Simple Italy

Celebrating Your Inner Italian

Goodbye, Gourmet

Posted by 4 Comments

It wasn’t devoted to Italy but it was “the magazine of good living” and what could be more Italian than that?

Conde Nast is closing Gourmet magazine, which has been published since 1941. To those of us in the food community, this feels like a death in the family. Gourmet has always been there, as the standard bearer, like a culinary Statue of Liberty.

The times they are a changin’. . .perhaps not for the better?

Here’s a link to our post about the magazine’s Italian-American cooking issue from January 2009.

How do you feel about Gourmet’s demise?

“More” Sicily

Posted by 1 Comment

The Greek temple of Concordia in Agrigento, Sicily.

The Greek temple of Concordia in Agrigento, Sicily.

The abiding artistic influence of Italy and the circularity of life are touchingly explored in “Inheriting Sicily,” an article by author and poet Honor Moore in the October 2009 issue of More magazine, on newsstands now.

My grandmother went to Sicily in 1954; Now, 55 years later, she was sending me, writes Moore, who also confides that she was seeking renewed inspiration after the rigors of a year-long book tour.

Her grandmother, the gifted Boston society painter Margarett Sargent, had toured Sicily long after her own career abruptly and tragically ended in the 1930s. But it was also in Italy — Florence in the early 1900s — that Sargent’s desire to create art was ignited. “She came back ‘crazy for Donatello’ . . .,” writes Moore, whose book about her grandmother’s life The White Blackbird , published by W.W. Norton & Co, is now out in paperback.

The view from the Temples at Agrigento, on the southern coast of Sicily.

The view from the temples at Agrigento, on the southern coast of Sicily.

Moore’s descriptions, and Harf Zimmermann’s gorgeous photographs, of the seaside resort Taormina, (“said to be the most romantic place in Sicily,”) Agrigento’s Valley of the Greek Temples, and imposing Mt. Etna, brought back a rush of vivid recollections from my trip to Sicily in 2006.

The stunning coastline viewed from mountaintop Taormina.

The stunning northeastern coastline of Sicily viewed from mountaintop Taormina.

Have you been to Sicily? What spoke to you on this timeless island?

The Movies of Cinema Paradiso

Posted by 8 Comments

Nuovo_cinema_Paradiso

Reading that Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore’s new film Baaria opened this year’s Venice Film Festival — and wishing I were there! — sent me to my DVD shelf. I reached for Tornatore’s Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso in the Italian release) and popped it into the player.

This is a movie that improves every time I watch it. It’s a bittersweet tale of an irrepressible little boy Salvatore, nick-named Totò, in post-war Sicily who finds both father figure, and his future, at the local movie house Cinema Paradiso.

An important element, and one that’s really fun to watch, are the dozens of clips of movies we see — through Salvatore’s perspective – that are showing through the years at Cinema Paradiso. Some of the movies I recognize. Others are unknown to me.

Curious if I could find a roster of all these films that appear in the movie, I started searching the Web. Finally, on Italian Wikipedia, there they were.

I like the variety in Tornatore’s choices for the Paradiso. He’s not a film snob. In a movie that’s really a love letter to the cinema, Tornatore mixes Capra’s American middlebrow It’s a Wonderful Life with Vadim’s tacky Euro-flick And God Created Woman with Visconti’s art-house La Terra Trema with Ford’s classic Hollywood Stagecoach.

From Charlie Chaplain’s City Lights to Fellini’s I Vitelloni, the clips just keep on coming. If I had to pick only one, however, for sheer entertainment value, it has to be Silvana Mangano’s crazy dance to Il Negro Zumbon in Anna. (A nun with a past!) You can catch it on YouTube.

If you love Cinema Paradiso, check out the director’s cut. It’s a much longer and very different flim. If you’ve seen both, which do you prefer and why?

Unimpeachable

Posted by 2 Comments

Torta di pesche in a tender butter cookie crust.

Torta di pesche in a tender butter cookie crust.

I’m living in a kind of peach frenzy.

Peaches and ricotta for breakfast. Baked peaches blanketed with pastry cream. Peach sorbetto.  Peach tart in a sweet cookie crust.

Pondering how long my supplies will last, I just spoke on the phone to the friendly clerk at Bechtold’s Orchard in Bucks County, PA. She said peaches will be available for about one more week. O-N-E week?  Sadly, the days of peaches dwindle down to a precious few.

