World Nutella Day 2012

It's that time of year again! And since I'm on a diet trying to cut down on sweets, for this edition of World Nutella Day I won't break the gilded seal of the usual giant tub, rather savor every finger scoop of this tiny 30 gram (1 oz) mini Nutella. These wee jars are sold during the holiday season as tree ornaments, see the clear plastic eyelet? Clever.

Happy World Nutella Day to all my friends, readers, family near and far, and a huge thanks to the sweet events' founders, dearest Sara of Ms Adventures in Italy and darling Michelle of Bleeding Espresso for putting this celebration together every year and giving me a chance to indulge.

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Baci nutellosi!

Happy Holidays from Rome

Positano for the weekend

It's October, I should be pulling out scarves, sweaters and rain gear; polishing apples and sweeping dried leaves from the doorstep, stowing away summer clothes and beach towels..

Not me.

I'm rubbing aftersun lotion on my brown shoulders after a spectacular secret weekend escape in Positano with my little boy.

We packed a small tote, left on the hush hush and spent two fabulous days swimming, relaxing in the sun, eating seafood and meeting friends in what is said to be the warmest Fall season in 150 years.

We like to catch the Laurito shuttle early, before the crowds. It's a 5 minute sail south of Positano, and the red fish ferries its lido patrons every half hour, despite what's painted on the fish (every 60 mins.)

We found a spot on the rocky beach and waited for Laura to arrive from Amalfi. It was a real treat to finally meet in person after almost two years of knowing each other via web.

We ate lunch on the terrace at Da Adolfo, and it was laid back and delicious as usual. I always have the house specialty, a mozzarella antipasto, which is grilled on wild lemon leaves... very tasty. We also slurped zuppa di cozze, sopped up the juices with a loaf of crusty bread and downed a caraffe of chilled white wine with chopped peaches bobbing in it.

After bidding arrivederci to Laura, we were swept away on a friend's motoscafo, and we laughed in the sun, giddy with acceleration and high on beauty.

More snorkeling and swimming at "il germano," a rock formation said to resemble a German soldier's profile. The water is deep deep blue, with patches of emerald green, and the mountains reflect on the surface.

We returned to Positano in time for aperitivo and...

My son couldn't believe it, and neither could I. Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" tune kept ringing in my ears.

...and dinner of course!! Paccheri are a regional type of broad, tube-like pasta whose name means "slaps." These were made with sautéed scampi, and just a few fresh tomatoes thrown in the pan. The Buca di Bacco holds cooking classes in the restaurant kitchen, taught by the charming Executive Chef Andrea Ruggiero. I'd like to join one before the hotel closes for the winter.

One last swim before heading back home yesterday. I have to keep reminding myself it's October.

Ciao Positano, a presto!

Please head over to Ciao Amalfi! for Laura's exquisite reportage of our Laurito rendezvous...

Bruschetta recipe

The first thing to know before making this genius antipasto staple and its creative variations is how to pronounce its name correctly.

Not 'brushetta,' please. That's mortifying. It's bru–SKET–tah. An onomatopoeic homage to the sharp sound made when digging your teeth in the crisp charcoal baked sourdough bread, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with sea salt. Sk! Sk! Think skyscraper! Basket! Skipper! Helter Skelter! Brusketta! Yeah, that's it.

In Tuscany, bruschetta is more commonly called fettunta, a contraction of two words (fetta unta) meaning oiled slice. When olives are taken to the local frantoio mill for pressing in late November, the growers typically take some country casereccio bread with them. There is usually a small fireplace burning in the corner of the pressing room, and when the fragrant liquid gold emerges from the press spout, the grower toasts a bit of the bread on the fire to sample the oil.

The meaning of the noun bruschetta has changed so that now some use the word bruschetta incorrectly to refer to the topping instead of the dish. Many grocery store chains worldwide sell bottled bruschetta, which is simply a mix of tomatoes, onion, garlic and oregano, usually cooked!

For original "red" bruschetta, only fresh tomatoes are used and never a sauce. And allow me to say this one more time, we Italians limit the use of oregano to few special dishes: common pizza toppings, Costata alla Pizzaiola and very few other applications. Any other use is a distortion of Italian flavor and a cliché.

All this said, here's my way of making delicious messy slabs of heaven.

For authentic bruschetta you will need:

Good, thick-crust preferably wood oven-baked bread: whole wheat, sourdough (with its typical chip structure and characteristic aroma) or delicious home-style pane casareccio bread. Bruschetta is a good way of recycling day old, or stale bread too.
Organic, cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil. The finest quality is key, particularly for this dish.
Numerous cloves of garlic, peeled
Sea or Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Optional:
Cherry tomatoes, chopped
Fresh basil leaves, hand-torn (cutting with a metal blade alters the flavor)

The term bruschetta comes from the word bruscare, which means to toast on the fire. So this is a procedure to be carried out on any red-hot surface, be it a barbecue grill, a wood burning oven or fireplace. Pop in a tosater if all else fails. The important thing is the degree of crunch.

