Food before traveling: Nettles

I'm writing this from Philadelphia, where we're temporarily parked before heading up to NY for thanksgiving and the return trip to Florence.  We'll be gone for 10 days all told, so we did a good job cleaning out the fridge of all perishables in the meals preceding our departure.  We were so successful at it, in fact, that there was essentially nothing left to eat for our last day in town.  Which is why I found myself gathering nettles in the hills south of Florence last Tuesday.
Now, I associate nettle greens with spring.  I love spring, but as a season it taunts you -- after being starved of fresh green vegetables whose names don't begin with kale all winter long the world is suddenly full of green growing things, but the green growing things in your garden are probably 10 weeks from being ready to pick.  Where I was growing up fresh new nettles were one of the first green plants that were ready to eat early in the year.  So I was rather surprised to see them poking through the unseasonable snow last fall when we first got to Italy. 

Ragu: the Porcini Strike Back

As I mentioned, we came into a serious wealth of porcinis recently (and a duck).  While the first night of porcini called for a simple saute with pasta, the need to end a large number of mushrooms on a Sunday lead inevitably to ragu.  Now, when we got here, I really didn't get what the big deal about ragu was.  I mean, everyone gets excited about it, smacks their lips with relish, cooks for hours and you get a basic red sauce with some meat in it?  Its like, midwest housewife cooking from the 1950's with better PR.  Which touches on a couple of points:  First, the best cooking for Italians is categorically that which one's grandmother either did or might have done.  The food here?  Good.  Inventive?  Since the war, not so much.  Second point?  I might be dismissing 1950's housewives (or at least Italian grandmothers) a bit to quickly.  (but I don't know, wasn't there, might not visit even if I could).  Turns out that the whole ragu thing -- take good but not super interesting ingredients, cook for a very long time -- actually produces.  Because Lauren has been itching to make chocolate pasta inspired by no recipes) for weeks we had the ragu over chocolate pici.  With a seared duck breast and some sauteed broccoli rabe.

Fall in Florence—Schiacciata con uva

A few weeks ago—right at the start of grape harvest—one of our friends showed up at choir rehearsal with a large basket of grapes from the trellis on her back terrace. They sat patiently in the corner during rehearsal, me eying them from time to time hoping there was a chance we might get to nibble on a few before going home. Naturally when the singing was done and the chairs being put away, a small group gathered around the grapes, and being curious as to why exactly it was they showed up in the first place, I wandered over to inquire as to their purpose. “They’re for making schiacciata con uva,” I’m told. “Ooh!” I say, enthusiastically. I had just been thinking about attempting this grape foccaccia concoction that is a typical and well loved Florentine fall dessert, available only around harvest time because according to the Tuscans it must be made with wine grapes. “Do you want to try making some?” asks one of our friends. “Here, take a bunch home.” Yay! And so I became one of the lucky people sent home with a large bag of freshly picked wine grapes.

Brown, brown is the color of my true love's hair

  And lunch yesterday.  And today.  And dinner tonight.

We were at Mercato San Ambrogio Saturday, getting some food for the first time in a week, with the intention of only picking up a few things so as not to overload the refrigerator before heading back to the states next week.  But we thought we might get some meat and since duck was the same price as chicken got a duck.  Then we were offered a really good price on some porcini's, but only if we would buy a kilo.  Added together with the riccotta al forno Lauren got excited about, apples and a small pile of green and crunchy things the walk home ended up being pretty hard on the arms.  Plus, we had a pile of porcinis which needed to be eaten. 

Fettunta

No, the amazingly green liquid in the water bottle isn't some kind of bad St. Patty's day joke out of season (I realize it comes out a tad brown in the picture, but in real life it looks shockingly neon-green). It is olive oil. New olive oil to be precise. And it turns out the distinction is important. The Italians are very excited about their new olive oil--now that it is olive harvest every weekend there is at least one olive oil festival to be found, possibly paired with chestnuts and vin novello--and if you try some, you'll see why. Newly pressed olive oil of the extra virgin variety is extremely flavorful. In Tuscany, where the oil is known for its spicy, peppery notes, new olive oil has a particularly nice spicy, fresh bite to it.

We have been thinking about olive season the last few weeks and have been hoping to be able to do some olive picking ourselves (so as to paid in freshly pressed olive oil). Unfortunately we haven't had a chance to do any harvest work yet. But, our landlord has (apparently his sister has a small orchard), and last weekend he gave us this water bottle (frizzante, if you're curious) filled with new oil from olives he himself had picked. Perhaps we will still have the opportunity to create some oil of our own, but in the mean time this is amazing stuff!

Now, you may be asking yourself, what does one do with fresh olive oil? Clearly it would be a pity to waste it all on cooking where the heat will take away much of its wonderful fresh goodness. Well, in Tuscany you make what to Americans seems like a rather odd concoction: fettunta. It may seem strange, but honestly it is really very good.