GETTING STARTED

Posted on June 12, 2013 by admin
unpacking

Just imagine all the bubble wrap there is to pop!

As the moving truck pulled away we looked at the forty or fifty cardboard boxes that contained our life, such as it is. We were beyond exhausted; it was time to grab something to eat and go to bed. But we leapt into the unpacking like crazy people, razoring open boxes, placing whatever treasure we found in some random corner of some random room and then stuffing all the wrapping paper back into the box. The next morning we woke to a house filled floor-to-ceiling with empty cardboard boxes. We couldn’t find the kitchen. So I went online and found Juan from The People’s Junk Removal Co. and he and his partner came out and took it all away. Then two days later — as the empty boxes piled up again — Juan came back to clear them as well.
At the end of the third day Jill was leaning various paintings and sculptures against the walls where they would eventually hang and she called to me in the kitchen, where I was trying to put some order to my batterie de cuisine.
“Honey,” she called, “where’s the second bird?”
“The second what?”
“Emile’s birds. I have the guy, but I can’t find his girlfriend.”

Emile's-birds
detail

Emile Norman, who passed away a few years ago at the age of ninety-one was a Big Sur artist and legend. We bought land from him, built a house and were his neighbors and friends for the last twelve or so years of his life. He created a pair of inlaid wood birds for our bedroom wall in Big Sur and the birds have been with us ever since. It was not okay to lose one of Emile’s birds.
On a whim, I called Juan.
“Oh, no way, Mr. Tucker; I’m really sorry to tell you this but we took all your stuff to the landfill two days ago.”
“The landfill?” The word had finality to it.
“You know, if you had just told me it was in there I would have saved it for you,” said Juan.
I let this pass.
Two days later the phone rang in the middle of dinner. It was Juan.
“I kept going back to the landfill to check with the guy and today he told me he had the bird.”
“Oh, my God,” said Jill, who had taken the call.
“But he said that it’s his bird now. He said everything in the landfill belongs to him.”
“Oh.”
“He said he could get fifty dollars for it, so I offered him thirty and he took it.”
So, you have it?”
“Yeah, I got it. Tomorrow, we’re working in Norwalk. You can meet me there and pick it up. I gave him thirty dollars, okay?”
The next day we met Juan in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in South Norwalk. It was like a drug deal.
“You gave him thirty dollars?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Here’s sixty.”
His eyes lit up like the McDonald’s sign. Everybody was happy — Juan, the landfill guy, the bird and, especially, us.

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ALMOST NUTMEGGERS

Posted on May 22, 2013 by admin
The-Nutmeg-State

Connecticut.
Come for the nutmeg, stay and you get to keep your habits.

In a week or so Jill and I will officially be residents of the State of Connecticut, which is variously called The Constitution State, The Nutmeg State or — my favorite — The Land of Steady Habits. Each of these soubriquets aptly applies to me. I have a strong constitution, witnessed by my predilection for downing a pizza and a bottle of wine just before bed and sleeping like a lumberjack; I unfailingly grate nutmeg into my favorite pasta — Penne alla Norcina; and as my longsuffering wife can tell you, my habits are as steady as the North Star. I was born to be a Nutmegger.

The set of Hostel, or our fair city's beloved transport system?

Plain soap and water no. Sweat from the brow of a thousand busboys? Maybe.

Getting out of New York, we discovered, is no less challenging than living there. If you can move out of here, you can move out of anywhere. It was month-long process, starting with de-filthification of every object we own. There’s a patina of grime in New York that settles over everything. It’s a potent cocktail — the fumes of the world’s densest carbon footprint stirred into the dust of a million broken dreams. And plain soap and water doesn’t really do much for it.

Our piano didn’t fit into the elevator. “So, how did it get up there?” you may well ask. Well, that was eight years ago and our piano was thinner then. Eight years of pounding out old show tunes can take a toll on a gal’s figure. Our heroic movers tried shoving it into the elevator car for a few hours, then gave up, turned it on its head, shrinkwrapped it and slid it down three flights of stairs. We’ll probably have to get it tuned.

