LIFE: Chiavari's Flower Fest

CHIAVARI, Italy – Flower fair this weekend. The streets of old Chiavari resemble walkways to heaven. The heady fragrance emanating from the thousands of flowers and herbal plants on display was hard to resist, not that anyone was thinking about resisting.

There is a part of the Italian Riviera called the Riviera of the Flowers. It’s on the side of the Riviera that goes from Genova toward the south of France. It’s right next to the Riviera of the Palms (See http://thisitalianlife.blogspot.it/2013/03/life-palms-vatican.html  LIFE: Palms@ the Vatican). 

It’s on that side of the Riviera that Italy’s flower industry began. The first flowers to be exported were carnations, followed by roses and violets. The top flower clients were the perfume houses located in and around Grasse, in France.

So the chances are pretty good that my favorite perfume, Chanel No. 5, was made from essence of flowers grown in Italy.  Why the Italians never developed a perfume industry of their own is still a mystery to me, but you have to hand it to the crafty French, they saw an opportunity and they took it.

Italy’s flower industry really took off when the railroad line connecting Liguria with the rest of Europe was completed. The year was 1894.  It wasn’t really an organized industry back then, local flower growers would gather at the train station with boxes of flowers and flower buyers from France, and other parts of Europe, would come in on the train, look over the goods and buy.

Flowers are still one of Italy’s major exports and the center of the flower industry is in the town of San Remo. What that means is no matter where you live in Europe, there’s a good chance that some of the flowers you buy at your local market and florists were grown on Italy’s Riviera of the Flowers.

So this weekend’s flower fest is a tribute to the flower growers. The weather is a little uncertain, but I doubt a little rain is going to keep people away. The whole town is celebrating and many of the bars along the streets hosting the fair have set out pots of blooming flowers on their outdoor tables.

Even the kids were having a good time sniffing and smelling whatever flowers they happened to come across that were at their level. Two seconds after I snapped this photo the little boy on the right spotted his grandmother standing across the way and dashed over to give her legs a hug. 

While most passers-bye were oooing and ahhhing at the beautiful lemon trees, the lemon tree guy was looking rather bored. Hard to believe lemon trees could lose their charm, but then again . . . . . And the kids from the Istituto Agrario in Marsano, Italy’s future flower and herb growers and all around tenders of the land, had a small stand too. To their credit they brought giant pots of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, which smelled absolutely delicious.

AUNTIE PASTA: Erbe della Riviera Ligure

CHIAVARI, Italy – Walked into my favorite greengrocer the other day just in time to see the owner coming in with an armful of fresh marjoram. I had never seen such large stalks of marjoram in my life, they were at least two feet long, but then again my experience with growing marjoram is limited to the 7 or 8 inch stems of my herbs in a pot windowsill garden.

 

 Marjoram

Then I noticed he had also brought in a fresh supply of bay leaf branches and piled them up over in a corner. I have some of their bay leaves in my kitchen that I bought a few weeks ago. They are tied together with some kitchen string and hanging up to dry. Now I have to find a container that is large enough to hold them and still fit in my limited kitchen space. I would have bought some of their marjoram as well if my own little plant wasn’t growing like the weed that it is and producing more marjoram than I can possibly use in a year.

I also bought oregano yesterday, a bouquet of dried Sicilian oregano sealed in a plastic bag. When I got home I beat the (sealed) bag of oregano against the table for about 15 minutes until all the leaves came off leaving behind the dried oregano buds clinging to the top of the now bare stalks. Then I cut the bag open and put the leaves in a container. It didn’t seem to be such a large bouquet when I bought it, but I sure got a good supply of oregano from my small investment.

 Herbes de Provence

There was a time, in my early years in Italy, when I spent many a weekend in the south of France. I always envied the French for being so clever at maximizing whatever they have, and the merchants in Nice for being especially clever. I would look at the bright lemon shaped soaps and the ribbon tied bags of ‘herbes de Provence’, and wonder why the Ligurians didn’t do something similar. Maybe not soap, but how about ‘herbs of the Italian Riviera,’ or something more exotic like ‘erbe della Riviera Ligure.’ That would work.  

