Peas-a

Last Tuesday I took a day trip to Pisa, for work. It was so beautiful! The city straddles the River Arno, and is made up of little streets and parks and absolutely teeming with students. (The University of Pisa is huge, relatively.) Tuscany is amazingly warm and sunny compared to Bologna, and I actually got a tan on my face from walking around. Sorry to say, because I know how cold it’s been on the East Coast.



I was lucky, because I had enough time to do some exploring. Before leaving for Pisa, I planned to visit the Piazza dei Miracoli, which is the site of the leaning
Tower. But I felt skeptical, mostly because I’ve seen so many pictures of it, based in a plate of spaghetti or something equally cheesy. But the Tower, and the Piazza itself, are gorgeous. The area is comprised of a big green field on which you can see the Tower, the Duomo (main cathedral) of Pisa, and a domed building that I think is the Baptistry – all dramatic and oversized. They’re made out of carved, embellished white marble and look like three huge white cakes sitting in the grass. The best part is that I approached the Piazza from a back street, enclosed by houses, until suddenly the street opened up and I was in a small square adjacent to the big grassy Piazza. There was the Tower, leaning in the distance. It looked fake! So, what made it special was that it was actually real. I took off my shoes and socks and lay in the grass in a tank top. It was really that warm.



Since going, when I’ve told other Italians how much I loved visiting Pisa, I’ve gotten mixed reactions. My colleagues from Florence say that it’s nothing special and there’s nothing to do. This may have some undertone of regional competition. Everyone I know in Bologna agrees with me and says that Tuscany is just beautiful all the time. I never know whether to just laugh at all the regional prejudices I hear every day, or to actually try to pursue these topics with people. Today, for work, I went to Forli, which is in Emilia-Romagna, like Bologna, but it’s in the Romagna part (these distinctions are still lost on me), which means that people from Forli are somehow markedly different from those in Bologna in manner and culture. (Keep in mind that the average train ride between Bologna and Forli is 30 minutes.) Of course I wouldn’t be able to see these differences, being a foreigner myself.

On the food front, I had a triumph on Saturday: I cooked a my own version of ragu (Bolognese sauce, to us), with no Italian assistance, and it was met with approval by a dinner table full of Bolognese Italians! As I wrote a few weeks ago, Italians are very particular about food. This would be exponentially worse with a ragu, because in everyone’s grandmother has a recipe, which is better than this or that restaurant, which is not as good as the ragu of the aunt of so-and-so, etc, etc. As dinnertime approached, I was in a state of terror. Why was I cooking the regional specialty for a people from the region, when I didn’t know what I was doing?

The idea of the dinner arrived like this: on Monday I spontaneously invited some people, who are slowly emerging as friends, for dinner on Saturday. I had no idea what to make. Still on Thursday, no idea what to make. On Friday I decided to go with a pasta sauce I’ve made before. For which I did not have the recipe. I racked my brain to remember what it was, and instead remembered how good the dessert was for said dinner in the States (banana pudding, not made by me). I went to the supermarket and bought ingredients at random, remembering only that the cookbook told me to cook the sauce for as long as possible. And, in the end, I cooked it for four hours. I think that did the trick. It ended up really thick and, I hate to say it, but meat fat makes it taste really good.

If you’re interested, this is what went into the sauce: ground beef, ground veal, and chicken-turkey sausage. Browned together. And then I put in an onion and a clove of garlic that I’d sautéed separately. Pepper, salt, and paprika (I like putting paprika in everything). And then two cans of stewed tomatoes, not from Coop. And it sat there, cooking, for four hours. At the end I put in some large-ish amount of lemon zest and parsley (I really was making it up as I went). Lemon zest: highly recommended. It’s really yummy in pasta sauce, if you like the taste of lemon.

I also made a great mistake, which was buying a type of tagliatelle (flat spaghetti – the only thing you eat ragu with here!) that is thinner and less broad than usual. And it was actually preferable, because it was easier to eat, and more tender.

Anyway, we ate everything. And Massimo, whose grandmother’s ragu has deity-like status for him, told me that he hadn’t had such good ragu in months. I’m sorry if I’m bragging. I was so proud.

Next on my list is to learn how to cook something else! Hopefully with real measurements and a recipe. (Photo below I took in Venice.)