It’s not every day that you walk by François Mitterand on the road to Paciano. Unless, of course, your friend, the Bossy Blonde, has decided that the flattened frog on your morning walk should have a name and that it should be of a dead French man, and that she only knows of one. I am totally in favor of this. I am decidedly all for the anthropomorphizing of any and everything (I have named all of the cars I’ve ever owned, obnoxiously enough) and why not memorialize the man whose last meal was a tribute to the particularly cruel, yet delicious, cuisine of his homeland (the outlawed eating of ortolan, anyone) by naming roadkill after him?

Anyway, after two full weeks of the daily sighting of Monsieur Mitterand in all his squashed glory, he was absent today, no longer a mile marker for my morning routine, having most likely been washed away in the torrential, unseasonable downpour we had in Umbria on Saturday. A storm that started just as our poor, mistreated and overworked Fiat gasped back into town after a ridiculous “little drive” that should have taken 45 minutes.

We had set out to go to a cheese factory outside of Todi with the idea to then carry on to Orvieto for some lunch and bubbles, but it quickly devolved from a great plan into a two and a half hour carnival ride on roads that Bossy later described as like “driving on radiatore, radiator shaped pasta” through the insane mountainous landscape. It was BRUTAL, and only salvageable as a day because there was CHEESE (my favorite being the black truffle pecorino) at the finish line at Caseificio Montecristo.

photo courtesy of Bossy Blonde (her pictures are much better than mine)

I didn’t take my camera with me for our quick little day trip into Montepulciano, a trip in which the single most notable part was the absence of car sickness on my part. I am incredibly sad about this (the lack of a camera, not the nausea) because we stumbled across something meaningful to me on a multitude of levels-- a store full of hand forged copper pots called Rinomata Rameria Mazzetti. It made the metalsmith geek in me absolutely giddy and it made the soup maker in me literally squeal.

“Oh my Gaaaaaaaawd. It can’t be!” I said in my best American Tourist accent to Bossy as we passed a window lined with copper bowls, vessels, fondue makers, baptismal fonts, you name it. There were repousséd copper sheets made to be used as house numbers in shapes of grapes and what I’m assuming is Bacchus (this is a wine region, after all), tiny butter and milk warmers and ladles. Basically, if I thought I could have gotten away with it, I would have hugged the nice Italian lady whose husband’s family have been coppersmiths for five generations, purchased 90% of her inventory and then bought a ramshackle Italian stone villa to house it all. I could momentarily imagine a whole new life created around this Tuscan kitchen... luckily for me, I don’t have the available balance (or the pot rack) to do such a thing.

Anyway, Mom, Dad, Secret Admirer(s): if you’re reading this give the nice Italian lady a call; though she doesn’t speak much English, she’d love to meet your Visa card, and I’d love a giant rondelle to make soup for 25 when I get home (2 mm thickness of the copper, please).

PostedAugust 15, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriesgear and miscellany

Tagsumbrian adventure, august adventure, umbria, viva italia!, copper pot, gear, Tuscany, Bossy, hand forged, montepulciano, rinomata rameria mazzetti

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Despite all my good intentions to zuppapoloooza! as soon as I hit terra firma here in Italy, there sadly was no zuppa in the ‘polooza of this Sunday. Instead there was a road trip to a famous macelleria, an Italian butcher shop. Destination: M with a capital E - A - T. This is no ordinary butcher shop, oh no, this is a full five course meat tasting-- yes MEAT TASTING-- at the butcher’s restaurant across the street from the macelleria. Who could say no to that?

Dario Cecchini and his beautiful shop in Panzano, Chianti, Antica Macelleria Cecchini, were made even more famous in Bill Buford’s 2006 book Heat, becoming arguably the most celebrated butchery in Italy-- if not to Italians, then certainly to Americans. I knew about Dario (I call him Dario because we’re that close despite us not actually knowing each other or sharing a common language in which to communicate) because I read Buford’s book; unfortunately I never got to the part that related to Dario because I was kind of irritated with Bill Buford as soon as he stopped talking about Mario Batali and started talking about Bill Buford. He’s about as fun as searing your hands while preparing short ribs in a blazing kitchen. Instead of being a wild boar, which I love and have not stopped eating as a ragu since I got here (cinghiale!), he’s simply a bore which is simply intolerable.

So we set out on our quest for carne...

