Rome

Gelato in Florence

Posted May 20, 2014 by Sharon Leave a Comment

Gelato maestro Toni Cafarelli churns out sweet memories at Il Re Gelato.

On my recent three-day stay in Florence, I sampled a pair of artisinal gelaterie that I’ve been hearing about. Years ago when I lived in Florence in the Santa Croce quarter, there was only one choice. Vivoli was our spot—superb gelato five minutes away from our apartment. It remains a fine gelateria but these days the number of gelato shops in Florence is expanding faster than a kid’s wish list in December.

Il Re Gelato

Sicilian Toni Cafarelli is the gelato king as far as I’m concerned. He appears on Italian TV and gained major press for his olive oil gelato. The pistacchio and cioccolato fondente we sampled were intensely flavored and caressed our tongues. The fiordilatte (flower of the milk), flecked with candied orange peel, was like eating specks of sunshine.

Located on the busy ring road Viale Strozzi near the Fortezza da Basso and the train station, the shop was filled with locals. In fact, we were the only foreigners. A selection of Sicilian pastries is also on offer. You can try a freshly baked brioche stuffed with gelato in the southern style.
Viale Strozzi 8/r
www.ilregelato.it

Carapina

Like buried treasure, the gelato at Carapina is kept under cover.

Another ultra artisanal shop, Carapina breaks with the tradition of displaying mountains of gelato on trays set in glass cases (visual stimulation=increased sales). Instead, the gelato is kept in stainless steel tubs covered with stainless steel lids to keep out air and light, and thus maintain freshness.

The flavors we tried–cioccolato fondente, crema, and caffè–were all smooth and lovely. We visited the Via Lambertesca location tucked between Piazza della Signoria and the Arno River. The main shop is on Campo di Marte and there’s also a Rome location.

Via Lambertesca 18r
Campo di Marte, Piazza Guglielmo Oberan 2r
Camp de’ Fiori, Via de Chiavari 37/37a (Rome)
www.carapina.it

For more tempting gelato spots in Florence, check out Toni Lydecker’s article in the Tampa Bay Times and Elizabeth Minchilli’s blog post.

What do you say is the best gelateria in Florence?

Francis and Francis

Posted March 14, 2013 by Sharon 2 Comments

The former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio is reported to live a life of humility and caring for the poor.

After much pomp and circumstance, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio is elected Pope Francis.

It’s been widely reported that Bergoglio chose the name Francis to honor St. Francis of Assisi. This puzzles me. First, he’s not a Franciscan; he’s a Jesuit. And second, I’ve always thought of the Jesuits as intellectual and elitist.

Like Francis of Assisi, Bergoglio is reported to embrace the poor, the homeless, the diseased, the disenfranchised. But unlike Francis of Assisi, who never became comfortable with the power and politics of the Roman Catholic Church, Bergoglio is now the capo di capi of this wealthy and (despite its many current challenges) influential institution.

[Read more…]

The Inner Italian Q & A: Linda Dini Jenkins

Posted March 14, 2012 by Sharon 7 Comments

One in an occasional series of conversations with those who try to “live Italian” wherever they are.

"La Principessa" in Perugia

Linda Dini Jenkins is a freelance travel writer and photographer and the author of Up at the Villa: Travels with my Husband (more later on how to win a free copy!). She also blogs regularly about travel and travel writing at Travel the Write Way and teaches creative writing and journaling. She enjoys taking small groups of friends, to explore what Italy has to offer beyond the Florence-Venice-Rome triumvirate, and she can pack her suitcase in 15 minutes.

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Q: Living “Italian”. . . Is it a great way to live or the greatest way to live?
A: Well, I think it’s the greatest way to live. When you take into account the slower pace of life (outside the big cities!), the immersion in history and art, the fantastic cuisine, the love of design and music, the respect for taking time out to enjoy the simple things . . . whether it’s Italian or Mediterranean or European, it’s how I want to live.

Q: Why?
A: Are you kidding? Start with the food, the design sensibilities, the language, the arts, the vino, the pausa, the passeggiata . . . need I go on?

Q: When did you discover your Inner Italian? What is your Inner Italian named?
A: I always knew about my Inner Italian but, like other children of first-generation Italian-Americans who desperately wanted to assimilate, “being Italian” was something that just happened and was never really encouraged. In fact, I’d heard stories growing up of how hard it was for my father to be Italian in a New York suburb in the 1930s and ‘40s; even being Italian in my first job in New York in the 1970s was something of a liability. And I was always a little ashamed after that of being part Italian (my mother’s side of the family was English/Irish/German) until I met my husband and he took me to Italy in 2000. Since then, I have been a proud and vocal Italian-American. If my Inner Italian has a name and it needs to be something other than Linda, I suppose it’s Principessa . . .

