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10/01/2005 Archived Entry: "Letter from Seliano"

If you are signed up for my newsletter, which you can do by putting your email address in the box at the top of this page (it is free), you will have already received this via email. If you have not signed in for the newsletter, please do it now. Unfortunately, you will have missed the letter I sent out on September 6, informing my newsletter recipients that I was off to Italy. In any case, I have been in Italy now for three weeks, and have been very busy. I am now at Tenuta Seliano, in Paestum – with Iris Carulli and Cecilia Bellelli Baratta (La Baronessa) and her family, who are almost like my own after all these years.

But first, I went to Rome and immediately started running from restaurant to restaurant and pizzeria to pizzeria with a friend who needed to do research for a new restaurant in the States. Then I went to Tuscany for a few days, including a day in Florence, for more research and a bit of relaxation at a beautiful estate near Camaiore, a hill town near the seaside resort towns of Pietrasanta and Forte di Marmi. The names should tell you what the real business of these towns are. Pietrasanta means sainted stone. Forte di Marmi means fort of marble. These are the towns near the marble quarries, where sculptors from Michelangelo to Gina Lollobrigida get their stone. Yes, Gina is a sculptor. I was seated next to her at a luncheon last year and she told me she was originally trained as an artist and came upon her career as an actress accidentally. She was thrilled to report that a show of her work in both Paris and Moscow last summer had drawn huge crowds. The works are monumental statues of her in her film roles. She intends to sculpt herself in white marble in every role she has played in the movies. I say Lollobrigida herself is a monument. At nearly 80 years old, she is still beautiful and statuesque, if a little shorter. I reminded her that many years ago, when I was a reporter for the Daily News, I followed her around for a day. She was a photographer then. She wore a memorable coat all day – a floor-length lavender fox. “It’s too long on me now,” she said wryly.

In the art-crowd town of Pietrasanta, I ate in a wonderful, simple restaurant called Gallo Nero. Everything we ate here was delicious, including fresh egg pasta with porcini, the bread and tomato soup that Tuscans call pappa al pomodoro, rabbit alla cacciatora, thick slices of crusty, rare rib roast … everything on a short menu that changes nearly daily.

Moving on, I had a glorious day in Naples by myself. I rarely have a chance to wander around aimlessly without an agenda and I was able to do just that from morning until nearly dinner time, when I met up with two American friends. I stayed in a hotel that is not quite three years old, but it in an old and important villa smack in the center of the city. It is called Costantinopoli 104, which is also the address. It has only 20 rooms and a friendly and accommodating staff befitting a small hotel. It also has the only hotel pool in Napoli, outside in a beautiful courtyard. The hotel is rather hidden. The name is outside on a street-side post, but not on the door. You have to know it is there, which my taxi driver didn’t. Unlike most Neapolitan cab drivers, who I like to say are the last crooks left in the city, he was very embarrassed that he couldn’t find it and he turned off the meter for me when he needed to go all around the block and start looking all over again.

Once you’ve found the place, you ring a bell and call your name into an intercom to enter an outside courtyard through a large wooden door. Then you ring another bell, give your name into the intercom again, and they click the lock on a metal gate which gives entry to the inner sanctum, a beautiful courtyard. For those who are insecure about visiting Naples, which has a bad but currently undeserved reputation for danger, the hotel has impeccable security.

The only downside to Costantinopoli 104 is that there is no elevator in the three-story hotel. However, there are several rooms around the garden-pool courtyard for those who won’t or can’t climb stairs. I stayed on the third floor and those who can and do climb up there are rewarded with a roof deck fitted out with lounging furniture and, in front of each of the eight rooms up there, a table and chairs where you can take your breakfast or eat food you have brought in from the outside. There is no restaurant in the hotel, but there is a buffet breakfast on the ground floor that has limited offerings of the absolute highest quality. For instance, there are cardinali (small balls) of fresh buffalo mozzarella, great prosciutto, pastiera (the Neapolitan ricotta and wheat grain pie), plus the usual bread, which in Naples is sturdy and crusty, plus unusually good fruit preserves and fresh fruit. There are scrambled eggs, too, with tiny sausage, but they are the least of the buffet.

Two nights in a row I ate at Bellini, a restaurant and pizzeria that is just down the street from the hotel on Via Costantinopoli, next to the Piazza Bellini where you can see a tiny excavation showing the ancient Greek foundations of the city. I have been to Bellini several times over the years, and I always enjoy it. You can sit outside or inside, but I prefer out. Although in bad weather there’s no reason not to sit upstairs in the comfortable dining rooms. The downstairs, inside seating, although a good place to watch the waiters at work, is cramped.

