Our Last Meal Together

Before we left, we had one last Colorno dinner together. It was most appropriate that we cooked together, ate together, and drank together as that's what we've done for the last 10 months. And even more appropriate, to have red wine from Parma, artisinal beer from Colorno, and Diana's infamously favourite radicchio lasagna. I will miss these dinners - the ease of getting together, the creativity of dishes, the deliciousness of food, the shared plates and utensils, the rearranging tables and squeezed in chairs, the flowing wine, the erupting laughter, the photos taken, the warmth of our homes, piles of leftover dishes and flour dust, taking turns cleaning, and barely ever having any leftovers. 

The First Snow of the Winter and an Apres-Ski Party.

Snow came to Colorno on the 1st of December. We started with snow in Colorno, and are ending with snow. It was not enough to cancel classes like on the first day. As we crossed the bridge to class, we found the Christmas tree being put up in Piazza Garibaldi. It was a little skimpy, making me feel cold just looking at the bare, naked trunk that barely supported the evergreen branches, but festive Colorno made me happy. 

 Being stuck inside later that night staring out in the blanketing white snow, the winter weather inspired us to divert our attention away from our barely concentrated year's end homework assignments and plan a Apres-ski Party. We had cocktail class in the afternoon (rough life) and a free day for some Italian holiday the next day (really rough life) so it was perfect to plan a themed party! 

snow fell from the sky

With some construction paper, scissors, tape, a visit to the euro store and a bag full of leftover toilet paper rolls, our creativity really shone. I like to think we transformed our little apartment into a winter wonderland  where even Anton from Tyrol would be impressed. 

snow flakes frosted the windows 

what's green and goes down a hill?

santa even popped in for a visit.

toilet roll holders are a waste of an invention.
for some reason we kept a bag full of empty rolls.
for some reason we must've known they'd be put to use.

dinky wreath.
yes those are chocolate coin wrappers

gluwine. mulled wine.

we even had a christmas tree!

the boys. 

Themed costumes were recommended. Decked out in winter clothes, despite the cold December night air, the windows were opened to cool us off.

Asher won the prize for best costume.
and best dj.

hostess with the mostess.

we even had Apres-ski dance moves:
moguls! downhill! jump! cross-country!

And the dancing started immediately and lasted into the night...until the neighbours pretended to call the police. ugh! they are noisy all the time morning into night!

Bug: I'm in the Mother F*ing House.

Christian called it a cimicidae, which translates to a bedbug, which I disagree with. Samara called it a shield bug, which I think it could be, and could also mean stink bug. gross.

Despite the window screens being constantly closed, these little critters somehow make their way into our apartment. They're everywhere: in the stairwell, on the floor, fluttering about the lights. They squeal if you hit the screen they are clinging on to and then fly away. They are crunchy (and juicy) if they are stepped on. And they are stupid. I took this video of one who landed on his back and couldn't get up. Amusing for us, maybe not for him. He should learn to stay outside.



i have no idea how they get into the house.

"You tasted it. Isn’t that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That’s all we’re given in life, that’s all we’re given of life. A taste. There is no more." The Dying Animal, Philip Roth

On the last day of my trip around NW Italy with John & Sheelagh in September, we had lunch in Lecco. After a week of my parents insisting that I translate and communicate in Italian for them, knowing fully aware that I can speak as much Italian as they can and most, if not all of the Italians we interacted with spoke perfectly comprehensible levels of English, my dad asked me one last time to help with the bill. Luckily enough for me though, sitting on the counter by the register were bottles of Ferran Adria's new beer. Luckily enough for me, my dad was standing right next to me paying the bill. 

The famous chef of Spain's El Bulli and Barcelona's Estrella Damm collaborated to create Estrella Damm Inedit. I had heard about it but had never seen it for sale so I guarded the 12euro bottle until it was the right time to enjoy it. It has been sitting in the fridge since September as I had promised to share it with beer-loving Jules. Perfectly chilled, he poured it into wine glasses, obliviously obliging to the instructions. It could easily have been an subconscious act as the bottle itself looks like a wine bottle: sleek, black glass with a long neck topped with a beer bottle cap. Typical for artisinal beers. 

