Aroma Cucina

Summer Elegant Italian Parmigiana

In the US, ‘parm’ comes in four generic flavors: chicken, veal, meatball, or eggplant. Usually heavy, goppy and greasy, it’s an overweight distant relative of the sleekly elegant Italian parmigiana. Think Jersey Shore versus the Amalfi Coast.
In Italy, a parmigiana is made from vegetables like eggplant or zucchini, or even combined with some potato. It can be a light main course, or a contorni (vegetable side dish).  In the summer, a parmigiana served at room temperature, along with a chilled white wine, is pretty much the perfect hot weather meal.

Warning: This recipe is all about the prep and it’s not insignificant. You should figure on 45 minutes to an hour to fully assemble the parmigiana. Make it in the morning, before the kitchen gets hot, make plenty of it, and freeze any leftovers. If you’re going to make a mess in the kitchen...go big...‘cuz you have to clean up the same amount if you make parmigiana for two or for ten!

Eggplant Parmigiana (6-8 servings)
2-3 medium eggplants
1 medium onion
1 stalk of celery
2 cloves of garlic
1 liter of pureed tomato
A lot of fresh basil
2 cups of grated parmigiana
1 egg
Olive oil, sunflower oil, salt, flour, cornstarch


Thinly slice the eggplant and rub each slice with a small amount of salt. These slices are about a few millimeters thick. Remember...stiletto elegant, not running shoe chunky!

Stand the slices on end in a colander and let the slices drain out their excess water. How long should they sit? Long enough for me to head over to our orto (vegetable garden) to get the basil, feed the town cat Niccolino, and take a few pictures because the garden looks really good...so, about 20 minutes. Leave the colander in the sink or in a bowl because it’s surprising just how much water will drain out of the eggplant slices.


While the eggplant is doing its drippy thing, it’s time to make the sauce. Finely chop the onion and celery and gently sauté them in a little olive oil for a few minutes. Add the pureed tomato sauce, garlic and basil. 

You should never cut basil with a knife because the basil will turn black where it has touched the blade; you are supposed to rip the basil into small pieces. But, let’s get real...standing there ripping basil into little pieces is either great anger management therapy, or a waste of time if you are going to be cooking the basil in a tomato sauce.
I roughly chop the basil and toss it into the sauce. Simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes or until the sauce thickens and loses that ‘raw’ tomato taste.

Another warning: this sauce makes the kitchen smell amazing. Resist the urge to eat it right out of the pot...well, ok, you can eat it out of the pot, but then you’ll need to make some extra.

Here comes the fun part, frying the eggplant. This is actually the most time consuming part, so put on some good music and prepare yourself to stand at the stove for the next twenty minutes.
Combine equal parts flour and cornstarch in a flat dish or on a cookie sheet. For 2-3 eggplants you’ll need about 3/4 cup of each.

Dredge each slice of eggplant in the flour mixture, shaking off any excess flour. Don’t rinse the salt off of the eggplant slices; unless you’ve gone hog wild with the salt; most of it will have dripped off and there is no salt added to the tomato sauce.

Heat the sunflower oil in a large, deep, flat bottomed pan. You want enough oil in the pan to allow the slices to float in the oil. You may need to add more oil as you go, but do so in small batches so you don’t dramatically lower the frying oil temperature. You want the oil to be around 350F/180C before you start frying the slices. Use a thermometer, don’t guess. If the oil is too cool, the eggplant drinks up the oil like it was water in the desert and you’ll get soggy slices. If the oil is too hot, you’ll scorch the slices instead of crisping them.

Fry the slices until you see a little bit of brownage on the edges. Turn once and fry until the slice is a light golden brown. Think elegant eggplant chips, not sodden slabs. Drain the slices in a strainer over the sink. This is the best fried food tip I will ever give you. Don’t bother with layers of paper towels to soak up the grease, just use your colander. You're welcome.
OK, sauce is done. Slices are done. You are in the home stretch now.

