We took a walk one day on an island in our landlocked region

2021-07-302021-07-31 / anthonypaonita / 2 Comments

How did we do this? Easy—there’s a big lake nearby, Lago Trasimeno. Brits sometimes call it Lake Thrasymene or some such, but they shouldn’t. It’s the biggest lake on the Italian peninsula proper, and if you’re a history buff, it’s where Hannibal’s great army fought the Romans. These days it’s somewhat less heroic, and probably more enjoyable. Lots of northern Europeople seem to like it; camping lots are filled with Dutch and German-plated cars. And Jeremy Irons and singer (sorta) Ed Sheeran have homes on or near the lake.

I was getting a little antsy after being in our mountaintop aerie a few days, except to descend to the plains to buy food and wine. We’re trying to continue social distancing as much as we can, avoiding large crowds and big cities. That leaves checking out or revisiting our favorite natural spots on weekdays, and the lake is one of those spots. Sure, there are lake towns that resemble beach resorts. But you can hop on a ferry and visit two of the three islands, Isola Polvese and Isola Maggiore, and hardly see anyone. (You guessed it: There is an Isola Minore.)

For this little trip, we chose Isola Polvese. For one thing, we’ve been there less often. And two, the walk around the perimeter of the island is relatively flat and the weather’s been either steamy like a New York August, or blazingly hot and pitilessly sunny. We looked at the forecast and chose steamy but slightly less hot, and it worked out.

The only problem, if you want to call it that, was the trip there. We wanted to make a mid-morning ferry without getting out too early, so we had to take the fast route, which involves our local highway (fast) and the Perugia ring road (hilly and traffic-clogged). Still, it was nice to be out. I’d dialed the ferry dock area into our navigation system, which was a mistake. I know my way around pretty much, but the nav is good for traffic and construction delays. It wasn’t that morning and seemed to like a ridiculously circuitous route that we ignored while The Voice practically shouted “fate un’inversione a U! (make a U-turn!).

Isola Polvese is uninhabited but has an elegant hotel and what looks to be a nice restaurant. It’s also home to a nature preserve, some ruins, including the shell of a castle fort, and most importantly, an environmental study center. The center gives guided tours on weekends, but we just wanted to have a different—and level—place to walk and picnic. For our elegant picnic, we toted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and water. I can just hear the cries of people saying that’s not Italian! What can I tell you? Lunch was easy to carry—and the jelly was Italian elderberry preserves.

While the bar we stopped in before taking the ferry was observing distancing rules, the ferry completely ignored them. We found ourselves on a boat packed with Slovakian teenage campers. Funny thing is, they were incredibly polite and quiet. As we found our seats, a few boys said “buongiorno,” and they mostly looked around and stared at their phones, as did their companions. Italian kids would’ve been much more boisterous and in constant motion.

*The Spartan Woman and I sporting the latest in monocolor mask fashion.*

It took 10 minutes to reach Polvese. I’d forgotten how beautiful the landscaping is. As you circumnavigate the island, you pass cypresses, fields, fairly dense woods, marsh areas, and a long alley that alternates cypresses and oleander bushes. Unfortunately for oleander almost everywhere around here, a late April frost almost killed them off. Most of us saved them by ruthlessly cutting down almost to the ground, and then the roots took over for new growth.

If you go, check the ferry schedule and the environmental center’s website, if you’re interested in taking a tour.

As for the other visitable island, we’ll probably head there in a few weeks. If we do, I’ll write about it then.

*Sometimes Italy can’t help looking like Italy.*

*Even uninhabited islands need to have a crenelated fortress.*

*I was having a little too much fun with the saturation and vibrance sliders.*

[Updated to fix a factual error. Thanks, reader Vian. ]

How do you live like that?

2021-07-212021-07-21 / anthonypaonita / 1 Comment

We’re hiding out in the dark. It’s a bright sunny hot day out there. Beautiful, in fact. But you know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen.

We get asked a lot by our American friends about, for example, the lack of air conditioning in our mountain retreat here. We love to say that we don’t need it about 99 percent of the time. Yeah, even when the Mediterranean sun is beating pitilessly down on us mortals, when you need sunglasses just to step outside, etc etc. What do we do? We conform to the local custom and hide out. In fact, I just had a wonderful short nap, after which I stared at the one open shutter looking at how the breeze swayed the tree branch. Hey, after years of working in busy newsrooms and tending to computer systems, this is not a bad thing.

