Monday, February 20, 2012

Venezia Carnevale



In the 18th century, the most serene empire of Venice was no more, having been dealt the final blow by Napoleon in, I believe 1797. The story goes that without the business of trade and conquest that had kept it busy for so many centuries, and with a cushion of wealth and luxury that would last them at least a century or two, the city settled into some hard-core decadence. Gambling was legal and socially acceptable (in Venice, that is, not back home, wherever home might be), and the pre-lenten celebration known as Carnevale, or meat festival, lasted for six months. The tradition of going masked, in fact usually in elaborate full costume, meant that the nobility and the lower classes could mingle at will. Perhaps more importantly, the masks gave the illusion that there were no consequences.

You know what's coming: what happened in 18th century Venice, stayed in Venice.

Twenty-first century Carnevale is a considerably scaled back affair. It only lasts for the ten days before Ash Wednesday, for one thing, and the whole mixing of the classes isn't as liberating as once it was. But, it turns out, it is still pretty intense.

Jeremy and I went to Venice this last weekend, which was the last weekend of Carnevale. We had, I say this with no little sense of smugness, a perfectly effortless travel experience. We have figured out the train system and the self-serve ticket machines. We arrived at the train station with the perfect amount of time to leisurely buy our tickets, stroll onto the train, and find our seats. The train both left and arrived on time. We did not get, or fear we had gotten onto, the wrong train. We left the train, bought a map of Venice, and walked directly to our fabulous quarters with nary a wrong turn, and found our hosts were waiting for us as promised. Stunning. Same thing on the way home. Luck, experience, and a little facility with the language -- plus, the stars must have aligned. There is no such thing as stress-free travel here.

Venice is a notoriously expensive place to stay, what with everything having to be delivered via boat and hand trolley. The web is filled with complaints about over-priced, tiny, noisy rooms in Venice. I booked at a random place on Hotels.com, described as a bed and breakfast, that seemed frankly frightening cheap by comparison to everything else on Hotels.com. We arrived to discover that we were staying on the top floor of a fifteenth century (or older) palazzo, called Palazzo Papafava. The bottom three floors are largely empty -- a few apartments, a few offices, some space to rent. In fact, that space ended up being the location of a private Venezian ball each night we were there, so we got to rub shoulders with the real Venezians on our way up and down stairs. The top floor is the apartment of Rosa and Paolo, and they offer two bedrooms and a suite for guests. Each room has an attached bathroom, and ours was gorgeous. It was the old library, with four walls of built in book cases, stocked with a respectable collection of art books, mathematics, and Italian and French literature. Turns out, Paolo is a retired mathematician with an abiding love for art. The room also had a fireplace, windows overlooking the roofs and canals of Venice, and a very comfortable bed (with springs!) Each morning, Rosa served us breakfast whenever we wanted it, and gave us recommendations for restaurants, museums, etc. It was, by far, the best hotel experience we have had in Italy. If you ever go to Venice, stay at the awkwardly named At Home a Palazzo. Totally worth it. And check out the website -- it really does look just like that.

Our favorite thing about Venice were small restaurants called bacari (bacaro is the singular). It's like aperativo, but Venice-style. You stand at a long bar, order a glass of ridiculously cheap wine, and point at the platters of delicious little niblets behind the counter. The lovely bartender makes you up a plate of whatever you want -- we saw mixed grilled vegetables, various salads, lots of shrimp and small fishes, that sort of thing -- and then you pay for whatever you have eaten. It never seemed to come to more than a few euro. One evening I had this lovely . . . something. It had proscuitto and mozzarella inside, and then a thick eggy batter, which was then fried until it was puffy and melty and yummy. But the best thing that seemed to be everywhere were the polpetti carne: beef mixed with potato, plus I think some small amount of crushed tomato and a little parsley, rolled in some sort of breadcrumb, and then fried. Somehow, the meat stayed delicate and tender and moist, while the coating was crispy and salty. Imagine the best fair food you have ever had, and then make it Italian. Get the picture? We ate a lot of polpetti.

I also ate a very traditional Venezian dish: pasta with squid ink. It was lovely. Okay, not exactly lovely, obviously, but tasty. The squid ink sauce was far more buttery than fishy, with more sweetness than brine. Even Jeremy liked it, and he is not a fan of the fruits of the sea.

Venice is really beautiful. It is certainly past its prime, and a lot of the facades of the Palazzos are dirty and in need of repair. A lot have been maintained or restored, however, and the streets seem cleaner than Florence in many ways. Well, mainly in one way: less dog crap. The canals really do make it unlike any other city I've ever been to, and they mean that one's vista is always changing from the close confines of medieval alleyways to long vistas of gorgeous facades. The architecture is far more influenced by Byzantine culture than anything else in Italy, which makes sense given Venice's background as a trading partner/sacker of Constantinople. The pointed arches and attention to pattern give the buildings a lace-like quality that is decided un-Renaissance in feel. On Saturday, we made it all the way to the other side of the city to visit the Guggenheim house and exhibit of avant-garde art (the main collection was, alas, closed). What a mind-blowing exhibit. Not only does it just feel good to see modern art after having been saturated by the Renaissance and the Baroque, but also that collection is spectacularly dense with important and exceptional pieces.

But, I should get back to Carnevale. I have to admit I wasn't expecting much. I've never been a hard core partier, and I have very little patience for the whole "bucket list" concept. As Susan Buffam writes in an interesting little poem titled "The New Experience," "Experience taught me / That nothing worth doing is worth doing / For the sake of experience alone." Nice use of enjambment, that. Experience has taught me the value of doing things even if they aren't what I'm normally into, and that when I just relax and let things happen, I usually have a good time. Plus, Jeremy does like the late nights, music, dancing, and he has been so patient going into churches stuffed with very old paintings. So, off to Carnevale!


Carnevale was actually pretty awesome -- strangely both more and less than I expected. On Friday, we walked all around the city, and saw a number of people in incredibly elaborate costumes. These were no ordinary halloween costumes; some of them looked like actual 28th c. clothes that had been passed down for generations. Others were just insanely elaborate. One woman had a gold multi-masted ship on her head. Another had a jeweled cobra that was about four feet tall and three feet wide. Of course, I have no idea if the jewels were real or the ship was actually gold, but the fact that I couldn't immediately tell should tell you something.

Friday night we went in search of Carnavale and . . . missed it. There was a big stage set up in San Marco, but it was hardly a party. No one was there, and the performers were basically jugglers and Punch and Judy acts. We found another square with a reggae band, but only about 25 people listening. We had a really good dinner, walked around a lot, hit a couple of bars, but that was about it. We had a long talk about how it was really okay that Carnevale was kind of lame, since we were enjoying Venice so much. Such was the power of polpetti to make everything right with the world. 

We shouldn't have worried. By the time we were trying to make our way back to our hotel after the Guggenheim on Saturday, the streets had become so massed that we could barely move. There were cops directing the pedestrian traffic, and several of the narrower bottlenecks had been converted to one way. If you haven't been to Venice, you should know that it is a very strange city to get around in. The canals mean that there are relatively few thoroughfares. If you want to get from the train station to San Marco (which everyone does), you either have to shell out ten bucks for a vaporetto ride, or you have to walk the one route that makes it to that part of town. Since some of that route is about two shoulderwidths wide (or one fat American), it can get backed up pretty quickly, especially with people stopping to take pictures of other people in costumes (or just some random bridge/gondola/canal). What should have been a fifteen minute walk took closer to two hours. Anyway, we finally made it back to the room, relaxed for an hour or so, and headed back out just a little after dark. 


The city was completely transformed. Everyone was in costume -- from the elaborate to the super cheap tourist mask. The traditional costumes were still out in force, but modern costumes had joined the scene. There was a group dressed as the ghost busters, complete with leaf-blowers that they had modified into backpacks (they were using the blowing capacity to disarrange women's clothing). (I'm not sure why I'm a hunchback in that photo. I don't think I was the rest of the evening. Maybe I was. There is some things that seem slightly blurry.)  There was a group dressed as the Beattles, complete with sound system, who would periodically stop and lip-synch. There was a shepherd with his twenty sheep. The was an entire group with hand-made masks based on Metropolis. There were clever Italian costumes making cultural references we didn't get/could't translate. There were an unfortunate number of Afro wigs. I was in an awesome blue leather medusa half-mask, complete with snakes, which I had bought on Friday. I was quite striking, if I do say so myself (see the first picture of this post). Drunks loved it -- several tried to steal it from my head. Everyone was shouting and singing and dancing and acting like people in masks and a crowd. 

There were two main squares with music. San Marco had the most elaborate set up, but was so big that it wasn't packed feeling. The more elaborate costumes were there, and the best people watching. The band was unexpected -- all American twenties dance music. I taught some Germans some Charleston steps, which they quickly did better than I did. In fact, I have to say that music was a pretty inspired choice. It was really fun to dance to, and somehow it didn't feel dated or old. It seemed quirky enough to be cool. The other main square was on the other side of the Rialto bridge, and was basically just a DJ and a hundred million people. We were there twice. Around eight, it was physically difficult to get into the square -- you had to push and shove your way past people -- but the actually dance area was still somewhat danceable. We went back around 10:30, and I seriously think it had doubled in occupancy. Sometimes you could get enough space to do some minimum dancing, but more often you just moved with the biomass. There was moshing, crowd-surfing, elbows thrown, feet stepped on. There were a few times I thought I was going down, and once when about twenty people near me did go down in a big tangle. There were a few times when I swear my feet were touching the ground, and I was held up simply by the press of bodies. It was all surprisingly good spirited -- no groping, no fights or really even a hint of  anger, no out of place bodily fluids. 

It was a lot (especially given the general incompetence of the DJ. You know how a good DJ can organize and coordinate a crowd? Not this one.), so after an hour or so, we left. There was really no escaping the biomass if you were out in the city, but outside of the DJ piazza, we could usually move and breath, if slowly and occasionally with other peoples smoke. Eventually, we made our slow way home. We could have stayed out later, but we had been drinking steadily if not much for about six hours by that point and it was starting to catch up with us. Plus, I wanted to remember what it felt like to have personal space. I do like personal space. And quiet. But, it turns out, I also really like Carnevale in Venezia. 




Monday, February 13, 2012

Dinner with Italians


Another reason (what do you think of that for starting in media res?), in addition to the cold, that I have relatively few exciting restaurant experiences to write about is that Jeremy and I have been very social since we have been here, and with Italians, no less. Last summer, Jeremy and I both signed up for Italian pen pals using a website called Conversation Exchange. I can't, of course, speak to anyone else's experience, but we both had great success with it, finding lots of Italians wanting to practice their English over email, Skype, various chat servers. I picked people largely based on their poor English and desire to write more than chat; Jeremy, ever planning ahead, choose more wisely, finding two correspondents who live near Florence.

All of my pen pals petered out, largely due to my terror of chatting with them in Italian, but Jeremy has kept up with both of his. Even better, we have gotten together with both of his pen pals and their significant others, and all four of them have been incredibly nice. You've already seen photos of our day with Matteo and his girlfriend, who took us around the countryside, and then to Prato for passagiato and chinese food. We had drinks and pizza with Katia and Andrea a few weeks ago. All four of these people are fairly young (around thirty); all four want to leave Italy. Katia and Andrea have plans to more to Australia in August. All four speak adequate English -- much better than our Italian -- but could use some brushing up. All four are wonderfully patient with us as we stumble through their language. All four seem to take the idea that they are our hosts in this country as a serious obligation, but one they assume with gusto. 

Once we arrived in Florence, one of my colleagues at the campus here, Henry, set us up with a friend of his, Enrico, as a conversation partner. Enrico is older, and has quite an established career as an art historian. He specializes in the baroque. He has, if you will excuse the colloquialism, a phat apartment. It is right on the corner of Piazza D'Azeglio, one of the largest green spaces in the centro. He has a top floor apartment that takes up the entire width of the building, so he has light everywhere, with views of the park out the front, and views of the terra-cotta roofs out the back. As one might expect, he has a lot of objects: furniture, paintings, tea sets, and things. His English is about the same as our Italian, so it feels like a fairly equal exchange. He wants to improve because he is organizing an exhibition about a particular collector whose collection has been scattered. Several of the pieces have ended up in English country estates, and he wants to be able to talk the owners into lending him their valuables. To prepare, he is reading Jane Austen, which led to me explaining to both him and Jeremy the concept of a drawing room. 

Enrico is from Belluno, and every item of food he offers us is from Belluno. The cheese, the salami, the rice, the totally horrifying little hard nougat candies. Even the corn meal was from Belluno, and grown by his brother. In addition, Enrico has a small country house and garden, somewhere I believe not far from Florence. Everything that is not from Belluno is from his villa: the honey is from his bees; the fennel is from his garden. Best of all, the lemon marmalade is from his lemon trees. Enrico has a perfectly charming habit of wanting to give us small samples of the wonderful things he has, so both times we have met with him, I've come home with my purse full of jars and bags. That lemon marmalade has been the real score so far. It's delicious: just tart enough to remind you it is lemons, chunky with peel, rich with pectin. 

Saturday, Enrico invited us to his flat for conversation, and then dinner with several of his friends. It was completely fascinating to watch his approach to entertaining. About twenty minutes before his friends were to arrive, he began to ponder his pantry items. Really: twenty minutes before a six person, four course meal, he begins to think about the menu. After quizzing me about the way I make risotto, he settled on making a dried mushroom risotto (I must have passed), with a lovely piece of beef he had bought at the market for the secondi. So obviously the menu wasn't totally on the fly, but I really think everything else was.

The first food we started cooking was a fascinating and simple torta. It started with wheat flour (it was some very special kind, no doubt from Belluno, but it seemed like straightforward, finely ground whole wheat flour to me). He added a large gulp of olive oil, and then enough water to make a very loose batter -- I would say just a touch thicker than pancake batter. Then, he threw in a few handfuls of raisins. Into a large -- very large -- well olive-oiled cake round. Then, more oil on top, several spoonfuls of sugar, and copious amounts of rosemary. Into the oven until it was cooked through. I'm pretty sure the recipe would be better with a little leavening of some kind, but the flavors were surprising and great: the raisins brought out the fruitiness of the olive oil, the olive oil brought out the greenness of the rosemary, and the nutty wholewheat grounded the whole thing. This is definitely a recipe to work with. I'll let you know if I ever get it right -- you do the same, okay? The photo at the top of this posting is of us making the torta. Check out Enrico's wonderfully farmhouse-y kitchen, right in the middle of the city.

The beef was also a surprise. He browned it in a pot -- not a sauté pan -- with a lot of oil, salt, pepper, and a spice mixture labeled "spices for braesola" (except in Italian). As it was browning, he put the lid on. Every cooking instinct I had started to scream that this would ruin the meat, which was pretty lean to begin with. Maybe a tri-tip roast? I think I deserve extra credit for successfully biting my tongue. He cooked the meat that way, turning it occasionally, for maybe half an hour, not on super high heat. Somewhere in there, he added a big squeeze of fresh lemon. It never went into the oven. Somehow, magically, when it was time for the secondi, the meat was perfectly cooked. It was rosy and tender on the inside, with nice caramelization on the outside, and the oil and meat juices had combined to make a light and unctuous sauce. He served the meat with chopped chicory sprouts, lightly dressed in a vinaigrette, that would have been too bitter without the richness of the meat to offset it. Utterly divine.

Dinner was surprisingly informal: we ate at his large kitchen table rather than his formal dining room. Antipasti was cheese and salami passed on a wooden round, with no plates. Slices of bread were set directly on the table next to the plates. Wine was in water glasses, and water was nowhere to be seen. We talked about novels and films and whether fast zombies were truly zombies. Even I managed to follow and participate. Once again, the entire group was amazingly friendly and welcoming and patient, and I found that it was, in many ways, easier to talk about topics near and dear to me, since I didn't have to rely on idioms as much.  The frozen vodka at the end of the meal may have helped.

We had Katia and Andrea (that's masculine name, here, by the way) over for dinner here last night, and I think it went pretty well, other than our total failure to utter more than twenty words in Italian. I think the night before drained us of all words. We spent most of the night talking about Lost, which they have been watching to practice English. I think I smell a little bit of a bait and switch, because surely if they can follow that series, they must speak much better English than they led us to believe. Interesting, they said they can understand everyone but Sawyer. And Charlie, but he died early, so he didn't matter so much. I tried to follow Enrico's lead, and keep things simple and easy: cured pork products and burrata for antipasti, orecchiette with zucchini flowers and grana, sliced chicken breasts with butter and sage, biscotti and vin santo for dessert.  I was nervous about cooking Italian food for Italians, but they ate everything and seemed to think it was good.The dessert was not a success -- the vin santo had come as a gift from our landlady, and maybe it wasn't of the highest quality. It was, in short, cooking sherry. And, we already have a text from them they want to get together again soon, so it must not have been that bad! 

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Cold weather food, Italian style



You've probably seen these pictures already, but they are pretty amazing, so I thought I would repost them. I don't know how much of a news story this has been back in the states, but Italy has been undergoing a pretty severe winter storm. The canals of Venice are frozen; there is snow on the Colosseum. The rail system is a mess. Almost every place around Florence has been hit with enough snow to make getting around difficult -- the Dean of the Gonzaga campus couldn't make it from Panzano for one day, and then had to stay in Florence the following night because he couldn't make it back home. Strangely, Florence itself has gotten almost no snow -- just a few flakes here and there. We have, however, been cold for the last week and a half. Really cold. Like, difficult to walk around town cold. To be fair, it has really only hovered around freezing, and I know that, back home, that could be a warm spell for this time of year. But, were I in Spokane, I would have ski pants, long johns, Gortex gloves, and a car with a heater. I packed none of those things. Plus, we have had a strong, Siberian wind whistling through the canyon-like streets, which has brought the wind-chill factor down considerably. So, the impact on us has been pretty noticeable.

The result of all this is that we have been staying fairly close to home lately. We walked to Santo Spirito last night, and felt nearly hypothermic when we got there. We've been cooking in the apartment a lot, taking advantage of the great fresh pasta and produce at the market. Seriously, can someone explain how they still have baby zucchini with the flowers attached in the middle of this storm? I suppose there must be commercial greenhouses not too far away. I'm not complaining -- just confused.

Cooking in Italy always feels a little bit like cheating. The basic ingredients are just so good that you really don't have to do much to put something really tasty on the table. Lately, I've been loving the salsiccia -- sausage. All sausage in Italy is Italian, although you can find variations: with fennel, spicy, regular. Well, really, I've only seen those three variations, and spicy is actually pretty rare. The salsiccia from the butcher in the market has more seasoning than the stuff from the supermarket, but both are pretty darn good. I've also been cooking a lot with these dried red chiles that are pretty ubiquitous here. They are called peperoncini, and are not to be confused with the pickled peppers that go by the same name in the states.They are super hot for how tiny they are, and they add a wonderful warmth to whatever they touch. Mostly, though, I love how easily they crush in your hand -- it's a very satisfying tactile experience, one that communicates a kind of directness that is lost in a lot of American cooking. I'm not sure I've ever seen them in an American supermarket, but red pepper flakes are the same thing. You just don't get to crush them yourselves. Finally, we are going through the grana like it is manna from heaven. It's a hard cheese, and one that tastes a lot like parmesan, but without the high price tag. Parmagiana here is pretty intense, and  is usually enjoyed on its own as a tasting cheese rather than as an ingredient. Even at Super 1 back home, a block of Grana is available, cheaper than even bad, domestic parmesan, and perfect for these kind of uses.


Here are two recipes with pretty similar ingredient lists, but very different results. Both are quick, easy, and both rely heavily on salsiccia, peperoncini, pasta, olive oil, and grana.



Minestra di Salsiccia and Pomodoro

Salsiccia (sweet Italian sausage)
zucchini (the flowers are unnecessary for this one)
a packet of verdura per bollita (in other words, a carrot, a small onion, a rib of celery, and some flat leaf parsley. I love that they sell that all together here!)
Garlic (optional)
Wine
A can or jar of crushed tomatoes
One bullion cube
Peperoncino
Dried oregano
some sort of small pasta
Olive oil
Parmesan or Grana
Basil (optional)

Slice the zucchini into bite sized chunks, and sauté in olive oil until you have a lot of good, brown color. Take out of the pan, and sauté carrots, onion, and celery until similarly brown. Take out of pan, and add sausage (out of the casing), until that too is brown. By the way, you can brown these ingredients in any order you want -- just make sure there is always enough oil in the pan that nothing burns. Put all your browned ingredients back in the pan, add garlic if you want and about 3 crushed small red peppers, and deglaze with a cup or two of wine. I've used both red and white, and both work just fine. Once the wine has reduced, add the crushed tomatoes, enough water to make the whole thing soup consistency, the bullion cube, oregano, and parsley. Simmer for twenty minutes or so, and throw in the pasta to cook in the soup. If you are using basil, throw in the ripped leaves at the very end of cooking. Serve topped with olive oil and grated cheese.



I love the bullion sold in the stores here. Clearly, they have not changed their label since the early sixties. It tastes good, though -- it doesn't have the metallic taste I remember bullion having. Of course, one should probably just use chicken stock, were such a thing handy. The stores here do not sell pre-made broth or stock, so either one makes one own (an expensive proposition, given the price of whole chickens) or one uses bullion.  We've been making this soup with leftover fresh orecchiette, or ear-shaped pasta, that we have been buying at the market. The texture of it is amazingly chewy and delicious. It is, in fact, my preferred pasta for the following dish as well.

The next dish is actually based on a dinner I had in the states, the first time I met Will and Anna, my ex's half brother and his then girlfriend, now wife, who live in the Bay Area. They had found the recipe in an Italian cookbook, and it may be the first time I realized that the real heart of Italian pasta was the pasta, not the sauce. In fact, you might be dissuaded from trying this recipe because it seems dry. It isn't. Especially if you add enough good olive oil, which is one of the keys of this dish.



Pasta with Salsiccia and Broccoli Rabe

Salsiccia
Broccoli Rabe
Peperoncini
Pasta
Olive oil
Parmesan or Grana

Get your water boiling for the pasta first -- this dish goes fast! Brown the salsiccia in a little olive oil, breaking it up as you go. It's important for this dish that the sausage gets fully dried out and nicely brown. Take the sausage out of the pan, and add the cleaned, chopped up rabe. Put a lid on the pan to let it steam a little if you need to, but don't let it over cook. It should be soft but not mushy. Somewhere in here, you should add your pasta to the water. Turn off the rabe if you need to so that the timing works out. When the pasta is about two minutes from being done, turn the heat back up under the rabe. Add the sausage back in, and break up a couple of peperoncini to add in. Add a little salt, but leave the whole thing a touch under-seasoned. What you are hoping for is that the sausage and rabe will be sizzling just when the pasta is done. Add the pasta to the sausage, letting some of the pasta water come with it. Toss everything together, and plate. Then add a healthy (or unhealthy, I suppose, depending on how you look at it) amount of olive oil, and top with a lot of cheese. Simple, but so good -- you get meatiness, chewiness, the sweetness and bitterness of the rabe, a little spice, all brought together by the cheese and oil.

Stay tuned for future entries -- I have so much to write about! Cookies and sandwiches and incredibly kind Italians, not to mention an amazing meal we had last night at Osteria Santa Spirito. Thanks for the recommendation, Erik, although after those gnocchi, I may never need to eat again!