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Franci, you are a great resource to have around! I've never seen one of those pastries, but it looks wonderful. Anything with swiss chard and pecorino would be great. Thanks for offering those recipes! For those read Italian, the Umbria in Boca is an excellent resource. Actually the whole in Boca series is good. Its raining cats and dogs right now...the sky looks like the end of the world is coming. Just in case you wondering....

Wow. Those calzones look incredible. I think the sugar caused the rapid darkening of the crust, but it looks beautiful mrbigjas! Nina, the eggplant also looks marvelous. Kevin, what do you mean about the seeds? What bothers you about them? Usually they pretty flat, inocuous sorts of fellows.

Teaser photo! We went to the market this morning! Remember those empty bowls?? My kitchen usually looks a lot more like this. I'm trying to get the rest of the photos to load....send good vibes.....

Sorry for the slow replies....I'm battling with my computer and more so with our ISP... Rant over. Dinner last night! Some pasta alla chitarra con amatriciana sauce. The chittara is a pasta cutting device commonly used in the Abruzzon region of Italy. Although lately I've seen dried chittara on grocery store shelves. I usually a big batch of it and freeze it, then use when hungry. Someone identified the chittara from the teaser photos...brava/o! This is how it went last night. Put on a big pot of salted water to boil. The saying is that the water should be as salty as the ocean. That's a rough guide....but you get the idea. Chop up some pancetta and an onion and a bit of chili peppers. Sweat in a pan with olive oil, when everyone is soft and relaxed, add your tomatoes. In this case, these were cherry tomatoes that we grew up at the Tower and that I recently canned. May I have a moment of appreciation for peeling all those little suckers?? This is just one jar of them. What a royal pain. Next year they get roasted with their skins on and put in oil. A classic amatriciana will usually use 'passato' or pureed tomatoes. By now, the water should be boiling. Throw in your pasta. This pasta takes about 2-3 minutes to cook, when its about 45 seconds away from being ready, take a ladle full of the pasta water and add it to the tomato sauce pan. Drain the pasta and add the tomato sauce and continue cooking until the pasta is done. There is controversy over this method...ok, we're in Italy, there's always another opinion, Marcella Hazan does not approve. I use this because I feel the pasta absorbs more of the sauce flavor this way. It can be tricky...add too much water and you've got soup or over done spaghetti. All done. Place pasta in the bowl, I added some chopped basil... I know, I know, you should never chop basil, only tear it. Mis dispiace! Our secondi was sauted chicken breast fillets with lemon. This is a basic dish that you will find in any trattoria around here. Simple meat, sauted in olive oil with some lemon, and maybe parsely, maybe not. I like parsley. Drank a little Sicilian wine, and put my feet up after a hard day of blogging. What about desert you are asking?? Well, I think I'm a little defective...I don't really have a sweet tooth and just don't care that much about desert. Heresy, I know!! From an Italian perspective, most meals do not end with a sweet. There might be some fruit or maybe a little digestive wine, but deserts are more for special occasions.

Buongiorno! Grazie mille for all the kind words and support! The kitties are both Abyssinians, Bella is half Somali which is a strain of Aby. Rusty is commonly referred to at "Sexy Beast", he purrs when you call him that. Missy B is having a hard time of it right now, she took a really nasty fall and is still trying to recover. Poor baby. Pan, you're right there is some lovely art in town. I'll try and take a walk this afternoon and take some photos. As far learning Italians goes...what I've learned best is that art of complaining! We 'immerse' ourselves because we have no choice, the radio only speaks Italian, our friends speak Italian! The newspaper writing style just cracks me up, you have to really read carefully, some of the stories are rehashes of things that happened 20 years ago. The weather report column is my favorite, yesterday's headline: "Get yourself ready, the real autumn is arriving". It always ends with a proverb. OK, who wants to translate this: "Faccia dura e faccia tosta, non c'e nessuna che l'acosta". This one is too easy! Most days, there is a little explanation of what the proverb means. Sorghum!! Thanks! One mystery solved.

