SABATO MUSICALE

Claudio Baglioni - La vita è adesso

PIZZA ESTIVA

I nearly called this "Pizza not-what-it-seems" as all the Italians I have shown the photo to are convinced it's topped with aubergines!  However,  pizza estiva or "summer pizza" is more catchy.

My starting point for this was the recipe for soft, Modican pizza I was given a few years ago and I added grilled nectarines - one of my favourite summer ingredients - and pancetta cubes.  I used some datterino tomatoes and passata instead of chopped tomatoes.

Pizza estiva

250 gr 00 flour or strong white bread flour
1 cube of fresh yeast, crumbled, or a sachet of easy-blend yeast
coarse sea salt
warm water
200 gr passata
about 20 datterino or other very small cherry tomatoes
dried oregano
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
chopped basil leaves
140 gr pancetta dolce or unsmoked bacon cubes
250 gr mozzarella, sliced thinly or ready-crumbled mozzarella for pizza
a little grated Grana Padana or Ragusano cheese
4 - 6 nectarines, depending on size
extra virgin olive oil

Mix the flour, crumbled yeast cube or sachet of yeast and some coarse seasalt together with enough warm water to make a soft, springy dough. I use a processor and it takes about 3 seconds but you can mix it in a bowl by hand if you want. Then knead it hard – slap it against the sides of the bowl. [Do this even if you have mixed it in a processor.] Leave to double in size in an oiled bowl covered with a clean, damp tea towel.
Slice the nectarines as thinly as you can, then grill them quickly on both sides on a lightly oiled ridged grill pan. Let them cool on kitchen paper.
Now whizz up the datterini or cherry tomatoes in a processor - you just want them mushy - and mix them with the passata, garlic, oregano and basil. Add some coarse seasalt.
Cook the pancetta cubes in a bowl in the microwave for 1 minute.
Slice 6 nectarines as thinly as you can and cook them in a little oil on a ridged griddle pan - about 1 minute per side.  Leave to drain on kitchen paper.
Cover a baking tray or sheet with baking parchment and oil it lightly.
When the dough has almost risen, heat the oven to 180 C [fan] or 200 C.
Chuck the dough onto the oiled baking parchment and stretch it out as best you can into an oblong shape. [I love this bit as it’s messy.] Pat it out with the heel of your hand, dipping your hand in the tomato mixture so that it doesn’t stick to the dough.
Cover the dough with the mozzarella.
Spoon the tomato mixture over, add the nectarine slices and pancetta cubes.  Sprinkle over the grated cheese.
Put the pizza in the oven and cook for 45 minutes. 

Serves 4 people with generous slices.  You could always make two for more guests / hungry people. Italians, of course, like a whole pizza each!

AND STILL THEY DIE

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

- Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, 1914

It seems much like that now, given the events of the past ten days, and one could be forgiven for thinking that the lamps are going out all over the world, as the extreme right closes ranks and even reasonable people blame the easiest, most identifiable scapegoat, the migrant or immigrant, for their woes.

Meanwhile on the "forgotten" migrant route in the Mediterranean people continue to die. I have not seen one report on this in the past week in the British media so here are the facts:

On 20th July Médecins Sans Frontières doctors on board the SOS Mediterranee ship Aquarius went to the aid of a migrant boat in trouble off the coast of Libya. What they found was horrific: bodies were lying at the bottom of the boat in a pool of fuel and it was obvious that these people had died an awful death, crushed or suffiocated, as they had been, in the crowded and inadequate dinghy. Survivors, who had been on board with the bodies for many hours, were stretching their hands out in desperation towards the rescuers and are unsurprisingly said to be still traumatised.  Of the 22 bodies found, 20 were those of women and this tragic event is being called the strage di donne [massacre of women] in the Italian press.  In all, 209 people were saved.

On the same day, over 1,000 more migrants were saved in the Mediterranean in eight operations coordinated by the Italian Coast Guard and 1,146 migrants who had been rescued previously were brought to Palermo. Of these, 23 were pregnant women and 63 were unaccompanied minors. The next day a Spanish naval vessel brought 841 migrants and one body to Catania and a MSF ship brought 628 rescued migrants to Pozzallo. Among these were a 73-year-old man and a baby aged seven months. Does anyone really believe that a man of this age, the mother of this baby and others like them would undertake such a hazardous journey if they were not fleeing for their lives?

Rescues and arrivals continued over the weekend, when 375 migrants, including six children and a newborn baby, were brought to Messina.  Two suspected people-traffickers were arrested in Vibo Valentia [Calabria] and are thought to have been involved in bringing a migrant boat containing 16 bodies in the engine room into Italian waters. The bodies of 41 migrants were discovered on a Libyan beach, also over the weekend. These poor souls had drowned five or six days ago trying to reach Italy

UNHCR has tweeted  that 3,000 lives have been lost in the Mediterranean since January.

Now it seems to me that we either accept migration as a fact of our era, stop drawing pretty useless and difficult to prove distinctions between "economic" migrants and those seeking asylum and see that safe corridors are created for them or we accept an ever darkening world.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. "

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Let's keep those lamps lit, ladies and gentlemen.

