Category Archives: Rome

January 30, 2013 · 11:25 am

32 Via Dei Birrai brewery’s Atra beer at Oasi della Birra

One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep a record of all the wonderful Italian artisan beers I’ve been trying. I’ve been remiss.

I won’t say I’m going to “review” these beers. I might have reviewed several hundred films and videogames in my time, but I’m really not sure I have the right vocab for appraising alcohol. So yes, it’s just a record, and hopefully a source of some useful info for other anglophone beer enthusiasts who might find themselves in need of a good brew while in Italy.

Anyway. We had this one last night, in the wonderfully named Oasi della Birra (“Oasis of Beer”) in Testaccio in Rome. It’s a pretty cool place, basically a shop that’s expanded sideways and crams in dining tables among the wares (which can give it a feeling of eating in a warehouse, though at least that’s novel).  In all honestly, though, a better of oasis of Italian craft beers in Rome is still Open Baladin bar, for the simple reason it has dozens on tap, whereas the Oasi, disappointingly, only has German beers on tap. Go figure.

The Oasi does, however, have an extensive menu of bottle beers, and a fairly epic menu of wines. Why it’s not called the Oasi del Vino I don’t know. It also does a reasonable aperitivo buffet, where you can pile up a plate for a fraction of what a restaurant meal would cost you, that is €10 for a drink and a plateful. (The cost of eating out is something that continues to confuse me in Rome – restaurants, and even most trattorie, are not cheap. Broadly, the only cheap way to eat sitting down in an establishment is an aperitivo buffet. There don’t really seem to be many options half-way between, in terms of price, bar a few genuinely cheap trattorie, mostly outside touristy areas, or the occasional good tavola calda. This literally means “hot table”; wordreference.com translates it as either “cafeteria” or “hash house”, neither of which is quite right. The former makes me think of British caffs, the latter sounds like “crack house” or “opium den”. They’re places that are generally defined by seating and a glassed-in counter displaying various dishes you can select. Volpetti in Testaccio has a good one, but it’s overpriced. The yummiest I’ve tried food-wise is Pasta… e pasta on Via Ettore Rolli near Ponte Testaccio, but I don’t want to get into the habit of eating there there I have an ethical problem with the throwaway plastic plates, cutlery, cups etc. Every diner creates probably around 50g of waste with each meal. It might not sound like much, but imagine the pile after just one busy day, say, and think of all that plastic sitting in a landfill for millennia. It’s a waste of resources, full stop. I know food and catering is all about overheads but we just have to think more sustainably in the 21st century.)

Anyway. Back to the beer.

So last night I tried to get a Sally Brown, a lovely brown (yep) beer that I’ve had at Open Baladin. It’s from Birrificio del Ducato, and on their site here it’s described as Birra di alta fermentazione, a cavallo tra le oatmeal Stout e le Porter inglesi – “A top- fermentation beer that straddles the styles of oatmeal stout and English porters.” The Oasi, however, had run out. This seems to be a typical factor of drinking from the Oasi beer menu. They don’t generally have what’s on the tatty photocopy, but are always happy to give advice about an alternative. It’s a process I really enjoy actually, as it usually involves trying something new.

This time, that something new was, well, I couldn’t work out what it was called last night, so had to check online today and in my Guida alle birre d’Italian 2013. The 75ml bottle is very elegant, with a minimal design. But as I’d never encountered this beer or this brewery before, I wasn’t sure immediately what was what from the label. Now I know though. The brewery (birrificio) is called 32 Via Dei Birrai.

The blurb on the homepage of their site says:  32 Via dei Birrai è il primo micro birrificio artigianale italiano a ottenere la certificazione di qualità ISO 9001:2008 DNV e la certificazione CI, a testimonianza di un prodotto 100% Made in Italy. / Passione, per 32, significa infatti selezione di materie prime e accorti procedimenti che rendono onore al nome stesso di essere e fare birra. Which means: “32 Via dei Birrai is the first Italian micro bewery to obtain the certificate of quality ISO 9001:2008 DNV and the CI certificate, testimony to a product that’s 100% made in Italy. Indeed, passion, for 32, first and foremost means the choice of materials and a grasp of how to make beer that honours our name.”  (I know I could just put my [not Google translate’s] English translation, but I like the two side-by-side, it helps me learn Italian. Plus, my translation is probably a bit shonky, so if you speak Italian and English, you can likely do it better.)

Anyway, 32’s beers. Atra is from a range of nine beers, most of which are made with top fermentation and bottle conditioned. Atra itself is, well, molto buono, as the waiter who recommended it said. But then he also said it’s non troppo forte, “not too strong”, when in fact it’s 7.3%ABV. I love how that’s not strong in Italy. In the UK, anything above about 5% is considered strong. To give some context to the Italian attitude to beer strength, Tennent’s Super is popular here, and that’s 9%. Apparently, it’s even considered kinda classy, as it was among the first import beers to make inroads here. The mind flippin’ boggles, as in Britain Tennent’s Super is basically a beer for alcoholic tramps on park benches. I’ll say now, so as not to confuse things, it’s popular among undiscerning Italian beer-drinkers, in much the same way as Fosters, say, is popular among British drinkers despite them having so many wonderful quality beers to choose from; hell, even if you like lager, you can choose a better lager… (I’m trying not to get started.)

