A Year in the World (23 page)

I know
you love artichokes. Wait till you try them here. Freshness makes a difference, as does knowing when to pick. They grow mainly around Bari and Brindisi and beautifully on Sardinia. Artichoke’s first cousin, cardoon, is a native, probably from Sicily. We plant these at Bramasole and struggle in the kitchen to release them from their stringy exterior. Poached in broth then treated to a few dabs of béchamel and
parmigiano
, they’re not just artichoke’s poor relation. Possibly the Arabs or North Africans evolved these thistles into their present states. Southern farmers drive trucks up to our markets in Tuscany with bundles of cardoons and five or six varieties of artichoke, still attached to the stalk. We are lucky enough to buy sackfuls of those prized, small purple-tinged ones. Ed makes a tomato sauce, adding garlic and onions, then stirs in a couple of dozen of these well-trimmed, barely steamed little princes—such a simple process, such a taste.
Carciofi fritti
, fried artichokes, taste better than French fries. A sprinking of coarse salt renders them addictive. I like to fry them in sunflower oil. Often a trattoria will have them, even if the menu does not say so. Ask!

In Puglia, cooks like layers. In high-sided pie plates, called
tielle
, they stack seafood, potatoes, and vegetables, or they use rice, leading some to connect the
tiella
with paella. In method, it’s a kind of lasagna without the pasta. One fabulous recipe I found in Nancy Harmon Jenkins’s
Flavors of Puglia
is Artichoke Parmesan. Sliced hearts of artichoke are dipped in a batter and fried in olive oil. You then layer the crisp slices with mozzarella and a little
parmigiano.
Fresh tomato sauce is spooned sparingly over the top; then the dish runs into the oven for half an hour.

The fact and fate of the South remains the sea. There are so many tiny places on the water where the fish is delicately fried—
fritto di pesce
—and the ambiance is enlivened by musicians who stroll in and out. At the Trattoria Dora in Naples, I ate a mound of
cicale
, plump crustaceans that resemble their namesake, cicadas. One of the waitresses burst out singing as she served the next table. The restaurant fell silent, and she held forth for fifteen minutes, then scooped up the pasta plates and swept, like the diva she is, into the kitchen while we applauded. Dining in the South goes like that. Fun. You must eat at Dora. Be sure to make a reservation.

At the crowded pizza places, you sit at a table with other people and try to absorb the noise level. Pizza, which was “bread with a relish” in Roman times, is now so simple—I saw most Neapolitans ordering the basic Margherita over and over. The quality of the mozzarella, made from the milk of water buffalo—imported into Italy from India for some reason around
A.D.
600—makes all the difference. They would croak to see how we pile twelve ingredients on pizza in America. Other than mozzarella, the main cheese of the South is pecorino, sheep’s milk cheese.
Pecorino fresco
is new and soft;
semistagionato
, somewhat aged, hardens and sharpens in taste; and
stagionata
, aged, is harder even than Parmesan. The
canestrati
, artisan pecorini, bear the mark of the basket (
canestro
) where they were formed. At home in Tuscany the cheeses often are coated with ashes or wrapped in oil-soaked grape or hazelnut leaves. Old baskets for forming ricotta are collectibles, long since replaced by plastic. Pecorino marries well to figs, to sliced pears and apples, and also to dense quince paste. The sacred spring rite requires you to eat pecorino with new fava beans. If you don’t like this combination, don’t tell anyone. Try also the adorable bulbous
scamorza
from the Abruzzi. This yellow cow’s milk cheese is usually roasted in the fireplace—just like marshmallows on a stick—and eaten with bread. The hardened outside gets toasty and the interior turns creamy. We met this on a mountain road in early June. Ten minutes earlier we’d been enjoying the red swaths of poppies across the meadows; then a freakish storm sent flying slush at the windshield. We couldn’t see the edge of the road. We pulled over at a trattoria where people were gathered around a bonfire feasting on great hunks of rough bread with melted
scamorza
.

Bread—oh, so good. In Pompeii on the day of the eruption, a bakery had turned out eighty-one round loaves of bread made from wheat and barley flours. There are so many touching details at Pompeii. It’s almost as though someone from that era lays a hand on your shoulder when you learn that the loaves were gashed in eight sections so that they could be broken apart easily.

