Us-In-Italy

Another great day today. We set out trying to locate Castillo Vibiano Vecchio because we'd read about their green, carbon neutral ways and wanted to take a closer look. Colleen is friends with friends of the owner's brother and thought we might get to see inside the estate. But alas, we just peaked through the gates at the amazing castle that sits on a hill above Mercatello. And even that was impressive. Driving back down the hill, we saw holding tanks and a solar panel and drove over to investigate. As luck would have it, one of the owners of the winery took pity on us. Even though the tasting room and sales area was closed for the day, he had an employee open it to sell us some wine. We bought enough to tuck into our suitcases and also to enjoy with dinner. Organic and sulfite-free . . . my kind of wine. Here's a link to an article about the facility's green nature: http://www.blogfromitaly.com/bright-lights-shining/
And their website: http://www.montevibiano.it/

We picked up a few additional groceries for dinner and headed home. Dan, Lori and I decided we needed a short adventure before our party tonight, so we headed a few miles down the road to Paciano. This is a well-kept village with beautiful stone and ironwork details on many of the homes. As shops were already closed for the day (they close at 1pm on Thursdays), we ended up exploring empty streets and looking through windows. Still great fun! We ate a gelato in the piazza before heading back to Piegaro.

The Mencarelli family arrived and grandmother Lea showed us how to make gnocchi. It's such a simple recipe and looks really easy to do. We'll see if we can duplicate it at home. We boiled potatoes and ran them through a ricer. Sprinkling a little olive oil and salt on them, we then added flour and eggs and began working the dough. Once enough flour was added, the dough was soft and spongy and we were able to roll out long tubes to cut into pieces. These were then pushed against the back side of a cheese grater and ended up as beautiful little gnocchi. Repeat this process 8,000 times.

While Alessandra and I were rolling the gnocchi, Lea was working on the 4 cheese sauce. She melted butter in a HUGE pan and then set it on top of a large pot of salted water that we'd later cook the pasta in. This created a double boiler to melt the cheese without worry about burning it. Along with the butter and olive oil, we added gruyere, ementhal, gouda and fontina cheeses and after all was melted together and well mixed, she poured in a small amount of cream, salt and pepper. When the sauce was ready and the water boiling hard, we added the gnocchi and cooked it for about 6-8 minutes. We added it to the sauce, along with a small amount of the pasta water and the end result was a delicious first course.

For our second course, we had roasted potatoes and veggies and grilled steaks with rosemary. All were very good, but our grill wasn't hot enough and we ended up finishing them on the broiler. No worries, they ended up tasting great, even if we did have a longer than normal break between courses.

Third course was capresi salad, with lovely local tomatoes and basil and fresh mozzerela. Yum.

Alessandra is a wonderful pastry chef and brought two desserts, a beautiful fruit and creme cake and coconut chocolate squares. Even though the language barrier was a challenge at times, everyone had a great evening and we all were able to share this special birthday dinner, sitting poolside at L'Antica Vetreria at sunset. The upstairs guests (we lovingly call them The Brits) even sang happy birthday to Dan and Eleda over the balcony.

Lisa was excited because she had Don Agusto bless the jewelry she'd purchased. Lori and I loved watching the cooking lesson and can't wait to make gnocchi at home and Dan got to eat one of his favorites . . . four cheese gnocchi with fresh parmegiano.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Italy before heading home. We're planning on visiting delle Marmore Falls in Terni, the largest falls in all of Europe. We'll fill you all in after.

Ardel



Castillo Monte Vibiano Vecchio is a green carbon neutral wine and olive oil company. We drove up to the castle for a closer look.


The Monte Vibiano winery has solar panels and wind power to run their operation. They are a carbon-neutral, green, organic winery in Central Umbria.


The bell tower in Paciano was simply elegant.


We just came for an hour in the afternoon to see this village and were patiently waiting for 4pm to look into the shops for a few minutes. Sadly we realized that it was Thursday, the day during the week that the shops do not reopen. Italians seem to work about 30 hours a week, to our 45 or more.


Ardel and Lori in front of a beautiful front door and flowers on one of the village streets in Paciano.


The church tower . . .


Our pet of the day was a small cat sleeping the afternoon away under a stone bench on a side street in Paciano.


In the early evening, we met up with Colleen's adopted Italian family to learn to make gnocchi, Italian style. Here, Grandma Lea runs the cooked potatoes through a ricer to break them apart.


Lea kneads the dough for several minutes. It's hard work and she's got the muscles to prove it.


After rolling out some of the dough into long strands, we cut these into pieces.


Then, Allesandra (Lea's daughter and Carlotta's mother), rolled them quickly across the inside of the grater to make the pattern and flatten them out a bit.


We rolled and cut and pressed a few . . .


Meanwhile, Lea started the four cheese sauce.


I rolled for a while, and then switched to pressing. We got pretty fast at it.


This is Carlotta, who works for Tom and Colleen helping guests make arrangements, and her great-grandmother, Elida, who was also celebrating her birthday along with Dan.


The gnocchi is plated and we all look for places to sit.


Deliciouso! But gnocchi was only to be the first course. We also grilled steak, roasted potatoes and vegetables and had a caprese salad.


Here is Maya Mencarelli, the family dog, wishing for more scraps from the steak at dinner.


Maya sits on Don Agusto's lap. He is the village priest, invited to dinner since Elida cooks for him every evening.


Maya looks like a possessed puppy. Maybe Don Agusto can exorcise her instead of feeding her table scraps.