You may have heard — or maybe you’re hearing it now — that several Venetian spring months were sparkled-up by the presence of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, here filming “The Tourist.” (Stuntman Vladimir Tevlovski was also here. Just thought I’ve give him a shout-out.)
But naturally the excitement was generally focused on The Jolie and also Brad Pitt, who seems to have come along to drink and eat things and get photographed around town with the kids. And perhaps to keep an eye on her and Johnny Depp, if some unkind comments are to be believed.
I’ve lived most of my life in cities where there are more celebrities than plumbers. And usually Venetians aren’t too easy to impress, even with the annual Film Festival and other big events that so excite reporters and editors. This “Hey buddy, you’re blocking the entrance” attitude is just another of the many similarities between Venice and New York, and just another reason why I love it here.
Hoping to illustrate the reason for Venetians’ general indifference to stars (“So who is that?” “It’s Al Pacino!” “It’s Heath Ledger!” “It’s Daniel Craig!” “Oh……”)I thought I’d add here the number of films which have been shot in Venice over the 100-some years that cinema has existed. But a complete list evidently has never been made. Listers tend to name only their favorites, which is a little annoying. Anyway, it’s a lot. Since I’ve been here I’ve seen at least six in progress, which isn’t all that many.
But in a bar/cafe/pizzeria behind the trees in the generally nondescript area known as Sant’ Elena, at least one barista hasn’t made any effort to be blase’.
The other morning I noticed that somebody had set up a little shrine to a moment of elation which will probably endure till the last person who knows who Brad Pitt was has been cremated and forgotten.
The note says: "Brad Pitt drank from this cup." The date is April 24, 2010. I'm sure it has never been, and never will be, washed.
I don’t mean to pound this topic into the mud like a piling or anything, but I just thought I’d mention two more flavors that make Venice real to the old gustatory organs. By which I mean things I eat here that I haven’t really found (or taken seriously) elsewhere:
When the bovoleti are ready to eat, they look almost good. Gentlemen, start your toothpicks.
Snails, or bovoleti (boh-voh-EH-ti). Think escargots, with absolutely no pretensions — the polar opposite of pretensions. And absolutely no taste, either, which is why they are boiled, then thrown in a bowl with an overload of sliced fresh garlic and olive oil. Snails are merely an excuse to eat oil and garlic, in my view. It couldn’t possibly be for their nutritional value. Or their texture, either. (The garlic helps you get past that, too. Those old-time hungry people thought of everything.)
Bovoleti show up in late spring and are sold by fishmongers; odd, considering that your snail is a land creature, happier clinging to some plant stem in a field somewhere. They’re on sale until after the feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July).
The thing to remember about snails is that they tend to wander off. Here at the Rialto fish market, their way is illuminated by reflections from the red awning outside.Therefore your shrewd snail-seller will block their exit with a ring of salt. One does wonder how the little critters stay alive under water, since they don't have gills. Maybe they're all holding their breath and hoping for better days, like the rest of us.The palazzo Contarini has a distinctive staircase which has long since been nicknamed "del bovolo" -- of the snail.
In fact, that festival is their moment of glory, if snails can be said to have one, because there they demonstrate their other sterling quality, as entertainment. Eating them gives you something to do while you’re waiting for the fireworks. Slippery little shell in one hand, toothpick in the other, the point is to snag and pull out the bit of whatever you’d call that material that used to be alive, and eat it. The waters of the Giudecca Canal can be speckled with these shells, tossed overboard by oily-fingered people who are beginning to run out of conversation.
The other special item would be fondi, or artichoke bottoms. Perhaps you didn’t realize that an artichoke has a bottom, but usually there is somebody near a fruit and vegetable stand who has been assigned a mountain of big tough artichokes and told to cut off all those leathery outer leaves and other useless bits (which is most of the artichoke) with a knife as sharp as a billhook, then carve a neat disk from what remains.
The artichoke puts up a struggle, but with the right knife and the will to prevail, you'll have something really good to eat. If you get bored with them like this, chop up a few and mix them with some pasta.
