If I were a real chef or culinary writer or food blogger or whatever, a trip to Italy would naturally result in a veritable vault of photos of glorious dishes, dissected with my not-so-poignant notes on aromas, secret ingredients, and perceived preparation techniques.
Nah.
Been there, done that. Long before blogs ever existed, I filled moleskine after moleskine with notes of the whereabouts and menu offerings of trattorie and tavernas from Milano to Madrid.
So our most recent photo collection from La Bella Paese look more like this:
Eighteen days in Italy. Sixteen of them on the trail, with just two rest days to recover from the longest, 12-hour days out. Climbed 7,000 footers; explored river gorges; and ambled over windswept, barren plains.
You can count the times we ate in restaurants on the fingers of one hand. But some of the highlights - pasta with zucchini flowers and saffron, fish baked in a potato crust, and crostini with guanciale and rosemary - were outstanding.
