Drunken Spaghetti in Florence

By the title of this blog, you are wondering what I am talking about...

We are in Northern Tuscany for a holiday. Before we came here I bought a book called The Food Lover's Guide to Florence by Emily Wise Miller. I diligently marked all the pages that feature restaurants I wish to try in this book with post-it indexes, colour coding purple for 'must try' and green for 'good to try'.

Osteria de' Benci (http://www.osteriadeibenci.it/index_en.htm) on Via dei Benci 13r, near Piazza Santa Croce, walking toward Ponte alle Grazie is the restaurant with my purple index 'must try' place.

We went to look for this restaurant for the whole purpose of trying out their signature dish, the spaghetti dell'ubriacone or drunken spaghetti, boiled in wine so that it turns a bright burgundy and then tossed with garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes and parsley.  You can taste the red wine and hint of garlic ... it was tasty but a touch salty for me however we both enjoyed this dish, and it was worth a visit. Definitely blog-worthy, ha ha ha.

Drunken Spaghetti - tasty but very interesting!

I was checking for the recipe online and found it by someone who has actually eaten there so please visit: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/04/seriously-italian-spaghetti-all-ubriaco-recipe.html if you are interested to make one yourself.

When we got to the table, they brought us a basket of nice bread, sprinkled with rock salt. There is a big bottle of olive oil on the table. We pour this into a dish and dipped the bread into it whilst waiting for bruschetta that my husband ordered for a starter.  The bruschetta was lovely, with lots of sweet and flavoursome tomatoes.

After the bruschetta, we both had the drunken spaghetti, followed by cafe macchiato in glasses.

Anyway, if you are interested to try this restaurant, here is their business card. It is not a big restaurant but there are some tables outside too. As it is a little bit off the main tourist area, we did not have any problem to get a table right away without a booking despite it is not too far to walk from Uffizi Gallery. That said it was Monday after all so that might have helped.

We did not have any dessert as we had another place with 'green' index to go to for gelato.  Emily Wise Miller's book also informed me of Caffe' dell Carrozze, the gelateria near Ponte Vecchio in piazza del peace 3-5 and their excellent pistachio gelato.

Considering it is meant to be the best gelateria in this area, the place is rather unassuing looking, without much elaborate displays of heaps of ice cream in different varieties that you see at other places. Perhaps they don't need such elaboration as people know where to go for excellent gelato.
I have thing about pistachio ice cream so I tried theirs and it was indeed delicious, full of nutty pistachio flavour!!

I was now happy, full of lovely food in my stomach and some shopping bags in my hand. It was a lovely day out to Florence.

That's all forks!

What I have eaten in Sicily

We are now back from Sicily. The weather was great, beautiful sunny day every day, hot but not too humid, food and wine were excellent and people were really nice.

Before we left for Sicily, I made a list of food I wanted to eat in Sicily (see my earlier blog - what I want to eat in Sicily). Here are what I have managed to cross off.

• brioche con gelato - sweet brioche bun cut open and filled with gelato. Well, I sort of have had this but with granita instead of gelato inside - see my earlier blog "Be cool in Sicily". The combination of nice soft warm brioche roll and head-freezing lemon granita works very well, especially in Sicilian summer!

Lemon granita with a soft warm brioche roll.

• caponata - one of my favorite; sweet and sour eggplant dish, served cold or at room temperature. Alfina, the chef at Hotel Feudo Vagliasindi, has made a delightful caponata for starter.

Sweet and sour caponata - Alfina made it delicate and rather refreshing taste

• pasta alla Norma - pasta with tomato sauce, diced fried eggplant (aubergine) and grated salted ricotta. According to legend, Sicilian composer from Catania, Vincenzo Bellini suggested the name of this dish to the chef of a restaurant near the opera house where he was rehearsing his famous opera "Norma". Alfina made it really tasty. My husband does not like aubergine but even he really enjoyed this dish. She used strozzapreti pasta instead of spaghetti, which was cooked to perfect al dante! Apparently the name of pasta strozzapreti associated with the word 'strangle' as it looks like taut rope!

Alfine made this dish with strozzapreti pasta coating the tasty sauce really well.

• pasta con le sarde - saffron-coloured pasta with fresh sardines, wild fennel leaves and a small dollop of sun-dried tomato. I had this at Restaurant Dino in Taormina. It was a very tasty dish but I was rather disappointed by the way they cooked this as it did not resemble to what I have always imagined from having read different Sicilian cooking books and TV programmes I have seen! I did not like the past they used - don't know what is called -  although I admit it did pick up anchovy sauce rather well, and also there were lots of anchovies in the sauce but there was no fillet of fried anchovies to top the dish and no currants used. I had also imagined the pasta to be more yellow - orangish colour to reflect saffron. Maybe I shall try making this by following George Locatelli's 'Made in Sicily' book to see how this would turn out to be. I shall let you know of the result but I don't know how or where I can get fresh sardines around here....???

Restaurant Dino's version of Pasta with Sardine - Taormina, Sicily.

• pesto di pistacchio - pistachio pesto. Well, Sicilians', especially area around Mt Etna where we stayed uses pistachio a lot! They use it for gelato, sweets, coating fish fillets like breadcrumbs and also for pasta sauce. Alfina at the hotel made this wonderful ribbon pasta with pistachio pesto sauce with ground pistachio nuts as decorations. This was a lovely dish, which was nutty and creamy but not too strong. I have also bought a jar of pistachio pesto from a wine shop in Randazzo so that I can make this at home. I wish I had also bought pistachio flakes whilst in Sicily but my husband says that we can buy this at any local supermarket - have you seen this in Tesco or Sainsbury's????

Alfina's delightful pistachio pasta!

Well, that's all! Unfortunately I could not cross off all of my list but I have tried dishes I otherwise would not have tried so I am happy with this. Don't know when we would go back to Sicily or if we ever go back at all but it was an interesting food experience, and I get to come back home with lots of pastry di mandola (Almond cakes) which is my favourite.  I shall eat it reminiscing a lovely time we had in Sicily, especially the lovely view of Mt Etna from our terrace of our hotel.....

Be cool in Sicily

It's late September yet the temperature in Sicily during the day is still very hot. We were in Taormina the other day and it was 27c during the day! Where we are just now, near Randazzo, it is around 24c during the day but in the evening it can be quite cool. You get a lovely breeze during the day without much humidity, you almost forget how strong the sun is and you end up getting sunburn if you forget to use sun cream like I have just done!

Anyway, great treat to have if you want to be cool in such a sunny and hot day is granita, Sicilian Ice, which is made by slowly mixing ripe seasonal fruits, sugar and water to a coarser, more crystalline texture. I like granita di limone (Lemon Granita), which is very nice and refreshing.

Granita di Limone at a cafe in Taormina.

Karen Landes in her book, In Etna's Shadow, explains how to make this refreshing ice treat. In a metal bowl, mix the juice of 3 lemons, 1/3 cup super-fine sugar, and 1 cup water. Place the bowl with the liquid into the freezer and stir every 30 minutes with a fork to break-up the ice crystals. Continue stirring until the liquid becomes granular but still slightly slushy, about 3 to 4 hours.

We were in Randazzo yesterday. It was about 11.30am and it was starting to get really warm. We went into a pasticcerie. My husband ordered an espresso and a small strawberry pasty. I ordered a granita di limone and the proprietor asked if I wanted it with a brioche. Yes, I have heard about gelati with a brioche in Sicily, which is on my list (see my earlier blog - what I want to eat in Sicily), so without any hesitation, I nodded my head for yes. Apparently Sicilians eat gelato in a soft warm brioche roll in a sandwich style, while granita into which pieces of brioche are dunked for breakfast! I looked around and yes, I did indeed see some locals eating ice cream or granita with brioche. This is a very interesting combination happening in my mouth - nice soft, sweet and warm brioche roll and cool and refreshing granita at the same time. It does really work, but you got to be in Sicily to really appreciate it.

Granita di limone and a soft warm brioche roll.

Italy is famous for gelato. According to Blue Guide - Sicily (2012 edition), it is quite possible that ice cream was invented in Sicily. The Romans brought down snow from Mt. Etna during the winter, stored it in pits dug in cool cellars, covering it with a thick layer of straw or sawdust to keep it fresh until summer. It was then recovered and mixed with wine, honey and spices and sold as a great luxury to the riches. The Arabs in Sicily then used sugar instead of honey and fruit juice instead of wine, calling it sherbet (hence sorbet). Then 17c Sicilian confectioner added cream to the mixture, which became the origin of what we have for gelato today.

Gelato is however mainly made with milk, which means less fat and has no air added (aside from what occurs naturally during the churning process), so it has more intense, dense and creamier flavour that normal ice cream. When you go to gelaterie (ice cream parlors), you see so many different flavours to choose from, usually as many as 30 - 40 choices!

Orange flavour gelati - this meant to be the smallest size!!!

The hotel where we are staying serves semifreddo for dessert, which is a semi-frozen dessert made with a base similar to gelato but with cream added. Being near Mt Etna, they serve pistachio flavoured semifreddo, with grated pistachio nuts. 

Semifreddo al pistacchio.

In fact here in Mt Etna region, they use pistachio as well as almonds for food extensively and imaginatively, which is another story for another day.

Razzle dazzle in Randazzo - sweet experience near Mt. Etna

We are in Randazzo, a lava-built medieval town closest to the volcano craters of Mt. Etna. It's a small town yet has so much history with different influences from Norman, Greek and Spanish occupations in the past, which you would easily miss if you don't explore on foot.

Santa Maria Cathedral - built in a 13 century

Anyway, our local guide Natale has taken us to a wonderful Pasticceria Arturo on Via Umberto for a lovely coffee and sweets after exploring the town.  Apparently this is a historic coffee house with a beautiful Art Nouveau interior, serving delightful pastries, cakes and sweets, all handmade of course!

There were so many choices and all looked very delectable. Natale selected some for us to try; these were Pasta di Mandorla and Pasta di Pistacchio (small cakes/soft cookies made of almonds and pistachio - these are really nice and soft inside), cannoli (filled with sweet ricotta cheese) and white chocolate with pistachio nuts. There is also a small green ball which, I think, is made of almonds and pistachio paste and covered with chopped pistachio nuts.  All these are really delicious and go very well with strong Sicilian espresso!!!

We met the pastry chef, took a photo with her and managed to say from my Italian phrase book, 'I really enjoyed it' in Italian to her to compliment her wonderful cakes and sweets. Note, many people around here do not speak much English so the phrase book comes really handy!!!

We then went to the local Enotecca - wine shop with delicatessen near the town's main square, Il Buongustaio (www.ilbuongustaildipipocala.it).  The owner has poured two different types of lovely Etna Rosso for us to try each, with different types of Sicilian cheese including the one with pistachio nuts in it too. Both bottles were fantastic but 2010 Rosso was really marvellous and it's 15%!!!  Well, being a perfect or model consumer and feeling so happy with lovely sweets and vino, we ended up buying the bottle to take home - one day we shall open this bottle for reminiscing the wonderful time we were razzle-dazzled in Randazzo!!!!