Shellfishfiend: what a great name!! Drop what ever you are doing and go to Puglia. All your wants, desires and needs will be met. What happens when I cook in NY is that I have a whole lot more ingredients available to me. I don't really change things that much, try to stay local, but I'm not rich enough to shop at the Greenmarket. What the hell is up with that?? I thought the green was for the vegetables, not about the prices!! Ouch! Nakji: I want to go to Hanoi!! Seriously. It's been on my to-go list for awhile. Most Italians do the 'cappucino and cornetto' thing for breakfast. Cornetto is a croissant type pastry. Upshot is everyone is very hungry come lunch time. Around here, farming country and all that, lunch can wind up being the big meal of the day. We change around depending on what's going on, sometimes lunch is big, sometimes dinner. Which speaking of...it's time to go make dinner. ciao!!

Sandy, you asked me a question awhile back...and if you didn't fall asleep during that last post, here's your reply. You asked what type of agriculture goes on around here. With the exception of the poppies, all the photos were taken on bike rides right outside of Montone. The poppy field is a little further down the road, on the way up to the Tower. Oh, and the 2 photos from today we took on the way home from Italian lessons. In May, there is the first harvestable crop:poppies. Poppies!! Cue Wizard of Oz music. Then comes wheat, which gets fully harvested by end July. You want to talk hay fever?? Holy moly!! I sneeze for about a month. But then you go down to the molino (the mill) and the smell is divine. The wheat picture just won't load!! If it loads later, I'll drop it in. At the same time, one of the farmers puts in these wacky onions. Late July, early August is sunflower season. I'm happy to report that the Italian government is no longer subsidizing tobacco, so there were a lot more sunflowers this year, and a much higher water table. Tobacco requires a lot of irrigation. There is still plenty of tobacco around, so smokers, you don't need to panic. Young sunflowers just crack me up, they have goofy smiley faces. I hate it when they mature and hang their heads. This photo is from early August. This is what they looked like today. This is one of the last fields left to be harvested. The farmers leave the flowers until they look like they are burnt to a crisp before harvesting. I don't really understand how there could be something useable in this, but obviously they know what they are doing. Anybody care to enlighten me? And one last photo from today..these 'russet things'. There are a couple of fields of them, anybody know what they could be? They're beautiful, aren't they? They have sort of a narrow corn plant leave, with this russet colored frou-frou frond on top. I don't have any pictures of the corn. It makes me too sad. Its all feed corn. No sweet corn. Looks just like any old corn field. Most grapes have been harvested already. The nut trees are a little late this year, its been off and on unseasonably cold. Figs are done. Boo-hoooo!!

Ciao tutti! Lucy, we'll try and swing by the Abbey tomorrow. As with many things in Italy, you need to keep track of opening and closing times. I think the red wine guy is open in the morning, but white wine is in the afternoon, and no one is open for lunch! We have a little pizza place in town that closes for lunch. You order your pizza before they close for lunch. Catriona: I totally get what you are saying. I went thru a stage where nothing came out in any language. Now the French is melting. Eatling locally. Its not really a choice here. Tomatoes are in season and you have them coming out of your eyeballs, you can them, the season for fresh tomatoes is over. Granted we still get tomatoes coming up from Compania and Sicily, and I'm not that much of a purists that I won't touch them. But I can't go to the orto up at the Tower and pick my fill. Builds desire for next year. Now eating regionally, that's a choice. For example: eating beefsteak in Umbria: it will most likely be simply grilled and served with a wedge of lemon in Toscana: grilled, but with dressed with fresh herbs in olive oil in Puglia: you won't find it, you might, but fish is more prevalent in Emilia-Romagna or Piemonte: they have meat that is more suitable for boiling/braising These aren't iron clad rules, its just a rough comparison. Now cooking in Umbria scared the bejeezus out of me at first. No technique to fall back on, no sauce to cover up a cooking mis-step, just the ingredient, simply presented. There is not much of a garlic presence in Umbria. Many recipes call for you to crack a clove, warm it in the pan with EVOO and then discard the garlic. That's it. (Don't tell anyone...I keep the garlic in...sssh). Same thing with chili peppers, very, very mild heat is marginally tolerated. People here believe that the tongue cannot process more than 3 flavors at a time. Oh, and most Italians get squeemish at the thought of mxing food on a plate. It's an entire country of people that don't like their food to touch. Example: your pasta is eaten and taken away Meat is served on one plate, vegetables on another Bread is eaten between courses to cleanse the palate. On one hand, it seems like overkill. On the other hand, these guys have really sensitive palates. No jaded, overworked palates going on here. They've eaten the same dishes all their lives, they pick up on the subtle variations instantly. I made a giant pot of amatriciana sauce for our festa in August and really worried if I had over spiced it. Reactions ranged from: too spicy, to another woman who bottled some up to take home, and my favorite reaction, one of the townspeople told me I made it as good as his mother. 'Course not everybody's mother can cook....hmmmm.... Meats are cut differently than they are in the States. There is more gristle, bone and fat left on. People are horrified when you cut the fat off...you've cut off the flavor. I'm planning on going to the meat market tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to show you what I mean. Umbrians love their meat; primarily pig and lamb, but there is plenty of beef and everything you could find in a barnyard. The lamb here is fantastic! Hunks of grilled meat, with a piece of lemon, eaten with your fingers, followed by a long session with dental floss is my idea of heaven! Ah. And then there is the Umbrian bread, which shares a common trait with Tuscan bread. Its salt less. It also takes a lot of getting used to. One theory I've heard was that not putting salt in bread was a way at getting back at the Papal state and their salt tax. Then again, I've heard that Umbria was never subject to the salt tax. The salt free theory that makes the most sense is that the plain bread is a neutral foil for all the salty flavors present in the meats. Here's something you can do at home, so you feel more "Umbrian". Make some bruschetta. In Tuscany, bruschetta is usually grilled bread topped with chopped tomatoes. In Umbria, its grilled bread, that then gets rubbed with a raw garlic clove, drizzle of EVOO and a sprinkle of salt. The best garlic bread you will ever eat. Try it. Get back to me. OH! I haven't even touched on pastas or wine. We'll leave for tomorrow, ok? This post is toooo long already!

