Nella Cucina

Today is the second of three days when the agriturismo is completely full, with all six rooms occupied.  Lorena and Sergio offer an optional, complete Tuscan dinner, so my main responsibility is to help with the preparation of dinner for the guests for these three days.  

That means working alongside a Tuscan cook whose food gets rave reviews.  Pretty cool, huh? 

The first night we made tagliatelle in brodo (wide pasta noodles in broth) for the first course, which Lorena is dishing up here.  

Most everything we've served and eaten at the family table is from the farm (wild nettles to make tagliatelle verde tonight, risotto with garden arugula, sauteed greens like wild borage, chard and cabbage which we had for dinner, roasted chicken with sage and rosemary,...the list goes on).

PS - The second course last night was potato and sage stuffed rabbit (from, you guessed it, need I continue?)

Learning to make pasta the old-fashioned way...

On the rare occasions that I make fresh pasta at home, I use the machine, so this was another thing altogether.  Lorena is a wizard with the rolling pin, flipping the entire piece of dough over itself, but I haven't quite mastered all the tricks...yet!!

Pork with Rosemary

The Rosemary

It’s killing me, but I’ve dumped a dozen wheelbarrows full of bay leaves, lavender and rosemary in the olive grove.  Sergio has been sprucing the place up a bit for the next (and last for the season) round of guests, so he’s trimmed these wonderful plants that grow like shrubs here and it’s my job to pick up and haul off the cuttings.  The rosemary, in particular, was hard on me; we can’t seem to get ours to last more than a year or two at home, let alone make full-on shrubbery.  This is a great country!

The Pork

Last night mid-hauling along this path (left), I decided to stop for a few minutes to gather some lavender for my room.  I must have been quiet enough so as to go undetected, because out of nowhere I heard a noise and looked over and here came three young wild boars running up the path, jumping the ancient retaining wall, and heading into the trees, just a few yards away from me!  One had trouble figuring out how to get up on the wall, and he just looked at me for a minute unsure of what do do, and then finally scrambled away. 

They were the cinghiali that we’d heard so much about on our prior trips.  The older males grow pretty threatening-looking tusks, but these were juveniles.  Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, but of all the pictures from my googling this one looks most like them, except their manes were more pronounced.

There are a couple of well-known Tuscan specialties – a pasta dish (papardelle al ragu di cinghiale), as well as some salamis – made from wild boar meat.  During the weekends especially, the hills around here ring with gunshots of hunters looking for their own cinghiale.

So…now that I have my bearings a bit more, here’s a follow-up on my new digs.  Since I’ve "WWOOFed" before, I had no idea what to expect, but it definitely wasn't what I found at the first farm.   Here's a quick rundown of the new place, which is gorgeous, well-organized and sane! 

This farmhouse has been, like many others in the area, added onto over time; and it's primarily composed of two parts:  the "old part" was originally a tower in the 13th century, and the "new part" was added in the 15th/16th century. 

My room, with my own bathroom, is the upper/attic storey of the "old part," i.e., the 13th century tower.  There were many, many towers in the area and most eventually were lopped off at the top, so my room is just the second storey of the current house.  It's clean and beautiful.  Did I mention my very own, clean bathroom?!   Here's my bedroom window (which is small, but plenty big for hearing the roosters at 5am!).  It definitely beats the rooms enclosed by sheets hanging in alcoves at the original farm!

All my clothes are clean now and hanging on the line with a view of the Siena hillside and the neighbor’s ancient farmhouse.   Most people don't use clothes dryers here, and I think it's great.  Sure it takes a few minutes to hang the clothes up, but they smell great afterwards and think of all the energy that's saved.  And I'm loving the nice, slow pace of being outdoors doing it, too.

The food is excellent here, nearly everything produced here on the farm and prepared by a good Tuscan cook.  More details on that later.  Overall, I'm definitely thrilled with the change, though I do miss the goats--and, I'll admit, was a little sad to wash out the goaty smell from my t-shirt (result of missing the bucket when I was milking!).  Just look at these gals, what's not to miss?

Dateline Siena, somewhere near Santa Colomba

I’m sitting outside at an old wooden table, under a roof that used to cover the pigsty and sheep pens that were appended at some point to a 13^th century tower.  I just picked up the clippings of a laurel/bay leaf shrub that Sergio had trimmed and hung a few to dry from the rafters in front of me.  Sure, bay leaves are dirt cheap at home, but how many people can say that they dried them themselves? 