Lay out your mise en place di parmigiana: grated cheese, the egg, sauce, slices and a baking dish lined with parchment paper. Heat your oven to 350F/120C.

Ladle a small amount of sauce into the baking dish and spread it around using the bowl of the ladle...just like you’ve seen the pizza guys doing it. Add a layer of eggplant, a thin layer of cheese and keep building the parmigiana, but you don’t want more than 4 or 5 layers. Use a bigger baking dish if you need to, but don’t build higher!

But, what about the egg, you ask? You’re going to use it for the top layer of sauce. Add a ladle full of sauce to a small bowl, break the egg into the sauce and whisk until thoroughly blended. If the sauce is still bubbling hot, do this step quickly so that you don’t risk scrambling the egg instead of blending it.

For the top and final layer of the eggplant, add the tomato/egg sauce, cover with cheese and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

Bake in the oven until it is brown and bubbly, approximately 30 minutes. Let it cool in the pan and then use the parchment paper to lift it out of the pan and onto a serving plate. Parchment paper is a wonderful thing.

Voila, you have just made a proper, elegant Italian eggplant parmigiana! For variations, use whatever you have in abundance in the garden but you only have to salt and drain the eggplant.  Enjoy! Buon apetito and thanks to Kate for giving me a push to write down the recipe!!

Wine Philosopher: Paolo Rodaro

According to Paolo Rodaro, there are only four kinds of wine: red, white, good, or bad. If you taste a wine and think, “Hmmm...might be off.” and you taste again, and maybe a third time, Paolo thinks you are wasting time. You were right the first time, send the wine back. He uses real corks, dismissed screw tops as an abomination, politely listened to the virtues of glass caps and then changed the subject to sex. If you do not look a person in the eye when you clink glasses you will be condemned  to seven years of bad sex! And so the conversation meandered during a lovely evening at the Enoteca Wine Club in Umbertide as we ate Antonella’s delicious food and tasted the wines from the Rodaro cantina.

The Rodaro Winery has been producing wine in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy since 1846. Unlike their famous brethren in Tuscany and Piedmonte, the Friulian wines fly a bit under the radar and are an excellent value for the price.
Nearly eighty percent of the wine produced in Friuli is white, the rest are reds and a little desert wine. Although it produces very good international varietals like Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, for my money, I find the indigenous grapes like Friulano, Ribolla gialla, Malvasia, Schioppettino or Refosco far more interesting. 

Maybe it’s the snobbish thrill of tasting a wine that can only come from the dirt, sun and rain in Friuli, or maybe because I was tasting something new, but we were having fun! Like meeting an intriguing person: will you be my new best friend, or is this just a moment of flirtation?  As we were sipping the Refosco, I kept sticking my glass under poor Jeff’s nose and pestering him, “Do you think this would work with grilled steak? Would it be better with lamb?”  The unique flavor of the Refosco had my cook’s mind clicking away, wondering what would be the best way to showcase this bold wine.

So why aren’t they planting these luscious grapes everywhere, you might ask. The simple answer is because these vines have a lot of trouble growing anywhere else. Some California vineyards made a gallant try at planting Umbria’s Sagranatino grape, but it hasn’t been successful, mostly due to viruses like leaf roll.  Apparently Sagranatino needs to stay in Umbria to be happy.  

These smaller varietals take a lot of extra TLC, like the thin skinned Malvasia, or the late  to harvest Ribolla gialla. They don’t lend themselves to mass production or consistent flavors like the hardier Sauvignon or Chardonnay grapes.

We started the evening sipping a Ribolla gialla. Gialla means yellow, and this wine is a honeyed golden yellow, light but silky on the tongue; it makes an excellent aperitivo sipping wine, or for lighter antipasto dishes.

For the antipasto course of ‘frico’ (a typical Friuliani dish of melted cheese and potato), Rodaro paired this with a light, fresh Friulano. His white wines are never oaked, so the acidity in the wine played very nicely with the rich frico.
Our fish based ravioli course was paired with a Sauvignon. Others at our table enjoyed the Sauvignon more than the Friulano, but not me. I preferred the lighter touch of the Friulano.

