Just Try It!

New Foods I Sampled in Italy:

• Trippa: tripe - made from various parts of the cow's stomach, as well as from sheeps, pigs, goats and deer. We tried a tripe sandwich from a street vendor tucked away in the winding medieval streets near the Duomo in the city center, which sells the assorted salumi, sausages, and lampredotto sandwiches that Florentians like to eat for the on-the-go lunch. The food of the real man rather than the flocks of foreign tourists, sandwich carts can be found all around the city if one knows where to look. Frankly I found the tripe to be rather unappetizing, with the gummy, slimy, chewy consistency that can be most closely compared to tough calamari with tiny (unsettling) gills that remind of the intestinal origin. Tripe is boiled for hours before "edible" - a testament to the fact it was first cooked in the days when medieval peasants, on the verge of starvation, cooked every single part of an animal for sustenance, and out of habit which grew into a culinary tradition, Italians have the penchant for the taste of it centuries later. Try it at your own risk.
• Lampredotto: typical Florentine peasant dish made from the fourth stomach of the cow. Sampled at roadside food truck where the locals sat around on surrounding picnic tables picking their teeth, and the cook had massive plumber's cleavage as he leaned over the grease-covered grilltop to turn the meat. Originally a poor person and workman's sandwich from the medieval days, lampredotto can be found at sandwich vendors throughout Florence but rarely elsewhere in the country. Typically cooked in water with tomato, onion and parsley, the meat has the stringy, fleshy consistency that one envisions when picturing intestines, with fatty ridges and an unsettling purplish undertone to its color. As I stared at the Lampredotto floating in the hot liquid that sunny afternoon, overwhelmed by the pungent aroma, I felt somewhat nauseous (this could also be attributed to the bottle of red wine I drank the night before, mind you.) I tasted a small bite of the thinly sliced cut of meat and found it has an intense, distinct flavor that's very difficult to place, let alone describe, and could be likened perhaps to calf's tongue. Clearly the salty meat is an acquired taste, for its loved by Florentines - men in particular - yet there seems to be no demand for replication elsewhere in Italy. After observing enthusiastic discussions about the merits of lampradotto revered as some kind of delicacy, I deduced that one can only truly love it if raised on the dish, developing the palate for the incredibly particular flavor and texture, and becoming intimately accustomed to the food over time. Not to mention - no pun intended - you must have the stomach for it.
• Pesce all'Acqua Pazza: literally "Fish in Crazy Water" - fish is cooked in a pan filled with hot water and basic seasoning - garlic, herbs, tomato, salt seasoning - creating a broth that's rich and flavorful, soaking into the mild white fish and saturating the meat. I had the pesce di giorno, "fish of the day" in a tiny clifftop village on the island of Elba, and the fish really did taste that it had been freshly caught in the Mediterranean waters hours below and then served to me on a platter, head and all. Normally I don't enjoy food with faces, seeing the eyes of my dinner looking up at me, but this fish was so fall off the bone tender that I had to devour it. A fairly simple cooking technique that could be replicated at home, the real key to good pesce all'acqua pazza is fresh, good quality fish. Not so crazy.
• Horse: really I ate this by accident, as it was on an antipasto plate of mixed salumi that we had at a tiny restaurant in the small town Massa Marittima in the Tuscan countryside. I thought it was pulled pork; it has the same look and consistency. The osteria where we had lunch there was totally authentic, about five tables crammed in a tiny kitchen with dried herbs hanging from the ceiling; in Italian "osteria" literally means a place where the owner hosts people, denoting a homey eatery where patrons are often served family style. This particular restaurant, on a tiny overlooked sidestreet/walkway in the provincial town, is in fact an award-winning hidden gem that follows the slow food cuisine movement. (Slow food, as discussed in earlier posts, is the idea promoting farming plants and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem to preserve traditional regional cuisine. Though now an international food movement, it naturally began in Italy.) We followed the antipasto platter of assorted meats with a local pasta dish made from farro, a typical wheat grain in the Grosseto region of Tuscany, cooked in a rich cream sauce with a strong cheese evoking gorgonzola. Essentially the most incredible mac 'n cheese ever. I highly recommend the place - Massa Marittima has the antique charm of the medieval Tuscan villages but is far less touristy than the more well-known San Gimignano. We stopped there on a whim and found it purely delightful.
• Crema di limoncello: I had become familiar with the Italian digestive liquer limoncello fairly recently before my trip to Italy (through, I'm ashamed to admit, a Giada di Laurentis cocktail) and really like the strong lemony flavor. Crema di limoncello, I learned, is made essentially with liquor, sugar and cream. It's cool and creamy, of course, and we drank it on the beach at night so for me the experience was positively magical.