to swim and I am just looking for a long, quiet walk through the forest by the side of a lake. We drive around the lake from above, admiring the view. White mist is working its way up the sides of the volcanic crater quite quickly and rolling over its top. We dive in and out of it, catching glimpses of the main town of Albano with its beautiful cupola and palace, directly across the crater from us.
We arrive at the entrance to the walking path, but are unable to walk along the forest track as there has been a landslide. A path has been cleared through it but it is still a thin track in what looks like a river of mud. We brave the track for a while, but every aeroplane going overhead fills me with terror as I imagine another river of mud starting above us. So my husband promises me lasagne instead.
We drive through more little towns in the hills, winding around roads that are canopied with dripping green trees until we get to Genzano, just around the corner from Arricia. My husband has promised me that there is a great fornaio (a bakery) there where we can get lunch. Every fornaio in Italy produces bread or biscuits. If you are lucky they make pizza and if you are luckier you will get tea, coffee and other drinks. This one has it all, plus homemade mushroom and truffle lasagne. This is a real neighbourhood affair; the radio is blaring, the seating is plastic and you get your drinks from the fridge next to the cash register. One of the servers wears a traditional baker’s costume from Genzano over a tracksuit and runners.
The pasta is delicious and costs ten euro, with a bottle of water, for the both of us. I constantly marvel at such out-of-the-way places, that place no importance on the comfort of the diner, yet have the most remarkable standard of food. There is almost no attention to service or presentation and I never would have chosen to eat here it unless my husband had heard it was great. Yet this is so typical in most of Italy.
A few years ago, as a result of not being a backpacker any longer and therefore being able to choose a restaurant based on anything other than its price, I set about sampling the haute cuisine of Rome. I tried about half of the restaurants commonly found in all guidebooks and presented as the top of Roman dining. After three extremely disappointing meals that cost over 200 euro (around AUD$370 at the time) for two, I felt I had done enough investigative research. It wasn’t just that they were bad meals, it was that they were stunningly and embarrassingly bad. These same kinds of dishes you could literally get around the corner for a tenth of the price and which were infinitely better. Also, the service was utterly snobby and unwelcoming. Your seating allocation depended on how expensive you looked, and the ambience was tired and touristy.
In Italy the best food is served with the least fanfare, far away from famous piazzas and landmarks. In fact, I find the less obtrusive the establishment, the brighter the fluorescent lighting, the more plastic the chairs and the louder the television or radio, the better the food will be. This is because it is catering to the local, discerning population of Italians who know how the food should taste and who will only eat out if the food is as good as they can get at home. They also usually want to watch the football match and talk to each other, so the ambience is not fundamental. Entertaining at home is much less common than for other nationalities and is reserved for family and formal occasions, such as baptisms or small children’s birthdays.
There are, of course, exceptions to every experience and I have not eaten in every restaurant in Italy. I have even once been coerced into eating close to a monument, due to the power small children have when they whine nonstop, and was pleasantly surprised. Also, some foreigners have been working in restaurants in Italy so long that they are very good Italian cooks. But if you are here for the real deal or for a short time, then I recommend sticking to those Italian restaurants run by locals and eaten in by locals, otherwise you might as well be eating Italian in your own country.
* * *
After snuffling down our truffle and mushroom lasagne, my husband having wisely put a stop to me ordering the crumbed veal and vegetables until after we had finished our primo, we reluctantly decide that we have to go straight to dessert. We both choose a sponge roll, one filled and coated with chocolate and one with white chocolate and cherries.
I am not a big fan of Italian desserts. Italy comes a poor second to my own country and many other European countries in the dessert category. I like to think it is because everything that comes before it is just so damn good that no-one notices what dessert is like, or no-one has room for it.
The traditional use of flours made from almonds, chestnuts, walnuts and grains other than wheat, as well as a lack of raising agents, means that there are no light fluffy cakes here, or butter-soaked puff pastry. Icing is nowhere to be found and cream is only used in January, sparingly. So desserts have a tendency to be ice-creamy and, frankly, why would you bother being good at anything else when you have the world ice-cream market cornered?
Whenever I spy something a bit different I always like to try it and it is usually at my peril. Like today, I realise, after my first bite into my white chocolate and cherry ‘sponge’. They weren’t kidding about the white chocolate part. The hard and crumbly sponge, or pan di spagna, is wrapped around semi-dry white chocolate that is so sweet I can’t eat more than a mouthful and which drowns out the occasional cherry. I put it aside for my husband to finish after he gets through his dark chocolate one and ask for the chocolate and pear torta, a flat, dry-looking tart. But before doing so, wary of the white chocolate and cherry roll, I ask, ‘Is there much chocolate in the pear and chocolate tart?’
‘No, it’s chocolate tart, not a tart of chocolate,’ the waitress says.
It is delicious, bitter in its chocolaty, crumbly pastry form, the sweetness coming from the syrupy pears.
We buy some Genzano bread to take back with us to Rome, which is apparently well-known as being great bread. We also have a selection of biscuits made from almond flour, nut flour, chestnut flour and flavoured with chocolate and orange, and a few slices of porcetta for our dinner. Porcetta is another wonderful speciality of the hills surrounding Rome. In many of these little eateries you will find a nearly whole cooked pig body, with no legs, resting under a large curved Perspex container. It has been roasted and stuffed with herbs. You order it by the gram or the slice. The lid is raised up and a sharp knife slices off delicious rounds of crackling, fat, roasted pork and herb stuffing. It is divine eaten by the slice from the paper it is served on, on a piece of bread as a sandwich or with vegetables.
It is time to head home. It is still raining and although I have not thrust myself into a whistling, dripping, green forest this Sunday, I still feel I have been refreshed.
Chapter 8
La Liberazione, Freedom
Today is April 25, a big day for Italy. It is a holiday that celebrates the day Italy was liberated from German occupation during World War II, the day that was also the beginning of the end for the Italian Monarchy, and the day that was a precursor to Italy becoming a democratic, voting, independent republic. My husband explains all this to me on the way to our local bar to have our usual Saturday morning cappuccino and cornetto ( breakfast pastry) .
‘That is an important day,’ I remark. ‘No wonder it’s a holiday. All of that happened in one day?’ I ask, incredulous.
‘Well, maybe not all in one day,’ my husband says, ‘but it all started from La Liberazione.’ It seems they were liberated from more than just the Germans.
Today has the air of a special and sacred day. It is a day that honours Italian soldiers killed fighting for their country, it honours those who lost their lives resisting the German-supported Fascist State, and it honours the partisan, or people’s, movement which formed the basis of the movement to become a democratic republic. There are celebrations all over Italy; military parades