Now it was time to move into the reds. This wine dinner was not for the faint hearted. If you want to discuss wine...you must drink wine! 

We started with the Schioppettino, a light bodied wine, very fresh tasting with floral hints. It reminded me of a young pinot noir, but a bit rougher, sexier, more playful.

Then we moved into the Refosco 2007 which is a much more substantial wine, with a more disciplined structure. Tannic but not over bearing, like a strict but good hearted headmaster. 

Of course, the conversations were getting louder and a bit sillier, when Paolo got up, grabbed one of his wines off the shelf and opened his Refosco 2006.  It was shockingly different...light on the pallet, but full, round, silky. Instead of a headmaster, we had a ballet dancer in our mouth.  Paolo was pleased, he had made his point...the beauty of wine is this difference from year to year. Who needs consistency? This is why we all love wine, why he makes the wine he does. It’s a living souvenir of the summer of 2006.
Then came the sweet Picolit, accompanied by tiny morsels of gorgonzola. And finally, when we thought we couldn’t possibly drink anymore...he brought out the refreshingly light, sweet Verduzzo with plates of biscotti for dunking. 
Thank you Patrick for being the eternal charming host, thank you Antonella for your delicious cooking, thank you Alex for being such an attentive waiter and thank you, thank you Paolo and Laura for sharing your knowledge and your wines!

 

Linguine & The Art of Vongole

Twenty years ago, Napoli Restaurant was a classic spaghetti joint on the corner of Spring and Sullivan streets in Soho, NYC. Actually, it was ‘our’ spaghetti joint back in the day when we were living cheap and going out didn’t require a mortgage to buy a bottle of wine.

Spaghetti with clams was a favorite, and the hardest decision was whether to have it with a white or red sauce. The restaurant sold so much of this dish that the place actually smelled like it; in fact the block smelled of spaghetti and clams. I don’t remember any shells, so the clams probably came from a can or the freezer.

Remember...I said this was ‘back in the day’ before we all realized that the only decent clam to be eaten had to be raised in the wild and hunted down by a fisherman named Guy. (And you know the fisherman’s name because now all the clams are tagged with their origins, the date and time of capture, if the clam struggled or gave up willingly and the fisherman’s name, age, and Facebook page.)  Yeah, I’m all about truth in labeling, but back in the prior millennium...who knew to even ask where the clams came from!

Flash forward to the new enlightened us who live in Italy and have eaten many clams, preferably picking them up at the port from the fisherman, with a cold bottle of local wine in the shopping bag. Here’s the time warp part: eating linguine alle vongole at the Italian seaside is probably cheaper than those dinners at Napoli. See, life isn’t always cruel.

Things you should know about making linguine alle vongole:
 

• The type of clams you buy really doesn’t matter. It will affect the cooking time and flavor, but buying fresh clams from a reputable fish monger is what is important. The clams should be tightly closed and smell of the sea.  For my taste, smaller clams are better, but not too small or you end up spending all your time picking out itsy bitsy pieces of clam meat from the shells while the pasta gets cold, and some one else just might eat more than their share!

 

• You can mix different types or sizes of clams, but you’ll need to add them to the pot at different times because over cooked clams taste like...flavorless rubber. Not that I’ve eaten a lot of flavorless rubber, but you get the idea. Clams are cooked when they open, in fact, as soon as they open, so timing matters. (And of course size matters, but that goes without saying.)

 

• Garlic is friend of linguine alle vongole. Adding cream or cheese to the dish makes Italians gag and is viewed as a crime.

 

• Use dried pasta, not fresh pasta. Although eaten all over Italy, lunguine alle vongole’s foundation is southern Italian, and they use dried pasta.  Fresh pasta usually has eggs in it, and this would also produce the gag reflex in any good southern Italian.

Making the linguine alle vongole:

1. Set a big pot of pasta water on to boil.
2. Decide if you want red or white sauce. I can’t help you with this decision. Both are good, sometimes you just have to choose. 
3. Give the clams a rinse and check to be sure all the little guys are still closed tight. Discard any clams that are open and don’t close when touched. You only need to scrub the clams if they are big and the shells feel gritty. Ideally you want to keep as much of the sea water inside the clam as possible.

White Linguine alle Vongole
1/2 kg or 1 lb of small clams
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 anchovy filet
White wine, olive oil, parsley, chili pepper


When the pasta water has come to a boil, salt the water and add your linguine.

In a sauce pan big enough to hold the clams and all of the linguine, add a generous glug of olive oil and warm the oil over medium heat.

Here’s where personal taste kicks in: if you like a mild garlic flavor,  just peel and crack the garlic clove before adding it to the pot. If you want a strong garlic flavor, finely chop the garlic. The finer the garlic, the stronger the flavor.  Now toss in one or two roughly chopped dried chili peppers or chili pepper flakes, and the anchovy filet.

You do not want to burn the garlic, but you want to flavor the oil, so tip the pan to make a puddle and let the garlic, chili pepper, and anchovy sizzle in the oil.
Pay attention! There is a valuable lesson here.... it means you stand over the pot and keep an eye on the garlic without getting distracted, and it has the extra benefit of you looking like you totally know what you are doing.

Add a small splash of white wine, no more than a half glass. It may look like you are being cheap with the wine, but the truth is the clams release a lot more juice than you think, so go easy on the wine.    Now add your clams, cover the pot, and turn up the heat.

By now your pasta should be in the pot about five minutes, or half way to being done.
After one or two minutes, when the clams are starting to open, add a ladle full of the pasta water to the clam pot. Drain the pasta and add to the clam pot. Finish cooking the pasta and clams together. In a perfect world, you want the pasta and the clams to finish cooking at the same time. This comes with practice. There is no way a recipe can tell you this because I don’t know what size clams or linguine you have. Learn to listen to your inner voice, and if you don’t have an inner voice, then cook with a friend and the two of you will figure it out.

Finish with some finely chopped parsley, a good pour of olive oil,  and a generous bit of ground black pepper.


Red Sauce for Linguine alle Vongole
Tasty, but not as common as white. In fact, it's probably an American-Italian invention, but who cares because it tastes good. Do everything as above, only substitute tomato sauce for the white wine. Double the amount of sauce, so instead of a half wine glass of sauce, use a full cup of tomato sauce.

A word about eating spaghetti with clams: For god’s sake don’t sit there with a fork and pick out the clams. Pick up the clam shell with your fingers and suck out the clam. Clam shells taste good! OK, if you’ve got a boatload of clams on your plate and you want some in every forkful, then go ahead and fork out the meat and mix it up with your spaghetti but don’t let me catch you eating each and every clam with your fork!

And one final secret: keep mixing the pasta as it sits in the pan or bowl (We like to eat it out of the pan because it keeps the pasta hot longer and I have this really beat up old pot that allows us to pretend we are grizzly fisherman hanging out by sea). The bottom of the pot is the best part as the pasta has soaked up all the juices.

Bon apetito and thanks to Kris Rudolf for asking me for the recipe for her blog Delicious Expeditions! I’ve been making this regularly for years and just hadn’t really thought about the details.  Enjoy!

Pickled Everything!

What do you do when your garden is onions all needed to be picked at once, the peppers are crazy cheap in the market, and it is the height of zucchini season? You pickle everything!

I’ve pickled onions and green tomatoes before, but I’ve also had trouble controlling the amount of acid or salt. You can follow recipes, but the problem comes with the actual vegetables or fruits. They might have more or less water content, acid levels, variations in ripeness, or just a different type of tomato than the recipe.

