Food Tourism and Nonna's Swordfish Recipe

          I love to travel (let’s be honest – who doesn’t?) - I love to visit new cities and countries, to see new things. But when I go to a new place, I don’t get excited to go to the museums. I don’t wake up in anticipation of visiting the monuments or seeing the shows or the important buildings (this being exemplified when I was in Paris and spent an hour at the Louvre - I know, I know, I’m sorry). I am the one that walks aimlessly through the city, with her eyes on everything but what’s in front of her, taking in the people, the smells, and the sounds. I walk miles, observing those around me, seeking out the markets or any place where I can find the actual inhabitants of the city and what they eat. I go on a not-always-fruitful (no pun intended) search for what everyday life in the city is, of which food plays a starring role. I eat. And I try as much as I can –because I believe that a culture manifests itself in its food and its traditions surrounding the food. For me, eating, particularly sharing the eating socially, is much more than nurturing your body. It can be a glimpse into another way of life in its purest form. In eating the typical dishes of another culture with those who are native of the culture, one sees the people doing one of most basic and human of few things. As I mentioned in my kitchen blog, the good and the bad is revealed through the act of eating and cooking. The same goes for at the table – people sharing meals together experience smiles, tears, heavy, life-changing discussions, jokes, and small talk. And they eat. In a traditional dish of a region, you are not only eating the cuisine insomuch as it is prepared, but you are eating the fruits of the earth of the place you are visiting - it’s indigenous plants and resources built the tradition cuisines that can still be found today. You sense and feel the region in every way at a traditional meal – you  smell the aromas of the food, feel the texture of the fruits of the earth and the labor, observe the culture, its people and its food, taste the flavors, and speak and listen to the sounds of cooking and your new friends.

       Eating the typical cuisine of a new city or place is a beautiful thing, but it has definitely not always come easily or without problems for me. Even if I love to try new things now, my passion for doing so began without a strong foundation or background in being exposed to new foods. I have been one of the fortunate people to have grown up and lived in the same house in the same city until I left for college. This consistency was an enormous gift from my parents, considering most of my friends at least moved houses growing up. However, my experience also meant that I also pretty much ate the same food for the first 18 years of my life. This food consisted of southern cuisine (so super grateful for the fact that I grew up with good Southern food), the occasional dish from my Italian-American heritage, and the wildly popular packaged and frozen food of the ‘80’s and ‘90s. I didn’t know what sushi was until a friend introduced me to it in high school; I had never eaten hummus until I went to college; and despite my Italian roots, I didn’t know what gnocchi were until my grandma made them out of leftover mashed potatoes when I was 14. Basically, I didn’t have a large scope of knowledge of cultural food or different kinds of cuisines.

         The first time I really traveled and ate was when I was 16. My family went on the proverbial American road trip – something that I am constantly asked about by my foreign friends and students - to explore the west. We bought a new van (more like a house on wheels, complete with two TVs, a Nintendo, and a backseat that folded into a bed), packed our bags, and then drove around the US for five weeks, from Georgia to California to Colorado and back through Tennessee. During this time I was able to taste America in the beef brisket of Texas, sopapillas at the Hillside Taco Stand in Winslow Arizona, and real Chinese food in San Francisco's China Town. While on the trip, I kept a diary with the intention of detailing the things and places we’d seen, but when I return to my writings I realize they are full of long descriptions of the food I ate. The other things I saw, like the Grand Canyon, take a back seat with one quick mention, but the food fills pages. This is the point in my life that I pinpoint as when I became a “Food Tourist.”

         I wasn't a great food tourist at first. My first experience of Food Tourism in Italy was when I was in Rome, the second being that when I was in Bolzano doing research for my senior thesis. I ate decently on these trips, but was alone trying to discover the food. By being alone, I was was unable to discover the food with the guidance of a local and missing the insider’s scoop as well as the social aspect of the typical cuisine, and my experiences were nothing to write home about (with the exception of the one time I visited my Italian family in Turin and write 7 pages about our meal – it still remains the favorite meal I’ve ever had). 

