WHEN A SHIRE IS NOT A SHIRE

Many of you will know that I am a great fan of MasterChef Italia, which has recently made a welcome return for its sixth season on Italian TV.  I am also an admirer of Joe Bastianich, whose biography I reviewed here and I did laugh at the pronunciation lesson that Joe gave an unfortunate contestant last night. You can see the video clip here.

However, it has to be said that Joe is not teaching British English! For those of you who are confused, the term shire means county and is usually used as a suffix, as in Gloucestershire or Yorkshire. In this case, the i is pronounced like the er in her in British English. It is pronounced in the "Joe" way in the term the shires, meaning counties. Having to deal with the eccentricities of Modican Englishitis every day, I do empathise with both Joe and the poor contestant!

Worcestershire Sauce, by the way, is a British ingredient which is readily available in Italy and I was glad to see an Italian being adventurous enough to use it.

AN EXHIBITION

Some regular readers may remember this photo from last year. It was taken by my friend the photographer Luca Migliore and is part of his 11 Donne project.

Luca will shortly be holding an exhibition of the photos in Ragusa and in connection with this, there is an artiucle about them in the Corriere della Sera online supplememt, Io Donna. The introduction says that although Italy is suffering a "brain drain" at the moment, there are people, like the women featured in the photos, who have chosen to move here. The bit about me partially recounts the story of my reunion with my birth sister Jill [although they have the name wrong - never mind].

I am again honoured to have been photographed by Luca and to be in the pictorial company of such interesting women.

BAKED RADICCHIO

I owe the idea for this recipe to Corriere della Sera, but as usual, I've done my own thing with it: I couldn't get the very crisp type of radicchio mentioned, so I separated mine into leaves. I incorporated the honey with the oil and balsamic vinegar [as in the video] instead of adding it afterwards [as in the text], and I used rather more of it. The Corriere recipe uses pomegranate seeds, adding them when the radicchio is cooked, but as pomegranates are out of season here, my first idea was to use sultanas. However, I didn't have any and torrential rain prevented me from going out to get some, so I used the dried cranberries I did have, adding them before baking. 

Here's what I did:

Separate two medium-sized radicchi into leaves and wash ,drain and get them as dry as you can. Arrange in a roasting dish and drizzle a little olive oil over them. Make a dressing from 4 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp balsamic vinegar, 1 tablesp honey and seasoning to taste.  Pour over the radicchio leaves and toss it through. Add a few dried cranberries or sultanas and some pinenuts. Bake at 180 C for 15 mins. 

Serve at room temperature or chilled.

This makes an excellent accompaniment to grilled chicken.

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 2014

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Giorno della Memoria

Journée internationale dédiée à la mémoire des victimes de l’Holocauste

Yom HaShoah

In the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day this year, I have been following, on the Corriere della Sera site, a series of short films about the life of Vera Vigevani Jarach: This remarkable 86-year-old lady left her native Italy for Argentina in 1938 with her family, after the passing of the Italian Racial Laws which discriminated against them as Jews.  Her grandfather stayed behind and died in Auschwitz in 1944. 

In Argentina, Vera married and worked as a journalist but her only daughter, Franca, disappeared in 1976. It was only recently that Vera found out what had happened to her: detained for her militancy, Franca was pushed out of a plane on one of the "death flights" of the period.  Thus Vera has had no graveside at which to mourn either her grandfather or her daughter.

These two stories, in Vera's words, have made her into a militante della memoria. One of the founding madres de Plaza de Mayo, Vera believes that her role now is to bear witness and to do all she can to prevent such events ever happening again.

The two films in the series which struck me the most were the one in which Vera goes to talk to students at the Milan school which she herself, as a child, was banned from attending and the one in which, with an Auschwitz survivor, she visits platform 21 in Milan Central Station, the platform from which the trains bound for Auschwitz left.  [The platform now houses a Holocaust museum.] If you understand Italian, I urge you to watch these films.

Vera's story, "from the Shoah to the Disappeared" as Corriere entitles it, proves the truth of these words from the Stockholm Declaration:

“With humanity still scarred by genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-semitism and xenophobia, the international community shares a solemn responsibility to fight those evils.” 

“Di fronte ad un’umanità ancora segnata dal genocidio, dalla pulizia etnica, dal razzismo, dall’antisemitismo e dalla xenofobia, la comunità internazionale condivide una responsabilità solenne nella lotta contro questi mali.”

- The Stockholm Declaration / La Dichiarazione del Foro Internazionale di Stoccolma sull’Olocausto, 2000.

CHICKEN WITH PEACHES

This was inspired by a recipe in the September edition of La Cucina magazine which comes with Corriere della Sera.  I've altered the recipe quite a lot as it uses fresh mangoes and I couldn't find any mangoes, fresh or tinned, so I used tinned peaches [which I prefer].  I didn't have any dried chilli peppers either, so I used half a fresh one.  [They come larger in Italy than the ones usually available in the UK.] I also dislike recipes that tell you to brown the meat, then take it out while you do the vegetables;  I find this bothersome and usually unnecessary, as long as I'm using a nice, wide pan.  I liked the idea of using a good amount of chives, as my chive plant on the balcony survives despite my régime of benign neglect.  Anyway, this is what I did:

Brown 6 - 8 chicken joints, skin-on, on all sides in 3 tablesp olive oil.  Meanwhile, chop a lovely Sicilian white onion, 2 cloves garlic and half a fresh red chilli pepper.  When the chicken is brown, add these to the pan and continue to cook everything over a low flame till the vegetables are softened.  Add coarse seasalt to taste, the drained contents of a large tin of peaches, a handful of chopped chives, 3 tablesp water and bring to the boil.  Turn the heat down, cover the pan and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about an hour.  Garnish the dish with more chopped chives.

Buon appetito.

WORD OF THE YEAR

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has invited readers to choose a word which would sum up their private lives in 2010 and email their choices to the newspaper's website.

The top ten words in 2009 were:  amore [love], lavoro [work], crisi [crisis], famiglia [family], amici or amicizia [friends or friendship], facebook, casa [home], speranza [hope], cambiamento [change] and futuro [future].  There were only slight differences in the words submitted by men and women, with "facebook" coming above "family" in the men's list and "Obama" coming in at number ten.   "Trans" [transsexual] also appears in the men's list.  The word "delusione" [disappointment] came in at number ten in the women's list. ["Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."]

There were some regional differences, with "crisi" being the top word in Central and Northern Italy.  The word "Berlusconi" also makes it into the top ten at number seven in the North.  But I am proud to say that "amore" remains at number one in the South, including the islands.

Other popular words were:  ragù, soldi [money], stress, sesso [sex] and briscola [a card game].

What word would you choose to sum up your 2010?  Mine would be "CRAP"!