HI - 'BYE! - CAN'T STOP - COOKING!

Hi, folks. No time to post properly today as I'm having one of my cooking marathons. Now, who knows why? .... I think Liz might be able to guess... Back tomorrow to answer all your comments and with some food pics., hopefully. Buona giornata a tutti.

FATTI DI CRONACA - 5

As we all await the Prodi vote of confidence tomorrow, it is another news story which has caught my eye today:

In Love and War...

In 1999 a Salerno man read his wife's diary and realised that she was having an affair with her brother-in-law. He then planned and carried out a prolonged campaign to "shame" her, threatening her and sending letters to her teaching colleagues. In 2005, he received an eight-month sentence for defamation, threatening behaviour and abuse and was ordered to pay damages to his wife, the judges having decided that too much time had elapsed since the man discovered the affair for a plea of "acting in extreme anger" to be accepted. Later, on appeal, the sentence was reduced to one for defamation only. Today, however, the Cassazione, Italy's Supreme Court of Appeal, has declared that no time limit can be put on a betrayed spouse's anger and hurt; if your wife cheats on you, you have the right to "shame" her. La Repubblica assures us that the decision would have been the same had the wronged partner been a woman!

La Regina Mirren

Martin Scorsese's Oscar has headlined here but there has also been plenty of coverage of La Regina Mirren, as Dame Helen is being called. Yesterday I used part of her acceptance speech in a lesson: analysed grammatically, there is a lot that a teacher can use in that sentence thanking Her Majesty: use of present perfect + for, negative subjunctive in a conditional phrase, and then the idiomatic use of the verb "give" to mean "toast". The students liked the quip about the royal hairstyle and the fact that it was OK to make it!

La Beckett

The story of the British Foreign Secretary having been taken in by Rory Bremner phoning her and pretending to be Gordon Brown got a three-quarter-page spread in Corriere yesterday: the story was reported with amusement and some incredulity that the impressionist was that good and that the Scottish accent is so pronounced!

OF CUTS OF MEAT AND THINGS

I baked these pork chops last night with apples and in a honey and mustard sauce [Dijon-style mustard being available here] then took the photo just to show you how the chops are cut differently to those found in Britain. You do sometimes see a shape similar to the British cut, but the chops are smaller and thinner.

Lamb, as I've mentioned, is more difficult to find but will be coming into the shops more frequently in the run-up to Easter. The best way of obtaining lamb chops is to go to the frozen food centre and get them to cut up a whole shoulder. I then freeze the chops I don't immediately need.

Carrots are the bane of my life [along with water!] as they are usually sold in large packs like this. I've just turned this lot into soup, which brings me to a discussion I had with Irma over Christmas, about Italian cuisine not having a great repertoire of soups. Apart from minestrone and the wonderful Tuscan ribollita, they are rarely served and this must be because pasta is king. Spezzatino, which we would call casserole or stew, is a different matter and the cubes of meat used in its preparation are much larger than in Britain.

WATCH OUT - WOMAN WITH TELECOMANDO!

At last I have acquired a telecomando - remote control thingummy - with which to open the barrier across our parking space. For those of you with RCL cars, I don't suppose this would be anything to get excited about, but it is a source of great joy to me that, next time the water lorry arrives while I'm in the shower [as it is wont to do] I won't have to rush downstairs, unmade-up and in whatever clothes I have managed to pull on, to open up manually.

I have been gleefully playing with this minuscule mechanical miracle all morning, opening and closing the sbarra from the balconies - because now I can! - and got some strange, though indulgent, looks from neighbours when I went out shopping later!

Incidentally, the arrival of the water lorry anywhere in the street still brings everyone out on their balconies, even at siesta time. I can understand that they want to know where it is going, as, indeed, I do myself, but they all stand there and watch the entire 15-minute performance as the water is piped into the selected cistern. I can only surmise that it makes a welcome break from Italian daytime TV!

RUM BABA, SICILIAN STYLE

Now, I wouldn't be able to eat a rum baba in Britain, as I've always found them too big, sickly sweet and overly sticky. But this pretty, delicate rum savoia on offer at the Altro Posto today was a different matter. The rum baba was the only dessert brought to Naples by the Bourbon chefs and so is really associated with Neapolitan, rather than Sicilian, pastry cooking.

ITALY - MUSINGS ON A DEMOCRACY

"So Italy reverts to type", a BBC World presenter commented disparagingly last night after announcing that the Prodi government had just resigned. Yes, it does seem that way sometimes to people outside Italy and I meet many Italians who are concerned about the image of their country abroad generated by the constant changes of government.

