We’ll be heading often to L’Aquila now: Pino’s restoration company has just won a bid to restore three buildings there, damaged in the April 6. 2009. As the job will take two years, Pino’s now looking for a rental for the six workers who’ll live there Monday-to-Friday while on the job. During the restoration project,…
On every Good Friday, as day gives up to night, evocative medieval street theater unfolds in the winding backstreets. The dull bounding of a drum (the bells ae “tied” from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday) – battistrangole -accompanies the slow pace of the local people and clergy following hooded, barefoot figures, crowned with thorns and…
There are treasures around every corner in Italy. In every village, no matter how small. You’ll find them just off the piazza, hidden away in medieval backstreets, and behind huge wooden doors. Like those of the checkerboard facade of the SS. Pietro e Andrea church of Trequanda, not far from Pienza in Tuscany. [lcaption]Sogni d’oro[/lcaption]…
It’s been a good year for wild asparagus, a springtime delicacy which transforms a frittata, risotto or pasta sauce into a regal feast. Pino and I had good luck foraging in early April, coming out of our woods with a good bundle. And on the day before Easter, I’d found enough for a frittata di…
The north Casentino valley tortelli di patate aren’t made with just any potato: the key ingredient is the Chetica potato, a red-skinned round tuber of rosy-toned white flesh, cultivated at 500 m. or higher. I first tasted these large square-shaped tortelli at the home of friends Louise and Jim in Poppi, castle-topped village in the…
If you look up as you stroll the narrow back alleyways of Naples, you might see an elderly lady leaning out of a window, lowering a basket or a plastic bucket to the shopkeeper below, calling out her order in napoletano. The grocer or baker or butcher or yardage goods merchant on the street puts…
Call it my need for a “Naples fix.” Or as my Italian friends put it: “una vera passione per Napoli” (“a real passion for Naples”). Whatever. I can’t do without a few days in Naples now and then. I need to leave behind the tranquility of Umbria for the noise and chaos of Naples. I…
You know you’ve found Ristorante/Pizzeria Marino near the Naples waterfront if you spot chef Salvatore crumbling bread crusts for the pigeons out front. (They flock near the front door after lunchtime for the bread – and waddle up to the kitchen door at noon for a handful of crushed spaghetti Salvatore has ready). [lcaption]Salvatore feeds…
This past winter, Raphael’s Madonna di Foligno (1512) returned “home” to Foligno for a week, attracting thousands of visitors. She’s now back in the Vatican Museum where she’s enchanted visitors since the early 19th century. A copy of the Raphael masterpiece is on view in Foligno’s Palazzo Trinci and nearby is a resin copy made…
My passione for Umbria’s rural life and rural cuisine was not waning as I started the final cooking class of my 2014 7-week coast-to-coast U.S. cooking classes/lectures tour. Was I tired, though? A bit. But Mary, the enthusiasm – and warm welcome – of your Brookeville. MD. women’s cooking group was a catalyst, an energy-charger!…