It wasn't bitter at all, but danced to melodic fruity tones. The amber colour matched the orange notes just as the frothy foam matched Ferran Adria's legendary technique. Easily drinkable, it made me long for hot summer nights, rather than the hint of winter that fall was harvesting upon us. 

"I am a true adorer of life, and if I can’t reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation" - Saul Bellow.

some photographs a la carte of why i love my UNISG classmates:

they go into the fields to pick tomatoes leftover from the harvest.

they publish books. about food.

we cook together. 

we drink together.

they come to class with daily essentials in their bag, even when all you need is a pen.

they buy pasta machines to make fresh pasta. 

they bake fresh, homemade, delicious, and healthy bread.

we invite our professors over for dinner. 

they have promising potential become professional sommeliers. 

they are strong.

yes. they are strong.

dumpster diving in my fridge. again.

we're leaving for our second study trip tomorrow....to crete! this not only means a week in beautiful, sunny greece learning lots about the culture and eating tons of delicious food (emphasis on sun and food, oh, and beautiful and culture too) but it means time to clean out the fridge. here are some "recipes" i threw together with what i had, trying to be healthy, seasonal, creative, and tasty. i guess the point is: don't waste food.

Thursday.
Creamy Tomato Gorgonzola Soup

what i had/used:
extra virgin olive oil
a carton of cherry tomatoes
4 medium size tomatoes, off the vine, cut into quarters
half a red onion, cut into large chunks
4 cloves of garlic
2 carrots, peeled, chopped
1 white onion, finely sliced
2 tins of tomato
whole peperoncinos, sprinkled by hand (and hands immediately washed afterwards b/c yes, you will rub your eyes and yes, it burns a lot).
dried basil

what i bought:
gorgonzola.

what i did:
turn the oven on high and put the cherry tomatoes and larger tomatoes with the halved red onion and garlic into an oven proof pan. coat with extra virgin olive oil and season with salt and pepper. cook until tender, about 20 minutes. meanwhile, in a large pot, heat a couple glugs of olive oil and add the white onion and carrot and cook until soft then add the two tins of tomato plus one tin of water (or i suppose broth if you have it) and simmer while the other tomatoes are cooking in the oven. when they are done, take them out of the oven, smash them a little (should be easy and squishable) and add them to the pot. stir it around a little and then blend until smooth with a handheld immersion blender (best thing ever). back on the stove, add the gorgonzola bit by bit until it is all melted evenly and is smoothly creamy. season to taste, add some dried basil, stir in some sprinkled peperoncinos, and poof! very easy soup.

No picture.

Friday
Springish Veggie Pasta.

what i had/used:
3 smallish courgettes, cut on an angle, 1/4inch thick
1 red onion, sliced into narrow strips
half a container of sliced mushrooms, snapped in half
spoonful of capers, drained
one medium sized tomato, cut into chunks
2 egg-pasta lasagne sheets cut into pappardelle sized noodles
fresh parsley.
parmesan

what i did: 
add the cut pasta sheets to a pot of salted boiling water and cook until al-dente - not very long. in a large pan, heat up a couple glugs of olive oil and add the onion and cook until soft. add the mushrooms until they absorb the oil and change that lovely shiny brown color. add the courgettes and cook until they soften but still have crunch enough that they aren't mushy. add the tomato. add the capers. season with salt and pepper. drain the pasta and add to the pot of veggies. throw in some fresh parsley leaves. mix all together. sprinkle with grated parmesan. yum. pretend that you tell yourself that you are only going to eat half because you have cleared out your fridge and will have nothing to eat the next day. eat it all.

Saturday
Green-Reminds-Me-of-Spring-Frittata


what i had/used:
6 eggs
parmesan
1 small red onion
3 cloves of garlic
fresh parsley

what i bought:
1 bunch of asparagus
1 packet of whole fava beans.

what i did:
start with boiling a pot of salted water. break off the asparagus where it snaps and take the fava beans out of the pods. while this is boiling, add the onion and garlic to a pan with olive oil and gently warm until they soften. then, add the asparagus to the boiling water and cook until bright green, about 3 minutes and then add the fava beans and cook for another minute. drain the asparagus and fava beans and add them back to the pot filled with cold water. then peel the fava beans and pop the little green bit right out. add them to the pan with the onion and garlic. then cut up the asparagus and add to the pan of vegs. while these are heating slowly together, whisk the eggs with some grated parmesan, milk (just b/c i won't have time to have my swimming pool mug of instant coffee in the morn) salt, pepper, hot paprika and fresh parsley in a bowl. add the egg mixture to the pan and i dont know, scrape it along the sides until the egg sets and is no longer runny in the middle. flip it over if you can. it's not the prettiest looking, and i've never cooked with fava beans before, but it tasted pretty ok and i know that i have half a frittata to eat on the way to the airport tomorrow.

it may seem like a lot of food that i had to use up, but we really do our shopping for our meals daily - buying just what we need or want to eat that night/day. of course you can't always eat that entire packet/bundle of produce by yourself at once and may not use it the next day so things add up. but we're good at not wasting food. and i am my mother's daughter - my mum is the queen of using up leftovers - or the freezer! the only problem is now....we come back next sunday and all the stores will be closed. stroopwaffles anyone?

complete happiness.

for some reason, i have been craving, thinking, and talking about making fresh tagliatelli or papparadelle with mixed wild mushrooms. luckily, jules can whip up anything so seemingly effortlessly, easily, and delectably deliciously. sliced mushrooms, fresh parsley, a splash of lemon (a critical ingredient always with mushrooms, according to jules), a sprinkled of crushed red pepper (a critical ingredient always with everything, according to me), a dash of arina's homemade garlic-red pepper marinated extra virgin olive oil,  grated parmesan cheese from our fridge-staple chunk, and hand cut strips of pasta from sheets of lasagna. italians never cut their pasta with a knife while eating, so just pile it onto the fork, and stick it in. 

now i can shut up and be happy.

dumpster diving in my fridge.

when going away for the weekend, it is important to clean out your fridge and use what you have as to make sure not to waste any food. well, i never think food should be wasted, which often leads me to eating excessively just so it's in a stomach rather than a garbage. i scrounged up an elaborate cheese plate (scamorza, aged pecorino, brie) with prosciutto di parma (i'm not sick of it yet) and a rabbit salad made from jules' leftover rabbit stew (yes, he butchered the entire rabbit himself. yes, i have impressive friends.)

taking into account my available kitchen ingredients, i decided to make caponata. 

heat up a couple glugs of olive oil in a large pan and add the chopped up eggplant and sprinkle with oregano. allow the eggplant to soak up the olive oil until it has become a golden colour, adding more olive oil if needed. add finely chopped red onion and some garlic cut as small as you can cut it without a garlic press. include capers, green olives and parsley. add a couple splashes of red wine vinegar and when that has pretty much evaporated, add some chopped up tomatoes - i used the remaining cherry tomatoes i had - and allow the flavors to aromatize and the ingredients to simmer. of course, season with salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper. this was inspired partly by my fridge, jamie oliver for some slight methodological instructions, which clearly i don't follow anything too specifically and by the italian ALMA kids who were horrified by the use of eggplant and lentils together. i don't know if they, being sicilian, would approve again, but with some toasted bread to soak up the juices, i quite enjoyed it. 

i also made an asparagus salad with roasted red and yellow bell peppers - inspired by a Thomas Keller recipe, but again, up to my make-shift culinary skills and judgements. 

heat the oven (just onto high since i don't know celsius temperatures yet) and add halved red and yellow peppers - two of each - cut side down and lightly covered in olive oil. meanwhile, boil salted water to which asparagus (stalky ends removed and the spears cut in half) will be added and boiled for about 4 minutes, until bright green. the roasted peppers are done when the skins are slightly charred. removed from the oven, the skins are supposed to be removed according to the recipe, but i didn't. cut them into strips, similarly sized to the asparagus, and add them back to the baking dish. add the drained asparagus and roast the vegetables with some garlic for 15 minutes. after, add to a bowl, season with salt and pepper, and drizzle with some good balsamic vinegar. the colours are gorgeous together and it tastes not only healthy but full of spring. 

