It is NOT Spaghetti Bolognese

 "There is no such thing as

spaghetti bolognese in Italy."

~ Too many Bolognese to credit

It is true, my friends that what you have always considered a wonderful dish—Spaghetti Bolognese—does not even exist in the land where it supposedly was conceived.  Don't get me wrong. Italy has spaghetti, and Italy has bolognese sauce. Italy does not, however, have spaghetti bolognese.  Let me burst your culinary bubble one more time: Tomatoes are NOT the base for a bolognese sauce. They play a very minor roll in all of this.

So, you may ask, what the heck is a bolognese sauce, and with what kind of pasta do Italians eat it?  Thank you for asking, and let me answer the questions in reverse order.

 Italians feel that pairing the correct pasta with a sauce can either enhance or detract from the meal.  Tagliatelle, a ribbon-like pasta that is able to hold the heavy sauce better, is what originated  with the dish. Tagliatelle is similar to fettuccine, but a little more narrow. If you can't find tagliatelle, you can always substitute fettuccine, linguine, pappardelle, stringozzi or even some of the tube-shaped pastas.

Bolognese sauce takes a good three hours to prepare correctly. Yes, you can cook it more quickly, but it will not be as flavorful. You'll note by the ingredients that it is a meat-based sauce that includes a few vegetables. The traditional recipes call for no herbs—especially garlic—except for a bay leaf which adds a little depth to the sauce.

Ingredients:
(This was what we used for 8 people last evening.)
1 carrot finely diced.
1 celery stalk finely diced.
.5 onion finely diced.
a little less than 1 small can of tomato paste
2.25 pounds of ground beef and pancetta  (Use 80% for the correct taste and consistency.)
 .25 pound of pancetta, finely diced and mixed with the ground beef.  (You can substitute bacon.)
red or white wine (About a cup or so)
vegetable or beef stock (About 2-3 cups)
olive oil
salt
pepper

First, wash and dry all of the vegetables.  Peel the carrots and remove the strings from the celery.  Finely dice the carrots, onions and celery.  The pieces should not be more than .25 inches square.

Coat the bottom of a large casserole with olive oil and heat over a low fire.  Add the vegetables and cook them until the onions are almost translucent.

 Break up the meat mixture and add to the casserole. Continue stirring with a wooden spoon until the meat cooks through.








Once the meat is fully cooked, add the wine (You can substitute vegetable or beef stock for wine, if you prefer.).  After the wine evaporates, add salt and pepper to taste.  It is important not to add it until the meat has cooked and the alcohol has evaporated because adding it too soon will make the dish salty.

 Mix in the tomato paste, add the bay leaf, and about 1 cup of stock.  Cover and simmer over a low heat for three hours.  After 20-30 minutes, remove the bay leaf.  Stir the sauce occasionally, and add more stock if the sauce is too thick.

When the sauce is done, divide it into two parts. Add the pasta to one of the pans of sauce and toss.  Divide onto the plates, and top with sauce from the other pan.  Serve with parmigiano and a nice chianti.

 

 

A couple of notes: Except for the meat weight, the other measurements are approximations. Davide (the chef) used a concentrated tomato paste from a tube. He chose it because the flavor was stronger than that of the can, and he needed that since he was not cooking the sauce for three hours. The amount he used seemed to be just shy of what is in a small can in the States. He gave us chianti to drink and used the rest of what was in the bottle in the sauce.  There was maybe a cup.  

Davide also occasionally added stock to the meat if he thought it was getting too dry. I think he put in a large ladle of stock two times. He said that some cooks use water in place of the wine or stock. He thinks the wine and stock make the sauce richer.

He used salt and pepper very sparingly.  One of the other students asked about garlic, and he said, "Niente!"

Davide did not drain the pasta. He lifted it out with huge pasta forks and placed it in one of the pans with the sauce.  He then added a few ladles of the water in which he'd boiled the pasta. He said he does that to give body to the pasta.

Domani (Tomorrow): We make pasta. . . .

