I hope this works....

Ok I'm writing this in an email to my blogger account because
supposedly this will post what I email directly into the blog. The
reason for this is that, no matter what I do, it appears that google
and, thus, "blogger" have committed suicide in the country of Italy,
at least for me. My Gmail works, googlemaps works, but google web
doesn't and blogger works until i try to post something, then it dies
again...very frustrating.
Anyway, so here it goes...
Last night we made the pizzas. I really hope no one from the cooking
school ever reads this, but...Valentino's kick these pizza's a$$, 500
year old wood burning brick oven and all. I did learn some things,
though. For one, apparently in Italy, they use rolling pins to flatten
out the dough for the pizza...you couldn't pay me to do this. I don't
care if that's the way they do it here, I think it's wrong - hand
tossed is better. However, I learned one thing I really have to
experiment with. We had this one pizza that was a sauceless pizza with
a mix of a soft cow's milk sheese called stracchina (probably not
spelled right) with sausage that had been taken out of the casings and
folded into the cheese mixture. This was then spread directly on the
raw dough and baked in the oven...soooo unique and amazingly
beautiful. Since stracchina is not available at all in the U.S. I'm
going to have to start experimenting with some other soft chesses to
try to find one somewhat like this, because this pizza is sooo unique
and delicious, I KNOW it'll be a hit.
The only other part of the night is I somehow managed to knock the
6-foot long pizza peel in the 5x5 tiny 500 year old room where the
oven was into a bowl full of sauce, sending the sauced flying over the
entire room, walls, ceiling, floor, everything, but mostly on my
face...awesome....
I have never felt so uncool in my life and that's saying something
when you're a conservative metalhead who likes to cook more than
anything else in life. When this is combined with me cutting my finger
a few days ago, spilling a glass of juice all over the table this
morning, knocking a spoon of the counter onto the floor this morning,
and completely missing my flip while flipping a fritatta at lunch
today and getting half of it in the pan and half on the stove...I
really suck right now. I think a large part of it may be the fact that
everything in this country is designed for little graceful people -
little and graceful being two things I am most certainly not. Still, I
have to admit, I'm kind of mad at myself and feel like freaking
Godzilla roaming the Tuscan countryside and destroying everything in
my path. I think before I come back to Italy next time, I'm going to
lose 80 pounds and take a year of yoga and ballet....
Sooo, that was last night. I must say, though, seeing as how I've just
finished my last cooking lesson of the week, I have LEARNED SOOO MUCH!
I feel I came into this place a pretty good cook and will be walking
out of here a pretty great cook, armed with so many little vital hints
and tricks and techinques I've never heard before, along with a
truckload of recipes and some great friends here who are more than
willing to answer all of my questions along the way...God bless the
internet and email.
Anyway, today we made fritattas, tiramisu, and a porcini risotto, a
saffron and yellow onion risotto, and a gelato made from the custard
for the tiramisu. I have to say, I HONESTLY BEAILIVE I could become
RICH just by opening up a store and selling the gelato made from the
tiramisu custard. It is simply one of the most amazing things I have
ever tasted and I PROMISE I will be recreating it when I get back,
because this needs to be spread around the world. I truly believe that
if we dropped some of this gelatto di marscapone on Mecca, we would
instantly be able to live in peace with the Islamic world.
So right before lunch, actually, (I'm getting a little messed-up
timewise here), we toured the olive oil production rooms here at
Campromano. You can see the pictures at
http://picasaweb.google.com/harrison.d.sonntag . It was lot of fun
and really interesting. More interesting, though, was the olive oil
tasting we had afterward. Apparently I'm the only American here who
really enjoys drinking olive oil, but that's the others' problems. It
was really gret to learn about how the different regions create
different oils from different species of trees, and how the amount of
rainfall affects the flavor of the oil. For example, if there is
little rainfall, the oil will be much more fruity and spicy, whereas
if there is little rainfall, then the oil will be much smoother and
have a delicate flavor. Also, I learned the whole "cold press" thing
is BS. It may have been important 100 years ago where people would
warm the olives by the fire so that the oxen pulling the grinding
stones would have an easier time extracting the oil from the olives.
However, now that it all done mechanically, no one would ever do that
anymore so it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's info like this that I
have entire journal full of already after a week.
So, that' about it. I'm going to be heading to Pietrasanta, a famous
marble sculpting town in the nearby marble mountain just north and
east of here - the same marble mountains where Michelangelo got his
marble for his masterpieces. I'm really excited about it and will be
taking tons of pics so check back later and I will have (hopefully)
updated the blog and pics.
Now we get to see if this even works, or if I've just been typing for
30 min for nothing....