Wallet Pizza and Spritzes (Italy)

We thought it would be appropriate to kick off our Italy posts with the food, since cooking and eating are huge features of Italian culture  and represent the strongest connection most people have to the country in the US, UK and elsewhere. During our three weeks in Italy, it’s fair to say that food was a primary focus for us – we ate basically everything, with enthusiasm! We confirmed what we already knew, which is that the flavors are amazing and the quality is consistently excellent, whether you’re eating in a budget railway cafe or a gourmet, celebrity-magnet restaurant.  We reveled in the sheer joy involved in bonding over food at every opportunity. We also learnt quite a bit about the geographical diversity of the cuisine – our trip took us across the length and breadth of the country, and for the first time we were able to fully appreciate the sheer range of traditional dishes, something that goes hand-in-hand with the many distinct regional sub-cultures which continue to thrive today.

Pizza

Pizza is perhaps the world’s most famous food – it’s a favorite of nearly everyone, a fixture of the majority of popular culture (“sofa pizza” in the Hangover, for example) and, as some readers may know, it even played a critical role in getting us together in the first place ($0.99 pizza anyone?).

The inaugural pizza of our visit to Italy. Strong and simple with an excellent base

Although pizza-like dishes have been around since Roman times, Naples is indisputably the home of modern pizza, having successfully harnessed the versatile flavors of the tomato brought over from the New World. The massive Neopolitan diaspora after Italian unification in the 19th century led to pizza know-how spreading far and wide across the planet (although pizza is ubiquitous in New York and Chicago, San Paolo actually has more pizzerias than any other city worldwide according to our walking tour guide).

Likely the world’s first pizza parlor, established in 1830. Before that it was a stall for street pizza vendors for many decades (not dissimilar to the food truck >> restaurant pathway today)

The quintessential Neapolitan pizza is a small, single-serving pizza consisting of a soft circle of spongy dough cooked in an iron-smeltingly hot oven for one minute, doused in a sloppy, flavorful sauce, covered with a bit of mozzarella, and topped possibly one or at most two toppings (more than that and it’s inauthentic). It’s known as “wallet pizza” since you eat it by folding it twice to make a sort of wallet and then chowing down. Novice devourers like ourselves found this a harrowing experience since scalding jets of sauce would regularly issue forth out of the corners to drip upon the unwary exposed limb. That being said, it was one of the most delicious things either of us had tasted, and worth every layer of lost knee skin. A good plain wallet pizza also only costs 1-1.5 euros. There are a few very famous pizzerias in Naples with lines stretching out the door, but nearly everywhere else is 99% as good, and we really couldn’t tell the difference (standards are carefully controlled by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana).

Neopolitan wallet pizza feasting in action. Note the intensity, perhaps mixed with fear

Outside of Naples proper, the cities and towns in the surrounding area also burst with a profusion of amazing pizzas, often with variations on the basic Neapolitan approach. Thin and crispy pizza is more of a Rome thing. Deep frying is also popular in Naples, and Milan has amazing deep fried mini-calzones called panzerotti.

How do you celebrate climbing up to the cliffs above Positano? Probably among the best pizzas we had in the foreground, and a rather intimidating calzone in front of Jess. While she appears undaunted, she changed her tune about halfway through the monster

How do you improve on the basic pizza? You fry the base!! At least we got a Coke Zero…

The last pizza of our Italy visit, in Como. Halfway through, and probably still about half a kilogram left

Pasta

Pasta is just better in Italy. It’s properly al dente, flavorful, kept simple, and served without too much ceremony since in a nation of 60 million professional pasta tasters, the standard is stratospheric. Some of our best meals were simple plates of pasta, and we had many days of two pasta courses each, and a few magnificent three-pasta days. Since nearly everyone has eaten a lot of pasta in their life, it’s a great yardstick for measuring just how good the food in Italy is. While it’s served simply, each region has its own specialties: chickpeas with pasta in Apulia, cacio e pepe in Rome, tortellini in Modena, etc.

