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01/27/2008 Archived Entry: "Things I Bought in Italy"

I’m home and I’m happy to be here and finally, after nearly a week, I’m back in rhythm with my normal life. I think it takes me that long because I do the wrong thing when I get home. I use all the false hyper-energy that I get from jet lag and frantically try to catch up with every scrap of paper that has been delivered to my door, and every phone call, and transcribe all the names, addresses, and notes I’ve collected … . There’s no need for me to rattle off all the stuff that keeps me too busy. Then, after waking up at 4 a.m. for a week, I crash. The crash came two days ago. After 2 p.m., I couldn’t do another food/work/answering mail/eating/caloric/paying bills/writing thing. I went to bed, drank cold water from my new Brita pitcher, and watched Dream Girls for the third time, this time on my new HD flat-panel screen.

The trip is still with me in nice little ways, though. The stuff that I brought back is arrayed on my kitchen counter and elsewhere in view. Since “What should I bring home from Italy?” is one of the questions I get asked most frequently these days, and I am not about to tell you to purchase a Prada handbag , not even a $30 knockoff on the streets of Naples, or a coral and gold bracelet, as one of my students bought for his truly wonderful wife, I thought you’d be interested in the inconsequential things I brought home.

The first thing I set my eyes on this moment gives me a broad smile, although it is not something I am sending you running to buy. It’s a bag of organically grown Sicilian chick peas, only $2.25. But it was not their purity or provenance or price, or any special cooking or eating quality that is so amusing about them, or why I bought them. Here’s the laugh: These chick peas were being sold to benefit a new Italian social/political movement -- Libera Terra (Free Land), whose goal it is to eliminate organized crime in Italy. LOL, as they say on the internet. And this bag is prominently labeled “dalle terre liberate dalla mafia,” meaning “from lands liberated from the Maffia.”

So, what I have here is, literally, a bag of “Mafia-Fee” Chickpeas from Sicily. What’s more, they are from Corleone, which is marked with a black dot on the green map of western Sicily that decorates the package.

Obviously, I will never be able to eat these chickpeas. They are much more valuable as a curiosity and conversation piece. They may end up residing on my kitchen counter for the next decade.

Just in case you are there and really can resist buying some of these yourself, I bought them in a store in Rome devoted to a few such food products, as well as more predictable goods, like T shirts and coffee mugs with anti-Mafia sentiments. The store is right off Piazza Venezia, on the right side as you look toward Via Florida. There is some scaffolding for construction that is going on. The store entrance is behind the construction obstruction.

As an aside, in Piazza Dante in Naples last fall, I attended an outdoor tarantella concert to benefit the Libera Terra idea, if not exactly the same organization. Political parties and movements in Italy are like pasta names and shapes in Italy. The same organization can go by more than one name. Different organizations can have the same name. Whatever the group was called in Naples, the concert bringing attention to them was amazing. The music was strong on tambourines, which are used as much for their drumming possibilities as their metallic jangle; guitars and castanets. In music, language, certain attitudes, and certainly food, the Spanish influence in southern Italy is very strong.

There were hundreds of chairs set up for viewing the concert, but the music was so infectious that just as many people were in open areas dancing tarantella with the manic hysteria one only can imagine by looking at the familiar 18th century paintings and engravings of the dance. I swear, this mainly 20-something to 40-something crowd looked like they were the subjects of those paintings, in everything but dress.

But back to the stuff I bring home from Italy.

I do not carry olive oil. Besides that it is heavy and dangerous to pack in checked luggage, we can buy the best Italian olive oils here in the states, even in many supermarkets. And the prices are now about the same as they are in Italy. I also never bring home wine anymore. It is also too difficult and heavy to carry, and we get plenty of wonderful Italian wine here. Some travelers like to buy oil and/or wine from a winery or oil mill they have visited. I totally understand the sentiment. It’s just me..

What I did pack in my suitcase, however, was several small bottles of colatura from Cetara -- one for me, the rest to give as gifts. Colatura is the liquid expressed by anchovies when they are preserved in salt, and it is nearly impossible to find at retail in the states, although I see it popping up on cutting-edge Italian menus in New York. Cetara is a fishing village at the top of the Amalfi Coast that is famous for anchovies and tuna and products made from those. (I have a wonderful recipe for a pesto with anchovies from Cetara.) Colatura is used as a seasoning, a condiment. A few drops goes a long way, but it can turn aglio-olio – the classic garlic and olive oil dressing for pasta – into a different dish entirely. It’s a heady final fillip to broccoli rabe that’s been sautéed with garlic and hot pepper. It perks up steamed or sautéed zucchini, and many of you will love it in salad dressing. Cecilia and I like to put a few drops onto our spaghetti alle vongole – spaghetti with clam sauce. A traditional Amalfitano dish for Christmas Eve, the all-fish feast, is garlic, oil, coarsely chopped walnuts, and colotura. You can find a version of this in “Naples at Table,” although I offer a version made with anchovy filets because colatura was unavailable in the U.S. at the time of that book’s publication.

