Settembre

É molto bella qui. Every day there is something more amazing than the last, and we all declare that it simply could not get any better, and then it does. I feel so spoiled by the food here, and the kitchens, and the people, I’m afraid it will be painful to have to work back at home now. The kitchens here are immaculately clean and spacious: they have windows and open screened doors to let in sunlight and fresh air,  more than enough space in refrigerators and freezers and ovens, and all the right equipment. Everything is fresh. Even mushrooms and tomatoes out of a can are still from within the region. Today while we were waiting outside Restaurant Umberto, where we have culinary classes, a couple of men drove up in a little car with a delivery of fresh riccio (sea urchins) and ostrica (oysters) from the western coast of the heel of Italy, a couple hours away. They had collected them that morning- all of them were still alive in a plastic bin. (On a side note, as I saw, live urchins will do their best to creep away if you leave them on a flat surface) With the help of our translator, we learned that only the female urchins are eaten, because male urchins taste horribly bitter, and urchin eggs are very dulce (sweet). The particular kind of oyster they brought can only be found on the western side of the heel of Italy, and smell slightly spicy. The barers of the seafood were more than happy to teach us about them, and patiently repeated their names until we pronounced them correctly (RIck-chi-o and os-TRICK-ah).

I’m getting to the point now where I can communicate a little in Italian, which is quite exciting. In the evenings, when we work at restaurants in the area, we do not have a translator with us, and so must learn to improvise on our own. Most kitchens have at least one English speaker, although on our first night at Brasiliani (our restaurant for the next two weeks) the only English-speaking chef was on his day off, so we mostly worked in sign language and copying. High-end restaurants here usually have fixed menus (meaning there are only options for one or two of the courses at most), and the pace of service is much more relaxed than in the U.S, so the chefs had some time to show us how to do things. I at least know how to ask questions in Italian, so I’m working on learning the names of all the ingredients they use- most are things I recognize and know the English name of, but many are regional specialties that you can only find locally, and some the translator admitted had no English name that he knew of.