La tiella gaetana

One of my favorite Italian foods is one that I've never found in the States. Essentially it consists of some kind of filling baked between two circles of pizza dough which have been pressed together along the edge. My family and friends said that the tiella was devised by fishermen's wives so that their husbands could take with them something that would last for the several days that they were out at sea.^*

Fillings vary quite a bit. My favorite consists of spinach and olives; I also like escarole filling and egg and ricotta.
Since Gaeta is a seaside town, there are several varieties filled with seafood, most of which I can't even stand the thought of: small octopus, for example. You can also fill it with eggplant and onion, but that's another one of those concoctions that Italians love and I don't.

I've never found tiella offered in any of the Italian restaurants in the states. You can find pizza, pasta, and all kinds of foods in Italian restaurants here, but you can't find the stuff I actually ate when I was in Gaeta. I reckon immigrants from Gaeta don't open restaurants, not around the places where I've lived at least. So I asked my mom once, and she gave me a recipe, the result of which you can see above. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. I'll describe how I make my variant after the break.

• Dough
  Be advised that I make my dough in a nonstandard way. For some reason the standard way doesn't work very well for me (a cone of flour with a hole in the middle, that looks something like volcano).
• 1.5 cups water
• 2-3 tsp of yeast
• 1-2 tsp salt
• 2-3 tsp sugar
• 2-3 tsp olive oil
• an undetermined amount of flour
• Mix dry ingredients (not flour) in bowl. Heat water: not too hot, not too cold. Pour over dry ingredients and mix. Let sit 5-15 minutes, depending on how busy you are with other things.
• Stir in olive oil.
• Add flour, a fistful at a time, say, mixing reasonably well, until your dough attains a nice consistency. If it starts to feel like a heavy slab, you did something wrong, probably mixing in too much flour. You should be okay anyway. (Yeah, I do this on occasion.) Once it's good and doughy, let it sit a while. Punch it down every hour or two.
• Filling for egg and ricotta (the spinach and olive filling shouldn't need explanation, honestly)
• In a separate bowl, beat 4 eggs thoroughly.
• Add one 15 oz. tub of quality ricotta, having allowed any excess water to drain. Whisk vigorously. The resulting consistency should be something akin to goo, or at least cake batter.
• Mix in some salt.
  Don't ask me how much; I don't think I have the yeast/salt/sugar amounts above correct, either. I just kind of eyeball it and hope I don't screw anything up. I think I use 2-3 tsp.
• Preheat oven to 450^o.
• Cut dough into two pieces, one a little larger then the other. Roll each into a circle, oval, rectangle, or whatever you feel like and/or are able to get the dough to agree to.
• Lay the larger circle out on an oiled pizza pan (or a seasoned baking stone).
• Spread a thin layer of oil over the top of the dough, leaving a dry ring at the edge. This will protect the dough from excess water in whatever filling you use.
  (This trick works for protecting pizza dough from tomato sauce, too. My dad taught it to me; I think he said that Nonna taught him.)
• With great care, spread filling over oiled dough. Don't let it get onto the dry parts.
• Carefully lay the second circle over the filling. Fold the lower circle over, pressing it down onto the upper circle. Use a fork to press down and seal the two.
• Bake in preheated oven for 10-20 minutes until the crust turns golden.
• If my directions aren't as bad as I think they are, you will enjoy a tasty, authentic, rustic Italian food. Doesn't look like I'll be writing any recipe books anytime soon, though.

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^*Variants of this exist in the regions around my mother's hometown. In Ponza they called it a ripiena; in Gaeta they called it a tiella. The ripiena isn't quite the same as the tiella; the one I bought was smaller actually.

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How to tackle obesity? Discourage walking, of course

One of the great ironies of life is that for nearly all of human history, being fat was considered a sign of health, wealth, and (if you were female) fertility. Here now come modern times to correct old superstitions. The wealthy pay doctors to make them look as if they haven't had a decent meal in years, while the lower classes fret over the fact that they eat healthier than kings of old, and look it, too. Even pregnant women today worry that their husbands will be displeased with the amount of fat that they've put on, and will be tempted to sample other options. I don't know what's worse; that our culture breeds that fear, or that I've known enough men to know that women are very often right.

Here in Mississippi, where (with one exception) my wife and I are still the only people over 15 years old that I've seen walking around a neighborhood, obesity is a real problem, blamed for pretty much every health problem the state has. Poverty is blamed for the obesity. That sounds really weird if you stop to think about it long enough; only in these modern American States would someone think to classify poverty as a cause of obesity.

Comes now a triumvirate of Mississippi legislators, Messieurs Ted Mayhall from Southaven, John Read from Gautier, and Bobby Shows from Ellisville, to introduce a bill into the legislature that would prohibit restaurants from serving obese people. In the immortal words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.

By his own admission, Rep. Read is no lightweight politician, in the non-metaphorical sense of "lightweight", so he himself would be banned from such restaurants. The point isn't to actually pass the law, but to draw attention to the problem. That hasn't stopped anyone from complaining that this offensive bill perpetuates discrimination against the obese. Apparently they've confused our politicians with those of New York City.

I don't see why people are so upset. This is precisely the sort of mischief that State governments should be getting into. If they're going to collect a 7% sales tax, very nearly the highest in the nation, with no exemption for food, they very well ought to combat rampant obesity with symbolic, meaningless gestures. At least Governor Barbour goes walking in a commercial with his wife and bunch of children.

What could they really do to fix the problem? That would make for a good family discussion one day while we take the 5 minute leisurely stroll to the mall. Unfortunately, we can't take that walk. The mall really is only a 5 minute walk away, but there is no sidewalk on the potholed road that leads there, and cars fly by quite a bit faster than the 35 mph speed limit implies.

