Cinque Terre!!

This past weekend I hopped a train to the Cinque Terre, five tiny, steep villages on the Italian riviera that are barely accessable by car, you would have to park on the outskirts and hike in.



There's a trail that runs between them, about 13k. But, you traverse mountains. A bunch. All the way up, all the way down. Almost completely on the coast... yeah. It's amongst the most beautiful hikes in the world.

Janene and I arrived in the first village, Riomaggiore, on Saturday afternoon, and just happened to fall into a food festival, score! We grabbed a quick, cheap, adorable hotel room, dropped our bags, and headed back down for some grub.

We sampled cheese, wine, procuitto, and these magical sandwiches. The guy above is griddling little flatbreads, filled with a mix of mashed potatoes, cheese, and sundried tomatoes. They were better than they even sound. I am going to work on replicating this as soon as I get home.

Then we grabbed a couple of cold, frosty Peronis, and grabbed a cozy rock by the shore. The water is crystal clear, but a bit cold for my taste. Hanging by the water watching the boats dock is heaven.

Sunday morning, after an amazing, super fresh seafood feast (which we shared with the stray kitty that hung out on the terrace) we started the hike. The first leg is super easy, it's called "the Tunnel of Love." Above is part of its charm, travelers leave their locks on every available space along the walk, in a quaint symbolic tradition.

The other part of the charm (aside from the casual natural beauty) is the elaborate graffitti that adorns the tunnel. The entire length is marked, some of the art rivals museum quality. I personally liked the extensive seascape that covers this stretch.

Everyone passing through leaves thier mark, and so did I. Though, less impressive than some of the other works.

Manarola is the next village you come to, where we found fishermen with their fresh catch. These are giant cuttlefish, pulled from the boat minutes before, dripping with ink and scented like cool Ligurian breeze...

Manarola behind us, off to Corniglia.

This is the coastline your steps trace the entire way. The trail ends another bay or two past the distant one in this picture.

But if you want to get to Corniglia, you must ascend. Many, many steps. These are actually the easiest steps... and yeah, they go all the way down to the train tracks in the picture.

A brief stop for espresso and the bagno, then the difficult part begins. Well, the almost difficult part. Off to Vernazza!!

This area is known for its great foraging. These people were harvesting bags full of wild arugula. There's also asparagus, mushrooms, herbs, citrus, and ancient olive trees.

Vernazza, from above. It was about 12:30, so time for lunch.

In hindsight, a bad idea. Not that the fresh, wood-fired tomato flatbread or beer weren't perfectly tasty, but the most difficult leg was ahead of us. If you ever hike it, don't take the break. Grab some salumi and keep trekkin', because it's a real pain to start up that last, treacherous mountain after stopping, especially in the heat of the day.

Vernazza in the background. Ow. But, completely worth the searing pain in your calves.

Because of these. Honestly, these are some of the easiest stairs/ascent on this leg. It gets pretty hairy up there! And man, if you want a leg workout, climbing mountains high enough to make your ears pop through terraced vineyards is the way to go. Bring a bottle of water and comfy shoes...

There's Monterosso, the little white specks on the distant shore. Notice the mountain I'm on, and the fact that we have to get to the bottom of this one, then back up and over the one in the foreground, and the one after...

But it is dripping in plants, little lizards, and super picturesque scenes the whole, entire, arduous route.

It's a bit hard to tell from this picture, but aside from the tuft of grass there, the greenery is the tops of the trees... and my heel is pressed against the stone wall... it actually gets narrower than this in a few places. And steeper!

Still steep. Janene had to turn around to let that guy pass, because the drop... Is. Damn. Steep.

Almost there! The roughest spots behind us, the end and some gelato are in sight!

We made it! The entire journey, burning legs, sweatier than I've ever been before, and still completely enamoured by the veiw. I highly, highly reccomend this journey to any nature lovers who like a good thrill.

And the gelato at the end tastes all that much sweeter... I won't describe our, ahem, odor, but it was the most amazing hike I've ever done. We went back to our room in Riomaggiore, showered, passed out, and caught the train back this morning. First open weekend... a complete success. If anyone ever wants to come do this hike, I will volunteer to be your trail guide...

La dolce vita!

Yesterday we took a field trip to Perugia, chocolate capital of Italy, to get certificates at the Scuola di Cioccolata, for working with chocolate. I even have a series of pictures in which I look quite serious about my chocolate making:

Making the white chocolate and limoncello filling.

