Category Archives: Piemonte

The Best Thing We Ate This Week – Spezzatino di Vitello

17 Sunday Aug 2008

Posted by in Italian recipes, Piemonte, Uncategorized

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Do I have a picture of it?  Of course not!  But I do have a lovely shot of the pot in which it was cooked:

The pot belongs to our friends Leo and Isa who spend some of their time in the little Piemontese village of Sostegno.  Evidently the pot is picking up some good vibrations, as Leo likes to listen to Rock and Roll while he cooks and cleans up.

The Captain, who cooked the Veal Spezzatini for Friday evening’s dinner, had harvested some fresh bay leaves and one very hot pepper for his recipe.  It looks rather Christmasy, no?

We joined Leo and other friends for a celebration of Ferragosto in Sostegno, as we do every year.  This year we had the Big Meal on Thursday evening.  It was an enormous fish, called in Italian a ‘lucio’ (pike) more than four pounds, that son Silvio had caught the day before.  In fact, it is one of the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen – how about you?  Ever seen one uglier?    But I must say, it was quite delicious once it was filleted and cooked on the grill. In this picture it is soaking in its pre-cooking bath of lemon juice and herbs.

But back to the matter at hand, the Spezzatino di Vitello…

This is something the Captain frequently whips up, and it is always a little different.  The starred recipe, under recipes over on the right, is the way he made it on Saturday, and in spite of the remarkable fish, it wins the nod for the best thing we ate this week. (Sorry, Leo and Silvio – the fish was good, but…)

There were two other Very Good things we ate over the weekend, and they get honorable mention this week: Leo’s mother’s stuffed eggs and Leo’s Polenta Cuncia.  I wish I had a photo of the eggs because they are lovely, and quite different from what we think of when we think ‘deviled eggs.’ For starters, they are green (Get back, Dr. Seuss!).  I do have a photo of the polenta:

Basically polenta cuncia is polenta into which you have stirred massive amounts of cheese and a bit of butter.  It is heavenly, though it makes your arteries scream.  Usually it is served during the cold weather, because it is rich; we had it on Friday because it was pouring rain all day and was rather chilly – it’s a wonderful dish for the upcoming days of autumn and winter.

Recipes are over on the right under the heading Recipes.

Buon Appetito!

How to bust a diet – Italian style

07 Monday Jul 2008

Posted by in Italian recipes, Italy, Piemonte, Uncategorized

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A friend who is dieting recently wrote an e-mail lamenting the fact that she had fallen off the wagon by eating – gasp – a piece of toast with marmalade, and drinking – double gasp – a G & T.  I had to tell her that hers were but minor peccadillos…

THIS is how you really shoot a diet all to pieces ~  Get up too early, eat a sensible breakfast, drive 2+ hours to Sostegno in Piemonte, to the country house of Leo and Isa. Hang around waiting for Carlo and Reka to show up for lunch, eat bread while waiting. Then eat some more bread and drink some wine with it. That wine was good; have some more.

Carlo and Reka & Anna and Jacobo appear, go to the table. Eat polenta cuncia – usually eaten in winter but it’s cold and rainy today, so… it is made with lots and lots of cheese and butter and it is so good you must have just a little bit more. Then have some other anti-pasti, perhaps a brace of stuffed eggs, some more bread with egg yolk something on it, then some bagna cauda on half a broiled red pepper (bagna cauda is a sauce made of anchovies, garlic and oil.  Its name is sometimes written “bagna calda”, but it is a Piemontese dish, and the correct Piemontese word is “cauda”.  Thus sayeth Leo). The salami looks pretty good too, so try several slices of both kinds. But it’s all so salty! Drink more wine.

Then eat the main course, which is just plain old ordinary polenta and a cotechino, which is a sort of fatty, spicy mixed meat something stuffed in a casing and boiled for a while. Red wine. Feel like you’re going to die. But wait. L & I’s daughter Anna’s boyfriend’s mother has sent along a tiramisu, and it would be awful if word got back to her that someone didn’t like it. Eat tiramisu. Oh gosh, look at the time – it’s after 4 p.m. Go for a walk, a long walk, no matter the rain.

