Category Archives: Eating

Pasta for dinner!

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Luther subscribes to Doctor Wine, an Italian wine and food site. Often I will find, in my inbox, a recipe he has forwarded that he has decided I should make. Every now and then I decide to make one and yesterday I did. This one was called Busiate al pesto di pistacchio e salmone affumicato or Pasta with pistachio pesto and smoked salmon.

Busiate is a fat long shaped pasta. It is made by wrapping maccheroni around a stem of a plant called Busa which grows in Sicily. This makes it a long twist of pasta. The pasta is a special shape from Trapani province on the west coast. It is traditionally served with a pesto made of almonds, pecorino cheese, garlic and olive oil.

I didn’t have Busiate so I used a fat spaghetti noodle. I have since found I can get the Busiate from Eataly. I will probably order some. Here’s the finished product. It was very tasty.

If anyone wants to try it the recipe is in the pull down menu [Recipes] at the top of the page. Also at the bottom of this page.
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Italian sentence for today. “Ho mangiato bene!” In English, “I have eaten well!”. Pronounced — oh man-gee-ah-toe ben-ay! You can say this after you’ve eaten in a restaurant and it will make them happy.🙂
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Stay safe all my friends! 🌈

Busiate con pesto di pistacchi e salmone affumicato
Serves 2
250 grams Busiate or fat spaghetti (about 8 ounces)
200 grams pistachios shelled and peeled (7 ounces)
50 grams olive oil (1/4 cup)
Salt
100 grams smoked salmon (3.5 ounces)
50 grams pistachios chopped (1.75 ounces)
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
Olive oil
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Blend the pistachios with extra virgin olive oil and a little tepid water to obtain a soft cream. Adjust the salt. (I used an immersion blender to make the pesto.) Set aside.

Chop the smoked salmon, leaving 2 whole slices aside for decoration. Set aside.

Cook pasta in abundant, well salted water. Cook until barely al dente. Save a cup of the pasta water and put the drained pasta in a big roomy pan. Add pesto and chopped salmon. Toss over heat, adding some pasta water (not too much at first) to make a nice sauce in which to finish cooking the pasta. Add more water as necessary. When the water is absorbed and the sauce looks creamy, serve with the decorative salmon strips, the chopped pistachios and the grated lemon peel on top. Garnish with good olive oil.

Another regional dinner

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Last Friday you may remember we had a dinner courtesy of Calagrana showcasing the Piedmonte region. This week we had a dinner showcasing the Marchese region. It was supremely tasty and a warming winter meal. Here is the menu. We did opt for the wine pairing this time and it was perfect.

Sentence for today “è proprio come la primavera oggi” or “it is just like spring today”. Pronounced Ay pro-pree-o come-ay la pree-mah-vara ohg-gee.
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Stay safe everyone! Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Covid

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A little thing I just realized…this is the first time in my adult life that I don’t know who is playing in the Super Bowl. And I just read that this coming Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday 😏. It is also the next super-spreader event…some advice, Don’t organize a party at home. Don’t go to a Super Bowl party.
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It’s time to update on our Covid situation and also talk about the future of travel to and from Italy. The emergency declaration which allows the government to make quick decisions about Covid issues has been extended until mid-April and it will probably be extended again.

Most of Italy has been rated Zone Yellow. Unfortunately we here in Umbria are Zone Orange, threatening to tip over into Zone Red. We have a steady increase of cases. This morning I read two cases of the new Brazilian strain of the virus were found here. I also heard the worst numbers are in the Perugia province of Umbria. In Umbertide we have a very famous rehabilitation center, Prosperious. Turns out there are 26 cases just in that center alone! It has necessitated the close of our hospital.

Speaking of hospitals, the big medical center university hospital in Perugia, Sibillini, is being hammered. There was a photo with a line of ambulances waiting at the Pronto Socorso (emergency). They have closed it except for Covid and emergencies. They are not allowing any visitors. This is particularly hard on Italians as they expect to practically live in the hospital with their family or friends.

Vaccines. We have heard our age group has been pushed to no sooner than April. They are still vaccinating over 80 year olds and health workers. We visited our doctor today and she says they have no idea what is happening with the vaccine. So we wait. I read an interesting article in the Washington Post about what people who HAVE been vaccinated should be able to do, and not do. The biggest issue seems to be the new strains which are loose practically everywhere now. The UK, South African, and Brazilian strains. No one knows if the vaccine people are getting now, will be protection against the new strains. And no one knows if a person who has been vaccinated can still carry the virus and infect others. This means people who are vaccinated can feel a bit safer themselves against catching it or getting very ill if they do, but they still need to wear masks etc to protect others. Because of the uncertainty I think they still recommend against traveling even if you’ve been vaccinated.

