Tuscan Traveler

For a sugar high on a beautiful Spring day in Florence, walk on by Cake Thinking, a new free exhibit on display at the Gallery of Palazzo Coveri. The show, featuring the indulgent works of Tuscan artist Marina Calamai, is entirely dedicated to the theme of the dessert, interpreted in multiple manners and variations.

Cake Thinking at Palazzo Coveri

Arezzo-born Calamai’s creations depict a simple world that joyously combines the antique with the modern. These works are inspired by the art of Renaissance pastry-cooks, rediscovering and reconstructing the forms and colors of the sweetmeats that graced the table of Eleonora and Cosimo I de’ Medici. The artist has created an original style of painting, sculpture, and jewelry, with the theme of sumptuous cakes and pastries of all sorts, able to appeal to the eyes and the appetite at the same time.

A tart topped with a cherry makes a ring good enough to eat.

Be sure to see the art-à-porter sculpture of “sweet” hats (meringues to profiteroles) that transform the ordinary into the unconventional – they can be worn as an ironic headdress or displayed as sculpture.

There are original audio “sound” paintings of the artist, including a diver taking the plunge into whipped cream.

A great fantasy - diving into whipped cream

The unique polyurethane foam sculpture entitled Corredo Cromosomico (Chromosome Complement), and the three-dimensional painting representing Cromosoma 4 (Chromosome 4), which is thought to be the gene responsible for the “sweet-tooth,” are the only two pieces that don’t look good enough to eat.

Don’t miss the celebrated installation Muffin, a huge cake that you can walk inside with a cherry on top, and, my favorite, the Kiwi table made with resin. There are also sweet silk scarves and jewelry in the form of cream puffs and cakes.

Kiwi table is a refreshing take on the fruit

The Gallery of Palazzo Coveri is located on Lungarno Guicciardini, 19 in Florence.

Entrance to the exhibit is free and is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 1 pm and 3:30 pm to 7 pm.

The show ends April 16, 2011.

For further information, visit galleriadelpalazzo.com and marinacalamai.it .

This is how I learned about the Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags!

Years ago, I was a regular at La Maremma on Via Verdi in Florence. I loved their penne pasta with mushroom and truffle sauce. I adored their fruit tiramisu. In fact, I don’t think I ever had a dish I didn’t like there. Everything was cooked to order, the service was fantastic, and the ambience with its slanting floor was warm and comfortable. (Since then, the restaurant has been renovated, but the high quality of the food is still getting rave reviews.)

La Maremma on Via Verdi

One evening, I ordered my favorite pasta and then saw ostrich (filetto di struzzo con salsa di vino rosso) on the menu. The owner, Enzo Ragazzini, explained that the ostrich was grown in Italy and urged me to try “un piatto speciale e buono.” I agreed, forgetting to ask for a half-portion of the pasta.

After some shared crostini, my large plate of penne con funghi e tartufi arrived, steaming, fragrant, and oh so scrumptious. I just had to eat the whole thing, sharing only a bite or two with my two dinner companions.

Almost full, my eyes popped when a beautifully presented filet of ostrich – round, about two inches high and four inches in diameter, like a classic filet mignon at a good steakhouse in the U.S. – with a deep purple-brown wine sauce and a sprig of fresh rosemary, was placed in front of me.

Ristorante La Maremma

The filetto was perfect, pink, tender, complemented in every way by the accompanying sauce. But it was huge. I could not do it justice in one sitting. Not after that pasta (and crostini and wine). I could have shared it with my friends, but as luck would have it I was eating with two vegetarians.

I vaguely understood the Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags! At least, I had never seen a container – bag, carton, foil, etc. – being offered in any of the many restaurants I had patronized (I am no cook, except for chocolate chip cookies and pancakes, so I ate out a lot.) in Florence. But I couldn’t let half a filet of ostrich, my first ostrich dish, go to waste. And I did not want the chef to get the wrong idea – I loved every bite.

So I asked Enzo in my almost non-existent Italian, if there was any way he could wrap the half filet up so I could take it back to my apartment. This conversation took a while. He even resorted to some English to clarify my desire. After I finally came up with “per portare via, per favore,” a phrase more suited to a pastry shop than a restaurant, he left with the plate, shaking his head. I was regretting the request.

La Maremma doesn't know about aluminum swans...or ostriches

Enzo returned in a bit and showed me a small used, but clean, plastic bag with a warm aluminum-wrapped half filet of ostrich. I reach for it to put it quickly in my shopping satchel, out of sight. He wouldn’t let it go. He sat down at the table and in a mix of Italian and English proceeded to give me the recipe (did I mention that I do not cook?) for the red wine sauce that graced the filet on the original plate.

As I hypothesized in explaining the Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags, one of the reasons Italians don’t believe in taking home leftover food is that the dish is to be eaten immediately, as the chef envisioned, not recycled into another form at another temperature.

Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags!

The friendly owner of La Maremma could not imagine that I would want to slice this tender filet of ostrich up with a little mustard and mayo in a panino, or tossed into a microwave oven to warm it up to go on a plate beside a similarly zapped potato (my kind of cooking). No, I was instructed on how to make the exact same wine sauce as the chef. I took notes.

And I swore that I would never request a doggy bag again in Italy.

History of a Food Rule

Some of the best stories are those that start in the same place where they end. The more things change the more they stay the same. The Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags! has strange antecedents because according to some the doggy bag’s first appearance was in the 6th century BC … in Rome.

Apparently, when invited to a banquet at the neighbor’s villa the ancient Roman would bring a napkin or two. It was a compliment to the host to take some of the dinner home wrapped up in your napkin.

Ancient Romans wrapped part of dinner up in a napkin to take home

But perhaps with the fall of the empire the custom fell into disfavor. During the Middle Ages, the leftovers went first to the kitchen staff, then to the lower order of servants, and then out the backdoor to the beggars in the courtyard.

Why don’t Italians ask for doggy bags?

In modern times, there seem to be three reasons that Italians don’t ask for a take-out container. (The term doggy bag or doggie bag is an Americanism that entered the European lexicon mostly to complain about the practice.)

First, Italian food is made to order, to be eaten as the chef envisioned it, immediately as the dish arrives on the table. It is not to be eaten at another temperature (cold pizza), in another form (bistecca alla fiorentina sliced in a sandwich), or mixed together (pasta alla carbonara with a chunk off a veal chop resting on top).

Second, servings in Italian restaurants tend to be of the appropriate size so that the diner does not get too full by eating everything on the plate. A light eater does not order an antipasto, a primo, a secondo, and a dolce - one or two courses is enough.

Third, Italians look at food left on the plate as scraps, not leftovers. There’s a difference. It’s not good manners to ask to take home kitchen scraps.

For 60 years Americans have requested doggy bags

Some say the term “doggy bag” came into being because embarrassed Americans wanted to hide their real purpose in requesting a container for leftovers. (Emily Post certainly frowned on the practice.) But the Smithsonian blog Food & Think claims that the first doggy bags were for the benefit of dogs during the 1940s when rationing had an adverse impact on pet diets. One Seattle restaurant offered a waxed paper bag labeled “Bones for Bowser.”

By the 1970s, the practice of doggy bags for late night snacks for human consumption became more accepted, first at restaurants that already offered take-out or delivery (pizza joints and Chinese restaurants). Then even elegant places would oblige when asked. (Remember the aluminum foil swan you got on prom night when you didn’t want to burst a seam on your fancy dress?)

Swans make take-away so so special

Today, there are a few reasons why Americans whole-heartedly adhere to the doggy bag ideal.

First, most restaurants in the United States believe that their customers do not think they are getting good value for their dollar if the serving size is not at least twice the size of what a normal person can eat at a sitting. In other words, the customer expects to get one or two extra meals out of an evening at a restaurant.

