Thursday,
September 14, 2006
Moist
Eyes, Soaring Heart, Contented Tummy in Trip to
The ANNOTICO
Report
That's what my
wife, Cindy, and I learned on a recent trip to the country. It was no surprise,
of course, since anyone who has ever visited will tell you the same thing.
We spent six months planning the visit for our 25th
anniversary. She dreamed of discovering her family roots, and it offered us a
chance to find each other again.
Her features
betray her ancestry, brown eyes and dark skin that deepened each day under the
intense Italian sun. She could walk into the market and be mistaken for a
local. I, on the other hand would never be mistaken for anything but a tourist.
My fair complexion and huge Irish head stuck out like a sore thumb. My skin slowly changed from red, to a little redder.
It was our first
meal in the country that would confirm all the stories we'd heard about Italian
cuisine. We stumbled onto a little trattoria on the
25-minute walk from the
The trattoria was family-run, with two sisters waiting tables.
We sat outside waiting for our antipasti and a bottle of the house red wine. We
thought it was 6 euros (equivalent to $7.60) a glass, but our waitress shook
her head as she explained in broken English that that was the price for the
bottle.
When that first antipasti arrived, we finally understood why
visitors raved. Cured meats and soft buffalo mozzarella melted in our mouths,
grilled eggplant and greens rewarded our palates with their simple, fresh
delights.
Then it was
pasta: I'd never enjoyed gnocchi more. The texture and taste was superb and the
mushroom sauce, divine. We ordered what we thought were scallops, which turned
out to be veal scallopine.
"What kind
of scallops are these?" I asked my wife, and then, after a few bites,
figured it out.
Free from the
responsibility of children, home and work, we indulged in a second bottle of
wine, then promptly proceeded to get lost on the walk
back to the hotel. It's easy to slip out of your comfort zone while wandering
the residential streets of
After a few days
in
We were headed
for the small towns of Castiglione Marittimo and Falerna where Cindy's deceased grandmother lived until the
1900s.
Cindy's cousin
Giovanni (Johnny) arranged to meet us at our hotel that night. We had last seen
him 26 years ago, when he visited the States. From the moment he picked us up,
he took care of us in every way, introducing us to family and showing us the
spectacular views Cindy's grandmother enjoyed as a child.
Johnny's
grandmother and Cindy's were sisters, and he treated us like the long-lost
family we were.
We used our
broken Italian to communicate, and the family used their broken English. Phrase
books and Johnny's huge Italian-American dictionary bridged the gap until by
the end of our visit we really knew each other.
The first day, we
walked through his olive orchard and then came upon some fig trees. I now
understand why so many Italian Americans go to such lengths to grow them in our
climate. Peeling and eating sweet warm figs while overlooking the sky-blue
shallows of the
We continued to
hike the property and stumbled onto Johnny's cousin, Thomas, who was picking
bright yellow and red buds the size of baseballs from the tops of huge cactus
plants. Next to him were a couple of boxes filled with the fruit.
Cutting one open,
he held it in front of us and motioned to us to grab it. As Cindy's fingers got
close, Johnny and Thomas simultaneously yelled "Attentione!"
It sounded more French than Italian, and I think it translates to "be
careful or the spines of that cactus are going to hurt you bad."
Thomas showed us
the precise fingering to slip your hand around the fruit, which was the color
of orange sherbet. The cactus fruit tasted wonderfully sweet with soft seeds
inside. With an approving grin on his face, Thomas kept cutting them until we
couldn't eat another.
We really thought
the food couldn't get any better on this trip, but Johnny's wife, Maria, proved
us wrong. Still filled with figs and cactus, we were about to learn how
families eat in
Pasta in a fresh
red sauce was followed by salad and bread. Johnny's olive oil, pressed from the
harvest of last year's orchard, gave everything a wonderful flavor. The aroma
of fried veal filled the kitchen, and it was both tender and tasty.
Just when we were
falling into a food coma, the cheeses came out, along with grapes harvested from
the couple's vines. We had never tasted a Parmigiano-Reggiano
like it: pungent, with an occasional almost-crunchy texture that I long to find
in the States.
But it was a day
later that Maria created perfection. After our pasta, salad and bread came the best eggplant Parmesan we'd ever tasted. It was
soft, fresh, dripping with cheese and had a crunchy layer, too. The combination
was pure heaven.
At the end of our
visit, Johnny insisted on taking us to the train station, even getting us in
our proper seats. He started to tear up a bit when we said our goodbyes.
We left with our
most treasured gift of the trip, a bottle of his homemade olive oil. We hope
that someday we can return the hospitality we received there.
After returning
to
We stayed there
for a week and found a restaurant we loved. When we went to visit on our last
day it was closed. We walked down the street to Tipica
Trattoria Etrusca, a
restaurant that came highly recommended. The wait staff was eating in the
dining room and we asked if they were aperto
(open). They nodded and in about three minutes they cleaned up their table
and were back in the kitchen.
The waiter was
hilarious. It's one of the incredible things about
Cindy's first
course was a simple red pasta dish. She took one bite and was astounded. She
fed me a little.
"It's the
exact recipe of my grandmother's sauce," she said.
I agreed. We
hadn't tasted that perfect mix of spices and pork for more than 20 years.
As she savored
the next bite, she began to weep and continued crying as she finished every bit
of the dish, soaking up the sauce with hard-crusted Italian bread.
Everything had
caught up to her: experiencing the views her grandmother once enjoyed, walking
in her footsteps along the stone streets of Falerna
and seeing the ancient cemetery where Johnny's mother and grandmother were
buried.
I tried to
explain to the waiter in my bad Italian and using ridiculous hand gestures that
there wasn't a problem, that it was one of our most wonderful moments: This
woman is crying because of the emotions your red sauce is evoking.
All it did was
confuse him. He never returned to the table, sending another waiter to finish
the job.
I wanted so badly
to explain to the owner how special the moment had been, and to get the recipe
for Cindy's grandmother's sauce, but it wasn't meant to be.
As we stepped
back onto the cobblestone streets of Orvieto, the
irony was not lost on either of us.
We came 4,000
miles to get a taste of home.
(Doug Oster can be reached at doster@post-gazette.com or
412-263-1484. )
http://www.post-gazette.com
/pg/06257/721599-34.stm
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