Lucca

Tortelli lucchese

/ get back, laurettadimmick / 1 Comment
Any foods prepared in Lucca, Italy are automatically known as “lucchese.”
Makes sense, right?
totelli
 I’ve discovered to my absolute delight that one of the most well-known and delicious primi piatti on many menus in Lucca is special type of meat ravioli. What sets this pasta apart immediately is that has a very bright yellow color, for, as it turns out, it is made with eggs and flour. Typically, pasta in Tuscany isn’t made with eggs; such pastas are more common up north, the traditionally wealthier section of Italy.
But, this lovely pasta fresca is rolled, cut in circles, and stuffed with a mixture of meats often including beef and pork, and served with a meat ragu.

Then there is the whole discussion of ragu. The most popular and widely used sauce in all of Italy is simply known as ragu. Most foreigners think of ragu as a tomato-based sauce, but it is actually a meat-based sauce, with only a small amount of tomato sauce or paste added.

Ragu is usually served with pasta. It often begins with a soffritto, or chopped onions, celery, carrots, and typical seasonings of salt and pepper. Minced beef is added, browned and then the sauce is simmered slowly for several hours to let all the flavors marry, as they say.  I’ve always thought that was a weird use of the word marry, but what do I know?

Italian cuisine is famous for its simplicity and variety with cheese and wine as major components of every Italian food recipe. It is also known for its pasta of different shapes, lengths, and widths and sauces with different ingredients.

Compared to other sauces it is thicker and made creamier by adding milk at the later stage of cooking. It has several different versions, and lamb, poultry, fish, veal, or pork can be used instead of ground beef. Other spices like chilies, peppers, beans, tarragon, and cumin can also be added.

Ragu alla Barese is prepared using horse meat; Ragu alla Napoletana has a lot of tomatoes and uses red wine; Ragu alla Bolognese uses white wine and fewer tomatoes. Ragu alla Bolognese or Bolognese sauce is the most popular version of ragu.

Bolognese sauce originated in Bologna, Italy and dates back to the 15th century. It is a pasta sauce that is meat based and contains a small amount of tomato sauce. It is traditionally served with tagliatelle, green lasagna, and other wide-shaped pasta instead of spaghetti pasta because the sauce holds up better with wider pasta.

Its ingredients include beef, soffritto, pancetta, onions, tomato paste, meat broth, white wine, and cream or milk. Like all other food preparations, Bolognese sauce has different variations. Pork, chicken, veal, rabbit, goose, and other meats can be used instead of beef.

The soffritto is made with celery, carrots, and onions cooked in butter or olive oil. Mushrooms, ham, and sausage are also added together with milk or cream to add more flavors and give it more creaminess. It is usually simmered for at least five hours.

These boots were made for walking

/ get back, laurettadimmick / 2 Comments

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I just noticed that the heels on my boots are almost worn away to almost nothing. But, I can’t take them to a shoe repair shop (does anybody say cobbler anymore, or is that just so Pinocchio?), because I only have one pair with me and even though they are wet and worn down, I still have to wear them!

But, don’t fret, because all my issues are First World problems.  The rest of the world should be so lucky.

I can’t go out and buy another pair of boots here because, for starters, I have longer feet than any Italians you might meet!  I recently moved from Florence to another unbelievably beautiful spot known to the world as Lucca. And, because it is my hope to return to Florence forthwith after a trip home to see my boy and other miscellaneous things, I left a lot of my stuff in Florence with a friend. Including other boots and shoes.  Because I wanted to travel light, you know.  So, in my disciplined packing, I forgot to factor in that it is winter in Italy, which apparently means a lot of rain (who knew? Google? probably. Didn’t think to check that before I left things in Florence. Dumb, dumb, dumb). So, predictably, I expect, it is raining gatti e cani here.  I have a new understanding of the word “cold”.

So, you see how I outsmarted my own damn self, don’t you? Packing light. Torrential rains. Winter. Extra long feet. You get the picture?

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I don’t have a photo of my well-worn boots, but they are riding boots, sort of like this one above, and may I just say that the they are truly gorgeous. There is a lot of irony tied up in my boots that you wouldn’t think about at first glance.

Because, to begin with, these boots were made in Italy, but since Italian women don’t generally have long narrow feet like mine, this size of Italian boot is not generally sold in Italy. I bought mine in Seattle at Nordstrom.

And, on top of the irony, there’s a whole lot of history tied up in that last paragraph. When you think about the rich heritage of the trading and bartering of goods that has been a part of human history reaching as far back as we know it, the mind starts to bend.

The history of commerce is the one thread of the human story that every sentient being lives with all the time because, of all the things that humankind has invented, nothing has ever trumped currency. And the one currency that all people desire is money.

Think about it.

Because, as a very wise man once said over a gorgeous dinner in Morocco one night, “we all know she is right.”