Two, as American-born, London-based broadcaster Charlie Wolff, in the BBC magazine article, Doggy bag: Why are the British too embarrassed to ask?, explained “We Americans don’t have the airs and graces of Europeans. Americans are a bit more of the people, more pedestrian. There’s nothing embarrassing about asking for a doggy bag. We don’t want to see waste. There’s a sense of working hard for your money and wanting value for your dollar.” His mother used to make an omelette with the remains of meals from their favourite Chinese restaurant. She also used to bring any uneaten bread rolls home. “We were upper middle class. My parents came through the Depression and I’m sure that had a bearing even when they became successful.”

Third, Americans are the first to start recycling their waste and in the same way they look at leftover food as a product to be recycled in future meals.

Which brings us back to Rome…

Un Doggy Bag, per favore?

The Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags is starting to crumble. Some say that Michelle Obama is to blame. In 2009, Michelle was in Rome during the G8. This news item was widely-reported: “The Coldiretti Society of Italian Farmers heartily praised Michelle Obama for her progressive use of the doggy bag during the recent family’s stay in Rome.”  Michelle, together with her two daughters, dined at the ´I Maccheroni´ restaurant near the Pantheon. The family ordered three pasta dishes - carbonara, amatriciana and bolognese – but the meal turned out to be too hearty for the three Obama girls. And so Michelle asked the waiter to pack the leftovers into a bag to take home.

Michelle made a splash with her request for a doggy bag

The First Lady’s effort to make sure the food did not go to waste was widely understood as a public encouragement to save more and waste less. The Coldiretti stated, “It’s an important move against an epidemic in developed countries today – more that 30% of all the food product we buy are discarded without ever having been used.”

By 2010, a non-profit group that works with homeless people in Milan, Cena dell’Amicizia, began a project called “Il buono che avanza,” (“The good things left over”). Restaurants in the Milan area can voluntarily take part, whereupon they are provided with doggy bags and a sticker by the non-profit. “The idea is to fight the idea of a throw-away, consumerist society where waste is normal and recycling (even of food) is looked down upon,” claimed Cena dell’Amicizia.

Logo for Milan's take-away campaign

In the Piemonte region there is a movement, not so much for waste, but to prevent drunk driving, to provide take-away bags, called buta stupa (”corked bottle” in Piedmontese dialect), for leftover wine.

What about the rest of Europe?

Even the Brits are coming around (although no news from the French). Last year, The Too Good To Waste campaign was introduced to reduce the amount of food waste in restaurants. The average London restaurant produces 21 tons of food waste every year, research by the Sustainable Restaurant Association found. That’s the equivalent to the weight of three double-decker buses. Too Good To Waste is encouraging diners to be “lovers, not leavers” and ask for their leftovers to go. They, too, have created a distinctive take-away cartoon for the crusade.

Too Good To Waste - Britain's crusade

It seems Italy and Britain are not alone in trying to break the Food Rule: No Doggy Bags; in Sweden (also in 2011, a magic year for doggy bags) a campaign was started to prevent waste in restaurants. Among other things, the promoters convinced the rapper Dogge Doggelito from the The Latin Kings, one of Sweden’s first hip hop groups, to participate in their doggy bag promotional film. In the film, Doggelito overhears a couple quarrel about something the man finds embarrassing, and takes for granted that she wants his autograph – when in fact it’s a doggy bag she wants.

Sweden's doggy bag campaign

Tuscany will not violate the Food Rule

From all appearances, Florence and Tuscany will hold tight to the Italian Food Rule: No Doggy Bags! Florentines may be willing to recycle their trash, but leftovers do not constitute food in a region that prides itself in a cuisine that has not seen change in centuries and is not ready for reheating in the microwave oven. As a baby step, Tuscany may agree to follow the national Associazione Italiana Sommeliers, which is promoting Portami Via, a move to provide take-away bags for leftover wine.

Tuscany may support doggy bags for vino

Winter is the season for hot chocolate, preferably with whipped cream. To me, the most perfect hot chocolate in the world was served at Café Angelina in Paris in 1977. (I tasted it again in 1996, but although it was still fabulous, it wasn’t perfect (that may have had something to do with the guy eating steak tartare, topped with a raw egg, at the next table).)

The perfect hot chocolate served your way at Café Angelina in Paris

Hot chocolate at Café Angelina is an event. A polite uniformed waiter arrives with a silver tray. On the tray is a silver dessert spoon, a small china pitcher of hot aromatic chocolate, a bowl of barely sweetened whipped cream heaped high, and a small china cup. He offers a snowy white napkin and proceeds to pour a mere half a cup of thick hot chocolate – the aroma intensifies – the choice of how much whipped cream to add is left up to you.

Hot cocoa 1950's style

During my childhood, hot chocolate was hot cocoa, which meant a packet of Swiss Miss mixed in hot water or on special occasions a spoonful of Hershey’s Cocoa mixed in hot milk or on very special occasions my mother would cook up a secret recipe of chocolate and milk in a pan on the stove and add marshmallows to the steaming cup of ambrosia.

Now I get my hot chocolate (cioccolata calda) fix in Florence. I have a choice of places. Probably the best cioccolata calda is created by Leonardo Vestri at the Vestri Chocolate Shop at Borgo degli Albizi 11r, but it is served in a plastic cup. This is more a place to go to get a premium hit of hot liquid gold to feed an addiction than an elegant place for a holiday chat with friends .

Rivoire has been famous for hot chocolate for decades

For a more formal hot chocolate experience, the most famous place in Florence is Rivoire. Here an efficient, but surly, waiter will plunk down on your table a small ceramic cup of incredibly good hot thick chocolate topped (your choice when ordering) with semi-sweet whipped cream. You will also get a couple of tiny paper napkins and a couple of unnecessary paper packets of sugar.

Hot chocolate with whipped cream at Rivoire

If you are sitting outside at Rivoire you will have a quintessential Florentine view of the Palazzo Vecchio, the statues of David and Neptune, and the passeggiata of a million Italian families mixed with a few Chinese tour groups.

Ciccolata Calda thick and rich at Rivoire

If you are seated inside, you are warmer and may catch a sight of a regular client – a pretty English Bulldog dolled up in her winter fur collar. Ask her how she likes her hot chocolate — with or without whipped cream.

Styling bulldog at Rivoire

If you are sitting at a table at Rivoire sipping cioccolata calda you are paying a premium. Remember to sit at a table in Italy is to be “renting” the table, so you should plan to stay awhile to make the price of your hot chocolate worthwhile. Better idea – stand at the elegant bar at Rivoire and for a third the price you will get the same taste treat with equally abrupt service, minus the napkin scraps and sugar packets.

With whipped cream or without - just give me a taste!

Tuscan Traveler is now on a mission to find the most luscious cioccolata calda in the best ambience for the proper price in Florence. If you have any ideas that would assist in the endeavor, please add a comment.

Not dressed for Rivoire

By now even a glance at TuscanTraveler.com (see here, here, here and here) will tell you of a greater than average interest in gelato. Imagine my distress to find that I would not be able to be in Cefalú on the north coast of Sicily for the fifth annual Sherbeth Festival.

If you love gelato and especially sorbetto and are traveling to Sicily in mid-September, head straight to Cefalú for four days of ice cream heaven.

Cefalú Sherbeth Festival 2011

From September 15 to 18, the historic center of the town will be transformed into the Gelato Village.

Whereas Florence (and Catherine de’Medici) lays claim to the creation of milk-based Italian gelato, Sicily fights for the honor of sorbetto, a divine combination of fruit, sugar and water. Sherbeth is an Arab word that became sorbetto in Italian (and sherbet when I was growing up in New Mexico).

