Does life get much better?

I'm really enjoying these photos, Lars.

BTW, I actually do know the answer to this:

I'd never had gnocchi like this and have no idea how they were able to make them like this.

I have a friend who is an Italian chef who lives in FL, and he was always very jealous of the gnocchi that his brother, also a chef but in Italy, was able to make. Then the brother came for Christmas last year and showed us that the secret is to add as little flour as will hold everything together. If you just add the amount called for in the recipe, they will not be ethereal.

Wow Lars, fantastic looking lunch! Siena is such a wonderful Tuscan city. Bet it's hot!

I had gnocchi in Venice a few years ago and couldn't believe how light & pillowy they were. They tasted like no gnocchi I have had here in North America. Sometimes it's hit or miss with food in Italy, but good gnocchi is such a delight when done well.

Have you had any porchetta yet? Man they do that REALLY well too!

I'm sure it's not good for my computer to have drool all over it but what a way to go! That gnocchi looks so good, wish I'd been tagging along :-)

And as well as the minium flour, don't work the dough. Soft hands make light gnocchi. I love your travels! It sounds like you had a really "authentic" trip and not a sanitised version of Italy.

Right, Islay. You want to handle everything as little as possible.

re-OOOO!

Very, very picturesque! I love the narrow streets, and old buildings. Great for walking!

I'd have my fork into Kevin's Calzone so fast he wouldn't know what hit him. Scrumptious! I like the small portions of your lunch :-)

I'm going to try making gnocchi with a small amount of potato, as a learning tool. Normally, I have made batches that were too large, partly because of the egg element, but I can beat an egg and just use part of it. I bought truffle oil in Italy also and may add that to the sauce that I make.

We definitely did not have a "sanitized" trip, and even the Italians thought we were adventurous. We rented a car in Rome to drive to Florence, Siena, Pitigliano, Tivoli, and then back to Rome. I told Kevin that he wasted his 20 cents when he threw a coin in the Tivoli Fountain when we first got to Rome because we were already going to return to Rome! We went places where people spoke no English, but my Italian turned out to be better than I thought. I was worried because I learned Italian 29 years ago, and this was my first trip to Italy. People were very generous with information when I spoke to them in Italian, but they also corrected me when I made grammatical errors - I guess they wanted to help me improve my Italian.

The GPS we took with us to use in our rental car went out after about 20 minutes because the cigarette lighter did not work, but as it turned out, the car had its own GPS, but it only spoke Italian, as far as I could tell. That was not an issue, however, as the vocabulary for the directions is quite small - maybe 10 words. The menu was complicated, but I had no problem with that either. However, I did notice that the GPS at one time asked us to select a country (not language), and so of course I selected Italy (we were not going to Albania), and perhaps if I had selected a different country it would have changed languages, but I will never know. Anyway, it was easier enough to navigate in Italian, and the Italian GPS pronounced the Italian street names correctly, whereas the one Kevin brought with him did not. GPS was critical when we came to a roadblock on the way to Pitigliano and had to take an unexpected detour, which turned out to be much more scenic. I had to program the GPS to leapfrog us through small towns to get around the roadblock and into Pitigliano. This is why I would not call it a "sanitized" trip!

It all looks and sounds fabulous! 38 years ago we spent time in Rome, Florence, Venice and visited Pompeii. We planned to see Sienna, but never made it. Your trip is motivating me to move it up on our list of planned vacation destinations. Thank you!

Thank you so much, for bringing us on your trip via these wonderful posts!

I love Siena. Daughter-san will spend next spring term in a study abroad program there. I'm hoping to go visit.

Lars, thanks for sharing. Really enjoying your photos.

I have been lurking here for a long time. But Lars, I have to say your reports of your trip are amazing. Thanks for the photos and your words about your time in Italy. I spent a semester in Tuscany back in 2000 (Duke in Florence, with my late husband), I think I stayed in the same hotel in Siena one weekend. Or one nearby. Alma... Near St. Catherine's? I could see her sanctuary from my little balcony. And visited her after climbing up the slope. Did you too find the bathrooms over there not quite as convenient as you would expect? But I was there from Sept- Dec., mostly living in a drafty villa in Sesto Fiorntino and only got to the hotels on weekends. Always wanting a hot or warm shower! . But to get to a cooking theme, my favorite thing I ate which I reproduced back home was calves' liver in sage butter. At one restaurant a Jack Russell terrier jumped up next to me and wanted to eat my precious plate of it in Florence. I now grow my own sage and make it for myself once in a while. And Pumpkin ravioli, but they only make that in season. And a gnocchi in Cortona, with gorgonzola sauce. Grilled veggie Antipasti in Rome. Anyway, thanks. Go in fall when they make amazing pastries with black unseeded grapes! I crave that--grape seeds are good for us. But no one around me sells grapes with seeds.

