You might think he's doing something else. But in reality, he's learning how to sit/stay, and not doing a very good job of it (he eventually learned how to do so beautifully ... sort of ).

mercoledì 30 marzo 2011

Don't fence me in


The Scallion was very busy over the weekend. He put up fencing to protect the flower beds on our terrace. It will certainly keep the Puppers out of it. It will also keep us out of it, as the fencing is well over five feet tall. Too tall to jump over.

“Many pet owners find it extremely difficult to maintain a garden and a good relationship with the family dog,” is a trenchant observation from the very helpful www.canismajor.com. Multiply that by six.

Do please note the flowering narcissi, and the flowering pear tree. Do note the safely-fenced in Banks rose. You can’t see the holes-to-China excavations conducted by the Puppers in previous research but trust me, they’re there. Today’s plan involves seeding lettuces, arugula, and chervil in pots on steps leading into the garden. Unfortunately, I’ll have to take the long route to get there, since the gate that leads to it is – you guessed it – fenced in.

Riccardo, our young and able dog whisperer, visits us every Saturday. He teaches us to teach them. One of his instructions is to socialize these puppies. Get them used to street noise and cars. Get them used to other people.

Today’s socialization project involves a pupper picked at random, who will accompany me to our little country bar. We took Lizzie a couple of Sundays back. The bar was crammed with local youths. Lizzie walked in, looked around, and promptly evacuated in a big way. Naturally, this caused all the teenage girls to hoot with laughter. (No, those girls don't do that: they have it laser'd out.)

Later, towards the end of our drink, a teenage boy came up to say hello to Lizzie, and she promptly peed out of happiness? Joy? Fear?

Lizzie will not be accompanying me to the bar today.

From Tillie’s sadly-unpublished memoirs: “Snacks and apertivo fare are again one of my favorite eating pastimes in Italy. The whole idea of “taking an apertivo,” as it were, is quite civilized. The aperitivo, which we crassly call “cocktails” in the United States, is taken before a meal, including both lunch and dinner. Italians usually have a glass of prosecco (sparkling Italian white wine) or a mixed drink. Many bars offer their own in-house specialties, and many of the bars are exceptionally creative. As I noted earlier, I don’t really drink except for that occasional finger-licking Veuve Clicquot moment. …

We walk through Piazza d’Azeglio which, at this time of the day, is usually teeming with canines accompanied by their people, little old Italian ladies sitting on a park benches catching up on the events (or non-events) of the day; and shrieking children in the playground while their parents sit and watch them carefully from the benches. Sometimes I run into friends, but I usually don’t stick around to sniff as something more important looms on the horizon: FOOD.

We proceed down those narrow twisting streets, and I shake sometimes as shopkeepers are often in the process of closing down shop for the day. This means pulling down metal doors that make screeching noises. For me, it is the canine equivalent of the human “nails on the blackboard” feeling. It is really one of the most unpleasurable sounds in the world.”

Tillie loved going for aperitivi -- practically up 'til the moment she died.

Pup Picked at Random will not experience any shopkeepers pulling down their metal grates, since they’re really aren’t any shops here where we live. Pup will, however, experience the raucous cries from the elementary school, and will have to endure car noise, and perhaps meet another dog or two (Penelope, a local pug, is often at the bar).

The Negroni is a distinctively Florentine apertivo, its creation credited to one Count Camillo Negroni, who apparently liked to drink this Italian equivalent of a double martini on via Tornabuoni beginning around 1919. (Efforts to -- ahem -- dig up more information about this genius came to naught.) Accounts differ, however, about the bar: was it Caffe Casoni? Was it Giacosa? Some folks from Forte dei Marmi stress it was invented there. (Many years ago, Giacosa closed (it’s since re-opened, but Roberto Cavalli has added his name to it) for seemingly good. They offered free negronis to all and sundry. It was quite a fest.)

To make a negroni, you need an old fashioned glass, lots of ice cubes, and equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari soda. Add a slice or two of orange, and sip … slowly. Then have another.

My late antiquarian friend Robi drank negronis at evening aperitivo time. He drank this, instead, at lunch time: In a long-drink glass, throw in a couple of ice cubes, and fill the glass 2/3 full with Bitter Campari. Add a generous pour of white wine, and drink. It probably has another name, but we call it the Robi, in his honor. It makes me think of him and his fine spirit whenever we drink them, which is often.

