La Jolla Village News!

“Prepkitchen is all about the slow fast-food,” was a great feature written byAdriane Tillman highlighting Prepkitchen’s commitment to “local, fresh food that is cooked simply and artfully.”

Excerpt
Kassel and Johnston began brainstorming the idea to open an auxiliary kitchen after they grew frustrated at not being able to find healthy, good food in a hurry to accommodate their own busy schedules. “We thought, ‘Why can’t we get Whisknladle food to take home?’” Kassel said. “That planted the seed.” So Kassel and his crew set up the “prep” part of Whisknladle kitchen at the samell café to offer made-to-order dishes like gnocchi with kitchen-braised beef in a tomato sauce to take home or eat at the indoor bar or outdoor patio.”

Click here to read the entire article!

We drove to the top of the mountain to an agriturismo by the name Le Volte. Like most other agriturismos, Le Volte is a self-sustaining farm that produces most of its own food. This one in particular is 16 Hectares and specializes in olive oil, apples and seasonal vegetables. We opted out of yet another olive oil tasting having had several before and instead, opted into the kitchen to spend the day with Anna, the resident cook.

Anna was a blast but very apologetic for not being a classically trained chef. She could not comprehend why we would want to learn from her instead of a professional chef. My response was simple. Italian cooking starts at home and most chefs first learn from their mama. We walked their garden and harvested a large squash (zucca), some eggplant and fresh herbs to cook with. It took us 3 hours but we prepared a lunch feast. Squash puree, gnocchi pasta baked with tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil and parmesan, spaghetti with braised squash, grilled squash, eggplant rolled around mozzarella with basil and baked in tomato sauce, eggplant “meatballs” fried in EVOO and then real beef meatballs (polpetine) also fried in EVOO and then baked on top of lemon wedges. For dessert, potato donuts with sugar and cinnamon, also, fried in EVOO. All very good and despite what it sounds like, very fresh and healthy.

Helping us in the kitchen was Joanna, a mother of 3 and transplant to the region from Maryland 12 years ago after falling in love and marrying a local pastry chef, and Mario, a very jovial Unkle Fester-like guy who unfortunately, did not buy into Western hygiene and smelled like what I imagine the inside of a well-worn leather-rode glove smells like. Prior to sitting down for lunch, Ryan and I decided to play Mario roulette at the table by sitting down and seeing who Mario would sit next to. Yours truly won and I spent the first course of the meal pseudo holding my breath before I decided to just deal with it.

After cooking for 3 hours and eating and drinking for 2, we were all tired and in need of some stimulation or a nap. We had initially planned on driving 2 hours away to a Buffalo farm that specializes in the traditional Buffalo Mozzarella, but the thought of spending that much time in the car to see a big cow seemed torturous. Instead, Carlo our host suggested a hike to Punto Campanele. Little Bell Point was a little more than I bargained for but this 45 minute hike led us down to the farthest South West point on the peninsula and overlooked both directions. To the South was a beautiful bay and to the West with the sun slowly setting behind it, was the large silhouette of the Island of Capri. At the risk of sounding corny, watching the sun set today put some closure on this adventure.

While we still have tomorrow’s drive back to Rome and a few tourist stops along the way, namely, the ruins of Pompeii, the educational portion of this trip is now essentially over. I will let my thoughts on the trip at large marinate for a day or so before I try and put it all together, but then again, I will surely find myself with lots of time on my hands on that long 17 hour trip back home. Until then, those of you that have taken the time to read these “journal” entries, thank you for sharing this journey with us. We are tired, homesick but very eager to return to work and to apply what we have learned.

Ciao…

We left the chaos of Napoli behind and headed just South to Sorrento. For those of you for whom this is unfamiliar, present company included, this area of Italy is impressively beautiful. Steep and lush hillsides dotted with old palaces, forts and gardens, windy narrow roads and some of the bluest water I have ever seen. For a brief while sitting overlooking a small port sipping espresso in the Mediterranean sun, I felt like I was on vacation.

