giacomo's

Roman Museums

Great information to have if you are planning a trip to the Eternal City. From the New York Times:

NO matter where you are in Rome there is probably a house museum around the corner if not right in front of you. The popes were not alone in thinking that the rooms, hallways and loggias of their stately residences ought to be overscaled and highly decorated, with frescoed ceilings, gilt-framed paintings and gleaming marble Greek gods and goddesses propped in every corner. Popes had nephews who also used their digs for personal art collections; so did several centuries worth of cardinals, wealthy nobles, queens in exile, art-loving French imperialists and Romantic-leaning English poets, as well as painters, sculptors and other artists from around the globe. Collectively, they left behind a wealth of treasure palaces and curious cubby holes displaying something for every taste....

Not all house museums in Rome are created equal. Some, like the Borghese and Doria Pamphilj galleries, are bigger, better known and better stocked than others. But for tourists, a higher profile can mean advance booking and steep ticket prices. Lesser-known museums are usually a cinch to get into and get through; most can be appreciated in an hour. Newly expanded hours (from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.) and entrance fees of just a few euros — even less with the recently started Roma Pass — can make finding a hitherto unseen Renaissance masterpiece all the easier.

At the Palazzo Barberini, for instance, the recently reopened first floor displays a substantial portion of the collections of National Gallery of Ancient Art, including works from the Barberini collection and other donors. The renovated space is cause for jubilation among art and architecture buffs. After years of a painfully slow restoration that had reduced the garden to a garbage dump and the museum to a one-room greatest-hits display, the palazzo — which was built beginning in 1625 for Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII, by architects like Bernini and Borromini — once again has a gurgling fountain and shady palm trees welcoming visitors to its dramatically terraced entrance.

Highlights of the collection include Raphael’s “Fornarina” — an icon of Renaissance beauty — and two important works by Caravaggio: “Judith Beheading Holofernes” and “Narcissus.” Don’t miss the central hall, capped by Pietro da Cortona’s painted ceiling, “Triumph of Divine Providence,” a swirling, angel-filled skyward vista that cleverly links the Barberini clan with the image of heaven. Children can be entertained finding all the bees — the symbol of the Barberini family — deftly inserted throughout the palace, from Cortona’s fresco to the mosaic floors and even the radiator grilles.

The National Gallery also occupies a suite of rooms in the Palazzo Corsini, across the Tiber at the northern tip of Trastevere. Originally belonging to the Riario family, the palace is perhaps best known as the residence of Queen Christina of Sweden, who set up residence after her 1654 abdication and conversion to Catholicism. It was later owned and expanded by the Corsini family. About 300 paintings by the likes of Fra Angelico, Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Murillo and Rubens are tidily compressed into eight galleries. Even at the height of the tourist season, daily attendance rarely tops 50 visitors so it’s like having these masterpieces to oneself.

Back across the Tiber is the Palazzo Spada, former residence of Cardinal Bernardino Spada, who in 1652 commissioned one of Rome’s most delightful architectural follies from Francesco Borromini. Known as Borromini’s perspective gallery, it is a trompe l’oeil loggia in which the architect, by tilting the floor, walls and vaulted ceiling, creates the illusion of a colonnade stretching nearly 120 feet, when it is in reality less than 30 feet long. Among the masterpieces inside the museum are two paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi, among the first known European female painters.

Individual paintings seem almost a secondary consideration at the Palazzo Colonna. The inauspicious public entrance — up a narrow spiral staircase from the cramped ticket office — only adds to the sense of awe upon seeing the grand main gallery in all its Baroque splendor. Catching her breath from the climb, a Judy Dench-ish woman turned to her companion and said: “Now this is exactly the sort of place that could lead one to suspect that Rome really was the center of the universe.”

Overhead, images of Marcantonio Colonna II, the family scion who played a decisive role in defeating the Ottomans in the 1571 naval Battle of Lepanto, confronts the Turks at sea and is otherwise glorified in a series of action-packed frescoes that offer no respite for the weary eye. Over the doors, carved and gilded military standards and trophy armor seem to explode out of the over-scaled marble moldings. A double row of Murano chandeliers hangs in front of the windows along either side of the gallery; between the windows giant mirrors have been painted with vases of flowers and frolicking cherubs. Beneath them, marble table tops are supported by writhing Ottoman slaves.