Tempering the chocolate, so that it will be smooth and shiny. Without this step, the chocolate wouldn't be crisp, and the color and texture would be off.

Pouring the excess tempered chocolate out of the molds.

Piping the filling into the molds after they set.

And the final product: chocolate roses with white chocolate-limoncello filling. They're pretty tasty, I saved you some :)

The chocolate factory we trained in is famous for their "baci" or "kisses", which are lumps of chocolate with a hazelnut or cherry loomped on top. Our tour guide's outfit actually looked kind of oompah-ish, but I think she didn't mean to do it on purpose...

I suppose I should explain about the bus before I go on. We take a large tour bus to our destinations when we go on field trips, and... "uncomfortable" just doesn't describe the gut-wrenching horror of having to ride on that thing. Sure, it LOOKS nice enough, from the outside, but once trapped within it becomes a sweltering muggy cesspool of straight-backed seats and terrifying views out the windows as our suicidal drivers hurtle us down winding roads next to sheer cliff faces and honk angrily at the smaller cars our bus needs to eat to fuel its rampage.

The first field trip driver merely looked depressed, and we worried for his sanity. We were a bit erked when he said that we couldn't eat on the bus, but we dealt with it.

This guy, though, has some sort of vendetta against dirty tourists. He wouldn't allow us to take our backpacks onto the bus, and he put towels down on the steps and glared at us when we walked on. Same exact bus as last time, mind you.

Luckily, Perugia was only an hour away, and the driver didn't know English. We joked around in gruff Italian accents about it to pass the time... "no backpacks on the bus! No walking on the bus! No sitting on the bus!! No standing on the bus!! NO LOOKING AT THE BUS!!!! MY BUS!!!"

All of us were damn happy to get off the bus and go to lunch, to top it off the guy didn't understand the directions and kept having to make u-turns. We finally found a restaurant that would accommodate the 20 of us, and it was probably the best meal I've had since I've been here, just a guy and his wife cooking simple food in a little village outside Perugia.

Risotto croquetta, cappicolo, procuitto on fried flatbread.

Homemade pasta in a light tomato sauce with grated pecorino cheese.

Green salad, wood-oven roasted ribs and pork chops, and sausage with chickory. Fantastic.

After the brutal bus ride, my table got... a little rowdy with the endless flow of awesome table wine served in carafes pulled from the barrel in the kitchen. Only then did we figure out that we were visiting a winery afterwards. It was a pretty giggly wine tour.

This was one of the larger wineries in Umbria, they produced several kinds of wine, including sparkling.

Alas, the bottles above were not for sale :(

Then we did a tasting of the wines from the vineyard, and toured an amazing wine museum, and an (also amazing) olive oil museum. I wish we could have spent more time in them, but we had dinner reservations at the Michelin-starred Tre Vassiles pictured above.

Either late tonight or early tomorrow, I'm leaving for Cinque Terre, so I won't be posting over the weekend, but I should (hopefully) have some good stories and pictures when I get back.

Ciao!

When in... oh, nevermind.

You've all seen this, so I feel it needs no introduction. It definitely lives up to, and exceeds expectations.

I spent all of yesterday in Roma, with the stated purpose of finding "exotic" ingredients like avocados that cannot be obtained in the little citta of Orvieto. So... internship cred! I really think that walking around Roma seeing ancient ruins and marveling in the splendor of centuries of human achievement may be the best way to garner credit hours towards my degree. I highly recommend it for any students out there.

Oh yeah, workin' hard, learnin' things. School rules.

Today, my camera arrived. I think that I would have actually spent less trying to get it out of the mafia, because the Italian government decided to charge me a 46 euro tax on a tiny FedEx box that had already been paid for. Jerks. I might be more peeved if they hadn't given us democracy and yummy food. They lucked out, this time.

So... after sleeping in and Skype-ing the boyfriend I took a small photography excursion around Orvieto. I love this city. In the above pic you can see the sheer precipice that greets you upon wandering to the city limits. The round structure to the left is the pope's well, a really unique structure with wide steps built for donkeys to retrieve water. The unusual part is the double-helix formation of the stairs as you descend/ascend, never crossing each other. The leaves have begun to sprout on all the trees in the countryside below, in a couple weeks the grape leaves should pop out and bathe the countryside in verdant splendor, until then it's only "mostly" beautiful. Of course I'm kidding.

