Simple Italy

Celebrating Your Inner Italian

Dining with the Duchess

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Monday lunch might be a ho-um affair in most places but not in Palermo, Sicily, when you’re dining with Nicoletta Polo, Duchess of Palma, in the formal dining room of her 18th Century Palazzo by the sea.

Palazzo Lanza Tomasi Luncheon Menu

  Aubergine Rolls
Casarecce with Zucchini, Basil and Toasted Pine Nuts
Chicken in Caper and Anchovy Sauce, Pantelleria Style
Roasted Potatoes with Fresh Garden Herbs
Strawberry and Orange Pudding

Regaleali Biano 2018
Regaleali Nero d’Avola 2017
Vecchio Florio Marsala Secco Superiore 2013

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Remembering Luciano Pavarotti

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I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the late Luciano Pavarotti this week and it has been emotional.

Last Saturday, Walter and I were in Pavarotti’s hometown of Modena, Italy. I made a pilgrimage to his statue outside the opera house, now named Teatro Comunale Luciano Pavarotti in his honor.

We drove out to the countryside to tour the light-saturated home where the great operatic tenor lived and died. The building is now Luciano Pavarotti Casa e Museo (Luciano Pavarotti house and museum). It’s a treasure trove of audio, video, photographs, celebrity fan letters to the maestro, theatrical costumes and more. The walls are adorned with Paravrotti’s colorful paintings and a glass box showcases some of his art supplies.

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Simple Italy Greatest Hits

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Le cose cambiano. Things change.

SimpleItaly is evolving. Fresh posts will appear less frequently.  Our greatest hits, however, are always a click away. When we discover a new Italian regional recipe, destination, experience, or person, we’ll share the gems with our fellow Inner Italians.

Let’s re-visit some of our fondest timeless memories–encompassing cooking, wine appreciation, people, music, movies, art and serendipitous experiences–from a decade of SimpleItaly.

Bolognese-style lasagna

Lasagna alla Bolognese (Bolognese-style lasagna),  a dish that embodies the allure of slow food, has only four components–fresh spinach noodles, ragu, balsamella, Parmigiano-Reggiano–but each deserves attention.

Flavors of Friuli

Elizabeth Antoine Crawford traveled throughout Friuli for five years to research her new book.

 

Sauerkraut, poppyseed, and cinnamon-sugar on pasta. Is this Italian cooking? It is in the northeastern region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  These seductive ingredients and more are explored in Flavors of Friuli: A Culinary Journey through Northeastern Italy.

 

A truffle hunter with his prized partner.

On the Truffle Trail in Le Marche

Acqualagna is all about truffles. One-fourth of the residents are qualified truffle hunters and 70 percent of Italy’s truffle dogs are trained here. The white truffle is celebrated each autumn with the Fiera Nazionale del Tartufo Bianco. (This article first appeared in the November 2011 issue
 of the travel newsletter Dream of Italy.

Confetti Town

Lining the main streets of Sulmona, in Abruzzo, are shop after shop selling confetti, the confectionary for which the town is famous. It sounds simple: start with almonds, pistachios or hazelnuts and coat them with multiple layers of molten sugar cane syrup. This dessert artistry has been evolving since Roman times when almonds were coated with honey. The results are magnificent. They are edible mosaics, work so detailed, artistic and well-executed that they fool your eye. Of course these are real flowers . . . no, they are confetti.

Brides of Amalfi

Love was in the air during a visit to the Amalfi Coast.

Ragazzi Reminisce

The Leather School, tucked in back of The Basilica of Santa Croce, is the scene for this dynamic duo’s meeting.

C’era una volta. . . once upon a time. . . Max (Massimo Melani) met Wally (Walter Sanders) in Firenze. (Spoiler alert: An iconic Florentine panino plays a supporting role.) Here’s the story in their own words.

The Inner Italian Q & A: Melissa Muldoon

All of our Inner Italians shared delightful personal journeys but, so far, only one has gone on to become an Italian language and travel diva. Artist, designer, cultural conduit, and author Melissa Muldoon hosts La Studentessa Matta (The Crazy Student).

Whites for Summer

In his wine commentaries, Walter seeks out the best, most affordable, wine produced from Italian grapes. He hopes to raise awareness of indigenous varietals that deserve a place on your table.

Lemon Semifreddo

The spoon dessert semifreddo translates as “half frozen.” A cross between a frozen soufflé and gelato, a semifreddo delivers the plush mouthfeel of frozen meringue with the luxurious richness of cream. This lemon version pairs well with red berries.

Malika Ayane


Of this sensational pop vocalist, Paolo Conti said: “Il colore di questa voce è un arancione scuro che sa di spezia amara e rara.” The color of this voice is a dark orange with a dark and rare spice.

