Carli Dottore

Andrea, our friend and art director at work, made us dinner one night. Andrea is from the town of Brindisi, which is way way wayyyy south- in the region of Puglia. Think of the ‘heel’ of the boot of Italy. 

He made us a simple pasta dish that consisted of baby octopus, which we all call “Bambino Octopus”— Andrea of course gets a huge kick out of this (we can’t ever remember the proper Italian word! hah. And actually, I think it’s technically squid..). It was super special because the octopus he used was FROM Brindisi! The only items that went into the dish was fresh sliced cherry tomatoes, a bottle of white Martini and the baby octopus, and he simmered it for a good hour. IT WAS SOO GOOD! Such a fun night.

Sunday August 1st, Andrea invited us to go to a beer festival in Arsoli, a very old tiny town snuggled into the side of the Apennine Mountains. Whenever I am invited anywhere, I get really really excited because the car ride itself is always so SO COOL. Like many tiny Italian mountain towns, there was an old castle, the Arsoli Castle is from the 10th century. These tiny mountainside towns are so picturesque, and when driving through the mountains you can see a dozen of them from the highway. It’s hard to believe that people live in these little towns, it just seems like the people are still living in another time, secluded from the rest of the world. (I always think to myself, what do these people do for jobs??)

It was called a beer festival, but I would’ve called it a street fair more than anything (as they had 3 very average beers on tap). I know, splitting hairs here. There was a GREAT food stand with a simple menu. I ordered “arrostino” which is roasted sheep, I was told this is a very typical food of Arsoli, thus, I had to try it. It was delicious. 5 skewers for 3 euro. It was interesting to me- the bits of meat on the skewers were cut so small- so much care had to go into skewering all these tiny bits of meat onto hundreds and hundreds of skewers. But these tiny bits of the meat made for such flavorful, perfectly browned & caramelized bites. YUMM. It was so good I had 2 orders! pictures below

I also found the ordering method very interesting. Basically you first stood in a “line” to buy a paper ticket for what you wanted. You want 3 orders of pasta? Then you got 3 little slips of color coded paper. Then you stood in another line to recieve your food, where they took your little slip of paper. It was interesting as this was the same method used at the Seafood Festival in Pescara (see below). Must be a typical way of doing street fair food in Italy, and it was really efficient. pics on this below, sorry they’re blurry!:

View at the top:

I love how this fortune teller is under the Virgin Mary painting:

hungry people:

haunted castle!