Like a squirrel frantically stashing nuts for the bleak days to come, I’m stockpiling peaches in my freezer. It’s easy enough to do. Submerge the ripe but firm peaches in a pot of boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds. Transfer them with a slotted spoon to a big bowl of ice water.

A Bechtold's Orchard peach emerging from a refresing ice water bath.

A Bechtold's Orchard peach emerging from a refresing ice water bath.

Start peeling with a sharp paring knife at the stem end and the skin slips off as easily as a satin robe gliding off the shoulder of a 1930s glamour queen. Halve or quarter the peaches and lay them on a tray lined with plastic wrap. Place in the freezer for a day and then pack the frozen peaches into a resealable plastic freezer bag or plastic freezer container.

Peeled peaches ready to be flash frozen.

Peeled peaches ready to be flash frozen.

And, while you still have the chance, you can bake a homey Italian peach tart with the following recipe. It’s sweetened with fruit preserves to intensify the flavor of the fresh fruit filling. Sometimes I replace half the preserves with ginger-peach chutney from Tait Farm Foods in Centre Hall, PA. It makes a sweet, slightly hot filling that’s bliss.

[Read more…]

Cal-Ital

Posted by Leave a Comment

width="140"Dante would be proud.

The great Florentine poet who authored The Divine Comedy–and is widely credited with fathering the modern standard Italian language–has many bilingual offspring in Northern California.

As Patricia Yollin reports in this San Francisco Chronicle article, the Bay Area is nurturing many little Inner Italians who are learning to speak la lingua piu bella del mondo.

The Inner Italian Q & A: Piero Antuono

Posted by 3 Comments

One in an occasional series of interviews–with wannabe Italians or expatriate Italians–who try to “live Italian” wherever they are.

antuono

I was born and grew up in the shadow of the Duomo in Florence until, at the age of 30, I was imported to Wisconsin as a souvenir by my American wife, who was living in Florence. I remember seeing her one day crossing Piazza Santa Croce and thinking she was the cutest girl ever–and I still do. So here I am in Milwaukee. Next year will mark my 30th in the U.S. which means I’ve had three decades of training and working on the “bella vita.”

La vita é bella? Yes of course la vita é sempre bella,  but one needs to work at it and make sure that every day there are reasons to feel that the “…vita é veramante bella…” I think one needs to know how to pause (. . . in your head at least if you cannot otherwise) and appreciate the small things that bring Italy closer. Things which remind me I am not that far anyway, things which allow me to detach, disengage, slow down.  It can be a caffé at the right time, a quick call to a friend, reading the news or listening to radio from Italy. Working at a university, travel is something which happens and I make sure it happens enough so I can visit Italy and reset my system. The most important things are not things at all, but rather a state of mind.

Q: Living “Italian”. . . Is it a good lifestyle or the best lifestyle?

A: I do not think it is a good life style (living “Italian” in Italy is stressful.) I do not think it is the best one (I am sure there are healthier ones.)  I think it is the only one.

Q: Why?

A: Because to vivere “Italian” implies (as for other Mediterranean societies) many social interactions during the day. These casual extemporaneous connections–some good,  some bad–are the condiments that add some spice to life. Even superficial chats with strangers at the bus stop, at the newsstand, or at the market are opportunities to give an “emotional valence” to what would be otherwise  routine. Sharing personal stories and family problems with friends, colleagues, and neighbors is a way of lessening the burden. After all, the word privacy in Italian does not exist.

Q: What does “living Italian” in the U.S. mean to you?

A: Being able to switch. Switching from living the U.S. life in the U.S. to the Italian life in the U.S. and to the Italian life in Italy.  Accepting that change is inevitable after so many years in the U.S.  Switching can last seconds or days. The secret is to switch without becoming schizophrenic. Feeling out of place or misplaced sometimes is okay.

Q: What nurtures your Inner Italian?

A: Being able to talk on subjects with Italian friends without being considered critical, offensive, politically incorrect, crude, rude, or insensitive because of the different cultural values.

Q: What Italian movie, or movie set in Italy, do you most like? Why?

A: Tea with Mussolini. Possibly not a great film, but my mother had a small part in it at 82 years of age. The plot was reminiscent of her life in many ways.

Q: If you could live in one place in Italy for the rest of your life, where would it be and why?

A: Anywhere where olive trees grow.

Q: Last Italian meal. . .what would it be?

A: The company would be the most important ingredient of the meal. The setting would be the second. The food would be the third. And if I could do the cooking with my friends, I would be in heaven already.

* * *

How do you nurture your Inner Italian? Share your comments.