"You Are Wrong."

"A wise man never knows all;

only fools know everything."

~ Unknown

(Note: It is very late, and I still havea bit of homework, so I am going to save the cooking school story for tomorrow or the next two days. Let me note that the photo above has absolutely nothing to do with this post. I just wanted something interesting.  ;-)  )

Cultura Italiana, the school that I attend, has about 50 students. I think you can divide us into two groups: Under 30 and over 40.  Except for an 18-year old, I am the only American. Most of the students seem to be German and Swiss (mostly Swiss German). I usually have lunch with German and Swiss German women and a Swiss French man.

Today I had an appointment at the Bologna Tourist Office, so we went to Eataly after class for panini. It was close to both school and the tourism office, and the others were kind enough to accommodate my tight schedule.

Amaury, the guy, has studied Italian for four years and is in the most advanced class. He mentioned that studying the subjunctive in Italian is not easy..

"It eez ver-ee hard," he told me. 

"It is," I replied. "When I learned the subjunctive in Spanish, I hated it, but it helped me understand the subjunctive in English."

He shook his head.  "Zare eez no subjunctive een Engleesh."

I shook my head.  "There most certainly is subjunctive in English. Many times Americans do not use it, but it does exist."

"Zhou are wrong," he insisted. "Zare eez no subjunctive een Engleesh."  He sipped his beer.

"She ist not wrong." Annetta, the Swiss German, saw that I was getting a bit upset.

"English is my native language," I snapped.  "I TEACH ENGLISH GRAMMAR. THERE IS A SUBJUNCTIVE TENSE IN ENGLISH."  I wasn't yelling, but my voice was louder than it had been.

"Geef me un example zen," Amaury insisted.

"How many do you want?" I asked.  "I wish I WERE taller.  It is important that Carlo FINISH his work. It is crucial that Maria STUDY every evening."

He looked quite confused.

Annetta added, "Do you see, Amaury? She is right."

I got up to throw out the trash. 

"Put that in your birra (beer) and drink it," I thought.

A Story About My French Friends

". . .if you were to remove everything from our lives 

that depends on electricity to function, homes and 

offices would become no more than the chambers and 

passages of limestone caves—simple shelter from 

wind and rain . . ."

~ Jane Brox

There are 10 apartments in the building in which I live, and two of us are at the back.  Mine is on the ground floor, and the other is on the first floor above me.  Since I moved in, I have heard people moving around, banging down the stairs, and trying to calm a screaming child.  I could tell they were French, and I figured they had two young children.

As I was writing the other evening, I heard a commotion in the hall, and someone rang my doorbell.  I opened the door to the mother and two girls.

"Do shou spake Eng-leesh?" the mother asked me.

"Si," I replied, although I have no idea why I answered in Italian.

"Our ay-lictric eez not own," she announced. Mine, she could see, was since I had turned on the foyer light when I answered the door.

"I'm sorry," I said, not really knowing what else to say.  "Did you call Giovanni?"

"Zee nome-bare, she doe-zant verk. Ve needs zee power."   She noticed the fuse box to my apartment inside the door.  "Vare eez our box like zees?"  How I was supposed to know, I have no clue.  I shrugged my shoulders.

"Giovanni lives two doors up at the same door as the B&B," I told her.  "Maybe just go there and ring his bell."  I felt sorry for her, but I couldn't help.

As I was getting ready for bed about 10 minutes later, the bell sounded again. I opened the door to find that the father had joined the troupe.

"Zee nome-bare fair Giovanni doe-zant verk," he said to me. I really felt sorry for them, but to be perfectly blunt, I didn't know any more then than I knew 10 minutes earlier. "You zee?" The father held up his cell phone so I could hear someone say that the number wasn't working.

"Ok," I said. "Let me try to call him for you."  I dialed the number and got, you guessed it, his voicemail.  I left a message outlining the problem and asked him to call the Francesi when he could.  "So, hopefully he will hear the message and call you," I said to the father.  He  talked to me for a few more minutes, but I have no idea what he said because it was probably nothing of consequence and, quite frankly, I was falling asleep on my feet by that time Sunday evening.

