Italy: Part 2

The beautiful weather we experienced our first couple of days in Tuscany quickly turned into a cold, rainy mess by our third day at the country house. But the timing couldn't have been better. That evening, we had plans to cook with Stefan, a Florence-based foodie, playboy and all-around fun guy. Through the rain and hail, Stefan (and his Spanish friend, Lara) jetted on his scooter from his home to ours, toting a crate full of seafood, olive oil, vegetables and pasta to school us in Tuscan cuisine.

Upon his arrival, Sandra gave Stefan a "Chefbock" apron (Bock is his favorite beer from Germany) to mark his position as head chef. He broke us up into teams to start prep for the evening's feast of an antipasto, "primi" (first course) pasta and "secondi" (second course) fish. Sandra and Malte worked on the antipasto, which was a beautiful presentation of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil - all drizzled with a bit of authentic Tuscan olive oil and a dash of salt and pepper. According to Stefan, the best olive oil in Italy is made in Tuscany.

The seafood pasta team included myself, Stefan and Isabella. She cleaned and de-bearded the mussels, Stefan worked on prepping the base for the seafood broth and I tackled the calamari. It was my first time working with these slippery little suckers, and I enjoyed every minute of pulling the guts out of each one.

Above: Isabella shows off her mussels; me, looking just a tad less haggard than the squid!

Stefan was a real pro: a dash of white wine, a sprinkle of fresh garlic and shallots, a pinch of herbs and a little dose of olive oil and the pot was ripe with a wealth of seafood goodness.

We threw in some fresh linguine pasta and the result was a beautiful and tasty mixed seafood pasta (we also threw in some shrimp for good measure). Though some may say white wine is better suited for this kind of dish, we opted to drink the house reds - the Merlot and Chianti produced by our house's owner. I think we went back a couple of times to the previously mentioned (see first post) cellar to pick up more wine; it was the kind of night. Cold and raining outside, and warm with drunkards inside. Between sips of wine, you could hear bursts of Spanish, English, French, German and Italian, but we had no problem communicating with each other as we seamlessly connected through cooking and eating and drinking.

Though we barely had room for anything else after our pasta dish, everyone made an exception for Lara's special fish. A mix of Spanish and Italian flavors, the white fish (I can't recall what type it was but it wasn't anything I'd ever heard of before) was christened with fresh lemons, olive oil, salt and pepper and placed on a bed of thinly sliced potatoes, tomatoes and zucchini.

Lara, Isabella, Sandra and Malte all helped with the fish, which turned out moist and juicy and full of fresh flavor.

I think this is the heart of Italian cooking: Basic, fresh food cooked simply and without much fuss. You don't need reductions and sauces and truffle oil to make something profoundly delicious, and this fish dish is the perfect example of that philosophy.

For dessert, we had a traditional Italian "dolci" of Vin Santo (a sweet, white wine - much like white port) and almond biscotti. Nearly every restaurant in the Tuscany/Florence area offers this as a dessert; you dip the biscotti into the wine then eat. By this time, everyone (except Isabella, who is pregnant) was pretty well sauced, and we were laughing about how our hands were getting stuck in our wine glasses trying to dip the biscotti into the Vin Santo. Malte had a very funny analogy about this that I wrote down as it was both fitting and hilarious:

He said that Africans used to put fruit in a dirt termite mound to try and catch apes in the jungle. The apes would stick their hands into the mound, but didn't have enough intelligence to realize they had to fold their fingers inward in order pull their hand out because the top of the hole was quite small and required some creative manuvering. The apes would sit there for hours with their outstretched hand stuck in the hole, yanking with desperation to release it. That was us by the end of the night, squeezing our hand into the narrow top of our wine glasses trying to soak up the last bit of Vin Santo with yet another biscotti cookie.

Looks like Malte successfully reached the fruit AND managed to get his hand out!