Thanksgiving turkey stuffing recipe

In the spirit of service journalism, I'm sharing our internationally acclaimed stuffing recipe from last year.

For a 10 lb bird
1 loaf of old, stale bread. A good loaf. Not Wonder.
A good clump of fresh parsley.
Celery
Onions
Carrots
laurel leaf
150 grams of sliced pancetta (or, even better, guanciale)
600 grams of chestnuts
1/2 kilo of "polpa di maiale e vitello" or minced pork & veal
4-5 eggs
a glug of milk
12 teaspoons of Cognac (yes, this is the secret ingredient!). For those of you wondering, yes, Armagnac works just as well.

1. Throw chestnuts into boiling water (30 mins). Afterwards, deshell and throw contents into a bowl. Chuck in the blender. Blend.
2. Cut your stale bread into cubes. Crack open the eggs and add the milk. Mix together to get a mushy mash of old yellow bread. Add diced parsley. Add the diced onions. Add the diced celery. Add the diced carrots. Mix more.
3. Throw the pancetta into a blender and whip up into a mash.
4. In a big bowl, add your mushy bread, your pancetta mash, the chesnut mash and the minced pork. Mix well.
5. Add your cognac.
6. Let sit for half-hour.
7. Turn your oven on.

Now, prepare your bird. (it really should be sourced from your local butcher and not one of those plastic, tasteless, Butterball creations, but even if it is, we've got you covered.)
1. Rub the outside of your turkey and in the cavity with a clove of garlic. Cover your bird with a few strips of pancetta/guanciale.
2. Sprinkle salt on same. Add laurel.
3. If you are feeling decadent, throw a tablespoon (or two) of the Cognac into the cavity as well.
4. Fill your bird with the stuffing. Place in the oven.

After 20 mins, drizzle a glass of white wine on the bird. Repeat after an hour. Keep covered (with aluminum foil or oven paper for duration of cooking.

Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Buon Ringraziamento!

Ao! 'Oppy 'olloween!

That's how the locals say it here in Garbatella. No pesky "h" to slow them down. I'm really pleased the Romans have adopted Halloween, or at least a number of the shops have here in Garbatella. It's always been a favorite holiday of mine. When else could you dress as a pirate and not get funny looks? (speaking of which, have the Somalis ruined that choice of costumes this year? Hope not.) Back in my London days (during the Bush Administration), the locals were hostile to Halloween. They saw it as some creepy American import and wanted no part of it. Sure, Halloween is a creation of the all-powerful rubber mask lobby, but as a form of cultural imperialism, it's pretty benign. I'm sure the local bakery feels the same way.

Why is Halloween so great? You get to carve up pumpkins. Lara, Stefano and I went to work on a real beauty after dinner last night. Here's our handiwork.



Boo!

This post brought to you by: Italian in-laws

It's the end of the last big summer weekend here in Italy, Ferragosto (orginally named for Ceasar Augustus' traditional holiday, "Feriae Augusti," and then nicked by the church). No doubt, the summer will plunge on here for another 6 weeks at least, but the first wave of holidaymakers will be returning to work tomorrow after several much-needed weeks' rest.

Us? We're in Perugia. With the in-laws. We seem to have spent a good portion of the summer with them (I'll explain why in future posts), including during our cherished summer holiday. I wrote this next bit a few weeks ago, but only now am getting around to publishing it... Here goes:
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We're back from a lovely weeklong vacanza in La Maremma, a region of Southwest Tuscany with fantastic beaches, great wine, amazing food and those classic hilltop towns. La Maremma is a real gem -- a rare piece of Tuscany that is off the tourist trail, and yet close to Rome. Keep it a secret!

We vacationed with the in-laws, which cues up a new Top 10 (well, there's just nine) list. This one -- "Top 10 (erm, 9) clues you've been on holiday too long with your Italian in-laws" -- reads as follows:

1. you race to the breakfast table to get first crack at the family blood pressure kit.

2. at the beach, your mother-in-law is quick to point out the Jesus in the driftwood.

3. you're quick to correct her -- that's Jesus *and* Mary in the driftwood!

4. After repeated warnings, you begin castigating other random mothers who allow their children in the sea a mere three hours after lunch.

5. your father-in-law punctuates every mosquito kill with an "Obama!," even in church.

6. even your father-in-law, who knows nothing of the sport, grumbles about the Mets at the breakfast table.

7. likewise, you too grumble about the cosmic injustice of more than 30 years without an Italian pope.

8. you no longer cringe when your father-in-law, an art critic, suggests to the lovely husband-wife team who run the Slow Food trattoria how they could improve the food, even before it's served.

9. you agree, the Tuscan coast is lovely and all, but it just doesn't compare with the land-locked Umbrian Riviera.

Graffiti, art or blight?

I have this tendency to grumble to anybody who'll listen about Rome and its graffiti problem. Our 'hood, Garbatella, in particular, is covered in grammatically dubious expressions of teenage love scrawled on the side of walls, on benches, on playground swings. Slow-moving nonne, I'm convinced, are at risk of getting a "Ti amoooo, Giovanna" declaration across their house dress. Nobody else seems to share my irritation though, so I thought I'd grumble about it here.

You see right outside our apartment lies the university, Roma 3. There are acres of clean wall space that are just taunting the aspiring graffiti artist. Until recently. A bunch of characters every other weekend sneak down to the tracks below the house and go to work on the wall of one of the university buildings that abuts the railway. I've begun to document the gradual transformation from nondescript building to urban canvass. With it, my opinion is beginning to change...

The first batch of photos were taken on the morning of June 1st after I noticed a new batch of boxy letters scrawled on the building below:





And then, last night I woke up around 3 a.m. to catch an inning or two of the Mets-Yankees game. It was a warm evening and the windows were open and, at one point in between innings, I hear that unmistakable rattle of spraypaint cans. I peered out from my salone into the darkness below and could just about make out two figures in black busy at the foot of the same building. Remarkable to me was that they did the work completely in the dark. They had no lights and there was just a sliver of a moon in the sky. Here's their handiwork:





The latest embellishment is certainly an improvement. So, I'm starting to refine my opinion of graffiti. If done well, it's not so bad. It adds a little color and life to otherwise drab city walls. The meaningless exclamations, hastily chucked up on a building, they are nothing more than vandalism. The graffiti artists should be more angered by these amateurs than me.

Marche, as the church saw it

Here's a wall map mural from the 1500s found in the famous Vatican Map room. It shows the provincia di Ascoli Piceno "back in the day." Yes, I'm a total map geek. Naturally, I zoom in on "Mandola," 16th Century shorthand for "Amandola," evidently.