The people under the stairs – Part Three!!

October 24, 2014October 24, 2014 / Eric Brown / 3 Comments

So there we were the other night, watching Gigli dubbed into Italian, when Janine turned to me. “Do you hear that?” It was voices, coming from below us. I went to investigate. Sure enough. We have people living under the stairs.

I kid you not. The place we’re renting has a bedroom and a kitchen upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs. In the vestibule at the bottom of the stairs is a pair of strangely arranged rugs.

Hey, what are those rugs doing there?

I pulled back the rugs to reveal a trapdoor that leads to an apartment downstairs.

Hiding the bizarre trap door, that’s what!

There was a party going on, at which half the cigarettes in Italy were presently being smoked. Seriously? I did some reconnaissance and discovered that there is an apartment down there. It has a separate entrance at the front of the building, but our apartments connect. In addition to the trap door downstairs, there is a flimsy melamine board that can separate the top floor of our place with our two bedrooms downstairs. Janine could lock me in the basement if she wanted to – kind of a low-rent Cask of Amontillado. To their credit, apart from that one little party and the smoking, which we mitigate by tucking in the rug, closing our melamine board and keeping the door to the rest of our place closed, the people downstairs are just fine – nothing like that other downstairs neighbor you might remember.

Our next door neighbors are another interesting case. Every day, sometime between 9:30 and noon, they start their engine by cranking up Enrique Iglesias’s song Bailando. When the song is over, they make it a bit louder, and play it again. And again. The other day I think they got through it four times, at which point the stucco was flaking off the side of the buildings. And then, just like that, the music stops and Forza d’Agro becomes a sleepy medieval village again.

Our other regular musical treat occurs daily at 12:05, when the main church broadcasts Ave Maria from its speakers. Perhaps that’s when mass begins, or perhaps the parish priest is attempting to cleanse the air of Enrique Iglesias.

I take this moment to digress slightly to respond to the very thoughtful comment from my friend Hubert, who noted after my entry about the many churches in this small village that Catholics usually have lots of churches, including a church for baptisms, a church for Sunday mass, and a church for funerals, which sounds like a lot of church-building for sixteenth century peasants, but perhaps they have extra time on their hands. I should point out that there are at least two more churches in Forza that are not in use at the moment, which seems to support Hubert’s analysis. My mind immediately began to apply this approach to other religions. I hope these places have good signage. Imagine walking mistakenly into the synagogue that just does the circumcisions, especially if you’ve been drinking.

Forza d’Agro doesn’t just have churches. It also has Giuseppe Carullo, the most cheerful, hardest-working man in the pizza business. Peppe (as his father calls him), looks to be in his mid-forties, and wears a short-billed cyclist’s hat at a jaunty angle on his head and a sunny, earnest expression on his face. I admit I wasn’t crazy about his pizza the first time I tried it, but we went in the other day searching for a sandwich to take with us to Mt. Etna and he whipped out a pizza dough, baked the bread in his wood burning pizza oven, stuffed it with prosciutto, mozzarella, and fresh tomato, packed it up, and sent us on our way with a great big smile. It was crazy good.

We then headed off to Mt. Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe at 10,000 feet. The mountain had its last big eruption just three months ago, spewing lava and otherwise putting on a show.

To get up to the top of Etna, you arrive at what looks like a truck stop with a hodgepodge of souvenir stands and schlocky restaurants, and have to trace the tram to the building where you can buy tickets to the top. Do you have to pay for parking or is it free? Who knows! It’s all just a bit haphazard, but perhaps that a bit of its charm. On the other hand, it can be a pain in the butt.

(We’ve often had to guess about how things are done. One day, we snuck through a hole in a fence by the side of the road to get down to the beach. (Until yesterday it was sunny and warm, with temperatures regularly hitting the eighties. Today, not so much.) We reached another absolutely fabulous beach area only after having driven past the entrance a half dozen times and concluding that there must be something down there. Indeed, there was parking, as well as beach chairs, umbrellas, bathrooms, a restaurant, and a bar that served a very nice Sicilian white in stemware that you could bring to your cozy little spot in the sand. Who knew?)

At Mt. Etna, if you’re cheap or crazy, or both, you get to the top by doing a 5 kilometer hike with a 3,000 foot elevation gain, which takes about four hours. The rest of us take a very comfortable cable car and then a four-wheel drive bus that looks like something out of Star Wars.

Kooky Etna Bus

We made it up to the top too late to be able to hike close to the rim (as if!), but being up that high and wandering about was a treat in itself.

The tippy top of Mt. Etna.

Yes, it’s cold up there.

As kitschy as it can be (although it’s quite charming later in the evening when the tourists are back on the boat), we found ourselves back in Taormina for one more really fantastic meal, at Osteria Nero d’Avola. We knew we were in for a treat when we arrived to the restaurant to find the chef owner, a very gracious and passionate fellow named Turi Siligato, working the room, introducing himself to the various tables, and showing off the scrapes on his arms that he acquired foraging for mushrooms that day. We started with fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with anchovies and caciocavallo cheese, those lovely mushrooms sautéed with a little bit of butter, and amazing mussels that are topped with pine nuts, fennel fronds, and bread crumbs and browned under the broiler.

For our mains, we had dorado that was topped with more bread crumbs, crumbled pistachio, and lemon zest, and we had a simply grilled red snapper that walked through the door shortly after we did (well, it was carried by the fisherman). However it arrived, our server paraded the fish around the room and we just couldn’t pass it up.

Parading the fish.

It’s a real pleasure to have a meal that trusts the ingredients. I think I heard it from Mario Batali, but I’ve been telling my daughter all her life that the key to good cooking is perfect ingredients simply prepared. She rolls her eyes, but gosh darn it, I’m right! Chef Siligato delivered on this promise, for sure. I could eat like this every day.

With Turi Siligato at Osteria Nero D’Avola

Back in Forza yesterday, we wandered into Giuseppi’s place for a salad and another sandwich when the skies opened up and began dumping rain. A busful of tourists sought shelter and Giuseppe managed the room with astonishing aplomb all by his lonesome and with unmanufactured good cheer. He was host, waiter, busboy, and cook. He answered every question with a jaunty “Si!” that was a combination of “of course!” “you betcha!” and “thanks for asking!” At one point, he got on the phone to call for reinforcements, and an older fellow who was clearly his dad (a comparison of their memorable noses proved this) appeared. By the look of it, it was more for moral support than anything else. His dad, who was probably in his seventies, took a few orders, but Giuseppe seemed to have things well under control.

It rained and rained, and Janine and I, who had nothing better to do, sat there for most of the day and had drinks, then lunch, then more drinks, then coffee, then cannoli, then some more drinks. By the time we were ready to leave it was still pouring, so Giuseppi sent us away with his umbrella. Once we got back to our place (where we had conveniently left our own umbrellas) I tromped back to return the one we had been lent. When I arrived, Giuseppi seemed a little annoyed. His response sounded something like, “Now what did you go and do that for?”

Tomorrow, we push off for Siracusa, which rivaled Athens in size and importance when it was part of the Greek empire. I have a feeling that we’ll see some old stuff.

Mandolins, an Ancient Theater, and more Cannoli – Now We’re Talking!

October 20, 2014October 20, 2014 / Eric Brown / 5 Comments

We found all the people in Sicily. They were rounded up by the authorities and forced to march up and down the main drag of Taormina, a popular tourist town about a half hour from here. There they are, with their fanny packs and square eyeglasses, their very European loafers (without socks – natch!), and funky headwear. They begin at one end of Corso Umberto I and methodically work their way to the other, a scrum of opportunistic shoppers and 5-minute portrait models.

Tourists! Oodles of them!

There are two guys entertaining the masses in the Piazza IX Aprile. One is strumming on his guitar and yes, the other one is picking away on his mandolin! What’s that song? I know I’ve heard it somewhere…of course! The theme from The Godfather! Get it? We’re in Sicily! I hope Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola are getting a cut.

As it turns out, every day the cruise ships hork up a couple of thousand seasick passengers and loose them on the shopkeepers and musicians of Taormina, who have adapted to the invasion by giving the people what they seem to want – designer jeans and pizzicato mandolin-ery.

On the other hand, there’s a perfectly good reason that the tourists have been flocking to Taormina since Roman senators started hanging out here a couple thousand years ago. It’s a lovely little medieval village with a cliché epic view of the sea. It also has a very old theatre. I thought the (late lamented) Morosco was old, but Taormina’s Greek theatre dates back to the 3^rd century BCE.

A theater older than the Morosco.

The highlight of our visit to Taormina, by far, was the crazy good lunch we had. Whereas our dinner in Forza felt like it was conceived by the bastard child of Fred Flintstone and Mamma Leone (the Buca di Beppo of my youth) our meal at Al Duomo in Taormina was sublime. We started with anchovies that had been marinated in orange juice, white vinegar, and a little sugar. This is the essence of some of the best Sicilian dishes we’ve had – a little sweet, a little sour, and a little fish. We had what they called “meatballs” but which were really seared patties of raw meat served on fried lemon leaves. They were delicious, but you had to be in the mood. Luckily, we were. We had cavatelli with sardines, grapes, fennel, and bread crumbs, and perfect cannoli. When we were in southern Italy five years ago, we had grilled anchovies at every restaurant as part of a comparison study. Here, we always have cannoli, the Sicilian dessert of a tube of fried pastry stuffed with a sweet ricotta filling, for those of you who have never seen The Sopranos or Jersey Shore. Al Duomo’s were dusted with pistachio powder on one side and powdered chocolate on the other. They were great, although they are still a strong second to the ridiculously good ones we had on the plaza on our first night in Forza. Oh, and we had a white wine made from Grillo, a local white grape that I’d never heard of. It was everything I love in a white – flinty and fruity, but it slapped you in the face with acid like an old Skin Bracer commercial (good heavens, nobody born out of the U.S. or after 1964 will understand anything from this post). Sorry.

The energy was contagious. On Sunday, our catatonic little village came roaring to life. It was like Brigadoon. Restaurants were packed with actual Sicilians, sitting at long tables with huge families and having a dandy old time. On Saturday night, half the places were shuttered, but by Sunday at noon they were rocking. Apparently, Sunday is the day to eat, and it was nice to see. There’s nothing sadder than an empty restaurant, and we should know, having worked at a few. There’s one place, ‘O Dammuseddu Ristorante, which sits just outside the main part of town. On most nights the proprietor stands in the doorway, forlorn, waiting for someone, anyone, to feed. We’d go in, but I worry that it would be just too weird. On Sunday, I scampered over there to see if he was joining in the good fortune. Alas, the place was a morgue.

In addition to some great food we’ve had out, (including a crazy good deep fried rice ball with eggplant we had the other day) I have to say that I’ve really been enjoying our meals at home. For one thing, if we eat out at every meal we’ll run out of money by November. But the other fun thing is poking through the markets and finding great ingredients and figuring out what to do with them. We also like the routine of cooking. We start each day on the terrace with coffee, which we make in that iconic Italian coffee pot you all know. There may be better ways to make coffee, but here in Sicily, on this terrace, you’d get a knock on the door from the carabinieri if you tried.

For breakfast yesterday, we ambled down to the bakery off the main square and scored a very lovely sweet brioche, which I took home and topped with some prosciutto and a poached egg and I moaned and groaned at the perfect marriage of sweet roll and salty ham and I wanted to eat this for the rest of my life. Is it ridiculous that food can make me this happy?

A simple breakfast for a simple man.

Next time – believe it or not, we have MORE WEIRDNESS UNDER THE STAIRS!

Ooh, one more thing. If any of you have been to Mt. Etna, should we go through the north entrance or the south? Thanks!

Stuffed, pickled tourists and other tidbits from life in our little village.

October 18, 2014October 18, 2014 / Eric Brown / 4 Comments

Life in this little tourist village is a lot like it is everywhere else, as far as I can tell, just slower. On our first night we sat in the main square with a drink, a pizza, and a salad. While I can name a dozen better pizza places in New York between 7^th and 8^th streets, that was certainly not the point. We were sitting in a Sicilian piazza, drinking beer, watching the sunset, and all was very right with the world.

Our first night in Forza d’Agro.

We watched two little boys who came with the restaurant get jiggy with an electronic dance mat until their mother pried it from one of the wailing little boy’s sorrowful arms. Kids are kids, no? And there are most certainly great charms to living the lifestyle of the Forza d’Agrans. On our two minute commute to the main square through what qualifies as Main Street – a winding alleyway that runs the length of the village – I’ve noticed a very, very old woman who lies in bed looking out at the sea through her door, which has been ajar every time I’ve walked past it. Her skin is color of ash, and my guess is that she won’t be with us for long. All day long someone sits at the foot of her bed – I’m guessing mostly family members, but probably friends as well. I’d bet my last money that she was born in this village. As I said, the door is always ajar and she can look out at the hills and the sea, which I’m sure makes her happy. It would make me happy, that’s for sure. Beats the crap out of an old folks’ home if you ask me.

The grandma who runs one of the two little markets here is unfailingly nice. I think she finds it cute that the man is doing the food shopping. The woman who runs the other market (unlike the guy with the synagogues, I go to both) is even nicer. Today, she packed up an armful of leafy greens and stuck it in my bag. It’s organic, she told me, and she grew it herself in her backyard. I am to boil it in salty water for ten minutes and serve it with lemon and olive oil, and I will.

My second market.

Our first proper dinner in town was an entertaining affair. We picked the only restaurant that had any diners in it, more for the ambiance than any effort at crowdsourcing. There’s nothing stranger than being the only diners in a restaurant in a tourist town in low season, so we decided on a place called Osteria Agostiniana, which was a relative hotbed of activity, with four or five tables filled. At this place, you can pick three courses for 35 euros or two courses for 30. Something deep inside us told us to start slow and go for the two courses. Well, two courses my patootey. The first “course” was actually an array of about seven or eight dishes. There were some beautiful oysters and a tuna caponata with an agridolce (or sweet and sour) sauce that was very good. We had marinated shrimp, a salad of arugula with some kind of fish, octopus salad, at least one version of baccala, or dried salted cod, and a bunch of other stuff. It got so bad that the waiter started stacking dishes on top of other dishes like a house of cards. Who eats like this?

The first part of the first course.

We did as well as we could with that course and after the briefest of intervals, part two came barreling in. There was a different kind of baccala, a really goofy “cocktail” of sweet little bay shrimp that had been drowned under about a quart of thousand island dressing. There was calamari, more tuna, fried anchovies, and some very strange croquettes of some kind, among other things. The stars of the course were four gigantic head-on prawns that had been simply grilled.

Then came the entrée, if you can believe it. It was a really nice whole grilled fish served with a lovely peppery olive oil. The astonishing thing is that the couple across from us got the three course menu, which also included a pasta course with enough linguini a la vongole to choke a horse as well as some kind of ravioli and god knows what else. These people are surely dead by now.

For 30 euros, we also got a bottle of wine, dessert (a frozen limoncello slurpee, a basket of cookies and biscotti, some ice creamy tiramisu-ish thingy, and a couple of cannoli, and, inexplicably, peanuts in the shell), and all the after dinner drinks you could guzzle. For that, they just drop a half dozen or so bottles on the table and let you have at it.

Five bottles of hooch, a basket of stuff, a slurpee, cannoli, and other desert. Crazy!

Five bottles of hooch, a basket of stuff, a slurpee, cannoli, and some other dessert. Crazy!

I was quite taken with the amaro, and I now know why the hipsters seem to put it into half the fancy cocktails they whip up in Brooklyn – it’s herbaceous, a little sweet, and goes great with whiskey. When I get home, I’m adding a bottle of this stuff to my collection.

The whole thing was more than insane, and not how we usually eat – it kind of felt like the Sicilian buffet on Circus Circus Cruise Lines, if such a thing existed and let’s hope they don’t get any ideas. I’m surprised more people aren’t medivac’d out of here. The thing is, the place is pretty much always busy. I’d chalk it up to insane gluttonous tourists, but there were a bunch of Italian people in there as well. If you cut through the sheer volume there were enough winners to make you happy. If they’d let us, I’d go back and have the grilled shrimp, the grilled fish, and a plate of linguini with clams. But I can see the headwaiter’s shocked expression now, “You don’t want the Trough of Sicily? Impossible!”

And then we staggered out of the joint into our little ghost town, which was shuttered up tight by the time we escaped our Sicilian Fiesta. Even the old lady in the bed had called it a night.

We managed to stumble home and flop onto the bed, where as luck would have it that cinematic masterpiece Gigli was on. Imagine our delight! Fortunately it was dubbed into Italian, and thus it made much more sense.

And now, for no particular reason, a few more photos: