Basta pasta

I knew pasta forms the base of the food pyramid in the Italian cuisine, but apparently my knowledge was not complete. If you leave out pizza and the rice dish risotto which do make it for a couple of entries in the menu card, the rest is all - with no exaggeration - some kind of pasta or the other. Take out your favorite text book on geometry and pick out all the regular shapes - tubes, cones, helices, toroids, thin sphagetti shaped objects (he he .. I like this description of the shape), flat sheets; and all that you imagine all have room in the generous world of pasta. And then the raviolis and the tortellinis with stuffing in them. I did not know that the flat sheets that make the lasagna are also called pasta, which is a quite a generic word. Anyways, the trouble about the accounting was slightly easy with the help of wikipedia which says there are 350 types of pasta. I wonder if the Italians have to be content with risotto/pizza for the remaining two weeks of the year !! Although I find the long sphagetti unmanageable, I have a new found interest and respect for it, thanks to the interesting commercials with spaghetti like the one below !!


I went on a holiday to Rome a few weeks ago. Its an 8 hour drive from Lugano to Rome, passing through several regions of Italy - Lombardy, Tuscany, Abruzzo among others. Stopped for a meal in the restaurants or sometimes went a bit fancy with the wish to experience the local touch by going for one of the trattorias, which is home-made food served in a small restaurant. Each of these places advertises a 'regional speciality'. Given my dietary preferences for a vegetarian meal, I innocently asked them 'do you have any vegetarian regional specialities?' "Yeah, sure we would get one for you" and after 20 minutes of delicious wait for the food, they come out with a 'pasta pomodori', which is essentially pasta with tomato. Being completely unaware of Italian cuisine, I would wonder what's so regional about this food that I eat at every stop. But it took me a while to figure out, with guidance obviously, that the speciality is in one of the intricate shapes of the pasta. With the long helices from one region, the shorter ones from another. The long sphagetti, the Italian counterpart of the Chinese rice noodles, with square cross section from the North of the countr
, and the oval, ciruclar cross sections from the others (now honestly I do not even remember which is from where, but you get the idea).

Two days into the trip, with the 'regional speciality' of pasta with tomato everywhere, I was ready to yell out "basta (enough) pasta". But then I was in a trattoria in one of these villages just after a long 12 km tunnel to Rome. They had the amazing dish 'pasta con funghi e tartufo (with mushroom and tartufo)'. It is probably the most delicious pasta that I ever had. This tartufo is supposed to be more expensive than gold and is one of the very special treats to the tongue ! So, if you find yourself with an offer to have pasta with tartufo, relish it !!! It's worth a shot, although you might later realize that it's an acquired taste !!!

piazza grande .. !

Piazza is literally a square. It's a very unique concept in the Italian/Swiss parts that I have seen, probably it can be seen every where in the europe. Other parts of the world have also piazzas like the union-square of San Francisco, but not as many as in the europe. Many a times it's an area in the heart of the town, where people lounge around, look at some of the nice architecture of the various buildings surrounding it at least one of which is likely to be a church or may be throw blank stares into the sky while enjoying their coffee in of the outdoor restaurants in the piazza. Usually in a city, unless you want to be in a building or a museum or a restuarant, there is no place where one can rest for a while, enjoy the sun or feed the hungry pigeons. Piazza is the home for all those who refuse to be bound by the walls, but still want to stay in the civilization unlike going into the woods. Come summer, these piazzas become the stage for a host of exciting outdoor events - from live performances of jazz to plays to movies.

Last week I was in the Swiss Italian town Locarno for the opening ceremony of the Locarno international film festival in the piazza grande. As the name suggests, it's a magnificent square with a seating capacity of 8,000. The shape enclosed by the piazza grande is not a regular geometric one and that adds a little bit of character and taste to the place. About a month ago, this square hosted the likes of Santana, Alicia Keys for their music concerts; and was the arena for the screening of the Euro football matches live. The opening ceremony of the film festival took off with a fine drizzle from the thick clouds engulfing the whole town. As I could not find a place selling umbrellas or ponchos, I went into a pizza place and was asking for a large pizza box to cover myself and my friends. They were not very welcoming for my request for a 'solo carta per pizza grande' (in MY Italian asking for just the box of a large pizza). Rain, a perfect beginning for a movie that was set in England - "Brideshead revisited". Then as the story started unfolding, so did the clouds, giving way to the stars and making the setting even more romantic for a story based partly on love (the other part being orthodox religious traditions).

