Dish Diplomacy, The G8 Eats In L’Aquila

President Obama arrives in L’Aquila today, and he’s going to leave a little heavier. And I’m not talking about his political weight, although that might increase as well. I’m talking about  the numbers on his scale in the morning.
As the G8 meeting of the worlds rich nations gets together in my Earthquake devastated adopted hometown in the mountains of central Italy, every local and national paper I skim though talks about the menu. The espressos and cappuccinos will be served by the staff of one of the better coffee bars in town, the Gran Caffe dell’Aquila located in the currently off-limits Piazza del Duomo, the main city square that until April 6th held an open air market daily for hundreds of years.
Saffron has been grown around L’Aquila since the Middle Ages, and it funded much of the art and architecture that made the City of Eagles one of Italy’s little known treasures. It’s therefore fitting that heads of state and the diplomatic corps will be eating pasta (rigatoni) with zucchini and saffron threads.
The menu for the dinner hosted tomorrow by Italy’s President – Giorgio Napolitano (Silvio Berlusconi is the Prime Minister) lists tasty but not very slimming treats. The starter is warm tomatoes filled with basil and giuncata (a fresh cheese) from the town of Rivisiondoli in the Abruzzo National Park, followed by a maccheroni alla chittara (a fresh, thick spaghetti like pasta typical of the region) with ragù all’Abbruzzese followed by veal in a dough crust with  summer truffles from the hills around the Sangro river. It will all be followed by an array of cheeses from Abruzzo and deserts from all over Italy.
The wine list is long, and includes one of my favorites – Masciarelli, who’s Montepulciano d’Abruzzo reds and Trebbiano whites can be found affordably in the US. I have seen their basic table version in Wisconsin at under $10, for example.
I will be writing more about saffron and truffles later on. Both have been cultivated or collected in Abruzzo for centuries and are considered rare, elegant and expensive foods. They are still expensive, but within the budget of normal human beings again.

E’ Nelle Piccole Cose – The Little Things

It’s in the little things – that I begin to touch what happened. Over a month has passed since we had to leave our homes at three-thirty in the morning, grabbing what we could as we rushed over the stucco flakes and other debris out of our house into the dark morning to find the hotel in front of us already down, folded like  a layer cake of cement and steel.
I have been so busy getting on with life – finding a place to stay besides our car farther and farther from home, going back for essentials – and the cat – with the firemen, getting on with work in Rome, and just getting on with life with the girls here in Montesilvano.
It’s the little things. Last night we were driving to Navelli, the family house there is in much better shape than our house in L’Aquila but the aftershocks continue and most people still sleep in tents at night. The girls missed their friends there and we needed to get some fresh clothes. A song by Irene Grandi came on the radio and we all started singing to it like in some cheesy movie and I started to cry – silently because I didn’t want them to miss a word.
The experts say that during earthquakes the best thing to do is duck under something that can protect you and wait it out. Which is impossible if you are a parent. As the floor rocked and everything shook and rattled and roared for almost half a minute, Silvia and I ran to the girl’s bedroom to get help them climb down from their beds. There’s really no room for thinking about what’s going on, being a father or a mother guides you.
A woman I saw on TV through the window of our cousin’s house (no one wanted to be inside so we watched TV from the garden), filmed in front of the pile of stones that was her house said something so simple yet full of truth.

“These are only stones, only bricks. I can put one on top of the other again. But my family and friends are the real bricks, and they are still here, and that’s what matters.”

And they are

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Helping L’Aquila Soar Again

To everyone who loves Italy,

I grew up in Wisconsin but have been lucky enough to call L’Aquila my home since 2001. My wife, Silvia, teaches Renaissance history at the university here and my daughters, Sofia and Emily are in school. Fortunately all safe after the Earthquake less than two weeks ago although, like thousands of others, we don’t know when, or if, they’ll be able to live again in our apartment. This message isn’t about us – our car wasn’t destroyed and thanks to the hotels on the coast we have shelter and most things we need for the immediate future. I have work to get back to in Rome.

Reconstruction in the long-run and getting people into stable shelter and some normalcy will take time. To date a third of the buildings surveyed are unsafe to live in, and the historical center has not been included in that survey yet. Tens of thousands of people are in the tent communities in and around L’Aquila and many more are guests in hotels like me, or with relatives in Rome and elsewhere.

I have been told that the media in the US and UK have already moved on to other subjects (no Americans like me died or were seriously injured), although many grass roots groups – mostly connected to academia or the Italian-American communities are still very active.

