Polpette – Meatball recipe

We live in a time where nearly one third of the food the Western world purchases on a weekly basis, is discarded without ever nearing the plate. 

Mounds of costly industrially washed and packaged salad are thrown away by the ton. Loaves of bread harden to rocky, unyielding firmness, forgotten in brown paper bags. Not to mention the precious pesticide-free produce bought at organic farmer’s markets: chucked away, blemished and unused. Gallons of milk go sour on a global scale in bachelor refrigerators worldwide. 

The waste factor is disconcerting. When carelessly over-shopping for our meals, we are sometimes oblivious of the fact that there are countries where staple foods and water are luxury items.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Still Life with a Basket of Fruit, 1601

When I was living alone in my tiny studio apartment before my son was born, I used to recklessly buy fruit by the crate. Oranges, bananas, apples, grapes, plums, kiwi, papaya, mangoes and pineapples; I would gracefully assemble them in large colorful bowls, and watch them rot. In this age of waste and wicked dietary consumerism, wisdom and wallet prescribe we make an approach towards growing our own produce, forage what Nature provides locally and start recycling leftover foods.

Meatballs are the preeminent meat recycle. Whatever meat is left over can work for polpette, even fish! So yesterday’s roast, leftover beef stew, half a chicken, pork chops, veal cutlets…anything goes. I mince different kinds of meat together, cooked and/or raw, throwing in a few slices of salumi too, to add flavor. This recipe is calculated for an average leftover amount of meat equal to 400 gr (2 cups, or 14 oz). But you can obviously tweak the proportions to your own taste. 

400 g (14 oz) ground meat
1 slice of rustic bread, crust removed
1 glass of whole milk
2 eggs
50 g (1/4 cup) Parmigiano, grated
100 g (1/2 cup) mortadella
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 fresh basil leaves
Breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper

Soak the bread in the milk. Mince the meats in the blender or a food chopper with the eggs, the Parmigiano, garlic, mortadella and the basil, seasoning with salt and freshly milled pepper to taste.

Wring the excess milk out of the bread and add it to the mixture. This is my favorite part: Ravel's Bolero is playing in the background as you transfer the meat mix into a large bowl and begin kneading with your hands, adding all the love and sensual feelings possibly imaginable. Blow kisses and smile as you do this, it adds character to your food. And it turns meatballs into an alluring seductive dish. Shape the polpette into billiard ball-size orbs and coat with breadcrumbs, and flatten them slightly into patties.

While sipping on a chilled glass of lager, heat a good amount of vegetable oil in a large pan and fry the meatballs for 5 minutes, constantly turning to avoid uneven cooking. Cool them on a paper towel and season with more salt if necessary.

Serve with sautéed peas, lavish amounts of mashed potatoes, crusty bread on the side, and wearing nothing but your apron and chef's hat.

Image © misya.info

Buon Appetito!

Diary from the set, part III

I leave in a few hours, I'm posting my last journal entry from last week as I set off for 3 more days abroad. Hopefully no more hotel/food horror stories...

Day 3 - Wednesday April 29th - sunset

This is the view I moved to today. The previous days' Overlook hotel was so noisy and brutally smelly that the few of us crew members staying there provoked a Bounty-like mutiny and demanded we change. So here we are.

A small agriturismo (working farm with b&b-style rooms) overlooking the splendid Lepini hills of the Frosinone region. Quiet, cozy and clean. Downstairs the signora is simmering asparagus for the ravioli filling and I can’t wait to tie an apron around my ample hips and lend a hand in her country kitchen. Outside in the yard, a suckling calf is scampering around its mother, cowbell ding-aling-ing along. The thundering sunset is offering up a spectacular skyscape.

My child spoke to me on the phone and closed our overlapping conversation with a heartwarming ti voglio bene, mamma – "I love you mommy" which made me melt with happiness. Tomorrow at this time I will be racing back into his arms, waking him from his sleep if need be to kiss his face, his wee sweaty hairline, his tiny chub hands, his feet.

This is where we shot today, and where we'll return after the long weekend home. A Cistercian abbey perched on top of a hill in the small town of Casamari.





Ciao amici miei, thanks for reading!

Diary from the set, part II

Today I am one year older than yesterday. It doesn't feel any different. Unless you count the apricot-sized lump in my throat every time I softly pronounce age to self. Looking in the mirror, I can see the expression lines creeping around my eyes. Too many smiles have left their mark. A handful of silver threads in my hair and my pear-shaped body remind me every day that the spring season is ending, my oak leaves turning tawny.

