In the Land of Lucca

After leaving the Italian coast, we boarded the train towards Tuscany. We thankfully decided to make a quick overnight stop in Lucca. Our only mistake is that it should have been a long stop. After arriving, we knew that this was a magical place that we would have liked to stay for many nights -- not just the one night stop-over we had booked. Walking through the center of the old walled town to the amazing bed and breakfast Evelina, we were blown away by the charm of the place and its awesome hosts. We will definitely go back there one day. This is a city where I could spend the rest of my life.

Our first taste of pizza in Italy (and our first meal in Lucca) was at Pizza da Felice, a place recommended to us by the proprietor at Evelina. We ordered a cheese slice and a cecina, which is a thin pizza-like flatbread made of chickpeas. They were each pretty damn good and with a couple of beers it was a nice light afternoon lunch. We didn't go crazy. We had to save room for some gelato!

After hobbling around Lucca all day, my knee was showing signs that I'd just spent four days walking Cinque Terre. We were pointed in the direction of La Bottega delle Cose Buone. This is a place for locals. Most tourists would not even know that there was a restaurant hidden in the back of this little market. It is pretty much a one-man show run by the kind gentleman that I am sitting with below. He prepares all the dinners by himself and we were treated to truly rustic, Tuscan cuisine.

We started with an appetizer of cannelini beans with rosemary and ham -- a pretty basic dish that was good, but a little too salty. It went nice with some bread to tame the sodium injection. 

Regan ordered the orecchiette in a beef and pepper ragu. It was really rich and a little on the greasy side, but yet another way to utilize all that Tuscan bread. We knew we were not going home hungry. I think she enjoyed it. She didn't take it to go to feed the pigeons.

I decided to take a gamble and order the wild rabbit with tomatoes and olives. This is a signature dish in this part of Italy, so I knew I had to try it. It came to the table and had the strangest smell. I wasn't quite sure what to think. The table next to us also ordered the rabbit, and they were waving the smell into their face as if it was the aroma of perfection. Maybe I am just not insanely cwazy over wabbit. It was good, and I am glad I tried it, but it wasn't something I craved during the rest of our time in Tuscany.

The atmosphere of the place and the chef are what you dream exists in Italy. I would recommend the place on this alone. The food is also prepared with love and there were many great looking dishes being served around us. I wouldn't hesitate to go back and try another gamble off the daily menu.

The next day, we awoke to a beautiful breakfast on the balcony of our b&b. It consisted of really strong coffee, some special Lucca sausage (that was mainly fat), yogurt and peaches, and some chocolate chip cake.








The best part was the view from our room and balcony where their were hundreds of swallows flying in and around the bell towers.

After breakfast, we rented bikes for a couple hours to ride along the top of the walls of Lucca. It turned out to be two of our favorite hours on the entire trip. Riding along the walls and into the heart of this fascinating city was a perfect way to end a short affair with one of the most enchanting places in the world. 

We had one last bite before heading to the train station: a tall mug of beer and a prosciutto flatbread sandwich. Nothing spectacular, but it was enjoyed in front of an incredible cathedral in the heart of Lucca. What's not to love?

Dig That Beet!

I recently became quite obsessed with a fermented beverage called beet kvass. It is a popular health tonic in parts of Russia and Eastern Europe. It is said to have many health benefits, such as a blood purifier and liver cleanser. I picked up a bottle one day at a local market because it looked oddly compelling -- a deep purple drink with a slight tang and a whole lot of beet goodness. I was hooked and started to spend $20 a week on this damn beverage! It was also only available at a couple local markets so I would I find myself biking there several times a week for this beet tonic. While Zukay makes some freakin' good beet kvass, I started looking around online about this drink. It turns out that it is quite simple to make and much cheaper to do so. I was a bit worried about the outcome of a fermented drink after a major failure with making pickles several years ago, but I decided to give it a go. It was a great success, and I am now on my 3rd batch! Here is all you need for 2 quarts of kvass:

I started this most recent batch with three medium-sized organic beets. I would have liked to have four, but I had one left over from the last kvass that had sadly turned soft, so I ditched it. Cut them up into decent sized pieces, not too small or big.

Next, get a teaspoon of Celtic sea salt and a packet of kefir, and dissolve both in a little tepid water at the bottom of your 2-quart jar. Make sure the jar has been cleaned really well. I poured some boiling water in the jar to rinse it after washing it.  There are other recipes online that say if you can't find the kefir packets, you can use whey -- which can easily be strained off of yogurt. For a vegan version, just use a pinch more salt and omit the kefir or whey. The whey and the kefir just help along the fermenting process.