Ciao! Barbara, I've kind of gotten over the small fridge thing. Not a lot of condiments, or salad dressing, even eggs don't go in the fridge. Boh! What can I say. I don't know about Preggio and a chestnut festa, I'll check around. We have our Festa del Bosco at the end of October and the roast chestnut man sets up his booth right in front of our house. I love, love chestnuts. The first day they smell great...by the third day, my whole house reeks of chestnut smoke and I'm over them for another year. Shaya, my brain is as hard as day old Umbrian bread, its tough to beat another language into my head. I spoke French too, when I got stuck in Italian the word would come in French, now I can't remember my French. Old bread brain, that's me. Lunchtime! It was blustery this morning, but by lunchtime it was clear, so we had lunch on the roof. I know our al fresco lunch days are numbered, so I'm enjoying our time up there as much as possible. Cream of cauliflower soup. There are tons of cauliflowers in the market right now. Rucola and tomato salad. Glass of wine. Works for me. Those are garlic toasted bread crumbs on top of the soup. I wanted a little texture/crunch along with the silky soup. This was a tasty soup and dead simple: chopped carrots, onion, celery sweated in some EVOO, add the chopped cauliflower some salt and some water. Go hang out on eGullet for an hour or so. Come back, puree, add some cream to taste, and serve. We were joined on the roof by our feline friends. Here is the king of his domain: Rusty And the lovely Bella, hanging around on the roof tiles. View from the roof, looking towards the bell tower.

Ciao ragazzi! Yeah, I'm a little distracted, but I want to post an Umbria intro in the next day or two. In the meantime, track down some pancetta, or better yet, guanciale and some sage leaves. Pan fry the guanciale, toss in the sage leaves, give the pan a hit of white vinegar. Stand back! When the hissing and spitting stops, immediately pop the guanciale into your mouth. mmmmmmm..... lick fingers or use some of that salt less Umbrian bread! Message to Andrew: it's cinghiale season. Hire that Elmer Fudd guy and track down some cinghiale. I can see it now on the Pennyslvania forum: guys, where can I buy cinghiale at the Reading Terminal Market?? There is rain in the forecast for Umbria. Rain = porcini!!

Tuesday mornings we have Italian lessons in Citta` di Castello, which is about 10 kilometers from here. There is a nice bar in the Commercial Center where the school is and that is where we like to have our breakfast. Here's part of the selection. We chose this very plain cake that is split and layered with a bit of not-sweet cream. We were running late so we got all 4 cappucinos at one time. The dirty ashtray comes with the table. Italians still like to smoke a lot, what can I say? But the good news is that they can only smoke outside now, not in bars or restaurants.