I have made it through my first week in Umbria, having suffered through a mild case of jet lag and uncomfortable travel shoes, to find myself relaxed, no longer pronouncing my Italian “gi” as two syllables and with a gullet continuously full of Prosecco and Chianti. This would probably mean that getting out the post about the last stateside soupapaloooza! from TWO weeks ago is kind of important so I can move on to the really fun Italy stuff like handsome famous butchers and hand forged copper pots; both of these things appealing to the true inner geek in me. But I would not be doing anyone any favors if I failed to mention the delicious American soup and the great party that we had back at the loft so many time zones ago.

I’ve never been a huge fan of corn. My mom, the Tiny Dancer, loves it and prepared it all the time when I was little, but I hated the way the silks would get caught between my teeth and there was something that, to me, seemed so undignified about the sloppiness of nibbling it off the cob. I was a fairly persnickety kid, shocking, I know. I also hated the way she considered corn a vegetable, which it kind of is not. “Kind of” because it’s a crop that is usually harvested to be dried and made into a grain, though the fresh corn we eat is technically vegetable because of how we eat it. It’s still sugary as all get out and I consider it more of a grain, and grains and sugars have a tendency to make me kind of grumpy, which no one needs to be around to see. I’ve generally steered away from the corn vendors at the street fairs and at places like Café Habana in New York despite their tremendous gravitational force.

PostedAugust 8, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriessoup

Tagspinchy travel shoes, umbria, recipe, white corn, getting 50 ears of corn to your car is a workout, soup, buttermilk ice cream, corn, umbrian adventure, august adventure, zucchini, soupapalooza!, jetlag, blueberry cobbler, zucchini salad, poblano, Semi-Sweet Bitters, meal worms

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A bird pooped on my head and down my shirt this last Sunday, which only further bolsters my long brewing animosity towards nature. I’m not a happy camper, quite literally, and I’ve never understood why sleeping outside of four walls and a roof is any more magical than driving out to a location well beyond the lights of the city to marvel at the stars and then returning to a place with a hot shower and clean sheets. I don’t need or have any desire to wake up, dirty, with a creaky back and caffeine withdrawal, only to hike back to my overheated car, no thank you.

Two of my fellow ‘paloozians had milestone birthdays within two days of each other this week, and though I will not repeat that scary number (scary at least to single girls with pet children), it rhymes with worty, which no one wants to be except Madonna who, in a fit of good Kabbalah luck was “enlightened” at worty.

Anyway, in an impromptu celebration of these two women, a few of our rag tag crew drove up north of Santa Barbara to a very beautiful state park and went glamping. No, that was not a typo; we went “glamorous camping”, which I would argue, is as much an oxymoron as jumbo shrimp. What exactly is glamping you ask? Glamping basically consists of a few steps. One: drive to a very nice campground in your Prius (for the record and as I stated earlier, the environment and I are not exactly facebook friends, so obviously the Prius belongs to someone else-- I prefer my cars to get less than 14 MPG) which will be weighted down with three ice chests full of such necessities as carrot cake, israeli couscous salad, artisanal goat cheese, truffle sausage and fig jam. Next, pay the nice lady in the log cabin the cost of a very nice piece of furniture for two nights, spend the next hour unpacking the car and then apply bug spray before settling in to your posh camp house, which is really just a re-branded mobile home made to look like a log cabin. And finally, after all this, order your BBQ kit consisting of hamburger, fixins, tools and ingredients to make s’mores, to be delivered directly to your fire pit for dinner.

PostedJuly 21, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriessalad, vegetarian

Tagssalad, glamping, dried cherry, recipe, roasted beets, worty instead of 40, walnut, the great pothole of 39, blue cheese, beets, cabrales, not a friend of mother earth, Leggsy McGhee, a bird pooped on my head, Innercity Velvet, Maria-Hold-the-Eggs, Jihad Jenni

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cannellini soup: A road to Rome isn’t necessarily the road to Rome

I have a dream: that one day this kitchen will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed--that all copper pots are created equal.

the long and winding road to meat: two blondes, two and half hours and too much to eat

white corn with poblano cream puree: LAX CDG BLQ (updating in umbria)

roasted beet, cabrales, dried cherry and toasted walnut arugula salad: rock out, whatever

Why? Because soup is cheap, delicious and easy. Kind of like me.

a weekly attempt to eat well and to savor life. or to see how much food I can get on my clothes.