Every time I see the Amalfi Coast, it never fails to take my breath away. There’s something about the small towns which seem to rise out of the sea and climb their way up the side of the mountain, the crystal clear waters dotted with colorful fishing boats bobbing about, the waves of beautiful purple bougainvillea clinging to the sides of precariously perched buildings. Everything is clinging; hanging on for dear life……kind of like me, while driving on the Amalfi Coast. 

Driving on the Amalfi Coast is not for the faint of heart. It’s more for the thrill-seeking personality. There are wonderful local buses which can transport you between the charming little towns. I have been on them. They can be crowded and carsick-inducing, and I’m just impatient enough to not want to operate on their schedule so, the car it is. 

The drive is best done with two people. The passenger becomes adept at quickly rolling down the window and pulling in the side mirror moments before it scrapes a rocky outcropping or another car half parked in the lane of traffic. The passenger’s job is also to disembark and stop traffic so the driver can maneuver into an impossible parking spot whereby the passenger then uses ridiculous hand signals to “help” the driver. 

It’s a lot of work, but this coastal drive is so worth it. It has the most amazing views. The serpentine coastline winds its way around vertical towns; the sparkling ocean ever-present in the background. 

And once you arrive at each little town, there is so much to see. Even if you are not there during beach-going season, there are still lots of things to do. There are beautiful churches, adorable shops, little museums, pretty piazzas, and miles of potential walking to admire the view.

And of course there is always the food….. Naturally, seafood is at its best here. There are amazing mixed grill platters, and pastas made with all sorts of fish. But don’t forget to have some locally made Limoncello; the sweet lemon liqueur the area is so famous for. Actually, you won’t be able to forget, as it is offered most everywhere you go! Best of all, you never gain weight as there is no way to get around all the walking you’re going to have to do. There’s very little flat surface; you’re either going uphill or downhill.....all the time.

The Amalfi Coast is a stunningly beautiful place, worthy of a portion of your trip to Italy. You won’t be able to get enough of the scenery. When you set eyes upon it for the first time, be sure to drink it in because once you see it, you won’t be able to forget it and you’ll want to return again and again and…….

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Let’s talk about your future trip to Italy. I can’t wait. Can you?

After two days “off” for cooking lessons (which I will blog about another day), I’m on the road again, (Oct. 7) eager to explore the archaeological site of Paestum. I am on a mission to develop new itineraries in Campania. I have a lot of territory to cover in an amount of time which increasingly seems to be not long enough. Paestum is located at the southern end of the famed Amalfi Coast. During the years I lived in Rome, trips to the Amalfi Coast were frequent treats, but somehow a visit to Paestum eluded me. Today, that error is thankfully rectified. 

Founded by the Greeks around 600 BC, Paestum (then called Poseidonia) had an ideal position. Located near waterways, trade routes and fertile soils; it thrived and three stunning Doric temples were constructed. In later years, it was taken over by the Romans who renamed it Paestum, and added many more features such as baths, an amphitheatre and a forum. In AD 877, the city was destroyed by invading Saracens and its citizens fled to escape not only the invaders, but also malaria. Flash forward to the 18th century, when the overgrown city was rediscovered, and today its isolated setting makes for a wonderful and very special sightseeing destination.

Above, on the left is the Temple of Ceres. On the right, you see the Temple of Neptune in the foreground and the Temple of Hera in the background. We visited Paestum on a day which threatened rain that never materialized. Regardless of blue sky, or cloudy, it was hard to take a bad picture in this most beautiful of settings.

I would hate for you to think that I went a whole day without indulging in some delicious food and wine. And so I leave you with a few pictures from lunch:

Lunch today is a simple meat and cheese platter. I am after all, in the land of Buffalo Milk Mozzarella and you can see by the milkiness of the cheese how fresh it is. As luck would have it, I am also in the land of Aglianico wine; a new found favorite of mine. This inexpensive "house wine" is perfect for the moment. And every meal should be topped off with a perfect espresso. We found one at nearby Bar Museo where the excellent barista also gave us a free sample of fig liqueur.  Ahh......Italy.

