I found this lovely bicycle parked outside a market in Florence and wished with every fiber of my being that it was mine. This - this right here - is la dolce vita. It was late afternoon and I took advantage of the long shadows to bring focus to the handle bars. I love how the bright green plant connects with dull green on the gently used bag.
No matter what city my fiancé and I arrive in, one of the first things we do is find the nearest market and fill our apartment with beautiful food. Our trip to Italy this past fall was no exception. We were lucky enough to wander markets all over Italy - from Positano in the south all the way to Verona in the north and many cities, big and small, along the way. For now I will highlight the markets of Florence, Venice, and Rome. But feel free to write to me about any other cities you are interested in visiting and I will do my best to help you find the best markets and local chefs. It is my pleasure to share how we nourished our bodies amidst all the temptation in Italy, without sacrificing taste and experience one bit.
Staying in apartments is one way we stay strong in our conviction for healthy eating while on the road. Having a kitchen allows us to take advantage of market shopping in a way that is authentic to the country we are staying in. Each country has their own market nuances and understanding them helps us connect to the culture and the locals on a whole new level. In Italy, you have to weigh everything in the produce section before getting in line to pay. It only takes one embarrassing encounter with a passionate and expressive Italian cashier to learn this lesson.
Sure, staying in apartments means we have to do a few dishes on vacation. But if you pay attention to subtle differences, you can start to see how culture creeps its way even into these mundane, everyday tasks. You start to understand what it would be like to actually live in that country. For example, in Italy, you don't have nearly the variety of dish soap as you do in the United States. We always had the same dish soap when I lived on Via Ricasoli in Florence many years ago and every time I have visited Italy since, the soap has been in the same in every kitchen. The smell brings back very fond memories and it helps me settle into the notion that I am not doing dishes in my kitchen in San Francisco. I am here, in Italy, and I am so lucky.
FLORENCE
A little corner of our pomegranate garden. I took this photo just after a deluge of rain, making the greens bright and the space between spaces nice and dark. Mother Nature did most of the work for me here, so I just dropped ISO and sped up the shutter to celebrate the contrasts.
We stayed in Florence for a long time and rented a charming garden apartment near Santa Croce. The garden aspect of this apartment was something I really looked forward to. From the streets in the city centre of Florence, you can't see any gardens. All you see are tall, narrow apartment buildings, one after the other. The idea of gardens being tucked away behind these ancient apartment buildings was so exciting to me. After all, I do love nooks and crannies. Since this would be our home for a week or so, the market shopping I did here was actually at good ole fashioned grocery stores. And they did not disappoint. For breakfast I picked up farm fresh eggs (look for "azienda"), arugula, parmigiano reggiano, and sausage to scramble together. You can buy pre-packaged and pre-cooked sausage to make things faster in morning, but we prefer to buy the ones made fresh by the butcher that morning. Thankfully, you don't have to go to a separate butcher shop to get great meat in Italy. Most grocery stores have a butcher onsite and, as you would expect from Italians, they take this stuff seriously. I also picked out some cabbage and peppers to use instead of arugula on some mornings.
Simple grocery store lunch of farro salad and cured meat. The plates and basket you see belonged to our host (lucky me) and I found the natural linen at a shop in Positano. I took this photo on my iPhone so I had to let natural light do all the work for me. I love the dark shadows created by the basket of eggs and folds in the linen fabric.
My favorite lunch dish was just about the easiest thing you could imagine. Every grocery store seemed to prepare a farro salad. It wasn't a leafy green salad, but more like a melange of farro, ham, vegetables, and black and green olives. Farro is not gluten free, but it contains considerably less gluten than other wheat products and is generally a lot easier on the digestive system. We often enjoyed this salad along with some cured meat and perhaps a boiled egg if we were particularly hungry. Since our apartment had a garden, coming home to eat was not only a charming experience, but it was also a reprieve from the crowds.
We almost always had dinner reservations, so we finished off most days with wonderful food prepared by someone else (WHERE WE ATE | Italy - Part I and Part II).
My point in starting this list with grocery stores is that food shopping doesn't always have to be as glamorous as farmers markets. Farmers markets are a luxury to me and when I can shop in them, I certainly do. But that doesn't mean I turn my nose up at grocery stores. Not only is feeding yourself from grocery stores a great way to stay healthy, but it is also a great way to surround yourself with locals. There is something very authentic about doing your shopping where the average Italian does their shopping.
VENICE
Our apartment in Venice was almost too good to be true. It had one of those front doors that you would see and instantly think "Italy". I smiled every time I put my key in the lock. It also had enormous windows that opened up to one of the main calle near the Rialto. But perhaps the best part was its proximity to the Rialto market. Every day I wandered to this market to pick out plums for breakfast or snacks for the day. I wish we had enough time to cook with the incredible seafood we saw. Thankfully, chicchetti (think tapas) are very much a part of Venetian culture. So at every bàcari, we chose seafood. For more on Venetian restaurants, visit Where We Ate - Italy Part II.