Cinema Italiana

SimpleItaly adores this hangdog comedy. What happens to those Italians left behind during Ferragosto, the national August vacation? One such scenario is brilliantly portrayed in the 2008 film Pranzo di Ferragosto released in the U.S. as Mid-August Lunch. Gianni di Gregorio, who co-wrote the script and directs, stars as the soulful Gianni who lives in the heart of Rome with his 93-year-old mother, exquisitely played by Valeria De Franciscis.

Do you have a cherished Inner Italian memory? Share it below.

Love Is All You Need

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Danish actress Trine Dyrholm is irresistible in this "Inner Italian" flick.

Danish actress Trine Dyrholm is irresistible in this “Inner Italian” flick.

Ever on the lookout for “Inner Italian” movies (see my Top Ten), I stumbled upon Love Is All You Need (Sony Pictures Classics) on Netflix. It’s a relatively recent film that must not have made it to my little corner of the world during its theatrical release.

Susanne Bier, the Danish Academy-award winning director for best-foreign language film (2011) In a Better World, made this film with stars Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. She shot it on location near Sorrento.

Love Is All You Need is certainly not a masterpiece (how many are?) but Walter and I found its quirkiness, and the charismatic Dyrholm, appealing. Not a typical rom-com, several dark elements colored the narrative.

We responded to the palpable sense of locale and it seemed as if some of the minor characters were locals.

My only serious irritation was from the music. Opening with Dean Martin’s That’s Amore (a song spot-on for Moonstruck, a movie celebrating an Italian American family in Brooklyn) is tone deaf in this context.

A view of Amalfi from a limonceto.

A view of Amalfi from a limonceto.

While I’m not in the business of revealing plot points, I will declare my crush on Danish actress Dyrholm.

Forget Brosnan, I fell in love with her.

When she says, “I can’t imagine existing in a world without lemons,” I found a soulmate.

Brosnan’s lemon grove is a pivotal locale that reminded me of my enchanting stay in a cottage set in a citrus grove above Amalfi.

Love, and lemons, are all I need.

What “Inner Italian” movie do you like?

Il Postino

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The late Massimo Troisi with Il Postino co-star Maria Grazia Cucinotta who plays Beatrice.

The late Massimo Troisi with Il Postino co-star Maria Grazia Cucinotta who plays Beatrice.

Have you ever been convinced that you’ve seen a movie only to find out that you hadn’t?

That happened to me with the Academy Award-winning Il Postino. Recently watching the DVD from Netflix, I realized to my chagrin that I had probably seen the trailer but not the entire film. For years, I’ve catalogued it in my mind as a standard Italian sex romp (doubtless because of the voluptuous actress on the poster) but that’s not what it is.

The film was made in 1994 and released in the U.S. the following year. Directed by Brit Michael Radford, it is the story of Mario Ruoppolo, the postman who delivers letters to Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda who is exiled on an Aeolian island. The sweet story portrays poetry blossoming inside the soul of the simple postman. With Neruda’s inspiration, he wins his Beatrice.

Reading reviews and features about the film, I learned that Massimo Troisi, the Neapolitan comic actor and director who played the postman died only 12 hours after filming was completed.

Troisi was plagued by heart problems since childhood and doctors warned him when filming began that he needed a heart transplant. He chose to go ahead with the work. He had become captivated with the novel Burning Patience by Antonio Skarmeta on which the screenplay is based.

Maria Laurino reported in The New York Times, “Il Postino was the 12th film for Troisi, who also directed five of the movies he starred in, and his death shook Italy. His devoted public, who had no idea that he was seriously ill, showed up by the thousands at his funeral in San Giorgio a Cremano, the small town outside Naples where he was born.

“Troisi had this ability to express the theatrical form of living that Neapolitans have in general and then translate it to the theater,” said Giuliana Bruno, a professor at Harvard University and author of Street Walking on a Ruined Map, a study of Neapolitan film. “It’s not just acting out language, but using facial expressions and body language. The soul of the people comes out in his work.”

 

MIT to Tuscany

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 By Walter Sanders

John and Peggy Heywood take a break from hiking in the hills surrounding Montestigliano.

John and Peggy Heywood take a break from hiking in the hills surrounding Montestigliano.

There are magical places on earth. Places that revive happy memories and help you create new ones. Places that inspire great activity and make you feel productive, welcome, and alive.

For John B. Heywood, Sun Jae Professor of Mechanical Engineering Emeritus at MIT, Tuscany is that magical place. More specifically, it’s a hilltop agriturismo hamlet just south of Siena called Montestigliano.

“This whole Italy thing began about 20 years ago, when my wife Peggy and I saw a film called Enchanted April,” John says.

“We were captivated by the movie. It portrayed how a group of British visitors were transformed during a trip to Italy,” Peggy says. “We tried to figure out how we could incorporate Italy into John’s work as well as our personal lives.”

The answer turned out to be a sabbatical.

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