Mercatino

“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again.”

-George Miller


On Wednesday mornings, I walk past the cafes on the lungomare, past the intoxicating smells of strong espresso and sweet pastries, to the “mercatino”, a weekly outdoor market held in a seafront parking lot at the southern edge of town. Striped vendor tents are lined up in two long rows with a walkway down the middle. The merchants spread out their wares and park their trucks and vans behind them, ready to make a quick exit in the early afternoon.
By mid-morning the market is already crowded, with locals and tourists (all Italians). The tourists are generally better dressed, and tend to mill and wander, sometimes pointing or taking photographs. The locals are more businesslike, rolling their smart canvas shopping carts behind them.
I walk slowly along the hot, sunny walkway, because every few steps I’ll need to brake quickly, when Carloforte neighbors suddenly stop to greet one another. “Ciao, bella!” they shout with exuberance, like they haven’t seen each other for ages, like they didn’t just see each other at the festa the other night. Then there’s the inevitable kiss (sometimes left/right/left and sometimes right/left/right), the full body hug, big smile, then a laugh, followed by simultaneous talking and gesticulating.
I smile longingly and scoot around them, feeling a slight pang of jealousy at these friendly chance-meetings, and a little ache thinking about all my friends back in Portland, and the simple pleasure of seeing a familiar face at the local market, or dog park, or coffee shop..
In fact, we’re so accustomed to seeing friends everywhere we go, that we still inadvertently look for them here. So far we’ve seen the Italian twin of Corey, Dickey, Debbie, Diana, and several Johns…just to name a few.
I think about how many times I have actually seen someone I know at this weekly market and the answer is once – last week, when I saw the man who lives on the boat next to ours. We both smiled and greeted each other with a nod, smile and a “giorno” (the “buon” in “buongiorno” is often silent here).
I scan the first few tents, where vendors sell household goods, kitchen items, linens, clothing, bathing suits, towels, shoes, toys, plants. Usually, I need something in this section, whether it’s a dish towel or wooden spoon, a snorkel or parsley plant.
I generally avoid the clothing tents, where the merchants show off their “best” on hangers swinging from the roof supports--racks of house dresses, fancy men’s slacks, wispy see-through beach cover-ups, sequin-studded micro bikinis—they’re mostly overpriced unless I get lucky at the 5 Euro table. The smell Italian leather is strong as I pass tables of glossy purses and high-heeled pumps or my favorite Italian shoe: the OPEN-toed “boot”—is it a boot, or is it a shoe? Sometimes it’s flat, like a flip flop, sometimes high-heeled, like an open pump, but with a leather wrap around the ankle or lower leg—a sensible choice on those days when your toes are hot but your calves are cold.
At about the halfway mark, the tents change to food and the air fills with the pungent fragrance of cheese and the earthy smell of vegetables.
I’ve learned to go to the market with a very short grocery list, because the food options change constantly, according to what’s fresh and seasonal. Whether cherries or peaches, clams or tuna, I’ve learned to adapt my cooking, so that I buy what looks good and then spontaneously formulate a meal plan around it.
Interestingly our longing for Thai, Asian and Mexican dishes are starting to give way to the available, seasonal foods of Italy (certainly not limited to pasta)--as if our bodies are adapting to the natural environment. We still make ethnic dishes, but they’re modified with Italian ingredients.
It’s making me see things very differently, with regard to “eating locally”.
It seems so logical and right, yet I admit, I am accustomed to living in Portland, Oregon, where one can satisfy nearly any food whim at the local grocery store. Brought in from hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away, I can find asparagus, artichokes and berries out of season, and fish that wouldn’t be caught dead in Pacific Northwest waters
It reassuring that, with few exceptions, the food in Carloforte is local – if not from Sardenia, then at least close by. The exceptions include pineapple, bananas and avocado which come from Africa (closer to Carloforte than mainland Italy).
I notice that vendors at the marketino often sell the same items, but I’ve learned to return to my favorites not only because they remember me, but because I like to think I’m getting better service being a “regular” customer. I stop at my favorite cheese tent, and in practiced Italian I ask for a slab of fresh soft pecorino, which tastes smooth and slightly sweet, nothing like the hard, aged, salty kind. Next I order a large wedge of Parmesano Reggiano, heavenly with a caramelized, buttery taste. Never have we tasted Parmesan this good. I usually buy salami here and sometimes olive oil that’s sold in used 1-1/2 liter plastic water bottles, still with their labels. The oil is a luminous, goldish-green color, with a velvety smooth taste and a peppery finish. The first time I bought it, I asked the cheese man, “Dove questo fare?” (where this make) and he pointed to himself, and said, “Da me, a Carbonia” (by me, in Carbonia) a town about 15 miles away, on Sardinia. It makes me ridiculously happy to know the man who is making my olive oil.