Simmer slowly in — you know what’s coming — oil and garlic, throw some minced parsley over them, and there you have your daily thistle.
Bit of useless information: You may discover that in Venice there are two words for artichoke used interchangeably: carciofo and articioco. Carciofo (kar-CHAWF-oh) is the standard word, but across northern Italy, from Friuli to Liguria, you’ll find variations on articioco (ar-tee-CHOKE-oh). Such as: articjoc, articioc, articioch, and articiocc. Both carciofo and articioco ultimately derive from Arabic; carciofo from kharshuf, and articioco probably from the Old Spanish alcachofa, which in turn came from Arabic.
Sometimes words are almost more delectable to me than the thing they represent. But I’ll stop here. Must. Go. Eat.
At this stage, the poppies and artichokes on Sant' Erasmo are more or less struggling for dominance. I suppose you could eat the poppies, but I'll stick with the spiky little purple flower I know.
I have taken some cruises, let me state for the record. What follows is not a screed against cruises. Sometimes a screed isn’t even necessary.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, cruises are one of Venice’s main sources of income — not from the paltry trinkets that the passengers may buy as they wander the streets on shore leave, or from the soggy sandwiches or slices of cold pizza they may eat while sitting on a bridge, but from the tax levied on each passenger of about 100 euros each.
Today I only want to share with you the sheer — there must be a word — sheerness of the sight which greeted me as I reached the end of via Garibaldi this morning.
We knew yesterday evening that a cruise ship, as occasionally happens, was destined to be moored at the Riva dei Sette Martiri, because the wire fence that serves as a minimal sort of barrier had already been set up.
What I hadn’t really noticed last night was that the fence stretched the entire length of the Riva, which I now know is about 970 feet, give or take. Because the ship that is tied up there is officially 965 feet long and, by the look of it, about three miles high.
This is the stern of Cunard's "Queen Victoria," as proud a protuberance as one (though probably not the erstwhile Empress of India herself) might wish. Don't think for a minute that the highest deck you see is the highest deck there is.I gave up trying to fit the entire vessel into one frame. If you want, I can send you the pieces and you can make a collage.Of course this is a modest optical illusion. The campanile of San Marco (that tiny belltower in the distance) is 325 feet high, while the "Queen Victoria" is a mere 205 feet high. I wouldn't want to fall off either one.
Cruise ships come in and out of Venice virtually every day from April to October (plus a little bit on each end). On weekends it’s the March of the Pachyderms when as many as seven arrive in the morning and depart that evening, a turnaround system that would dazzle the Ferrari pit crew.
My impression, standing by this behemoth, was that this is the largest thing afloat that isn’t an iceberg. But the facts are otherwise (fancy way of saying I was wrong). In fact, I must be really easy to impress, considering how far down the list (34th) of behemoths she ranks.
I tried some snaps from the water side, but still can't make it look like anything less than what it is.
The “Queen Victoria”‘s stats are: 965 feet long and carries 2,000 passengers.
The “Oasis of the Seas,” which has yet to grace Venice with her presence, God forbid, measures 1,181 feet and carries 5,400 passengers.
I’ve seen plenty of ships which are essentially the same size as the Queen Vic: the “Norwegian Gem” (965 feet), MSC “Musica” (964), “Costa Serena” (952), and the “Ruby Princess” (951). So I really shouldn’t have been so stunned — it’s just that the others moor in the maritime zone and I only see them underway at some moderate distance from the shore. Walking past the “Queen Victoria” is like walking past the Great Wall of China.
Nope. There is no angle from which this vessel looks like anything smaller than the Matterhorn.
And then I got to thinking. It carries 2,000 passengers and about 1,000 crew (I like that ratio, by the way). And it’s got so much square footage that I don’t want to stop to figure it out, amusing as that might be.
