Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tropea
I haven’t yet told you about my misadventure in Tropea, the ancient Calabrian beach town that I mentioned in passing several diary entries ago. It is famous for its sweet red onions, and I told you I had learned an excellent onion sauce for pasta when I was last there, more than a year ago, but that I needed to clarify my recollection of it. My notes on it were not as good as they should have been.
[more]
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Rabbi Barbara and Jewish Calabria
Our Calabrian odyssey continued in Nicastro, where I had a meeting with the only reform rabbi in Italy, and the only woman rabbi in Italy, the charming, fascinating, warm-hearted and welcoming Rabbina Barbara Aiello. The real and only word in Italian for rabbi is the masculine rabbino, but Barbara prefers the feminized form. Rabbi Barbara, as everyone English-speaking calls her, is an Italian-American who was born in Pittsburgh and, yes, she is related to Danny Aiello, who is a first cousin, once removed. Who knew he was Jewish? Who knew Aiello was a Jewish name? Rabbi Barbara has lived in many places, serving many small Jewish communities, even in Beijing. Now she is living in her ancestral home, the house her father grew up in. It is in Serrastretta, a village in the hills overlooking Nicastro.
[more]
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
One More Calabrian Restaurant
Let me tell you about just one more restaurant in Sila, the forested mountains of Calabria, because it was such a delightful experience. Naturally, it was a recommendation of Mirella and Barone Maurizio Barracco. It is part of their Old Calabria route, named after a 1915 book by the English writer Norman Douglas, who made a trip through the region in the early 20th century (including mule rides):
[more]
Monday, August 13, 2007
Two Great Restaurants in Sila, Calabria
The best traditional cook in Camigliatello Silano, according to Barone Maurizio Barracco (see In Sila, two entries ago, Aug. 6) is Angela Valente, who owns the Aquila & Edelweiss Hotel with her husband, Giuseppe (Pepe) D’Amico. As Maurizio most appreciates home cooking, traditional dishes, and he said Angela knows all the antique recipes of Sila, Calabria, I knew I had to meet her. He graciously called ahead and put in a good word for me so I could spend the morning watching Angela cook, and pump her for local food lore and recipes. That she turned out to be an adorable, energetic, and generous 75-year-old was a bonus. It was impossible not to admire every one of her 58 inches.
[more]
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Still in Sila, Calabria
Potatoes and pork sausage: They are both specialties of Calabria, and the combination keeps coming up. Here’s just one instance: In Nicastro, which is south of the high Sila mountains and nearly on the sea coast, when I asked a young local woman, an art gallery owner, about the town’s gastronomic specialties, she told me that sausage browned on top of the stove, then baked in the oven with potatoes was one. And a couple of days ago, Bob Harned and I ate sausage sandwiches in an Alpine-looking shack along a pine-forest road in Moccone, the next village from Camigliatello, and one choice of topping was sautéed potatoes and peppers. Fried peppers and onions on a sausage sandwich we all know about. Potatoes? Figuring it was a bit of carbo overload for someone on a diabetic/weight loss diet, I just had a one-bite taste of Bob’s – fabulous -- while I ordered my sausage topped with what was called caponata, not the Sicilian version, but strips of hot green pepper – peperoncini – sauteed with strips of eggplant and sliced onion – and, to be a good boy, I ate only half the roll.
[more]
Monday, August 6, 2007
In Sila, Calabria
I am in Sila, in the middle of Calabria, the southernmost region of Italy – the foot that kicks Sicily, as some people say. The word Sila is related to the English word sylvan. Both are derived from the Latin work silwa. They all mean a place with woods, and I am surrounded here in the town of Camigliatello Silano, about 4,000 feet above sea level, by pine forests, rustling linden, oak, maple, and chestnut trees, rustic wooden fences covered with lichen, and other woodsy things that remind me of the Adirondacks and New England. In fact, I hear that in mid October the colors are as vivid as they are in Vermont. One reason I chose to spend a week here was to escape the heat of mid summer, and that has been accomplished. [more]
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Cook at Seliano on Eyewitness News
I think we – meaning me and my Cook at Seliano guests -- looked pretty good on Eyewitness News Monday night, the ABC/Channel 7 evening report. If you’d like to see the feature on Cook at Seliano, go to: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=local&id=5524823 (I somehow can't find the keys to make a link on this Italian keyboard, so copy the address, please, and put it your internet line above).
[more]
