Archive for the year 2012
Il Pancotto di Mattia Posted by Geoff on May 22, 2012
Yesterday I published a blog by my friend Mattia who, as he himself describes in his post, dreams of becoming a professional cook. Mattia is from Puglia in the south of Italy, and like most Italians is very passionate about his region’s culinary specialities. Here, as promised, is my translation of Mattia’s traditional Pugliese recipe…
Il Giovane Cuoco Italiano Posted by Geoff on May 21, 2012
In our blogs we always try to portray as many different facets of Italian language and culture as possible, but at the same time we are aware of the difficulty of trying to depict a country as varied as l’Italia from our relatively limited perspective. So for some time now we’ve been looking for an…
Il Pane Posted by Serena on May 18, 2012
Bread has been a fundamental part of our diet for thousands of years. Examples have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back more than five millennia. It is not surprising therefore that there are innumerable variations based on the simple ingredients of flour and water. Here in Italy we have our fair share of different…
L’Infinito di Leopardi Posted by Serena on May 16, 2012
A couple of months ago my uncle Luciano gave me a CD on which the great late actor Vittorio Gassman reads some poems from the most important Italian poets of the Romantic era: Ugo Foscolo, Alessandro Manzoni, and Giacomo Leopardi. Listening to them brought to mind the time when, aged eighteen, I had to study…
Bella Posted by Geoff on May 15, 2012
I’ve made a few notes in English at the end of this blog for the words and phrases highlighted in bold. If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment. Non è stato difficile decidere come chiamarla. Un batuffolo di pelo rosso bianco e nero, occhi accattivanti, e una coda da scoiattolo…
Bagnato Posted by Serena on May 11, 2012
In our last blog we looked at asciutto and secco (dry). Well here comes the rain again, so let’s see what vocabulary we need to describe … wet! umido = damp: il bucato è ancora umido (the washing is still damp) l’umidità (dampness – noun fem.): dopo tutta questa pioggia c’è molta umidità in cantina…
Asciutto Posted by Geoff on May 9, 2012
With all the rain we’ve had over the last few weeks wet and dry has become a bit of an obsession! Over the next couple of blogs we’ll at some of the vocabulary that we use to describe these conditions. Let’s begin with asciutto = dry: ormai il bucato dev’essere asciutto (the washing should be…