Plates and Pedals

Cycling Stories and Regional Recipes

Stage 21: What I learned after 21 Days of Cooking Italian

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by

Laura Valle
in ,

Reflections on 21 Days of Italian Cooking

Italian food is globally celebrated. Pasta and pizza are foods you can find everywhere. Yet, apart from pizza, I didn’t cook a lot of Italian food prior to this. Partly, it’s because I was afraid of some of the ingredients that are common in Italian cooking. If you look back to the last 21 days of cooking, you won’t find a single tomato, which is so closely associated with Italian food, because I don’t really enjoy tomato.

So one of my personal goals was to find Italian foods that didn’t have any tomato. I’ve been to Italy once. I was staying in Nice, France for a winter holiday and we decided to take a day trip into Ventimiglia — a town just over the French-Italian border. The 45 minute train ride leaves Nice, stops briefly in Monaco, and then enters Italy. We went for lunch. It was hard for me to find something that didn’t include tomato. So I decided to order a grilled cheese. Turns out, the cheese at the restaurant had chunks of tomato inside of it! So I was really worried that I’d never be able to visit Italy because I wouldn’t find anything to eat — a unique problem but a deterrent nonetheless.

But if there was one takeaway I had from watching the Giro it was that I HAVE to go to Italy. It is so beautiful. I think, after this project, with a baseline amount of Italian, I could probably do a trip to Italy.

Italian food is a lot more than just pizza and pasta — it is giving care to all the ingredients, and turning something humble and simple (like chickpeas or cabbage) into something delicious and filling, with enough care and attention.

And, I found some delicious new flavors. I’m glad I tried new things. Cooking something new every day for 21 days was really challenging. It was hard to plan things based on regions and my dietary restrictions, and it was hard to find the time between work and trying to keep up my daily routines of being a human being (cleaning, exercising, walking my dog) and writing this blog at the end of each day. But I also feel like i’ve learned a lot about trusting my gut in the kitchen, gained confidence. And, anything worthwhile takes time — as they say.

My Top 5 Dishes

Just for fun, I wanted to list out my top 5 dishes. But almost everything I made these past three weeks I would make again!

  1. Sea Bass (Stage 1)

  2. Pork Shoulders (Stage 7)

  3. Qofte (Minty meatballs) (Stage 3)

  4. Neapolitan Pizza (Stage 6)

  5. Gnocchi with Mushrooms (Stage 12)

These are my top 5, my boyfriend had a different top 5. But overall I feel like I learned so much, both as a cook and as an eater, and I know next time I make any of these dishes it will be a bit better.

Reflections on the Giro

This was truly the most entertaining Giro I have ever seen. It was so unexpected, fun to watch, an so fun to also cook along with it. I don’t think I will forget this Giro anytime soon and look forward to continuing to watch these cyclists throughout the rest of the season. For fun (and parallelism) here are my top 5 stages, and for old-times sake, the stage summary and dish reflections.

Top 5 Stages

  1. Stage 20 – Simon Yates takes the W after setting a world record for the fastest climb up delle Finestre

  2. Stage 17 — Isaac del Toro takes the stage win in Bormio

  3. Stage 9 — Isaac del Toro takes the Pink Jersey, Wout van Aert wins the stage on gravel stage climbing up to Siena.

  4. Stage 16 – XDS Astana 1st and 2nd win, Roglič abandons.

  5. Stage 15 – Monte Grappa, Carlos Verona wins, GC shakeup with Roglič cracking, and the top 4 solidifying.

Today’s Stage

Today’s final stage was half ceremonial — with riders drinking champagne and taking team pictures — and half a final opportunity for sprinters to get a stage win. The Pope took a minute out of his day to greet the riders in the middle of their race, and the stage ended in a sprint finish in Rome, after a 20 km circuit around the colosseum. Olav Kooj on Visma Lease-a-Bike won the stage. Needless to say, Visma Lease-a-Bike got everything they could have hoped for out of this year’s Giro.

Today’s Dish

Today we made cacio e pepe, a dish native to Rome of spaghetti with pecorino Romano and freshly ground black pepper. We used store-bought pasta so I think that was my biggest issue with the dish. Fresh pasta — even poorly made — is better than store-bought pasta. But good flavors, and a quick meal.

Thank you so much! for following along this year’s Giro with me. I feel like I have learned so much, and am a better cook now than I was 21 days ago. I also enjoyed watching each stage more intently so I could write about it later.

Grazie mille! Ciao!