FGF&WBW in Umbria
Umbria stuff
June & July
The Pasta Man
Perugia, June & July
If ever you find yourself in Perugia, with access to a kitchen, and in need of a fantastically tasty, and easy, dinner, or any dinner for that matter, you should head down to Via C.Corpalis (???) to see the Pasta Man.
Known to his friends as Christiano (or possibly Cristiano - I'm not sure on the spelling to be honest), said pasta man makes some of the best pasta we've tasted in the whole of Italy. He's also responsible for one of the more touching moments I had whilst in Italy - the Italian language, as so many European languages, has two different words for 'you singular', depending on how formal you are being. The formal 'you', lei is used for any stranger, or someone you want to show respect to. The informal 'you', tu is used for family, people you know well, and children/anyone else 'inferior' to you. At one point in July, Christiano asked me to call him tu, and seemed as touched as I was at the fact that I understood the significance of what he was saying.
Anyway, back to the pasta, wonderful stuff that it is. The shop is very small, and has a glass topped/cased counter, in which there is the till, a space for wrapping purchases, and several saucers with samples of whatever pasta he's decided to make that day. There's also a screen-type wall, behind which is his preparation area. I know this because that's where he disappeared to to make more gnocchi one day when he didn't have quite enough.
I'm pretty sure I was undercharged every time I was in there, as Christiano seems to have a penchant for rounding down, and I'm absolutely definite that I was happy at every meal we cooked with his egg pasta/traditional Umbrian flour pasta/gnocchi/stuffed pasta. Fabulous stuff, freshly made by a really great guy, who everyone who visits Perugia should meet.
You Can Make Friends with Salad
Perugia, ??th July
As it turns out, after several months of a diet of almost entirely pasta and meat, we start really craving green stuff. So, when Liz and Koen offered to make a big salad for dinner, I went dashing into town to get all the ingredients, and the potatoes (for baking) and steak to go with it. Due to our butcher having disappeared on holiday, I in fact came back with a large amount of tinned tuna, scooped out in two massive pieces from a huge tin by our lovely little deli. Liz spotted the size of the to-be-baked potatoes and the mascarpone I'd decided to accompany them with, and protested to Sam that I was trying to seduce her...
Liz and Koen make fantastic salad, and there are apparently two tricks to this. One is to keep the liquid you drain out of the tinned sweetcorn to go into the dressing. T'other is to scoop out the gloopy seed part of the tomatoes, also into the dressing. We ended up with a nicoise style salad, because we also had eggs to use up, and it was so good we repeated the whole trick a couple of days later, but accompanied with some of the best steaks ever instead of tuna and soft boiled eggs.
Buying the steaks was fun. Sam and I went to the market, and sat on a bench opposite the butcher whilst I tried to recover from my mental blank and remember the word for steak. Bistecca. Ok, great. We asked for our four steaks, used international pointing to explain we'd like them a bit thicker than the butcher was indicating, and assumed all was good since the hunk of meat he was holding looked plenty big enough for all four to be cut out of.
Then he just dropped that hunk of meat and disappeared out the back. We exchanged our usual confused/amused glances and wondered if we'd offended him with our thick-steak request. He returned a few minutes later with about half a cow over his shoulder, grinned, and showed Sam the face of the slab, looking for approval, which he promptly got. So, he took his scarily huge butcher's knife, and sliced as if through butter until he got to the bone at the end. Down went the knife, out came an even scarier cleaver, and just a few good smacks later, voila, t-bone. He repeated this trick another three times, with me only half watching, for fear of flying fingers, and then we, the Great White Hunters, hefted our catch and wandered off home to make Liz and Koen very happy indeed.
Must be the Grifo Latte
Torgiano, 1st August
At the end of our time in Perugia, we took ourselves off down to Torgiano for a few days, to have a bit of a chill out after escaping from the crazy landlady, and also in order to be near Perugia in case there were any issues with crazy landladies, unreturned rental deposits etc. When we visited back in June, we'd checked out one of the hotels, and ate in it's sister restaurant, the place with the cheese filled gnocchi, then decided to stay there for our two days chilling, taking advantage of their bed, breakfast and dinner special.
On our first night there, we headed down to the restaurant, and were surprised to find that it was apparently closed for renovations - big sign on the door, builders wandering in and out - hmmm. On the basis that the hotel hadn't told us any differently, we went in anyway. Turns out they are doing massive renovations, but have kept one little room of about seven tables open, in a 'local restaurant for local people' sort of way.
On the second night, we just wandered in nonchalantly, enjoyed dinner, and again decided to go for dessert, since our meal was going to cost the same either way. Having had a pretty average panna cotta previously, I decided to try the tiramisu, since I've always been a fan, even of average tiramisu.
This was not an average tiramisu. For starters, it was a slab large enough for Sam to feel the need to wish me luck with it - always a good sign. The squishy cake base is always a winner with me, only the mascarpone is hit or miss. And this hit. I'm pretty sure Grifo Latte make the best mascarpone in the world, and this tiramisu had it beautifully lightly whipped into a fantastically rich creamy texture, liberally dusted with good quality cocoa powder, and stupidly stupidly tasty. After a taste, Sam reckoned it was a bit too rich, and that I wouldn't be able to finish it all, but he's rarely right when it comes to my stomach capacity...