I have a “gift” of being entirely swept away by books and movies.  This can be a difficult burden when I despair over the sad ending of a movie or the conclusion of a book, even if it had a happy ending, but simply because I will miss the characters as part of my life.  The great part though, is that when I read a story set in a foreign place, it is as if I am living there too (this really saves money in our travel account).  So too, when I read well-written descriptions about food, I can smell and savour and ridiculous as it may sound, feel “full”.

These are the hills of Sicily (not Tuscany) where we have traveled.

I have just finished this wonderful accounting of a couple’s desire to live a simpler life and their move to rural Italy to do so.  It is entitled “The Hills of Tuscany-A New Life in an Old Land”.  I have a crush on Ferenc Mate.  He is originally from Eastern Europe (like my Dad), lived for a while in Canada (the best country in the world!) and then the Caribbean, Paris and New York (all of my favourite places on earth).  He writes so beautifully about very simple pleasures which ring so true for me.  He also loves abundantly-his wife, his little piece of property and food!  Here is his description of dinner at a little Tuscan Trattoria.

 

The food was as simple as the place.  For appetizers there were assorted crostini-fire-toasted bread, some smeared with chicken livers, others with sauteed mushrooms.  Then of course came pasta.  We both had pici– a homemade, hand-rolled, unevenly thick spaghetti-Candace with a sauce of wild boar and I with a sauce of mixed wild mushrooms.  We were slow in eating, savoring every bite, and looked up as the little girl’s Mamma came and asked if the sauces were fine.  Candace complimented her on the food and apologized for eating so slowly.  A big smile broke on her face, “Piano, piano, con calma,” she said.  Slowly, slowly, with calm.  The came the meats: for Candace roasted pheasant with parchment-like brown skin, and for me wild boar stew marinated in red wine and juniper berries and tasting like heaven, and a plate of Tuscan white beans drenched in olive oil and crushed garlic, and a salad.  And we kept emptying wine glasses, toasting the little girl, her Mamma, Tuscany, the boar, the beans, the toasts.

We ate, with calma, and drank, with gusto, and the little girl and her doll had said good-night long ago, led upstairs by Nonna, Grandma, from behind the bar, and then Mamma went up, too, to say good–night, and we swooned from the heat of the fire and the wine, and thank God Nonna came back and brought us two espressos to bring us to, then she quickly thought it over and brought two glasses of grappa, to sink us once again.

As we left, they both came and said good-bye-handshakes and smiles as if we had been acquaintances for years.  Then we went out into a silver flood of moonlight.

We breathed the night air deeply, utterly content.  And it wasn’t just the food and the wine, but also the family.  There was something heartening in three generations together there-at home.  We felt as if we had dinner at someone’s house.  And the place was so honest, unpretentious, that you knew what counted was not the walls and floors, but the people they comforted.  And it felt reassuring that the vegetables came from their gardens, the wine from the small vineyard across the road, and that the boar and the pheasant were hunted by Grandpa.  We talked about this as we ambled in the moonlight.”

For a moment, didn’t you feel as if you were there with the heat from the kitchen, the smell of roasting meats and basking in the attention of this Grandma and her daughter?   Come back for a couple more installments in the days to come.

Kath’s quote: “Arm in arm in the autumn light, calmed by the warmth and the pitcher of red wine we had at lunch, we ambled in contented silence up the hill towards the piazza where the mosaic facade of the cathedral blazed like a million tiny stars.”-Ferenc Mate

Love-that is all.

I have shared with you, my new favourite author and promised some more excerpts from her writings.  This is first of many from “Delicious” which is the story of three generations of  Italian women and the old kitchen in Campania which binds then together.

“Food was what she loved.  Shopping for it at the market stalls piled with glossy, purple-coated aubergines, dirt-dusted field mushrooms, ripe red peppers and artichokes with their hard green leaves tightly clasping their hearts.  She loved unpacking her bounty and imagining the extra life she could bring to it with a lashing of chili sauce or a sizzle in oil over high heat.  But most of all she loved eating it, greedily tasting as she cooked , licking her fingers and the backs of spoons, piling it onto plates and bowls, or sometimes eating more than good for her right out of the pan.  Marketing strategies and leveraging opportunities were all very well but she could hardly be blamed if they didn’t fill her with the same passion as a tray of slow-roasted tomatoes bathed in balsamic vinegar or a slab of beef braised with red wine and onions until the meat fell softly from the bone….

