Italy

Italy, Italy, Italy. This is where I spent the summer of my 19th year learning Italian. I always remember it as being a vaguely uncomfortable trip. The heat and humidity meant that my skin was horrible and I was constantly getting sick, I never had enough sleep and I must have gained 15 pounds in a matter of weeks. It was glorious! I love going back, so when my father took me with him a couple weeks ago I was a pretty happy camper. Work and travel? What could be better!?

Well. As it turns out wearing a suit and heels in the train is uncomfortable, especially when you have heavy bags to carry. And of course I left my jeans in Switzerland, and had to go shopping (I hate doing this in Italy, it's impossible!). It was uncomfortable, and yet I relished the feeling because it was so very Italian to me. Vaguely uncomfortable and completely wonderful. So what did we do?? I've already told you about the food, so let's talk about the touring!

My father has been staying in the same hotel in Florence for thirty years. It's called the Hotel Villani, run by one Erminio Villani, and it's a single floor in a building about a block from the Dome. In fact, the Cathedrale (di Santa Maria in Fiore) is so close that you can't take a picture of it out the window. It's just too big! Here is an example of my attempt:

 Pretty pathetic, no? Here is a better picture, taken down the block the night before:

I think it might be one of the nicest pictures I've ever taken.

While wandering around the city this time I stumbled across a little museum I didn't even know existed, the artifacts of which left me breathless for an entire day! Can you guess what it might have been? Probably not. It was the Salvatore Ferragamo shoe museum! As it turns out, you can order recreations of famous shoes worn by movie stars! Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren, among many others, wore his beautiful shoes in their movies. Even Marilyn Monroe! They are so beautiful in person that words cannot describe. And since photos are verboten in the museum I can't show you either. Just be sure you get yourself over to the website and have a look. It really has to be seen to be believed. (http://www.museoferragamo.it/en/scopri-cinema.php)

We took a trip outside of Florence one day to see Tuscany a bit. We went to San Geminiano, a little walled medieval city that has been beautifully restored and is now a world heritage site. Here is a photo:

We also saw Siena, which is worth a look although not as beautiful to me as many other Italian cities, and to a little town I had never heard of before called Monte Reggiano, where we ate incredibly tasty proscuitto on traditional tuscan bread (unsalted) and very fresh pecorino. Yum! Here is my father and our friends enjoying our wine in the rain. At the end of the day we headed to a farm that produces its own wine and olive oil, and which has a lovely restaurant. A truly Italian dinner followed, by which I mean pasta, meat, contorno of beans and a little dessert, all with plenty of wine!

The volcanic ash lengthened our stay in Tuscany by a couple of days, although we ended up getting quite a bit of work done while we were there. We had a ton of wonderful Tuscan food and got to spend more time wandering the city than we anticipated. But now I'm running out of more things to say about the trip, so I will leave you with some more photos (including a couple of the Ferrari museum in Modena). Enjoy!

 

Oh my beloved Dino. I want a car just like you!

Let's see where this goes

I'm not highly motivated to write at the moment, the weather over Lugano is absolutely dreadful and I'm in a bit of a food coma. Side note? Melt dark chocolate with a bit of butter and cognac. Seriously, it turned my mood around. Before I forget I also need to share a truly weird story. The past few days there have been more bugs than usual. Specifically I keep finding these giant brown spiders on my bedroom floor (and only in the bedroom). Now anyone who knows me knows I hate, loathe, despise and otherwise abhor spiders and bugs of all kinds. Even typing the words "spider" and "bug" give me the creepy crawlies. One of these spiders was even big enough that I could see it without my glasses on. Just to be clear, I can't see my own hand in front of my face without my glasses. Yikes. So when I saw the first giant critter I thought, "I don't have the energy to deal with this right now, I'm just going to trap it under a glass until I get the courage up to kill it". So I did. Except I never did get the courage to kill it, and more spiders kept showing up... long story short I basically have a little menagerie in the corner of my bedroom of spiders trapped under glasses. I'm started to feel like a creepy serial bug killer a la Silence of the Lambs, letting the bugs build up their terror before I kill them. But I'm not really like that! I just don't have the courage to kill them. This is why people have boyfriends and roommates, huh?