Q: What does “living Italian” mean to you?
A: My grandparents came over from Italy in the late 1890s and they were anything but rich. So for me, living Italian has to do with cooking and eating together, always having crusty bread and wrinkled olives and green olive oil on the flowered oilcloth-covered table. It means not being afraid to be emotional—even if that involves fists and things flying when you’re angry. It means loving music and feeling the arts very deeply. It means trying to have a sense of style—of la bella figura—even if the clothes or table settings come from Target. And it means being a storyteller and a traveler and something of an adventurer.

[Read more…]

Pranzo di Ferragosto

Posted August 15, 2011 by Sharon 6 Comments

This is one lunch you won't want to miss.

August 15, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven, is a national holiday in Italy. Like many other Christian celebrations, it is built upon the crumbled foundation of ancient traditions.

In modern times, Ferragosto is the jumping off day for Italians to escape stifling apartments and head for holiday al mare or in montagna—the sea or the mountains.

August is the worst time for foreigners to explore Italian cities because mostly they’ll encounter overheated, testy tourists like themselves. The living spirit of the cities has been drained out like the color from a faded photograph. [Read more…]

Formaggiomania

Posted May 10, 2011 by Sharon 6 Comments

What’s one way to tell if you’ve done a half-way decent job at mothering?

When your daughter returns from a business trip to Rome with a big chunk of formaggio pecorino stagionato. This cheese is the color of antique parchment studded with salt crystals that look like pin pricks. Truly, it looks a little intimidating. But on the tongue, it’s sweet and sharp and surprisingly mellow.

Emma had fun purchasing the aged sheep’s milk at the famed Volpetti food shop in the Testaccio neighborhood. “The guy was so nice. He let me taste it,” she said. (Did I mention that she’s young and beautiful?)

Although Emma can’t remember where it was produced. I checked the product list on the Volpetti Web site and if forced to guess, I’d say Messina in Sicily.

Looking at the photograph, does anyone have a more informed opinion? In the meantime, I’ll be nibbling.

Wining and Dining in Ancient Rome

Posted March 16, 2011 by Sharon 3 Comments

Roberto Bompiani's depiction of an ancient Roman banquet from the Getty Museum.

By Emma Sanders

Guest Writer

Want to shake things up at your next dinner party? Take a cue from the early Romans. Pour Boone’s Farm, Yellowtail Shiraz, and a coveted Super Tuscan wine, but don’t offer your guests a choice. Instead, assign each guest to one of the three wines based on how much you like and value that person relative to his or her dinner companions. (Warning: you may lose some friends in the process.)

This kind of overt rank valuation was common at early Roman banquets, according to Dr. Nicholas Hudson of UNC Wilmington, who recently spoke on the topic at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His lecture, Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: The Changing Identify of Dining in the Roman World illuminates how styles of dining reflect a changing society.

On early Roman banquets, Pliny writes:

“He apportioned in small flagons three different sorts of wines; but it was not that the guests might take their choice: on the contrary, that they might not choose at all. One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of lower order (for you must know the measures of friendship according to degrees of quality; and the third for his own free men.”

The Romans also applied this behavior to food, as hilariously summarized by the Latin poet Martial:

“Since I am asked to dinner… why is not the same dinner served to me as to you? You take oysters fattened in the Lucrine lake, I suck a mussel through a hole in the shell; you get mushrooms, I take hog funguses; you tackle turbot, but I brill. Golden with fat, a turtle-dove gorges you with its bloated rump; there is set before me magpie that has died in its cage. Why do I recline with you?”

Over time, banquets shifted from the model of assigning guests social worth. Large sharing dishes became more common. These sharing dishes tended to be very similar in color and design to emphasize consistency of food served across a table. This growing egalitarianism of banquets demonstrated a social and cultural shift from the elitism of early Roman banquets.

In late Rome, a fissure grew between Romans who adopted the newer style of banquets and those who clung to elitism. Dr. Hudson espouses that the newer style of banquets ‑‑based on unity and sharing‑‑ even provided an early precedent for the rituals of Christianity.

To read more about Nicholas Hudson’s work,

visit http://www.archaeological.org/lecturer/nicholashudson