...

Even the city’s glamorous shopping district around the Via del Corso and the Piazza di Spagna harbors a few noteworthy cultural destinations like the Keats-Shelley Memorial House, the house where the English poet Keats finally succumbed to tuberculosis. The museum displays manuscripts and memorabilia of Keats, Shelley, Byron and other 19th-century Romantics.

A few doors down is the house where 20th-century Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico lived during the last 30 years of his life. It is open by appointment, but is often booked months in advance.

Behind the Scenes On Pasta Prices

From the New York Times an article on wheat farming that helps explain the rise in pasta prices:

Until recently, he could expect around $3 a bushel for his wheat — far less than his parents and grandparents received, when inflation is taken into account. Consumption in the United States was dropping as Americans shunned carbohydrates. The export market, while healthy, faced competition.

Now prices have more than tripled, partly because of a drought in Australia and bad harvests elsewhere and also because of unslaked global demand for crackers, bread and noodles. In seven of the last eight years, world wheat consumption has outpaced production. Stockpiles are at their lowest point in decades.

Around the world, wheat is becoming a precious commodity. In Pakistan, thousands of paramilitary troops have been deployed since January to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Malaysia, trying to keep its commodities at home, has made it a crime to export flour and other products without a license. Consumer groups in Italy staged a widely publicized (if also widely disregarded) one-day pasta strike last fall.

In the United States, the price of dry pasta has risen 20 percent since October, according to government data. Flour is up 19 percent since last summer. Over all, food and beverage prices are rising 4 percent a year, the fastest pace in nearly two decades.

The American Bakers Association last month took the radical step of suggesting that American exports be curtailed to keep wheat at home, though the group later backed off.

Italian Spiderman

If you have 3 minutes to spare, go to www.youtube.com this very minute and check out "Italian Spiderman."  Although its in Italian, it transcends the language barrier to be one of the funniest, campiest trailers I've seen in a very long time.  Check it out!

Prato, Tuscany

For one wonderful year, I lived in Florence while studying the Italian language.  At least once a month I would travel to Abruzzo to visit family and friends for a relaxing long weekend (il ponte they call it in Italian.) Believe it or not, the journey home by train was fairly enjoyable for me because it was during those return trips "home" to Florence that I could see the countryside and get to know life outside of the city.  I remember Prato's train station because when the "intercity" would pull in I knew then that I was almost to Firenze.  I never did get off the train to take a look around and now I wish that I had.  I hope someday my train will pull into Prato again!

From the New York Times:

PRATO’S all-time favorite scandal — the love affair of the local Renaissance painter Fra Filippo Lippi, who also happened to be a monk, and his model, a beautiful nun — has for centuries overshadowed the spectacular work that was born of their romance. But no longer. Against Prato’s Tuscan backdrop of Romanesque and Gothic churches adorned with local albarese stone and rich green marble, Lippi’s magnificent frescoes in the Cattedrale di Santo Stefano are newly restored after seven years under scaffolding.

. . .

Prato is a city few Americans visit, and it’s a shame. The 30-minute bus (or train) from Florence winds through a sprawling industrial community of 175,000, but the 13th-century stone walls and watchtowers enclose a beautifully preserved pristine city that is easily walked, filled with charming trattorias and pizzerias, and host to enough small inns to make it perfectly hospitable.

. . .

Lippi arrived here in 1452 after his patrons, the Medici family, bailed him out of prison on a false swindling charge. He spent the next dozen years living and working near Santo Stefano in the center of the old city and served briefly as chaplain of the Santa Margherita convent. It was there that he first laid eyes on Lucrezia Buti, the young nun whom, according to legend, he snatched off the streets and took to his workshop where she became his lover and bore him a son, then a daughter.

Lippi’s scandalous appetites have at times drawn attention away from his art. But in 2001, the Italian cultural heritage ministry put 1.25 million euros into restoring the frescoes. The restorers were careful to preserve the natural elements of aging, including the loss of details Lippi had painted after the fresco plaster had dried, while painstakingly returning facial expressions, gestures and colors to their earlier depths.

