Al Tranvai has the reputation of being one of those old fashioned, traditional restaurants in the working class neighborhood of San Frediano. But for some reason it often slips between the cracks of foodie destinations and is never on the top of anyone’s hit list.
It should be. Al Tranvai serves some of the best - and often creative food - in Florence, at an extremely reasonable price with some of the friendliest service around.
I love leeks. When they are in season, I’ll make sure to buy as many as will fit in my shopping bag each Saturday at the Farmer’s market. I’m never sure what I’ll do with them, but know that whatever I’m making can only be made better by a leek or two.
Rarely do I cook them on their own. Although my sisters and I grew up loving leeks vinaigrette, these days I almost never serve them on their own. Instead, they make their way into frittatas, pastas and soups, adding not only their distinctly pungent yet delicate flavor, but acting as a thickener when they become meltingly tender.
When I started planning my newest app, EAT VENICE, I asked friends and colleagues for their ‘top five’ Venice lists. I had my own favorites, but I always like to check in with people whose opinion's I trust. Almost every single one of them named Antiche Carampane as their number one choice.
Other restaurants like Corte Sconta, Testiere and La Bitta I'd been to many times over. But somehow Antiche Carampane had eluded me.
Since I published my apps EAT ROME (March 2011) and EAT FLORENCE (MAY 2011) I’ve gotten an incredible amount of positive and constructive feedback from everyone who has downloaded them. Everything from suggestions for new restaurants to corrections of spelling mistakes. Grazie!
In addition I’ve gotten a lot of fan mail just thanking me. Well, thank you! I couldn’t have done it without your encouragement and support.
One of the recurring themes among the emails, Facebook comments and twitter messages has been Venice. As in “When are you going to do EAT VENICE?”
Remember that post I did last week? About throwing a dinner party? I wrote about how I do like to cook all , but don’t want to spend any time whatsoever in the kitchen once my guests get here.
This has to do with making guests feel welcome. And preparing something special is certainly part of that approach. But. (you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, right?) But... even though I want to go all out, I don’t necessarily want to spend oodles of money.
In other words, I want it to seem as if I went all out, but at the same time I know that if I am going to be cooking for 8 people (and me being me I’ll make enough for 12, just in case) I can’t start out with expensive basic ingredients.
I’m not sure how other food bloggers do things. I always have this sneaking suspicion that everyone else is much more organized than I am. You know. They decide they’re going to write about something. Then they go out and buy the ingredients. Then they spend a lot of time photographing not only the ingredients, but also styling the finished dish.
I’m kind of lucky if we get dinner on the table.
Some of the best Italian recipes are barely recipes at all. Almost every restaurant in Rome serves some sort of greens, ripassata in padella. This means boiling the greens (they are usually chicory, but can also be spinach, Swiss chard, broccoletti or any combination of those), draining them, then re heating the cooked greens, in a pan, with olive oil, garlic and a bit of red pepper.
Couldn’t be better.
Except it can.
There is another way of cooking greens that is not only easier, but (in my humble opinion) even more delicious. Rather than employ the two step process described above (and get two pans dirty!) this other way of cooking greens all takes place in one easy pot.
When I decide to have people over for dinner, I’m always on the lookout for a certain kind of recipe. I figure that since I’m throwing a dinner party, which is a special occasion in itself, that I should spend more time than usual preparing whatever it is I end up serving.
But. And this is a bit 'but.' Even if I spend hours in the kitchen that day (which I actually love the excuse to do) , the recipe should have absolutely no last minute fussiness once the guests arrive (which I loath.) Which is why soup is often my go to first course. I can make it ahead of time and then just reheat it before serving. No fancy schmancy kitchen antics involved.
So I can sit out in the living room, enjoying a cocktail, just like my guests. (you knew where this was going, right?)
You know how everyone is always writing recipes that use up leftover bits of cheese? Like this delicious one from Smitten Kitchen, for instance. What I want to know is why doesn’t anyone ever address the even more pressing issue of half-forgotten, unloved, leftover bits of dried out salami and random bits of cured meats.
Am I the only one with this problem? You know. Nubs of boar sausage. Slightly dried chunks of pancetta. A piece of duck prosciutto you were saving for a special occasion that never came.
I decided to use these odds and ends and adapt them to a recipe that my friend Judy posted a few weeks ago for radicchio roses. Actually, I adapted the recipe instead of following it faithfully mostly because I had forgotten to buy one of the key ingredients.
