More food

I meant to post this yesterday so the time frame is a bit wrong - but that is neither here nor there.

I have recently tried the following:

Baccala alla veneziana – dried salted cod in an onion sauce, once again with polenta, this time like mashed pumpkin, but grainier than the first time. I wonder if polenta comes with what otherwise would be fairly unpalatable ( unless I guess you are brought up on them) dishes. The fish was in little pieces about 1cm square – could have been thinly sliced shoe leather for all I could tell. That makes 3 dishes that I am pleased to have tried but will not choose to have ever again.

Sarde in saor – sardines in a sweet and sour sauce made with onion, pinenuts and sultanas. This was served with, you guessed it, polenta. The sardines were quite tasty and I would not mind having them again. I was given a spare plate, I presume for bones, but I just crunched them up. I got a very weird look when the empty plate was taken away.

I was talking yesterday to 2 waiters/restaurant touts after the lunch rush was over about different Venetian specialties. I told them what I had tried and told them that eel was still on my list but that I hadnot seen it anywhere advertised. They said that maybe 10 years ago it was eaten a lot in Venice but there were not any eels any more. Goody goody I thought – I donot have to try it. John and I did eat eel in Chile and it was quite nice. There is a lot of fried calamari on menus.

Today I went to a restaurant that had been recommended. It was a little more expensive, but significantly nicer than most of the others. I had an antipasto of seafood. It was similar to the previous one, but had more different things. The latti di sepia this time was described to me as the eggs of the squid. 2 of the sources I have say seppia is cuttlefish, but probably cuttlefish is a type of squid. But eggs? Today I was given 2 and they were about 5cm by 3 by 2. Same consistency and colour as before but to have eggs that size it must be quite big . More thought required. ( I am limited in my email time and download so some things will have to wait) . I also had some schie which looked like the tiniest prawns you could imagine. Then I had some lasagna with ricotta and spinach which was really light and delicious.

I started this trip by asking a few times for a bicchierre of wine and was not understood so I asked for a quarto and was understood. There are other words ombra and calice and calicino. I have just been down to the local bar to sort this out. Calice and calicino are interchangeable. Ombra is what you ask for if you want a glass of table wine. Table wine is bought in huge glass bottle things with what looks like cane around them that I have seen a shop selling. Bars always seem to have it decanted into jugs. An ombra is usually smaller than a calice. A calice is what you ask for if you want a glass of bottled wine that is slightly better than table wine. A bicchiere is not used much in this part of the world, but she said it was usually used if you wanted a slightly bigger glass of table wine than an ombra. Having said that I am sure the other day for lunch I asked for a bicchiere of vino rosso at lunch time and got a largish glass poured from a bottle. She could understand me, but despite me asking her to speak slowly she spoke quickly and I did not catch all of it. I am only a little the wiser.There was another option of having a smaller amount of wine in a calcino size glass. While I was there I had a calcino glass of red refosca – slightly sweet – for 1.10 euro., but maybe she only gave me an ombra-sized amount. Clear as mud?