          In 2009, however, we visited my boyfriend’s family in Catania, Sicily. During this trip, I was finally able to truly discover an Italian city through food. I was so excited to go, and had asked my boyfriends hundreds of questions in preparation: What is that thing like gelato, but more like Italian ice? (Granita) It’s not like shaved ice, is it? Because I don’t like shaved ice. (Just try it.) Now let me get this straight. The lunches are 4-5 courses? What all do you eat during that time? Don’t you run out of different kinds of dishes? How do you eat it all? Etcetera, etcetera. One day I found that one of his grandmother’s specialties was octopus. During this time, I enjoyed a good fried calamari, but stayed away from the tentacles, which massively grossed me out. I was against the idea of eating tentacles, but my fear of being rude by not eating something I was served in an Italian house, specifically that of my boyfriend’s grandmother the first time I met her, won. I began practicing, first by ordering fried calamari and considering eating the tentacles, then by eating one or two, then by eating equal parts, then by eating grilled calamari, which became preferring the tentacles. I'm proud of my hard work in conditioning my taste buds to be open to new flavors. I can now say that not only did I eat the octopus, caught that day, boiled in seawater, and served with parsley and lemon, but it was my favorite dish and remains for me the dish in which I taste the essence of Catania. It isn’t just the fact that the octopus was delicious; the dish is the manifestation of the experience that summer - the sea that I swam in, the people I ate it with, and the memories we created together.

         Every once in a while, I long to revisit my experience in Sicily and turn to the food that I ate there. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been easy to find octopus in Ohio and even we I were to find our eight-legged friend, I’m not sure it would be completely…fresh. Therefore, we often skip the octopus and make another Nonna specialty – swordfish (pesce spada). This is actually the my boyfriend's favorite dish and was part of our first lunch in Sicily. The fish is simply cooked in a frying pan and finished with olive oil, parsley, and lemon. We make it whenever we find beautiful swordfish at the market or Whole Foods (shiny, not dried out, white/light pink in color), and I have even tweaked the recipe to depend less on oil for cooking while maintaining the moisture of the fish. In this blog, I’d like to present to you my version of Pesce Spada alla Nonna.

Pesce Spada alla Nonna (for 2-3 people depending on how hungry you are)

1 pound swordfish (in comparison to the thin cuts of the fish in Italy, the US cuts the steaks very thick, so this weight might just be one filet – cook whatever pieces you do get whole to maintain the integrity of the fish while its cooking and then cut into desired portions)

water

juice of one lemon

parsley (fresh or dried – in Sicily she used fresh, but I don’t always have it on hand)

salt, pepper,

olive oil or cooking spray

            Salt and pepper the fish on both sides. Spray a frying pan with cooking spray or put 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan and heat to medium-high. When the pan is hot, place the fish in and let cook until it begins to brown (the length of cooking depends on the thickness of the fish – if you have one piece, it might be 2-3 minutes, thinner pieces will cook faster). Once the fish is browned on one side, flip it and allow to brown on the other side.  Then put 2-3 tablespoons of water into the pan and  cover – let the fish steam for 2 minutes and then remove the cover to allow the water to evaporate (1 minute) and maintain the crust on the outside. Flip fish and repeat. Check doneness – a finished fish will be white the whole way through, and flake away easily, but still look moist. If the fish is not done, repeat with the water. As soon as the fish is cooked (be careful not to overcook!), place on a plate and dress with lemon juice and parsley. You  may also finish with oil if you’d like – I personally don’t because the fattier juices of the fish mix with the lemon juice for what I consider a perfect sauce. 

This recipe is a trial and error based on the thickness of the filet - if you have any questions or confused email or comment and I'll steer you in the right direction! 

Read the Italian version here!

Espanol poro dummies-o! O Spangolo peres stupides

Yesterday, like any other day on my hour and a half drive home, I was listening to my usual Italian radio food and wine podcast. This podcast is right up my alley - it talks about a variety of topics topics, from how to taste wine to genetically engineered food to the dangers of aspartame to suggested foods to detox after the holidays. I get a lot out of these listenings and learn useful and useless facts like Stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar and aunts can carry up to 50 times their body weight. Often, however, listening to a radio show in another language and culture reveals to me another set of assumptions about the world that is different than mine. It never ceases to amaze me that so much that we consider "truths" are actually just reflections of our world view - and how that is reflected in language.
Yesterday the podcast was about Guatemalan rum. The hosts, who were interviewing a woman who did not speak Italian from Guatemala about her production of the sweet liquor, began the podcast with the usual simple Spanish. Hola! Bienvenido a Decanter! After a bit of the general Spanish welcome, one of the hosts (who could at least speak Spanish proficiently enough to translate the guests responses into Italian) commented on the Italian way of attempting to speak Spanish. He said something along the lines of Come on, let's not do like the Italians always do by just adding -s at the end of the words to speak "Spanish". This comment was taken lightly by the other host and the show continued on, but for me it raised a red flag. What? I thought to myself.  Add an -s? This statement, presented as a truth, was not a truth for me. In the US, I'm accustomed to hearing people speaking "Spanglish" (which can at times be quite offensive) by adding an -o at the end of words - Why-o don't-o you-o comprehendo?  If someone came up to me and said Whyes don'tes youes understandes?, I would be confused why this person was making everything plural, but not the fact that they were speaking made up Spanish would not even cross my mind. How interesting - another instance of culture and language's inseparable connection - a world view reflected in a linguistic element.
Small revelations like this make me realize how much the world's citizens would benefit from truly learning another language. By this I do not mean just studying its grammar and structural application, but how the language is used by its people - its' pragmatic elements, its culture, its living, breathing reality. If languages classes were like this, or if people took learning language like this, or if people just even understood this, maybe we would have less cultural misunderstandings. Less people might harbor hatred for those who are different. Maybe we would have less wars. It's a lofty vision to think that world peace can come from one person learning language, but as we say in English, you've got to start somewhere.

