One of my favorite things that I ate last year on the dig was prepared by a friend of mine from near Naples, Antonella. Antonella taught me this recipe, which I share with you all now.

Pasta con Caperi, Tonno ed Olive

Ingredients:
1-2 cloves garlic
olive oil
onion
capers
tuna (preferably packed in olive oil, but in water will do)
black olives
green olives
pasta (preferably short, like rotini)

Prepare pasta to boil (don’t forget to add salt in the water!). When the water is boiling, add the pasta and start the caper/tuna/olive mixture. Sauce doesn’t seem like the right word…

Chop/crush and sautee the garlic with diced onions in some olive oil. When the onions are almost cooked, throw in a can of tuna, diced olives and capers. (All to taste–remember, we’re doing Italian cooking!)Sautee all these together for a while.

Be sure to take the pasta out when it’s al dente, not super soft. Add the tuna, etc. to the pasta and enjoy with a nice glass of white wine or some acqua frizzante.

Another recent recipe we made was potato gnocchi (Dad—you’re forbidden from trying this recipe. Just trying to protect Mom and Kaia) with the students. Our professor has a great, easy recipe, so if you’re motivated, try it out. We made our own special Taleggio cream sauce to go with, which was pretty tasty. Definitely enough calories for a couple days!

Potato Gnocchi

10-15 big potatoes
½ kg flour (type O)
fine salt
1 egg (if needed)

After having boiled and peeled the potatoes (the potatoes must be put on the cooker with cold water), mash them; if they are too mushy, add an egg. Place the mixed flour on a wooden board, add the potato mixture and make a dough. The dough must NOT be sticky. Roll the dough into a sausage-like form, as thin or thick as you prefer. Cut the gnocchi with a knife very quickly, without handling them too much. Sprinkle with flour.

To maintain them: the gnocchi can be cooked straight away in boiling salty water. When you take them out of the water (as SOON as they float to the top), transfer them into a big enough container and pour some olive oil on them; they can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Taleggio cheese cream sauce

Taleggio cheese (in Tucson, this can be found at Roma Imports…I haven’t looked for it elsewhere)
Bresciamella/cooking cream
butter

Cut the Taleggio—which has a nice, creamy texture and a subtle flavor similar, I suppose, to blue cheese or gorgonzola—into chunks for easier melting. Melt butter, cream and cheese together, stirring frequently. Serve immediately for best taste/texture—that type of sauce likes to form layers of skin if left too long. Add to gnocchi (or other pasta) and enjoy!

So, I forgot to post about this before, but a weekend or two ago, Jeremy and I utilized a lovely flat pan and some leftover eggs to make a tasty little omelet. I’ve become much less vigilant about figuring out proportions; experiment!

4 eggs
pesto
cherry tomatoes
parmesan
milk
butter

In a small bowl, mix the eggs and a dash of milk to make them fluffy. Add a couple spoonfuls of pesto and mix. Dice the cherry tomatoes and grate parmesan cheese (this is all to taste, as a rule of thumb). Pour the egg mixture onto the pan and add the diced tomatoes and cheese; after it’s cooked, fold half over, omelet style. Serve with a cold glass of OJ (or ACE, if you can find it—orange, carrot and lemon juice. SO GOOD!)

Wow, I haven’t updated in forever. Our “fieldtrip” last week was a cooking class with Alba, our program director. She taught us how to make gnocchi and tira misu, which turned out beautifully and I’d like to try my hand at it at home.

Our big fieldtrip of the semester was to Pompeii, Naples, Paestum, Cumae and the Regia di Caserta. The compact version of that is that the south has the best pizza in the world, I think…Pompeii was pretty incredible but I almost enjoyed Paestum more, if only because it was less crowded and the weather was perfect and autumn-y and wonderful. The museum in Naples was incredible, too, because we saw some stuff that I’ve been studying since I was a freshman in high school (ie the best copy of the Doryphorous, which became the classical canon for beauty) and some amazing Hellenistic sculpture, which also happens to be one of my favorite artistic periods…Cumae was small but pretty and we could see horse-drawn chariots running along the beach (what the heck, right?) and the Regia di Caserta is actually the Italian version of Versailles. Ploy, Meghan, Jessica and I rented a 4-person bike and got a great workout riding around the Regia’s grounds, up hills and down…we had to push the bike up a couple hills, so I got my cardio in for the month I’d say…

Halloween is not really a celebrated holiday here, but we made it so. My friends and I were witches, some other girls were wine glasses, another was proseco, we had a scary creature, a moon goddess, a punk rocker, and a Roman senator, to name a few costumes. We hung out at a freind’s house and then went to the only club on top in Orvieto, which was a lot of fun.

As there was an Italian holiday, one of my roommates and I went to Rome and met up with Maddalena & co. We didn’t do much but we did watch an Italian teen 80’s movie called Notte Prima Degli Esami, which I think is like watching Breakfast Club or Pretty in Pink or something…it was actually great, I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you, English subtitles, p.s. The next day we met up with some other friends and did some shopping, saw the Piazza del Popolo, the outside of St. Peter’s, some Caravaggios, and got lost in Rome. Ate some phenomenal gnocchi and gelato (not at the same time).

Now it’s time to study for exams this week. Blah. I can’t believe how late it’s getting. I come home in about 4 weeks and I can’t imagine what it will be like. I have been to at least a bit of Europe and I love to see how each country has its own sappore, sabor, whatever you want to call it. Orvieto is full of such genuinely nice people, and Italy itself is one of the most welcoming countries I think I’ve been to.

Next post…the best fieldtrip we ever took.