Olive update

Distant field planted,
closer field about to be planted

Thursday was the first cloudy day in quite a while and threatened rain in the afternoon. We knew that the planting of olive trees was going ahead full speed and we wanted to take a look how things were proceeding before everything turned to mud; a day of rain was predicted for Friday.

We drove south without Dominique who was back in Montepulciano getting ready for a business trip unrelated to his olives. (We imagine that he was thinking about his olive trees while he was packing up.) 

After a little searching we found the narrow dirt road that led off the highway to the Santolivo orchard and marked the location in our GPS so we could find the spot again.

A pile of olive trees to be
planted on a terrace

A lot of progress has been made. The distant field has been planted. Closer fields have the plants nearly laid out for planting. The closest fields still have the little olive trees in piles waiting to distributed and planted.

After the trees have been planted grasses will be planted as a ground cover and to encourage the insects that protect the olive trees and olives from insect pests. In three or four years there will be a harvest from these new plants.

Time to pack up. We'll return to Florence Saturday morning and fly to Washington DC early Monday morning. We're reluctant to leave and looking forward to seeing friends and family at home. Hmmmm, that pretty conflicted, isn't it?

Dominique's olive trees, bistecca at Acquachetta, a note on Monticchiello

Last Saturday, as we were moving into the Montepulciano apartment, we were invited to go on an agricultural field trip. The Al Poggiolo apartments had been handed down to Elena and Margherita from their mother. Dominique is Elena’s husband. Two years ago Dominique was negotiating the purchase of the property south of Montepulciano, two adjoining former farms. The farm houses had already been sold without the land and Dominique was seeking to take possession of both now-houseless properties. He was successful. He immediately began to clear away underbrush and later that year harvested olives from the olive trees on the farmland to make olive oil.

Last year he found success selling his olive oil in Paris where, evidently, they have a taste for the fruitier, richer olive oil from Tuscany; French olive oil, in contrast, is quite light. He is also selling his olive oil to a Tuscan restaurant in Hokkaido, Japan. (It must be one of the few Tuscan restaurants there!) This year Dominique is looking to produce more high quality oil in the future with the planting of 600 new olive trees. 

Walking across the north side
of the property

This is an interesting change in Dominique’s life. He is a mostly-retired-but-not-quite-retired communications executive who has gardened for relaxation. The dabbling has been expanded into a business called Santolivo! (The website is currently in French and Italian. Click on the links anyway; you’ll enjoy what you see.)

Monday morning we drove south from Montepulciano through the town of Chianciano. Along with us were two other Al Poggiolo guests, a couple who have a dairy farm in northern France. Dominique promised that the tour of his olive orchard would be in two languages. He was good to his word, flipping back and forth between French and English.

Ancient terraces that had been
overgrown

The property is on north and south sides of a large hill. We parked on the north side and had a lovely view of the town of Chianciano across the valley. As we walked across this largely dormant side of the property, Dominique explained that the north side was too cold and too windy for olives. Animal feed crops had been planted on the north side.

We walked along a dirt road and approached the top of the hill. Dominique had discovered terraces, centuries old, that had become overgrown. He cleared the north-facing terraces but had no plans to grow olives there.

Soil prepared for new olive trees

We crossed over the crest of the hill and saw olive trees in all directions. We also saw newly turned earth and three workers setting up bamboo poles to steady the small olive trees that would be planted in the next days. The small, 4 foot tall trees would also have to be protected against deer, a problem in this area for people who plant olive trees.

There are many kinds of
olive trees

Olive trees prefer dry, sandy soils and the conditions on the south side of the hill were ideal for the olive trees that were long established and for the 600 new trees that are to be planted. Dominique took us around the existing olive trees, explaining that there are many varieties of the olive trees in Italy. Spain has 15 different kinds of olive trees, Greece a similar number, Italy has 350 different kinds of olive tree. He showed some of the varieties including some very, very old olive trees that are still productive.

