locavore in Rome | The Roving Locavore

Posts Tagged ‘locavore in Rome’

La Mura

Posted in Fruit, Meat, Shopping, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Rome, markets in Monteverde Rome, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore on September 14, 2009| 3 Comments »

wall

just wide enough to look or shoot through

I had an interesting personal-historical palimpsestic experience this morning on my way home from dropping Jack at school. I wound my way to the market street, and went to the last stall, where there is a sign saying “Vendita Directa,” meaning that the fruits and vegetables are sold directly from farmer to consumer. I don’t know how to explain the presence of bananas from Ecuador on the table, but oh well.

On my way home, I decided to take a little staircase I hadn’t seen before, which seemed to lead in the general direction of the American Academy. It led to a sidewalk that ran along La Mura—the gigantic wall built around the ancient city. I knew that the Academy was situated just over the wall, in a sort of nook near the wall’s highest point. If I just walked along the wall, I’d find a way in. I kept walking and walking along the wall, as it started to wind down the steep hillside. Cars rushed by me on one side, and the high wall reflected hot sunlight on the other. I kept thinking, there has to be a way through this wall! And then I realized the historical and ironic nature of this walk—about a mile out of my way. My position on the outside, and my desire to get in, put me in the place of the barbarians the wall was constructed to keep out. I may be an American, and wearing jeans from the Gap, I thought, but I’m carrying a bag of figs, and I’m trying to learn Italian!

Finally, I decided to turn around, and this time, I spotted a woman pushing a stroller through a narrow doorway in the wall. This passageway led to the park and playground right near the Academy. I was in.

Now for some pictures. Last night, a bunch of us at the Academy did our best to eat as Romans do. We had a pot-luck barbecue, but there were no barbarian-style hot dogs or burgers on the menu.

I made pizza:

my pizza

Lars and Eva brought sausages to grill:

grill

When the rain let up, we carried all of the food outside to a table under the trees:

carrying

The fire kept burning, and more meat came out. This was the butterflied leg of lamb Russel and Annie bought at Testaccio on Saturday, along with some sweet cippolline:

lamb

It was a good spread:

the table

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market at Testaccio

Posted in Shopping, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore, Testaccio, Trastevere market on September 12, 2009| 1 Comment »

I went on my first major market excursion today. There’s a huge, semi-permanent haphazardly roofed, open-air market in the neighborhood of Trastevere, which is down the hill and across the Tiber from where we live. (I still can’t get over being able to utter that last phrase!) From the outside, the market looks a bit like a temporary shelter for disaster victims. But inside, the place is swarming with exuberant life in all forms. Along one side, all of the stalls sell meats of every kind and cut–from legs of lamb to the most unique salame. While I stood in line at one of these, the white-haired man running the shop handed Jack a large slice of the mid-priced proscuitto. Grazie!

I’ll put in a bunch of pictures of the highlights I was able to photograph. This was a bit challenging, since I had Jack’s hand in one hand, the handle of my rolling cart in the other, my purse slipping off my shoulder, and an inept vocabulary in my head.

A slice of some kind of heirloom pumpkin, anyone?

lg squash

What’s this mystery veg? (I’ll have to ask Mona, the chef here at the Academy.)

mystery veg

Chanterelles and porcini, like I’ve never seen before.

fungi

I was so awestruck by the porcini, I couldn’t bring myself to buy any. This is hard to explain, I know, but my first visit to this market was pretty overwhelming. I’ll work up to the awe-inspiring ingredients with some practice. Anyway, I asked for a handful of chanterelles, along with some marinating olives.

Another awe-inspiring sight was the tomato stall. It’s run by a farmer who grows only tomatoes. Thirty or so different varieties. He led our little group on a culinary tour, pointing to the tomatoes that are best eaten raw, those that are best in tomato sauce, those that are best with fish. The tomatoes ranged in size from perfect little 1-centimeter ovoids to fist-sized ruched, wrinkly balls, and ranged in color from a blackish red-green to summer sun orange.

