topinambour and chocolate

Varese is about an hour away from Milan and, luckily for us, was hosting a chocolate festival the weekend before Christmas. The festival had actually been re-scheduled from its original date after a transport strike immobilized Italy the week before and stopped most everything from moving around the country. This included staples such as gas and groceries, and apparently chocolate as well.

December 23rd was unfortunately a cold and wet day. Just cold enough to freeze your hands and just wet enough to worry that a downpour might be on its way. But far be it for moisture and a gray day to wring all the joy out of a chocolate festival.

We went with a handful of friends and fanned out, exploring the booths and snagging samples of the chocolates they had on offer. I've said it before but it's worth repeating: Italy has fabulous chocolate. There's a place in this world for Hershey's but it's not at an Italian chocolate fest. These are chocolates that melt warmly and delicately on the tongue, that are layered with flavors, with textures, and that reflect unique tastes -- think salt, anice, fennel... It's easy to taste too much, to get too excited, to buy far too many tiny parcels filled with chocolates.



But we weren't alone in our quest. Varese was filled with a fair amount of guests indulging their chocolate fantasies and there was also a giant penguin in attendance. Some sort of mascot, or just a random weirdo -- we're still not sure. But you'd better believe that the ladies in our group got a photo with the giant penguin. I mean, you kind of have to.

The character we should have sidled up to was the hearty soul we'll call Santa Magro, aka the world's skinniest Santa. I don't think anyone has ever seen a Santa that thin, a Santa so unconcerned with the conventional characteristics of Santa. I mean, this guy didn't even put a pillow in his shirt. But there he was on Main Street in Varese handing out balloons and the like. I guess living with Mrs. Claus up at the North Pole has cut down on this Italian Santa's opportunities to eat Mom's cooking.



We found a great drogheria while moving from piazza to piazza. Italian drogherias are usually fun places to wander -- they're filled with a little bit of everything. Wine, chocolate, pasta, topinambour. Topinambour? Yah, topinambour! Everybody knows what that is, right?

No, not really. I found a jar labeled "Topinambour e acciughe" in the back room of the drogheria and appreciated the fact that I had never, ever, heard of such a thing. I turned to an Italian man who was standing nearby and asked him what this Topinambour stuff was. He said he had no idea. He even pulled off the price tag so he could read the entire label and got no further than I had.

The lady at the cash register - one of the owners - explained that a topinambour is, in fact, a topinambour. The more useful portion of her explanation was when - in response, I'm sure, to the perplexed look on my face - she described the mystery ingredient as a vegetable, a tuber. So at least we know that the jar we now have in our cabinet features not only anchovies, but some sort of tuber.



Tubers weren't the only intriguing items in Varese food shops. There were more than a few windows featuring creepy food combinations under aspic. Based on what I can tell from window displays at this time of the year, Italians seem to like most anything when it's coated with a generous blanket of clear gelatin.

Hmmmm, carrots, peas and tuna... Is it under aspic? Ok, I'll buy it! Shrimp, egg and red pepper... Is there aspic involved? Give me three! Nothing says Merry Christmas and Happy New Year like a thick covering of quivering goo.



Far more appealing is the pizza at Fabbrica Pizza. There were five of us, we each ordered a pizza, and no one was disappointed. In fact, most of us gave a sigh or two throughout the meal. My pizza was an amazing and authentic rendition of a pizza napolitana. Doughy, puffy edges with a saucy center. And the buffalo mozzarella dripped that subtle taste of fields and earth that makes it so special.

The restaurant also was indoor and had heat which made it a pleasant alternative to the cold wintry outside. (Although you'd be surprised how far a cup of Italian hot chocolate will go to improve your mood.)

When we left Varese we had a backpack bursting with chocolate and a small jar filled with a mystery tuber. If I didn't know better I'd say we're ready to combine the two and boil up some aspic.

Buon Anno da Milano! (and Varese)

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Fabbrica pizza Via G. Ferrari, 5 (C.so Matteotti) Tel. 0332.232.939 www.fabbricapizza.com

torino two times

We headed to Torino for the chocolate festival this weekend and did our best to honor the spirit of the event -- indulging in samples and skads of wanton chocolate purchasing. While it wasn't in the same piazza as last year (we know because we were there) it was almost as good. We couldn't find the smoked chocolate, and the salted chocolate (our favorite) was only available in the smaller, and more expensive, bars. But we did find a flourless chocolate cake, the size of a dessert plate and heavy as a brick, that's now in our kitchen waiting to be devoured.

Reaching into the sky above Torino is a spired tower that can be seen from almost every piazza and open space in the city. You could see it from the chocolate fest - and it shows up on the right in the first photo. This symbol of Torino is popularly known as "The Mole" and was finished in 1889; at 167 meters many claim it be the tallest structure in Italy. What was originally intended to be a synagogue is today a well-known observation point whose main building houses the Torino Cinema Museum.



The view from the tower is a good one although the elevator ride to the top is the real adventure. Twenty seconds of glass-walled lift through open space. No girders, no elevator shaft, just a glass elevator gliding up, up, up along its cables. Sheer exhilaration.

The cinema museum is excellent. Starting with the simple play between light and shadow and reaching into today's technologies, the museum traces the development of cinema over time. In our attempts to enter the museum, and our wanderings within it, three themes made themselves brilliantly clear: 1. the domination of Hollywood in the film world, 2. how very cool a museum can be, and 3. a certain nonchalance towards customer service.



The museum is basically an opportunity to see never-ending examples of film and its precursors. The space is surprisingly interactive and you find yourself exploring the many floors and exhibits, watching clips from every genre, era and style. There were surreal films playing in a giant refrigerator with toilets as the theater seats. Experimental films screening in a mad scientist's laboratory, TVs glowing in the sinks and stove. Horror films presented in a haunted mansion complete with a coffin under the floor.



In the center of the museum, in the large space under the tower with the elevator rising directly above, is a theater where guests recline in lounger seats with speakers at their heads, watching films play on giant screens in front of them and, intermittently, projected on the interior of the tower. The vaulted ceiling becomes a giant screen, with the stick-straight cables leading into a small hole in the roof through which the elevator reaches the spire. As you might imagine, it's quite dramatic.

It's true that a majority of the films will be easily-recognizable to Americans. You can't escape the fact that Hollywood churns out more than a few of the world's most popular films. And you'll see clips of them at every turn. Even in the screening room we couldn't quite figure out -- its theme had something to do with love and you have to lay down on a giant, circular, red velvet bed to see the film clips which were playing on the ceiling. We found ourselves laying there with a young Italian couple, watching films play in the muted light. Once we got up, we were replaced by a quintet of silver-haired ladies who giggled as they lay down.



I should mention that we waited in two lines to enter the museum. First, the "wrong" line which could easily have been avoided if the young lady manning the cash register had been more interested in us rather than her pile of un-counted euro pennies. Which she proceeded to count as we stood in front of her. And count. And count. She finally told us we had to go wait in the other line. And once we finally did reach the other cashier - after 30 minutes standing in the sun - our previous "helper" double-checked with her cashier colleague that we had actually waited in the line. (As if we'd been hiding in some dark corner of the museum for half an hour and had only just then popped out to cut in line.)

Additionally, there was a staff member at the top of a very, very long spiraling ramp who let us know, in no uncertain terms, that our understanding of the museum layout was quite off and that we were to head right back down that long spiraling ramp until we were back at the bottom. And that was that. No more discussion about it.

I will say, though, that even though the customer is never right, especially at the cinema museum, it behooves the customer to visit the cinema museum. Because it is so very cool. Especially when you've got chocolate in your pockets.

torino for two

For Stefano and myself Torino used to mean "site of the Olympics." But after this weekend it means something else. Something quite unexpected and terribly too good. We were certainly very impressed by the Egyptian museum (see later post). And we were very happy with the aesthetics of the city and intrigued by its people. But what caught our attention first, and was the result of serendipitous good timing alone, was "La Grande Festa Del Cioccolato" - the Chocolate Festival. Chocolate, my friends. An entire piazza filled with the stuff.



Piazza San Carlo was framed with tented exhibitions by various producers and purveyors of "cioccolato" -- pronounced "choc-oh-lott-oh" and seemingly embraced by the Italians with even more vigor than Americans. The clincher was that each exhibitor offered samples of just about everything they had on display - the most requested taste seemed to be from the jars of soft chocolate. Think Nutella but gourmet. Everyone was walking around nursing a miniature spoon recently dunked into the stuff. And not to be outdone, Nutella had it's own booth and was selling Nutella milkshakes, crepes and more. But that's the simple stuff.

The chocolate purveyors were very creative in their combinations and that's where things got interesting. Think of a flavor... Let's try curry. Were there any curry chocolate bars at the Torino Chocolate Festival? Why yes, there were. Licorice? Don't be silly - of course.



Shall we ratchet up the oddball factor... something more difficult... smoked chocolate? "Cioccolato affumicato?" Had it. And while I wouldn't say it's required eating it was very worth the taste. With a smoky flavor wisping through, it's the only time I've eaten chocolate and felt very masculine in the process-- like a lumberjack who'd wandered into Godiva.

Winner of best in show for "new ways of thinking about an old favorite," for us, was salted dark chocolate. Weird and wonderful it's chocolate with a salty wave rushing through it - not sharp, but smooth and surprising. We brought home a bar and have already cracked in for a square or two.



Of course there were perfect candied orange wheels dipped in dark chocolate. And the traditional candy of Torino - the elongated triangular log called the "giandujotto" which is way too easy to eat. Creamy, soft and often tinged with hazelnut - it's a bite and a half of decadence wrapped in metallic paper. Sheets of chocolate with candied ginger, halved figs or curled walnuts laying along the top. Whatever chocolate you may have tasted once in a boutique years ago, or dream about in a world veined with chocolate rivers... was there.



So while we may not have seen the Alps, we did see a Harry Potter chocolate Easter egg the size of a pregnant sow. Thank you Torino. And not just for the chocolate - thank you for giving the Italians a reason to stop smoking for two seconds. Cause otherwise they couldn't come in the tent for chocolate. It's the little things, really.