Of Tuscan tuna and other culinary delights

Had dinner at a truly magical restaurant last night, the kind of place I dream of finding.

It was called La Saletta, tucked away in Certaldo Basso, fifteen minutes drive from where we were staying.

DSC_0075.JPG

It was really nothing more than a couple of rooms at the back of a family-run pastry shop, the “Dolci Follie” in the name. When we were there it was laid out to take sixteen people all told. At best I think the two rooms would have been able to cater for twenty.

The Niccolini family run the pastry shop as well as the restaurant; the shop has been in existence for over forty years, while the restaurant is a more recent invention.

And what an invention. An absolutely amazing menu: there was so much I wanted to try that I gave up on the antipasti, decided I would just concentrate on the primi piatti, the secondi piatti and the dessert. And even then it was really difficult to choose.

For the primi piatti I couldn’t decide between the onion soup, the gnudi and the gramigna alla salsiccia. All three had come highly recommended, and in the end Gianpiero Niccolini solved it for me by offering to serve me a mini-portion of any two. So I went for the onion soup and the gramigna.

DSC_0068.JPG

That’s what the onion soup looked like. I don’t have the right words to describe how it tasted. Unbelievable. It was a soup you ate rather than drank or sipped, which tells you something. The cipolla of Certaldo is renowned for its taste, and it was just amazing. A soft almost-fruity sweetness underpinned by the classic tang of the regular onion, served up as a slightly mushy semi-solid substance with the consistency of a soft boiled egg.

I then moved on to the gramigna alla salsiccia, a favourite of mine:

DSC_0069.JPG

Usually, when I have this dish, the ragu is done in the bolognese style. Here it was served in a very light creamy parmesan sauce, with the pasta done to al-dente perfection. I am not a fan of parmesan, but I could not resist this dish. And I am so glad I went for it. It was so good I found myself stretching out the consumption of the last few commas of gramigna, using them as hockey sticks to collect the pucks of salsiccia that remained.

I couldn’t put off the secondi piatti any more, and could not for the life of me see how the first two courses could be bettered. This time I’d gone for the Tonno del Chianti, which, I was told, was basically a pork dish served “in the style of tuna.”

DSC_0073.JPG

It wasn’t a dish, it was an art form. The meat looked like tuna, the texture felt like tuna, and the taste was out of this world. Moist, tender, succulent, so gentle that you could separate the tuna-like strands of meat with your tongue. The white beans set the dish off beautifully.

By this time I was conquered. Done. Ready to come back some other time. But no, there was more to come. For dessert Giampiero recommended the peach semifreddo:

DSC_0074.JPG

Knowing that the restaurant was tagged on to a well-established pastry shop, I couldn’t resist. It tasted as good as it looked. Brilliant.

All in all a fantastic meal, demolished in great company (my family, along with friends with local knowledge who recommended the place). At reasonable prices, as well.

Incidentally, the Certaldo onion is like nothing you would have tasted before. How else would you explain this?

DSC_0028.JPG

So if you ever find yourself near Certaldo in Tuscany, do try and make this place. It is well worth the effort. And Certaldo Alta, the old town, is worth a visit in its own right, as the following pictures may show:

DSC_0042.JPG

DSC_0041.JPG

Playing for the singleton queen

A few days ago I made some predictions about the “Ashes” Fifth Test at the Oval, a cricket match between England and Australia. My predictions were: England would win the toss, bat first, put up a decent score on the first day and part of the second day; that Australia would come in on the second day and crumble; that England would proceed to set up the game for a solid win; that Australia would fight back heroically but ultimately to no avail, they would lose. And England would win the Ashes back.

Well, England won the toss, batted first, put up a decent score. Australia came on the second day, crumbled. And England are set fair to win.

Since I’d shared my predictions on Twitter, there were comments about my prescience. And I promised to respond via a blog post. Which is what I’m doing here.

First off, there’s no need to call James Randi in, there’s no sixth sense here, nothing paranormal. I am not prescient. Nor do I claim to be.

Here’s all I did:

  • I learnt that I was going to be at the Oval on the second day.
  • Since I’m a cricket fan, I had a reasonable idea of the state of play between the teams, the strengths and weaknesses.
  • Using those two bits of information, I constructed a scenario that would make for an exciting second day’s play, but which ultimately would lead to the result I wanted, an England win.
  • Then I proceeded to share that scenario in public.

In summary, I took the facts as I knew them, built them into a hypothesis that was sympathetic to my frame of thinking, then published that hypothesis. It was a process that I learnt from observing my father playing contract bridge, something he described as “playing for the singleton queen”.

Let’s say you’re declarer at bridge, the lead has been played, dummy’s come down and you’re assessing your options. You realise that there is just one way to make contract is to have the spades break 4-1 with the singleton on your left, and for that singleton to beĀ  the queen.

