Category: Food & Wine

LOOKING AT LIFE. ROSÉ COLORED GLASSES.

rose colored glassesMONTEPULCIANO, Tuscany– OK the calendar says Fall. Late Fall. I checked. And the lazy November sun was punching in later and checking out earlier – every day. But! When that sun is out and about, so are we. We spend our days strolling about in short sleeves. And our nights sleeping with the windows wide open. And according to my Plant Diary, it was exactly like this last year at this same time. In Maine, the colors have run away and left us with shades of grey. But here in Umbria? Things are just starting to get their autumnal glow. When we got to Umbria on the 24th of October, I noted the left behind vines of recently harvested grapes were still rather green. The next week they went momentarily golden and now they are turning nut browns and drifting down to the still warm ground.

Almost insincere shades of lush bright green cover hillsides. And flowers mix with red vines climbing up and over walls in the village center. And there are bright blue skies overhead every day. It all puts me in high spirits maybe higher than on a summer’s day. I’m tempted to stay home and laze about. But it is just too nice. You have to be out. And coffee at “our local” is not a bad idea either so we’re off to the piazza for a soft launch into the day. So many people to meet and greet, so little time. This morning we saw at least Paulette, Susan, Mauro, Gigi, Biano, Adelmo and was that all? Light day but excellent.

the bellringer of Montepulciano, TuscanyToday we are blessing Montepulciano with our presence and buying a few Christmas presents while we are at it. The town is abuzz and people are in their Sunday best. Which is maybe as it should be since it is Sunday after all. Looks like there are more than a handful of End of Summer neighborhood festivals, a chestnut festival, public dinners (you can hear and smell the sizzle of sausages being grilled, mid-day bells ringing, there is accordion music in the air outside one festival. Way too many stores are open so our progress is slow as we roam up and down the steep, stone streets. We dropped in the Osteria di Borgo that Paulette spoke of in glowing terms, and it is way up at the apex of the town. The better to see your view, Montepulciano. One of a million vantage points with panoramic vistas here in this crows’ nest of a town. After awhile, incredibly, you just start to take the fabulous overlooks in Montepulciano for granted. An embarrassment of Tuscan riches? Yes, indeed.

And the best part? The crazy clock on the village tower says it is LUNCH TIME! And we are in Italy. And, and, we are eating outside. In November!

La dolce vita, in fatti.

so many good things to eat Italian and Tuscan style

THE GLASS IS HALF FULL . . . BUT NOT FOR LONG!

We had many things at the Osteria – including a rosé Prosecco that I really liked. But then, there really isn’t a bad Prosecco. Not in my unsophisticated way of looking at the world. I expect Prosecco to be good and it almost always is. But the cheese plate we had here and the ribollita WOW they were both real Dear Diary entries. Montepulciano is famous for its Vino Nobile but they love to Say Cheese here, too. And we had an especially nice collection on our sampler plate, and the sauces to dress them with were serious fun, too. Green, red, mahogany brown, they were representatives from all over the color wheel. The green pepper sauce you could sort out for yourself but the almost purple black one, I had to taste it several times before I caught its onion origins. There was one spicy, spicy one I really liked but really never pinpointed the principal ingredients. The ribollita soup, on the other hand – it was brilliantly obvious what it was made of. Perfect texture, not just a big old mush, which I also like just fine but this one was visually attractive with bright primary colors clearly defined the full range of the Vegetable Kingdom. Did I say it was great? Hey. Hey, get your own bowl!

write on stew. right on about ItalyHUGS AND KISSES

To hug or not to hug? Being from the Midwest, it is a curious thing to me – all this hugging. When I was growing up on the Great Plains, physical contact was pretty much limited to football practice. In my life to date, I’ve gotten along fine without an overabundance of social hugging. Well, I think I have. Who knows if I would have been a better or a worse person with more or less hugging?. Even though I’m a native of a relatively hug free environment I’m finding I’m rather OK with all the hugging going on around here. Maybe the times are changing. Is it me or are people, even in middle America and New England, huggier that they use to be? Hard to put a stake in the ground and compare. Here, in central Italy, it is really almost not all that optional. You may have noticed. You see an Italian friend, their eyes light up, their arms open wide and the next thing you know you are sure enough hugging. And there is the option when a handshake becomes, of all things, the double kiss option.

So, now look. . . if you are going to get sucked into this whirlpool of hugs and air kisses I say you may as well do it Right. Literally. See the kissee’s head? You go to the right. Your right. Airkiss. Then go left. Repeat airkiss. But it all starts to YOUR right. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t go to the right first, but it does throw everyone off a bit. So get out there and practice, practice, practice. Kiss. Kiss. XXOO

See you in Italy,

Stew

PICK A LITTLE, TALK A LITTLE, PICK A LITTLE, TALK A LITTLE, PICK, PICK, PICK

olive picking time in central Italy
PANICALE, Umbria – The sounds of chickens clucking, sheep baaing, happy olive pickers helloing back and forth mix and mingle in the air around us. It was foggy first thing in the morning but now the sky is robin’s egg blue. Could it be olive harvest time in Italy? I think so. We’d bolted our morning ration of cappuccino in Masolino’s this morning and walked out of the village gates and down the white road to our day’s work in Elida and Guenter’s olive grove. Oh, the happy pickers may be from the far corners of Portugal, Germany, Maine, San Francisco, Australia and Vermont – but these silver leafed trees with their coal black fruit are Umbria at her finest. Strange, that we are all stranieri here but Guenter has been trained in olive lore by local friends. And at least we had a plan. On our walk here this morning we saw what can happen without one. A wide eyed older man we know had a wooden ladder set up in the road outside his house, a net below it about the size of his shirt. And he was up the tree with his cane, beating away with a vengeance. By late afternoon when we walked back, there was an olive oil slick where he’d rained fruit down on the road and the piddling traffic had “pressed” his olives for him. Looked like I’d parked an old Studebaker there for the day.
Aussie up a tree in Italy. and he's a pickin'
So, foreign or not, we certainly were miles ahead of at least one local. He’s locally famous, mostly for his prize winning collection. Of 10,000 or so of those tiny liquor bottles like you get on airlines? Steve from San Francisco said maybe the man only needed enough olive oil for one of those bottles. Allora. But what a day we picked to pick. Kids, dogs, nets, ladders, plastic cartons, plastic rakes, let’s go get us some olives!

HOW OLIVES ARE COAXED OUT OF THE TREE. THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.

In this plan, you spread nets under a tree and reach what you can with your rake or your hand. If you have a rake, it is nothing exotic, just an orange plastic one like you would take to the beach in your yellow plastic bucket. Some rakes were modified to be longer by strapping the orange plastic rake onto a stick with some silver gaffers tape. When you can’t reach any more, even with a stick, someone shinnies up the tree or grabs a ladder and we keep on picking and grinning until everyone agrees That’s close enough. Black olives, green olives, pruning sheers Guenter left up the tree last spring, whatever. Get’em down, we’re only going up that tree and setting up this net the one time.
rivers of italian olives
When you are done with a tree you move the nets around, pouring rivers of olives to a low spot in the net. You lift up that part of the net where they’ve accumulated, slip the net and the olives into a big red plastic box and slip the net out. Vwalaala. All pretty low tech and pretty obvious. So, there you are with a red plastic box of olives, some sticks, some leaves. Sort out the big pieces of extraneous non olive stuff and get ready to move to the next tree. And you’ll want your net so you will pull up stakes and pack it up like a careful giant taking down a circus tent for regular sized people.
NET WORTH, ITALIAN OLIVE HARVEST
OLIVE PICKING TIME. THIS IS WHEN YOU FIND OUT WHO YOUR TRUE FRIENDS ARE

People come from near and far to do this. You’ve read Tom Sawyer I suppose? Everyone has a story of who they can get to help pick. The only topic of conversation in town. And lots of the pickers are of foreign persuasion these days. It’s basically a math problem. Every one here has lots of olive trees and everyone is harvesting at more or less the same time so everyone is scaring up anyone they can find. Every body is booked and all of those olives have got to come down. Now. Before they fall down by themselves and stay hidden in the grass under their drooping limbs. They say olives are no good after they’ve been on the ground for any time at all. So every year, about when daylight savings time tells you to Fall Back, you start picking olives like mad before the nice fall weather goes away and the winter rains begin. You just don’t pick in the rain.

Maria serves up olive harvest bounty
WILL WORK FOR OIL

This was grand. Better than a picnic at the beach. I’ve picked olives on cold, dark and windy December days and I’ll take seventy, sunny and November days – any day. Big fun yakking to the other monkeys up the same trees. And seeing the results of what we’ve done. Our net worth as it were. And of course the owners of the olives have to feed you at some point if they want you to keep on keeping on. At lunch the first day they have covered a table for 12 with salads, pots of soup and a great Portuguese version of Shepards’ Pie called empadas. Add in breads, and cheeses and bottles of wines, waters and of course olive oil and you have a fine reward for an long morning’s exercise. We’re not nearly as productive after lunch. But the days are short and you pick till dark. And then walk home happy and tired.

After dinner that night, I asked Midge what she wanted to do for the rest of the evening. She yawned “Take a bath. Go to bed”. “Sounds pretty good to me” I said stretching and kicking out of my shoes. Pushing up my sleeve I show her my watch. 7:15. PM. Ye Gads. Bed still sounds good. That olive picking is a pretty full body experience. A good day. And a good night to all. See you in the morning. When we’ll do it all over again. Like any good Italian opera, this one isn’t over till the fat lady sings.

Happy Holidays and

See you in Italy,

Stew

AND NOW A DOUBLE LA LA RAVE: LA FOCE AND LA PORTA.

PANICALE, Umbria – A hour in the garden, a walk in the clouds. Work, work, work. Garden, garden, garden. A phone rings. Oh no, Paulette can’t come. While I am talking to her on the phone, I see Steve and family in person waving down at me from above the garden wall. Goodbye Paulette, hello Steve. As soon as we get inside Midge is coming in the other door. An hour later, with the door to Via del Filatoio open to let Steve and family out, Elida and Guenter are coming in. Too fun. Our first evening is shaping up nicely. And tomorrow? We have a plan. And that is where the raves began.
La Foce outside Monteciello in Tuscany

HELLO, MONTECCHIELLO.

MONTECCHIELLO, Tuscany – Hard not to rave and rave about this lovely side trip we launched into our first full day on the ground. How have we missed this jewel? We’ve read all the books about it. Its right in our neighborhood. 20 minutes away? Past CianocianoTerme near Montepulciano.

We are just such Philistines that despite entreaties from left and right we had not ever been to La Foce. Have you been there? If you have you know the Iris Origo connection. And most importantly, have you stopped to eat on your way to La Foce at La Porta? Add in a summery summery end of autumn day and good friends and you have the ingredients for quite a day. We loved every sun-drenched minute.

We felt we knew the Villa La Foce a bit because it is annotated and documented in several books. One book related to it would spin us off into another and it’s a very rich and interested combination of stories. We’d read Iris Origo books including The Merchant of Prato, and War in the Val d’Orcia and we have the big coffee table photo books of it, so it is strange we hadn’t hopped over there. But it was high on this trip’s list and we made it happen Day One.
La Foce gardens
The story of how this massive, landscaped fantasyland villa and more than 10,000 acres of farm can to be is well told in all the books about Iris’s life. And what a life she had. She was half English, half American and pretty much all Rich. Her mother owned the most important Medici villa in Florence and Iris rebelled a bit against that and went Back to Nature in this farm life she chose for herself. Sort of. It was a farm but a fairly gilded farm. The gardens and grounds were spared no expense and are palatial at least. Every color plant and tree frames views that were embellished and enhanced and perfected over the years off into the distance as far as you can see. Which they could do because they owned from the villa to infinity. And beyond.

One of the lame reasons we hadn’t seen La Foce is that it is only open for two showings a week. 3 pm Wednesday, followed by 4 pm Wednesday. 10 euro ticket and worth 10 and the price of a plane ticket from wherever you may be.