This is a beautiful agriturismo outside of Siena, near the tiny village of Santa Colomba.  That’s all I really know.  I was just glad to see Sergio at the train station last night!

Things were pretty iffy at the first farm after my first week, and I was thinking about leaving but wasn't sure how to extricate myself from the situation since this was my first wwoofing gig.  The surroundings were beautiful, and I loved the goats.  The main problem was a complete lack of organization, so that I didn't know when or if I could ever make cheese or really work with the animals (as the wwoofers who arrived earlier had those jobs), or if my primary wwoofer job would be the lunch and dinner dishes.  (This seemed to be a wwoofer job though nothing was said explicitly about any responsibilities.  Ever.)    

So when I had a chance, I arranged a ride to Asti with an American cheesemaker and his photographer wife, who had come to see their cheesemaking process and whom I'd met at the Slow Food "Cheese!" fair.  Otherwise, I thought it could get pretty awkward hanging out there for several days until someone went into town, with everyone knowing I was trying to get out of there.   These folks were fantastic, one of them a teacher of cheesemaking, and they were travelling around Italy after the "Cheese!" fair to visit small cheese producers.  What a great trip!  They were kind enough take me, and it made me feel so much better to have that option. 

When we left the next morning, they drove me to the train station and Robin wanted to make sure I was OK.   Jim, by the way, is a very knowledgeable cheesemaker and his stories about various traditions of cheesemaking are fascinating (http://www.cheesemaking.com/JimW.html).  A big thanks goes out to both of you!!  

But the first farm wasn't all bad.  It wasn't a great place for a first wwoofing gig, but there were some good things.  In fact, traditional hand-milking (which is rare these days) and cheesemaking had a lot of potential.  There were just too many wwoofers and no direction at all, not to mention that the lodgings were--shall we say--hostel-like at best; and I think that it's enough excitement to be learning the language and the culture, without the additional, unnecessary chaos and the uncertainty about why I was even there.

Turns out that it wasn't such a difficult conversation to tell Mario I was leaving, and I generously just said that it just wasn't a good fit for me.  And turned the conversation away from the reasons for leaving (what would be the point?) to teach Mario my father-in-law's expression to describe our situation:  "There's an ass for every seat," which made him laugh.  Naturally, I kind of left out the part about that expression implying "there's no accounting for taste."

So far this place seems to be great, but more on that when I've gotten my bearings a little more.

The Care and Milking of Goats

I’ve spent much of the past few days (as a paying guest of the agriturismo rather than a “WWOOFer”) attending the Slow Food “Cheese!” festival in Bra, Italy, about 30 km from here.  So I’m definitely not an expert on this, but I’ll lay out what I understand about milking.

 



The milking season is about to end because the grazing is getting sparse now, but for now the animals are still milked twice a day.  Five at time, they climb up onto a waist-high platform, which has a feeding trough behind bars that hold their necks in place, their hind ends facing the open side of the platform.   Check out the sheep crowding the gate to to milking area!





 

 

Here's the milker's view!  Unlike cows, who get milked from the side, with sheep and goats the milker stands behind them, directing the stream (hopefully) into small buckets.   The milk is then poured into a larger jug, filtering through a cheese cloth to keep out the flies, the straw, the hairs, etc.  Don’t worry:  it will be filtered again before the cheese is made!



The goats and sheep all start in the barn, on separate sides, where they had been kept overnight.  After the sheep are milked, each group of 5 exits the barn into the fenced barn lot.  Next, it's the goats' turn, in the same five-at-a-time setup.   The smaller goats are wandering the middle aisle all the while, looking for attention or something nibble on, maybe your jeans.  Notice that the sheep are trying to reach back into the barn from the outside to get something else to eat!

The sheep produce very little milk (maybe 1/3 cup per ewe?) compared to the goats, who can produce half a liter during the prime milking season (spring).  The goats are also easier to milk than the sheep, partly because their udders are bigger and, in my opinion, partly because they seem less skittish.  While the animals are being milked, they’re also fed in the troughs behind the bars that hold their heads in place.  The goats figure out where the empty slots are as they’re climbing up onto the platform; the sheep, not so much.

