EyeItalia

The Anfiteatro Castrense is the Roman amphitheatre that most people, including most Romans, know nothing about. This miniature version of the Colosseum hides an interior garden blessed with some of the freshest fruit and vegatables in the capital and the unlikely urban farmers are actually white-habit-with-black-aproned, Benedictine-Cistercian monks whose monastery and church, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, are now part of the amphitheatre complex.

One of the most widely made cheeses in Italy today is the sheep’s milk “pecorino” and its secondary product, “la ricotta.” Although various treatments have embellished pecorino over the ages, the fundamental cheese has probably remained largely the same for over two thousand years.

Wild boar…cinghiale…aka “Sus Scrofa:”Tuscany’s super-sized, numero-uno public nuisance, who may look great in a sauce over a plate of papardelle but standing on all fours, is nothing but trouble.

Mother Nature saves her best for last, so just before the lethargic winter, it’s time for the year’s grand finale: the closest thing to mothers’ milk that exists in nature. Today we officially finished our “small”…two hundred and fifty tree…olive harvest and pressed this year’s olive oil. Never has looking bad been so worth it!

One of the best things about the Italian summer coming to an end (besides the days finally becoming cooler) is that the figs are starting to ripen. If you don’t have your own fig tree, there’s always one close by. Volunteer trees spring up in the most unlikely places, thanks to fig-loving birds, which unintentionally deposit fig seeds into cracks in walls, sidewalks and rooftops, which then perform complicated contortions to grow and bear fruit. The musky vanilla scent of fig leaves is unmistakable but doesn’t compare to the absolute perfection of a perfectly ripe fig (or a perfectly dried stuffed fig!).