All I was thinking is this: The proportions are essentially ludicrous, in the same way that it’s ludicrous that a vehicle has been invented (a car) which weighs 2,000 pounds in order to carry me, which weighs 125. Now we have this leviathan of the seas carrying a mere 2,000 passengers, which probably means that each one rates 4,500 square feet all his or her own.
Or look at it this way: All 2,000 of those paying guests, none of whom is any larger than the crumblike humans in the photographs, are the only thing keeping this mutant mammoth alive. If it weren’t for the assortment of tiny plantigrade mammals I saw descending the gangway in the rain, this colossus would just starve and die.
The idea that something so big could be so vulnerable is nothing new. Other behemoths come to mind, such as the Temple of the Jaguar Priest at Tikal, or the Hill Complex of Great Zimbabwe. But we keep building them all the same. Maybe it makes us feel slightly less crumblike.
We were on the Minoan Lines ferry waiting for whichever Princess that is to back out of her parking space and leave room in the world for us. I'm starting to love those little crumblike humans. They're so cute.
A rare sighting of the trio of great spring vegetables together: asparagus, peas lurking behind them, and artichokes lurking to the lower right. The jury is instructed to disregard the figs, which are obviously from some hothouse somewhere, as the local ones don't appear till August, as God intended.
The gustatory sense is next on my list of attributes of the sensual Venice because this time of year is swamped, decks awash, in great things to eat. If one is inclined (“one” meaning “me”) to focus on seasonal comestibles, then this is a period that verges on the orgiastic. Naturally I try to conceal this. Sort of.
From October to April we eat in a sensible-shoes sort of way –plenty of local food, warm, sustaining, totally good for you but not very exciting, if you don’t count the castradina in November or the roast eel on Christmas Eve, and several forms of pastry. But this somewhat restrained diet means that by spring I’m watching for the first asparagus with an intensity most people give to watching the Powerball drawing.
At the annual patron saint's festa on Sant' Erasmo in early June, the farmers sell their produce essentially in job lots. It all looks so good I think they must call in makeup artists.
When I finally see that first green stalk, it’s like the starter’s gun on a new season of — how can I put this delicately? I can’t — glorious glut.
First comes the asparagus, which is steamed or boiled and often eaten with hard-boiled eggs cut in half. Sprinkle this assortment with salt, pepper, and extravirgin olive oil, and you’ve had dinner.
These are definitely my favorite flower to eat.
Shortly thereafter the artichokes arrive. Not just any artichoke, but the carciofo violetto from Sant’ Erasmo. This is a purple variety that thrives around the lagoon — we’ve had them from the Vignole, and from Malamocco, though apartment buildings now cover the artichoke fields that Lino remembers. The encyclopedia says they are also to be had from Chioggia, but I’ve never knowingly eaten anything from Chioggia except a type of radicchio. In any case, the saline environment evidently does something important to the old Cynara scolymus, if my taste buds are not lying to me.
This spring we rowed over to Sant’ Erasmo many times, which meant that we’ve eaten more artichokes in the past five weeks than ever before, I think. We’d come home with bags of these little creatures, often cut off the plant just for us, paying about two-thirds less than the price at the Rialto. We’d pull off the outer leaves and eat the inner morsel raw. We’d simmer them in olive oil and garlic. We’d cut them in half and throw them on the griddle. We even experimented with boiling them and then storing them in a jar full of olive oil. No verdict yet on how those turned out, but it’s hard to imagine they could be bad.
I approve of a food that comes in its own wrapper, even if I do have to pay for the extra weight.
Peas: Fresh peas are next up, the crucial element to risi e bisi (REE-zee eh Bee-zee), or pea risotto, a Venetian classic. Preparing artichokes is a very grown-up sort of thing to do, but shelling peas takes me very, very far back. I could be anywhere (say, Venice) and it would still make me feel like I was sitting on somebody’s back porch. The only thing I object to about fresh peas is the same thing I object to about fresh pinto beans: you pay by weight, which means you’re paying for a whole pod in order to get a batch of little pellets. That’s another thing I’m going to have to change when I get to be in charge of the world.
