
To Florence for the day. Sarah was visiting, and was keen to see Michelangelo's
Pietà, in the
Museo dell Opera del Duomo, and I wanted to go to San Marco, having been inspired by Lauro Martinez's excellent book on Savonarola to see where it had all taken place.....(last time I was there was in 1981, when the book hadn't even been thought of, and my memory of the place was a little

hazy). The City was in full Christmas swing, with stalactite illuminations the length of the street between the
Duomo and the
Palazzo Vecchio, and the crowd on the train from Pisa suggested Christmas shopping expeditions were firmly in progress. The Pietà was beautiful - as were the original panels

from Ghiberti's
Gates of Paradise, also on display in the museum courtyard - and San Marco was like the Ideal Home version of what a monastery should be: all polished perfection, with Michelozzo's spaces and Fra Angelico's frescoes jostling exuberantly for attention....
En route to San Marco, we made a slight detour through the
Mercato Centrale, which is a food-shopper's paradise. On the ground floor, poultry, and h

aunches of meat, and tripe, and pasta, and oils and wine, and up on the first floor, vegetables, and dried fruit, and fresh fruit, and more oils and vinegars, and strings of peppers and mountains of pumpkins, and on and on.......Freezing cold, and jolly, and noisy and bustling. Had we not got a full day's itinerary ahead of us, I'd have loaded up more generously, but as it was contented myself with bottles of Sage Oil and Rosemary Oil - for adding to salads - and some dried strawberries and dried cherries (excellent, amongst other things, re-constituted in alcohol and mixed in with vanilla ice cream....).
Inevitably, we ended up in
Cammillo for lunch. I had the most delicious chicken I can practically ever

remember - boned, and chopped up, and then deep-fried - whilst the Technical Department had fried brains, which he proclaimed excellent, and Sarah had a dish of Tripe, ditto. She and I then had Crême Caramel, the texture of which was thicker than I would make it, but with the delicious and unexpected addition of flecks of orange peel in the mixture, and the TD had a tart with Crême Patissière and Wild Strawberries. Two carafes of house red to windward - to keep out the cold, you understand - and we were all set to declare victory and make our way back to the station, window-shopping the length of Via Tornabuoni as we did so.
And the Sad Day? Much lamentation......but Claudia has announced that she'll be closing down soon, for good, and the
best pasta bar none that
any of us have ever eaten will be no more. Her father and brother make it in their
laboratorio in Via Tavoleria, and Papa is too old to ca

rry on, and the brother has had enough of starting work at four o'clock in the morning for six days out of seven....And I suppose he can't be alone in that, since they seem to have given up hope of selling at as a going concern, and are merely going to shut down instead. The pasta they produce is of a quality almost unimaginable.......a texture which is soft and buttery, and in comparison with which all other pasta (even that painstakingly made at home,
a mano) is frankly rather ordinary. I don't know whether it's the combination of flours that he uses, or a particular technique in the process, or - more probably - a combination of the two.
So......no more
Casarecci, no more black ravioli stuffed with
Branzino, no more melt-in-the-mouth
Papardelle or
Fettucine. It's good news for the waistline, but most definitely a ratchet downwards in the quality of life!
Tonight's Dinner:
Onion Risotto, made with a rich Duck stock.
Bistecchie di Maiale, coated in minced Fennel and fried; Chard cooked with Chick-peas.
Apple Strudel (with a handful of dried Strawberries mixed in with the Apple...)
2 comments:
What a lovely post...I felt like was right there, walking the bustling streets of Florence, smelling the food in the market, seeing the art, eating that incredible sounding food and warming up with that house red wine! Thanks for the mini-vacation.
Very sad news about that pasta shop. Sadder even to know that they are probably not alone as many all over Italy are probably facing the same problem of the newer generations not willing to do that kind of work, which as you know is a labor of love.
Exactly - that's the truly depressing part about it, that it isn't just the disappearance of one business, but the sign of a decline of an entire type of industry. And it isn't going to be replaced with anything that even begins to compare in quality....
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