Charlie Hebdo

 Statue of Alfred Dreyfus holding his broken sword in the entry courtyard of the 

Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, 71 rue du Temple, 3rd arrondissement, Paris

It’s true that I’ve been away from my blog for quite some time because I’ve been working on a special issue of Dream of Italy devoted to Lago di Como and Expo Milano; but the other reason is that I have been thinking about the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher store in Paris (which just reopened two days ago) and I have wanted to write something but didn’t know exactly what.  So I continued to think, and at one point I thought that perhaps, over two months after the horrific attack, I didn’t need to post any thoughts.  But then I concluded that it didn’t feel right at all to say nothing, and the passage of time is not a reason to ignore it.  As a writer I feel compelled to acknowledge the attacks, but I also feel compelled as a traveler to say something. 

I can’t express my sorrow for all the victims and their families better or more deeply than others who wrote and posted in the days and weeks immediately following the tragedy, nor do I have some moving remarks expressing my support for the staff of Charlie Hebdo (and by the way, since it seems at least some people do not know, Hebdo is short for the word hebdomadaire, meaning weekly).  But what I can do is remind travelers about some facts of terrorism, and share some thoughts worth pondering by writers far wiser and more eloquent than me.  

I referenced an enlightening article in Condé Nast Traveler, “Terrorism: Weighing the True Risks” (July 1996) in my book on Venice, the Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.  For this piece, reporters prepared a ‘Targets of Terror’ timeline from 1972 through April 1996.  Some of the attacks featured on the timeline included the following: Palestinian terrorists kidnap and murder eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games (September 5, 1972); two IRA bombs explode in London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park (July 20, 1982); Palestinian gunmen hijack the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean (October 7, 1985); explosion at the World Trade Center in New York (February 26, 1993); Palestinian terrorists bomb La Belle nightclub in West Berlin (April 5, 1986); Arab terrorists throw a bomb from a passing car into a crowd at the Paris department store Tati (September 17, 1986); Shining Path guerrillas detonate a car bomb in front of a Lima, Peru hotel (May 24, 1995); and Algerian Armed Islamic Group bombs the St.-Michel Metro station in Paris (July 25, 1995).  As is clear from these highlighted examples, terrorist attacks happen not only on airplanes but on cruise ships, in department stores, in parks, in nightclubs, and on public transportation – in short, anywhere, to anyone, for reasons as random as wearing purple socks (yet another attack was one on April 18, 1996, when Islamic Group terrorists killed eighteen and wounded another fifteen Greek tourists in Cairo, mistaking them for Israelis).   If terrorist attacks are always within the realm of possibility, then so are the mundane activities of our daily existence, such as walking out the front door and picking up the morning newspaper, standing on a ladder and cleaning the leaves out of the gutter, or carrying clothes a few blocks away to the dry cleaner – each of which carries the risk of falling down and hitting our head on the sidewalk or the stone steps or the fire hydrant, not to mention drunk driving accidents, street crimes, hate crimes, heart attacks, rape, or murder.  If we never leave our homes, we are effectively living in fear; if we travel with fear, we are victims of that fear, real or imagined, even if not a single incident occurs while we’re away. 

One of my favorite writers, Francine Prose, wrote an essay in the travel section of The New York Times on September 8, 2002, and in it she reminded us that “Travel alters and expands our perspective.  By showing us that life really is different in other places, it provides a reality check against which we can measure the misperceptions and even prejudices we may have developed at home.”  She concluded that “The events of September 11 have – or should have – turned us not just into patriotic Americans, but into citizens of the world.  And we owe it to ourselves, and to our fellow citizens, to go out and see for ourselves this fragile, damaged and brave new world that, like it or not, we’ve come to inhabit.”  Like a Condé Nast Traveler reader who, after September 11^th, wrote a letter to the editor to say she believed that “Every American who travels abroad is a bridge for peace,” I believe we are all, in a small way, promoting international understanding by reading about other places and traveling to them. 

I remember how surprised I was when, just after September 11^th, a friend said she wasn’t making any travel plans “until all this blows over.”  It seemed so obvious to me that the world had changed, that we were in this situation for the foreseeable future, and that nothing was going to blow over (and my husband and I left for northern Spain two weeks later).  Certainly there have been more incidents, enough for a new timeline, and I believe that Charlie Hebdo was not the last. 

