Auguri e Buon Anno 2011!!!
January 13th, 2011
Auguri e Buon Anno 2011!
From the forecast, I know that snow and ice are bearing down on my North Carolina home right now, but here in Cortona, it’s balmy and 55 degrees. I’m just back from shopping because tomorrow night our neighbors are coming over for dinner and I’m trying out several recipes from the cookbook I’m writing—a Torta della Nonna, a ricotta tart with shavings of chocolate, and apples wrapped in pastry. Italians are not that excited about desserts so I expect them to take one bite of each. But they are such natural gourmands that I will be able to tell immediately if the desserts are great or merely okay. Already in the fridge I have the big veal shank, seasoned and resting. The rest of the menu I’ll decide tomorrow when I go to the frutta e verdure. I’ve been loving the red radicchio—grilling it, then chopping it coarsely and mixing in little cubes of fontina. I pile it on prepared bruschette and then run it under the broiler. So delicious and easy.
Right after we arrived—after a two day weather delay—we drove up to Cormons in Friuli, picking up our friends Robert and Lara near Venice. We checked into the serene Castello di Spessa, just outside Cormons in Capriva.
Here are some notes: This superb place, www.castellodispessa.it, is in NO guidebook I have. Why? The castle is spectacular; the rooms are enormous; and the service is just right. The high, carved antique bed in our room looks as though some signora could have birthed a half dozen splendid bambini on its linen sheets. The view is sweet and Lucia, the manager, just couldn’t be nicer. This is a wonderful base for exploring Friuli. We have stayed at La Subida’s chalet-style brand new cottages and we loved staying there, too. This is our third visit to Friuli. You may remember that I wrote about this exciting region earlier on my blog.
Weeks ago Robert reserved our New Year’s Eve table at La Subida, (www.lasubida.it )one of the great restaurants in Italy. First we visited the wine consortium’s enoteca in Cormons, where we met winemaker Mauro Drius and tasted his lyrical Malvasia, which was awarded Tre Bicchieri by Gambero Rosso. For info on the consortium, look at www.vinidocisonzo.it Then we drove out to Venica & Venica, to meet Giampaolo and Chiara, whose wedding I wrote about in June. He and his family make many of Friuli’s great white wines. www.venica.it Even if you are a confirmed red wine drinker, which both Ed and I used to be—after all, we’re in Tuscany—you can’t help but fall hard for Friuli’s whites. They are as complex as reds. Giampaolo very sweetly loaded a box of his Ronca di Mele (a Tre Bicchieri award winner) wines in our car and we all took off for La Subida. This is our third dinner there with Robert and we’ve grown fond of the owners, the Sirk family. A friend of Giampaolo, Matteo Coser, and his girlfriend Marta, joined us. Matteo makes Ronco dei Tassi (Hill of the Badgers!) wines, so soon his lauded Collio Bianco Fosarin–also Tre Bicchieri–was on the table.
Robert and Giampaolo proceeded to order a dizzing array of local wines, each as fine as the next. The first thing we tasted was frico, melted Montasio cheese, here served like lollipops.
One of the valued tastes in this area is prosciutto, none more revered than D’Osvaldo’s, slowly smoked over cherry wood. Other local tastes that we don’t find in other parts of Italy: carpaccio di cervo (deer), radicchio e kren (horseradish), sciroppo di fiori di Sambuco (syrup of elderflowers poured over pears and nuts), gnocchi di crescione (watercress gnocchi), and capriolo con scalogni (little deer with shallots). We tried several pastas, the rabbit, boar, veal shank, the deer, lamb. . .on and on. At midnight, everyone went outside for fireworks and all around the restaurant rang toasts, auguri, auguri. We were back at the castle by three.
Robert and Lara had to leave the next day but Ed and I lingered in the castello, chatting with Lucia, who makes everyone feel especially welcome. In the afternoon we drove to Aquileia. That we never had heard of amazing Aquileia just shows how endlessly rich Italy is. We always will be at the beginning of our travels! Others have known of Aquileia since 181 B. C. It is a green little town with Roman villas, a Forum, strange funeral casks, Roman roads, port ruins, oratories, and a Roman bridge. All that and a basilica built in the third century B.C., destroyed by Attila, and reconstructed in 1031. The building preserves a visual history of the town because along the way everyone added, subtracted, multiplied and divided this complex structure. An astonishing floor of mosaics from the original church was uncovered in the early twentieth century, having secretly slept under other pavings for so many centuries. We walked into the basilica and looked at each other: are we dreaming? Portraits, decorative panels, symbols, wildlife, birds, flowers, daily activities, offerings, harvest—so vast and varied are these mosaics that you could spend days wondering over them. I especially loved the narrative of Jonah, shown being swallowed by a fanciful, curly sea creature, more dragon than whale. The hundreds of fish, urchins, octopi, sting ray, lobsters—all swimming in tesserae, are a joy to behold. These mosaicists knew their ichthyology. Jonah is finally seen reposing naked under a pergola. He appears to be levitating over his striped cushion. In the crypt are eleventh- century frescoes and more mosaics. Dazzling and–the joy of travel: totally unexpected.
Because it was New Year’s Day, much in the town was closed, including the archeology museum. We will go again. We drove on to the coastal town of Grado. By then, it was late afternoon and the entire populace, bundled in coats, was out, strolling along the canals, stopping for cream-topped hot chocolate in cafes, and greeting their neighbors with auguri and buon anno. Their presepio, manger scene, floated on the water, with the three wise men approaching in a row boat. This is a popular Adriatic beach town and as we walked I was superimposing a summer crowd in shorts eating gelato and buying tanning lotion. Another place for a return visit.
We dined at L’Hosteria, the restaurant near the castello. After last night’s excesses, I was happy with a mushroom risotto but Ed opted for the good-luck-in-the-new- year dish of stuffed pigs’ foot, cabbage and lentils, severed over polenta.
We’re enamored with the hearty food in this area—the mix of Austrian and Slovenian influences blending into the Italian traditional country food. Does Friuli have any bad restaurants?
The castello serves a family-style breakfast in the kitchen. I’m would love to tie aprons on three friends and start cooking here.
Most of the inns have yellow Vespas, retro-Fellini style, for guests’ use. I wish we could jump on one and wind around in these lovely vine-covered hills today, but we are moving onward this morning to Venice, Venezia in winter.
