Jaffe

Italy in August - Part 4: The Food

A trip to Italy always involves food. On this trip I had the chance to have some of my favorites, try some new dishes, and even have a new version of an old favorite.

Pasta e fagioli
The first time I had this was at Vicolo della Neve last Christmas. It made my list of favorites then, and is still near the top of the list. Vicolo della Neve was closed the first time we tried to go on this trip, but fortunately they were open again before we left so we could get our fix.



I tried two other things during dinner at Vicolo della Neve. The first was polpette, which are meatballs, and the other was ciambotta, which is a mixed vegetable stew. It's impossible to capture just how delicious each of these were. Clearly there were more things in the polpette than just meat, and more ingredients in the ciambotta than just vegetables. I have no idea what the other ingredients were, but if I grew up with these I would have been a much bigger fan of meatballs and vegetable stew!

Panzerotti
Serena's mother made these during the Christmas holiday last year. This was also on my list of favorites then (as 'calzoni'), and is worth another mention now. Apparently these are popular in South Jersey, although I suspect they wouldn't even come close to the ones Serena's mother makes. We had them one evening for dinner on the patio overlooking Salerno and the Mediterranean Sea. Bellissimo.


Panzerotti

Arrosticini
We had this traditionally Abruzzese dish at the dinner the night before Catia and Assagid's wedding. The dinner was at Catia's parents' house, and they made the arrosticini by hand. As far as I could tell, this was just grilled pieces of sheep on a skewer - no seasoning, no sauces. The simplicity, and the fact that the meat is extremely flavorful, is what makes this work. All you need is some bread and red wine, and you're all set. Buon appetito!

Home-made pizza
Growing up in the US, we made pizza from scratch a few times (when I say 'we', I of course mean my parents). I remember my mother (or was it my father?) rolling the dough out onto a circular metal pizza pan with a Tupperware cup, spreading the tomato sauce, covering it with mozzarella, and putting it into the oven. We didn't have pizza often, but when we did it was a real treat.

When I heard that Serena's brother Antonio would be making pizza, I had a feeling he would do things a little differently. For one thing, Serena's family has a coal/wood-burning oven outside that looks like the kind you see in a real pizzeria. Also, I've heard the water in Naples is supposed to make the pizza taste better.





The result was impressive - fresh, light, delicious pizza. It was a team effort (as far as I could tell... I was too busy eating them as they came out of the oven), and Antonio, Silvana, and Serena made several pizzas with different toppings. Serena's father told me that the 'house speciality' is topped with tomato, mozzarella, and arugula.


House speciality

Next time we'll have to make one 'Chicago style'!

Labels: food, Italy, summer, travel, vacation

posted by Aron @ 11:44 AM