*It’s bright and hot out there, so I write in the dark.*

In fact, our friends from across the pond are often amazed at this and the dozens of other small differences between the continents. In the old days those differences might have meant a lower standard of living for Europeans, but these days it’s often the U.S. that feels behind the times.

For us, it’s all about adaptation. We’re lucky in a couple of ways. First, culturally: I grew up in a Sicilian household that just happened to be in New York City. So the language wasn’t hard to pick up; when i was 5 years old my nonno (grandfather) from Palermo lived with us. He and I took walks almost every afternoon. He didn’t speak English and I don’t remember speaking Italian. But we had pretty involved conversations, so maybe I did, or at least understood enough of what he was saying. My first experience here in Italy wasn’t as a tourist; we stayed with family for half the summer. Likewise, The Spartan Woman lived in Perugia while attending the university there.

As for climate, so far we’ve been blessed with only slightly strange weather and nothing like the craziness up in Germany. It’s been hot for the most part, but not too—around 30-31 degrees C, or 86-88 Fahrenheit. We get breezes up here since we’re at the crest of a hill. And our house, like every house around here, is made of stone, thick, meter/yard thick stone, which does a good job of keeping things cool during the summer. All we have to do is close the shutters along the sun’s path, which is why we sit in the dark at lunchtime.

Thinking about this stuff makes me remember last summer, during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. TSW and I (and our trusty dachshund Lola) basically stayed indoors most of the time, except for dog walks. We stayed in the shade too, but that’s because our Staten Island home is on a lushly tree-lined street. It being New York, though, it was humid as well as hot. So we kept the air conditioners running almost all the time, and the television was usually tuned to MSNBC or, for relief, HGTV. We sent out for food and wine, and I took naps out of sheer boredom. Our electric bills were through the roof; luckily we didn’t have huge gasoline bills because 1-we didn’t go anywhere, and if we did 2–we’re bad Americans and have a small European hatchback instead of a monster SUV or pickup like lots of our neighbors.

In fact, I gassed up last week here as we set out for a town in the mountains, Casteluccio di Norcia, and the vast glacial plain around it. One of my cousins from Sicily is driving around Italy on her wedding trip and she and her husband stopped by for a few days. So we were four adults in our Renault Clio, what the industry calls a B-segment hatchback (in U.S. terms, think Ford Fiesta or Honda Fit). Part of the way involved highway driving, but most of the route consisted of one lane in each direction, steep uphills and switchbacks, and lots of gear changing (as well as passing slow trucks, which means revving the small engine to the max). It’s a diesel, the kind of car that will be extinct in Europe in a decade along with all internal combustion engines. We filled up yesterday and for 338 kilometers, we bought about 15 liters, or nearly four gallons of fuel. It works out to about 52 miles per gallon—and that’s pretty normal here. Yet the four of us fit into the car fine and, yes, the a/c was on. I hate wind noise, especially when driving on a highway.

*Meet Clio, who doesn’t drink very much.*

Perversely, Covid-19 has brought some changes that have updated the way people here live. Cash was king not so long ago, and it wasn’t unusual to see someone pay for a load of groceries with a wad of cash. But now, most stores not only accept contactless debit or credit cards, but the same machines mean you can use Apple or Google pay on your phone. I’d guess that it’s more common here than in New York, where local merchants are still amazed when I pull my iPhone out of my pocket to pay.

*We shared “the best beer in the world” at Umami Beer.*

Speaking of Covid-19, WTF? We look at the vaccination maps back in the U.S. with a mixture of wonder and horror. Sure, there are some antivax crazies here, but it’s not a big thing. If there’s any criticism of the vaccination program it’s that it took awhile to gather steam. But now Italians are among the best-vaccinated people in Europe, and probably the world. After a slow start it seems like everyone we know has gotten both jabs, and the tend to be Pfizer. So we were less nervous when we got together with a few local friends here for, um, for burgers and beer. There’s a laid-back place near Assisi called Umami Beer, and it’s one of the favorite places for our friend Letizia Mattiacci, who runs the cooking school La Madonna del Piatto. I don’t feel sheepish at all plugging her and her classes; she’s warm, fluent in English, and her cooking pays homage to Umbria while having a fresher, more veg-friendly take on familiar foods. (By the way, she and her Dutch husband Ruurd also have a B&B there and can put you up between classes.) Umami’s no simple burger joint; owner Roberto sources high-quality ingredients and tracks down great beers from around the globe.