When we were in Ponza, the local ladies used a technique I’d never heard of. Basically they start by soaking the vegetables  in vinegar to ‘cook’ them, drain, season and cover in vegetable oil. The Ponzese seem to use a lot of vegetable oil, instead of olive oil. I suspect this is because there aren’t many olive trees on the island so they’ve never developed a strong olive oil culture.   This is not long term storage pickling, it’s summertime instant-gratification-eat-them-tonight pickling.
(I’m using the word vegetable as a catchall, it includes roots and fruits..so don’t go all persnickety on me!)

What I’m enjoying about this technique is that you can easily control the final outcome. It’s fast, and you can make small batches so experimenting with flavor combinations is  easy.

I used the same technique for everything but the roasted peppers:

•     Slice your vegetable, fruit, or root
•     Soak in vinegar
•     Drain
•     Lightly rinse with fresh water
•     Arrange the pickled vegetable in a clean jar
•     Season
•     Cover with vegetable oil
•     Refrigerate
•     EAT

* A note on the vinegar: I have an abundance of red wine vinegar in the house, and not a drop of white vinegar, so, you guessed it...I used my red wine vinegar. It turned the eggplant an appealing meaty red and barely tinged the zucchini.  It’s more of a color thing than flavor, although my red vinegar is probably milder than a store bought white vinegar. (And yes, I ‘make’ my own vinegar...if that’s what you call throwing any left over wine into a big glass jar to ferment. Not exactly rocket science, but oh so rewarding.)

Zucchini Arabiata
(anything arabiata or ‘angry’ means its spicy)
1 zucchini sliced paper thin
1 hot chili pepper
1 clove of garlic

Using a mandoline, slice the zucchini paper thin. Place the slices in white wine vinegar, covering the slices. Add a good two finger pinch of salt. Add the chili pepper and a crushed clove of garlic. Let sit for about 45-80 minutes.
Here’s where your personal taste kicks in. Taste the zucchini at about 45 minutes. If it tastes crunchy and pleasantly vinegary...you’re done. If you like the flavor to be stronger, leave the zucchini to marinate a bit longer.
I roughly chopped my chili pepper, and it’s a good thing I did, because that particular pepper was MAD hot so I pulled out 2 of the chili chunks before we hit the four alarm fire stage.
Zucchini picks up flavorings quickly so don’t go overboard with the garlic and chili.

Drain the vinegar, lightly rinse the zucchini with fresh water. Place in a clean jar, cover the slices with vegetable oil and that’s it.

Pickled Eggplant
1 medium eggplant
Oregano
1 clove of garlic
1 hot chili pepper

Coarsely shred the eggplant lengthwise using the big holes on a hand grater. You should get long strips of eggplant.  Cover the strips with vinegar and a generous two finger pinch of salt.
The eggplant takes longer to ‘cook’ in the vinegar than the zucchini. Figure on tasting at about 90 minutes, but you could go as long as two hours. You want the eggplant to be firmly crunchy, not soggy or spongey.

When the eggplant is done to your liking, drain well, rinse lightly, and then give the eggplants strips a strong squeeze to rid them of excess vinegar.  Season with a sprinkle of good oregano, toss in a crushed garlic clove and some chili pepper, cover with oil and you are good to go.

Pickled Red Onions
Fennel and/or Parsley Seeds
Grated Orange Peel

Thinly slice the onions, add the vinegar and figure on about 30-45 minutes of marinating time. Again, you want a good crunch, not a soggy onion.
Drain the vinegar, very lightly rinse with fresh water and arrange the slices in a jar. Add the fennel and parsley seeds and a little bit of grated orange peel.

I bet if you thickly sliced the onions, let them marinate a bit longer, then battered and deep fried them you would have an addictive hit on your hands! Oh my!


Roasted Peppers
Lots of coarse salt

In a 350F/180C preheated oven, roast the whole peppers on a bed of coarse salt until they are soft. Depending on the size of the pepper, it should take about 20 minutes. The salt bed absorbs the excess juices and keeps the pepper from getting super soggy. Place the peppers in a paper bag, or cover with paper towels until they cool. (I don’t know about you, but paper bags are getting to be a scare commodity around here. The paper towels work almost as well. Almost.)

When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel them, cut into strips and place them in a clean jar.
Now you can get very creative with the seasoning: some garlic, an anchovy, fresh parsley etc. I kept mine pure, just a sprinkle of salt so that when I serve them I can give them a unique little flavor bump. Why serve the same peppers twice?

Now, what do you do with all these pickled goodies?

I like to add them to a green salad, either on top, or mixed into a salad dressing and tossed throughout the salad. The marinated eggplant tastes great mixed into a cucumber salad. Or you could do like they do in Ponza and serve the pickles on top of ‘bruschetta” (toasted or dried bread).  The zucchini slices would be delicious in place of pickles on a hamburger. Have some fun..its summertime after all! (At least in my part of the world!)

The Mad Men of Le Forna

Surely there are plenty of mad women in the village of Le Forna on Isola di Ponza,  but it’s the mad chefs of Le Forna that captured our hearts and stomachs. From crusty pizza to oily, inky black spaghetti, to delicately fried fish, to impressive apertivi, to a feast on a boat, these men know how to cook!
Il Maestrale
Via Chiesa
Le Forna, Ponza

This is Chef Maurizo’s restaurant and it’s the unofficial town hub for locals. Maurizio can keep an eye on the traffic outside his kitchen, so he’s ready when the fisherman comes to drop off the anchovies, the lady who salts them comes to pick up and drop off, the beer man shows up after being delayed on the mainland for 2 days by bad weather, a boat captain who needs a translation for his advertising (but really just wants to hang around and talk), the guy who builds awnings that Maurizio has declared an artist, and the occasional group of tourists who just enjoy Maurizio’s company. (That would be us!) Going for a swim meant walking by Maurizio’s, which meant we were offered something to eat or drink every time we went by. This is sincere from-the-heart hospitality at its finest. Not to mention that an ice cold Prosecco tastes exceptionally good after hiking up the steep steps from the sea.

Maurizio is also a mad scientist when it comes to liqueurs. He  brewed up a batch of a thick boozy licorice liqueur that would make our Finnish friend Kevin give up his beloved Panda candies and move to Ponza. Kev, forget the Ullr and come to Ponza!
Another time Maurizio was brewing up ‘myrtille’, a sort of herbaceous blackberry digestivo that is perfect after a meal.  Maurizio kindly gave us a bottle to take home, and we’re doling out our last precious sips of Ponza.
Come to Il Maestrale for the excellent pizza and fish, but you’ll keep coming back just to visit with Maurizio.

La Marina
Cala Feola
Le Forna, Ponza
This would be my fantasy restaurant. A shack, stuck into the cliff rock, right on the sea.  A kitchen filled with good music, loudly clanging pots, a barefoot cook, sometimes a dog, and always a few children. Eccentric, eclectic, and absolutely delicious. Because it’s so hard to find (you either have to find the right foot path and walk down about 150 steps, or come by boat) it feels like a private social club.  Not the stuffy club scene, but the grubby sea wolf and wench club.

I have no idea who owns the kitchen or is actually in charge; it seems like a loose confederation, but there is clearly serious attention being paid to cooking the food. The dude who takes the orders must sit down with you and explain what is available that day. Even his young apprentice Franceso needs to sit with you, and if you don’t know the type of fish that is being offered, they will happily draw a picture of the fish.
There is no reason to come here for a quick bite, it’s a place to linger, relax, enjoy the people watching and mangia bene. The menu changes every day, with super fresh fish and lobsters a speciality.

We had already met one of the chefs, called Mangia Fuoco, up at Maurizio’s, so the first time  we walked in we were greeted with a bellowing “Hey New York!” and that’s pretty much the way we were greeted each time we went back. If you care about strict restaurant rules, this is not the place for you. If you want to eat ginger flavored tuna tartare, an incredible plate of fried fish, spaghetti sauced with the strange but super delicious rana pescatrice, or a tomatoey moon fish appetizer, then this is the place for you.
Relax, enjoy, let time drift by and be happy it is summer time in Ponza.


