The corner of taste III: from Bologna with Love

Finally heading toward Bologna once again, I left behind me the beautiful weather of Sicily, its patisserie, its hidden gardens (which flower ahead threatening walls) and its sense of spiritual devotion. At my back, la donna della mia vita, the woman of my life: changing just a consonant, donna become nonna (grandmother) and the arcane is revealed! I feel a strange sense of nostalgia, yet in advance. Ragusa is so full of emotions, because a few aspects of its potential are actually developed. So when you are there you are absorbed by a continuous wondering, an never-ending projecting mood. People live sometimes in a sort of dizzy state, not really asleep, but deeply introspective, and it is difficult to read between the line of shadowy pages.  

A view of the old bridge in Ragusa, from the New Bridge	Bigné filled with chocolate cream at Di Pasquale Patisserie seriously irresistible
Saint Francis in Ragusa, in honour of Papa Francesco	A lemon garden hidden behind a barbed wire!

I consoled myself with a pile of connoli in Fontanarossa, the civil airport of Catania. Catania is a great mystery. Apparently volcano dusts block its pipes and when some drops of rain fall, the streets become veritable torrents, with fish-heads, next to the fish market, floating next to your feet. Two years ago, along with my cousin and his girlfriend I had the pleasure to visit the city for a day and a half. Its symbol, the Liotro (a deformation of the name Eliodorus, the alleged carver), is an elephant carrying an obelisk (A), which is to say, in Freudian terms, an elephant holding a penis. Deplorable! I was shocked by the presence of a palm insect, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier, that decimated the plants in town. This red monster operated especially within the local Hyde park, Giardino Bellini or simply The Villa (B), a jewel rich of promenade and exotic plants: something in between the Italian taste for gardens and the Persian pleasure for paradeisa! Finally, I was in love with a grotto restaurant, named Agora (C-D-E), for the little overlooking square: this place is also a cocktail bar and has a subterranean river flowing under the stone-room with a glittering natural vault. Spectacular, tasteful (F) and affordable, check on Trip advisor!

The Liotro statue with its obelisk from Syria, borrowed during the crusades (A)	An insight of the Bellini Garden in Catania (B)
The disastrous effect of the insect (C)	Agorà restaurant during a summer evening (D)
Agora restaurant (inside): the grotto (E)	Couscous with vegetables (F)

Bologna, instead, welcomed me with some days of incredible sunshine and happiness. You always recognize happiness when it is gone. It makes feel you high, and when it becomes a memory, you actually feel like in those days, while you read a book you pass from afternoon to dusk without paying attention. Today is one of this days and I’m listening to Händel to cheer up (link below), while snow climbs down from its dusters in hurried whirlpools. Bologna was an occupied territory, filled with outposts of Spring.

What I like of Bologna, is the actual coexistence between the Middle-Ages, still towering with their uneven building and leaning towers, and a modern joy for lightness, that a Laura’s sister Marianna was able to capture in an unbelievable shot.

Balloons seller near to Piazza Maggiore, by Marianna Sciarroni ©

During my stay, on the 4^th of March, also took place a commemoratory concert for Lucio Dalla - a music genius, always running after perfect melodies and ironic lyrics - who left us last year for an heart attack, a few days before his b-day. Although I am the last and skanker apostle of good music, it in this case it is perhaps worth to pay attention to this hint, especially if you are willing to learn Italian as a language and consider his music offer. A song that always moved my intelligence and heart is called 4^th March 1943, the day of his birthday, during the war. His mother got pregnant, aged 16 and his father a foreign soldier died after the sweetest hour before being slaughtered (l’ora più dolce prima d’esser ammazzato).

4th march 1943 - 1st march 2012

I remained for days that passed like three hours of luminous sleep. Being with Michelle somehow arrests Being & Time, and somehow makes them beat faster than usual. The iconic image of this feeling is perhaps the strawberry dipped in pure chocolate. True emotions can pass only throughout images: the mind is like a powerful dreaming station that prefers metaphors to words. So were these days: natural sugary fruity cores, covered by armours of dark crispy chocolate.

Strawberries in chocolate armour	Champagne and chocolate strawberries
Chocolate dip	Banana's sticks

The apogee was an incredible chocolate mousse, I shall baptize as Isabel’s chocolate mousse, since her hands performed it and it is true that, when she does something the spirit of Love for her husband John is infused in it: so guests often benefit of this passage of spiritual energies without having any merit in the whole matter. Isabel and John are a sort of living example of wholeness and some poor spirits may have misunderstood this fact, often exploiting their self-emanating kindness with redundant insular greed. This whole-ness is a sort of joint venture between  whole-nuts and full-ness. It is like a divine bunch from which no grape can be taken away!

Marquise au chocolat (click here for the recipe)

Last, a splendid vegetarian dinner took place at Rovescio, possibly my favourite wine-bar-inn. Despite a turbulent waiter, Michelle’s presence at the centre of the table radiated a joyful and smiling light on the entire evening. The one course dish, thought and assembled by Raffaele Fierro, the chef, was really a masterpiece of colours and tastes: in comparison to the Italian cuisine that unfortunately Scottish citizens are still obliged to find in anachronistic restaurants, this dish was a jump into the future: it waves the chilometro 0 philosophy, which is to say local. Only seasonal vegetables have a resonance, along with organic food and biodynamic wines: red chicory pure on polenta morsels, stewed card and onion, roasted potatoes, tastes of focaccia, a spinach strudel and then I forgot the rest, save the fact that all was quaffed by a superior Lagrain, from Trentino.

Stefano (left) and Pasquale (right) the souls of Rovescio

And the trip Edinburgh-Malta-Ragusa-Bologna-Edinburgh was over!