Foodie Diaries

2013 has not been good to me so far. What with mom’s surgery and the ever-increasing stress of work, time seems to be flying by, and yet, crawling. Nothing significantly good seems to be happening. I have some tentative plans happening for the hols, but nothing’s confirmed yet and things are looking dicey on the travel front, which makes me cranky and mean. Travel is my drug, do not wean me away from it! :(

As I’m not going anywhere, all I can do is look through my pictures of past trips and reminisce, to feel a bit better. Of course, I look through the Italy pics most as they are the most recent. Just looking through these pictures makes me wanna go back to Italy! Unfortunately, I really didn’t do justice to the food when I went there this time, but now that I’m back in Dubai, I’m eating (and cooking) Italian food a lot and wishing I’d had a better appetite while in Italy!

Bruschetta

When I first tried bruschetta (in Dxb somewhere), I didn’t like it very much. “Tomatoes on bread?! No thank you!” I used to turn away and make barf-faces. I also used to pronounce it brus-shetta. I am less ignorant now! Not only do I know that it’s pronounced brus-ketta, I have also come to appreciate the simplicity of freshly chopped tomatoes on warm bread with a drizzle of olive oil.  Of course, I have Italy to thank for this change of heart! I’m not sure how they did it, but it was the best bruschetta I ever had! Maybe they put pot on their tomatoes instead of basil! :P

freshly made pasta with lamb ragout and deep-fried artichokes

Fresh pasta in itself is delicious and I’d have been happy with a simple aglio e oilio, but this dish was something else! I’d never tried fried artichokes before. It was crunchy and delicious and added a lovely dimension to the smooth pasta and melt-in-the-mouth lamb ragout.

The restaurant is an elusive lil place about 5 mins away from the Spanish steps. The Palatium sits very inconspicuously in a corner and we actually missed it and only found it on our way back, while walking dejectedly at not having found the place!

Best. lasagna. EVER!!

 

Rome, being a tourist hot spot,  is filled with restaurants and cafes selling you substandard food which will leave you disheartened and think Italian food is overrated. This is why we (and when I say “we” I really mean my friend R, cos I did no research at all :P) did our research on where to go beforehand so we wouldn’t be disappointed. But the problem with these lovely places is that they’re all hard to find! Rome has a numbering system for their establishments which, if you try to follow, will lead you around in circles. It took us almost an hour to find this elusive lil place called Trattoria Luzzi, and we were famished and ridiculously late for lunch by the time we found the place. But I had the best, most succulent lasagna there and their tiramisu was to DIE for, so having lunch at 5pm didn’t seem so bad (in retrospect!).

Btw, you know what’s weird about Italians? Their hot chocolate…. is pure hot chocolate!!! 

W.T.F!!

Now while I love my chocolate, I cannot pour pure melted chocolate down my throat without gagging! No, really! There IS such a thing as too much chocolate! Unless you’re Italian I guess!

I have a lot more pictures (please check the album on this post), but I’ve got a sudden craving for chocolate (wonder why! :P). So until next time… Ciao!