Nancy Dinar
It's a habit for my friends and I to
get together for dinner once a week. We exchange gossip, we laugh
like school girls, but most importantly, we eat. Two weeks ago,
congregated over a rainbow of seafood and a bottle of peculiarly dry
white wine, I told my friends I was headed to Molise. Suddenly, the
laughter stopped.
"Where?" they muttered in unison,
caught between bites of a crusty baguette smothered in Brie.
"Molise," I repeated, "the home of Italy's best olive oil, brodetto, stracciata ..." They stared at me.
"You're not going to Rome?" was all they could muster.
"It's better than Rome," I answered. "There are rolling greens hills and quaint farmhouses filled with food and cute Italian grandmothers."
"Ah," was the resounding response, followed by audible spoonfuls of fish stew and sips of Chardonnay. Clearly this was undiscovered country.
***
My plane landed in Italy on
a soggy Monday. From the winding and convoluted roads of Rome, I
traveled three hours by bus to explore the lush, mountainous
countryside of Molise. Shadowed by lingering fog and the threat of an
impending storm, I stared out the window at the rolling green. The
bus, meanwhile, made its way along winding rivers and up into little
hill towns that seemed unchanged since Cicero's glory days, some
2,000 years ago. The loquacious guide, ever the excited native,
regaled his eager audience-a gaggle of hungry journalists-with
constant information.
"Molise has been known for its local
produce since the 1500s when the Portuguese took over the spice
routes," he related with sing-songy cadence and a dense Italian
accent. "These nomadic traders traveled up and down the traturros
(ancient roads used to transport cattle, spices, and produce from one
end of the country to the other), spreading word of fine Italian
cooking as they traveled." It was a supremely educational three
hours-marked by grumbling tummies. Every nook and cranny of the
countryside was filled with the origins of famous foods-prosciutto,
olive oil, wine, stracciata. The list went on and on.
As the narration continued, bounding between food and geography, we rode along the ancient traturros of the Portuguese (now modern roadways). Our first stop: the Pentrodicenio winery. Pausing just long enough in his breathless storytelling and aggressive gesticulation to usher us out of the bus, our guide pointed to a pristine aluminum silo of three-year-old Tintilla wine. We siphoned; we sipped. And, as if every glass of wine would be naked sans antipasti, we were presented with a plethora of cheeses and salumes.
After mulling over the wine's co
mplex
nose and softening its character with fat-rich Abruzzi salume, our
resident wine expert broke the muffled chews with a revelation: "It
needs a little more aging," he said of the Tintilla. I certainly
don't claim to be an expert, and could make no such criticism. In
fact, my first taste of Molisian wine has inspired me to hunt down
the varietal back home in New Jersey.
A bit further down the road, palates teased and inhibitions faded, we paused to visit the legendary Franco Di Nucci Dairy Farm in Agnone, one of the most famous cheese factories in Italy. Big-eyed, camera-toting tourists though we were, little kept us from unabashedly professing our love of their homemade stracciata in broken Italian-a stretched cheese flattened into strips and braided. It was, I suppose, the challah of the dairy world.
And, to our gleeful surprise, we were privy to its fabrication. The cheesemakers, gloved and booted, ushered us into an expansive room marked by its peculiar technology and stellar cleanliness. In its center stood tight-knit groups of workers clad in hospital whites, pulling wads of cheese out of brine and braiding them. As hushed conversation issued from the cheesemakers, we were lectured on the flavors of stracciata: herbs, flowers, and grasses from native hillsides make up the diet of native cows to produce the native milk that makes the native cheese that was already our obsession. The discussions went on; I indulged in more of the hours-old stracciata. I was, after all, here to eat.
***
Our first formal meal was lunch at Agriturismo Villa Marcella, only hours after visiting the Di Nucci Dairy Farm. It was exactly what romantic images of Italian countryside conjure-a farmhouse set against sprawling green with the patriarch-host, chef, and lover of all things food-serving as our gregarious host. The women of the family laughed from the recesses of the farmhouse in the generous kitchen as we entered, stirring freshly ground cornmeal into a polenta. "Come in-sit down-eat with us," the effervescent host cajoled as we entered the dining room.
As soon as we cozied into our chairs, circled around elongated tables that are the mark of family dining in Italy, the carafes of housemade wine started flowing. The first hinted at strawberry. And while I would quickly have spent my afternoon sipping wine and butchering Italian in piecemeal conversation, I was eagerly pushed to sample the food that ebbed and flowed from the kitchen. It was truly a grand procession: antipasti of cured meats made on the farm; a new red table wine; newly uncovered truffles (Molise is one of the largest sources of truffles in Italy, I learned); newly stretched and freshly minted cheeses; marinated olives; more wine; more meat; more cheese. Each mouthful was rich with flavors I instantly recognized, if only because I could see the land where each ingredient was born, farmed, foraged, butchered, rendered, and distilled.
Lubricated, fat, and doubled-over from our laughable Italian (who knew it was best not to repeat slang from city slickers?), we ushered ourselves in wavy lines back onto the bus. From the mountains, we traveled, subdued, to the Adriatic coast.
Only hours later, we arrived at our next meal: a famous stop on the edge of the Adriatic that promised both hyper-local specialties and a uniquely atraditional Italian experience. Tornola, our eventual, fog-saturated destination, sang the praises of its own Brodetto di Tornola, a fish stew originally made by fishermen's wives from scraps left unsold at markets during the day. At the edge of the sea, this was a population that leaned heavily on fishing. Seafood framed, necessarily, all corners of Tornola's native cuisine.
Lunch came that day with an amusing surprise-famed chef Bobo was on hand to spruce up the pedestrian stew. But Bobo was more than a chef; he was a local character who proudly proclaimed his Communist beliefs by wearing a red toque and a shirt depicting the likeness of Mao. Even the wines he served were named for his heroes: "Mao" and "Che."
But if his fashion served his personality, his cooking style displayed even more of his character. As soon as we arrived, Bobo invited us into his kitchen to watch him work-an intimate experience largely unheard of in American kitchens. With multiple terra cotta pots bubbling on the stove, we watched as he sprinkled a flourish of seasonings over the strangest looking fish imaginable. One pair had eggs growing out of their heads; others had elongated jaws. There were, much to our delight, more recognizable fish bubbling away as well: cuttlefish bobbed alongside a pot of calamari, flounder, red mullet, and six varieties of shrimp. These mingled with sundry ingredients added on a whim-whatever Chef Bobo found to his liking at the market that morning. In a separate broth simmered fresh tomatoes, garlic, peppers, basil, and, of course, the very best Molisian olive oil.
When the meal was finally served, it did its creator justice. Whatever we saw that had shocked our delicate culinary sensibilities faded from memory. We indulged; we drank; we laughed. And however well I might relate the peculiar tapestry of flavors that settled on us during that meal, it wouldn't do the experience justice. Suffice it to say, it was a gustatory adventure best had at the foot of the Adriatic. No, I should say, only at the foot of the Adriatic.
***
This Wednesday, my girlfriends and I are heading to Lombardi's-a local Italian haunt that's become one of our favorites. The meatballs are to die for, and nothing beats the carb-rich indulgence of freshly baked Pugliese smothered in olive oil and fresh, fat cloves of garlic. On a good night, we'll put away three bottles of wine while we slur our stories of workaday charades and relationships gone asunder. But, I wonder, slightly more aware of the offerings of Italy, if I won't be just a little bit disappointed. There will be no Communist chefs in attendance, no boisterous hosts shouting in colorful Italian dialects, no farmhouse charm, no rolling hills out the back window. And while I would usually unload every piece of entertaining news from my week, I think I'll keep the memories of Molise to myself. Smiling, as I remember climbing the soggy green hills, heading into the fog, my stomach filled with stracciata and salume.