This is an early spring bonus: carletti, which Lino finds on foraging expeditions along the lagoon edge of the Lido.
After a few weeks of glory this trinity of sublime plant life has begun to fade from the scene and I will not be eating them again till next spring, even if I could get them from hothouses in Sicily or Israel or who knows where. But other things will be along — lettuce and string beans and tomatoes and eggplant. The faithful old zucchine. Fresh tomatoes right off the vine — we make our own sauce. Around here, “Eat your vegetables” sounds like an invitation to a party.
Clamming is hard work if you don't really love it. Lino's got the focus of a lion stalking its prey.
And the clamming season is now officially open — to the entire world, if your average Sunday afternoon in the lagoon is any indication. Of course it’s open all year to the professionals, but families spend recreational summer hours digging around in the shallows, and it is probably Lino’s favorite thing to do, way ahead of sleeping or eating. Maybe even drinking. It must be like meditation or yoga. He can do it for hours.
So we’ve already been out a few clam-hunting expeditions. The trick is to find some patch of terrain that hasn’t already been ravaged by legions of trippers. Lino is very patient and he actually looks for the clams, one by one, whereas most of the other mighty nimrods just claw up fistfuls of mud hoping to find something good. These are not fishermen, these are locusts.
After we’ve let the clams soak in a bucket of lagoon water for several hours, we take them home, and get ready for the Great Cooking Thereof. This may not happen immediately; we may have to leave them in the fridge in their plastic bag for a little while. They kind of hang out in there till we’re ready to cook them. When we put the bag in the sink, I can hear them making moist little shifting and tchk-tchk noises. Yes, they’re still alive, and these little sounds sort of do something to me. Maybe they’re talking about how much they enjoyed spending the afternoon in the dark and the cool. I hope so. I’m glad they don’t know what’s coming next.
Lino brought home the ideal assortment -- cape tonde ("malgarote"), caparozzoli, sansonei, lungoni, and the occasional bevarassa. Now we're introducing them to oil and garlic.
So we throw them into a large saute pan with garlic and oil. Steam goes everywhere. About a minute later they’ve given their last dying gasp, opened their shells and succumbed. We put them in a bowl where they slosh around in a celestial broth of their own saltwater, garlic, lemon juice and chopped parsley and we eat them like crazed little swine, right out of the shell — ignoring scalded fingertips, drops of oily water falling at random.
I’ve been talking about clams in a generic sort of way, but there are all sorts of bivalves to be had out there. Bevarasse (Venus gallina), sansonei, cape lunghe (Solen vagina), cape tonde (Cardium edule), caragoi (Vulgocerithium vulgatum), canestrei (Pecten opercularis), to name a few. There are also oysters — Lino went out on Christmas Eve a few years ago and brought back a load of fresh lagoon oysters, which were delicately sweet. Wish he’d do it again.
Just a few short hours ago, these mussels were clinging to their piling wondering what to do today. Unfortunately for them, we got to decide.
And now it’s mussels. A friend of ours went out in his boat yesterday with a fiendish contraption and scraped a huge amount of them off the pilings — wait, I’m not finished! — the pilings in the lagoon near the island of the Certosa, near the inlet of San Nicolo’, where the tide is so strong that the water is always really clean. Last night we permitted ourselves a modest gorge, annihilating a large bowl in a very short time. They were divine.
Somebody gave us a batch of canestrei, or "lid scallops." It took no time at all to open, bread, and fry them. You don't like fried food? Try these.
Whatever remains of the clams or the mussels is either thrown into tomato sauce for pasta later, or set aside (clams especially) for a risotto. Then we go out and get more.
I haven’t even gotten to the subject of fruit or ice cream, which are whole galaxies of delectable on their own, but I’m worn out. So let’s all put our heads down on our desks and be quiet for a few minutes.
But as we do, let me just repeat something I say far too often: It’s not easy to eat really well (not impossible, but not easy, to eat really well) in a restaurant in Venice, but here at home we eat better than the entire dynasty of Gediminids.