We are staying in the guest house of a local family that has been here for several generations. The patriarch of the family, a retired boat captain in his 70′s, spends his mornings hunting for quail and his afternoons tending to his garden. This small estate, like so many others here, has beautiful lush gardens which evoke an Eden-like sense of plant fertility. Here alone, there is an apple tree, oranges, pomelos, pomegranates, kiwis, grapes, olives and of course, the aromatic lemons which give birth to lemoncello, the sweet yellow liquor. Carlo, the eldest son and our host and tour guide for today and tomorrow, makes a small batch of lemoncello, olive oil and even wine from fruit grown in this very garden. I hope they realize how lucky and special this part of the world is. I could definitely see myself happy living in a place like this (Don’t worry Lex).

After settling in, we walked down to the marina for a seafood lunch.
In an effort to be polite, I ate a few fresh local anchovies (ok, but
2 was enough to not draw attention), an octopus salad (good, but I prefer raw, ceviche or Spanish style with garlic and spices) and a great dish of Spaghetti Vongole with garlic, white wine and local clams. This plate of pasta was so good that I would endure 2 more anchovies just to eat it.

After lunch, we drove over the mountain to the south to the town of Positano. Twice before, I had heard from people that Positano was their favorite place in Italy. While I do not completely share their sentiment, I can understand why. Tucked into the hills, this beautifully preserved town snakes its way along the Southern face of the mountain range and reminds me of Santorini, Greece. It is no wonder then that both Positano recommendations came from couples. I have every intention of bringing my wife one day. Carlo, coincidentally, is friends with the son of the owner of Hotel Pietro. This Relais & Chateaux property is voted year after year the best and most beautiful hotel in Italy and top 10 in the world. We were given a jaw dropping all-access look and I’m blown away by its beauty. I couldn’t come close to affording a room even in the “off” season but a boy can dream.

From there, we continued on to Amalfi which is sadly overrun by tourists and there for a nick-nack souvenir shop and gelateria for every 5 people. But, I can say that I have been there and now cross it off my list. Tomorrow we have a cooking lesson with a local chef and then will be heading inland to a Buffalo farm famed for their real Buffalo milk mozzarella.

Hasta la pasta…

Arrived to Naples in good time. Let me just get this off my chest; Naples is ugly, dirty and very seedy. Driving here was like playing Frogger, dodging cars, scooters and pedestrians whom don’t seem to respect traffic laws. I am very relieved to have found a parking garage and ditch the car for
the day.

Our hotel is quite nice and peaceful and definitely sheltered from the chaotic streets. We have also opted to ditch the camera for the day to try and not stick out so much, but that won’t be so easy with Ryan. For one reason or another, our guide for the day has had to postpone and we find ourselves on our own in Naples of all places. No use sulking and It’s now mid day so were going to venture out to find some lunch…

We walked the city for several hours through the tight and crowded corridors of shops and street side vendors. The only real highlights so far have been the small seafood vendors with various live species (octopus, lobster, eel, shrimp…) and several others so fresh they were still stiff with rigor mortis. The other highlight has been the pizza which has so far been spectacular.

It’s Sunday and 90% of shops are closed and we now find ourselves camping out in the relative safety of our hotel. Having been held up in the hotel room for hours, I now understand the Italian’s passion for racing. Everything on TV is racing, cars, motorcycles, boats and even scooters. I kid not, there is a circuit of people who competitively and professionally race mopeds much like mine. Perhaps my little 125cc Buddy in racing red has a home after all.

Having reached a new level of boredom, we decided to give Naples a second chance. Ryan and I were on a mission to find a bar playing American Football. Said mission took us to the outer limits of the downtown area and ended in failure. However, all was not lost because Naples came to life after dark and somehow, strangely, I felt safer walking around and there seemed to be more people walking the streets. Like most women, she looked better with a few drinks and in the dark. J/K Every street side cafe and bar was packed with people of all ages out for a coffee and half pack of cigarettes. While still not my favorite city in Italy, it did in all fairness, have its charm.

