Day Eleven of my internship with the Rome Sustainable Food Project was a very good day. I know this, because I kept a diary. There were many days I came home exhausted, the kind of fatigue that makes you forget hunger ironically enough, but still I managed to type out something to mark each shift. Sometimes it was just a sentence, sometimes it was several paragraphs. It’s amusing to me now to go back and see which days made the biggest impact. This one was one of them, the day I made my first pasta. I loved eating Amatriciana before I ever cooked it, but now I adore it. It’s part of the holy trinity of Roman pastas (in my opinion) that includes Carbonara and…
Cannoli Pepperoni
Est. 2013
Posts from the “Food” Category
Before I started interning for the Rome Sustainable Food Project, I spent a saturday in the kitchen as a volunteer. I remember it was a crisp fall morning. Curious and ready, I reported for my shift at 8am, prepared to be swept up into a busy day. But first it was time for the Menu Meeting. A twice-daily ritual (held once before the start of the morning shift and once in the afternoon), the meeting is a sit-down exchange between the Chef and the interns on duty. Like a captain before an armada prepared to set sail, the Chef lays forth a plan of action for his ships. The waters may be rough (i.e. the head count may be high), but together we’ll make…
I have so much to say that I have nothing to say. Do you know that feeling when you’re with a friend who you haven’t seen for a long time, and you just don’t know where to start? You want to perform a feat of magic– bundle up three months into something articulate. Meaningful, but not boring. Inclusive, but not exhaustive. You want to give a real sense of what has gone on in your life. But sometimes it’s best to skip ahead and just order another round of drinks. There are plenty of things happening right now worth sharing. I want to tell you more about my experience with the Rome Sustainable Food Project. The internship seriously altered my ideas about cooking and eating, as…
I learned the secret to the Best Roasted Potatoes on day three of my internship. Believe me, a chorus of angels sang from on high when this secret was revealed. Over the last few months of living at the Academy I’ve noticed that if roasted potatoes are a component of dinner, it doesn’t matter how delicious the braised pork cheeks were. People will fight to the death for the last potato. They are that good. As promised, here is the recipe: Clean and peel potatoes. If you’re not using them immediately, store in cold water so they don’t discolor. Cut potatoes into wedges. [The secret part!!!] Blanch potatoes in boiling water for a few minutes. Drop them in the water and let them sit…
Categories: Food
Tagged: recipe, roasted potatoes, Rome Sustainable Food Project, RSFP
Shortly after Peter’s magical letter came in the mail, I discovered the Rome Sustainable Food Project. It is exactly what it sounds like. A sincere, passionate mission to source the best seasonal food within a small radius of Rome and transform it into a week’s worth of delicious meals for the Fellows of the American Academy. This excellent video will fill you in on the rest: The RSFP is a teaching kitchen, staffed by three chefs and a crop of rotating interns. Yes, interns. Can you guess where there is going? There’s a reason you haven’t heard much from me. I’m living in two worlds right now– I’m an RSFP intern and a “fellow traveler”– and somewhere there’s regular old Junita, too. My internship…
Last Sunday Peter and I ventured off the Academy hill to the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme. We’ve been slowly building a list of museums and sights to see in Rome and just as slowly checking things off the list. The beauty of being here for almost a year is there’s no pressure–at least right now–to sightsee. We can drink in Rome’s history like a rich digestif, slowly sipping so that it settles nicely. I’ve never been so aware of stretching out an experience, but that’s what this year is like. It feels like the more gradually I take everything in, the longer the memories will last.
Palazzo Massimo is a gorgeous museum with a large collection of ancient mosaics, one of the most vividly-colored intact frescoes I’ve ever seen, and the haunting 4th century B.C. bronze sculpture, “Boxer at Rest.” Can you imagine what it would have been like to be the archeologist who discovered this wondrous object in 1885? You can see the scars etched on the boxer’s face. You can get so close that he almost looks real (until you set the sensors off, like I did, and are jarred out of your reverie). We wandered through the galleries, blissfully alone in most of them, until we’d had enough. How do you follow up an afternoon of beautiful art? With pastries of course. So we stopped at L’arte del Pane for a sweet nibble and then we got on the bus to go back home.
We waited patiently outside the humble entrance to Trattoria di Oscar. It was our final night in Monterosso as well as our last in the Cinque Terre. A tiny, gorgeous stretch of Ligurian coastline, Cinque Terre is made up of five candy-colored villages built right into the rocky cliffs: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. Five villages linked by four hiking trails, one train and the occasional boat. After a terrible lunch in Corniglia (lured by a sunny piazza we chose a place that somehow managed to make gnocci inedible), I wanted this dinner to count. With the warmth of the sun several hours gone, there was no mistaking the brisk chill hanging in the air. I thought the more humble we…
Tagged: Cinque Terre, Italy, Monterosso al Mare, Trattoria da Oscar
Cannoli Pepperoni 