LA PORTA: THE DOOR TO TRUE HAPPINESS
But IF you need more motivation, treat yourself to lunch at La Porta before La Foce. No, really. Go ahead. You deserve it. Like the name implies it is right at the village gate. Montecchiello’s gate. We were outside bonding with the sweeping views of the Sienese crete from the terrace overlooking the valley. The stone terrace itself seems carved out of the old old city gate. Most excellent position and it was wonderful to have sunglasses and or floppy hats almost required by the brilliance of the sun. But the food outshone even this. Paulette had gone on and on about it to us our first night. So when Steve, reading from a scrap of paper, said “Aldo wrote this name here . . . some place named La Porta. . . ?” we said Heck yes, lets get there already. Complete out of body experience. The staff was so cool they let us sample around and really enjoy it all. We ordered all three of the antipasta specials they mentioned and they brought us each a small plate and we dived in. Really and truly have no idea what the names of all the cheeses were but lets just call them Most Excellent Cheeses. One was a super fresh new cheese, almost cottage cheese consistency (Steve later set me straight: burrata is its name and it is a “young” mozzarella). There was a big plate of that surrounded by diced red tomatos. Too good to be true. Another plate was all fresh greens and bits of a glorious something cheese and the last plate was warmed pecorino morbida and Cinta Sienese proscutto. The ham from that white belted black pig is legendary in this region and totally will put you off all others. They did the sheep cheese here like brie and spread it on bread and we fought ever so politely over the scraps and crumbs on every plate.
La Porta restaurant outside La Foce
And the staff here at La Porta didn’t bat an eye when we said we wanted pasta samplers as well as mix and match anti pastas. So all of us got plates that included pici and duck, pici and cinghiale (they were so embarrassed. This was to be on papparadelle) and ravioli stuffed with artichokes.

ITS ALL TOO WONDERFUL

One of my favorite meals in decades of eating in Italy. The day and the company and the location had something to do with it but this was some fine recreational dining. The local white wine was off the chart as well. I saw Steve look up from some stellar food, wash it down with the wine and look back at their glass and not wanting to interrupt a conversation in full swing at the other end of the table just mouth What IS this? I’ll ask him later if he remembers finding out the name of that heaven in a glass HEY STEVE. Ok, he doesn’t remember either. But what I call it is Mightyfine. Just like the whole day. Worth the whole trip. And we are just getting warmed up what with this being merely the first FULL day.

The Wiley Traveler vs Really Slow Food:Food she found crawling out from under a leaf in our Umbrian Garden

UMBRIA, Italy— Escargot have always intrigued me. My first memories of them are warm. Everything is warm. I remember it being summer in Maine and sitting on the porch, the rough wood under my outstretched legs and the warm sun cutting shadows across the tops of those baby legs. I remember bare feet and my Aunt Ginny sitting in a chair above me, laughing. Then my mother would back out of the screen door calling something into the house and carrying a dish in each hand. And I was excited. Somehow, even at six, I new that escargot was crazy. For starters we ate them off the special round white dishes that were for boiled artichokes only! Then just to add to the mayhem we prodded them out of their shells using the minature ceramic ears of sweet corn shaped prongs that were only for, uh – ears of sweet corn! Now add to this that my big brother has told me that these little chewy buttery bites were SNAILS?! Do Mom and Dad know? They’re really giving us snails? Is that ok? I just kept my mouth shut and hoped they didn’t notice what they had done while I savored the warm melty garlicky snack.

ITALIAN ESCARGOT?

Flash forward to Italy almost 20 years later and here I am after a few spring rainstorms with a garden teeming with lumache (snails, in Italian). They must be rappelling down our back wall. After a rain they are everywhere. Chrunch. Opps. Another one bites the dust. I have heard from people in town that you can prepare them, and again I am intrigued by these cute little buggers- I can prepare snails myself can’t I? Well, lets just see about that.

I had thought about DIY snails for days when it became necessary to sweep the garden steps of the drifts of Wisteria petals; but in every step corner are groups of lumache and without thinking I grab a bowl and don’t stop until the bowl is full and I have about 45 snails. It’s only then that I realize I have no earthly idea what to do with them. I leave the bowl and race up to the computer to figure something out.

WHO DOES A WEBSITE ABOUT COOKING SNAILS, ANYWAY?

There are actually lots of websites with recipes for lumache. And they all agree that before being cooked they must ’be prepared.’ This involves a fasting, so the snails can get any bad guck out. Normally this takes around two weeks, but as my snails have been in a garden without pesticides it will only take six day. ONLY six days! Ok, didn’t I tell you these suckers are crazy?