Okay, Atra itself. It’s dark (“the colour of friars’ habits”), with a taste that’s charcoaly (ie from well-toasted malt) and surprisingly sweet. It’s very pleasant indeed. We had no idea whether it’s the done thing to drink such beers while eating, but it went very well with a plate of salads and cheese and salumi and bread. Indeed, now I’m reading the brewery’s own description, it seems like it’s fine to drink it with food. But as with wine culture, Italian micro-breweries are very specific in their descriptions of their beers and what to drink them with. So here it says, Abbinamento suggerito: contorni di lenticchie e fagioli, minestre con legumi, stinco con cotenna caramellata, torta al cioccolato, crème caramel, panna cotta. “Suggested accompaniment: lentils and bean sidedishes, vegetable soup, shin with browned bacon rind, chocolate tart, crème caramel, panna cotta [‘cooked cream’ desert].”

If you want a more in-depth appraisal, the Guida 2013 says it has scents of coffee, cocoa, liquorice and toasted cereal and a taste of barley coffee, cocoa and caramel. I’m not sure I got the liquorice, but I can’t argue with the rest. Delicious. And also remisicent of my friend Michele’s Cotta 74 from Mastri Birrai Umbri brewery, which I talked about here.

Hopefully next time we go to the Oasi, they’ll have more from 32 Via dei Birrai, as I’m keen to try the others. And I do like the design of the bottles. Especially now I know 32 is the abbreviation for the name of the brewery.

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January 25, 2013 · 5:04 am

The Euro-mankiss

Hugs are great. I love a good hug. They’re versatile. They can be reassuring at a teary emotional level. They can cement a reunion between friends of any sex, whether it’s after just a few days separation or several years. They can celebrate a shared experience. They can even celebrate a shared manly experience like scoring a goal or, I dunno, shooting a boar. In a perfectly masculine way. Heck, think of all the American movies where a bunch of “the guys” are watching “the game” and their team scores “a touchdown” or whatever, and they leap up, spilling their cans of pissy beer, high-fiving, bumping chests and, yes, hugging.

It’s all good.

I’m really not very British about hugging. Many Brits are still more stiff and formal, proferring a hand for gentlemanly shake. Not me. When I was younger, I lived in New Zealand on and off for about three years with people others would probably describe as hippies. I would have been described as a hippy too. We all enjoyed hugs. I like hugs with my family too. Even with my more conventional brother, who’s tall like me (1.89m) but burly, so does a good bear hug. I’m even perfectly happy for a good Italian chum to give be jovial hugs or take my arm when we’re joking in the street.

When I am very British, however, is when a Euro-mankiss is involved. That’s where I draw the line, which leads to some slightly awkward situations living in Rome. I’m not sure how widespread the mankiss is, but from an outsider’s perspective, it seems to be absolutely commonplace in Italy, France and other countries in the Romance language group. Perhaps it’s the ancient Romans’ fault. Somehow, however, the habit didn’t survive the crossing to the barbarous shores of Britain with Caesar and co. For a Brit, it’s just not done. Unless you’re in theatre. Or unless you live on the continent and have gone really native. And I haven’t. My wife is a Brit too, and we have plenty of friends here who are either British or have a slightly closer cultural heritage (like Canadians). There’s no mankissing with them. We have plenty of Italian friends too, though, and that’s where the trouble starts.

It’s not all good.

So, the other night we were going out to meet some friends. She’s Sicilian, his background is from various parts of Italy. We go to a restaurant. I’m already antsy as I don’t like eating at Italian dinner time. For me, I’m generally hungry around 6pm, and my family always ate dinner at 7pm. I can survive a little longer if I have snacks, but not too many as I don’t want to ruin my appetite (as my mum would say) for the proper meal. Eating at 9.30pm plus seems crazy to me, especially if you’re shovelling away all the courses, and dolce, and coffee and digestivo. How can the body cope with all that? Never mind the diners who I hear yacking away at midnight in the summer at the restaurant just down the road from our flat. How the heck do they digest and get up for work the next morning? I mean, strong coffee is the obvious answer, but surely there’s a cumulative effect of eating late, not getting much sleep and drinking loads of coffee? I don’t geddit. But then I’m northern European.

Anyway. The restaurant. So we arranged to meet at 8pm. They finally arrive about 8.30pm. By which time, my (self-diagnosed) hypoglycemia is making me go squiffy. I can’t really think straight. I manage a Euro-womankiss, one on each cheek. That’s fine. I used to be involved with the art scene enough to have practised that at gallery openings and whatnot. But then my hungry brain and body have to contend with the male greeting. He goes in for a mankiss, I go in for a quick hug. He ends up airkissing, the hug happens sideways. Feathers aren’t notably ruffled; it’s a tolerably minor cross-cultural semi-faux pas. But I’m relieved half an hour later when some food finally arrives and I can start to think straight again. First thing I think is that next time I’ll have to try and line up my approach for either a handshake or a hug or both a bit better. Though I’m not quite sure what body language is required to give the message “Nice to see you but I don’t do the Euro-mankiss.”

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December 11, 2012 · 10:31 am

Requisite Bonci post

If you’re based in Rome, and have a blog, and that blog talks about food, there seems to be an unwritten rule that at some stage you have to talk about Gabriele Bonci and his pizza. Far be it from me to break that rule.

A couple of weeks ago, I did Bonci’s two-evening pizza course. The day after the first class, I wrote a somewhat fevered draft about the experience. It wasn’t very level-headed (the working title was “Making pizza and taking the pizz”. You get the picture). The day after the second class, I wrote another piece. It was more level-headed, but little more than notes. So this is my third attempt. Hopefully it’ll be an honest appraisal, and sufficiently level-headed. (That’s not always my forte.)

Anyway. The course was a birthday present. A somewhat generous one, as it was really flipping expensive.

For those who don’t know who Gabriele Bonci is, here’s a little background. He’s a pizzaiolo (pizza-maker). He’s an celebrity chef. He has an acclaimed hole-in-the-wall pizza a taglio (pizza by the slice) place behind the Vatican called Pizzarium. He also recently opened a bakery, Panificio Bonci, nearby. He’s a big bloke, like a rugby player who’s enjoying the clubhouse more than the pitch.

Bonci 1

I first met him, briefly, at Open Baladin, the wonderful beer bar run by Italy’s biggest microbrewery. It was last autumn, and I’d been experimenting with making bread with chestnut flour. When I chose a chestnut beer (Borgo’s Castagnale), I got chatting with a friend who works in the bar, and mentioned I’d made the bread. She called over Bonci, who looked at a photo on my phone, made some encouraging noises, then wandered off to resume his duties (his outfit provides the bar with its breads). My friend said he’d suggested I do one of his courses, which seemed like a good call – except my Italian was non-existent then. After a year or so, I thought it might be ok – after all, a course is not just about the spiel, it’s about the demonstrations. And what I really wanted to learn was about how to handle very wet doughs (his starts with about 750g water to 1kg flour – ie 75% – then he adds more to bring it up to about 85%).

It was a foolish assumption, however, as my Italian really wasn’t adequate. Never mind the fact that Bonci talks in a Romanesco growl. Though I did manage to get more of an understanding of what Bonci stands for. I’d already investigated him a little when I first heard of Pizzarium, but broadly his message is much along the lines of my feelings about food: a rejection of industrial production; a blend of knowledge and instinct; an emphasis on  seasonal and traditional ingredients (eg he uses a natural leaven and einkorn flour at Pizzarium; we used easyblend yeast in the classes, as it’s nominally easier); no fear of innovation.

Bonci’s greatest achievement, perhaps, is the latter. The Italian obsession with food involves: eating; talking enthusiastically about food; patronising foreigners by default with the assumption we don’t cook and know nothing about food; and telling everyone that there’s only one way to do something in the kitchen. That way is the way your mum, or grandma, did it. Broadly, Italian food culture is anti-innovation. And yet Bonci does innovate and he’s made a success of it. He’s not afraid to experiment with the toppings of a pizza. Or indeed to variants with filled or upside-down pizzas. On the second evening he started by making a load of meat-fests: a leg of lamb, some garlic and rosemary all wrapped in pizza dough; ditto with chicken legs; ditto with sausage meat and artichokes. All baked slowly. (Though this technique is actually steeped in traditional too. Apparently, it’s an old rustic way of cooking: in an era of communal village ovens, it masked the cooking smells of your meat so your neighbours wouldn’t come blagging.)

Bonci 3

Anyway, it’s a solid, encouraging message: experiment with pizza dough, toppings and fillings.

For a Brit, and someone who’s always experimented in the kitchen, this is no great revelation but the enthusiasts crammed into the Tricolore kitchens on Via Urbana for the course, this message was received like the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, there’s a profound level of sycophancy around Bonci. US Vogue called him “the Michelangelo of pizza”, and it’s impossible to write about him without reiterating this. I’d just like to point out now, however, that this is clearly hyperbolic bollocks. Very, very few people could spend years lying on rickety scaffolding painting vast expanses of ceiling, or wrangling with hefty chunks of marble and making incredible works of art like The Deposition or the Pietà. But anyone can learn to make pizza. Indeed, Bonci’s message is just that – try it yourself! Practise! Experiment! Enjoy!

I wonder whether he’s embarrassed by the “Michelangelo of pizza” thing. He seems like a decent guy, though he probably can’t help getting caught up in  the whole rock-star thing. For example, his recipe book, The Game of Pizza, is modestly subtitled Le magnifiche ricette del re della pizza: “The magnificent recipes of the king of pizza”!

His message is great and his pizza is quality, but the course itself was somewhat farcical, especially considering the not inconsiderable cost. Sure, it included eating and taking away as much decent pizza as you could hope to eat, but it really falls down with the location, format and facilities.

The Tricolore kitchens are tiny, enough room realistically for about six or eight students. Yet a dozen are crammed in. We each had about a square foot of work space, but mine was at the back of the class, in a busy thoroughfare. Sure Italians like the huddle more than Brits (who have this strange concept of “personal space”), but paying hundreds of Euros to get in the way of the staff was a bit shit. I mentioned this inconvenience, and the manager moved me for the second evening, but then I was right in the way of one of the main ovens so had to keep moving again. Apparently, it’s hard to find a decent teaching space with enough ovens in Rome. Really? In the capital city of a country that prides itself on its cuisine, there’s no better teaching space? It’s hard to believe.

This has turned into more of a ramble than I planned, so I think I need to summarise.
Bonci and the Bonci pizza courses.
Pros
Great overall message (you can do it!).
Solid technique demonstrations (don’t be afraid of 85% hydration; I’m getting there…).
You make a lot of pizza, you eat a lot of pizza, you take home a lot of pizza.
Cons
Expensive for six hours of lessons.
Especially expensive considering the tiny, totally inadequate space.

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November 8, 2012 · 5:32 am

Roman parking – shame on you!

Rome has as pretty much many cars as London*. Problem is, it’s a city a third the size, around three million compared to nine million inhabitants. And much of the historical centre consists of tiny windy cobbled streets, some of them – nominally at least – off-limits to vehicles.

Hence, there’s an issue with parcheggio: parking.

We’ve always laughed a bit about the absurdity of Roman parking, about how if the road’s full or somehow off-limits, the pavement seems to be an acceptable alternative. Even if that means pedestrians have to squeeze by – and people with prams, or, god forbid, wheelchair users, cannot fit by at all. (I seriously feel for wheelchair users in Rome: the pavements are in a terrible state, even when they’re not garlanded with dog poo.) Even the cops up the road park on the zebra crossing. While many, many car owners don’t seem to care much about their tyres and ride up onto the kerb if they can’t be arsed to concentrate on parking well, or there isn’t quite enough room.

I even asked an Italian friend about it, and he was bewildered when I said it was largely unheard of, or at least thoroughly frowned on, to simply park on the pavement in London. I don’t think he was being ironic.

Frankly, though, it’s not funny – the packed parking reflects the vehicle ownership situation, and these levels of personal vehicle usage just shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century, here or anywhere else. It’s not viable. Not with all we know about climate change. Not with the basic fact that an environment dominated by vehicles isn’t an environment well suited to people.

I feel very strongly about this sort of thing; always fantasised about writing a book about how vehicles radically compromised the human environment through the second half of the 20th century. I never get my shit together but this guy, Taras Grescoe, has. Must read his book, even though it apparently doesn’t consider the major city I know best: London.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about blogging about Roman parking for ages. Never quite reached that point where stimulus outweighs laziness though. Until today, when I saw a note shoved into the windscreen wiper (tergicristallo – new word for me) of a car nearby. telling the owner off for blocking the route to buggies and wheelchairs. So apparently not all Romans are blasé about random, inconsiderate parking.

This particular location has been bugging me for weeks. There’s a lovely flight of steps near where we live. It cuts through a patch of semi-wild land, dropping down between the hairpins of a street. At the bottom, a zebra crossing – frequently parked on – cuts straight across the road to, well, nothing much: more parked cars, a wall, no pavement. So you have to go diagonally, to a break in the wall, where the pavement resumes.

Except that someone had parked a car across the break in the wall, so you have to climb around. One form of protest I’ve seen here is to pull up the tergicristalli. It’s a quiet, vaguely polite form of protest, which would probably give the driver some irritation, but not really irritation commensurate with that of innumerable pedestrians.

The wiper protest was taken to another level with this particularly vehicle, as it has been there for so many weeks. Someone has broken the wipers. Gosh. This flyer, meanwhile, was left by a woman with a buggy I suspect. (Questo spazio non e’ un parcheggio. Vergognati! – “This isn’t a parking space. Shame on you!”) How she negotiated the blockage I don’t know.

 

Shame on you flyer

The increasingly knackered-looking car in question has been there so long, however, I’ve come to suspect it’s been dumped. Two other cars opposite were burnt-out earlier this week, so maybe it’s a popular spot for delinquents, joyriders or somesuch. But my suspicions were aroused mostly by the fact that the car doesn’t have Italian number plates. They’re Swiss. A Swiss would never park like that, surely?

 

 


* Time Out Rome 2008 quotes a Eurostat survey, that shows Rome to be the most dangerous EU capital for road safety: 8.37 dead and injured accidents per 1000 population. Next in the list is Copenhagen, with 1.4 per 1000. It says there are 950 vehicles per 1000 population, compared to London’s comparatively sane 300 per 1000 population. I don’t have TO’s source material and can’t find anything more recent. Hey, it’s a blog – don’t expect journalistic standards!

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October 5, 2012 · 8:09 am

Rocket pesto – non si fa!

 

Pesto di rugula con spaghetti

If you’re here for a recipe for rocket pesto – scroll down! If you’re happy to sit through a little theorising and food history – read on!

