Boots in the Oven

Hare Pie, The Joke That Writes Itself.

So this week I made hare pie. I know, I know, get it out of your system early. Yes, the hare pie was delicious. Yes, I love to eat hare pie and I enjoyed watching my wife eat hare pie. The hare pie was moist and buttery etc, etc… If you’re so inclined please feel free to add your own double entendres to the comments. Oh, out of a sense of duty I feel that I should mention that this hare pie would have gone exceptionally well with the ass we ate last month in Puglia.

Ok. There. It’s all out in the open. Doesn't everyone feel better? Now let’s move on to the serious business of pie cookin’.

When Mme. Pants first told me that pie was the featured player in the newest Waiter There’s Something In My… I was really excited. I mean who doesn’t love pie? (Now would probably be a good time to thank Jeanne over at Cook Sister! for hosting this little shin-dig.)

The first thing that popped in my head was baking a nice eel pie as I have been itching to make something with those slimy buggers for quite a while now. However, since we are currently in Florence, hundreds of kilometers from the coast, eels are not particularly easy to come by.

Why fight location? No sense in struggling to make a British dish (with half-assed ingredients) when I live two blocks from a bona fide Tuscan market. So what’s something local and fun? Well lots of stuff actually, but I started thinking about nifty ingredients that are hard to come by back in the U.S.

In the States, you either have to be a hunter or know one pretty well to get your hands on some good wild game. We have laws governing its sale that read like a Rube Goldberg diagram. Luckily, here in central Italy (where Tuscans are absolutely crazy for the stuff) it’s a lot easier to find.

Recently, I have been cooking a fair amount of rabbit. All of the rabbit here is farm raised and consequently it has very white meat with little complexity and not particularly noteworthy flavor. However, in the macellerie next to the rabbit, you often see its deep-dark red cousin the lepre or hare. “Why not?” I thought. And so began our hare pie odyssey.

The first thing I did with my newly acquired half-hare was to break it down into more easily manageable pieces and give it a good rinse. (Actually, the first thing I did was take it outside for some pictures where the sight of a mussy-haired American earnestly photographing a freshly skinned animal not too unlike a cat in size and shape probably helped to reassure all of my Italian neighbors that “Hey, he may be a psycho, but at least he’s a conscientious chronologer.”

So with neighbors properly on edge and hunks of hare at the ready I started to sauté a little guanciale (pancetta or bacon would work just as well) for the base of the soffrito. When a nice amount of fat had rendered out I added a splash of olive oil and then all of my chopped vegetables: carrots, onions, celery, and celeriac.

While these guys were quietly softening away, I turned my attention to fixin’ up a suitable condiment for my rich meaty pastry; a nice tangy red currant jam. I love the combination of sweet, tart berry flavors with the pungency and twang of game.

The jam is super simple. Basically you heat a cup or so of currants in a pan, add in a few tablespoons of sugar and dash of lemon juice and cook over low heat until the berries are falling apart. Then strain the mixture and add back in a few of the seeds if you’re so inclined (as I definitely was. Yay seeds!) Also a pinch of pectin may come in handy if the jam isn’t quite thick enough. That’s it. Just let it cool and it’s ready for any number of mouthwatering applications.

Condiment finished and vegetables softening, I dusted the hare in a little flour and then seared it on all sides in a mixture of butter and a little olive oil. When it was brown all over, I added the soffrito, six halved prunes, a handful of precooked chickpeas, and then poured in a couple cups of chicken stock and then a half cup of tawny port for good measure. Finally, I tossed in some salt and tied herbs (a bouquet garni for all y’all fancy folk.)

With the lid on, I let it braise away on low heat while I put on my pastry pants (figuratively of course, I own no such awesome pants) and moved into pie crust mode. Pie crusts aren’t my favorite thing to make as they can be a bit finicky. The only real way to master them is to make a shit-ton of them (that’s professional kitchen terminology for the uninitiated out there).

I won’t go into all of the details but I’ll give you a few basic tips:

1. Mix butter and lard (butter for flaky, lard for tender)
2. Keep everything cold
3. Don’t use too much water
4. Work fast
5. Make twice as much as most recipes call for

And that’s about it.

When the crust was in its proper pan place, I gave it a good docking and then poured in a few dried beans (Tuscan of course) in preparation for a bit of a blind bake. I slid the crust, beans and all, into my preheated oven and left it to brown for about 15 minutes.

At this point it is customary to stop working on the pie and prepare a delicious snack for your wife because “What the hell is taking so long! I thought you were baking a pie not breaking the world record for calculating its value!” To be fair I was a little peckish myself.

Enter these lovely suppli for a delightful and cheese filled intermission. If you have leftover risotto what could be better than stuffing it with mozzarella and deep frying it?

Snack eaten and hunger assuaged, I checked the hare to find that it was pretty much falling off the bone. Perfect. I took it out to cool and in the meantime I drained all of the vegetables and reserved the yummy sauce that it was cooking in.

When it was cool enough to handle I deboned the hare and mixed the chopped meat back in with the veggies. The juices I let reduce a bit more until they were a nice thick gravy consistency. When the proper texture had been achieved I poured enough gravy onto the hare mixture until it looked like a slightly too dry stew.

This whole mess gets poured into the blind baked pie shell (Mme. Pants is urging me to remind you to please, please remove the dried beans first) and then covered with a layer of blanched bietole or Swiss chard leaves. Next slap on your lid of fresh pie dough and give it a slather with a nice egg wash. Then cut a few slits for steam.

Ok, one last time back in the oven, but really hot this time- say about 220°C or 425°F. Let it bake until it’s a nice golden brown which will probably take around half an hour.

When it’s done, let it rest for a bit so it can get all settled. When you just can’t stand it any longer, slice it and serve it up with some of that divine red currant jam, some fresh cracked black pepper and maybe a drizzle or two of some really good olive oil.

Now that, my friends, is some tasty hare pie. And the good news about this little dish is that it’s better the next day and maybe even better than that the day after. Good Lawd!

So stop all your snickering and get to making some hare pie, it’s finger lickin’ good.

-L. Pants

Come one, come all, to Carnevale!

Want to accompany us to Carnevale?

Italy's overwhelming Catholicity means that in the days and weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, much of the country goes a little party-happy.  The most famous Italian celebration is the Carnevale in Venice, which attracts tourists from all over the world.  However, a small Tuscan beach town called Viareggio hosts an enormous celebration every year that appears to be actually preferred by Italians. 

Whereas much of the festivities in Venice take place in invite-only parties behind closed doors, in Viareggio there are parades made up of enormous cartapesta (papier-mache) floats.

We visited the town as a day trip from Florence, on an excursion organized by Apicius and Study Abroad.  When we arrived in Viareggio, we were all dissappointed to learn that the Carnevale Museum, our first stop, was closed for the day since a float had broken and needed to be repaired.

Instead, we walked immediately down to the parade grounds, which is actually the main beachfront street.  Somehow, they close the whole neighborhood off and charge 13 euros admission - pretty impressive!

First, COFFEE.  And fritelli di riso, or sweet little rice ball fritters stuffed with cream or not, as you wish.

The street was mostly deserted when we got there.  A few people milled around in various states of costuming.

Most excitingly, the morning was being used to get the floats set up and in order for the parade, which seems to just make a giant loop up and down the street.

Pictures don't really do justice to these floats, but we tried.  Some of them were up to four stories tall, with moving parts - and it bears repeating that the vast majority of each float was made of papier-mache!

(This chef float pokes fun at avian flu and the now-past illegalization of selling steak on the bone.)

Later on, the bleachers set up in each float would be full of people dressed in matching costume, dancing and yelling and shooting silly string and foam everywhere.

This early, though, things were much quieter - the craziness to come wasn't yet evident.  So we did some shopping.

With beautiful masks like these on display, how can you not buy one?  The prices weren't even unreasonable - these above were around 12-15 euros depending on where you picked them up.

By the time the group got all set with masks and face paint and wigs and everything, things were starting to pick up a little.  Men set up in the street with large bags of confetti and displays of "foam" and silly string.  Food vendors began to advertise their wares.

How about canned corn-on-the-cob, grilled?  I was all set to jump on this until Husbear grabbed my arm and hissed "you've lost your mind - canned corn on the cob?"  Ah, yes.  You really don't see corn on the cob that often around here, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until I saw this.

We ended up grabbing an early, quick lunch from a giant movable stand set up right in the middle of the fairgrounds.  Typical fair-type food - panini, pizza, a menu completa di terra oppurre di mare...

Sorry.  The whole time we were sitting there, eating our panini and fries and drinking our wine out of a giant juice box, the announcer kept blaring over and over that you could buy a complete menu of the land or of the sea.  A three course menu, with coffee and water!  That's not something you see every day at a fair.  The Aussie with us (whose flickr account can be found here, with a hilarious picture of me here, and carnivale pics grouped here) ordered fish and chips, and recieved a rather odd mess of fried shrimp and calamari.  Just like my British grandma used to fry up.

These doughnuts also tempted us, but we had after all just eaten a big thing'a fries.

This was a great place for peoplewatching.  I really enjoyed looking at the various costumes.  It was interesting to me how this event, where people wore all manner of costumes, differed from American Halloween (not to mention Mardi Gras!).  At home, on Halloween, it seems like most people are dressed as a slutty fill-in-the-blank.  Nurse, cat, maid, vampire, dinosaur, apple, whatever.  Here, we saw none of that - the ambience was more Fourth of July with costumes and copious silly string.

We saw some ridiculously cute kids.

Some of them were definitely getting into the slightly more destructive aspects of the festival.

The dress-up was by no means limited to the kids - some adults really went all out.

This couple is dressed in the Venetian style, which is amazing but has always struck me as a little creepy.

And some were just hilarious.  You have to admire this guy, fishnets and all.  I especially love that he's wearing the World Championship T-shirt from the World Cup last summer.

By this point, just before the actual parade began, the silly string and shaving cream were flying in earnest.  Here's one of the guys we were with, just after being hit full on in the face while wearing glasses.  (Later, he actually made it on to three separate floats, so I don't think this slowed him down too much.)

And Barbara, one of the women who works at the school:

Those big Afro-wigs, by the way, were magnets for anyone who was happening to hold a can of foam or spray or a bag of confetti.  For future reference.

Many of the people we saw looked like this:

Unfortunately, the faux shaving cream didn't mix too well with this season's style of shiny puffy coats.  We saw a lot of people who were going to have substantial dry cleaning bills after the party!

Just before 3, everyone put the finishing touches onto their makeup

and with a loud burst of Italian dance music, the parade began!

I've never seen anything like these floats.  I can't imagine how much time it must take to craft these out of papier-mache! 

And, wonderfully, most of them seemed to have a political theme.  Unfortunately, we often didn't know who was being skewered...

The only Italian politician I could pick out with any degree of accuracy was Romano Prodi, who's been Prime Minister for nearly a year and was formerly President of the EC.  (UPDATE:  My goodness, I write a post saying I can recognize Prodi done in cartapesta - and he resigns?  That's sort of overkill, don't you think?) Here he is (I think) in a giant tin boat, being preceded by a huge group of people shaking blue pom-poms to represent the water.

And here's another Prodi, on what was probably our favorite float.  Here, he has on an adorable soldier's outfit and is seated on a wooden horse, with empty evil hooded characters on either side.

As you can see, the level of interaction between the viewers and the viewees was pretty high.  There was nobody keeping people out of the middle of the parade, and you were definitely expected to be the one in charge of not letting yourself get flattened by a float.  Luckily, Security Mouse was there to help us all.

Just like at home, the floats were interspersed with local high school bands and whatnot.  There were some terrific smaller papier-mache works of art, that were meant to be worn on a large shoulder harness and walked through the parade route.  I kept wondering how heavy these things must be and if people ran into things a lot. I mean, look at that eye slit!

