Napolean Lives Here: the strangest museum in the world

Whenever I drive south of my village in Valle d’Aosta, I’ve passed by a bizarre site.  It almost seems like a junkyard, but not quite.  It is a lot on the side of the road filled with strange constructions made of scrap metal, ancient industrial fans on tall polls with brightly colored paint peeling off of them, creepy life sized dolls looking over the road, dressed in decomposing rags.  There’s a big, peeling, hand-painted sign declaring it a museum, but to tell the truth, I never really got up the courage to check it out.  It’s not a place locals tend to stop at.  

We parked the car, and cautiously approached the roadside ‘museum’.  There were crudely hand painted signs dangling on the fence surrounding the rusted fence, declaring it to be world famous.  It was filmed by some Russians.  The TV channel Sky apparently transmitted it.  Someone wrote about them on the internet.  

Oh, and Napoleon lives there.  

We made our way in, and couldn’t believe our eyes.  If it seemed bizarre from the outside, that was nothing compared to being within the labyrinth itself.  The artist had built reproductions of many of the regions 152 castles, each about the size of a car.  Exact reproductions, created with scrap metal from a condemned beer factory.  There were creepy old mannequins of children standing everywhere, some missing one or both of the staring eyes, dressed in tattered clothes from decades past.  There was a weedy flower bed that had decapitated doll heads sprouting out of it.  There were nativity scenes.  But not your standard variety, 15 nativity scenes crammed into a small space, in a small cave, with ski lifts, all covered with a thick layer of dust.  A creepy life sized Santa doll with a maniacal look in his staring blue eyes, behind a dusty and half shattered window.  There was a metal chicken on a poll that waved in the air, and fans from the insides of ancient cars spinning in the breeze.  Chickens lived in the heart of the museum, in a scrap metal structure topped with what looked like a life sized Edward Scissorhands doll, and his friend, creepy bald doll.  Photos really can’t capture what this place is like.

I think this doll needs a bath

Who knew Jesus was born under a ski lift?

The original Edward Scissorhands

After wandering around for a while, a wizened old man suddenly appeared on the path in front of us.  He was hunched, had no teeth, and slowly made his way toward us.  At this point, he introduced himself as Carlo Tassi, owner of the museum, artist, and inventor. He was thrilled to have visitors, and enthusiastically and somewhat incoherently told us about his museum, is nose mere inches from my own, spraying globs of spit on my glasses as he spoke.  

But it was so worth it.

He told us he was 84 years old, and had been working on his museum for more than 30 years.  He  asked us if we saw his castle, Fort du Bard, because his mother was born there.  We looked behind us, and sure enough, there was an exact reproduction of the famous Fort, which was built hundreds of years ago by the Savoy family.  

Fort du Bard, made from scrap metal

 He then turned is back, and beckoned us to follow him, through a locked gate that looked as if it had been wrought from the center of the earth over a thousand years ago.  I think perhaps that was the case. 

He had a series of garages, which he opened and showed us the contents.  You wouldn’t believe it.  He had larger-than-life bronze statues.  A gold cash register.  A massive bronze statue of a lion, which he affectionately petted so often that it’s nose was getting worn down.  Intricately engraved Roman helmets.  A washing machine from the 1950’s.  A *real* ball and chain, from about 2000 years ago.  One of the original espresso machines.  Oh, and about 20 lances and head-axes from the year 900.  He even showed us how to use the lance, and how to properly behead someone.  And insisted we try them out.

We got to play with the 1000+ year old weapons

I perhaps had a bit too much fun!

We were given a lesson on how to properly use a lance to stab someone

We also learned how to use a vintage washing machine.

And then we met Napolean.  He has a freaking bronze statue of a pointingNapolean, on his rearing horse.  Carlo claims it was original, from Paris, and worth a fortune.  I asked how he got it, and he responded, ‘who knows?’  Every morning he opens up the garage, and wheels Napolean to a balcony overlooking the busy road below, so that he can greet the cars as they pass by. 

The real Napolean likes to wave at cars.