OK, let me try and catch up on questions. By the way, keep 'em coming. What if I run out of things to say?? My husband would immediately check to see if I had died or been possessed by aliens...! Susan Snowangel: The Italian language is a gorgeous and impenetrable fortress. Everytime you think you have found the key....the locks change. I love learning it, I love trying to speak it but there are times when I get really frustrated! As for Curtis, he is now a senior at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He's a film major, photography minor, talented glass blower and budding chef. Can you tell I'm a proud mama? He got tatooed in Buda pest (But, Mom it was so much cheaper there.) It wasn't until yesterday that I started wondering just why he had chosen to put that on his leg. Just what have I imparted to the fruit of my loins?? Can women have loins? My anchovies were the last of a stash a friend brought from Ligura. The are headless but whole, packed in salt that is sort of blood tinged. Not photogenic, but they were outstanding. Highly recommend the packed in salt variety over the oil packed. Sandy: Yes, I am a card carrying member of Slow Food. No, I'm not a card carrying member of the Communist party. However, during the summer, the Communists throw great parties! Seriously. Music, dancing, porchetta trucks. One town will have a Festa of Unity, the next town has a festa of liberty. We all go...but we never, ever sign anything! Markemorse: Nope, not strozzopretti. That pasta is indeed Umbrian, but I had some dried pasta from a Napoli company. This is my favortie brand of dried pasta. I mixed it with some 'casarecce' pasta just because I needed to finish up some little bits left in each bag. FabulousFoodBabe: I think tomorrow I'll have a visual aid reply to your question about 50 something women in Italy!

Do you know any hunters?? It's venison now, right?

Just to give you an idea about slow loading pics: 7 pictures, pushing 30 minutes and still loading. First, last night's dinner. We tend to eat simply when we are just the two of us; however the good news is that I bought the first artichokes of the season. Or at least the first I've seen. Woo-hoo...let the season begin! Here they are in all of their violet glory. We had artichokes, roasted potatoes and a piece of beefsteak. The beefsteak was covered with coarse pepper, some salt, pan fried in butter and finished with a splash of Scotch. Not Umbrian...but very tasty. There is something about the combination of butter, pepper and Scotch that is just perfect. Sort of a quicky 'au poivre' sauce. Can you see the wine bottle in the background? The one with no label? That is some vino 'sfuso' that we bought in Tuscany a few weeks ago. Vino sfuso is wine that you buy...in bulk. You bring your 5 liter bottle or plastic jug to the vineyard, fill it up and go home and bottle it yourself. Rough price idea: about 1.50 euro a liter. Hopefully tomorrow we will head over to Polidori vineyard which is just outside of Umbertide. They are an organic wine producer, and they make a great red wine. Great in the everyday wine sense of the word. Their white is undrinkable...for that we go to the Abbey. I'm not sure if we'll get there this week, but its a strange place. They have a little office where they keep the big wine conatiners, the kicker is that they only allow one person into the office at a time. Now, security is not really that much of an issue here, so who knows what the one at a time policy is about...! I know I'm behind on questions...next post, ok??

Buongiorno tutti!! First, a morning rant: I have really, really, really, really slow internet, so loading pictures is a bit frustrating, but hang in there, I'll figure out some method. This is the Italian way: first complain, complain, then eventually......you complain a bit more. Complaining is a fine art here, but its not usually taken too seriously. Let me try and catch up with your questions while I'm waiting for some photos to load. Pan: you've been to Umbertide?? I'm having a love affair with Umbertide right now. Its basically a farm town, and I'll do a tour later. But traffic in Hanoi! Bah! We sneeze at traffic in Hanoi. Driving in Umbertide is like riding the gaunlet....medieval size streets, kamikaze old ladies on motorized bicylces (seriously this old lady must by 102 with a blue bike and I swear she aims for you), mammoth 2 story tractors, text messaging ragazzi, those 3 wheel API's, and circle of death roundabouts. Like Hanoi, top speed is around 10-15 MPH because you also must chat with people as you go by. House questions: Yes! That is our house. Ground floor has the entry way and garage. A garage is a very valuable thing in this town, people would kill to have a garage on a driveable street. First floor is the kitchen, see the long window? I'll get somebody to wave to us...either my husband or one of the cats. Second floor has a bedroom, living room, and balcony bedroom. Third floor has 2 bedrooms, 2 small in the hall sort of offices, a kitchen hob (cool feature, show you later) and we have a roof top terazzo. Oh, a drying room/boiler room. There are no 'tumble dryers' in Umbria. I went to buy one and the man said, "Why?" Montone is very tiny and very dense, it s a walled in city. There are 2 driveable streets, but you cannot park or leave a car on the street. Yesterday was 'traffico intenso' on via Garibaldi. I was going out of the street and someone was coming in. It was chaotic I tell you. Language: oy-veh!! I'm running right now because we have Italian lessons twice a week. Swisskaese: this one is for you. You may have my fridge, but do you have a concrete encased oven?? Gelato: I'll try later at the bar. It's almost out of season here. Yes, even the gelato is seasonal.