Travel. The EU, and Italy, have no plans to loosen the travel restrictions. In fact things are tightening up even more. The Italian government updates its rules and restrictions about every 2 weeks. And they don’t try to predict any farther into the future than that. So there’s no way to tell when the travel ban will be lifted. My guess is not until most Italians have gotten the vaccine and we have gotten the disease under control here. We are far from that right now. They don’t predict the third group of people (under 60) to be vaccinated until October or November at the earliest. I don’t think 2021 will be the year tourists return to Italy. 🙁
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Flatbread!
Today I decided to make a old recipe I’ve been making for years. Rosemary flatbread. I ordered some dry yeast on Amazon because the stuff you get here is very unpredictable. This is just like the Fleischmans I used to get in the States. So to try it out, I made…flatbread! It was thicker than my previous loaves because I don’t have my big cast iron pan here. Still it was tasty.

Sentence in Italian “Il tempo non è freddo questa settimana” in English, “The weather is not cold this week”. Pronounced – eel temp-o non A fred-doh quest-ah set-tee-mahn-ah.

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Stay safe. Don’t go to a super bowl party! Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Baccalà

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Yesterday was a welcome sunny day. And not too cold. As usual, the Kilometer Zero market was here and instead of huddling under their tents to keep dry, they were sunny and happy like the weather. We ran a bunch of local errands and did some shopping. The nice man I visit normally had what looked like spring onions. I asked him what they were called and he said aglio fresco, or fresh garlic. It was young garlic before it grows into bulbs. He proceeded to tell us all about ways to use it. In a frittata or in a pasta. So I bought some.

I didn’t intend to use it in a frittata or in pasta. I thought it would be perfect in the dinner I had planned for last evening.

I had planned a dish using baccalà. It is the salt cod which you find throughout the world. It was first produced by the Vikings and allowed them to explore widely. They brought it to the Basques who were also renown seafarers and fishermen. Portugal calls it bacalhau. It eventually went to the New World where it became a huge industry in New England.

It is super popular here in Italy. It is found everywhere and is relatively inexpensive. The fish is dried until it is hard as a rock. It is one of Luther’s favorite things. I bought the cod from our fish truck which comes twice a week. It was already soaked and ready to use. I bought it dried once before and soaked it myself. Takes about three days and you change the water out at least twice a day. Much easier already soaked!

The dish is salt cod baked with cauliflower. It sounded interesting and cauliflower is plentiful now. The cod is cooked in cream with garlic and scallions until it can be flaked. In this case I used the young garlic greens. The garlic and scallions are mashed in the cream after it is cooked until thick. Then the cream and cod is mixed with cauliflower, pine nuts, currants and lemon zest and baked.

Here is the finished dish. It was yummy, but I’m not sure I’d make it again.

Italian sentence for today, “Forse andrò a fare una passeggiata” in English, “Perhaps I will go for a walk”. Pronounced for-say ahn-droh ah far-ay une-a pass-ahj-gee-ah-ta.
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Stay safe everyone! Buona domenica!

New zoom lens

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I just got a telephoto lens for my camera and I’ve been playing around with some photos from our house and terrace.

First one is of one of the feral cats behind our house. They love to sun themselves on a shed roof.

Second one is a close up of the sunny hillsides at the beginning of the Niccone valley. In my opinion, one of the prettiest valleys in Umbria.

Third one is the raging Tiber river. It was well up over the walking path on the right.

My favorite is of the nearby hill town Montone. The sun was setting and a few of the buildings were illuminated.

Tonight we are getting dinner delivered by Calagrana. They have started a weekly menu of regional dishes from around Italy. Tonight it is Piedmontese. Looking forward to it.

Our Italian sentence for today is “stasera non devo cucinare” in English, “I don’t have to cook tonight”. Pronounced Stah-sair-ah non day-voh cooch-in-are-ay. 🙂
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Stay safe and warm at home! Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Fagiolina del Lago Trasimeno

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I wrote about some of the more obscure legumes we can get here in Umbria. One of them is Fagiolina del Lago Trasimeno. The Blog post I wrote in December describes the attributes of this legume and explains the difficulty in cultivating it and hence it’s scarcity. Click the link to re-read the post.

I have just gotten around to using the Fagiolina. I researched recipes and decided to go simple and make a soup. It is really cold now. We woke up to a dusting of snow and it is supposed to go down to -3C tonight. Perfect soup weather. Especially a stick-to-your-ribs soup like this one.