Mango sorbetto will be a favorite at the Sherbeth Festival

The Romans say Emperor Nero started the craze by having his slaves carry buckets of ice and snow down to him from the Appian Way. But the Turks and the Chinese also had sherbeth frozen fruit desserts and Marco Polo is claimed to have carried the idea back from his travels. Certainly Sicily got the inspiration from the Arabs.

Here would be my idea of a perfect September day in Cefalú: In the morning, you can walk Cefalú’s sandy beach, one of the best in Sicily (burning off some calories in preparation for the rest of the day), and swim in the clear, warm sea (mid-70s).

Or you can begin as you mean to go on and order a typical Sicilian summer breakfast, a sweet brioche with gelato inside. (See Joe Ray’s WSJ post that describes the experience perfectly.)

Sicilian breakfast of sorbetto in brioche

Finish off the morning wandering the narrow streets with buildings displaying Arab, Norman and Byzantine influences, seeing the impressive Duomo, and then heading to the Corte delle Stelle and along the waterfront to indulge yourself at 35 Sicilian and international artisanal gelateria stands, savoring their hand-made sorbetto.

Stop by Carpigiani Gelato University’s gelato school and take a class in how to make sherbeth. Carpigiani is providing the equipment at a central production lab for all of the gelato makers where they will create their own proprietary recipes for the delight of the expected crowds.

Fruit flavors reign, but try chocolate sherbeth, too

Under the stars, a final gelato in hand, on my perfect September day, I would take in the wide variety of musical and other entertainment provided by Sorbeth Festival 2011 in Cefalú.

Gelato tourism has to be coming soon. Sign me up!

One of the highlights of this summer was an invitation to spend two days at Carpigiani Gelato University, located just outside Bologna, on the historic Via Emilia, between Lavino di Mezzo and Anzola dell’Emilia.

48 hours of just thinking about gelato and, of course, tasting flavor after flavor of sorbet, semifreddo, granita, frozen yogurt, soft-serve, as well as, traditional Italian gelato.

Gelato Maestro Luigi Perrucci

At the Gelato Lab, Carpigiani’s freestanding high-tech gelateria, two brand new flavors of gelato were introduced to the world on July 20 during the presentation of the 2011 Gelato Pioneers (more about this later).

The two fascinating flavors were created by Gelato Maestro Luigi Perrucci in the Gelato Lab’s research and experimentation kitchen, using the most innovative of Carpigiani’s gelato and soft-serve machines.

Mortadella Gelato Crostini

The crowd cheered as a tray of Mortadella Gelato “crostini” was presented. Mortadella is one of Bologna’s most famous foods, dating back five hundred years. Maestro Luigi chose to serve his mortadella gelato on a small round slice of bread and top it with a shaving of Parmesan cheese, a squiggle of balsamic vinegar and bit of shredded lettuce.

Made with a sorbet base, the pink gelato offered a true mortadella flavor without any fatty mouthfeel or aftertaste. The bread, balsamic, Parmesan and lettuce made it the perfect sandwich, albeit an icy cold one.

Balsamic Gelato from the soft serve machine

For dessert, Maestro Luigi offered a Balsamic Vinegar Soft Serve Gelato. Of the palest purple in color, made with a milk and egg base, the delightful swirl of gelato was sweet with a slight tangy aftertaste.

Balsamic vinegar is not vinegar per se. It begins with late-harvest grapes (usually white Trebbiano) grown near Modena. Traditional balsamic vinegar is thick and sweet and very very expensive.

Balsamic Vinegar Soft Serve

Carpigiani is known for pushing the envelop of the tradition Italian gelato experience. The company seeks to bring Italian gelato to the whole world. Mortadella gelato may not find its way into any gelateria on a regular basis (except for perhaps Humphry Slocombe in San Francisco and on the Food Channel’s Iron Chef), but the balsamic vinegar soft serve is a keeper.

Ora d’Aria has been part for the Florentine restaurant scene for a few years, but was inconveniently located and mostly a secret of locals. Now relocated to the historic center in a modern but cozy space, the word is getting out and rave reviews are coming back.

The name, Ora d’Aria, refers to the “hour of air” or time spent by inmates exercising outdoors while serving a term in prison. But, perhaps, it also refers to the breath of fresh air this restaurant brings to the oft-stuffy Florentine insistence on how to cook and present traditional Tuscan recipes.

Ora d'Aria selection of breads

Chef-owner Marco Stabile was born in Tuscany and is in his mid-30s. Ora d’Aria is a labor of love that follows a rocketing career through a number of well-known Tuscan restaurants, including Arnolfo (two Michelin-starred establishment in Colle Val d’Elsa), where he backed chef/owner Gaetano Trovato,one of Italy’s best chefs.

Stabile is a visiting teacher at some of Italy’s renowned culinary accademies, like those in Jesi, Montecatini Terme and Arezzo (Accademia del Gusto), as well as working in collaboration with the prestigious Les Jeunes Restaurateurs d’Europe.

View from the dining room

The reason for the name Ora d’Aria was because it was initially located outside the former Renaissance women’s prison, Le Murate. But in 2010, Stabile obtained an exciting new space behind the west corridor of the Uffizi in Via dei Georgofili. This centrally-located premises, with its glass wall to the open kitchen and simple décor keeps your attention on the food through all the steps of the process: selection of dishes from the ever-changing menu; preparation and cooking; service by the chef with an explanation of the ingredients; on to the last morsel of a superb dessert.

Poached egg in broccoli sauce with pancetta (tapas size)

The dishes are executed with real skill and imagination. Stabile’s menus acknowledge his Tuscan roots, but he plays around in an intelligent, carefully calculated way with the best fresh seasonal ingredients and interesting taste combinations and textures. Dishes are as exciting to the eye as they are on the palate. The color choices and presentation are perfect, using plates and bowls of interesting shapes, but always white so as not to distract from the main event.

Tapas of salt cod braised in browned butter with a pink chickpea sauce

Imaginative starters, such as a poached egg, centered in a broccoli sauce with slivers of pancetta (could that be a play on green eggs and ham?) lead into tasty pasta combinations. Meat and game play a major role, (pigeon cooked in three ways is a classic Stabile dish), but there are fish and seafood choices, too; for instance baccalà (salt cod) braised in browned butter with creamed pink chickpeas. And for Americans who moan about saltless Tuscan bread: rejoice — the bread basket is full of crispy rosemary cracker bread, salty olive oil schiacciata, walnut rolls, and more — all made in-house.

Save room for dessert. Of course there is the chocolate tort with a warm melting heart graced with cold gelato. But if you can pass that up, you can pick tiramisu espresso or caramelized pineapple with a cream of Vin Santo, before moving on to the cheese selection with brioche marmalade and honey.

Three-bite hamburger with apple garnish and finger of mashed potato

You can order à la carte, but the set menus (one Tuscan, the other fish) are good value. The lunchtime menu, which offers a choice of dishes in either tapas version or a full portion, is a particular bargain. The tapas version of a hamburger with an apple slice standing in for lettuce and tomato gets raves for presentation and is only three bites big, but they are the best three bites in town.

The wine list features some 600 labels, but it’s the list of artisan beers that is especially unique in Florence. Only one quibble: there should be more wines offered by the glass, the present selection of three is uninspired.

Chocolate torte with liquid chocolate heart and gelato

Finally, service: in a tourist city where the restaurants are frequently staffed by inexperience to inattentive to downright rude waiters, it is a joy to spend an hour or two in the fresh air of Ora d’Aria’s friendly, responsive service, both in the dining room and from the kitchen.

Where:  Via dei Georgofili, 11r
When:  Lunch and Dinner Tuesday through Saturday, Monday dinner only. Closed Sunday and Monday lunch.
Phone:  055 200 1699 Reservations recommended.
Web: www.oradariaristorante.com
How Much:  Lunch — 25 to 35 euro per person. Dinner — 40 to 60 euro per person.