Add the beets to the jar (I also added a few slivers of fresh ginger) and fill it up with filtered water. I placed a towel and a rubber band over the lid and put it in a dark corner on the countertop. Some recipes say to leave it for 2 or 3 days, then put in the fridge for a few more, but some say to leave it fermenting on the counter for a week. I tasted it after a couple days, and it did not taste right, so I ended up leaving it out for 5 days. It turned out awesome! You can let it continue to ferment in the fridge for a long time, if you can wait to drink it. Supposedly, it will get a little more sour and delicious with prolonged time in the fridge.










Strain the beets, and you will have a super nutritious and crazy purple drink that the kool-aid man would envy. I saved several bottles of the Zukay Kvass so I could bottle my own version, and now I have an extra $20 in my pocket this week.

You can re-use the beets for one more batch with a half cup of the kvass, a pinch of salt, and more filtered water. It will be a little weaker than the first round but will still beat your ass! I recommend watching this groovy beatnik classic while you are waiting for your bucket of blood to ferment. Dig it!

Cinque Terre

I thought I might be able to finish up the Italy trip in one more post, but it turns out there are far too many photos and great meals to write about, so there will be a few more. I have already written about Monterosso, so now I will combine the rest of the villages into one scrumptious post.

After leaving Monterosso, we arrived in Riomaggiore where we would stay for a couple nights while exploring the rest of Cinque Terre. Our first taste was a light lunch right on the harbor at a place called dau cila.  We had heard that only a foolish man would pass up the opportunity to eat lemon-marinated anchovies in Liguria. Wow!  I am so glad we tried them. Those of you who gag just by hearing the word anchovy should not be alarmed. These are nothing like the kind in tin cans that smell like a sailor's dirty socks after a week out to sea. With a little bread and a beer, this turned out to be one of the most memorable delights of the trip. My only regret is that we didn't have it a few more times.

Along with anchovies and pesto, the focaccia bread is another reason to visit this part of Italy. The next two mornings, we walked down to the center of Riomaggiore to Panicifio Rosi, a small bakery that served up some incredible focaccia. Oh, how I wish I could be back there, sitting on the steps and looking in my Italian book for the words to say bigger slice and more napkins, please! What a great way to start the day. It brought us so much joy in the morning.

Every piece we tried was so good, it was hard to know which one was the best, but the two pictured were probably the front runners: a tomato, cheese, and pesto slice, and one with onions baked in. I have never had focaccia in the states that even comes close to resembling the kinds we had in Cinque Terre. 

From Riomaggiore, we walked along Via dell'Amore to Manarola for dinner. Manarola is perhaps the most visually beautiful of all the villages. It is actually the main reason I wanted to visit Cinque Terre. I came across a picture of it online many years ago, and it remained a place I always said I wanted to go. I knew nothing about Cinque Terre nor this little village, but being there and taking this photo at sunset was everything that I dreamt it would be. We dined at one of the most celebrated restaurants in all of Cinque Terre, Trattoria dal Billy. We arrived right at opening and managed to grab a table on their panoramic balcony. Somehow, this was one of the only dinners when I simply forgot to take pictures of the food. It was nothing spectacular. The best part of the meal was the thick and luscious balsamic vinegar on the table that can be used to dip your bread. I had some pasta with bottarga, which is a cured fish roe. It wasn't bad, but it also didn't thrill me that much. Regan felt the same about her dish, which was pasta with shrimp and asparagus. Totally overrated food, but it was a beautiful place to sit with a glass of wine and watch the sunset.

The next day, we decided to check out Corniglia. This is a village high on a cliff that requires a walk of about 1,000 stairs, or you can opt for a shuttle bus. By this time, we were pretty walked out, so we hopped on the bus. The view from the top was incredible. You could see all of the other villages from the lookout. The town itself was very peaceful and probably the least crowded of all five villages.

The honey gelato in Corniglia is supposedly some of the best in Italy, so of course I had to sample some of that. What's better than having an afternoon gelato every day in Italy? I thought I'd tire of it and wouldn't care much about the gelato, but every day around 2:00 p.m., I start scouting out my gelato options.