for as much as i like food photography, these pictures are horrible. oh well. 

raindrops on roses and whiskers on kitten

one of my favorite things is after class, thought-provoking or not, we all talk about it. with 25 students and 3 hours per class, we don't always have a chance to speak and share our opinion, but i know each of us have different ideas, experiences, thoughts, questions, and debates squirming around our heads that we would like to bring up.  i'm a big nerd and take a lot of notes, but often enough, i'm writing down questions and concepts i'd like to research, explore, or contemplate further after class. 

"i love watching food bake in the oven" - jules.

jules, back from his easter break two missed flights, one missed train ride and a missed class later, offered to cook us dinner with some soft stinky-rind french cheese (reblochon) he brought back from the alps where he had been snow boarding. who would say no? the 6 colorno students, team zinzani, were re-united after two weeks over a delicious meal of a creamy-cheesey pancetta-potato gratin (aka tartiflette), warm peppery rucola soup, mixed greens salad, lemony-asparagus & whole wheat penne, fresh toasted focaccia, olive oil & oregano soaked rusks, birra moretti beers (don't mind the redundancy) and some italian ligurian white wine.

since being here, sometimes i feel spoiled and a little "unlucky" that english is my first language. from 16 different countries, other students here are able to practice and improve english as their second language as well as learn italian and whatever other languages they can. i can barely get by on my spanish, pretending that it's close enough to italian that they can understand me. sorry bucknell. (although that one night at the pub, arina and i spoke spanish fantastically. fluently.) but as i learned over our easter break, popi and arina, as they try to improve their english grammar and vocab, help me improve my english. they ask me questions on the correct pronunciation, usage and wording and i have to second guess my first reactions. sometimes the words their dictionaries provide are more advanced and intelligent than i could ever come up with. and sometimes they know english words i have never even heard of. corpulent? yes - an indispensable word of the year - now introduced into my vocabulary, i use it frequently.

i'm way off topic. what i wanted to say was, i love the discussions that our classes provoke and we continue after class and because english is my first langauge, i'm occasionally asked questions for clarification from class. talking about it not only reinforces what i just heard/learned for myself but opens up conversations. so far, we all come from different backgrounds, have different experiences and opinions, but are very open to hear what others have to say and share. we're all here b/c we're interested in the same (food-related) subjects, the same issues and the same concerns - and even more so, we love to talk about it. and what better way than with friends and an excessively cheesey filling meal? i love it.

wait. did i mention we had biskotoloukoumo for dessert? i gave jules a bite of mine and he fell in love too :) mmm

sunday.

so, it only took me 4 days to finish writing about our 11 day holiday. i'll have to learn and improve for the next trip. which is next monday.

lots of laundry later, everyone seems to be back and settled in a little bit again for school to start tomorrow. popi, arina and i made a late sunday lunch together today. both super easy.

caramelized broccoli with lotsa garlic, crushed red pepper, squirts of lemon and freshly grated parmesan:
cut the broccoli heads off and split in half. place the cut sides down onto a pan and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil. i like to peel the stems, slice them slim and crunch on them raw while cooking. slice a couple cloves of garlic - at least four - and add to the pan. the more the merrier. then try to figure out the european oven - i used the two lines which i think means the heat comes from the top and the bottom rather than the squiggly line which i think means the broiler and turned it to about 200C. sounds good. cook the broccoli until they are browned and crispy. the crispier the better. then sprinkle some crushed red pepper flakes (note: if crushing the dried pepper yourself, make sure to wash your hands and not tough your eyes afterwards), a few squirts of fresh lemon drizzled over and some grated parmesan that will slowly melt on top. oh, and a little sea salt too.

also made a salad with whatever vegetables were in the fridge: mixed greens, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, red onion. healthiness.

penne with gorgonzola, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach: 
cook the penne accordingly. in a pan, heat some extra virgin olive oil and add some sliced sun-dried tomatoes. add the spinach and stir until it wilts. then add the chunks of gorgonzola and blend together until it is creamy goodness on low heat. if you like it reaaallyy creamy, arina would suggest adding panna to it, but both popi and i were opposed :) then add in the pasta. voila. sprinkle with some freshly ground black pepper and freshly grated parmesan (36 months). also tastes really good with chicken.

finished the meal with a greek coffee and a biskotoloukoumo and it was perfect. although i could've eaten three more of those. but probably even more perfect that i didn't.