I was very sad when I learned that the ‘herbes de Provence’ is just a generic term for herbs found in Provence, typically savory, fennel, basil, thyme and lavender leaves, and   the herbs in the cute little bags don’t actually come from Provence, or even from France.  Most of them come from central and Eastern Europe, North Africa and China. And no one could explain the presense of lavender leaves as the French, especially those from Provence, don’t use lavender leaves in their cuisine.

But that’s not the point. The point is I thought the Ligurians could easily create a thriving cottage industry producing equally adorable ribbon tied sackettes of herbs that are grown in Liguria and could have the DOP designations to prove it. (See: Auntie Pasta PDO, DOP, et all http://thisitalianlife.blogspot.it/2010/02/auntie-pasta-pdo-dop-et-al.html for a PDO, DOP primer). Why they, the Ligurians, didn’t take advantage of their natural bounty was a mystery that puzzled me for quite a while.

Parsley, Basil, Marjoram and Thyme

Then I figured it out. The reason they never did it, nor will they ever do it, is because they use more fresh herbs than dried herbs. Oregano may be exception to the rule, but even the Ligurians bow to the Sicilians when it comes to growing flavorful oregano. Oregano is one of the few herbs that actually tastes better dried so that would work as an herb product, but like I said, the Sicilians have the corner on that market. The herb most associated with Liguria is basil, but dried basil tastes like sawdust and dried parsely isn’t much better. Actually most herbs taste better fresh.

The story still goes round expat circles of the American who used to drive to Nice, some 96 kilometers (120 miles) from Genova, to buy dried parsely from the grocery department of Galleries Layfatte. When asked why, she explained that she had asked every greengrocer in town for dried parsely but there was none to be had. They only had fresh parsely.

But fresh or dried, Italians generally don’t use a lot of herbs in their cooking. And they rarely mix and match. They may use garlic and rosemary for a roast, or oregano, garlic and red pepper for a spaghetti sauce, but they don’t have a large jar of ‘Italian’ herb mix sitting by the stove. They try to bring out the flavor of whatever they are cooking and create a balance between their ingredients and the herbs and spices.

 

 Canata

Today’s recipe is called Canata, it’s a typical recipe from Lazio and it is another example of the simple deliciousness of Italian cuisine. It is very similar to Tuscany’s panzanella and like most authentic Italian recipes it’s a little short on details, but you are all used to that by now, right? There is also a Ligurian version of this summer favorite and probably a version for every other Italian province as well. On the plus side, the ingredients are few, the taste is big, and it’s super easy to make.

Canata

Serves 4

4 tomatoes

4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

Rustic bread, at least three days old, cut in slices (cibatta is ok*)

6-8 fresh basil leaves

Vinegar (red wine or balsamic)

Salt and pepper

Wash the tomatoes in cold water, cut them in half and rub them on the bread slices. Then cut the tomatoes into smaller pieces, put them in a large salad bowl, drizzle them with olive oil, a little vinegar, salt and pepper. Tear the bread (by hand) into bite size pieces and add them to the tomatoes. Tear the basil (by hand) into smaller pieces and add it to the salad. Mix all the ingredients together making sure the bread is well coated with the juices. You can do this with a large spoon but it’s better if you use your hands.

Suggestions: If your bread is really stale, but really really stale, you might want to dampen the pieces with a little water to soften them before adding them to the other ingredients. However if the bread isn’t stale enough, it will turn to mush if you dampen it with water. You can also add other vegetables to this salad, such as celery or sliced artichoke hearts, the ones that have been preserved in oil.

LIFE: Table Talk

Guest blogger Elisa Scarton Detti recalls her first encounter with an Italian food critic. Of course the food critic was only three years old and the encounter took place in a nursery school (which in Australia are called kindergartens), but here in Italy food critics are born, not made.

 

Elisa Scarton Detti and the Tuscan Twenty

Table Talk

By: Elisa Scarton Detti

As I tucked into my second plate of beautifully dressed fennel with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, I knew this was the life. Content, I nudged my fellow diner, looking forward to sharing my delight over the salad greens. As I open my mouth to speak, my neighbour finished licking all the dressing off his last piece of fennel and dumped it unceremoniously onto his napkin along with the others.

“Finnochio fa schifo,” he said to me as he wiped his fingers on his smock. I didn’t agree that fennel was gross, but I couldn’t exactly start an argument about it. He was three years old and we were sitting in mini chairs around a mini table in the middle of a typical lunch at a country Tuscan kindergarten.

I was tempted to snort and tell this kid that down under in my home country of Australia, little brats weren’t served lunch at kindergarten, let alone the expertly prepared, hot two-course meal he just devoured. But then I remembered that an English-language aide teacher should have a certain level of graciousness and sophistication, so I just muttered ‘you evil little thing’ in English and left it at that.

In my years of teaching English to Italian kindergartners, I learnt a lot of things. I learnt that those under five show no interest in reciting numbers in another language when they could be covering themselves in paint. I learnt that you should never leave a four year old with a handful of plastic coins unless you expect her to eat them. And I learnt that Pingu the television penguin is not an effective language teaching aide when you consider that he only speaks in indistinguishable honks.

When I look back at my experience of the Italian education system, I look with the eyes of an expat who is about to become a parent. In a few years’ time my little brats will be attending an Italian kindergarten, elementary school and hopefully, if they don’t decide to pursue professional sport or super stardom in Hollywood, secondary school. Will I send them to an Italian school or an international school?

My strongest memories of the Italian state school system are wrapped up in school lunches. I still enviously and fondly remember the meals we were served every midday in the kindergarten parlour with its Post-it note yellow walls and scarred linoleum. Slices of tender veal cutlets, ricotta ravioli with sage butter and shaved parmesan, steamed long beans with a tomato ragu sauce! As creative as my mother could be back in Australia, her standard school lunch consisted of ham and bread.

Of course, the Italian children I taught were disadvantaged in other ways. No Australian teacher in her right mind would leave an inexperienced 18-year-old foreigner (me) with two dozen under-fives, while she went outside to have lengthy mobile phone chats. In my first year of teaching, I grew eyes in the back of my head just so I could keep two on the little boy who had a perchance for pulling down other kids’ pants.

When I moved to an Italian elementary school, the classes I observed were sometimes haphazard, the teachers weren’t always experts in their fields and the lack of extra-curricular activities was surprising to a young woman who had been forced to play tennis, dance in school plays and head a debate team throughout her schooling years.

There’s no doubt the Italian education ethos is different from its international schools, where everything is as pristine and polished as a couch that still has its plastic cover on. In the international school I taught at, there were no lovingly prepared school lunches, but the education was as proper as any private school in the U.S or the UK. But it was an utterly un-Italian education, devoid of the natural affection and passion the country is famous for and devoid of the almost subconscious appreciation and instruction of European art and culture.

Over the years, expat friends and parents have asked what school system I recommend. Their number one concern is always whether their children will suffer because they don’t speak the language. I honestly don’t know whether local or international schooling is best in Italy, so instead I tell my friends about the beautiful Romanian children I taught when I was at my Tuscan kindergarten.

On mini chairs on the other side of the mini table on that faithful day when were eating dressed fennel there sat four Romanian cousins. Three girls and a boy, they’d only be in Italy for a couple of months and were as shy as could be. But I remember as they watched Mr Brat discard his fennel, the little boy turned to me and said with perfect fluency, “Questo qua é piuttosto un rompipalle”. I couldn’t fault his Italian and I couldn’t fault his logic. That kid really was a pain in the butt.

About the author

Elisa Scarton Detti is an Australian journalist who came to Tuscany for a year, fell in love and decided to stick around. Not one to keep amazing holiday destinations to herself, she now writes a blog and travel guide (www.maremma-tuscany.com) about the infinitely beautiful Tuscan Maremma, so that others can get a taste of la dolce vita.