We were experiencing technical difficulties,

Yeah, it was way way too long between posts. I sort of tried to make up for it with a couple posts in succession. It, i am sure, will not work. I was in technology hell for a bit, but thats no excuse.

(screw it. between me and ellen, we had two iPhones, a kindle, a laptop and the internet access at school all decide not to work in about 72 hours. and they all continued not to work. it sucked)

Ok, so excuse and explanations over, I'll try to be more timely with the updates.

Terra Madre/Slow Food/craziness

Take the biggest and best food and wine event you've ever been to in the states, multiply by 100, fill with wildly gesticulating Italians, put it in a former Fiat factory on the rough side of Torino and make everyone half drunk. Including me. And then add a smattering of Germans, French, Scandinavians, Brits and Americans, the Slow Food Africa and South America contingents both in full on traditional dress and mix well.

I don't think I've properly conveyed the scale of the event: I've been here for five hours so far, eating and drinking diligently, moving rapidly even, and I haven't made it to entire halls worth of stuff. I've done two Italy halls, the International hall, the enoteca (wine tasting area), the spirits (the highlights here were all the awesome rum that never gets imported to the states), the beer, the street food and the salumi. I'm missing the Piedmonte (the regional sponsor this year) and the Torino room. And the labratorio del gusto, but I'm not sure what this is yet.

Fucking hell, this Terra Madre is no joke. Certainly worth a six hour train journey each way. (and I have to add that we left Jesi at midnight, and we are departing Torino at seven pm, getting back at like 2 am or so. A long day in any case, even if you manage to sleep on the train. Still worth the hassle.)

I'm disappointed about how poorly represented the US is. We've got the american craft brewers association pouring beer that made me homesick and a few top shelf bourbons and ryes among the spirits. That's it. It sucks because we've got product that can compete with what's here, at least some of our cheese and meats and definitely the wine can, but none of it's here. Is it slow food not recognizing American products or America's own insularity at work? Or possibly tough importation regulation from the EU? Either way, America does have good food and drink and we aren't showing the rest of the world that its there. And that sucks.

I haven't been homesick the entire time I've been in Italy, but the dogfish head and the correctly made Manhattan did it. A bartender who could not speak any English at all but still managed to make me exactly the drink I wanted, ordered in Italian, was great. It did however make me want to see all my DC peoples at bar pilar. And if I could time travel, bar pilar when Adam made the best manhattans in the world there.

So then I went and had some out of this world prosciutto from Parma and some superlative gnocchi alla sorrentina from Campania and everything was ok.

But still. America needs to step it up on the international scene. We've got some good shit in the states and everyone thinks were only coke and mcdonalds. Shit, on the international scene, we are lucky if it's burger king representing.

Oh yeah. And our oysters, both coasts, kick the ass of anything available, at this event, anyway. Multiple species and places of origin on the European side of the Atlantic are here, but I still think PEI and Puget Sound would kick ass here. Even out humble Chesapeake oysters compare well.

To sum it all up: this event is over the top amazingly fantastically hedonistic and wonderful but we have to get some US producers to make the trek.

And if you find yourself in Italy during Terra Madre in 2012, drop everything and spend a couple days here. Worth every penny. Or euro as the case may be.

Capri sun is more than a juice box.

After a second week of classes, I was ready for some R&R. Ellen agreed, and we took a 20 minute hydrofoil to the island of Capri on Friday afternoon. Since in rained all day Wednesday, Thursday and most of Friday, our classmates and teachers suggested we postpone the trip. We already had reservations at the Capri Palace Hotel in the town of Anacapri, so we forged ahead anyway. Fortune favors the bold, or at least those who book hotels in advance, because we woke up Saturday and it was a perfect blue-sky day, with a nice breeze. Perfect weather for sitting in the sun next to a pool (or in my case, sitting in the shade with sunblock on), reading the paper or studying Italian in a desultory fashion. Though to my chagrin, I forgot my capri pants, the weekend was a nice escape from our school routine.

