Galleons and Sloops in the Apennines.

The Garibaldi Caffè e Enoteca is another of my favorite little places in L’Aquila. It’s a neighborhood all-hours place kind of like the Bar Pasquino under my apartment in Rome. In other words, cappuccino, brioche and newspapers (in Italian only) in the morning, wine and spirits from aperitivo time until after midnight. Both have pannini and other simple but delectable food at lunchtime, but I’m always somewhere else then.

The place was tiny when I first stumbled in 10 years ago. The walls were lined with bottles, boutique chocolates and fake masterpieces up to the arched ceiling and stacked along a wall like in an art counterfitter’s hideaway. Davide and Daniele the two friendly and attentive young brothers who own and run the place also have a gallery that sells professional fakes of famous paintings. As I write this I have two enormous scenes of venice above me (Tintoretto, I believe) Klimt, Hopper, and Van Gogh above the wall of white wines and grappas in front of me, Renoir, Modigliani, Monet and Bottero to my left. When I first stumbled in back then were the model sailing ships among the wooden chess sets and humidors filling the windows. They also have a small but interesting selection of cigars and a nice little bench on the cobblestone street outside - no smoking in bars in Italy anymore.

Despite being on a medieval street 2000 feet up in the mountains the boats fit in because the place was tiny, lined with dark hardwood, the bathroom was tiny like those on sailboats and after a few glasses of wine the world might start to pleasantly sway. They have added another room since I first started coming here, but the lived in, slightly cluttered atmosphere is the same.

This evening as I’m killing time before I meet up with my eleven year old daughter who hanging out with friends in the main square (I’m sometimes jealous of kids growing up in Italy. Just me, a notebook, and a plate of olives, mixed cold cuts and taralli (crispy dried bread in bite sized curls) meant to dampen the effects of a glass of Pecorino, white wine from varietal native to Abruzzo that is undergoing a sort of Renaissance here. The music goes back and forth between Spanish jazz and Astor Piazzola inspired lounge.

The only thing missing is dinner, but recently Davide and Daniele opened up the Punto G - Piacere della Griglia grill (literally “G Spot - Pleasures from the Grill”) across the street. Strictly carnivores only.

But that’s another post.

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Slush puppy heaven

(Cinnamon Summer II)

Growing up one of my favorite dirty pleasures was the slush, or slurpy, or slush puppy. The names changed with the convenience store, but the recipe was always the same. Crushed ice was pumped into a cup and copious amounts of sweet, florescent dyes were squirted in.  You drank this concoction until it gave you a dizzy headache, or you sucked all the syrup out of the ice. It didn’t matter that your tongue was green for the rest of the afternoon. Actually, it did matter –– it was a fringe benefit!

In Italy, they have a name for it: Granite. Anyone who has been to Italy is familiar with the machines swirling the already mixed ice and mystery liquid that are in every bar or gelato joint around the main tourist attractions. The flavors are often better than the convenience store variety of my youth, but not enough to take your mind off the fact that they are just slightly more liquid snow cones. 

Only a traveler to Sicily, where they claim to have invented granita, will understand just how satisfying flavored ice can be. Although, it is possible to find standard, tourist-trap granite – those candy shop machines are everywhere–– I have yet to find a more sublime granita anywhere else in Italy.   One of the best is at the Bar del Porto at the, well, at the bar at the port on the small island of Panarea in the Aeolian archipelago just north of Sicily.  Here the granite is dished out of stainless-steel ice cream containers, like those at Giolitti in Rome or other historic Italian ice cream parlors. The choices may be few: lemon; coffee (great sandwiched into a brioche for breakfast); gelso (white mulberries and almond milk, but all are wonderful.  The almond milk classic is my particular favorite. 

Last year a friendly bartender (who sadly was not there this summer) suggested we try different combinations - gelso and almond, coffee and almond, etc. But, it was not until the third to last night of our vacation when he greeted us with cinnamon sticks an

Cinnamon summer

Cinnamon is one of those spices that bring back memories. Especially, freshly ground cinnamon. This evening I made a quick stop at the Caffè Polar, the tiny bookshop café, with a free hotspot (still not very common in provincial Italy) here in L’Aquila, the city in the Apennine mountains where I live. My goal was a short cappuccino and a newspaper break, but that change, as I stepped up to the bar to order and caught a whiff of that, oh so familiar spice. The young woman behind the bar was busy grating cinnamon over a small glass cup of espresso.  As she tops it up with panna (dense cream), I ask how she would do espresso and cinnamon cold. It is a warm day, after all. “I would make a

Caffè Shakerato,” is her response. 

Caffè shakerato is the hedonistic Italian version of iced espresso. It consists of two shots of espresso straight from the machine, ice and sugar.  The ingredients are mixed in a cocktail shaker then poured into a flute or cocktail glass. In Milan, and a few other parts of northern Italy, Rebarbaro, (a semisweet bitter), or Biancosarti, (a vanilla-based liquor) are added before shaking.   It is great with a touch of freshly ground cinnamon. 

What I like about the  best spices is how they can turn on your memories that play on all of your senses.   I’ll tell you how cinnamon transformed evening strolls on the Sicilian island of Panarea last summer, in the next installment how.

Blood on my hands

For two Sunday’s in a row we were greeted at the gate of my family’s country home in Navelli by a tree a blaze with cherries. I don’t know the exact species but when you have four buckets of fresh, organic (we do absolutely nothing to the tree) cherries just two steps up a ladder, you don’t really care about the name of the tree. I am not a gardener or farmer –– the very thought of taking care of a garden or having a little farm makes me want to hide in bed.  But, when cherries are calling out to you like that…..   Well, there is nothing to do, but put on some old clothes and started picking

As Emily rode her bike and chased farm cats, Sofia read under the pines, and Linda cared for her wide-blossomed roses, I picked cherries that were so ripe handfuls came off without their stems.  Within fifteen minutes, my arms and hands were so sticky that I was taking breaks to rinse the sugar build up off.  When I was done picking, I had four buckets of ripe Apennine Mountain cherries and I looked like a doctor in a Mel Brooks film. 

The problem, of course, with any abundance of fruit, was what to do with it.   By nightfall we had eaten enough to last us a year. A few Tupperware containers full went to friends and family. So, I tried to make a marmellata (marmalade). Fania, my sister-in-law, is the real expert on this, simple but long process of making topping for ice cream or yoghurt or to spread on toast. The recipe calls for melting down (but not boiling) sugar in a few tablespoons of water.  The amount of sugar you use is  in exact proportion to cherries (1lb cherries to one pound of sugar).   Just before the sugar starts to brown, you throw in the well-rinsed and dried cherries and bring the mixture to a slow boil, stirring periodically until the juice around the cherries no long rolls down a wooden cutting board. Fania and I prefer putting in as little as a quarter the amount of sugar (you can always add it in later), which means that the boiling process takes longer because you have to wait until the cherries’ own sugar kicks in.  If you want you can add cherry liquor, amaretto or limoncello.  Spices, especially cinnamon, can make a nice addition to the marmellata, as well. 

(actually this all happened in June;-)