Entries from October 2008 ↓

Food in Tuscany has kept a very original and archaic nature. No compromises with a modern, world cuisine. Tuscan people don’t like compromises. In the same way as they were able to maintain the originality of their landscapes, avoiding as much as possible jerry-building (unfortunately very common in other parts of Italy), so they also kept in their cuisine many ancient recipes.
Eating their vegetable soups, meat, pasta and many other special recipes, I always have the feeling I am still eating the same recipes as in the time of Dante, Boccaccio, Lorenzo de’ Medici… This feeling is even stronger when we are in those wonderful medieval villages, as Montefioralle for example, or in places with view on the renaissance buildings in Florence.
The flavours are strong and masculine, the ingredients are natural and rustic. Recipes are transmitted since generations, with a big respect of tradition.
My brother-in-law who is born and raised in Florence is an artist of Tuscan cuisine. Last weekend in their beautiful house on the Chianti hills he prepared the Gran Pezzo, which literally means “big piece” and this is the name of the recipe, but it is also a very big piece of meat!…

The Gran Pezzo is a huge rib steak (more or less 3 kg) with bones, bound together with a string and then cooked for a couple of hours in the oven at high temperature. In this case he used the firewood oven in the garden. He prepared the meat covering it with salt and pepper. The result was delicious: a crisp crust outside and rosy and savoury inside. Accompanied by baked potatoes and some bottles of Chianti Classico, it was a great Tuscan dinner!

My first time in Brussels was when I was 17, then I had many other opportunities to go back in the following years. The city has undergone many changes in the last twenty years and, despite its international nature, it has kept something really special and unique.
The first impression arriving in Brussels is about its contrasts. Modern and futuristic buildings next to small old fashioned cafés. Elegant suburbs with the typical art nouveau style houses, bordering folksy neighbourhoods with Arabic night shops.
Another evident contrast is given by the language, which is French and Dutch together and because of its bilingual asset, every road-sign, restaurant menu, bus and metro indication or any other kind of public information is written in both languages. But walking in the streets you will hear talking also Italian, Spanish, English, Arabic…
The presence of the European Community and many other international companies gives Brussels a very international allure, although the international community is mainly not integrated with the local people. That’s why sometimes Brussels seems like an abstract place, like an airport.
The real “bruxellois” is more and more difficult to find. He talks both French and Dutch but with an accent, and knows all the most ancient cafés (serving only traditionally brewed beer), antique dealers, the best “chocolatiers”, the good restaurants, all places that no tourist and no EEC employee will never find (luckily).
Contrast is usually given by the weather, often rainy, but also windy and sunny, sometimes all together in a crazy stormy mix.

Things I love in Brussels:

Antiquarian shops
Antique market at Le Grand Sablon on Saturday morning
Place du Grand Sablon
Marcolini
Flamant
Lola
Bakeries and Patisseries
Dansaertstraat
The old cafés
Dark trappist beer
Les frites (French fries)
Les Musées des Beaux-Arts

I will conclude today my description of the Italian way of drinking coffee with cappuccino.
I guess everybody knows what it is: an espresso coffee with addition of milk. But it’s not just milk, because it’s warmed up with steam (using a special nozzle on the espresso machine that I described in my previous post), which produces a delicious foam, which makes cappuccino so unique….
Anyway, preparing an excellent cappuccino is not so easy, because the best cappuccino must have some conditions.
Not too warm: if it’s too warm it’s because the barman used to much steam to warm it up. Consequently the cappuccino will be not only difficult to drink, but also too “long” because of the quantity of water produced by the steam.
The foam must be thick: so thick that you will drink it first and then collect it with a spoon…
A good balance between coffee and milk.

In Italy the real cappuccino addicts select and choose their favourite breakfast bars according to their cappuccino.
When do we drink cappuccino? Only for breakfast, usually together with what we call a “brioche”, a croissant.
If you are in a bar or restaurant in Italy and you see someone drinking cappuccino after a meal or in the afternoon (or sometimes even at night!) then one thing is sure: this is a tourist!

As we told a few days ago, we’ll be in Florence next weekend and an obligatory stop is to MonteFioralle. It is a little borough in Chianti Valley above the village of Greve in Chianti. Last March Illy and I had done a tour in that region and our first rule was: “now we follow a random street on the right because we have to discover this region” and after four or five random turns in tight streets we arrived to a stop light. We waited few minutes and we wondered why there was a traffic light in the middle of nowhere. After green and we turned right and we understood…a wall of a medieval borough on the left…. that was Montefioralle. We parked the car and into five minutes we were walking on medieval streets with no cars and only a couple of persons. The atmosphere was amazing and it seemed to be really in the middle age. Everything so authentic and characteristic. Almost at the end of our mini-trip in that borough we found a little producer of Chianti, Azienda Montefioralle, one of the best Chianti that I tasted. This is the reason of our visit next weekend, we have finished our Chianti……