And here's a milker you might recognize. 

The animals are pastured afterward for several hours, morning and evening.  There’s a 28-year-old Italian shepherd here named Andrea who’s in charge of the animals and the milking, and he decides every day where the best grass is (a challenge at this time of year) and moves the goats and sheep there, letting them wander around for the duration. 

The shepherd is a pretty  interesting guy:  first of all, shepherding is a not a lifestyle too many people are choosing these days.   Andrea had been a WWOOFer on this farm and later decided to buy property that’s adjacent.   It seems quite popular for Italians to WWOOF in their own country, maybe it’s an economic decision.  At any rate, the cost of living in this area is very low, and I suspect that land is fairly reasonable.  In fact, the buildings on this farm are part of an almost-abandoned community of perhaps ten houses.   For reasons that I’m not clear on, Andrea (who is from a northern town) bought a horse in the southern-most part of Italy, along with ten goats.  To transport his newly-purchased livestock,  he spent six months riding his way north, bringing the goats.  He said he’d chosen to take six months so that he could meet and talk to people along the way and learning more about shepherding.

Here's a few shots from pasturing.  Note the goat who's eating the tree leaves, standing on two hind legs.  They can go through a grove of young trees like a swarm of locusts! 

Ready, Set, Cheese!

This is my first time to Slow Food’s Cheese! expo, and I'm really excited.  Cheese is amazing when you think about it:  milk that is edible weeks/months later? Think about the first people who figured this out and could make the efforts of their goats/sheep/cows/camels portable and durable. 

This expo is all about small, local producers who have come from all over the world to keep artisan cheesemaking going and growing.   Incidentally, the exclamation mark in the name is NOT mine, though I’m prone to use punctuation with enthusiasm.  Anyway, I definitely understand the sentiment. 

I’ve come into Bra (yes, that’s the name of this town in northern Italy, an hour south of Torino/Turin, hometown of Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini).  Today is a day away from the farm, though as I look down at my one pair of decent pants I notice that I’ve brought plenty of the farm with me.  Don’t know if it’s dust from the hay, goat dander, or your basic dirt, but this fatal flaw in my dress might be the one thing that sets me apart as non-Italian.  Ha!

Enough about that.  Let’s talk about cheese.  After the first day, I have made it through only a tiny part of the outdoor exhibition area, but have met interesting people whose lives are devoted to this living, breathing food that we love.  I miss Michael more than usual here, because I know how much my food geek husband would love this! 

Blue cheese aged in cherry schnapps barrels

The first stand I visited was a Swiss one called Tumi from the Emmenthal region, and they were determined to show the world that Emmenthal cheese isn’t just the yummy fondue variety.  In fact, they were rather unusual in that they produce an enormous range of cheese types from blue to bloomy rind to hard grating styles.  The range is unusual, primarily because it's especially easy for the molds in blue cheese to contaminate other cheese.  These folks make the blue in a separate facility.


One of my favorites of the whole show is their blue cheese (left) aged in the barrels used to make cherry schnapps.  From the schapps, it has a hint of sweetness which goes well with the sharp, salty blue flavor.

Peppery cheese for grating--imagine it over
beef carpacchio, pasta, salads.  Yum!!



This one is another favorite; its flavor is so strong that it is used by slicing it very, very finely, like a truffle.  Kind of looks like a truffle too!  It's a  hard, round crumbly cheese (right) with a really strong pepper taste, used for grating over things like beef carpacchio—a little goes a long way!

I stopped at a booth called “The Best of Spain,” run by a group of several producers who band together to share the costs of promotion, like booth rental fees, etc.  I spoke with Juan Luis Royuela, a goat cheese maker from “La Cabezuela,” located outside Madrid.  He’d brought three varieties and was clearly passionate about Spanish cheese.  I really enjoyed talking to all of these producers, but I had a hard time trying to speak Spanish after working so hard at Italian these past few days!

But back to cheese:  part of what has been great about this show (besides tasting more cheese than my tastebuds can handle) is  learning about techniques in cheesemaking.  The tiniest variation in production method can make an enormous difference in the final product. 

For example, check this out:  the two “La Cabezuela” cheeses below are made from the same goat milk, same rennet and same introduced molds, and they’re aged for the same length of time (two months).  The first one is drier, crumbly and fairly hard; the second one is smooth, creamy, soft and somewhat elastic.  The only differences (aside from mold shape) are only the temperature and humidity during the aging process (see captions).