3 weeks of school, 2 weeks of holiday.

easter break officially started on friday afternoon. one class in the morning - well, it wasn't a lesson, it wasn't quite a conversation - um - and then a free afternoon which was spent at jules' and david's apt. david made fried rice and chinese chicken noodle soup, sung made melt-in-your-mouth korean beef and naama made a sugary homemade apple and pear pie. it was nice and spring was in the air. a lazy, but very sunny saturday, was spent cleaning and packing - arina bought a bike and i got to ride on the back of it! a brave soul, she rode it all the way back from parma and through the streets of colorno. i am positive there will be tons of pictures in the near future!

PRIMA

so, in anticipation of our trip tomorrow, arina suggested making a greek dinner. she made a fantastic dish of chicken, roasted tomatoes, onions, lemon, green and black olives, white wine and topped with feta. we couldn't keep our fingers off the creamy feta and filled us with hungry eagerness at the thought of all the delicious greek food we would soon be consuming into our meat, cheese, and italian wine stuffed bellies. we invited david up as jules had already left to go back to belgium and so there we were, eating a greek meal, in italy, made by a dutch girl and eaten with a taiwanese boy and an irish/american girl (yes, i do have identity crisis issues.)

DOPO

sooo tomorrow arina and i are off on our first adventure together. we are leaving in the morning to catch the bus to parma then the train to rimini, at the southern tip of emilia-romagna along the coast. also known as italy's atlantic city. hmmm. it's a seaside resort town, with 15kilometers long stretches of beach but, it's a sunday night at the end of march - not quite peak season for tourists...did i mention our hostel is called jammin' party hostel? HA. then greece on monday! :)

it's awesome that italians like their religious holidays, but we've only been in school for not even 3 weeks and we already have 2 weeks off!! when does real life start?

Italian Tip #3

If you ever see furniture on the side of the street, and it looks ok, you are free to take it. we currently have a new comfortable leather couch in our apartment. it may or may not have broken the front legs as we carried it up three flights of stairs...cough...but with the help of some super glue - and one half-hammered nail - it is now as good as new! i just won't be the first one to sit on it.

our first home made dinner

last night arina and i decided to cook dinner at home. we apparently didn't buy any pasta at the grocery store because we figured we'd be eating enough of it throughout the year, but we had some couscous and some fresh veggies. it was super simple and very delicious!

recipe:

cut up half an onion and saute it in some olive oil until soft and

add some minced garlic - we used a generous two cloves. then add some chunky cut up bits of half a red and yellow pepper and a half a courgette cut into similar sizes. if your chicken breast is frozen like ours was, why not add some quartered italian salami (not the skinny deli sliced kind). cook it until it becomes softer and colorful and the aroma fills the kitchen. meanwhile, add some boiling water to the pot of couscous - take a guess if you are missing a measuring cup - there's only so many things a kitchen can come

equipped with. add some diced tomatoes to the pan and some cut up pieces of rocket until they wilt. when the couscous is finished, drizzle in a little extra virgin olive oil, grate some parmesan cheese - feta would be nice, but it is italy after all - and maybe a dash of balsamic vinegar for fun. spice up the veggies with some sprinkled crushed red pepper, sprinkle over crunchy flakey sea salt and include slivers of fresh basil. combine the vegetables to the couscous and enjoy with a nice glass of cold white italian

lidl wine. maybe compliment with a side of pickles and some hot wanna-be sambal pepper sauce.

after dinner, we went across the hall to samara's and poppi's for some wine and cheese and to meet some of the other students who also are living in colorno. nice evening for a snowy day! above: samara, arina and me