I didn't have enough time today to walk this whole trail, but you can wind around the volcanic plateau on the trail pictured above. It's really beautiful and the weather is getting pretty fantastic. I had to cut this hiking session short- and rush to my wine tasting class with the Italian sommilier. Damn the humdrum life of a student!! Classes to attend, DOCG wines to taste, food to nosh... you should be glad I'm here taking care of these issues so you don't have to suffer!

I will have to apologize now for the brevity of this post, I need to get a head start on my homework for the weekend, as tomorrow I'm going to Perugia to practice chocolate artistry with master pastry chefs, then have another multi-course meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. This weekend I'm going hiking in the Cinque Terre with one of my roommates, if all goes as planned.

Buena notte!

Glorious, glorious grapes.

Soo... I hate to do this, but I must compile these two experiences into one blog just to catch up. Things... are dramatic in a very fantastic way here, I'm slipping this post in as fast as I can whilst my roommates argue over who buys the wine tonight (they both want to buy, I want to sit back and laugh at how this is my biggest problem at the moment, aside from Fedex).

The tiny barrels above are full of ambrosia, leaked from Jupiter's secret vault into the Tuscan countryside and labeled with tiny placards that gloss over the true beauty of the contents within. I could wax philosophical about their contents and history for several pages, but alas, I will make a feeble attempt at an overview.

We've all heard of a yumm-tastic substance called balsamic vinegar. Some of the more culinarily inclined may even be thoroughly familiar with a balsamic reduction. But the minute centurion vessels pictured above are filled with Acetico Balsamico Tradizionale, a product so unlike the balsamic vinegar any of us are familiar with. Only two producers that use this ancient technique actually produce enough to release a few bottles for sale, the rest hoard their liquid love for their families and most beloved friends.

The piccolo barrels are made of not only oak, but also chestnut, cherry, and acacia woods. The vinegar from this producer is made from the must of first pick, top-quality Lambrusco grapes.

Then there's these barrels, also 100 years old, that the vinegar actually develops in, before transitioning through the smaller varied barrels. The must (mushed up grapes with the stems and pips removed) is placed in these 5 guys, then every year, as evaporation lowers the levels of the liquid naturally, the small barrel is topped off from the barrel before it, and the larger barrel's contents are scooted into the next smaller barrel. Once the contents have undergone enough evaporation to fit into the small barrel, the acetico (vinegar) is thick, like a reduction, or essentially the texture of warmed honey. Only after this natural, slow process is the vinegar tasted, then the flavor adjusted by moving it in progression through the various types of wood, each one selected to add richness, fruitiness, sweetness... or whatever the maker decides is appropriate. After 29 years, it is bottled. Yeah, it's older than me.

Normal balsamic vinegar is also made from grape must, but usually the second pick, and the flavor is enhanced by additives, caramel for color, and sometimes preservatives to help it keep. It's still quite tasty, and aged balsamic vinegars can run into the couple-hundred-bucks price range. This stuff kicks all those to the curb and chokeslams them while they're down. Yeah, it sounds exaggerated, but one little plastic spoonful caused my brain to melt and fly into an acidic euphoria equivalent to a kick on the magic 'shrooms. Okay, I'll admit that it may not be that intense, but it's damn good (note to parents: of course I've never had 'shrooms, it's simply alliteration. Note to friends "Duuuude, you gotta try this!!!)

Then there's these barrels, filled with every one's favorite grape derivative, vino! These belong to an awesome (and loaded- cha ching!) lady named Donatella, who makes both Brunello in Montecchino, and Super Tuscans on her villa in the Tuscan countryside.

Brunello is the DOC/DOCG wine from the Montecchino area, and is made of Sangiovese grapes. It's made of happiness as well, a nice, bold, peppery red that does need some maturation to open up, but develops into a complex and refined powerhouse vino rosso that compliments game, red meat, and other hardy meat substances like salumi quite well.

Super Tuscans are technically "table wines", as they're made of grapes not approved for the region by the consortzio, but they're amongst some of Italy's very best wines, and are quite vogue on fine dining menus. There's some of both on the way to your house, Mom and Dad, so I'm sure you'll find the appeal on your own.