Before we get to the food part: Pontormo...can we talk Buffy?? I was/am a major Buffy fan. Back to the food: WOW!!! Man, have you guys been cooking up a storm. Beautiful meal Kevin!! That torte looks gorgeous. Was it NYCMike or Mrbigjas: I'm with you on the baked pasta dishes...mmmeh... Olive oil for frying: As an instructor once instructed: olive oil is the closest thing to mother's milk. How could that ever be bad for you?? Foodman: You are amazing!! That timpano is gorgeous!!! Franci: As always your photos and descriptons are inspirational! We just got back from Puglia, with a few nights in Campania. I honestly thought that I had never met a shrimp that I couldn't eat. I did. I actually managed to completely eat my fill of sea food. I did not think it was possible. Has anyone ever been to the town of Avellino? Its near the Puglia border. This is a description of what we had for lunch at a goofey restaurant called "Aqua Pazza". Your right Judy...Aqua Pazza everywhere you look! "Things are getting desperate, its almost 2:00 pm, full into the lunch danger zone, we’ve been turned away from 2 restaurants and others are empty. Finally we stumble on Acqua Pazza which has all the charm of a large Greek diner, leering mermaids on the wall, sea shells around and about, a boat steering wheel (what do you call it???) with a sign in English underneath it "Open 24 hours". No menu, just a quasi friendly, ancient waiter who keeps bringing us plate after plate after plate of the most amazing seafood meal. It has become the standard by which we judge all other meals. Our choices consisted of 'si' meaning bring it on, or 'non'. We never used the 'non' word. Appetizers: Fried dough balls with herbs **Marinated alcii: outstanding, not too acetic, the fish is clean, frim, fresh and tasty Bruschetta con pomodoro Insalata spinaci con fromagio, pancetta (soft, with aceto), outstanding, lick the plate clean Insalata di mare con polpi e gamberetti *Clams, and mussles alive alive o!!!! oh! Con secret sauce. Mabye saffron?? Viscous consistency Miraculous I explain to everyone that I must mop the sauce up, all of the sauce to be able to ascertain the ingredients and recreate the sauce. Pretty much I get away with it. Ravioi stuffed with potato and buffalo mozzarella with fruit di mare, soft, pillowy ravioli ....the stuff dreams are made of Fish Platter: grilled orata, sepia (cut into a charred rib cage, interesting bordering on grotesque), pesca di spada, gambero rosso Dolce: Garden of Eden: Crenshaw melon, strawberries, banana , red currants, nectarine, pears, black and green grapes 3 bottles of Fiano di Avellino….turned out to be my favorite wine discovery of the trip. .....need to go back to Avellino.......

chuga-chuga is not a real word. yet. But everyone who comes to house winds up going to the store to get a chuga-chuga. Spread the word. I have no idea what they are really called. Thanks for all the encouragement. I'm currently battling with the image upload, but I'll be back!