As it turned out, Pup Picked Out at Random was Lizzie. Her comportment was worthy of Georgia, a golden retriever who died many, many years ago but who maintains, as always and ever, the title of Mistress of Deportment.

ADDENDA

The Diggers, according to wikipedia.org, "were an English group of Protestant agrarian communists, begun by Gerrard Winstanley as True Levellers in 1649, who became known as Diggers due to their activities."

martedì 22 marzo 2011

How not to keep puppies out of the garden


It’s time to start thinking about planting the garden. Actually, it was time to think about planting the garden many many less-than-large fullest moons-in-the-world ago. In an ideal world (ours decidedly isn’t), a lot of stuff would already be planted. A friend came by a few weeks ago, and roto-tilled it, and it’s been long enough ago that bits of green (weeds, that is – not delicate baby lettuces) are already appearing.

Our excuse for not having planted the peas, the favas, the garlic? Well, we’ll blame it on the weather, or perhaps call it hubris, since I somewhat smugly remarked, upon the completion of the tilling, that we were ahead of our Green Thumb Neighbor who hadn’t, at last sight, tilled his plot.

This Green Thumb Neighbor, besides being the locus of great jealousy on our part, is actually a very nice man. His garden is much smaller than ours. It is tidy, and things grow in it, which is what’s supposed to happen in a garden. His tomatoes are always red when ours are full of stinker bugs (does he spray? we have wondered). A low-fronted rustic stone wall fronts his two-storey casa colonica (farm house); terracotta pots filled with flowers of vibrant hues are a pleasure to look at while driving by and so, too, are the little purple flowers growing through those stones in that wall which come tumbling out. Green Thumb Neighbor has pruned his wisteria to almost bonsai artistry; his roses seem to blaze far longer than ours do. Our wisteria: beautiful, unshaped, unpruned. Our roses? Up in the air given the presence of these three Puppers.

We kind of hate him – Green Thumb Neighbor, that is.

We have a Banks rose crowning the wall just outside our kitchen door. It should bloom magnificently if we can keep The Puppers out of it. Next to it was one of many varieties of lavender plants we have; “was” is the operative word here. Next to that is jasmine, which still has a chance in hell. This part of the terrace forms an “L,” and on the other end, myrtle covered the ground, and crept up the wall. Do please note the use of the past tense in many cases. Scads of terracotta pots filled with herbs and various illegally-imported hot pepper seeds that’d sprung into plants lined that wall. The Puppers, at a tender age, enjoyed eating the stalks of the peppers (I know, I know: what were they doing there, anyway? Why hadn’t we properly cleaned and closed our garden and terrace last fall?). Many of the pots cracked or were broken during heated pup chases; one pup – Buster, it must be pointed out – enjoyed prancing from pot to pot without his fat little paws hitting the ground.

Why is it that puppies go exactly where you don’t want them to go? For example, above you see Buster happily terracotta-ly ensconced in the remains of the mixed Japanese greens, which he and his sisters had joyously excavated while our backs were turned for oh, about 2.5 seconds.

Let the record show that the flower beds on the terrace are fenced. The daffodil bed’s wiring needed to be raised, as The Puppers delighted in prancing through them just as they were at their peak. The bed with the Banks rose, jasmine etc. is also fenced but, apparently, not high enough. Easy to leap over, trash the lavender, and dig a hole, all at the same time.

The internet provided a modicum of sage advice. Googling “Keeping dogs out of gardens” revealed the following. www.associated.com suggested red pepper solution, as well as “How About a Charming White Picket Fence?” The author continues: “I ended up using chicken wire to keep my dog from eating the tomatoes in my gardens. The green chicken wire blended in well with the surroundings, and it was tall enough to keep my dog out but short enough to allow me to step over.”

Unfortunately, making the chicken wire/green mesh high enough to keep The Puppers out also keeps us out because it must be so high. Associated.com also suggested creating a Designated Digging Box, putting some of their toys in it, and encouraging them to dig. We shall try that but since they eschew most of their toys in favor of books (especially Bronzino exhibition catalogue covers and cookbooks by Jane Grigson, cell phones, socks, sponges, wood for the stove), it wouldn’t work. Unless, of course, we ply the sand/digging box with electronic equipment, Ferragamo shoes thrown in just for the beauty of it, and limited edition prints.