On Friday night we had dinner in the Capri Palace Hotel’s restaurant, which got great reviews and two Michelin stars. Based on this (and a few other dinners) we have come to the conclusion that outside of France, the storied Guide Michelin is utterly unreliable when it comes to food quality. If you’re looking for a high server-to-guest ratio, this books for you. If you actually care about what you are eating and not how many people are hovering over your table, it holds little value. Not that this was a bad meal, just not anywhere close to the gushing review. The highlights of the meal: Ellen’s first course, the seafood mosaic, and dessert, an architectural chocolate construction. Both I would happily order again anywhere. The low point of the meal was the lemon-scented risotto topped with raw fish that I ordered: the rice had a watery texture, was a little crunchy in places, lacked salt and, incredibly, needed more acid. It was supposed to be lemon risotto? I sent it back almost entirely uneaten. The backserver who cleared the plate asked if I liked it and I replied that “it wasn’t for me,” and she nodded. That’s it. If you don’t like something in a two-star in France, or any restaurant worth its salt in DC, someone will acknowledge it, perhaps offer a replacement or take it off the check, some kind of response. But here, nothing. And the coup de gras, at least for the service experience: they brought me the wrong entrée. I ordered a dish featuring suckling pig but they announced the veal as they dropped our plates. At this point, it wasn’t worth arguing about. And the veal was actually delicious, cooked medium so it was juicy and flavorful. I may not have ordered it but I certainly wasn’t sending it back.

Convertible taxi!

Saturday lunch was poolside, casual with a nice bottle of (something white?). For dinner, we took a taxi  (a convertible taxi!) down the hill from Anacapri to the larger town of Capri. The taxi ride was great: we happened to be leaving right at sunset and the view of the sea over the sheer cliffs of the island was beautiful. The roads are narrow and winding, with several hairpin turns and at best a loose adherence to traffic regulations. While I enjoyed it, Ellen described the ride in the open-topped cab as “harrowing.” (Full disclosure: I’m the kind of person who loves roller coasters and would happy bungee jump or sky dive.) She took a ton of great pictures of the view though. We wandered around the town’s main piazza for a while, had a cocktail overlooking the water and then headed to Pizzeria da Georgio for dinner.

Drinks in Anacapri. 

We met our friend from class, a Londoner named Justine, at da Georgio. We had a table right next to the large open windows overlooking the water, and the lights of Napoli across the bay. I order the bresaola (air-cured beef sliced paper thin) for a first course. The salty bresaola with spicy arugula and shaved parmesan, dressed only with olive oil and balsamic, was great. Then I had a pizza with mozzarella di bufala. Life was good.

Capri is a fancy-pants, pretentious place. The views are beautiful, but everything else is annoying and difficult to deal with. And they apparently wear short pants. 

the little water buffalo

One of my favorite restaurants in Sorrento is undoubtedly Inn Bufalito. This is a smallish trattoria-style place on a narrow alley off the main drag, Curso Italia. Around 75% of the tables are outside, in a front patio surrounded by low walls, but the whole front of the building is open, so there isn’t much difference. It’s part of the Slow Food network, having pledged to use only local ingredients and to cook the cuisine of Campania. The avowed specialties of the house are mozzarella di bufala and dishes using buffalo meat, hence the name. The service is friendly, not a given in touristy Sorrento. The waiters here seem both enthusiastic and knowledgeable, which is a help given that the majority of the menu changes constantly and is written in an untidy scrawl on a blackboard.

We’ve eaten at Inn Bufalito four times in three weeks; between Ellen and I we’ve tried a fair number of different menu items. I’ll hit the highlights here.

the decimated cheese sampler plate

On our first visit, we saw a mozzarella sampler plate destined for another table. As the server passed our table, I immediately declared my intention to return to the restaurant. We had already ordered, but I absolutely needed to try this. I was not disappointed when we indeed returned: the sampler is intended for two, but we shared it between three people and didn’t finish everything. Creamy-crumbly ricotta di bufala con miele nocciola (buffalo’s milk ricotta with hazelnut honey) was amazing. The ricotta had a grassy, herbaceous flavor to it and the honey wasn’t too sweet, but actually retained a slight nutty note. This we finished all of, I was practically licking the plate. (On a complete side note, I have to figure out a way to get hazelnut honey in the states. Totally different flavor than any honey I’ve ever tried at home). The walnut-sized boccancini had a firm texture, while the larger sizes of mozzarella di bufala got progressively creamier in the middle. The braided style had a totally unique texture, and was a bit saltier than the cheeses. It reminded Ellen of Armenian string cheese, at least in texture, and I thought the comparison was right on.

Yeah, it was that delicious.

Another memorable first course was the caponata. This dish is a little tricky: in Napoli expect tuna, olives and tomatoes with your salad and toasted wheat bread, while in Sicily eggplant is required and the other items are optional, except for the bread. At Inn Bufalito, they make a caponata siciliana, with large chunks of bread, tomatoes, basil, black olives and eggplant marinated in oil and vinegar, no lettuce. It was great, with enough dressing, but not so much as to make the croutons soggy. And they didn’t included a ton of tomatoes, maybe four or so pieces in a serving,  so the eggplant really carried the dish. It was robust enough to stand up to the 2005 Aglianico di Taurasi we drank with it.

Buffalo sausage! 

Among the pasta we tried, my favorite was the paccheri con ragu di bufala. Essentially giant size rigatoni with an awesome meat sauce based on tomatoes and buffalo meat. The lasagna was also great, made with both cream and tomatoes, ground buffalo meat and perfectly al dente fresh pasta. I’m still not sure how they achieved that. Another awesome pasta was the scialatelli with buffalo sausage. Ok, everything with buffalo and pasta was great. 

So this restaurant is great. You all should go, etc. 

not the worst meal ever.

After a trying time navigating Solofra in search of lunch, we called a taxi to take us to and from dinner. It seemed the wisest choice, if we indeed wished to eat dinner at all. We had made reservations at a Michelin-starred restaurant in the Feudi di San Gregorio winery, one of the best-regarded producers in Campania, perhaps in all of southern Italy. The winery is about 25 or 30 minutes into the country from Solofra, and the scenery was beautiful. We were driving down twisting country lanes just as the sun was setting over the mountains. It was the kind of scenery I associate with a chick flick wherein the heroine drops everything, heads to Italy and rediscovers herself by falling in love with an Italian who probably speaks with a British accent. Cheesy as hell in a movie but pretty fantastic in real life.

The winery itself is a beautiful building. We had a bit of a tour before we sat down to dinner: the cellar, the giant oak fermentation tanks, the racks of spumante (made in a collaboration with a French Champagne house), and finally, a 15 by 20 by 4 foot or so nativity scene that featured a Norman era church (maybe 12^th or 13^th century) that had been razed by the earthquake of 1980. I’ll admit, the nativity scene kind of came out of left field.

Yeah, its a little weird. 

Then on to dinner. The room itself is very sleek and modern in style, with floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the vineyards and a glass-enclosed spotless kitchen. There were perhaps 40 or 50 seats and I counted seven cooks. No menus were offered, and we happily accepted the offer of both a tasting menu and wine pairings. Overall, I have to say that both the food and the service were on point, excellent, superlative, fill in your own ecstatic adjective here.

footlong breadsticks

First was a trio of appetizers. A shot glass full of their take on insalada Caprese comprised of a sort of buffalo mozzarella cream (don’t call it a foam, it was way creamier and richer and I’m positive there wasn’t any lecithin used) and a bright acidic tomato water/sauce. Also a bacalao style fritter made with anchovy, perfectly crisp outside. The third component was described as polenta ice cream, and it was topped with wafer thin slices of black truffle, olive oil and flakes of sea salt. It was the most restrained use of truffles I’ve ever tasted, and the ice cream had a hint of corn’s sweetness but matched the truffles well.

Next, a truly over the top bread service: we had three separate baskets/plates of bread on the table. Crispy breadsticks about a foot or 18 inches long in a vase, a longboard plate of hot rolls in four or five flavors (salami and cheese was the most memorable) and a room temp basket of crusty white bread, all accompanied by the estate-grown and pressed olive oil. It was more fruity and had much less of a spicy character than the Spanish and the Californian olive oils that I’ve been using at home recently.

