It All Started with a Panino

“Giovanna is nearing eighty and has a bent and wobbly wrist from rolling out fresh pasta.  A lifetime’s worth of honest dough-kneading has left its mark on her very bones.  This is what being close to food is all about.”

It all started with a panino.  Andrea, the Roman politican who could care less about gourmet food, wanted a panino.  We had just arrived in Arezzo, and the idea was to grab a light snack in the historic Caffe dei Costanti, where one of the scenes from the Oscar-winning film Life is Beautiful was shot.  This was not our fate, as Andrea’s sixth sense brought us inside the ‘Aretino’ world of Alimentari Trattoria Mazzoni, a delicatessen and family-style restaurant in the historic center. 

Andrea’s wife and dear friend Orsetta, whose name translates to ‘little bear’, was on week two of a diet called The Zone, in which food is weighed, combined and consumed according to a military regime.  In Tuscany.  She watched us eat oversized panino sandwiches loaded with hunks of aged and pungent pecorino and thinly sliced, herbaceous fennel sausage, and reminded us that in the evening she was going to eat whatever she wanted.  The rationalization was that if she couldn’t enjoy at least a meal or two on a country weekend and just let herself go, she could’ve just stayed at home.   Of course, it doesn’t hurt that some of the best food in the world is produced in this corner of Italy. 

As I watched her eat a healthy lunch bar, I could’ve sworn I saw thought bubbles hovering in the cheese-infused air just above here chair, scanning the proverbial menu she would tuck into later on.  It’s a lot to think about, what with flame-grilled steaks and local pork sausages, cooked practically in front of you, paired with wines that truly take one’s breath away.

We got to talking with the proprietor, who ran the establishment along with his wife and three children.  I immediately grilled him on that night’s destination, Osteria da Giovanna, located just a few kilometers away. As a proper local, I thought that he would be a natural insider on all things gastro.  He didn’t know the restaurant and had never heard of the owner’s son, Luca Martini, a professor-turned-colleague.   As a recent sommelier school graduate and former student (and I will admit a big fan, professionally speaking), I was astounded that Luca, the Best Italian Sommelier of 2009, was not also a local celebrity.  Mental note: don’t exclude feigned ignorance when mentioning a pretender to the throne to an Italian restaurateur.  The competition is fierce everywhere, even if it exists only in the mind and not the eventual dinner bill.  

I instantly noticed his confidence, pride and passion, qualities often present in Italian food emporiums.  It doesn’t really matter where you go, from north to south, small town to big city; there is an ownership and communicability of one’s gastronomic passion that is simply contagious.  It doesn’t seem to make much difference if the person behind the counter is the owner or an employee. 

Unlike America, where students typically get summer jobs in restaurants with little or no experience, here there are proper academies devoted to the industry.  The ‘scuola alberghiera’, or hotel school, prepares students for the hospitality profession with a four-year degree that offers 360 degrees of practical know-how and targeted internships in the field.  Fundamentally, it instills a savoir-faire in its alums that translates to top-notch service and at the very least, a swagger and self-assuredness that puts customers at ease. 

Great respect for the craft and its precious raw materials, from local ingredients to the chefs that are cooking in the back, is written on their faces as they smile and explain the various specialties on offer.  They speak about the day’s dishes as if they were new discoveries or precious jewels, or their first born.   

The attention to detail in an Italian food establishment has always made me feel taken care, in an almost familial fashion.  Entering any restaurant, bar or café along the boot brings me back to my grandmother’s house as a child.  She would ask if I was hungry, and feed me anyway, and then feed me some more, and clean every last crumb.  Her version of hospitality made me feel like I was the only person in the world.  She served love and nourishment on the same plate, and did it because she wanted to.  In Italy, many foreigners and locals alike can feel mothered or grand mothered, as it were, by perfect strangers, wrapped up in their contagious passion for local ingredients and attention to detail.   