A walk-up pasta bar at the covered market in Florence. Delicious, simple, and €5 per plate

Best €5 ever spent. Deeply pondering the true nature of joy

Although the transaction felt like buying something illicit with the scale, baggies, and specialized jargon, fresh tortellini cannot be beaten

Tortellini with balsamic and parmesan. Utterly dominant and about the most complicated pasta dish you’ll see

Antipasti

Eager to maximize eating and drinking opportunities while in Italy, we wholeheartedly embraced the concept of antipasti – a collection of various “snacks” that come with your evening drink and in many cases constitute a full fourth meal between lunch and dinner. We found that options here varied just as widely as the pizza and pasta, with classics such as bruschetta, arancini and prosciutto alongside Apulia’s crispy, bite-sized taralli, Naples’ unrecognizable but delicious deep fried morsels, and Milan’s mouth-watering cheese. One item that was ever-present, though, was the large Aperol Spritz, which appears to have taken all of Italy, and increasingly the world, by storm over the past few years. We weren’t complaining…

Aperol Spritzes and bruschetta (and a beautiful sunset) in Capri

Stocking up on taralli in Lecce – these can be best described as tiny, crunchy bites of toasted focaccia, since olive oil is the key ingredient. Needless to say they are incredibly “more-ish” (a word Ethan still doesn’t understand)

A particularly intimidating spread at one bar in Apulia. The concept of eating dinner after a pre-feast like this is laughable, although that doesn’t stop anyone

A cornucopia of Neopolitan street food including four different types of deep-fried risotto balls (arancini), some fried vegetables, and three sorts of fried bread. Also some cheese-based innovations

A sampling (spritzing?) of spritzes. Can you guess which one is not in Italy?

Wine

The Italy trip was one of excess in both food and drink, and the latter met its most perfect form in The Saga of the Gallon of Wine. We engaged in a multi-week struggle against a massive jug of the nectar of Bacchus, brought on by the impossible-to-ignore challenge of buying decent quality wine out of a petrol pump. The saga of TGOW began when we discovered online that Consorzio Produttori Vini Manduria, a wine cooperative between Taranto and Lecce, sells good Primitivo and Negroamaro (the 2 main Apulian wines) out of petrol pumps, generally to locals who bring their own containers. We obviously wanted in on this adventure, and quickly headed that way. A side benefit is that the cooperative has a small but thorough museum of the history of the wine industry in Apulia.

Old-school megabarrels

In the old days, the initial fermentation was done in massive tanks buried underground; today, it’s done in stainless steel tanks but you can walk inside the old ones

Due to the similar conditions required for growing olives and grapes, many vineyards also make their own olive oil. This is an olive press from the good old days

A very large bottle of wine – Ethan for scale (looking a little unfocused after a very generous tasting session)

After taking the tour of the museum and indulging in a rather extensive tasting, the moment of our ultimate triumph was at hand. Rather than buying a fancy “tourist” bottle, we opted to go the path of the locals and buy the jug of Negroamaro. There was much rejoicing.

To our guide’s utter dismay, we ultimately opted for the gas pump wine. Because who can say no to a gallon of wine for 6 euros? And did we mention that it’s served out of a gas pump?

About an hour afterwards the ultimate ramifications of our quest began to sink in, and we realized that we were saddled with a massive amount of wine. Not only is a “gallon” of wine in Apulia actually five liters, but we also were backpacking around, and there wasn’t quite space in our backpacks for that kind of tonnage. Thus Ethan was forced to hand-carry the prize as we moved through train stations, AirBnBs, and hostels, attracting (mostly) judge-y looks along the way. After the weight of the wine snapped the jug handle, he was forced to cradle it around like a large, cirrhotic child. Ultimately, through persistent and single-minded dedication, we were able to sip the last sips and vanquish our foe, triumphant (but perhaps a little tipsy).