Setting up support poles

Dominique explained that the harvest takes place in late October, after the olives have turned from green to brown or red, depending on the variety, but before the olives drop of their own accord from the tree. Nets are spread under each tree and a tool with flexible teeth “combs” through the branches to pluck the olives off the tree and onto the nets below. The olives are taken the same day to the frantoio, the olive oil mill, for crushing and the olive oil is held in stainless steel tanks at a constant temperature topped with pure nitrogen so the oil will  store without degrading.

Many of the poles are set

Workers have to be summoned at short notice for this sprint from olives on the trees, to olives in the nets, to olives at the mill, and finally olive oil in the tanks. The harvested olives are never stored overnight; they are milled into oil the same day. 

Dominique says that he pays the workers ... in olive oil.

Explaining the plan for the
new olive trees

Dominique is working with agronomists at the University of Pisa to devise natural methods for controlling the olive fly, the pest that preys on the olives themselves. They are also experimenting with new methods for trimming the trees in the spring. Most Italians trim olive trees extensively and columns of smoke rising from burning piles of olive tree trimmings are an typical sight in the Tuscan countryside in the spring. Dominique and the agronomists at Pisa believe that the common practice of trimming is excessive and decreases output of fruit and, eventually, oil. Dominique’s trees look less aggressively trimmed.

Young olive trees have
 shot up form the decaying
 but still vital trunk.

This pathway was overgrown with
brush. It had been used to cart
away  the harvested olives.
It may be used for
 that purpose again.

Bistecca at Acquachetta

After an interesting morning tramping around the countryside, we returned to Montepulciano for lunch. We had been looking forward to a visit to a small local restaurant called Acquachetta. This restaurant is known for its specialty, chianina beef. The animals are raised in the Val di Chiana which is just north of Montepulciano and the meat that they produce is tender and delicious. Acquachetta is a narrow space and the kitchen is at the end and raised. The star attraction of the restaurant sits under a spotlight on a butcher’s block in full view of the diners. 

We enjoyed our steak or, as Tuscans refer to it, our bistecca.


For a better description of the same restaurant and the same experience, see this link.

This morning (Wednesday) was cool and clear, very clear. We drove around Montepulciano on our way to take pictures in the countryside north of the town. As we drove around Montepulciano, a pickup truck passed in the other direction with a load of young olive trees. Even though the truck drove by us quickly, the driver looked familiar. He was smiling as he drove south toward Chianciano.




We posted earlier about the Battle of Monticchiello and the barely averted elimination of the town's population in April 1944. We were in Monticchiello again today (Please feel free to guess why we were there again.) and we met two people, a shop owner and his 88 year old father who was one of the people lined up at the city wall by the Germans in 1944.


Dominique mentioned that there are towns in the Apennines north of Florence which are empty today because of whole-town executions carried out by the Germans in World War II. The people of Monticchiello escaped a real danger and it was not a scene from a war movie.

Montepulciano, La Porta, Per Non Dimenticare

We are thinking of sister Patricia today.

Pici al ragu

On Saturday we packed up our lives at the Nonna Rana Country House near Cannara in Umbria, filled our rented car for the second time, and drove to Tuscany and the hill town of Montepulciano. The trip was about 60 miles and took about an hour and a half. Our apartment was being prepared for us so we stopped for lunch near Montepulciano at a country inn called Osteria di Nottola, named after the area of the same name near Montepulciano. 

We were looking forward to a special pasta that is found only in southern Tuscany called pici, thick strands of hand-made pasta, slightly uneven in thickness. Pici are made by taking a little ball of fresh pasta dough and rolling it between opposing palms and fingers until the pasta becomes a strand. An uneven strand. We were not disappointed with our pici al argue, that is, pici with meat sauce.