But reserve your judgement for a moment, as if you look at the parliamentary system it should be perfect: both Chambers in the Italian Parliament have equal rights , the Senate or upper Chamber is elected [apart from former Presidents and up to five members appointed by the Prime Minister sitting as life senators] and a proportional representation system which the British Lib-Dems might envy, on paper, operates. So why doesn't it work? Largely because the proportional system leads to the election of many smaller parties, which in itself gives rise to a need for coalitions. The Prodi Unione coalition included eleven parties when I last counted and these were as far apart, ideologically, as the Greens and the unreformed Communists. So it was always going to be a difficult group to hold together and few people here expected the government to last a year!

Another factor is that Italians are anything but apathetic politically [ with voter turnout at 83.6% in the 2006 general election]. If there is a burning issue, few here would profess themselves as an "I don't know" on it. Rather, they are out in the piazze demonstrating and making their feelings felt very quickly, so last week's protests at the planned expansion of the US base at Vicenza have had an impact. You see this political commitment in schools, too; perhaps because some of Italy's freedoms have been won relatively recently, people are not complacent about them, and young people are willing to make their voices heard, participate in a school strike or demonstrate in a way that would be unimaginable in the UK. All this, in my opinion, is healthy.

This is a country that elected Berlusconi in full knowledge, or almost full knowledge, of the former Premier's faults; yet someone like Blair would not last one, let alone ten years here. There would have been so many hard-hitting demonstrations against him by now, and certainly a vote of no confidence.

No one could pretend that these constant changes of government are good for the country or a recipe for stability, yet they do show democracy in action. And for all its faults, let us not forget that this country of very diverse regions, unified only since 1861 and ununited by a common language until the advent of television in most homes during the 1960s [ prior to this, the majority spoke dialect] has remained a democracy since the end of World War 11. That, I believe, is a proud achievement.

As I've said before, here it is accepted that politicians are fallible and governments are expected to fall - "pazienza", as they are saying in the cafés and out on the streets right now.

RAGUSANO FRESCO

This is our fresh Ragusan cheese. It has a firm texture but is softer than a Cheddar. The flavour is mild with just a hint of sweetness. The matured version of this cheese is quite different and I'll show you that another day.

BITS AND PIECES

Just a few bits and bobs to tell you about this evening:

First, a post of Ellee's yesterday made me think about the location of supermarkets here: many are on the outskirts of the town and have large, flat, free carparks as in Britain, but my local one is underneath a block of flats and down the slope pictured. It is well signposted but you'd need to know that Conad is a chain of supermarkets to realise that that's what it is. You could miss quite a few businesses and offices here if you didn't keep looking up [and down] actually: Raffaele's is up the stairs in the second photo and you wouldn't know there was a hairdresser's there unless you happened to glance up and see the poster. [I once asked him why he calls his salon "yellow", by the way: apparently there was another hairdresser called Raffaele here years ago and when "my" Raffaele opened, he had his salon decorated in yellow and so he used that as part of the name to distinguish himself from his namesake. I think he also rather likes the word!]

Today is a sort of holiday for Carnevale: some businesses have been closed all day whilst others have not reopened this evening. There isn't much of a Carnival tradition in Modica: it seems, here, to be mainly a festival for the children. There will be some processions in Modica Bassa tonight but I'm not going down there as I don't feel like having water and that gooey stuff thrown at me, though I don't begrudge others their fun. Having just been out with Simi, I saw that we have a beautiful new moon, so in a moment I am going to fling the shutters open and gaze at it awhile , for, dear readers, if you have not seen a Sicilian moon, you have not seen a moon....

A less welcome visitor than the moon was a locust which decided to fly into my bathroom last night. I'm afraid I was much too intent on getting rid of the thing to photograph it! Perhaps I won't open the shutters right now, after all...

Now to a complete change of subject: there is to be a health initiative in Sicily so the already reasonable prices for fruit and vegetables are to be lowered. Portion sizes in bars are also to be reduced but no one seems to know yet how and to what. I'll let you know when I see evidence of this.

Going back to the supermarket, there were three power cuts in there while I was at the checkout yesterday [not, I think, their fault]. Even the door is electronically controlled now, so no one could get in or out during this time. As you can imagine, there was much shrugging of shoulders and uttering of "pazienza"!

And finally, for this post, "they made me do it" - blogger, that is; late last night they made me change to beta . This is my first beta post and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing - pazienza.

MY COMFORT FOOD

This may be of particular interest to Liz, as it is the chicken with olives and capers dish for which I gave the recipe in the comments section before Christmas, though James won't like it because of the olives. Anyway, I used to make it in the UK and I make it here, for, served with a green salad and a potato baked with oil and herbs, it is my idea of comfort food. I get withdrawal symptoms if I go for more than a couple of weeks without making it and last night the weather turned cold, so I decided it was time... It is also a dish which will stand a fair bit of abuse, such as leaving it in too long, and you can use streaky bacon or even prosciutto instead of the pancetta if you prefer. It freezes well, too. The first photo shows the dish ready to go into the oven and the second one the finished dish. Here is the recipe again:

CHICKEN WITH OLIVES AND CAPERS [serves 4].

2 - 3 skinless chicken breats, cut into bite-sized pieces [In Britain I used to use part-boned breasts with the skin on but have adapted to what is available here.]

2 tablesp.olive oil

small packet of pancetta cubetti

1 large onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

14 oz can chopped tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, as I have used here

a good dollop of 'strattu [tomato paste, not purée - a small can of the Greek kind sold in British delis is about the right amount.]

a few chopped mushrooms or a small packet of button mushrooms

a handful of stoned black olives, sliced if you prefer [if these are canned in brine or oil, rinse and drain them; since I've been here I don't bother stoning them.]

a handful of capers, salted ones preferably, rinsed and drained

5 fl. oz red wine [maybe just a tad more]

seasalt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200 C.

Put the chicken pieces into a deep casserole dish with a lid.

Heat the oil in a pan and fry the pancetta. Add the onion and garlic and fry till transparent. Add the tomatoes and 'strattu and stir it all around a bit. Then add the olives, capers and mushrooms. Give it all a good stir and add the wine and seasoning. Mix well and when it bubbles chuck the sauce over the chicken.

Put the lid on the casserole dish and put it in the oven for about 1 hour.

Buon appetito.

ALL THE ONIONS IN SICILY

"When it's night time in Italy

it's Wednesday over here

All the onions in Sicily

make people cry in California"

- I still have my Everly Brothers vinyl with that song on it and, after all these years, it still cheers me up!

No onions to show you today, but a table of fennel and young artichokes at our pleasant new greengrocer's.

UN PO' DI NOSTALGIA

This is the area of Modica Bassa where Simi and I lived for the first five weeks after we arrived here in 2005. I was down there this morning and as it was a lovely day, took these pictures, which I thought you'd like to see.

Click here to see inside the tiny house [kindly lent to us by dear friends] where we were.

A VERY IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY

Hi, folks, it's Simi here! I told you I'm just like the Queen as I have two birthdays, didn't I? Well, today's my "official" one, the eighth anniversary of the day my mummy got me. Such a lucky mummy!

We've had some adventures since then, especially flying all the way to Sicily together and me having my own special passport! Then we lived in a very small kennel for a few weeks till we moved into the present one. I don't mind that it doesn't have a garden as I get more walks now and sometimes I even get to stroll along the shores of the Med, which my mummy tells me is a very smart thing for a dog to do, as if I don't know that!

Last week I dropped my "ropey toy" in the bath and it got a bit soggy so for my presie today I got this new one. [Hee-hee! Wait till she gets in the shower tonight!]

I'll be back to check on you all again soon, but right now I need to check on my very own human.

Buona serata a tutti,
Love,
Simi X

CHIACCHIERE

Here are chiacchiere, the wafer-thin biscuits made during this Carnevale period. The verb chiacchierare means "to gossip" and the biscuits are said to derive their name because they are made in the shape of old women's tongues!

CATANIA IS PUNISHED

No football will be played at the Catania stadium until 30th June and the club will have to play its remaining home fixtures at neutral grounds with no spectators present. In addition, the club will have to pay a €50,000 fine. Its chief executive feels that this punishment is excessive and points out that AS Roma has not been punished for the disrespectful behaviour displayed by some spectators during what should, before a game against Parma on Sunday, have been a minute's silence for ispettore Raciti, the policeman killed in the Catania violence of February 2nd. There is also talk of building a new stadium in Catania and naming it for ispettore Raciti.

I'd be interested to know what readers think: are the ban and fine excessive? Would naming a new stadium after the Inspector be a good idea and a mark of respect or simply an empty gesture?

CONFESSION - 3

For dessert, we had what I think is one of the most refreshing dishes you can find here and that is gel al limone [for which I posted a recipe here, if you are new to this blog]. Then to Linda's for a lovely birthday tea. So, having been lucky enough to have celebrated the day bi-culturally, I am spending the evening pleasantly with my true Valentine - my precious, faithful, beautiful Simi dog.

CONFESSION - 2

Then to lunch at Il Cortiletto in Modica Bassa with Irma and Gina. It is quite something for Sicilian women to come out to lunch without their husbands so I did appreciate it. As you see, Irma remembered to bring along something very important! Cincin a tutti, said I! We each had a plate of these magnificent antipasti to ourselves, then decided to have the beautifully cooked coniglio alla Modicana [rabbit ]. It was all superb.

OK, I CONFESS!

I am 57 years old today and, having pushed the significance of those two digits out of my mind, I have been having a very nice day indeed.

1. "Close your eyes", said Raffaele the hairdresser after my complimentary comb-out this morning and this lovely bracelet was slipped onto my wrist.

2. These were in a sale and I just had to!

3. It was the heel detail that did it!

More about my day on the next post.

FATTI DI CRONACA - 4

Some items of news from Italy that may be of interest, though not a very merry round-up this evening, I'm afraid!

Calcio
The Catania stadium is to remain closed for another month whilst police investigations into the football violence of February 2nd continue. A seventeen-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of the policeman and the boy's family are in denial. How on earth, I wonder, would any of us react if a child of ours had done, or was suspected of having done, something like that? It must be such a shock and you would be asking yourself all sorts of questions about where you might have gone wrong, I imagine. Meanwhile opinion here is divided between those who believe that the football season should just be declared over now and those who think that the hooligans will have won if it does not continue. It is a depressing time, indeed, for genuine fans, with the majority of Italy's stadiums being closed to them. "Football isn't football without the spectators" a club manager said on TV today and of course, there are financial implications for the clubs. As ever in these cases, the majority are being penalised for the stupidity and mindless violence of the few.

Euthanasia
My heart goes out to Kelly Taylor, whose plight I heard about on Sky last night. I think this is a terribly difficult issue and none of us knows how we would feel if we were in this position. It occurred to me that many readers will not have heard about the Welby case, which is still being debated all over Italy. For me perhaps the saddest aspect of this is the fact that, after so much suffering and begging, agitating and campaigning for the right to die with dignity, the piece of music that Welby requested at the end was not available for him. I'll leave you to read the article and decide for yourselves.

Terrorism

15 Italian nationals were arrested in northern Italy in the early hours of Tuesday on suspicion of planning terrorist activities here. They are believed to belong to a branch of the infamous "Red Brigades". "Oh, no, not this all over again", I hear myself crying inwardly, for I remember the atrocities and tragedies of the eighties only too well. As if Italy, like all western democracies, does not already have enough to worry about...

Dico

The government has, just before the deadline for doing so, presented a bill which would allow cohabiting couples, regardless of their sexual orientation, certain rights under the law: these include inheritance and pension rights and employment relations rights. There has been a lot of linguistic work on this, too, the term Dico - diritti e doveri dei conviventi [rights and responsibilities of cohabiting couples] - having been brought into play to replace the originally French and politically charged term of Pacs [patto civile di solidarietà ] . The right-wing opposition of course opposes the bill and the Vatican is preparing a statement declaring that such a law would undermine the family. It is said that if the law is passed the couple would have to go and register with their local comune - I think there would be a charge for this - and then all should be well. But, having dealt with Italian bureaucracy, I very much doubt it would be as simple as that! Good luck to them all, anyway!

ARROSTO DI VITELLO

Roast veal in a deliciously delicate sauce as served at the Altro Posto at lunch time today.

FLYING ALMONDS

We have a Maestrale [Mistral] wind of 23 mph today and I got smacked in the face several times by almonds which had blown off their trees on my way to Raffaele's this morning. [Thus the latter was instructed to "glue", rather than lacquer, my hair!] Debris is blowing about everywhere, the shutters are rattling like mad and it's such a noisy wind in itself that I can hardly hear my TV or radio. Yet it has been sunny: observe the clear, blue sky above the hospital building and then take a look at the flags!

When I was out with Simi just now I noticed that a few power cables are down so if I normally visit your blog and I don't manage it this evening it could be that we are having a power cut.