The Real Italy: Lardo

Lardo. Poor man's prosciutto. Modern chef-in-the-know's darling. If you've never had it, it's easy to describe (cured fat tasting of garlic and rosemary) and difficult to imagine. It's completely tender. Lardo, sliced super-thin, melts in your mouth but melts even faster on hot crusty bread. A sophisticated, spiced, Italian version of bread and butter.

A new friend took us, out of the kindness of his heart, up windy Tuscan roads to Colonnata. We saw lardo being made in the traditional manner. Not in some industrial, stainless steel vat....

...but in a cool basement on the foothills of a Tuscan village. Ugh. Disgustingly romantic, I know. Fat curing in a deeply scented cellar steps away from a cobblestoned Tuscan village.  And Colonatta's situation near/in the larger city of Carrara, known for its incredible peaks of marble, mean that the tomb-shaped curing bins are made of cool, porous Italian marble. And it means that we ended our afternoon in the farmed marble mountains. We tiptoed quiet around the puddles formed by water, which drips slowly through the marble. It was surreal to walk through a cave that felt more like a centuries-old church.

Here's to old rocks, new friends and fat.

the real italy: marrakesh ristorante

One of the best meals we had wasn't pasta, it wasn't in a small port town, and it wasn't expensive.

It was Moroccan cuisine at a restaurant off of the Loreto metro stop, and our entire meal was eleven euros. Our last night in Milan we stayed somewhere C. find on priceline, without any idea of where exactly it was. We got off the subway in the middle of going-home-from-school traffic and found ourselves in the middle of a crowd of kids and parents. The neighborhood was crowded, but with real people, not the hip and beautiful ones you find off the Via Montenapoleone. As we strolled around, looking for a restaurant, we were stopped dead in our tracks by the smell. 

It was a smell of cumin, ginger, and chiles.  And so of course, we entered. The spread of food behind the deli case was anything but typical: whole roasted fish with vegetables, bright red tomato salad, a hotel pan of thick, spiced lentils, a red sauce flecked with pepper seeds, black and green olives tossed in herbs, bright red meat on kebabs, ready to be grilled. C. and I looked at each other, and I tried not to squeal. We ordered a little bit of everything, including this beef tagine, which was incredible, dotted with soft red peppers, potatoes, carrots and slightly caramelized onions.

And next to the restaurant was a pastry shop loaded with delicious-looking cakes, tarts, and cookies. Their shapes (some smaller than others) and slight imperfections were a sign of homemadeness, and the moist, dense, perfect apple cake I got I am going to go ahead and give the title "Best Pastry I Have Bought in Europe". 

It wasn't Italian food, per se, but it was food in Italy by people who may call themselves Italian. And it felt real. And really, really good.

the real italy: part 2

Perhaps the happiest moment as a tourist comes when you feel your visions of a country aligning with reality. This can happen with food, such as with the ragu-stuffed arancini, above. It can also just as easily fail to happen with food (take the frozen paella served at so many bars here in Spain).  It happened to us in Italy, with the aperitivo. 

At first I kept cringing when little snack plates were brought out with our drinks, expecting an extra, probably astronomical charge. Apparently still hurting from the 2005 trip I took to Rome. Well, this trip's aperitifs and accompanying snacks definitely helped assuage the pain.   

As did some homey, saucy gnocchi.  A piece of modern Italy, a Milan self-service cafeteria, but with gnocchi as pillowy as anyone's nonna could churn out. 

And, of course, the further outside the city centers we got, the more "Italian" the landscape became. Things ceased to be tailored to English-speaking tourists. They ceased to even recognize our existence. Which is fine by me, if a bit confusing. It turns out when I go somewhere where I really can't communicate, at the prospect of a conversation, I get very giggly. 

For me, NOTHING (that I can think of right now) tells me more about a place than its grocery stores. And the ones in the small town of Lérici had my breath caught in my throat. These purple asparagus were enough to prompt me to have a "conversation" with the ancient shopkeeper. I think we talked about how white asparagus are common in Spain and Peru, and green everywhere, but that these purple ones were grown in Tuscany. I think. At any rate, I didn't say anything too offensive, because he let me take a picture.

The closer you get to nature, the more you really see a place. So we checked out of Milan ASAP, heading to the Italian coast. More to come with what we saw. Here's to Italy! A teaser:

the real italy: part 1

Italy.  The boot-shaped land of pasta, of mountains, of sea, of tiny Mediterranean villages, of the Tuscan sun, of so, so many....clichés. It is perhaps second only to France in countries that You Think You Already Know Before You Get There. And, Rick Steves will tell you, do NOT forget to make a trip to Cinque Terre, "the most fantasy-fulfilling stretch of the fabled Riviera..." where "the lure of the Mediterranean, Italy, and village life combine so potently". 

And if the dazzling photos, like this one of the stretch between two of the villages of Manarola and Riomaggiore, are allowed to speak, they do nothing but back him up.  But my trip to Italy this time around wasn't about backing up old, tired stereotypes. I wanted to taste and smell and catch the slightest glimpse of the REAL Italy. It was hard. Very hard. But I think I got some flashes of what Italy is, and it's not the perfect, idyllic Rick Steves version. But traces of the Italy of collective memory still do exist. You just have to look carefully past the modern, and carefully past the modern stylized to look like the past.  

THIS is Cinque Terre, folks.

Don't be fooled by my photography skills or angel-like baby, bottom right. This is Cinque Terre, where tourists (mostly American) walk ankle to ankle, often on metal trails, trying to get to the next already-completely touristified village, guidebook in hand. The natural beauty is still there, but it's hidden behind nets, khakis, and touristic signs, like the one that memorialized the Cinque Terre celebration of the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road. Huh?

Signs. Tourists. Plastic mardi gras colored cups. This is the real Italy, if you look along the beaten path.  That once secret gem of a bistro now posts their (beautifully written by a new friend) New York Times mention out front. Maybe even brings the writer to feel a little remorse. It's still Italy, but it's meta-Italy. 

There's the Italy of history, then there's the Italy that still pretends to be Italy of history, and the Italy of now, and the Italy of now as discovered by modern people, and the Italy of now as discovered that posts it discovery and invites a new, different type of person into its social circle, until that becomes the tired Italy. Then, of course, somewhere, there's the Italy of history that hasn't changed. Ready to be tainted by people like me, journalists, bloggers, adventurous and well-meaning travellers. It's complicated. 

But I suppose that's what Italy (and any other country) is. We Americans aren't good at living side by side with history...we aren't used to it. We feel compelled to take pictures and go "aweeee" a lot. And if you go in looking only for the first Italy, as we tend to do, the Italy of storytales, the blinders that you inordinately put on yourself are going to prevent you from seeing the real country. The country that is a mixture of modern and historical, contradictory but beautiful. 

That's the Italy I came out with visions of. Stay tuned for more....