You then have two choices. You can work out the probability of a 4-1 break with the singleton on your left: the spades could break 0-5, 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1 and 5-0. You can then work out the probability of the singleton being the queen. And you can convince yourself that the chances are too low and start playing to curb your losses.This is natural, since we all have loss aversion.

Or you can play for the singleton queen to be on your left. And find the only way to make contract. Also a valid choice, but one far less likely, especially if you are loss averse.

Back to the cricket. I wanted England to win, I still want England to win, but I wasn’t going to get upset if England lost. Similarly, I didn’t mind being proven wrong with my prediction. It was nothing more than a way of constructing the known information into a sympathetic hypothesis. Loss aversion didn’t come into it, since the loss would have no material effect on me.

Whenever the win or loss has no material effect on me, I try and play for the singleton queen to be on my left. Why ever not?

Slowly slapped with garlic

Wandered down a very quiet side street in Sorrento and stumbled upon an amazing restaurant today; the Inn Bufalito. [My wife had seen a reference to it in one of the guide books, so we weren’t taken completely by surprise.] Incidentally, there has always been a joy in stumbling across things in the physical universe; the pleasure was not created by, nor is the sole property of, the digital world.

DSC_0001.JPG

The sign says “Italian Slow Food and Drink” and you’d better believe it. There’s nothing hurried about this place, it’s more poco piu largamente than it is adagio. Which is a good thing. Because the food there is absolutely brilliant, and does not deserve to be rushed.

We decided to have our lunch there. Here’s what was on offer as the “specials” of the day, the blackboard dishes:

DSC_0002.JPG

Given my predilection for different types of pasta with different types of ragu sauce, I succumbed and had a red meat dish for the first time in a fortnight, if you don’t count the odd slice of prosciutto. So I went for the paccheri al ragu di bufalo. And this is what I got:

DSC_0006.JPG

Superb. Paccheri pasta, the big broad firehose-section tubes of pasta you see above, served with a very very slow-cooked buffalo fillet ragu. When I say slow I mean slow. Cooked overnight. Bufalo (fillets of buffalo), piccolo pomodoro (small sweetish local tomatoes), cipolle (small fresh onions), lots of garlic, celery stalks, carrots, salt, pepper, olive oil, white wine. Cooked for at least 12 hours.

The meal also solved a long-standing problem for me, the reason why the pasta was called paccheri. I had originally been told it had something to do with smuggling garlic centuries ago, as suggested here. Which appeared to be true. But then I’d heard that paccheri actually meant “slaps” in Neapolitan, as suggested here, and which appeared to have nothing to do with the garlic story.

The chef at the inn solved it. The answer’s both. The word means “slaps”, apparently to do with the sound the pasta makes when you try and manhandle it with a fork and knife. So that answer is right. On the other hand, paccheri was invented in order to smuggle garlic; the expensive cloves were hidden inside the tubes, and the tubes were then transported across city-state borders in order to break up some monopolies and trade barriers. So one has to do with the origin of the word, while the other had to do with the reason for its invention.

By the way, the rest of the food there wasn’t bad either. Here’s my son’s gnocchi and my daughter’s lasagne:

DSC_0004.JPG

DSC_0005.JPG

Cheap. Unhurried. Quiet. Good-sized meals lovingly prepared. And a fabulous taste. So if you ever happen to come by the Sorrento area, do pay a visit to the Inn Bufalito.

Blowin’ in the Wind

I’m sure most of you have read quite enough about the Amazon “1984” incident; it received somewhat less coverage than the Techcrunch Twitter incident, which itself is saying something. I’m not going to comment directly on the merits and demerits of either incident here and now; they deserve considered responses and in the right context, not while emotions are high and views are unduly polarised.

Nevertheless, there are a few points I’d like to make.

One, we should use this opportunity to look at the idiocy of current copyright law. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about 1984’s copyright status:

Nineteen Eighty-Four will not enter the public domain in the United States until 2044 and in the European Union until 2020, although it is public domain in countries such as Canada, Russia, and Australia.

So let’s get this right. A book published sixty years ago, by an author who died the next year, may continue to be in copyright in some countries for another 35 years.

Publishing today is a global business, and the costs of reproduction and transmission are extremely low. Having regionally disparate copyright law is bad enough, trying to impose or police that law borders on insanity. So what happens if I buy a “post-copyright” copy of 1984 from a bookshop in Canada, and then cross over to the US to read it?

In a digital world, the very concept of copyright needs to be rethought. [And I am glad that many people, such as those at the Berkman Center, are doing just that.] What is happening now is as indefensible as region coding on a DVD, the desperate attempts of a historical monopoly to try and retain its rents.

A second point is best articulated via the example of Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. For sure he wrote it. For sure he was influenced by a negro spiritual called No More Auction Block, Dylan himself has admitted to that.

No More Auction Block is cited in literature as far back as 1873.

And No More Auction Block is shown as being under copyright to Special Rider Music in 1991.

What’s wrong with this picture?

In a digital world, we really need to revisit everything to do with IPR, inclusive of DRM and copyright and patents.