Bella Figura

Buon giorno, una bella giornata.

I recommended the coffee-table book “Tuscan Escapes”, some time back. In the book, Caroline Clifton-Mogg, has this to say about elegance – a part of La dolce vita.

To an Italian, elegance is an essential part of life; it is no surprise that the phrase bella figura is both immediately understandable and almost untranslatable – there being no equivalent in English or French. Elegance is not to do with a particular fashion; rather, it is a knowledge and sense of what looks good that goes far beyond transient enthusiasms. Elegance is always simple; it is always less, never more – and it is always desirable.

Although elegance is international, it takes many different forms. The elegance of a Provencal country interior is not the same as that of Parisian maison particulier, in the same way that the elegance of a New York apartment is not the elegance of a Cape Cod summer house. Equally, elegant Tuscan rural interiors are not the same as those of the cities of Tuscany; there is a softer approach, albeit touched with a certain urbanity. There is also an understanding of a local or native style, for elegance is always a question of using the best available – taking a pivotal piece and refining it, giving it a certain distinction, perhaps by placing it in a certain spot, in the right light, and surrounding it by objects that both complement and flatter it. It is not easy to describe, this elegance of touch, but when you see it – you know it.

I think that Caroline has aptly described elegance at the end of the first paragraph: it is always simple – it is always less, never more….. and this touch of elegance can be found in all aspects of the Italian life – the sweet life. Look at your life today, and reflect on the elegance that can be found in it – is it simple with less than more?

Cheers… and salute

Love Italy, love life.

La Cucina Italiana – Part 2

Buon giorno, una bella giornata.

Continuing from where I left off in my last post, on an introduction to Italian Cuisine, I had stopped after mentioning the elaborate food of the Renaissance period.

The poor, of course, continued to subsist on the simple foods they had always eaten, but the wealthier middle classes developed a taste for fine foods and created their own bourgeois dishes. The finer features of Italian cooking even reached the French, when Catherine de’ Medici went to Paris to marry the future Henri II, taking fifty of her own cooks with her. They introduced new ingredients and cooking techniques to France and in return learnt the art of French cuisine. In those regions of Italy which border France, you can still find reciprocal influences of French classical cooking, but generally speaking, Italians do not like elaborately sauced dishes, preferring to let the natural flavours of their raw ingredients speak for themselves.

The essence of Italian cooking today is simplicity. The Italian way of cooking fish is a good example of this. In coastal areas, freshly caught fish is most often simply chargrilled over hot coals, then served with nothing more than a splash of extra virgin olive oil, a wedge of lemon and freshly ground black pepper. Recipes like carpaccio di tonno, in which the fish is so delicious raw that cooking seems unnecessary, and branzino al forno, where the delicate flavour of fennel is used to compliment rather than obscure the fresh taste of the fish, are typically simple, as is grigliata di calamari, squid chargrilled with chillies to reflect its robust character.

Italians learn to appreciate good food when they are young children, and eating is one of the major pleasures of the day, no matter what the day of the week or time of the year. Witness an Italian family gathered around the Sunday lunch table in a local restaurant, and consider how the Italian menu of antipasto followed by pasta, rice of gnocchi, then fish, meat and vegetables served in sequence is devised so that each can be savoured separately – both the food and the occasion are to be enjoyed as long as possible. The first course, or antipasto, is a unique feature. In restaurants, this can be a vast array of different dishes, both hot and cold, from which diners can choose as few or as many as they wish. At home with the family, it is more likely to be a slice or two of salami or prosciutto crudo with fresh figs or melon if these are in season. But no matter how humble or grand the setting or the occasion, the antipasto is always visually tempting. Dishes like bruschetta casalinga and pepperoni arrostiti con pesto, which look so attractive, are typical in this way.

The variety and diversity of the Italian ingredients available in our supermarkets and delicatessens will surely inspire you to concoct any number of delicious meals, from a simple dish of pasta to a full-blown four-course dinner. A plate of antipasto followed by pasta or risotto flavoured with seasonal ingredients, then simply-cooked meat or fish and finally a local cheese and fruit make a veritable feast. You could prepare a different meal along these lines every day of the year and almost never repeat the same combination. If, and when, you visit Italy, avail yourself of the wonderful local ingredients to prepare a menu full of the flavours of the region. Every area has its own special delights that make cooking and eating a real pleasure.

But in the meantime, use the wonderful local ingredients we have here in South Africa, follow the guidelines above, and you are on your way to living the “sweet life”.

Buon Appetito

Cheers… and salute

Love Italy, love life.

