Tag Archives: Italian Food

Spring Lamb from a Once Noisy Rock

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Silla used to be Scylla. Those were heady days. When the Greeks were in charge this was a mighty place. Sailors knew: “but that is the den of Skylla, where she yaps / abominably, a newborn whelp’s cry, / though she is huge and monstrous.” Six heads of monstrous per Homer, who knew a bit about showmanship, with “triple serried rows of fangs and deep / gullets of black death.” The place had a buzz.

Opposite the rocks that lore named Scylla was Charibdis; a Sicily-adjacent whirlpool, impassible. To risk the whirlpool was to lose your ship. The rocks meant a sacrifice of six crewmen, “from every ship, one man for every gullet.” It was the original hard place.

Further south along the toe’s coast, you find Palmi, with views across the Tyrrhenian of the Aeolian Islands’s Mt. Stromboli to the northish and across the Strait of Messina of Mt. Etna to the southwest. There aren’t many places in the world from where you can see two active volcanoes. Keep going with the sea to your right and olive trees to your left to reach Reggio Calabria, the provincial capital (Overly simplified: Italians say regions when Canadians would say provinces and their provinces are what we’d call counties.)

The most interesting thing about Reggio Calabria to me right now is that it’s listed as the 100th most populous city in Europe by Wikipedia. Not 99th. Not 117th. What are the odds that the city I read about last night and decided to look into further this morning would hold such a decidistinction? In grade school I was told that Mt. Everest was found to be 29,000 feet tall but reported as 29,001 because the statisticians didn’t think anyone would believe the round finding. “Latest measurements” put it at 29,032 feet. Better lasers than in Hillary’s time, I suppose.

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Meatballs with Sausages: Breaking the Code of Silence

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

They must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.  – Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

This is going to take a minute, so if you’re just here for the recipe feel free to skip on down.

I got my first job at sixteen in an Italian restaurant/pizzeria owned by the people who lived across the street from us. The place was a retirement of sorts. The mister was formerly of the stock market, Alabama bred but with a mid-American accent learned out of professional necessity. Get him laughing and Gadsden came out. The missus was from Brazil. They both spoke English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She added French, German, and a bit of Italian. Their son who helped run the place spoke all of those but German.

They were all clever as can be. (And still are. I see them almost weekly, but this is a nostalgic anecdote and there’s power in “were.” It creates for the reader a sense of being transported, and once frame of reference is changed the experience is more immersive.) There’s an old saying that a gentleman is someone who’s as comfortable in the company of pirates as of kings. As a trader, he spent time with New York financial power players. She was practically Rio aristocracy. They could pull off Ma and Pa shop keeper. No problem.

I remember one afternoon, the missus complimented a woman on her purse. The woman, in her thirties and from the over-the-mountain community (we know because she managed to get that in), was working out whatever insecurities she needed to work out by implying that (a) yes it is a nice purse, (b) you’ll never be able to afford one, and (c) what would a shop keeper know about fashion accessories anyway. The missus gave a Brazilian smile and nodded. “It really is nice, though.”

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Not French Onion Dip

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

This week’s recipe is an adaptation of an apparent Tuscan comfort food as recorded by a Tuscan-raised food writer who rediscovered the dish in a chic Roman restaurant just as chic restaurants Eternal City wide were bandwagoning as only really innovative and vibrant hot spots can.

The food writer is Giancarlo Caldesi and the cookbook this recipe is taken from is Rome: Centuries in and Italian Kitchen, co-written with his wife, Katie. My copy lists the publishing date as 2015 so given time for writing, editing, art direction, printing, and distribution, I’m guessing the Caldesis ate at Roscioli, the chic Roman restaurant where Giancarlo reacquainted himself with cipolle sotto sale or salt baked onions, in 2012 or 2013.

Brian McCannachie performed a bit on National Lampoon’s Radio Hour back in the early 70s called “Quick Canada Quiz.” He would pop in and ask a, as the name of the skit implies, quick question about Canada and then later in the show ask the question again and give the answer. I had to look up who voiced it. Until today I thought it was Chevy Chase. What I couldn’t find was a direct transcript of one of my favorite suddenly-not-Chevy Chase lines from the quiz, but it was something like “What song was number one on the Canadian pop charts for August of 1971?”

I’m sure I got the year wrong, but anyway, he came back later in the show and asked again. “What song was number one on the Canadian pop charts for August 1971?” Then a beat pause. “I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet that whatever it was, it was number one on the U.S. charts six months earlier.” Rim shot.

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