But on to nicer things. See I haven't told you about when my friend Jon was here and we went to Bellinzona for the flower festival. Up until this moment I wasn't sure if I was going to, because I'm feeling lazy, but here we go! Bellinzona has a market on the weekends, but one weekend a year they also have a flower festival where local florists submit impressive structures made of flowers (and wire, etc). The general public gets to vote! Here are some examples of the entries, which are located in little corners all over the city center:

Actually, I don't think the giant chair was entered in the competition, but still. It's pretty, right? There were also giant vegetable constructions suspended over the streets. At least I'm pretty sure one of them was supposed to be a carrot.

Throughout the rest of the year Bellinzona is known for the awesome castle whose wall cuts through the middle of the city. It's pretty confusing, we were attempting to access the castle by climbing up ancient stairs to locked gates, when in fact the part that was open for tourists was on the opposite side of town. Once we finally made it was started laughing at the entrance. The "door" is a concrete tunnel with a very high ceiling cut into a sheer wall of rock. You walk in a few yards and there is an elevator and a staircase going maybe four floors up to the castle grounds. It looked a little like something out of Lord of the Rings, I swear. Let's see if there's a good picture. This doesn't show the entrance itself, but it's cut into the wall of rock pictured here. Once you get into the castle walls you can walk up the tower to see the valley. It's really very pretty.

So Bellinzona was an utter success, but we were also able to visit Lugano and nearby Ponte Tresa, sort of the Tijuana of Italy and Switzerland. Only with pasta and cheese instead of drugs and booze. All in all it was a delightful weekend (with beautiful weather). Unfortunately I came down with a cold directly afterward, which I have only just kicked.

Here are a couple more pictures from the trip.

A traditional Swiss Alpine band!

A View!

Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote

I'm getting the jump on things, it's not quite Strawberry-Rhubarb season. Not quite, but good enough to get started. I've been homesick lately and this is something my mom taught me to make. You can do it in any quantity, just grab some rhubarb and a box of strawberries and get going! Don't forget to buy greek yogurt or ricotta to eat with it. 

Start by cleaning of your rhubarb. Isn't it funny looking? Like giant red celery! Slice the ends of with a sharp serrated knife, then start cutting the stalks on the diagonal into small chunks about an inch long. Try to make them even, and don't use the very end if it is completely green. Dump the rhubarb chunks in a pot and cover with some sugar. Toss them around a little to get them coated, and set them aside. Clean the strawberries and slice them, adding them to the pot. Once everything is sliced and in the pot, toss it around a bit to get it all coated. A note: if you're making the compote with strawberries you don't need that much sugar. In fact a variation on this recipe would be to squeeze and orange over the fruit instead.
Let the fruit sit for a half an hour, until the chunks have released some moisture in the pot.

Once there is a a bit of liquid in the bottom of the pot, place it on the burner and heat it up. You want to get the liquid bubbling but pay very close attention that it doesn't burn! Stir it frequently. Once the liquid has bubbled a bit, turn it down to medium low, stirring often and making sure it doesn't get too hot. In a half an hour or less, all the fruit should be melted down into a delightful looking compote. Taste it to see if it needs more sugar. When you're satisfied, take it off the stove and pour it into another bowl. Enjoy with yogurt, ice cream or by itself!

Red Velvet Cake in France

Finally I get around to telling you about the red velvet cake I made for my sister's birthday. Here's a picture:

As you can see it was made in the shape of a giant cupcake. I hate baking in this pan, you can never get the cake perfect. It's always a little overcooked. But you'll probably bake in a normal pan, right? Good plan. My sister loves cupcakes and cute pans, and she loves red velvet cake. The recipe was beautiful, as I said before we made a couple substitutions, as you can see below. Try it out, it's a fabulous and tasty recipe that will most likely turn out beautifully!

Red Velvet Cake with Fluffy White Frosting and Toasted Coconut

     Adapted from Joy the baker, from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

     makes 2 8-inch or 9-inch round cakes

8 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 egg

5 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

4 Tablespoons of liquid, either half coffee and half water, or half food coloring and half water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or one package of vanilla sugar)

1 cup buttermilk (or 3/4 cup plain yogurt and 1/4 cup milk)

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda (or one package of leavening)

3 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C).  Grease and flour two 8-inch or 9-inch round cake pans.  Set aside.  

