Tag: food

Eating in again

Most mornings I pay what I call the ‘Volterran Sleep Tax’, and get up early to drop the trash down for collection. This must be done each morning, except Sunday, between 06:00 and 08:00. The trash is split between various types (normal, paper/cardboard, plastic and metal, organic, glass), each one having its own collection day(s).

Organico has 3 days, because, well… stinky. I think this is a fantastic idea, as it prevents the town from looking nasty for the visitors who arrive in the mornings. I’m an early riser anyway – when I’m in work I usually get up around the 05:15 mark – so it’s not a huge deal.

I usually do a walk after that, and document it here for you folks!

Yesterday, after the walk we just stayed in and Niamh threw lunch together from some odds and ends in the fridge. The thing about Italy, is that the ingredients here are so good, that food as inoccuous-sounding as I just made it, is actually pretty damn good!

I knocked half of my red wine over our lovely outdoor table. Sometimes I have the coordination and poise of a two-legged giraffe.

It was a hot one again yesterday, and we had a small stroll and topped it off with an amarena (cherry) granita each.

As I hadn’t been feeling 100%, I found myself wrecked tired after the short walk, and for the first time during this stretch I disappeared to my bed for a couple of hours, while Niamh snuck out to do some additional food shopping.

Niamh cooked again tonight, and it was a minced beef ragù, with a passata base. She began with a stir-fry of the holy trinity (celery, onions and carrot – often said to represent the Italian flag, but looking more like the Irish one!), and ended up with a nice, coarse (just the way I like it) sauce to go with the bucatini (thick spaghetti with a hole running through it). It was fab, and we have enough left over for more this evening!

Little did I know that during her sneak-shop while I was resting, she got some take-out from L’isola del Gusto – cherry (again), and their award-winning Crema d’Ersilia. We have enough left over of this too for this evening… Yummmm!

After dinner we went out for another stroll. They were setting up for a dance and music special in the Roman Amphitheatre. We caught a lovely sunset as we watched them prepare.

We went home, and watched the second episode of Orange is the New Black from the latest series. Not holding out much hope for the rest of the show after some of the dumb plot turns in that episode. Oh well.

This morning, Niamh paid the Sleep Tax, and so I was able to have a little lie in of 30 minutes before heading out for my usual walk.

Down in the valleys below, thick blankets of fog made islets of the colline (hills) below. This is the Tuscan countryside at its best.

Today, being Saturday, is market day! Instead of being in the Piazza dei Priori, it’s down in the main car-park, which might scupper our plans to visit Colle di Val d’Elsa today – but we’ll see. At least we’ll still have a mooch in the market! The Piazza is being used for a silent disco later on, so a chance to people-watch at their most primal, then.

A presto!

Holiday day! Eating out.

Peak laziness was achieved yesterday after my walk! We hung around the house and then, with a bit of a hunger on us, walked the long way around to get lunch. We went from our house to the Porta San Francesco, and followed the walls clockwise, past the Roman amphitheatre back to the Porta Fiorentina, which is actually the closest gate to us! Nothing wrong with getting a second walk in, I suppose.

On the way, we took a look inside Chiesa di San Lino, as we’d never been in it before. Whenever I enter an Italian church, the first thing I do is look up!

It took us a while to reach the restaurant, Osteria La Pace, who have wonderful home-made pastas. Their menu isn’t huge, but that which you can concentrate on is often wonderful. I had Caserecce di Cinta e Funghi (a pasta variety with pork and mushrooms), and Niamh the Pici al Cianghiale (thick noodles with wild boar). The pasta that came out on my plate looked nothing like caserecce, but more like thick pappardelle (the pic on the left below), which is ok as it’s one of my fave pastas. While mine was tasty, the food jealousy was very real after tasting Niamh’s (the middle photo). It’s one of the best plates of pasta in Volterra. We both finished the meal with an amazing tiramisù. On the way back to the apartment, we booked a table for our evening meal – always be thinking ahead!

In the afternoon we rested a while (it was pushing 30 to 31 degrees out), I wrote a few more hundred words of my novel and toasted myself for a short while out on the terrace.

We then went out to have a look at a small flea market and stopped off at La Mangiatoia for a couple of Moretti each.

After another laze-about, we got ready for our meal and wound our way down Via Gramsci towards the restaurant. On our way, I paused a moment to snap a lady demonstrating the art of alabaster carving.

Sometimes it’s the food that keeps you coming back to your favourite places, and sometimes it’s the welcome. In the case of La Taverna della Terra di Mezzo it’s both! Roberto and Aurora always welcome us back enthusiastically, and serve us some wonderful dishes. A free snifter of grappa (a strong spirit distilled from the left-overs of wine making) to finish the meal off helps a little there! It has a strong, almost woody, flavour, but hits you a bit like vodka.

I had the Zuppa alla Volterrana and Niamh some Bruschette to start. Niamh then had Penne Arrabbiata (literally, angry penne!), which was quite hot with chili. I had a steak on the bone with oven-baked spuds. Then we had tiramisù again, but instead of it being made with coffee, it was made with limoncello and was almost as lovely as the one we’d had earlier.

We rolled ourselves out of our chairs and strolled towards the Roman amphitheatre, as there was a performance of Faust there that night. We got one of the cheap ‘seats’ (looking on with no charge from the walls above!). It was all in Italian, and we understood little of it – the sound wasn’t bad, but it didn’t carry fully up to where we were. At one stage, Mephisopheles appears, and it was done so well – completely unseen, then appeared with clever lighting. Unfortunately, I missed a photo of that. I have photos below, but they’re poor – I must invest in a decent camera one of these days!

We only stayed for 15-20 minutes before heading back to the apartment.

This morning, I felt a smidge hung-over, and there were denser clouds in the sky. The air felt thick in my lungs, and I knew a strenuous workout was to be avoided, so I just walked about town and papped anything purty I saw.

I didn’t sleep so well last night, and so I’m still a bit wrecked – back to bed for a while! A presto!

Ti piace il sale?

It was the beginning of a lazy day after my walk was over yesterday morning – although Niamh began her ‘Couch to 5k’ while I was out – no mean feat in a hilltown! After some telly-watching, we did some food-shopping for the makings of lunch and dinner. The weather had certainly picked up, but the highest it got all day was 26 celsius, and I don’t think it was for very long. We pottered around the shops for a while, and I got myself a pair of lengthy culinary tweezers (is there a more correct name for them?) for plating long pasta and stir-frying. We also bought a fan to try it out.

I am an incredibly impractical man, and so Niamh had to jigsaw the device together, and it seems to work fine. She also prepped lunch – a carpaccio of bresaola (thin, cured beef slices), rocket, capers and pecorino (sheeps cheese).

A drizzle of olive oil finished it off nicely – it was tasty!

We went out later and tried out the new (to us!) granita shop on Via Porta all’Arco. Granite (pron. gran-ee-teh) are essentially dense slush-puppies, but usually flavoured more naturally. We both went for frutta di bosco flavour (fruit of the forest), and it was yum… but there were a lot of seeds to crunch through. They also found every nook and cranny in my teeth. The consistency was less dense than I expected, but still I’ll go back there again – it was really refreshing.

Back home for a siesta, a little novel-writing and relaxation, and my attempt at making conchiglie con carne di salsicce e cime di rapa (pasta shells with sausage meat and ‘turnip top’ greens). We couldn’t find cime di rapa, and settled instead for cavalo nero (black cabbage – essentially it’s kale). I managed to turn these:

Into this!

Here’s the thing about Italian sausages. They are denser than Irish sausages, in that they are really meaty, but they also have gristle in them, which is great for rendering down. They are flavoured with salt, black pepper, fennel and salt. I really did not appreciate how much salt there is in Italian sausages. I should not have salted the ingredients in the pan, nor put as much salt in the pasta water as I had. The cavalo nero would serve to temper the salt, but I also put in about 50% less than I should have. The result was that the dish was too salty. Ah well. The basic flavours were all there, though! A 50/50 hit/miss, so.

As it got dark after dinner, I noticed that Niamh had strung solar-powered light bulbs across the railings of the terrace, and they looked pretty neat!

I finished off watching The Boys on Amazon (try it – not for kids!), threw on some brainless laughter-fodder on YouTube and then went to bed.

Here are some shots of my walk this morning. I polished off listening to ‘Milkman’ by Anna Burns (more for literary flair than story-telling), and started off Jo Nesbo’s ‘Knife’ during the 50 minute stroll.

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We’re going to need fans!

The humidity on our first night was around the 80% mark (due to a storm – humidity is usually very low here in the summer), and although the temperature was down, it still felt really warm. Before we arrived, we naively told people that, due to the thickness of the walls, our apartment will be well-insulated against the heat. It was more than a little worrying when we felt 3-4 degrees warmer after we climbed the first two flights of stairs with our luggage. Volterra had also had its heatwave recently, and the apartment was really warm when we got in.

During the day, it is possible to open the back door to the terrace and create an airflow by leaving windows opened throughout the apartment. It works wonderfully. Whilst I know Volterra isn’t exactly a crime hotspot, we’d rather not have to do this overnight. Additionally, it was stormy that first night, so we had to be careful about letting windows/doors slam, and having rain come in.

Before this year, we had remembered Volterra as being quite sleepy come 22:00 – when everything seems to shut, apart from restaurants. That night a new place near us was having a Boney-M revival night, and it was loud. I was still glad of it, though, as I had begun to wonder what Volterra’s younger generations do for a bit of craic. It’s great to see a little night life in the town!

Anyway, with clothes pretty much shed (sorry for that image!), I fell asleep. Then I had to get up at around 04:00, as there was pelting rain with accompanying gales, so I adjusted the windows or closed them altogether. I don’t think I got out of bed until well past 10:00 that morning, which is pretty much unheard of for me.

There was still a yellow weather warning in effect throughout most of Tuscany, so it piddled down on and off until Sunday evening. Fortunately, Volterra’s nature also suits dismal weather.

Aaaannd it didn’t stop us stuffing our face!

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Zuppa alla Volterrana, pici with sausage and tomatoes, stewed boar and olives we had in Ristorante Etruria, and I forget what the last thing is but we had it in Pizzeria Ombra della Sera! 😉

Before we went back to the apartment we had a look at the Roman Ruins to check out the setup for the Arts Festival they’re currently having (nothing scheduled for Sundays), and to have a quick pint in the Irish bar there, called Quo Vadis… probably the only Irish bar in the world with that name!

We caught the sunset, though.

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Sleep the second night was pretty much the same as the first, albeit a little better. Then up for a quicker than usual walk, and some brekkie.

That brings me pretty much up-to-date. Maybe some fan shopping today is in order, and now that we’ve moved the outdoor table back outdoors, we need a table for the telly. I’m also thinking of cooking up rigatoni with sausage and kale later on. Ciao!

A rocky start

Everything began beautifully. My brother picked us up, and dropped us off at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Despite there being quite a few people waiting, we managed to grab a bag & tag machine immediately, and with practically zero queue, ditch our bags to the mercies of the handlers in Dublin and Pisa.

My wife, Niamh, had to stop for cash, and afterwards my brain created an event here that didn’t actually happen – more on this later. We breezed through security – one of the aspects of air-travel I really detest.

Things started to go wrong after we’d ordered food at one of the bars. I’d had a couple of swigs from my cider, when I thought I’d smugly show Niamh that, yes, I had everything in order. But my mini-wallet wasn’t in my pocket. No fake-out. I got that feeling of panic… you know when your stomach drops, then rises and your bladder shrinks to the size of a golf-ball? We emptied my carry-on all over the table, thinking I had absent-mindedly thrown it in there, after we’d gone through security. There was no sign of it, though.

I was convinced that I had looked in my wallet in the airport when Niamh was getting cash out, to make sure I had a float of my own. I raced back downstairs, past all the shops and over to some security guys to explain my situation. I had three cards in there, plus about 150 Euros in cash. I didn’t care about the cash, my bank card (we have an account in Italy, so we’re ok for money) or my Health Insurance card. What was killing me was that my driver’s license was also in there… and I was supposed to be a named driver, so I could share the driving. I was feeling a total moron for having lost it.

Fair play to the lads in security, they searched high and low for it. I convinced them that I definitely had the wallet before security, as I remembered that I had taken it out at the ATM. Anyway, they didn’t find it, and so I raced back, pausing to stop at some shop tills to see if anyone had left it in. They were all cool too, but didn’t have it – they took my number in case it came up. People simply are brilliant, more often than not, aren’t they?

Anyway, we had to leave shortly, so I yummied down as much of my lunch as I could in 3 minutes, before departing for the gate.

The flight missed its departure window, and so left 30 minutes late, at 14:15. No worries, I thought, we can still make Volterra and have dinner there later this evening. I began to get worried again when the captain said they’d have to circle for 20 minutes, as the weather was too bad to land. We knew thunderstorms were on the way and were wondering if we’d missed them in Pisa. We hadn’t. We did land after that 20 minutes, and it was a very smooth landing, fair-play to the pilot. I don’t mind flying, but I do get a little antsy about landings sometimes.

We taxied, and waited for a few minutes. It looked dry out, if dismal. Then came another announcement – ground staff will not work in thunderstorm conditions, so we’d have to wait on-board until the weather got better. He turned the air-con up, so we wouldn’t suffocate. Only then, did the rain come down.

It was liked being papped in a carwash, with tumbling water blurring the view outside and lighting flashing through the clouds.

rain

The photo was taken by Niamh early on in the deluge, and doesn’t do the latter stages justice. After 50 minutes or so, we were allowed leave, and I got a free shower just running to the bus at the end of the stairs. I said to Niamh that I thought the arrivals area would be cataclysmic. The bus started up, and, no word of a lie, travelled all of 40 metres to the terminal stop where, laughing, we all got off and raced inside. I understand completely why they have to do that – not everyone is able-bodied or in the prime of their youth, but it was comical at the time.

Passport control was a breeze, and I thought I might have been wrong about how busy the rest of the terminal might be. I wasn’t. People had piled in, and we struggled up to the telly screen to see on which carousel our flight’s baggage would be arriving. But there was no movement, neither of screen nor carousel. There were occasional announcements that the baggage handling would begin when the storms subside. Still more people arrived into the terminal. One of the two vending machines was out of order, and I managed to get 2 of the last 3 bottles of water from the functioning one.

terminal

Feeling a little sorry for myself, I WhatsApp’d my brothers and had a bit of a rant at how things were progressing. I got a call from the brother who dropped us at the airport, shortly after to say that he had my wallet – I must have dropped it in the car on the way. He is due to come out to us for a few days at the beginning of September, so both Niamh and I were happy for Niamh to do the driving in August, and I in September! I can’t begin to describe the endorphine rush I got after that call! While I am writing this, I am still unable to banish the ‘memory’ of pulling out my wallet at the airport ATM and looking at the cash. Isn’t the brain an absolute fucker somtimes?

About 2 hours later, we saw a bunch of students we knew to be on our flight gather around carousel #3 and were collecting bags. I looked at the master screen, and it didn’t say, and the screen over the carousel didn’t indicate the flight either – yet those students knew. Neither of us had heard any announcement. But what the hell, our bags were finally coming out!

Once our bags were snatched, we dashed through customs, squeezed our way through the hilariously over-crowded arrivals area and out into some refreshing air. The car we picked up from Hertz 20 minutes later was a Lancia Ypsilon (we’re here for 9 weeks – our budget is limited!). I will be as nice as I can and say that it was a time-machine: just like driving was back in the early 90’s. Niamh sent the mail to Volterra’s Municipal Police to request that our ZTL & Parking resident’s permit be updated with the registration of our little Tardis. A town’s ‘ZTL’ (Zona Traffica Limita), is an area through which no traffic can pass, save for those with special permits. Each time you break a ZTL sign, that’s a 3-figure fine!

The winding journey to Volterra from the airport was in the dark, save for eruptions of lightning, which flickered across the sky. There were a couple of instances of forked-lightinging, and were I to do this all over again, I’d (remember my wallet!) have parked a GoPro on the dash to capture the journey. The forks were colossal!

We arrived in a partly fog-shrouded Volterra about 70 minutes later, and with 70 kilos of luggage, were reminded how unfit we are. We eventually arrived in our apartment at around 23:00, local time – exhausted, and only fit for our bed.