I Pazz' Sono Fuori

Michele: Sabato's friend, co-worker, and my unofficial Neapolitan dialect tutor.

They have saying here, that in the mental hospital, one guy looks to the other, and says "The real crazies are outside", or in Napoletan', "I pazz' sono fuori." I'm starting to think it might be true.

I've been here almost three weeks, and although I haven't done any real work aside from washing dishes occasionally, these three weeks have left me exhausted.

Everyday, Sabato, the man who is hosting me here, picks me up from the hotel, but I have difficulty interpreting Naples time. Sometimes we say 9:30, and he calls me at 10:15, and asks me where I am. One morning, we had set 9 as the start time, and after consecutive mornings of 9 being 9:15, 9:30 being 9:45, he shows up at 8:45, and I feel bad because I have just gotten out of the shower, and he has to wait for me.

Everyday, Sabato shows up in a different car. Sometimes he is driving his own vehicle, a Fiat Multipla that has seen better days. Other days, he is riding shotgun in one of his friend's cars. Once I leave the hotel, I have no idea what will happen. I have learned to make myself ready for anything. I always pack layered clothing and wear comfortable shoes.

Some days are completely calm. We run a few errands and eat lunch with one of the two grandmas that live nearby. I nap on the couch, watch some Italian TV. We run more errands, and his wife comes home from her job as a Chemistry professor and makes dinner. These days are rare.

One day he picks me up with the master pizzaiolo who will teach me to make good pizza. We drive up a windy road to a mountain town called Agerola. Here they make the best Fior di Latte and Provola di Monaco cheeses. We visit a cheesemaker who takes us down to the cellar to see his rare aged cheeses. They all seem to be arguing about something, but that is just how they talk here. We have a coffee and listen to the pizzaiolo's "special CD" on the way back. He turns the volume up when "Forever Young" comes on.

One day we visit Faella, one of the oldest pasta factories in Gragnano. We greet the owner Mario Faella, age 96, dressed in a three-piece suit. He doesn't want Sabato to pay for the two boxes of pasta Sabato is trying to buy. Somehow, Sabato gets them to accept his cash, and we leave. Sabato often doesn't pay for goods and services around here, and when he does, he always pays cash.

Sabato gives me an impromptu lesson on tomato sauce.

Another day, he picks me up and we stop by at the house of one of his artichoke farmers. We see the farmer's wife cleaning some sort of scrawny red carcass over a bucket of water. The daughter has her mom's wide-set eyes and plays listlessly with dusty toys and sticks. The nonna is dressed in black and with her protruding chin and craggy face, looks like she could cast spells on all of us if she wanted two. We pick up two boxes of artichokes and leave.

The same day, we eat lunch at Sabato's mother-in-law, "Nonna Chiara's", house. She has a garden the size of two tennis courts out back, and her son, Giovanni, tends to it on the weekends. She makes hand cut Candelle pasta with tomato sauce from the garden. Then we eat a stewed hen from her chicken pen, salad from the garden, charcoal-roasted artichokes, salame and prosciutto Giovanni makes every year in January, and whole grain, twice cooked bread from her wood oven. Someone murmurs something about dessert, and Nonna Chiara scoots out to the chicken pen for eggs. In twenty minutes she has a warm lemon and raisin cake on the table.

In these three weeks, I've been through extremes of discomfort, isolation, and pure joy. Discomfort from sitting in on family arguments and being force-fed unnatural amounts of food. Isolation from not speaking dialect (I really can't understand them). A moment of pure joy: Sabato and I make my first pizzas together in his wood-fired oven. We take out my first effort, a gorgeous margherita, and he says, "Get your camera. Take a picture. This is your first pizza, and it's beautiful." He slices it in half, and we eat it folded in half "portofoglio" style, like a true Neapolitan. We make a quick toast, drain a small glass of beer, and run back to the oven to make pizzas for the rest of the family.

My first pizza.

It hasn't always been fun. I have to be honest about that. Nineteen days is a long time to have no independence, and to basically follow a person around, waiting for the next thing to happen. There have been times I've wanted this to be over, but every day I understand that it is important that I came. Before I start making pizza's full time, I'll at least know a little bit about the people and the place that invented my favorite food.