I'm still trying to figure out what they do in Jackson with all that money. They're not building sidewalks, and they're not paying policemen to watch for speeders along Weathersby Road. I don't even feel safe in my vehicle sometimes, let alone on my feet at the side of the road. Don't even get me started on the sparsity of streetlights or the lack of serious bus service.

It's too bad these three men don't represent my area. Two are Republicans and one is a Democrat, which in Mississippi tells you nothing more than the lawyers' club they hang out with. In any case, these men have my vote. Anyone un-serious enough to think that obesity can be tackled by introducing a bill that would forbid restaurants from serving the obese deserves a seat in the state legislature no less than Caligula's horse Incitatus deserved his seat in the Roman Senate.

Yes, dear reader, the best part of having a weblog is knowing that my writings leave a legacy that guarantee I will never be elected to anything.

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All natural yogurt again

Some time ago, Breyers' yogurt switched from their all natural recipe to one with artificial colors. This may be related to their being acquired by Kraft Foods, but I'm not sure. When I emailed them to complain about this, and received a polite reply to the effect that they had decided to switch in order to provide the same "high quality" yogurt at a price affordable to their customers. As if "high quality" can be associated with artificial colors...

Apparently this plan backfired. While strolling through the store with my wife a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Breyers' yogurt once again advertised itself as "All Natural", instead of "All Natural Flavors" or whatever the weasely tagline was for awhile. So I bought some. The taste corresponds to my memory. Unfortunately, my wife and son don't care for Breyers' thinner texture, one of the things I had liked. When I eat yogurt these days, I eat whatever they have handy. In addition, Dannon is now marketing Activia here, and not just in Europe (of all places, I first discovered it in Russia!!!), so it's hard to justify buying Breyers. Still, I wish the company luck; it's great stuff, and good to have it all-natural again.

This may also be related to a change in ownership; I recall that Breyers' Yogurt was owned by Kraft Foods, but now it's one of the CoolBrands International, a Canadian outfit. Do I have to thank those Canucks up north for the return to "high quality" yogurt? I hope not.

Unfortunately, no one paid me to write this. :-) So my gratitude is sincere.

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Famished

For some reason, I'm hungry all the time. I'm wondering if it's due to the time zone; Austria is 6 hours ahead of the Eastern US, so that could be the cause. I still wake up early in the morning, but that isn't nearly bad as the constant hunger.

I haven't mentioned a few curiosities of life in Austria. One was the shower curtain — or rather, the lack of one. I would take a shower in a tub so shallow that it was clearly meant for showering, and not for bathing. Yet there was neither curtain nor door. A glass wall covered half of the opening, but that left the other half from which water would splash out. Why the Julius Raabheim chooses not to use a curtain is beyond me; after every shower, water covered the floor, the walls, and even the carpet in the entranceway, unless I closed the bathroom door.

Foreign keyboards are different, too. Imagine having the z and y keys interchanged. I was often analzying instead of analyzing. At one point a French professor let me borrow his laptop; imagine trying to type with the q and a keys switched. It's not so bqd reqlly, once you get used to it. :-)

The television received a number of channels in different languages. I didn't waste any time trying to learn German, and I didn't waste long trying to decipher the French on TV5. I did spend some time watching Italy's RAI Uno; there's a neat game show called L'eredita. I was surprised at how many answers I knew. (The host is much better than I would have guessed from the photo on that webpage.) Watching the news (il Telegiornale) was rather depressing, however; there is something surreal about watching a reporter whose lips are obviously the victim of an aggressive plastic surgeon discuss in the northern Italian accent politicians' polemics following anti-global protestor' riots at a center-left rally in Milan. I also had the opportunity to watch the San Remo music festival, but it always prompted me to click the power button on the remote, and one of the musicians who used to visit San Remo yearly said that she has more or less the same reaction. I had the opportunity to watch Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien on CNBC Europe, but I didn't catch much more than one night's headlines.

On Wednesday, most of the participants visited a very nice restaurant in Linz. I've forgotten the name, but the restaurant was along the lines of 400-500 years old. The inside looked every inch to be an old tavern; the only thing that was missing was the roaring fire in the hearth at the center of the room. The meal was a buffet served by two women; you went to the bar, told them what you wanted (or pointed at it) and they handed it to you. The food was reasonably good; there were several meat dishes to choose from, lots of vegetables, sauerkraut of course, and several desserts.

This is not the reason I'm famished, though. Mostly I ate simple sandwiches, fruits, and vegetables. It's a good thing the math dept. is about to go to lunch — on the other hand, if they weren't, I'd probably be heading home right about now to eat my wife's delicious food.

Argh.

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Delicious Decadence!

Speaking of my weight, I've discovereed a marvelous yet simple new dessert. Take a box of Vanilla Wafers and a jar of Nutella, and dip one into the other. — No no no, dip individual wafers into the nutella, not the whole jar of Nutella into the box!

Why are they called "vanilla" wafers anyway? Most of them seem to be maded with vanillin instead of vanilla.

Nothing else to report for now. I'm a little too lovelorn to write thoughtfully.

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I had two dates tonight

They were large, brown, and wrinkled. They were a week old or so, but they were still reasonably fresh, however fresh a dried date can be. They tasted soooooo very good, and the seeds (pits?) are sitting on the table. Have you ever noticed how large date seeds can get? Also that their shells are half-dark, half-light? It's really weird.

What's that look for? What did you think I was talking about when I had two dates?

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