While you wait for the coals or logs to reach meat-cooking temperature, place bread slices (max 1 inch thick) on the grill and keep a close watch. Turn with a pair of tongs and remove when lightly charred on the surface.

On a large serving platter place the hot slices and begin rubbing with the peeled garlic cloves to flavor the bread. The more vigorous the scrub, the more intense the taste will be.

Drizzle with abundant olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

You can dress with chopped tomatoes and basil, or any other interesting variation you may wish to invent. I personally love bruschetta plain, but in the summer when I have guest over for a barbecue, I always like to present them with a variety of choices. Some favorite sample bruschettas include: slices of Prosciutto and a thin wafer slices of mild Nero di Pienza Pecorino cheese, sundried tomatoes and Gaeta olives, veggie spreads like olive or artichoke paste or a dollop of pesto sauce mixed with cream cheese. A very successful coastal bruschetta topping is a spoonful of shelled wedge clams stewed in garlic and olive oil, sprinkled with (very little) parsley.

Analogue memories

In this age of digitalized photography, technology used to obtain a vintage grain on pictures captured by a phone, and retro image rendering, I thought I'd post these photographs taken in Positano with a Kodak Instamatic camera, in the summer of 1977.

I scanned the originals so I could post them here, but didn't tweak the levels. The prints actually look just like what you see: rounded edges, cool cross-processed, funky '70s feel (and slanted horizons).

No App could ever match this.

This precise spot on this very beach is where I plan to spend lots of time during the Easter holidays, enjoying a few days off with family.  Possibly doing handstands in the water.

Buona Pasqua!

A prayer for 2010

The new year begins.

I am borrowing the poem/prayer below and offering it to you as a sign of gratitude. As a gesture of love. As a symbol of where I am right now. My new year's resolution is to repeat this prayer and reap its deep beneficial effects. I hope you will too.

This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I’ve been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of us—even those of us who ­don’t believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods, the God beyond all Gods... the Girlfriend of God... the Teacher of God... the Goddess who invented God.





DEAR GODDESS, you who always answer our very best questions, even if we ignore you:

Please be here with us right now. Come inside us with your sly slippery slaphappy mojo. Invade us with your silky succulent salty sweet haha.

Hear with our ears, Goddess. Breathe with our lungs. See through our eyes.


DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads or hears this benediction.

I pray that you will give us what we ­don’t even know we need—not just the boons we think we want, but everything we’ve always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.






DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of us don’t even know who we really are.

We’ve forgotten that our souls live forever.

We’re blind to the fact that every little move we make sends ripples through eternity. Some of us are even ignorant of how extravagant, relentless, and practical your love for us is.

Please wake us up to the shocking truths. Use your brash magic to help us see that we are completely different from we’ve been led to believe, and more exciting than we can possibly imagine.

Guide us to realize that we are all unwitting messiahs who are much too big and ancient to fit inside our personalities.


DEAR GODDESS, you sly universal virus with no fucking opinion:

Help us to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach us to know the distinction between oppressive self-­control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in us the power to do the half-­right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

And arouse the Wild Woman within us—even if we are men.



DEAR GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed all of us wise and sexy virtuosos.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to us, no matter how long we have suffered from it, and even if we have become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.

Conjure an aura of protection around us so that we will receive an early warning if we are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague into our lives in the future.

DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:

I pray that you will inspire us to kick our own asses with abandon and regularity.

Give us bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

Help us learn the difference between stupid suffering and smart suffering.

Provoke us to throw away or give away everything we own that encourages us to believe we’re better than anyone else.

Brainwash us with your compassion so that we never love our own freedom more than anyone else’s freedom.

And make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone or anything that’s no good for us.




DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:

I pray that you provide us with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that hinder us from loving the world the way you do.

Show us how to purge the wishy-­washy wishes that distract us from our daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach us that we can have anything we want if we will only ask for it in an unselfish way.

DEAR GODDESS, you who just pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what's right:

Help us to be like you—wildly disciplined, voraciously curious, exuberantly elegant, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, blasphemously reverent, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically logical, and blissfully rowdy.



And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these pregnant moments you have begun to change all of us in the exact way we needed to change in order to become the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be.





