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March 23, 2007
sementes
I found this on Flickr whilst looking for papaya images. See sometimes, when I'm hit with a certain memory, I have to quickly get a visual reference and savour the emotion.
In this particular case, I was IMing with a friend in Indonesia, talking about fruit and I remember the breakfasts my father would make for me.
My father would slice papayas into blocks in a bowl. Sprinkle a little bit of sugar and squeeze fresh lime over it. Sometimes he does this before I even wake up, so he chills it in the fridge. Sometimes the bowl of papaya is already waiting for me on the dining table, but nothing really beats this feeling of opening the fridge and discovering there is this delicious bowl of papaya specially made by my father for me.
Oh man, I'm really homesick right now.
Posted by Yasmina at 02:54 PM | Comments (1)
March 14, 2007
La Dolce Vita
Life was certainly sweet last weekend when we went to Torino/Turin for the annual La Grande Festa di Cioccolato, which this year ran during March 2-11. Our friends, K&D, came down from Germany for a long weekend since it was K's birthday weekend. K's birthday coincides with our wedding anniversary (2 years this year, wooo!), so we celebrated together.
Piazza Vittorio Veneto was where the whole festival was based. A bit of historical fact: this piazza is one of the biggest in Europe and Torino has the most streets named after an Italian royal family member than any other Italian city. The buildings in the historical center have portico sidewalks, where in the past, the King and Queen could walk through in the rain without needing an umbrella (or so Giovanni told me). And, unlike Milan, Torino was built like most US-cities, in square blocks, so no wonder my Torino friends (namely, Giovanni) always complain of disorientation when they come to visit Milan.
There were the big names: Caffarel, Lindt, Droste, Streglio, Venchi, Peyrano, but also plenty of the local names. I had a delicious hot cup of cioccolato alla canela. Hot chocolate here is really different from hot chocolate drinks you'll find in other countries; it's literally melted chocolate, it's so thick (think of chocolate in a bain-marie/banho-maria and it's that kind of consistency) and can be infused with mint, oranges, cinnamon and lots of other complimenting flavours. It can be quite heavy and rarely can you drink more than one cup.
We decided against buying a Chocopass, which, for €10 is valid for 24-hours and allows 10 chocolate tastings around participating cafes around Torino. There was also one for €15, valid for 48-hours and 15 chocolate tastings. The thing is, they were not valid for the festival stands in the square, only in participating cafes in centro historico and we didn't want to be walking around the other parts of town while there was this great feast going on here.
Torino has a series of historical cafes, really really beautiful 18th and 19th century style interior, with dainty pastries and cakes, robust coffee, and traditional cioccolato con panna. I don't see these cafes in Milan. This is a tourist attraction in itself, I think, so no wonder they were aiming the Chocopass around the historical cafe experience. We had a peek into some of these cafes, since they were always really packed with people and we preferred somewhere more quiet and intimate.
I think seeing all the chocolates and food on display, as well as having the smell of chocolate permeating the air into our skin, just made our cerebellum fuse and we walked around in a frenzy of chocolate binging. We didn't know where to start! There were chocolate tablets, tasting squares, chocolate liquor, chocolate paste, chocolate gelato, chocolate spaghetti (would be lovely with some custard and strawberries), chocolate tea, and we were given a spoonful of this gooey chocolate stuff (kind of like a cross between zabaione and custard) at one of the stands that had chefs doing cooking demonstrations. We thought it was gelato, so were a bit disappointed at the flavour. It had a good cocoa flavour but way too sweet. I think it's because Kathya and myself prefer the taste of dark bitter chocolate.
Torino is well-known for its Gianduiotto, which is a blend of cocoa and roasted hazelnuts. Gianduia gelato is a derivation of that flavour and you must simply try it, especially if you're in Torino with gelaterias like GROM and Fiorio and Mondello, which coincidentally, was where we had breakfast on Sunday. Gelateria Mondello is known for its Sicilian gelato and they've won the Slow Food prize a couple of times, so yes, it was a delicious Sunday breakfast. We even had cannoli siciliani. Little did we know that K&D were also having a Sicilian breakfast with Paolo and Alessandra.
We managed to get gelato from GROM in the evening; during the day, the queues wind up along the street and you end up queuing for 20-30 minutes. Flavour of the month was matcha, te verde, and it was good. They must have used really good green tea stock; the other flavour I had was torroncino.
K&D were staying with Paolo and Alessandra in the Vanchiglia district, just 300 metres from the piazza, lucky them! They probably woke up to the smell of chocolate. They were also nearby the studio where I occasionally work and the wonderfully delicious GROM gelateria. The handsome-and-talented husband and I had a loft in Aprile, in the equally cool district of Quadrilatero Romano, just off Via Garibaldi with its many walking sidestreets.
Sunday was more relaxed. Waking up late. Quiet breakfast at the gelateria. Donatella joined us in the afternoon, for another walkabout the choco fest. We had cafe pinguino, which is a cup lined with cioccolato fondente, a shot of hot coffee poured in, then a dollop of panna (whipped cream) on top and sprinkled with some nuts. I also had a banana dipped in dark chocolate and nuts; the banana kind of eased my guilt trip about not eating fruit and veg that weekend.
Later on, we had apperitivo at Talmone, just in front of Torino Porta Nuova Station. It's a really good place for apperitivo because the food selection is massive! Half the cafe was platters of food arranged on tables: penne con pesto, artichoke hearts, various cheeses and cold cuts, pomodoro secchi, salads, onion rings, fritto misto, and lots of sandwich triangles with various toppings like salmon and cream cheese, anchovy-and-tomato, ham-and-cheese, prawns-lettuce-and-mayo. I keep drinking americanos and I think it's M's fault.
You can see other photos of the choco fest on my Torino Flickr set.
Posted by Yasmina at 09:08 PM
March 06, 2007
Woohoo! Mug goodness!
At some point during the day, one of the neighbours rang the doorbell and when I opened the door, she presented me with a box from US Postal Service. Wow! A package from Kenn! I'm so happy! It made my day!
Dear Kenn, thanks so much for this. I've never had a self-designed mug given to me before. Ever. It's totally unexpected so it's doubly nice. I was so happy that I ran out to get some pie from the panificio (yes, yes, any excuse to eat pie). Here's some pictures of the whole Wislander package experience... The funny thing is, for the last few days, I have been the character on the mug, hovering over my desk sketching because a rush-job tight-deadline project got dumped on my lap and I've been working non-stop.
Oh, and P.S. I got a haircut; Patrizia wasn't there but Mamma was, so Mamma cut my hair. It didn't help that she didn't speak English and mine is dodgy, so I said "piu corto" instead of "piu lungo" but luckily she didn't chop all of my hair off... At least now I know how to say "layered" in Italian, which is "la scala", and that concludes our Italian lesson of today... Ciao ciao!
Posted by Yasmina at 08:39 PM | Comments (1)
got.the.bug.must.travel.
Oh man, I have to leave Milano. For the past couple of days, I've been looking for Easter-Pasqua getaways (a bit late for that, actually) and I was really hopeful on getting a long weekend in Sicily. I thought of flying to Palermo, and taking the ferry to Cefalu, or the autobus to Trapani. Or fly into Catania or Reggio Calabria and get a ferry to Messina.
Ma non trovato(-re?) speziali offerti Pasqua, boo hoo!
Another option was to take the trains on the Milano-Venezia-Firenze-Milano route, which I could find for cheap. However, the accommodation prices are ridiculous for that Easter-Pasqua weekend, and being dependent on Trenitalia means we can't stray far from the centro historico.
I think we'll end up renting a car and driving down to Toscana. Yeah, Toscana would rock our socks.
Then, I started to randomly click and Google destinations and started looking at tickets prices for Indonesia. We're planning to go sometime in August-September. After our Hungary and Turkey trips in June, we figure we still have 20-25 holiday days so we were going to spend 4 weeks in Indonesia, where 2 weeks is spent with family and going to the mountain house, and 2 weeks can be spent elsewhere.
It's always hard trying to decide between a cultural experience or a beach holiday. We'll skip Bali this time and head straight for the white-sands-clear-blue-sea of Lombok. My dad had always wanted to take us to the Bromo crater; Unfortunately, it always erupted shortly before our visits, so no tourism allowed. I also want to take the handsome-and-talented husband to the Borobudur temple.
Oh man, I am so excited about all these trips and I'm annoyed that we can't go earlier. Well, at least next weekend our friends K&D are coming down from Germany and together we will spend a weekend in Torino for la grande festa di cioccolato! Yippee! I am so looking forward to that.
Posted by Yasmina at 06:36 AM | Comments (2)
