A Spring Brunch at Home in Italy

Warning: this post may make you hungry !

The very small size of my Italian apartment, not to mention the lack of a real oven in the minuscule kitchen, makes entertaining a challenge. I’ve managed as many as 6 for a dinner but that took a lot of juggling and some very cozy seating around the table. And now, when social distancing is the norm, even 6 is way too many. But it’s spring, the weather is gorgeous, the markets are full of beautiful strawberries and asparagus, and I’ve been itching to prepare a meal for friends. When the pandemic rules limiting visitors were relaxed over Easter weekend I was able to invite 2 friends to my home for a meal. With that in mind, I happily started planning a brunch menu. Sometimes it’s fun to get a little fancy and this was one of those times. When you find me ironing a vintage table cloth, you know I’m about to get fancy! Pretty flowers, a nicely set table, the good dishes, and soft music set the stage.

Homemade lemon curd - nice and tart with a smooth as silk texture.

The brunch menu combined some wonderful Italian ingredients with some of my American standards and gave me chance to fix some of my favorite dishes.

Preparations started a couple of days beforehand with the making of lemon curd. This no-fail recipe from Fine Cooking magazine is better than any lemon curd I have ever purchased. (https://finecooking.com/recipe/classic-lemon-curd). It’s my go to recipe for a fancy brunch or tea menu. Using juicy Italian lemons makes it even better. The hardest part was setting it aside until the day of the brunch. I may have sampled just a taste (or two) beforehand.

Of course where there is lemon curd there must be scones. I prepped the dry ingredients a couple of days before; it was easy to finish the dough and bake them on the morning of the brunch. The scones and lemon curd paired nicely alongside a bowl of bright red strawberries.

The main dish was a crustless quiche, another Fine Cooking recipe (https://finecooking.com/recipe/crustless-quiche-with-red-peppers-goat-cheese).

These small tin foil baking dishes aren’t very elegant, but they fit nicely in my little countertop oven.

This is a versatile recipe because it is so easy to vary the ingredients. I have only a small countertop electric oven (two steps above the Easy Bake oven I had as a kid), so I divided the quiche base into two smaller pans. In one, I used the red peppers and goat cheese from the original recipe. In the second pan, I crumbled crisp pancetta, sautéed mushrooms, and fontina cheese. My tiny oven only baked one pan at a time but, covered with foil and set on top of the oven while the second one baked, the first one stayed nice and warm. And they were delicious - soft and light as clouds. All the credit goes to this fantastic recipe - it’s a snap to make and always a hit.

I couldn’t resist the fat stalks of asparagus I found in the market. Cooked quickly and drizzled with a lemony vinaigrette they made a simple and tasty addition to the menu. Both asparagus and the quiche go well with some slightly salty prosciutto, so I added a small platter of that and the meal was complete.

Is there a better combination than fresh spring asparagus and prosciutto? Well, maybe a summertime prosciutto with melon, but that’s a few months off yet.

Well, almost complete. We were celebrating spring so mimosas made with Prosecco and orange juice made brunch even more festive.

Good company, good food, and lots of laughter. A good way to welcome spring !

Pasquetta - Easter Monday in Italy

The day after Easter is officially the Lunedì dell’Angelo (the Monday of the Angel) but I’ve never heard anyone here in Lucca refer to it by that name. Here it is known simply as Pasquetta (little Easter). Pasquetta is a national holiday and one that marks the beginning of the spring season. Traditionally, it is a day for Italians to venture into the countryside for a day of picnics and outdoor fun. But not this year. For the second year in a row, Easter celebrations are limited by COVID restrictions. Last week, all of Tuscany (along with much of the rest of Italy) was declared a red zone. For the last three days, over the Easter weekend, the whole country has been “in the red”. For now, it is not possible to leave one’s home city and we are supposed to stay at home except for necessary things like trips to the pharmacy or grocery store. That means no trips to the countryside for Pasquetta and no picnics either.

Traditional Easter Colomba (dove) cakes, in fancy tins by Dolce & Gabbana.

All but essential shops are closed. Luckily, chocolate shops are considered essential (one more reason to love Italy). This is a good thing - can you imagine an Easter without chocolate?

How cute are these? Chocolate chickens are much more common than bunnies here at Easter. These are from the artisanal shop Chocolat in Chiasso Barletti, Lucca.

Even the local woodwork shop has a window decorated for Easter

It is still permissible to go out for a walk, though the guidelines include a vague statement about staying “close to home”. The wall around Lucca remains open (unlike last Easter when it was off-limits) and it certainly qualifies as close to home for those of us who live within its embrace. But don’t forget to carry your self-certification documents!

Fortunately, the rules were relaxed a bit for the 3 days over the Easter holiday (the weekend of Easter plus today’s Pasquetta holiday). For these 3 days, we have been allowed two persons to come into our homes for a visit or meal. I took full advantage of this, cooking an Easter brunch for 2 friends. A pretty table, good food, great company, a little Prosecco, and lots of laughter made for a wonderful Easter morning. Today I will celebrate Pasquetta with a long walk along the wall, enjoying the new green leaves on the trees, the wildflowers, and the views of distant hills.

Despite everything that has occurred over the past difficult year, life goes on. Shops are decorated for Easter, people wish each other “Buona Pasqua” in the streets, we are enjoying some beautiful spring weather, the gelato shops have opened for the season (gelato is the perfect take out food), the wisteria are blooming, and the church bells ring. There is reason for optimism and everyone is looking towards next year when, hopefully, I will be able to host a big group for an Easter luncheon.

Buona Pasquetta !

Cacciucco: An Italian Fisherman's Stew

One of the things that most surprised me when I first started visiting Lucca is that, while we are only about 30 minutes from the sea, the traditional cuisine here is very meat-based. There is not a seafood market to be found within the centro storico (the historic center of town) and restaurants serve far more meat than fish. I’m not complaining, the meats are fabulous - porchetta (spit roasted pork), tender tagliata (slices) of beef, huge grilled Tuscan steaks, thin but oh-so-flavorful lamb chops, perfectly roasted chicken, cinghiale (wild boar). Even the traditional pasta of Lucca, Tordelli Lucchese, is a meat filled pasta topped with a meat sauce.

A shellfish carbonara at Osteria Via San Giorgio, Lucca

There are some fish dishes to be found. The seafood carbonara at one local osteria is a particular favorite of mine, but these dishes are definitely in the minority.

I’ve searched for why this meat preference is so strong and the only answer I’ve found is that in times past wealthy people ate meat and poor people fished, cooking with whatever they caught. Lucca was historically a very wealthy town, so meat was plentiful and nobody fished.

That fish is less common here made it all the better when, on a recent chilly and windy March day, I walked past a restaurant take-out window advertising a daily special of cacciucco. Cacciucco is a fisherman’s stew with origins in the areas along the coastline of Tuscany which includes the port towns of Viareggio and Livorno. It is a bit like cioppino, the fish stew brought to San Francisco by Italian immigrants. However, cacciucco’s ingredients are more of a poor fisherman’s mix compared to the more expensive ingredients found in cioppino (crab, shrimp, scallops).

Cacciucco - thick with seafood and covered in a fragrant broth

Of course there are legends surrounding the beginnings of cacciucco. It is said that the widow of a drowned fisherman made the first cacciucco from odds and ends of fish collected by her children from local fisherman. They took the mix of fish home and the mother cooked them (the fish, not the children) in a broth which she then spooned over day old bread. The neighbors caught the delicious scent and before long the dish became a local favorite. One whiff of a good cacciucco made me a believer in this legend! Another legend about cacciucco is that, to be authentic, it must contain 5 different types of fish - one for each C in the word cacciucco.

The recipe begins with a broth made from fish parts and white wine. To that base are added spices, tomatoes, and a mix of fish. The fish can include white fish along with octopus, mussels, cuttlefish, calamari, red fish, and scampi (or whatever else is available).

A mix of local seafood makes cacciucco a type of cucina povera (poor man’s food)

The ingredients vary from city to city and there is of course disagreement about which city makes the best version. According to one article I read (La Repubblica, 2010) the differences between a cacciucco in Viareggio versus one made in Livorno is that the Viareggio version is lighter and a bit more refined. There is no garlic and the fish is boned and filleted. In Livorno the dish is more rustic, including garlic and a soffritto (a sauté of onion, celery, carrot). Also, in the Livornese version, the fish is in chunks, including some pieces with bones.

If the sight of tentacles, scampi with heads, and fish bones bothers you then this may not be the dish for you. As for me, those little tentacles are tender and tasty and all the bits of fish are wonderful. Even better is mopping up the broth with a good piece of rustic bread.

If you’ve been watching the CNN program “Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy”, you may have seen him eating a cacciucco in Livorno during the Tuscany episode. That was definitely an upscale version, with the addition of lobster. Rather than mopping up the sauce with bread they tossed the leftover sauce with some pasta. Something to try!

