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SOMETHING FROM NOTHING
Find out how to make Jota below!
Making something from nothing?
I often wonder how Italians manage to simply exist. With all the chaos, drama, indecision, impulse decisions and general randomness that occur in a place like Italy, how are they all still living their lives indifferently?
I spent Christmas in Italy with my husband, and then spent a few days in the United Arab Emirates before heading back home to Canberra. I was struck by the contrast between the two countries.
The UAE, and Dubai in particular in this case, is a placed filled with people from all over the world. In any given hotel, restaurant or shop you might find Indians, Afghanis, Iranians, Africans and the British working together. They all speak different languages, and yet somehow they manage to communicate impeccably. Everything runs like clockwork, life there is almost effortless.
In contrast, in Italy, a place where everyone speaks the same language, communication seems impossible. Chaos rules supreme.
How do people live there? How do people manage to negotiate all the idiosyncrasies, bureaucracy and general craziness? Even the most simple task becomes ridiculously complicated, like catching a train for example. Not only do you have to navigate the enormous queue, which snakes out the door to reach the biglietteria at the station, and avoid Italians who are trying to push in front of you, you then need to stamp the ticket before you get on the train (but wait, there are rarely any functioning stamping machines).
Finally when you’ve stamped the goddamn thing stamped, you have to run frenetically down a series of stairs and tunnels with your luggage (because of course there are no lifts and escalators) only to discover that the train has been re routed to another platform, at which point you have to run to the next location—this process is repeated on several occasions, until you finally get on the train, only to have a conduttore (ticket inspector) eventually wonder around to again stamp your ticket.
It’s madness. And did I mention that it’s an eighty euro fine if you’ve forgotten to stamp your ticket on the platform. But, ironically, only a seven euro fine if you’re caught smoking on the train.
Complete and utter madness.
Every time I’m in Italy I wonder how do these people live like this? And then inevitably, I get really annoyed with them. I get annoyed with the pushing and shoving, the constant staring (because Italians stare all the time), the sheer and utter disregard of anything and everything that’s happening around them, and the total fixation with getting ahead.
As I stood on the line for my flight in Milan, which also snaked out the door, waiting to check-in for my flight, I thought to myself, this is the last time I’m coming to Italy. Then I witnessed another one of those unremarkable events in Italy. A small child ran into the airport, trips on a loose tile, smacks her head on the floor…..and there you have it, blood. How do they get away with it? I thought to myself.
Never again.
Of course I’m already planning to go back in July now. Maybe I’ll partake in a cooking class in Tuscany or a food tour in Abruzzi?
Who knows exactly how it happens, but about three days after leaving that erratic, hair brained country, I start thinking about how I can get myself back. Is it a love, hate relationship?
I don’t know. But I think lots of other people experience the same thing. You might feel like ripping your hair out at times in Italy, but who could forget those gnocchi al ragu that you had in Venice before going to the Opera, or the tortellini in a sage and butter sauce that you had in Bologna, before the owner (who instantly befriended you because he had once worked as a chef in Leichardt) decided to show you how to do sit ups appropriately in a crowded restaurant?
Perhaps it’s a mixture of the unexpected and the wonderful that gives Italy that je ne sais quoi.
And besides the ridiculous, there were some very unexpected and wonderful things that happened in Italy on my recent holiday—especially in the food quarter. Off the back of a year cooking and writing about Italian food, I really wanted to sink my teeth into the real thing, food that was grown and made in Italy.
I spent the first week of my trip in my father’s town, doing exactly that. My husband and I must have visited each of the Italian bars in said town, Cervignano. We certainly drunk our fill of red wine, and ate exorbitant amounts of Panini.
One of my favourite things about Italian food is that it is so simple. It’s based on simple but honest ingredients. Rather than just being a boring lunch box filler, suddenly a baguette, cheese and prosciutto will come to life.
On one particular occasion I went to the local market, held on Thursday, and bought some fresh Rosetta bread, several different cheeses from the region, including Montasio and Asiago, and some prosciutto San Daniele (it might cost a bomb in Australia, but it’s much cheaper in its home town). My husband and I feasted on the combinations alongside a glass of red.