With a few friends, both in the US and England, we noticed that we could help both the people of l’Aquila and the city and region that we love. We started with the first English-language group on the subject on Facebook ( L’Aquila Renaissance – Helping L’Aquila and Abruzzo , http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=66535648631&ref=ts)

We have also set up this petition in favour of L’Aquila and the villages and towns around it: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/laquila-renaissance/signatures.html

For now the group tries to give information on how to donate form the USA (often tax deductible). The list is incomplete.

USA
- NIAF – The National Italian American Foundation have created a Abruzzo Relief Fund & their online donation form is in English. Again here you can make a fast & easy online donation to assist in helping L’Aquila now and rebuild their lives, it’s tax free for those in the US.
https://www.niaf.org/relief/Relief_info.asp
Italian Academy Foundation (IAF) has established a L’Aquila relief fund. Additionally, the IAF headquarters in L’Aquila (Bisegna) is open to the victims of the April 6, 2009, earthquake who are seeking shelter. View the IAF website at italianacademyfoundation.org.
Catholic Relief Services http://www.crs.org/emergency/italy-earthquake.cfm
- The Sons of Italy Foundation (SIF) has created an Emergency Relief Fund. View the Order Sons of Italy in America website at www.osia.org.
UNICO Announces Initiation of Fund to Aid Abruzzo Italy Earthquake Relief. website at www.unico.org-
The American Red Cross https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=514161456&df_id=1094&1094.donation=form1&s_subsrc=RCO_link

UK
- Global Giving for Abruzzo – http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/pr/2700/proj2695a.html
- Red Cross UK – http://www.redcross.org.uk/donatesection.asp?id=93852&entrypoint=37220_mainItaly

While no one can argue that the human loss is greater than the cultural loss, I am also worried that during the reconstruction, the beautiful old city will be neglected.  If I had talked to be before the quake, I would have spent half the conversation trying to convince you, especially those living in or visiting Rome, to come look at this jewel that so few Americans see but is an hour and a half drive from the Eternal City. I hope to be able to push the city like that again soon.

As always, to make sure things work in the long term it will be helpful that people keep on experessing, through letters and email, to officials in L’Aquila, in the Italian government, and in the U.S. government, the Press and other “piazze” in favor of rebuilding the city and not expanding it. Many of us have seen the result of the “modern urban suburbs” created, some never finished, after similar events,  In the long term we hope that this group – and what may grow out of it, can contribute to the future of this city just as the world’s love for Assisi and Florence help their rebirth after natural disasters.

Thank you.

L’Aquila, April 16th

Joshua  Lawrence
L’Aquila, Italy / Madison, Wisconsin.
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Earthquake in L’Aquila-but we are all well

We woke up at 3.30 a.m Sunday night/Monday morning to a Earthquake that was 5,7 richter but brought down the entire antique city center, and, unfortunately, many new buildings as well. Me, my wife, daughters and extended family are all alive and unscratched. We were able to save the animals two days ago too. But almost three hundred people lost their lives, 1000 injured and tens of thousands are homeless, at least temporarily. I am staying with relatives almost 100 km away now where we can no longer feel the aftershocks. I thank everyone for their words, worries, prayers and offers of help. I’ve always believed in people, now I believe in them even more. Even if some “people” are the criminals who built the modern buildings that fell – Abruzzo is seismic but usually this magnitude does not bring down buildings if they were designed and built properly

G-Spot: Liver & Lamb

When the owners of Garibaldi (see post “Galleons and Sloops in the Apennines”) decided to add on this little restaurant right across the street, the idea was to offer a simple selection of grilled food to the same sort of people who were stopping in for a glass of wine and the company of friends friends and colleagues before going home for dinner.

Davide and Daniele insist that name of the place – Punto G – Piacere della Griglia (literally “G Spot – Pleasures from the Grill”) – was inspired by the letter “G” in both “grill” and “Garibalidi” the name of both the street it’s on and the bar the run across the street. It was not originally a play on the Gräfenberg spot, but that didn’t stop them from hosting a public conference on the matter by sexuality and psychiatry professors from the University of L’Aquila last summer.

You don’t have to eat red meat if you don’t want to. They do grilled vegetables and bruschetta as well. But grilled eggplant, zucchini, red sweet peppers, onions and radicchio (red bitter lettuce that’s heaven when seared) are almost sublime when served with a half pound angus steak from Ireland. Even better when you’ve reignited your taste buds before hand with bruschetta (grilled toast with toppings) covered with black truffle paste, porcine mushrooms, hot pepper sauce, or marcetto (a spreadable tangy aged pecorino sheep cheese).