This brings me ‘round to sorrel, our really only true Garden Success Story.

At this point, it continues to thrive, even with this cold snap we’re having. Or maybe because of it. This classic Florentine primo is typically made with spinach; mixing in some sorrel gives it a lemony kick.

The recipe comes from Mirta, Florentine sister, lawyer and phenomenal cook.
Perhaps I should invite Green Thumb Neighbor over for an aperitivo so he can admire our sorrel?

Crespelle alla fiorentina/Florentine pancakes stuffed with ricotta

1¼ lb. spinach (fresh or frozen)
½ lb. fresh ricotta, preferably sheep’s milk
2 c.flour + 3 T.
7 eggs, preferably organic
4 c. milk + 3 T., divided
12 T. butter, melted
2 heaping T. tomato paste (triple if you’re lucky enough, double if less so, regular if luckless) diluted in ¼ c. of your already-made bechamel
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 1 c.)
Freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Stem and trim the spinach, place it in a steamer over boiling water. When it’s cooked through (in a couple of minutes), remove and let cool. While you wait for the spinach to cool, put the ricotta in a sieve over a bowl, and let it drain. When the spinach is cool enough to handle, squeeze all the liquid out of it, and chop.
Place the spinach in a large mixing bowl, add the drained ricotta, four eggs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Be generous with the spices. Mix well.

Make the crespelle: Combine the flour, 12 T. melted butter, flour, 1 c. milk, and salt. Stir to combine.

Heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat, drop in a 1 T. olive oil and 1 T. butter. When sufficiently heated, using a ¼ c. measuring cup, drop large dollops of the crespelle mix into it. Pick up the pan and roll the batter around: you want it as large and thin as possible. Cook on one side ‘til you can easily flip it with a spatula (about a minute, or less), and flip. You want it cooked through, but only barely, as these go into a very hot oven. Continue cooking until all the batter has been used up.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly butter a 13” x 9” casserole dish.

Make the béchamel by melting the butter in a small sauce pan, adding the flour, remaining 3 c. milk. Taste for seasoning, and add salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Again, remember to be generous.

Assemble the crespelle placing the ricotta/spinach stuffing on one half of the circle, leaving some room around the edges. Fold over the other half (you will have half moons on hand), and gently tamp the edges. Place in the lightly-buttered casserole dish, gently overlapping them, and continue stuffing the crespelle until either the stuffing’s all gone or the pancakes are.

Take the 2 T. tomato paste, diluted with ¼ c. of the béchamel, mix thoroughly, and pour into the remaining bechamel. Pour over the crespelle, and cover that with 1 c. of freshly-grated Parmesan cheese. Give the dish a couple more gratings of nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Bake in the oven ‘til lightly browned and bubbling – about 20 minutes.

BOBO suggests pairing Crespelle alla Fiorentina with La Porta di Vertine rosato igt 2008.

martedì 8 marzo 2011

Wine, women, song ... and pork products


How intriguing that International Women’s Day and Mardi Gras collide on the same day, which is today. Perhaps it will give women extra license to eat, drink, and be merry: but shouldn’t we be doing that the other 354 days of the year? And shouldn’t we also be celebrated as female beings the rest of the year?

Today also marks the feast day of an obscure saint called S. Giovanni di Dio (St. John of God). It's also the 67th anniversary of the deportation of Florentine Jews to Mathausen: a plaque at the train station Santa Maria Novella (at the bottom of track 6) memorializes this. Today a special ceremony happens at the station, and both the mayor of Florence and the mayor of Mathausen, along with a survivor from the camp, are unveiling a new plaque.

How to involve the puppers in these Women’s Day/Mardi Gras celebrations? How to teach Lulu, Rosie, Lizzie, and Wilma about celebrating themselves as the bitches that they are? How to tell Buster that on this day he can let his natural exuberance exude even more? How to tell Harry that he can maraud even more than he usually does? What special treats can we give the three adult dogs? (The Puppers will continue on a restricted diet ‘til they’re a little bit older). Should we instruct Harry and Buster to bring bouquets of mimosa (yellow flowers that are traditionally given to women on this day) to the girls, or should we tell them to ignore this somewhat patronizing habit?