Here’s a theory. It’s probably not an original one. Britain, being an island nation, has always existed as place of immigration and trade. As such, British society has been always been informed by integrating new ideas, new tastes, new cuisine. It’s intrinsically mutable and always has been, despite what certain more conservative types might believe. Just think of how the chicken tikka massala – which isn’t Indian, but certainly didn’t have its origins in Britain – has become a British national dish.

Italy, on the other hand, is a mountain nation, with the spine of Appennines, the Alps in the north, broken only by the Po Valley. The Ancient Romans might have imposed themselves on much of the known world, and they certainly integrated foreign ideas (such as the cult of Mithras say), but by and large it was a more stringent process of integration: people became Roman, Rome didn’t change. It was the Eternal City. It still is.

The rest of Italy, meanwhile, even during the Ancient Roman period, was a place of villages and rustic poverty. It largely remained so over the centuries. People were born and died in the same village, in the same valley, eating the same food, for generations. And there’s only one way that food was made – the way nonna did it, and the way mamma did it, and the way figlie then learned to do it.

Although Italy has of course opened up, especially since il boom of the 1950s, it remains a place where traditional and convention rule supreme. And those traditions and conventions remain very regional (after all, Italy has only been a nation just over a century and a half). Radio and TV early in the 20th century, then motorways and corporate chains of supermarkets and junk-food outlets later on, may have destroyed most comparable regional variation in Britain, but not so here. They do have corporate supermarkets here, for example, but Italians are holding out better against the insidious neutralisation of regional variation we’ve seen in the UK. Mussolini might have tried to force a specific linguistic culture, for example, on Italians using new media in the 1930s, but it didin’t work. The people we buy some of our meat and dairy products from on the farmers’ market say their dialect is different to that of their closest village. They say they even argue with people from the neighbouring village about how things should be done, how certain dishes should be made.  Regions – even individual villages – are enormously proud of their traditions and their regional foods, and rightly so. Campanilismo, it’s called – an association with all things within sight of your town or village’s belltower (campanile).

Non si fa!
There’s a classic utterance in Italian: non si fa, which literally means “that’s not how one does it,” but it’s probably closer to “it’s not the done thing”. If people from neighbouring villages bat that expression back and forth between them, just think how foreigners cooking nominally Italian food are looked upon.

So I knew I was risking a non si fa when, looking in the fridge and trying to decide what to have for lunch, I hit upon using up some slightly sad looking rocket by making pesto. As pesto is made with basil. Not rocket (aka rucola, rugula and Eruca sativa). Never rocket. There are regional variations of pesto of course. But they all use basil. The classic form we know in the UK is pesto alla genovese (Genoa pesto), made with basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano. Pesto alla siciliana (Sicilian pesto) includes tomato and almonds instead of pine nuts. Pesto alla calabrese is made with red peppers.

Internationally we’ve varied it in many ways. I’ve made it with nettles (Urtica dioica or similar varieties like Urtica urens) before. Nettles are a great free food, and very nutritional. It’s a good use of wild garlic (Ramsons, Allium ursinum) too, if you’re lucky enough to happen upon some. And, heck, I’m sure I’d heard of rocket pesto before. Though I suspect it must have been a recipe from back home. Jamie Oliver does mention using rocket for pesto here, calling it “slightly more American”. Though I’m not sure why rocket is any more US than UK in terms of adapting Italian cuisine. (I say adapting. An Italian would probably saying messing up, or violating, or ruining. Or would simply not recognise it as in any way related to real Italian food.) Either way, the US is an immigrant nation too, so like Britain historically has cuisine that’s had to adapt and evolve.

Anyway, rocket. Rocket is an interesting crop. I remember when it first started popping up in British supermarkets in the 1990s. It was dead trendy, right posh. Did we really not eat it before the 1990s? No, apparently not. My wife keeps telling me it was popularised as food crop by a colleague of hers, Dr Stefano Padulosi. Dottore Padulosi is an ethnobotanist who garnered the name of the “Rocket Man”. Why? Because when he worked for the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute he noticed rocket growing among the ruins of Pompeii – so the story goes. How apocryphal it is, I don’t know – and initiated a program to encourage its consumption. (IPGRI is now Bioversity. Part of its remit is to encourage the use of food crops marginalised by the increased intensification of agriculture through the 20th century.)

The Ancient Romans (them again) had eaten its leaves and seed, the latter being considered good for the production of, er, male seed. Though the same source mentions how the early Catholic Church tried to suppress its cultivation because of its dirty, dirty aphrodisiac association. So apparently, by the late 20th century it was one of those marginalised food crops. Outside Italy it was basically unknown. So we have Dottore Padulosi and his colleagues and their work to thank for introducing us to this plant, for popularising it internationally. Rocket is not only delicious in its pepperiness, it’s easy to grow and it’s also nutritionally rich. It’s a great source of vitamins A and C, folates, calcium and iron, among other goodies.

So the idea of making pesto out of rocket seems like a good idea – it’s tasty, it’s inexpensive, it munges up nicely in a blender.

Here’s my recipe. It’s flexible.

3 good handfuls of rocket/rugula/rucola/roquette (you could also use wild rocket, Diplotaxis tenuifolia, a similar species but from a different genus)
1 clove of garlic
80g (approx) pine nuts, lightly toasted
60g (approx) pecorino (You should probably use Parmigiano-Reggiano, but hey, it’s not like this is an authentic recipe. Use whichever you prefer or have in your fridge! I liked the idea of the sweeter pecorino in tandem with the pepperiness)
2-3 good slugs of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Whizz the whole lot up in a food processor. Add oil to get a thick but not runny consistency. Season to taste.

If you’re old school, you could use a (large) mortar and pestle, with the cheese pre-grated and the leaves coarsely chopped.

Making it with a pestle would have a nice poetry to it, as the word pestle has its roots in the Latin pistillum, which is from pistus, the past participle of pīnsere, the verb to pound, crush. The word pesto itself comes from the Italian verb pestare – also to pound, to crush, from the same roots.

So get pounding and crushing! Unless of course you consider it non si fa.

Addedum, 19 October 2012:
Last night a Sicilian friend said her mother used to make pesto with rocket, and it was perfectly si fa.

Addendum 2, 11 January 2013:
My ignorance increasingly shines through when I look back at my old posts; but that’s ok. Blogging is a process of self-education as much as anything else.
Anyway, I’ve just read John Dickie’s excellent history of Italy and its food, Delizia. It has a lot of interesting stuff about pesto and what it can contain. “Genovese pesto today is a pulp of basil, leaves, cheese, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil. But according to the earliest dictionary definition, which was published in 1844, pesto was a condiment made fom a pounded mixture of garlic, oil, cheese and either basil or parsley or marjoram. Pine nuts were not mentioned. Neither was pasta. In 1844, it seems, pesto was a flavouring most often used in soup.” [Note the closely related southern French pistou still is a flavouring most used in soup.] The book has loads of other interesting things to say about how pesto alla genovese has evolved and how the version that’s deemed most “traditional” – with local Genovese basil, pine nuts etc – has only really been codified relatively recently.

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October 1, 2012 · 3:35 am

Penny buns and doughnuts

The end of the summer and the start of Autumn. The best time of year for fresh produce. September in Italy has been fairly mixed weather-wise – which is good, as a bit of rain encourages the fungi. The market stalls here have lovely displays of porcini (Boletus edulis, also knowns as ceps. Though I like the traditional British name: penny bun. As, you know, they look like little buns) and galletti (Cantharellus cibarius, chanterelles).

Both of which are lovely with pasta. I’ve cooked with porcini for years, but in Britain we more typically just get the dried ones. It’s not that penny buns don’t grow in the UK,  it’s just that we’re a bit crap at taking advantage of our wild fungi varieties. When I asked the girl on our fruit and veg stall about how best to cook these mushrooms, she basically just shrugged amiably and said “aglio, olio e prezzemolo”: garlic, olive oil and parsley. Your classic, basic Italian flavourings. If in doubt, aglio, olio…

 

The same day, we managed to work out how to watch The Great British Bake-off on iPlayer. Yay. In the episode we watched they were making doughnuts (or donuts). Which, inevitably, set off a craving. Your standard British jam-filled doughnut is something I’ve never seen in Rome. Which is fine and dandy – I wouldn’t expect or need to see it here. Instead, some local goodies hit the spot. Specifically some frittatine di mele, “little fried things with apple”, like mini apple doughnuts, purchased from Pasticceria Nonna Nani. This is a pasticceria that opened earlier this year, and is owned by the same people as Da Simone, an excellent pizza a taglio (pizza by the slice) place across the street. The street in question being Via Giacinto Carini in Monteverde Vecchio. The nonna (grandmother) in question, Nani, being conspicuous by her absence.

 

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August 7, 2012 · 7:29 am

Rome: closed for the holidays

We’ve lived in Rome for nearly a year now. We arrived last August, and soon became familiar with shuttered-up shops and restaurants adorned with various signs saying “Chiuso per ferie”: Closed for the holidays. People, very sensibly, avoiding the heat, humidity, traffic fumes, and stench of garbage cooking in the dumpsters and dog shit dry-fried on the pavements.

Having said that, there’s also something pleasant about Rome in August: it calms down, marginally.

As summer rolled around again this year, the shutters started coming down. In July, the woman in our local pet supplies shop said to me: “When are you going?” “Going where?” I responded, slightly confused. “Vacanze!” Oh, right, of course. She was checking what supplies I needed for our cats as she was going away at the start of August, and wouldn’t be back till the end of the month.

It’s not like every business closes for the entirety of August, but a reasonable proportion still do. Apparently Rome used to be even quieter in August, especially from Ferragosto – the 15 August holiday that traditionally marks the hottest point of the year. (I reckon it’s heading for 40C ish this year.) The word, like ferie, is close to the Latin for festivals, Feriae, but I like to think of it as “ferro agosto” – iron august, when it’s so bloody hot, it’s like being hit with a metal bar. Or metal getting so hot you can’t touch it. Or something.

Anyway, the fruit and veg vendors I favour said bye in late July, and now the market is half-empty, the various metal shacks totally locked down. When we moved into our current flat on 4 September 2011, the big, popular restaurant on the corner was all closed still, but this year I spotted a sign proudly stating they’re open for August. Though maybe they’ll be staggering their holiday, and closing for September.

As a Brit, this continues to tickle me. It’s just such an alien concept. We have a different work ethic, and a different work-life balance. You’ve got to admire these people for retaining the sanctity of holiday, of time with family and friends. If Sunday is the week’s day of rest, then August is the year’s equivalent.

My only point of reference in British culture is from stories by the likes of W Somerset Maugham and EM Forster, describing a very middle-class, or upper middle-class milieu in Edwardian Britain. But even most well-off Brits wouldn’t consider taking a whole month off these days. It’s not like it’s a comparable class issue here though. Many Italians I speak to, from different walks of life, have seaside or country houses, including our neighbours, who aren’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination (she’s a perpetually stressed single mother, for example). Maybe it’s a bit more like the New Zealand culture of the “bach”, a second property to retreat to for a break, be it a shack in the hills or a nice pad on the beach. (Oh, and many Brits are confused by “bach” – well, it’s short for bachelor pad, innit.)

I don’t know whether my friendly grocers have gone to a country retreat, but they’re certainly having a nice long holiday.

A few weeks back, in July, I wanted to get some chocolates for a present from a cioccolateria, and found a sign saying they were off for nearly three months.

Nearly three months! Respect. Is selling handmade chocs really that profitable? This is in Trastevere, a favourite location with tourists, so maybe it is. Or maybe it’s just a practicality. Perhaps it’s just too messy trying to sell handmade chocolates in the summer.

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June 19, 2012 · 5:36 am

Macchinaphilia

Italians have a great passion for coffee, for food (notably offal in Rome), smoking (basta!), football (you should have heard the horns honking after the 2-0 Italy-Rep. Ireland match last night) and cars. It’s fundamentally evident in the language: la macchina means the machine, but it’s most commonly used to mean the car. The machine is the car. The car is the machine

They love their cars. I did read somewhere that around the turn of the millennium, Italian per capita car ownership exceeded that of the USA. I can’t find that stat now. This list on Wikipedia (of vehicles per capita, not specifically cars) has them at 10th in the league table of vehicle-crazy nations. Monaco is first (surely Monaco is small enough to just walk everywhere? Crazy). The US is second. The UK, perhaps surprisingly, is 30th – good for the UK. That’s a sanity point in the UK’s favour.

Anyway. So Italy is still up there. 690 cars per 1000 population.

This car obsession was re-iterated to me this morning not by an encounter with Rome’s daft traffic but by an exchange I overheard between a thirty-ish mother and a three-ish daughter.

“Mummy – what kind of car is that?”
“That’s a Chrysler dear.”

This child was certainly starting young. And a girl to boot. Would you ever hear a three-year-old British girl ask that? Maybe, but the cultures I’m a little more familiar with – British, New Zealand, even US via the old remote viewing of movies and TV – it’s the males who grow up to be petrol-heads.

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June 11, 2012 · 3:12 am

Chicory international

A favourite vegetable dish here in Rome is cicoria, which of course means chicory. When the guy on our fruit and veg stall on the market said it was good, I bought a bunch last week, and decided to cook it up. Raw, in salads, it’s very bitter and not unlike dandelion leaves, a classic of free foraged food. It looks similar too.

One classic, basic way it’s served here in Rome ripassata – cooked down in olive oil, with some garlic and a little chili. Reading up on preparation methods got me thinking, and led me down an interesting path of leafy revelations.

So, the cicoria I bought was leaf chicory, or common chicory. To clarify slightly considering the various international names, in Latin it’s Cichorium intybus. To run with the Latin name for a mo, its genus is Cichorium, the family is Asteraceae – yep, that’s the Aster, daisy family – which includes Bellis perennis, the common daisy found in a million British garden lawns, as well as such popular domestic flowers as Leucanthemum vulgare, the oxeye daisy. And, yes, Taraxacum officinale – the common dandelion. (Which, incidentally, gets its English name from “dent-de-lion”, French for “tooth of the lion”, and is basically the same in Italian – dente di leone. The funnier French name, meanwhile, is “pissenlit” – “piss-the-bed”).

So yeah, no wonder raw common chicory leaves taste like dandelion leaves. The similarity is particularly marked if you get cicoria del campo, aka cicoria selvatica – the wild variety of Cichorium intybus, where the leaves – and flavour – are fairly indistinguishable from dandelion leaves. In the US, the leaves of Taraxacum officinale are eaten and known as “dandelion greens”, though I’ve also heard this term used for chicory, especially wild Cichorium intybus. Taxanomically, chicory, dandelion, lettuce and even salsify are not only all members of the Asteraceae family, but are also members of the Cichorieae Tribe.

