Roma, Italia
April 5, 2015 § 2 Comments
Rome was packed—packed full of middle school groups touring the monuments and museums. Luckily, the restaurants weren’t, which made my style of vacationing (which this time involved a multi-layered map, conveniently separable into “gelato” “pizza” “coffee” “restaurant” and so forth) much easier to accomplish than seeing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We ate well, and often. I was a particular fan of eating squares of pizza with just a simple tomato sauce for breakfast—a great savory alternative to breakfast pastries. In fact, while this blog tends to document an unwavering relationship with sugar, I veered pretty strongly towards the savory in Rome.
Some highlights: Pizza with prosciutto di San Daniele, and a bowl of fettucini with the most translucent, buttery and sweet, tomato sauce at Emma Pizzeria, a plate of melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi with strolghino and tomato from Roscioli, the dozens of different kinds of pizza, cut and weighed to order, at Pizzarium, caffe and caffee granita at Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè, gelato at Gelateria del Teatro (around the corner from our apartment) and Fatamorgana, a huge plate of rigatoni at Le Mani in Pasta, at Trapizzino, handheld triangles of pizza bianca stuffed with stewed eggplant and tomatoes, fresh burrata…you get the picture. There were also many plates (only two pictured here) of cacio et pepe, the Roman specialty of pasta with Pecorino Romano and pepper.
Food aside, another great thing about Rome in March was the opportunity to go outside without a winter coat. Oh, the novelty!
This and that, my away message
July 5, 2012 § 1 Comment
I’m in the process of booking a whirl-wind of complicated flight-train combo trips, overnight stops in random hostels, and 12+ hour-long days of travel. As much, my last day in Barcelona is being spent in the hotel lobby, having already walked to a food market this morning (which was, of course, closed), walked to a donut shop (which was, of course, closing in ten minutes, but I just managed to squeeze in), and locked myself out of my hotel room. So while I pull together a real post on Barcelona, I thought I’d leave you with a couple of snippets of travels that have previously gone unmentioned.
After my research in Maroilles went sort of awry, ending in a rather fruitless trip, we switched from the dingy, grimy motel room in the equally gray Maubeuge, to a small agritourisme in the area. While the rooms were huge, including both bath and shower, and refreshingly decorated, the highlight for me was the cute breakfast setup — all white napkins, crusty bread, flakey croissants, and several types of jam, served in little white ceramic pots. The tiny butter-dish even had a top, with equally tiny handle!
Later on, at a more upscale agritourismo outside of Modena, where the pool dropped off into the vineyards and hours could be spent dining on the patio overlooking the hills and valleys of the northern Italian countryside, we enjoyed tortelloni stuffed with spinach and local ricotta, an interesting pasta made with breadcrumbs and drenched with parmesan fondu before being topped with assertive black truffled shavings, stuffed omelettes and eggy, baked flan, and to finish, multiple rifts on vanilla-cream gelato, eaten with spoons of the house basalmico and tiny cups of espresso.
So there you go, some of the more beautiful moments of a trip that has often involved trudging through cow stalls, taking pictures of baby black pigs, and waking up at 6 a.m. in order to observe the entire cheese-making process (and that’s still hours later than the cheesemaker wakes up!). Ciao until next time!
Soufflé Days 