Ending the saga of TGOW did take some dedication – Jess shown here rehydrating after a morning workout

Wine Part Two

Lest the reader gets the impression that we’re a pair of Philistines, we did indulge in a few classier moments as well. As we traveled up through Tuscany, we got the chance to visit Montalcino, the home of Brunello, a very hearty red beloved around the world. We chose to visit Poggio Antico, one of the smaller wineries, and did some great touring, tasting, and tank-inspecting. It’s a beautiful combination of staring out on vistas of cypress and grape vines, exploring basements filled with modern winemaking apparatus, and sipping upon a few of the resulting creations. We were by far the youngest couple on the tour that day, which on the plus side made us feel sophisticated, but sent a jolt of dread down Jess’s soon-to-be-28-year-old spine. We very much enjoyed ourselves.

 

Wine grows in these parts

The eerily silent fermentation tank room

Brunello is aged in these lovely, handcrafted oak barrels

This is a modern bottling machine which, assembly-line style, fills, bottles, and labels wines at a speed approaching that of a cheetah

Observing the end-product in the field

Water

It’s hard to give a proper impression of the monumental intensity of gustatory culture within Italy. We did, however, find one notable feature in Florence which does help to paint a picture. Here, there are some public water fountains that provide the option of sparkling water, for those who just can’t bring themselves to pair still water with their panino caprese.

Frizzante o naturale?

Ingredients

Any cooking show will tell you that Italian cooking is all about having ingredients that are the “best, freshest, etc.” While this line gets a bit cliched, the fact is that a lot of the cuisine is about showing off the individual ingredients – and there’s a lot to show off. We visited a bunch of markets containing some pretty fantastic ingredients, and perhaps best of all, tasting the ingredients is an intrinsic part of buying them.

One of the cheese vendors at a food festival in Montalcino. We pillaged that tasting plate

The truffle tent!!

Pondering produce in Modena

Not just any banana, it’s a bananito. 

Contrasts

No matter how delicious any cuisine is, eventually you want to get a little bit of variety. Since we traveled the length and breadth of Italy, there was a lot of diversity in the flavors that we were able to enjoy, but every so often, we had to try something completely outside the Italian culinary universe… which brought us to some very out-of-place meals. That being said, Florence sports some surprisingly enjoyable “Asian” and “Mexican” food!

What is this new devilry?

It’s fried rice!! Oh, how I’ve missed you

We had to travel 4,000 miles to find archetypical New York food item – an Italian fortune cookie

I’ll have my fajita with extra formaggio, per favore

Ending on a High(-End) Note / That One Time we Ignored the Budget…

We set out to experience the full spectrum of Italian dining on this trip, and although so far we have planned almost nothing more than a few days ahead, we did manage one miraculous feat of organization. On June 1 this year, we (Jess) dragged ourselves out of bed at 4am to make a booking at a spot that was shortly thereafter named as the number one restaurant in the world. And even more miraculously, when we turned up in Modena in mid-September we did, in fact, still have a reservation (naturally the counterfactual was the source of much angst for Jess during the first half of the trip).  Following a quick scramble around the shops looking for something passable to wear, we enjoyed a long – and quite spectacular – evening at Osteria Francescana.

Outside the inconspicuous entrance to Osteria Francescana, dressed up in H&M’s finest…

…including a rather fetching pair of white(Bulgarian) espadrilles that will never be seen again. Fortunately the dress code isn’t too strict!

The meal was truly outstanding. We had expected impeccable execution – as noted previously, standards are impossibly high in Italy even at cheap, everyday restaurants, and ingredients are always first class. What we weren’t quite prepared for was the level of ingenuity shining through in each dish. Massimo Bottura, the increasingly well-known chef patron, is a hugely energetic, creative and passionate chef who makes a habit of showing up – still in chef’s whites and trainers – to greet his guests every evening and hear about their dining experience, their background, and pretty much anything tangentially related to Italy. We were blown away by everything we tasted, but particular highlights include “Lentils are Better than Caviar” (yup, that’s caviar made from lentils),  “Mediterranean in Papillote” (a twist on parchment-baked fish, with edible paper made from sea water), and “The Crispy Part of the Lasagne” (which they made a vegetarian version of especially for Jess).

The Negroamaro makes a surprise second appearance – in a much, much classier format

Lingering over the best lemon risotto either of us will ever eat