Category Archives: cooking

New food – Agretti aka Roscano.

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So, I have been seeing a vegetable unknown to me called Roscano here in our markets in Umbria. It looked a lot like chives with its roots but with the texture almost like a rosemary leaf. Finally, curious I grabbed a bunch and looked on-line for recipes. Here is what it looks like. (photo from wikipedia I forgot to take one before I used it!)

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…and from the food network.

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Also, during my exploration on-line I find that there are food fights going on in England over this stuff. Who knew what I was missing?!

As for my preparation. You can just saute it in butter or oil with lemon and garlic as a side dish. Or you can make a pasta, which is what I did. It was a little tedious to clean but then you just blanch it in boiling water for a couple of minutes and add it to your pasta sauce. My sauce also had fresh fava beans, lemon, garlic and toasted walnuts. I liked it. The Agretti was grassy and unlike anything I’ve had before. I would do it again. I hope the season is not over yet!

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May day

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Wow do they keep the Umbertide band busy or what?! Friday May 1 is a European-wide holiday similar to Labor day in the US. We had the band out again. The local union leaders and polititians got up on the podium and speechified for a couple of hours. Umbertide is majority communist so labor unions etc. are very important. Later they blessed the tractors… I missed it but I am told it is the tradition.
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After my sister and her husband left I asked them, since they were the first to use the guest room, what it lacked. All in all it served them well. The only issue is the odd steps in our hallway ready to trip you up in a very real sense. These steps are between the guest room and the designated guest bath. For their visit we moved a small lamp from their room into the hallway. It did the job but was a temporary fix. After they left I purchased a night light which is activated automatically. It comes on when the lights go out.

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The weather is very beautiful now. Sunny and warm. It will be in the 80s for the next few days. It makes me want to plant things so I purchased some plants from our market and we got some dirt from the hardware store just down the street. Here is what I call the herb corner.

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Sweet basil. Here they sell it oddly. You don’t get just one plant. Rather you get a densely packed bunch of small stems. I have to see how this works out.

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First of the flowers. Three lonely petunias. There will be more soon.

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View of Umbertide in the evening sun.

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Finally here are my purchases from our Wednesday market. The strawberries are local now. The artichokes are perfect and YES! those are new spring peas. Sauteed them in some butter with salt and pepper. So sweet!

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Hot peppers! Found!

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After our Italian class on Thursday I talked everyone into going to Arezzo to a food store I had been wanting to visit called Essalunga that I learned about in one of the groups I am member of called Italian Reflections Group. A great group of folks with all kinds of good information for Expats in Italy. Since we were already in Citta di Castello for our class it wasn’t too far away. Off we went. The store is just off the highway that goes past Arezzo and is huge and very modern and new looking with big wide aisles. We had fun looking at all the wares and sure enough they had a lot of things I have not found here like fresh hot peppers. We also found some lovely tuna steaks (ate them last night!), salmon filets and other unusual spices. Here are my peppers! I will freeze them until I need them.

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After our shopping trip it was time for lunch. Arezzo is nice in that it has lots of parking lots one of which Susan and Gary told us about which always has spots and also has escalators up to the town. We had picked a possible restaurant called Ristorante Chiavi d’Oro. Golden keys restaurant. It was on Piazza San Francesco which was a straight walk across the centro. It is a lovely city with lots of shops, art galleries etc. I need to come back for more than lunch someday!

Our lunch was very good. There was a tiny menu with about 6 items in each category, antipasti, primi, secundi. Susan got the most scrumptious flan made of Gorgonzola and so light and airy. I got the salmon tartar. Here are pictures.

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Susan and Gary had pastas and Luther and I got the rabbit. All were good. We agreed we would go back.

Today is a beautiful, very spring-like day. Probably about 60 degrees F. The sky is blue. We decided to go to Marsciano to buy outside chairs. There is a factory outlet for a store called EMU which sells all outside furniture. We bought 4 pretty metal chairs in a orangy-yellow color. I hope they look good with our table when it arrives.

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We bought a nice steak at the store and I will grill it tonight since it is so nice out.

Ciao a tutti!

Odds and ends…

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I wanted to catch up with a couple of things. First, I don’t think I ever showed a picture of the garage we rent. It is quite spacious and we even thought we could use it to store things like pellets for our stove as the space, even with the car inside, is big.

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Last week when we went to Leroy and Merlin we purchased some items. It never ceases to amaze me that nearly everything I buy here is made in Italy. How they manage to hold onto industry here and we can’t do that in the US is puzzling to me. This is the box with the toilet paper holder and brush we bought for the guest bath.

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We also talked to Jim, our realtor about our fireplace and terrace shade (two items from our list). He dropped by and took a look. He knows just about everyone so we figured he was a good source. Also Emanuele is a busy person lately and we thought we’d try to manage without him this time. Jim said what we wanted to do to the fireplace was definitely doable. He is supposed to get in touch after he talks to some folks.

Saturday morning dawned gray but the Kilometer Zero market is hanging in, even in the dead of winter.

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We had planned to go with Joseph and Paul to visit a vineyard or two. We drove to Montifalco and first visited Adanti. We still had time before they all close for lunch so we visited Filippo not far away. We managed to fill the trunk of course.

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We had decided not to lunch because Joseph and Paul needed to get back to Georgia, their little dog. I had planned to make dinner tonight anyway. I want to share a great recipe that I found for roast chicken. This is the best, and the easiest roast chicken I’ve ever found and I’ve been making it over and over. It is by Thomas Keller of the French Laundry. The trick is to make the chicken very dry so it crisps up. You also put it in the oven and do not mess with it. So easy. Best Roast Chicken. I do not use a rack. It is just as good in a pan with space around it. And here is a picture of mine. SO GOOD!!

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And finally, on Sunday we went back to Calagranna for lunch. Alberto was in the hospital so Ely was cooking and had a big birthday party bunch of Brits coming but she said that is we just eat what she is making for them we can come. It turned out it was roast beef and yorkshire puddings with all the fixin’s as a main course. But for us the best part was the anitpasti. She made a bunch of wonderful little things. I couldn’t describe them all but here is a picture.

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Bay leaves

One ingredient I’ve never found here is bay leaves. They just don’t have them in the store. Well I found out why. Everyone has a laurel tree and they just pick the leaves off!! I don’t have a tree but a friend brought a branch to me. Who’d have thought it!

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Yesterday we had a big cold front come through. In the morning it was almost 60F but by afternoon it had dropped to near freezing. In the process we had a big hail storm and very strong winds.

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This time last year we were just winding up our house hunting trip. A lot has changed since then!