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about three minutes.  Turn mixer to high and add the eggs. Mix very well

In a separate bowl mix together cocoa, vanilla and red food coloring (or coffee & water) to make a thick paste. Add it to the butter/sugar and mix it very thoroughly (this is especially important if you're using the food coloring - get all the batter red!

Turn mixer to low and slowly add half of the buttermilk.  Add half of the flour and salt and mix until combined.  Scrape the bowl and repeat the process with the remaining milk and flour.  Beat on high until smooth.

Turn mixer to low and add baking soda and white vinegar (we weren't sure if we should add them in the same place at the same time, so we put the baking soda on one side of the bowl and the vinegar on the other. It probably makes no difference whatsoever).  Turn to high and beat a few more minutes.

Spoon batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center cupcake comes out clean. It took our cake a looooong time to bake (over an hour) because of the mold it was in. I don't recommend it, the giant cupcake tends to overcook on the outside (although the inside was perfect).

Let rest in the pan for 20 minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

We didn't have cream cheese, so we used weird French cheese spread. I didn't know what proportions to use but it basically goes like this: Butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar. Mix it until you get the right consistency... Better yet, go to Joy's website and get one of her recipes!

Tips for frosting your cake: this is not easy. I'm not good at it...that being said, here are some tips that I've heard. Make sure the frosting isn't too cold, or it will be harder to spread. The cake should be at room-temperature or cooler at this point. Don't do it when it's right out of the oven! If you need to make a layer cake, make sure the tops of the layers are fairly even so they will sit flat when stacked. Start by putting a layer of frosting on the first cake layer, then placing the second layer upside down on top. Lightly press it down if it's uneven in certain areas. Now you're going to put the "crumb layer" of frosting on top. This is a thin layer of frosting that will be harder to spread and not look as nice. Frost the top first, then the sides. Put the cake in the fridge for a while and let the frosting set. After an hour or so, take the cake back out and put a much thicker layer of frosting on it, top first, then the sides. Let that set in the fridge for a while. Then you're ready to serve it!

The Last Two Weeks in Three Paragraphs (sorta)

Hi Everyone!

It's been a while...here's what's happened in the last two weeks:

1. Big meetings at work
2. Dad came to Switzerland
3. Dad and I went to Italy for a few days with a friend, they both got stuck for an extra four days because of a certain temperamental Icelandic volcano named Eyjafjallajokull. Yeah, you read right. 
4. My friend Jon came to visit Lugano from Paris
5. Eating. Eating. Eating. Eating. Eating. Food. Eating. 

Few! What have I baked since then? Well, for Dad a flour-less dark chocolate cake with brandied cherries and whipped cream, and after I got back, strawberry-rhubarb compote, hazelnut cake, parmeson cheese crackers and chocolate-banana muffins, and I'm working on making my own vanilla extract. Whew, I know. And I still need to post the red velvet cake! Would you forgive me if I directed you to lovely Joy's website where I found it? Then I can post a picture and tell you the substitutions I made: yogurt and milk instead of buttermilk, vanilla sugar instead of vanilla extract and a package of french leavening instead of baking powder (soda?). See? Easy...

Telling you all of what I ate will be harder...budino di riso, nutella, chestnut cake, apple tart, pasta, cheese, pasta, cheese, octopus salad, chicken liver pate (I should have made a record)...bistecca alla fiorentina (giant t-bone steak specially prepared in the florentine style), stinco (roasted forearm of a pig), fresh pasta with truffles, tiny tortellini in broth,  tortellini filling served separately, prosciutto, mozzarella di bufala, fresh pecorino, vitello tonato...the list goes on.

This is not even including the "advanced" 10-course meal I ate in Modena at a restaurant called l'Osteria Francescana, where we were served risotto flavored with (but not actually including) oysters, raw fish with (and I'm not joking) smoke, pan-roasted black cod with black tomato sauce, a soup inspired by "the flavors of the earth" including truffles and snails, beer (!), several different wines including one made of walnuts (which I skipped, of course) and a POTATO SOUFFLE, served in a potato skin, with vanilla cream. Let's not forget the roasted, square marshmallows on wooden sticks served after the dessert, and the tiny tiny cream puffs and assorted cakes served after that. As a gift after the dinner, we were given bottles of extremely aged balsamic vinegar, for which Modena is famous.