The floats just kept coming, most of them truly inspired.  Here's a crazy flying devil zebra surrounded by figures straight out of Munch's head.

And here's a guy in the guise of Emperor, giving a victory salute.  (I think this might be Marcello Pera, member of the Legislature from Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and former Socialist politican.)  (AND Another update!  I've just displayed my ignorance of Marcello Lippi, the coach who led the Azzurri to a World Cup Championship last year.  Duh.  And he was born in Viareggio, too!)

There was also an American Graffiti float, surreally accompanied by a bevy of Elvii.

The American Graffiti float was anchored by a giant dancing Elvis, with Betty Boop and Felix the Cat playing second and third fiddle.  Here's Darren's picture of the float.  Felix's open mouth was apparently too much of an invitation for some people...

One of the last floats we saw prior to leaving was this number, perhaps the biggest we saw all day.  It towered over all of us, blotting out the sun with its deep black sides.  For serious.  It was a semi, being driven by... well, I don't know, but gawd was it big!  Look at the people standing on top of it!

The back of the float was a huge hole, taken up by enormous articulated skeletons.  People wearing harnesses and wings played at harassing the giant glowing bones.  Very impressive.

Since it was getting close to our scheduled train, we returned to the front to admire the Lamborghini tractors on display (I had no idea Lamborghini made tractors!  Some Midwesterner I am).  The rest of the group gathered, and we made our way to the train station.

Shockingly, at the train station there was a significant lack of information.  Five minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, it was finally assigned a track, and we made our way there to find... THIS.  You really want to follow that link.

As Darren says, the train that pulled up on our track at the assigned time for our train was - not our train!  It was a sleeper train, heading to Rome.  But it took half our group getting on the train and much pushing and shoving before this was discovered.

We all managed to get off the train and over to our actual train, which had of course been sent to a different track.  After another insane pileup at the doors, we actually managed to find seats - though I had to sit on Husbear.  Poor guy.  Apparently, some people weren't so lucky....

So, we had an amazing time at Carnevale.  A completely different experience than the one Mardi Gras I've been to!  I would highly recommend it, though you may want to make your 2008 hotel reservations, oh, last month.

girlie

We got to go into the Vasari Corridor!

This news is probably only exciting if you're a big dork.  Like me!

So first, what is this "Vasari Corridor?"

Well, let's say you're a Medici, a member of the ruling family in Florence during the mid 1500s.  You've just moved, from the Palazzo della Signoria (now called the Palazzo Vecchio, or "old palace") across the river to the Palazzo Pitti.  But your offices are still in the Uffizi, back next door to where you used to live.

You certainly wouldn't want to actually have to, say, hobnob with the people on your way to and from work every day, would you?

So, you build a big tunnel on the second story of all of the buildings between the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti.  Here's what a portion of this corridor looks like today, from the window on the third floor of the Uffizi. (The thing with the red tile roof that zigzags across the bridge.)

The full length of the tunnel is almost 2 kilometers, and amazingly only took 5 months for Vasari to complete.  (Giorgio Vasari's name may sound familiar to you - he wrote a history of art in the late 1500s that is used even today to help identify lesser-known artists.)  The reason it could be completed so quickly is that it was mostly built on top of and through existing buildings - the only part that had to be built from the ground up is the first section, which you see above, between the Uffizi and the Ponte Vecchio.

Normally, it's really difficult and expensive to get into the corridor.  So, when we had an opportunity through Husbear's school to have a guided tour, we jumped all over it.  (Though it did mean sharing the experience with a bunch of 19 year old FUA kids who spent most of the time yawning and talking about what bars they'd be visiting over the weekend.  Imagine, art school kids who aren't interested in art!)

The tour began with a run through some of the more famous of the Uffizi's holdings, but since we'd been multiple times before, I was really hoping to curtail this section.  When we finally were led through a small, unmarked door off of a hallway on the third floor of the museum, an additional 10-15 people tried to follow us (Hey!  Where are THEY going?) but were rebuffed by the guides.

Immediately on entering, you're faced with several masterpieces that were irreparably ruined by the Mafia car bomb that went off outside the Uffizi in May 1993, killing 5 people.  (We were cautioned against taking any pictures, so apologies for the quality of these.)  Then, we were led into the tunnel itself.

The first section of the corridor, leading from the Uffizi to the Ponte Vecchio, is lined with 16th and 17th century art, mostly by minor artists.  When the Nuovo Uffizi addition is completed in five years or so, some of these paintings might be moved out into the museum. 

The natural light in the corridor used to be substantially less, limited to small portholes installed by Vasari.  However, when Hitler came to visit Mussolini in 1938, new windows were knocked into the sides of the tunnel.  (And later, the Germans blew up all the bridges save the Ponte Vecchio, thus sparing the corridor.)

The views you have from the windows and portholes are really interesting, giving you a new perspective on the bridge below.

When you reach the end of the Ponte Vecchio, there's a dogleg around a medieval tower.  When the corridor was being built, the owner of the Torre dei Mannelli refused to let Cosimo I de'Medici plow through the middle of his tower.  The citizenry of Florence held their breath, wondering what the punishment would be, but Cosimo just shrugged, said "In his home, every man is a ruler" and cantilevered the tunnel out around the side of the building.  This means you get a really nice look at the whole length of the bridge from its end.

The next part of the walkway contains a series of self-portraits, arranged chronologically.  When the corridor was completed, Vasari hung 80 self-portraits in this area, and letters were sent out requesting that famous artists of the day paint themselves and send the result over.  There are also a few that are fakes, including one of the Gaddi family (turns out that people really didn't do self-portraits in the early 14th century) and one of Leonardo da Vinci.

Now, artists petition the regents of the Uffizi to be allowed to send in their self-portraits.  Some of the paintings in there are wonderful, and all are at least good, which is why it was so disappointing to be rushed through extremely quickly.  Also, many of the most famous ones, including two self portraits by Albrecht Dürer and one by Marc Chagall (that last really disappointed me) were missing, on loan to various museums throughout the world.  At least in traveling exhibits, they'll be seen by more people than they are in this corridor!

We were gratified to be able to pick out Carlo Levi's face, though.

It was neat seeing artists play around with the structure of a self-portrait.  This Italian master was apparently known for his ability to paint flowers.

A few minutes later, we were led out of a small door (again totally unmarked) into the late afternoon sunlight.  A statue of Apollo stared at us.

We had landed in the Boboli Gardens, behind the Palazzo Pitti.  At this point, our guide told us we had two options.  She was going to leave the premises.  If we wanted to stay and enjoy the gardens, we needed to buy a ticket for 6 euros.  But... we could also just take the stairs to the right.  She wouldn't keep an eye on if we left or stayed.

We stayed.

Actually, the place where we found ourselves was singularly odd.  It was a small building, built by the architect Buontalenti (Court architect to the Medici after Vasari.  He also very likely invented gelato, and thus has a tasty bread pudding-like flavor named after him).  The building was built to look like a small chapel that had been overtaken by mud and ruin.

(That's the six-balled coat of arms of the Medici family over the doors.)

As we stood there gaping at it, we saw a small sign that said the grotto would be open for visitors at 4.  And hey!  It was 3:58!

At 4 on the dot, a lady with a clipboard arrived and unlocked the gates, letting in a maximum of 20 people at a time.  This was such a strange place - I've never seen anything like it!  Apparently, this was the style for a little while during the last quarter of the 16th century - buildings that looked romantically ruined.

The inside is truly weird, but sweet in that overly-romantic Renaissance way.  In the middle of the fake mud and drips is a statue of Paris and Helen of Troy created by Vincenzo de'Rossi, wherein they're sitting on an upside-down wild boar and Paris is grabbing at Helen's breast.  The corners of the front room originally held Michelangelo's Prigioni, or Prisoners, that now keep David company in the Accademia.

The first room, is the strangest.  Loosely formed statues of sheep seem to be whiling away the time, chewing on the vegetation that's grown up on the old chapel.

Shepherds look on, crooks in hand and floppy hats on head.  And then there's this lady.

We left the grotto, relinquishing our place to a couple of German tourists, and walked deeper into the gardens.  We found a pink granite obelisk, brought in from Luxor.  Brings back memories.

And then we walked up a path that turned out to be a heck of a lot steeper than it looks.  Here's me, the Palazzo Pitti behind me.

The gardens reminded us fairly strongly of Versailles, so we were half expecting a giant pond at the top of the walk, complete with paddleboat rental.  Alas, there was only a small, pretty puddle, which didn't seem to be overly stocked with fish.

Just at this point, a loud disembodied voice assaulted our ears, telling us in Italian that the park would be closing soon.  Then English.  Then French.  Ah, there's the German.  And it repeated and repeated and repeated as we walked along a new path, trying to find our way out.

Being driven crazy by the incessant announcements, I lost Husbear for a minute.  I found him taking his 12th picture of this little guy.

Together, we found this enormous head, which was duly photographed with the speaker yelling in our ear.

And then, just before leaving the gardens, the voice stopped.  And we found this ode to Bacchus, god of drink and debauchery.  (I think I remember reading that the figure is based on a Medici court dwarf, which people had back in those days.  Of course.)

He looks to me like he's about to expound further on a point he's made in a drunken debate.  "Naw, jus'... jus' lissen for a sec, see!"

Walking back over to the Ponte Vecchio, we saw the point where Vasari had to go around the medieval tower.  Really interesting, now that we know exactly what it is.

As a special bonus to people who made it through all the boring historical discussion, here's a followup to the fashion post from last week.  Ridiculous dress is certainly not limited to Americans here.

And here's the name of a jewlery shop on the Ponte Vecchio.  I can't speak for the quality of their wares, but I think this is a very good example of when a double entendre does not work in your advertising favor.

Tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning, we go to Viareggio to check out Carnevale!  And Husbear is even now working on an unspecified pie for the blogging meme "Waiter, there's something in my pie."  Dinner at 11!

The Mercatino Tedesco: serving all your tiny German market needs in Florence

In the interest of not letting the awesomeness that was the Mercatino Tedeesco slip through my lazily blogging fingers, please allow me to direct your attention to last November.

The Mercatino Tedesco di Heidelberg, which translates literally from the Italian as "small German market from Heidelberg," (Creative, no?) took over the Piazza di Santa Croce for nearly a month last November and December.  It was a great place to do some Hanukkah and Christmas shopping, with terrific crafts from Germany and elsewhere.  (Austria, mostly.)

Adorable hats and puppets for children jostle with jewelry, scarves, porcelain, statuettes, camping gear (!), soaps, and most of all a huge array of German and Austrian food stands.  (That last may not sound like a good thing, but damn is it hard to find anything besides Tuscan food or falafel around these parts.)

We went to the market nearly every day it was open, for a mug of gluhwein (glow-wine, or mulled wine - also called vin brulee), or a sausage, or for a bit of holiday shopping.

It was a beautiful place to just browse and feel in the holiday spirit, though the two weeks before Christmas things were more than a little crowded and hectic. 

The wares on sale at this booth might look familiar to cousin-megs.  (I really should have gotten a little something from this booth.  STUPID.  Yes, those are my meaty paws flapping around the lovely little necklaces.  Great angle on them.)

We did end up making a lot of food-related purchases.  For one thing, there was a terrific spice and dried herb guy who boasted things we haven't seen in months - like dill, and dill seed (which tastes just like caraway, something we've had no luck finding around here), and tarragon.  For another, we were able to buy a bunch of German sausages (most of which are even now frozen in our tiny freezer) for next to nothing near the end of the festival.  We did stay away from those dang Salzburger Mozart chocolates that practically chase you down the street all over Austria bellowing "BUY ME.  LOVE ME."

Nor did we buy a giant rope of garlic, appealing as this display was.

Perhaps the most wonderfullest thing at the Mercatino is the fact that there is a functioning carousel there.  Not just any carousel - this one is missing the fanciful horses and chariots normally festooning such edifices.  It's a BAR!  That serves lots of beer and mulled wine!  And rotates!

