Grotta Gigante

A few weekends ago we visited the aptly named Grotta Gigante (Giant Cave) in the also aptly named Borgo Grotta Gigante (Village of the Giant Cave). This is the largest tourist cave in the world and with a volume of 600 thousand cubic meters it can fit lots of other large things inside, for example St Peter's Basilica, or 240 Olympic size swimming pools or about 42 billion chocolate truffles...mmm...chocolate.

The cave takes your breath away both because of the beautiful and odd shapes and the shear size. However, you can't help but notice the damage that humans have caused. A lot of the surfaces are covered with soot from the acetylene lamps and candles that were used in the past to light up the cave. Those have been replaced by electric lights, however the electric lights prompt algae growth on the rocks. You really can't win unless the cave is closed to visitors, then the cave wins and we can't be having that.

Tours run every half hour or so and there is a warning before you go in that there are 500 steps down...and 500 back up again. I think a few people on our tour would have done well to heed this sign. The guide gives the tour in Italian but also has tapes in other languages which they play after each spiel. The English tape was a very English sounding lady, quite amusing.

There are a number of experiments run in the cave, mainly to do with the geosciences. One consists of two pendulums which are suspended from the ceiling of the cave and hang to the floor (~ 100 m). These are used to measure very small movements of the Earth's crust and can even pick up the tiny tidal motions of the Earth surface. Very cool.

Outside the cave is a little fast food place, however, despite the sign we couldn't find any bat and ball games, or insects from the gryllidae family. After visiting the cave we went to the gallery of Paulo Hrovatin. This fellow makes beautiful stone sculptures which I've never seen the likes of before, well worth a look.

Lots of cheese (and foccacia)

I just counted the number of cheeses in our fridge, six. Contrary to the name of this blog...lots of cheese for us! So, what cheeses do we have?

Treccione affumicato : treccione comes from the word treccia which means plait or braid, and affumicatio means smoked. So this is a smoked braid of...further investigation reveals that the cheese is called scamorza which is an Italian cows milk cheese (Italian cows mind you!). This cheese can be substituted for mozzarella; being a fan of smoked cheeses I quite liked this one and would like to try it on pizza.

Brie: across the border now to France...Marito can't resist a good Brie. This cheese is named after a town in France and doesn't necessary have to be made from French cow's milk.

How does one milk a sheep?

Pecorino Pepato Frecso: a fresh sheep's cheese with peppercorns. I wasn't a huge fan of this cheese but I would like to try the aged versions. We bought these cheeses to eat with a beautiful home made foccacia. Since being in Italy we've started making our own pizza dough, this is so very tasty and I recommend the extra effort (Jamie Oliver's dough recipe is pretty good). Foccacia is pretty much made the same way as pizza dough, but isn't rolled flat for cooking.

Ricotta: apparently not technically cheese, rather a by-product of cheese making, not bad for a by-product. We got this cheese to make tuna balls but have previously made gnocchi with ricotta, a fast alternative to potato gnocchi. As well as the usual fresh form, ricotta is available baked, salted and smoked, I'm intrigued to try these.

Mascarpone: also not technically a cheese, but a triple cream...need I say more? Yes, use it, it's good. For a few weeks Marito was under the impression that marscarpone was a healthier alternative to cream...ha!

Parmegiano regina forme: the good old parmo, always present in our kitchen (except when nasty cheese ladies have their way). We normally buy about 1/48 of a wheel, I am tempted to buy an entire wheel one day, but probably wouldn't be able to carry it home.

Norberta

I've started knitting a baby dragon for my baby nephew. In Italian the same word, nipote, is used for nephew, niece, grandson and granddaughter. The gender of the person is given in the article before the word, e.g., il nipote for grandson or nephew, and la nipote for granddaughter or niece. Basically if you want to know more information you have to ask questions, this suits the Italian's love of talking.

Anyway, back to the dragon. I'm following a pattern called Norberta, using blue and red wool. I've pretty much finished the knitting and have been on the hunt for something to stuff her with. I found the translation for polyester stuffing, imbottitura in poliestere, and went looking in town. I went into one shop and asked for imbottitura in poliestere and the lady seemed to be ask me if it was for me, pointing at my jacket. I'm not sure why someone would want to stuff their jacket but anyway, I found the word for toy and showed her that. All became clear...she didn't have any, but she wrote down the name of a shop and what I wanted on a card "capok imbottiture - giocattolo" and told me to give it to the shop lady there. She then tried to sell me a "lovely" jacket with sequined writing on the front...not really my thing.

Not knowing what "capok" was I wandered off to find the shop. The lady there pulled out a gianormous bag of stuffing, I asked if I could buy half the bag, but no it was all or nothing. Not really having the need for so much stuffing (unless I did sucumb to the urge to stuff my own clothes) I declined. So Norberta is likely to stay unstuffed until I get back home, or find another source of stuffing. In the meantime, she does make a pretty amusing hand puppet. Here she is modelling a hat I just finished knitting (Urchin). I used Lion Brand organic cotton, it's ridously lovely and soft. The pattern is pretty easy to knit and is knit in wedges so if, like me, you don't measure your gauge you can easily add more wedges if it comes out too small.

Oh, I just looked up capok, and found entries for kapok which is a natural fibre, apparently much better than poly for stuffing toys.

Songs in the street

Last Sunday we were woken to the sound of singing over a loud speaker. At first I thought it was coming from the church around the corner, but it seemed to be getting louder. I peered out the window to see priests and town folk walking up the street holding palm leaves and singing. One fellow was carrying a loud hailer on a pole and singing into that. I turned back to Marito and put two and two together, "I'm guessing Palm Sunday? Does that come before Easter?" Marito answered in the affirmative. The singing palm carriers continued on their way.

This Saturday we were woken to the sound of Elvis' "Blue Suede Shoes" over a loud speaker...the logical conclusion...The King is dead.

Birre con pizza?

Our Italian teacher gave us a lesson in beverage etiquette in our class on Wednesday. So, contrary to common perception, Italian's don't drink wine with pizza, that's right folks no wine with pizza. Italian's drink beer with pizza. Our teacher said it even took her a while to convince her Norwegian husband of the fact. Apparently if you walk past a pizzeria and see people drinking wine with pizza then they are not Italian. So, beer with pizza, and sometimes with red meat. Wine with everything else right? Yes, sure...but only white wine with fish. Oh, and don't go drinking a cappuccino after breakfast...tourist...

Back to my limoncello!