Would you believe that those to paragraphs are only a fraction of the total amount of food I ate in the last two weeks? More to come when I get my pictures off my phone.

The Longest Day

It's been a long, exhausting day which will be followed by a long, exhausting week. Things are lovely but sometimes a girl just needs a little break. Would somebody be so kind as to hit the off switch on my brain for a short while? K thanks then.

Still got two baking adventures to tell you about (actually more like three), but it'll have wait until I get back from Italy.

Catch you on the flip.

Easter in Brittany

I went on a wee vacation to France last week for Easter. It was so much fun to see my sister and brother-in-law and their rather large extended family again! Among other things we went to the weekly farmer's market, drank tasty tea, ate galettes, brioches, eclairs, tartes aux fraises, quiche and gratin dauphinois. And let's not talk about the chocolate...dear God we ate chocolate. For my sister's birthday we made sushi and I baked a red-velvet cake with (almost) cream cheese frosting. More about that recipe (courtesy Joy the Baker again) in another post.

Rennes is adorable! The center of town is still made up of rickety-looking, tudor-style buildings that tilt this way and that, and are painted bright colors. They look like they might fall down if you exhale emphatically or look at them sideways. Rennes is the capital of the greatest province in all of France (and every last department): Bretagne! Brittany is in the Western-most region of France quite near England. It's so close, in fact, that it shares many of the ancient celtic cultural traditions of the English isles such as monolithic monuments and some traditional cuisine and dress. This unique background makes Brittany different from any other region of France. The regional language, or patois, of Bretagne is closely related to Cornish and Welsh, from (can you guess?) Cornwall and Wales. There is also a strong celtic folk music movement in Brittany which revived the old tunes and instruments and reintroduced them into modern music. Go Bretons!

What is there to see in Brittany? Well, plenty. The coast of Brittany is dotted with small fishing towns which are quaint and serve unbelievable fish platters. Periwinkles, snails, tiny shrimp, big ol' crabs, coquilles st-Jacques (scallops) and raw muscles and oysters are popular, as are my personal favorites, langoustines (like small lobster/crawfish), served steamed with mayonnaise. One coastal town you may have already heard of is called Saint-Malo. It's a walled city that is hugely popular during the summer months, when it only rains 6 out of 7 days in the week. I wish I were joking...Saint-Malo has a wonderful, rich background in piracy and smuggling to nearby England. Now the city is a wonderful place to walk, sit on an old cannon overlooking the sea on a giant stone wall, go to a fancy, purified salt-water spa, or eat kouign amann. What's that? Mmmm, let's get the the food.

Besides raw shellfish (I cannot underscore enough how much raw shellfish is in Brittany, the quantity borders on obscene), the food of Bretagne is tasty and stuffed to the brim with butter. Kouign amann is one such buttery pastry typical of this region of France. To make it you take pastry dough, and you layer it with butter and sugar and fold it a few times. Then you layer it with butter and sugar and fold it a few times. Then you repeat...fifty million times. When you bake it for a while the sugar caramelizes and creates a bit of a crust on the outside. The inside is sugary, doughy and super super buttery. It's like eating a bit of crispy caramel slathered with melting butter. Yes, that's drool you just dripped on to your computer. I know, me too. But wait, there's more. Perhaps some of you who have visited France have tasted the local delicacy known as the crepe? Well if you did it anywhere but Brittany, you were fooled! The homebase, the epicenter, if you will, of the crepe, is Bretagne. Galettes, the savory kind, are made with buckwheat flour and can contain cheese, egg, ham, spinach or shellfish, or just about any other combination of vegetable, meat or seafood you can imagine. They are creative; I think I saw a hawaiian galette on the menu last weekend. They eat the galettes with cider, not like Martinelli's either. This is hard cider, weaker than beer but stronger than water. It's absolutely fantastic. Many people enjoy a kir breton as an aperitif, which is cider (or champagne or white wine) with creme de cassis, or blackcurrant liquor. It's actually originally from Burgundy, but let's just pretend, shall we? Authentic breton all the way.

Well this is a lot  more about Brittany than I was planning to write, but aren't you glad you know it now? No? Well too bad, it's my blog. Here are some pretty pictures from my trip: