A Heritage of Humor – Stories from my Kitchens

Post #731 Travel Time – Naples, Italy!

We’ve been there before in these posts, but it’s time to visit again.  I got to work in Naples twice while I was traveling and it was one of my favorite places to be.  I loved the culture, and I loved the scenery, but I really LOVED the food.  So, in a little bit, I’ll be going on about it.

First, just an explanation on the sporadic nature of posts recently.  With the FiL having moved in, the family dynamic is changing and we’re weathering through it all.  Soon, a new level will be reached and we’ll all be able to get back to a routine.  Work is always work, but lately with the excessive heat, it’s been physically exhausting.  But I’m constantly thinking about the blog and how I’m letting it slide, and with the best of intentions, I’ll get it back on track soon.  Okay, enough of the sad pity party.  On to Naples, Italy!

I’m going to focus on my first trip because that’s the one I learned so much on.  I got there about a week after the rest of the team late on a Saturday night.  I checked in with the team lead, and went to bed.  I asked him to let me know if they all went somewhere because I wanted to see the sights.  However, perversely, I woke up at 7am on a Sunday morning, long before any of my colleagues, so I went down to breakfast, then went out on my own.

Our hotel was located right on the Bay of Napoli across from a castle located on an island not far from shore.  There was a causeway leading out to the castle.  The street directly in front of the hotel was one of the main thoroughfares.  On the weekends, the street was closed to traffic and became a pedestrian walkway.  So when I left the hotel, I was surrounded by people speaking Italian which I vaguely understood.  It was so cool.  I turned left and wandered around.  Suddenly, I was in the middle of a street fair!  These are the types of things I love to find.  It’s locals enjoying a Sunday morning doing things that tourists wouldn’t do.  I wandered around with a smile plastered to my face, the sun shining on me, and people just having a good time.  I’d wandered several miles so I was starting to get a little hungry and I smelled popcorn!  I went to the man and raised one finger to indicate one bag.  He grinned and I gave him a euro and I had a bag of fresh hot popcorn.  With sugar on it.  I hate sweet popcorn.  I never liked Cracker Jacks as a kid, but wanted the prize.  I took one bite and gave it to a kid walking by with his parents.  They all smiled and said, “Grazia!”  I answered, “Prego!” (not ragu) and went on my way.

I made my way back to the hotel and arrived about mid afternoon.  I arranged my room, then sat on the balcony with a magazine to enjoy the breeze, the sun, and the ache in my legs.  I connected with the group a couple of hours later and they strongly recommended a restaurant on the causeway leading to the castle.  I have no idea if this same place exists today, but during our trip, I ate there at least twice a week.  It was where I was introduced to fried calamari.  We were sitting there, chatting excitedly (as only American can) since we hadn’t all been together for several weeks, sharing experiences at the various places we’d been, and they kept insisting I had to eat the calamari.  So I ordered a plateful.  Then I watched as the chef (he couldn’t be called the cook because his art went way beyond that) went to the side of the causeway and lifted a basket.  Inside were several squid that had been caught that day and were “living” in the basket.  (While on my second trip, I noticed small children diving into the bay and capturing that day’s meal in calamari and other shell fish.)  He pulled out a succulent one and butchered, cleaned, and prepped it while I watched from the table.  I wondered what I’d gotten myself into but adhered to The Rule and made myself enjoy what was to come.  It arrived, crispy brown enticing nuggets on a bed of lettuce lightly sprinkled with sea salt, with two lemon wedges on the side.  Bread, olive oil, butter, and vegetable nuggets were already on the table with our drinks (white wine for me!)  I bit into one hot nugget and crunched into the most delicious piece of seafood I’d ever had in my life.  There’s no way to adequately describe calamari.  It doesn’t taste like anything else, not even chicken.  You’ve just got to taste it yourself.  But don’t ever get calamari delivered, and don’t buy it in the store frozen.  It just isn’t the same.  I’ve found that Thai restaurants do it closest to what I had in Naples.  It’s just plain delicious.  I ate every bite, and ate the lettuce it was sitting on, and would have licked the plate but I thought it would be bad form.

Later during the trip, we went to a buffet and I got to try grilled calamari and it was a different taste and texture, but every bit as delicious as it was fried.  I also had calamari on pizza which was another wonderful dish.

Pizza was created in Naples.  Everyone in Italy agrees, and most of the world accepts it.  Pizza in Italy is just different from pizza everywhere else.   And pizza in Naples is just different from anywhere else in Italy.  It’s simple, easy, complex, delicious, and easily the meal I want to die eating.  Back then, my gall bladder was still handling cheese okay so I could have pizza whenever I wanted so I ate it a LOT while I was in Naples.  The classic pizza in Naples is Pizza Margherita, a simple dish of pizza dough, fresh tomatoes, sea salt, olive oil, and mozzarella cheese.  Sometimes fresh basil leaves are added after it’s out of the oven.  However, you can get any kind of pizza you want in Naples, and I went with Pizza al Funghi, roughly translated as Mushroom Pizza.  But what they do is slice the mushrooms paper thin with a mandolin and cover the entire crust with mushrooms.  Because they’re so thinly sliced, they cook quicker, and get pretty crispy.  A real delight, let me tell you.