Next, I bought bulk wine. A huge jug was only 5 Euros! Hopefully, it’s not unquaffable.

vino 1

All in all, here was today’s haul.

haul

We’re having a couple of the other families over for a casual dinner tonight. Looks like we’ll definitely start with prosciutto and melon. And if the figs last until then, they may go with honey for dessert. We’ll do some kind of pasta for dinner.

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fruit, and school lunch

Posted in Fruit, Pasta, Trends, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, Fontana dell Aqua Paola, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Italy, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore, school lunch, Scuola Arcobaleno on September 8, 2009| 2 Comments »

We find ourselves snacking on fruit a lot. There are so many reasons why. First of all, there so much of the juicy stuff in season. I was walking along this morning, not planning on buying food, when I saw one lonely market stall, with the most bulbous figs! I bought a basket, and we ate most of them before I remembered to take a picture:

figgi

What I should have done is have my son hold his little fist on the plate, too. Then, you would have gotten an idea of the size of these gorgeously squishy, heavy fruits.

Jack loves the melon, though. He’s not a fig guy, so far:

melone

Jack had his second day of school today. I went with him again, and left for a short while. Tomorrow he’ll stay through lunch. I’m excited about their lunches. The culture of food in general at Scuola Arcobaleno is no less Italian than you would expect. Every morning, each parent leaves a piece of fruit in a basket by the classroom door. This week we’ve seen bananas, pears, apples, peaches, plums, grapes, and kiwi (some of which are obviously not of Italian origin, but some of which are very local). At 10:00, the teachers cut the fruit into pieces, and one of the children carries around a plate, and like a little caterer, offers everyone a piece.

Lunch puts a food-focused parent like me even more at ease. Each child lays out his own place setting, and pours her own water out of a pitcher. Then, they are all served a primi and a secondi. A two-course lunch, involving fresh vegetables and big bowls of pasta! And this is not the pasta that blubs out of a huge can with some sweet sauce distantly related to tomatoes. This is the real thing. The only thing that will disappoint me will be my four-year-old son’s ability to accurately report what he had for lunch. The usual answer to that question, for any kid, is, “I don’t know.” But I’m hoping he’ll be able to bring home some culinary tidbits in Italian for me.

It’s especially interesting to be having this school-lunch experience at the moment when there’s a parental, grass-roots uprising in the U.S. against the atrociousness of school lunch there. That problem, which I hope schools, cities, states, and the Obama administration will work to solve, is of course part of the much larger problem in the U.S.: the lack of a culture of food, and the economics of food, in which the cheapest food is the worst for you.

Anyway, though, I want to touch on our other fun today: checking out the view from Fontana dell’ Aqua Paola, which is on a hilltop in our neighborhood:

(Is this really my life?)

taking a bus home from a long walk in Trastevere, (which we got to by taking the long staircase downhill from this fountain):

Jack on the bus

and spotting a cool weather vane that reminded me of home:

weathervane

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Gelato

Posted in Dairy, Ice Cream, Sweet Things, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, gelato in Rome, Italy locavore, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Rome, Miami Gelateria Rome, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore on September 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We made our first gelato-destination-trek yesterday, after asking around about the best shops in the neighborhood. Miami Gelateria, conveniently located about halfway between our apartment and Jack’s school, makes theirs in-house, and offers an array of flavors, from the tangiest limone to the densest chocolate, with everything nutty and fruity in between.

gelateria

They serve typical cones or cups with large, melty scoops, and they also make mini, dipped cones. The minis are about 6 centimeters (trying to think metrically, here) high, are dipped in dark chocolate, then a bowl of chopped nuts, then served, to eager little hands. You can eat one in two or three bites.

After contemplating the selection, and learning new words in the process, Jack chose melone and Peter and I shared a creme caramel.

gelato

The texture is airy and fluffy, compared to the hard ice cream at home, and the flavors were undiluted essences.

