Choir dinner

Last week (or maybe the week before, time passes so quickly!), Florence and I went to the choir dinner. It was a delightful affair of maybe 20, held in the priests' quarters of the Bishop's palace. Now, our last parish, we could never even get a priest to accept an invitation to OUR home, let alone be invited to our priests' home.

When we arrived, we were greeted by a very busy Don Andrea, hair ruffled cutely, wielding a spatula. Yes, that's right, he was preparing the pasta for us.

Allowing him to get on with things, we wandered around the rectory. It-s a rabbit warren, and if you proceed around corners, through 4-foot-high door frames, etc., you eventually get to the terrace. It's one of the high spots of the town and has an absolutely splendid view.

After oohing and aahing, we wandered back in to get to the serious part of the evening: food. The delightful trays of prosciutto, cheese, etc. gave way to Don Andrea's pasta -- which was SUPERB, by the way (that man can COOK!) -- and then to Mariapia's chicken and my salad. Cute note: the locals were intrigued by the concept of a salad dressing, since they usually just throw oil and vinegar, a little salt and pepper on a daring day, on top of their lettuce. So they were adamant that I actually mix the dressing into the salad, rather than passing it. Okay, then! They mostly seemed to enjoy it, so we'll consider it a success. Dessert (homemade crostata, essentially a jam tart made with homemade apricot jam) brought with it an epiphany: we have often commented on the rather strange lack of real desserts in the Italian culinary repertoire. Those they have are typically dry, crumbly, and not very sweet at all. Positively NOT sweet.

This is what came to my mind, though: wine here is the important thing. After dinner you have a digestivo (which is a STRONG alcohol of some sort...grappa or limoncello or something that's a complete rotgut). Between dinner (wine) and digestivo (rotgut) you sometimes have "vin santo" which is also pretty strong. Well, if you are trying to eat something sweet along with that...bleah. Therefore, the desserts HAVE to be non-sugary. And if it's mushy or creamy, also bleah because it sticks in your mouth when you're trying to drink your vin santo. Hence the crumbliness. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a theory.

In any case, all the meal part of the drinking disposed of, we had to have another reason to keep imbibing. I know! Music! Luckily, Gabriele (choir director) had brought his accordion, Paolo (his adorable 9-year-old son) his violin, and Maria (the six-year-old daughter) had her voice. They performed "Somewhe ovah de Rainbo" and it was absolutely a treat. Then a few solos on Paolo's part, and we launched into accordion popular songs from who-knows-when, but everyone joined in with the most maudlin tones possible. A grand time was had by all!

Love,

Alexandra

Views from the balcony: