Vino Italiano: It's Personal

I’m a people person.  It’s probably that empathetic, Georgia-born Italian-American coupled with the curious anthropologist in me that makes me want to meet and learn the story of just about everybody I see. Seldom is that a bad thing – although I do get some weird looks in elevators – and often it results in new friends or at least interesting stories from people in all walks of life.

Me + People = Happy  (I love being a guide for WSA in Rome!)

 It’s hardly a shock that this very prominent aspect of my personality carries over to how I approach wines. In fact I think it’s the Italian empathy in me that makes me want to meet and learn the story of every wine I see. It’s that empathy that once again, my favorite author and anthropological-and-linguistic-commentary-genius Beppe Severgnini illustrates perfectly by his comparison of Italian and British flight attendants in his hilariously insightful analysis of the Italian culture, La Bella Figura:

“The Italian flight attendant sometimes takes her job title literally--the plane flies, she just attends. But she's always pleasant, elegant, and ladylike, so much so that she can appear intimidating. I remember one flight from Milan to New York. The Alitalia attendant, an attractive brunette from Naples, was strutting up and down like a model on a catwalk thirty thousand feet above the ground. The man sitting next to me glanced at her and asked me, "Do you think I might be able to get another coffee?" "Why ask me? Ask her," I replied, nodding in the direction of the flight attendant. "How can I ask Sophia Loren for a coffee?" he whimpered. He was right. The good-looking attendant was putting on a fashion show in the sky, and no one dared to interrupt.

But then take a British flight attendant. You wouldn't mistake her for a model. She'll have very little makeup, and no jewelry. Often she is robustly built, and until recently would be sporting one of those little round hats that you only see on British cabin staff and New Jersey ice-cream vendors. Her heels are low, and her shoes are "sensible," as they say in New York. Alitalia crews wear emerald green. British Airways has improbable combinations of red, white, and blue, or a mayonnaise-cum-apricot shade that nature felt no need to invent. The British woman is attentive, though. She comes back again and again, smiling all the time. She waits until your mouth is full, swoops on you from behind, and beams "Is everything all right?"

Then something happens. Let's say you spill your coffee on your pants. At that point, the two personalities undergo an abrupt transformation that--you've guessed it--sums up the respective national characters.

The British attendant stiffens. You have deviated from the pattern; you have done something you shouldn't have. All of a sudden, her inner nanny emerges. She doesn't say she's annoyed, but she lets you know.

The attractive Italian also undergoes a change. In an emergency, her detachment disappears. At times of crisis, what emerges is her inner mom, sister, confidante, friend, and lover. She takes off her jacket and actually helps you. Weak at, if not openly irritated by, routine administration, she comes into her own in exceptional circumstances that allow her to bring her personal skills to bear. Where did the ice goddess go? She melted. In her place is a smiling woman who is trying to be helpful.”

Nicola Trabucco, truly an amazing wine maker and person

Sofia Loren looks aside, I am that Italian flight attendant when it comes to wines. The wines perform best and I appreciate them the most when the situation brings out the personal aspects of each of us. Take me in a wine store, for example. I stare at the bottles, indifferently at the rows of labels, seemingly different yet all the same, when choosing which I would like to take home that night. The 90+ numbers bestowed by Robert Parker on the lucky few do little to entice me. Even when the knowledgeable employee or even owner at the wine store points me towards the best sellers or their favorite wine, I am skeptical and cold. Not that I don’t trust he or she likes that wine, but I’m not interested in the wine - I don’t trust the wine - because I don’t know it. And therein lies the key:  I don’t know it. It hasn’t spoken to my personal side, it doesn’t need or want to talk to me. The way I approach wines are the way I approach people – I want to know them and they want to know me. You can’t just give me a bottle with a technical sheet and a long list of credentials such as “aged in barriques for 6 months before 12 months in the bottle.” My favorite wines taste good because I have a relationship with them – I know their story, that of the people that made them, and the culture they come from.

This is Italian wine. Italian wines are good because the elements that people analyze are exceptional – they are amazing because each bottle is a reflection of the story of the people who make it. I love Italian wine because if you listen, it tells you that story, and I can’t wait to open the next bottle to hear what the wine has to say or relive the first time I was lucky enough to experience that bottle’s tale for the first time. In my most fortunate of cases - such as the wines of Nicola Trabucco, Castello di Neive, Allegrini, Tascad’Almerita, Villa Dora, Ferrari, and Antinori – I’ve met the wine makers, the families, the employees that pour their hearts into their work, heard their stories, and stood on the grounds where wine was born. In other cases- such as the wines of Foradori, Bruno Giacosa, and Borgogno & Figli (try No Name for a great story)– I’ve read interviews, watched videos, and and studied the legends that are poured into the bottles of these iconic wines.

My Italian-American family

Italian wines are passion and love, they are history and culture, and they, like their culture, are made for empathetic, Georgia-born Italian-American anthropologists like me. 

**Special additional thanks to those don't work for the wineries but who have been key in making it possible for me to explore the Italian wine the empathetic way: Giuseppe LoCascio and Stephanie at Winebow Imports, Jon Goldsmith at Spacca Napoli, Caolan Sleeper at Eataly,  Anthony Minne at Plum Market, and the countless other people with whom I have developed relationships and friendships.

Eataly is Italian, Which Explains A Lot

There's been a lot of buzz about Eataly Chicago's recent opening - the heavy anticipation leading up to the Mecca of Italian gastronomy had set the bar high, and Chicago expected Eataly to deliver. But just what exactly did they expect? I've been reading countless reviews (several of them with a bitter tone) over the past few days, and it leaves me wondering if some people have missed the point.

(angels singing)

Eataly is Italy, not Mariano's. If you read the manifesto of the store, there is no place that says you are going to find the best deals or that you’re going to be able to get your Christmas baking materials in their baking section (which they don’t have…). The point of the store, as is pretty clearly expressed in this manifesto, is educating the population and creating a community around high quality Italian food. Anyone who has visited a place where artisan cheese is being made or wild boar is being hunted and slaughtered (or, really, anyone who has done their research on what it takes to get that food to the store or your table), knows that prices reflect the work that the people put into it. This is actually a well-known and accepted fact in other countries; just consider that France, Italy, and Japan - all known for their exquisite cuisines - spend anywhere from 13-15% of their yearly income on food, while the US is lagging at 7%. Quality and price are directly correlated - when I buy an heirloom cherry tomato from the Green City Market for $4.00/lb it tastes like a tomato. When I buy it from Jewel for $1.99/lb, it tastes like water (but at least red-colored water).

No Name (not) Barolo - one of my favorite wines with a story

All this is not to say that the pricing at Eataly is always fair. I’ve been recently working on wine Tasca, Ferrari and Allegrini, and wanted to use the Eataly wine store, completely dedicated to Italian wine, for a gift basket. When pricing the basket, we noticed bottles such as Allegrini's Palazzo della Torre selling for significantly more than it’s sold around the corner at Binny’s. Same went for Antinori’s Villa Antinori. But after mentioning this to the department, I was told that there are plans to work on price matching in the very near future. Hopefully this is the case, but for now I’ll save the common wines for Binny’s and the special ones that I can only get at Eataly (like Borgogno & Figli’s No Name, a wine intended to be Barolo made in a cask that the DOCG commission did not approve of, and sold in protest as No Name).

Caolan Sleeper, the Project
Manager of Eataly Chicago
(who loves her job and brought
you that wonderful store you're
enjoying today)

Also, Eataly as a whole is not about being the fastest sandwich or pizza maker in Chicago during your 30-minute lunch break, although they do try their best to satisfy their impatient clients. Yes, the lines have been long and the staff does seem like there is a very steep learning curve that they seem to be climbing. But once it gets up and running, I don’t want to be in and out of one of their eight restaurants. My experience in Italy has taught me patience in two ways – one being that type of patience when you’re at the Rome airport lost luggage window and the only person working decides to take 3 smoke breaks of 10 minutes each before you move 5 feet in the line – and the second being that patience that you must have for a true Italian ragù (all day) or authentic pizza (you’ve got to plan days in advance for the dough’s rise time of 8-36 hours). I’ll wait for my food, thank you, so that I know that it’s good.

Eataly is Italian, which means first and foremost it’s also empathetic. Italians break rules because they see the person over the rule or law, and in this case, their people over the $$$. After the employees worked day and night to open the store, they deserved a break - and the empathy of the Eatalian gave them a day off on Monday. Let the people be people – sleep in, spend a day with their families, and recharge from all of the hard work they put into the opening last week. From what I can see, it didn't shrink in fear of it's opening, it gave the people who deserved it a break! If only all corporations saw its employees as living breathing entities with needs.

Oscar Farinetti-  the mastermind behind the
concept - is 100% Italian

Eataly is Italian, which means it’s not perfect, but it is (like all things Italian) passionate. Read the signs, talk to any of their employees (a close friend of mine was very involved in the opening) and they are working 24/7 not because they have to but because they want to  - they love their job. It’s a store that’s built for people who are interested in sharing the learning experience and the passion for authentic Italian food and wine. Yes, it does have several aspects of the store that should and hopefully will be improved. But it is what it said it would be  - an authentic physical homage to the world of Italian gastronomical culture.

Celsius to Fahrenheit: More Than Just Simple Math

            I am not one that deals well with discomfort in the elements. I have been known to take drastic measures to change my situation immediately when too cold or too hot, like when I was taking a walk on a chilly beach without a sweatshirt, and instead of going back to my condo a mile away, had to buy a new sweatshirt at the nearest gift shop. Or the time when I was wearing jeans in a tailgating parking lot at Notre Dame, and was so hot I went to the bookstore to buy shorts. In sum, the idea of “sucking it up” or “toughing it out” does not register with me when it comes to temperature. You’d think, logically, that I would be very aware of the weather reports in order to avoid impromptu purchases of tacky souvenir sweatshirts, and I am. However, I am further impeded by an inability to correctly comprehend exactly what the temperature is suggesting I wear. 73 degrees: Is that shorts weather? But I get cold easily. I’ll put on jeans. But what if I’m hot? I’ll bring shorts. Or maybe wear shorts with a cardigan. Basically, I end up wearing shorts with a cardigan, bringing jeans, and changing when I reach the place that I am at because I’m too cold. It’s not a great system, but it works, and it gives me options.

Sicilian summer house - You could fry and egg on those 45 degree stones.

        Recently, a wrench was thrown into my method of dealing with the weather: I began working, traveling, and living in Italy. And there, they use Celsius. My Italian boyfriend would warn me about Sicily’s summer: It’s going to be 42 degrees every day. Prepare yourself! I’m not so naïve that I didn’t think it was summer, but I did bring light scarves and jackets just in case 42 meant it was chilly at night. Long story short, 42 (107 degrees Fahrenheit) is not scarf weather. It’s wear-as-few-clothes-as-is-considered-decent-in-order-to-prevent-completely-melting-into-nothing weather. 

            Another instance, again in Sicily, but this time in November, involved extra layers of confusion because Sicilians have a particular view of weather (anything below…65°F - again, guessing on the numbers, but I think it’s something around there - is cold). Anyway, it had been drizzling on and off all day, and I had been in the house helping Nonna cook (…okay, helping is a little strong, watching the master and hoping that some of her skills would transfer magically via osmosis to me is more like it). Our cousins asked if I would like to join them for a freshly mixed soda at the kiosk around 10PM. I agreed, and was immediately forewarned that the weather was 13 degrees and I needed to bundle up so that I wouldn’t get sick. They donned me in a wool scarf, told me to zip up my jacket and decided that we had to take the motorino because it was too cold to walk. I was ushered out the door, but too focused on how to get on the motorino without looking like a fool to notice the temperature. It was only when I began to sweat after driving the two blocks to our destination that I realized…13 degrees does not equal cold. I peeled the layers off and after a refreshing Italian soda, walked home, beating the motorino.

            I’m beginning to learn to adapt to my inabilities: in addition to buying large purses that allow me to cutely conceal all extra accessories/changes of clothes in case I guessed wrong about the weather, I have learned how to quickly convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, which at least gives me a ballpark idea of the temperature. Fahrenheit is officially Celsius x 1.8 + 32, but to make it easier you can just multiply by 2 and add 32, taking away a degree or two (luckily I am blessed with being able to do simple math in my head). With this new trick, when I visit Italy I’m at least not bringing my winter boots for 25 degrees or wearing a wool scarf in 13. And I still have hope for the future…or maybe I’ll just get a bigger purse.