Good Thing's I've Eaten: 'Na Bella Tazuella 'E Caffe

The coffee really is better here, always short, intense, and full of robust flavor. Most Neapolitans drink it with sugar and take it down in two or three sips. They always serve a glass of mineral water, which I've been instructed to drink before the coffee, that way the nice flavor of the espresso lingers in the mouth.

To me, the coffee epitomizes the conflicting nature of Naples. Here, life is uncertain, chaotic, and often dirty, but this life is laced with elements of high elegance and beauty. And while the ritual of stopping for a highly-refined, full-flavored espresso ensures a brief window of serenity and perhaps a moment of reflection in a busy day, once that little cup hits its saucer, you suck the coffee down , pay the eighty-cents, and you're right back in the chaos of the streets before the caffeine even registers in your brain.

It sure tastes good, though.

Good Things I've Eaten: Campania Catch Up

I've eaten so many good things here in Campania, I'm having a hard time keeping up. Here's a quick look at some of the highlights:

Lemon Sorbet: Eaten from a street vendor who sets up shop just outside my host family's house. Sweet but not too street, smooth, tangy, perfect.

Whole Grain Pizza "Integrale" : Super rare, traditional recipe for a whole grain pizza. Only a few pizzaiolos still make it. The crust is slightly thicker (about 1.5 CM at the edges), and is crispy on the outside, and soft and moist on the inside. The pizza is baked in deep pans and takes 3-4 minutes in a hot wood burning oven.

The master prepares a "Marinara": tomato, olives, oregano, fresh garlic, and plenty of olive oil.

Biscotti del Pescatore: These “fisherman's biscuits” are day old bread, toasted in the oven, left to dry out, and then brought back to life by dunking in tepid water. After just a few seconds in the water, the bread gets soft enough to eat, but the crust stays crunchy. These are really good dipped in the broth of a soup or the juices that run off cooked, leafy vegetables or a grilled piece of meat.

Mozzarella (Fior di Latte): Warm, Straight from the Hands of the Cheesemaker: In this area they don't make mozzarella, which must come from Buffalo's milk. Here, they make Fior di Latte, the same thing as mozzarella, but from cow's milk. We visited a cheese-maker, and as he was pulling the cheeses into balls, he stopped and gave me a small one to try. Still warm and soft, the cheese set off an explosion of sweet, concentrated milk flavor balanced by a nice saltiness.

Panini with Broccolini and Pancetta: We made bread with leftover pizza dough, sliced the bread while it was still slightly warm, and then packed our panini with hot, sauteed broccolini, and thin slices of raw pancetta. Juicy, salty, slightly spicy, and with a perfect bread-to-filling ratio, this was a very, very good sandwich.

Raw Artichoke Salad: Here in Castellemmare, they grow special variety of violet artichoke that they cover with a terra cotta cap to keep the flowers tender enough to be eaten raw. After removing the outer leaves, one can slice these artichokes thinly, dress them with olive oil, lemon, and salt, and go to town. They have a delicate, nutty flavor, totally different from a cooked artichoke.

Good Things I've Eaten: Pasta all'omerolo

Pasta with tomato sauce ranks up there in a elite class of foods that seem impossible to live without (others on the list include peanut butter and jelly, rice and beans, cheese and bread and all its variations, and a few more) These foods were destined to find each other, and once they did, they were never same.

Here, just outside Naples, I am living in the epicenter of the pasta/tomato collision. “Pasta all'omerolo”, as the dish is called in Neapolitan dialect is a true staple. Almost half of my meals have been pasta with tomato sauce.

Before coming, I can't even fathom how many times I've eaten pasta and tomato sauce. But here, it just tastes better. As I write this, I can hear wind rushing up through the valley that cuts through Gragnano. This wind made it possible to make consistently good dried pasta. A few kilometers to the north, in the valley that stretches toward Mount Vesuvius, they grown San Marzano tomatoes, the best for pasta sauce.