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bread and melon

Posted in Baking, Fruit, Shopping, Sweet Things, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, biscotti, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Rome, markets in Monteverde Rome, pizza bianca, Rome sustainable food on September 7, 2009| 1 Comment »

On Jack’s first day of school, I stayed there with him for a couple of hours, to ease him into the experience of a new school in a new language. We left just before lunch, and took a looping, indirect way home, stopping at market stalls and shops along the way. One of my destinations was a half-block of street closed to cars, where vendors were selling fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese, and household odds and ends.

mkt st

We bought bags of the pink-and-white-swirled fagioli borlotti, and of blackberries that taste as sweet and meaty as pears. Not a trace of tartness, which is a surprising sensation! To be honest, I only bought the pricey 3-Euro basket because Jack fondled them. The unspoken rule of etiquette at the markets is: you touch it, you buy it.

veg mkt

Next time, I think I’ll get some of these elegant peppers:

peppers

The most delicious item we bought, though, was the melon. Sweet as honey and juicy as, well, juice:

melon

Next, we went to the bread shop, which is the most nondescript shop I think I’ve ever seen. What you have to do is follow the scent of baking bread with your nose, and look for a bunch of people standing around chatting happily, and moving in a constant stream in and out of a narrow door. That’s the line for bread.

bread store

Once inside, I was crammed shoulder to shoulder with people buying multiple bags of bread, biscotti, pizza, and cornetti (croissants). Jack stood in a corner, with his backpack and sunglasses on, eating an apple. He looked as nonchalent as a true Italian. The only proper name of a bread I knew was pizza bianca (what we call focaccia), so I asked for that and used gestures and alternate “grazie”s and “per favore”s to indicate how much I wanted. Then I asked for quattro biscotti, and pointed at these cute little lemony-almondy cookies:

biscotti

Oh, boy, were they good.

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first day in Rome

Posted in Pasta, Shopping, Water, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, Roman supermarket, roving locavore, Trastevere sights on September 5, 2009| 1 Comment »

Disclaimer: I didn’t sleep at all on the way over, and I walked about 7 miles today, so I don’t have much of a mind to write. But there’s so much to be excited about. And I did forget my camera in the supermarket, but that’s just as well, because I would have wanted to post about twenty pictures: of the twenty-two varieties of ham at the deli counter, of the low, low cheese prices, of the interesting juice selection (I bought a lemon-orange-carrot blend), and of the cute little carts that you tow behind you, rather than the “buggies” of the U.S. that, according to a John Cheever character, “unsex” you when you push one.

My new friend Antonia also took me to the market stalls this morning, where I practiced my Italian phrases associated with purchasing, etiquette, and numbers, and bought beautiful greens, figs (figi), eggplant, peppers, a microfiber sweeper, and a citronella fumigator.

I’ll bring my camera next time.

Later in the day, after a lunch of arugula, wheaty bread spread with tapenade, prosciutto, and fresh asiago (not hard due to age, and lighter and sweeter in flavor), we took the stairs down to the hipster neighborhood of Trastevere with our new friends. I spotted the sticker of a like-minded person, on the window of a hand-crafted wooden instrument store (mandolins, tambourines):

omg sticker

We bought “pizza” for the kids along the way–and it isn’t quite what you think. Some of it looked like its American progeny, but “pizza” also refers to thin bubbly bread sandwiching sliced cheese or prosciutto and mozzarella. (Actually, Jack had this variety of pizza for breakfast, while Peter and I had nutella-spread cornetti (croissants) and cappuccino at “Cafe G.”)

We bought umbrellas for the boys, Nicholas and Jack, and they tried them out at a fountain, out of which flows rock-cold, clean, fresh water, with which we also filled our bottles:

umbrellas

We crossed the Tiber, and saw the remnants of an ancient Roman bridge:

Tiber

We saw a fountain, with fish, turtles, and men involved in a choreographed effort of ease:

turtle fountain

And, finally, we came back to the apartment to cook dinner. In the fridge was a two-liter plastic bottle filled with Sardinian wine. Really. Our new friend Cory gave it to us last night. He’d bought it—and had the emptied water bottle filled—at a local wine store that offers two whites and two reds—out of casks with taps. Can’t wait to find that place.

I made a bowl of pasta with all of the local veggies I’d picked up: round, bacci ball sized eggplant, fresh onions, zucchini, red pepper, Roma tomatoes. Nothing unusual, really, but everything was fresh and local.

1st dinner