We had lived in Sardegna two months or so when we developed a fierce craving for one of our favorite meals – Thai curry. My husband and I moved here for his job with the Navy on the island of La Maddalena, which is between Sardegna and Corsica. When we first arrived, we happily ate loads of pizza and pasta, the only fare in town, until we finally got the urge for a bit more variety. A few years ago, I came across a recipe for Thai curry paste which used ingredients that could all be found at any decent grocery store, rather than exotic things like galanga and kaffir lime leaves which many recipes called for. A few tablespoons of paste added to some coconut milk served with chicken and vegetables over rice made an easy weeknight meal. The paste could be stored in the refrigerator for several weeks and the remaining ingredients were easy to keep around – canned mushrooms, bamboo shoots and coconut milk, bottled fish sauce, frozen chicken breasts, and rice.
When we found out that we were moving to Italy, we stocked up on the basics needed to make our favorite foreign dishes, including Thai curry, as we weren’t sure what we would be able to find upon arrival. So, we already had coconut milk, fish sauce, canned mushrooms and bamboo shoots, and an assortment of dry spices. In order to make our curry, we started off by heading to the local Macelleria, or butcher shop, to buy some chicken breasts. Upon entering, we were greeted by pigs, chickens and lambs, all hanging from above and all whole. The chickens even had their feathers still on. In the cases below, we spotted pairs of giant pairs of chicken breasts. These were not the wimpy American chicken breasts that we were used to. Two of those were usually perfect for two people, but two of these breasts would be too much. Of course, it would have been far too easy if we had simply needed one piece. I knew how to say, "un pezzo," but we needed to order by weight, which required converting from pounds to kilograms. A kilogram is roughly twice a pound, so it wasn’t too tricky. Following our request for un mezzo (half) kilo, the butcher took one of the pieces and then produced a giant meat cleaver with which he began slicing the breasts into very thin medallions, or scallopini. After many desperate hand gestures, we managed to get the point across that we wanted to breasts entero (whole), and he wrapped up the rest for us with a smile.
The next ingredient that we needed was rice. For this, we went to the Supermercato. Don’t be fooled by the name into thinking this means it is big store; it just means that they have a bit of everything. Inside, we found ourselves staring at many rows of different colored boxes and all of them contained rice: riso integrale, classico, originale, and arborio. I recognized arborio rice as the type used to make risotto, but had no idea which of the others would be basic, plain white rice. Integrale, we thought, might be brown rice, but we couldn’t guess what might be the difference between classico and originale. There were also no cooking directions to be found on any of the boxes, which added to the challenge. We decided to try the riso originale in the red box and hoped for the best.
While there, we also needed a few fresh ingredients for the curry paste aside from the dry spices that we already had. Garlic, or aglio, was readily available, but ginger and cilantro were nowhere to be found. We also managed to find a red pepper, pepperoni rosso, which is not the type you order on a pizza, but the vegetable. Fortunately, from previous travels in Europe, we had already been through that confusion. We had also been through the embarrassment of being scolded by the produce vendor for not using a plastic glove when selecting our fruit. It seems a little odd that the butcher uses his bare hands to handle raw meat, but that you must use gloved hands to touch produce that you are presumably going to take home and wash before consuming. Once you have selected the fruit, God help you if you show up at the register with a pepperoni in an unlabeled bag. Your bag must be labeled with a sticker from the automatic scale in the produce section. If you’re lucky, there is a store clerk assigned to the task of weighing the patrons’ produce. If not, you have to figure out the machine yourself, which requires locating the numbered code for whatever you have put into your bag, typing it into the machine, and then finding the sticker it has just printed out. We got all of that figured out and put our properly-stickered bag in our basket.
On to the next challenge: soy sauce. While we had brought a bottle of soy sauce, we didn’t have quite enough for our recipe. I remembered seeing soy sauce at the local Herboristeria, a sort of health food shop, among other things like wheat noodles, tahini paste, and lemongrass tea, but it was already closed for the day. Expecting to be out of luck, we were pleasantly surprised to find a small section of ethnic foods including a very small bottle of Suzy Wan soy sauce nestled in between a box of Uncle Ben’s wild rice, canned salsa, and a box of Paella, which touted that all the ingredients were included (how they got the seafood in there still puzzles me). The bottle was a bit dusty and, upon turning it over, the sauce appeared to be of a strangely thick consistency; apparently there is not a high turn over of soy sauce at this store. It also costs about 4 euro for 4 ounces, but we proceeded to buy it anyway, happy to have found it at all.