Just don’t leave without trying the spiedini, the tiny little shish kebab skewers that the Abruzzi are famous for. Traditionally made sheep the pieces are tiny so that they grill down tender and tasty. Ultimate finger food for a glass of ruby dark red wine, you eat them right off the sticks and can imagine people doing the same in the same room hundreds of years before. They also have a turkey and chicken version, but their most interesting variation on the theme is liver and hot peppers. Another bottle of this red please.

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Polar Hot Chocolate

Once again a little break away from the home office and the Rome office. A quick stop to write and think in my little book bar haunt in L’Aquila – Caffè Polar. The music is from Ray Gelato’s most recent album, a current jazz singer who’s sound seems more at place alongside Louis Prima recordings. It’s cold and humid today, my older relatives here would say c’è aria di neve, in other words the air is perfect for it to snow soon.
It’s five-fifteen in the afternoon and it’s pampering time – hot chocolate, almost as dense as pudding, with a little island of crushed coconut in the middle.
You can find excellent hot chocolate all over Italy, and sometimes it’s better. But today I like it best here.

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Drunk before the wine

Friday night I caught the tail end of a classical music here in L’Aquila. I had to pick up my daughter at piano lessons a half hour before it was to start, so I could only sneak in quietly between movements at the end.

Why even bother? In part because when the company, Officine Musicale (directed by Orazio Tuccella) plays at Palazzetto dei Nobili, usually Vinalia, one of Central Italy’s best wine cellars and among it most refined and creative restaurants, is the main sponsor, and they usually organize an aperitivo for the concertgoers after the show. The other night the special guest was Bianco Colline an interesting, full but balanced white wine from the Azienda Agricola Nicola Di Sipio in the town of Ripa Teatina near the Adriatic coast. This white wine is a mix of Trebbiano (Ugni Blanc), Pecorino and Falagnhina grapes.

But before that there was the music, three symphonies from Franz Joseph Hayden. I’m not a big expert on classical music – I don’t get much farther than the most famous names and their best known works. I know J. S. Bach wrote a lot of piano concertos, and that Mozart died young. Often classical music flips on that switch in my brain that makes me daydream or reflect on things, and I end up missing most of the music. A part of me often likes this as much as the music itself.

That night, as I was standing in the back of the small hall against part of the wooden, medieval chorus like woodwork that lines the lower half of the walls (painting from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century fill the rest), something started happening during the second to last movement of the evening. Something started to move inside me, I started to feel a bit warm, happy, and dizzy. The penultimate movement of Hayden’s Trauersymphonie (Symphony 44) made me feel as though I was about to float off the ground.

The glass of white wine, later that night, was what would later pull me back to earth.

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Galleons and Sloops in the Apennines.

The Garibaldi Caffè e Enoteca is another of my favorite little places in L’Aquila. It’s a neighborhood all-hours place kind of like the Bar Pasquino under my apartment in Rome. In other words, cappuccino, brioche and newspapers (in Italian only) in the morning, wine and spirits from aperitivo time until after midnight. Both have pannini and other simple but delectable food at lunchtime, but I’m always somewhere else then.

The place was tiny when I first stumbled in 10 years ago. The walls were lined with bottles, boutique chocolates and fake masterpieces up to the arched ceiling and stacked along a wall like in an art counterfitter’s hideaway. Davide and Daniele the two friendly and attentive young brothers who own and run the place also have a gallery that sells professional fakes of famous paintings. As I write this I have two enormous scenes of venice above me (Tintoretto, I believe) Klimt, Hopper, and Van Gogh above the wall of white wines and grappas in front of me, Renoir, Modigliani, Monet and Bottero to my left. When I first stumbled in back then were the model sailing ships among the wooden chess sets and humidors filling the windows. They also have a small but interesting selection of cigars and a nice little bench on the cobblestone street outside – no smoking in bars in Italy anymore.

Despite being on a medieval street 2000 feet up in the mountains the boats fit in because the place was tiny, lined with dark hardwood, the bathroom was tiny like those on sailboats and after a few glasses of wine the world might start to pleasantly sway. They have added another room since I first started coming here, but the lived in, slightly cluttered atmosphere is the same.