“The first three days the snails are kept in a white non-acid box with drainage and fed only dill and thyme for flavor.” Well, after trying wooden fruit boxes and baskets that the snails keep climbing out of; I find a site that says that breathable plastic is acceptable and easy to clean. So I settle on a plastic cutting board covering a plastic strainer and set on top of a flower stand. Ok, now that the escape routes have been covered what about that dill and thyme- ok yes – for escargot that’s great, but these are lumache and my garden is filled with sage and rosemary- so I guess that’ll do.

ALL COMFY IN THERE? MORE HERBS, ANYONE?

For three days I take the snails, wash the strainer and each snail individually and give them more herbs to eat (I feel slightly like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, but I placate myself with the knowledge that otherwise the cats get them or they’ll be thrown out with the garden clippings). From the 4th-6th day I continue the daily washing, but stop including herbs.

Then comes Sunday- the day of reckoning. I am following the traditional garlic and butter snail recipe, but can someone tell me why something so ultimately simple has so many steps?

First, the snails are boiled for 3 minutes. Then you remove the meat from the shell (interestingly most of the meat still holds the spiral of the shell). The meat is then left for an hour in cold water saturated with salt, while boiling further disinfects the shells.

During this time I prepare the “Court Bouillon”. (Editor’s note: there must, must be a reason for this title. Do not know what it is. The Wiley Traveler is traveling right now. Will ask her to explain the royal terminology later) I will be simmering the snails in a mixture of: white wine, water, carrots, onions, garlic, shallots, sage, rosemary hot peppers and the kitchen sink, for an hour. The mixture is beautiful to look at and lovely to smell and I wish I knew something else to do with it, besides boiling snails.
BUTTER UP!

While it is simmering (mind you this is now onto the 3rd almost 4th hour) I am creating the garlic butter, by kneading finely chopped garlic, shallots and Dijon mustard into sticks of butter. Once that is done I place a small amount of the butter inside each of the empty shells that are now on a cookie sheet. I then place a single lumaca in each shell and with each one I realize too late that I have pushed too much butter in the shell and that I have no real idea which one should go in which and the butter keeps squidging out everywhere. But once I finally get them all in I cap each one with more butter. The tray is then placed into the oven (along side crusty bread I have toasting and vegetables I have roasting) for all of 3 or 4 minutes, long enough to make the butter bubble and the kitchen smell like heaven.

And then after 6 days and 6 hours I sit down and eat my snails. I’m on our terazza in Italy, not our porch in Maine. And I am not laughing as I take the first bite- I am praying that it was in some way worth all the time and effort- and feeling as though my crazy gene has won and understanding why they cost so much at restaurants and here goes the first bite… and… they’re good. And yes, after a week of preparation they are slightly anticlimactic, and I need the ooohs and ahhhs I get a few weeks later from my family to really send the point home; but they are good, really good in fact. I wish they were a little chewier but I’m probably the only one who wants anything chewier. And I think the step of saturating the snails in salt is a bit much for something that takes on flavor so easily, but come on; garden snails? Butter? Garlic? How wrong can you go?!

Whether I’m telling friends in the States or in Panicale they look at me like I’m nuts, the Italians think I’m saying the wrong thing and desperately search for what I could possibly be going on about; but you know, it feels good to use our city garden for sustenance. In the fall it’s figs and in the spring it’s Lumache and although you can tell me I’ve lost my mind no one’s gonna tell me that that’s not the way it should be!

Wiley

THE MIGHTY SNAILS OF SIENA
This is a photo of the big decorative plate that hangs over the mantle in our kitchen. We are suckers for the colors of the Contrada Chiocciola in Siena. The neighborhood of the snail. This is the symbol that our friends at Spannocchia rally around for the madcap, bareback horse race through the Campo every summer. When I think of all the names I could imagine wearing on a sweatshirt, I think Panthers, Tigers, Broncos, Cowboys, Patriots. Even the Mighty Ducks. But The Snails? Don’t know if I would ever come up with that. I will admit snails really make a plate.

See you in Italy,

Stew

FESTA DELLA NAZIONE?

OK, Where’s the Party? My place?