Aged at 15° C in 90% humidity

Aged at 8° C in 80% humidity

That's it for now:  more Cheese! tomorrow...

An important part of travelling is tasting regional specialties

I have just ordered a raw sausage sandwich.  I didn’t do it on purpose, though I had heard that the local “salsiccia di Bra” (sausage from Bra) is mostly eaten raw, and I should have known.  You can see here that I'm not lying: 

But now I’m sitting here looking at it, thinking that this is Italy and if you don’t eat the food, you get in trouble with the waitresss.  

Hmm...

But I’m an adventurous eater, right?  This is pushing even my boundaries, but I can’t just send it back.  (Someday I’ll post the kidneys-in-the-camera-bag story).   I love sushi, right?  (says the angel on my right shoulder).  Red meat is different (says the devil on my left shoulder). 

Well, here goes…

Molto buono!  With every bite, I have to make a conscious effort to set aside my aversion to raw meat and then it’s really quite good.  You can taste the nutmeg, wine, and something else I can't put my finger on.  By the way, Mom, when you get here, we can eat this every day!  OK, I'm just kidding.  It really is good, but it's not a Tuscan specialty so you are out of luck I'm afraid.

OK. That's all I can eat; I got about 90% of the way there.  It's a big sandwich and there's also a big slab of cheese inside.  I ask for the bill, and the waitress wants to know why I didn't eat it all.

I have milked a goat!

I’m outside enjoying a goat milk caffe latte for breakfast--from yesterday afternoon’s milking--while looking out over at this view.  From the balcony off my room, I see the same view though it’s somewhat blocked by the persimmon tree that’s growing right outside my door!  On the cascina (the common word for “farm” in this part of Italy; podere is used more in central Italy), I’ve already seen several trees growing that I’d never seen before:  persimmon, pomegranate and a fuzzy apple-like thing that I think is quince.  There are walnuts, hazelnuts, pears, figs, peaches, and plums, as well as a standard vegetable garden.  Oh, and grapes for wine of course!  (That is, “certo!”).  If all of this is a little too idyllic sounding, does it help that I had to pick out a piece of probably-urine-soaked straw from the milk while it was heating for my latte? 

I helped milk the goats this morning; the sheep are harder for me, so I'm waiting until I get proficient with the goats.  And still I'm twice as slow as the other American WWOOFer who's only been here two weeks!  I guess that means there's hope for me.  It kills me how hard you have to squeeze and pull.  I'm sorry, but...ouch!  The goats don't seem to care, however.  Can you imagine that all these random people come in every few weeks or months and learn by trial-and-error how to milk on YOUR udders?  Was that a little too graphic for everyone??  OK, basta.

As we all expected, and some of us knew (that's a shout-out to my in-laws), the goats have way more personality than the sheep.  Sheep act like, well, sheep.  To indicate that the shepherd has the same attitude:  all the goats have names, and none of the sheep do.  I'm reminded of the joke about Massachusetts...I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader (and I'll have to add that I don't agree). 

This one is adorable, but not the more common breed they have here.  Most of the goats are brown with black markings, but I haven't managed a good picture yet.  The really cute one is a younger one (named "Puttalina" - not touching that one) who really thinks she's a lapdog.  While you're milking the others on a platform, she’s on the ground below leaning into your legs like a dog, and I can't get her picture because she always comes toward me when I squat down to take one at eye level.  In fact, she actually tried to climb in my lap!  I'm sneaking her into my suitcase when I go.

Sono arrivata...

My first view from the farm when I arrived yesterday afternoon.  It’s really hazy now, apparently for the past few weeks, so the Alps are a little obscured.  You can still make them out, along with a half dozen towers on the surrounding hilltops. 

I arrived yesterday around 5 pm, after a quick drink with Mario at his friend’s bar in Moglia.  I'm still not exactly sure where I am, but Moglia was about halfway here from Bra. 