Back again in the hotel we’ve managed to find some football, and although on a delay and in Italian, it’s still football. Tomorrow, we leaved the city to the outskirts of Campania and I can’t wait.

Arrivederci…
- AK

Today marked the beginning of the 3rd and final leg of our trip.

We spent the morning with Johnny touring around the Lazian countryside. We began by visiting a larger more commercial (by their standards), cheese-maker. He and his sons run a small meat and cheese shop that seemed quite the happening place while we were there. Their claim to fame is that their cheese has been to outer space. Story has it that they met an Italian astronaut and sent him up to the international space station with some of their Pecorino. Sounds a little far-fetched but they had the framed newspaper article to prove it!

Their cheeses were great as was their fresh ricotta, but very different than yesterday’s. They pasteurize their milk prior to cooking it again (re-cotta (cooked)) and it seemed to take some of the sheepy-ness out of the cheese. I hate to admit it but by 11 a.m., I was on my 2nd glass of wine and that would set the tone for the rest of the day.

Post mid-morning snack, we managed to find an olive grove that was mid-harvest (olive growers don’t like to harvest during or just after rain). An old wives tale has it that it’s the easiest time to spread disease. Anyhow, this producer, was a joint effort of two brothers and their father who looked like a really swollen character from a Tin Tin novel. Their little farm was prized with best Olive oil by Slow Food just 2 years ago. We helped harvest one tree with the little sand rake-like contraptions hooked up to compressed air, which slapped the olives off of the trees onto netting that they laid on the floor. Fun and interesting for about 5 minutes but seemed like really back-breaking work. I think I preferred picking them by hand.

Post pick, we returned to Casperia to Johnny’s drinking club for an overwhelming spread of local meats, cheeses and of course wine. Shaved fennel with citrus, pine nuts and bottarga (dried fish roe), assorted pig meats, and cheeses of varying degrees of stinkyness. One we decided, smelled and tasted like jockstrap, but it was nothing a little local honey couldn’t cure. After all this, it’s no surprise I found myself napping (passed out) again in front of the fire place for 2 hours midday.

Around 5, we hooked up with Paola. She is another one of these unbelievably talented people that grow some of their food, press their own olive oil and even make their own wine (not a good thing in this case. It was a merlot & nebiolo blend that tasted like cranberry pomegranate juice with alcohol and tiny grains of tannic sandpaper that mucked around my gums with every sip) Being the polite alcoholic that I am, I drank a good deal of it with a smile on my face.

Her agriturismo looked more like an animal rescue from outside (I counted at least 7 dogs and 4 cats) but one look at her kitchen and I knew she meant business. All white marble, oversized prep-table in the middle surrounded by all the culinary gadgets one would need to produce serious food. We made 4 pastas, classic ricotta and spinach ravioli, a chestnut and ricotta ravioli, potato gnocchi with a veal and pork flavored tomato sauce, and pici cacio peppe, which is officially now after having had it twice on this trip, my favorite pasta. This one is stretched by hand like giant rubber bands, and then rolled and then stretched some more, until you end up with misshapen, long, rounded noodles. The dish itself is simply great with Parmegiano and cracked black pepper. Only a little bit of pasta water was used to make the “sauce.” The dish is simplicity at its absolute best. We also made a braised chicken dish with her farm’s chickens (no, I did not slaughter it) with stewed tomatoes, olives and peppers. It too, while not the most visually appealing dish, was bursting with flavor.

Needless to say, we completely overate, but my new 4-5 lbs is simply sympathy weight for my pregnant wife.

Tomorrow, we leave the country side for the “mean” streets of Napoli.

