Yesterday was a new Italian national holiday--the celebration of 150 years of the Republic of Italy. I understand that it is a national holiday for one year only, but everyone still had the day off work. I love Italia!!! So, we had a special pranzo.
It was my first day here and I woke at 10:30, as Michele and Antonia were already preparing for the festa. We set the table with a green tablecloth and ate fresh, wild green asparagus; and had white dishes and napkins and ate white lardo, bread, cheese, and pasta; and ate red sugo on the pasta, salami, carne, and drank red wine. Green, white, and red--the colors of the Italian flag!
Antonia had dough rising for the bread. She cut off a little piece to make a few crostini with rosemary and olive oil to eat with the lardo, and baked the rest. Like schiacciata, but pronounced different in the dialect. Michele was preparing the sugo--a light tomato sauce with a little browned meat. The pasta is always lightly, but throughly coated, but not swimming in red sauce as we tend to do in the US. Michele had picked some beautiful, petite asperagus on his morning walk, and we ate some raw--earthy and grassy.
As always, lunch was served in courses. Antipasti: two types of salami--one from Antoinia's trip to the Dolomites, and one from Damiano's father, and a thin slice of lardo on a crostini. Lardo pig fat preserved in herbes and has a smoky flavor. It melts in your mouth like butter. Maybe it's an aquired taste, but I took to it the first time I tried it with no problem at all...
The primo was that delicious sugo and short, fat ziti pasta (don't know the name).
The secondo was thin slices of beef, a bit of flour, then sauted with olive oil, whole garlic cloves, and brushed with fresh rosemary, then a little milk added to make a sauce. Then Antonia put small slices of hard cheese from the Dolomites in a small frying pan, and heated them up and served them hot. Crusty and squeaky like cheese curds!
Bread on the table.
Vino rosso.
For dessert, the best torta yet... Antonia calls it a crostata, and it has her homemade orange marmalade that is "to die for," no kidding!
Caffe.
A taste of a grappa-like liquor that Michele brought back from Peru. A taste of grappa.
If this sounds like a lot of food, just imagine each course as being small, managable, and civilized. Which it is.
Buon appetito!
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| Damiano and Marta |
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| Antonia and Michele |
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| Michele, Antonia, Damiano, Marta, and Corrado |
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| Antonia with the bread already baked, and rolling out dough for crostini |
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| Michele slicing the salami and the lardo |
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| Damiano with his new Arizona Diamondbacks cap! |
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| Antonia's schiacciata |
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| Crostata with marmalade |
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| Lardo and salami |
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| Wild asparagus, carne, and lardo |
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| Lardo and salami |
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