by Maureen | May 24, 2012 | Cheese, Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Italy, Journal, Milano, People, Photos, Shopping & Markets
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.)
by Maureen | Jun 15, 2011 | Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, Milano, People, Photos
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
by Maureen | Dec 8, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, Photos, Seattle, Shopping & Markets
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”.
Mark Bittman, “The Minimalist” chef for the New York Times, wrote a concise, yet thorough, ditty on buying and cooking octopus, “Octopus Demystified”.
And here are guide on Cooking Small Octopi and Cooking Large Octopi including cooking charts with times and results.
Here’s a recipe, in Italian: Insalata Tiepida di Polpo e Patate
or, roughly translated into English: Warm Salad of Octopus and Potatoes
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.
by Maureen | Jul 15, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Meals, People, Photos
Octopus as tender as a dream, served warm and simply, with potatoes, olives and olive oil. Fish and pasta prepared and presented with an expert hand. Warm-hearted hosts, all family, welcome their guests into an easy, comfortable dining room in their restaurant alongside the Naviglio Pavese canal: Carlotta Café Bar & Restaurant. If you want to eat at all in Milano, EAT HERE.
During my year here, I have eaten at the Carlotta Café 5 times, and each time I have swooned and savored my meal. The fish could not be fresher. The light seasonings could not be more perfected. The preparation of every dish has never been pretentiously grand; it is simple, pure and complete. It’s no wonder I keep going back.
Carlotta Café owners, Ninni and Agnese, have had the restaurant for 13 years.
Siblings, Carlotta (after whom the restaurant is named) and Erik, work with their Mother in serving the café patrons. Erik is as attentive and welcoming as one could wish for when out for a nice meal.
Here are a few of the dishes I’ve enjoyed in my times at the restaurant.
(The photos were taken in varying lighting conditions, evening and daytime.)
Pane Carasau, also called “Paper Music”, is a wispy-thin cracker served hot, generously drizzled with a flavorful olive oil and brightened with salt. This bread starts the meal and wakes up the mouth.
The dish that keeps bringing me back for more: Piovra con Patate – Octopus with Potatoes.
I can’t even descibe how delicious it is.
Gamberi Rossi Crudi della Mediterranea – Mediterranean Red Shrimp, served raw – are a delicacy and a gift to the palate.
This shrimp will be splashed with lime and relished.
Spaghetti con Vongole e Bottarga – Spaghetti with clams and grated, dried fish roe.
Bottarga is a southern Italian gourmet specialty.
Branzino Vernaccia con Olive – Baked seabass with olives and olive oil.
Look at how beautiful those filets are. Ninni knows how to handle fish!
Carpaccio di Spada – Thinly sliced, raw swordfish, served with rucola – arugula – and tomato.
Paccheri all’Isolana – Paccheri pasta with tuna, basil and tomato.
Gnocchi con Speck e Rucola – Potato Gnocchi with lightly smoked speck (cured meat somewhat similar to prosciutto), arugula and a creamy sauce.
The Carlotta Café offers a full bar, wine list and caffé. Order an ice-cold bottle of Mirto, a Sardegnan specialty from myrtle leaves and berries, as a digestif to sip after your meal.
The Red Room is the quiet, more intimate room set off from the bar and main dining area.
There’s also a north-facing Terrazo Room with it’s pleasant light.
The café is not in the central hub-bub of town, and unlikely to be found by tourists. It’s not close to a subway stop and, for me without a car or scooter, it would be a long walk on a hot day. So I gladly take a quick cab ride to the restaurant and it is oh-so worth it.
Ninni and Agnese offer a “Cena a Base di Pesce“, dinner based on fish, at an incredibly reasonable price. Make it simple for yourself: order this special dinner and a nice bottle of wine then sit back and enjoy the steady stream of expertly prepared foods that arrive at your table. You will go home happily satisfied. And you, too, will dream about the octopus. (Tell them “Maureen” sent you.)
(Check with them on their current pricing, since it may change.)
Carlotta Café Bar & Restaurant
Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, 274
20142 Milano, Italia
TEL: 02.89546028
E-MAIL: carlottacafe@gmail.com
by Maureen | Jul 6, 2010 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, People, Photo of the Day, Photos, Sanremo
Last Friday, after my whirlwind morning in Genova, I continued on to Sanremo for what was likely my last visit with my “landlady” Sandra and her husband, Mauro, before my departure from Milano. I had visited them a couple of times in winter and at my departure then it felt as if longtime friends were bidding “arrivederci“.