Kitchens: The New Living Room

            “Kitchens are the new living rooms.” These words, written in an interview with Rossana Orlandi on the last page of the magazine La Cucina Italiana, stopped me as I read them. I had reached the point at which I quickly skim through the last few pages of a magazine because I’ve already been reading for at least an hour. I’m a little tired of reading but won’t allow myself to put the magazine down without having flipped through every page and at least glanced at every article. (I’m one of those people who have trouble leaving things unfinished).  Anyway, I was not being super attentive of the words – I don’t even remember the other questions or subjects of the interview – but with these six words I hit the breaks on my speed reading. “Kitchens are the new living rooms.” I’ve said the word living room a thousand times in my life, but seldom reflected on the meaning of the term. Living room…a place in which you live; not in which you sit or stay, but live. And for me, my kitchen is the place in which I live. I probably spend more time in the kitchen than the living room (which in our apartment is kind of connected to everything else and consists of a designated area with a TV, a sofa, a loveseat, and an ottoman).  When I host people, we usually spend our time together in the kitchen preparing food, chatting, and eating until the main meal, which is at the kitchen table (again, in a small apartment you don’t always have the luxury of separate rooms for cooking and  eating).  In addition, our American kitchens these days, even some of those in apartments, are decently large and may even rival the size of the living room. The kitchen: the new living room - a room in which we live.

            My boyfriend and I love to cook and to eat. We plan our meals like old Italian grandmothers. I wake up and think about food: What will I eat for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? What should I get ready or prepare now? One of our favorite things to do is go grocery shopping together. I love to create and to share my food, and when I am at home, cooking is a de-stress, relaxing activity for me. Our kitchen is pretty nice for an apartment – we have a good-sized refrigerator, a microwave, oven, ample counterspace, and even an island on which are located the sink and dishwasher (this is what sealed the deal when we were apartment hunting). In sum, it’s relatively spacious and comfortable. However, when there are two cooks (aka both of us) in our kitchen, all of that space suddenly shrinks.

            There are some couples that are capable of cooking together. Not standing in the kitchen together while one cooks, but really cooking together. Sweetly passing each other another spoon to mix the sauce that they have both contributed to creating while saying Here you go, dear and Thanks, honey, giving each other a kiss and a smile while cooking harmoniously.  They joke lightheartedly and at the end of their labors produce a beautiful meal made of bubbly, happy love (or something like that). I have friends like this, usually both of them are shy or quiet people who work together well and happily. When I visit these friends, I watch them in awe. How do they do it? We, both extroverts with Italian origins, are less than tranquil in our food-creating abode. Our kitchen, instead of a pleasant scene of picturesque love,  becomes a bit of a battlefield when we cook together. He is always fixed on the task at hand, moving from left to right, up and down, capable of being in every corner at every counter at once. I am always blocking his way, and he tells me so. I, on the other hand, am small, but agile and fiery, and I like to cook exactly how I like to cook. When we cook together, I am always over his shoulder, criticizing, asking, You sure you want to do it like that? Really? or  So…you’re going to also put  (insert any ingredient that I like more than he does – garlic, for example - here) in the dish, aren’t you? And bless your poor little heart if you cut the onions wrong or touch my frying pan when it’s cooking something. He is also the first to put his “touch” on food – flipping the contents of the frying pan, cutting the onions how he sees fit, or putting an extra spice that I don’t want in the food. The only thing that we have found that we are able to cook together is pizza. He makes and rolls the dough, I get the toppings ready. Then we each dress our own pizzas, not even considering touching the other’s.

