Living in Milan has been an incredible experience and leaving is very difficult. Stefano, who's already back in the States, was hit with a sad longing for Italy nearly as soon as he'd left. It's hard to leave behind the adventure of a new culture, the sights we chased after, and the foods we so happily consumed.
But the item that will leave a far more tangible fissure in our well-traveled hearts is the people whom we've met. It's surprising how close you can get to strangers in two years. If you're lucky you can go from nothing to sharing dinners with their families.
And we've been very lucky.
One of our best friends in Milan took me out to dinner with his family the other night. There was more raw seafood at this one meal than I have eaten in two full years in this country, perhaps in my entire life. And I may have previously seen the things we were eating swimming around an aquarium tank but I have never before seen some of them on a dinner table.
But I ate it all and our friend was an excellent guide who knew everything about what we were eating. For each little undersea creature he would explain how to best remove it from its sometimes sharp and spiny shell and then how to eat it.
At one point we were eating these very large, very strange, praying mantis + shrimp kind of things. And I couldn't remember the name of this creature. They kept telling me and it kept just disappearing from my brain. Mind you, the entire dinner was in Italian, and my wine glass kept miraculously refilling, so my language skills were probably not at their finest - but I just couldn't understand what these things were.
The next thing I know my cell phone is ringing with a text message: "Si chiamano canocchie o cicale di mare." Our friend, sitting next to me, had sent me a text message to remind me what these weird crustaceans are called. It's goofy to say but I wish I could keep that text message forever. Not only does it tell me what those darn things are called but it also tells me I have a friend.
We ate giant shrimp that had been cooked and then put in an ice bath to cool them down quickly - digging around with a big spoon to find them laying under all of that pebbled ghiaccio. There was a plate of teeny tiny snails and pointy sticks to take them out of their teeny tiny shells. And we had burrata - that decadent combination of cheese wrapped in cheese. And olives and fried things and always more raw things. And don't forget the bread to drag through the sea urchins.
In the end we took a photo in front of the display with all of the seafood on ice. The lobsters behind us were languidly waving their antennae and we put our arms over each others' shoulders for the camera. It was dark in the restaurant but I love that photo. It reminds me what I loved most about Italy.
1 comment:
Oh, it's been fun for those of us living in Italy vicariously through your accounts, too!
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