But not today. Today I feel young and free. Lighthearted and happy. I am with a special boy who grabs my hand and kisses my cheek at the supermarket. He picks out the mortadella from the deli counter and decides for the olive oil crackers, I smell the melons and teach him the word "ananas," Italian for pineapple.

He's becoming too heavy for the seat behind the handlebar, and I had to give in to purhcasing a plastic Pluto doll, despite the fact we have one already. E's eyes sparkle in the Roman sunlight and the warm wind toustles his fine ash blond hair. he looks up at me and says, ero triste mamma, finalmente sei qui - I was sad, mommy, finally you're here.

Am I or not the luckiest birthday girl alive?


Whenever I flush the toilet, the pipes play a deep trombone note that wakes my entire floor. The new hotel is closer to the new filming locations and thankfully doesn't smell like smoke. It is curiously however somehow connected by some bizarre vent system, to the kitchen. So this morning my acute sense of smell was not tickled by coffee and warm croissants but rather by yesterday's minestrone. Not exactly the best wake up call. As I said, not all that glitters is gold. The movie business, and all things connected to it, housing arrangements and food included, can get quite stank at times like these.

It's hard to go back to basics and live in a place with no wireless connection, poor cell reception and cable TV. I've always dreamt of the benefits of living the simple life, but now I can't blog nor be reachable other that on the 3-star hotel land line. Having left my small child in the care of my elderly osteoporotic mother and a non-native nanny, phone communication makes me feel safer. It also cuts down on the guilt factor if I can call my son and coo for a few minutes listening to his stories of lions, dragons and powerful diggers.

The crew's been scattered among 3 different hotels varying in distance from the locations. I’m 5km away, some are a 10-minute drive away, some have to travel a half-hour. But the inverse proportion is closer-crappier, distant-deluxe. For some reason I got stuck with the former. The fun, younger crowd is enjoying saunas and excellent meals 50km away. I'm writing this not sure I can post it before I return home on Friday. And the food here has yet to jolt my tastebuds out of apathy.

Sermoneta, castle 

Yestarday's rain and curvy roads to get here added nausea to the chill.

But this is what must be done, this is what it means to work as a single parent. I'm the breadwinner. The working girl. The sole provider. I’m so tired and worn out, though. I'd like to be home now, snuggled up to my sleeping child and not here in a squallid hotel, with torn towels and noisy pipes. I don't care for luxury, I don't mind the smell after all, I'm easy and I'm flexible. But sometimes I feel I'm giving so much more than I'm getting back. And right now the lonliess and lack of love is making me cry.

The shower towel in my bathroom...

I have to pack my script bag and shlep it to set now, because the call time is on. Today we shoot in a Medieval abbey, I'll take pictures and hopefully post them in my next update.

Ciao.

Diary from the set, part I

I lied. I said I would post from the road, but I did not.

I'm home for the weekend. On a National holiday the crew gets May 1st off, European Labor Day. I've just returned to my desk from a lovely picnic with friends. We spent the morning playing football and chasing butterflies, the park was noisy with kids' laughter, jaws crunching on fava beans and Pecorino, our posse drunk on Roman sun and strawberry Prosecco.

The work week was good, quite productive despite the unforgiving rain and the usual difficulties of location shooting. The living conditions were tough, the food horrid but the setting was very pretty. I wrote every day, hoping to be able to post, unsuccessfully. I kept drafts and decided to blog them now, one day at a time. I am loyal to my friends and readers, so a promise is a promise where I come from. My wish is to include you in a retroactive journey to the places and feelings I lived in, over the last 4 days.

...

Here's what I would have posted, had there been a chance. They are more like journal entries than posts. A list of laments in many cases:

Day 1: Monday, April 27th - after a very bad dinner experience

The room smells like old cigarettes despite the no smoking sign. At the hotel restaurant I waited close to 2 hours to be served a plate of cold pasta with nondescript meat sauce immediately followed by a dry breast of roasted chicken onto which an entire pepper mill had been spilled. I'm in a rusty mood because I can't understand bad restoration, but contrary to the current predicament, my day did start well. I spent the morning filming in a gorgeous setting, surrounded by lush vegetation, breathtaking vistas and in good company.

Our lead actress and 3 extras in full costume during a bucolic scene.

The garden of Ninfa is a fairytale haven, esconced at the foot of a sheer limestone mountainside, only a few miles from the sea. Monarch butterfiles and sparrows shared the air surrounding us; we walked amid clusters of snow white roses and languid albino wisteria, 6ft shrubs of laurel and sage lining the gravel paths that crept around the citrus groves and 7 natural springs that snaked around the garden. Being the flora-freak and frustrated garden-less green thumb that I am, I felt like I was in paradise.

In the half-hour necessary to build the track and the crane used for the first shot of the day, I wandered around the property shooting pictures, smelling the perfumy flowers and taking in the surrounding beauty, drinking it in overflowing gulps. The stony, half crumbled Medieval structures stood standing like empty masks, lay forgotten on a pristine lawn. The beads of dew dotting the yellow acacia blossoms and the Japanese camelia flowers glistened in the pale morning sun, the birdsong sang to my heart notes of peaceful melody. I was ecstatic. These are the days in which I realize how lucky I am to do what I do. My job gives me the opportunity to visit wonders the existence of which I otherwise never would’ve known.


Things started to take on a bad fold when at luchtime, we had to fight for silence after a large group of school kids on a field trip began screaming and racing around the gardens in headless chicken manner. Soon after, dark clouds began to gather overhead and a strong wind began to howl furiously, shaking flowered shrubs and lifting billowing clouds of dust. Trying to take notes and keep track of dialogue and film stock use, continuity and camera reports while marking a 90-page script in a twister-like storm is not easy. I sat on my usual applebox by the wide angle lens camera and was nearly swept off my ample derriere by a strong gust, while the second camera, operating on a steadicam had to give up on a leading shot down a tree-lined path beacuse the wind was so strong, it threw the 300 lb operator+rig off balance. I hate the rain when I’m stuck in it, and the show must go on.


We wrapped the day after completing our 10-hour shift, slapped by violent buckets of chilled water and aggressive gales. After a curvy drive uphill, I walked Marcel Marceau-style into the musty hotel reception, grabbed my key and made for the shower. I must say the little cubicle washing enclosure did restore heat to my limbs. It was a mystic experience. At no less than 110°, I scorched my skin and stood chin to chest under its strong jet for something like 20 minutes, singing the aria "All'alba vincerò" at full lung capacity.

Face flushed by the searing ablution, skin balmed with almond oil and hair wet due to malfunctioning hairdryer, I wafted down to the reception to check my email in the small internet point (a desk in a corner of a dimly lit room). Unfortunately that's all I could do. 25 people in line and no time to log onto Blogger. Too lazy to go out again, discouraged by all the rain that had soaked my bones and that kept pouring in sheets, I opted for a meal in the hotel. Big Mistake. Long wait. Bad food = bad mood. I apologize for the tone, but I am fuming as I write this, knowing it will not be posted.

It's late now, and my eyes are closing. I will try and steer my dreams back to that idyllic garden and like a bee, travel from flower to flower. I’ll transform into a Kafkian bug or a nimble lizard and slip from rock to grass in rapid bursts of cold blooded energy. I'll become a sparrow, diving down from my corner nest barely touching the surface of a stream down below. I'll be a carp, under the surface of the lagoon, calmly observing humans above the shimmering surface in their dry aquariums.

I'll wake tomorrow to another day in a beautiful place. It's Sermoneta domani, where we shoot a crowd scene in the Medieval town's stone alleys. The weather forecast isn't promising, but at least we'll find mushrooms.


Buonanotte.

Another film, another suitcase

On the road again... This is what my job entails. Packing another suitcase, spending lonely nights in one more anonymous hotel room, and eating hotel food. Good luck.

I'm off on a week of filming on location around the Lazio region. I shall be visiting Norma, Ceccano, Sermoneta, Ninfa and Casamari, among others. Click on the names of the locations to view some random images uploaded from the web. They seem beautiful, and being the setting for the Medieval story the film tells, they should be laden with character and history. There'll be beauty abundant.

The suitcase contains my grandmother's cookbook and my notes. My camera and my laptop. I've got the script marked with the scenes to be shot, those still owing and the few omitted. I've got my stopwatch and my stapler. My pens and markers. I've packed my rain gear and one pair of heels for the evenings. I've got it all but one. I'll be leaving my baby behind. He stays with his loving nonna and his dutiful nanny, this time. I'd love to bring him along, but for just a few days it's not worth it. He's recouping from a high weekend fever and very comfy in his cozy home.

I'll be back in time for my birthday, May 2nd.

In the meantime, I shall be posting:
a) quick updates from the set;
b) simple recipes, comfort food Linus blankets, and any interesting fares I'll be encountering during my travels;
c) photos and images captured on the road, etc.

I may not have time to visit each and every one of you, or be able to comment on your posts, but I will be traveling solo with you and your hearts with me the entire time.

Ciao amici, buona domenica!