Today was the first day that felt a little bit like fall. The humidity was gone and the air was crisp. It was appropriate to feel the weather change as we are feeling too that things are different. This foreign country is starting to feel less foreign. We finally know where to get all of our food, we understand why the weatherman is a colonel (meteorology is strictly a military pursuit here) and we are having more success with our culinary pursuits as well.
We received excellent instructions from our friends Susan and Jay on how to make coffee in the cafetiera. I have a feeling we went wrong primarily in how we filled the basket with coffee, that is to say that is where we went wrong after we bought a cafetiera in "Top Sound." Kitchen items are a specialty of Italy and I found a hardware store (still a bit strange for us, but there is no crate and barrel here) that sells "Bialetti" cafetiere. We figure with the best cafetiera money can buy and step by step instructions from our friends, we should be able to make coffee with out any explosions.
We also successfully cooked our whole fish. Tara responded to our post about the Branzino with a recipe. With her suggestions in hand I was brave enough to defrost the fish. You might be surprised to know that Branzino is actually sea bass. We stuffed it with lemon and rosemary as instructed and roasted it in the oven with a little white wine. It was delicious. We skipped out on eating the skin--we are taking this one step at a time.
It seems we exhausted the stove with the roasting of the Branzino, because the next day we noticed the bonfires we have for a stove top were looking pretty anemic. I was barely able to make the sauce I needed to make the meal I was planning: cannelloni filled with ricotta. Stupidly, we didn't realize what was going on. I had a pan full of stuffed pasta ready for the oven when it completely stopped working. We finally realized we had run out of gas but identifying the problem was really only the beginning. Not only did we not know where to find a gas canister but we didn't even know the word for gas in Italian. I know that the gas put into cars is called "la benzina" here, but I had a feeling that wasn't what we needed. With gestures and explanations in a combination of Italian and English, we explained the symptoms of the stove problem to the porter. A look of clarity came over his face, and he said we needed "una bombola." The very word had us in hysterics. We were certain that whatever a "bombola" was it wasn't going to help. The next day some guys came over to look at the stove. They tried to light it and said with a very dry sense of Italian humor, "It's hard to get the stove to work without gas." They returned soon after with the "bombola" a canister full of "gas." Yes, the word for "gas" in Italian is "gas!"
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