Calamari stuffed with spring onion and breadcrumbs served over a squid ragu followed. Tender squid, meltingly soft green onion, the breadcrumbs add a nice contrast in textures. The clam dish that arrived next was perhaps the best of the night: tender fresh pasta filled with shrimp (perhaps it was scallop mousse that bound them together, I’m not positive) topped with shelled Manilla clams, tiny and sweet, the broth in the bowl is clarified clam stock with ginger, black tea and parsley, and there is a single larger clam, about the size of a littleneck, on the halfshell as a garnish. Every element worked with everything else, the dish was balanced, perfectly seasoned, light but flavorful. I wish I had come up with it. (I know the picture is a little blurry. I'm a cook with a camera phone. Deal with it.)

Next came sheets of fresh egg pasta wrapped into cylinders around a base of a farmhouse-style fresh cheese topped with brunoise of roasted eggplant, zucchini and peppers, sauced with foamed buffalo’s milk and olive oil. A little thyme and marjoram. Simple, and well-executed. The produce is so good that a dish like this seems more complicated that it is while you’re eating it, because it has so much depth of flavor.

Entrees appeared next. Ellen does not eat quadrupeds (no beef, pork, lamb, rabbit, venison, etc. but fish and poultry are ok) so the kitchen gave her an Indian-spiced chicken breast with a yogurt sauce and some veg that she enjoyed. I, however, was happy to have a small square of tender pork belly with a crispy skin that I think might have been achieved with a blowtorch. Or not, I didn’t watch them cook it. In any case, it tasted great, fatty/crispy/tender all at the same time. Served with a smooth and refined lemon marmalade, a rich brown sauce I guessed was the reduced braising liquid and sweet roasted onion, nicely caramelized at the edges.

At this point, I could have thrown in the towel, but we still had a cheese course and two dessert courses to go. The cheese was nice, a selection of aged Italian cheeses of which the still-creamy-in-the-center goats milk was my favorite. The first dessert consisted of a small brioche roll with powdered sugar and a chilled martini glass of pistachio cream and lemon gelato. Delicious, light, palate-cleansing even. But the second dessert was the standout. The chef hails from Sicily, and he had, according to our server, attempted to put together the flavors of his home island in this dish. A few orange segments, topped with crushed almond and pistachio, orange gelato, a crisp orange chip, orange pound cake with almond liqueur, almond pastry cream. Wow.

Just when I thought I could not possibly go on, a selection of candies and “biscuits” showed up. This included a shot glass of espresso, coffee flavored pastry cream and some kind of coffee booze I couldn’t identify. Also watermelon gelee cups that were made with agar agar. The flavor was good but the texture off, almost a little plastic-y, and they were the only thing that hit our table that I did not like during the entire meal. The butter cookie was worth mentioning, just because the texture was so nice, crumbly but not dry. The chocolate-almond truffle-esque candy was nice as well, but made of milk chocolate and I much prefer dark chocolate.

I just realized I haven’t even mentioned the wine. Maybe I’ll let Ellen cover that.

Stupid smartcar.

After a challenging first week in class, the weekend arrived. Ellen and I decided to rent a car (she’s driving and I’m navigating) and drive up into the mountains, where the vineyards are. She first thought of going to Avellino, well-known for its wine, and we eventually ended up with a hotel reservation in Solofra, at the Solofra Palace Hotel and Spa. This is a quaint little town five km outside of Avellino. We got the hotel to make dinner reservations for us at the Michelin-starred restaurant in Feudi di San Gregorio. This is probably the best regarded winemaker in Campania, and the restaurant got rave reviews. All this sounds wonderful, a nice break from school.  

So we pick up the car on Friday afternoon, and hit the road. Italy has many virtues, but the presence of road signage is not among them. It got a little hairy, but we managed to avoid driving through Napoli and actually got on the correct autostrata. The GPS informed us that we were several km away from our hotel just as I spotted it, mere meters away. We should perhaps have paid more attention to this at the time, but as we had arrived at the hotel, we just got on with checking in, unpacking, etc. After the stressful drive, we decided to have dinner at the hotel rather than trying to find our way in the dark. It was uninspiring to say the least. Worst meal of the trip. Pasta undersalted, missing acid and a little crunchy. Fish badly overcooked. Wine oxidized so badly we sent it back.

Ellen with the Smartcar

As the next day was Saturday, I slept through breakfast. But Ellen and I decided to drive into Solofra to seek out lunch, since the hotel’s restaurant was so lackluster the night before. We jump in the Smartcar, fire up the GPS and keep an eye out for an open restaurant.

First, we meander through a thoroughly closed, nigh on abandoned zona industriale. Then we go around a traffic circle and do actually happen upon downtown Solofra. Which is similarly shut down. The only open businesses are bars, which serve only espresso, booze and possible some pastry items. We see a promising looking place, find a spot to park. Parking is… I’ll go with exciting. Though Ellen has wisely insisted on renting a car with an automatic transmission, the Smartcar behaves just like a manual whilst in neutral and reverse. So parallel parking on a hill while find this out was a challenge. But Ellen came through brilliantly: she didn’t hit any other cars and parked our car pretty close to the curb. Then we walk into the place that looked like a restaurant only to discover that it is just a nicer-looking bar, and that it doesn’t have any food.

At this point we decide to give up on Solofra and just go back to the hotel for lunch. Fire up the GPS, and we are off. This machine proceeds to lead us up hills, down hills, the wrong way down a one-way street. Into people’s driveways. If I hear the word “recalculating” again anytime soon, don’t hold me responsible for my actions.

The Smartcar, perhaps sensing our desperation, decides that it will no longer go into reverse. So, when we inevitably need to turn around, I hop out of the passenger seat and push the car backwards. This happens perhaps four or five times. Unfortunately, no video exists or we could be the next viral video. At least it was a small car.  Approximately an hour, perhaps 90 minutes later, we happen upon a couple of carabinieri and ask for directions. A couple of guys chatting with the cops, seeing our predicament, offer to lead us to our hotel. Which is perhaps eight minutes away.

Poolside at the Solofra Palace Hotel

We eat sandwiches and drink beers poolside at around three. I’ll admit, that Heineken tasted better than any I’ve ever had.  I do not recommend driving in southern Italy. And I wasn’t even the one driving.

Dinner at the winery, however, was fabulous. Details to follow. 

2500 irregular verbs.

the marina grande

After four days in busy Napoli, we took an hour-or-so taxi ride to Sorrento. After a brief multi-lingual haggle over the price of the cab, in which our new landlady tried to intervene on our behalf, we started unpacking in our new apartment. I would call it a relatively spartan student-level place, but it does have everything we really need. I’m probably more comfortable than Ellen, but she’s really doing well. I mentioned that we have everything we really need: we don’t have a washer, a dryer or an oven. It is on what I would call the fourth floor, but of course in Europe the first floor is “0” so it’s a bit of a hike up three flights. Probably good for me after all the pizza, pasta, gelato, etc.

Sorrento is small, old, quaint, touristy. The high tourist season is over, but there are still plenty of sun-seeking British, German and Scandinavian people about. It means that most people here speak at least a smattering of English, so I often end up speaking stilted Italian and they answer back in much more fluent English. But people seem to appreciate the attempt. 

School is school. Four hours a day of desperately trying to learn Italian, so I can then desperately try to understand the chefs who’ll be teaching me how to make all of the delicious things I’ve been eating. That’s what I try to keep in mind when I inevitably lapse into Spanish in the middle of a sentence. Or when our otherwise lovely conversation teacher let slip the fact that the Italian language has two thousand five hundred irregular verbs. At least I already know most of the food vocab.

Something fun I’ve noticed (and often discussed with Ellen) is how much of class is devoted to food. Separate vocab lessons about going to a restaurant, going to a bar, what you find on the table at a restaurant. Conversation class has be variously devoted to what we like to eat, what we like to cook, what the typical dishes from our countries are. We’ve gotten our teachers off on some great tangents too: a description of the traditional meal served at Easter vs. that at Christmas (Someone might recall the Feast of the Seven Fishes at Hook. Apparently that really goes down, at least on the coast).

Ellen at our first lunch in Sorrento

Class usually starts with the teacher asking about what we did the night before. This immediately devolves into a description of dinner, a chorus of restaurant recommendations. Then we move on to the whole conjugation of verbs/memorization of vocabulary thing. Not so terrible, especially when the view from school is of the marina grande. So class is over by one, and then we go off to lunch.