Tuscan Escapes

Buon giorno, una bella giornata.
I have just finished reading (as well as salivating and dreaming) a coffee-table book that I took out from the Cape Town Central library:
“Tuscan Escapes: Inspirational Homes in Tuscany and Umbria”.
Caroline Clifton-Mogg – Photography by Chris Tubbs. Dewy classification number: 747.25 – book to be found in the art section on the ground floor.
So many of the homes photographed and written about, could be here in South Africa, and once again I am reminded of how close the lifestyle and living in parts of the Western Cape are so similar to that of Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio and Campania in Italy.
From the Introduction to this book, Caroline writes:
Like all the world’s most romantic places, Tuscany is a state of mind as well as a physical entity. Say the T-word to Tuscophiles and their eyes take on a faraway look, as if they have suddenly been transported to that landscape, those houses, this village – all bathed in the bright, clear Tuscan light that has inspired so much great art over the centuries. This artistic heritage is particularly associated with the period of the Italian Renaissance, when, in cities such as Florence and Siena, painters, sculptors, architects – Giotto, Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi – created works of art that have influences and informed European Culture for more than 500 years.
Indeed, for many foreigners to the region, Renaissance Italy IS Tuscany – which may explain why the Tuscan landscape seems to strange and yet so familiar: the rounded hills dotted with tall, cigar-shaped cypresses and live groves, the rambling stone buildings and bell towers, and the dusty narrow roads along which one would hardly be surprised to see a cavalcade of noble horsemen, in plumed hats and gold-embroidered tunics, clattering up the hill on their way to hunt wild deer and boar. Artists working in Siena, Florence, Arezzo and other Tuscan towns composed their religious and secular works against a background made up of local landmarks – hills, trees and orchards, vineyards and olive groves, monasteries and churches – which is why, even more than in the rest of Italy, Tuscany is a place where the past, both recent and distant, is always present.
The evocative writing of Caroline and the stunning pictures of Chris, made this book for me a rewarding time spent dreaming and reflecting. It also made me realise that we have so much in South Africa with its various countryside’s, cultures and histories, that the state of mind Caroline writes about, is here as well. The first house portrayed in the book, from pages 14 – 21, remind me so of a house I owned in the Overberg of the Western Cape years ago, with its thick walls, indoor shutters and the wooden beams.

Link to Kalahari.net for more information on this book
(A scan of the cover of “Tuscan Escapes” on loan from the Cape Town library).
I can highly recommend this book, and if its not in the library, then more than likely I have taken it out on loan again.
Cheers… and salute
Love Italy, love life

La Cucina Italiana – Part 1

Buon giorno, una bella giornata.

As mentioned in an early post on why Italian lifestyle is good for us, I made the first point of how we can duplicate this dolce vita, but looking at the Italian food. I wrote: To the Italians, food is life and as such, they honour it using the freshest ingredients.  All the senses are evoked during purchasing, growing, preparing or eating food.  Every meal is to be enjoyed to the fullest.

There’s an old Italian proverb:

“A tavola non s'invecchi mai”.  It means you never grow old at the table.

So, to continue with this important topic, which as I am sure you will understand, will be a major part of this blog, I have written an introduction to the Italian cuisine, and this is Part 1.

Italian cookery reflects the fact that the country was unified only in 1861. Until then, each region produced its own characteristic cuisine, relying exclusively on ingredients that could be gathered, cultivated or reared locally. Nowadays, of course, regional produce can be easily transported all over the country – all over the world, but Italians still prefer to base their cooking on local ingredients, because they regard quality and freshness as more important than diversity and innovation. (Can we say the same of ourselves?)

So the most flavoursome sun-ripened tomatoes, aubergines and peppers are still found in the south of the country, the freshest seafood is on offer along the coast, the finest hams come from the area where the pigs are raised, and so on. “La cucina italiana” remains distinctly regional; northern Italian cooking, for example, incorporates ingredients that are simply never found in the recipes of Sicily and Naples to the south, and vice-versa. In the dairy-farming north, butter is used in place of the olive oil so prevalent in the south; bread and polenta are eaten instead of pasta. The only unifying feature is the insistence on high quality ingredients.

Good food has always been essential to the Italian way of life. (I will do further posts in the not too distant future on the various regional cuisines.)

“La cucina italiana” is one of the oldest cooking cultures in the world, dating back to the ancient Greeks and perhaps even earlier. The Romans adored food and often ate and drank to excess; it was they who really laid the foundations of Italian and European cuisine. The early Romans were peasant farmers who ate only the simple, rustic foods they could produce, like grain, cheeses and olives. For them, meat was an unheard-of-luxury; animals were bred to work in the fields, and to provide milk, wool etc. and were too precious to eat. Trading links with other parts of the world, however, encouraged Roman farmers to cultivate new vegetables and fruits and, of course, vines, while their trade in salt and exotic spices enabled them to preserve and pickle all kinds of meat, game and fish.