It was hot even in Sanremo, which is usually milder than the inland. Sandra and I sat in the cool of the house, and later on the porch swing, covering every topic from food and family, to health, spirituality, friendship and life approach. (Not bad considering it was all in Italian.)
Mid-afternoon, it was time to start dinner: homemade Sardenara and Focaccia, carpaccio of Tuna (thin slices of raw tuna), and insalata di gamberi e rucola (salad of shrimp and arugula).
Sardenara is specific to Liguria, the part of Italy up north and west along the Riviera, approaching France. You can’t quite call Sardenara “pizza”, but rather a focaccia pan bread with very specific ingredients. Sandra made a dough of a specific semolina flour purchased especially for this recipe. A friend, Angelo, had shown her how to make this.
She rolled and formed the dough into the square baking pans, then set them aside to rise.
After the dough had risen, Sandra selected one pan for a simple focaccia with coarse salt and olive oil. The finger indentations in the dough, and more than a splash of water (!) poured on top before going into the oven, were two secrets important to the recipe.
Next came the very simple, yet specific, Sardenara preparation: a base of peeled, cooked tomatoes; taggiasche olives, local to the region; salted anchovies; garlic cloves, olive oil, oregano, coarse salt, water.
The Sardenara cooked up to a half-inch thick bread with a wisp of tomato and the pungency of olive and anchovy. It began our dinner.
Mauro, Sandra’s husband, was hungry and ready for dinner.
A perfect summer meal, begun with fresh Sardenara, and followed with a simple salad of arugula and shrimp, and tuna carpaccio. All light and delicious for a hot day.
Sandra and Mauro’s friend, Sandro, joined us for the meal. We had all spent time together in the wintertime, (including our trip to Monaco and a meal of Sandro’s special pureéd rabbit liver sauce over freshly-made pasta). He dished up the tuna carpaccio, which had been doused with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and olive oil. It was fantastic!
The salad was dressed simply with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.
Dinner was a lovely time with my new “old friends”. And the making of it was as much a part of the pleasure, as was the conversation throughout it all.
by Maureen | Jun 28, 2010 | Cheese, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, People, Photos, Varenna
How do you give a 13-year-old a whirlwind overview of Milano and other spots in Italy?
I had grown up picking rocks off of Earl’s parents’ waterfront on Three Tree Point, just down from the house I have in Seattle now. (In other words, he’s known me since I was born.) So when Earl decided to take his grandson, Matthew, on a tour of Italy, and knowing that I’m here in Milano, he got in touch with me and we started planning the whirlwind. By the time the trip was only a week away, Earl wrote to say they were “counting the hours”.
The two travelers arrived at Milano Malpensa Airport, jet-lagged but excited. We caught the train into the city, with one minute to spare.
Like Hannah and Zibby two days before, Earl and Matthew’s first stop, with mere 21-pound packs still on their backs, was the Spezia Milano Pasticceria. They needed a little something to take to their hotel room and picked out a dozen sweet treats. (The best in town.)
The guys needed a break after their long travels, and a little freshening up. We met up a couple of hours later when they came over to my apartment just 2 blocks away to “skype” family back home. Then we walked up the canal, Naviglio Pavese, to a pizza restaurant with a wood-fired oven. I don’t know what was so funny, but Matthew enjoyed his 5 cheese pizza. Much of it was packed home though, and ended up in my frigo (and made a high-fat breakfast for me the next day).
Earl and I shared an antipasta plate of mixed cheeses and meats, then a pizza of prosciutto, mushrooms and artichoke hearts.
Still recovering from the trip, “The Boys” called it a night early without the evening stroll along the canal (to the gelato shop), and headed back to their hotel for a good, long night’s sleep.
In the morning, having missed the breakfast part of the “bed & breakfast”, they came to my apartment for made-to-order, prosciutto/grana/peperoni/cipolla omelettes with bread, jam, blood orange juice and strong coffee. Once they had been fueled for the day, we headed for the subway.
It was a day to scout for Leonardo around town; he had lived in Milano for 20 years as a young man and left his mark across the city. Our first stop was the Castello Sforzesco, an impressive moat-encircled castle in the center of town. From there we moved on to The Museum of Science and Technology and its Leonardo da Vinci exhibit.
We saw some incredible models representing the ideas in Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus!