Amen


Om


Hallelujah


Shalom


Namaste


More power to you




Oh, but one more thing DEAR GODDESS, you pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing:

Please give us donkey clown piñatas full of chirping crickets,

ceramic spice jars containing 10 million-­year-old salt from the Himalayas,

gargoyle statues guaranteed to scare away the demons,

lucid dreams while we’re wide awake,

enough organic soup and ice cream to feed all the refugees,

emerald parachutes and purple velvet gloves and ladders made of melted-down guns,

a knack for avoiding other people’s personal hells,

radio-controlled, helium-filled flying rubber sharks to play with,

magic red slippers to contribute to the hopeless,

bathtubs full of holy water to wash away our greed,

secret admirers who are not psychotic stalkers,

mousse cakes baked in the shapes of giant question marks,

stories about lightning strikes that burn down towers where megalomaniacal kings live,

solar-powered sex toys that work even in the dark,

knowledge of secret underground rivers,

mirrors that the Dalai Lama has gazed into,

and red wagons carrying the treats we were deprived of in childhood.

~Rob Brezsny

Happy 2010!

The keyhole at Knights of Malta

White and green. The two predominant colors in the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta. They are the hues of the carved marble and the feathery foliage of cypress, ivy and palm trees.

The walk uphill Via Porta Lavernale, leaving Testaccio's busy Via Marmorata behind, is quite a work-out. The incline is steep, but the surroundings pretty, so flexed calves and burning buttocks almost become a pleasant feeling. You'll find that the Piazza at the end of the passeggiata is empty: a Carabinieri patrol car, engine idling, perhaps a street vendor selling chilled water bottles, candy and microwaved Jurassic pizzas, and that's it. The place is deserted and peaceful.

At the far end of the square, set like a black diamond in the white facade, the huge doorway (always shut) is the mighty entrance to the headquarters of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta. The one dark spot in the otherwise blinding glare of marble in the sun.

If you stop a while here, you'll see the occasional group of tourists approaching the closed doorway and taking a peek. And then they leave. Ten minutes later, a car may drive up–oftentimes a rented limo with driver–an Asian couple alights. They take a peek. And then they leave. No big deal. The Carabinieri sit motionless in their purring vehicle. Nothing strange is going on.

What everyone is peeking at is the 'Hole of Rome,' the famous keyhole through which the dome of Saint Peter can be clearly seen at the other end of a secret courtyard. The trees in the Order's garden romantically frame the perfect image.

Image copyright Gary Arndt

It may be a cliché, but the ritual of the "peek" is always a touching moment, like a sudden row of multiple stone arches, or harp music in a classical composition. There's something oddly sentimental in leaning forward, closing one eye and looking at il Cupolone, the dome–as we call it here–through one of Rome's most prohibited locations, mainly because the show through the keyhole is one hardly forgettable. This is in fact the only possible contact with what resides beyond the heavy closed doorway. The only exception is possessing an uber-authoritative decree signed by the Knights themselves, allowing the fortunate pilgrim through.

Neither the church of Santa Maria del Priorato, Giovanni Battista Piranesi's XVIII century remodeling work of art commissioned by Cardinal Rezzonico, the courtyard, nor the Order's convent are accessible to the public. What Piranesi's genius was able to rebuild, landscape and decorate cannot be seen in person. Only the Piazza and the famous doorway is for everyone to have. A consolation prize.

Sure, it would be great to continue the visit and see the church. But you can't.

One must be content with the emptiness of the ivory Piazza. Appreciating subtraction and absence; and basking in its silence. I like to come up here to peek through a keyhole, squint at the white of a marble facade, and drink up the deep greens of the cascading ivy, the cypress and the palms caressed by the sun.

Image copyright Gary Arndt

Growing hope

As I was walking in the midday heat, eyes glued to pavement, head buzzing with overlapping worries and thoughts, my eyes fell on an encouraging image.

This little plant was able to see daylight, stubbornly creeping up through thick layers of dry dirt, asphalt and grime. And mind you, it hasn't rained here in over 2 months. I stared down at this perfect image of strength and will, and understood its message.

A small, dusty sapling was teaching me a huge lesson.

Filming The Life Aquatic with Steve ZIssou in Anzio

Daybreak at Anzio, 2003

This photo was taken on a chilly December morning on the Anzio coastline during a day filming. Part of the reduced crew I was working with and I were waiting for the Belafonte ship to sail by for a second unit shot. We sat there in awe of this beautiful sky, hoping the moment could be extended.

During the filming of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, this sunrise on the calm Anzio waters is among the fondest memories of those busy days.

Death by Oreos

This made me laugh. Considering my epitaph will read 'She Died by Cheese,' and my obsession with Oreo cookies, this twist on Whistler's Mother looked like a viable alternative.

Death by Oreos, 2006 - by Daniela Edburg


See the complete Drop Dead Gorgeous image gallery, and read an interview with the author here.