The really interesting part of Donatella's wine empire is that her vineyards are staffed by women only, as Italy is still a somewhat sexist society, though not as much as in the machismo (is that a word?) times of yore. She does a lot for the community, and the vineyard had been in her family's possession for over a century- passed down to the first born daughter. It makes for a great story, great history, and damned impressive wine.

We also had a super awesome seven course lunch at her resort's restaurant. Once again, it's a hard life, but I'm determined to make the most of the meager experiences I've been receiving. Ouch, the sarcasm hurt me there for a minute.

The guy talking to chef Polegri above is a transplanted Sardinian shepherd who travels though the Tuscan countryside grazing his antique breed of sheep. The lambs were really adorable and looked tender and tasty. He was holding up our bus so that we wouldn't disturb his flock.

And here's Janene and Michele smiling at the beautiful Tuscan backdrop at the last stop on our journey. It may be the prettiest countryside on the planet. It sure felt that way.

Ciao, ragazzi

Tomorrow I will write more, as I spent the day in Roma wandering about and garnering the easiest internship cred ever. Until then, my roomies just decided that they'd both buy the wine, so I have to go :)

Procuitto de Parma

The word "procuitto" basically just means "ham" in Italian, and the root of the word is actually derived from "acuitto", meaning "to dry". Several types of procuitto are DOP products, the second most highly regarded is Procuitto de Parma. (San Danielle Riserva is considered to be of higher quality, from the north, but personally it's a bit to sweet for me, though still very nice). All procuitto is made from the hind legs of pigs. Procuitto de Parma is crudo- raw, as opposed to cotto, meaning cooked, so no heat is involved in this process ever.

The pigs used for Procuitto de Parma are fed acorns and grains, and again, the diet is strictly controlled by the consortzio. In fact, they also must drink some of the milk left over from Parmegiano-Reggiano production. Only the male pigs are used- their muscle-to-fat ratio is higher, and the legs themselves are generally larger. When the pigs are slaughtered, the legs must be cut quite carefully, as only a certain cut can be used for the consortzio, any "inferior" legs will be sold as procuitto natzionale, their "generic" qualification.

The plants are strictly controlled, and must have windows of a certain shape and size in the curing rooms. The whole process is very specifically defined, any deviation and the hams will not recieve the crown brand. The machine above is the first step when the legs arrive. It is filled with sea salts, and has paddles inside that gently massage the legs to relax the muscles, and work out any blood that may remain in the vessels. The salt is also applied in the machine, but each leg is checked by hand, and the area around the bone is salted by the workers, as only a trained eye can really apply the right amount of salt.

The legs are placed on thier sides at this point, and moved into a refrigerator set at 1-4 degrees celsius, where they will remain for one week.

After the first refigeration, the legs are run through another massaging machine, and salted again. A worker then carefully ties waxed rope around the hock of each leg and hangs it inverted on these racks. The racks are placed into a different refigerator, set at 5-8 degrees celsius, for two weeks. They are then salted and massaged agian, and aged in the refrigerator for another 6 months.

After the refrigerated aging process, the legs are moved to the curing area, which is in the basement, so a bit cooler than room temperature. A mixture called "sonia", made of pork fat, rice flour, salt, and pepper is rubbed onto the exposed muscle (but not the skin), to help preserve and protect this area. The fat is to seal, the salt to preserve, the rice flour allows it to stick, and the black pepper keeps insects at bay. A very thin strand of muscle is left uncovered-only the area by the cut of the skin on the inside of the leg, called the "crown". They are aged for 12 months in this room.

I wish I could say that no horses were harmed in this process, but horse bone is very pourus, so a specially carved piece of horse leg bone is used to check the legs. It is inserted at five points on each individual leg, and a highly trained consortzio inspector quickly smells the bone. Their sense of smell is so refined that they can sense if there is any trace of blood or mold in the ham, which would cause the leg to be rejected and used as procuitto natzionale, after the bad part is trimmed away.

The highest quality legs have very little hair, smooth, unscarred skin with minimal capillaries visable, and absolutely no bruising. Every part of the leg is checked, and must be perfect. After aging, the locals cut off the sonia, and use it to make a kind of salumi, so once again, nothing is wasted.

I think that's enough for today, tomorrow: Balsamic vinegar, the good stuff. And by good stuff, I really mean it. If I have time (which I hopefully should), Brunello from Montecchio and lunch at a villa in Tuscany. Life is damn hard here in Italy *wink wink*.

Buena notte, ragazzi.