Arrivederci Firenze

The Economist wrote about PhD programmes a week ago and concluded that doing a PhD is waste of time. It was slightly discouraging to read such an article only a few days before I was finishing my thesis but, at the same time, I could only think that the last 3 and half years have been an excellent period in my life and living in Florence was an amazing experience. If I don't manage to translate my extended studies into economic benefits, at least I have had the opportunity to learn about Italian culture, admire painters from Giotto to Michelangelo, and visit dozens of beautiful Tuscan churches. So, I always have the plan B of becoming a tourist guide in Florence...

Of course, the whole autumn (my last one in Florence) was a huge nostalgic period when I was constantly thinking that I will have to give up my life in Florence that I had just now learnt to fully appreciate. Even those two months when I was the first one at the library at 8h30 when it opened (after a cappuccino and cornetto in San Domenico) and left around nine o'clock in the evening and hardly had the time to explore Florence, I was enjoying my stay.

During my last weekend, I strolled around the city to go through all my favourite spots of the city and walked up to San Miniato. It has the best view of Florence. The church itself is also amazing; so amazing that during one of the Florentine wars, Michelangelo protected the church with mattresses against the enemy's weapons. I sat inside for a while and in the comfortable isolation shed a few tears, out of happiness of having had such great last few months in Italy, beauty of the place and melancholy.

The last weeks in Florence were so busy that suddenly, via Cologne's Christmas market and Brussels, I was back in cold and snowy Finland, complaining about Senegalese tomatoes found in the supermarket and bad coffee found everywhere and drunk excessively. Later it was also snowing in Florence, something I've never seen. People who had stayed there posted images and Facebook comments on the chaos in the city. This video as well:

Olio nuovo

While the on-going season is usually accompanied by a gentle jingle of wine bottles when people are hurrying to pre-Christmas parties, my bag was jingling because of something else. I had just purchased three bottles of our institute's olive oil. From late October to end of November markets are filled with olive oil vendors promoting their freshly pressed olio nuovo, new olive oil. The olive trees in our institute's lands are also contributing to this exciting culinary season.

Photo from Talk of Tomatoes blog with a description of olio tasting in Tuscany.

New olive oil is lime green, unfiltered and bitter in a way that you become slightly addicted. My dinners will consist of mostly bread during the next week as I just want to savour the delicious taste of olive oil. It's also very good in different minestrones or soups. My new favourite recipe is Tuscan-style soup with potatoes, onions, chick peas, cavolo nero (black cabbage?) and other root veggies that are part of the autumn season. The soup gets especially good after three or four days. Yesterday I added the rest of pici (spaghetti type of fresh pasta from Siena) and today when I finally finished the soup it was at its best. And of course I drizzled a lot of olio nuovo on top of it.

Giorgio Locatelli is an Italian chef and the author of magnificent "Made in Italy, Food and Stories" that makes me feel like spending hundred euros in a good balsamico di Modena. He writes about Italian cuisine in a way that you're annoyed that you were born in a country with no special emotional attachment to food. Actually, I think that one of the most important things I learnt while living in Italy is the way of "living" food and not just eat, cook, or even enjoy it. Locatelli writes about olive oil, the liquid gold: "In Italy, olive oil is still considered something you buy from someone you know, either direct from a local small producer, or via a shop that will probably only stock a few oils." What would then be better oil for me than the 'Badia Fiesolana, olio extra vergine di oliva', from the trees that I have probably been contemplating while writing my thesis.

Olive oil has been produced since around 5000 BC but only around two decades ago it arrived to Finland promoted as a healthy Southern product that was considered as the reason for longevity in Italy or Greece. Today everybody knows that you should buy extra virgin oil even though few actually know what's the difference really between basic olive oil, virgin oil and extra virgin. From Locatelli (my new food guru), I learnt that extra virgin oil is extracted only by cold-pressing without chemicals and has a very low acidity (less than 1 per cent, what ever that means...). I also engaged in a "field study" to get hands-on information about olives. When following a group of Italians picking olives in Settignano, outside Florence, on a beautiful November day, I ended up asking them a couple of questions. I found out that one tree can produce something from 10 to 20 litres of olives. On the one side of the road, a sophisticated method was being used to pick up the olives: a tractor with a special equipment shook olive trees while another tractor was holding big plastic sheets underneath it. On the other side, people with whom I was talking picked them manually, some people climbing on the ladders and others laying nets below the trees. It was all very idyllic and if we weren't in a hurry (for spritz!), I would have liked to stay and if not to help at least to observe. (By the way, olives directly from the trees are not made for eating! Their amazing bitterness might be however worth to try out...)

Happy olio nuovo season!