Cooking with the Duchess in her Palermo Palace

Not just any Duchess. Nicoletta is THE Duchess. Her full name is Duchess Nicoletta Polo Tomasi Lanza and she runs occasional private cooking lessons in her palace on the sea in Palermo, Sicily. The delightfully full day's lesson was organized by Linda Plazonja of Morso Soggiorno. We met the Duchess in the early morning, outside of the hectic Viccuria market, where we shopped for the ingredients.

Duchess, banging through her shopping list

While shopping in the market, she was accompanied by our group (who mostly just helped carry the bags), plus her two young assistants. Then in her palace, her every need was serviced by her assistants plus her maid and butler. Dirty pots and utensils vanished as she finished with them.

Insalata Pantesca di Patate e Capperi (Potato Salad with Capers, Pantelleria Style)

Although she was raised in Venice, Nicoletta made Palermo her home when she married her royal husband and moved into his family's Palazzo Lanza Tomasi. The palace was built beginning in the late 1600s and was used in the 1700s as the Imperial College for the Education of Young Aristocrats. A bit of irony there.  The palace has been in her husband's family since 1850, and over the years, various pieces of it have been assembled by adding nearby properties. It is a grand and elegant place. After the cooking lesson in the kitchen, while the food was cooking, she took us on a walking tour through the public spaces in the palace, regaling us with its history.

We ate lunch in the dining room, with full service of china, silver and crystal. We were all grimy from cooking, but she tactfully overlooked it, including invited guests to join us at the table. They were properly dressed and coiffed for the elegant lunch we prepared - but which we dined on in our workout clothes and sneakers. Oh, and the Filipino waitstaff was crisply dressed in pressed whites.

Palace China with the Family Crest

Elegant Service for an Elegant Lunch

Me, looking ridiculous as I share a lovely lunch with a bank executive...conversing the whole time in French

Menu Cards Printed and Placed for each Diner (Doesn't everyone do that?)

Fish are Jumpin' at Viccuria Market, Palermo

I went fish-shopping at the Viccuria in Palermo. It is an outdoor food market -- one of several in Palermo, but this one is the oldest.  The fresh fish are right out of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The thing that struck me was that they are displayed like they are jumping off the counter. The heads are tied to the tails, putting them in a curvy pose, as if they are swimming in formation.

I was shopping in the market to procure the ingredients for a cooking class with a Duchess....more on that in a separate post. The Duchess is really picky about her vendors. First stop was for fish. She uses only this place. She had the fish monger slice the swordfish into very thin slivers, to use for rolling into Involtini di Pesce Spada (swordfish rolls).

The Duchess's Fishmonger at Viccuria Market, Palermo

Slicing Swordfish into thin Slivers

Involtini di Pesce Spada (swordfish rolls) ready for cooking

Bring on the Lardo

Lardo - All in its naked glory, Fat, Fat, Fat

While on a fabulous food trip through the Piedmont region of Italy, the pressure was on to taste the lardo. Linda Plazonja, who runs Morso Soggiorno, led this wonderful trip of off-the-beaten path artisanal food experiences. She insisted that I taste the lardo, assuring me that I would be glad I did. Lardo was not my first go-to item to choose from among beautiful meats, cheeses, olives and caponatas. Not being a big meat-eater, I was happy to eat the salami. It was heavenly. But Lardo?? A glistening wad of naked fat?  Well, I'm so glad I passed that slithery slab over my lips. Oh my!! I am now a lardo fan. It was delicious. Having read up on it, I now know that Lardo is not the same thing as Lard. Lard is a cooking fat, used like butter. Lardo (emphasis on the "OH!"), is a type of salumi, or charcuterie, sliced very thinly, and deserves its place on the antipasto plate. It is made by curing strips of fatback with rosemary and other herbs and spices.

Lardo sits on top of salami. It's almost like it's saying "Pick Me! Pick Me!", at Tra Arte e Quercia in Monchiero

Cheese and condiment sampler served with wine tasting at Cascina Val del Prete - different place, different story. Just showing this in contrast to the fat slabs of lardo

Truffle Hunting: It's all about the Dog, About the Dog

I always thought that without wild boar, the world would be truffleless.  Wrong. While the French rely on crazed pigs to find their precious truffles, the northern Italians use dogs. Really smart, really focused, well trained dogs.

I had the fantastic opportunity to go truffle hunting with Etzio and his dog Dora, in the Piedmont region of Italy. The trip was part of a terrific food-focused trip organized by Morso Soggiorno out of Boston. Etzio owns a large property where he hunts and occasionally lets visitors follow along with him. The property is located near Alba, and is about 35 miles southeast of Turino (known as Turin in English).
Etzio's land is covered with groves of trees, some maple, some oak and another whose name I didn't catch, even though it was translated into English. The truffles are like mushrooms, in that they are a fungus. But unlike mushrooms, the truffles are found about 6 inches underground, at the base of a tree, amid the roots, and within only a few feet of the tree's trunk. Truffles are an extraordinarily precious commodity. They are harvested for only a short period and because of the worldwide demand for them, a truffle broker waits nearby to purchase Etzio's findings. The white truffles are more valuable than the black ones; with white Alba truffles retailing at about $40 per ounce.

Etzio trained Dora to seek the scent of truffle around the tree bases. When she finds the smell, she begins to paw at the ground furiously. She would love to eat the truffle. Not happening. When Etzio sees that Dora has scored, he pets her enthusiastically, grabs her collar, pulls her away from the spot and bribes her with treats, usually pitching them far away as a diversion.

The first truffle we came upon was black. Its earthy aroma was more intense than any truffle or truffle oil I ever encountered. But, that was NOTHING compared to the perfect emanations from the white truffle. It's easy to understand in one sniff why the white is so much more precious than black.

Etzio carefully uses a tool much like an archeologist would, to unearth the impacted prize.

After about an hour of hunting, Etzio and Dora yielded 4 truffles, a mix of black and white. A broker weighed them, with two whites coming in at 65 grams.

Then, in the family-style trattoria near Etzio's hunting grounds, we experienced possibly the dreamiest pasta I ever ate. Shaved white truffles sprinkled over freshly homemade pasta.

Dazzling Golden Mosaics in Palermo Sicily's Monreale Cathedral

The Cathedral of Monreale is just 10 miles from the center of Palermo (20 minutes if the traffic is light - which apparently it rarely is). The church is one of the main attractions in Sicily, and all of Italy, too. It was built outside of Palermo during the time when the Arabs occupied Palermo, when the Catholic Bishop moved out. After the Normans drove out the Arabs in 1072, the Catholic Bishop moved back into Palermo. But this souvenir of the exile is a magnificent display of Arab influence through the use of Byzantine tiles. The brilliantly colored glass mosaics laid on a gold background cover the entire surface of the upper walls. The tiles are tiny and intricate, yielding art that looks like painting. The images tell the Bible stories to the probably mostly illiterate church-goers who have worshipped here since its dedication in 1182. This church is the largest display of Byzantine mosaics in Italy.

I am not exactly a Biblical scholar, so I was limited in my ability to pick out the bible stories from the pictures on the walls.

Depiction of the story of Noah's Ark (obviously)

Eve emerging from Adam's rib

The Adam/Eve story was tucked in the farthest corner of the top ceiling of the back of the church. A fellow traveler spotted it. Being virtually impossible to grab a decent photo because of the low light and the weird contortions needed to get the right angle, I resorted to the next best thing. I took a photo of a postcard in the gift shop outside the church.

Postcards in the gift shop - took a pic of the pic