P.P.P.P.P.P.

I love food, but what I love more is feeding people. It's more fun to cook for others than for myself, and more satisfying to cook for friends than for strangers. Therefore, in exchange for a bed, visitors to my humble village must eat my food. (And, to keep the gender roles blurred, clean the dishes.) (See Exhibit A: "Captive house guest." Don't worry, Barry. I set him free eventually.)

Usually I recreate dishes from work. One day after a night at the restaurant during the Toscana Nights street festival, I tried to replicate Marco's gnocchi with cream and pears. The dish was doomed to poor imitation from the start due to a lack of gnocchi and cream. With no gnocchi, I changed the consistency of the sauce to better suit the long pasta I had. With no cream, I changed the flavor profile to fit a lighter sauce.

In other words, it came out completely different. Crepes rather than pancakes. Cake rather than brownies. Gumbo rather than jambalaya. This dish, which I call 6Ps (porri, parpadelle, pecorino, prosciutto, pera, pepe), has been declared a favorite by all (three) guests who visited after it's creation. And only one was related to me. God's smiting thumb! I'll have to hang on to this one for when I'm a yuppie.

6Ps - Add olive oil in a pan with chopped prosciutto and chopped leek. Add cubed, skinned pear and let cook for a few minutes. Add dry white wine (Vernaccia di San Gimignano) and let cook until alcohol evaporates. Add pepper and butter to taste. Add cubed pecorino and let cook until pecorino starts to melt. Add almost-cooked parpadelle to pan, mix, and let cook excess liquid in pan has been absorbed by the noodles.

* To make the pear flavor more subtle, crush cooked pear pieces with the tines of a fork before adding pasta.
* Salt levels in this dish will vary based on the prosciutto you use. (di Parma = dolce; di San Daniele = semi-dolce; di Toscana = salato). Add salt as necessary.

One thing I forgot to mention

Marco is a great chef and entrepreneur. He opened the restaurant where I work about three years ago. The restaurant is decorated with bold colors and modern art and features a courtyard out back where visitors, both Italian and foreign, can enjoy the Tuscan dusk.

Most of these visitors must be surprised by the tattoo/piercing parlor that opened across the way in June. Nestled in the a thousand year old castle, the shop is painted black with gold trimming and also features Lucky 13 Apparel. Leaving work one day, I saw an Italian grandmother in a cashmere sweater looking first at a black hoodie encrusted with a fake diamond scull (100 euro), then at a pleather belt (35 euro), and then at a set of handcuffs ("for sex").

The shop has caused a small stir among the more conservative citizens of Ambra, and students of economics know that the solution should be Coase's--the family restaurant should buy the tattoo shop. And then shut it down.

The latter will never happen, because the former already has.

Marco, a great chef and entrepreneur, is also a tattoo artist and the athiest drummer in a heavy metal band. Anticipating public consternation, he named his tattoo parlor "Doctor Madd" rather than "Doctor Satan." The shop in Ambra is doing quite well. Marco plans to open other stores in Florence and Arezzo.

I mention this to shed light less on Marco than on the area, because Marco's shop can survive only as long as there are people who require his services. There are British and German tourists that walk among the castles and celebrate the red wine and rolling hills. There is the nearby bridge, which Leonardo da Vinci painted into the background of the Mona Lisa. And there is the youth culture. Here, you can get a piercing with your pasta. You can drink prosecco with folks with multiple tattoos and barbells in their ears. You can learn about scarification until the explainer must go home for dinner with his mother.

Rock on.

In my room lives quite possibly the dumbest mosquito in the world. It bit the bottom of my foot.