Join me in 2014! Let's explore the Amalfi Coast together. Stay tuned for upcoming blogs as I make my way up the coast......

Day four had me picking up my rental car to begin my journey away from Rome. I made my way to Zagarolo, a charming little town only a half hour or so south of Rome where a friend of mine lives. I must say, I was enjoying every minute of driving a stick shift again :)

We started the day together at a winery (why not?). I was in search of cesanese wine, made from local Lazio grapes and a recent discovery for me, that I was eager to try more of. We arrived at Fedrici winery at 12:45 asking if we could taste a few wines. “Certo!” (Of course!), was the reply. We were led to the tasting room where the gentleman began to pull new bottles off the shelf.  “Wait!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you have bottles already open? Are you opening new bottles of everything just for us?” He glanced at his watch, and explained they hadn't had anyone in for wine tasting yet today, but he was happy to open bottles for us.  He glanced at his watch again. “In fact”, he said, “why don’t you just take these three bottles home with you and taste them there. You can always come back if you like it.” My friend and I glanced at each other. Was he offering us three free bottles of wine? When we offered to pay for the wine, he glanced at his watch again. “No, no. Please. Just take the wine, really. I’m happy to offer it to you. Come back if you want more.” And off he went, out the door, into his car, down the driveway…..and home to lunch; where I’m sure his wife was waiting with a hot dish of pasta…..much more important than wine sales. Only in Italy!

Our goal for the afternoon was to visit the monastery at Subiaco, a place I’d always wanted to go to, but somehow never managed to get to. First however, like the gentleman from the winery, we needed lunch. As we wound our way up the mountain to the monastery, we pulled off at a roadside restaurant. Our pasta portions with porcini mushrooms and another with meat ragu sauce were very filling. The amazing part of it though was the price. Have a look at the check. Our ¼ liter of house wine (cesanese at a cost of .80) was cheaper than our bottle of water (2.00). Only in Italy! 

And finally, the true highlight of the day;  the monastery at Subiaco. The drive there is filled with lots of twists and turns as we navigate our way higher and higher up Mount Talèo. Upon arrival, one must pass through the gate.........

........and stroll the path of trees growing surreally from the rocks. 

At the end of the path is a set of winding stone steps.........

.......and when you come to the top, you finally get your first phenomenal view of the monastery built into the side of the mountain. 

And what a view it is….breathtaking, truly.

The interior of the monastery is nearly indescribable. It is a rabbit warren of rooms, each connected at odd angles by series of steps. The frescoes are beyond amazing. The colors, scenes, and stories told are simply incredible. Large sections of the mountainside create interior walls in some areas. To think, St. Benedict lived as a hermit for three years in the “Sacro Speco” or Sacred Cave which visitors are now allowed to enter. 

Our trip to the monastery has been not only the highlight of my day, but in the end, a highlight of my entire trip. I am moved to speechlessness by the beauty and serenity of this place high up on the mountainside. A handful of white-robed Benedictine monks still reside here, and I think, maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad place to live. Only in Italy.

At this point, I know you think all I do is eat. You would be wrong. I also love to shop for food and take pictures of food.  The most popular food market in Rome is at Campo dei Fiori. It is a lovely market, very centrally located, but quite touristic and on the expensive side. The food market I take you to on my tours, on the other hand, takes a bit of knowledge to get to, but is cheaper, bigger, has much more variety and is shopped mainly by locals. This market is a little bit out of the way, thereby not really making it onto the A-list of tourist activities. However, EVERY time I am in Rome, I am careful to leave enough time for a stop here.  Not only do I have favorite booths to return to for my personal food shopping, but I am also sure to capture some really wonderful food photos.