After we watched the movers drive away with everything we own, we checked into a hotel a few blocks away from our ex-apartment. We still had lots to do in New York and a week to kill before we could move into our new digs in Connecticut. We were homeless, exhausted and sweaty after packing and moving and we were looking forward to a hot shower, a simple dinner and a night’s sleep.
“There’s an emergency boiler repair happening today — between the hours of 5:00 and 11:00 this evening,” said the desk clerk as we checked in.
“You mean …?”
“No hot water until at least 11:00 o’clock tonight. We’re terribly sorry about that.”
“So we don’t have to pay for the room?” I asked with no small amount of irritation in my voice. I would have killed someone for a shower at that point.
“I don’t think we can not charge you for the room,” mumbled the poor schlep at the counter. He didn’t know what to do either. “We can give you a pass to the NY Sports Club down the street and you could shower there. And that would be on us, of course.”
“No,” I said. “I want to shower in my room where my wife and I can walk around naked. That’s why hotel rooms were invented.”
“Well,” he simpered, “You could find another hotel and we’ll refund your deposit.”
“Give me the fucking key,” I said amiably.
After a delightful ice-cold sponge bath at the sink, we sought out dinner. We were only six blocks from our old neighborhood but it was like we were in a foreign city. It was all chain restaurants and sports bars — not like my old Wasteland up the street on Amsterdam with its myriad of restaurant possibilities. 77th and Amsterdam is the true culinary wasteland.
We probed further south and remembered one of our favorite lunch spots — Salumeria Rosi on Amsterdam and 73rd.

penne-alla-norcina
Salumeria-Rosi
Jill's-farrotto

They had two seats at the bar and we each had exactly what we wanted. Jill wolfed down what they call a “farrotto” — farro cooked in the manner of risotto with fresh peas, asparagus and cauliflower. I had their version of pasta all’ amatriciana with their “signature” nine meats stirred into the onions and tomatoes. We were in heaven, gabbing with the bartender, regaling him with our day of moving.
Onward to the Land Of Steady Habits!

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PORETA

Posted on May 8, 2013 by admin

We went for a cocktail-hour potluck last week at Paule and Flavia’s place. They’re both architects and they live in a house of their own design in the medieval village of Poreta.

Poreta, Italy

Poreta, Italy

We had been to visit them once before and I pretty much sort of knew where it was. It was up this steep little street, I remembered. Well, it’s not a street; it’s more like steps that you walk up but cars use it, too. It’s a medieval thing. I have driven up a number of stairways in my time, in quaint European villages, but never intentionally.
So, we parked at the bottom and trudged up the steps in the direction of the twelfth century castle that crowns the hill. I figured I’d recognize Paule and Flavia’s place when I saw it. By the time we got to the top of the hill, I thought I had seen three possible candidates but no clear winner. We walked back down the steps, which was a lot easier than going up but Jill was tiring of carrying the bowl of hummus and the plate of raw vegetables that we were adding to the lucky pot. I carried the wine, which is a husbandly duty.
“We could call them,” she offered.
“No, let’s ask this guy. There couldn’t be more than eight people in the whole village. He’ll know where they are.”
The man was sitting alone in his garage on a decrepit wooden chair that looked like it went back to the Garibaldi era. And the guy was older than the chair.
“Excuse me,” I said in my best Italian, “do you know where is the house of Paule and Flavia, the architects?”
His face lit up and he rose and vaguely pointed in the direction we had just been.
“Do you know which house?” I asked.
Without answering he started to shuffle up the hill. Italians don’t tell you where to go; they take you there. But this is a very steep hill and we were afraid he wasn’t going to make it.
“Please, sir, don’t bother yourself to take us there. If you could just point it out …”
He nodded and smiled and continued his very slow climb. He was in a good mood about the whole thing. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than sitting in a garage. We followed, one on each side of him, with our arms held out — like you do with a toddler.
“Thank you so much, thank you, sir,” said Jill, taking her turn to convince him to go back to the hill. She can usually convince a man to do anything but he was having none of it. Twenty minutes later we got to the top for the second time that evening and it became clear that he didn’t know where Paule and Flavia’s house was any better than we did. We thanked him again and slowly squired him back down the hill. I’m quite sure he was still alive when we left him in his chair.

Smoked-Eggplant
cotto
Pasta alla Norma

We found the house, which had been right there all the time — just where I remembered it. We sat around the fire, sipped wine and tucked into the various antipasti: everyone had brought vegetarian things because they know Jill is a vegan and they wanted to make sure she didn’t starve. Paule and Flavia also provided a plate with prosciutto and cotto that was home-made and hand-sliced by Ugo, everybody’s favorite butcher. This was a sop to the otherwise deprived meat eaters at the party.
The best dish of all was smoked eggplant, which we slathered onto bread, crackers, vegetables, our fingers, the tablecloth — it didn’t matter. The eggplant made everything taste great.
Paule had just poked some holes into whole eggplants, tossed them into the hot coals and waited until they got charred and began to collapse into themselves. That’s the cue that they’re ready. Then she cut them in half and scooped the smoky pulp into a bowl.
Next time I make a pasta alla Norma, I’m going to use this fire-charred eggplant rather than the usual fried. Just thinking about that smoky flavor mixing with the garlicky tomato sauce is making me happy already.