On days when the newspaper headlines make the world seem like a particularly nasty place, I recall that my friend Lindsay M. sent me the following lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest on the morning of September 11, 2001, a year after the World Trade Center attack:

How beautious mankind is!

O brave new world

That has such people in’it!

Italy's Best Cooking Schools

Finalement, I'm back!  Sorry for the absence but I've been really working hard on two special issues of Dream of Italy that are devoted to cooking classes in Italy (that's a photo, above, from the August issue).  If you are an Italophile and don't already know about DOI, you should!

More about this below, but I first want to note that I was remiss, in my last post about Paris, in not mentioning XL Airways, the airline I chose for my trip.  XL is nearly 20 years old but is not that well known in North America -- in reading about the airline I learned it's been sold and acquired five times, most recently in 2012, when it was sold to X-Air Aviation, a subsidiary of Swiss-US investment group BeachSide Capital LLC.  Whatever its history, I had good experiences on both flights from New York to Paris and back.  I appreciated that I received an e-mail message and a telephone call two days before my departure, informing me that the flight time had changed.  (I also really appreciated being bumped up to the airline's Galaxy Class on the flight from New York to Paris, but even if this had not happened I would still be a fan of the airline.)  HQ for XL is Charles de Gaulle Airport, and it currently offers seasonal flights on Airbus 300 planes to Paris from the U.S. cities of New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.  Flights are also available from four other French airports -- Lyon, Bordeaux, Nantes, and Toulouse -- to other destinations, and there are flights from Paris also to Guadeloupe, Martinique, Cancun, and the Dominican Republic.  When I was comparing prices in the spring, XL fares kept turning up as the most affordable -- the airline's slogan is 'l'avion plus malin' (the smarter aircraft, or sharp fares, smart you) -- and I just noticed the airline is offering some fares from $944 for some December dates and from $832.50 for dates in May 2015.  I highly recommend giving XL a try, and the in-flight meals were a cut above most others, believe it or not!

Now, back to Dream of Italy:  I'm enthusiastically endorsing the newsletter not because I've been writing for quite a number of issues over the years (though I am proud of my contributions, especially interviews with Faith Willinger and Frances Mayes and special reports on the Amalfi Coast and Florence) but because each issue is packed with useful information and subscribers have access to the entire DOI community.  The newsletter is by subscription only -- it's not found on newsstands --and it's published 10 times a year.   Currently a digital subscription is being offered for $62 and a print subscription is $72.  Travel expert Peter Greenberg says, "As I've traveled the world I've come to know -- and depend -- on local knowledge. It makes the difference between being a tourist blindly following a brochure and a streetwise traveler who benefits from great experiences. Dream of Italy and editor Kathy McCabe are great resources -- this is a must-carry item for me whenever I want cutting edge information about one of my favorite countries - Italy!"

Kathy McCabe was in Italy recently, and she posted the following note and photo on the Dream of Italy blog on the 4th of October:

Pizza School in Naples Italy

Even *I* learn something from the pages of Dream of Italy! Though many of the story ideas and articles are conceived and written by me, I also hire the best travel experts to help uncover more Italian gems.  

I first read about master pizzaiolo Enzo Coccia and his Naples pizza school when guest editor Barrie Kerper handed in the first draft of the her list of best cooking schools in Italy. I had a trip to Napoli coming up and bingo, last week I had a once-in-a-lifetime lesson with Enzo (with the red scarf below) and his team!

As Kathy also noted, subscribers will receive immediate access to these special issues -- with the classes and schools listed alphabetically by region -- as well as 115 terrific back issues.  And, we're working on expanding these issues into an electronic book with even more culinary details...stay tuned!

And coming soon: my post-Paris, Côte d'Azur report, and the Canadian Rockies, and Milano and Lago di Como (these last two destinations I am also covering for Dream of Italy). 

 

Book jacket photo by Steven Rothfeld, http://www.stevenrothfeld.com/ / photo of Frances Mayes and two others, taken at Bramasole, by Peggy Harrison, http://www.peggyharrison.com/. 

"Food!  The obsesssion of every Tuscan."  -- Frances Mayes

My most recent interview with Frances Mayes ("Catching Up with Frances Mayes") appears in the current issue of Dream of Italy!  (If you are already a subscriber you've likely read it by now, and if you're not a subscriber, you should be!  Seriously, when you subscribe to DOI you become part of a passionate community of Italy enthusiasts, and in addition to the monthly newsletter you have access to the archive, receive some special discounts, etc., etc., plus Kathy maintains a blog which she updates daily.)  

Dream of Italy Founder, Editor, and Publisher, Kathy McCabe, still receives lots of queries about Frances from her readers, so the publication of a new book by Frances and her husband, Edward Mayes -- The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes From our Italian Kitchen (Clarkson Potter) -- seemed like an opportune moment for another interview (I interviewed Mayes in 2005 for Dream of Italy and I had the very great pleasure of meeting her at Bramasole when I was working on my Tuscany and Umbria book -- my interview with her appears on pages 160-169).   

Frances and Ed collected their favorite recipes for this book, and as Frances writes in the 'La Cucina' chapter, "If you came to visit me in Tuscany, we would cook the food described in this book."  What I didn't have space for in Dream of Italy is to mention some of the recipes I've had the chance to make over the last few months.  Here I can report to you that I had great success with the following:

*Chicken with Olives and Tomatoes (I didn't use the recipe for roasted tomato that appears on page 42, but rather I used one I'd cut out of some publication or another that simply calls for cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary)

*Farro Salad (double delicious if you love farro as much as I do)

*Fiorella's Red Pepper Tart (though Fiorella apparently purchases ready-made piecrusts, I don't, ever, after buying one once and it was horrible -- perhaps in Italy there are good quality crusts available; so I made the pate brisee crust in the first edition of Martha Stewart's Pies and Tarts, which has long been my go-to, never-fail, recipe though probably more authentic would be a pasta frolla (recipe on page 192) minus the sugar)

*Onion Soup in the Arezzo Style (as the recipe states, you eat this with a fork -- it gets baked in the oven and still comes out a little bit soupy)    

*Pici with Fresh Fava Beans (A friend had given me some pici pasta, unique to Tuscany, that she'd bought at O & Co. and this recipe was calling as I love, love, love fava beans)

*Green Beans with Black Olives (the recipe also calls for orange peel, which my husband absolutely detests, so I used lemon instead)

*Ed's Crostini Neri (I've made a fair number of recipes for this classic Tuscan starter of chicken liver on toast but I'm making this one exclusively from now on)

In truth, a number of recipes in the book are quite similar to those in other Tuscan or Italian cookbooks, so home cooks should not expect to find 150 unique recipes; but many feature a unique twist on a well-known favorite, and still others are from local places in and around Cortona and elsewhere in Tuscany that Ed and Frances particularly like, as well as from places like The Catering Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, run by Franca Dotti who is originally from Milan. 

I have bookmarked lots more pages with recipes, and I'll make them over the next few months.  But for me, this book is more about inspiration: I love reading about the seasonal rhythm at Bramasole; about local traditions; and about all the friends Frances and Ed have made in and around Cortona, notably Sylvia Regi at the lovely and trendsetting Relais Il Falconiere (Sylvia is pictured in my book on page 499) and Ann Cornelisen, author of a treasured book, Torregreca: Life, Death, and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village, originally published in 1969 and reissued by Steerforth Italia in 1998; Frances loves it also as she wrote the Foreword to the Steerforth edition.  I also love looking at the photographs of the tables set alfreso, and as I note in my Dream of Italy piece, I love that the label for Bramasole's olive oil features a detail from 'The Birth of the Baptist' fresco in the Cappella Tornabuoni in Santa Maria Novella by Ghirlandaio. I'm sorry to say I haven't yet tried Bramasole oil, but I'm now hugely anticipating it.  The oil is only available by mail order -- essentially you become a member of the Bramasole convivium and commit to purchase the oil in advance of the harvest.  Ed and Frances only import the amount of oil that has been pre-purchased, and it's not available in retail stores (I suppose it might be at some point in the future, but not now).  For all the details about the oil and for ordering, browse http://www.thetuscansun.com/.  