            Easter this year was no exception to this phenomenon. My parents drove from Atlanta and my sister traveled from South Bend to join us in Cincinnati for the occasion: we were 9 total that weekend with my boyfriend, his family, my family, and two of our friends. Friday we cooked at our apartment…actually, our agreement was that I would cook at our apartment while he set the table. (See? It’s not that we aren’t a good team!) The next day, we had our big Easter meal at his parent's house. He was the chef, making his famous oven-baked macaroni and cheese, beef roast, and salad. My only job was to do the asparagus and cut the bread.  I prepared the vegetables, cutting them and placing them in a pan with dressing while making sure to stay out of his area of the kitchen, but the oven was completely full with his concoctions. I assessed the situation. After realizing what asking for space and a different temperature in the oven might entail, I asked anyway. He, running from the roast to the boiling water with the macaroni, responded with frustration, “There are too many cooks in the kitchen…too many cooks in the kitchen!” (At this point I would like to remind you that we were the only ones in his parent’s kitchen, whose size rivals that of all of the living space in my apartment combined.) My bad – I should have known better. I smiled to myself – nothing changes even with the holidays – and I left to sit with my family…in the living room.

            In reality, I think that our kitchen really is the room in which live. We cook, eat, fight when someone cuts an onion incorrectly, cry when we discover the pizza crust was made with rice flour and disintegrates when we try to flip it, and even laugh and embrace. Our kitchen holds for us opportunity to feel all emotions and experience life in many ways. It is our own “Living Room.”

            Today, I’d like to share with everyone the recipe that my boyfriend made for our Easter roast. He is the expert when it comes to meat slowly cooking in the oven, and this tender, succulent beef roast is one of the best I’ve had. He forwarded me an email with the recipe that he sent to a friend after the friend tried this bit of deliciousness, and instead of putting my own touch on it by changing it, I’ll share it to you just like he describes.
(to read the Italian version of this blog at Faccio Tutto da Solo, click here!)
 

Best Pot Roast Email

So.

I had the butcher show me the roasts he had then cut off a section of
the rib eye roast he had with the ribs tied on. (about a lb per
person)

set the oven to 450 F

in the pan cut up mixed fingerling potatoes - I like the gold, purple,
and red ones (gives color to the dish), some carrots, and if you like
some celery

take the roast and pat it dry

cut off some extra of the top fat and season it with salt, pepper, and
your favorite seasoning (mine is my secret but others work great too)

put the roast in the pan over the cut veggies and drizzle with olive oil

bake in the 450 over for 15-25 min till its getting nice and brown
then drop the heat down to 325 and bake (time depends on the roast's
weight, mine was 7.5 lbs so it took about 2 hours)

baste the roast every once in a while and rotate the pan every 30
minutes so it cooks evenly

when the times done take it out of the pan and let it sit for at least
5-10 min with tin foil over it

take the veggies out put on a plate or serving dish in the mean time

carve the roast and enjoy alone (its plenty juicy) or with horseradish
or mustard...there u go

 

Okay I lied – but I gave it my best shot - I’m going to append this recipe by sharing the internal temperatures and times that you should cook a roast for medium rare/medium/well, so that you can check the doneness to your liking with your meat thermometer.

Medium Rare: 145°F (63°C)
Medium: 160°F (71°C)
Well Done: 170°F (77°C)

A Love Affair with Pane...and How to Make Good Crusty Bread

                  When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie…that’s a PANE! Bells'll ring Ting-a-ling-a-ling, Ting-a-ling-a-ling…that’s a PANEEEEE! I sing this song as I dance, twirling, through my kitchen. No, I have not fallen in love with a boy named “Pane.” I am singing this song because I sing it every time I make fresh bread – I become super excited while the bread is still in the oven but almost ready, and I sing. Sounds crazy, but you do crazy things when you’re in love. And I’m in love with delicious, crusty bread.

                  I haven't always been this way. I didn't even know about fresh, crusty Italian bread until I was 20 years old. I began on my bread path when I was a child and fell in love with the typical Southern breads such as cornbread and biscuits. By the way, to this day there is little I wouldn't do for a fresh, homemade biscuit, served next to a veggie omelet or with some strawberry jam or honey. (If you all could please excuse me, I have to take a moment to recompose myself after thinking about the deliciousness of the homemade Georgia biscuit). Anyway, this post is not a post about biscuits, so let's leave that to its own deserving post another day.

                  The cuisine of the southeastern US doesn't reflect a great amount of Italian influence; thus, it can be difficult to eat authentic Italian food, whether it be from the supermarket or at restaurants. In addition, when I was little, my Italian-American mom didn't make homemade bread because she was working full-time kicking butt and taking names as a lawyer. Because of these two factors, the tradition of crusty Italian bread was not present in my childhood world at home or in restaurants. Any "crusty" bread that I had the opportunity to eat was usually previously frozen, soft after being reheated, covered in butter and garlic powder, served during spaghetti night at our house or with Olive Garden's spaghetti and meatballs (fun fact: this dish doesn't actually exist in Italian cuisine - it doesn't make sense to match a chunky sauce with delicate, small noodles - the size of the noodles always goes with the size of the sauce). I didn't know that this bread would not be considered "delicious" in Italy. I ate it voluntarily - there aren't many things that I don't eat voluntarily - but the bread was never anything special. Then, when I was 20, I visited Italy for the first time and everything changed.

                  The year was 2006, and I was a student studying abroad at John Cabot University in Trastevere, Rome. Before the fall of that year, I had never been outside of the United States. Stepping out of the airplane for me was entering into another world. I walked around the city for my first few days unable to shut my jaw... I couldn't believe that these people lived there lives in another language, walking around, living within 2000-year-old ruins e nun se ne po’ frega de meno! (FYI: Roman dialect for they don't give a damn! - it's a super useful phrase in Italy, as Italians usually don't...give a damn that is.) The first day in Rome was a blur of hunger and exhaustion. I hadn't slept well on the airplane because I was so excited and when we arrived in Italy, I didn't have time to grab a bite at the airport. My first opportunity to go in search of food was mid-afternoon when we arrived at our apartments. I remember vividly descending the spiral stairs of my new home, and blindly turning right out of my building. What luck!, I thought, A bread shop right next to my building! (At that point I was unaware of the fact that it impossible to go 100 feet in Rome without finding some place to eat or drink something.) I entered the building - scared to death of speaking the language, but my hunger won over my fear and I asked for some bread. Quale tipo? (What kind?), the woman answered me. There are kinds? I thought to myself, and murmured, Ummm non lo so. Ho fame. Non ho ancora mangiato pranzo (Ummm, I don't know. I haven't eaten lunch).  The woman smiled, and without asking me, prepared my lunch. Spero che a Lei piaccia (I hope you like it), she said, passing me something wrapped in white paper.  Mille grazie, I thanked her, leaving the store. Once on the street, I hastily opened the paper hiding a crusty roll with some sort of spread. I took my first bite of bread and Nutella and died of happiness there on the street. Luckily it was not a crowded street, and after having resurrected from this death of joy, I gathered myself and reentered the bread shop to thank the woman. Buono! Grazie - buono! Grazie – mille grazie – che buono! I exclaimed, almost bursting from joy. In this moment, my love story with bread had begun: it had me.

                  I returned to the United States in January of 2007. There are bread stores here that make very good bread, but not very many in Georgia or at Notre Dame, where I was a student. And even if there were amazing bread places close to me, a good loaf of bread here is costly, and as a poor student, I was desperate. I began looking for a recipe that could resemble the bread I had eaten in Italy. After three years of trial and error, I was finally able to find a recipe that doesn't take much manual labor, but does need preparation a day in advance. I hope to share it with any of you that might miss good crusty bread or any of you that might want to try good crusty bread. Although it might not be made in a forno al legno in Italy, my family and I think it does the trick… and it goes great with Nutella.

                  I will leave you all with my new motto, taken from my Piemontese origins: Ol pà l’istofa mai!! (One never gets tired of [good] bread!!)

Crusty Bread
1.5 cups warm water
1 tbsp yeast
pinch of salt sugar
3 or more cups of flour

Metal pot with lid.

Mix flour, yeast, salt, and warm water in a large bowl (I usually use glass). The dough should be wet and sticky. Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rise for 18-22 hours (I have found that warm means somewhere between 74-85 degrees). After letting the bread rise for 18-22 hours, pour the dough out onto a floured surface. Dust the top with flour and shape into a flat “ball”. Cover again with plastic wrap and let rise for another two hours. During this time, preheat the oven to 450 and put the pot and lid into the oven.  After the dough has risen for the second time, spray the pot with Pam and move the dough into the pot (this will not be easy but since the dough is so sticky and soft it will reform to the shape of the pot once cooking). Cook for 20-25 minutes with the lid on and 15-20 minutes with the lid off until the bread is the brownness and crustiness you desire.