26 September 2009 Okay, so for everyone who has been badgering me about food… I finally took some pictures :) actually… K and I went over to F&L’s apartment for a night of Tuscan cooking… We meet at the CONAD (local grocery store) and picked everything up for the pre-planned menu… it was funny, L had printed it out and everything… there was even a cute little drawing of the Tuscan countryside on the bottom :-p F, being possibly one of the most painfully organized people I know, had to show us, by section in the store, where to get everything (checking off each item as we went, of course…) … it took far longer than either K or I had expected… and then we came to the wine section… madon’… if anything seemed long up until that point, we were sadly mistaken… I think it took 15min to choose the white alone (with the dishes we were preparing, white was more fitting… and we had to get an authentic Tuscan white, and it had to match the flavoring, and there was much debate as to the alcohol % - after 13% the flavor drastically changes with each .5%... oy) and then to the red… well, chianti was the standard, and expected, so we went to the chianti section, and looked – in awe – at all of the different types… we ended up settling on the chianti classico, a certified wine from the chianti region, less than 12%, full enough for the mushroom dish without being overpowering for the rest… Finally, around 7 (we met around 6…) we walked into F&L’s apartment, and put everything on the table… and then came the debate what to prepare first… well let’s have a look-see at the menu: Porcini mushrooms with garlic and olive oil (self explanatory… omg amazing!) Kale and Onion Bruschetta (again, relatively self explanatory…) Tonno e Fagioli (Tuscan White Bean, Tuna, and Red Onion Salad) Strozzapreti alla Fiorentina aka Gnudi (literally, priest stranglers, or naked… ravioli sans dough) Castagnaccio (chestnut ‘cake’… the term cake is used lightly… not the sweet dessert K or I expected!) So, we spent the next hour or so prepping, cooking, and having a wonderful time in the kitchen :) (and anyone wanting the recipes, let me know… all are traditional Tuscan dishes that are wonderful!) When it came time to eat, not only was I excited to try everything (thanks Mum, for teaching me the basics… I didn’t feel so silly when asked to mince, flay, braze, and sauté :-p) but I was starving!!! Everything honestly was amazing… I love Tuscan food… it’s sooo much better than the Sicilian-American stuff you get back home… I mean, a whole dish based around this rich, nutty porcini mushroom?? Heaven. And the bruschetta reminded me of cabbage pierogis (don’t tell F&L!!!) which accomplished two things: making me homesick, and providing me with a strange Italian-ized polish comfort food :) Overall? Success… I swear K and I rolled home!
Wow today’s been crazy… but before I get to that, I should update you all on the past few days…
Lots of field trips, which really just means class (!!!) for me, and also means lots of pictures!
Sooo… it was a walking week… in short? We visited: the Baptistry, Santa Croce, Or San Michele, Ospedale degli Innocenti, a little church in Piazza del Limbo called Santi Apostole Biagio, San Lorenzo… Want the long version?
We started out in the hot Tuscan sun at the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the first real orphanage in Europe… it was created for children of the plague, and those born out of wedlock who would have been otherwise left helpless somewhere in the outskirts of the city… yes, I know what an orphanage is, but it made me sad to realize that with all of the advancements in the past 40 some-odd centuries, we really haven’t come that far… Anyway, the building was created by Brunelleschi, and remains a beautiful reminder of the true compassion inherent in humans…
From there we walked to ostentatious San Lorenzo ...okay… so I know it doesn’t look like much, mainly because the façade was never finished… but it is the Medici church of Florence… and trust me, what it lacks in curbside appeal, it makes up for in the interior... I have this new-found affinity for the inner-courtyards of these monestaries and churches!!(I wanted to take a picture of the treasury… but no photos were allowed down there… or in the church itself...) The inside is beautiful and natural, with an insane attention to symmetry and perfection… this was built in a time when men were realizing God as something greater than a Divine figure of fire and brimstone, and awesome wrath… all of a sudden (okay, huge lie… sweeping generalization, I know… but in hindsight it seems like this miraculous overnight epiphany) God was this forgiving divinity with a more human side… and it’s crazy how you can see this shift in ideology in the art and architecture… of course, it was all funded by the Medicis (San Lorenzo, just one of the 8bil Medici-funded projects), so it is ridiculously extravagant, yet clean and beautiful, in keeping with the new religious reforms (aka moving as far away from the old medieval corruption of Tezel and the sales of indulgences and the gross simony and nepotism that had become the church)… Between Brunelleschi’s sacristy, Michelangelo’s sacristy, Donatello’s pulpits, and the other various artistic giants who helped with the internal structure of this church, it’s insane to think that this space was meant to be a place of worship and not an art museum!
Or San Michele (church of Saint Michael in the Orchard) was this beautiful church that we only saw from the outside… mainly because of the little niches filled with sculptures that were far more interesting than confusing ourselves with yet another nave, transept, altar, and apse… that, and the fact that the outside façade had a much more interesting history than the inside :) The outside niches were created to be filled by the respective guilds of the city, and therefore contain works by different sculptors, representing different ideals and values.
Another day of class was spent in Santa Croce (the church of the holy cross) which is a stone’s throw away from my apartment.It was interesting to learn about something I’ve seen so often the past few weeks… it’s also strange how comfortable you can get in a place, because by walking by it so many times, Santa Croce had almost lost its impact, until I was forced to stop and take notice again in class… It’s the church where Machiavelli, Galileo, and Michelangelo are buried, and holds yet another score of incredible masterpieces.The façade alone (while not original… just another imitation… in hopes of looking Roman and authentic…) is beautiful as it was meant to be a public art piece, and therefore better the city.The inside was under some serious revamping while we were there… it was hard to get the full effect with all the scaffolding and restoration being done, but, the sheer size of the thing was enough to be awe-inspiring… The frescos were gorgeous, most of which were painted by Giotto, the artist thought to bridge the gap between Byzantine medieval art and humanist Renaissance art… it’s amazing the difference depth can make… by painting the figures with movement, emotion, and depth, Giotto’s works were far more sculpture-like, and had much more of an emotional impact than many of the medieval works we had seen up until this point… even to me, a modern viewer, one so used to art as movement, his works were striking… it’s amazing what transcends time.
On Thursday, we visited the Baptistery, and Santi Apostole Biagio... Santi Apostole Biagio was a small church far removed from the hustle and bustle of Historical Florence, surrounded by more modern buildings, yet serenely beautiful in its own right… in legend it was built by the first Christian emperor, Charlemagne, during his sweep through Italy… but the roots of that legend are rather precarious… it’s crazy to think that something built in 1000 AD could not only survive in modern times, but maintain its quiet beauty amongst the crazy hustle and bustle that has become modern Florence…
The Baptistery, being one of the most recognized and legendary buildings in Florence, is smaller than I expected… I’ve walked past it plenty of times, but the mesmerizing exterior makes the actual width of the place deceptively bigger than it actually is… Of course, that’s not why it’s amazing… it’s amazing because of all of the stories surrounding it, and the significance of the whole thing… It was rumored to have been built on the ruins of an ancient Roman temple to the God Mars, the patron God of Florence (who was later replaced by, guess who? St. John the Baptist… hmmm…) thus deepening Florence’s connection with the ancient republican Romans… It’s octagonal shape is supposed to represent not only the idea of the perfect circle (heaven), but of the baths of ancient Rome (adopted by the Christians for… baptism!), and the numerological idea of the 8th day as the day of everlasting life (Genesis…)The three sets of doors (three… so unnecessary…) were created by Pisano and Ghiberti… Ghiberti’s gates of paradise are no doubt the reason the Baptistery is so famous nowadays, but the history surrounding all three sets is quite interesting…Pisano’s set of doors are the original, they depict the life of St. John the Baptist, and were created in the Medieval style (lacking depth and perspective) for the purely functional purpose of telling the story to the masses… by depicting the life of St. John, the common masses could understand what this building was for… and at that time the conversion rate was incredibly high, hence the large building… In 1401, there was a contest for another set of doors to be designed, and Ghiberti won (though that fact is debatable… it is thought that he and Brunelleschi tied, but Ghiberti’s design was just the less expensive to create…) thus creating the second set of doors depicting the life of Christ… which seems so fitting… you enter through the life of St. John the Baptist, you become pure through baptism inside, and you exit through the life of Christ… incredibly poetic, obviously I took note :-p
But, they could not be happy with that… and Ghiberti was later commissioned to create the third set of doors known as the Gates of Paradise, depicting scenes from the Old Testament.Once inside, the large open space of the Baptistery is shocking… the altar, added centuries after its original construction, was the last thing to draw your attention… it was the Byzantine ceiling that I could not look away from… It depicted Judgement day, Genesis, the life of Joseph, the life of Christ, and the life of John the Baptist in a beautiful mosaic illuminated by gold leaf…
Needless to say this week was overwhelming with its culture… I never thought walking from church to church could be so exhausting… but I can’t help but be moved by the true spirituality and beauty of each place… because it is the stories of the people, and the splendor that they were inspired to create, that has moved and inspired me…
26 September 2009
and then came the debate what to prepare first… well let’s have a look-see at the menu:
And the bruschetta reminded me of cabbage pierogis (don’t tell F&L!!!) which accomplished two things: making me homesick, and providing me with a strange Italian-ized polish comfort food :)