Perhaps the best reason for reading and cooking from this book is expressed by Frances: "Most recipes are simple and the few that are not are fun.  This is real Tuscan food from a small hill town we have grown to love as home.  Because of our  many years here, we've had the great luck to learn about Tuscan food from the inside, not as visitors...what I hope becomes real for you is the astonishing range of Tuscan food, and the sense of joy that permeates the Tuscan kitchen."   

   



Continuing with my recommendations for some recent good reads, this post is devoted to just one: Hotel Il Pellicano (Rizzoli, 2011, $60). It landed on my desk on one of the hottest days of the year in New York, and I was mesmerized by the cover image. It seemed incredibly appropriate that I read this during the dog days of summer, so I immediately dove in. With text by Bob Colacello (former film critic of Village Voice and editor of Interview, author, and special correspondent for Vanity Fair) and Bronwyn Cosgrave (fashion historian, journalist, and author), this is mostly a book of photos, fabulous photos, by John Swope (who established himself as a photographer in Hollywood in the 1930s and after the war became a Magnum photographer; he became an investor in Il Pellicano and documented the 1964 ground-breaking of the hotel); Slim Aarons (who began his career as official photographer for the U. S. Military Academy at West Point and later became a photographer of the jet set for Life, Town & Country, and Harper’s Bazaar; he aimed his lens at Il Pellicano guests from 1967 to 1991); and Juergen Teller, a German photographer born in 1964 who is credited with campaigns for Marc Jacobs, Missoni, Helmut Lang, etc., and whose work has been shown at Tate Modern and MoMA – he and his family were invited to Il Pellicano in June 2009, when he also captured the hotel’s Globetrotters’ Party on film.

Readers of my Tuscany and Umbria book know that Dianne Hales -- author of one of my most favorite books, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language (now a Broadway Books paperback) who maintains a great site you should know about, http://www.becomingitalian.com/ -- is a great fan of Il Pellicano, the hotel perched on a hill overlooking the coastal Tuscan town of Porto Ercole. And, in the May 2011 issue of Dream of Italy, she relates that the first time she went to the hotel it took her breath away: “I want you to bring me here every year for the rest of my life,” I said to my husband Bob. That was 1990 and we have indeed returned annually. How could we not? No place on earth may be more romantic.”

Though I’ve not been a guest at Il Pellicano, I agree that it is incredibly romantic (but in fairness I must admit that the village of Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast, might give Il Pellicano some stiff competition!). In the same year that Dianne Hales first visited the hotel, I was very fortunate to be invited for drinks there that summer by the then-proprietors of the Cala Galera Marina, who were old family friends of my good friend Charles (readers of my book may recall that Charles contributed an account of his salad days in Porto Ercole on pages 71-75). I no longer remember if we had drinks in the Il Pellicano Bar, at the poolside restaurant, or the all’aperto bar – I mean, I was given a tour of all the public areas of the hotel, but most of the time I was practically pinching myself to make sure I really was in this place that didn’t even seem like a hotel. It felt more like a grand party, one that I wasn’t invited to officially but that I was in the middle of nonetheless. It was intoxicating, stunning, hugely appealing, and downright sexy.

As Bob Colacello writes in ‘A Visitor’s Note,’ when he finally visited Il Pellicano, after hearing about it from friends, he wanted to stay for two weeks, or two months. “At Il Pellicano, the world beyond disappears. It’s a place to rejuvenate, to have a real vacation, not to network, or to see and be seen…it’s Italy the way you dreamed it would be.” He also accurately points out that both Il Pellicano and Porto Ercole are such an anomaly. “Mass travel has created mass development and mass disappointment,” and places that were once unspoiled – Marbella, Mykonos, Puerta Vallarta, etc. – have utterly changed. Porto Ercole is better known today than it was in1990, but still, I meet very few people who’ve been there. As I wrote in my book, “Porto Ercole is a pretty, pleasant coastal village with a refreshing lack of sites to see, though it’s noteworthy for the fact that Michelangelo Merisi – Caravaggio – died here in 1610. And when the Argentario area came under the control of Spain in the late 1500s, Philip II had the Forte Stella (“star fort”) built, seeking the advice on the fort’s design from Cosimo de’Medici, who recommended Bernardo Buontalenti and Giovanni Camerini. The Argentario was described as “scarcely undiscovered, but neither is it a byword among Mediterranean resorts” by Doone Beal in Gourmet (July 1988), and I think this is still accurate.” Bronwyn Cosgrave, in her essay, ‘A Tuscan Home Away From Home’ shares the opinions of several people very familiar with both the hotel and its locale. One, Frida Giannini – creative director of Gucci -- says, “There is no shopping in Porto Ercole and no showing off at Il Pellicano.” Another, Daisy (Countess Desidera) Corsini – of a very distinguished and princely Florentine family dating back to the 13th century; you may be familiar with her family’s Palazzo Corsini at via del Parione 11, one of the most prestigious examples of the Baroque style in Florence -- says that Il Pellicano, just like Porto Ercole, “has never been a jet-set place like Sardinia or St. Tropez. It is about family. Some people come here and say, “Where is Prada? Where is Gucci?” We tell them: “Go back to Rome.”

Il Pellicano (the hotel) was conceived by Michael (British) and Patricia (American) Graham, who, in 1962, “accomplished ‘what a lot of people talk about, after their third martini, but seldom do – they chucked all their so-called “security” and changed their lives” as San Francisco Chronicle Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Herb Caen noted. Bronwyn Cosgrave reveals that after the Grahams were refused a loan from the Italian government that they’d counted on, the financial backing for the hotel came from a consortium of close friends. Michael reportedly gathered about twenty friends together and told them if they’d contribute, they and their families could come to the hotel gratis. But Michael Harris, an advertising executive who’s been staying at the hotel with his wife since 1967, said Graham “forgot one thing. Some of these people had very large families. They ate him out of house and home! So Il Pellicano never made any money.” The hotel was acquired by Roberto Sció in 1979, and his daughter, Marie-Louise Sció, an architect, oversaw a two-year restoration of the hotel in 2006. She was aiming for a very homey look, but “it all had to look Pellicano.” Bronwyn Cosgrave observes that “by using Pellicano as an adjective, Sció alludes to something its guests understand – that is, Il Pellicano is as much an attitude as it is a hotel, combining the old-school polish of Roberto Sció with the freewheeling spirit of founders Michael and Patricia Graham.”

Il Pellicano (the book) is a beautiful, must-have family album of la dolce vita. I love the thick cloth binding, and how the endpapers feature a red wave design on a bright white background. I think I love the black-and-white photo section by John Swope a tad bit better than the color images, but only just a tad. Missing, to my mind, is pictures of the restaurant with some accompanying recipes (after all, it has earned two Michelin stars) and of guest rooms – I, for one, would surely glean some ideas from the rooms’ style and décor. But, I suppose that since the hotel is closed from mid-October to mid-April, the focus of the photographs is outdoors, and its publication now is not accidental as it’s a true song of summer: I can practically smell the suntan lotion while I turn the pages. A nod to the level of service at the hotel is found in the book’s acknowledgements by Roberto and Marie-Louise, who express their thanks to the hotel staff “with special mention for those boys and girls years ago who worked so hard jumping up 94 stairs and down 94 stairs just to bring water to the guests on the beach” (before they got the license to build the elevator).

Bob Colacello recalls ordering a club sandwich and fresh limonata lunch down on that cement beach (which, though it doesn’t sound like it is actually very chic and is reached by those many stairs or by taking the outdoor elevator) and revelling “in the rays of the Tuscan sun. That’s an Il Pellicano day: living in your bathing suit, reading a fat royal biography or slim avant-garde novella, breaking for dips in the warm, clean, emerald sea or in the very civilised saltwater pool.”

Hotel Il Pellicano is a member of Relais & Chateaux and its Michelin-starred restaurant is under the direction of Chef Antonio Guida. Room rates range from 420-880 euros and suites from 765-1900 euros.

Porto Ercole is in the region of La Maremma, and a good resource for the whole area is http://www.tuttomaremma.com/ (click on the British flag for the English version). Other nearby places to visit that I recommend are Orbetello, Porto Santo Stefano, Grosseto, Pitigliano, and Isola Giglio, where I had to buy two pairs of plastic blue sandals because I lost a single sandal (from my left foot) in the deep and clear water of the Tyrrhenian Sea. I still wear them today anytime I’ll be on a rocky beach.