Pizza & Gelato

Pizza and gelato under the Tuscan sun. Isn’t that what you think of when you think of Italy? (OK, that and pasta and ruins and leaning towers and….). But before I could ‘immerse’ myself in Tuscany, I first had to make it there.

Still raining

So, the last time that you heard from me, I was hiking wet and sick through the Cinque Terre. After that day, neither the germs nor the rain was ever very far away. Either was always lurking. And that sums up the day after the 5 Lands. Wet and sick before Tuscany.

After getting up and packing, the plan was to explore La Spezia a bit and go looking for a Geocache nearby. But entering the kitchen all I saw through the balcony window was rain and cold and I decided to not go out and get myself killed by germs. I could not try my luck twice in a row.

After breakfast I loitered in the hostel until ‘throw -out’ time, then I had to face the rain with my luggage. I schlepped through the rain to the train station, waited some more and hoped that my train ride would go smoothly today.

While waiting in the morning I received word from my Pizza and Gelato class that the lesson was moved up to the day of my arrival in Florence. This was a bit of a worry because it would be a super tight time squeeze, but I did not want to cancel. That class was one of the things that I wanted to do most while in Tuscany (the other one never happened, but that is a story for later).
This time squeeze meant that I was again utterly dependent on the trains being on time that day.

A glimpse of Pisa on my way to Pizza 😊

After an hour’s wait, the train came, just a few minutes late which was a positive start to the day of travel. It was raining all the way to Pisa, where I caught a glimpse of that famous leaning tower. The glimpse was very brief, but I had plans to come back just for that. So not too much disappointment there.

Frantic in Florence

Late the afternoon I arrived in Firenze frantically trying to find the next train that goes to near where I would be staying. It was 5 minutes late which meant more running for me, later on to be on time.

At the next stop, I got off and sort of ran the 1 odd km to where I would stay. Breathless, wet and hot, I made it to the top of 4 flights of stairs. There was no time to recover as I had to run back to the station to get to the class on time. While searching for accommodation before going solo, I found this nice place just 1km from the secondary train station. 1km. Pfff!! I can walk that in my sleep! But never did I anticipate how 1 can turn into 10 when schlepping 20 kgs along, in rain, while sick and on a very tight schedule. Man, I learned new things every day! (I learned a lot of lessons regarding the ‘disillusion ‘ of distance and schlepping luggage on this vacation, just wait for my Napoli outing!)

Back at the train station I had to navigate this foreign city centre to find the place where the class will meet. With each passing minute I got more lost and convinced that they will leave me behind. And then very randomly I stumbled upon them without even trying anymore. They had not left! And I was paste like an old smoker.

Food glorious food!!

And then the outstanding experience started with me finding 3 South Africans there, English one’s but from home non the less. I immediately wormed my way into their little group and had a great time with them for the rest of the night.

From the centre of town, we were transported to a farm on the outskirts of Florence. Just the scenery on the drive alone was worth the running. We were dropped off at a hilly farmstead and given bruschetta and red wine as a welcome. These people love their wine. If you ask for something else, they look at you as if you asked them to take you to their leader 😊.

Gelato

After the bruschetta was history, the gelato lesson started. Turns out there is quite a bit of science involved to ensure all goes well, but all in all, once you know that, gelato can be your oyster (hopefully without the shellfish). Everybody got a recipe and I was in charge of the fragola batch. They are very finicky about how you go about making your batch. How you cut and measure and mix. But all in all, for all the sciency stuff we were told beforehand, it was spectacularly easy. While our mixtures were chilled, we went out to the terrace overlooking the Tuscan countryside to start the main course. Pizza!!

Pizza 111

Here we learned a few things about pizza making. They use Tipo 00 flour, which they describe as all-purpose flour (but it turns out, here back home any flour is not all-purpose. The closest that I found was white bread flour, but it is not quite the same. One can order 00 flour online, but it is not always available. I have thus decided on cheating and am using dough from the shop for all my future pizzas).

Interesting facts they told us: A pizza is not a plate and should not be piled high with toppings (everybody who has ever made their own pizza does this, when you are done it looks like a little volcano😉). A pizza is also only supposed to be for 1 person and not for sharing, therefore they don’t cut their pizzas as we do. They also encourage pizza to be eaten with a knife and a fork and not by hand (again we do this, especially since pizzas are already cut for sharing).

And then there was the question of pineapples. You hear that they frown upon Hawaiian pizzas. Apparently, ananas are dessert food and pizzas are not supposed to be a dessert. Well, if they frown upon pineapple, they will probably cry a bit when they see the premade Dr Oetker’s chocolate dessert pizzas. (o yes, and the dough is supposed to go through a 2-day cycle of rising and fermenting, hence another reason for me cheating with readymade dough).

Back to the sweet stuff

That was what we learned before starting making little balls of dough and just like that a new wine glass appeared. As the dough rested we went back in to finish the gelato. We poured our chilled mixtures into the ice-cream makers and stared mesmerized as they started to gel-ato. After turning away from the hypnotic churning, we were treated to a ‘show’ about nitrogen. A lemon ‘sauce’ was turned into gelato in a cool puff of frozen delight. That was really cool to watch. What was even more impressive was them adding pepper corns and flash nitrogen frozen basil to the mix. Weird combination, but totally delicious. I would never have thought to mix that into an ice cream, sorry….gelato. I am not that adventurous when I stand in front of ingredients.

Dinner is served…. in 1.5 minutes

We ate our lemon basil pepper gelato, and went back out to finish our pizzas. And yet again wine was waiting. Unfortunately, me and fermented grapes are not best friends as the rest seem to be. I must have missed the wine appreciation class 😊. Anyhooo. We were taught how to turn a ball of dough into a legitimate flying saucer. I will, however, not attempt that on my own. I need a saucer supervisor. We could each build our own flavour pizza, and 1 and a half minutes later it was done. That pizza oven is crazy hot, and it is pretty much just in and out and ta-da!! Dinner is served.

It was a really good pizza, not a volcano, not a triangle in sight and eaten like the Italians do with a knife and fork. Good food, people from home and a view for the books! But the best was still to come!
Gelato in many flavours! My fragola was served with balsamic vinegar and basil. The new lemon one had Cayan pepper and something else, but the rest were served as is, dark chocolate, coco- and hazelnut. If I were not as stuffed, I would have gone for seconds. But there comes a time when you just have to accept defeat and call it a night. But not before a short certificate ‘ceremony’ before we were off to Firenze again.

Florence by night

We got a beautiful night view of the Duomo and had a quick stop for the cameras. Back in town the other South Africans said that I could tag along with them so that they can show me a few sights. And so, me and 3 random South Africans walked the street of Florence by light. Everything worth seeing was lighted up. The Pont du Vechio, the Duomo, all the ‘not so modest and huge’ statues. (I heard a mom saying that her teenage son was not impressed with her for making him go see porn. The David would probably not be impressed either). Anyway, we wandered around and by late night, we found ourselves at the train station again. Here we went our own ways and I was solo Svelka again. 

I had to cross a long bridge over the train tracks. It looked super dodgy and I prayed all the way across that I did not get mugged. Back in SA, I would never in my life walk alone at night in a place like that. But I walked across unscathed and as the excitement of the day started to fade, I started noticing the cold again (just a side note if you were wondering, none of my ‘cold’ fell into my pizza 😉 ). I climbed the flights of stairs and was over and done with the day, the only thing left for me was falling into bed. And that was literally what I did.

This started out as a pretty boring day of rain and transport but ended with a bang. Cooking on a Tuscan farm was one of the high highlights of my solo Italy. And now I regularly make my own pizza and gelato at home.

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