Don Genova's Blog

Trastevere District, 3pm:  We have checked into an amazing apartment to hold what is now a party of five:  My sister and her son, her partner, me and my wife Ramona.  The apartment is right in the middle of the Trastevere district of Rome, very close to Vatican City and other must-see sights.

But when we checked in, the info guy from the rental agency told us we were lucky because there was a great restaurant just around the corner.  We took his advice, (the place was also mentioned in an old issue of Gourmet we had photocopied) and went into Osteria Le Mani I Pasta for lunch.

This place serves homemade pasta, and much more.  Our friendly waiter brought over a dish of white beans with olive oil, garlic and lemon juice for us to taste.  Amazing flavour, great mushed into slices of bread.  Then our appetizer, a huge plate of breasola (thinly sliced air dried beef), with fresh water buffalo mozzarella, arugula, segments of blood orange and thinly sliced grapefruit!  We swooned.

My main course was also a delight..fettucine with ricotta and pancetta, creamy and fresh, Ramona had spaghetti with tiny clams, shrimp and bottarga (salted, dried tuna roe), along with the sweetest cherry tomatoes and chili peppers cooked into the sauce.  Stupendous flavour.

Now we have to go and climb the Spanish Steps to work up our appetite for dinner.

Ciao!

Sorrento, 6pm –  Not much time to write lately, as we have been busy getting from place to place.  Today we arrived in mainland Italy at Naples, then made our way down to Sorrento for the first of two nights.  Just a couple of things to note now, more later.

Highlights:

Orange blossoms and orange trees laden with oranges, the aroma is from heaven!

Lemon trees abound in Sorrento, home of Limoncello, a lemon-based liqueur.

Pastries to die for in Sicily, many of them based on almond paste.

A communist-themed restaurant in Catania, around the corner from a baroque Cathedral trying to shine in a very dark city…

Shrimp cooked in lemon leaves…

..and a desire to eat less traditional Italian fare this evening.

Trapani, Easter Sunday-We have spent the past couple of days exploring the mountain top town of Erice, 2500 feet above Trapani, and the salt flats between Trapani and Marsala.

Erice is stunning, a medieval town with cobblestoned streets worn smooth over the years.  The day we negotiated the hairpin turns up the mountain was clear and warm, and my sister swore she could see Mount Etna and a plume of smoke in the distance.

Lunch was a delicious affair made up of several different pastas, but even before lunch we visited a few pastry shops to see the beautiful marzipan pastries and lambs all ready for Easter.  Even the cannoli are stuffed with a sheep’s milk cream, and we haven’t had a bad cappucino yet.

My most dominant images of yesterday were all the windmills we saw along the salt flats.  They used to be used to grind the large chunks of salt that were gathered from the flats after all the water had evaporated.  A visit to the salt museum in Nubia showed what backbreaking labour it must have been to carry the large buckets full of salt from the flats in the oppresive summer heat. There is still some salt production in the flats, but most of the windmills are abandoned, some missing their colourful red tops, a silent testament to another age when salt was used as a currency and a method of paying Roman soldiers.  Sale=Salt, salary=wages in salt.

We had an excellent lunch in a small, family-run restaurant in Marsala, I enjoyed a fiery penne arriabiata and a moist and flavourful grilled swordfish steak…followed by a crowning touch of mellow Marsala wine.  My sister liked it so much she bought a bottle from the restaurant owner!

We enjoyed a picnic dinner last night to give our bellies a rest, but I purchased a variety of sheep’s milk products to test.  Highlights:  A very, very fresh and mild pecorino, a slightly-aged pecorino with black peppercorns, and then two ricottas, one flavoured with lemon, the other with pistachio, one bright yellow, the other green.  They tasted strongly of their flavouring and made a wonderful dessert with a few grapes and chunks of fruit and nut laced chocolate.

Today it’s down to Mazara del Vallo to explore the Arab quarter and stay overnight near the seaside before heading to Agrigento and the Valley of Temples.

Ciao!

Hi everyone…we are on day 3 of our trip to Italy and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.  That is, once Ramona and I finally got here…it is a long story, but suffice to say we could not fly directly to Palermo from Rome after a flight booking error and we had to take a plane-bus-train-ferry-train-taxi to get to our hotel.  A long day!

Food highlights of the past 24 hours…

-Seeing piles and piles of fresh artichokes and fava beans at the Trapani market, along with piles and piles of fresh fish at the lively fish market next door.

-Eating the Arab-inspired fish cuscus at a restaurant last night, along with a thin-sliced wafer of compressed and dried tuna eggs on a piece of bread with a nice, fresh tomato on top.

-Sampling sweets in the sky-high town of Erice, then downing plates of gnocchi, strozzopreti and other pastas at a very pleasant restaurant in that town.  (details to follow)

-savouring all the cheeses made with sheeps milk so far, including fresh pecorino, and creamy ricotta at our breakfast this morning.

Have to run, it is Good Friday in Trapani and we are off to see the procession of the Misteri, carvings that are hundreds of years old representing the passion of Christ and the Stations of the Cross…then, more food!

Arrivderci for now,

Don