We met our hosts, Elena Bracci and her husband Dominique Ronvaux, unpacked our car, and took a walk around town. Elena’s sister, Margherita and her husband, Giorgio, were in Rome and had not come up for this particular weekend. There is also a French couple staying here this week, a couple from northern France who have a dairy farm. Dominique offered to give the four of us a tour of his olive orchard sometime next week. His olive oil has just been awarded DOP (denominazione di origine protetta) status which for olive oil is similar to DOC status for wine. It’s quite an honor.

Dominique promised to give the tour in both French and English versions.

La Porta, in Monticchiello

Earlier in the week we made reservations for a birthday party of sorts on Sunday at our favorite restaurant, La Porta in Monticchiello, a small town about 7 miles west of Montepulciano. All the towns here with “Mont” at the beginning of their names are a hint that comfortable shoes are a must here; these towns are picturesque but quite vertical. As you approach Montichiello, you see signs that say, “Monticchiello, Borgo Medioevale” (Medieval Village.) Though the buildings have been there for centuries, the town seems perfect; every building is in excellent repair and there are thoughtful touches everywhere, flowers in pots, flags, gardens, a pergola covered with wisteria, and on and on.

We arrived for lunch at 1pm, took a table on the terrace of La Porta overlooking the Orcia Valley, and ordered lunch. Daria Capelli, the host, asked if we were celebrating anything special. We told her that the birthday that we were celebrating had already taken place on Thursday but that Thursday is the *one* day of the week that she is closed. Restaurants and many businesses here are small and the same staff works every day that the business is open. Restaurants normally have a day or two each week when they are closed.

Sformato di verdure at La Porta

At La Porta the spectacular views compete with spectacular food and a most gracious host. We’ve tried not to list all the places that we’ve eaten -- that would be dull for our kind readers -- but we have to make an exception for La Porta. We started with an appetizer that we shared, a sformato of green vegetables. A sformato is chopped or shredded vegetables held in a matrix of potato and/or stiffened egg whites. Daria’s treatment of this traditional dish was to add a sauce of fresh local cheese (pecorino) and then add shavings of white truffle. Deliriously good.

Waiting for the celebration
to begin

The rest of the meal was in that vein and we had Daria’s brother’s delicious Vino Nobile di Montepulciao wine which carries his Lunadoro label.

Poster

While we were in Monticchiello for the afternoon, we lingered after lunch to take in a special celebration in the town called Per Non Dementicare (which translated to “So that we will not forget”.) Monticchiello is a small town, only 300 residents according to the Italian census, but the town and its people have a special place in recent history. 

National Association of
Partisans of Italy

On April 6, 1944, 450 Italian fascist fighters were dispatched to Monticchiello to deal with the Partisan elements there. The Partisans inside the town fought the Fascists outside of the town during the day and the Fascists, despite their greater numbers were forced to retreat. The German Army, unhappy with what had happened, dispatched their own soldiers to round up the inhabitants of Monticchiello and shoot them. Soldiers lined up the people against the town wall but were convinced by the local priest and a German woman who lived locally to drop their murderous plan. The horror of this event is memorialized in a monument that is just below the terrace of La Porta.

Bella Ciao

The threat was not idle. According to Dominique there are towns north of Florence that are empty as a result of the kind of action that had been intended for Monticchiello.

The town’s celebration begins in a small central piazza and was scheduled for 4pm. We arrived at 3:55pm and found only three or four people already there. By 4:30pm the members of the band had collected together, the representatives of patriotic organizations had arranged their banners and standards, and the playing of Bella Ciao, the anthem of the Partisan resistance in World War II, had begun. 

The band played verses standing in place and then began a march around the tiny town followed by members of the community. We know the town well enough to know that the band would soon be back so we stayed in place and listened to their music as they marched up around and back down the other side of the main piazza. It was stirring! Various texts of Bella Ciao in Italian and English can be found here and here. The song has many variant texts and today is identified, proudly, with the left in Italian politics.