I like the beans. They taste very much like black-eyed peas. Those have always had a flavor to me that was different than other beans. And these have that same flavor. Buon appetito!
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We are still in lockdown Code Orange. Although, we have many freedoms, we cannot leave our own Comune. There are exceptions for very small Comune so they can go to an adjacent one for shopping etc. They are using twelve different statistics to determine your zone color. And they just added a Zona Bianca, white zone. This is what we all want to get to. More freedoms.

Quote translated from Corriere della Sera “But although the overall situation appears to be slightly improving in several regions, at the moment almost none are close to the values ​​to go white. It is necessary to have an Rt (rate of transmission) lower than 1 and the weekly incidence of cases must be below 50 per 100 thousand residents. The control that assigns the bands to which they belong, has already decided that no territory will become white next Friday, considering that the data being examined are those of the previous week (therefore January 18-24). Basilicata, which is the one with the least serious situation, had a weekly incidence of 60.58, close to the required 50, but still above. Sardinia is at 77.89, Tuscany 80.62 and Valle d’Aosta at 93.10. In the other regions the situation is quite different: Bolzano 578.19, Friuli 293.94, Trento 211.31, Umbria 200.22, Emilia 189.75, Marche 183.05, Sicily 180.46, Puglia 165.85, Veneto 152.9, Lazio 136.93, Liguria 124.46, Abruzzo 120.08, Campania 118, 47, Molise 113.21, Piedmont 112.87, Lombardy 110.41, Calabria 102.66.”

So as you can see, we are a ways away from getting out from under these restrictions.
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Italian phrase for today. “Mi piace cucinare. Oggi ho cucinato la zuppa di fagioli.” Which means, “I love to cook. Today I made bean soup”. Pronounced…Me pee-ah-chay cooch-in-are-ay. Oh-gee oh cooch-in-ah-toe la zoopah dee fah-gee-oh-lee. 😋
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Stay safe – Andrà tutto bene 🌈

Pici, fatta a mano

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I bought a bunch of big fat pasta called Pici. It is the special shape common in Tuscany. Our special shape here in Umbria is Strangozzi. So I have to keep it a secret that I’ve gone rogue and am cooking the evil pasta Toscana. Just kidding! I bought it here so it must be OK.

Years ago, on my first trip to Tuscany, we were traveling with my sister and her husband and stopped in a village outside Montalcino. During dinner a nonna carried her small table over beside our table at dinner and began making pasta by hand. I didn’t know at the time that is was the special pasta Pici…fatta a mano…made by hand.

Pici
Pici alongside Strangozzi.

For dinner tonight we had pici con funghi misti. Very yummy.

Italian phrase. “stasera, ho cucinato la pasta” in English, “tonight, I cooked pasta”. Pronounced… sta-sera o cuch-in-atto la pahs-ta. 🙂
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Say home. Wear your masks. Be careful. The vaccine is coming.💕

Smokey lentil stew with potatoes and leeks

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My friend in Virginia sent a recipe for this stew that is from the NY Times. I am a big lentil fan and even though I make soups with lentils often I thought this one sounded a bit different.

And how! It was it different. The key ingredient is the smoked paprika. It adds a big smokey taste. I made it today for lunch and we both loved it. I will make it again as a dinner meal and add some sausage. It is a perfect winter-time stew.

I made quite a few changes to the Times recipe. First off, I simplified things. For instance they used three (!) pots to make it…I reduced that to two. I didn’t put the onion in with the cooking lentils but added it in with the leeks. I totally took out the saffron. It was such a small amount in a huge and highly spiced stew. You never could’ve tasted it and besides, it is an expensive ingredient. Waste. I sautéed the spices in with the leeks and in the oil to bring out their flavor. Anyway it was a hit with us! I put the recipe in the recipes in the top menu bar. Tap the title twice if it doesn’t come up with only one tap.

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We’ve also gotten some much needed errands finished. Every January we have to renew our enrollment in the National Health. It involves obtaining a stamped and signed statement from the Social Security office in the American Embassy in Rome. I wrote in early December and received the statements. We had to call the health department for an appointment this year because of Covid, and that was on Monday at 9AM. Before we went though, I had to copy all of our cards and documents. That included our expired Tessere di Sanitaria, our Codice Fiscale, our Permessi di Soggiorno, our Carta d’Identita, our passports, make an extra copy of the social security statement, convert the amount to Euro and then compute the amount we owe for the year and print that out. Whew. At the appointment we met with Laura. Once our nemesis, she either has gotten used to us or she has mellowed. So she isn’t quite as scary as she used to be. She took all the papers and checked our calculations and sent us off to the Poste to pay for the coverage. There were about 8 people ahead of us in line where we all waited outside. Did I say it was frigid? Well, it was. Finally we got that done and returned to give Laura the receipt. She had everything done and we signed multiple times and – tada! We were finito. Of course they would only give it to us until April because we are STILL waiting for our new Permessi from the Questura. Seven months and counting. When we get it we visit Laura again and get the Tessere extended…to June. Which is when our NEW cards expire AGAIN and then in June I am sure we will have to go and get them extended to the end of the year…eyeroll. We pay for the whole year in January. They know we are getting our Permessi, so why not give us the card for the year? So much less work for us AND them!

