It’s that season of the year in Italy, when virginity and purity are top of mind in all the churches (December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception and it goes on from there). Piero says the teen aged girls in his time had a prayer, “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who conceived without sin, help me sin without conceiving,” but that’s a conversation for another day.Then there was the message from those Ivory Soap ads from the 1960s (1950s?):
“it's 99 and 44/100ths percent pure.” All the post-war mothers rushed out to buy pure white Ivory and the “almost-pure” concept took off.
Then, somehow, the concepts of virginity and almost-pure were merged and came out as extra-virgin. I have no idea how. I do not set the standards here, but I’m sure there are millions of young women in conservative societies who would embrace the idea that just a little fooling around could still buy them the label of extra virgin bride.
My brother, the preacher, says he thought the extra virgins were the ones who didn't make the cut for the sacrifice-down-the-volcano selection in ancient times, kind of like those who don't get in the Top Ten in a beauty pageant, but I think he is mixing up his pagan rites with his hopes for his beautiful teen-aged daughter.This is all to prepare you for the announcement that the olive oil from Yellow House and La Casetta Rosa, plucked from our motley assortment of a hundred or
so trees by ten good friends
, was tested and found to have an acidity of only 0.032%. To meet the standards of extra virgin, the acidity can be no more than 0.06%. So, you see, our gorgeous green oil is not only extra virgin, it surely must be extra extra virgin. Our oil is more virtuous than Ivory and the taste is infinitely better.This was one of those banner years in the very short history of Olive Week at our place. The trees were just groaning with fruit, twice as much as in 2007. Our friends arrived from the South (Battle’s Wharf and Tampa), Tulsa (oil, yes; extra virgin, no) and Cape Cod, plus Namibia, England, and down the road in Todi. The days were long and sunny, so we managed to get more than 700 kilos of those little black nuggets off the trees and into the baskets, while exchanging gossip, arguing philosophy, falling off ladders, listening to Swedish folk songs (next year, Bjorn, think about the Beatles, in English, or opera, in Italian), and contemplating both the view and the zillions of olives hanging on the next tree over. Of course, there was much conversation about the American election, including numerous toasts to Obama with Omero’s garage red.
Our pickers were fueled with truffles, porcini mushrooms, pasta, hand cut prosciutto, home made farro soup, fresh bread, vino, and a wee drop of the plum wine made over the summer from a tree that unexpectedly rained fruit to prove it wasn't dead. Of course, we hit the local ristoranti circuit pretty hard and also managed to get to chocolate school.
Even now, weeks later, the pickers' hands are surely still twitching in their
sleep; not unlike a dozing dog chasing an imaginary rabbit, they “milk” those endless olive trees. But, what an achievement! Ah, to have been acolytes in the grand ceremony of producing something extra extra virgin, the fruit of the land, green and organic, sustainably environmentally correct; with the dark moist earth of Umbria encrusting your boots, leaves in your hair, olives in your bra, proudly wearing scars from face-scratching branches to dinner parties across the globe. (See great opportunity below).
PS.A note to our pickers (you know who you are): In order to convince you to come back next year, we are naming a tree after each one of you, which will be pruned and fertilized with sheep dung. We will ask Bjorn to come over from Todi and sing your choice of tune to your tree, preferably when we are far away from home. You will receive photos of your tree during the year, so that you may see its progress, from buds in the spring to tiny olives to full, ripe, juicy olives ready to be picked -- by you. Va bene?
Here in Umbria we never get anything good to eat, but we try to make do.
Yesterday morning, standing in the middle of the medieval center of Deruta, I threw back a big slug of hot chocolate so thick and creamy it made my taste buds dance a jig. Think of it as the perfect fall day: crystal blue sky, slightly cool air, sunny, with the aroma of chocolate in the air.
It was the second annual Ceramics and Chocolate celebration in Deruta, an offshoot of the huge Eurochocolate madness that takes over Perugia every year in late October.
This festa is smaller, combining Deruta's central theme, the creation of hand painted maiolica ceramics, with the region's devotion to chocolate. Tied into the over five-hundred year history of the town is the sale of maiolica chocolate mugs, handpainted and fired by artists all over town. These can, and should be, filled with the complimentary and divine hot chocolate.
On regular days, you can wander the streets of Deruta, poking your head into tiny studios, where artists are painting plates, tiles, or bowls; yesterday, a group of artists were painting a wall of chocolate with the traditional patterns of Deruta ceramics. Last night, the wall would be broken and the crowd would be fed a piece of local chocolate.
But we weren't there. Last night, we had moved on to other culinary delights at Roccofiore Winery's annual harvest dinner, this year themed "Il Giuoco dell'Oca," the game of the goose.
We were seated in the cellar, among the barriques full of wines of various vintages, bottles of new red wine on the table.
The menu went like this:
gli antipasti (starters)-- goose prosciutto in salad with balsamic vinegar, goose salami, goose liver crostini;
primo piatto (first course) -- gnocchi made from potatoes with a ragout of goose from the farm;
secondi (main courses) -- goose roasted in a wood-fired oven, pork from Siena baked with herbs, roasted potatoes, field greens doused with local olive oil;
dolce (dessert) -- roasted chestnuts with the late harvest wine, Passito Collina d'Oro.
I know, I know. Today we will eat simple, low fat things: lentil soup, salad, broiled chicken breast with rosemary and sage, a glass of white wine.
And, just maybe a piece of that chocolate from Deruta.
copyright Sharri Whiting 2008
Yesterday at 1: 30 in the afternoon, I ate the last fig. Not the last in the basket. It was the very last, the final fig of the season. As I pulled apart the lime green peel with my thumbs, the pulpy heart seemed more ruby red than usual; it was an explosion of color, a sensuous shape fitting in the hand so perfectly, and a joyous mouthful of hot sunny days.
And that’s the thing, you see. That last bite of fig means it’s over. Summer is gone –this year the line of demarcation between seasons was abrupt and I wasn’t ready. One day it was 80 degrees, then came the first rain. When the sun came out, the temperature was only 60, where it stayed for awhile before inching back up a little.
Today is October 3. It's a simply gorgeous fall day, with blue skies, bright sun and a light breeze. I’ve put aside my broken heart and turned my attention to the olives, which are almost fully plump. In six weeks, we will pick them, press them, and end the year with jugs of thick green oil so demanding of my attention that the figs will only be a fond memory until I fall in love with them again next year.
copyright Sharri Whiting 2008
Therapeutic shopping is not today's subject, though indeed it could be, since nothing cures the blues better than wandering the ceramics factories in Deruta to discover something that I don't already own and didn't know I couldn't live without.
This is about completely different kinds of miracles, beginning with the story of a single ceramic cup found in the tiny Umbrian village of Casalina, near Deruta. In 1657, a local merchant named Cristoforo stumbled across a little cup, which was decorated with a picture of Mary and baby Jesus. For some reason, Cristoforo hung the cup in an oak tree near a stream. When his wife became seriously ill, Cristoforo remembered the cup and prayed to the Virgin of the cup to spare his wife. By that evening, she was completely cured. Thankful, Cristoforo placed a handpainted ceramic tile on the tree, depicting his wife sick in bed, he himself praying to the cup hanging in the tree, and the written story of the miracle.
Before long, word got out about the miracle and people started asking the Virgin of the cup for help; other tiles commemorating miracles were nailed to the tree. Eventually a sanctuary, the Madonna del Bagno (Our Lady of the Stream, the name an improvement over Madonna of the Cup) was built around the oak tree, which is still visible behind the altar, along with fragments of the original cup. The walls of the little church are completely lined with hundreds of tiles dating from 1657 to 2005, each one made by an artisan to give thanks to the Madonna for creating a miracle. On many of them are the letters "PGR," per grazia ricevuta, for grace received.
The Madonna del Bagno has performed some very interesting miracles indeed -- tiles from the 17th century illustrate people falling out of trees, getting struck by lightning, gored by bulls, falling through a ceiling or off a horse, and running from packs of red devils. More modern matonelle (tiles) show a man on a bicycle being run over by a big long car in the 1930s; another depicts the day dynamite made a man blind and the Madonna restored his sight. There is also one involving a train -- details about the miracle are not clear. Miracles that saved children cut across all time periods, with babes in arms visible from the 1600s through today.
This little sanctuary near Deruta is one of Umbria's secrets, hidden in the shadows (the word Umbria means shade) until discovered on the way to somewhere more known or popular. A devastating robbery in 1980 resulted in the closure of the sanctuary for seven years, but the people of Casalina, undoubtedly assisted by the Madonna del Bagno, managed to raise the money for restoration. Today it is a reminder of the close ties between art, history, culture and religion that have marked Umbrian life for a thousand years.
When we stopped at Madonna del Bagno, we were actually on the way to what may be Umbria's most divine restaurant. The food at L'Antico Forziere is so good, in fact, that it just may deserve a tile with the letters PGR. To round out a day devoted to ceramics, visit the Ceramics Museum, where the exhibit celebrates the work of the painter Pintoricchio with an exhibit of majolica pieces through June.
copyright Sharri Whiting Umbria Bella 2008
I know that spring is coming because the olive trees have had their haircuts. The perrucchiere dei piantoni (hairdresser to the olive trees, as I call Gino), has been here and the girls all look very chic.
Because the goddess Athena planted the first olive tree and there are numerous women named Olivia in Italy, I have decided our trees are female, despite the fact that the Italian word for tree is albero (masculine) and the local name of olive trees is piantone (big plant), also masculine. This idea is not original; the Latin poets also thought of trees as feminine, but I suspect for different reasons.
I'm convinced our piantone are women because:
1) Who else but a woman would come up with such a skin care product as effective as olive oil?
2) They mark the seasons with fashion: a great haircut in spring, followed by a beauty treatment (fertilizer), lovely flowers in summer, curvy fruit in fall.
3) They wear only a flattering color, olive green; which has inspired vast armies, as well as legions of earth-tone driven interior designers. Plus, those silvery leaves are really sexy in the breeze.
4) They show their age well -- I met a 1,500 year old olive tree the other day and she didn't look a day over 350. Plus, they become more interesting as they age, as all women should.
5) They can endure abuses -- wars, pestilence, being hit by Piero with the car* -- and still smile.
Lastly, and most important, they offer a product that I call the "red lipstick of cooking" -- pour a little olive oil in the leftover soup or in boring pasta and it covers a multitude of sins. I don't think I could live without either MAC's Retro in my purse or the jugs of EVOO we have stored in the cupboards.
All those beauty queens, when asked what they would take to a desert island, are dead wrong -- they always answer "mascara" or "my mother." Uh-uh. Take along a bottle of extra virgin olive oil to rub on your skin, on your lips, in your hair. For dinner in the wild, EVOO makes fresh palm leaves palatable and is fabulous on raw fish (think carpaccio). If my mother comes along, I'll share.
*About Piero and the car and the olive tree. The tree won. She now leans a bit, but she is still going strong.
copyright Sharri Whiting Umbria Bella 2008
Someone has manufactured a new word in the lexicon of the United States: locavore.
After I read the definition, I realized it applies to me. I’m also a carnivore, but it seems that in this era of eco-dining, locavore trumps that one, along with my other trait, omnivore. A locavore eats only foods found locally. I hate to tell my compatriots, but this is not news. In Umbria, people have always consumed foodstuffs from their own backyards or those of their neighbors.
Just day before yesterday, in fact, Settimia asked Piero if he wanted her to cut Parma ham or proscuitto from over the mountain in Norcia, Parma being not local fare. Of course, he brought home the Norcia. Since Italy’s various regions are chock full of amazing local foods, not to mention wines, being a locovore is SOP, so we didn’t have to invent a name for it.
Another Italian innovation is now called "sustainable cuisine" by the Alice Waters crowd and other serious foodies. This is an elevated way of saying "eat what’s in season, from local sources, and re-cycle everything you can.” The Rome school system came up with this idea some years ago and has been at the forefront of the effort to keep children healthy by serving them wholesome lunches made from fresh, seasonal ingredients. Americans may need a buzzword to get them focused, but when they get the concept, no one is better at making things happen. The sustainable cuisine movement is spreading across the land like natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread.
Then there is molecular cuisine, which we really don’t want to know about here in Umbria. This is where you change the molecules of food and make it into something it did not intend to become when its mother gave birth to it or a farmer planted the seed. I’m not saying that having my ice cream made instantly at table isn’t dramatic, but I simply can not imagine serving an Umbrian a slice of pecorino cheese with a dollop of prosciutto foam on top. Foam is for cappuccino.
Lucio and Luca, two men from the village of Gaglietole on the mountain behind us, have worked as geometri on several construction projects for us and Lucio is now putting the finishing touches on some work on Yellow House. He invited us for a “locavore lunch” the other day, though he called it simply pranzo. (My teacher used to say to learn a new word, you must use it several times in a sentence. I actually prefer my own term, “kitchen supper,” when friends come over to eat pot luck around the fire while I scrounge around in the garden for a very local fennel bulb or whatever lettuce the sheep haven't eaten). Anyway. . . if there are to be any princes of locavore-dom, then Lucio and Luca will have to be invested soon. Their father, of course, will be the king, as he is the man who taught them how to turn a 500-pound pig into edible fare.
We had never in our lives tasted proscuitto so sublime . As big as a sofa cushion, it had been curing for two years after being salted, then peppered. Luca sliced, we ate. And ate. Then Mrs. Lucio came in with some penne she threw in the water about the time she realized there were unexpected guests in the front yard. After that, some hot triangles of torta della testa (a kind of pizza bread) came out of the kitchen, followed by something so simple and delicious it made our heads swim: guanciale (sliced pork cheek bacon fried up in a pan), swimming in balsamico and bacon fat, with fresh sage leaves. Then there was more prosciutto and torta della testa, with a side of fresh broccoletti ripassati. Then, apologizing, she brought out leftovers from the previous night’s celebration party for the new prosciutto: a home made cake roll filled with creamy pudding and pineapple. This was all served with merlot from Baldassari down the road.
When you’re talking about locavores, think about this: there is local and then there is local. I’m willing to bet that being a locavore here in the green heart of Italy is more rewarding than being one in most other places. Umbrians may not have invented the word, but they invented the concept.
copyright Sharri Whiting Umbria Bella 2008
“What is love if not the language of the heart?” “My soul is a furnace of love: stoke it to the full.” “A loving heart is forever young.”
You carefully unwrap the silver foil. Then, as you savor the silky richness of a Perugina Baci in your mouth, you smooth the wrinkles from the crumpled inner wrapping. Written on parchment in four languages is your own personal love message, vestige of the clandestine love affair that is one of Italy’s most romantic tales. After all, baci in Italian means kisses.
Luisa Spagnoli was a beautiful and determined woman who married a poor young man from Umbria around 1900. The two struggled to buy a machine to make candy confetti, the sugared almonds popular at Italian weddings and other celebrations, which they installed in one tiny room in Perugia. Eventually, to enlarge their business, they needed a partner. That’s when the young Giovanni Buitoni, heir to the Perugina company, entered the picture. In 1907, two men and one compelling woman began to work together, setting the stage for romantic combustion.
Luisa was the confectionary genius who created the Baci, using whipped milk chocolate blended with chopped hazelnuts, topped with a whole hazelnut and coated with rich dark chocolate. Her creation, originally called cazzotti (a "punch" of chocolate), is whispered to have been inspired by the steamy illicit love affair she carried on with her business partner, Giovanni Buitoni, under the nose of her husband.
As the story goes, Luisa contrived secret ways to communicate with her lover. Luisa sent baci to both Giovanni and her husband to sample in their offices, but only Giovanni received the poetic love notes she wrapped around each candy. From the introduction of the baci on Valentine’s Day in 1922 to this day, every piece comes wrapped in a message of romance. (There’s also a rumor about the breast shape of the baci. . . . )
Luisa and Giovanni’s affair did not die with them. Not only are the candies themselves a memorial to their love, but the advertising for Baci for almost a century has centered around a passionately embracing couple. Marketing posters feature a passionate embrace between two lovers. Are they Luisa and Giovanni? Who else could they be? In the 1920s, Federico Seneca, the designer, called them “The Lovers,” which he based on the Hayez painting of the same name. War weary, people needed romance and, after all, chocolate and romantic love are closely linked.
The history of the Baci is immortalized at the Museo Storico (museum) at the Nestle Perugina in San Sisto near Perugia. The Aztec upper classes first enjoyed chocolate as a bitter drink, sometimes flavored by red peppers; then the Spanish, who brought cocoa beans to Europe, discovered that sugar enhances chocolate’s flavor. In the 16th century, the physician to the Spanish king Philip II used chocolate as a fever reducer. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Italian scientist and de Medici physician Francesco Redi combined drinking chocolate with ambergris and musk, which must have been horrible. Later, chocolate was found by clever murderers to be a good way to conceal the taste of poison.
In early 19th century Netherlands, Coenraad Van Houten invented a way to use hydraulic pressure to turn chocolate into a hard cake. His process, called “Dutching”, made it possible to turn chocolate from a drink to a confection. Thank you, Coenraad, from lovers of candy bars everywhere.
On a day when the Perugina factory is in production, the compelling aroma of chocolate consumes both mind and body. The resulting primal urge can only be satisfied by – what else? -- baci. Fortunately, they are for sale in the museum shop, along with posters of embracing lovers. The displays include TV commercials from the fifties and sixties, including one with Frank Sinatra singing the praises of Baci.
Luisi Spagnoli didn’t stop with chocolate. She went on to found a fashion company based on wool spun from angora goats. Today more than 150 Luisa Spagnoli stores cover Italy, while Luisa’s chocolate is sold around the world and dark chocolate is still called “Luisa” in Perugia.
copyright Sharri Whiting Umbria Bella 2008
so trees by ten good friends, was tested and found to have an acidity of only 0.032%. To meet the standards of extra virgin, the acidity can be no more than 0.06%. So, you see, our gorgeous green oil is not only extra virgin, it surely must be extra extra virgin. Our oil is more virtuous than Ivory and the taste is infinitely better.
sleep; not unlike a dozing dog chasing an imaginary rabbit, they “milk” those endless olive trees. But, what an achievement! Ah, to have been acolytes in the grand ceremony of producing something extra extra virgin, the fruit of the land, green and organic, sustainably environmentally correct; with the dark moist earth of Umbria encrusting your boots, leaves in your hair, olives in your bra, proudly wearing scars from face-scratching branches to dinner parties across the globe. (See great opportunity below).
PS.
