Chianti: Singing for Sting in the Hills

Tonight I’m just going to tell a quick story about Chianti.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been talking a lot about my love affair with Tuscany. Instead of Dante’s circles of Hell, my visit was like ascending circles of Italian Heaven. First it was Florence, then Siena, and finally, Chianti.

As much as I love all the sites and sounds a city offers, I don’t feel like I can really breathe or relax until I get into the countryside.

On that trip in 2004, my family and I stayed at Castello di Meleto. The nearest town was Gaiole in Chianti, so we were right in the heart of, well, Chianti.

The castle itself was beautiful, perched on a hill overlooking a rolling landscape and lush, green fields. I absolutely love this place. Our room, the people, the grounds, the castle, the vistas. Everything.

Meleto has a long, winding driveway lined by cypress trees that snakes back and forth, showing off the neighboring landscape and the castle’s vineyard.

My mom was a seasoned runner who always ran in the mornings on our trips. I had just taken up running and the view was pretty enough that I could be fairly easily roused from my deep slumbers—just one snarl instead of the usual ten—and happily go running.

Our route was quick and easy. We would just run down the driveway and back. It wasn’t all that long, but it was enough to help wake us up and make us realize how fantastic life was at that very moment. You know, to really get the blood pumping and experience all the great things about being alive, healthy, and able to take in the views when everyone was still asleep. Glorious!

I can’t remember which family member found this out, but we learned that Sting had a property and yoga retreat in Chianti called Il Palagio. We weren’t exactly sure where it was, but we thought it was very close. In reality, it’s 30 km/nearly 19 miles and probably an hour away on Chianti's maze-like roads near a town called Figline Valdarno.

So one morning we ran down the hill, giggling about Sting and belting out "Roxanne." We knew he would hear us and invite us to some yoga and dinner. Oh, yes.

We were always peppy starting out, seeing as it was all downhill. On the way back up, however, we tended to shut-up as our lungs and legs started to burn. I took to running up the drive as fast as I could, just to get the pain over and done with.

This continued a couple of times until one morning, on the way down, we saw Sting at the bottom of the hill with a baseball bat.

"Shut-up, already. I'm trying to sleep," he yelled with furrowed brow and fire in his eyes. "I will put out your red light, capisce?"

Kidding.

He was at the bottom of the hill with a bottle of wine and a yoga mat, praising our running and singing skills.

Oh, right. That's not true, either.

Actually, we heard the sound of machinery.

“Hmm what’s that?”

“Dunno.”

The beautiful, tall cypress trees obscured our view of the offending noise.

Whatever it was got closer as we rounded the hairpin turns further and further down the hill, until the vineyard was in view.

Suddenly, we realized it was a huge tractor and it looked like it was spraying something.

“Ahhhhh! Nooooo! Pesticides?!?” (I don’t really know if they actually were pesticides. Thinking back it might have been dust but I distinctly remember being convinced it was some kind of spray.)

The cloud started to float toward us. Immediately, we turned around and began running back up the hill.

I held my breath and pulled the front of my tank-top over my nose and mouth and sprinted as fast as I could, leaving my mother behind.

Once at the top we laughed a lot and, then, my mom yelled at me for dropping her like a sack of potatoes. (Sorry mom! I was running for help, I swear.) Fight or flight? I "flighted." Big time.

And that’s the story of how I began my running and singing career in Chianti.

I’ll be sure to do some more posts about Chianti and Castello di Meleto, so stay tuned. Come to think of it, that part of my trip was completely chock full of great, memorable experiences. It’s the place to go, I tell ya.

Siena's Panforte: Showing Fruitcake Who's Boss Since the Middle Ages

Have you ever eaten something and not particularly liked it upon first bite but developed desire to eat it anyway? It’s as if there’s something about it that you know you could learn to love over time. That’s what panforte, a confection from Siena, does to me. Panforte means “strong bread.” The name comes from the blend of warm spices that go into it, like cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and coriander. I think its name is also appropriate because it’s so heavy and dense you could probably use it as a mild weapon if necessary.

Something along these lines: “Don’t mess with me now, I’m just back from the pastry shop and I’ve got strong bread in this bag.”

Most people compare panforte to fruitcake. I admit, there are some similarities. They’re both substantial cakes full of nuts and dried/candied fruits. They are both traditionally Christmas cakes, although panforte is now available year-round in Siena, Tuscany, and I’ve even seen some in Umbria.

The glaring difference to me, however, is that fruitcake is almost universally disgusting to me. I’ve had a single bite of one that I didn’t mind but, other than that, I loathe most of them with the fire of a thousand burning suns.

In my strong, but humble opinion, it’s the quality of the ingredients that take panforte out of the realm of fruitcake and into the realm of delicacy. How many times have you seen a fruitcake and it has those neon-green and fire-engine red, toxic-looking “cherries” peering out at you like demented eyes? And green cherries? That’s just unnatural. I do not want them in my mouth. Ever.

Panforte? Recipes differ, of course, and there are two main types. Panforte Nero has bitter almonds and cocoa which give it a deep, dark color. Panforte Margherita is lighter and a little less intensely flavored. They’re both full of good, natural stuff like warm, deep spices, honey, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, figs, dates, and candied fruits like lemon, orange peel, and even melon.

A thick, sticky dough is made by mixing the chopped fruits, nuts, and a bit of flour with a boiled honey and sugar mixture. It is then spread evenly over wax paper in a springform pan and baked. The final product is dusted with confectioner’s sugar and then cut into wedges. What you get in the end is rich and thick; a cake that leans toward candy territory. It’s sweet, spicy, nutty, and sometimes a little bitter.

Throughout Siena, shops lure you to their windows with stacks of these cakes, made using their special recipe, showing off the bounty of ingredients they’ve packed into a single slice. I think this is where my strange attraction to panforte comes into play. I get to Siena, I’m surrounded by remarkable medieval architecture, I’m lulled into a happy historical stupor, and, then, unique, historic desserts start winking at me through all of these windows. How can I not get a slice?

Panforte, you see, has a long historical connection to Siena. I have a great book about Italian food and its history called Culinaria Italy. It says that the first mention of panforte shows up in a document from 1205, so it has been around in one form or another for a long time.

The book recounts a legend about the creation of panforte. As the story goes, a young man named Nicoló de Salimbeni got sick of his indulgent ways and gave up all of his worldly possessions to a nun named Sister Berta. These possessions included a bag of spices, which were very dear in those days, and a recipe for a sweetmeat of apples, flour, and dried fruits called melatello. Sister Berta made the recipe but decided it was too extravagant for nuns to eat, so she passed it on to a bishop. The recipe continued to pass from person to person until it reached the hands of a famous cook named Ubaldino, who was so well-known that Dante wrote about him in the Divine Comedy. Ubaldino changed the recipe a bit and, essentially, created the first panforte. Panforte then became one of Siena’s exports and was thought to be an aphrodisiac because of the amount of exotic spices used in the recipes. It appeared in Venice around 1370. (Culinaria Italy, ed. Claudia Piras (h.f.ullmann, 2008), 245.)

So if you’re ever in Siena, grab a slice and wander the medieval streets while pondering history and/or trying to discern any aphrodisiac effects.

If you can’t make it to Siena, you can always try making panforte at home. I haven’t made one yet and there are lots of recipes strewn around the web, but these are the ones I’ve been looking at so far: Davina Cucina and Bon Appetit. When I do make one, I’ll be sure to do a post on it.

If you make or have made one in the past, feel free to leave a comment about your experience!

Oh, and although I really, really hate fruitcake, I'm always willing to give them a taste. If you have any tried, true, beloved, delicious, and neon fruit-free recipes, feel free to let me know!

Erin go Bragh and Happy 150th Birthday Italy!

It's Saint Patrick's Day. Yay! People across the world will wearing green, drinking Guinness until their faces fall off, and, perhaps, eating corned beef and cabbage if they have the stomach left for it. It always seems a little strange that we celebrate a saint and bishop this way, but who am I to judge? He did, after-all, banish snakes from the island. That, at the very least, is definitely worth a pint or two.

Since my name is Erin, today always puts a little pep in my step. When I was a just a wee lass and first found out that my name did not mean "Princess of Power" like I had always hoped and, instead, was a "poetic name for Ireland," I was a little disappointed. I used to think it was just plain weird to be named after a country.

I imagined traveling to Ireland and being laughed at for having a silly name.

Then, one Saint Patrick's Day, I saw a little green flag sticking out of a big green cake.

"Erin go Bragh!" it said.

"That's my name!" I thought, which was followed closely by, "Cake! Cake! CAKE!"

I'm an only child. I look back now and realize that I had (have?) a slight delusion of grandeur. For years I thought the Air and Space Museum was named the Erin Space Museum and it was mine. So anytime I saw my name somewhere, I felt a little sense of pride. There's a whole town called Erin here in Ontario. If we had visited when I was 5, I'm sure I would have thought myself to be its little Mayor and strutted around there like a mini-Napoleon.

I digress. Back to the cake and the flag.

Erin go Bragh. Ireland Forever. Maybe my name wasn't so bad after-all.

Later the Erin go braless jokes would come. But by then I had gone through a short blip of being called Urine after a boy in my 4th grade class typed in my name on his totally cool portable, electronic dictionary and that's what popped out. Urine.

It didn't' really matter, though. Ever since I saw that flag, I've loved my name. Now, I think it's beautiful and simple. As a history nerd, I love that it's connected to a country that has an incredibly rich past. I wear it with pride and, today, with lots of green.

(As a side note: Is anyone else suddenly craving a Shamrock shake right now?)

Also: Happy Birthday Italy!

As if St. Patrick's Day wasn't enough, today is also Italy's 150th birthday.

It's National Unity Day, which celebrates the unification of Italy on March 17, 1861 when the first Italian parliament made Victor Emmanuel II the King of Italy.

Fellow italophiles out there should grab a Guinness in one hand an a glass of Brunello in the other. Add a little red and white to your outfit while you're at it. You'd better pace yourself, we've got a lot of celebrating to do.

It looks like the festivities began last night, March 16th, with the Notte Tricolore. Cities around Italy decorated with their tricolors of red, white, and green and some opened up museums and cultural sites for special late-night hours.

I've been reading a couple of articles this morning and there seems to be some feelings that the economic and political state in Italy are dampening the celebrations. This one from the BBC, for example, suggests the "champagne already feels a bit flat." Nevertheless, the festivities continue.

If I could, I'd send all of Italy some tricolor cupcakes.

On second thought, I'd rather hand deliver them and partake in another one of these:

Happy Birthday Italia! Here's to many more years and may the next be better than the last. Oh, and may I get to visit you again soon!