The Best Pizzeria Sign in Italy
Wifi access in Puglia has been sporadic and/or slow, but hopefully I will be able to upload bits and pieces of the last week’s adventures when I get home this weekend. In the meantime, I shall leave you with what is certainly the Best Named Pizzeria in Italy.
Aren’t you glad for proper internet?
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Travel Note: Puglia Stage
An administrative note from the powers that be: we are traveling to Apulia for a stage (the Italian word for field trip) and will be staying there for the rest of the week. The UNISG program includes about a week’s worth of travel every month or so, where we go to another region of Italy or another country, and spend time learning about local products, meeting producers and sampling the specialties of the region. Puglia is well known for its olive oil, beaches and aggressive men. Ah, my first stint in southern Italy.
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Turin: Piazza San Carlo Panorama
A panorama of Turin’s Piazza San Carlo, one of the most important town squares in the city. The Americans in the group lamented the lack of town squares in the US when we saw this one. Much of the architecture dates back to the 17th century, with an equestrian monument dedicated to Emanuele Filiberto (Duke of Savoy) in the center, flanked on both sides by the rococo Palazzo Solaro del Borgo, with twin baroque churches dedicated to San Carlo and Santa Cristina on the other end. In the Palazzo Solaro, you can see echos of admiration for the Louvre in Paris. In modern times, the plaza has been the site of many public gatherings, from victory celebrations for Juventus (soccer) fans to mass with the Pope to commemorate the public display of the Holy Shroud of Turin (believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus).
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Wine Snobbery 101
“Everyone has the ability to taste and analyze wine, you just need to have the vocabulary and focus to do it,” said Ann Noble, a retired UC Davis professor of Viticulture and Enology. With that, we launched into two days of Sensory Analysis classes, an overview of the sensory properties of wine (appearance, aroma, mouthfeel, flavor, aftertaste) and some of the psychological factors that influence the perception of wine. And though her appearance was unassuming, Noble turned out to be a colorful, crusty character full of dry, sarcastic comments such as “You just have a pinot fetish” and “You’re a prostitute when you’re a researcher because you need money!”
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On Food Writing
Before you ask, no this isn’t a photo of me, it’s the daughter of a family friend, picking Asian pears in the orchard.
“People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?
They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.
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Temptation in the Garden of Italy
My eyes alighted on it as soon as I stepped into the Coop grocery store, akin to spotting the love of your life from across the room. It stared openly back at me. Green, smooth, palpable. An avocado, delicately ripe, full of rich promise and culinary inspiration.
Danielle looked at me with chagrin. “Didn’t we just discuss the merits of eating locally grown food in class? How many air miles has that flown? Where is it from anyway?” I grimaced. “Italy? They grow avocados in the foothills of Piedmont, right?” We inspected the sign. Origin: Israel. Damn. I tried to rationalize. At least we’re not so far from the Middle East, compared to the United States?
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Lunch, UNISG Edition
In a previous post, I discussed what it was like to have lunch at the Fed, but there was no mention of the food, mostly because the Sodexo-run cafeteria, while competent and better than your average corporate cafeteria, mostly catered to the greatest common denominator and offered nothing of blogworthy interest.
Here at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, you can avail yourself of the midday meal service plan for €1000, and be assured a hot lunch every day that you are at school. For the first week of classes, everyone can dine at the canteen, which gives you a chance to try the food and determine whether or not you want to bring your own lunch instead. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but figured that this would be a nicer, more intimate version of Cornell’s dining halls (which were actually pretty good compared to the institutional slop served at most other universities). I definitely did not expect a 3 or 4 course meal, complete with full table service.
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Back Roads of the Italian Countryside, or My Daily Commute
Note: This post is mostly geared towards UNISG students, so it will be fairly useless to you unless you need to get from Bra to Pollenzo.
Living in Italy, you start to realize that there are always two ways of doing everything, the official system and the back door in-the-know route. Take the process of acquiring a permesso di soggiorno residency permit, required for all non-EU citizens staying in Italy for over 90 days. In Bra, you can either go to the Post Office, pick up an application kit and struggle to figure out what to put down so as to not have your application rejected, or you can go to the Al Elka-L’incontro center for foreign citizens, which provides consulting services and staff who fill out the application for you. Granted, the center is only open for 7 hours a week, on Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings, but that is different gripe. Ah, Europe.
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Gastronomy School is Serious Business
The view out the window from Aula 2, where we spend 6 hours a day in class
Classes at UNISG are held from 9 am to 4 pm, with an hour long lunch break at noon. Without too much self-incrimination, I will simply say that it has been a long time since I have had to focus so intensely, without the distraction of of the internets, on one subject for that length of time. This will require some adjustment.
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First Day of School!
In an effort to uphold my reputation as a crazy cyclist, the first thing I did upon arriving in Bra was to beeline to a second-hand bike shop and pick up a used bike. I am now the proud owner of an old school Atala, decked out with fenders, a bell and a basket. Fast she is not, but for 60 quid I could probably do worse.
The University of Gastronomic Sciences campus is about 6 km away from Bra, which is about the length of my old commute to the Fed. However, biking to class is considerably more difficult/hair-raising than going to the Fed because the route involves riding down a two-lane highway with a very, very steep, winding hill. Unless you are comfortable with biking downhill with lorries whizzing past you on a road with no shoulder, I don’t really recommend biking. As I flew down the hill this morning, I was traveling so quickly that my eyes were watering. To be fair, vehicles are courteous and do try to move to give you enough space, but there’s really not much room for error. Going back is even more hilarious because you now have to tackle going up the hill. Despite my best efforts, the bike slowly ground to a halt about halfway up the hill and I settled with walking the rest of the way up the hill. Perhaps I should have bought a bike with more than one speed.
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