The Pig and the Saint

Yesterday was Saturday, which means market day here in Perugia.  I was very surprised and disappointed to discover that Perugia does not have a central market, nothing like San'Ambrosio or Mercato Centrale in Florence.  This has pushed me into some of the small, speciality food stores -- butchers, bakers, etc. -- but it has also meant that I have spent a lot more time tiny Italian supermarkets.  On Friday, the school told us about a big market being held outside of town on Saturday morning, so a number of us students got together to head out.

We met at the downtown minimetro station.  It was the first time Jeremy and I had taken the minimetro.  We were supposed to take it to get to the apartment, but couldn't find the one near the train station, so we took a bus instead.  The minimetro is my new favorite thing about Perugia.  It is, as the name implies, a wee subway system.  Imagine the Seattle monorail, designed by Italians, and functional.  There is one track that runs from il centro down to a large park outside of town, with about four stops in between.  It runs about every three minutes, and costs the same as a bus ticket.  I'll try to get some video of it, because nothing I write will express the extreme cuteness of these fast little cars whizzing by.

So, we took the minimetro to a large market, which had some of everything:  food, meat and cheese, chickens, housewares (mostly imported from China), clothing, shoes, flowers and plants.  It went on for aisles and aisles.  I bought some beautiful round zucchini, more porcini (these had a much stronger, earthier taste, almost bitter, than the ones I bought in the supermarket), and some arugula.  I bought salami cinghaili, which tasted a lot like my salami, but with smaller chunks of fat, (Jeremy says my salami is better) and some pecorino fresco.  I even bought a dress!  I think I was the only one of our group that bought anything.  But then, I think I'm the only of our group who cooks.

About every fifth stall was a porchetta truck.  Porchetta is a suckling pig, deboned and rubbed with herbs and garlic, rolled back up and slow roasted.  It is Italian pulled pork, and hence, delicious.  At the market, they sold porchetta sandwiches, which is traditional -- just meat on bread.  As it happened, I had bought half of a kilo of the stuff from a small butcher shop the night before, so we had leftovers waiting for us back at the apartment.   It is, as good pork should be, fatty and rich, with a background of garlic and oregano, and the occasional punch of fennel when you hit a fennel seed.  The skin is still on, which adds a little chewiness, but the rest of the meat is meltingly tender.  I once tried a porchetta-style recipe at home using loin roast, and it really needs the fat to make it work.  It might be possible to come close using butt.  I'll work on it, and let you know.

After lunch, Jeremy and I were going to head out to Deruta, a small town known for ceramics, but we misread the train schedule.  We thought that, since we were reading the train schedule, we should go to the train station, but that was wrong.  We should have gone to the bus station.  U, apparently, stands for l'autobus.  Who knew?  So, instead, we got on a train for Assisi.  I'm not sure Saturday was the best day to go to such a major tourist site, because it was crowded, crowded, crowded.  But, the weather was perfectly glorious, clearing up completely after a foggy morning.   Basilica San Francesco was amazing. The lower Basilica is dark, and the walls are crowded with busy, dark frescoes, some by Simone Martini and some by Giotto (although, if I remember college art, there is some debate about whether they are really by Giotto or someone Giotto like.  I have to say, they didn't seem fully Giotto-esque to me, although they were incredible.  Some of the faces seemed wrong, but maybe they have been repainted or were painted by an apprentice.)  The upper basilica is much lighter, and the frescoes are in paler pastels.   There is some weird stuff happening up there -- visions of dismantled buildings, men holding up slanting buildings.    One could spend years looking at the art in that one building; it was way too much to do justice to in one sitting.

After the basilica, we walked a good deal of the town, which is cute and, did I mention?  touristy.  It's no surprise:  Assisi has been a pilgrimage site since the twelfth century, so they have a lot of experience selling crap to foreigners.  As a joke, I told Jeremy I wanted a St. Francis bottle opener, and to my dismay, I found one.  Yes, I bought it.  We were going to head home on a six o'clock train, only to find out that we had yet again misread the train schedule.  The six o'clock only runs on week days, so we found ourselves with an extra hour to kill.  Thank god!  We walked to another church in the lower town, Porziuncola (also called Basilica Santa Maria degli Angelli) a huge eighteenth-century affair that isn't even in our rather crappy guidebook, and inside that monolith was the most beautiful little chapel, which according to legend was St. Francis' own, original chapel. Inside the beautiful little chapel is the best annunciation I have ever seen.  Mary's expression is a wonderful blend of scared, shy, and confident.  Then we had terrific gelato, and strolled onto the train back to Perugia.  The later train meant that, for the second night in a row, we missed some sort of festivities in the Piazza here, but maybe we will catch them tonight.