There are many great things about living in Milan, not least of which is that once a year Serbia’s tourism board rents a double-decker bus, gets a band to play traditional Serbian music and then sends the pair on their way picking up people as they go.
Out for a ride through the streets of Milan
And so it was that Friday night I found myself on the upper level of a red tour bus cruising the streets of Milan listening to phenomenally engaging trumpets, saxophones, tubas and a drummer. The Serbs time these tours to coincide with the Borsa Internazionale del Turismo – BIT, Milan’s massive trade fair dedicated to the tourism industry.
The band is called Nema Problema, “no problem” in English, and I’m told they do weddings. Too late for me, but if you are still in time I think these guys will make your party one to remember.
They do weddings
A tip if next year you find yourself on this bus: before gulping down the clear liquid you’re likely to be offered in a plastic cup at some point during your ride through town, that would be the liquid that seems to be making everybody happier, make sure you ask what it is because it’s probably not water.
Two Sundays ago with Milan amply below freezing and me fighting a stubborn virus and in need of an excuse to leave the house, I ended up at the Affordable Art Fair. There are trade fairs for cosmetics, farm vehicles, cellular technology, airplanes, outdoor sports, wine, food. You name it and it probably has a trade fair. And, as it turns out, contemporary art is no exception.
The Affordable Art Fair bills itself as “the leading showcase for affordable contemporary art.”Affordable is, of course, a somewhat relative term. Here they put the cutoff at 5,000 euros, above that and the exhibitors (i.e. galleries) are not allowed to sell it.
Affordable Art Fair, Milan
So I’ve been to my share of trade fairs both for work and pleasure and they are all pretty much the same. You walk up and down the aisles looking at the newest gadgets (hoping for a cool freebie), touching the tractors, tasting the wine. The Affordable Art Fair is no different and in a large space in Milan’s trendy Via Tortona neighborhood set up with white dividing walls you cruise the aisles looking at contemporary art, all of it on sale and all of it for less than 5,000 euros.
One of the 77 stands at Milan's AAF
The Milan edition of the fair, in its second year, is just one stop for an event that hits 14 cities around the world including London (it’s birthplace), Los Angeles, Brussels, Melbourne, Stockholm, Mexico City, Seattle and Singapore. Here’s a list of the upcoming dates – London is next (15-18 March) followed by New York in April. Italy will have a second event, this time in Rome, in October
Who hasn’t dreamed of leaving it all behind and becoming a farmer? Well, anyway, I have and fortunately on occasion I have a chance to pretend.
In late December I was down in Salento again, Muro Leccese to be exact, where I took part in the olive harvest. The olive oil aficionados out there will have immediately noted that this is a very late harvest and indeed the oil that gets produced from these olives is a bit rough around the edges. It’ll be extra virgin, it’ll be good, but it’ll have a very strong, almost overpowering flavor that is a far cry from the refined stuff you get when you pick the olives by hand or shake the trees and gather the olives right away. These olives getting harvested have been on the ground for days, in some cases several weeks.
The six photos below show how the process is done: 1) olives sitting there waiting patiently to be picked up, 2) small tractor does the deed, 3&4) tractor dumps all that it picked up into a machine that separates the olives from the leaves and stones, 5) the olives get dumped into a truck, 6) getting ready to start over again. This video brings it all to life thanks to the overpowering sound of the tractor (sorry about that).
1 – olives on the ground
2 – olives get collected by small tractor
3 – Olives and everything else gets dumped into separating machine
4 – machine separates olives from leaves and stones
5 – separated olives get dumped into truck
6 – waiting for next load to arrive
Granted I’m a little bit batty for olive trees, but I’d challenge anybody to take part in an olive harvest and not be absolutely head-over-heels for the oil that results from their labors. The majestic nature of the olive tree and its fruit is all the more remarkable when you have had this experience.
For a look at the process of how more refined extra virgin olive oils are made, this excellent video from northern Puglia is a great primer. About that part with the guy in the tractor making a sharp turn in the middle of the olive trees while talking on his cell phone (at 1’35’’)…think they could have clipped that out as Italians don’t need any encouragement as they are already always talking on their phones in the car even though it’s against the law (and dangerous for bikers like myself).
I’m just back from a few days of New Year’s celebrations in Trieste, which is tucked away in Italy’s far northeastern corner. After a quick look at the map it will not surprise you to hear that this sliver of coastline has been contested through the ages and it’s not entirely unreasonable to presume that Trieste could now be part of a different country if 20th Century history had gone a little differently.
New Year's fireworks in Trieste
Trieste was the only port of the Austrian Empire for centuries and then with the birth of Austria-Hungary in the 19th Century the city’s importance grew as it became the empire’s most important port and fourth-largest city (after Vienna, Budapest and Prague). With this much non-Italian history in its past, Trieste promised to offer some interesting eating opportunities.
The menus of most of the city’s restaurants look as if they could have been imported from someplace a bit further north and east. Lots of goulash everywhere, sausages and other Mitteleuropa goodies that after a meal leave you wondering if your heart and veins will go on strike to protest the fat content.
