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ShareIn Italian terminology it is termed the "fifth quarter", those parts of the beast when all the prime cuts have been removed, including the liver and kidneys. So a dish traditionally eaten on a Thursday, tripe, was one of the dishes I had, served in rich tomato sauce. Oxtails and trotters are also popular.
Roman restaurants abide by certain traditions, if it is tripe on Thursday, it must be the salt cod or baccala on Friday. In fact, at a trattoria in the Trastevere, the working class area of the city, now slowly being gentrified, I enjoyed a classic Roman combination of baccala with ceci, (chickpeas) and the combination worked successfully. In fact, ceci was a feature in a number of Roman dishes; one of my favourites was a delicious soup consisting of pasta and ceci.
If one does not particularly like tripe or offal, there is always the pasta. The traditional Roman pasta dish is the spaghetti all amatriciana (tomatoes, onions, sausage) although that is often overshadowed by the spaghetti carbonara invented supposedly at Alfredo's in the 1920s.
I personally find the carbonara too rich -- eggs, parmesan and pancetta, sometimes cream make for an obscenely rich pasta sauce. Otherwise, there is no shortage of other kinds of pasta as there are numerous pan Italian restaurants serving pastas and risottos from all over Italy.
One dish which is a tribute to the Roman genius for casual foods is the Saltimbocca alla Romana, the ultimate comfort food, a veal scalloppine between two layers of wax paper with the sharp edge of a slice of prosciutto, a sage leaf and fried in olive oil.You can eat it with a tooth pick and drink a glass of Chianti whilst sitting in a sunlit piazza.
The restaurant scene is changing, as new establishments which are more experimental are coming on to the gastronome's radar. I went to a particularly interesting one in the Trastevere area, the Glass Hosteria which had exquisitely innovative food. I had monk fish with a tamarind sabayon sauce.
A tamarind sabayon sauce is something you would imagine would be a contradiction in terms: it worked beautifully. There were many other witty touches, the use of Asian flavours and techniques on some classical European dishes, not much unfortunately, for my vegetarian friend who was with me. She had to make do with some tofu. The desserts were a little too adventurous even for my liking, iced lasagna with coal mouse was something even I drew a line at!
But my best meal on this short trip was not in Rome at all. I visited some old friends in a charming fishing town between Rome and Naples, on the coast, Terracina and when my friends picked me up they took me to the fish market where I was given choice of the freshest fish you could imagine.
I chose a magnificent looking turbot (not cheap at €33) and we bought some scampi. The fish was cooked in half an hour and we sat down to a splendid lunch, overlooking the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Pure bliss!