The director of the film mentioned in his opening remarks that there is nothing like a bad weather, it's just wrong clothing. Whichever way he would describe it, we watched the movie with the clothes a little wet. Well, if that is the price you pay for enjoying a movie while being in nature, it's well worth it!

The closest experience I had to this while in India was in the 5000 person capacity open air 70mm theater we had in our college in Madras. With a film every week, in all the seasons of the year, it was definitely a great time. Not knowing its true worth, I missed many movies in that OAT. Then the next experience was the half-oval amphitheater in the Caltech, laid in three rings of grass around a small 16mm screen. So small, so cozy, with a room for just 100 people. And the jasmines that lined the separation between these rings would set the ambiance for a romantic summer evening under the stars !! With my interest for the movies and the open skies, open air theaters are a heaven for me !!

got cafe?

I picked up the coffee from the vending machine. Although a few machines are OK, a few others make an inhomogeneous preparation, with the sugar settling down at the bottom and no stirrer to mix it up. As I sat down to have this machine coffee and my taste buds started reaching a 'happy ending' with the sugar, I wondered what a good coffee tastes like.

Although neither Christianity nor coffee originated in Italy, these folks have become a considerable authority on both. So, I asked my Italian friend "What's a good coffee?". "A good coffee .. " he started off, but then paused with a deep breath as if the description was beyond words. He looked at the vending machine coffee and with a smile he said " .. definitely not this".

There are several kinds of coffees around here, some with two teaspoons full coffee served in a very tiny cup that can be barely held - the espresso or the licho: something you can sniff out of the cup. Add a drop of milk to this to create a machhiato. Half a glass of milk more makes it latte macchiato. Capuccino with the froth on top of it. And the story goes on. To feel like a real Italian, one should drink a macchiato for the breakfast and a licho without even a single drop of milk as a dessert after lunch. A capuccino is acceptable for a breakfast, but definitely not after lunch. There are so many ways of preparing a capuccino: if you get a capuccino with a chocolate topping - Switzerland, cinnamon topping - US, no topping - south of Italy. If you ask for a capuccino and get a latte machiato, you are in the north-east of Italy where the names, as I heard from my friends, are interchanged. A capuccino thus serves as a kind of a coarse grained GPS for identifying your position!! At the risk of sounding like a sexist, I should point out this hilarious video on macchiatto from "Italian Spiderman !!".

Well, starbucks definitely is responsible for the coffee revolution in the US. One of the mistakes new comers in US do is to use starbucks as a landmark before they realize there is a shop every street corner. As can be guessed, the most popular coffees in the US are about 300 ml to 400 ml compared to the 30ml espresso. And they are usually loaded with sugar, and many times ice. I only had the 'brain freeze' drink once. I caught a bad cold for one week after that and I decided to give up on iced coffee. Coffee is definitely very popular there as you can get a mug full of coffee and finish of your work as the person attending to you refills it regular intervals. And one thing an americanized person will miss in the Italian side is the luxury of taking your coffee to go with you!

In India, at least when I was growing up there a few years ago, coffee is a very unique and not many variations exist. Ask for coffee, you will have a cup-full of wonderful drink on your table in a minute. The closest american and Italian counterparts to this drink are cafe latte/latte macchiato. You will not be grilled with questions such as - hot or cold; ice or no ice; sugar or no sugar; tall or grande; without milk or with milk (whole milk/skim milk) or with soymilk; for here or to take it go and finally are you paying with a starbucks card today?? Without those questions, that's definitely a more enjoyable experience. Slowly the americanized coffee shops are mushrooming in the big metros.

Espresso machine at work place seems to be one of the basic amenities in the Italian region. People help themselves liberally with it. I stayed late at work one evening and saw my Italian friend drink a coffee at 10pm. I asked him "dont you have trouble falling asleep??" "nope" he replied. I laughed and said "I forgot, coffee and s*x are good at any time of the day." "Well, I am not really sure about the second one, though !" he replied instinctively !!

The famous mathematician Godel used to say that mathematicians are machines that convert coffee to theorems. Seeing so many smart people at my work place get a regular coffee every few hours, I am not only convinced of it but am also thinking of trying it out in greater proportions myself .. !! Let me try my luck with a boost of caffeine.