I ignored my heart for three days (hope it doesn’t hold a grudge) and indulged. I’m normally not a fan of boiled meat, but in Trieste they boil pork to perfection and they pull the meat out of the water long before the taste has seeped away, as happens with boiled meat in the Cremona-Mantova area. Another enjoyable local dish is goulash with gnocchi di pane. The goulash is the goulash of Hungarian fame though the gnocchi rather than the small potato gnocchi common on Italian menus are large balls of bread, milk, eggs, cheese and meat that make them essentially like the canederli you find in Trentino-Alto Adige.
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is barely more than an hour from central Trieste so a visit to one really should include a stop by the other. More sausages, more meat, more testing of my heart’s resilience.
The conspiracy against my heart continues in Ljubljana
Ljubljana is positively beautiful and I’m already negotiating with my heart and veins about when I can return. It seems I’ll be allowed back in a year’s time as long as I limit myself to one sausage a day.
I’ve just returned from a place that uses $50 bottles of wine to cook beef for hours at a time, eats raw meat with the same gusto as the French, uses butter liberally, has almost no idea what olive oil is, takes pride in dishes that use the most unappealing parts an animal has to offer and then washes it all down with some of the very best red wines in Italy and, this is not an exaggeration, the world. Oh yeah, they also have a thing for white truffles that at present are going for a cool 4,000 euros a kilo.
Sagra in Barolo dedicated to bollito misto
Alba brandishes its foodie credentials
Roasting chestnuts in Alba
Got a grand (that’s euros) to drop on a fungus?
For budget shoppers who still want to bring home a fungus
Barolo is not only about wine and beef…ever seen leeks that incredible?
Of course this could only be Piedmont, that huge Italian region tucked into the country’s northwest corner on the border with France (hence the raw meat and butter). More specifically, I was in the Langhe, an area of Piedmont that includes Alba – probably the most foodie of all Italian cities, edging out a few other finalists that include Bologna – as well as Barolo and the other ten towns where Barolo wine is produced.
I tried bollito misto, mixed boiled meats, only because I pride myself on trying everything once (and then if I don’t like it I try again in five years). This is not something that is easily appreciated, to be honest my stomach turned when I got my first whiff. Ingredients in a traditional recipe include: 800 grams of beef tongue, 1 kilo of calf’s head, half a chicken and sausage. For 6 kilos of meat the recipe also calls for four carrots and three onions so rest assured that you have your veggies covered.
Then there is the finanziera, which for the uninitiated makes eating bollito misto seem downright enjoyable. It’s a stew of sorts the ingredients of which include: 1 calf’s brain, 200 grams of a chicken’s crest, 500 grams of various calf glands. I’ll stop here because I’m still hoping to work up an appetite by dinner time. So as a rule I do try everything, but there are some things I don’t try so I can have an exception that proves the rule. Not sure I understand the logic, but it seems that if you have an exception it makes the rule stronger. Anyway, for the finanziera I opted for the exception. Even I have limits.
Fortunately Piedmontese cuisine is not only about boiling, stewing or frying (fritto misto, I’ll spare you the details of this one) those parts of the animal that really are not meant for eating.
It’s not often that most of us open a $50 bottle of wine, unfortunately. On the other hand, if you live in southern Piedmont where Barolo flows from the taps you can be a bit extravagant and make Brasato al Barolo. I’ve had it and can say it lives up to the hype. If you want to try at home, which I haven’t, mostly because I drink my $50 bottles of wine, here is a great recipe. It’s in Italian but for those not versed in the language, there’s a video that includes some holiday music to get you in the mood (in case the crowds in the stores haven’t already done that for you).
Barolo is worth a visit if just for the views of the surrounding countryside and to have a glass of the good stuff in its namesake town. I had the fortune – misfortune? – to arrive in time for a sagra dedicated to bollito misto. Ever wonder what happens with retired military have a bit too much bollito and cheap wine on a nippy afternoon in Barolo (nobody gets hurt):
Insider tip: when you go to Barolo, give the wine museum a pass. And if you must go, make sure it’s after several wine tastings (the type where you don’t spit out). Two good parts of the museum, though alone they don’t merit a visit, are a series of film clips where wine is part of the scene and a slide show of pieces of art that feature wine.
Eating pizza is a large part of life in Italy. Let me rephrase that as I don’t want to speak for the 60 million people who live in this country. Eating pizza is a large part of my life. I … Continue reading →
Until just a few years back, come early December I’d begin counting down the days until Christmas as I imagined all the great gifts that awaited me. The anticipation has faded in correlation with a drop off in gifts, both in quantity and quality (the abyss was touched last year with the wife giving me a pair of slippers, I’m not sure what that says about the wife or me, but it feels worrying on so many levels).
So I won’t be counting down to Christmas this year (also because feigning delight at my gifts is getting progressively harder), but not too far away there is an event to look forward to – the mother of all Italian wine tastings. Mark your calendar, 24 March 2012, and if you are the compulsive type and want to know exactly far away that is, somebody has you covered (last I looked we’ve got only 114 days, 11 hours, 50 minutes and 17 seconds to wait). Continue reading →