Members of the community band

The band and members of the community passed by the main piazza and continued on to a small park near La Porta where there is a monument to the war dead. The band and the community stopped, two little girls lay flowers in front of the plaques, and then the band marched on to where the ceremony had begun in the small main piazza. 

Memorial to the events of
April 6, 1944 located below
the terrace of La Porta

Two people spoke. The first was a local “important person” who thanked everyone. The second speaker was the town mayor. He was full of passion as he challenged people to remember the sacrifices that had been made in the defense of liberty and democracy. The speech was powerful, the audience reacted with enthusiasm, and the connection to the problems of modern Italy (Silvio Berlusconi and his failings, the demonization of immigrants, and so on) were presented as affronts to the memory of the brave Partisans and their sacrifices.

We stayed until the end. It was a beautiful day and the passion of the event subsided but we imagine that a reservoir of memory remains regarding the events of 1944 in this village.

Assisi, fresh eggs

Pink and white stone, a typical
building in Assisi

We visited Assisi yesterday. It’s a short trip across the valley from where we are staying and it’s a trip to a gigantic irony. The 25,000 people who live in Assisi have inherited a beautiful city that attracts thousands of religious pilgrims and many more tourists who visit the city’s churches, museum, hotels, restaurants, resorts, and shops to celebrate the virtuous life of a local man who preached total and complete poverty. A little odd.

The city spills down the side of the mountains and is built out of blocks of light pink and white stone. As you drive across the valley through the farms and past the Barilla factory that manufactures pasta, the pink city shimmers in the distance. It’s embarrassing to write like this but the city is that beautiful.

A piazza in Assisi

We parked at the top of the city. Like other towns that attract lots of visitors, the Italians have built large underground parking garages that swallow up cars but do not mar the cityscapes. We parked, walked a few steps, and were in the ancient city with tour groups speaking many languages, school kids, pilgrims wearing plain tunics and sandals, all kinds of people but few cars and no parked cars visible.

San Francesco from above

The most significant church in Assisi is San Francesco, dedicated to St. Francis. The church, like the town, is grand and impressive. The church was begun shortly after the death of St. Francis and was controversial from the beginning for memorializing a simple life in such an opulent way. The construction was finished very quickly, in something like 70 years.

The church attracted the most famous artists of the time to decorate the interior, most of them from Florence. Two generations of artists were deeply involved. In the main part of the church the transept includes a crucifixion done by the late medieval painter, Cimabue, in the 1200s. The huge fresco is in poor shape; the colors are fallen off the painting but the drama of his portrayal of the event is clear. The composition of the ghostly figures is haunting.

The Crucifixion by Cimabue

The Florentine painters of the 1200s and 1300s took the visual arts in a new direction. Before the Florentines nameless artists repeated formulaic images of saints in heaven, Mary and Jesus in heaven, always in two dimensions against gold backgrounds indicating another world and another life. The Florentine artists set figures in this world and focussed on the human drama in the lives of religious figures. The new images portrayed an empirical perspective, a third dimension, a solidity to buildings and people. Not surprisingly mathematical perspective was discovered (invented?) by Florentines in the 1400s and the third dimension in paintings became perfectly convincing.

St. Francis renouncing
worldly goods

The next generation of painters after Cimabue took over in the late 1200s. Giotto, the great Florentine who pioneered a more natural appearing, more realistic style of painting, did a cycle of well over 20 huge frescoes describing the life of St. Francis. The frescoes tells stories from the life of the saint for an audience that was largely illiterate. The stories are told in a series of comic book frames with stage sets constructed by Giotto and include a host of characters. 

Giotto’s stage sets reflect the real world of central Italy. Giotto's first fresco is called Homage to a simple man and is set in front of what appears to be a Roman temple. In fact, there is a Roman temple to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and music, in the main piazza at the center of Assisi. No one who lived in Assisi would mistake the visual quotation.

Of course, the Roman temple to Minerva has been converted to a church.