She was clever with food, always had been.  As a child she helped her mother, Maria, in the kitchen almost from the moment she could walk.  First she’d been allowed to stand on a chair and stir the gravy for the Sunday roast to stop it sticking and then she’d graduated to rolling out the pastry when her mother made a pie, stealing the off-cuts for jam tarts and turn overs.

When she looked back over those years, it was the tastes and smells of the meals they’d made together that stoked Chiara’s memory more than any particular event or moment.  Still vivid in her mind were winter dishes of pork sausages wrinkled from simmering in thick brown gravy, huge comforting helpings of shepherd’s pie with a crispy crust of cheddar, or plates filled with oven-roasted cod and fat crinkle cut chips that they could never resist wrapping in over-buttered soft white bread and devouring as the heat of the fried potato melted the butter which ran down their hands.”

You can see that Chiara has not embraced her Italian heritage at this stage and those delicious chapters are yet to come.

Kath’s quote: “It is impossible to read English novels without realizing how important a part food plays in the mental as in the physical life of the Englishman.”-Elisabeth Luther Cary (1867-1936)

I have just returned from a 9 day winter vacation where I did a whole lot of nothing except drink and eat (more about that later), collect shells on the beach and read in the hammock strung across our balcony.  Interpret this as: bliss. 

I try to rotate my reading selections between non-fiction, what I refer to as “literature” and finally- fascinating fiction.  The fascination part changes according to whim.  Ever since my travels to Italy I have been on a kick of novels set in Italy but they must also have to do with food.  On this trip I read “Delicious” by Nicky Pellegrino which I will write about in the future.  Just before we left I read her “Recipe for Life”.  Those of you who know me well, will understand that her books are the perfect blend of many of my loves:  Italy, strong women, cooking, eating and the exploration of food as a means of expressing love.    

Her books are not available at the Winnipeg library so I actually had to buy a number of them.  Usually I rave about a book and then cannot pass it along because of my library addiction.  I won’t tell you a whole lot more about it; this excerpt will give you a sense :

“She smiled and went over to the sideboard where she retrieved a tattered old handwritten recipe book.  Its pages were frayed and falling out the ink faded and smudged in places, but she held it as though it were something very precious.

“This belonged to my mother,” she explained, turning the pages so I wouldn’t have to touch the book.  “She was an amazing cook and collected recipes all of her life”.  Many of the dishes we make come from here, others we’ve come across ourselves or concocted over the years,  Every day I learn something new about food.  That’s why I love it.”…

“Food is so important.  In my family its how we speak to each other, express gratitude, show we care, sometimes even say we are sorry.  Good food must be made with love.  You can taste if it’s not.”

“Even restaurant food?”

“Of especially that”.

Cooking with love was a new idea to me but there was certainly nothing stressful about working in the the kitchen of the trattoria.  Once customers began to arrive, Raffaella moved to the front of the house, showing them to their seats and taking orders.  I ferried food to the tables, cleared away dirty dishes and filled tall glasses with ice cream or tiramisu for dessert.  In the kitchen, Ciro seemed in control.  He worked with quiet concentration, occaisionally asking me to plate up a dish for him, making himself understood with the pointing and clicking of fingers.

Out in the dining room and on the terrace beyond it, customers were eating.  This was not refined picking over plates with knives and forks we saw at Teatro.  No one came here to be seen or to socialise.  They were solely for the food and they enjoyed it, bending their heads over the dishes, slurping hungrily, wiping up every last slick of oily juice with crusty bread. 

Once everyone had eaten and left, we stacked the dirty dishes and Ciro put out food for us.  The fish, as they had promised was all finished, so instead we had my herb ravioli drizzled in a sauce of crushed walnuts and dressed with shards of pecorino cheese.  There was a little of the octopus to taste , some of the chicken stew, a bowl of steamed greens dressed with lemon and olive oil and some crusty bread.

