Recommendation 5: Food

It is valuable to arrive in Italy with a good sense of the way Italians look at food. Forget complexities or recipes, concentrate on the closeness of Italians in traditional life to food, its production, its sale, its preparation. If French cuisine is a process of sophisticated alteration of the natural, Italian cucina is about the enhancement and appreciation of the natural.

The SBS Italian Food Safari is a good place to start.

Then, in Italy, with the opportunity to prepare food in your own kitchen, avoid doing the 'supermarket life' thing, with the big shop. It is best to shop meal by meal, or at most day by day. It takes time, it takes thought, but it will enable immersion and proper preoccupation with food as central to life, not as a rush job.

Look at what others are buying, consider buying similar, use the internet to research, to find out what might be done at home. Ask for advice. Some prices are the opposite to Australia. Prosciutto Cotto [cooked ham, what we call 'ham'] is more expensive generally in Italy than Prosciutto Crudo [raw ham, what we call 'prosciutto'].

At the core of everything are these things:

- wines which in normal life are low priced and local... check the labels, start out with products made within a modest radius. They will go best with local food too.

- olive oil: extra virgin olive oil is oil which has been extracted without heat treatment. Olive oil can be pale and golden coloured, in which case generally late season, less flavour, may suit use in the frying pan. Or it can be bright fresh and green tinged, earlier season olive oil with more flavour suitable for abundant use on salad or vegetables or skin.

- bread which really does need to be bought every day. If you can find a place which bakes through the day, you need not buy a whole loaf but buy by the hectogram (100gms), buy enough for one meal. Three hundred grams is 'tre etti' [pron: tray etti] etc.

Look for special things in markets, things brought to market by growers. I asked for best artichokes for Carciofi Romani and the market stallholder obliged.

It can be disappointing to go to Italy and find the same apple varieties (Delicious, Fuji, etc). Look in the market for unusual apples. Price is likely to closely follow quality. In the mandarin season, you can buy items called 'mandarine' but next to them will be 'Clementine' - almost identical to look at, amazingly better to eat. Also with oranges, note that blood oranges produce a juice from a planet much closer to heaven. To experience this best, ask for a spremuta di arancia [orange juice] in a bar.

Expect in most places (shops, market stalls) that the range may be limited. It will generally only include what is seasonal and fresh. Don't hunt out of season things, unless you want it to taste like supermarket food).

Try to avoid eating within a kilometre of a major tourist attraction, or at least at sufficient distance to imagine that locals would be seen in an eating place. Avoid 'menu turistico.' Go to where ordinary Italians eat in ordinary (often wonderful) places. Try to adopt the eating hours they adopt when they have time - lunch after 1pm with siesta to follow. Dinner after 8pm after a walk.

Above all, abandon all prior conceptions of food. As Elena said to her daughter on the phone after dining at Tre Scalini "I didn't know food could be orgasmic". Open your heart.

Tre Scalini - last dinner in Soriano

We seem to have settled for dining in the restaurant 40 metres from our door - four times in four weeks, and all wonderful fresh food. As someone said to us on the first day we were here: "why bother eating anywhere else." It may sound less than positive as a comment, perhaps, but read it the other way: "nothing better".

Our host Roberto (he who did the lunchtime on-the-spot-invented song and dance the other day)

and Lui

Our meal this evening began, as once before, with assaggini di pesce - little tastes of fish

these are not professional food photos, they do little justice

they are just pointed iPhone.

... hiding in the middle of which something very cheeky and innovative, a half passionfruit stuffed with little shrimps.

Followed by cockles and mussels (cozze e vongole) in a broth with white wine and olive oil, alongside a gratin of long shellfish, in their own super fingernails.

Helen return to a dish of chicken with porcini mushrooms, in a truffle cream sauce.

Dennis had saltimbocca, a Roman dish with scallop of veal, leaf of sage, slice of prosciutto crudo. It did not supplant the memory of the first time with this dish, it is very hard to cook well and was not as well cooked this time as before (too long cooked, or the meat not as good).

As a vegetable dish, cicoria, chicory, wonderful wasteland weed, which was light fried with a little porcini mushroom.

and for dessert after that we said please:

tiramisu, uno

cucchiai, due

Tiramisu 1, spoons 2

with Roberto finishing each line for me

and then bringing a doppio or larger serve.

When I said it seemed a doppio he grinned and said ssshhh.

The atmosphere is warm and local and we will go back there, wherever we may stay, if we are fortunate enough to come back to Italy.

Montefiascone

We have driven through Montefiascone, near Bolsena, a number of times.

Elena, especially, has developed a stronger and stronger need to visit Montefiascone, not for the undoubted ruins somewhere, but because it appears, despite the fact that it is on a major tourist route, still to have local and individual character. And each time we have gone through, before today's specific visit, everything has been shut.

So we went there today, in the rain, and have few pictures. It was, as we had imagined, a very interesting place with small shops of all kinds, including bookshop, artisans, and clothing shops of distinctive character. And we had an excellent coffee in a very cosy bar, where the barista told us her daughter was a determined English language student and it was such a shame that we she was not there to practice English; she (the daughter) also had an Australian friend via the internet.

So, by the time we got home and got dinner organised and opened the computer, there, already, was an email to say that there was a comment on an earlier entry in the blog, which reads:

Hi! We are Rita, the barmaid and Sara from Monefiscone, My Bar. greetings, take care!

Very good to receive your message, Rita, nice to meet you and have this message also from Sara. Sara is going to England for a week soon, to improve her English.

We have few pictures of Montefiascone, because of the rain - it continues to elude us, there is some strange attraction!!

Rita and Sara, you can also find us here and write to us at dennisargall@gmail.com

Alas, we have no photo of Rita's bar, small, snug and more comfortable than the Bar Roma, perhaps you can send a photo and an address so other Australians coming here may visit. A MAP would be good too, it's easy to get lost in Montefiascone!

Anyway, here are the photos.

This first is of the garden of the cinema, an amazing little garden on a tiny wedge of land.

Just along the street to the right, above, is this restaurant. Helen wanted to stay for dinner of duck with berries, but the bottom of this sign says that Monday is the day they have off... alas.

Nearby was a sculptor or worker with glass, with work-in-progress out the front

In the supermarket Elena giggled buying the cheapest bottle, a white table wine from Montefiascone, Euro 1.29 ... planning to soak off the label to take home. Elena is currently drinking her bottle of delicious wine and is very, very happy! (writes Elena). AND, she adds, we have just cooked a delicious dish of leek, ham, bechamel sauce and fresh mozzarella with gran padana on top... served in classical white dishes. This after an entree of stuffed carciofi. However, despite the magnificence of this food, and the great success in our combined cooking efforts, Dino continues to commune with the computer at the dining table! I wonder who brought him up???

Vitorchiano and the carciofi (artichokes)

This is Vitorchiano. Helen says if we lived here, she would not go out on that veranda but might consider putting washing out as is a signora way up north, down the end there.

We have made a note in our diary to go back to Vitochiano next Wednesday.

We had a big success with the artichokes, but are unlikely to be able to reproduce such success in Australia. That recipe said the secret of success was in choice of artichokes. These are choice artichokes!

An excellent, simple and authentic recipe. We have eaten two of the carciofi [pronounced CAR CHOFF - FEE], we have the other two cooked to eat tomorrow. Helen says the other success secret is the good glass of local wine she had while we worked together.

We got those wonderful carciofi from a man in the market in Vitorchiano, who has a 20 hectare farm near Lake Bolsena. The Wednesday Vitorchiano market is in the square outside the walled city which is on the amazing peninsula in this googleearth map.

I have been trying to find a moment to put up more photos from last Wednesday, including Vitochiano. I now find the wonderful page about her home, Vitochiano, by Linda Lappin.

and while diverted...

...returning just now from buying a lemon for us to cook the artichokes, I passed two very dramatic goth figures coming from the castle. As I got back to the camera and the kitchen window, the dog who is the keeper of the outer gate was completing security inspection.

San Valentino

After fresh air climbing to the castle behind our apartment, with a view of the snow on the Apennines, we went for lunch in the restaurant 30 metres from home, and ate well:

Agnello allo scottaditto (a handful of tiny grilled lamb chops, the 'scottaditto' translating as burned fingers')

Saltimbocca (veal with sage and parma ham, the saltimbocca translating as 'jump in the mouth')

Carciofo (artichoke, stuffed with garlic etc, delicate, eat the lot, nothing rough)

Asparagi gratinata (with light buttery parmesan dusted sauce)

Tiramisu (pronounce it tier - a - me - SOO, with emphasis on last, it translates as 'pull me up'; not to be confused with items of same name in Australian supermarkets, this was weightless and dreamy )

Castagne (chestnuts) in a lethal sauce with grappa.

Vino di casa, quartini (quarter litre flasks) of white both frizzante and non (bubbly and still).

--

Elena says: "I have discovered food."

Regarding this picture on the wall, Elena remarked: "Another strong woman." (comparing with a figure in the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza Navona, our photo here)

gaining and losing weight

Before our account of travels yesterday, this is written at late breakfast of coffee, bread, cheese, salami, proscuitto and fruit.

This photo shows cheeses on hand last night. Rear left, an excellent hard Romano, also for the pasta; small loaf of bread, buy only for the day or the meal, it is always available fresh; two pieces of an extraordinary goats cheese round, you will see how depleted it is having been purchased two days ago; a jar of local honey; at the front, Bel Paese at left, fresh and light, a taste not obtainable in Australia. Also at the front a sheep's [pecore] cheese which in its dullness says any country can make a dull cheese - and which explains why it was on sale.

And then, and then, right at the very front, a slice of bread, with honey and goat's cheese, recommendation of the market stall holder who sold it, wonderful combination.

And the other photo? Well, we are living on a hill and this is a portion of the walk to where the car is parked down below .... you can only see half the steps. There is a breath-catch space in the middle; a second flight of steps is obscured.

p.s. I can only regard the Cheeses In Immodest Quantity as responsible for a night of dream in which I somehow became West Australian Premier, planning sudden resignation this day, accepting request to be the bodyguard tomorrow for some visiting American popular movie thug male, who agreed without question to my request for $100,000 for the day's work. I had the media planning sorted, I began immediately planning to pass all the money directly to Vinnies, with some consideration (in the dream) of tax benefits, also considering Vinnies as the preferred charity being sceptical about the overheads of many charities, then becoming bogged in trying to work out how many Vinnies hostels there are and how much if cash direct to each. Which meant that I didn't manage to keep up with he whom I was supposed to guard, which for some reason he did not mind. The dream ran all night with fitful waking. I am accustomed to former-work-related nightmares of difficult coordination but this was ridiculous! I am considering when during the day and in what quantity cheese eating is wise... And as remarked to Elena, it would be really nice to have an erotic dream instead of that lot.