I have forgotten thus far to mention the other major complication to grocery shopping here – riposo. Riposo is a wonderful thing if you are in a position to repose with everyone else, including all of the shopkeepers. Between 1 pm and 4 or 5 pm (or sometimes even 6), things get very quiet. Doors are locked, lights turned off, and metal gates are rolled down over the storefronts. Everyone goes home to have a big home-made lunch with their families and then to take an afternoon nap. Some time in the evening, people start to emerge again for their passegiata, or walk through town. Good luck if you need something during riposo hours, with the exception of a drink. The bars are always open but, although they purport to have food as well drinks, this is not the case at all hours. Riposo also extends to Sundays – some stores close altogether and some have limited morning hours. So, if you want dinner for Sunday night, you’d better decide what you want on Saturday. We think that the Italian restaurateurs are in collusion to get you to eat out on Sundays. Lucky for us, we were shopping for Thai curry on a Saturday morning, so everything was open.
The last stop of the day was to the Navy Exchange store (known as "the NEX"), which we often try to avoid since we live in Palau, a town at the tip of Sardegna, and the NEX is on the island of La Maddalena, and requires a ferry to get to. It is really pretty simple to take the ferry and inexpensive on foot, but to get to the NEX we needed to take the car, which added 5 euro or so to our grocery bill. But, because the NEX is an American store, it is open during riposo, so we could shop there in the afternoon. Once there, we were finally able to find ginger, but still no cilantro. We also happily noticed a supply of fish sauce, coconut milk, bamboo shoots and mushrooms as well, among the assortment of ethnic foods. This was good to know for future re-supplying.
We returned home with all of the supplies and unloaded our precious loot. In the US, making the paste for the curry required putting all the ingredients into our small food processor and hitting the start button. However, our food processor runs on 110V electricity, and Europe runs on 220V. So, all of our appliances have to be run through a transformer. Because we only have one transformer which is usually hooked up to the array of media devices in the living room – TV, DVD player and stereo – using the little food processor requires unplugging everything from the clunky transformer box and lugging it into the kitchen. This was accomplished without too much trouble, thankfully, and the food processor revved to life, producing a fresh batch of curry paste.
Now, we were ready to cook; we just had to brave the stove. Luckily, we weren’t baking anything, so we didn’t have to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius. We just needed the stovetop, which is gas and is run off a refillable tank kept outside our house. These tanks, called bombolas, run a lot of things around here – dryers (if you’re lucky enough to have one), heaters, stoves, etc, and their gas supply is powerful! When you light the stovetop, you had better stand back because the flames shoot straight up from the burner upon ignition. Then, it is a Zen art to properly adjust the flame level to low heat without turning off the burner completely and having to go through the hair-raising ignition process all over again. You must hold very still and move very slowly with no distractions as you ease the gas down bit by bit. Of course, Thai curry needs to be simmered at very low heat, so we went through this process several times before getting the flame just right.
In the end, the giant Italian chicken breasts, the mystery white rice, and even the Suzy Wan soy sauce all came together to make a delicious curry. It is amazing to think that this meal was one of our staples, an easy last-minute meal, back in The States. We usually had everything on hand or could pick up the ingredients at the closest grocery store on the way home from work. While it was convenient to be able to buy everything at one store without having to learn about different kinds of rice, how to order chicken breasts in kilograms, or how to select and weigh a pepper, we have come to appreciate the challenges of shopping here and the things we have learned in the process. By now, the man at the Macelleria says hello to me, the woman at the fruit stand rounds down to the nearest euro when charging me for my produce, and the Supermercato staff smiles at the lost-looking American who comes in nearly every day to shop. Sometimes convenience comes at the cost of these human connections and I have learned to value the relationships I’ve developed with local vendors here.
Living overseas is a strange balance between learning a new culture and retaining your own. When we first arrived, I looked askance at the people here who always cooked American foods and bragged about recreating "a little America" at home. But, now I have come to respect that way of life and to share in some of its comforts. I began to think about the neighborhoods of Italians, Mexicans, or Chinese in cities all over America and how neat it is to see people holding on to their native culture rather than completely assimilating. It will be interesting to see which things from home we hold on to most closely and which things we let go of more easily as we spend more time here.
All of that said, after all of our adventures, we finally sat down at our familiar dining room table, eating off our familiar plates, listening to American Jazz on our iPod (hooked up again through the transformer), and ate Thai curry while looking out the window at the La Maddalena islands jutting up out of the Mediterranean. We licked our plates clean and remarked that the curry might have tasted just a little bit better for the trouble it took to make, but that we would do it again for a taste of home in Sardegna.