 “You have to eat here, then,” he said.  “We have a full-scale operation and do a great Sunday lunch, why don’t you have a look at the menu?”  Diligently, our group did a quick reconnaissance and judged the chocolate-laden cakes in glittering glass cases and marigold yellow walls covered with black and white photos of the city, and decided to book ourselves in for the next day’s meal. 

Of course, we were still one very important meal away, Saturday night at Osteria da Giovanna, and not to rush matters, took a stroll around the city and explored the churches, antiquary dealers and medieval piazzas.  We instantly recognized the famous square where Benigni steals his Principessa from her pompous consort in the pouring rain with a makeshift umbrella and stolen hat.  The most breathtaking work of art is a larger than life crucifix in the church San Francesco, hung over the main altar with Christ in a patterned red robe framed by a triptych of Madonna paintings on its horizontal and top axes. 

Benedetta and Vartan, dear friends, married couple and active Catholics who hopscotch around Rome’s churches for Sunday mass, just for the sheer fun of it, have collectively seen a fresco or two in their time.   They both stood entranced, and when asked what they thought of Arezzo, mentioned the crucifix as an absolute must.  I will defer to the Italians on this one…it was only after Vartan realized he should not have taken a picture of the altar, as Benedetta pointed out, clearly written in capital letters on three of the four church walls, like a good Catholic, felt a bit guilty and decided it was time to resurrect the afternoon elsewhere.

The obvious destination was Arezzo’s cheese shop, which sells all sorts of gastronomic delicacies and blessed us on our visi with the help of a rosy-cheeked and round-faced woman behind the counter.  Her vibe screamed ‘mamma-in-training’, still quite young but certainly if put behind a hot stove with a few little ones at her feet, she could complete the Italian familial fantasy that I have been carrying in my head since my return to these parts.  She lavished us with oversized samples of pecorino, a point of pride in Tuscany’scheese dairy, and we obediently tried the varieties on offer.  The dry earthiness of the chunk wrapped in hay contrasted with the lush and robust texture of another covered in grape skins. 

Spoiled for choice, we grazed small and perfect glass jars filled with marinated porcini mushrooms, swimming in bay leaf, olive oil and garlic, and a paste of green tomato and vanilla, to a quince and mustard jam.  Here the wisdom of flavor combining meets the sheer bounty of the Tuscan soil, to explosive results.  We laid our hungry eyes on homemade pici pasta dipped in Sangiovese wine, literally the stuff Chianti dreams are made of.  Benedetta with her sweet tooth did not forget to pick up a package of cantuccini hazelnut biscuits, overlooking the chocolate variety as it was not the ‘original’. 

As dreams of Italian sugarplums danced in our heads, it was not yet time for our long winter’s nap.  We tucked home for a tea and a sit-down, just long enough to calm the metabolism and get it ready for its most courageous feat of the day: dinner, at Da Giovanna.  It was quite apropos that the town in which this humble and mouthwatering establishment lies is called La Pace, Italian for peace.  There is something about breaking bread,’com panis’, which is Latin for ‘with bread’, and is also the root for the words ‘company’, ‘companion’ and ‘companionship’, that is, being together, and one hopes, in peace.  If the most basic unit of human culture, the family, is at the root of this idea, Da Giovanna certainly illustrates it incarnate. 

Giovanna is the name of the grandmother and matriarch.  She is nearing eighty and has a bent and wobbly wrist from rolling out fresh pasta.  A lifetime’s worth of honest dough-kneading has left its mark on her very bones.  This is what being close to food is all about, when you get so intimate with it, that it literally becomes a part of you, like a tattoo or a scar, it is not a deformity or imperfection, no, but a mark of pride and ownership. 

Giovanna’s daughter  runs the front of the house, and with a stern and loving touch, she has told her son Luca on more than one occasion in my presence, while he is lost in the poetic majesty of a bottle from his private collection, to just sit down and eat dinner before it gets cold.  One feels the practical, no-nonsense side that rules the roost rearing its beautiful, maternal head. 

