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CHAPTER TWO

Dec 5

On a sunny, gusty morning in early November I drive down to the village to visit with Martin. He and his partner, Massimo, have their architecture office on the piazza. Martin was our architect when we enlarged the Rustico and he’s become a good friend. He also has a fax machine, which is the real reason for my visit.
“Do you know what we celebrate today?” asks Martin after I had taken care of my faxing chores. Martin is German and he’s fluent in Italian and English.
“Another holiday?” I guess. Italians take a holiday every second breath. They have hundreds of saints and whenever one has a birthday they close all the banks.
“É il giorno del vino novella. The 6th of November is traditionally the day when the new wine comes to market — although I got a taste last night.”
“And?”

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NOVEMBER

Nov 26

migrant-workerOlio nuovo is identical in its chemistry to any Umbrian extra-virgin you’ll buy at Williams-Sonoma at Christmas time. The difference is that it’s nuovo. It was pressed yesterday from olives that were picked the day before. Its newness is the whole deal. In November it turns up on every table in Umbria, whether in a trattoria or a friend’s kitchen, served by the host sparingly — to drizzle over a bowl of hot lentils or to add a little unctuousness to a wood-grilled pork chop. The color is deep olive green and opaque; it pours like honey and it has an alluring aroma — like that of a pretty girl who’s just stirred from her afternoon nap. It’s peppery, too. That’s because the fruit was picked on the early side of the harvest when many of the olives were still green.

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BARTHELONA

Nov 18

PapituWe took a break from olive picking  to hop across the pond to Barcelona to attend the Catalan International Environmental Film Festival.
We were invited through our friend, Will Parinnello, who was being honored for his films about this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize honorees . All of which means that we spent three days — and nights — with some of the greenest people on the planet.

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WHITE CLAM PIZZA

Oct 17
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Frank Pepe’s famous White Clam Pizza

Pizza is local. A guy from Cincinnati traveling in Italy will thumb his nose at the pizza because it’s not what he used to eat in Ohio when he was going through puberty. Italians are no different. I know Romans who make rude gestures when they talk about the pizza from Naples.
“The crust is too thick — and then it falls apart in the middle. It is without structure.”
I’ve eaten a lot of pizza in Naples; I’ve downed an obscene number of pies at Baffetto in Rome; I’ve had Sicilian pizza in Sicily, Pugliese pizza in Puglia and Ligurian pizza in Liguria (excellent, by the way) and pizza, at its best, is totally local, which means to say it reflects the personality and the groceries of its neighborhood.

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MARCELLA HAZAN

Oct 2
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Hazan and her beau.

I once had a large collection of cookbooks. This was back in the days before every recipe by every chef in every language was available at the flick of a mouse. In those days we had books. When I’d buy a new cookbook I would read it cover to cover, like a novel. From page one I was hooked into the intriguing cast of characters; then I’d fret over them as they were crushed, peeled, pounded and quartered and then unceremoniously plunged into hot oil or boiling water. Imagine my delight when they emerged, reborn, reshaped by their trial by fire, to make the world a richer, tastier place to live. We had books in those days.

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