World’s best pizza and espresso, here I come…

Our rendezvous today was with an Englishman Johnny, who fell in love with Italy and with an Italian woman 27 years ago and never left. He is the 4th such person we have met that has been sucked into the slow food culture and lifestyle of the Italian countryside. In addition to being a culinary tour guide, he is a food/travel writer, olive oil expert and according to him, a sculptor as well. We met up with a friend of his who runs an agriturismo. These are state subsidized B&B’s that produce food of some sort; cattle, produce, wine, olive oil, cheese…

We had a delightful lunch from produce picked merely 15 minutes prior to eating. Zucchinni with balsamic and pine nuts, local cheeses with house made jam, Orichiette pasta with a cauliflower puree and parmesan cream and then a simple salad of arugula, cabbage, apple and almonds. For dessert was a freshly whipped Sabayon. We of course had some local red wine “Unknown” and espresso. After a few laps around the garden to digest the food, and a shot of their house made bitters as a digestif, we headed off to a well respected olive mill.

Traditionally, Lazio and more specifically, Sabine where we are, is a poor part of the country. Most growers do not have their own mills, but instead take their olives to the local press. Here, we got to see the very high-tech process of extracting olive oil and we were able to taste the olive oil just seconds old. It was fresh and intense, but Ryan and I agree so far that we far prefer the oil from Carlo in Tuscany among others we have tasted. However, we’ll just keep that to ourselves.

From here, we ventured to the foothills of Sabine to a small house, where a woman has gained notoriety for making incredible, fresh Ricotta. She was a tough woman, farming the estate as well as responsible for her herd of 400 sheep from whose milk her Ricotta is made from. She has a piercing glare and could be a very beautiful almost Demi Moore-like woman with a little work, shaved armpits and a bra. But we weren’t there as talent scouts for the next Ms. Lazio, we were there for her Ricotta. She only produces a very tiny amount and just watching her and waiting drove me mad. It requires a great deal of patience which I do not possess, but the pay off is worth it. Creamy, fresh and unmistakably goat, this unpasteurized cheese, like most others we’ve had, was out of this world.

Our B&B for the next 2 nights is in the medieval town of Casperia. This town, like so many others, speaks about a time when all towns and regions where in a perpetual state of warfare. It’s built into a rocky mountaintop and has only 1 entrance. It too, like San Denato in Poggio, is fake-like deserving to be in the next Lord of the Rings. Bad news is no cars inside the village and the B&B is at a highpoint, so we had to carry our bags up the narrow stepped streets. Good news is, I didn’t pack like a girl like Ryan, who brought with him a small pharmacy and clothes for all seasons, just in case.

I find myself at the moment with an hour to kill resting by an oversized medieval fireplace before our evening outing. I took the nap of naps…

Post nap, we went to Johnie’s little Enoteca which rightly so, he calls more of a drinking club than a bar. We arrived in American fashion, early before the locals, but slowly but surely, expats from different countries trickled in for good food, good wine and English conversation. After a few glasses of wine and some more of that pungent sheep’s milk Ricotta, we walked down the small narrow ancient steps of Casperia to a small pizzeria at the foot of the fortress. We were greeted by a large jovial man with a Bin Ladenesque S&P beard. He was the proud chef and owner.

Dinner started with a painfully delicious (why didn’t we think of that) spread of crispy flatbread, garbanzo beans in olive oil with celery and chili flakes as well as some beans with olive oil and garlic. There was also some finely diced and sautéed mushrooms with all sorts of innards like liver, heart, kidney…but that didn’t even seem to be an acquired taste b/c the local we were with skipped right over it. The main course was a giant pizza baked in their wood-burning oven. This pizza was long and oval shaped and broken into different sections each with different flavors. I can’t definitively say it’s the best pizza I have ever had but if it wasn’t, it was certainly up there. Arturo’s coal fired pizza on Houston Street in NY still holds a place in my heart.

Dinner was great and made even better by the fact that we shared this great meal with Mary and Mary, two Irish women from Dublin, friends for the last 20 years and here on a cooking expedition. If I was to try and find a common theme to the best meals we’ve had here, it’s the genuine spontaneity of some of the conversations we’ve had with some of our meals.

Again I find myself sitting by a fire and a bid you all, a good night.

-Arturo

Early start with an espresso right around 7:30 a.m.

Today, we had plans with Silvio, a local food historian who makes his living by touring the eager from town to town in search of culinary treasures. We had plans to meet in the Piatza in some town but we were unable to find it. Over an hour of circling and asking for directions and driving in the pouring rain I might add, and we were able to locate Silvio.

Based on abrupt phone conversations, his lack of empathy for our tardiness, “Is no New York. How do you get lost,” and the fact that he carried a little jar of honey to put in his espresso wherever he went, I was as excited to spend the day with him as I would be to plant my tush on a frigid toilet seat. This feeling persisted well into the morning but would pass. And like the day’s morning shower that blew over leaving a gorgeous Tuscan afternoon, I grew to very much appreciate his company. But enough about Silvio.

Our day began with a trek to a distant town in the foothills to visit a man who run’s a 4th generation pasta mill. He is well known throughout Tuscany and for a very good reason. He is one of 5 artisanal producers that produce dried pasta in a very special way. They start using only the best local grains. Aside from this, what really separates them from the bulk of industrial producers like Decceco and Barilla is the drying process. His pasta is dried slowly at a low temperature preserving the natural gluten and that perfect al dente consistency. Having had it for dinner the prior night, I never would have known it was not made on the spot. It will be hard to go back to the dried pasta I typically purchase at the supermarket.

From there, we drove to the most picturesque town ever. Let me repeat myself, EVER. This medieval town called San Donato in Poggio is the Central Park West, Rodeo Drive…of Medieval Tuscan villages. It was so perfect that I felt I was on a blockbuster production set. Here, the Parti family, 3 generation inhabitants and butchers run there local shoppe. Their fresh local meats and salami production are bar none, except for Sopressatta. For that, we had to drive to another town to another butcher shoppe which Silvio insists, is the best Sopressatta around. Sopressatta is a form of “head cheese”, a cooked and pressed blend of cheek, head, ears, tounge…Not for the faint, but truly amazing. However, before we could taste and enjoy this Soppresatta, we had to drive 20 minutes away to pick up some Pecorrino cheese from a local herder who tends to a flock of 50 sheep. A brief tour and then we were off to the town of Montefioralle another 30 minutes away to finally sit down and enjoy a meal with Fernando, a small artisanal wine producer from the Chianti Classico region.

Fernando didn’t speak a lick of English but he spoke the language of food by producing some great everyday wines and foremost, for his wife’s Ribolita soup, which is a porridge-like vegetable stew thickened by day old bread. Unbelievably delicious, healthy and resourceful. After a nice spread of meats, cheese, bruschetta, Fernando’s small batch of house olive oil and the Ribolita, we treated ourselves to some Pecorino with Acacia honey and some of his very small batch of Vin Santo.We were offered a much needed espresso but declined as Silvio planned for us to take espresso at another village that overlooked the Chianti foothills. Another 20 minute drive and an espresso, and I was in a full comma.

The only cure was a small hour-long hike through the Chianti countryside. Bit of a struggle uphill with my newly gained 5 lbs but well worth it. If it sounds like a full day, it’s not over.

After our hike, we went to the Collie Orientalli to meet Carlo, who produces exceptional olive oil from his 30 hectares and 2,000 trees. Carlo like most of our other hosts was passionate and warm. In his spare time, he carves little wood cities out of the roots of the olive trees, but his real passion he says, are puppets. Carlo carved and built a set where he plans to tell the story of Pinocchio much as it has been for thousands of years. We loved Carlo and his oil so much, especially his Lemon flavored oil using Italy’s prized lemons from the Amalfi coast, that I am trying to import a whole palette of 300L of oil for us to use and sell. I will keep my fingers crossed that we can make it work despite the unfavorable exchange with the Euro.Lastly, from Carlo’s, I now find myself in the warm and modest house of Gianni and Luccia.

Luccia is teaching Ryan how to make a home cooked Italian meal, and I am sitting here drinking there local wine and absorbing the magnitude of the moment. This tiny kitchen is now packed with 5 family members each offering their take on the progress of the night’s meal and I am simply staying out of their way. I have offered my services with the dishes and will earn my meal.

Dinner consisted of bread topped with a mushroom ragu, polenta with Cavalo Nero “Black Kale” and house-cured pancetta and little fried polpettines of cauliflower. For dessert, some more Pecorino cheese with pears they grew in their yard. It wasn’t the best meal but it certainly has been my favorite and most memorable one.

As we always like to say, it’s not just what is on the plate but how it got there.

We departed Florence this morning to a small town on the fringe of the Tuscan countryside. There we met up with Guido, a farmer who runs his family estate. He makes his living primarily by raising Chianina cattle.These giant, and I mean giant white cows, are what make Bistecca Florentina. His prized bull, an 8 year-old male, was well over 6 feet tall and weighed over a ton. Despite his docile nature and the steel fenced enclosure, I still found myself intimidated by his presence. His sole purpose is to mate with the calves and I would want his job if I was to be a cow, since all of the other males with the exception of another younger bull in training, will end up at a butcher shop within 3 years.

Aside from raising cattle and some organic farming, Guido also has grounds very well suited for the prized white truffles. After spending 2 hours hiking through the lush woods hunting for truffles, I have a new appreciation for the little fungus. Dogs did most of the work as they galloped around sniffing out the white gold. These dogs are bred and trained for this very task and cost anywhere between 3,000€ and 8,000€ each depending on the pedigree. After a few hours, we only managed to find 3 tiny little nuggets, each weighing no more than 7-10 grams. For those of you global warming deniers, Guido blames the tardiness of Fall and the terrible season so far. The woods need a lot of moisture to produce truffles, and his woods, due to weather, still appear to be in the summer months.The fact that no one has been able to cultivate truffles, along with the painstaking and often fruitless process is what sets their high price of around 4,000€ per kilo. Guido’s estate averages around 15K per year but is off to a very, very late start.

Wet and muddied due to the rain today, we then departed for Valpolia, in the heart of the Tuscan Chianti region. Here we are staying at what I believe to be one of the most charming little B&Bs overlooking the valley floor. Our hosts, Martina and her husband (also Guido) were extremely fun and gracious. They are consummate hospitalitarians and great for a good laugh. Martina is a funny, borderline hyperactive woman in her 40′s and Guido, at least 15 years older, also has a very sweet nature and a great sense of humor.

In the late afternoon, Ryan and I hiked through the vineyards as well as the surprisingly dense forest to the town center of Valpolia. This medieval town is so picturesque and perfectly preserved that it looks fake, like a set at Disneyland or Epcot center. Not much going on there so we turned right back, but the hike alone was worth the effort. Besides, I weighed myself a few days ago and I clocked in at 165 lbs clothed, so roughly a 4 lb gain so far. So it was nice, necessary and good to earn my dinner.

After a much needed nap, we spent some time in the kitchen preparing and then eating dinner and shortly thereafter, enjoyed some nice grappa and even better conversation. Tomorrow we have an early start as we will be exploring the ins and outs of Chianti wine country.

AK

While the epicenter of the Italian renaissance is dotted with historical landmarks, Florence has thus far proven to be equally dotted with tourist traps. Food takes a back seat to art and fashion in this city and the strong tourist presence lends itself to 19€ Ceasar salads, 55€ Steaks and in the oldest cafe in Florence, 12€ for an espresso and a cappuccino. All this being said, it was nice to walk around to soak in the historical landmarks…

Tonight we have dinner at Tratorria Cibreo so I will report back later.

…Just returned and like so many times before, I am eating my words.

Cibreo was what everything else in Florence was not. Thoughtful, quality driven and well executed. Ricotta flan with meat ragu, a salty but very readily replaced polenta, a simple and delicious pumpkin soup, a very gamey quail (Ryan liked it, I thought it tasted like liver), chicken meatball with tomato sauce, cold veal cutlet with cold tomato sauce (which the son of the founding chef, Julio, said was traditionally a Jewish Florentine recipe from the Jewish side of his family (he’s 1/2) and an eggplant dish for vegetarians. Did I mention tomato aspic, tripe crudo (AMAZING) and a few other side dishes. Service, hospitality and great, simple, traditional food, Cibreo deserves its reputation and I would gladly continue to eat my words if it means dining like that.

