Chow from Roma: Campo de’ Fiori

I took a walk through the Campo de’ Fiori, a market with, flowers, food, spices and housewares.

The spring vegetables are all shades of green from the yellow green of the Fava beans to the light  green of puntarelle, chicory hearts (stems), and all the deep hues of the broccoli, artichokes and chicory.  I have been challenging myself to use new ingredients  so I picked up 400 grams (just under a pound) of the puntarelle and made a salad one night with just olive oil,balsamic vinegar and salt and the next night  with an anchovy sauce.  The anchovy sauce is made by pureeing anchovy filets, garlic, olive oil and white vinegar.  The sauce was a revelation and would also be great on hot pasta.

It isn’t really tomato season yet but still there were displays of both fresh and dried tomatoes from Sicily.

Passing through the various stalls I had to keep reminding myself that I have a dorm-size fridge,a petite kitchen and limited space in my suitcases.  Which hasn’t always been a deterrent!

Housewares stalls are generally my greatest weakness. And demonstrations of really cool sharp kitchen tools that shred, slice and curl have TEMPTATION written all over them. Oh Dear.  Look what I found.

This guy was a really good salesman — but notice, that isn’t me buying! I would have been shredded, sliced and curled if I brought this home, because I already bought one the day before I left Tokyo in February!

A field of Italian Moka coffee pots were also enticing but they didn’t pass the need vs.want internal debate either.

Time to leave the market and reward myself for such self control with a slice (al taglio) or two of pizza from the wonderful bakery/deli Roscioli on Via dei Chiavari.  On the way in the middle of a tiny square were two lovely women singing opera snippets for a commercial.

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Finalmente — the pizza, which is baked in rectangular pans, cut into pieces and weighed.

It was a very satisfying day.