Oh the weather outside is frightful...

It's raining in Rome. And since the Nonnas that rule the roost have not commanded it the heating still hasn't been turned on. A soggy Ben arrived back from the library at lunchtime today with two tartine. It cheered me right up!

Pasta disaster!

Ahhh how confident and naive we were, armed with our brand new 'PastaSmack' pasta machine and a bag of Tipo '00' flour.




It all seemed so simple: make pasta dough, leave in the fridge for a bit, start cranking the handle. What could possibly go wrong? It all went well to begin with, the dough was easy to make and even looked pretty professional.



30 mins later, we got the dough out of the fridge, set up the magical machine and then proceeded to try and feed the entire ball of (too sticky) dough the wrong way through the machine on its finest setting. Hmmmmm.

I feel we were possibly victims of our own disorganisation. Actually, I really think we were victims of Jamie Oliver's rubbish recipe - too many eggs!

Anyway, 1 hour, 3 arguments and nearly a kilo of pasta flour later we finally got the hang of it and managed to make enough pasta for a bowl of fettucine alla carbonara, and it was suprisingly tasty!

Nostra via

Here are some views of our funny little street, which runs from the Roman walls to the Verano cemetery and has views to Tivoli at the far end. Like all of San Lorenzo it's covered in graffiti, most of it communist in theme. Opposite us are two communist social clubs (one, apparently, serves good pasta at lunchtime!) and just down the street is the market square and church. Most of the shops are only open in the mornings and evenings, and most of the bars...whenever they feel like it. The graffiti-covered shutters make it hard to identify closed shops, so every day we discover a few more that we hadn't noticed before.


Our house:


The Roman walls at the end of the street:

Via dei Volsci - the first sighting

Here's home, finally... Just a few shots of our new abode. More to be added later.




And, on a related note, here's our first ragu:


Plus in the next exciting installment; Rachel and Ben venture outside...oooohhh.


Italian phrases of the day:

chele di granchio = crab legs, served deep-fried - quite exotic.

crocchette di pollo = chicken nuggets - less exotic, best avoided.

A pilgrimage to Pork Mountain

Last week we went to Frascati, the home of goodness - porchetta! And wine! Yum.

The little train from Rome takes only half an hour, and costs €1,90. It's a nice trip, chugging up through the vineyards of the Alban hills. The town is pretty, overlooked by the Aldobrandini villa, and on clear days (like the day we happened to be there) you can see all the way to the sea and across all of Rome.



But back to the pork... The main square of Frascati is roast pig central. Porchetta people (their technical title) from all over the area - the home of porchetta - come here to sell pig. It's splendid. €9 got us two massive sandwiches and two plastic cups of exquisitely rough first-press Frascati - a winning combination, best enjoyed on a high wall in the sunshine, thus:

Ciao bella!

Benvenuti - Monteverde

Hello!

Week one, day one, and we're in a very tiny flat perched on the top of a big old mansion high up in Monteverde. The flat is minute but the terrace is huge and the views are fairly spectacular... not least during any one of the three storms that happened this week.




Anyway, we start as we mean to go on: plenty of this...


but also quite a lot of this...


Recipe: tomato, mozzarella, rocket - simples!