PS – We now have the name of our future Italian restaurant.

Bona Forchetta (Good Fork) which is slang for one that chases the fork.

Happy eating…

Master cheese maker Marco starts his day by rolling the curd from cattle (kept in large vats) into giant balls. The local cattle enjoy a special diet of all natural greens which leads to the tangy rich flavor of the Parmigiano Reggiano. These giant balls are then transferred to the molds where they are slowly compressed over several days to emit most of their water. After the molds have been tightened like a notch on a belt, the now semi hardened wheels are then soaked in large baths of water and sea salt. From there, they are transported to a large warehouse where they are set to rest for a minimum of 20 Months and up to 36. But even after enduring the process, the cheese must be submitted to a panel of experts for tasting (terrible job) and approval before it can call itself true Parmigiano Reggiano. Like everything else we’ve seen so far, there are a lot of imposters so buyers beware.

After our brief tour and a failed attempt at importing 10 Wheels (300 Kilos) of cheese I began my hunt for Romano Levi Grappa. RL, recently passed away, so his Grappa is not so easy to come by. It seems that every great restaurant we’ve come across has a collection of work. He specializes in making single batch Grappas, each infused directly in the bottle with herbs and spices and then each bottle has a hand written label. Later in Life, Levi became slightly mad and started to live the life a recluse. Never leaving his shop, he worked furiously on his life’s passion, Grappa. Many of his bottles are adorned with his child like stick figure drawings and incoherent sayings. He is likened to a Willy Wonka like character, mad, talented and full of mystery. After unsuccessfully begging and pleading restaurant owners to sell me a bottle, I was told of a long-standing shop in the town of Corregio that still had some of his earlier works. Success, I bought 3 of the 6 bottles they had left and will cherish them for a long time to come…

With mission accomplished, we returned back the Acetaia San Giaccomo for a cooking lesson/lunch with Andrea’s mother. Carla was the archetypal Italian grandmother. Svelt, sweet and according to Andrea, swift handed when she needed to be. Her old mangled hands kneaded the fresh dough with grace and speed. No mixer. Ours could achieve what she achieved in a short 20 minutes and speed aside, her pasta was textbook al dente. We were each given a chance to make some ravioli and sorry to say, that it wasn’t hard picking out which ones I had done, lopsided and a few grams larger than everyone elses. I know this because Carla busted out the scale to prove it. Of all the chef’s we’ve worked with so far and all the Michelin stars in the world, her food was best of all, and sitting around her modest kitchen table and eating her modest food is a reaffirmation as to why we’ve gone such distances to get here.

In addition to pasta, she showed us how to make “Step Mother’s Tounge,” a crispy flatbread, some pickled Gardineiri of vegetables in olive oil and for dessert, Parmigiano gelato with Apple Vinegar, Andrea’s Balsamic vinegar and shaved bitter chocolate. In one word, “unbelievable.”

Reluctant to leave, but excited for Florence, we departed on a short and picturesque 2 hour drive.

Our lovely and simple B&B is a stones throw from the Duomo so we have been able to spend the evening walking the old city. We have plans to dine tomorrow at Chibreao so tonight was up in the air. We walked around in circles trying to avoid the minefield of tourist traps that litter the city. We even encountered a 22€ Ceasar salad, I kid you not. We settled upon an Enoteca across the River Arno thinking it’s distance from the numerous landmarks would make it a safe bet. Our initial impression after hearing several other tables speaking English, was that we were duped but we found ourselves pleasantly surprised. Simple, yet relative to everything we’ve had so far. What did leave an impression was the fact that when asked where the industry people go for a bite, we received nothing but blank stares.

I can only explain this by hypothesizing that Italy doesn’t have a food culture the way we do, but instead, culture here is food. It’s such a small minority of people that appreciate food in the U.S. relatively speaking, that we band together. Here however, food is a birthright and they simply don’t have to think about it as much as we do…

Buena sera…
Arturo