A Proper Italian Supper

In 1986, a Slow Food movement started in Italy as response to the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome (more of the history of Slow Food here). Although the movement has gained legs to reach 150 countries around the world, the threats from modernity and fast food were perhaps more benign than expected.

Because as real as the threats might be, the lifestyle of slow food is still very much a part of the Italy that I know.

Nevertheless, my wife and I honored the Slow Food movement by planning a proper Italian supper on Saturday night. What constitutes an Italian supper? Well, time and leisurely-paced courses of drink and food to start. The courses generally follow this sequence:
1 - Aperitivo, pre-supper drink(s) to whet the appetite
2 - Antipasti, snacks and samplers to acclimate the palate
3 - Primo Piatto, first course(s) to enjoy with wine
4 - Secondo Piatto, second course of meat(s) to fill the belly, usually with a side dish, or contorni
5 - Digestivo, after-supper drink(s) to settle the stomach, can include espresso (but never capuccino!)
6 - Dolci, dessert(s) to linger on the palate

Give yourself 3 or 4 hours, so that each course can be enjoyed on its own merits. And if the aperitivi or digestivi carry over on their own, you might need more time.

Of course, we did cheat a little bit, on both the antipasti and the primi piatti, as we prepared another secondi piatto to compensate. But the drinks and the food were delicious and Slow Food triumphed to distract us from the ongoing winter doldrums.

This week I'll share a few of the drinks and recipes that we enjoyed, which carried a more Tuscan flavor. Stay tuned as I assemble some of the menu from our Italian Supper:
Negroni cocktail (aperitivo)
Sangiovese wine (to accompany the piatti)
Peposo, or Peppered beef (secondo piatto)
Bocconcini di pollo alla toscana, or Tuscan-style chicken (secondo piatto)
Fagioli all'olio, or Tuscan beans (secondo piatto, contorno)
Panna cotta dessert (dolci)

Until next time, or as the Italians say, alla prossima...

Comments

A Little Bit of Proust

Somehow I started to read Proust. The blame goes to Alain de Botton , a writer whose witticisms deconstruct modern thinking and make intellectualism seem but a trifle and a whim. He wrote a book in 1997 called "How Proust Can Change Your Life" which distills the enigmatic French novelist into a self-help dispenser of pithy ideas. How clever I found Mr. de Botton to be when I dipped my toe into the vagaries of Proust; I picked up volume one of "In Search of Lost Time" and instantly fell into the deep end. What author dares to run sentences onward into the stratosphere that sometimes seemingly mellows behind the stars of a bright night, but never so much as an introspective person that wretches for the meaning of a simple thought, sometimes stumbling, but always emerging strongly as that same night in starry sky, almost an homage back to Van Gogh, whose rich paintings greatly represented the mood of a generation - and generations often afford a few mis-steps in l...

Try Something New: 750 Words

If there is anything universally redeeming about writing, it is the ability to delve into the inner thoughts of one's own psyche and come back with perspective on feelings, motivations, and desires. In this way, journaling as the specific form of writing that provides this redemption can be a worthwhile pursuit. One might suppose that the internet world would offer various tools to make journaling simple, easy, and relatively painless, but that has not always been the case - until now. I came across this from Lifehacker, who was promoting the site back in March: 750words. The site is run by a former Amazon product manager who has an interest in journaling for the creative process and data visualization. Mash those things together, and you have an interesting site that is built around the premise that creative juices get flowing by consistently writing 3 pages worth of stuff on a daily basis, which translates to roughly 750 words. Logging in by using your Google or Facebook use...

Netscape, We Hardly Knew Ye...

In 1995, I started using email. In my first college days, my friend Virge anointed me with a playful email handle - toddity. She never told me that your email address was somewhat permanent, and I spent the rest of my university days with an username that amused most who got a message from good, old Eudora. At that time, I used Netscape as my web browser. Fast forward almost 15 years. I moved on first to Internet Explorer (Microsoft had a monopolistic hand in it), and then to Firefox from which I am penning this blog entry. Somewhere along the way, Netscape was acquired by AOL and sent down the river on a slow obsolescence. Until next week, when Netscape will end up on the scrap heap with Prodigy, Compuserve, and Excite@Home. How much the internet has changed. I can wax poetically on blogs and social networks, but I can also remember messageboards, usenets, IM, forums, web 1.0, HTML, and the world wide web when www. was a foreign concept. The concept is still the same - connec...

Journal : OpenRoadWorks

Search This Blog