In our last class at UNISG, Corby Kummer, a well-known food writer, told us to avoid at all cost the words “delicious”, “amazing”, and “perfect”. He also informed us that a serious writer only has five exclamation points in his or her lifetime.

Well, this pasta all'umerolo is perfect. The rich, earthy, deep flavor of the tomato sauce marries so well with the chewy, slightly salty, very al dente pasta. Every bite is delicious. The dish is so simple, yet truly amazing. I ate it and thought: "This is what I've been missing my whole life!"

I think I'll be fine living the rest of my life with four exclamation points.

Good Things I've Eaten: Before I Forget

Things can get crazy over here, but always in a good way. I've left Bra after what has been a mild, crisp, and invigorating winter in Piemonte. Now I am in Campania, stationed just outside Naples in the epicenter of mind blowing food. It is going to be really hard to keep up with these Good Things I've Eaten entries. Before it's too late: here's a look back at some of the highlights of the last month or so.

1. Luca's Mom's "Poire Belle Helene"

After a casual weekend lunch, when we were trying to run our food inventory down before leaving, Luca and I looked at each other and kind of new that neither one of us was quite satisfied by the hodge-podge salad, leftover pasta, and nuggets of cured meat and cheese we had eaten. Then Luca goes to the cupboard and pulls out a miracle save on what could have been the only unsatisfactory meal we have eaten in our apartment all year.

He pulls out this stuff:

As the label says, it's called "Poire Belle Helene", and it's a French recipe for a gooey, spreadable jar of goodness made from chocolate and pears. This stuff is seriously good. The chocolate flavor is strong and well balanced by the slightly acidic pears. It has the texture of chocolate heated just enough to melt and pour elegantly out of its vessel. The chunks of pear add a nice crunch, and the stuff isn't too sweet. You can eat it straight out of the jar, with a spoon, which we did. We also spread in on biscotti, bread crusts, and sliced fruit. Then we washed it down with nips of Sicilian passito. Unsatisfying lunch avoided. Thanks Marcella.

2. Churros and Chocolate: Caceres, Spain

I wanted my first experience of Churros and Chocolate to be organic. I didn't want to get duped by a snack-shack with a paper sign taped to its window that slings a low quality, watered-down product to tourists. I wanted the real thing, and I found it when I was least expecting, but when I needed it the most.

After staying out past six in the morning and thereby breaking my late-night, European dance party record, my classmate and I desperately needed something to eat. Thankfully, we passed up a crappy, fast-food sandwich shop, hoping for something better but not sure if we could find it. After some dejected walking and basically giving up, we came upon a greasy, poorly lit shop. The sign said "Churreria". My spirits immediately lifted.

Behind the counter, a woman worked a coffee machine and a man tended to two different sizes of curled, sizzling tubes of dough floating in a cauldron of hot oil. We ordered hot chocolate from the woman and four of each type of churro from the man.

The bigger churros were fluffy, slightly chewy, and had a hint of saltiness. The smaller churros were crunchy on the outside and light and airy on the inside. Both doughs had the same sweetness level of good Brioche, nothing like the sugar-crusted, previously frozen stuff one finds at carnivals and sporting events. These churros had the substance of a real breakfast food and served as a perfect vehicle for soaking up the bitter, dense hot chocolate.

I ate my pile in a blissed-out daze. I had found exactly what I wanted. This was a meal worth staying up for.

3. Breaded and Fried Risotto Ball, Stuffed with a Breaded and Deep Fried Lamb's Testicle*, Beer Battered and Deep Fried

That's right. At our end of the year deep fry party, I took a deep fried testicle, smooshed it inside a deep fried risotto ball, then beer-battered the whole thing and refried it while all the components were still hot. And actually, it came out delicious. Good enough to make again and actually serve to people on purpose, not just the next time I happen to have a deep fried testicle, a deep fried risotto ball, and beer batter sitting on my kitchen table. Some spicy tomato sauce really helped to cut through the richness.

*We're not quite sure if we had purchased lamb's testicles or veal testicles. Either way, breaded and deep fried, they were a hit.

