‘Eat, Pray, Love:’ When in Rome, Eat As Much As Possible
When you are visiting the Pantheon, the Gelateria Della Palma is close by. Look for the cups with the rainbow palm tree.
Viewing the new film, Eat, Pray, Love, starring Julia Roberts, brought me back to my days living in Rome, where all one worried about was where to eat the next heavenly meal and whether one was going to fit into one’s jeans (for the clothes in Italy are tiny). I was studying Classical Civilization and Italian Baroque Art History in Rome at the same time that Elizabeth Gilbert was finding herself meal by meal at the same restaurants. Although on paper I was studying ancient history, in reality, I was becoming an expert on gelato, blood oranges, and pasta dishes.
It was exciting to see Julia Roberts order cappuccino in a chaotic café, where one needs to pay extra to sit down; I remembered my first bite of spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce, which was better than any Italian food than I had ever eaten in the States. The romance that one has with gelato is once-in-a-lifetime: Blue Ice, a chain of gelaterie, offers the best chocolate flavors (e.g. bacio, which is a chocolate-hazelnut); San Crispino, which is located near the Pantheon, offers the best fruit flavors. The best, in my opinion, is Della Palma, also located near the Pantheon, which is the ultimate gelateria: it not only offers the best chocolate and fruit flavors, but it also has a wide selection of candies and other sweets. Its central location is optimal after a long day of sight-seeing.
I could write for days about the food in Italy, for each region has a cuisine specific to its region (for example: Sicily has a cheese that one can only get on the island itself), but I will leave you with only one recipe that Elizabeth Gilbert’s character ordered in the film, which is spaghetti alla carbonara. The following recipe comes directly from Italy, because as a foodie, do you really think that I went home without bringing the authentic taste of Italy? When in Rome, I learned the most essential Italian, and that is the Italian needed to order and to cook their decadent cuisine.
This simple-looking dish is filled with rich flavor that should be mixed with another light side dish.
Without the need for a painful divorce and an expensive plane ticket, here is a delicious Italian recipe right on your computer screen:
Spaghetti alla Carbonara:
Serves 4:
500 g. Spaghetti
2 large onions
2 eggs
½ cup Parmesan cheese
½ cup Pecorino Romano cheese (sheep’s milk cheese)
8 tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup butter (ie: 4 tbsp.)
¼ lb. bacon, cut into small cubes prior to cooking
a pinch of pepper
salt.
Place the cut the onions into very thin slices and place them into water for about 30 minutes, drain them, and place them in a pot with half a glass of water (note: I forgot to do the soaking step and it still tasted great). Sauté on a high flame, and when the water has evaporated, add the olive oil and the bacon, sauté to a light brown and add the butter. Simmer for a few minutes. In the meantime, beat the eggs with two tablespoons of Parmesan, two pinches of pepper and a pinch of salt. Cook the spaghetti, drain and mix everything very quickly so that the eggs cook in the pasta. Add the sauce and the grated Parmesan cheese and Pecorino Romano cheese and serve.
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[...] get you going, here is a delicious vegetarian recipe straight from Italy (see: “Eat, Pray, Love” for more information). It contains cheese, but this can be substituted with vegan [...]