The pizza at Bellini is excellent, as are the batter-fried vegetables, potato croquettes, and mozzarella in carrozza. The signature dish, however, is linguine with assorted seafood baked in parchment – in cartoccio. The seafood – frutti di mare (fruit of the sea) – includes clams, mussels, shrimp, mazzancolle (a kind of large shrimp we don’t have) and some calamari. The sauce of cherry tomatoes, garlic and parsley penetrates the pasta when you bake it in paper and it is sensational. The presentation is nice, too. The waiter brings it to you in the bag, which he has slit open, so you can view it and smell the fragrant steam. He then dishes it out – or is supposed to. Having eaten this one night, the night I arrived and was too tired to go any place further from my hotel, I ate plain spaghetti with clams the next night, when my friends and I couldn’t get to the other side of town where we really wanted to go. There was a demonstration blocking all traffic, so we were stuck, though not stuck because Bellini came through with a delicious meal again. I also tasted my non seafood-eating friend’s “pasta Bellini,” which is fettuccine with peas and ham and tomatoes and Parmigiana. I would be tempted to order it myself sometime, but seafood is the true specialty of the house and the fish is so fresh here it is still moving before they cook it.

After Naples, I came to Tenuta Seliano for a session of Cook at Seliano. I have to say that one of the most gratifying things in my life is the high level of people I attract here at Cecilia’s farm-inn. Again, we had a classy and interesting group of people who were game to do anything and appreciated everything. Among the highlights of the week was a visit to an early 17th century olive oil press. An acquaintance of Cecilia’s inherited his ancient family home a few years ago and discovered that the cave-like room his father used as a wood shed was actually this antique press. He cleared out the room and lovingly restored it. We needed to walk down a long, deep stone staircase to get there. It’s in the Cilento, a rocky and mountainous area just south and behind the plain where Cecilia’s farm is situated, and the local powers that be have not gotten around to fixing the only road that leads to this man’s house. He and his wife are recently retired from their careers in Rome and they are pretty angry that there is so little access to their home. We couldn’t imagine schlepping our stuff, even groceries, down all those stairs, but they do it. Once you are in their home, however, you see the reward. After a visit to the press with its 12-, maybe 15-foot high wooden screw, carved from an entire tree trunk, and even longer lever – I can’t get into the whole description of this here – we were offered some Prosecco and biscotti on their terrace overlooking the mountains and valleys of Cilento.

Another highlight of the week was our lunch on the terrace of my friend Chiara Lima and her family, in Ravello, overlooking the sea. It was a privilege to be there, and anyone can experience the Lima hospitality in Ravello. Mamma Agata, Chiara’s mother, does the cooking and she is a truly great cook. Chiara does the hosting, and she sets a beautiful table with flowers and beautiful local pottery. Her husband, Gennaro, is a certified sommelier and he selects and serves appropriate wines. We started lunch on the terrace, which is somewhat protected by a vine-covered pergola, but then it started raining. In a way, I’m happy it did. We were able to experience the indoor dining rooms that have just recently been built, and I can testify that indoors or out, the experience is memorable, not to mention delicious.

For antipasti, we ate fried zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella, squares of eggplant parmigiana, and two kinds of crostini -- topped with the Lima’s own home-grown and home-dried tomatoes and some with an olive salad, also from their trees. We had two first courses. First came spaghetti with olives, capers, basil, cherry tomatoes, and uncooked leaves of peppery wild arugula. A superb risotto with lemon followed. For a main course, we had chicken braised in lemon, plus vegetables. For dessert, there was Agata’s syrup-saturated lemon cake. If it sounds like too much lemon, it wasn’t. Everything we ate, except the rice and pasta and cake flour, was grown on the Lima’s several terraces just below the dining terrace. Besides many lemon trees, and citron and orange trees, there are vegetables, chickens scratching, and a rabbit hutch. You can check out Mamma Agata by going to the website mammaagata.com. I have had a link to it for many years on my own site.

The big event here at Tenuta Seliano, on Saturday night after our group left, was the wedding of Cecilia’s younger son, Massimino, to his long-time fiancée, Barbara De Maio. The ceremony itself was in the 12th century church across the road from the temples of Paestum. The reception, for about 250 people, was held here at the farm-inn. Some of us sat in the huge gazebo where meals are often taken in the warm months. Some sat under umbrellas on the big lawn, surrounded by Cecilia’s rose garden. The meal was cooked by a young chef, not by Seliano’s staff of local women, and included a buffet of antipasti, then a seated dinner the highlight of which I thought was the quail braised in tomatoes with sformatini (small timbales) of rice with pumpkin cream. The very grand finale was a dessert buffet beside Cecilia’s swimming pool. It included the wedding cake, and many other cakes, all baked and decorated by Barbara’s mother, Antonella, a retired pastry chef. The cakes were of the highest possible quality. Antonella baked everything at home, and made all the pastry creams and fillings at home. She brought all the elements here for assembly and worked all night and into the morning for three days putting everything together. Every cake was decorated differently and beautifully. It was a tour de force. She is an artist.

I think you’ve heard enough from me now. But you’ll be hearing from me again before I leave for home.