Ciao Bella!

I've been starting and stopping this post for months.  Italy is so much a part of my DNA and I've found it surprisingly hard to boil it down to a post.  So I'm not going to.  Boil it down to just one post, that is.  I'm just going to write, and talk about food (duh), and what life was like, over time and, probably, several posts. But I wanted to get this party started because my partner in crime, Italia style, Laura Gabbert, has a new movie coming out  - City of Gold - and her birthday is coming up and she's been on my mind and I miss her terribly.  So here goes...

1987.  I was a third-year student at the University of Virginia but instead of heading back down to Charlottesville as an upperclasswoman, I hopped on a plane with 16 other young adults and spent the next 9 months studying Italian, art and history in the cradle of the renaissance:  Firenze, Italia.

My Italian was, hmm,  how shall I say this?  It sucked.  Which was kind of a  problem because the program I chose, through the University of Connecticut, was a total immersion program.  We spent two months working on intensive Italian and then enrolled at the Universitá di Firenze.  With Italian college students. In Italian.  With oral exams at the end of the year.  In Italian. 

We had an overnight flight, connected through Holland,  arrived in Rome, then took a bus to Florence.  En route I met the lovely and amazing Laura Gabbert, who remains one of my favorite people and closest friends to this day.



Isn't she gorgeous?  When reviewing pictures from Italy now, 30 years later,  I'm struck by the fact that Laura looks like a super model in every shot and I, um, don't.  But I digress.

 She, too, had opted for the rigor of an immersion program through a school that wasn't her own (she's a native of Minneapolis but attended Connecticut College) and her Italian was as challenged as mine.  We hit it off and were delighted to realize we had been assigned to the same apartment.  I have no memory of actually getting to that apartment for the first time but our third roommate, Michelle, got the single room and Laura and I the double.  And that was pretty much it, aside from a tiny bathroom, kitchen and balcony.  So that room served as living room, den, office and dressing room.

I remember how different everything seemed right from the start -The streets were narrow and teeming with life.  The sound I remember hearing all the time, the soundtrack of that year, is the sound of an espresso spoon hitting its saucer and the concurrent sound, and smell, of an espresso machine hissing into life.  It still brings me right back, that sound and that smell.   We walked to class that first day and got lost but eventually found the street on which our program's classes would be held until we started at the university.  We stopped at the cafe down the block, desperate for a cup of coffee in our jet lagged and delirious state.

And the man, who we forever more simple called 'the man', supplied us with a shot of espresso in a demitasse on a saucer.  I remember thinking, what the hell is that?  Remember, this was 1987 and Starbucks was but a tiny local player in Seattle at the time.  Instant coffee was still quite common and local bakeries and cafes had just started proudly brewing specialty coffee.  I took a tentative sip and nearly keeled over at the bitterness.  Suddenly the cafe full of men pouring what looked like a cup of sugar in their tiny cups made sense.  Flash forward nine months and I couldn't get enough of the stuff and couldn't imagine going back to American swill coffee.

Thus began a beautiful nine months of my life in Florence, Italy. 

Last night Corey and I locked in and tried to finish this puzzle.

 It's a scene from Positano. I told her I had been to Positano, that Laura and I took a trip to the Amalfi coast in spring of 1988.

We took the train down from Florence to Rome and saw Jimmy Cliff in concert, then took a very late night train from Rome to Naples.  We arrived at dawn and I recall dancing, delirious with fatigue, as we watched the sun come up and waited for the cafes to open.

 Laura and I spent a few days on the Amalfi Coast, about which we had heard so much.  It didn't disappoint.   It was stunning.  We rented vespas one day and cruised along the coast.  Craggy, steep cliffs soared upward on the inside of the windy road, and the other side, outside of the hairpin turns we navigated, were olive orchards that gently sloped down toward the sea.  It was incredible.  

 We got to Positano and wound our way down, circling toward the town center and the black-sand beaches.   I was describing to Corey that it took a while to get there, and it was hot, and we were hungry, so we parked our little scooters and hit a cafe on our way to the beach, where we both ordered a caprese panino.   Caprese suggests the simplest of ingredients - bread, tomato, mozzarella and basil.  They pulled out bread they had clearly baked, mozzarella that was local, olive oil that was in a tub and had clearly been home-pressed, and tomatoes and basil that tasted like they had been picked that morning.

