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 Cauliflower (cavolfiore in Italian) was one of those vegetables I ate but never liked. My mother cooked it only one way - steamed - which rendered it relatively tasteless and the kitchen smelling like...you know...  So I never made it for my family because they all professed to dislike it probably because the few times I made it for them it was steamed, tasteless and the house smelled. So imagine I bring a shopping bag full of terrific Ortensia Blu goodies to Marla & Bill's house for dinner and Bill is practically drooling as he unpacks everything.  He then excitedly says "This is great! -I'll use the Garlic & Peperoncino Herb Blend on the cauliflower!"  Cauliflower? Really? You're serving cauliflower? To guests? Ever the gracious and polite guest, I turn away to make my gagging face.  

Bill and Marla continue with their dinner preparations as I continue with a Prosecco. Facial expression in check,  I watch as Bill in his magnificent kitchen, happily tosses cauliflower florets with extra virgin olive, the Garlic & Peperoncino Herb Blend, spreads it on a baking sheet and pops it in the oven. 

We all enjoy another glass of Prosecco as the rest of dinner is being prepared and finally sit down to a wonderful meal of meaty bbq'd pork ribs slow cooked all afternoon in the big green egg, a lovely, scrumptious Asian salad prepared by Marla, fresh cornbread and...the cauliflower.  It certainly looked okay...actually quite nice - golden and slightly caramelized, the red specks from the peperoncino peeking out, all glistening with the extra virgin olive oil.  And it smelled nothing like...you know...in fact, it smelled quite good - a little spicy with a toasty earthy aroma. 

Ever the well mannered guest who tries everything, I put a couple of small florets on my plate next to the huge pile of succulent ribs hanging off my plate.  I push it around a bit, poke a tiny piece with the fork, take a bite and...I'm amazed!  The roasted cauliflower was incredible-incredibly wonderful! It tasted nothing like the cauliflower I ever knew and I proceeded to help myself to several more servings (Note-cauliflower is a cruciferous vegetable in the same family as cabbage, ahem...just so you know...)  

So here's the Roasted Cauliflower preparation a.k.a. recipe with all the credit going to my friend Bill who taught me something new - toss the cauliflower with a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and a couple of teaspoons of Garlic & Peperoncino mix, put it on a baking sheet and in a 450° oven for about 20 minutes until it's a lovely golden color, dark around the edges.  And ignore your guests who make faces...

http://highaltitudegardening.blogspot.com/2012/01/ortensia-blu-and-recipe-too.html

Cue Barbara Streisand singing "On a Clear Day"...in Italian...and that's what pops into my head while gazing out from the roof of the magnificent Duomo in Milan (although I seem to relate many things in life to a Broadway show tune but that's a whole other story).  Every major Italian city and many smaller ones all have the obligatory Duomo or cathedral which are always ancient, historical, majestic and awe-inspiring.  I'm generalizing here, but they all seem to be at least 400 years old; and I continually find it hard to believe that such beauty was constructed without power tools, dump trucks or union labor. 

Walking through the front doors of the gothic Duomo into the serenity of the magnificent church, roaming while looking up at the spectacular ceiling brings an extraordinary sense of peace but also makes one feel a part of yesteryear, knowing that millions of people have passed over the trodden but elegant marble floors.  And realizing that many were famous men and women who not only existed in history, they created it.

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As the 4th largest cathedral in the world, the Milan Duomo is even more special because visitors are allowed up on the roof (okay another song, not Broadway, but still...)  You can either walk up the steps or pay a higher fee and take the elevator (I'll confess the elevator was our form of transportation; it was a long day!). Flying buttresses, scary gargoyles and impressive spires are just a few feet away as the city of Milan spreads out below.

From the rooftops and the open air to the damp and darkness of down below, the Babtistery is another must see.  Lying beneath the Duomo and piazza are the ruins of the 4th century Battisero Paleocristiano.  The excavation, remains of mosaic, frescoes and ancient artifacts surround you while wandering underground.  Spend a little time here and you can't help but realize how all the hustle and bustle going on outside is just a spec in the timeline of history.

The Duomo on its own is amazing, but to be able to follow in the footsteps of millions of people over hundreds of years hoofing it put to the top and creeping your way down below is truly sensational and not to be missed.

As I was strolling down the hill from Residence San Rocco to meet Nicoletta for dinner, lovely Signora Graziella Manestrini was walking up, carrying a heavy pot wrapped in a red and white checked kitchen towel.  She had just brought a piping hot dinner down to her husband Signor Manestrini who had been at the frantoio (olive mill) since 7:00 am.

And during the "pressing" time of year, he doesn't leave there until after 11:00pm! But it seems like the long days make him smile even more.

In addition to making their own olive oil, Azienda Agricola Manestrini has over 200 customers who bring their own olives to the mill to be pressed into extra virgin olive oil.  The olives arrive in the trunk of a car, in the back of a truck or pulled by a tractor - all to be made into oil.  Some customers even bring their own special jars, jugs and cans as containers for their oil.

And the customers include anyone from the guy who has a couple of olive trees in his yard to the one with a few thousand trees.  One day when I was hanging out chatting at the frantoio, Signor Franzosi was delivering several crates of olives from his over 1000 Leccino and Casaliva trees.  He also owns a terrific vineyard www.cantinefranzosi.it and have wine will travel because he pulled a bottle of his wonderful Benaco Bresciano Rebo wine out of his truck for me. Maybe I should hang out there more often!  And later that day in Salò, the priest at the local parish was helping to harvest the olives from the trees right outside the front door of the church.  Time is of the essence during the harvest and everyone needs to pitch in (says me who was trying to figure out how to open the wine without a corkscrew).

So how much olive oil does one olive tree produce you ask?  Now for the math part so follow along...or don't and just take my word for it.

One olive tree produces approximately 30-50 kg of olives which converts to 66-110 pounds of olives.  

And it takes 8-10 kg of olives (18-22 lbs) to produce one liter of olive oil which is 33.8 ounces. So this means that one olive tree produces 4-5 liters of olive oil which is 2-3 gallons per tree. 

That's a lot of olives!  So the next time you open your bottle of olive oil, think about all those olives that went into it.  

But this will all be easier when we convert to the metric system which will be really soon, right?

The drive from Verona was picturesque and traveling up the road to Residence San Rocco, I heard a gentle buzzing noise – louder than an airplane but quieter than a lawn mower. I got out of my (very fun) rental car and smack dab in the middle of the olive grove, I saw the first step in what I had traveled to Italy to see  - the harvesting and pressing of olive oil at Frantoio Manestrini. The adventure was about to begin…

A couple of guys were using something that looked like an electric powered rake called a rastrello that gently vibrated and pulled the olives from the trees. Laid out underneath the olive trees were large burlap tarps to catch the fallen olives and I watched as the tarps were gradually maneuvered so the olives collected in the center and were then transferred to large plastic crates called vasche (which is the plural of vasca if you're interested).

And when I picked up an olive and poked my finger in it, guess what came out…olive oil! And you want to know what it smelled like? Olive Oil!  This was already pretty cool and I couldn’t wait to see more.

The crates were moved by a tractor and brought down the driveway to the frantoio, which is the olive mill/olive press and sits at the bottom of the hill.  And one by one, each crate was brought inside to start the job of making olive oil.

The smell inside the frantoio was somewhat pungent and the machines loud but Paolo and his father Egidio were wonderful guides in the production of their amazing extra virgin olive oil. Considering olive oil has been made for thousands of years, the process isn’t much different; it just involves a bit more technology.

The olives first traveled up a conveyer belt, which I thought was interesting that they didn’t roll back down but I guess that’s the technology part.

The next machine had two jobs – it rinsed the olives with water, and then removed the leaves and since pesticides aren’t used it was a pretty simple process.

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Then they go into the musher (that’s Italian for the machine that mushes) – okay it’s not called that but that’s what it does - mashes everything up, olives, skins and pits. The next step was the separation of the olive oil from the paste-like pulp that traveled through a plastic hose and voilà – extra virgin olive oil!

Is this a happy guy or what? Signor Egidio Manestrini doing what he loves....

Unfiltered olive oil, which is cloudy with sediment, has a somewhat stronger taste and doesn’t last as long as filtered oil, only about 6 months.  Filtered versus unfiltered is a personal preference but it’s so incredibly natural and unrefined, you just feel like there’s nothing purer on earth.

My dreams of stomping olives like Lucy & Ethel did with grapes didn’t pan out which was just as well since it was rather chilly…maybe next year.

It was like a top secret mission – we were told to be at Sant’Agnese, the 14^th century church located outside the ancient walls of Montepulciano at 5:30 pm and a driver would meet us.

When we arrived at the church a man was standing there.  He glanced furtively at us and after a few minutes he quietly asked us if we were waiting for a ride.  I nodded yes and as I turned away, I noticed a couple walking slowly down the hill toward us.  As they reached the parking lot our eyes met and we gave each other a surreptitious nod assuming we were all part of the same assignment. Over the next few minutes several more people quietly arrived until there were 8 of us nervously waiting for our next instructions.

A white van pulled up and a dark haired man with a cap pulled down over his eyes got out.  His glanced over the group of us and told us in Italian to get in and he would drive us to our destination.  Apprehensively we got in, the van doors were slammed shut and locked and then…he smiled at us, told us his name was Giovanni and to enjoy the beautiful ride to Diva’s house.

Diva?  Really?  That’s someone’s name?  In hills of Tuscany? Is she a pop star? And what’s up with meeting at the church?

When we arrived at the house, a petite older woman with funky Italian eyeglasses greeted us warmly, introduced herself as Diva, and said she was ready to cook with us. Diva led us to her patio overlooking her olive trees and poured us glasses of a lovely red wine, which she told us was from her neighbor’s vineyard.  As Diva was chatting away in Italian, I took a deep breath and gazed out over the beautiful landscape.  An older man and a younger man emerged from the olive trees carrying several plastic cartons of olives. It was Diva’s husband Maceo and their nephew bringing in the day’s harvest.

As the sun started to set and a chill began to set in, Diva led us into her kitchen, where she had already started on the evening’s meal. We were all ready to get to work – with a glass of wine in hand of course.  Diva first asked us to help with the cinghale (wild boar) stew, wild boar being very common in Tuscany.  The meat had already been marinating for 12 hours in garlic, olive oil (from Diva’s olive trees), fresh rosemary  (from Diva’s garden) and white wine (from the Diva’s neighbor’s). Oh yeah, Diva’s nephew hunted the wild boar.

From her extensive pantry, she pulled several jars of tomatoes canned from her garden that were opened and went into the pot, along   with more red neighborly wine.

As the stew was stewing, we started on the pasta called pici that is a hand rolled pasta common in Tuscany.  Not only did Diva not use a bowl for the pasta dough that was made on her special wooden board, she didn’t measure anything…at all. 

The eggs were from her chickens of course, and I’d never seen a bag of flour that large in anyone’s kitchen.  The group of us gathered round and for every 9 pici that Diva rolled, we each did 1.  But 8 slow people rolling pasta actually went fairly quickly and we were ready for our next instructions. 

Zucchini Sformata was next with zucchinis – of course silly, they were from Diva’s garden! Cream, eggs and Parmigiano cheese. And into the oven it all went.  

Dessert was to be tiramisu – I thought Diva was a bit of a slacker when she opened the package of ladyfingers from the grocery store, but I took another swig of the neighbor’s wine and forgave her misstep. She makes her tiramisu with raw eggs, which made some of the Americans in the group a little nervous about, but when in Rome…technically Montepulciano, but Rome was only a few hours away.

And lastly but which was really the first thing on the menu was the bruschetta with tomatoes from guess where and drizzled with the most divine olive oil, pressed two days prior.

When all of this glorious food made with such skill and dedication was ready, we sat down to an amazing dinner served by charming Diva and Maceo, unforgettable in taste, experience and fun.

The day was gorgeous – sunny, blue sky with a few puffy clouds and my friend Deborah from the Strada dei Vini e dei Sapori del Garda and I were headed to La Torre Vineyards in the province of Brescia (Brescia is the province in Italy that borders the western end of Lake Garda and is located in Lombardy).  Yes we were going for the wine, but we were also going for what Deborah promised me was an authentic Brescian meal – Spiedo and Polenta. 

The driveway passed through the lovely vineyard which has been in the Pasini family for 3 generations and we parked in front of the 18^th century building which houses the wine cellar (la cantina). Already I’m getting excited….And as we got out of the car, I smelled the most amazing aroma but it had nothing to do with the bouquet of wine; it was smoky, meaty, herby and fabulous.  I asked what that wonderful smell was, and Deborah proudly told me that it was dinner (at this point, my heart skipped a beat). Our noses led us to a large shed-like structure where Attilio Pasini, the owner of La Torre and a couple of other guys were poking and prodding at something and as they stepped to the side, I saw one of the oldest forms of cooking – meat roasting over a fire…sort of.  The special oven is called a tombolo and as I found out later, Brescia is the only place in the entire country of Italy where you can find a tombolo.

And turning round and round was a beautiful sight of chestnut hued meat rotating on 3 foot long skewers with butter and sage gently drizzling down from the top.

Olive wood was fueling the fire producing the most sublime smoky aroma.

I asked what kind of meat was on the Spiedo and the response was pork, chicken and bird.  So then I asked what kind of bird thinking it was turkey, duck, maybe goose and the answer again was “bird”.  Now, my Italian isn’t what I would like it to be, but I think I have a fairly decent command of the English language and thought for sure there was some sort of language barrier here.  But when the guy pointed toward the trees and flapped his arms, I had my answer.  So yes, authentic Brescian Spiedo has pork, chicken and bird…specifically goldfinch.

Sometime later, we sat down to a beautiful table set with multiple wine glasses,

a platter of perfectly roasted and glazed spiedo and amazing polenta.

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The food, the wine, the company was awesome…and no, I didn’t try the bird.