Making Homemade Pasta in Rome

Back in the fall, Brad and I took a trip up to the big mall at the north end of Rome and bought a cheap pasta maker (for €20, I recall), along with other household items. 

It didn’t get much use at first (as Brad warned me it wouldn’t). But after Christmas, when our other holiday visitors had gone home, Lily stayed on and was joined by her boyfriend, Luke. For a few days over Epiphany, a friend theirs, Sidney, now living in Spain, also came up for the weekend. 

Lily and Sidney at Ostia Antica ruins near Rome (January 2017)

They are a fun-loving group and currently in a craze for time-lapse videos. While here, they got the notion to make pasta, so the pasta machine was finally put to use and the process captured on video!

In that first pasta-making session, we made fettuccine and served it with a simple tomato sauce. Sidney had the smart idea of leaning her camera against the back wall of the counter .... 

A few weeks later, Lily, Luke, Brad and I took a short trip to Florence. On advice of one of their friends, we went to Trattoria Quattro Leoni where they serve a pear-stuffed fiochetti (little pasta packages) served in a creamy cheese sauce with pieces of steamed asparagus. 

Brad's veal chop was pretty good too (una costoletta buona e bella entrambe).

And, apropos of nothing, the bottle of water we ordered there was exceptionally bubbly.

Of course, we had to try fiochetti when we got home:

The results were fantastic: Lily has an eye (and the hands) for these things. We served it as the first course for dinner at the house with friends we have met here, Basha Hicks and her daughter, Emelia. 

Another evening, when Lily and Luke were in Amsterdam for a few days, 

Brad and I hosted dinner at the house for some new Seattle friends now living in Rome: Rose and Wayne Wentz (who have been living in Rome for over 3 years and have no definite plans to return, although their son just had their first grandchild) and Patty and Pete Farmer (who just moved here in January on a one year visa). I used my new "raviolostamp" to make little ravioli served in sage butter stuffed with onion and carrot. 

Definitely took some time to master it and the edges of the ravioli were a bit too thick (and therefore tough) but none were left on peoples' plates. Brad also made breaded chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella and bresaola (thinly sliced dry cured beef). We had so much fun, we forgot to take photos of the food... but it was Wayne's birthday and Patty got him a bottle of gin, so we got a picture of that ...

Then, after Luke went home to San Francisco (to get ready to lead a three month trip of recent high school grads around Southeast Asia), Lily and I tried our hand at tortellini (also pictured in my St. Brigid's Day post). Not nearly as difficult as we thought they'd be! 

Later, we got a text from Luke with a photo of the pear ravioli he had made with his mom. (He said he wasn't dextrous enough to make fiochetti.) Apparently, one of the first things he did when he arrived home was to buy a pasta machine! So the tradition continues a little bit more ...

Il Grande Freddo

photo Luke Bauner

I’ve posted about how the kids (Conor, Lily, and Owen) were in Rome with us over Christmas, along with my sister, Ger. We had some great times with them, including a four-day trip to Vienna (more on that later). Lily stayed after everyone else left, and her boyfriend, Luke, joined us in early January. While they were here, we toured Rome and also made trips Florence, Venice, and Orvieto.  

One of the defining features of late December and all of January was the freezing cold weather. Il Grande Freddo, as the media called it.

In the walkway to our house, just before the frigid weather (and Lily) arrived

The weather had several impacts. For a few days, the fountains in Rome were frozen and even the Tiber looked about to ice over.

Little courtyard fountain

Fountain at Vittorio Emmanuele II monument

Fountain at Piazza della Repubblica

We stopped for a lot more coffee than usual, just to get out of the cold. 

The French fleur-de-lis is also a symbol of Florentine Medicis

We also had to improvise with lots of random layers of clothes, since none of us had true winter coats. I think it was the first time I thought about wanting a fur coat, which so many of the women were wearing. (Sorry, little warm animals.)

In Vienna: Annoyed at lack of family cooperation in taking selfies ;-(

In Florence, on top of the Duomo 

Lily at rooftop bar of Hotel Raphael, Rome

At the Duomo in Florence

It actually snowed in Venice the day before we arrived there by train. So strange to see some remaining snow (and a snow man) beside the canals...

We climbed the campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore church, which sits on an island in the Venetian lagoon, and the views were spectacular ...

San Marco and the Doge's Palace in Venice, with snow on the Dolomites

Sunset over Venice

We could also see the cloisters next door with snow in their garden mazes ... 

In general, there aren't many tourists here in January, but this year's cold really cleared them out. One fantastic advantage was that the streets and museums were practically empty. At times during our visit to the Accademia in Florence, it was virtually just me and David ... very few people have experienced that, I think.  

St. Mark's Square empty in Venice 

Coffee shop halfway up the Dome of St. Peters, Rome: Just us and the guards ... 

Candles in the virtually empty Stephanskirche cathedral in Vienna

At nearly empty San Pietro on Epiphany with Lily's friend Sidney, visiting from Spain

The weather has some really terrible impacts as well. You may have read about the 29 people killed by an avalanche at a resort in nearby Abruzzo. And when we were in Florence, we encountered riot police pushing back a group at a government building. They were protesting the death of an African immigrant, who froze to death because he wasn't given the government housing he was entitled to. 

I am most grateful for warm places of refuge from the cold and for all the other blessings we enjoy of peace, prosperity and good health. 

Winter shadows in Florence ... 

Stepping Out in Rome with St. Brigid

As many of you know, I was born in Ireland to parents who immigrated to New York City when I was 11 months old. As some of you also know, a friend of my mother’s brought a plaster statue of Saint Brigid to Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital on the day I was born. She has been in the family ever since, another immigrant with us and a traveler from New York to Michigan to New York State to Maryland, West Virginia, Massachusetts, and then update New York again. She has a few chips and her nose could use some work but she is still with me. It’s only in recent years that I’ve paid her due attention, displaying her in a greater position of honor in the house and trying to take her out on her feast day, February 1. So it seemed appropriate to bring her along when we moved to Rome. I’ve been looking forward to taking her out in Rome on her feast day …  

                                                               

Lily and I walked her over to the Vatican this morning. We had hoped to catch the tail end of the Papal audience that typically occurs on Wednesday mornings when the Pope is in town but, for some reason, it didn’t happen today. So we took photos in and near the square instead. 

See Brigid up at the base of the three papal crowns ... 

.... here ....

It is amazing how much like spring it felt today, after so many weeks of unusually cold weather. (That’s fitting since, in the old European calendar, February 1 is the first day of spring and May 1 the first day of summer: the only way to make sense of midsummer, which happens on June 21 or 22.) It almost seemed like someone had turned a switch, not only on the weather but on the tourists and the hawkers—the line for St. Peter’s was longer than we have seen in a couple of months.

Then we walked over to Borgo Pio with its many stores selling “articoli religiosi.” Shortly after arriving in Rome when Brad and I walked along that street, I had noticed a store featuring dozens of little golden crowns in the window (along with golden chalice and paten sets and elaborate monstrances). 

I had decided then that I might buy a crown for my Brigid (even if it might be inappropriate for an abbess like herself), so Lily and I found the store and went in. The owners, elderly father and son, spoke very little English but we managed to explain that it was our saint’s birthday (Lily’s middle name is Brigene, meaning little Brigid) and we wanted to get her a crown. 

We decided on one with red "gemstones" to match the bible under her arm ….

 Later that day, we traveled south of the Coliseum, near St. John Lateran, which is Rome’s cathedral. (The Pope is not only head of the Catholic Church but also Bishop of Rome, and St. John Lateran is his church in that function.) We went to visit Villa Irlandese, which has been the Irish seminary in Rome since the 1600s. 

It has a small chapel with modern mosaics celebrating Ireland’s major saints, chief among them St. Brigid (second in line after St. Patrick). The young man who let us in was glad to hear the greeting “Happy St. Brigid’s Day.”

My St. Brigid and mosaic St. Brigid holding her plaited cross of reeds ... 

That evening, Lily and I make chicken soup with homemade tortellini. Tomorrow is Lily’s last day in Rome. Her wonderful boyfriend, Luke, went home yesterday and we really missed him tonight. The flowers on the table are a thank you gift from him.

A formal way to say hello in Irish is “Dia Duit,” meaning God to you. In response, one might say “Dia is Muire duit,” meaning God and Mary to you. The first person might then respond “Dia, Muire, agus Pádraig duit,” meaning God, Mary and St. Patrick to you. In which case, the second person (illustrating the position that St. Brigid holds) might say, “Dia, Muire, Pádraig, agus Bríd duit,” God, Mary, St. Patrick, and St. Brigid to you. This can go on indefinitely, they say, as there are hundreds of Irish saints … St. Brigid’s Day is big in many parts of Ireland, with making St. Brigid’s crosses an important part of the holiday …

Here are more details:

General information about the feast: http://triasthaumaturga.blogspot.com/2012/02/brigids-belt-in-poetry-of-seamus-heaney.html

How to make a St. Brigid’s cross (from pipe-cleaners if you don’t have the appropriate rushes on hand): https://dontforgetyourshovel.com/2014/02/25/keeping-the-traditions-alive-st-brigids-crosses/

The tradition of tying pieces of cloth outside on the eve of St. Brigid’s Day for her to bless with healing properties as she walks the land with her little brown cow: http://www.irishamericanmom.com/2012/02/01/st-brigids-day/

Happy St. Brigid's Day!