I remember declaring to Laura, on the beach, that it was the best food I had ever tasted in my life.  I can still taste it, I swear to God.  #highwatermark #ismycapreseaturkeysandwich?

Such an amazing year.  Laura and I were a fantastic traveling team:  I called her last night after looking at photo albums:  we went to so many places together!  Rome, Venice, Amalfi, Capri, Sorrento, Perugia, Sienna, Bologna, Verona and all over Tuscany,  Barcelona, Madrid, and a road trip to what was then called Yugoslavia.  What a blast.  We had a lot of parties in that little apartment.  (I have artfully cropped out the bottle of Jack Daniels in my hand in the above picture.  I still can't smell the stuff, 30 years later. Enough said.)

Sienna

It was a pivotal year.  Being gone for an entire year of college preseented its own challenges - leaving a 2nd year student/sophomore and coming back a graduating senior was surreal.  Life had gone on without me.  But I wouldn't trade a thing about it.  I wonder often about studying abroad today, how different it would be.  Still amazing, I know - I see students at NU whose lives are changed by it all the time.  But I reflect on how different it would be now, with the ability to stay so connected to home through the internet and cell phones.  We had no phone in our apartment and went to the Florence post office every other sunday to call home, a process that took hours.  So we had to truly be in the present.  And learn to cope with loneliness and getting lost and terrible language skills and asking for help and just deal. Laura and I were such a team - propped the other up when things got rough, but mostly what I remember is laughing.  And traveling.  And drinking.  And eating very very well.

Boat ride to Elba

Italian food is all that it's cracked up to be.  It's not that it's so elaborate, although it certainly can be, it's more that every item tastes so fresh and you can connect it to its source.  We'd stop at the bread store for bread, the meat store for meat, the pasta store for pasta, the giant market in San Lorenzo for fruits and vegetables and cheese.  And the wine?  It was literally cheaper than water at times, and so so delicious. Italia. Best decision I made in my young life. 

Favorite Italian food memories?  Homemade pasta, especially tortellini.  individual super thin pizza at Cibreo.    Gelato.  Cappuccino.   Gorgeous, simple sauces.  Risotto.

Risotto is a point of pride in many Italian restaurants.  It's super time consuming but man, is it good.  I made Ina's squash risotto recently.  It's labor intensive but it's killer.

 

Peel a butternut squash, remove the seeds, and cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. You should have about 6 cups. Place the squash on a sheet pan and toss it with the olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, tossing once, until very tender. Set aside.

 

Meanwhile, heat up 6 cups chicken stock in saucepan, keep on low

 

Melt 6 Tbsp butter in a dutch oven and sautee 2 oz diced pancetta and 1/2 cup minced shallots for 10 minutes until shallots are translucent but not brown.

Add 1-1/2 cups arborio rice and stir to coat.  Add 1/2 cup dry white wine and cook 2 min.

Invite Margie over to stir and eat with you

Then you just keep adding 2 ladles of stock and stir until absorbed.  Repeat until all stock is used.

Add s&p, the squash and 1 cup shredded parmesan.  Stir and salivate, then eat.

Buon Appetito!

Ina's Butternut Squash Risotto

1 butternut squash (2 pounds)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
2 ounces pancetta, diced
1/2 cup minced shallots (2 large)
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice (10 ounces)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon saffron threads
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Peel the butternut squash, remove the seeds, and cut it into 3/4-inch cubes. You should have about 6 cups. Place the squash on a sheet pan and toss it with the olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, tossing once, until very tender. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat the chicken stock in a small covered saucepan. Leave it on low heat to simmer.

In a heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter and saute the pancetta and shallots on medium-low heat for 10 minutes, until the shallots are translucent but not browned. Add the rice and stir to coat the grains with butter. Add the wine and cook for 2 minutes. Add 2 full ladles of stock to the rice plus the saffron, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Stir, and simmer until the stock is absorbed, 5 to 10 minutes. Continue to add the stock, 2 ladles at a time, stirring every few minutes. Each time, cook until the mixture seems a little dry, then add more stock. Continue until the rice is cooked through, but still al dente, about 30 minutes total. Off the heat, add the roasted squash cubes and Parmesan cheese. Mix well and serve.