Prepare for dinner. Help by setting the table and testing to see if the bread is still good. It is. When asked say that you want the fish instead of the beef (because after all you are on a diet!). Commiserate with Louis that his pesto lasagna has had to sit too long before being served. Eat a big square so he won’t feel badly. Eat your whole fish after removing head and tail – it has been baked in tin foil with olive oil and has been stuffed with thyme. It is heavenly. Feel sorry for all the fatties eating meat. Eat a second portion of salad because it is good diet food. Wine? Yes! Some of each please, and 2 extra glasses of the Triminer because it is particularly good with the fish. Dessert? No thank you. Oh, that’s right, we brought it (purchased, not made: a light cakey thing called Dolce Varese)- the others might think it’s poison if you don’t eat it. Have a second piece to lay their worries completely to rest.

Go to bed hating yourself, but resolving to do better tomorrow.  That’s how we go off-diet in Italy! How do you do it?

Moving pictures

30 Friday May 2008

Posted by in Birds in Italy, Italy, Photographs, Piemonte, Rice, Travel, Uncategorized

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I’m addicted to taking photographs from our speeding car. There’s something about out-of-focus grass on the verge of the highway, the slight blur of near objects and clear focus of far that is exhilerating.  Sometimes the Captain, a patient soul, stops so I can take ‘real’ pictures, but usually when we travel I shoot through the windshield, bugs and all.

Last weekend we drove in the rain up to Piemonte (about which more in a later post) via the A26, part of Italy’s magnificent and over-crowded highway system.  The A26 is one of the newer highways and features some graceful bridges and many, many tunnels. The autostrada system was one of the first highway systems in the world, and the Italians are justifiably proud of it.  Its only problems are that there are too many trucks, too much traffic in general and too few lanes… especially when many a driver wants to take his lane from the middle of the road.

In ‘Rice Fields’ under the Photograph links to the right you can see some ‘moving pictures’ of this journey taken through a rain-spattered windshield.  The Ligurian autostradas are peppered with tunnels – we went through 54 on our way home from Piemonte; the shortest was only 40 meters, the longest (Monte Castellano) was 2010 meters.  At the entry to each tunnel is a little sign which gives the name of the tunnel and its length.

Our route took us through Genova, through the many tunnels and over the graceful bridges of the A26 as it navigates the Apenines, and then onto the flat plain of the Po river with mile after mile of rice fields.  The fields are at their most beautiful now, still flooded with the broad expanses of water reflecting the trees along the edges. In many the pale green rice is already above the water. It is a shade of green that can only be described as ‘new’.  (The Captain tells me that the irrigation system still in use for the rice fields was designed by Da Vinci). If you make this trip on a clear day you will have a dramatic view of the snow-topped Alps reaching into the sky behind the fields.

The first time we approached the town of Arborio some years ago I was thrilled, imagining a small boutique village with little restaurants serving risotto in its many delicious forms.  But no.  Arborio is a very workaday looking farming town, plain to a fault.  The highway now bypasses the town altogether. Arborio gives its name to the most commonly available rice used for the dish in the U.S. Many Italians prefer the carnaroli variety of rice for risotto.

As we drove through the countryside we encountered a first-time sight: storks in Italy.  They are not uncommon, we are told, but we had never seen one in countless trips along these same roads.  Perhaps the high platforms built for nests attracted them.  They are big (this has been Big Bird month for us) and strange looking. The picture of the stork landing in its nest was from the moving car; the other when we stopped to look and wonder at the unusual sight.

You can’t make a long trip on the Autostrada without stopping at a – YUM – Autogrill.  These come in various sizes, from very small, serving only panini, to very large with sit-down restaurants. Each also has a retail section, usually featuring specialties of the region.  For me the Autogrill stops are one of the best parts of a Road Trip.

Enjoy the photos!