 I highly recommend everyone visit Carlo Tassi’s museum.  I promise it is like nothing you have ever seen before! Thanks to Barbara Swell for the fabulous photos.

Jam Making for Jamaphobes

It's jam season!

Yum! Plum & star anise jam on top of local goat toma and organic walnut sourdough bread baked in a wood fired oven

Actually, it's been jam-making season for quite some time, but I've been too busy canning to write about it.  Even as I'm writing, I hear the plums insisting that I turn them into jam.  Ok, not really, but they are sitting there on the table, looking very tasty, and if they could talk, they would be saying 'Annie...Annie.... please take out our pits and make us into tasty jam!  That star anise over there would go really nicely with our juicy flesh....."

A lot of 'young' folks seem to jam-phobic.  People of our parents generation make the jam, and we eat it, for the most part.  However, making jam isn't difficult at all, and today I'll give you some guidelines on making delicious jam.

There are different types of jam out there.  I like following the French 'confiture' method, which you can read all about in Christine Ferber's book, 'Mis Confitures'.  She's the queen of jam, and recently when I was in Annecy, France with my mom, we both stopped in our tracks and simultaneously screamed like teenagers at a Backstreet Boys concert (do they even exist anymore?) because we saw some of her jam in a shop window. So, of course we bought some.

There are different types of jams, and different ways of making them.  Here are the things to think about:

-  Do you like you jam chunky, with big pieces of whole fruit, or smooth jam, or somewhere in between?
If you like it chunky, leave small fruits (like strawberries) whole, or cut into large chunks.   For smooth jam, cut fruit into medium sized pieces and blend jam with a stick blender right before canning.  For somewhere in between, cut fruit smaller or give your jam a short burst with a stick blender. 

-  How sweet do you like your jam?
In the US, I think many people do equal weights of fruit and sugar.  Christine Ferber's are nearly that sweet.  In Italy, I've learned to appreciate less-sweet jam, so I usually add 500 g sugar per 1000g fruit.  I go up to 650g or so for less sweet fruit, but I don't go under 500 g because I think the consistency becomes compromised and you have to overcook the fruit to get it concentrated enough to can.  I think 650 g sugar per 1000 g fruit is a good starting point,giving a good balance between sweetness (not overly so) and consistency.

- Do you want it for breakfast, or to go on cheese or meat?
I didn't really know about cheese and meat jams before I moved to Italy.  And boy am I glad to discover them!  These 'savory' jams aren't necessarily any less sweet, but they have herbs and spices in them that make them pair well well cheeses and meats.  With bleu cheese, I love apple & liquorice jam, and with Fontina I love plum & star anise jam, and for goat cheese I go for thyme jelly, for example.  Black pepper, rosemary, liquorice, star anise, cinnamon, ginger, thyme, fresh mint.... there are no limits to how creative you can get!  I like to use those things to cover up fruit flavors that I don't love (like plum, gross) so that I end up with jam that is tasty even if I don't usually like that kind of jam.

Ok, lets get down to business.

You need good, ripe fruit.  If the fruit doesn't taste great by itself, it won't make great jam.  The riper the better. The following method can work with pretty much any fruit.  I go by weight, because that is the most reliable, and will give a recipe based on 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of fruit, which is easily multiplied.  Also, no pectin. You really don't need the stuff. It is the jam making equivalent of using a store-bought frozen pie crust.

Equipment:
Big pot: ideally you should use something that is wider than it is tall.
Biggest pot you own (for sterilizing your jars)
Big spoon
Stainless steel strainer (for berry and other delicate fruit jams)
Thermometer (optional, but highly recommended)
Kitchen scale
2 little plates
Jar lifter (optional)
Jam funnel (optional)


Base ingredients:
1 kg fruit, peeled if necessary, and cut up
500-750 g sugar, depending on the fruit and your tastes
juice of one lemon

1) Mix it all together in a bowl, cover, and leave it refrigerated overnight.  If you can't wait, you can leave it for a couple of hours and it will be ok.  We are doing this so that the sugar goes into the fruit, and the water goes outside of the fruit.  This will help our fruit stay whole, so that it doesn't turn to mush.Really juicy fruit (like peaches) can be left for an hour and be ok to use, but little plums (like in some of my demo pictures) really need to be left overnight.

I like to cut my fruit into chunks like this

2) For berries, the next day, bring the mixture to a simmer for 10 minutes, and then cover and refrigerate overnight.  For everything that isn't a berry, just go onto the next step.

3) Put water (enough to cover your jars) in the biggest pot you own and put over a flame.  You want this to be boiling when you finish your jam, so plan accordingly.  Also, get your clean jars and clean never-before-used lids ready.  If they've been used, they won't seal.  I find I get about 4 large-ish normal jars per kilo of fruit, depending on if it is a high pectin fruit or not.  And put some small plates in the freezer. 

4)  For berries and other delicate fruits (I do this with peaches and figs, too),  strain out the fruit from the liquid.  Put the liquid in your pot over a medium flame, and in a while we will use the fruit, but not yet.  After a while it will start to make some foam, some fruits are worse about this than others.  Berries foam up like crazy.  With a big spoon, spoon off the foam, because we don't want it on there.  Stir regularly, making sure that it doesn't scorch.  After a while the liquid will stop foaming and it will go a little darker.  If you have a thermometer, when your syrup has reached 105 C (221 F), it should be nearly ready.  Otherwise, when your liquid has that dark-ish translucent look to it and starts to look syrupy in thickness (should take between 30 and 50 minutes), add your fruit back in and cook for about 10 minutes more.  Don't forget to gently stir! At this point I might zap it with the stick blender and add in whatever herbs or spices I'm mixing in, tasting as I add.

Peaches can be cooked all together, or strained out and added in later.  If the peaches are super ripe and falling apart, I strain them out and add the fruit in at the end.

This is what it looks like when it foams.  At this point start spooning off the foam.

After I spoon off the foam, and it cooks a bit more, it starts to get translucent looking

5)  After 10 minutes, take one of those plates you put in the freezer, and put a drizzle of jam on it.  let it sit for a minute or two and run your finger through it.  If the jam doesn't fill in your finger tracks, it's probably ready. It is ok if the jam partially fills it in after a while, you just don't want it completely liquid.  It can take making jam a good few times before you figure out exactly when it's ready.  Undercooked is better than overcooked, though.

I'd call this jam done

 
 Here are two super useful tools.  They aren't strictly necessary but I don't make jam without them:

Jar lifter and jam funnel

6) Ladle your jam into your clean jars.  The jam funnel is great here because it is fast and clean.... if you get water, condensation, or jam on the lip of your jar, it won't seal.  A more 'ghetto' and time consuming alternative, if you don't have stellar aim with a ladle, is to press aluminum foil around around the lip of each jar and spoon the jam in. Don't forget to take off the foil!  You want to leave at least a finger's breadth of air at the top of the jar.

Filling the jars with my super handy jam funnel

7) Cap immediately!  If you put the lip on immediately after putting the jam in the jar, the glass is still cool enough to tough without burning yourself.  Make sure to tightly close them.  Each country has a different sort of jar and lid system, so figure out what you have and make sure you know how to use it. Sometimes there are little tricks to making the lids close right.  The ones I get in Italy, I have to turn the lid a few millimeters counterclockwise until I hear a 'click' and then turn the lid clockwise to close.  I've heard people say that you should never put hot jam in a cool jar, but I've never found this to be the case, and none of the many professional jam makers I know have ever had a room temperature jar burst from hot jam.  If you are worried about this, you can warm your jars in the oven or in some boiling water, making sure they are dry when you put your jam in.

 8) Using the other handy-dandy tool, I put my closed jars in the boiling pot of water I prepared.  Make sure that there are at least 2 inches of water covering the jars.  Boil them for 10 minutes.  This is VERY important, it sterilizes your jam and your jars so that funk won't grow in them.  Take your boiled jars out, and let them cool without being disturbed.  Depending on your lid type, you will probably hear 'POP.... POP' as they start sealing. Please don't touch the tops or you won't be able to tell which ones have actually sealed!  Leave them be overnight and the next day check to make sure that the pop up thingy on the lid is sucked down towards the jar.  If you press the top of the lid at this point and there is some give, it's not sealed, so you need to refrigerate it.  Otherwise, keep in a cool dark place until opened!

Oh yes, and don't forget to label them.  I used to think that I'd remember which jam was which but let me tell you, you can't!  Happy jamming everyone!

Italian Men and Their Cheese

Italian men love to talk about their local cheese.  Within moments of meeting an Italian man, likely as not, they will wax poetic about the cheese of their particular village, and how it is better there than anywhere else.  Don't get the cheese from the neighboring town, it's not as good.  Their cheese is the REAL one.  They'll tell you how to eat it, what to eat it on, and recount recipes that you can make with their special cheese.  They'll ask if you've ever eaten their cheese, and if not they very well might invite you to come visit so that you can try their local cheesy delicacies. Italian women are just as proud of their cheeses, but they aren't likely to talk to you about it.  Instead they'll invite you over for dinner and feed you.  And while you eat, the men will keep telling you about the cheese. Perhaps stereotypical, but I've found it to be true in my experience.

Local jam on top of local goat/cow toma

Being in an isolated part of Italy, and not having traveled extensively outside of it, I thought this was perhaps a local phenomenon.  People from Valle d'Aosta are very proud of their Fontina.  Proud of their cows.  Proud of the recipes made with their cheese.  Considering that half of my posts have something to do with cows, that probably isn't surprising!  But yes, in Valle d'Aosta, Fontina isn't just a cheese, it is a way of life for many.  Even those who hate eating or smelling cheese (like my husband) are very proud of Fontina.  Real Fontina only comes from Valle d'Aosta, from a certain variety of short legged Alpine cows who eat certain grass and herbs near the tops of snow capped Alps all summer.  We have cheese festivals in castles, a big festival to celebrate when the cows come down the mountain from their mountain herb eating summer holidays, pregnant cow battles to find the queen cow of the region, and a raw milk and Fontina vending machine.  But, as I found out at a wedding last weekend, the cheese obsession isn't just local.  It appears to be everywhere.

At the wedding dinner, I sat next to a man from Gambellara, in the Northeast region of Veneto.  We introduced ourselves, and he immediately asked if I ever tried real Asiago.  I told him I wasn't sure.  He tells me it is so good you can't imagine!  You can get it fresh, and it is like eating a bowl of fresh cream.  You can eat it on everything.  But go 40 km away, isn't not the same, not as good.  You have to eat Asiago in the town of Gambelara, because they have the real one.


I think I need to visit Gambelara.

After I was stuffed silly from the delicious wedding feast, I ended up talking to Antonio, the father of the bride.  He is a gregarious man with a huge personality, and before we were even introduced he had grabbed onto my shoulders and proclaimed, "I come from where they make the REAL mozzarella!" and for the next several hours he told me exactly why Battipaglia, in the region of Campania (in the south of Italy, near Naples) has the best mozzarella of the world.  The mozzarella of Battipaglia is sweeter, he told me, but whatever you do, DO NOT get the mozzarella from Caserta, which is a neighboring town.  They sell a lot, but it's no good.  You need real buffala (water buffalo) mozzarella from Battipaglia.

He told me, "I'm retired.  I work for my family.  I don't smoke, I don't gamble.  What I like is to sit down with a good bottle of red wine and good food.  I make my own wine, and drink a bottle a day, half at lunch and half at dinner.  I come from where they make the real mozzarella.  You have to buy it right when it's made, leave it in its water for a day at room temperature.  Then it is ready to eat.  It is wonderful, you can't get it up here where you live, you can't imagine.

"They come in big balls.  Don't eat them with a knife; it won't taste as good!  You have to dig into the ball with your thumbs and peel it back, break it open and eat it with your fingers.  Like this." As he speak, he is demonstrating exactly how he breaks open the mozzarella and pops it in his mouth.  I could swear that I could taste the sweet cheese melting on my tongue, as he smacked his lips in satisfaction from his imaginary cheese.  The conversation meandered through the subjects of tomatoes and bread, and the obligatory recipes that married the three subjects together, but it always came back to mozzarella.

Antonio already planned out my trip to visit him (and his cheese).  I guess I'm going to Battipaglia!

Black Bread Adventure and Zuppa Valpellinese

A few days ago I took my mom and her friend Randy up to the village of Ozein.  It's a paradise...there is no other word for it!  Well, a paradise for people who love ancient picturesque villages immersed in a sea of wildflowers, with breathtaking views of the tallest mountains of Europe.  It's pretty spectacular.  As my momma says, better than a poke in the face.




We decided to try and find the village's community bread oven, because Ozein is pretty well known for their wood fired pane nero festivals. Pane nero, or black bread, is the traditional bread of Valle d'Aosta.  Twice a year (sometimes more often) the villages fire up their massive community bread ovens, and the locals come and bake their bread that will last them the year.  The bread is low and dense, and made with either rye or whole wheat flour.  Some people make it with a starter, others with yeast.  They dry out the bread on racks, and have a special cutter for it so that they can saw off hunks that they then soak in liquid so that it is edible.  For dinner, it can be soaked in broth and made into soup, or for a snack it is soaked in homemade red wine, called zuppa di asino (donkey soup). 


 

The only bread oven we were able to find is one in ruins near a rustico (half falling down old stone house) that I have been eying for years. Gorgeous, but obviously not been used for many years.  After climbing a hill through the village through a blossoming sea of wildflowers, we saw an old woman on the street, chatting with an old man.  The man left as we approached, and I asked the woman if she could tell us where to bread oven is.  Our conversation went something like this:

me: “Could you tell me where the bread oven is?  My mom is writing a book on them, and we heard the one of your village is wonderful.”
old woman: “It’s just down the hill over there.  But it’s locked shut!  I wish I had the key, I used to have it, because it’s beautiful inside.  I’m so very sorry that I don’t have it.  I would love to take you there.”
me: “oh, that’s ok, we appreciate it.  We’ll look at it from the outside.”
old woman: “We baked bread in it just last Saturday!  I wish you could have come, you would have loved it.”
me: “ You bake bread, how wonderful!  What kind do you make?”
old woman: “pane nero, with whole wheat.  I'm so sad that I can't take you to see the oven. Would you like to try some bread?”
momma: “Sure!”

….old woman goes into her house, and comes out with a loaf of bread, which she hands over to us.  She seemed so heartbroken that we weren’t there for the firing of the bread oven, she wanted to give us a loaf of her bread that she made last December.  Yes, you heard right.  Last December, either on the 14^th or 15^th, she doesn’t remember which day.  She said it would be good for another few years, so we don’t need to use it right away.




She insisted we take the whole thing (not like it could be easily split, anyways), wrapped it in newspaper, and we went on our way to explore the old village.  When we got come, I called up my friend Angelo, whose mother is famous in the Valley for her zuppa valpellinese, a traditional Valdostano recipe using black bread.  He gave me the recipe, which resulted in a glorious dinner.  If you can scrounge up some dried up whole grain bread, here is an excellent use for it!  Measurements aren’t really important.  Folks here don’t measure for this soup, so neither should you. This isn’t a soup with much liquid in it, and is baked in the oven with Fontina cheese on top.  

Zuppa Valpellinese (for approximately 4 servings)

Ingredients:

-          half a loaf of black bread, or other dried up and dense whole grain bread

-          some butter

-          half a head of green cabbage

-          1 liter of broth (beef broth is traditional, but I use vegetable broth)

-          250 g Fontina cheese

-          1 or 2 onions

First, caramelize the onions, which should take about 40 minutes.  To be honest, caramelized onions aren’t usually added to this, but it makes it so much tastier.

 

  Preheat your oven to 350 F or so.  Prepare your broth, salting it to taste if necessary, and slice the Fontina.  Slice the bread (or in the case of black bread, get it into manageable sized chunks), and toast it with a good amount of butter.  Take off the leaves from the cabbage, and leave them in pieces as large as your hand.  Blanch the cabbage leaves (put them in boiling water for a minute, and then dunk them in cold water). 