Arancini...Proof that Leftovers are Delicious

            My family has never been one that wastes…anything. Being the oldest daughter of an ecologist and an Italian-American who was raised the daughter of a poor Italian mining community in the Pittsburgh area hit hard by the Depression, I have it in my blood to not throw anything away.

            My parents are champions at keeping EVERYTHING, especially my mom, who throws nothing away until it is utterly and completely ruined, and even then not everything gets the boot. She still has all of her college t-shirts, and she keeps food until every single drop or crumb is gone or it is obviously non-edible (expiration dates are merely a suggestion). There have been so many times in which I, cleaning the kitchen, have found three crumbs of a muffin on a plate placed on the counter. Thinking this is the plate of someone who did not take the time to put the plate in the dishwasher, I throw the crumbs into the trash. Like clockwork, a few hours later my mom enters the kitchen asking Where’s my muffin? Marti…did you throw away my muffin? I was keeping that for snack! I pretend not to hear her or know what happened, which rarely works, and in time I have gradually learned to keep to my crumbs and let others take care of theirs.

            My grandmother survived the Great Depression with no mother and three brothers in a poor Italian immigrant community,  She is always thinking about how we can save or not have to go to the store to buy something new. Grandma makes rags out of old clothes, sews holes in socks, and even saves the bags that sliced bread comes in to use instead of Ziplock bags when she makes too many cookies or needs a bag of ice for a grandchild’s boo-boo. My grandma is also the Grand Master of using left-overs to create new and inventive meals, such as using leftover mashed potatoes to make some of the best gnocchi I’ve ever eaten, or using leftover meat to make a ragu’ by shredding it and serving it with red sauce. She’s brilliant, my grandma.

            I have a little bit of both my mother and my grandmother in the way that I live. I will keep a bottle of balsamic vinegar until there are two drops left, and I love to make creative new dishes out of leftovers.  (I do step out of line with mom’s habit of keeping all food  and throw away things that have expired…my less-frugal boyfriend has made that influence on me in that way.) In a quest to not have to make the decision of throwing away old food, I try to use leftovers as quickly as possible the next day, creating a new meal out of the old one, and I find that the Italian cuisine lends itself beautifully to this. You can always throw some leftover meat or vegetables into a sauce or stew (ribollita was made just for this – a stew of leftover vegetables served over day-old bread). My favorite thing to make, however, comes from leftover risotto (rice made with short-grain, or arborio, rice), and is a Sicilian specialty. Literally meaning “little oranges” arancini are traditionally friend balls of rice, similar to croquettes, stuffed with cheese or ragu’ (made of meat or vegetables). In order to save myself some stomach aches and the pain of using a deep fryer, I bake mine in the oven with a drizzle of olive oil and serve these as a side dish or tasty snack.

**You can also use sticky rice if risotto is not on hand – as the forming of the balls is based on the idea that the rice sticks together by itself, basamati or long-grain rice might not have enough starch. However, if you would like to try with regular rice and maybe throw an egg in the leftover rice to give it some binding agents, go for it!

Arancini

1 ½ cups leftover risoto

½ cup cubed cheese (any kind that you wish)

½ cup Sauce or Ragu (optional

1 egg, beaten

¾ cup breadcrumbs

¾ cups flour

olive oil

           

 Preheat the oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper, and place the flour, egg, and breadcrumbs in three separate bowls, one after another.

Form six patties with the leftover risotto and place them on a plate. Take a patty in the palm of your hand. Place the cheese (and sauce if you choose) in the middle of the circle and reshape the rice around to form a ball.  Repeat with the other five patties. 

 Once each ball of rice is stuffed with cheese, dip the balls into the flour, then the egg, and then roll in the breadcrumbs to create a breading, and place back on the pan. Drizzle the balls with olive oil if you like and cook for 25 minutes. 

Let cool for five minutes and then, serve immediately.

Eggplant Endeavors

           Eggplant. It’s not a beautiful name. It’s not romantic or appealing. The name doesn’t even invoke curiosity to find out what is behind the unfamiliar word – maybe instead it does the opposite and repulses you. Say it to yourself. Eggplant. Kind of awkward; definitely unattractive. What has this innocent plant done to deserve such a name?  Poor thing, it’s not just in the English language that it has a less-than-alluring name. At one time all plants in the nightshade family, of which the tomato, eggplant, and potato are a part, were believed to be toxic. This is reflected in various names for the plant. The Italian word for eggplant is melanzana, from mela non sana, or “unhealthy apple”, because it was once believed that it was poisonous, and is still believed to be toxic when eaten raw. Other Mediterranean populations called the fruit (like its cousin the tomato it is, in fact, a fruit) mala insana, “crazy apple” because they believe it would make anyone who ate it crazy.

            My first experience with eggplant was also not the most wonderful. I remember it vividly – I was in the third grade and we were writing a play for school. The characters were different fruits and vegetables: there was a jolly blueberry, a stupid but lovable stalk of broccoli, a sexy strawberry, an intelligent zucchini squash, and an unpleasant eggplant who was always in a bad mood: Eggbert Eggplant. At this point in my life, I had never eaten an eggplant…and this play assured that I never wanted to eat one. You know the TV shows for kids in which the characters are likeable fruits and vegetables so that kids will feel comfortable towards them and eat more? This experience had exactly that effect but opposite – every time I thought (and still sometimes when I think) about eggplant, I thought about unlikable and unpleasant people.

            My disinterest in the eggplant was amplified by the uncomfortable sound of the word itself: eggplant. To write this blog, I decided to do a little research on the history of the name. In reality, the name does not reflect any qualities of the eggplant we know today. The word was created in the 1600-1700’s when European traders brought back the fruit from its indigenous Asia. The species of eggplant that was brought back was a white-yellow fruit about the size of a goose egg. So it looked like an egg, but was a plant…the Europeans were faced with a difficult task in naming this new specimen? The first name that they tried, plantegg, didn’t go over well, so the imaginative  Englishmen choose the ever-more creative eggplant. With the years, Americans kept this name, but our English cousins opted for the more "fancy" French trend of aubergine, originally from the Arabic al-badinjan. This difference in names reflects the differences in our historical stories and our rebellious American spirit. In England the French language enjoyed a high prestige as the official language in various sectors of society for centuries after the Norman Invasion (it actually remained the official language of the courts until 1731). Therefore, it is highly likely that the English choose the French aubergine over the creative and beautiful eggplant for reasons of prestige. However, for us Americans, prestige was found in doing exactly what the English weren’t doing or the opposite of whatever they were doing, and therefore we choose to go with the other word. If the English call it aubergine, no way we’re doing the same. God bless America and its eggplants!

            Although I love eggplants today, I honestly did not even begin trying to eat them until I was 23 years old, when I was living in Chicago and worked at a Lebanese restaurant. Lebanese cuisine is famous for its baba ghanoush, a delicious puree of roasted eggplant, made very similarly to hummus and DELICOUS. My lunches became baba and pita several times a week, and from this discovery that I liked the food, I branched  out a bit and came more in contact with the food. My travels in Sicily resulted in the most delicious bites of pasta alla norma (made with rigatoni, eggplant, ricotta salata, and red sauce), parmigiana (not the kind we think of, but something more like a layered casserole of fried eggplant, Emmenthaler cheese, and red sauce), and my personal favorite, grilled eggplant. These were all delicious, but I hold dear my first experience with eggplant in that taste of baba ghanoush, and today that is the recipe that I want to share, in addition to how to choose a good eggplant when buying it and how to prepare it for cooking.

            Finding a good eggplant and treating it correctly before cooking are the most important factors to creating a delicious dish. The eggplant is part of the nightshade family, which also includes the potato and tomato. Members of this family contain alkaloids, cousins of nicotine and morphine and which can be toxic when eaten in very large quantities, and the eggplant has the highest level of alkaloids in the family. Never fear, however! Unless you are planning on eating 36 raw eggplants at any time in your life (the amount you’d have to eat to get a harmful effect), you are safe! Alkaloids are found in the seeds and even if they aren’t going to kill you by eating one of the fruits, they do give a distinct bitterness that is often quite unpleasant. So, first thing when choosing an eggplant: avoid the unpleasant bitterness. Older eggplants are usually bigger, which means they have more seeds. Therefore, choose the younger, smaller ones. If you are faced with only large, old eggplants, consider the sex.  Eggplants are male and female, and can be distinguished as such by looking at the bottom end (away from the part where it was attached to the vine). Female eggplants, recognizable by the light brown, deeper oval indentation, have more seeds and therefore more alkaloids. Male eggplants, which have a shallow, round naval, contain less seeds and less bitterness. In addition to avoiding bitterness, it is important to choose a fresh and healthy eggplant. The skin should be firm without any wrinkles or pronounced imperfections. The stem at the top should have a clean cut and not be too dry (a dry stem means it was harvested a long time ago). The last thing to do is press on the skin, it should give a little but then spring right back to its original form.

            After choosing an eggplant, it is necessary to rid the fruit of its water, which carries a lot of the bitterness. This can be done in several ways: cut the eggplant into rounds or long pieces, place in a colander in the sink or on a cooling rack with a pan underneath, and salt heavily. This breaks down the cells and releases the water; leave the eggplant to drain for 2-3 hours (sometimes I even do more), and then rinse, squeeze, and pat dry. The other option, as is the case with baba ghanoush, is to roast the eggplant whole, peel the skin, and put the roasted meat in a strainer with a bowl underneath for 30 minutes. (Side note: I’m really emphasizing the importance of avoiding the bitterness because it really ruins the dish for me – if you’re into it, go for it! After all is said and done, it’s you who has to like your dish).

            As I ‘ve mentioned, today I will share the recipe of my first experience with eggplant: baba ghanoush. Baba ghanoush is a typical dish of Mideastern cuisine, particularly in the region that contains Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. This puree is made with roasted eggplant and a paste of ground sesame seeds called tahini (found in Arabic specialty stores and increasingly in American groceries and markets). If you do not feel like putting tahini in the baba, you can try substituting a sesame oil (I might only do one tablespoon) or leaving it out all together. This food is traditionally served with pita, but can also be eaten on top of crostini for a twist on bruschetta or however else you choose to eat it.

Baba Ghanoush (adapted from Alton Brown’s Recipe)

1 eggplant

2 cloves of garlic

¼ cup fresh lemon juice (bottled has a much milder flavor, and this recipe needs the pop that you get from fresh lemon juice)

2 tablespoons of tahini paste

parsley

salt, pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Poke holes with a fork in the eggplant and then place it on a cooling rack with a pan underneath it to catch any water that might escape and roast for 30-45 minutes. *If you do not poke holes in the eggplant to allow gases to release, it will explode, which might be cool to watch but much less so to clean.*   

When the eggplant looks a little shriveled, take it out and let cool for 15 minutes. 

Then, remove the skin and place the meat in a colander over a bowl and let drain for 30 minutes (throw away the alkaloid-laden liquid at the bottom). 

Place the pulp, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini in a food processor or blender and mix. Salt and pepper to taste – if the baba is still too bitter, you can always add a bit of honey or sugar to balance the flavors. To finish, add parsley and lightly pulse to give the leaves a few chops. 

Serve cold or at room temperature with pita or anything else you desire.

What's in a Name?

            One thing I love about America is its diversity. We are founded on the idea people are from different places, have different backgrounds, speak different languages, and follow different cultural traditions. We are founded on these and we cling to them. Growing up, my friends and I constantly compared stories of what our families did at home; my Russian friend recalled stories of a quiet game involving a story about a dead cat, my Bosnian friends brought in baklava on school Food Days, and I proudly compared differences between my Catholic upbringing and that of my protestant friends. I took the fact that people come from different cultures as a general assumption of life…but maybe that’s not always so.

            While I was recently teaching my students from Saudi Arabia and China, a question popped in my head: Do people ask others how to spell and pronounce their names in other countries in the sense that is a standard, regular question?  America’s being used to and appreciation of various languages and cultures is a rarity in the grand scheme of the world’s cultures. You can tell an Italian name, a Spanish name, an Chinese name, or an Arabic name by just looking at it, and most of the indigenous people in said countries carry names that show so. An American name, however, can be deceiving in the fact that you can’t look at it and say it’s American. You can have an American who knows no Spanish and never set foot in a Spanish country with a name of blatantly Spanish origin (take my sister’s half-Swedish boyfriend with a Mexican last name…his family goes back to Spanish conquistadors), or one with Indian, Asian, Irish, or any origin.  How cool is it that our diverse uniqueness is present not only in the fact that there is not one stereotypical “American” color or physical features (such as dark African skin, Arabic almond eyes or large Italian nose) that peg us as American, but also that there is no one type of name. Our demarcation is the fact that we are different.

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!