Today, we took the VeeDub to the shop to get its oil changed and get its every other year inspection renewed. We will pick it up tomorrow. So the beginning of the year errands are sorting themselves out slowly.
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A friend asked me to include a sentence in Italian with pronunciation with my blogs. So I am starting that today. Here goes! “Abbiamo fatto le nostre commissioni!” It means “We have done our errands”. Pronounced abbey-yamo faht-toe lay noh-stray com-miss-see-oh-nee 🙂
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Stay safe everyone. Andrà tutto bene! 🌈

I miss root vegetables

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I never thought I would type those words. Not that I’m a huge fan but when you can’t have something, well… anyway we just don’t have root vegetables here. No beets, no turnips, no parsnips, no rutabaga, no celery root, no kohlrabi. Once in a blue moon I’ve seen them, and if I do see them, I snatch them up. I like these vegetables in wintertime. They are filling and earthy and warming.

My friend Elizabeth told me yesterday, when I was whining about this, “they are not Mediterranean. Why would you expect them here”? But as you know, my friend Vera brought me some turnips from her mother-in-law’s garden. So they DO grow here just fine.

I guess it is a matter of taste. And a matter of tradition. Italians are very, very traditional. If it was good enough for their nonno, it is good enough for them! It is why we don’t have any Thai, Indian, or Mexican restaurants to speak of here. At least in rural Italy. Italians don’t tend to embrace new tastes and flavors. In the big cities you will find more diverse foods.

Anyway, as I leafed through my Six Seasons cookbook to look at the last season in it, winter, I realized there were very few recipes I could actually make here. Oh well. It doesn’t matter. There are many other things to make.

I was out at the local market this morning and made a concerted effort to see if I had just overlooked them in the past. Sadly, there’s were none. There is an abundance of winter veggies here in the winter, so I won’t complain. I came home with full bags.

A friend sent a recipe for lentil, leek and potato soup. I need leeks and potatoes to make it. Oddly, there was a big run on leeks. I was waiting at one stand and the guy in front of me bought them all! tutti! Grrr. And there were a bunch too. Then I went to the next two stands and they said “finito”. Finally at the last stand were about 8 left. So I waited my turn. A guy came up and told his wife he would get the leeks…over my dead body!! Success. (I’m nice, so I left him half…)

Tonight I have a nice fire. It is really cold and snow is predicted this weekend. The fire warms the kitchen…I hardly ever have a fire without using it to cook. So today, at the butcher, we got a Bistecca Fiorentina. Or Steak Florentine. It is huge!! But it will be good…

The things we do to amuse ourselves! Stay safe and well everyone.

Carte Jaune

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A vaccine yellow card? Carte Jaune, is a medical passport issued by the World Health Organization. It’s an official record that some countries require for entrance, and it can document vaccination against diseases ranging from cholera and yellow fever to such childhood illnesses as rubella. So, will a “Carte Jaune” be required for Covid?

What will happen? No one knows. Airlines can require a coronavirus vaccine because they are private companies. Also, cruise lines. Countries may also make vaccination a requirement for crossing their borders. Within the United States, it’s highly unlikely that the vaccination would ever be required for travel, according to experts. So, I suppose this means you can remain in the US and travel, which I agree with. But there may be restrictions and requirements for vaccination to travel to other countries. It is early days yet…

We learned yesterday, our age group here in Italy, should be getting the vaccine from March to May. They are having “traveling gazebos” (whatever they are!) to administer the vaccine or we can go to our medico. Or we think we can. This is the latest plan and they seem to change often. Again, we will wait and see.
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It’s funny. I bought the New Year seafood 4 course meal for us from Calagrana. The menu was: antipasto – Salmon Carpaccio, primi – tagliatelle with mixed seafood sauce, secondo – two sea bass filets cooked with a buttery tomatoey sauce and contorni (sides), and dolce – bread and butter pudding. Luther and I decided there was no way we could eat it all at once and truly enjoy it, so we ate the carpaccio on New Years Eve. Then the sea bass with the Brussels sprouts and the potatoes on New Years, then the tagliatelle last night. And the pudding over the whole time. Parts of three meals for us that were supposed to be one. I feel we enjoyed them more this way. I shared this picture on Facebook. Thank you Calagrana! It was delizioso!

Bread and butter pudding

Stay safe everyone… Andrà tutto bene.🌈