 "Bon chance (Good luck)," I said as I closed the door.

About 20 minutes later, I was asleep.

"Viva, Las Vegas! Viva, Las Vegas!," my phone blared (ZZ Top = my ring tone). I probably bounced to the ceiling and back in panic when I heard it.  I wasn't expecting a call, of course, and I was very much asleep.

"Hello."

"Krees, it's Giovanni," the male voice announced.

"Who?" In my sleep-fogged state, I was confused.  (If you read the post about my arrival at the apartment, you'll understand the irony of my response.) Within a split second, I realized it was Giovanni. "Oh, you got my message."

"Yes. What is-a da problem?" He apparently got the message but either didn't listen to it or didn't understand it.  I repeated what I had told him about the French family's electricity.  "Again it-a happen. They turn on-a da washer, da air, and da microwave at-a da same-a time. It may work-a in Francia, but in-a Italia, it break-a da electric. The box is-a by the door-a."  

  Fast forward to last evening at roughly the same time. The bell screeched again, and again I found the mom and girls at my door.

"Sorry," the mom said. She pointed at the oldest daughter. "She mean to turn own zee light for zee stairz."

"It's okay," I replied.  "Your electric is working okay today?"

"Yes, but zee hote wat-air eez oaf." Sensing, I think, that I was going to suggest she call Giovanni, she continued, "Ve call Giovanni, and he eez comb-ing soon, ve hope."

I hoped so, too.

What Time Did You Wake Up This Morning?

“If you want to make your dreams come true, 

the first thing you have to do is wake up.”  

– J.M. Power

Waking up this morning—the second time, that is—was harder than waking up any other morning.  Let me explain: I was literally falling asleep at this time last evening (7pm Bologna time), so I was in bed by 7:45. I woke up at 4 am and was up about 90 minutes before I tried to fall asleep again. When my alarm went off at 6:30, I was not happy. I was tired and just wanted to stay in bed.

I should have signed up for school starting next week, I thought, although I must admit the terms I used were a little stronger than what I wrote. Yet, I forced myself to get up and get ready.  I stopped at my usual bar for café and headed to Cultura Italiana, a 10-minute walk from the apartment.

Upon entering the old palazzo, I saw a sign that read: "Cultura Italiana ---- Walk all the Way to the Top of the Stairs."  The school occupies the fourth floor of an 11th century palace and is accessible only by walking up 45 stairs. (Note that I don't mind that at all, but anyone with a disability could have a problem.)

"Welcome! Welcome!" A tall, thin, elderly man greeted me as I walked through the school door.  "My name is Massimo. What is your name?"  (As with yesterday, I'll write in English and italicize what we said Italian.)

"Cristina Cutler.  Grazie mille." I'm pretty good with thanking people in Italian.

"Can I get you a coffee?" he asked me as he prodded me through the doors to a classroom and introduced me to "Sister Francita and Kanae." A few minutes later, he returned with espresso and a glass of water.  "Good Italian coffee. Espresso. But be careful. It's very hot."  It wasn't (good coffee, and it was (VERY HOT). (In all fairness, it was espresso from a machine.)

Let's fast-forward through the speaking and listening comprehension tests, the introductions, and  welcome lecture except to say that all of it was in Italian. We are not supposed to speak anything but Italian in classes (of course), during breaks, or during the pre-planned activities. I am in an intermediate conversation class and an advanced grammar class, and while I can understand about 85-90% of what the instructor says, my comprehension of what other students say is a lot less.

You may wonder why I can't understand the other students.  Well, as far as I could tell, the only other American in the school is an 19-year old who is from Maine. Everyone else is from France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Japan, Turkey, and Singapore.  Imagine how many ways we all say the same Italian word.  For example, preferisci.  The best way I can tell you the correct way to pronounce it is:  preh-fair-EE-she.  I heard everything from prayer-is-key to pray-FER-izzy to pra-fer-ITS-key to prior-fo-ITsy.

Let me be honest.  They have a hard time understanding me, too.  I have a habit to substitute Spanish whenever I can't think of an Italian word.  For example, in grammar, we were studying reflexive verbs, and the instructor asked us to tell what time we got up this morning.

In all honesty, I had no idea. I was first up. Great.  I had never heard of the Italian verb that means to wake oneself up, so I reverted to half-Italian, half-Spanish.

"Mi desperté a las quattro de la mattina."  (The underlined is Spanish; the balance is Italian.)  Everyone looked at me and then at Marina who informed me that I was half right and what I should have said was, "Mi sono svegliato a las quattro de la mattina."  As you can probably tell just by looking at them, svegliarsi sounds nothing like despertarse. 


So, my piccolo (little) brain hurts tonight, and I think it will only get worse as I have two hours of written homework to complete. On the other hand, I hope it helps me sleep through the night.

Buona serata.

Sounds of Silence

"We travel to learn . . . "

~ Maria Mitchell

I've noticed the sounds more than anything over the past three days. Since Mike is not here, I say very little unless I'm in a shop or walking down the street. Instead, I listen.

Just a few minutes ago, I heard tapping on the red tile roof four stories up. I looked up to see a few huge drops plop on my terrace. The rain increased in intensity—as did the tapping. Suddenly, it stopped, and all I heard were the church bells ringing to announce 6:00 PM. I hear the church bells a lot.  I think the priest, who sits outside of the side door every afternoon, rings the bells on the half hour.

A mother and her two children live above me, and I hear them  couple of times a day when they leave the apartment.  The door slams, and three sets of feet pound down the stairs. I've never seen them, but I'm guessing the children are around two and six. They' speak French, so I don't quite understand what they're saying. However, the youngest one is often not very happy to be leaving or returning because he's always protesting in a very loud way.

Speaking of French, I don't hear it much in Bologna. I was on a short ride around the city yesterday, and there were Germans and Scandinavians. It's quite odd to be walking down the street with people like me and realize that I cannot understand a lot of what they're saying.  I listen, though, to the musicality of their languages. The Germans sound like they are marching, while the French sound like they are sliding their feet. American tend to skate, and the Italians waltz. Cesar, my new friend who owns the bar a few doors down from the flat, agrees.

The other sound I really notice is near Piazza Maggiore, the main plaza in town.  Friday and yesterday, there were a lot of people around, and all of the talking and laughing  created a very loud buzz. By evening, though the crowds thinned out, and the buzz was more of a hum.  Today, even the hum was resting.

I hope this makes sense since I am once again falling asleep at the keyboard.

Buona serata.

PS The kid is on his balcony screaming.  It's time to close the door.  ;-)

"Who?"

"You got to be careful if you don't know where 

you're going, because you might not get there".
~ Yogi Berra

(Note: To make this easier to read, I'm going to write everything in English. I'll italicize anything that I said (or thought I said) in Italian. I also changed apartment address.)

The thing that worried me the most about traveling alone to Italy was arriving in Bologna just before midnight and getting to the apartment to find no one there to greet me. Since I had kept in contact with the owner, I felt I was being a little silly, yet I worried. (I tell you, it comes naturally.)  And for good reason. It was a little after midnight when I rang the bell as the owner requested I do, and there was no answer any of the three times I rang the bell.

"HOLY. SHIT."  I wanted to cry.


Let me back up a bit to my arrival in Bologna.  Coming through customs was very easy. The customs agent was thrilled to be working so late at night, so he barely looked at my passport as he stamped it and waved me through.  My bags, which I swear gained about 50 pounds during our stop at Heathrow, jostled behind me as I pulled them to the taxi stand.  A very friendly taxi driver waved me over.

"Where are you going, Signora?" he asked me.

"Sixty-eight Via Castiglione," I replied.  "Please forgive my Italian. I don't speak it very well."

"You speak well," he reassured me.  I had said all of about 10 words to him, so I'm not sure that he was a good judge.

He drove quickly pointing out various sites as we passed them, but I was too tired to notice much.  I was glad when I started to recognize where we were, and I held my breath in excitement. He slowed the taxi as he passed the B&B we had stayed in last year, and he stopped a few doors down the street.

"Sixty-eight Via Castiglione," he announced and added, "17.20 euro."  I handed him a 20 euro note, and he started to give me change. (In Italy, tips are not the norm.)

"No. No," I told him. "For you. It's very late. Thank you. Thank you."  He waited until I'd yanked my luggage to the door and took off.  I had been hoping that he'd at least wait until I rang the bell, but I guess he wanted to get back to the airport.

I stood and tried to read the apartment numbers in the dark. Apartment 2 was at the bottom of the row of buttons.  I rang the bell.  Nothing. "I knew it," I whispered. 

I rang the bell again. Nothing. "Crap." Anxiety quickly pushed the excitement out of the way. I wondered if I had the correct address  I knew I was on the right street. Maybe I was wrong on the number.

I pushed on the bell for at least 10 seconds.  Nothing.

"HOLY. SHIT." I wanted to cry. I was exhausted and hot and, by this time, completely deflated. It was dark, and the only other people I saw were an elderly couple walking down the other side of the street, and a university student on a bike. My taxi driver had been the last car to head down the street.

Giovanni had given me his cell phone number, but I had stupidly not written it down nor programmed it into the phone. I didn't have wi-fi, but I hoped that I had saved the message in the phone's email. I did. I dialed and waited what had to be only a few seconds for the call to catch, but it seemed like forever.  The phone rang once, twice, and,

"Yes?" A man answered.

"GIovanni?" My voice was shaking.

"Yes," he hesitated.

"It's Chris."

"Who?" he asked.

"Who?" I thought. I don't want to tell you what went through my mind.  "Krees." (That time I used a more Italian pronunciation.)  "I'm in front of the building."

"Oh. Oh. So-ree," he said. "I be right-a down."

And, he arrived promptly.

"You come-a early," he said. "I was-a thinkin' another 30 me-noot."

At that point, I was happy to be in the apartment. He showed me around and demonstrated how to turn on the air, the stove, and the internet.

"Do you need-a anysing more-a?" he asked me.

"No, grazia."  I just wanted to call Mike and go to bed.

"Look the door. It's-a safe, but look-a it," he advised as he left.

And, I did.

Wake Me When It's Over....

Trying to stay awake after 36+ hours with no sleep.

Airline travel is hours of boredom 

interrupted by moments of stark terror. 

– Al Boliska

One of my biggest fears when traveling is having my luggage searched.  I watched TSA go through my mother's stuff numerous times when she flew, and that always unnerved me. (Although it could have been that she wore underwear that was about 5 sizes too large for her, and the agents always held at least one pair up.)  I'm grateful that I get pre-checked through a lot these days, although I don't think they do that on international flights unless you buy a Global Pass, which I have not done.

My flights were relatively easy yesterday.  I flew British Airways (direct) from Las Vegas to London Heathrow. The flight took almost ten hours and arrived in London around 3 PM their time.  After a six-hour layover, I caught another BA flight to Bologna, arriving here at 11:30 PM Bologna time.

I was fortunate to have an exit-row seat with no one in front of me, so I could stretch my legs out. (See photo below.)  Even better, there was no one in the middle seat, so the 80-year old lady who shared the row with me could spread her stuff all over the place.  There were only two minor blips to the first flight: 1) When I lifted my backpack into the overhead compartment, two tins of mints jumped out and kicked me in my left eye. Of course, that's the eye that's had the most trouble since surgery.  2) I didn't sleep.  Between the house and the plane, I somehow misplaced the pills (including Ambien) I had for the evening.

I was a bit cranky when I deplaned, and I'm not sure if it was the lack of sleep or the I-Hate-Heathrow Effect.  More than twenty-two million passengers pass through Heathrow annually making it the fourth busiest airport in the world and, as you would imagine, jammed with people. Worse, as the planes hurl the masses into Terminal 5, everyone who is not staying in London (about 90%)  get pushed to a central area to await notification of their next departure gate.  You see, Heathrow does not announce gate numbers until one hour before flight time.  There are a zillion inhabitants in the  area at all times of day.

Of course, before passengers have the luxury of waiting in that massive waiting room, they have to run the Heathrow Security Gauntlet.  Uniformed (in purple, no less) agents push everyone to the first checkpoint.  The line of people snakes through the cordoned-off rows while the same recording urges people to make sure they don't have more than the allowed amount of liquid. Additional purple people hand out the 3-1-1 bags repeating the same warning that anyone who tries to sneak something through will have to go through increased checks.

Arriving at the front of this first line, we get to go to the next available window where another purple person scans passports and makes sure travelers have not changed since they got on the plane at their place of origin. This agent doesn't want to look at our liquids, so we place them back in the luggage for now.  Once we get our passports back and a terse nod from said purple agent, we rush to move to the next snaking line which winds around and drops us at an escalator that takes us to the waiting area . . . or so you would think.

View from my seat featuring Jonathon, the flight attendant

At the top of the escalator, the line fans out, and we can choose to enter anyone of about 20 lines so agents can screen passengers and their luggage once again.  The agents in this area (dressed in grey, beige, or navy) *want* to see our liquids, laptops, and ALL medications.  I showed the bag of medications, and the agent thanked me.

"There won't be a problem with any of these since you still have the pharmacy labels," she said. " Leave your shoes on, too. You'll be fine."

Fine, H-E-Double Hockey Sticks.

Like everyone who went through the arch with shoes, I set off the alarm, so the agent there made me take them off so she could scan them separately.  That done, I got my body scan and went to grab my bags from the belt.  My nicely packed suitcase was there, but the backpack and tray containing laptop, meds, sweater, Ipad, etc. were not.

"Those are mine," I told another agent who was standing behind the counter.

"You've been flagged, Madam," he replied.  "We'll be with you when we can."

After about 15 minutes, an agent grabbed the tray containing the laptop and meds and called me over to her.  She went through the bag of medicines and read the label on each one. She picked up a box that contained a tube of cream and stared at it.

"Where is the presecription for this?" she snapped at me.

"Turn the box over," I said in what I hoped was not a snarky way.  She took the meds and the bag of liquids and touched everything with the magic wand that tells whether there is an explosive on it or not. She then ran them all through the scanner again.

"You can pack everything up again," she finally told me.

"I can't until you give me the backpack back," I said.

"I can't do it right now," she told me as she walked away. I stood there stupidly holding the one big tray of unpackable things.  After 15-20 minutes, a different agent came over to me.

"What are you waiting for, Madam?" he asked me. I pointed to the backpack.  "The iPad set it off," he continued when he got back.  "Take everything out of it and put it in this tray."  I emptied it, examined everything, and told me to put it all back.  "You can throw these on top after I check them." He smiled at me.  He took my iPad and camera and repeated the routine the gal had done on the meds.  After running them through the scanner, he told me I could go.

I lugged everything over to a table, emptied the entire backpack again, and repacked it. By the time I got to the giant waiting room, I had spent more than 90 minutes in lines. 

I'm not really complaining. I'd rather they be overly cautious than not, but it seemed ike the right hand didn't know what the left hand (the screener and the pre-screener) was doing.  I'm just grateful I didn't have to unpack my bundle of clothes.  I might have missed my flight if I had had to repack that thing.

One more word about British Air: Their airplanes are spotless, and the seats in the planes they use for European continental flights are roomy and comfortable.  No one seemed to have his knees in his face during the flight to Bologna.

 Tomorrow: My really big fear is arriving at an apartment after midnight, alone and exhausted, and having no one there to greet me.