Our last night in Riomaggiore, we headed back to the harbor and dined at another highly recommended restaurant. Trattoria La Lanterna was located right next door to dau cila, where we enjoyed the anchovies the day before. I ordered some kind of seafood sampler, which was several plates of small portions of fish. The presentation was beautiful. The food, however, was one of the worst meals I had in Italy. It was bland, not very creative, and a huge overall disappointment. It's a good thing we had a liter of white wine to help make the experience a little happier. Regan ordered a ravioli with a good cause: all the proceeds for the special anchovy and potato ravioli would go to help save Vernazza, which was the most badly damaged village in the horrible flood of 2011. It's too bad they couldn't make it a good dish. It was straight-up canned tomatoes poured over mediocre ravioli. I actually thought they were messing with us and purposely serving us bad food, until some locals sat down and ordered the same seafood sampler I had.

We did hike some of the trails in Cinque Terre, including this one from Monterosso to Vernazza, a pretty exhausting trip that did a number on my old knees. It was totally worth it, and the views from the trail are nothing short of amazing. 

Vernazza is an incredible place, still recovering from the flood that nearly destroyed it forever. It was not as bustling as it probably was before the flood. Many places were still closed, but it was on the rebound and looking like it was soon going to make a full recovery. While we did not eat in Vernazza, we did enjoy a much-deserved cold beer after our long hike to this remote village that time forgot.

2 nights and 10 courses!

It has been a while since my last entry. Now that the summer days and summer nights are almost gone,  I am ready to get back into the swing of writing some new posts. Lots of dinners have been had and many delightful home cooked recipes will be coming in the weeks ahead. I thought I would start with finishing up a few more posts on our summer trip to Italy in June. 

Upon our arrival into the heart of Tuscany, we stayed a few days at Torracia Di Chiusi, a beautiful farmhouse a few miles outside the medieval city of San Gimignano. We relaxed by an incredible pool with a view of vineyards in every direction. Included with the stay was a bottle of their wine, which was cellared in an old Etruscan tomb. The owner was kind enough to give us a tour of the cellar, the farmhouse, and a private chapel while explaining the history of the place, which also sits right on Via Francigena, an ancient road that was a pilgrimage route to Rome. We felt very special to be staying at such a place, and if I had worn my plush Buster Brown boots I might still be in Italy walking this road. Also included in the stay was a 5-course Tuscan feast that was prepared every night with love by in-house chef Bruno. I did not think I would be able to knock down all five courses, but both nights we dined there I persevered and loved every bite.

The first night, our dinner began with melon and prosciutto -- a nice and light way to begin the feast.

The second course was Pappa al Pomodoro (tomato and bread soup). A classic dish that makes great use out of stale day-old bread, this simple and delicious soup is made special by the quality of a few ingredients. Following the soup was a butter and sage potato ravioli. The portion sizes were just right, not too overwhelming. This was a super rich and satisfying dish. I was just about ready to throw in my towel until I smelled something fowl in the air.

The courses were spread out, allowing you to enjoy a glass of wine and not be bombarded by the gastronomic delights. The sun began to set, and by the time the main course came out it was hard to photograph. By dessert there was nothing but light from the candle on our table. The dining area was outside on a large patio where there were about ten tables of couples all enjoying the Tuscan atmosphere. The main course of the night was guinea fowl cooked with zucchini from the garden. It was absolutely phenomenal.

Day 2

On the second night -- after a long day of exploring the small Tuscan towns in the area and another dip in the refreshing pool -- we saddled up to the table for a second round of La Dolce Vita! The first course was a cold farro salad with a nice vinegar tang. I tried guessing what the night would hold for us, and before dinner I bet Regan that we would have zucchini soup, and (sure enough) we were slurping it up and enjoying every bit.

The pasta course was the standard classic that we enjoyed throughout Liguria, but this time the pesto pasta was served with homemade spaghetti noodles. This was good but not quite up to par with the versions we had in Monterosso with the trofie pasta.

It seemed like the dinner started a little later the second night, because by time the main course came there was no more sunlight so I had to resort to using the flash. These were pork ribs, and they were even better than the guinea fowl from the previous night. Meat fell off the bone and melted in our mouths! I had no problem finishing off this plate. The desserts were kept fairly simple and light, which was all that anyone could handle after all the pasta and meat. The first night it was a chocolate gelato, and the second night it was a lemon sorbet. 

Above is one of the views from the house, and another with me floating in the pool. I must also add that there was a huge breakfast spread every morning with juice, pastries, meat, cheese, and fresh veggies and fruit. 

Regan's selection                                                                                      my morning