International Women’s Day was first celebrated on March 19, 1911, and it was originally a socialist holiday. Mardi Gras’s precedents date to ancient Roman times –such feasting and excess occurred on the Saturnalia, followed by the Baccanalia, and then, finally, the Lupercalia in February which, according to Carol Fields, priests, “called luperci, offered up two goats and a dog, animals known for lusty sexual appetites, smeared their own foreheads with blood from the sacrificial knife, burst into uproarious laughter, and ran naked through the streets snapping goat thongs at women to call forth fertility.”

This is alarming on so, so many levels. Though we have six potential sacrificial victims on hand, we won’t venture there. Isn’t it also alarming, visually speaking? NAKED PRIESTS? (However, it's all too easily imaginable to picture Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi doing this: an outdoor bunga bunga party!)

Often on this day in the United States, we eat pancakes or doughnuts. In Tuscany, cenci (rags), a delicious sugared dough which is either fried or baked (there are two very strong schools of thought re: which is the True Way), appear several weeks before Ash Wednesday. They will disappear at day’s end, not to return 'til next year.

Fields continues: “Carnival in Italy is still a time when anyone who is hungry eats … At Carnival people eat everything left in the larder, but they also dip into fresh sausages and meat …”

Tonight we do not offer up a sacrificial pup, nor do we run around naked with goat thongs … but we are eating sausage. I’ll make it while channeling Helen Reddy singing “I am Woman.”

(No, I will not.)

Penne con salsiccia, olive, e rape/Penne with sausage, olives, and broccoli rabe

3 T. extravirgin olive oil, plus more for dribbling
1 red onion, halved, then thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
¼ c. pancetta, chopped
2 pork sausages, about 1/2 lb., removed from casings
2-3 hot peppers, stemmed, and minced
About 2 lbs. broccoli rabe, tough ends removed, chopped – you should end up with close to a pound
½ c. black olives, pitted and chopped
200 gr. penne/scant ½ lb. penne
Freshly-ground Pecorino-Romano
Freshly-cracked black pepper
2 bottles of wine

Bring a large pot of water to a boil (you can add salt if you want). Put the rabe on a steamer tray, making sure that the water subsumes it. Let it return to a boil, and let bubble away for about 5 minutes. When tender, remove the steamer, and reserve.

While you’re waiting for the water to boil, put the olive oil in a saucepan on a medium flame. Add the onion, and stir ‘til it’s slightly colored. Add the garlic, hot peppers, and pancetta. Do not let the garlic brown.

Toss in the uncased sausage, using a wooden spoon to break it up. You might have a greasy mess in the pan once both pork products have cooked through, and you might want to drain a tablespoon or two away. Or not: remember, it’s Fat Tuesday (and the Pecorino Romano will help absorb all that fat).

Put the reserved rabe and sausage in a pasta bowl, and add the olives.

Cook the penne according to package instructions; drain in a colander. Add the cooked penne to the mix, and taste for seasoning. You probably won’t need to add more salt, but be vigorous with the cracked black pepper. If it’s dry (which seems hardly possible), give it a jolt or two of extravirgin olive oil.

Eat immediately.

Serves two. The two bottles of wine? It’s Mardi Gras, and you don’t have to drink all of the second bottle.

ADDENDA

St. Giovanni di Dio (b. Portugal 8 March 1495, d. Spain 8 March 1550), apparently lived a life of adventure as a military man, but was hospitalized due to eccessive religious fervor (imagine how fervent he must have been, while keeping in mind that Catherine of Siena, among many a medieval nutter, was never hospitalized. Puts “eccessive religious fervor” into new perspective, what ho?). He was later released, founded a hospital in Granada, and is the patron saint of nurses, doctors, hospitals, cardiologists, among others(www.santiebeati.it).

International Women’s Day: It’s a common misconception that this day commemorates the 146 women who either died of smoke inhalation or jumped to their deaths at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. It doesn’t. That terrible fire happened several days later on March 25, 1911.