CHIGNON AND PIZZA

I'm a bit sad at the moment, but I cheer up when Margherita fixes me a summer chignon:

Seeing friends is always good, especially with a backdrop of Modica by night:

And this original way of serving pre-pizza chips, a spiced pork pizza and gel all'anguria with a foam all helped no end!

DOMENICA MUSICALE

Il Volo again this week, ladies and gentlemen. I think you'll recognise the tune!

Il Volo - Io che non vivo senza te

BONNE FÊTE NATIONALE 2016

For the other country which has so inspired me:

Yves Montand - La Chansonnette

Bonne fête nationale à tous! Vive la France! Vive l'Europe!

WITHOUT A TRACE

I haven't indulged in a post office rant for some time and I must admit that the service is quicker [by Sicilian standards] and friendlier than it used to be. 

But what has happened to the posta prioritaria, the option whereby, provided you were posting within the EU - of which the UK is, at the moment, still a member - and that the letter or packet weighed less than 2 kg, you could send items at a reasonable price and be fairly certain that they would reach their destination quickly? At one time, items sent from here to the UK or vice versa would arrive in two days. The only drawback used to be that you couldn't track or get a receipt for your posted item.

Alas, things have not been arriving speedily for some time now and last week I learned that the service has been changed to a two-tier one, with a tracking option. I thought I'd give this a go and was handed a slip with a QR code and tracking number.  After a few days, I attempted to track my item online and was informed that the number wasn't valid. I don't know why I was surprised!

When I made enquiries at the post office, I was told, "Oh, no, it doesn't work from this end for items sent abroad but you can tell the recipient in Britain and they can trace it from there." This might be fine if you are posting something to friends or family but I had sent an important document to a government department, where the employees are unlikely to have time to trace it or to have Italian speakers on hand to deal with the hardly straightforward post office site! And anyway, why hadn't the clerk who took the item informed me that you couldn't trace it from Italy? Because he didn't know and this, in turn, would be because nobody had bothered to tell him.

Come on Italy, it's traceable or it isn't traceable.  Stop saying it is for show and give us back our speedy prioritaria service [until the Brexit, at least].  I'd be interested to know if anyone is having difficulties with "priority post" from the UK.

There endeth my rant, along with my pazienza.

DOMENICA MUSICALE

I need to calm down, so I'll let Mr Einaudi do the honours again this week:

Ludovico Einaudi - Oltremare

AND AGAIN!

And for any Italians still in doubt, yes, it's a NATION, not a region!  

THE PROUD EUROPEAN CHALLENGE

"The Proud European Challenge:  Post five photos that make you proud to be European and show what that means to you."  

This was a friend's suggestion on facebook and I thought it was a good idea. Here is what I wrote and the first collage shows four of the photos I posted. In these I am in Montpellier, France in 1970 [yes, I know we joined the EU in 1973 but we were on our way in and things were already getting easier];  in Messina in 1998; on my way to Elba in 1977 and in Legnano [Milan] in 1996. 

"Freedom of movement has allowed me to study and work in several European countries, where I have been lucky enough to meet people from all over the world. If the barriers go up again, we will all be the poorer, in every sense, for it."

But of course I didn't want to stop at five photos so I'm posting some more here. Below is the Charles Bridge in Prague, which became one of my favouite haunts in that lovely city; in 2009 I am being interviewed in Buggiano [Tuscany] about my translation of the poet Antonio Lonardo's book; I have very happy memories of my 45th birthday in Modica in 1995; and Prague again with colleagues in 2003 [the 5th photo I put on facebook].

Then there is what being in Sicily means to me:  it means being in a particularly fascinating, culturally mixed, part of a country I've loved since I was 19. Sicily for me is the purple sea at Eloro, the bread arches of San Biagio Platani and having the opportunity to share a little of my own culture with Sicilians, for whom I always make Welshcakes on St David's Day. The island is also rich in the Greek heritage from which culture as we know it in the West first blossomed. When I'm feeling low, I remember Agrigento and am reminded why I am here.

Being in Sicily also means looking across the Strait of Messina to the Calabrian coast, the beginning of a journey to the New World for so many in the last two centuries. They were economic migrants trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, a perfectly natural desire that is being derided these days. They weren't caged and beaten before they left, killed on board ship for asking for a drop of water or thrown overboard when they grew weak but their journey was long and arduous, as was their path to work and acceptance at their destination.

I, too, am a migrant, albeit from choice and I am here to understand.  I want to be part of a Europe of opportunity, not a Europe of barriers and I want the country that made me to be part of that too.

SABATO MUSICALE

Number 4 in the Italian charts and it's in Spanish:

Enrique Iglesias e Wisin - Duele El Corazón

OH, ALL RIGHT, THEN.....

OK, Wales, just this once I'll support you, even though you voted "Leave".  But if it's you and Italy in the final, I might have to think again!

Here we are at London Town, Modica - Centro Linguistico Internazionale:

I must say, HM's outfit is much improved by the flag!