Icy Granita

Last week, in passing, I mentioned granita as a summer treat. Today, I want to tell you more.

At its best, granita is heavenly; at its worst, sewer sludge. The worst has the consistency of slurpees sold in the 7-Eleven stores in the U.S. The machine stirs an icy mixture round and round. This mixture is decanted into a plastic cup to order. The most common flavors are lemon and mint. They are vile. The lemon tastes like dried lemonade mix with a metallic aftertaste. The mint resembles stale chewing gum. There are sometimes other flavors, but don’t try them. Trust me.

The best is another story altogether. Gelato shops labeled artigianale make their own. A syrupy liquid is poured into stainless steel pans resembling those used in cafeteria hot tables. Freezing coils reside underneath instead of hot water. The syrupy liquid is stirred from time to time as ice crystals form, but these crystals are never allowed to completely solidify. When someone places an order, the waiter stirs the granita to ensure that no lumps contaminate the icy mixture, then the granita is transferred to a dish (or a plastic cup to go) and served with a spoon.

The most common flavors are lemon and coffee. The lemon is made with freshly squeezed lemon juice, sugar, and water. It’s very concentrated, like the best homemade lemonade. On a hot day, the icy lemon granita refreshes like nothing else I know. The coffee is made with concentrated, sweetened espresso. This is served in layers, granita, whipped cream, granita, whipped cream. There is often a cookie on top. Sublime.

Other fruits produce tasty granita, too. These are made with pureed fruit pulp, sugar, and water. The proportions depend on the fruit, of course. In an artigianale shop, it’s probably good. Other fruit flavors you might find include cherry, cantaloupe (melone in Italian), or mixed berry (frutta di bosco).

If you can bear to forgo gelato, I recommend granita.

Note: The website InRomeNow has a profile about me this week at http://www.inromenow.com/site%20templates/Profiles.html

Gridi, Grido, Gridiamo per il Gelato

Birds are warbling in the pre-dawn hours. Women are painting their toenails. People are unswathing their throats of the scarves they’ve worn all winter. Well, some people are beginning to unswathe throats, but I digress. I’ll save throat swathing for another day. These are the classic signs that summer is approaching in Italy and the gelato season is upon us. Not that we’ve been deprived of gelato during the nippy winter. It’s always available. But when summer comes...oh, my.

The first signs appear in the late afternoon when the warm air invites people to stroll arm and arm down the street enjoying being outside at last. What better way to celebrate than to stop by the local gelato shop for a cone. But we know that summer prevails when the family piles into the car after Sunday lunch at Mamma’s. The car heads for a park, or a lake if there’s one handy, or some archeological site to enjoy the open air. After they walk to and fro admiring the fresh blooms on plants, or the sailboats, or ancient statues, they look for an outdoor café.

And everyone orders gelato. Well, almost everyone. Mamma may choose granita and the youngest child may choose a frozen confection-on-a-stick shaped like a cartoon character. But in general, gelato reigns.

Italian gelato differs from American ice cream in many respects, primarily the intensity of the flavor. Since gelato is sold by weight instead of volume, it isn’t whipped with air, so it’s denser. In addition, gelato is made with less cream, sometimes just milk. In my opinion, cream coats your tongue creating a barrier between taste buds and flavor. So again, the intensity of gelato bursts in your mouth. But the main reason that Italian gelato has such a potent flavor is legal. By law, gelato labeled strawberry must comprise thirty percent strawberries. This law applies to all fruits and nuts, so the flavor is intense. Certainly, the vanilla isn’t thirty percent vanilla, nor is the chocolate thirty percent. But the flavors explode in your mouth nonetheless.

It’s customary to get at least two flavors. After you pay for the size you want to buy, you take your ticket to the counter and select from the array of flavors available. If you have a small size, you generally select two flavors, but with larger sizes you can have as many as four or even five. The choice is yours: cantaloupe and coconut, tangerine and tiramisu. Let your imagination soar. One shop in central Rome has about fifty flavors on display at any given time, and the choice is really difficult. My favorites there include pink grapefruit and champagne.

Once the waiter has filled your cup or cone, he or she will ask, “Panna?” That means “Do you want any whipped cream?” So even on an ice cream, er, I mean gelato, cone, you can have a dollop of whipped cream on top. It’s really hard to resist.

So please excuse me while I go out for my first gelato of the season.