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THINGS GREEN

Posted on April 25, 2013 by admin

When Italians bid you goodbye between the hours of 11:00 in the morning and 1:00 in the afternoon, rather than saying, “See you around” or “Have a nice day,” they say “Buon pranzo,” which is a wish for you to have a good lunch. There’s the difference right there. Lunch is the uppermost thought — not just that you’ll have lunch but that it will be a good one, seated at a table, with the proper water and wine. You’ll take time; you’ll have a few courses. And because you’re in Italy you won’t overeat or drink because that would not present a bella figura, which is so important to these splendid people. Perhaps the explanation for the superior quality of Italian food is that for centuries there’s been an eager, appreciative audience expecting it — demanding it — at every meal.

asparagus-man
view
Martin's-salad
spicy-family

Allora. After hunting for the elusive asparagus — sometimes on our knees — and coming up with barely enough to put into a dish of pasta, we ran into this guy on the street in Spello, which is a beautiful town just up the road from us. Asparagi for everybody! Last night we had dinner at Martin and Karen’s house. Here’s the view from their terrazza. The walled town is Campello Alto, which overlooks the Spoleto Valley.
Martin served salad from his garden to start the meal. Every leaf, sprig and bulb — of which there were at least ten or twelve varieties — comes from the same family — rucola or arugula in the English. Who knew?
It was the tastiest (and freshest) salad I have ever eaten, filled with spicy, peppery, mustardy greens and shocking radishes.
Buon pranzo!

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ASPARAGI SELVATICI

Posted on April 16, 2013 by admin

We bought our house in Umbria ten years ago this past summer.
asparagiA couple of months after the sale was completed the former owners, Bruno and Mayes, came over for lunch. And as the lunch lingered, as lunches in Umbria do, Bruno interrupted himself in mid-lecture on the glories of Roman pasta.
“Asparagi,” he said calmly. He got up from his chair, crossed over to the wall of our ancient wood-burning oven and snapped off a pencil-thin spear of wild asparagus that was hiding in and among the other grasses.
“It’s all over the place,” he said. “April is the time. You’ll see hundreds of contadini in the fields and by the side of the road, harvesting them. Here, taste.”
I bit off the end of the slender stalk and chewed on it a bit. It was raw, of course, and a little stringy but the taste fairly attacked me with its vibrancy. Wild asparagus is way wilder than tame asparagus.
“Just imagine,” I thought, “how it’ll make my pee smell.”
With that noble scientific quest in mind, I immediately began to search for more. I looked all around the forno, where Bruno found his and then up the hill toward the olive trees, but there were no more spears to be found.
“I think you got the last one,” I said to Bruno.
“No they’re all over the place. There’s one by your foot, for God’s sake.”
I looked and looked.
“Where?”
He sighed, got up from his chair with a pitying look on his face and pointed two feet away from my foot,

It's in there

It’s in there.

“Do you see it?”
I didn’t. I didn’t see it until he bent over, snapped it off and handed it to me.
This frustrating charade has been going on for the last ten years. We come every spring; we see the locals by the roadside with long forked sticks poking the weeds aside (also to check for snakes, of which Italians have a deathly fear) and satchels over their shoulders filled with wild asparagus. And we have none.
But yesterday! Yesterday I was up in the olive grove, just to feel the early spring sun on my face, and I looked down and there was a wild asparagus spear! I wasn’t even looking for it. I bent down to pluck it and felt a sharp prick on my finger. There was a lacy weed right next the spear that had prickles on it. Then I noticed another lacy weed that had a stalk next to it. And then another.
“Jill!” I called. “I think they grow next to these prickly weeds!”
I ran to my computer and googled “prickly weeds next to wild asparagus,” and guess what? Those prickly weeds? They’re called asparagus plants.
Why did no one ever tell me? Ten fruitless, frustrating years and not one person, not one friend, ever said, “Look next to the prickly plants. That’s where they are.”

asparagi
Happy Hour

Never mind. The present is all that matters. We spent the afternoon harvesting handfuls of them and right around happy hour, which is whenever I say it is, we tossed them in some of the olive oil that comes from the very tree the asparagi grow under, added a sprinkle of salt and a quick roast in a hot oven — just long enough to start a sizzle. We ate them with our hands and then licked our fingers — like popcorn.

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