Trek Home

Ugh...packing and anticipating the looooooong flight doesn't make for a great day. On the up side, it's an absolutely glorious, sunny day. The drive from Villa Lempa takes us up close and personal to the Gran Sasso range and I snapped some photos out the window of the car while zipping along on the autostrada that almost captures it.

This drive took us through the longest dual tunnel in Europe....6 miles long. (Two tunnels with two lanes each way.) It's the dual tunnel thing that makes the record book. It's actually only the 3rd longest in Italy.  Fortunately, I was kind of snoozing and missed a great deal of it since tunnels make me claustrophobic and anxious.

The trip was uneventful and boring thereafter, not to mention the flight home. It's time to plan the NEXT trip to Italy!!!

Oops....

Oops....we're supposed to be seeing Abruzzo but we're staying 15 minutes from Ascoli Piceno, a town on the border of Abruzzo but it's in Le Marche. Our landlord said it's a beautiful place to visit so that was our plan for our last tourist day before the trek back to Rome to go home.
It was a gorgeous, sunny day for our short trip through beautiful mountain terrain to Ascoli Piceno. We parked near one of the main squares where a giant market was happening and found a tourist "train" that we had been told was a good way to see the city so we hopped on. it was a good orientation to all the things we needed to see on foot and a nice overview of the city. It's true...it's a lovely city and it was a great way to spend our last day.

The market had many porchetta trucks (see yesterday's post) and we felt an obligation to try another porchetta sandwich for comparison with the one in Teramo. It was even better! I want someone to open a porchetta truck in San Mateo!! A bit more wandering the town and back to our nice cottage for our own Italian cooking (pasta with sauce with mushrooms and prosciutto) and packing up for the trip home.

Moving Day

We decided we needed to go to Teramo in the northern part of Abruzzo. There are four provinces in Abruzzo and Teramo was the only one we hadn't yet visited. I found a cottage available for a short stay and we left Pescara province to go to the town of Villa Lempa in Teramo province. We went to the town of Teramo, walked about a bit and then saw a porchetta stand. Porchetta is a dish we have always wanted to try but had not encountered before. Porchetta is a small pig that is boned, stuffed with herbs, rolled and then baked over many hours which renders the fat and leaves a crispy skin on the outside. It's always sold on food trucks as a sandwich and the whole idea just sounded delicious. IT WAS! We got a sandwich (which always includes a bit of crispy skin) to share and sat on a park bench near by and had our lunch then walked a bit more before continuing on to our next stop.

Civitella from a distance

Unfortunately, the road out of town was totally blocked by some sort of bridge construction and we had to come up with a work around that took us through some nice countryside and windy roads up the mountain to the town of Civitella del Tronto, named one of Italy's 500 most beautiful towns. It WAS beautiful perched up on top of a hill. We walked the streets of the town (needed to walk off the porchetta) and enjoyed the views.

Civitella street

Then we made our way to our new home which turned out to be a very comfortable two bedroom cottage in a nice location. Not a bad place to spend our last couple of nights on the road.

Blue Monday

Blue because we wake up just a touch hungover either from all the wine or just plain exhaustion from the incredibly fun but incredibly busy last four days. We also have to make a decision as to what to do next since our time with Leonardo has come to an end. We make a slow start on the day and decide we will stay in our current lodging for one more night and explore some of the small towns nearby. The area is beautiful countryside with mountains and lush agricultural valleys with lots of vineyards and olive groves.

The towns tend to be on a hill with a town park area on the plateau overlooking a valley. We stopped in several towns and just walked through the main streets. In the town of Montebello, we had a little difficulty finding the town center and ended up on a dead end, ridiculously narrow street ( my personal navigational specialty is directing Dick into one of these) which required him to back up and attempt to turn around while the locals watched with interest as he did a bit of damage to the rear of the car on a stone wall. Ah well, the trip wouldn't be complete without at least one of these events. In one of the small towns we encountered two guys going into a local coffee spot carrying traditional musical instruments. One of the instruments resembles a bagpipe and is made out of a sheep's belly. The other guy had a wooden flute. I asked if I could take a picture and they agreed, played me a short tune and then asked for money...oh well.

Something we found interesting was the manner in which grapes are grown. Rather than the rows that we are accustomed to seeing, the vines are planted in a "pergola" in which the vines are grown like a roof on a pergola. On the road to our agriturismo, there were vineyards of both types planted next to each other.

Pergola in foreground, typical CA style rows in background

Under the pergola

After a morning of cruising, we had a late lunch at a perfectly OK restaurant and went home for an afternoon nap. Our dinner was prepared by our agriturismo hostess. She made the local specialty, "arrosticini", skewers of small pieces of lamb grilled (by her husband.) Of course, she had to give us an antipasto of meats and cheeses and a first course of homemade pasta and was quite disappointed when we declined dessert. It was a much needed early night.

Oil and Wine

Sun 10/13/2013

We were allowed enough time for a shower and to pack for our next destination in the province of Pescara. On the way, we stopped at a Franciscan abbey that dates to the 12th century for a look around and to admire the view from the abbey looking out over the Adriatic. The abbey was very simple and beautiful with a peaceful courtyard. It is also the site of the oldest known olive tree, 1000 years old. (It's now dead.)

View from abbey over the Adriatic

1000 year old olive tree

Abbey garden

From the abbey, we drove along the coast, known as the "trabocchi coast" because of the fishing devices known as trabocchi that are all along this area, many of them 100's of years old and still in use.   Somehow the topic of gelato arose and Leonardo insisted we stop at "the best gelateria on the coast." We couldn't fight it.....we had gelato.

We checked into La Rustica, our agriturismo lodging, had a little over an hour before we were off again to the village of Bucchianico for an olive oil tasting and a visit to an olive oil museum created by a local family that has been in the olive oil business for generations. The town of Bucchianico's claim to fame is as the home of Camillus de Lellis, founder of a religious order that cares for the sick. He originated the symbol of the red cross hundreds of years before the international organization was founded and this is the symbol for the town of Bucchianico.

By now, it's 8:30PM and we have been on the go since 6:30AM and we now are on our way to dinner and wine tasting. (We have now realized that we're waaay too old for this pace no matter how much fun we're having.)

We enter a very nice and quiet restaurant and decide to make a stop at the bathroom and Leonardo says fine but don't look down on your way there or back. We obey (of course) and subsequently find that there is a window in the floor to the cellar below, our next stop, where there is lots of noise and activity. The cellar is a crazy place with hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine, tons of people milling around eating and drinking. As you enter the room, there is a bar of sorts with Claudio, the sommelier, presiding. He knows we're coming and knows that Dick knows a thing or two about wine.

Claudio

The bar where Claudio presides

He chats a bit and suggests some prosecco to begin the evening. In the meantime, waiters pass through continually with fabulous hors d'oeuvres to nibble as you drink. We rapidly progress to prosecco number two.

There are multiple rooms in the cellar. One room has a table with meats of all kinds and is also the place where the waiters place the hors d'oeuvres after they have passed through. Another room has a table with cheeses of all sorts. And then there are several rooms that just have stores and stores of wine. Dick has died and gone to heaven. I'm worried that he will never leave this place. 

Cheese table

Meat table

 We cruise around nibbling and visiting with Claudio quite regularly as he pours tastes of one wine after another (generous tastes, I might add) progressing through whites and onto reds and visits with Dick and questions him about every wine and asks his opinion, all in Italian.  At some point Leonardo tells us we should go upstairs for DINNER (???) after we have had our weight in hors d'oeuvres not to mention significant portions of wine. We think we have won when we tell him there is NO WAY we can eat dinner and he accedes (we think.) Then there appears the waiter with plates of cubed grilled tenderloin of beef for us followed by something pasta (which we now can't remember) and then finally dessert. By then, we've been there over three hours and are ridiculously stuffed and possibly un po' drunk. We line up the ten bottles from which we've tasted for a memento picture.

 It's 12:45 when we get back to our lodging. We have had a truly unforgettable day (except for that pasta dish....blame the wine.)

Fish

Sun 10/13/2013
We barely had time to change out of our muddy clothes from the truffle hunt and have our delicious truffle containing breakfast when it was time to get our aprons on for our fish class. Giorgio, the chef, was our instructor and he was tough! First, the octopus needed to go into the pot since it takes a long cooking time to get tender.

Next, we had to debeard and clean mussels and then open them and stuff them with a bread crumb mixture for a mussels gratin.  We also left some of the mussels to just be steamed. Next up was the cleaning of squid. Definitely a task I'd never tried before and will likely avoid in the future despite my new hands on knowledge though it was an interesting exercise. I have a new understanding of squid anatomy!

There were elements of squid preparation that were less than appetizing though the ultimate outcome was a success.

Next up: scaling, cleaning and fileting a dorato, a type of sea bass. These were whole fish that had not been gutted. Again, Giorgio was a tough task master making sure that the inside of the fish was spic and span, no scales were left, the filets were thorough and the pin bones were all tweezed out.

                   

The clams were clean and required no preparation on our part, just a demonstration by Giorgio of the proper way to make spaghetti vongole. And also how to cook scampi.....giant prawn/tiny lobster variety. While he made the spaghetti vongole, Giorgio gave us a glass of wine and the now cooked mussels and scampi so that we wouldn't perish from starvation. And then we were sent to the dining room to sit down for our lunch of fileted dorato and spaghetti vongole along with a squid and octopus salad.

Squid and octopus salad

And that's how fish is cooked in Abruzzo!

Truffles

Sun 10/13/2013
Wake up call at 6:15, coffee 6:30, into the van at 6:45 to go meet the truffle hunter. Truffles are a big deal in this part of Italy. They are native to the area and are a source of big income to the finders. The white truffle season is only about 2 months long beginning in Oct and these are the most valuable truffles. Black truffles can be hunted pretty much year around and are a bit less precious. The sun was just coming up when we met Primiano and his dogs Ruby, Lapo and Miss.

Bad pic because the dogs don't want to pose. Ruby is the star, a poodle mix that is commonly used for truffle hunting, Lapo is a young hound mix, (brown and white) and Miss is a spaniel mix, also young. Lapo and Miss are still "in training." So we followed Primiano through the woods on dirt tracks for a while then we all got out and began our truffle search in the forest. The dogs LOVE doing this job! The forest is dense and hilly (and muddy) and we hadn't walked long before Ruby told us she had found something. Primiano began carefully excavating in the area Ruby had spotted and found our first white truffle of the day.

First white truffle of the day

It wasn't long before Ruby found another one. Then after some trekking, Ruby again found something....another white truffle. We were leaving that spot when Lapo began frantically digging in almost the exact same location so Primiano started excavating the area and one after another truffles became apparent, a total of 8 all in the same spot. The largest one was 2-3 cm diameter.

Everyone, including Primiano and the dogs, were SOOO excited. In the time span of about an hour "we" had found about 1500 Euros worth of truffles....an EXTREMELY good day!

Leonardo with the largest white truffle

We trekked a bit bit more including going over a stream, up and down hills without more white truffles but as we were going back toward our starting point the dogs went through some thick underbrush and Miss announced she had a find and Primiano went through the brush to see that the dogs had found 4 nice sized black truffles. And Primiano thought that
Miss had eaten one more.

Black truffles

Primiano

Primiano gave us a white and a black truffle to take back to the hotel to be cooked with eggs for our late breakfast. Delizioso!!

This outing was incredibly fun. The idea of TRUFFLE HUNTING had never occurred to us. The weather couldn't have been more perfect, the landscape couldn't have been more beautiful and the walking through the woods was just good clean fun!! 

Primiano carefully digging while everyone watches

Ruby and Miss

Ruby has found a truffle! Lapo on right

Just Some Appetizers

Sat 10/12/2013
Time to move to Villa Danilo in the Chieti Province of Abruzzo. Leonardo had us follow him to the town of Sulmona where he had someone come get our car to deliver it at our last hotel site. We went to the town of Sulmona for the Sat. market, one of the largest in the area. I had a goal...I needed a cheap pair of serviceable shoes for a muddy walk scheduled for Sun. We walked through the market admiring the gorgeous produce and checked out all the "stuff" being sold (tools, kitchenware, clothing, purses, all kinds of food, etc, etc.) and I was able to score a pair of 6 Euro high top sneakers. Sulmona is a pretty town with a big chunk of a Roman aqueduct running by the market.

Roman aqueduct

It's the birthplace of Ovid

Ovid

and it's famous for "confetti", candies with a hard shell that are used at weddings, baptisms and parties of all kinds. The  candies are made into flowers or left as singles in every color and flavor. The most typical is almond with a candy shell but the variety is huge. I picked up some "confetti" to bring home, we checked out the cathedral then Leonardo took us to lunch where we were going to just have "some antipasti and soup." HAH! The antipasti was an endless parade of delicious appetizers that included meats, cheeses, farro salad, breads, involtini, vegetables cooked kind of tempura style and many more than I can remember. The "soup" was pasta fagioli, a VERY hearty bean and pasta soup. Then Leonardo insisted we have a dessert...."it's small, we can share it." HAH! It was multiple desserts all on one plate. They rolled us out, stopping to talk to the chef on the way out.
Then into the van for the 1 hour drive to Villa Danilo in the Chieti area of Abruzzo, an area of forests and rolling hills with a strong agricultural tradition.  The hotel is a 4 star hotel in the middle of nowhere. We had a couple hours of break before gathering for a beer and then pizza. (After all, it had been at least 3 hours since we ate.) The hotel has a state of the art but traditional woodburning pizza oven so Giorgio, the chef, showed us how to make pizza. Evil Leonardo said we HAD to try their semifreddo for dessert even though none of us could come close to finishing our pizza so he ordered a mint and chocolate semifreddo. Delicious but one bite was more then enough by that time. An early night because Sun was to be an early morning wake up.

Food, Food, Food

Fri 10/11/2013
Another cooking day on Fri, this time meat and desserts. First we started by preparing lamb racks for the oven by "Frenching" the bones. Then we learned how to bone, butterfly and tie a leg of lamb. We also learned how to prepare a stew of braised wild boar (cinghiale), a skill that isn't too likely to be used anytime soon though the technique could apply to other meats and the marinade and sauce was outstanding. Next up was dessert. We made a tiramisu' and pizzelles, a type of cookie that is typical to Abruzzo and is made in something like a waffle iron contraption over the stove.
When we finished with our  food class, a group of Leonardo's friends from the UK showed up and we spent time chatting with them until lunch when we enjoyed the fruits of our morning labors with lots of wine and conversation. In addition to the foods prepared in the morning, we had a first course (primo) of our malfatti pasta that we had made the day before served with a light and delicious pumpkin sauce.
Next up, we all (UK folks included) set out in the van to visit a woman who makes artisanal cheeses in the old traditional way. The route took us over and through the mountains of the Gran Sasso along sheep paths that have been used for centuries.

We saw some giant flocks of sheep and stopped to chat with the shepherds and to admire the sheep dogs that are used, including one group that had 2 puppies in training. After a stop in a small town for an espresso (and grappa for some), we arrived at the cheese place. The woman has received an exemption from the European Union to use the ancient techniques that require the use of straw baskets to shape and store the cheese.

Cheese lady

Yum

Newly made cheese

Some of her baskets are over 100 years old. We watched ricotta being made and had a tasting of all her products, including sheep jerky....yeah, not a cheese, but there are lots of sheep around. The fresh sheep's milk ricotta is absolutely delicious! All the cheeses were good but that one was special.
We drove back to the hotel to drop off the visitors and headed off to an area that is famous for producing saffron. We went to visit with a guy that grows the saffron producing crocuses, a variety that blooms in the fall. When we got to the field, the farmer saw that the first 3 blossoms were visible, which he picked to show us the stamens which become saffron after they are dried.                          

Crocus field for saffron production

Now it was dinnertime and Leonardo took us to a special restaurant called Osteria Borgo dei Fumari in a nearby town. The restaurant is comprised of multiple small rooms on multiple levels created by restoring and combining two old structures and is beautiful and elegant. We stood in the kitchen while Lino, our chef showed us how to prepare saffron risotto then we were seated in one of the rooms for dinner where we enjoyed the delicious risotto, a fried bread (made of pizza dough and a traditional dish in Abruzzo)  served with some lentils, onion marmalade and a couple other things that I have forgotten, then a pasta with vegetables...kind of a weird dinner but everything was wonderful.

Dessert was a flan made with pears and parmesan that was totally unique and absolutely wonderful. Leonardo said that it's the one recipe that Lino refuses to share. As we left and Lino was telling us goodbye, Dick asked for the dessert recipe and HE GAVE IT TO HIM!! I'll give it a try and hope that he wrote it down without leaving anything out.
Another ridiculously full day comes to an end!