You're probably thinking that a rotating carousel six steps off the ground full of drunk people during the rainy season might be a lawsuit waiting to happen.  Probably it is.  One night, on arriving at the carousel for a post-dinner evening mug of gluhwein with friends, we noticed a woman sitting up against the candied and chocolate-covered fruit stand that backed up to the carousel.  She was surrounded by friends and was holding her ankle.  We settled in, and by the time the carousel made its 20-minute rotation back around to her, an ambulance was there and her ankle was being splinted.

A half-hour later or so, the bartenders were sticking these hand-made signs to the top of the staircases.  "Attend to the Stairs," indeed.

The carousel itself didn't serve any food - just drinks.  Rotating drinks.

And, well, you can't beat the view.  Even with our neck-chins in it.

During the day, you can even buy food from the surrounding food stands and eat it in the carousel.  We did this several times - it was great especially when it was raining.

(These sausages were from the stand run by guys from Trentino-Alto Adige, the part of Italy that butts up against Austria.  Good bread, boring kraut.)

As you can see, you have to buy a drink or somesuch if you're going to eat your ill-gained foods in the carousel.

Husbear to the rescue!

And if you don't want to buy the more expensive mulled wine from the carousel, you can get it from this guy and his giant kettle.  Though his mugs come sans carousel.

There are a fair number of savory food options at the Mercatino, as long as you want German food.  There are white sausages, and red sausages, and spiedini (kebobs) of pork, and stinco di maiale, which I've been told is like the pig's ankle that's deliciously roasted, and a couple of different hearty stews.  And lots of sauerkraut.  Pretzels, too.  You know, typically light stuff.  Doesn't stick with you for hours, but it works.

Sausages waiting for their buns, for your perusal:

And here's a whole piglet, roasted.  (Maialino di Latte - milk-fed piglet.)

We only ended up having a couple of pretzels, something about which I'm not overly pleased.

Here's a mouth-view of another sausage, just prior to being eaten.  And a view of the carousel during the day!  Most booths started out letting you apply your own mustard, but so many people kept squirting mustard on themselves that that task was returned to the sausage artists.

And if you're curious what's up with that stinco di maiale, here's a half order.  I thought it looked like a lot of food, but there were all sorts of people around us with full orders - double the meat!  The booth I mentioned earlier, from Trentino-Alto Adige, is the best place to get stinco.  Just wish they had better kraut.  Delicious pretzel-bit, though!

That is a seriously good bit of pork, y'all.  Crunchy skin, moist piggy meat.  Here's a food porn shot for you:

And, if you really need something a little sweet to chase all that rich and pickly, there are certainly options for you!  There are homemade cookie and candy and fruit stands, along with a place selling different types of sweet pretzels.  You can get apfelstrudel (that would be... apple strudel) at a couple of places, with vanilla cream sauce if you want.  This one was ok.  Rich, buttery, and appley, which is I suppose what one wants from a strudel?

Another fun option, which I imagine would be even more entertaining if you have children with you, is the cotton candy (zuckerwatte, zucchero filato) guy. 

No colors or flavors added here, just an enormous cloud of sticky filaments.  This put me straight back in Roos gymshoes with a penny in the side pocket, an enormous t-shirt scrunched at one side, and pleated drop-waist jeans.  Oh yeah, and a slap bracelet decorated with fireworks.  With one ponytail on the side of my head. 

Guess the year of Girlie's birth and win a picture of her with novelty-size cotton candy!

So - if you find yourself in this area in the month or so leading up to Christmas, definitely drop by Piazza Santa Croce and see if the Mercatino Tedesco is in full swing.  A good time is guaranteed, as long as you watch it on those stairs.

Mr. Pants Runs Naked and Screaming into the Woods and Drags Out His First Bistecca

So Tuscans love meat. They just do. They eat it at pretty much every opportunity. I’ve even seen old men chowing down on tripe sandwiches at 9:30 in the morning. But here in Florence when you talk about meat, the pinnacle, the meatiest of meats, you’re talking about Bistecca.

Bistecca literally just translates to steak – a bastardization of beefsteak if you wanna be all historically accurate and stuff. Nowadays though, you can have all kinds: pork steak, tuna steak, horse steak. However, Bistecca alla Fiorentina is always and without exception a huge chunk of beef.

                              (This is a hunk of uncut Bistecca displayed in a restaurant window)

In most other parts of the world, it would just be called a Porterhouse- people would recognize it as a fine steak and that would be the end of it. Not so here in Florence. The Bistecca Fiorentina has become a cultural symbol, tied up in their history and culinary identity.

This is a little strange considering that the Bistecca as we know it today has only been around for a couple hundred years. Apparently, it was originally cooked by Italians for traveling English folk during the age of the Grand Tour. However, at some point the Italians stopped simply serving the specialty, and started claiming it for themselves.

So yes, it’s just a porterhouse- but no, you’ve probably never seen one like this. These things are novelty size. Think Fred Flintstone’s Bronto-ribs. If you are not mentally and physically prepared to take on one of these things, odds are you’ll be defeated.

(It's three inches thick and bigger than her head I swear.)

Bisteccas are available at pretty much every restaurant in Florence. Back in 2001 they were banned due to the Mad Cow scare. In 2006 they were proudly reinstated and have flourished in their new found legality. Like steaks everywhere though, be prepared to pay for quality. Restaurants price them by the etto (100 gram portions) and a typical Bistecca is over a kilo. At four Euros an etto you’re looking at a 40+ euro steak, which is like $900 these days. (Or if you happen to be at Enoteca Pinchiorri you can try their 100 euro Bistecca and please drop me a line to let me know if it’s marinated in gold or perhaps with a fine diamond crust.)

A better (and certainly more enjoyable for me) way to get the full on experience is to buy a Bistecca at the market and cook it yourself. This way you get to see the butcher insanely hack off a huge hunk of aged beef from a long log of cow. Also, you get to check out the steak for yourself and choose from the best on display.

