From our apartment on the hillside below Castellina we look out to the west over vineyards, olive groves and wooded hillsides. Turns out Castellina is something of a crossroads making it easy to take a new route every day. Our first full day here was a Sunday and the larger grocery (the Coop, every town seems to have one) was closed, but we had done some shopping on our way down from Florence and the little shop in town was open supplying us with homemade prosciutto and fresh pecorino, a few vegetables, pasta, large cracker-like bread, and olives. Still, we chose our Monday outing by choosing a town that was supposed to have a market on Mondays. We headed east to Radda, another hilltop town maybe slightly larger than Castellina. No market. Oh well, the tourist office supplied us with a map for a nice 2 ½ hour hike through the hills. See the next posting for the nature details to spare those of you not so into nature.
We got back to Radda (see photo) from our hike in time for lunch and chose Al Chiassco dei Pacifici because of its lovely outdoor terrace. Jake tried the local soup, Riboletta, really more of a thick stew of white beans, tomato and many other things. I got fried meatballs with potatoes and salad. It may sound ordinary, but it was really good. I think they must fry everything in olive oil and the salad had an intense, fruity balsamic vinegar and a slightly spicy olive oil dressing. From Radda we drove up to Volpaia, taking a wrong road the first time and ending up way up in the mountains. Volpaia is a hilltop castle that makes wine and olive oil, sort of a company town. Unfortunately there wasn't much there to do aside from take in the views, maybe due to what seemed to be an intensive effort to fix some underground plumbing problem. I had read that they offered cooking classes and made excellent wine and olive oil. But there is a restaurant/bar with a terrace with amazing views and we had an espresso before driving home.
Tuesday's outing was planned yet again to find a market. This time we succeeded by again heading further east to Figline. Jake enjoyed driving the twisting roads, except for when the occasional bus or truck would come zipping around a curve towards us. Taking in the large number of warnings on road signs can be pretty daunting. Sequential sign posts can warn of falling rocks, leaping deer, unstable road edges and the need for snow tires. Figline is a fairly large town near one of the major north-south highways. The center is ringed by a massive stone wall with various towers built into it. You couldn't miss the market this time, but at first all we could find were stalls selling clothes, shoes and household items. Finally down a side street Jake spotted the market stalls with edibles. There was a decent selection of vegetables as well as a lot of stalls selling cooked meats, cheeses, olives, and dried fish. We bought a good-sized trout from a fresh fish vendor and some swiss chard and garlic from the vegetable stalls. Also a melon to have with prosciutto at lunch time. Pan-fried trout and braised swiss chard made for an excellent home-cooked dinner!
We ended the afternoon back in Castellina getting some necessary work done (see photo of Jake's new office!), picking up clean laundry and having a five o'clock gelato in town before walking back to our apartment.
Wednesday we opted for San Gimignano, supposedly the most beautiful town in Tuscany. It is beautiful, but also filled with busloads of tourists. It's large enough though that you could still escape down back streets. Still, it was hard to think of anyone actually living there. The town is ringed by high, thick stone walls and has many tall stone towers within the walls each apparently built by different families. I went through the ancient basilica which has frescoes from the Middle Ages. One side was frescoes from the New Testament and the other side the Old Testament. They seemed to have a thing for camels back then! We also enjoyed walking along the outside of the walls where there were few people and great views over the valleys. The scent of figs perfumed the afternoon air in some sections.
We decided to have a rather nice lunch at a restaurant the Michelin Guide recommended for its local food and creative menus. We had planned to eat at La Cisterna on a recommendation from a friend, but it was closed for lunch for some reason. Ristorante Dorando' didn't have the view of La Cisterna, but it was within an old building on a side street and very peaceful. The waitress brought a chef's offering of a dab of red pepper mousse and some sort of fluffed mild cheese with a roasted cherry tomato. I had a fan of smoked duck with grilled cabbage as a first course and Jake had roast quail with an onion that had been hollowed and roasted with apple. For my main course I had guinea hen stuffed with a mild sausage and served with swiss chard cooked with raisins and pine nuts. Jake had macaroni with a very rich sauce of duck and leeks. Probably because I'd had most of the split of Chianti Classico (Rietine 2005 from Gaiole), I convinced Jake that we should also share an order of the warm chocolate cake with caramelized pears and orange slices with a cup of espresso. Not that he objected!
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