We regularly visited my Uncle and Aunt in Ontagnano, a small, one street town, where I was married (ironically the church has since been struck by lightening – I’m not reading into this), and ate at their table. They live on a large plot of land and grow all sorts of things, every vegetable you could possibly imagine and they even have a vast array of animals that they unceremoniously eat for dinner. My cousin, a devoted hunter, had managed to catch and kill a pheasant, which was cooked up in a wonderful fruity sauce, and served as the main meal, after brovade, moset and polenta.
We feasted at a degustation at Al Cjasal for Christmas, with a table full of relatives. The converted bar is rustic, and pays homage to the traditional foods and lifestyle of Friulans. The eight courses we ingested on Christmas day were enough to sink a ship, and were finished off with peanuts, mandarins, and house made grappa, that the waitress snuck across to us.
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was a hole in the wall bar we discovered in Trieste, called Osmiza. I kept thinking it was exactly the type of place Hemmingway would have had a drink at while he was living in the Carso region, or a few. It could only sit about three people at a time, but suddenly there were ten standing about drinking the wines, eating gnocchi, and a delicious prosciutto that the owner skilfully cut and dished out to his patrons, as though we were more his friends and family then paying customers.
And that was just the start….
Why do Italians survive in such chaos, and prosper? Because their resourceful, I hear myself responding. They can make something from nothing; they can transform the ordinary to the extraordinary, from a hole in the wall restaurant, to a one pony town, to a barn. Their attention to detail and capacity to make something warm and inviting is uncanny.
Making something from nothing? Jota is the definition of that. A traditional recipe from Trieste, which employs basic ingredients and creates something warm, inviting and unique.
People from Trieste, or as they call themselves Triestins,claim the word Jotta derives from the Latin word Jutta, which means a liquid soup. While Jota is traditional to the area, there are variants of this dish throughout Friuli, that is, bean soups. But we did have the honour of being served Jotta at a wonderful osteria close to the bay of Trieste. I asked the owner for his recipe, and he obliged. Try it yourself!
Jota
what you need
1 ½ cups of lima beans (can be substituted with other beans such as borlotti if required)
Around 250 grams of potatoes
400 grams of bacon
200 grams white sauerkraut
1 bay leaf
Olive oil
1 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons of flour
Salt and pepper to serve
what to do
You’ll need to soak the beans in water overnight and drain. Roughly chop the potatoes, and place in a pan with the bacon and beans, cover with water, and bring to the boil. When the potatoes are cooked mass half of the potatoes and beans, this will give the dish, some different textures and also thicken the soup.
Cook the sauerkraut in water, and toss in a bay leaf as well for flavour.
Then you’ll need to bring the whole dish together. Chop the garlic and fry in a saucepan with the olive oil, then mix in the flour, stirring continuously for around 2 to 3 minutes. Then add the sauerkraut and cook on a medium heat for around 4 minutes. Once this is complete, add this mixture to the pan with bacon, beans and potatoes and cook for around 30 minutes on a low heat, adding water if required and salt and pepper to taste.
The result will be a lovely, thick, hearty and tasty bean soup, perfect for a winter’s evening? And hasn’t this Australian summer really been a winter one after all?
You can get all these ingredients from your local, and if you struggle with the white sauerkraut, I’m sure you can find it at any good delicatessen.
The secret to Italian success? Something from nothing methinks.
What’s your favourite ‘something from nothing’ dish?
Perhaps, Lisa, your expectations of order and reason have been unduly elevated by living in Australia for too long!
We agree with your assessment of the food and the unexpected discovery of gastronomic pleasures in the most ordinary of places. We toured around for a month last year after we’d finished our month of language classes in Firenze and six weeks skiing in the Dolomiti, and we had some wonderful meals, some of the best food we’ve ever eaten, totally different to the ‘Italian’ you get in Australia. Many other aspects of your description, however, are only superficially related to the Italy we have discovered.
This is our fourth period of 3-4 months here, and it has however taken us some time to get used to the train system. Early on, on one occasion following quarter-understood threats from a ticket inspector, we got off a train and bought a second ticket after having failed to validate the first ticket because we thought the person who sold it to us said there was no need to validate it. But now we know all about validation, have had no problem finding working machines, and we have also mostly been able to locate lifts. After a year, we even worked out how to use them – you hold the button in for the whole of the journey, or the lift doesn’t move!
As for pushing and shoving: the area we go skiing in attracts many German and Austrian skiers, and the Italians are models of politeness and consideration compared with Germans and Austrians, who come in on the side and just about knock you over in the rush to the front. We have polished our shoulder or elbow-led blocking movements, but they have little effect on most Germans and Austrians (especially if, like me, you’re only 150cm tall). The most helpful strategy we have found for coping with pushing and shoving is to recognise that our English-based sense of queuing and order is just that, and the problem becomes a lot less significant if you don’t expect to find Australia in Italy. For the most part the Italians will retreat and apologise if your prior occupation of a position is pointed out to them (unlike the Germans and Austrians who pretend they haven’t heard you) and we’ve found them to be delightfully considerate on trains, waiting patiently to get off while other departing passengers block the aisle retrieving coats etc from racks (in this they contrast greatly with our experience of the impatience and rudeness of many Australians in a similar situation).
And talking of Australia: tripping over a tile and spilling a little blood seems to us to be an entirely desirable possibility if the alternative – in our over-regulated (in our opinion) society – is to spend a vast amount of public money to ensure every tile is perfectly even, simply to avoid the risk of lawyers claiming vast amounts of public money as compensation for someone who happened to trip over an uneven tile. In Italy, the Australian approach would probably see all the ancient cobbled streets and pavements ripped up and replaced by concrete and bitumen. In Italy, people seem to see accidents as ‘incidente’ to which they may have contributed – an especially reasonable presumption on the part of the fashionable women who wear 10cm stilettos when walking down the cobbled streets.
Yes, there is a certain amount of chaos, but the society is alive and swirling. Each of the five major newspapers represents a different political view – from far left to far right – and Italians engage with the political and social construction of their society. Catch a train and you will see large numbers reading (usually one of the three centre-aligned) newspapers – they know what’s going on and they care. They get frustrated by the famed level of corruption, which spans the small ‘take’ to the million-dollar fraud, and they also get concerned about unemployment and social provision for those without employment (their employer-funded ‘dole’ payments are a source of pride, and also one of the biggest impediments to success in a ‘free-market’, globalised world).
In Australia we made thirty years ago the economic adjustments that Italians are just realising they have to make (and possibly can make, now that they have a ‘technocratic’ rather than political government) – in terms of a system designed to look after those in difficulty yet encourage endeavour we think Italy could learn much from Australia. In terms of corruption, while we in Australia don’t have the widespread corruption that is a scourge in Italy, most Australians choose to ignore or simply don’t know about the level of corruption related to ‘favours’ achieved through access to those in power, old boys’ networks etc.
One thing that does still seem very strong in Italy is the value placed on the extended family and community, and this we find very welcome, something which perhaps we’re beginning to re-discover the importance of in Australia. Family seems to be the foundation for much of the good food that is available: restaurants that have been family-owned for generations take pride in serving the same high quality food and recipes perfected over many years. There doesn’t seem to be the same turnover in restaurant ownership that we experience in a ‘chef-for-hire’ and fad-driven restaurant culture. People go to the same restaurant, year in year out, because they know what it serves (our two favourite restaurants in Firenze have been in business for 35 and 25 years, with the second and third generation of cooks and waiters now serving the same familiar dishes to the second and third generation of eaters!)
And now that we’re back to talking about food … in summary, suffice it to say that we love Italy and find the Italians delightful (while recognising of course, as in any society, that there are both good and bad – socio-politically and in people). Our experiences seem rather different to yours, Lisa.