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We had 3:30 tickets for The Last Supper and needed to check in a half hour beforehand. Their tours are very precise in their beginnings and endings so that they can best control the atmosphere within the chamber that hosts the fragile mural. To actually SEE the original painting, the inspiration for so many reproductions and college lectures, is an experience to add to a lifetime.
Earl and Matthew were both spent after our sightseeing. We each wolfed down a panino of prosciutto, brie and “red mayonnaise” then headed back to the subway. I was heading north to buy our train tickets for the next day, and they were going to test their navigational skills and get themselves back to their hotel. (Matthew had great fun later trying to convince me that they had gotten lost and had been wandering around for hours.)
We regrouped later for evening skype sessions with the folks back home. (At 6:00 pm here, it’s 9:00 am on the U.S. West Coast.)
The big question was “where shall we go for dinner?” With so many options, I wavered in my recommendation, but kept thinking about octopus and potatoes at the Carlotta Café south along the canal. I wasn’t sure how adventurous Matthew would be, but we went anyway, and took a cab since neither the subway nor our feet would get us there easily.
Dinner was DIVINE. If you ever want a good meal in Milano, head to the Carlotta Café! Matthew ordered gnocchi with speck, (like a lightly smoked prosciutto) and rucola (arugula) in a fabulous, creamy sauce.
Apparently, Matthew really liked the sauce! (Matthew! I can’t believe you did that!)
Earl and I ordered the evening special, a 7-course, fish-based meal that kept the food coming all night. At our first urging, Matthew took a little taste of the fresh-caught anchovies and he was hooked from then on. He quickly swooped in on a half dozen of the slim, silvery filets, then scooped up a portion of the much-anticipated octopus and potatoes. I was pleased by his willingness to sample the seafood variety.
Our 29 Euro-per-person meal included:
– “Paper Music” bread, hot, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt
– Piovra tiepida con patate e olive (Octopus with potatoes, olives and olive oil)
– Alici marinate (Fresh anchovies on a bed of rucola)
– Carpaccio di spada (thin slices of raw swordfish)
– Ostriche (Raw oysters)
– Paccheri all’isolana (pasta, tomato, tuna, basil)
– Spaghetti con bottarga (spaghetti with grated, dried tuna roe)
– Branzino vernaccia (Roasted branzino fish with olives)
– Mirto (an after-dinner liqueur from myrtle leaves and berries)
– Pardule (a star-shaped, pastry desert from Sardegna)
We ordered a nice, chilled bottle of Vermentino di Sardegna vino bianco to go with our seafood.
By the end of the evening we were having quite the time chatting with Erik, our wonderful waiter. When other restaurant patrons ordered a roasted, suckling pig, Erik brought it by to show us. And when it was time to leave, we met the chef/owners and the others in the kitchen, complimenting them on our fantastic meal.
Carlotta Café
Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, 274
20142 Milano
Tel: 02-89546028
The next day we hopped the train northeast, to the town of Varenna, along the eastern shore of Lago di Como (Lake Como). Earl and Matthew were scheduled to meet with a travel group at 5:00 that evening to continue their whirlwind tour. Since I hadn’t seen Varenna before, I accompanied them on the train trip and to their steep hillside room-with-a-view. From their balcony, they looked almost due west to Bellagio (hidden by the 3 tall cypress trees), and north to the town of Varenna.
We had a little wander around the town and a lunch by the lake shore.
After lunch, we walked just around the bend for a treat of pistacchio, coconut and vanilla gelati, which we ate while leaning on the railing looking out over the water. We said our goodbyes, gave each other hugs, and then went our separate ways for our own exploration.
We had two very full, delicious and beautiful days! What an introduction for Matthew – nicknamed “Mateo” – to the sights and food of Italy. I’ll be curious to know what his highlights are.
by Maureen | Jun 13, 2010 | Bologna, Church, Food!, Graphics, Incredible Locations, Introspection, Journal, Photos, Quips, Shopping & Markets
The visual lushness in Italy thrills me. Architectural details. Signage. The artistic sense. And the character of the people. As an artist, I am fed deeply as I explore this country. I expect that the inspiration and imagery I’ve found here will propel me for years to come.
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by Maureen | Jun 13, 2010 | Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, People, Photos, Venezia - Venice
Last September, with just a few clues in hand, I wandered around Venice in search of Trattoria da Ignazio. Having heard about the exquisite meals freshly prepared by Signora Ada, I was disappointed to find the restaurant closed for the day, but vowed to return. With wide eyes, my wonderful Italian teacher in Bellevue, Josefina, had raved about the trattoria.