We ate it out on the terrace with a glass of white wine that tasted like apples and Rafaella told me about their lives.”

Can’t you just smell the smells of garlic and onions and feel the evening breeze on your face?  Can’t you hear the waves lapping in the distance and taste the crispness of the wine?  Ah, I love books that sweep me away.

Kath’s quote: “It is good food and not fine words that keeps me alive.”
Moliere

D was a second year student studying Tourism and Hospitality at Ryerson in Toronto when we first started courting and he returned for his final year of study when we were engaged.  Needless to say, there were many reasons to visit Toronto for a weekend back in the olden days and I’ve been a fan of Movenpick ever since.  We would visit their Yorkville location in those days as we were fascinated that a very old neighbourhood, could some how come back to life with shops and restaurants.  These days of course, that is what TO is all about!

As the saying goes-feast your eyes!  If you agree that we eat with our eyes then you’ll be more than satiated before you even pick up a plate at Movenpick Marche.  The food displays are exquisite and are set up in food groupings.  When we visited at brunch time there were these stations: dim sum and sushi, crepes and waffles, seafood, omelettes, salad, etc. etc. etc.

On this day, we were meeting most of the rest of the family of the Frenchman (our pet name for the beau of our youngest).  We choose a quiet spot in the area of the restaurant that has a brasserie feel of Europe (appropriate since that is where this couple first met). 

I could not pass up the grilled vegetables on the salad bar reminiscent of the antipasta dishes that we fell in love with in Italy

and there were THREE kinds of baked pumpkin (I sampled them all). 

D was tempted by the divine bouillabaisse and so we shared both. 

This loaf of apple strudel was too good to pass up and even thought we shared it too, we could not finish the huge portion.

Kath’s quote:  “…..all the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity.”-H.L. Mencken

Thank you for making the drive from Peterborough to meet us and for the exquisite lunch and visit.

The media business is a close community.  Many people that I work with, I have known for almost twenty years.  In some cases, I am now collaborating with a second generation of media representatives.  But it is highly unusual when virtually 100% of persons gathered at a restaurant for lunch are from one business community.   Such was the case though, at La Cantina de Mona Lisa.  Hot 103, QX 104, CJOB, Power 97, CTV TV and Global TV were all represented by the tables in the room.  This all proves the point that not only am I an appreciator of good food but so are the people that I call friends.

When you travel in Italy and it is around the lunch hour, you might walk over to a market and buy a small, fresh loaf of bread.  You would break this open and find yourself at the cheese truck and request a creamy portion of unripened mozarella.  Continuing along to the meat stall you might ask for a wavy, thin slice of poscuitto ham.  Before you were done, a slice of grilled eggplant or red peppers may be to your liking so you would search those out.  In the end, you would have the freshest, sandwich, piled high with the best ingredients.

This is I think, the experience that Joe Grande is trying to recreate for his customers at La Cantina.  My sandwich was full of sliced chicken breast and a sauteed green vegetable that was think spinach but had a name like broccoli.  Help me out here folks-what would it be called?  It was served on a huge wedge of water bread.  I asked for an add on of grilled eggplant and was in heaven.

One of my lunch dates eats gluten free and she remarked that the same sandwich, when made with their gluten free bread-was the best gluten-free sandwich she had ever had at any Winnipeg restaurant.

My second date had five, cute little buns stuffed with a spicy sausage and cheese.  She called them her pac-man sandwiches.  We also ordered a Bocconcini and tomato salad to share.  Each of these ready to serve offerings are the flat price of $5. and an add on like the eggplant is an additional $2.  What a deal!

Joe was willing to let me behind the counter to photograph what was left of their lunch offerings (they make small amounts, so that everything is freshly made each day)-a Calabrese sausage sandwich and a anti-pasto plate.

When Joe let me into the kitchen there was one staff member, thinly slicing proscuitto ham and another making fresh pasta.

These are the trays that the pasta dries on.

Buon appetito!

Kath’s quote: “When you become a good cook, you become a good craftsman, first. You repeat and repeat and repeat until your hands know how to move without thinking about it.”-Jacques Pepin