As you can see, there is an incredible variety of fruit and vegetables, many of which are grown on one of the city's lesser known islands. I found purple cabbage and pink string beans, deep red nectarines and golden zucchini flowers. I found bright green apples and classic tomatoes. And not only is the city of Venice otherworldly, but so is its seafood. In addition to sardines, clams, shrimp, and crabs, you can find moscardini (baby octopus), a personal favorite of mine, squid, and cuttlefish soaking in its own ink. You will also find fish mongers proudly displaying their biggest catches of the day. I was lucky to visit on a morning when a giant swordfish was caught. It was one of the most incredible fish I have ever seen (see photo at right/above).
If you slow down and pay attention to the market, you can actually see the connection between what the fisherman caught that morning and the specials restaurants are serving that evening. Most seafood will be very simple so you can enjoy the tastes of the lagoon. You may also find traces of ancient spice routes like star anise and green peppercorns. The Rialto market has been selling fish and produce for over 700 years and sustainability has been engrained ever since. Now that is my kind of market!
It just so happens that one of my favorite food writers is from Venice. From My Dining Table will regale you will tales of living in Venice and cooking traditional, family-inspired meals. I met Skye in Brooklyn last spring and I have been following her work ever since. She takes the most beautiful photographs and her writing really makes you understand la bea vita di Venezia (the beautiful life of Venice).
ROME
The abundance of fall on our dining room table. I found this olive wood spoon at Mercado Centrale in Florence and was excited to use it for the first time while in Italy. I found the blue and white linen in Venice and I thought it would contrast nicely with the red and orange tones of the currants and zucchini flowers. Of all the lovely things, my favorite part of this photo is the linen placemat on the left. The color blends into the wood table, but I love the texture it adds.
During our trip, the abundance of fall was on full display at Campo de' Fiori, Rome's biggest and most famous farmers market. This market has more tourists than I generally care for, but this is where getting up early pays off. I love getting an early start to watch the city wake up poco a poco, little by little. You can witness the vendors setting up their stalls, the shopkeepers opening their doors. You can appreciate the smells of espresso brewing and fresh bread baking. Early in the morning, you can feel the heartbeat and rhythm of the city.
The market was bursting with zucchini flowers, figs, the deepest of blue plums, nectarines, and my personal favorite, red currants. I didn't quite know what to cook with all these delectables, but I knew I had to play with them. So I had a dreamy morning of food styling in the kitchen of our apartment. The owner of the apartment was a painter and her space was every bit as artistic as she was. Her kitchen was full of old bowls, trinkets, and apothecaries that had been in her family her years. But even more important than the props were the conversations we had. She referred to me as an artist and this is the first time I thought about myself in this way. I think often about the conversations I had with this wonderful woman in broken English. Maybe I really am an artist at heart. I already look forward to returning to Rome and to this kitchen. If you are interested in details about the apartment, write to me and let me know. I will gladly share details with people who will appreciate and honor the space as much as we did.
Flowers from Campo de' Fiori on our dining room table. This was unplanned, but I love how the blush color of our carpet connects with the pink flower tips. I pointed the bouquet towards our window so I could drop the ISO for a darker image, but not lose any of the flower details.
One of the reasons I love Campo de' Fiori is the variety of items you can find there. It goes far beyond vegetables and produce. There are spice makers, wood carvers, cheese mongers, and florists. All the fioristi (florists) were clustered together in one corner of the market and I took my time selecting a bouquet for our apartment. It is hard to tell from the photo to the right, but those stems were nearly three feet tall. It was the tallest bouquet I have ever made. I ended up having to display them horizontally in a basket because they were too heavy to stand upright. The flowers filled our apartment for the days we stayed in the city and when we left, I gave them to our host as a thank-you gift.
For dinner in Rome, we made a lot of salads - in part because we had just eaten our way through the Piemonte region and needed a break from heavy Italian food, but also because the Fall season brings so much bounty. Salads are a great way to take advantage of that bounty. Campo de' Fiori is great for perusing and picking up a few beautiful treats here and there, but again most of our shopping was done at the tiny market around the corner from our apartment. We got to know the owners during our stay and it was a pleasure visiting every evening. At this market, I picked out a few different kinds greens, more farro, and chicken (by this point we needed a break from cured meats). I also picked out some olives and quinoa to switch things up and a bit of pecorino cheese. The plums, figs, and nectarines you see in the photo above were used to augment our breakfasts and salads and they made great afternoon snacks as well.
Finalmente, I would like to share a photo from our final morning in Rome and, in my humble opinion, it is the best photo I've taken to date. It is dark, yet you can see the morning light starting to peek through our curtains. This is my favorite time of day. I had clipped a few of those gorgeous flowers very short so we could have some on our dining room table. Here in this quiet moment before a bustling day in Rome, I was able to be slow and take a breath. If you take time to share coffee with your loved ones before starting the day, gratitude has a chance to settle in. In true Italian fashion, you can practice la dolce far niente. The sweetness of doing nothing. Arrivederci, Italia. It won't be long until we meet again.
It is hard for me to pinpoint exactly why I love this photo so much. Maybe because it is somehow symbolic of all our mornings in Italy. Maybe it's because these objects are not mine, but they somehow serendipitously found me. Maybe it is because I love the light or maybe it's the memories of my morning at Campo de' Fiori picking out those flowers. I suppose the reason doesn't really matter. I'm just going to let it remind me to slow down and take time for appreciation.