This is not a dish I’d ever attempt to make at home. But I think I am going to have to make a pilgrimage to both Livorno and Viareggio as soon as possible to compare the two versions, all in the name of culinary research of course.

With restaurants closed to seating due to COVID restrictions, these take out windows are becoming more popular. This one is in front of the restaurant Nonna Clara in Lucca. Along with the street food some items from the regular menu are available to go, including this day’s special of cacciucco .

Frittelle for San Giuseppe

Italians must be the world champions of celebrations. There seems to be a festa (party) or a celebration for just about every occasion - saint’s days, onomastic (name) days, major religious holidays, national holidays, birthdays, sagras to celebrate regional foods. When you live in Italy, you festiggiare (celebrate) all of life’s special events. It is one of the things I love about living here. As an added bonus, many of these events include special foods. And although the pandemic has for the last year limited gathering for most of these events, small celebrations and culinary specialities continue to mark the occasions.

March is generally a quiet month in terms of celebrations. Epiphany is long over, the Carnevale season has ended (and this year it was cancelled almost entirely), Easter is not yet here. Food wise, the Carnevale sweets are gone and Easter cakes and chocolates are just beginning to show up in shop windows.

But all is not lost! In mid-March there is the Feast Day of San Giuseppe. It is the official onomastic day for the name Giuseppe and so a special day for anyone who carries that moniker. Because of San Giuseppe’s religious role as a father, the Feast of San Giuseppe has also become the Italian Father’s day. And … falling on March 19th it is also on the cusp of the spring equinox. Certainly this day deserves a special culinary treat!

A frittella makes a perfect sugary treat

To mark the day, pastry shops across Lucca are filled with Frittelle di San Giuseppe. Frittelle are delicious! A sweet batter, often flavored with a bit of lemon peel, is dropped by spoonfuls into hot oil (fritta = fried), filled, and then rolled in sugar. The traditional filling in Lucca is riso (a second cousin to rice pudding but more firm). Other varieties include chocolate, Nutella, and (my personal favorite) a delicious pastry cream. Some are vuoto (empty) with no filling to distract from the sugary treat.

Frittelle are crisp and sugary outside, light and often cream filled inside. Yum!

It was hard work having to taste test frittelle before writing about them, but I made the sacrifice. Crisp on the outside with a slight crunch from the sugar crystals, airy dough on the inside, and a delicious eggy custard filling. Scrumptious. In fact, I just may need another one to go with my coffee this afternoon. I think I’ll invite a friend to share !

Hints of Spring

Spring is still officially a week away, but here in Italy it feels as though spring began last week on March 8th. That day, the Festa delle Donne (International Women’s Day) recognizes the role of women in society, women’s rights, and also the violence that is still all too common against women. It is traditional here to give flowers, simple yellow mimosas, to mark the day. For me, March 8th is always the unofficial start of spring. I see the yellow mimosas being sold in the piazza and I know that spring is just around the corner.

Bunches of mimosa at the flower market in March 8th

There are other hints of spring to be found. The days are getting longer, the skies more blue, and the temperatures are that wonderful spring “in between” of not cold, not hot, but just perfect.

Wildflowers along Lucca’s wall

The photinia bushes outside my bedroom window have sprouted new growth - a pretty red in contrast to their usual green. Bulbs are beginning to send up shoots. The grape hyacinths have already bloomed in pots along the streets and in gardens.

Grape hyacinths, always a favorite early spring blossom

My friend Michael has one of the rare gardens inside the walls. He has been busy with spring garden clean-up and now it is paying off with early spring growth - soft green ground cover, the first daffodils, tulip shoots (no flowers yet), pretty little hyacinths, delicate violets, and stalks of yellow mimosa.

Here in Tuscany our cafes are still closed to all seating, but the mild weather means we can meet outside for a chiacchiera (chat) or to share a caffè d'asporto (coffee to go). Stepping into an open piazza, people stop and turn their faces toward the sun letting the warmth embrace them. Hints of spring can be found all around.

Even store windows are hinting at spring with colorful displays of merchandise in Easter egg colors.

Spring colors in the window of the Bialetti store

Last year at this time spring seemed to pass me by as I watched it unfold from my window during Italy’s quarantine. Even a walk to see the magnolias in bloom was forbidden. I felt guilty the one time I strayed just a little beyond the 200 meters from home limit to catch a glimpse of wisteria in bloom. This year feels different - the hints of spring are a tonic, not a tease. How fortunate I feel to be able to be out and about watching spring arrive.