Her husband, a mustached figure who grills meat on an open fireplace and hacks T-bone steaks so loudly that the thwack echoes through the room and nearly bounces into the wine glasses, is a man of few words.  He speaks through his steaks, bringing the raw version to the table for the customer’s approval and serving up perfectly pink slices, juicy pork sausages and thick-sliced pancetta with candy stripes of light and dark, fat and lean, a truly succulent mix.  I met the other sister while smoking a cigarette in the foyer, and when asking the exact age of the grandmother, she shouted the question to Luca’s sister, sitting at the front table with a group of friends, and I instantly felt what it means to be in a real family restaurant. 

The trattoria in Italy can be equated to the pub in England, an extension of one’s living room transposed to street level.  When sisters and aunts and grandmothers (oh my!) are actively involved in creating public gastronomic moments, the space comes to resemble a dimension just as intimate as the family kitchen.  And there is no space more intimate than the kitchen.  Say what you want about the bedroom, but there is something on a soul level that gets played out in the making of food, the standing around and letting water boil, while stories come out, milk is spilled, tears are spilled, and love bubbles fervently to the surface. 

The meal was delicious, as always.  I let Luca choose an assortment of starters, and we were left to tuck into runny, farm eggs with whisper-thin slivers of local truffles and good unsalted Tuscan bread to sop up all the gorgeous electric orange yolk.  This was followed by a painter’s palette of pecorino cheese served with blonde acacia honey and sticky fig marmalade, only to be trumped by the crostini neri, the most classic of nibbles in these parts, which we will address in a later chapter. 

Next came the ribollita.  Thanks to Orsetta and her diet, she made the safe choice and ordered what is mistakenly translated into English as ‘Tuscan bread and vegetable soup’, due to the presence of broth, but minestrone it is not.  Ribollita was the real star.  This poorest of Tuscan foods is elevated to high art at Da Giovanna, with no need to adopt of a fancy, molecular technique or totally revisit the classic recipe, just attention to detail and a proper dab of pancetta thrown in for good measure.  When we asked for the recipe, she brought out a huge Tupperware bin with the bread and vegetable mix to illustrate her point, that it’s made in advance and gets better each day as the flavors mix and mingle in the container.  This is where the lines really started to blur.  We weren’t in the kitchen per se, but felt very much a part of things, privileged to be let in on the ribollita family secret, and I got inspired to write about the apparently hodgepodge dish that has become one of Tuscany’s gastro-wonders. 

Contrast the next day when we went to the restaurant in the centre of Arezzo, it was more of a soupy, brothy combination, with the pieces of bread intact, which indicates they were not resting for days, in fact they would’ve been most likely added each time the dish was reboiled for a customer, but it already had a different take.  We spoke to the owners, who reassured us that theirs was the real deal, and that it should be liquidy, and so we savored this version just as much as the first, knowing that there are more than one way to skin a cow. 

The ribollita, it must be known, is peasant food.  Waste not, want not has long been the chime of Tuscan cuisine, as leftovers are transformed into their own unique dishes.  Poor farmers are historically not the most literate bunch, and going back fifty or more years, it was not the custom to finish high school, let alone go off to college.  Recipes are passed down orally by mother to daughter, and kept strictly within the family.  There are natural discrepancies between the available documentation of a dish, written necessarily by the scholarly, urban elite, and the authentic ingredients and cooking methods used on a daily basis.  What’s worse, from one village to the next, a fiercely-guarded twist on the recipe can easily be disputed for generations.  I have attempted to offer the most popular history of the ribollita, and will ask to be forgiven if a dear reader’s Florentine aunt objects to the inclusion of a tomato or leek.   In fact, the dish is claimed by Siena, Arezzo, Florence and the Maremma, with variations on the same theme. 