That’s enough background for now! What’s in my fridge??? Just about nothing!! Take a look. Couple bottles of water, one wine bottle, a jar of ricotta forte (!!), Walker’s Jerk sauce that I brought from NY, by far my favorite Jerk seasoning, and some old cheeses. We just came back late last night from a fantastic vacation with my husband’s brother and sister: few days in Rome, then on to Pompei, then a week in Puglia in the Salento area, that’s down at the very tip of the heel. We had a blast! But, I have no food in the house. Poor me. See these bowls?? They are usually full of fruit and vegetables. Depressing sight. I usually get most of my fresh produce at the market in Umbertide on Wednesday mornings. I’ll pick up a few things today at the Coop (its like a Shop Rite, but run by the Communist party…or so I’m told) to hold me over, but we’re all going have to wait until Wes. to really stock up. Back to the fridge, yes, it is a dorm size fridge. Yes, that is tape all over the itty bitty freezer part. The door broke and the only way I can keep the fridge from frosting over is by taping that door shut. I have a secret though, I have another refrigerator in the garage….think of it as long term parking. It’s a full size fridge, and it has a freezer, where I can make….ICE!! Italians, and Europeans in general don’t go in for a lot of ice. My husband likes ice, so last summer we bought a full fridge and for his birthday, I made him lots and lots of ice. Hey! It took days! OK! Sometimes it’s the simple things that we treasure most. Today was breakfast at home. French style café au lait made in the moka, and foamy milk made with the chuga-chuga. This is a simple device: container that holds milk and can be heated, a screen on a stem. Milk heats up, you plunge the screen up and down a few times, voila, no fuss, no muss and you have a great cappuccino. Brilliant! I had some cornflakes and raisins, while thinking wistfully of Pontormo and peaches. Jeff had some biscotti and then we had to run to Perugia to return the rental car. Lunch was a quicky: cherry tomatoes, anchovies, chili peppers, capers, black olives, onion, garlic over some pasta. Green salad, glass of Verdicchio and we are good to go. See you around dinner time, ok?

You say: “Permesso?” I say: “Certo!” In my area, it’s polite to ask if you may enter someone’s house, by asking, “Permesso?” For some reason, it’s a lovely, endearing thing to hear, and even children will ask before entering. I’m inviting you now, to join me in my house in Italy, in the region of Umbria, in the province of Perugia, in the town of Montone, on via Garibaldi. Uhhmmm, it’s a small town (about 800 people, just to give you some perspective on small), you may not find it on a map, but we do have a town website! We live in Montone about six months out of the year, and the rest of the time we spend in New York City and thereabouts. But, this week we are in Umbria. Our neck of the woods is fairly rural, the terrain is steep and hilly. The primary industry is agriculture; right now the feed corn and tobacco are being harvested. Sheep farms are abundant, which means I have access to excellent cheeses. I’m hoping to introduce you to some of the people that produce the food we eat. “Eating local” isn’t a politically correct choice here; it’s just the way it is. Why “Carpe Diem”? Yes, it does say Carpe Diem, tattooed on my son’s leg. About 3 years ago, my husband and I decided to seize the moment. We closed up our business in New York and decided we wanted to spend more time in our house in Italy. We bought the house in 2001 and I’m going to guess you have the same question that everyone else asks us, “How did you find this place?” As a family, we have traveled a lot, and in his junior year in high school, our son Curtis took one of those class trips to Italy. He had been to Italy a few times before this, but this time he came home, and said, “You’ve have got to go to Assisi. I could live there.” It was an unusually passionate response from him, which may have been influenced by the fact that he ate exceptionally good truffles while he was there. By now we knew we wanted a house in Italy, so we schedule an appointment with a realtor and we looked at everything from total ruins to finished villas with grapevines and tractors. The last place we looked at was described as a townhouse in a medieval village. We were goners before we even entered the front port of the town. Why live in the countryside where we don’t speak the language, we don’t know anyone, when we can live in town. Hey, we’ve lived in NYC for 150 years, we are city folk. It was a great move, I cannot begin to tell you how warm, inviting and welcoming the townspeople are, not to mention a tiny bit nutty. I hope you get to know some of my neighbors this week. Last spring, I attended the Ital.cook school in Jesi. It’s run by Slow Food and teaches students about regional Italian cooking. I’m in my early 50’s, and I lived for 10 weeks in a dorm with a bunch of wacky, wonderful ragazzi (young people) and had the time of my life. These days, I write a little, and teach a little and cook a lot of Italian food. My husband is involved in the “Tower Project”: Torre de Moravola. We are helping our friends restore a medieval watchtower that will eventually become a full service rentable villa or small hotel. It is a fantastic place!! We are up to the point we need to do some creative financing to finish the project, but hey, we knew there would be bumps in the road. If all goes well, I’ll be the chef at the tower.

