two fresh mozzarella balls… (even though they’re from Wisconsin.)
It’s now 10:37 and the octopus has cooked for a little over an hour. I put the timer on for another 15 minutes. Better tender than not. What I’m thinking is that I’ll pull it out of the cook pot and let it cool. Tomorrow, I’ll cook the potatoes, and will cut up the octopus parts and maybe sauté them a bit. (Yes? No?) Then I’ll toss everything together and hope that it looks and tastes something like what I had at Ninni and Agnese’s fabulous little café, named after their daughter, Carlotta.
Ninni and Agnese had offered to let me come into their kitchen to learn how to cook this, my favorite meal. Friday, the day before I left Milano to return to the U.S., I hired a taxi to take me to the café. (It’s not very walkable.) When I arrived on Friday at lunchtime, they were closed! I was so disappointed, and rode the same taxi home. I never got my chance for a lesson from them but will always remember their incredible meal.
11:06 p.m. The octopus is out of the pot after about an hour and 15 minutes. It cooked down to not much, really. I think I could select a bigger octopus next time, or one-per-person. It’s tender and perhaps needs only one hour. The outer skin is loose and slippery, so I’ve fingered most of it away.
Guess what’s for dinner tomorrow? I’ll cook my potatoes, lightly warm my octopus in a sauté pan, drizzle my oil and some fresh-squeezed lemon, and add my olives and parsley. A little sea salt and some pepper. Done! Maybe it’ll approximate Ninni and Agnese’s dish, and if I close my eyes I’ll think I’m at their cafe alongside the canal, sipping a Sicilian wine and whiling away the time.
Wednesday morning. Post-Octopus…twice! I prepped the octopus as I described, for my dinner late on Sunday. A girlfriend stopped by just in time and we both relished it.
My hunch-of-a-method approximated that of the Carlotta Café enough so that I decided to cook it for two friends on Monday night, too. I went back to the Pike Place Market, got two octopus from Rich and started all over again. This time I threw more veggies into the cooking broth and cooked the octopus whole. It ended as a deep aubergine color, but the skin was more troublesome this time. I may need to do more research, but my friends devoured it, nonetheless. Piovra con Patate may be my new “potluck dish”.
A little side note: One friend was puzzled by the long, pale gray, glistening octopus that I bought (seen above) and the deeply-colored, ruddy-purple, curled, firm octopus seen below. It’s “before and after”! Before cooking, the octopus is limp and pale. One web site recommended holding it by the head and dipping the tentacles a few times into the boiling water so that they curl uniformly, then dropping the whole animal into the pot to cook. Almost immediately, the skin color darkens, and by the end of cooking, (in this case about an hour), the octopus has taken on this dark coloration. Some enjoy eating the skin, some do not. Depending on the length of time in the boiling pot, the dark skin can be brushed or scrubbed off, ideally leaving white cylinders of meat. Personally, I like to have the suction cups remain because they are the clue to the meat on the plate! But the skin at the top of the tentacles and around the body/head is thick and viscous and I haven’t developed that preference yet.
One year ago, late November, I was riding my beloved bike route along the Naviglio Pavese, one of the several canals radiating from the center of Milano. In the near-14-months that I rode this paved path, I couldn’t guess how many times I covered part of these 33 kilometers between Milano and Pavia, to the south.
Some days I went only as far as the roundabout joining two highways near Binasco, and turned back, not having the guts that day to do that dangerous circle on two wheels. Other days I veered off west into the farm land, and wound the one-lane roads amidst the rice paddies and corn fields on my way to buy fresh ricotta cheese at Cascina Femegro. There were times I talked to and raced with the lycra-clad jock cyclists on their training rides and I surprised them by keeping up with their pace.
In the course of my long year, I witnessed the full cycle of seasons along the canal. I rode in the humid heat of summer under a blazing sky, and continued riding in the cold, hazy gray of the long, Milanese winter. I was intrigued by the dull hues and disrepair of the backside facades overlooking the canal. Along this route, I saw the frostburnt remnants of summer gardens, moss and algae, stucco and tile begging for repair and persimmons left to hang.
The canalside is more often left untended; it is the non-public face of the home or business, unlike the streetside front that presents a more polished view, (akin to a beautiful woman ironing only the front of her blouse). But there’s something very direct and appealing about the canalside facade, even quaint, and certainly without pretense. It called for a sleepy, early-winter portrait from the water’s edge.
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Among the many, here are a few other stories I’ve written about the canal:
The inspiration of living in Italy will likely continue on for a very long time. I recently split fresh figs and stuffed them with a wedge of goat cheese. I wound them with jackets of prosciutto slices and garnished them with young leaves of basil. The plate of appetizers disappeared in 30 seconds. Late-comers were out of luck.
When in Milano in late July, riding my bike alongside the canal, I passed many fig trees heavy with ripening fruit. I kept watching the progress, wondering if the figs would be ready before my departure on July 31. They weren’t. But at half-ripe, they were already twice the size of the the California figs I recently bought here.
Eating figs here in Seattle reminds me of eating figs for lunch with friends in Sanremo along the Italian Riviera in early July.