It is early October after all, so pumpkins and porcini mushrooms are all over the place.  Porcini mushrooms have a relatively short season, so when they’re ready, everyone is mad for them.  They have a rich, deep, earthy flavor and are delicious grilled. At this time of year though, you will find them on everything including pizza, in pasta sauces, and in risottos. Tis the season for mushrooms and they are for sale in every market and along many country roadsides.

I love buying pumpkin or zucca in Italy. What is so wonderful about buying pumpkin you ask? It is the fact you don’t have to buy the whole darn thing! Every veg vendor sells pumpkin by the piece. He proudly displays a beautiful pumpkin and you tell him how much you want by weight, or better yet, with hand gestures to say you want a piece “this big”. Pumpkin here is grilled, or chopped to make risottos and to fill pastas among many other recipes. This way, you can make a pumpkin recipe, but you don’t end up eating pumpkin for every meal for the next two weeks. You buy just the amount you need. Genius. 

Another food item often sold by weight, is salad. Italian food markets are great about doing some of the prep work for you. They sell artichokes already trimmed, green beans already stringed, veg chopped for minestrone soup, etc. But these items are not pre-done and shrink wrapped. There’s someone in each booth doing it as the day goes along. Your purchases are freshly prepared. Such is the case with salad. Mixtures of various greens, and in this case carrots and radishes are prepped just ahead of your purchase. You choose how much you would like to buy. You can ask for a certain euro amount, or you can ask by weight. Genius.

There are lots of items which can be purchased by weight. This particular booth sells all kinds of beans and lentils. In addition, they sell a wide variety of rices.  It’s like shopping the bulk section in a U.S. grocery store. The difference is they can tell you where every grain comes from and if it was grown organically, as well as give you ideas for preparing them. This is the joy of having a real person who is completely knowledgeable about the items they are selling rather than making your bulk purchases from a spigot.

There are so many items at this market that I Love. There is a man who offers tastes of porchetta or pork roast. One of my favorite booths has such a bargain on pecorino cheese.  For me, it’s worth bringing a whole wheel back to the U.S.! On this trip I also bought delicious cookies baked with red wine, yummy slices of candied ginger, and dried chestnuts to add to my soups and stews when I return home.  I could spend a whole day here.

But, I do have other things on my agenda. Like visiting with old friends and meeting for a fabulous lunch. Welcome to my old neighborhood; Monti. It’s such a familiar haunt to me; I love just strolling the streets stopping in at favorites spots and looking for new changes. In fact, I had invited my friends to join me at my favorite pizza spot, only to disappointedly find it closed for the day. No worries. Monti is filled with fantastic eateries. We find another just a very short distance away and have a delicious lunch filled with seasonal favorites.

We all decide to order several appetizers rather than having the usual pasta. My first appetizer is grilled pumpkin topped with a slice of grilled prosciutto which is garnished with a creamy gorgonzola concoction. With each bite of pumpkin and prosciutto, I have a little nibble of gorgonzola. The combination of slightly sweet pumpkin, salty meat and the strong gorgonzola is really delicious. Next up are small local peppers which have been grilled, sliced open, and filled with a creamy mixture of fresh ricotta and pancetta. Smoky, crunchy, creamy, Heavenly. Last of all a deep fried combo of artichoke pieces and calamari. The breading is very light and very crispy. Inside, the artichokes are perfectly cooked and the calamari tender. I will return. Yes, I will.

Once again, I know you must think all I do is eat. But as it happens, after lunch comes dinner. What's a girl to do? This is the cycle of life….thank goodness. There is a restaurant I have been dying to try and somehow when I want to eat out, there is always a good friend willing to accompany me. My friend and I share three dishes: 
1)      An incredible pasta made with pistachios and guanciale. Seriously intense, seriously delicious. I will be trying to recreate this dish once I return home. It will be a matter of rendering the fat from the guanciale which is the cured jowl of a wild boar, and adding ground pistachios and ground pecorino…something to that effect. When I get it right, I’ll write a blog post about it. Until then….it’s a lovely memory.
2)      A lamb stew.  My friend, who is of Italian descent, proclaims the dish just like the one her mother used to make. Hurray for authenticity!
3)      And last, but not least, cicoria ripasatta. Cicoria is simply chicory. And I do mean simply. The beauty of Italian contorni or side dishes lies in their simplicity. The chicory has been boiled to tenderness, then cooked again on the stovetop. It is sautéed with garlic, a fair amount of olive oil and maybe a bit of red pepper flakes. Chicory can be bitter, but cooking it this way mellows it; the olive oil makes it tender; the garlic and red pepper flake give it a little kick. Simple genius.