Food became a near-obsession and ever more elaborate dishes were devised to be served at the decadent and orgiastic banquets for which the Romans were famed. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire led inevitably to a deterioration in the quality of cooking and a return to simple, basic foods. For centuries, regional cuisine reverted to its original uncomplicated style. With the Renaissance, however, came great wealth and a new interest in elaborate food. Once again, rich families strove to outdo each other with lavish banquets where courses of rich, extravagant foods were served – truffles, song-birds, game, desserts dripping with honey and spices – all washed down with quantities of wine.

To be continued in the next posting.

Buon Appetito

Cheers… and salute

Love Italy, love life.

Eat, Pray, Love - il dolce far niente

Buon giorno, una bella giornata.

Liz Gilbert is unhappy with her life. In a moment of self-realisation, the thirty-something American woman picks herself up off the bathroom floor and decides to divorce her husband. She later embarks on a journey around the world to rediscover the good things in life and find her true self.

The recently released film Eat, Pray, Love, starring Julia Roberts as the leading lady, may have its self-indulgent aspects, but for anyone with a travel bent, the stunning scenery along the way makes the feet more than a little itchy.

Based on the bestseller novel written by Gilbert herself, this is a story about reconnecting; with both the outside and the inside world.

As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. And as Gilbert knows, one of the things Italians do best is food. Spending four months in the country that gave the world pizza, pasta and gelato, she experiences the true pleasure of nourishment by embarking on what she calls a ‘no carbs left behind’ quest.

From slurping on spaghetti on the streets of Rome to sampling countless flavours of gelato in Naples, Gilbert rediscovers the simple pleasure of good food.

For an indigestion expedition through Italy, I would suggest that you start in Rome, where you can sample one of the country’s most famous dishes — pasta. In the region of Lazio, surrounding Rome, you can expect to taste some of the best spaghetti carbonara on offer.

To enjoy quality olive oil poured over lightly salted, fresh baked bread and coupled with a glass of local red, head to the hills of Umbria, where olive oil estates abound. Or if it’s the traditional slice of heaven that you are after, I would then advise you to visit Naples, where great pizzerias are plentiful.

Anyone following in Gilbert’s footsteps is bound to discover two things: that eating in this manner will end in the acquisition of generous love handles, and that there’s something truly satisfying about the sumptuous yet simplistic lifestyle the Italians lead. It’s known as il dolce far niente, translated as ‘the sweetness of doing nothing’. Gilbert discovers that the Italians know quite a lot about taking time out to enjoy the good things in life.

While it may be frustrating for some visitors, there is definitely something to be said for the concept of ‘Italian time’, which is best summed up by the idea that things will get done when they get done. Locals don’t waste energy worrying about being late or meeting deadlines. Trains arrive when they do, meals arrive when they’re made, and somehow everything still functions.

To appreciate the simplicity, all you need to do is sit at a café in one of the many piazzas dotted around Italy and watch as the old men play cards and drink espresso, lovers share a meal and young children run about chasing each other. And it is this enjoyment of life that is not only the best reason to plan a trip to Italy, but more importantly, to create your own dolce vita lifestyle here in South Africa.

I made spaghetti last night with a Tuscan meat ragu, eaten with some crusty panini and simple red wine. I did not want the meal to end – I was living the dolce vita. Wake up and taste the sweet life – live the sweet life – you can do it.

By the way, I can highly recommend the book which you should find in all book shops, and you should read it first, before seeing the film.

Buon Appetito

Cheers… and salute

Love Italy, love life.

The Sweet Life at Delheim

Delheim Wine Estate is situated on the high, southwest slopes of the Simonsberg Mountain in Stellenbosch, and is one of my all-time favourite wine estates, for to visit and for their wines.

Yesterday, I was once again fortunate to live the sweet life by spending some quality time walking around the estate and having lunch on their terrace looking out over the winelands towards Cape Town, and the slightly hazy Table Mountain in the distance. I was invited out, and shared a Delheim and cheese and deli platter and a bottle of Delheim Pinotage Rose, which I believe to be the best Rose made in this country. The platter had six local cheeses, which included a wonderful plain goat’s cheese, and three types of cold meats, including smoked eland.

Sitting there with the sun birds darting around the garden, the estate Jack Russells slowly wondering around the terrace, the impeccable service, the wonderful company and the sounds of the Simonsberg mountains, I realised once again how close to heaven Delheim is. But more than that, how easy it is for us to live “dolce vita” here in South Africa. I sat there on the terrace for almost two hours, not wanting the experience to end, and it seemed that’s the way most of the other guests were feeling as well.

I can highly recommend to all of you who in live in the Cape Peninsular, and all those of you who will be visiting our wonderful corner of this country, put some time aside and pay Delheim a visit.

More details can be found on their website:

www.delheim.com/

Cheers… and salute

Love Italy, love life