By the time I went to bed, I’d been up for more than 36 hours; I just couldn’t get to sleep on the main flight from Chicago to Frankfurt.  I did doze a bit on almost every one of the legs:  flight from Denver to Chicago, seven hour layover then Chicago-Frankfurt, short layover then Frankfurt-Bologna, “BLQ” bus to Bologna Stazione Centrale, train from Bologna to one of Torino’s stations (Punto Nuovo), off that and on to another train for one stop (Torino Lingotto), then final train ride from Torino Lingotto to Bra (yes, that’s the name of the town), and lastly Mario’s van from Bra to the farm.  OK, I didn't doze in the van, but those who know my phobia about mountain roads would have been proud to see how calm I was as he was zooming around the curves on these high, one-lane mountain roads.  Or maybe I was just delirious.

And she's off!

Sitting in O’Hare for my seven hour layover, I’m still not sure it has dawned on me that I’m about to leave the U.S. for almost two months, that I will be speaking only Italian, and that this isn’t just a two-week vacation.  Somehow, however, I’m feeling pretty relaxed and calm about it all.  Maybe it’s the mental haze of sleep deprivation, or maybe it’s actually true that the last couple of weeks of crazed planning have left me well-prepared.

I’ve researched vocabulary for farm life (my favorite: forcone for pitchfork sounds to me like a really big fork), being outdoors (fango is mud), and cooking alongside the hosts (pentola for saucepan).  I’m hoping that I’ll have at least a little time during this adventure to need words like l’architettura, la scultura, and l’arte.

I’ve read a few blogs from WWOOFers who went before me, taking their advice on rubber boot covers, bug repellant and sunscreen.  I’ve obtained my international driving permit (God help me), checked my passport expiration date, and opened a no-foreign-fee ATM checking account.

I’ve wrapped up my computer consulting work, hopefully leaving everyone in a stable state until I return in November.  The stability of the house is another story:  I have not filled the freezer with meals for two months or arranged for maid service, though I did make my stepson Nathan pinky-swear that he would not let his dad order Meat Lover’s pizza every night.  I’m thinking that it will turn into subsistence on frozen ravioli and potstickers, but I may be pleasantly surprised.

I’ve tried to pack as minimally as possible, while still including clothing for sweating over grapevines, picking olives in cold rain, and traipsing with my mother from one ruin to the next in the hot Roman sun.  Most challenging of all given most of what I’m bringing, Mom and I will be dressing up for my birthday dinner at a restaurant in Tuscany where Michael and I shared one of the most memorable meals of our lives.  In the end, at the 11^th hour, I broke down and brought “The Big Suitcase” despite all my efforts to the contrary.

Most difficult of all, I’ve said goodbye to my wonderful husband who has been so graciously supportive of this.  I’ll strive my hardest to follow his parting advice to “really be there” and to “take it all in.”  So when my next entries aren’t as long-winded as this, after your initial sigh of relief, you will know that I’m busy living “in the moment.”

Since this is my first time “WWOOF”-ing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), I only have a theoretical understanding of what lies ahead of me.  The idea is that I’ll work for 5 or 6 hours per day on an organic farm, helping the hosts with whatever needs to be done, in exchange for room and board.  WWOOF accommodations range from a BYO tent option to living in beautiful 18^th century farmhouse bedrooms—if there are no guests at the time. 

In some families, the volunteer is completely integrated into the household, sharing meals and even bathrooms.  In other situations (none of which do I think I’ve agreed to), the  volunteer lives with a group of other “WWOOFers” in a communal setting, like bunk beds in a barn loft.  I’ll keep you posted.

The first farm where I’ll be staying produces serious cheeses.  I had so hoped to be able to go to the biennial Slow Food Cheese exhibition this coming weekend, but accommodations were scarce and very pricey by the time my schedule had firmed up.  But in a huge stroke of luck, my hosts will be exhibitors there, which means that not only are they serious about their cheese, but I’ll have a ride to and from the conference, which is no small thing without a car and with inconvenient train connections. Before and after the conference, I think I’ll be learning to make amazing raw milk cow cheeses in their dairy.  Again, I’ll keep you posted.

I just received an email from the second farm I’ll visit, which confirmed that I will be helping her in the kitchen (serving guests in their small restaurant for 16), with the olives, and with the animals.  Working alongside an Umbrian cook, enjoying the peace of the majestic olive trees and tending to the animals, which consist of “free range pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, 2 cats and 2 dogs.”  To quote Pee Wee Herman (and who doesn’t want to do that??), “I couldn’t be more excited!”