Carol Fields, Celebrating Italy, New York, 1990. The recipes she includes for Carnival festivities include a scrumptious-sounding “Fricandò” from Ivrea, which translates to “Spareribs and Sausages Braised with Wine Vinegar.” She, too, raises the Catherine de’Medici issue: “Some say another dish with the same French-sounding name went to France with Catherine de’Medici and then made its way back to Milan and Piedmont at the end of the 18th century. Others insist that it was brought by Hagy, Napoleon’s omnipresent Egyptian cook, who opened a restaurant in Milan when the emperor’s fortunes went into decline.”

If you’re interested in checking out other expatriot blogs, do please visit www.expat-blog.com.

martedì 1 marzo 2011

(Not French) Onion Soup


Catherine de’Medici was fat, unattractive, and unloved by her husband who, as it turned out, became Henry II, King of France. She was infertile for the first 11 years of their marriage, and then started popping them out in rapid succession. Of her nine children, seven survived their infancy.

She was born in 1519 to Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the grandson of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and his French wife, Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne, both of whom died before Catherine was one. She spent some formative years in the Florentine convent of Le Murate before her worried uncle – in this case, Pope Clement VII – figured out a way to marry her off. And marry her out: like, to a foreign country.

History has not been kind to her. She had (and has) a nasty reputation, as is often inevitable with women who have any access to power. She had a hand (or didn’t) in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), in which a whole lot of Huguenots were unnecessarily killed (those who survived limped their way to Canada and other places, or came to help populate Livorno, soon to be declared a free city).

Ask any self-respecting Italian about French cuisine, and he/she will inevitably say, “Oh! When Catherine de’Medici went off to France in 1533, she took her chefs with her, and thus French cuisine was born.”

Utter nonsense. The late, great Alan Davidson, in his majestic Oxford Companion to Food, has an entry entitled “Culinary Mythology.” Heading that list is “Catherine de’Medici Transformed French Cookery.” He quotes Barbara Ketcham Wheaton’s (1983) study which proves that the French already had their cuisine in place, thank you very much. But Italians need to believe in fairy tales, just like we do (think of our westerns), and so we should gently humor them, as they sometimes attempt to humor us.

Onion soup might be a case in point. In the States, the onion-filled soup, put in individual gratin dishes, iced with grated Fontina or Emmenthaler cheese, is called French onion soup. It’s got a slice of grilled, toasted, garlic’d bread as its base, then the soup is ladled on top, then the cheese on top of that, and then it hits the broiler. What emerges is crunchy on the top and non-crunchy from within. It’s heavenly.

A problem arose yesterday when making this soup, as I did not have the requisite amount of onions. So I went out to the garden and pulled up some long-suffering red onions that never properly came to fruition. The puppers were most interested in this, as you can see.

It was the Scallion’s birthday and we celebrated it by eating many things from the onion family: we started with a most marvelous pork/chicken liver pate with pickled onions from David Tanis’s brilliant Heart of an Artichoke (any self-respecting foodophile/buona forchetta should have this in his/her kitchen), and then followed it with onion soup.

What follows is the recipe. It is not Tuscan (since it has balsamic vinegar in it, giving a nod to Modena, which is in Emilia-Romagna). It is also not Tuscan because it has a generous dollop of gorgonzola/mascarpone in it (to hell with something on the top, and the broiler), and gorgonzola comes from the village of the same name near Milan, and mascarpone comes from just about everywhere.

But it still tastes pretty good, and Catherine, it is hoped, might have liked it.

Zuppa di cipolla/Onion Soup

3 T. butter
1 lb. red onions, peeled and thinly sliced
1 lb. white onions, peeled and thinly sliced
¼ c. best-quality balsamic vinegar
1 c. red wine
3 c. chicken or vegetable broth
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs thyme
Generous ¼ c. Gorgonzola (best if you have a combination of Gorgonzola/mascarpone)
Handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Melt the butter in a heavy stock pot. Add the onions, thyme sprigs, and bay leaf. Cook 'til tender, then toss in the balsamic vinegar, and reduce.

Once the balsamic’s reduced, add the wine; let it bubble gently for a bit, then toss in the chicken broth. Let come to a boil, turn the flame down, and let cook for about 15 minutes.

Add the Gorgonzola, and swirl it around ‘til it melts. Remove the bay leaf and thyme sprigs.

Garnish with parsley, if you want a wee bit of color in an otherwise drab looking soup.

ADDENDA

Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, New York, 1999.
David Tanis, Heart of the Artichoke and other kitchen journeys, New York, 2010.