Roaming in Rome and Chilli olive oil

Parts of my history book came alive, parts of the Bollywood movies became real, parts of those colourful cook books sprung to life..........what a lovely place to be in......Rome.

Last week Rome happened. Finally.

I am not planning to write ABOUT Rome ( thats too much and too easily available on google). The target is to write and share some of my experiences, some story telling about Arno and some mouth watering recipes for you all.

Some of the highlights:

1. Rome is wonderful.  Beautiful statues and majestic monuments are scattered around  in the city in the same way as toy cars are scattered in Arno's room. They are Everywhere!
2. Rome is delicious. Any food in any restaurant is super tasty. We ended up eating tons of Italian plain bread with olive oil which they serve as the side dish in all restaurants! The waiter's eyes said " you greedy couple, do you even have any space left to tackle the main course? THAT was a side dish!!"
3. The Italian language is like music.  People talk a lot and they talk in a language which is so sweet that it feels like music. The fact that talking is combined with a lot of body language as well, transforms it into an opera.
4. Rome has warm people. They smile, they chat, they swear (in musical Italian!),they make you feel welcome.
5. Traffic is scary. We, Indians, almost felt at home. Zebra crossings are pretty empty, people cross the roads anywhere, anytime.
6. Calendar of Christ is much more heard of than our ordinary January-February calendar. More people spoke about B.C and A.D dates than 27th or 28th  of February!
7. The Guccis and the Armanis and the Dolce Gabanas dominate. There was even an "Armani Junior" shop !
8. The pope resigned while we were there. Not our fault. We did not ask any difficult questions.

 

The moment we announced that we are going to Rome, Arno's first comment was, " Yippee, now I can have ONLY pizza for four days for all my meals". 
However, things turned out a bit different. After his second pizza in Rome his comment was,

"THEY do not make good pizzas here, THE FROZEN pizzas from Albertheijn (dutch supermarket) are tastier!!"

All I could say to that was.."Ssshhhhhhh".
Fresh-basil-fresh-tomatoes-fresh-mozzarella-thin-crust-pizza Vs thick-frozen-with-preservative-thick-old-salami-filled pizzas??? 
Forgive the innocent child ,  my Lord! He does not know what he is saying.....

                       

Arno was also not feeling very well during the trip. The magic of Paracetamol kept him going--poor guy! He complained from time to time about the "Huge rooms full of paintings ONLY, nothing to do" in the Vatican.  On top of that since we had a guided tour, all paintings had a story attached to it. Now for a eight year old, what does it matter if Raphael passed away at the age of 37 or Michelengelo was at the same time a  sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer!!!I tried to be a good mother and re-explain to him some of the stories which the guide told us. But whatever I said, I had the feeling that this little boy was moving with us from one room to the other in the Vatican expecting some kind of a theme park at the end! Look at him!!

O my God, how many more of these paintings?

But what a treasure house the Vatican is....the ultimate beauty being the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For a moment one is left speechless. The enormity of the project coupled to the difficulty of creating something like this on the ceiling is almost unbelievable. How could someone draw all this?

 Now for a mouth watering recipe. I know this post has already become a bit too long hence I will share with you a very very short recipe. Infact I should not even call it a recipe. 

All restaurants that we visited during our stay in Rome served four things on the table as dressing.

1. Olive oil    2.Balsamic vinegar    3. Salt     4. Pepper.

But some of them also served a fifth dressing :  Chilli olive oil. 
This was really lots of red chilli seeds immersed in olive oil. Nothing more than that. But what a taste!! The first thing I did after coming back from Rome was to have this on my table. Recipe is simple.

1. Buy some dry red chilli seeds (I bought the red chilli seeds in Rome)
2. Buy some extra virgin olive oil .
3. Carefully open the cork of the oil bottle.
4. More carefully pour in the chilli seeds.
5. Observe (with or without camera) the red hot particles gradually work their way down in the bottle --beautiful.
6. Sprinkle a few drops on anything and everything. ( I am using it on sandwiches as well)
7. Enjoy.... 

Next time I will post a real recipe. Promise . Cross my heart.