Italy or not

In my 3/3/2012 post I mention a possible trip to Italy this year, but, so far, no airline seats are available to use miles. In my 1/7/2012post I wrote that this’ll be the year I make progress getting Half Italian published, or lay all attempts to rest, once and for all. Quitting may be the end result, but the pending piece in France magazine slows that thought down, for now.

Not sure whether a trip to Italy is fitting, or not, in this year of “either/or,” but if seats become available, Naples and Amalfi Coast, here I come. 

-PJ

Coming back

I’m nearly free of what my cousin, Dianne, named the “Monster cold of 2012.” What relief to cough without pain in my ribs!

My uncle, who spent a few days at the hospital in January, has returned to good energy and good spirits. One reason: for the moment, he’s still living with our cousin, Carlin, which means he’s eating well. (Everyone eats well at Carlin’s – she knows the secrets of Italian cooking, and has never fallen out of practice.) And to watch her battle the mole problem in her garden is enough to enliven anyone’s spirits. “Oh, those talpin -- they make me so mad! They make their tunnels everywhere!” (Talpin, pronounced "talpeen," is the word in our Italian dialect for moles.)

There’s talk of a trip to Italy, the Amalfi coast, with my friend and travel companion, the one with whom I’ve taken two trips to France since the beginning of this blog. I’m ready.

- PJ

End of Week, and the Pasta

This week’s pasta will get finished tonight. It heats slowly in the oven. Scents drift down the hall, into my study. I sip a whiskey, and write. Tasty until the end, this sauce is. (Forgot to say I chop the carrots and throw them onto the shredded meat, before I “pour the remainder of the Dutch oven mixture over it all.”)

The scent from my kitchen, combined with the view out my window, of that little area on the hill I call my little Tuscany, connect my memory with a calm day in Montepulciano, Italy, 2007, the day I tasted my first cinghiale ragu. My, my, my, my, my.

Work is a little better, these days.

No responses yet to any of the email queries of 8/15 and 6/12.

Cousins have been supportive. Caller ID, too.

- PJ

This Week's Dinner

During visits to Italy, I’ve enjoyed meat sauces different from those I know in California. Growing up, I often wondered why “meat” sauces I experienced seemed to be mostly tomato sauce. My family packed more meat into theirs than did any restaurant, but tomato sauce still seemed the primary ingredient. Then I visited Italy and discovered wonderful meat ragus with little, if any, tomato sauce, unlike anything I’d ever had. For the record, I’ve traveled from the Swiss border to Rome, but I’ve not yet been south of Rome. I’m told the further south you go, the more tomato-y sauces become.

Yesterday, I made the bolognese sauce I mention in my January 5 post, this time in a Dutch oven, cooked at 225, for twelve hours. I use tri-tip, with a nice layer of fat. I season the meat and then slow cook it with diced tomatoes, chopped red bell pepper, carrots, onion, and a little garlic. The garlic is optional -- I’ve noticed in America a belief that to make any dish “Italian” all you need is garlic, and lots of it. Restaurants often spoil otherwise good dishes with excessive garlic. This is not the case in Italy; in fact, some Italians don’t even use garlic in their meat sauce.

After twelve hours, take out the roast and shred it in a roasting pan large enough to hold all the contents of the Dutch oven, plus cooked pasta. Here’s the Dutch oven mixture, less the roast.

Here's the shredded roast.

I throw some crushed red pepper and herbs de Provence on the meat and then pour the remainder of the Dutch oven mixture over it all. Mix in cooked, drained pasta and let the whole thing sit in the oven for a while on 225, so the pasta and sauce can get to know each other.

This meat sauce is similar in character to Tuscan cinghiale ragu, wild boar sauce, simple and delicious. Here’s the finished product, with shredded smoked fontina, waiting above the plates.

- PJ

Moving violations – American, French, Italian

Friday evening. The 2^nd workweek of January is over; however, I’m not anticipating the worse-to-come period accountants call “year end.” For my area, this lasts from mid January through February, with aftershocks occurring through April. Tax has nothing to do with my job – tax accounting is something else, entirely.

Seated at my computer desk, sipping a whiskey, I look out the window. Early evenings are dark in January, so I can’t see my little Tuscany/Umbria, only lights on the hill. I wonder when I’ll receive my options on what to do with the citation I received for the “California stop” I wrote about in my 1/5 post. I said I haven’t had a moving violation in 11 years, and that’s true, in the United States.

I got a speeding ticket in France, 2008. My traveling companion warned me those electric dot-matrix-type road signs warned that speed limits were being enforced. I scoffed. Later, driving from Brittany to Paris, I saw something in the rearview mirror. “A motorcycle just pulled out from that hedge, and is following us. What do flashing blue lights mean?” I asked.

“Pull over!” my friend urged.

The officer wanted only me out of the car, and spoke only in French, so I said, in English, slowly: “I’m sorry; I don’t speak or understand French. Mais, mon ami – oui.” I pointed to the car. The officer okayed my friend to approach. Since we were not French citizens we had to pay on the spot. Knowing the Euro was at least 1.40 to the US dollar I attempted humor, pulling out American cash. He apparently understood, and with a wry chuckle, said something that sounded like, “No thanks, I know how much those are worth these days!” Later, we were told the 90 Euros we paid, for the speed I was driving, was quite reasonable. I’m thankful for that -- another friend told me he got a ticket in Mexico around the same time and the officer told him he too must pay on the spot. “How much is it?” he asked. A pause, then, “How much do you have?” the officer asked back. Yikes.

A year before my French speeding ticket I received another ticket, this one in Perugia, Italy, but I never learned what it was I did. I was notified in the mail that our car rental agency made an additional charge, several months later, to provide the Italian police with information on who’d rented the car. Attached was a notice from the police, with the words non pagare; don’t pay. All I understood was that on a certain date, at a certain time, our rented car did [something] when it was clearly marked not to. I couldn’t find the verb for what I did in my dictionary, so to this day it remains a mystery. I do remember we found parking reasonably easy in one lot, when all the others were full.

Nothing in the mail yet on my “California stop.” And I’m still at 4/8.

- PJ