Cooking in Rome

Rome exists on a scope that I’ve never encountered before in a city. It’s big and massively spread out. There’s really no downtown and everything you might want to see is miles from wherever you are. And it has all the attendant traffic, noise and confusion of humanity you would expect from a big city. It also spans several millennia of history with ancient Roman ruins butted up against Gucci and Armani stores.

I’m pretty sure Rome is a great city. I’m pretty sure you could have an awesome time exploring Rome, but by the time I got there I was already done with Italy. Done with Europe. I was ready for the beaches of Bali, our next stop on this quick jaunt around the world.

My exploratory motivation was low by the time I got to Rome. We went to the Colosseum and marveled for a moment before an ATM machine ate my card on a Sunday afternoon^[1]. We didn’t quite have the money to get in and even if we did there was no way we were going to wait in the line that wrapped nearly all the way around the Colosseum. Ancient sites are pretty amazing in my opinion, but that amazingness diminishes considerably when the line to get in is five hours long. If I’m going to wait in a five hour line (and I’m not, ever, but if I were) I want a new iPad at the end of the experience.

When you’re burned out on traveling the best thing to do is nothing. Which is what we did for three days. We explored a little, wandered the Trastevere area, ate some cacio e pepe (simple noodles with a sauce of pecorino and black pepper), a bit of pizza and even made it out to the Pantheon, which was an utterly disgusting experience. I know the Catholic Church is pretty much like the Borg in Star Trek, absorbing and destroying everything in its path, but to turn a place whose name literally translates as “many gods” into a catholic church is the sort of bullshit that just makes me despair about the future of humanity.

So instead of really getting into the sights of Rome we got into the food. Not the kind you get in restaurants, but the kind you find at the local market. Every afternoon we walked half a block down the street from our apartment to a small produce stand. It wasn’t even a nice produce market, just an ordinary produce stand in a residential neighborhood with a mediocre selection. And it was the best damn produce I’ve ever purchased.

Each afternoon we bought nearly 2 kilos worth of zucchini, eggplant, lemon and greens. For under 2 euro. At the worst exchange rates that’s about $2.80 for 4 pounds of produce. You can hardly buy a dozen bananas for that price in the U.S.

The only spices at the apartment where we stayed were salt and pepper. There was also some ordinary, cheap olive oil, which happens to be ten times better than the most expensive olive oil I’ve seen in the United States. But you don’t need extensive spices and fancy oils when the ingredients you start with are high quality. I sauteed everything in a generous splash of olive oil with a bit of salt and pepper and it was the best zucchini, eggplant and beef I’ve ever made, or had for that matter.

And I’m far from a great cook. I learned a few things working under talented cooks like Hugh Acheson and Chuck Ramsey, but even if you barely know how to scramble eggs, you could make the same thing I made in Rome. Good ingredients are all you really need, and the raw cooking materials of Italy are the best I’ve seen in all my travels.

In the end Italy and I didn’t really get along, but the food redeemed it for me. The restaurants are good, but if you really want to experience the glory of Italian food you need to head to the market, grab some utterly amazing raw ingredients and whip up something yourself. This is what food is supposed to be, simple, fresh and great.

Now hold my calls, I’m off to lie in a hammock somewhere in Indonesia.

1. 1. I know I know. Terrible. Never use your ATM card after hours. The lesson here is that even if you spend years wandering the globe, you’re still, at the end of the day, an idiot. Luckily I got it back the next day without too much hassle.↩