Got a great, long note from Dad on lessons in grilling, American style, with our Italian relatives. The food sounded wonderful, even if I would have been stuck eating just the veggies … No problema!
Here’s the dispatch from Dad with the photo gallery leading off:
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- Prosciutto!
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- Cheese .. formaggio!
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- Grilled peppers!
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- Raw sausage … salsiccia
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- Family on the patio.
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- Dad manning the grill.
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- Cooked meat … the ribs are done!
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- Dolce … sweet rewards.
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- View from the patio!
Absolutely gorgeous day here in Roma today. About 75 degrees and no clouds in the sky.
Cookin' American style in downtown Rome
Today was barbeque lessons in Roma. Luisa and I brought cousin Angela a full-sized Weber grill in May, but didn’t really have time to show the rels how to use it. We subsequently heard that they had become very good at turning nice pieces of meat into uneatable hockey pucks. Turns out they had been putting the charcoal on the very bottom of the grill kettle and then putting the meat on the charcoal grate immediately above the coals. They were also unfamiliar with how to start a fire, so we started with that as lesson numero uno. They had three small bags of Italian charcoal that turned out to be more like the coal my granddad used in his furnace in Teaneck, NJ many years ago. It had lots of big chunks, but also many small pieces. Good thing I had brought some US charcoal with us. So we filled the Weber stovepipe charcoal starter with a layer of US coal and then filled it up with the Italian stuff. Caution here, the Italian coal burns very hot and tends to explode and put out max sparks while it is getting hot. Had to be careful not to bring out the fire department or burn the kiddies.
While the coals were starting, I bent two coat hangers into charcoal barriers to hold the charcoal on two sides of the grate (with a pan of water in the middle). This was to facilitate indirect cooking of the full rack of ribs that we brought over from Santa Marinella. Now this was a very, very big rack of fresh ribs that Luisa had gotten specially cut at a butcher shop. I was just barely able to lay them out in four sections in the middle. Ok, so now we had fire and ribs, and the rels pouring in for da festa.
Allesio was starved, so we started on the antipasti, which included putting slices of bread over the coals on the sides of the grill for bruschetta. So, it was lid off to put the bread on, lid off to flip the bread, lid off to take the bread off and put more on, etc. Ribs are going, “Whoa, where’s my heat?” Zia Maria kept trying to get me to sit down and eat antipasti. They really believed you could throw something on da grill and then sit down for half an hour while it all got good and char’d. I managed to fight her off only to find out later that she really wanted to tend the goodies on the fire herself. By now we were up to 14 on the penthouse patio and the pace was picking up. So after the bread was finished, it was replaced by a sequential load of about 30 large sausages (to die for).
Ribs! American style
Oh, did mention we had some nice lasagna in the middle of all this? Anyway, as we were consuming the divine sausage, I was now cooking eggplant and then tomatoes on the sides of the grill. The tomatoes were smuggled (unbeknownst to me) by Luisa from our garden in Virginia Beach. They were green when we got here, but a perfect red today. Pulled those off and then finally took off the ribs after two hours. Took them to the cucina and chopped them into individual pieces. They were consumed in about 5 minutes.
I secured the fire and finally sat down for some dolce. I am now the family gladiator of the barbeque.
We got back here to Santa Marinella about 2000 and it’s now 2138. I am watching da Heels play da hoos on my slingbox connection on the Internet.
Go Heels!
Charlie
