The Tuscan Olive Harvest

1. 

Yesterday, I pitched in at the Olive Harvest at Villa La Pietra. Picking the olives off one at a time from the branches is part of a traditional fall activity which the Italians call la raccolta. The raccolta begins the first week of November. It is important not to pick olives before they  ripe. A bitter olive oil usually means that the producer jumped the gun and started early. We picked the olives and tossed them into bushels where they would be sent to a local olive oil producer to be crushed. After olive picking for a few hours, we were given an olive oil tasting. In front of us were set three small cups of olive oil - a very yellow color; a darker golden color; and a green-gold olive oil. As you may have guessed, we all liked the darker one the most. The smell and taste were the most potent, rich, complex and a bit peppery. What I learned about olive oil is that darker most generally means better, but not necessarily so. It could just mean that the oil is younger. Smell is very important when choosing an olive oil. The stronger the smell, the more virgin it probably is.  Sediments on the bottom are also  good sign and are safe for eating. In Puglia, the region where most Italian olive oil is produced and where my Nonna is from, they only use the olives. However, in Tuscany, some producers also use the leaves when crushing the oil, giving the oil a more bitter peppery taste. Our olive oil lector, a British transplant who is obsessed with Tuscan gastronomy and agriculture, said that ''only a true Italian can taste the difference.''


For lunch, we were served Ribollita Soup, a traditional Tuscan dish served as a main course. The men were grilling sausages which were served with Tuscan bread with olio nuovo, a cloudy green-gold olive oil bottle to go around. The Ribollita Soup was one of the most delicious soups I have ever tasted and I am hoping I (or..if you're reading this..mom) can recreate it when I am back home. Ribollita means reboiled. Traditionally, ribollita is a bread-thickened vegetable soup. 

*This recipe comes from a restaurant in Florence, the Giannino. 

INGREDIENTS

1 cup cannellini beans, uncooked

1 large red onion, sliced

2 carrots, diced

1 celery stalk, diced

4 potatoes, diced

10 zucchini, diced

1 1/2 cups swiss chard, shredded

1 leek

1 savoy cabbage, shredded

1 bunch kale, shredded

salt and pepper

2-3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 days old stale Tuscan white bread

Soak the beans overnight and then cook over low heat. It will take approximately 1 to 1 1/2 hours for them to cook. In a pan, gently fry the onion. Add the other vegetables, with the exception of the cabbage, kale and beans which are added at a later point. 

When the vegetables have sweated out their juice, cover with hot water and then add all the cabbage and kale. Cover and simmer for an hour over medium heat. Add the cooked beans (some of them whole and some puréed), salt and pepper. Leave to simmer for another 20 minutes, stirring frequently because the beans tend to stick to the bottom of the pan. Add the tomato paste. Slice the stale bread and, in an earthenware casserole, alternate layers of bread with the soup until the bread is soaked. Let rest for one day. To serve, remove the desired quantity from the casserole and reheat it, or "re-boil" it, as the name in Italian suggests

"Even the poor know that richness, the fragrance of the lemon trees."

Listen: the laureled poets
stroll only among shrubs
with learned names: ligustrum, acanthus, box.
What I like are streets that end in grassy
ditches where boys snatch
a few famished eels from drying puddles:
paths that struggle along the banks,
then dip among the tufted canes,
into the orchards, among the lemon trees.

Better, if the gay palaver of the birds
is stilled, swallowed by the blue:
more clearly now, you hear the whisper
of genial branches in that air barely astir,
the sense of that smell
inseparable from earth,
that rains its restless sweetness in the heart.
Here, by some miracle, the war
of conflicted passions is stilled,
here even we the poor share the riches of the world—
the smell of the lemon trees.

See, in these silences when things
let themselves go and seem almost
to reveal their final secret,
we sometimes expect
to discover a flaw in Nature,
the world's dead point, the link that doesn't hold,
the thread that, disentangled, might at last lead us
to the center of a truth.
The eye rummages,
the mind pokes about, unifies, disjoins
in the fragrance that grows
as the day closes, languishing.
These are the silences where we see
in each departing human shade
some disturbed Divinity.

But the illusion dies, time returns us
to noisy cities where the sky is only
patches of blue, high up, between towers. 

Rain wearies the ground; over the buildings
winter's tedium thickens.
Light grows niggardly, the soul bitter. 

And, one day, through a gate ajar,
among the trees in a courtyard,
we see the yellows of the lemon trees;
and the heart's ice thaws,
and songs pelt
into the breast
and trumpets of gold pour forth
epiphanies of Light!

Once upon a time...

When Sir Harold Acton died in 1994, he left La Pietra, his estate of five villas and 57 acres to New York University. He'd given it with the hope that it would be put to good use, inspire generations of students. And it has.  He really left an amazing gift and a legacy that's exciting to be a part of.

I discovered the gardens of Villa La Pietra yesterday morning and I was very inspired. So inspired that I was tempted to skip Italian class and just sit in the garden all day (don't worry, I went...it was a very pointless introduction to elementary italian class..."ciao!" come stai? cuanti anni hai?" It's troppo lento so far...hopefully it will get better). Anyway, Arthur Acton designed the garden himself in 1908.. and it really is out of a fairytale... I can imagine Cinderella had lost her glass slipper here...

As the man who once wandered these 16th-century replicated gardens so beautifully put it:

 "For me beauty is the vital principle pervading the universe-glistening in stars,

glowing in flowers, 

moving with clouds, 

flowing with water, 

permeating nature and mankind.

By contemplating the myriad manifestations of this vital principle we expand into something greater than we were born. 

Art is the mirror that reflects these expansions, 

sometimes for a moment, 

sometimes for perpetuity."

Sir Harold Acton, 1948

Firenze

The view from my bedroom window

On Tuesday, it was back to school.  Ah, it feels so good to finally be able to speak English. So good it is not to be a mute. After separating from mama who seemed very reluctant to leave my apartment after helping me unpack (thanks mama), I met up with Nami at the Duomo. Thank God, a familiar face. We walked around and this group of kids was following us, but we wanted to lose them. In the process, who do we meet but Nami’s banana pants magoo (See Nami’s blog http://unanuovacitta.blogspot.com for further details. Basically, Nami comes across a strange mix between Borat/Kramer real estate lawyer with flamboyant yellow pants who shows her around the city on her first day). Anyway, it was good to put a face to the infamous man in banana pants in Nami’s blog post.

"Valley of Death" - the walk to class in Villa Ullivi