Traditionally the dish was prepared on Fridays, using vegetables cooked during the week for other meals.  The idea was to create a meal both nourishing and belly-filling to feed the family over the weekend and into the next week, re-boiling each time and hence ribollita, or to reboil in English.  The basic ingredients are cannellini beans, cabbage, kale, Tuscan oven-baked bread, potato, extra-virgin olive oil and some kind of animal flavoring for the beans, be it pancetta, prosciutto or ham bone. 

Ribollita was first mentioned in print in 1891, in what happens to be the first modern cookbook that aimed to paint a gastronomically coherent Italy, thirty years after the country’s political unification.  In Pellegrino Artusi’s seminal work, The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well (La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene), the dish is described as a modest farmer’s dish that he was convinced would also be appreciated by proper gentlemen, indicating an awareness of the class delineations between cucina povera, or peasant food, and elite cuisine.  Artusi was certainly on the money, as years later a visit from none other than HRH Prince Charles and his Princess Consort, Camilla, were dining in Siena on the ribollita.  From rags to riches, the dish has proven its universality across lines of class and culture.

Ribollita (original title: Zuppa toscana di magro alla contadina, or Tuscan farmer’s lean soup)

Ingredients:

400 grams Stale Tuscan bread

300 grams white beans

150 grams olive oil

2 liters water

Cappuccino or verzotto cabbage, half a head each

Bunch of bietola and a bit of pepolino

One potato

2 cloves garlic

2 stalks celery

Parsley

1 large onion

Tomato sauce or tomato puree

Some cotenne di dry meat or prosciutto cut in strips

Place the beans into a pot with water and the cotenne.  The beans should have been placed in water diaccia and if they are dry, you must add hot water.  While they are boiling, dice the onion, garlic, celery and parsley and sauté with olive oil.  Once the mix has become translucent and golden, add the vegetables, first the cabbage, then the bietola and the potatoes cut into cubes.  Add salt and pepper and add the tomato sauce or puree, and if it is too dry add some broth from the beans. 

150 Years of Italian Unity & Women in the Kitchen

Io Donna … 4 Regional Recipes Celebrate 150 Years of Italy As We Know It

Among the cured tuna purveyors and balsamic vinegar stands at Taste Florence, a display of glossy, large format photographs capture dry pasta and Roman artichokes with the flair of a modern-day still life.  A marriage of styling and gastronomy from Io Donna, the exhibition is a tome to Italy’s unification, which celebrates its 150^th anniversary this year. 

Four iconic dishes represent the food culture of the country’s main regions, in beautiful pictures and savory, simple recipes.  The visuals speak instead of life beyond the table, with whimsical icons such as red coral for the coastal-oriented south, the foot of a Roman statue for central Italy and a modern wall clock for the industrial north.  And now let’s take a look at my favorite recipe, scandalously subjective you will agree, taught by my Palermo-based Chiara back in Rome many years ago.   

Starting from the bottom of the boot in Sicily, ‘Profumi dell’Isola’, or ‘Island Aromas’, is poetic license for the pasta dish the region is best known for, ‘Maccheroni alla Siciliana’, also referred to as ‘La Norma’.  A celebration of the sun-kissed bounty of the Mediterranean isle, it features eggplant (‘melanzane’ in Italian, or ‘mulinciani’ in dialect), tomatoes, ricotta salata*(not fresh ricotta…), as well as onion, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.   Here is my simplified version of the recipe:

Ingredients for 4:

375 grams of maccheroni pasta

525 grams of pureed tomatoes

525 grams of eggplant (diced)

225 grams of ricotta salata (diced)

Hand-torn basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, onion

Cut the eggplant into ½ inch cubes, place in a colander and cover with coarse salt.  Place a pan full of water or other heavy object on top and leave to soak for an hour.   This will remove any bitterness from the eggplant.  Rinse and dry the eggplant and fry in olive oil.  Prepare layers of paper towels to soak up excess oil, and place the eggplant between the paper to dry. 

Make a ‘soffrito’ by heating olive oil oil in a pan and adding paper-thin sliced onion.  Cook until the onion is transparent, at medium heat. Add tomatoes, salt and pepper and cook on a light flame for 15 minutes, until the sauce is reduced by half.

Cook the maccheroni pasta al dente and place in a large bowl.  Add half the ricotta salata, tomato sauce, fried eggplant, basil, pepper and delicately mix.  Garnish with remaining ricotta and basil.  Enjoy with a Sicilian red wine, such as Nero d’Avola. 

 

I Biscotti di Lory

Made with Love … The Tender Hands and Hearts behind Lory’s Biscotti

Small hearts and smaller star shapes line the Taste Florence stand of Sicilian biscuit-maker and longtime ‘gastronaut’, Loredana Carere.  Based in Messina,Sicily, the chef and food educator has been practicing her craft professionally for more than twenty years under the name I Biscotti di Lory (Lory’s Biscotti or cookies). 

One whiff and subsequent bite of her orange flower biscotti and I was in love.  I wanted to know if she had a son, and if he was available for immediate marriage, just to have a valid excuse to lounge around her kitchen and clean up the scraps.  Alas, my mouth (and heart) was too full to ask. 

The particular biscuit that I have fallen for, head over heels, is shortbread, or ‘frollini’, which means it contains a healthy amount of butter, in Lory’s case, 15% of the good stuff in every batch.  It is her command of aromatic herbs that creates truly emotional reactions, though. 

She has collaborated with the Botanical Insitute of the University of Messina and is considered a gastronomic alchemist, transforming essential oils, hand-dried Sicilian flowers and spices into sweet and sensual creations.

Not to be missed are her hibiscus and calendula ‘frollini’.  The delicate petals of calendula with their vibrant yellow hue, confer both aroma and color to the cookies, while the light acidity of the hibiscus flowers adds balance and bite.  I would suggest them with English breakfast tea in the morning or with white tea in the afternoon.

Lory’s magical baking has created special aromas without the use of ingredients traditionally associated with those flavors.  Her aperitif line of olive oil-based biscuits includes a black mustard version that smells like chocolate.  There is no actual chocolate in the biscuit, though.  The combinatioujn of Sicilian extra-virgin olive and black mustard create this aromatic sensation, without infringing upon the taste, a rustic and mouth-watering combination perfect with an artisanal Italian beer.

I Biscotti di Lory are edible proof that food can create the kind of intimacy that leaves one so exposed, it is almost embarrassing.  Well into my third biscuit, I got a rush of early childhood memories, of tending the family’s herb garden with my father and baking buttery Christmas cookies with my grandmother.  Lory’s biscuits take one down this winding lane of emotional imprints, and it’s her attention to contrast and comfort that stimulates the palate in a decidedly 21^st century fashion.   

Contadi Castaldi & Fusion Bar

The Fusion Bar restaurant, located in Florence, is part of the Lungarno Hotel Group.  The small, privately owned chain offers upscale accommodations in both Florence and Rome, always located in the centre of the city and often with a restaurant or bar attached that attracts tourists and locals alike.  It is a natural partner for the event ‘Taste’, which takes place this week in Florence, a gastronomic event of all good things to eat from the Made in Italy brand of local edibles.  

I caught the tail end of a presentation of Contadi Castaldi wines, presented by reknowned gastro-journalist Davide Paolini, who writes for Il Sole 24 Ore, and the vineyard’s enologist, Dr. Gian Luca Uccelli. 

Castaldi is one of the heavyhitters of Franciacorta, and they presented their Saten as part of ‘Fuori di Taste’ (Outside of Taste), part of a group of events that take place in venues around Florence during Taste. 

Franciacorta is a beautiful winemaking area in Lombardia, and extends across 900 hilly hectares.  With fresh and gentle breezes that arrive from the Lake of Iseo, the area enjoys a microclimate ideal for the cultivation of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir, the principal grapes in Franciacorta sparkling wines. 