Lars, everything looks fabulous, from the gnocchi to the gelato. I'm glad you are having your "unsanitized" trip, I always like to find out what a place is really like, not what the tourists are led to think its like.

I'm loving the photos and travelogue, what fun!

Annie

What a thrill to get to see your photos and read about your experience. Thank you for sharing.

I thought in Europe they had small servings. Those look huge!

I've attempted gnocchi once or twice, and wondered why people like them. Of course, my attempts were awful. I'd love to try some made by experts. I bet my opinion would change drastically.

Sally

Ask if the gnocchi was potato or ricotta. I find ricotta gnocchi to be much lighter than potato.

Looks wonderful, thank you for sharing!

Andrea, you probably did stay at the same hotel. Here are some photos of the common area/lounge

John, I'm sure your daughter will love the time she spends in Siena, and I hope you do get to visit her there. In addition to being close to Florence and Rome, it is also close to a lot of Etruscan sites and is said to have been an Etruscan city from the beginning.

Front patio of hotel:

Lars, thanks for sharing! I think I've eaten at the same gelateria and I remember that pork shop. Both the calzone and your gnocchi looks so fantastic. The truffled pasta can be incredible --- I also love the truffled taleggio cheese melted on a good filet.

Lars, thanks for the all the pictures of the places you were staying. I love seeing the old hillside architecture. All the pictures are wonderful. You're like my menfolk, I think. Their idea of a good trip is to drive, especially the backroads. Sounds like your old Italian was well up to the challenge!

Good luck with the gnocchi!

Love seeing what you saw! That piece of art hanging in your hotel lounge reminds me of Kevin's work.

We made gnocchi once using mascarpone and lemon zest ... no potato. Very good!

Giada & Ina making Mascarpone & Lemon Gnocchi

It does look reminiscent of Kevin's work, but he had been wanted to go to Italy to see paintings/art ever since he was in art school, and I think he got some inspiration there.

I'm going to have to try the variations on gnocchi - so glad I had a different version (I think). That was inspiration to me, as well as the calzones. I saw that Giada and Ina show, but I was skeptical of it. If you recommend it, I will make it! BTW, Kevin's calzone had zucchini and eggplant inside.

Gooster, there's a good chance you did eat at the same gelateria, as it seems to be the main one on the piazza, and the only one with table service, which we were happy to pay a bit extra for. The take-out prices were a bit cheaper, but we needed to sit down at that point.

I almost missed this post, so glad I was bored into scrolling through 'old' posts this morning!

Your photos are fantastic! Afraid I must admit, though, that those narrow streets would give me a serious attack pf claustrophobia if I had to walk down them. But in the pictures, they are wonderful. The architecture there is amazing. Thank you for sharing with us.

I've only had Gnocchi twice in my life, both times at what are supposed to be authentic Italian restaurants, one in MI's UP, and the other here in S. Texas. The one in MI was in a creamy white sauce (this was over 15 years ago, so I don't remember whether is was an Alfredo sauce or not), and I loved it! The 2nd time was just a couple of weeks ago. This time it came in a Bolognese (sp?) sauce, and tasted like plain mashed potatoes. I didn't care for it at all. I want to try my hand at making some one of these days, the truffle and mushroom sauce you had sounds delicious. I also want to try making ravioli again. Made some a long time ago, it wasn't bad at all. It had a cheese and spinach filling, a recipe from my SIL, who married a first generation Italian. She has shared a few of her Italian recipes that were given to her by her immigrant in-laws. I would really love Kevin's shrimp ravioli! I'd also like to try them with a portabella mushroom and ricotta filling.

Thanks again, Lars!

Rusty

I bought ricotta so that I can make the ricotta gnocchi - I did not see marscapone in the market, but I stopped looking when I found ricotta. I'll see how that goes and then look again for marscapone.

Yesterday I made an Italian inspired dinner with tomatoes, basil, oregano, and peppers from my yard, plus zucchini, onion, and garlic from the store. I have a bunch of tomatoes all getting ripe at the same time - I grew them from seeds someone gave me, and so they must be determinate, which I usually do not grow. Anyway, I had some zucchini and decided to cook them together and add some Calamaretti pasta, which I've had for some time and never used. I bought it because I thought it looked interesting, and it worked well with the zucchini. I served the dish with Asiago cheese, finely grated. For me, Asiago is like a combination of Mozzarella and Parmesan, and so instead of using both of those, I can use Asiago alone.