At the top of the list for my visit to Venice last week with my friend, Sally, was a dinner at Signora Ada’s. I was able to navigate right to the trattoria (an amazing feat in Venice) and was surprised by it’s large size. I had expected a much smaller restaurant with one woman in the kitchen. I was puzzled and thought that maybe someone else had taken over the restaurant.
We entered and were greeted by a waiter in a white tux. I asked if Signora Ada was still there. The waiter immediately went to the kitchen and I heard him say (of course in Italian), “Signora Ada, someone’s out here asking for you.”
This pixie-like, spry woman with a bright yellow scarf tied around her neck came out to say hello. I relayed what I had been told of her, and that I had been “commanded” to eat there. We talked for a few minutes, two short women, eye-to-eye. Her sparkling warmth was a delight. We were told she’s been cooking for 70 years (?!)
The restaurant has a large internal dining room, and an even larger outer courtyard, with a vine-covered trellis ceiling. (Choosing to avoid cigarette smoke while we were eating, Sally and I chose the inner dining room.)
I began my meal with Cape Sante au gratin, delicious scallops baked in their shells.
We were well-tended by our waiter, Fausto, who recommended the whole, baked branzino. He even brought it to us on a tray before cooking; it looked like it had been caught just 5 minutes earlier! We ate our appetizers, drank some of the house wine, and then were presented with the fish when simply cooked to perfection with just a little olive oil.
Here’s Fausto, ready to debone the fish for us.
The fish was moist and succulent. Not overdone one minute! Delicate and so freshly flavored.
During the meal, I had to get up and take a peak in the kitchen. Signora Ada was hard at work putting her expert touch into each dish for every fortunate restaurant patron.
After our long and wonderful meal, Sally and I went back to the kitchen door to say goodbye. Signora Ada and I chatted a few minutes more, gave each other kisses on both cheeks, and shared twinkles in our eyes. Her Trattoria da Ignazio is a must for any visit to Venezia!
TRATTORIA DA IGNAZIO
2749, S. Polo – VENEZIA (VE)
Tel: 041.5234852
Web: www.trattoriadaignazio.com
by Maureen | Apr 6, 2010 | Canals, Cheese, Food!, Introspection, Journal, Meals
The windows are open to the day’s remaining warmth while trout and green beans grill and steam for dinner.
I had awakened this morning to bright sun direct into my bedroom, and the day held promise. After some tasks around the house and a light lunch, I went for a bike ride along the canal, past magnolias, cherry trees and forsythia, and then west into the farm land. I rode to the dairy and bought grana padano and fresh scamorza cheeses. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is fresh ricotta day. That’s worth riding back to the farm for! They will have just finished making it by afternoon and it’s so light and fresh it should be eaten by the spoonful out of its tub.
The rice paddies are green with the first new growth, and I dreamily followed the curled road back through them, returning to the canalside path. The temperature and sunny, blue sky were so delicious, and I felt warm and easy.
by Maureen | Feb 28, 2010 | Food!, Incredible Locations, Journal, Meals, People, Photos, Sanremo
It’s a natural for friends to gather for food and conversation. This is worldwide, but I find that the Italians do it well and do it often.
Last weekend, in Sanremo, seven of us got together for dinner around the table: my landlady, Sandra, and her husband, Mauro, and their friend, Sandro (all of whom I had spent the weekend with two weeks earlier), plus two friends of theirs, Renata and Angelo, and another friend of Sandro’s, Livio. Everyone came with food in hand, and we had a lively time.
Below, left to right: Livio, Angelo, Mauro, Renata, Sandra, Sandro.
We started with some salame that Livio had made. (Yes. Those are chunks of fat.) I had made a loaf of mixed-grain Irish Soda Bread that we ate with it.
Sandro had cooked a fabulous mix of seafood, including mussels, shrimp, squid, pescatrice (that funny, deep-water fish with the “lure” hanging off the front of its head), and tiny 3 inch fillets of a local, sand-versus-mud fish. There was just a tad of hot pepper oil in this dish which added a touch of zing.
Renata had baked a fresh tart, beautiful with apple wedges emerging from the deep gold, dense, pound cake. This was pretty darned good with some of the array of gelato that Sandra and Mauro had picked up at the town’s best Gelateria. We ate and talked for close to three hours. (Yes. All in Italian.)