Homage to a simple man

Though all this seems pretty ordinary in our eyes, Cimabue and Giotto invented a approach of painting that focused on the humanity of the scenes that they were depicting. Earlier painters had focused only on manipulating religious symbols but the new generations of the early Renaissance included real people and real towns and cities in their depictions.

In front of the former
 Roman temple to Minerva

There are sites on the internet with images of the complete Giotto cycle so we won’t post any further images here but please browse through this link to see all of the images in Giotto’s life of St. Francis.

A final note. Florence, the home of Giotto, has a certain palette of colors. Only a few buildings have natural brick faces; most buildings are covered in concrete and painted. The colors of the building exteriors are a narrow range of colors. The range of colors in Florence is from pale, pale yellow to pale tan, to pale, pale orange. No other colors and certainly no bold colors.

San Francesco from below Assisi

Umbria has a different look. Again most buildings are covered in concrete and are painted. But the Umbrian palette is a level or two more bold. The yellows are more forthright. The tans are more brown. The oranges begin to look orange. None of these colors are pure yellow or brown or orange but in Umbria the colors are more striking.

Also more striking are the colors of the stage-set buildings in Giotto’s scenes from the life of St. Francis. Giotto was among the first artists to focus on this life rather than the next life and was among the first to depict scenes of ordinary life in ordinary towns. His ordinary towns were ordinary central Italian towns. What strikes us is that the palette of colors used by Giotto in the backgrounds of his life of St. Francis cycle is the same palette as it used in Umbria towns today. That cannot be a coincidence.

For dinner tonight we had a fritatta. Made with fresh eggs. Very fresh eggs. Massimo runs the place in the Nonna Rana Country House where we are staying and yesterday asked us if we liked eggs. We said, “Yes” and he returned with five fresh eggs from the chickens that he and his wife keep in the back of the property. Just enough eggs to make a fritatta along with some zucchini, chopped prosciutto, and shredded pecorino cheese. We are in the country here.

Montefalco, Gozzoli, and L'Alchimista

Asparagus gatherers

Our apartment is on the side of a hill overlooking a broad valley below. This afternoon we took a walk up the hill to ... well, to take a walk. About a half mile up the road we met three people who were on the side of the road. One woman stayed back near the car, the other woman and the man were poking in the ground along the side of the road. We said hello and asked what were they doing. The man said that they were looking for wild asparagus and showed us a handful of the precious stuff. He was already looking forward to his frittata, sort of an Italian omelet served as a light dinner with vegetables and perhaps some cheese mixed in. The three were having a good time though one of the women complained about the possibility of finding snakes instead of asparagus.

ColSanto winery

Sunday afternoon we visited a winery that is on the road between where we are staying and the small town of Montefalco. The winery is called ColSanto and appeared to be open and inviting. We drove up the long, dramatic driveway and parked by the main building. Almost immediately someone stepped out, welcomed us, and asked if we’d like to have a tour. The answer was, of course, “Yes!”

Francesco took us to a display area where they showed off the winery’s products. We focussed in on three in particular, an inexpensive wine made up largely of Merlot called Ruris, a middling level wine called Montefalco Rosso made up of sangiovese (the chianti grape) and some sagrantino (the local Umbrian grape), and, finally, the flagship wine, Sagrantino di Montefalco, a wine that is 100% sagrantino. The first two wines spend only a brief time in wood; the last wine spends 3+ years either in huge barrels, small barriques (small barrels), or resting in the bottle before it is released. The Ruris was a 2008, the Montefalco Rosso was a 2008, and the Sagrantino di Montefalco was a 2007. 

A large barrel of
Montefalco Rosso

We tasted the lesser wines first and finished with the oldest wine. All were good and the size and the complexity of the wines increased as we went from Ruris to Rosso to Sagrantino. The prices were reasonable so we bought one of each. The Sagratino is a really big wine, big red wine taste, and we understand that it can age gracefully. Sadly, the production is small and not much Sagrantino di Montefalco is exported from Italy.