After taking a tour through Ca’ del Bosco, Contadi Castaldi, Bellavista and other big names of Franciacorta, it’s hard to believe that forty years ago there was nothing more than mediocre red wines being produced in the region.  

The origin of the wine’s name is disputed.  Some say that it comes from Francae Curtes, Latin for Corti Franche, and others claim that as the area was controlled by French soldiers in the 18^th century yet excluded for tax purposes, the name ‘Franca Contea’ fits more appropriately. 

Whatever the name, sparkling wines from Franciacorta, and especially Saten, have an elegance and sophistication that are truly in my humble opinion one of the shining stars in Italian’s viticultural crown.  It is a shame they are not as well known outside the country, due in part to lack of marketing and the general public’s default mechanism to champagne in the sparkling wine category. 

Ciao Tomato

 

Ciao Tomato!

Today is the first day of what could either be the rest of my life, or at least the rest of this blog … any way you slice it or dice it, Ciao Tomato is born!  And just like the birth of a child, it’s going to have growing pains, get too big for its britches, and even ask for an allowance, so bear with me, dear reader(s).

Why Today?  Why Ciao Tomato?  What is it all about? 

Why Ciao Tomato?  Well, the tomato is the symbol of all things Italian, even though funnily enough, it wasn’t introduced to the country until the 1500s, from South America by way of Spanish colonialists.  The most Italian of dishes, according to foreigners and clichéd romantic comedies, is spaghetti with tomato sauce, which in fact  is part Asian, with Marco Polo often cited as the introducer of noodles after his many travels in the far east, and with the other part of the dish being originally South American, I’d say that is quite a mix already.  That is the point, though, Italy is a mix.  The country was unified 150 years ago.  When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, he wasn’t living in Italy.  He was from the Duke of Tuscany, and went off to St. Peter’s Church in the Vatican to finish his masterpiece, but he was not strictly speaking an ‘Italian’.  The country’s language as we know it today was born in Florence with Dante’s iconic literature and grammatical style.   Before that, someone from the Alps would not be able to understand a Sicilian.  Some would claim the same holds true today, but the unified language is the one taught in schools, spoken on television and radio and written in major publications.  So, if old is new and Italian is sometimes borrowed and cherry-picked, where does that leave us?  In a delicious position to explore where Italy stands today, in 2011 to be exact.  And where I stand today in it.  This is not a pour-your-Tuscan-heart-out blog about how the soft cypress trees dot the landscape, although I will wax poetic when I damn well want to, thank you very much.  I’d like to capture my extremely biased, personal opinions about what does and doesn’t happen here, how I feel about being in the space, and tidbits on food, wine, art and anything else that tickles or wags.  Because just like Billie Holliday said to Louis Armstrong in her iconic song, ‘you say tomato and I say tomato’, and it’s the very accent I’d like to share, an American accent in Italian to be exact, from Long Island, New York, transferred to ‘somewhere in Tuscany’.

What is it all about?  It’s about food, it’s about wine, it’s about cultural fusion and diffusion, mise-en-place and politics, art, design and music.  If it’s happening in Italy under my nose, especially in Tuscany, I will blog it, attempt to capture the moment in words and pictures, and translate it as best I can, through my own cultural lens.  I get excited about guided tastings from passionate enologists, what gets served with an aperitif or the dishes they put on the buffet, festivals of all sorts in cities and small towns, and touristy curiosities that may be useful for travelers to the Bel Paese.  It will evolve as I go.  It’s not just about cataloguing experiences and events, though.  I will have a diary section that reveals my thoughts and feelings about what it’s like to be here, which brings me to the last question of this opening piece …

Why Me (here)((this part is personal …))  My love affair with Italy started when I was still in the single digits.  My uncle married an Italian woman from Verona whose family was highly ranked in the Catholic church.  At their wedding, my divorced maternal grandparents were forced to pretend they were still married.  Rumor has it her clan had a cardinal on their side of the pews.  My grandmother used to tell the story of how poorly her Italian-American ex-husband spoke the language.  In fact, he didn’t speak it at all, according to her, he just thought he did.  He would boldly ask for an apple (mela) and they’d bring him a bowl of honey (miele), or he would shout and gesture wildly for sugar (zucchero) and got served a plate of boiled squash (zucca). 

The young married couple had a boy and a girl who spent their early years jetting back and forth between New York and Italy.  They got their hair cut in Milan, skied in the Alps and enjoyed Veronese summers.  I was insanely jealous, hungry for anything exotic and generally wanton for anything I didn’t already have.  Where was Milan, this mysterious place where you could get this great hair cut?  I found it on a map.  It was near the top of the boot (and still is, thank God), just before it widens , spilling out into France, Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia. 

My grandmother, in charge of the brood including my sister and I and our cultured cousins, prepared exclusively Italian food, from ‘mussels fra diavolo’ to baked stuffed clams and linguine with clam sauce.  Her blood was German and Irish, but she had once upon a time married a man whose last name ended in a vowel.  In those times, that meant learning the family dishes from his side of the family.  My great-grandfather owned a bar in upstate New York, acted as a rumrunner during Prohibition and was missing a few fingers on both of his hands.  Stereotypes mixed with historical probability leave one wondering about whether he was ‘connected’ to a ‘family’ …  I would never be proud if he was at all involved in the Mafia, but his immigrant status, business connections, frequent trips to New York City and inevitable alcohol smuggling add up to the obvious if somewhat reductive conclusion.  He reportedly told his children that he’d slammed his fingers in a car door, but everyone from that side of the family remains suspect to this day.  To top it off, he had a separate family, wife, kids and all, who surfaced at his funeral, much to my great-grandmother’s surprise.  So, that’s the Italian blood.  There isn’t much of it, to be honest.  I’m a mere 1/8 Italian, not enough to get citizenship or even cut the line at the pizza parlor, but what there is sure is colorful, and I’ve the feeling most of it has gone to me in this generation. 

Ironically, I practically failed Italian in college.  I was too busy partying and eventually gave up to pursue more noble pursuits, such as feminist Jamaican theatre studies and Shaker architectural history from 1753-1760 …  It wasn’t until I failed out of school itself, well, shall I say ‘took a semester out’, as I was still an adolescent and well, **** happens, that I visited the Bel Paese for the first time.  It’s funny how what seems like the end of the world can pave the way for a life-changing opportunity.  I had to graduate a year late, as while I had temporarily lost my way I lost valuable college credits to boot.  The obvious choice was to cut my losses, join the class below me and spend a semester traveling.  I decided to backpack around the Med.  The intention was to just hit Italy and cruise around the major art cities, and see where life took me.  Instead, I was whisked off by a charming and ultimately jealous and idiotic Chilean to visit Greece and Turkey.  He offered to pay my way as a platonic gesture of our four-day friendship, and as I was naïve and broke, I bluntly accepted his seemingly decent proposal.  You can imagine the rest.  I had to get rid of him before Turkey, and am grateful to have met two brawny Australians who helped me fend off his pathetic and possessive Latin machismo.  Looking back, the highlight of the trip on the Italian side was decidedly Venice, with its mysterious and meandering canals , black ink squid risotto, liver and onions, the kindness of strangers and a very cute Brit who I didn’t even kiss.  I wasn’t particularly impressed with Rome.  It was too big and chaotic, I found it dirty and the men horribly rude and uncouth.  Florence was a blur because I was alone and just wanted to check off the big sights in my guide book and be on my merry way.  How things have changed since the college-girl American backpacker first set foot on this soil … I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lives between me and her, even though we are one and the same, separated by time and experience and a few great pasta recipes.

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