It was in just such a situation that I found myself last week. I decided the time had come and I could no longer delay the inevitable. I went to see my favorite butcher in Mercato Sant'Ambrogio and began to explain what I wanted in my hilarious Italian. I didn’t get much past “Bistecca” before his eyes lit up and he whipped out what I can only assume was some sort of jungle machete. He went to work slicing and thwacking on what I couldn’t help but notice was an insanely large steak.

(A quarter is an inch across, so this thing was like 10 inches?!)

I tried to stop him, suggesting perhaps something a little smaller. He gave me a wry grin. “For how many people?” he asked. “Only two.” I replied plaintively. He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands, “È una bellisima bistecca, perfetto per due!” His eye roll punctuated my ignorance.

I was now the proud owner of a 1.7 kg steak. That’s almost four pounds people! Think “small child”. I, however, was not to be disheartened. I wanted the real deal and this was certainly as real as it got. So what if we made six meals out of it? I was gonna do it the right way, Fiorentina style.

I waddled home with the beast and heaved it onto my counter. I stared at it. It stared back. Ok. I don’t have a real grill. I live in a small third floor apartment in downtown Florence and we have fire laws. Traditionally, Bistecca Fiorentina is always cooked over charcoal (after all it came of age during the Enlightenment era where everything used coal and coal derivatives). I, on the other hand, have gas and an IKEA knockoff of a cast iron pan. With ridges. I know, save your jealousy.

So, where does one begin? How does one prepare a Bistecca? Perhaps surprisingly you should do very little. I left the thing out for a couple of hours to come to room temperature. Then I wrestled it into submission and salted it heavily and without remorse. Meanwhile, I brought my pseudo-grill up to an ungodly temperature; as hot as I could get it without things or parts of things going all soft and puddily.

Once I was satisfied with the heat, I used a small hand-operated pulley system to hoist the Bistecca into place. It hissed its disapproval. I inhaled the satisfying smoke and waited out the following four minutes and then the subsequent four minutes on the other side.

Here’s the thing about Italian steaks: a real steakhouse, or home-cook for that matter, will never ask you how you want your Bistecca cooked. There’s only one way – al sangue or “to the blood”. Yep. It’s rare. Really rare. Like the Japanese think of fish, Italians wonder why you would ruin a fine piece of meat with all that unnecessary cooking.

Once I had achieved a nicely seared crust on both sides I had Uther, my Norwegian man-servant, use his mighty arms to wrest the thing from the grill onto the cutting board so it could rest for five minutes or so.

After all of the juices had resettled and the proteins relaxed a bit, I sliced it and served it with creamed cauliflower and a potato gratin prepared by none other the fabulous Mme. Pants Herself! It was ridiculously delicious. And she says she can’t cook.

Oh right, I almost forgot about the crispy tasty fennel with a little argan oil (made by picking the seeds out of the droppings of tree climbing goats. Look it up, I swear.) for scrumptiousness. It takes lots of vegetables to go head to head with all that meatiness.

So long story short: Bistecca good, Bistecca big. Buy Bistecca and cook for self. You like. Urgh.

Don’t strain your back.

-L. Pants

Lucca: Biking and Buccellato

Somehow, we're at the point where we only have about three months left before we leave Florence, and Italy, behind.  (For now.)  This is kind of shocking, at least to me, because it highlights just how little time ten months in a place turns out to be.

So, though all of my spare time was being devoted to putting up all the posts about our trip through Sicily and the Mezzogiorno, when Anna suggested a couple of weeks ago that we go to Lucca for the day - we jumped on the chance.

Lucca is a small town in northern Tuscany with a heavy tourist presence.  They're famed for having 3 kilometers of completely intact medieval wall circling the town, which you can bike or walk.

We arrived on one of the many daily trains from Florence (though Anna just about gave us a heart attack when she came bobbing up at 9:08 for the train, which left at... 9:08) and strolled through town in the direction of Piazza Santa Maria, where there are several shops that will rent you a bike by the hour or the day for reasonable rates.

Lucca wasn't immediately captivating.  In fact, the narrow streets, lined with tall houses in varying shades of yellow and cream with green or brown shutters, looked to us like they could easily be Florentine - with the exception of this small canal.

We reached the bike shop, and I attempted to conduct the rental transaction in Italian - but when I didn't understand the Italian word for "lock", the shopkeeper switched immediately to fluent, British-accented English.  It felt strange to be back in an area where English is heard perhaps more often than Italian.

We got on our bikes and rode up a small hill to the walls, which are wide and planted with trees.  It's basically a park on a ridge that happens to go all the way around town and be built of brick.  Very nice for biking, especially as my expertise in that area is pretty limited.  (Hey, I grew up in Chicago, and our bikes got stolen.  Out of our locked garage.  Three times, I think.)

Being on the walls gives you a pretty view of Lucca's churches and streets and parks.

We made it all the way around the walls without running over any of the tiny dogs or preschoolers out for walks with their owners or parents, and entered traffic on a busy street heading out of town towards a nearby park.  I was really worried to be biking in Italian traffic, but people stayed well clear of me - I think they could tell that I might lose control of my bike and fall down in front of them at any moment.

The park was actually a very long, narrow strip of green north of town along the banks of the Fuime Serchio - the Serchio River.  The path started out paved, but this quickly turned into a gravel surface - difficult on the legs and arms, at least for me.  Beautiful views, though.

The weather was perfect for being on a bike - not so cold that your whole face chaps, but not so warm that you melt into a puddle.

Our free little map implied that there would be three bridges we would pass (not counting the major road that we used to reach the park) that would cross the river, and we resolved to bike to the last of these and cross there, coming back on the opposite side.

We stopped for a picnic after 45 minutes or so, stuffing our faces with marinated artichokes, panini, and fruit as well as enjoying some Ritz crackers Anna found cheaply in a market.  It's been a while since I've had Ritz!  No wine, though, for those of you who are fairly sure we're alcoholics.