This evening as I’m killing time before I meet up with my eleven year old daughter who hanging out with friends in the main square (I’m sometimes jealous of kids growing up in Italy. Just me, a notebook, and a plate of olives, mixed cold cuts and taralli (crispy dried bread in bite sized curls) meant to dampen the effects of a glass of Pecorino, white wine from varietal native to Abruzzo that is undergoing a sort of Renaissance here. The music goes back and forth between Spanish jazz and Astor Piazzola inspired lounge.

The only thing missing is dinner, but recently Davide and Daniele opened up the Punto G – Piacere della Griglia grill (literally “G Spot – Pleasures from the Grill”) across the street. Strictly carnivores only.

But that’s another post.

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Soggy Noodles?

My daughter likes her breakfast cereal soggy. I think that’s gross and hope her tastes will change as she grows up; thankfully she already is food-curious for an eleven year old. Breakfast cereals are slowly becoming popular here after years of marketing by multinationals, which can even be a good thing – corn flakes are not evil. Breakfast cereals are part of our half-american household but we still usually go for dipping Italian breakfast cookies in warm milk, colored with chocolate or espresso shots according to the age of who’s dunking. But most of us would rather our cornflakes are still crunchy when we eat it. It’s the same with pasta. Think about it. It’s just more pleasurable to have something to bite into than something squishy that falls apart under your tongue. It’s called “al dente” – literally “to the tooth” because your teeth still have to deal with eating it – but Ricciolidoro (Goldilocks) would have called it “just right”. How do you tell when Ricciolidoro will finish her whole plate? Folk legend has it that you throw a strand of spaghetti on a vertical wooden cupboard and when it starts to stick it’s ready. I have tried this so you don’t have to at home. First, it has to be a simple wood surface, or it will just slide off anyway. Second, it’s really quite disgusting. When was the cupboard last cleaned? How much pasta material will stay up there and for how long? And trust the insights of the rocket scientist who tested the theory (me) that the taste of wood finish and traces of cleaning liquids and wax were not enjoyable when I was 19, and there’s no way I’m going to verify if they have gotten any better today. I mean, who dreamt that up? Gross. Basically the pasta is al dente the minute the center is cooked, and the exterior is just becoming soft enough to make the sauce stick but not so soft that it absorbs the sauce. You can actually see this moment happen. As your spaghetti boils try taking a piece out and biting into it a few minutes before the cooking time indicated on the package and look at the subtle color difference like you would count the rings of a wooden stump to identify the age of a tree. When the inside yellow disappears, it should be ready. I prefer it a bit rawer, when there’s still a pinprick sized darker core. If you’ve been eating soggy spaghetti for most of you life, try eating it the hard way.

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Why Dracula can’t cook

Garlic, like anchovies and raw onions, gets a bad rap. Just because it’s smelly or fishy or salty and stays on your breath doesn’t mean it’s not scrumptious.
Peanut butter eaters shouldn’t throw stones.
Even here in Italy, a land famous for garlic and anchovy eating, these wonderful foods have their detractors. I think the detractors are clueless.
Forget about the proven health benefits of garlic for the heart and the immune system. They are part of why garlic is good, but only a small part. It’s because they are heaven.
My first garlic epiphany is still a fond memory today. My mother had just ordered a plate of baked garlic cloves with our hamburgers and steak sandwiches in a basement bar in what little was left of the Italian-Irish neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin.
I loved it.
And the bad breath? It’s only bad if you don’t like it (poor unknowing fools) and have not also eaten garlic in the same meal. The important thing is that you eat garlic together, then none of those involved will care.
I still remember a meal I cooked for my friends Erin and Bill when I first came back to Madison from Bologna in 1990. Oven-toasted rosemary potatoes, grilled sirloin with oregano and black pepper, and truffled champignon mushrooms.
Truffled mushrooms are as simple as it magical. Clean, dry and slice the mushrooms and get them ready. It’s going to be fast. Peel and crush a few cloves of garlic and get them ready. Get some good Italian olive oil up to frying temperature. Throw the garlic and turn the heat down low just before the garlic fragments turn crunchy and golden. Then slide the mushrooms and cook until they are soft, grey and have absorbed the garlic and the oil.
I like them straight up as a side dish, but they are great as an appetizer on toasted bread (with or without melted provolone cheese).
What made the dinner with Erin and Bill so memorable? The moment I tossed in the garlic in the yellow tuscan oil (yes, even back then you could find it in Madison) a mushroom cloud of garlic steam burst up and filled the studio apartment. I looked back and saw them both, noses up in the air and huge silly grins like dancing Peanuts characters in It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas.
They say blood is thicker than water, but garlic bonds.
To all my garlic brothers and sisters.

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