UPDATE: An American friend who has lived in Rome for many years shares the fears of Roman traffic that I wrote about on April 27. She reports having had dinner with an ambulance driver recently. My friend asked the driver what the most common ambulance call is. The driver, a woman, reported that, hands down, it’s pedestrians struck in crosswalks. That makes me think that Romans have it right, after all. Maybe it’s safer to cross mid-street than at the crosswalk.

Crime Continues at the Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain continues to be a crime scene. When I developed the idea for “Feeding Frenzy” (Fish Tales, Wildside Press, March 2011), my inspiration came from a real crime. In my story, it’s fish in the fountain. But before that, in 2007, a man named Graziano Checchino had thrown red dye into the fountain, a fact that I allude to in the story. He reportedly had right wing leanings, and called his act of defiance “futuristic,” referring to the art movement founded in 1909 and championed by Mussolini as the “official art of fascism.” Checchino’s motives are unclear. He may have been protesting the Rome Film Festival (or its cost) or perhaps capitalism in general. There was no damage to the fountain that time, but last year someone repeated the red dye stunt, and some of the marble was termporarily stained.

But crime at the Trevi is not limited to things being put into the fountain. Things are put into the fountain daily in the form of coins tossed by tourists. The custom, popularized by the 1950s film Three Coins in the Fountain, comes from the superstition that if you throw a coin in the fountain you are guaranteed to return to Rome. I’ve certainly pitched in my share. The crime comes from taking the coins out.

About €2000-€3000 worth of coins are flung into the fountain every day. Officially, these coins are collected for a charity. But some enterprising Romans have been harvesting this bounty for themselves. Recently, a television crew set out to document the police standing by while the money was being raked out. A scuffle ensued, and the television reporter ended up tossed into the fountain himself. The police intervened only when the thieves attacked the camera operator.

The main perpetrator of this illegal collection is a man named Roberto Cercelletta, who calls himself D’Artagnan. Italian courts have ruled that the coins have been abandoned by their owners and can therefore not be stolen. D’Artagnan apparently sees collecting these coins on par with picking up empty bottles on the roadside. Last week the police tried to arrest him while he was in the fountain with a broom sweeping up coins because, while it may not be a crime to take the coins, it is a crime to enter Roman fountains.

D’Artagnan resisted, ripping off his shirt and climbing high up onto the fountain. There he slashed his stomach to dramatize his “persecution.” He was last seen being tucked into an ambulance. Stay tuned.

May Day

May 1st is a holiday in Italy. The festivities in Rome end with an enormous concert not far from where I live. A couple of subway stops are closed to help corral the crowd, and the music goes on late into the night. This was an especially strange year because May 1st also saw the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Days in advance, subway notices about travel in the city began appearing in Polish, and traffic and public transport use increased. A million people showed up in St. Peter’s Square for a ceremony that lasted, and was televised, for hours.

The fava bean season officially kicked off May 1st, too. Known here as le fave, the beans have been in the market for a couple of weeks, and I’ve eaten them. So have lots of other people as witnessed by the hulls littering the sidewalk outside my local market. But on May 1st Romans traditionally eat raw fave with pecorino Romano, a sheep’s milk cheese with the consistency of parmesan. I don’t much like the combination, but it’s a Roman favorite. On the days preceeding May 1, the fave are stacked in crates in all the markets with big chunks of the cheese nearby.

A favorite way of cooking fave is with onion, olive oil, and hog jowl, which sounds ever so much more refined in Italian, guanciale (a word that also means pillow). There isn’t really a recipe for this simple dish. Put all the ingredients in a pot, add water just to cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Fava beans must be peeled twice. First remove the outer shell. Then squeeze the bean from a hull that surrounds each separate bean. This can be done with raw beans, but I think it’s easier to blanch them for a couple of minutes in boiling water. Plunge them into ice water to help loosen the hull.
My favorite recipe comes from Sicily. At this time of year the artichoke season is ending and the fave and pea season is beginning. This is a noble dish to celebrate mid-spring.

Spring Vegetable Stew
1 cup shelled fresh peas
1 cup shelled fava beans, cleaned of their outer hull
4 artichokes, cleaned of all their hard, outer leaves and the choke, thinly sliced
1/2 cup chopped bacon or boiled ham
1 onion, finely chopped
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil plus a little more for serving
1/2 cup white wine
2 tablespoons chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the onion is a large pan with 1/4 cup water. Cook over low heat until the water evaporates. Add the bacon or ham. Cook until you are satisfied with the consistency—especially of the bacon. I usually want it to be nearing the crispy state. Wipe out excess bacon grease with a paper towel.

Add the peas, fava beans, and the artichokes. Pour over the wine (my Italian recipe says to “bathe” the vegetables with the wine) and cook until partially evaporated. Add the olive oil and parsley. Simmer for about 20 minutes, covered. Stir from time to time. The vegetables should give off enough liquid to keep the stew moist, but add a little water if it seems dry.

At the end of cooking, add salt and pepper to taste. Just before serving, add the basil and pour on a little olive oil, what the Italians call a “thread of oil” which means pouring on a fine dribble of oil. This dish is good served as a main course or over pasta.

Playing in the Traffic

The traffic doesn’t stop until you step into the street. This maxim rules the life of Roman pedestrians. That makes things difficult for those of us from another culture where the rule is: Don’t step into the street until the traffic stops. Drivers here see you and prepare to stop, but they don’t halt their cars until your feet are firmly off the sidewalk.
Romans on foot approach a crosswalk without pausing. They step into the traffic, and like Moses parting the Red Sea, they manage to interrupt its flow. The cars move around them. The key is to avoid pausing because drivers often judge a pedestrian’s pace and aim their cars ahead of or behind the stride without actually stopping. A pedestrian who dawdles risks death.
Despite the number of years I’ve spent here, I still find crossing the street a challenge. When I first arrived in Rome, I would walk great distances to find a traffic light. That ploy is not a guarantee of safety, however. At many Roman crosswalks there is a pedestrian “Walk” light while cars have a turn arrow allowing them to traverse it at the same time. One such intersection lies in my daily path just outside my front door. I usually cross the street twice to avoid that dangerous spot.
My lifelong stratagem for crossing the street fails me, too. I stand looking left, watching for a break in the traffic. I see one five cars along and wait, keeping my eyes on the spot. Usually, one of two things happens. First, a car ahead slows to give me a chance to step into the traffic, disrupting the entire flow so that the break I’ve anticipated closes up. The driver who has paused becomes disgusted with me and speeds up, and there’s no place to cross. The other scenario is even more annoying. Another pedestrian often steps up to my right, out of my line of vision. That pedestrian strides into the traffic, which stops. I have my eyes focused ahead and don’t notice until it’s too late and the traffic has started again.
My usual strategy is to join somebody else and cross with them. Just last week I approached a particularly harrowing crosswalk over a busy thoroughfare. The traffic from the left careens down a hill and around a curve so that you can’t see too far back. The traffic from the right speeds up the hill and around another bend with an equally short line of sight. I spotted a school group about to cross and tried to catch up, but I failed. I shuffled around until a lone, leggy young woman approached, and I stepped behind her has she plunged into the traffic.
Romans step into the traffic in the middle of the block, too. When I’m walking with someone who does that, my heart races. A couple of years ago I was in London with two Italian people. Now, crossing the street in England is a challenge because you have to remember to look right for oncoming traffic. These two people started to plunge into the traffic mid-block. They would surely have been killed before my eyes if I hadn’t pulled them back. Londoners expect people to follow the rules.
I am braver about crossing the street now, but if all else fails, I wait for a nun or a mother with a baby carriage.

Water, Water Everywhere

Unlike many European cities, Rome has an abundance of water, thanks in large part to the ancient aqueducts. This system was refurbished during the papal reigns beginning in the 1400s. Water is still piped through these acqueducts from springs in surrounding hills. It thunders into some fountains, like the Trevi, and trickles at a modest pace into others like the Barcaccia the foot of the Spanish Steps.
The Trevi, Rome’s most famous, completed in 1762, marks the end of the Acqua Vergine, the aqueduct built by Marcus Agrippa in 19 BC. It’s an amazing structure with water surging with such force that it sounds like a waterfall. In the eighteenth century, people believed that drinking its water ensured your return to Rome. Now, the toss of a coin gives you that guarantee. I threw my first coin in 1969 and never fail to toss in another whenever I leave the city (at least when I leave the country). The proper way to toss a coin is to stand with your back to the fountain and toss it over your shoulder. Famous from the movies, the Trevi is still featured in Italian advertising for bottled water and many other products.
Beyond the Trevi, many other Roman fountains quench the thirst and tickle the imagination. The Water Nymph Fountain in Piazza della Republica near the main train station, for example, features four erotic water nymphs entwined with sea creatures. It caused such a stir when it was unveiled in 1870, that it was covered for a time. Now it’s in the center of a busy traffic circle, and you must make an effort to get a proper look.
The Tortoise Fountain hides in a little secluded piazza where you can rest and smile. The fountain shows young men nudging turtles climbing up and over the fountain’s rim.
The most common fountain is the nasone (big nose), so called because the spout resembles a large nose. Spaced roughly 200 meters apart throughout the city (a designation dating to ancient Rome) these fountains ensure that you are a short walk from fresh water wherever you go.
The utilitarian nasone are fifteen-inch metal cylinders that stand about 4 feet above the ground. The spouts extend about 10 inches from the base, and water constantly pours from the thousands of them across Rome. If you put your finger against the opening at the end of the spout to stop the water, it emerges from a hole in the bend of the spout, spewing water like a regular drinking fountain in the U.S. You can have a fresh drink, even without a cup.
People here detect differences in the taste of water from various aqueducts, and the amount of advertising for bottled water rivals the Coke/Pepsi wars in the U.S. Many people forgo bottled water altogether. Knowing which fountains are fed by which aqueducts, they take their bottles to the fountains and fill them directly. You can buy plastic carriers to hold six liter bottles (similar to the old Coke bottle six-packs). I often see people going to and fro with these contraptions. In the markets, vendors wash their veggies under the nasone, and I’ve even seen waiters from small restaurants take salad greens outside to wash them under this free, and freeflowing, water.
It’s amazing to think that this water, which is really quite delicious, is flowing through a system that originated more than 2000 years ago!