Bread in Naples is cakier than the rough Tuscan bread we’re used to. They usually use semolina flour in the South, giving the bread a golden tint and a more briochelike consistency. In English, this is durum wheat flour. I know you don’t like the unsalted Tuscan bread, so you’ll be happy here. Before the oceans became polluted, bakers often used seawater in making bread. I guess you’d gag if someone did that now. When we’re driving, we start out the day at the best
forno
and buy a loaf to take in the car, along with whatever else looks good. I like the ring-shaped, small, herb-scented twists of bread with coarse salt called
taralli
. They’re the Pugliese equivalent to pretzels. If they’re not fresh, they can crack a tooth. The famous big old
pugliese
loaves are simply the bread of Puglia. They can weigh twenty pounds in some areas. Naturally, as with all bread, you can buy a quarter of a loaf or a half. And buy it, of course, every morning.

A day proceeds like this.

Breakfast: always pastry.
Sfogliatella
, a fan-shaped flaky pastry stuffed with some delectable creamy ricotta filling, with a cappuccino, fuels you for endless sightseeing days. Pastries in Tuscany tend toward dryness. I always know when I’m truly acclimated there because the pastries start to taste good to me. Then I come South and taste heavenly
cannoli
, that impossibly divine combination of tastes and textures—fried tubular pastry filled with sugared ricotta delicately scented with orange flower water. Often their ends are dipped in chopped nuts. Oh, Lord. I’m not a fool for desserts, but thank you for allowing me back into the pastry shops twice a day. Pastry in Sicily is an art form. I saw a whole Noah’s ark made from marzipan.

Lunch: pasta, fish. Maybe I am given to excesses. In Sardinia every day I ate lobster for lunch—then sometimes for dinner. All over that area you meet various types of lobster that don’t even look kin to the Maine lobster. Waverley Root says that in Sardinia they eat like Stone Age men. Staring into the eyes of one of these lobsters, you have to agree. It doesn’t look like something you’d put in your mouth. Once you do, you want to weep! So tender and sweet. Besides all the get-up-and-plow pastas of the South, one I took to immediately in Sardinia was new to me: fregola. It looks like breadcrumbs, slightly colored by saffron, and is served with salty ricotta. One difference from the usual pastas is that it’s cooked in stock. The whiff of lost Araby comes from the saffron and from the mysterious town of Alghero itself, where we stayed in a former villa, turned small hotel, with two friends. We wandered the medinalike streets for a few days, hardly getting in the car at all, pointing to brightly colored tiled cupolas, stopping for strawberry gelato, drinking in the warm May air. Isn’t the experience of food too intricately woven into your surroundings for you to know exactly what a taste is? The clear waters, with the sun spangling the floor of the sea, the young man bicycling with his baby on his shoulders, the slow slosh of the tide, the smell of fish scales, salt, iodine, and roses, the sun cutting down a narrow street—all these mix with the memory of the taste of lobster, the taste of a crisp cucumber salad, the taste of an icy amber beer. Maybe that’s why when we go home and try a recipe, following all the instructions, it never quite tastes the same as we remembered it from the high terrace over the sea when the water was striated from lavender to gray and a little piece of music hit you right in the breastbone. The food seemed, then, so alive, so perfect and clean there, when the waiter lifted out the whole spine of the fish in one swift movement.

Dinner: a mussel soup with
crostini
, rounds of bread soaked in the broth. Next, a hare with pappardelle, rabbit with fennel, something hearty, or a simple grilled fish. They know to leave a fish alone. Elaborate preparations mask the elemental taste. No nut crusts, no breading, no thick sauces. Just a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkling of parsley and mint. Sardines are loved all over the Mediterranean. Quickly grilled or dipped in vinegar and fried—they convey the essence of the sea.

To extend a summer night down south, end your dinner with a tiny glass of strega, which translates as “witch” but seems instead closer to the angels with its airy floral perfume, or a bracing limoncello, the very tart breath of the citrus groves. By the way, limoncello is very easy to make at home. In a cool place, you steep peels from eight organic lemons in a covered quart of ninety percent proof alcohol for four days, shaking it now and then. On the fifth day, prepare a syrup of fourteen ounces of sugar and a quart of bottled still water. Don’t let it boil, just simmer five minutes or so. Strain the lemon mixture and mix it into the syrup. Throw away the peels. Pour into bottles, and cork.

A friend uses the same method to make a laurel elixir, which he serves icy cold. I’ve had
basilicocello
, too. Even in Tuscany we seek out Moscato Passito di Pantelleria, the dessert wine from the windy Italian island of Pantelleria, way down close to Tunisia. Will you go there? I haven’t been but would love to. The wine is lush and smooth and fragrant. You almost want it for a body spray. Stromboli, too, I’ve missed, maybe because of that dreary movie with Ingrid Bergman.

The southerners are fond of their
amari
, like all Italians. These bitters aid digestion. I don’t feel the need for such an aid and don’t respond to their cough-syrupy flavors. The South’s walnut liqueur makes my tongue raspy, and I fear it will cause my brain to curdle. Ed, however, likes them all, even the artichoke-flavored one, but especially Averna, made from thirty-something herbs. Maybe you and Ed have shared a few late-night nips of this.

The wonder of Italy—it’s hard to find a bad meal. Hard also to have a bad time.
Buon viaggio, amico mio
.

Con affetto
,
Francesca

Dear Steven, soon to be Stefano,

Continuing my long love letter to food. I wanted to give you a brief intro to the wine of the South. We’re now in Gaeta, another coastal town, with an immense
passeggiata
on Sunday night. Here the bay at dusk looks like lapis lazuli. Everyone strolls. A fabulous tower, made out of stones from all eras, looks just randomly stuck together so that you see traces of Arabs, Greeks, Romans, and latter-day Italians. I wonder how many gelatos I’ve had in the past three days.

You heard that the South is the “new Tuscany” for wine. That’s right. Growers are changing from mass producers of indifferent-to-good everyday wine to more specialized and careful vintages. It’s time. The even climate of much of the South, the sun-facing slopes of mineral-rich rocky terrain, and a new awareness—all conspire to change the philosophy of wine making.

Finding good wine is easy. This afternoon before we left Sperlonga, we went into the wine store, and the owner helped us select a half dozen of the area’s best bottles to pack into our trunk. The surprise is the price. These wines are still affordable.

We reach constantly to the backseat of our book-mobile car for the yearly edition of the
Gambero Rosso
wine guide. Wines from every region are ranked, with
tre bicchieri
, three glasses, as the optimal wine. Even a one-glass rating is good; only select wines get in. Aside from all the sophisticated ranking, however, in many restaurants they’re pouring Uncle’s special up to the brim of the glass. Everyone makes wine, or has a cousin who does. Uncle might make the most delicious wine in town.

Within the South, I’d say Sicily is
the
hot spot for wine—especially reds. As the Tuscan and northern Italian wines soar toward the prices of California wines, suddenly the hearty wines of the South look more appealing. Just when I thought I had a handle on the types of grapes in Tuscany, I find that in the South it’s all different. Puglia’s primary grape variety is the
negroamaro
, meaning “black bitter.”
Primitivo
grows all around. The American version of that is zinfandel. Grenache, so appreciated by the French, is known as
cannonau
in Sardinia.
Zibibbo
(what a fine name for a cat) grapes are muscat, good for wine and also luscious to eat. The list goes on. Perhaps the most characteristic Sicilian grape is the native
nero d’avola
. We can see how history is always at work in this area. The name of the prized red
aglianico
probably derives from Italian for “Hellenic.”

As you drive around the island, order these when they appear on the wine list: Donnafugata—recognize the name from
The Leopard
?—whites and red, also the range of Planeta wines. Even their least expensive ones are good. We drink several Planeta wines in Tuscany. Feudo Principi di Butera makes a big cabernet. Ed is partial to Abbazia Santa Anastasia Litra and Morgante Don Antonio. Cantina Sociale di Trapani also brings out a cabernet you’ll enjoy.

But you will make your own discoveries. Just buy the wine guide, and tear out pages for the areas where you travel. If they’re out of the wine you ask for, whip out the page and ask for something just as good. I stress again, though, your waiter Massimo’s daddy may be an unknown master winemaker. Even if the local wine is rough and ready, you get a taste of the soil and sun of a particular farm. Some names to memorize for the rest of the South: Paternostra, for their
aglianico
wines from Basilicata; Agricola Eubea and Cantina Fiforma Fondiaria di Venosa, also Basilicata producers. Two from Lecce: Cantele Amativo and Agricole Vallone Graticciaia. That’s a start.