And so ends Rome, Day 3. I have two weeks to go.  More food, more wine, more beautiful sights on the horizon. Stay tuned......Day four is filled with art.

Day two of my trip to Italy is devoted to old friends who like me, share a passion for food. My dear friend Wendy Holloway runs a bed and breakfast/cooking school called Flavor of Italy. Whenever I’m in town, my friends and I gather in her wonderful kitchen in the countryside of Riano outside Rome for a day of cooking and camaraderie. Holly Magazzino and Thelma Gambino join us for a full day of cooking, laughter, eating, joking, drinking, yakking and more eating and drinking.

But before catching the train to Wendy’s house, I must have the classic Italian breakfast; a cappuccino and a cornetto. When breakfasting at home, most Italians make a stovetop espresso and add hot milk sans foam. But when having breakfast out, a cappuccino is a must.  And if one is indulging in a fancy cappuccino, why not include a lovely cornetto?  These pastries are usually brushed with a light sugar coating, and good ones are crispy on the outside, tender on the inside and served warm and fresh. Sigh.

At Wendy’s, we plan on making three dishes: Ravioli Caprese, Torta Caprese and Cacio è pepe. To start we make the Ravioli Caprese as it is a little time consuming to make the dough and filling. Wendy makes a basic tomato sauce that is so flavorful and simmers atop the stove while we take turns rolling out the dough until it’s so thin we can see the pattern of her marble counters through it. We make a filling of two kinds of cheese combined with lots of fresh marjoram, and make what seems like an overabundance of ravioli (though we manage to consume most of them). 

In addition to the ravioli, we also make Cacio è Pepe. This is one of my favorite classic Roman pastas whose preparation has simply eluded me. Wendy shows us how to “toss” the cheese into the pasta rather than stir it in as I have been doing. Last of all, we create a most delicious and decadent Torta Caprese; a cake made with ground almonds rather than traditional flour, and lots of deep, dark chocolate.  It has crispy edges and a gooey innards. We all moan as we take our first bite.

Eventually, after much chatting and laughter, we decide we can finally indulge in some dinner. But it is going to have to be a light dinner after such a heavy lunch. We head to a nearby restaurant where we order nothing but vegetables cooked expertly over wood-fired coals. We start with tomato bruschetta. The cook creates wood coals on the right side of his grill and shovels them beneath the cooking grate as the evening wears on. He grills our bread, drizzles it with olive oil, and tops it with nice fresh tomato slices and a sprinkle of salt. So simple. So delicious. We also order grilled radicchio and grilled porcini mushrooms. The in-season vegetables are smoky, tender/crispy and oh-so-delicious.  Again….So simple. So delicious.

Day two comes to an end after twelve hours in each other’s company.  We are tired and full, but rejuvenated by our time together. The four of us realize for the first time that we span four decades, and yet somehow, we have so much in common and enjoy each other’s company immensely. Another day in Rome; another day well spent.

Rome was calling me. No, I don’t have the pope on speed dial, but Rome was calling. Once you have lived in Rome, regardless of whether you tossed coins in that beautiful fountain, you will return. Rome gets into your blood, under your skin, into your pores like no other city on earth to me. Yes, it is chaos and noise and bureaucracy, but it is also infinite beauty, and a way of life that is simply so…..simple. And so I find myself back in Rome, ready for a resurrection, eager to return to a city where a new discovery is around every corner. Join me on a little pictorial trip of Rome: Day one.