I loved to wander the piazzas and plazas around the hotel to see where they would take me, and one early evening I wandered into a plaza I hadn’t been to before.  It was almost directly behind the hotel by about a quarter of a mile, but you had to know it was there to find it.  I found a couple of my teammates there outside a gelato store.  I sat down and they made me buy some gelato.  My gall bladder was already starting to react against dairy about that time so I wasn’t certain.  Even now, it’s hit or miss, and then it was the same.  But it was Friday night and I had all weekend to recover if it didn’t sit well, so I went into the shop and got a small bowl of decadent chocolate.  It was OMG! good.  Gelato is basically ice cream with extra dairy fats added to it so the mouth feel is smooth and unctuous.  Typically it’s fruit based in flavor, but even simple vanilla is wonderful.  The thing that makes gelato successful is the ingredients must be the highest quality you can get.  There is no second-rate about good gelato.  Here in the states, the more you pay, the better the quality, and the better the experience.  Today, I wouldn’t even consider eating ice cream much less gelato, but I remember eating that stuff in Naples and being taken to another place by the flavor.  Chocolate is great; chocolate gelato is better.

So, I haven’t mentioned wine yet, and Italy is second only to France in wine quality and taste.  Some people even prefer the Italian wines to the French.  I’m one of those people.   One time my ex-wife and I went out to dinner with her parents to an out-if-the-way Italian restaurant that we like a lot.  I always ordered the salmon al forno because it was delicious.  A large piece of fish smothered in a tangy cheese sauce with small cocktail shrimp all over it.  I always ordered a white wine and one time I asked the waiter to bring one and to surprise me.  He brought a Soave Blanco and I fell in love with it.  One time my mother in law and I drank an entire bottle between the two of us, and got quite tipsy.  But while I was in Naples that first time, I was still a neophyte with Italian wines, and generally with wine in general.

One Saturday, some of my colleagues and I were wandering around the city just enjoying the sights and hoping to find a sidewalk sale (we did.)  We had plans to eat in our rooms and play cards that afternoon.  We were all committed to spending as little as possible on this trip for some reason.  In my case, it didn’t really matter.  My expenses were minimal to start with, but I was willing to go along with the group.  On young lady and I went into a bar to get some water and noticed some white wine bottles lined up on a shelf.  It’s label read Vesuvio.  I was instantly enchanted.  Vesuvius is the volcano that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum and we’d already visited the sites of both tragedies.  We asked the price and it was so low, we each bought two bottles for the afternoon’s card game.

We got back to the hotel with our wine, and the others each brought something for us all to munch on during the afternoon and early evening.  We had a several rounds of cards, with plenty of wine and plenty of food.  I was hosting it since I had the best view and the largest in-room fridge.  One of the guys was a sponge and brought minimal contributions while ingesting the lion’s share of drink and food.  The group wised up pretty quickly and on this day while the food flowed freely, the beer was brought stingily, and I made sure the wine lasted the whole evening.  The wine was excellent, and such a good deal, my colleague and determined we’d keep our eyes opened for it again.

A week or so later, we decided to do it all over again.  They were still interested in saving money; I enjoyed the company; and the card game was fun to watch as well as play.  The same coworker and I went to a different bar and found the same wine and bought four bottles each.  The bar owner was hesitant, but language barriers prevented him from expressing his doubts to us.  We were so pleased with ourselves, we didn’t even mind the trouble getting all those bottles back to the hotel.  The trouble came when we popped the first bottle.  It was like vinegar.  It was terrible.  We understood, finally, the barkeep’s trepidation in selling us so much of the wine.  No one had ever told us about aging the wine, or that each vineyard and bar and pub and other establishment aged their wines for month before selling it.  We were so disappointed!  I’m wiser now, and I know what to watch for but at that time I was looking for cheap, good wine.  I found two of the three.  It was cheap and it was wine.  It wasn’t good.  We left seven bottle for the maids as a tip.  I’m sure they loved it.

On that trip, from Italy, I went home.  I had about three weeks home, then went to Sydney, Australia.  About a month into the trip, and just a few days before my 40th birthday, I went rollerblading, had an accident, suffered a head injury and some brain trauma.  But that’s a different story.

I have loved Italy ever since my first visit.  I later went to Rome for several weeks, and a short trip back to Naples for some followup work.  I gorged myself on pizza and gnocchi and pasta.  Europe knows what’s important.  Food, good friends, and good times.

Hope you liked this travel tale.

As always,