by Maureen | May 19, 2013 | Cheese, Featured Articles, Food!, Incredible Locations, Italy, Journal, Milano, Photos, Shopping & Markets
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.)
by Maureen | Jun 16, 2012 | Featured Articles, Food!, Italy, Journal, Meals, Milano, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
Fresh figs are in at the Saturday street market just a couple of blocks away, and they share the display with the magenta-splashed Borlotti bean pods! I bought some of both green figs and black, and enough borlottis to make a pot of something. (I also bought some picadilli tomatoes, slender green beans, pickled onions, dolce “sweet” green olives and cherries.)
As a kid, my only exposure to this fruit was in the form of highly-sugared “Fig Newtons”. Little did I know that the cookie’s core comes from a soft, sweet fruit, that needs no sugar (wonderful when wrapped with prosciutto). I wanted to do a side-by-side taste test of both green and black figs, so I strolled the market to find the best prices, best fruit and best fruit-handler! (Good fruit and pricing is easy to find. A gentle handler is not.) I ended up with enough figs, ultra-ripe and needing to be eaten promptly, that I’ll be eating several a day hoping to keep ahead of their ripeness.
Borlotti beans caught my eye when I was living here a couple of years ago. Now, during each time in Italy, I’ve got to buy at least enough of the pretty beans to sit myself in a chair for half an hour and shuck the soft shells for a meal. I’ll cook up a pot of the speckled beans, with some fresh sage, garlic, fresh tomatoes, red pepper, zucchini and maybe some pancetta.
Steve Parle’s post will get you started on cooking borlotti beans.
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.)
