Writing Memoir

My final assignment was a memoir piece about my time in rome. i'm not sure if this is the right version for the final copy. it's long but I thought some of you may enjoy reading it. Two finals tomorrow then I'm done with my junior year!

You Fall in Love through your Stomach

Before leaving for Rome, everyone told me, “You’re going to love the food there.” I didn’t doubt them. Italian cooking is considered some of the best, especially since it is one of the centers of Italian culture. And considering the fact that food has been a passion of mine since I was eight, and grocery shopping is one of my favorite pasttimes, I knew I would take the opportunity and take advantage of all the deliciousness Rome had to offer. Despite being so passionate about food, I didn’t think it would be one of the centers of my life in Rome; I wanted a complete experience, not one based on one aspect. From my first plate of pasta primavera at a little family run restaurant on the Gianicolense, I knew everyone was right. The food would make my semester.

My first trip to the supermercato, I felt giddy and anxious as I walked through the aisles and around the fresh produce. The vibrant colors of the zucchine next to the pomodori and the deep purple of the melanzane, all I could do was smile as I pictured the extravagant dishes I would be cooking in my gorgeous penthouse apartment all semester. The cheese aisle was a whole other world. I didn’t know what most of the cheeses were, but they all looked delicious and I could almost taste them oozing out of a ravioli or being shredded over a plate of gnocchi. I stuck to what I knew and bought a block of fresh parmigiano, making a mental note to look up different Italian cheeses when I got back to my apartment.

I went to the check out counter with a cart packed with fresh tortellini filled with spinaci e ricotta, a container of porchetta, prosciutto, salami, mozzarella and an abundance of fresh apples, blood oranges and vegetables. I bought enough food to last a few days, not knowing how much sightseeing I’d be doing, or when I’d get the chance to come back to my first favorite place in Rome. And the total for my purchases came out to 17 euro.
How affordable all the groceries were validated my thoughts that Rome was the right choice for my abroad experience and to further my culinary dreams, as I could experiment with some of the freshest produce, cheese and pastas for prices lower than I had seen in a lot of places that I’d lived. My roommate, Gabby, and I went straight back to our apartment to put away all our purchases.
“So… I know we already ate lunch, but do you want to cook up some of this food,” she started slowly as if she was embarrassed to be excited about the food.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a requirement. I was thinking some of the gnocchi you got and we can cut up my eggplant and mushrooms?” Planning meals was in my head the entire time we were in the supermercato. I had just met Gabby when we arrived in Rome, so she wasn’t even aware that I had the ability to cook, let alone that cooking was probably my favorite thing to do and that to procrastinate I go to recipe websites and bookmark the things I want to make.
Our kitchen was better equipped than my dad’s house back in Hawaii. I hadn’t encountered a gas stove until my mom bought a new house in Santa Monica a few months before, when I discovered how much better they are than electric, and luckily my Roman kitchen had one. We didn’t use any sauce or salt because the ingredients were so fresh and flavorful that it wasn’t necessary. My love for Italy began to grow even more, as did the validation that the way to someone’s heart is through his or her stomach. Italy was making me fall in love with it, through my stomach.

The next night at our orientation, a group of girls we’d met invited us to dinner. The school recommended a restaurant down on Viale Trastevere, called Le Fate. It was only a ten-minute walk from campus and had a student menu that included a bruschetta, primi piatti, dolce and wine for ten euro. Upon arriving we were disappointed to know that instead of a pasta dish, our primi piatti would be bean soup. Seeing as we had only been in Rome for about 48 hours, if not less, all we really wanted was either pasta or pizza, as any typical tourist in Rome would desire.
Our bruschetta was topped with fresh tomatoes, sweeter and crisper than the best produce Hawaii could offer. There was no mealy feeling left in your mouth as an after taste, and it was only seasoned with some fresh ground salt and olive oil. The bean soup, which most people at the table were dreading, was one of the most flavorful soups I had tasted. My mouth still waters when I think of it, especially considering it may have been the only soup I had during my time in Rome. It was very rich and hearty, with nothing but beans some tomato and some onion in the bowl. The final course of the meal was a lemon cake. Other than the cone of gelato I’d had earlier in the day, I hadn’t indulged in any sweets while being in Rome. It’s light consistency and hint of lemon was just what I needed to not feel as if I had actually eaten as much as I had when I got up from the table.

Little did I know, the owner of Le Fate was the chef who taught the cooking classes at school, Chef Andrea Consoli. Throughout my semester I took two cooking classes with Andrea. He not only taught me how to make the most delicious pasta alla carbonara I had ever tasted, but gave me many general cooking tips to enhance the other concoctions I put together back at home. Pasta alla carbonara, a long thin spaghetti-like noodle with egg, porchetta, pepper and pecorino cheese, would soon become a staple in my apartment’s weekly dinner line up. And thanks to him I now know to keep the skin on the cloves of garlic and smash the clove whole with the bottom of a pan, since the skin has all the nutrients good for your heart, as well as the fact that making fresh pasta really isn’t as hard as it sounds.
In my first cooking class with Chef Andrea, we learned to make carbonara, one of the classics. We learned to make Spinaci alla Romana, Straccetti di Manzo con Pachino, Rughetta e scaglie di Parmigiano and Soufflé alla Pera e Cioccolato as well, but the carbonara was a reminder of how decadent food can taste even with only five simple ingredients. In the class we made the pasta fresh, but really there are only five or six ingredients for the dish. Despite a lack of diversity in the ingredients the amount of flavors that come out of the dish make it seem like there are at least double the amount. There was saltiness from the porchetta, or pig’s cheek, creaminess from the egg and richness from the pecorino cheese. Because Chef Andrea goes to the market every morning to get ingredients, the ingredients were as fresh as possible, which adds more intensity to the flavors if the ingredients are cooked soon after ripeness.
My endless hours watching Food Network in the United States for probably the last fifteen years or so told me that the freshness of ingredients was key to cooking better food. I always believed what Rachel Ray and Paula Dean told me, they knew their stuff, but a lot of times it takes a first hand experience to actually believe what you’ve heard. Chef Andrea gave me that experience.
Throughout the semester I continued to savor the fresh and affordable ingredients Rome had to offer. From mornings spent at the Campo de’ Fiori market, to quick afternoon trips to the Conad down the street, I tried to get different ingredients each week. While some people would have regrets about not traveling enough while abroad, as the semester went on, I realized my regrets would have been about not immersing myself in the Italian culture enough, especially in terms of food.

Day trips that I took to small towns surrounding Rome helped validate that it was not just Rome that I was falling in love with, but Italy as a whole. On an unseasonably warm day in February, two of my friends and I took a trip to the beach town of Anzio. We brought some school reading to sit on the beach with, but started with some lunch before getting to work. Our two criteria for lunch were that we wanted seafood and we wanted to sit outside. Both were fulfilled at Nostrum Taberna, a small restaurant along the boardwalk run by a one man show.
The menu was written on a piece of red construction paper, ripped around the edges and crinkled as if it has just washed up on the shore a few feet outside the restaurant. The special for the day was fresh pasta with baby lobsters and clams, which all three of us decided sounded absolutely perfect for our beach side lunch. Prior to getting the pasta we had ordered, our waiter, who was also the chef and the owner, brought us out two other courses to show off the delicacies of the area. The first was a polenta cake covered in a shaved, dried fish, which was not something I’d eat again, but it was imporatnt to try their traditional dishes. The second was baby octopus in a tomato sauce, which was delicious.
With each dish that the waiter brought, he smiled and explained it to us in the best English he could muster up. The pride that he had towards the food he served flooded out of his mouth with each explanation. He gave us his card, as well as his brother’s card, who has a restaurant near the Colosseo. He knew we were Americans, most Italians can tell from about 100 km away, and that there was a good chance we’d never be back at his restaurant. But his love for his food and sharing his culture with us in the few hours we were at his restaurant were his priortiy.
It could easily have been my best meal of my semester abroad. The freshness of the seafood against the pasta that had clearly just been made, topped with a light tomato sauce complete with pieces of tomato, all still lingers in my mouth. But what enhanced it all was that his passion for his food and his culture. Similar to my home of Hawaii, food is the center of the culture and family life in Italy. Everyone is part of the clean plate club because it’s insulting if you don’t finish your food, and it is a time for family and friends to be together and enjoy each other’s company.

To some, looking back at my semester in terms of my experiences of foods may sound a bit obsessive, pathetic and lame to most people. I was able to appreciate the beauty and history of Rome, the concept that if you are walking down a street, you can literally walk into thousands of years old ruins. These kinds of things are completely unique to Rome and can’t be seen anywhere else. But while I think back to amazing places I traveled, trips to the Fontana di Trevi, Piazza de Spagna and il Colosseo, I can’t help but think back to the panino I ate in Piazza de Spagna overflowing with salami picante and mozzarella.
The pastas and gnocchi I make in the United States won’t have the same freshness as those I ate nightly for dinner throughout my semester in Rome. Instead of sitting at the dining table with my roommate watching the cars go down Colli Portuense, I’ll most likely fall into the American tradition of eating my dinners in front of the television in my studio apartment alone. But I will take back how simple a dish can be, yet still be delicious and I will bring the vibe of the Italian culture surrounding food to my friends and family.
My time in Rome has felt much shorter than it has been, while I know I’ll be back in the future, it won’t have quite the same feeling as it did during my semester abroad. The love won’t be quite as fresh, new and exciting as when Rome got me to fall in love with it through my stomach.