Here’s how colatura is made: The fish’ heads are cut off and the fish are gutted. They are then layered with coarse sea salt in a container. In the old days – until about 30 years ago, I gather --this container would have been a wooden barrel. These days, it is more likely a plastic tub. It could be a white ceramic crock. After a short while, the salt draws out the juices of the anchovies and this briny liquid is drained off. Colatura means strained, which is exactly what is done to the liquid when it is drawn off.

I buy colatura in a grocery in Cetara when I get there, but I can also buy the exact same product in a store in Vietri sul Mare, which is the pottery town, just above Cetara, where I almost always take my groups to shop.

The name of the shop is simply Carne e Prodotti Tipici Campani di Luigi Margarita, meaning Luigi Margarita’s Typical Campanian Meat and Products. It’s on the main street, a curving cobbled street lined, as is the rest of the town, with potteries and pottery shops. At Luigi’s, I buy a small gift bottle of colatura for about $10. It’s high quality, the thick bottles are basically break-proof, and it’s enough colatura to last a year. Luigi, who will offer you a taste of his artisan-made salami or a glass of limoncello while you browse his store, also sells the hard-to-find Concerto, a nearly black, very syrupy liqueur flavored with herbs and spices. I don’t buy that, something I love and can’t get at home, only because my friend Barbara’s mother, the adorable Antonella, who is a professional pastry chef, makes her own and gives me some. Very lucky me!

Concerto was created by monks in Scala, the tiny town above Ravello in the mountains of the Amalfi Coast. I first learned about the liqueur from my-friend-the-professional Italian mamma in Ravello, Mamma Agata Lima. She makes Concerto, too. It’s her belief that fried eggplant with chocolate sauce, the peculiarly delicious dessert of Amalfi, was inspired by eggplant with Concerto. Although traditionally made for parties given on Ferragosto, the August 15th national mid-summer holiday that is also the Feast of the Assumption in the Roman Catholic Church, eggplant with chocolate sauce has lately become popular in stylish restaurants in southern Italy.

I also brought home two big bunches of Amalfi Coast oregano. It is hard to find oregano as sweet and fragrant as this, but, yes, I do buy oregano here, just not in the supermarket, where you pay too much for really harsh herb. I get great oregano at several places where I shop for Italian ingredients – Buon Italia in the Chelsea market, Coluccio here in Bensonhurst. There are so many stores now carrying bunches of Italian and Greek oregano. I bought these bunches in the Battipaglia weekly market, but if you are in any medium to large Italian city there is certainly a daily market, probably an indoor market, where you can buy dried oregano.

I always keep an eye out for wooden forks. This trip, I spotted a batch of them at the Battipaglia market. The two that I could not convince anyone in my group to take, I took for myself. I now have a collection of wooden forks from at least a half-dozen countries, and six regions of Italy. Some I just look at, standing up clustered in various containers. Some I use. A wooden fork seems very practical when I push my scrambled eggs around a no-stick pan, or make a fritatta. I find lots of uses for my wooden forks, but even if I didn’t they feel good to use. And they feed into my collecting compulsion. And they are easy to house. And they are cheap. The ones from Battipaglia were $1.50 (1 euro) each. Could anything be more perfect than a wooden fork?

I also bought a white marble rosette at an antique shop in Naples. I am always finding something in this shop, although you really can’t call it a shop. It’s a room that opens to the street where a foul-looking woman garages and guards -- from the street because you can’t possibly walk in -- a dusty, rusting heap of junk spiked with just enough good stuff to keep your interest for a few minutes. The woman, who actually looked more put-together this time, always cites insanely high prices and won’t negotiate. I walk away. However, this time, for the first time, she did negotiate. I had to buy it, didn’t I?

I am always quoting my mother’s travel advice, given after I did not buy this fantastic, dramatic tin soup tureen in Buenos Aires: “You never regret what you buy, only what you don’t buy.”

Boy, do I have a good cake recipe for Valentine’s Day. I'll be back in a couple of days.