After yummy lunch, we got back on our bikes and passed the second bridge, which turned out to be limited to train traffic.  While we were dickering about whether we could walk our bikes across it without dying hideously, a train thundered past.  We decided to continue on.  Husbear got a great picture there, though.

The third bridge, we didn't find until we had taken our city bikes down what basically amounted to a scree hill, through a large mud field, and along an extremely rocky pockmarked road.  This was when we discovered that the third bridge was actually the main autostrada - not particularly conducive to dinky bike traffic.  No choice but to go back along the cratered road, through the mudfield, and up the rocky slope.

We traveled back along the gravel path,

until we got back to that first bridge and crossed over.  The other side was more crowded, with people out for early afternoon walks with their dogs and families.  Some small children were learning to ride bikes.

The ride back to town went swimmingly - it's so much easier to travel along with traffic than against it!  We returned our bikes and paid up (not too bad, 20 euros for two bikes for four hours) and went for a walk around town.

We admired the twinkly Byzantine-style mosaic on the front of the Chiesa di San Frediano.  I was reminded strongly of the mosaics we saw when we were in Palermo, though this one is 200 years younger.

Unfortunately, they were closed, so we couldn't go in to see the della Robbia altarpieces (that's the Tuscan ceramics house that decorated just about everything in this area - best known for their white faces on bright blue backgrounds).

Our next stop was at the Piazza Anfiteatro, which was built along the outlines of the town's Roman Amphitheater.  Hence the name.  It's a big oval, and interesting for its shape, but not much else.

But, as you know if you've looked through some of our other posts, our favorite thing to do in a new town is to sniff out the local food specialty.  Here in Lucca, it's a sweet biscuit bread studded with raisins called buccellato.  Lonely Planet directed us to Piazza San Michele to a pasticceria called Taddeucci for the best.

It's sold in loaves.  Most of the time when we buy bread in Italy, they are happy to sell us portions of a loaf, but here we had to buy the whole thing.

These look overcooked, but I think they were supposed to be that way.  The interior reminded me a little bit of an American biscuit (not buttermilk), with a strong aniseed flavor and lots of tasty raisins.  They weren't the nicest people in there, but they did make good bread.

We munched on our loaf and walked over to check out the piazza's namesake - the Chiesa di San Michele in Foro.  It has a very fancy Romanesque facade.

I'm not sure what was going on around here in the past that caused the parish to print a sign in four languages!

It was starting to get dark, and the streets were packed with people.  We decided to return to another pasticceria we had seen earlier, to stack their buccellato up against Taddeucci's.

This one was stickier, with a less assertive crust and a more muted anise bite.  I liked Taddeucci's better - this one was good, but a little ho-hum.

After checking out some menus (and the pitiful state of our wallets after a one-month trip!) the decision was made to return to Florence for dinner at chez Pants.  Most of the menus we saw were pretty sad, to be honest - the same few dishes, over and over.  This is sort of a truism about everywhere with a large tourist presence - restaurants want to draw tourists in with the local dishes, but it makes for a kind of paralyzing sameness everywhere.  I'm sure some of these chefs want to play around with farro soup, which we saw on every single menu, but they may feel like they can't or they may figure why bother, as it's all tourists anyway.

We walked back to the train station to catch a train back to Florence.  Husbear got a picture of the nighttime walls on our way.

I thought Lucca was nice, but it wasn't the amazing place I had been hoping for.  Even in January, the streets were absolutely packed with tourists, and we couldn't figure out why.  I suppose part of the reason is its inclusion in Rick Steves' traveler's bible.  All in all, though, we didn't see anything to make us really want to get back there.  Though biking the walls was a nice diversion.

After arriving at Santa Maria Novella, we said goodbye to Anna and made our way home.  Husbear popped open a jar of pistachio sauce we had bought in Sicily and carried all the way across the South, and threw together a tasty pasta dish with some cooked chickpeas he had around and a farro spaghetti.  (Farro is a pretty common grain around here - it's called spelt in English.  Kind of barley-like.)  Since we had had a big day of exercise, I succeeded in talking him into putting a poached egg on top of the pasta.

A very good pasta dish, though Husbear was disappointed that the pistachios had been cut heavily with almonds and didn't have a strong pistachio flavor.  Whatever, I thought it was delicious.

And the next morning, Husbear decided to toast the rest of our buccellato from Taddeucci and serve it as part of a Waffle House inspired dish - scrambled eggs with cheese (tomino, in this case, a white cheese - that bright yellow is all egg yolk, baby!) and hash browns.  There was a bit of a hash brown malfunction, causing the potatoes to sog up a little.  Frustrated Husbear, happy potato-eating girlie.

Tomorrow, my aunt comes into town with two of her friends - and we're giving them a walking tour of Florence!  I have to go bone up on my history.

girlie

These are the people in my neighborhood (For Margaux)

We have two awesome people coming to visit at the end of the month, and longer ago than I'd like to admit one of them sent me an email with a fairly simple question...

"What are the cool kids wearing right now?"

Now, I could have (and probably should have) just written a list of what I see people wearing out on the streets of Florence, but then I thought - why not a photo essay?  So last weekend we took the camera on an outing to the Piazza del Duomo, where we captured tourists and Italians alike.

Of course, the coolest of the cool kids are looking like this.

But I guess we can't all be me-clones.

The cool little kids, at least on Sundays, seem to often be wearing princess costumes.  Why not?

Then there's the really cool older kids, who are wearing outfits I'd still kill for.

And if you want to be recognizable as American from across a crowded piazza, by all means bring your Uggs, sweatpants, sweatshirts, and Northface fleeces.  We also see a lot of American students out wearing their pajamas.  A lot of older Americans tend towards wearing dress pants with bright white gymshoes - I promise it is possible to find nice walking shoes that aren't manufactured by Nike!

Being in Piazza del Duomo meant that we captured a lot of Asian tourists with our lens.  They were doing some of the strangest things with their purses!

Not only was there the wearing-your-BACKpack-on-your-front look, which I've been known to sport when getting things out of my bag or on really crowded transportation (but never just when going for a stroll), there was also this purse-under-the-coat style. 