TripAdvisor says they take reservations, but I sincerely doubt that. I think someone there might have a phone, but your best bet is just come and hang out.

Fauno
A Boat ride to Palmarola

One of the best day trips to do is to take a boat tour over to the spectacular small neighboring island of Palmarola. There are a number of boats that do this, but our loyalty belongs with Captain Francesco and his boat, Fauno.

Why is Captain Francesco mad? Because no one else will thread the needle between the razor sharp volcanic rocks like Francesco. He’s a confident daredevil, maybe a pirate and a show off, but always extremely careful.  His boat tour will wander around the Ponza coves and grottoes for awhile. He likes to get up close and personal with Grotte di Pilato (Pontius Pilate’s Caves...and yes Pontius hung out here, and Nero was born on the island. This island has some serious history.) Then he heads over to the marvelously awesome volcanic island of Palmarola. There are swimming stops, always different because of the weather and wind, and when you are good and hungry, he makes lunch. His wife makes the pickled zucchini and eggplant that come on top of the bruschetta, a very hard crust of bread that is dipped in sea water to soften it before being served. This is followed by an excellent pasta dish, sometimes made with swordfish eggs and finally some coffee. It is absolutely perfect.

He lives up in Le Forna, and you can buy a ticket from the little Everything Shop on the main drag in town, or you can just meet him in the port. The boat leaves promptly at 10:30 and gets back when Francesco feels like coming back (usually around 5:00 pm).  It’s the best bargain in town.
Marlin Bar
Main Street, Le Forna
(I’m sure the street has a real name, but it doesn’t really matter)

The Marlin Bar is right at the curve in the road, before the bus stop, and down a few steps. Mind your head if you take the direct route and step over the benches to find your seat on the little outdoor patio.
Devilishly handsome Clemente is the resident mad bar man and this guy knows how to do aperitivi!
The cocktails come out on pieces of beautiful olive wood that Clemente has created. The drinks are surrounded by all sorts of treats: spicy olives, pickled vegetables, soft balls of fried cod, every day it was a different feast.
He also makes one of the best mojitos this group has ever tasted, perfectly balanced between rum, lime and soda water.
Everyone shows up at the Marlin sooner or later, including my favorite dog, Johnny. It’s  an aperitivo oasis after a hot salty hike up from the sea.
La Tartaruga Bar
“Cornettaria”
Le Forna

Almost across the street from the Marlin is La Tartaruga and it’s more of a traditional Italian bar. Serving Neapolitan style pastries and cornetti (cornetti are croissants, but Italian style.) with excellent coffee in the morning, and switching over to light bar food and drinks in the afternoon. Flat screen TV’s play music videos, soccer matches and sometimes the news, and everyone stops there at least once a day.
 
The barmen aren’t really mad, they are just madly efficient and good at what they do. This bar is hopping, people come in waves, and Fabio and Andreas just roll along taking care of everyone.
We were there long enough to watch the transition from early tourist season into nearly high season, so some new barmen joined the ranks. I’m sorry I don’t know your names, but hats off to you as well, because La Tartaruga was always the best place to start our day. And the people watching isn't bad either! 

Quick Tips: Le Forna is the largest village outside of the port town. It's perched high on the hills and has terrific hotels, restaurants and access to the sea by foot. There is even a sandy beach over by La Marina. Access to the island is by ferry or yacht. If you are taking the ferry, you can depart from Anzio, Terracina or Formia, but Formia has the most options. Take the public bus instead of your car, driving is hair raising and parking is impossible.There are plenty of taxis at the port to take you to your hotel.

We’re back on the mainland now, back in Montone, and getting back into the swing of things, but I sure am missing the Mad Men of Le Forna!