For the life of me, I don’t know why more people don’t know about Renato e Luisa. It’s not that people don’t go there. The restaurant is usually full. But when I say ‘people don’t know’ I mean, of course, the regular round of guide books/blogs/forums that English speakers and visitors to Rome turn to.
I admit it took me a while to get there too. I have a habit of trying out a new place for lunch, before I commit to dinner. And Renato e Luisa isn’t open for lunch. As most restaurants have begun to have hours that stretch from almost breakfast to dinner, Renato e Luisa refuses to even accept reservations before 8:30.
But persevere I did. And do. Because not only is the food slam dunk delicious, daily specials offer surprises that are a welcome change from the same old, same old of Roman restaurants.
Rome has been going through a bit of a restaurant explosion lately. Crisis? What crisis?
Or maybe it is the result of the financial crisis. If you can’t go on vacation, buy a house or a new car, at least you can afford to go out to dinner, right? That seems to be the thinking these days. Because not only have there been lots of new openings, the existing restaurants are all full, all the time.
There are certain phrases that just don’t translate from Italian into English.
The other day, Sophie and I were at the Farmer’s market in Testaccio. After I had finished choosing vegetables and fruit for the week, the woman who was waiting on me took me aside, and whispered “Do you want to buy my eggs.” After I hesitated a bit, (only because I wasn’t sure I had understood her correctly) she added “They come from my own chickens, and I’ve only fed them on grain and corn." And finally: “Sono da bere.”
I gave her a resounding yes, and as she was carefully wrapping up the feather-bedecked eggs, Sophie finally turned to me, as if I was insane, and asked “Are you really going to drink them?” Because ‘sono da bere’ means that the eggs are so fresh that they are drinkable.
About a month ago, when I was switching gears from fall to winter, and was about to get the Christmas tree set up, I decided I better do something about that squash sitting in the middle of the dining room table.
It had been there for a couple of weeks, a decidedly decorative mottled grayish green color, lumpy and misshapen in a sculptural kind of way. Domenico had brought it home one day from the Farmer’s market. I’d sent him off with a list of fall veggies including leeks, kale, potatoes and cabbage. And, scribbled at the bottom, ‘decorative gourds.’
You know the ones I meant, right? Those small, bright orange and green mini pumpkins and squashes? But I wasn’t so specific and so this is what he came back with. Which was fine, because even though it wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined, it was certainly pretty enough to act as centerpiece.
Even though I didn’t grow up in Italy, some of my most intense memories from my childhood date from the two years my family and I spent here. Food obviously looms large, and I’ve written a lot about that in this blog. Visits to the market, tasting my first slice of pizza bianca, gnocchi on Thursdays, the smell of artichokes in Campo de’ Fiori are all things that are as fresh today as they were decades ago.
But one of my most vivid memories - for both me and my sisters - was the spectacle that happened at Christmas in Piazza Navona. We had grown up in St. Louis and even though we did celebrate Christmas (despite being Jewish) the over the top fun fair atmosphere that transformed this Baroque piazza was one of the most completely magical, exotic and seductive events we had ever seen.
I had a funny conversation the other day in the Farmer’s market, as I was buying two huge bunches of cardoons. They sort of look like frosty celery, but on steroids. I was struggling to stuff the unwieldy stems into my shopping bag when my friend Scott asked me why I was buying them.
Um... because I love them? Because they taste delicious? “But they are such a pain to prep” he said. So I asked him, how do you usually cook them? And he replied: "Oh, me? I’ve never bought them, they are way too much trouble."
I don’t understand how cardoons got such a scary reputation. It seems like no one ever cooks with them because they think are too much work to prepare. But - and this question is not just for Scott - how do you know how much work they are if you’ve never even bought them?!
While everyone is talking about all the new places that have opened in Rome during 2012 (Romeo, Porto Fluviale, Panificio Bonci, Coramandel, No.Au., etc. ) I’m just having trouble visiting all the old places that I’ve never been to. I'll get to the new ones. I promise (resolution #1). But in the meantime I'm playing catch up with the old ones. (resolution #2)
A couple of weeks ago, on my way to Danilo, I stopped by Roscioli. No, not that Roscioli. And not that Roscioli either. This is the other Roscioli. The one that people tend to forget about.