Next million dollar question: do you sleep??? You certainly seem to take on huge tasks and do them very, very well. Brava!! Ok, now for a 25 cent question: what is sriacha? I just saw this on the dinner thread, and now here. That chicken dish looked delicious! Thanks for blogging. Some very interesting stuff going on in your life! Is the island as flat as it appears in the pictures? What happens when it storms? Is flooding an issue? Sorry. I'll stop asking questions. For now.

Dove vai? I'm jealous... ← Be careful with local wild rabbit...something about too many parasites. Try lepre instead. God only knows where you would find lepre in the States. That would be the rabbit with the 'terrible fangs"!! We are going to Rome tomorrow, then on to Pompei, then a week in Puglia (based in Nardo, near Gallipoli). Should be some fun, huh?

Thanks Franci! It was a gorgeous, sunny, almost Sicilian kind of day. Alberts: keep those photos and deserts coming! YUM!!! The pesce de spada is soooo good. Does anyone know, is it politically incorrect to eat Sicilian swordfish? Meaning, is the swordfish population stable and plentiful or over fished.

Wow. Very strange on many levels. 1) If WF is going to make a blanket, disparaging statement, like "not up to our standards", then they must publically publish those standards. 2) Are they kidding? I'd trust an Italian making prosciutto, where it a revered art form, long before I'd trust any industrial US product. And if there is an artiginal US producer, I'd give it a try, but the production would be very limited. The Italians 'invented' prosciutto, they are obssessed with things like air quality, cultivating their own particular "muffa'' or mold. The artisinally raised pigs are slaughtered with the honor that they deserve. 3) Prosciutto di Parma is a DOP product with very strict requirements to retain the DOP designation. The prosciutto can only come from 3 breeds of pig: Large White, Landrace or Duroc, it must weigh at least 150 kilos, and can be slaughtered after it reaches 9 months. (info from the Slow Food guide to Salami). There is no reference to antibiotics given to the animal. Feed would be tightly controlled and would have to come from the area where the pig is raised. 4) After the lobster thing....WF might want to rethink their press relations. There is a large, some would say, Bush type disconnect, with reality going on. I would bet that they simply weren't making enough money on the product to justify carrying it. Its not just the product, but also slicing and education about how to handle the product, that affect bottom line profitability. 5) The Italian producers, after being mortally offended, would laugh themselves silly at the thought of somebody at WF telling them how to produce prosciutto. Disclaimer: I have absolutely no interest in bashing or praising WF. My interest is soley in discovering why a major chain like WF would prohibit the sale of Italian prosciutto.

No, it definitely wasn't too dry. And shredded rabbit added to the sauce was great on bucatini last night. Though after eating it, I don't think I'll cook rabbit again for a while. Rabbit seems to have a superabundance of tiny, sharp bones that wind up everywhere. They're a hassle to deal with, and the flavor isn't so extraordinary that I'm really tempted. Word to that. The most extraordinary thing I had to eat when I was in Venice this spring was a really first-rate fritto misto (golden shrimp, pale calamari) from a take-out place. It was absolutely amazing. And of course Rome has suppli, not to mention filetti di baccala; so I agree that frying is really an Italian thing, or even just a food thing. Still, I won't deny that Neapolitans do it better than just about anyone else. ← Andrew, if you had a lot of broken bones with the bunny, could be the butchering. Its not that hard to do it yourself, just follow the instructions Pontormo gave us upthread. Only the ribs are little bitty bunny bones. If you are braising, then the different cut/cooking time thing is minimized. If you are frying the bunny (and fried bunny is outstanding) you can compensate with the cooking time. I wouldn't bother with brining the bunny either. For me, conigilio is a sort of gamier chicken flavor. I'm sorry you guys are having trouble with it. Could very well be the type of bunny that is available in the US. They are also quite expensive...relative to what I pay here. The one I took apart the other night looked like it had been sleeping with the ducks it had so much fat on it. Another aspect to the popularity of frying in southern Italy could be the shorter cooking time. Its hot in the south, typically fried foods cook quickly and you are done. P.S. I'm a fan of the flour/cornstarch mix as well. edit to add p.p.s. I should be in Compania this weekend!! Yeah! I sincerely doubt I'll have internet connection, but I'll try, I'll try.

I never thaw the ravioli before placing in the boiling water. I've frozen ravioli with all kinds of fillings w/out any problem.