Today was a mercifully slow day: we needed time to work on our assignments and regroup from our hectic-ass visit to Bra and Parma.
As I had missed a visit to Enzo's olive-oil factory earlier in the week, Enzo decided he would have to take me and Gerarada down for a visit that morning. This was communicated to me in profoundly Italian hand gestures and lots of ineffectual yelling back and forth (did i mention that I love Enzo?). We jumped into his dog-hair covered car (Oliver!) and headed to the factory. Enzo works there when he's not cooking for us at the convento.
Some of the olive-oil and traditional Italian delicacies on offer. The factory is Slow Food certified and justifiably proud of their products. They have all sorts of awesome looking stuff - a zillion different kinds of truffle oils, all the jams you might want, home-made pestos and tapenades and spreads....yum.
Enzo posing with the goods.
A machine used for smushing olives. At least that was what I could figure out. (Attempting to communicate the notion of smushing through broken Italian and English is really, really amusing). Enzo took us out back to the factory works and explained with aforementioned Italian Gestures what everything did. It was incredibly entertaining.
The factories sign. Stop in if you're in the Bolsena region. Ask for Enzo to give you a tour.
I picked up some strawberry jam (good around here) and some of the delightful local honey. No oil, I'm afraid - I don't think it will last another month in my bag and the results will be dire if it does explode all over my clothes. As in will have to throw them all away and that will be VERY BAD.
For lunch, Enzo made us some penne with cheese and peporonata - really delicious and piquant. I like the crunchiness of this stuff. He also made us some killer chicken cacciatore - light, delicious, good. I'll have to replicate his version of the recipe sometime.
Most of us spent the afternoon hanging out in the poppy-strewn garden and catching up on our assignments - a nice change from the all-prosciutto all the time adventure of the day before. (I was still feeling a bit bilious -man cannot survive on prosciutto and parmesan alone, I don't care what Mr. George Clooney prosciutto-dude claims). Most of us did decide to head into town to get out of the convent's grounds, hunt down that awesome wine we'd drunk in Parma, and grab some gelato. (Would Italy grind to a halt or implode without gelato? Signs say yes).
This gelateria on Bolsena's main square serves the gelato we sampled at the factory.
Some of the excellent flavors on offer. The Santa Cristina was particularly interesting: a crunchy and tart combination of orange, lemon, and carrot. The ricotta with cinnamon and the mascarpone were also delightful. Santa Cristina is committed to using real ingredients and the benefits to the gelato's flavor are obvious.
I had some incredibly intensely flavored and rich blackberry gelato with Santa Cristina (carrot) on the bottom. This was excellent. And the photo is not excellent.
We enjoyed a walk through town - Bolsena really is an attractive place, and mercifully low on tourists.
Enzo served us some bean soup with bread. It tasted rather like an Italian riff on bean soup - I really liked this.
Our secondi was a simple summer plate of bruschetta. We had chicken and pepper pate, arugula-pesto type stuff (slightly bitter and good), and something composed of liver. There was also some fresh-made pepper caponata, some white bean salad with olive oil and pepper, and some fresh local cheese. Some people thought this was odd, I liked it. But I like livery things. Full of delicious iron, right?
Finally: another nice local tart with apricot jam.
We spent the evening working, and some of us decided to watch Fast Food Nation. It got the point across, I suppose, though I wouldn't suggest watching it if you are interested in consuming fast food hamburgers ever again. The acting was horrid and it even had Avril fucking Lavigne in it. It was actually sort of amusing in a vastly heavy -handed sort of way - see the corruption of innocent Mexican immigrants! Watch the salary-man watch pornos in his hotel room and explore the depths of his love for the MAN! Observe the innocent teenage-McDonalds worker become a politically-awakened crusader due to the influence of her wacky uncle! Also: quivering cow heads at the end just to wake you up. Yipes.
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