NOTE: The Trevi Fountain is the scene for my story “Feeding Frenzy” appearing in Fish Tales, Wildside Press, March 2011.

Brown Eggs Are Better When They're Chocolate

Chocolate Easter eggs are clogging the supermarket aisles in Italy these days. And the pastry shops and chocolate confectioners are overflowing with handmade treasures. These chocolate eggs are an old tradition here. Each hollow egg contains a surprise, and finding the surprise is half the fun.

The smallest eggs are about 10 inches high, made from about 500 grams of chocolate. The eggs can be as large as five kilos, which is a hefty amount of chocolate indeed.

Each egg is balanced on a little plastic cup to make it stand up straight. Then it’s placed on a square of colorful foil which is gathered up around the egg and fastened in a topknot, often with a ribbon.

The supermarket variety targets children. The foil wrapper hints to the prize inside, and children have their favorites. A quick stroll through my neighborhood supermarket revealed eggs featuring many cartoon character—T om and Jerry to Scooby Doo to the Roadrunner (known here as Willy Coyote and Beep Beep). Disney is well represented, too, with 1001 Dalmatians, Snow White and Peter Pan.

Some eggs contain prizes that are targeted for girls, others for boys. The eggs for girls are labeled “Bimba” in large letters while those for boys say “Bimbo.” This is diminutive for the word bambino, child, with the characteristic “a” ending for feminine words and “o” for masculine. It always makes me giggle since “bimbo” in American English usually means a ditzy female. I’m longing to call a male American friend Bimbo. But I digress.

Commercial eggs targeting adults use other ploys. Perugina, the manufacturer of Baci candies, makes an egg featuring the dark chocolate of their kisses; the prize inside these eggs is four Baci. Lindt, from neighboring Switzerland, gets in the act, too. Their elegant eggs are wrapped in red foil and topped with gold ribbon.

And the choices! One company produces a candy bar called Novi made from chocolate embedded with hazelnuts. Their egg is called “Noccciolato,” combining the Italian word nocciola (hazelnut) and cioccolato (chocolate). It’s the only egg I’ve seen that’s bumpy.
People stand in the aisles discussing the merits of milk chocolate vs. dark. They’re both available, but you have to read the label carefully.

The pastry shops and chocolate confectioners make the eggs by hand with elaborate decorations. The prizes inside these eggs tend to be more elegant, too. These shops are prepared to make eggs to order. You see chocolate egg halves awaiting a customer’s special prize. Engagement rings are frequently tucked into these.

The customary way to open a chocolate egg to get at the prize is to punch it with your fist. It seems crass, but that’s the custom. And you do get a little bit of joy at feeling the chocolate give way to your blow.

Billie Mochow's sugar egg

Billie Mochow, a renowned pastry chef in the U.S., asked me to look for egg molds last year, a month or so after Easter. She wanted to create for a confection, not chocolate, for this year. Now, Italy bends with the seasons. At that point, Easter was well behind us. There were no egg molds in cookware shops. I approached a couple of pastry shops to see if they could special order them, but I got a lukewarm reception.

The egg season was over. Billie found her own source and has produced an incredible work of art. And just as I expected, egg molds began appearing in upscale cookware shops a few weeks ago, but they’ll be gone soon.