 

In individual portion sized, oven safe casserole-type dishes, layer the ingredients.  First bread, then caramelized onions, then blanched cabbage, and then Fontina.  If your dish is deep enough, layer until it is filled, always finishing with Fontina.  Pour the broth over your layers, making holes in the cabbage and cheese if the liquid can’t pass through.  Put dishes in the oven for about 45 minutes, and if the cheese isn’t well browned by then, put the broiler on briefly. Serve hot! 

 

Light as a Cloud Gnocchi

I love gnocchi.  Not the hard, prepackaged, rock-like nuggets you can buy in a grocery store, but the real deal.  Fluffy little pillows that melt on your tongue, so light that they could nearly levitate on a humid day.  They have those little indentations that hold onto just the right amount of sauce.  They are delicious, and you can eat a lot of them without feeling weighed down. 

They are also quite easy to make, if you know a few tricks.

For 4 servings you will need:
about 1 kg (2 pounds) starchy potatoes that have started to wrinkle
pot of boiling water
1 slightly beaten egg
about one cup of all purpose flour
sauce (in the spring time I love using homemade nettle pesto)

The lovely thing about gnocchi is that measuring is completely  useless.  You just have to eyeball it.   The potatoes you use are important.  You want to use starchy, kind of dried out potatoes.  I like to use them once they start to get wrinkly.  You see, the secret to good gnocchi is adding little flour, and if you use a starchy and wrinkly potato,  that will be much easier.

My friend Alexis grew these potatoes high up in the Alps.  This is what 2 kgs looks like. See how nice and wrinkly they are?

Wash the potatoes, cut them in half (or thirds if they are big), and cover with water.  Boil them until they are tender, about 45 minutes,  scoop them out of the water and let them drain well.  When they have cooled down enough so that you won't burn yourself, peel them, and pass them through a ricer or food mill.  If you don't have one, you could use a potato masher but it won't give you quite as good of a result.

Food mill over a bowl, so that the milled potatoes don't get squished

When you use a mill, like the one above, it finely mashes them and leaves little fluffy bits of hot potato behind.  We want to do this, and while they are hot and then let them cool off a bit, so that as much water from the hot potatoes can evaporate as possible.  This will mean we can add less flour later on, which leads to lighter dumplings. 

Milled potatoes left to cool

Get a pot of well salted water boiling; you can use your potato water from before, or a fresh pot, whichever you prefer. Spread mostly cooled potatoes on a counter in a rectangle, and pour the beaten egg on top of it.  Some people don't use an egg, or use only the yolk, but I like the consistency when I add a whole egg. Then sprinkle about 3/4 c of flour on top.

Potatoes, egg, and flour

Then I take my handy-dandy plastic scraper (I use that tool for nearly everything!) and fold the potato into the egg and flour, and then gently knead it until it comes together into a soft ball.  If it is still sticky, add a little bit more flour.  I usually end up using about a cup of flour, up to 1 1/4 cup.  Any less, they are mushy, any more, and they are too dense.  For fluffy gnocchi, try to not over knead.

Flour your work surface, and cut off a bit of dough about the size of an egg.  Roll it into a 'snake' about the width of a finger, and then cut it into little dumplings about the size of small finger joints. 

This is how I do the next part.  I hold a fork in my right hand, and I put a dumpling on the fork.  Using my right thumb, I gently roll the dumpling up the fork a little.  When you do this, you get a thumb indentation on one side, and fork tong imprints on the other.  This will help your gnocchi hold onto sauce. 

I usually put the gnocchi on a lightly floured plate, or they stick to the counter.  Before the next part, you want to go ahead and put your sauce into a medium sized bowl. 

Then I dump about 15-20 gnocchi at a time into the pot of salted, boiling water.  They will sink and then gradually rise to the top. About 15 seconds after they have risen to the top of the pot, I scoop them out with a slotted spoon, put them directly into the sauce, and gently mix them in.  Repeat until all your gnocchi are done!

Don't forget this step or else the gnocchi will all stick together!

Serve while hot and enjoy!

Homemade gnocchi with stinging nettle pesto from my field