Perhaps more interesting, however (if you’re a food obsessive with a passing interest in taxonomy that is), is the fact that both endive (ie Belgian endive, aka witlof or witloof) and radicchio (aka red chicory), are are cultivated varietals of Cichorium intybus. Which they bear no resemblance to, at least not in the forms you see them on the market. Though the taste is so similar – basically bitter – that the relationship becomes clear.

Also, what is commonly known as endive in some Anglophone countries, is also another chicory, another member of the Asteraceae family: Cichorium endivia.

It’s cultivated in two main forms, the first of which I’ve always known as frisée, or frisée lettuce in the UK, when it’s not a lettuce (genus: Lactuca) it’s a chicory (Cichorium). The French call it chicorée frisée, in the US curly endive, while here in Italy it’s called scarola riccia (“curly”). Cichorium endivia crispum.

The other version is Cichorium endivia latifolia – broad-leaved, which is also known as escarole (French) or indivia scarola here in Italy. I don’t even know what we call it in the UK. Probably just “that lettuce”, pointing or picking. We’re sophisticated like that.

Here in Rome (and other parts of Italy), another popular seasonal vegetable is puntarelle. You will see curly strips of this green in markets and restaurants for a long season from autumn through the winter. It’s also chicory: Cicoria di catalogna (Catalan chicory) or cicoria asparago. Though the common Italian name is cuter – puntarelle means “little points”, or “little tips”. I’m not 100% sure on this one, but I believe it’s just another cultivated varietal of Cichorium intybus.

Also, the coffee substitute made with chicory root also uses a variety of Cichorium intybus: Cichorium intybus var. sativum. It has long white roots that look not unlike fellow Cichorieae Tribe member black salsify, Scorzonera hispanica.

Addendum
A few months later (1 Oct 2012 to be exact). Here’s another lovely variety of radicchio that they’re selling on the market. It’s like a lovely little pink-flecked lettuce. But it’s not a lettuce! I can’t remember the Italian name for its just now, but will add it when someone reminds me.

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April 27, 2012 · 3:58 am

A quick trip to the supermarket in Monteverde Vecchio

It’s a hot sunny late April day in Monteverde Vecchio, our neighbourhood in Rome. I need some stuff from the supermarket – I generally buy food at one of the markets, but the supermarket is good for its eco-branded bog roll and whatnot.

Leaving the house, I’m met by ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush being blasted from a raised ground floor flat. It’s somewhat incongruous, but joyfully so as Kate is the one musician I’ve listened to all my life.

I fall in behind a pasty, chunky guy in shorts and flipflops. Clearly a foreigner, as such attire is generally non si fa (not done) for Italians, unless you’re at the beach. I may be acquiring some local prejudices, as I speed up to overtake him, then head to the ATM. I wait at the door to the vestibule where the cash machine is located. He falls in behind me, a micro orderly queue. A Brit perhaps. Two ladies, presumably a mother and a nonna (granny) pull up with a pair of double buggies. They don’t form an orderly queue.

After a trial of patience with the ATM (they seem extraordinarily slow here. Maybe I’m just even more impatient), I turn to leave and find the doorway flanked by the buggies, one of the occupants on his potty right in the middle of the thoroughfare. I giggle, I think the mum does too, but it’s not funny enough to make her consider putting young Giovanni’s potty slightly, you know, out of the doorway.

At the supermarket, I gather my goods, head for the till. The woman in front is on her mobile. The woman on the till is busy chatting with her colleague. For the best part of a minute, the woman in front holds out her bank card, not looking at the woman on the till. The woman on the till is chatting over her shoulder and doesn’t notice the bank card.

I finally get to shuffle forward, around the woman yakking on her mobile. Luckily the till’s “shoot” is divided into two areas, so I’m able to pack without getting muddled up with Senora Yakki. I hurry though, as I’m aware of the next person’s goods building up behind me.

The charge is €22.35. I don’t have €2.35, so I make a comment about not having enough change, as usual. Change is an issue here. Vendors welcome cash, but they particularly welcome exact change. One cash till lady was very sour with me when I tried to pay for something costing €10.70 with a €20 note, but if you ain’t got the change you ain’t got the change.

We tend to generally get €50 notes from ATM, as we get out money to split between us. Except it’s hard to split as we can’t easily get change. Even the friendly chap at the local launderette has to generally nip next door when I offer him a €20 to settle my €14 bill.

I muster some change, 35c. It’s a gesture. The woman seems appreciative, and even laughed at my comment, so presumably my Italian is making some progress. Unless of course she was just laughing politely but didn’t understand a word I said.

Leaving, I run the gauntlet of beggars, and head home. A door in a palazzo opens on the pavement and a dog emerges, barking. It’s the sort of bark that’s on that fine dividing line between assertive and aggressive. A nonna strolling by smiles indulgently, which is very much si fa when it comes to daffy dogs here. The dog – miraculously – shuts up, and is followed out by another mother, holding the leash, dragging out huge plastic ride-on toy car, and a child. The mother is muttering something about scappare – the verb to escape or flee. I can’t make out whether she’s referring to the dog escaping, or the child, or even her own desire to flee.

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