PANICALE, Umbria— That’s what they say today’s holiday is. Festa Nazionale. Off to a funny non-typical start for a holiday in Umbria. Well, at least one in June. Its dark and chilly, but the clouds parted a bit late in the afternoon and sure enough a tent went up in the piazza. They were selling local olive oil. Wiley says Katia’s family’s oil is part of the brand that gets sold with the town logo on it (the painting by Perugino of St Stephen). We got a tin of it for our Italian American neighbor Carlo, back in Maine. Always take presents that are heavy and/or breakable. Our one firm, unbendable Vreeland Family Travel Rule.

We are so slow on the uptake. The festive carved watermelons in town might have been a hint? It appeared to us that the one tent in the piazza was the sad sum total of the Festa. But some patient person took pity on us, took us strangers in a strange land, by the hand and pointed out there were galleries and cantinas open down every alley in town. How did we miss that? Always surprises us when these fun places open up. Day in and day out they present blank, ancient wooden faces to their alleys and we mindlessly walk by. Nope nothing there. Nothing to see here folks. Keep moving. Then, a couple times a year they unbar those doors, swing them open and start slinging wine and bruschetta at you in one and olive oil and local fagiolini (broad beans) in another and so on right around the town. Some are old wine storage places with ancient wine presses or wooden casks left behind for ambience. Some are proper pastel painted galleries with modernistic Italian lighting in their arched ceilings and views over gardens. Totally changes the feel of the town in the Where Are We sense. Once the light bulb went on in our tiny brains we knew where all these cantinas often are and passed ourselves from one to the next buying bottles of wine, jars of saffron, more wine. One place had a fish-based bruschetta which sounds rather odd but tasted rather divine. Benefits of an open mind and, in this case, open mouth. We came, we tried, we liked!

What a fun and revealing trip around town. Can we really be this blissfully unobservant? Our house sits between two tiny stone streets. We get use to using our top street. Its where our main doors are, its just the logical path of least resistance and makes the smoothest, easiest entry. But we do have an entry on the lower back street, our back alley in Panic Alley, Umbria. The trip we took through our lower street today to see all the local products on display was a real eye opener. Something has happened here. Can’t fool me. We looked away for a minute and What the Heck, we done got gentrified down there. I’d heard that Patrizia (of elegant restaurant Lillo Tattini, right on the piazza) had a rental place in town, just didn’t know where it was. Today the massive doors that close it off from the world are open and it is chic, chic, chic. But what am I talking about, the whole street is looking great. Che shock. I think it is our downstairs Roman neighbors relentless application of flowers and more flowers followed by liberal application of lace curtains and polished wood doors. We have one double set of doors there and we are polished wood and lace curtains and our garden looks ok from that angle too now that I look up at it. But Massimo and Stefania da Roma really put us to shame with red geraniums spilling out of every door and window opening. When we bought our house our “door” on that street was a mangled mess of old wood sort of shielding a dirt floored stack of moldy junk from view. Sort of. A place where soft hearted neighbors slipped in plates of food for the wildcat swatter residents of Casa Margherita. Not now. Less Cat. More Chic. The things you can find. Right in your own back alley.

WATCHING THE HOME FIRES BURN

Anyway, what with all this activity we shill-ied and shall-ied a bit too long and Masolino’s was fully booked so we decided to stay in and nosh. Salads, cheeses, bread and the Wiley Traveler’s outrageously fine escargot. So successful and tasty and unusual that, since it has been raining off and on all day, we went out in the garden and scooped up several dozen more latent escargots candidates (lumache) to start the next slow food event! Our garden isn’t big but it is like a game preserve for the local lumache. Big honkers too. See typical Garden Variety Big Game next to euro bill in photo for size. They are all that big. Luckily this game is somewhat slow moving, so hunting and tracking them is about my speed. The preparation is the really amazingly slow part of the process. Six days from snail to snack! Wiley is writing the story of the preparation, but now that I think of it she’s being slow too, isn’? Hmm. The ultimate Slow Food, indeed?

We settled down for a fine night by the woodstove, playing Scopa!, teaching my brother and his wife the fine points of this fun Italian card game. And somehow . . . it made us a bit thirsty and we sampled all the wines we had carried around from the festa until oh no. All gone. How did that happen?

As early sixties writer, H. Allen Smith might say “These photos illustrate the type of work the Vreeland brothers do”

Until next time,

See you in Italy!

Stew