A sample of the 2014 vintage

Francesco finished off the tour with a sample of the most recently harvested vintage, 2010 that will be released as Sagrantino di Montefalco in 2014. He took us over to a large barrel with a spigot on the side and asked us if we’d like a sample of something different. We were curious what new wine would be like three years before it is released. It didn’t resemble the big, complex red that we had just tasted at all but it was, surprisingly, delicious. Fruity, dense, very grapey.

We visited the town of Montefalco the same day and were impressed with the beauty of the little town. Montefalco has a main piazza called Piazza Comunale at the top of a hill and the five main streets that radiate out and down the hillside. The piazza is round and nicely developed with arcaded buildings that face each other and with many places to sit. The piazza is ample and on Sunday no traffic is allowed and children were playing and people were lolling in the sun. It was a pleasant scene that reminded us of Siena, a much larger city with a famous and beautiful central piazza, and streets radiating out. Siena’s landmark piazza, however, is at the bottom; Montefalco’s is at the top. Both are beautiful and beautifully situated in relation to the rest of the town.

Piazza Comunale, Montefalco

We were disappointed that we could not get a table at L’Alchimista, a recommended restaurant that is on Piazza Comunale. The place turned out to be tiny with room for only 28 or 30 diners and, since it was Sunday, it was full to the brim. We made reservations for the next day, Monday.

Monday morning we returned to Montefalco and found that the town was sleepy. Many businesses in Italy close Saturday afternoon, all day Sunday, and Monday morning. This Monday morning in Montefalco was quiet but L’Alchimista was open for caffe and pastries. Small town restaurants often do double duty as coffee bars. We had our morning cappuccino at L’Archimista and then took in the town museum.

Benozzo Gozzoli, Montefalco,
St. Francis meets St. Dominic

The town museum incorporates a deconsecrated church which contains frescoes of the Florentine artist, Benozzo Gozzoli. His best known work is The Procession of the Magi which is in a small chapel in the Medici Palace in Florence. Because the chapel is so small and the crowds are so large, Gozzoli’s most famous work is difficult to view. In Montefalco Gozzoli had the central apse of a church and used all of it to show off his skills. The frescoes described the life of a local hero, Saint Francis of Assisi.

L'Alchimista coffee bar
and restaurant

We returned to L’Alchimista for a memorable meal. Everything was done perfectly from the service to the food and the wine. We ordered a Montefalco Rosso by Arnaldo-Caprai, the most famous local producer. The wine was an excellent accompaniment to the appetizers (mixed bruschettas and artichoke souffle), primi (lasagna made with crepes, porcini, and radicchio and an unusual leek and potato soup), and secondi (thin slices of pork loin over a bed of artichokes and slices of chicken breast served on a bed of mushrooms and artichokes.) We ended with small glasses of Sagrantino Passati, a sweet desert wine made from sagrantino.

We asked the owner why he named the place “The Alchemist.” He said that it is the cook who takes ingredients and transforms them, as though through magic, into wonderful dishes. By this he meant to compliment his wife who is the cook and who does, in fact, works magic in the kitchen.

We going back to L’Alchimista later this week.

From Florence to Umbria

Packed up, ready to go

We took a walk around Florence early Saturday morning, visited our favorite pasticeria, Nencione, on Via Pietrapiena for a farewell cappuccino and pastry, and returned to our Ghibellina apartment for the final packing. We filled the taxi with our suitcases and other items and were driven across town to the area where all the rental agencies have their businesses.

We picked up our rental car, a little smaller than a Honda Civic, easily and quickly, loaded it up, practiced with the six-speed transmission and the reverse gear that a contortionist would find intuitive, and dove into traffic. The drive out of Florence was the most difficult part, difficult because we had second thoughts about leaving the city and, of course, difficult because of all the crazy drivers who surrounded us.

The rental car was a great car for the drive. A rental agent was recommended to us, Serge at Sixt rental on Borgo Ognisanti. He was personable, efficient, and generous. Though we reserved a small Fiat, Renault, or a Peugeot, we received a small, white Alfa Romeo Giulietta, four cylinder turbo diesel, that has great acceleration in every gear. Lots of fun to drive.

We left Florence at 11pm and our check in time at the apartment we had rented in Umbria was 3pm, and the total drive was about 1 hour 45 minutes. This left just enough time (2 hours 15 minutes!) to squeeze in lunch. We consulted our trusty guide to places to eat in Italy, Osteria d’Italia, published by the Slow Food people here. The 800+ page book lists and describes the restaurants (and trattorias and osterias) in Italy devoted to traditional foods cooked in traditional ways. Price is not a consideration; some of the recommended spots are expensive; some are not. All are terrific.

Osteria d’Italia is updated every year but is published only in Italian. The layout is simple, however, and it is pretty easy to make sense of their recommendations.

Almost all the restaurants in Italy are good. Anyone can make a list of restaurants using a map and darts and the results will be impressive ... to a non-Italian. Italians, however, are demanding when it comes to food and food preparation. For example, when we order in a restaurant, it takes us no more than 30 seconds. When Italians order, it is a complex negotiation, many questions are raised and answered, the kitchen staff may be consulted, the menu may be ignored, and considerable time is taken. Count yourself lucky if the server comes to your table first instead of the other table with the party of eight Italians.

I Birbi, near Perugia

Osteria d’Italia suggested a restaurant in Torgiano, Umbria, called I Birbi. Since that was most of the way to our apartment, we thought that it would be a good place to stop. Traveling along a narrow, two-lane local road, we saw a sign for the restaurant and we turned in the direction suggested, and drove on a road barely wide enough for two small cars to pass with ditches on either side. The road twisted and turned as it climbed a hill and the ditches on either side became deeper. At the top of the hill then road became a one-lane gravel driveway with a smallish house at the end. A little confused, we parked and noticed that the house (unmarked in any other way) had a small sign that said that credit cards were accepted. That was a good sign. We’d found I Birbi.

Perugia from the dining room

The dining room had a number of windows looking out over the countryside. The view from the dining room was across a wide valley to Perugia, the largest city in Umbria, on the opposite hill top.

Looking down the driveway
from i Birbi

We considered the menu for soups of pastas but the server told us that he had picked asparagi di bosco, wild asparagus, during the morning and that we might want to try the wild asparagus over pasta. We’ve seen this unusual vegetable in the Florence market, very expensive, recognizably asparagus but in a very thin, very tender form. The stalks are a little thicker than chives and turned out to have a flavor that was mild yet assertive. The dish was served with freshly-made tagliarinni, fruity olive oil, shavings of parmigiano, and the thin, thin stalks of asparagus cut into 3/4 inch lengths and cooked only with the heat of the pasta. 

We went on to have some grilled steak, cut in slices, one flavored with oil and rosemary, the other with a piquant red sauce. The meat was accompanied by some wild greens, raw, done in fruity olive oil flavored with a touch of anchovy. We’ve seen Italians along the roads picking greens in the spring; at this meal we enjoyed some of those greens.

The house red wine turned out to be Lungarotti Rubesco, an outstanding sangiovese wine we’d had occasionally at home when we could find it. Lungarotti’s base of operations is in Torgiano.

The meal at I Birbi was memorable.

Assisi across the Umbrian valley
from Nonna Rana

We drove on and arrived at the Nonna Rana Country House near the small town of Cannara, Umbria, at about 3:30pm. The husband and wife team met us, helped us unload the car, and offered us coffee which we gladly accepted. We told them about an interesting article on Umbrian wine and food that we had read and which mentioned their place. They remembered the author well and had some thoughts of their own on the wine and food of Umbria.

We settled in and took in the views across the valley to Assisi and the other small towns on the valley floor and up the sides of the mountains. Tomorrow we’ll begin exploring.

Traveling today

We're picking up a car later this morning and driving to Umbria, the region to the south and east of Tuscany. We have a place in the country called the Nonna Rana Country House and it is genuinely in the country, about 3 km from the nearest small town, Cannara, whose population is a little over 4,000. There are a number of interesting towns nearby, Assisi, Bevagna, Spello, Torgiano, Norcia, Todi, and many more.


We honestly don't know if we'll be able to pick up an internet connection from the place where we're staying. If we cannot, we may not be able to post much this coming week.

Picasso, Miro, Dali, 2nd time: Osteria del Bricco, 1st time this year

Strozzi Palace

This morning we revisited the show at the Strozzi Palace of the collected early works of Pablo Picasso, Joan (pronounced Juan, yes, I found that confusing) Miro, and Salvador Dali. After our first visit to look at the early work of these moderns a week ago our heads were swimming. We’d hoped that we’d gain a better grip on our second visit.

On our first visit we walked through the gallery several times, quickly the first time, more slowly the next two times. The Stozzi is nine or ten rooms, the entire second floor of the building. It is possible to walk through the whole exhibit in five or ten minutes and we think that it is a good idea to start such a show with a sense for the whole. We were dazzled; afterwards there were lots of images floating around in our heads. One of us hard a hard time sleeping that night.

Today we went through the show once with the audio tour, a little iPod looking device with a pair of earphones. Many of the paintings were marked with a number. Step in front of a painting, note the number posted below the painting, enter the number into the device, and hear a commentary on that particular painting. The narration helped to add context.

Early Picasso
(source)

Late Picasso
(source)

This time the exhibition was easier to take in. The Picassos were stunning. Some of his early work was very conventional, very skilled, and easy to approach and admire. His later paintings take more time. Picasso reinvented himself over and over so you can’t see one style or one approach developing over time. Picasso was a modern, a restless modern.

Dali was interesting but sometimes bizarre. As a young man he was thrown out of art school because he said that none of his professors were good enough to judge his work. He may have been correct but the stresses in his family that resulted were unfortunate.

We found Miro to be very interesting. We knew very little about him. Like Dali he was younger than Picasso and influenced by his work. But Miro seemed to develop a unique visual language and left us wishing there were more of his work to view.

Miro, Small Universe
Two fish, one mermaid
(source)

Dali left an exciting description of his first meeting with Picasso, a dramatic introduction, many hours spent together, sharing works, exchanging no words but only knowing glances. The Dali-Picasso encounter, however, was probably imaginary. The Miro initial encounter with Picasso was real. Miro went to Picasso’s home in Barcelona, met his mother, and took a cake from there to Picasso in Paris, and met the older master.

After the show we crossed over the Arno for a meal at one of Florence’s fine restaurants, Osteria del Bricco. It was quiet on the other side of the Arno, the wave of tourists don’t get very far across the river. It’s a shame because Bricco is a jewel. 

We started our lunch with a sformato appetizer which we shared. A sformato is a shredded or chopped mass of a cooked vegetable, sauteéd in butter, flavored with grated parmignano and perhaps a little nutmeg, held together with egg, bechamel, and/or mashed potato, and baked in an hot oven until a crust forms. The sformato appetizer at Bricco is five small pieces of sformato, one each of the spinach, cauliflower, potato, carrot, and zucchini versions. You look forward to the first bite; you regret the last.

We’ve had this dish before, of course, and the rest of the meal was a wonderful way to celebrate a memorable show of artists and art and a beautiful, sunny day. Besides Picasso, Miro, and Dali, the sformati are what we’ll remember ... until the next sformato appetizer which we’ll have in Monticchiello, a tiny medieval village near Montepulciano.

Tomorrow we pack up our Ghibellina apartment and Saturday morning we’ll drive to Umbria.