Lucky me, I have arrived in Rome just in time for lunch. Never one to dilly-dally where food is concerned, I toss my bags in my room, take the quickest of showers to refresh and revive myself, and head out the door to find good food. It’s Rome; I don’t have to go far. Not long into my stroll, I discover a new pizza-by-the-slice place called Grano. I wander in to see if it looks good, and……well, let’s just say it was so hard to decide which kind to have….so I only picked three.  Pizza-by-the-slice is weighed in Italy.  Isn’t that a great concept? You merely point out how much of each kind you would like, they cut off your piece with a big pair of scissors, weigh it, and put it in the big oven to reheat. In the meantime, you get your receipt, take it to the cashier, pay for your pizza, adding a drink if you’d like and by the time you get back to the pizza counter, your hot pizza is ready. This new place had some really interesting and delicious combinations:
1)      Radicchio with gorgonzola and walnuts
2)      Porcini mushrooms (They’re everywhere because they’re in season now!) with truffles
3)      Eggplant with tomato sauce
Not only will I be returning to Rome; I will be returning to this place!

Jet lag is beginning to set in. Time for a pick-me-up, and I know just the thing.  I head over to my favorite building in the whole city, the Pantheon. Nearby is one of my favorite treats in the whole city; a granita di caffe con panna from the coffeehouse Taza D’Oro. They squeeze some unsweetened whipped cream into the bottom of your cup, add in two scoops of sweetened coffee flavored icy granita, and top it off with more whipped cream. The strong coffee is tempered by the sweetness of the granita mixture which is tempered by the unsweetened whipped cream. It is perfection. It is THE cure for jet lag….in my opinion.

With a full belly and a nice jolt of caffeine, it was time to take in a little culture.  And what could be more apropos than a viewing of a fresco by Rafael.  Tucked in a little out of the way corner, not far from Piazza Navona, is the Chiostro del Bramante. The Cloister of Bramante is attached to a church called Santa Maria della Pace.  In this church is a most beautiful fresco by Rafael commissioned in 1500.  And from the upper reaches of the Cloister, if you look out a certain window, you get a bird’s eye view of Rafael’s fantastic work of art.  Looking at it makes me……sigh.

Next stop is one of my favorite markets for some food shopping to bring back to the U.S. This is one of many cases where the internet is simply misinformation. The market is not open late on this day as I had read on-line. Most of it is closed. Most, but not all. The fresh pasta shop is open. No, I will not be bringing fresh pasta back to the States, but the lady who makes the fresh pasta happens to also love making red wine cookies, and she has a fresh plate sitting out! When she sees me eyeing them, she hands me the plate and tells me to have one. Not wanting to offend her in any way, I help myself. They are SO good; better than the ones I've been trying to make at home which need more work. I’ll take a dozen please. For the equivalent of $4.00, I get 12 huge, delicious crispy cookies baked with red wine and glistening with sugar crystals.

With not much of the market open, I realize I will have to return another day to finish my shopping and so I head out. Glancing at my watch, I realize, it’s “wine time”. This is perfect!  Nearby is a wine bar I’ve been wanting to try out. The little bar has a few tables and chairs out on the sidewalk. Securing a spot on this beautiful day, I pop my head indoors to let them know I’m out there and find an adorable basement wine bar filled with music paraphernalia and legs of prosciutto ready to be hand-carved. Passaguai prides itself on its use of local products, and so I order a wine from the Lazio region. Ever in need of a little munchie, I also order a plate of mixed bruschette and a bowl of olives. The olives are incredibly buttery and when the bruschette arrive, they are beautifully plated and delicious. The wine, a blend which includes the cesanese grape, is one I hope to learn more about on this trip. It is wonderful. My bill amazes me when I ask for it. Not by the expense of it, but by the lack of expense. Welcome back to Rome.

As I head back to my dear friend’s apartment, I catch a glimpse of the sunset over St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. What truer sign is there that I am in Rome? I have been resurrected.