The Delta Covid-19 variant is beginning to be felt here, too, and it’s put a little damper on things. We don’t go out as much, and we’re still supposed to wear masks in indoor public spaces. The government says that it may tighten some rules in a few regions. But following public health rules here seems less fraught and less of a statement. Everyone does it and there’s no stigma or weirdness. If it’s one thing Italians are really good at, it’s self-preservation.

Is this what they mean by fusion cuisine?

2021-07-052021-07-06 / anthonypaonita / Leave a comment

If you wander around food-related sites on the interwebs, you might notice a strange little trend: Italian cooks reacting to the horrors visited on Italian dishes by non-Italian cooks. Some of those non-Italians might even be pretty famous, like the British restaurateur and TV personality Gordon Ramsay. You’ll see the Italians wincing as Ramsay and others put cream in spaghetti carbonara, or cook pasta in jarred tomato sauce. One of my favorites is the couple Harper and Eva (he’s American, she’s Calabrese) who good naturedly explore Whole Foods and Domino’s Pizza. Eva’s reactions alone are worth the time suck.

*Eva does not like Ramsay’s “carbonara.” Not at all.*

Here on our mountaintop getaway, we manage to visit other horrors on the food of this region. You see, there really is no such thing as “Italian food” because the cooking in Italy is so regional. No, hyper-regional, because dishes can change even from town to town. Get a local nonna (grandma) to show you how to cook a local dish and she’ll give explicit directions and mention what is absolutely forbidden: no onion and garlic together in X, put celery in Y and you’ve dishonored all your ancestors, etc.

We’re in Umbria, a small, mostly rural, landlocked region tucked between Lazio (Rome’s region) and Tuscany in Central Italy. For a region with a population just shy of 900,000, it’s sure got a distinctive cuisine. it’s a land of black truffles, legumes, mushrooms, pork products, and grains. Try to picture all that and you realize that mostly of this food is brown or black. A typical snack is chicken or goose liver paté on toast—I was served that along with a drink the other day.

If you’ve grown up with that, it’s fine. Our Perugian “mother,” Giovanna, shunned most vegetables and compensated by having huge bowls of fruit on hand for dessert. (Her idea of health food was to bake eggplant slices with lots of crumbled sausage on top.) But The Spartan Woman and I have Sicilian (100 percent for me; 50 percent for her) and Greek ancestry. Both Sicilian and Greek cuisines are colorful, vegetable-friendly, bright flavored and citrusy, while Umbrian food tends to be heavier, more comfort-food like. Add to the mix the fact that we’re native New Yorkers, and therefore entitled to eat any kind of food we like that exists on the planet, and you’ve got the makings of either interesting contrasts or a disaster. Having relatively good taste, we’ve managed to avoid most disasters.

Oh, and we don’t eat meat, which keeps a big part of the food here off-limits to us. We do eat fish when we feel decadent or lazy Plus us native New Yorkers (sorry copyeds, but I’m using NYC dialect here) grew up eating seafood. A couple of decades ago this would have probably cramped our style big-time, because Umbrians didn’t eat much fish and you could hardly find any in the markets. Lately, though, they’ve embraced seafood and supermarkets have huge fish departments.

*Two years ago, pre-Covid, our town of Valfabbrica got together for a multicourse seafood dinner.*

In good weeks, we’ll get gifts from our neighbors and friends. When Angelo picked us up at Rome’s airport, he gave us a care package, the fixings for a Sicilian blood orange salad, complete with olive oil that his friend produced. And our neighbors at the agriturismo Ca’Mazzetto occasionally show up at the door with freshly made sheep’s milk ricotta.

So what do we cook? Let’s call it Umbria-Sicilian-New York fusion. We pay homage to Umbrian food—I haven’t met a truffle I didn’t like—while at the same time keeping it light and bright with lots of different colored vegetables and spicier/brighter flavors. Luckily, the olive oil here is incredible, green and a little spicy, and enobles simple dishes like borlotti beans stewed with garlic and tomatoes. The markets carry tons of fruits and vegatables, and Italians have embraced healthier food between, you know, a morning Nutella-filled cornetto and an afternoon gelato.At the same time, being Americans generally and New Yorkers in particular, we occasionally crave Asian food. Our area is pretty well served by sushi restaurants and Chinese markets, so it’s not that hard.

But here are some examples of how we feed ourselves and others.