Perhaps

If you ever get the chance, you have to read this powerful little book of poetry entitled Italian Women and Other Tragedies written by a wonderful writer and Italian immigrant named Gianna Patriarca. (Thanks Claudia for enlightening me with her work!) Patriarca's poems are moving and deeply personal.   I relate to her poetry on so many levels because although I am not an immigrant my parents are and through them I feel like I too have lived the immigrant experience.  My favorite poem is one called "Perhaps."  This poem could have been written about my own father who came to America from a small town in Italy in the early '60's.  He only returned to his homeland twice in 47 years -- once for 10 days to attend my brother's wedding and then 10 years ago for 3 weeks.  Why didn't he want to go back more?  He never really explained that to me or to anyone actually.  Dad lost his mother and father at a very young age and was basically left to raise himself. Following the death of his father he lived with his child-less older brother Vincenzo and very stern wife Maria and by all accounts it was not a happy household. I feel really sad for him sometimes when I think about how much better his life could have been if he hadn't been orphaned by the age of 13.  My father is 71 now and sometimes when he's in a particularly chipper mood he talks about going back..."one last time"...then he stops himself and says..."Nay, I'm too old to go back."  It's never too late to go home, Dad.

Here's an excerpt from the poem "Perhaps" by Gianna Patriarca..

...perhaps if he walked that

road of white pebbles

and reached the farmhouse

in the distance

he would touch the heads

of the newborn chicks

and recall the wonder

but for thirty years now

he's slept in a foreign bed

that has curved his spine

the corn husks of his young bed

have rotted in a cradle

if he could return

to smell the earth

his father left him

he would understand.

Nonna's Gift

Foreword: My sister Giovina wrote this very beautiful piece about our nonna and I am so happy to be able to share it with you.  Grazie Gio!

Nonna’s Gift

          When I was a little girl I often wished I could visit my grandmother whenever I wanted. But my grandmother, my Nonna, lived all the way across the ocean in Italy, and our visits were years apart. Though our visits would be for weeks at a time, I was jealous that my cousins in Italy could visit her whenever they wanted, especially at Christmas. When I was older I learned that some of them didn’t visit her very much at all. “I know you better than them,” Nonna scoffed, “and you live across the ocean.”

          Nonna was a tiny woman, well under five feet tall, but she was feisty. She’d married young, lost her first child when he was a toddler, but went on to raise ten more children, sometimes on sheer will. My grandfather earned a meager salary at a factory, but with so many children, it was never enough.

          My mother, the oldest child, recalls that even though their family was poor, they never went hungry. She says Nonna always managed to make enough food for her family to eat. When she couldn’t afford to buy meat, she would buy the cheapest scraps and bones from the butcher and use them to make delicious soup or pasta sauce.

          My grandmother’s talent as a cook was well known around town and people sometimes hired her to cook for baptisms and wedding receptions. She’d remind us often that she had worked as a cook for both the town physician and the mayor, which she considered an honor.

          Nonna was a harsh critic of other people’s cooking, especially her own daughters’. While my mother prefers cooking rustic Abruzzese food, Nonna preferred more refined modern Italian cuisine. “Your mother cooks too old fashioned,” she complained. “No one eats Pasta e Fagioli anymore!” During every visit with Nonna, she made sure to teach my sister and me some modern recipe she thought my mother might not know.

          In May of 1997, during our honeymoon in Italy, I took my husband Bob to meet Nonna. We stayed with her for two weeks in Lettomanoppello, a small village in the mountains of Abruzzo that has been my ancestral home for several generations. Nonna was 78 then and had been a widow for almost fifteen years. She was frail and tinier than ever. Although she’d had a heart condition for half of her life, a doctor had told her once that she’d probably outlive everyone.

          Nonna relished having someone to cook for and Bob reaped the benefits. Nonna told me she enjoyed cooking for Bob because he ate her cooking with such gusto. We’d all laugh every time he tried to praise Nonna’s cooking in his comically halting Italian.

          One afternoon Nonna announced that now that I was married, it was time for her to “school me” in cooking and give me her special recipes. We sat on her sunny balcony where we could see snowcapped mountains in all directions. I took notes while she talked and talked, giving me recipes, telling stories and reminded me of cooking rules I should never break. Nonna’s specialties were her fish recipes and it didn’t matter that I might never find baby octopus back home in the U.S., I made sure I wrote down the recipe for Seppioline e Piselli word for word.

         With my aunt’s help, Nonna catered a little wedding party for Bob and me. Aunts, uncles and cousins from both my mother’s and father’s side came and gave Bob and me lavish gifts. A few days after the party, Nonna presented her gift to me. It was a large braiser pan with a glass lid. It appeared to be an excellent quality and knowing that Nonna couldn’t afford to buy me a fancy present, I thanked her for buying me a useful gift.

          But what I didn’t know back then was that I would use this pan almost every time I cook. Whether I need to braise, sauté, stir-fry or stew, this pan always seems to be the one I reach for first. It’s the perfect size for most of my recipes; it’s clear lid lets me monitor the cooking process; and the food cooks evenly and doesn’t stick. And after ten years of near constant use, it’s still in great shape.

          Car loans, babies, mortgages and career changes have been our priority for the past ten years, and Bob and I haven’t managed to return to Italy yet. And sadly, when we do return we won’t find Nonna there. She died last April just three weeks before her 88th birthday. Although I will never have another day with Nonna, I have her recipes, I have her stories, and I have the perfect cooking pan. And these are by far the best gifts she could have ever given me.

Pocket Coffee e' arrivato

Pocket Coffee has arrived! Thanks "Rebecca" for your very wise suggestion to sell these delicious coffee concoctions at Giacomo's.   What kind of Italian grocery store would we be without Pocket Coffee? I first discovered these in Lettomanoppello as a young teen and thought they were pretty cool then and they're still pretty cool. I think the fact that they are hard to find in the U.S., well that just makes them that more special when you do bite into one.  Fantastico! And believe me one bite and you'll be a believer! Usually by 3 o'clock in the afternoon Pocket Coffee starts to call my name......

Artisinal Dairies

We have been slowly building our stock of local Maine organic goods.  Its a slow start in the winter but we hope to add a lt more in the way of local cheeses etc.  This NYT article was an interesting read on the revival of small dairies.

These artisanal operations are turning cow, goat or sheep milk into simple, straightforward foods like crème fraîche, butter, buttermilk, ice cream, puddings, custards, yogurt, yogurt-based sauces and yogurt drinks. Many of these dairies also sell unhomogenized, and in a few cases even unpasteurized, milk with an old-fashioned farmhouse flavor.

The movement is, in some ways, an offshoot of the American cheesemaking revival that began 15 to 20 years ago, and some of the creameries make fresh cheeses like mascarpone, mozzarella and ricotta that let the quality of the milk speak for itself.

Chalk it up to a lucky confluence of events. Most small dairy farmers cannot keep afloat selling milk to large processors at commodity prices, so those who are trying to survive are looking for alternatives. At the same time there is an increasingly sophisticated public that appreciates the difference between mass-produced dumbed-down food and the handiwork of a small dairy that has learned to produce exceptional butter or yogurt or ice cream by doing it the way it was done before World War II, when there was a creamery in every town.

Ines Rosales Sweet Olive Oil Tortas

I know, I know...we're an Italian market so why are we carrying Spanish Sweet Olive Oil Tortas by Ines Rosales. Believe me, once you try them you will be hooked!  These little beauties are so light and delicately sweet (they loosely remind me of "elephant ears."  Those tiny dark specks you see in the photo are real fennel seeds which give its distrinct flavor.  They come packaged as 6 very thin flat, pressed crisps in distinct white wrapping paper.  The tortas are made without preservations and the ingredients are listed on the package as unbleached wheat flour, extra virgin olive oil, sugar, baking powder, sesame seeds, anise seed, salt, and natural anise essense. 

If you don't belive me, check out Jasmine Shops.

Roman Polanski Update

From the New York Times:

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, a fugitive from American justice, will be honored at the Turin Film Festival in November.

Polanski, 74, won a best director Oscar for 2002's "The Pianist" and received nominations for "Tess" in 1979, "Chinatown" in 1973 and "Rosemary's Baby" from 1968.

He fled the United States in 1978 rather than risk serving extended prison time after being convicted of having unlawful sex with a minor. A documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," suggests he was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice.