Simple Italy

Celebrating Your Inner Italian

Remembering Amarcord

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By Walter Sanders

Maybe the greatest cinematic love letter ever filmed, Federico Fellini’s 1973 Amarcord is a special treat on Valentine’s Day.

amacordIt’s a multi-layered, lasagna-like love story-a good looking taste treat of Fellini’s remembrances of growing up in Rimini. Through the eyes of his alter-ego teen character Titta Biondi, Fellini tracks a year (from spring to spring) in pre-WW II Fascist Italy.

Amarcord, dialect for “I remember,” is about his love of youth, his love of the seasons passing, his love of women, his love of political folly, his love of the foibles of love, his love of Rimini, and his love of being in love, his love of memory and how it expands some images…and laughs at others.

The characters are lush and over the top. Zio Teo, the crazy uncle, sprung from the asylum for a family picnic, climbs a tree and howls for hours like a horny wolf “Voglio una donna!” (I want a woman.) [Read more…]

Bitter. . .Sweet. . .Love

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Italian Paolo Conte composes love songs for grownups.

Italian Paolo Conte composes love songs for grownups.

Italians can seem jaded about the idyllic promise of romantic love. And who can blame them? They’ve been at the dating game for thousands of years longer than we have. As a culture they’ve known youthful passion, mature affection, illicit sensuality and unrequited love—over, and over, and over again. Millennia are just a long time to keep chasing “happily ever after.”

Paolo Conte, the idiosyncratic Italian singer-songwriter, set me pondering love in all of its complexity. The other night as I listened to Gelato al Limon, one of his early hits, I felt compelled to pick up the liner notes and read the lyrics, poetry really.

In his rough baritone, accompanying himself on jazz piano, Conte brilliantly uses the metaphor of gelato al limon, tart-sweet lemon ice cream, to represent bittersweet love, the passing of time, the loss of youth and fleeting pleasures.

“A lemon ice cream. It’s real lemon—do you like it? Another summer’s bound to end.”

We fear that the guy in the song has just given up. . .he sings of “the sensuality of desperate lives,” and “woman just entering my life. . . don’t be afraid that it may already be over.”

Ah, but then a sanguine saxophone wells up behind the piano and the mood changes. He lets us know, with humor, that he’s still up for the game. . . “This man can still give you much more. E un gelato al limon, gelato al limon. Gelato al limon.”

best-of-paoloconteFor a more complete introduction to the musical genius of Conte, check out the 1998 compilation CD The Best of Paolo Conte (Nonesuch)

Also, a very good fan site is at Paolo Conte online.

Orange Blush

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Cold sheets of rain were lashing the harbor wall on that first morning in Ortygia on the southeastern coast of Sicily. But inside the breakfast room at the Hotel Gutkowski, the sun was dazzling, taking the form of garnet juice shimmering with color as vibrant as a Gauguin sunset. As the guests jostled to take their spots at the self-service electric juicer,   a small mountain of blood oranges stood at the ready. This is citrus that’s used to attracting attention.

Arancie di sangue, blood oranges, are the tomatoes of winter.

Arancie di sangue, blood oranges, are the tomatoes of winter.

Blood oranges have a blush skin and deeply red pigmented flesh that’s sweet, floral, sometimes with hints of raspberry. They are, in short, exquisite. Wildly popular in Italy, they are thought to be the result of a mutation that occurred in 17th century Sicily, according to Food Reference.com

Lucky for us, blood oranges are now cultivated in California and Texas so we can find them at fruitstands and some supermarkets. Italian imports are sometimes available in specialty stores.

At this time of year, oranges step easily into the role that tomatoes play in summer salads. The flavors are tart-sweet, the flesh soft and juicy. To make a Sicilian style salad with oranges, in a large bowl, whisk some extra virgin olive oil, a squeeze of blood orange juice, and some Kosher or sea salt. Add arugula, baby spinach, romaine or other greens, some thinly sliced red onions, and chunks or slices of blood orange wedges. Toss to coat with dressing and grind on some black pepper.

Coming to Closure

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Wine closures clockwise from bottom: traditional cork, glass stopper, screwtop, plastic cork.

Wine closures clockwise from bottom: traditional cork, glass stopper, screwtop, plastic cork.

By Walter Sanders

We’ve all heard the rumblings.

Corks are dying and alternative wine closures are the saviors of consistency, convenience, cost and quality.

Chances are you have encountered screw tops, synthetic corks, composite corks or glass stoppers in wine bottles at restaurants, wine shops and parties. What’s going on with alternative wine closures?

To learn more about the issues, I read the IACP Award-winning To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, And the Battle for the Wine Bottle by George M. Taber (Scribner, 2007).

Well, my wine-loving amici, there is no comprehensive single answer to the red, white and blush question of what is going to win the battle for the wine bottle. The author documents the immense energy, time, money and research invested in the closure wars…and the battlegrounds are shifting. Here are his 2006 statistics:

  • Some 20 billion wine bottle closures were used in 2006
  • 13 billion were still natural corks
  • 3 billion were technical or composite corks
  • 2.5 billion were plastic corks
  • 1.5 billion were screwcaps
  • 20 million were glass stoppers

Those numbers indicate that cork still has an 80% market share but “that’s down from a virtual monopoly two decades ago,” says Taber. Cork growers, particularly the Portuguese, have the most to lose. Amorim, the largest producer, has invested in technology, cleaner harvesting and manufacturing processes, and testing to try and minimize TCA-produced “corking” (that awful wet-newspaper aroma and taste emitted by a corked wine) and oxidation issues.

Now the cork industry has the tough sell, after generations of blaming wineries and consumers for tainted wines, of admitting the TCA problem and offering an improved cork closure product. [Read more…]

Good Chicken Hunting

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The search for a sensational pollo alla cacciatora is over.

The search for a sensational pollo alla cacciatora is over.

The other day as I researched this recipe, I pondered on Facebook, “What makes a really good pollo alla cacciatora?

The suggestions were thoughtful.

“It should be cooked slowly so the flavors blend.”

“Eating it in Rome.”

“I put many different mushrooms in mine. To me that’s the best.”

My favorite came from Marge, who recommended “A really good-looking hunter in the kitchen.” Definitely the most enticing but, if acted upon, might have impeded my cooking progress.

Marge was right about one thing, though. “Alla cacciatora” translates as “like a hunter.” So I got to tracking a prototypical recipe in the classic 1,200 page Le Ricette Regionali Italiane and bagged three-from Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, and Sicilia (with the addendum con melanzane).

[Read more…]

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In Italy, the mind and all the senses are always engaged. Everything there has a meaning and occupies a place that is part of a larger whole. The Italophile is a person who seeks to understand what all of this means.

– Fred Plotkin, Italy for the Gourmet Traveler

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