Honorable Mention: Farinheira

On our trip to Portugal, Farinheira, a smoked sausage made of pork fat, wheat flour, and lots of paprika stood out as one of the most unique and delicious ingredients: full of good smoky, porky flavor, balanced by the sweet spiciness of the paprika. The flour gives the sausage a strange but pleasant dryness in the mouth, which makes the product truly unique.

I have to downgrade to honorable mention status, though, because after a morning of serious cured-meat tasting, including lots of Farinheira, I got really sick and was nauseous and crampy the whole next day, which leads me to believe that Portuguese cured meats are a little too rough around the edges and gnarly to truly be considered a "Good Thing I've Eaten".

Good Things I've Eaten: Emilia-Romanga

People tend to regard Emilia-Romanga as the heart of Italian cuisine. It is hard to say if this is true or not, as the regional food of Italy is too varied for any one place to be the "heart" of it all. That said, the food here feels important and essential. The dishes are familiar, but edifying. Nothing needs an explanation, but every plate teaches a lesson. Here are the highlights:

1. Underground Salami

On the first morning of the trip, the bus stops at a flat, muddy, cold-looking farm in the middle of no-where. Middle-aged men huddle around wood fires with big, steel cauldrons. We enter an oversized barn/garage where sliced pork has been sorted in two enormous piles on a table. Red, purple, and brownish organs hang from hooks, slowly dripping blood and other liquids.

This is a sort of Fight Club of cured meats. These guys kill a pig once or twice during the winter, and Angelo, their friend, butchers the animal and makes salami, prosciutto, culatello, and lardo strictly for their own consumption.

While Angelo works on the salami, the other guys take turns stirring the outdoor cauldron, where the make fried pork skins. (Basically frying pork fat in pork fat) They serve us some, and the crumbly, dense, crunchiness is not unlike the insides of a Butterfinger. The taste is of pork, pork fat, and things you might scrape off your oven. A bit too much for me.

The salame and prosciutto, however, are beautiful. Fresh, clean-tasting, not too salty. They serve us everything they make, along with bread and focaccia, and plenty of sparkling wine. Not a bad way to start a study trip (at 10:30 in the morning). After tasting their products, we quickly understand why these men go to such lengths to keep a tradition like this alive.

2. Stuffed Pasta

The tradition of making "pasta sfoglia", or sheets of pasta, and stuffing them with delicious things, runs deep in the region. They used to judge a woman's potential as a wife by how thin she could roll her pasta: the best "sfoglinas" could make pasta so thin you could see the church tower when holding up the stretchy, golden dough to a window.

Clearly, none of these honored techniques have been lost. We ate stuffed pasta in a church basement, at posh two-story restaurants, cozy wine-bars in Parma, and at a funky agriturismo in the country side. Every time, the pasta was amazing: soft, pliable, with a delicate chewiness.

The simple fillings, potato and parmigiano or ricotta and herbs, often made for the tastiest tortelli, crespelle, and tortelloni. They seem to understand that although the filling is important, the homemade, perfectly rendered pasta should shine. And shine it did.

A satisfying, essential food, these perfect pastas also make me cringe with regret for all the doughy, bland, watery ravioli I've eaten back in the states.

3. Parmigiano-Reggiano

I've always had a soft spot for this hard cheese. On the trip, we saw the cows that produce the milk, we saw cheese makers, we visited the consortium, and saw a massive facility where thousands of the cheeses are aged.

We also learned quite a bit about the stuff. See "Parmigiano-Reggiano information" below for the key stats. More importantly, we ate a lot of cheese, both in pure form and incorporated into some great dishes.

My favorite "straight up" PR was a 28-month Red Cow cheese. At this age, the cheese still has a freshness to it, it melts easily in your mouth, and gives up flavors of caramelized fruit, nuts, and toasted brioche. In less technical terms, it creates a flavor explosion/party for your palate.

Surprisingly, a sweet-dessert stands alone as the best dish incorporating PR. At a lunch featuring the cheese in every course, the chef finished the meal with a simple cake made with pears and tons of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Italian desserts are usually weak, but this was fantastic: not too sweet, a little salty, complex, and satisfying like a perfectly balanced, tangy cheesecake. After a three course Parmigiano-Reggiano assault, we would have had seconds of the cake if they brought us more. It was that good.