To be fair, several of our friends here have been pickpocketed - one Japanese girl in my Italian class even had her wallet taken out of her purse while she was wearing it (it was a bucket-style purse, though, not a zip-top).  Still, though, it seems like there are other safety measures you could take without looking like you have a weird saddlebag.  You know, a small under-arm purse, or carrying your purse in front of you?

Europeans have long been known as being on the forefront of fashion, and it's definitely fun to take a look at some of the crazier styles.  (Margaux, I don't know if these pictures will be helpful or not!)

Before you ask, yes, this is her hair.  And those are not the shoes I'm talking about when I say comfortable stylish shoes do exist.

This one's for Robert, because I know how he likes to pimp things out.  I hope you can see the silver studs on his shirt clearly.  Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of the silver heelplates on his alligator boots.  He was with his wife and young child.  Isn't that the Diddyest coat you've seen in a while?

Unfortunately, the 80s appear to be coming back.  We saw a couple of women with tall, teased bangs actually wearing leather miniskirts.  More common seems to be the pointy ankleboot with leggings or a sweater dress.  I really hate these tights - I think they make her look like she has some sort of skin problem.

Speaking of shoes I can't wrap my head around, check out these muppet numbers!  They swish so satisfyingly when she walks, though.

And then there are the people who really stand out amongst the usually staid and sedate Florentines.  Husbear's getting this outfit for his birthday.

And this poor kid.  I didn't want to break his heart by reminding him that The Crow came out in 1994.  (Though it looks like the kid he's talking to might be this/close to telling him himself.)

Small ceremonial swords are also the hotness.  Jump on this trend before your friends!

One thing that I've noticed here is that the women seem to wear a lot more fur than they do in the States.  Of course, there isn't much call for fur in Texas and South Carolina, where I'd lived for 9 years before moving to Florence, so perhaps my sample is skewed?

I loved this woman's phone cord, though.

More fur for y'all.

All right.  In all seriousness, what seems to be really popular this season are really really long skinny pants, sometimes with ballet flats or high heels and sometimes tucked into boots,

or with gold or silver shiny shoes, whether you're female or male (there's a kind with springs in the back that a lot of people are wearing)

The teenagers are all wearing these skinnyskinny pants really low, too, which makes for a strange silhouette - like their butt is at mid-thigh and they have little stump legs.  Plus, the guys seem to enjoy buckling their teenyskinny pants below their actual ass, which means that we see a fair amount of underwear.

Some people just take the skinnypants thing too far.  We saw several people who had pinned their pants tightly around their ankles.

Here are some pretty typical dudes, just conversatin' on a chilly Sunday afternoon.

Almost as popular as skinnypants are formal shorts, and this time of year they're being worn with cute tights and boots.

I have serious coat and scarf envy here in Florence.  It would be pretty easy to build up a giant scarf collection, too, what with all of the street markets.

Most people here just look so... put together!  At home, I might go out with sweatpants on and my hair looking all stupid, but here it just feels wrong, somehow.  It's that Italian, and especially Florentine, preoccupation - some might say obsession - with the bella figura, cutting a suave figure with your clothing, face, and body.  A Florentine would never dream of going outside, even for a run down to the alimentari at the end of the block, in their pajama pants.  Always look put together, because it makes you more powerful.

Hope that helps...

girlie

Supercup a Firenze

I'm not really a sports fan.  The only time I'll happily go into a sports bar is during the Olympics.  However, the Superbowl is a horse of a different color.  Yes, it's a football game, but it's also become the newest and greatest American holiday.

Here in Florence, with its huge population of American students, you could even feel the Superbowl approaching.  Over the last couple of weeks, people have been standing in front of the Duomo, in Piazza della Repubblica, and over near the Mercato San Lorenzo passing out postcards emblazoned with skimpily-dressed cheerleaders, inviting expats to Superbowl parties taking place at clubs and discos all over town.

We can't watch the Superbowl at our house, lacking satellite TV.  So, we ended up at Finnegan's at 11:15 on Sunday night.  It's an Irish bar run by a Glaswegian, and one of our friends tends bar there.

There is definitely some strangeness to watching the Superbowl here.  One, we were watching on the UK's Sky Sport network... so no commercials!  Two, kickoff was at 12:15 in the morning.  Since bars here can't legally stay open all night long, this meant that Finnegan's actually put down their big metal shutters just after kickoff and posted a list of possible exit times, every half hour.   Three, though just about everyone in the place was American, there were some Italians who wanted to know just what the hell was going on.  One asked me "It's your championship tonight.  The Supercup, yes?"

Four, and perhaps best, is the fact that one of the commentators on Sky Sport was Don Johnson.  You know, because the Superbowl was in Miami and he was on Miami Vice!  Makes perfect sense.

This was the scene a little after kickoff - perhaps between the fifth and the sixth fumbles of the quarter?

Most of the people there were students at one or the other of the nearby universities.  There was a little clot of girls wearing homemade Bears jerseys who got in a bit of a spat with a group of Asians who were rooting for the Colts.  (I heard one of the girls drunkenly telling another kid that Indiana is a stupid state that doesn't even deserve to be a state because it's so stupid.  With an airtight argument like that, the other party unsurprisingly backed down.)

Watching a game with other people who are so invested was a lot of fun.  Each fumble or interception or dropped snap or sack led to yelling and cheers.  We put a couple of euro into a betting pool, but got awful numbers and didn't win.

At around 2:30 or so, some of the kids couldn't stand not being let outside to smoke and just went ahead and lit up inside.  The law here, where it's illegal to smoke in bars and restaurants,  is that the smoker is fined, not the bar.  So, that was fun.

Unbelievably, we waited out the whole game and left the bar a little after 4 AM.  The only other people out on the streets were Americans, including one very drunk kid who stumbled up to us and said "Waitaminnut, waitaminnut.  Colts won, right?"  Husbear asked him if he wanted to put any money on the outcome.

The thing about staying up until almost 5 in the morning on a Sunday is that it throws your schedule off for the whole week.  So, oops.

girlie