Our cheese-makers hard at work.

Important Parmigiano Reggiano Information

The name Parmigiano-Reggiano started in the 1930's, when the regions of Parma and Reggia formed a consortium to protect the origin and quality of their cheeses. Before that, "Parmigiano" and "Reggiano" were two almost identical cheeses with different names, and these products fell into the much larger category of "grana" cheese, which is made throughout northern Italy.

The Parmigiano-Reggiano consortium enforces strict quality standards: the cows must be fed without silage (fermented corn feed), and 50% of their feed must be produced by the dairy farmers. They must keep the milk at eighteen celsius (64 farenheit), which means they deliver fresh milk to the cheese-makers twice a day. Once made, the cheese must be aged at least twelve months before it earns its Parmigiano-Reggiano namesake.

The cheese is made with whole milk from the morning mixed with semi-skim milk from the evening milking. Lower in fat than most cheeses, PR is also easy to digest. The aging process does must of the digestion for you, so Parmigiano-Reggiano only takes thirty minutes to digest while fresh cheeses can take up to three hours.

Eat Your Strawberries (and lardo)

This post starts back in sixth grade at Outdoor Ed. Just weeks into the school-year and new to the bigger environment of William H. Crocker middle school, they took us all to small compound called Jone's Gulch in the redwood forests just above Half-Moon Bay.

We went on nature walks, slept on bunk-beds in cabins, spent time alone with trees, writing in our journals, and ate highly questionable cafeteria food. The week amounted to one of the most significant experiences of my life at that point, and I still have vivid memories of the time spent there. Early on, our cabin leader for the week (they hired young, crunchy UC Santa Cruz graduates as camp counselors), told us a parable I will never forget. It goes like this:

A young man is chased by his enemies. He runs until his lungs burn, holding them off until he comes to a cliff and finds himself trapped. He hears the footsteps of these armed, ruthless men approaching and decides to scramble down the cliff instead of surrendering to his hated foes.

He works his way over the edge and begins to lower himself down the cliff, but his footing gives out and he slips. The young man nearly falls to his death but he saves himself by grabbing a protruding root. He holds onto the root and rests against the side of the cliff, breathing heavily and listening to his enemies shuffle about above, looking for the young man.

He knows not if his enemies will find him. He knows not how strong the root is that holds him, and he knows not how long he can cling to the side of this cliff. Then the young man looks to where the root pushes out from the rock of the cliff and he notices a wild strawberry plant has somehow managed to grow out from the same crack. A plump, ruby-red, ripe strawberry hangs from the plant within his reach.

The young man contemplates this strawberry, adjusts his grip on the root, and then uses all his strength to reach out and pluck it. With his enemies above, certain death below, and no sure way of climbing back up, the young man examines the strawberry and then bites all the juicy red flesh off the stem.

This is the juiciest, ripest, most flavorful strawberry the young man has ever tasted. Bright, sweet, tangy, and fragrant, the taste overwhelms him and juice runs down his chin. Nothing has ever tasted so good to him.

Our cabin-leader told us this story, and then throughout the week, whenever we asked her what came next, when lunch would be, or what we do tomorrow, she would just tell us: "Eat your strawberries." She wanted us to live in the moment, let every experience fully soak in, without concern for the immediate future interfering.

Eat your lardo.

The story still has relevance, especially for me and my classmates. With only two more months of class left, we soon have to leave this wonderful little bubble we have around us. Going to school here has suspended the reality of all of our lives, allowing us to learn, taste, and experience without much interference.

But the future is creeping in. Soon, we leave, and reality awaits us all, not-unlike the young man's enemies on the cliff. Most of us are feeling uncertain about what lies ahead.

Yet, we still have two months here! Three more weeks of study-trips! Five more free weekends. Most of us are planning to travel some more after graduating. We have plenty of strawberries before us to enjoy.

Making plans is fine. Looking ahead is great. But right now, we have to eat our strawberries. The future will be there for us when it comes.