One vendor sells nuts, another sells olives swimming in tubs of brine. Many vendors sell fresh local eggs, with bright orange yolks and thin spotted shells, sometimes with feathers still clinging to them. No one refrigerates eggs in Italy.
I stop at one of the fruit and vegetable tents and grab several blue “boostas” (plastic bags) for my purchases, being careful not to mix my produce. They frown when you mix your fennel with your onions.
I grab a small bundle of the sweet, tiny carrots that Jenna loves, with their green plumy tops and thin, tapered ends, clumps of dirt still hanging on them like they were just dug up this morning. I get a cantaloupe that is so sweet I eat the whole thing for breakfast one day, wrapping the wedges with salty prosciutto and slipping them into my mouth, one by one. I buy fresh cherries and perfectly ripe peaches that Jenna and I slice and make into a “crisp” topped with crushed hard cookies mixed with melted butter. Once we even made a grilled peach appetizer. We brushed the peach slabs with olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper, then slipped them onto a piping hot grill for a minute, and draped them with paper-thin slices of fresh pecorino and prosciutto.
I stand, shoulder to shoulder with the other customers, ready to hand my bags to the merchant. The window of personal space is smaller here—people stand closer together, often brushing up and bumping against each other, so close I can often guess who has left the house without brushing their teeth, or showering.
When it’s finally my turn, I hand my bags to the vendor, and sometimes ask for something else, like arugula or parsley, something that I think they might have (but that I don’t see), and they often reach into a hidden bag or their van to get it for me. How many other things are hidden behind the tables? They weigh my items and charge me what always seems like too little—usually just a few euro for loads of produce. I’m always prepared with plenty of coins, because vendors love getting exact change (they frown and look exasperated if they have to make change). Most of the time they give me a “Grazie, senora” afterward, but occasionally they call me “Madame” thinking I’m French. I’m not sure why.
At the far end of the market is the riotous fish counter, always my last stop so I can rush back home. The fish men (there are three) stand on a raised platform, with a long counter in front of them and the fish splayed out on the crushed ice below them. There’s always a huge fish up on the counter—tonno (tuna) in the earlier season, now pesce spada (swordfish)--with either an alarmingly large head or fin showing. The fish men hack away huge slabs of the meaty flesh, and then wrap it up delicately in paper.
I look to see what’s offered this week, stand on tiptoe, but it’s tricky because there are about twenty customers standing in front of the fish, yelling, pointing, anxious to place their orders. As usual, most of the fish is utterly unrecognizable to me, however I do see vongole (clams), gamberi (shrimp) and calamari.
One week, they were selling tiny live crabs. The crabs were stuffed into a large bag with airholes, but the crabs kept jabbing their tiny pinchers at the holes, making them bigger, and crawling out. One of the fish men was standing next to the bag, grabbing the errant mini-crabs and placing them into a high-sided crate nearby. But the number of escaping crabs far outweighed the quickness of one fish man. Jenna noticed tiny crabs crawling on the table, tiny crabs jumping off the table, tiny crabs making a break for it along the pavement, and tiny crabs slipping into the storm drain, so she jumped in to help, gently lifting up their little bodies with thumb and first finger and placing them into the crate.
The fish men are always yelling—at the customers, at each other. “Cozze, cozze!” yells one of them, and another man races to their van and comes back with more fresh mussels to throw onto the ice.
The customers are literally shoving each other to see what’s offered, yelling their orders to the fish men. But everyone is good-natured, happy.
I always get this nervous, excited feeling at the fish market. Heart pounding, chewing my lower lip, I practice my words—vongole, gamberi, calamari. Vongole, gamberi, calamari…
The calamari will require the most work. First I’ll have to cut off the head with the buggy eyes, cut off flaps and squirting ink sacks, reserve tentacles, remove long stringy things and reach inside to pull out the slimy guts and remove the thin flat bone. It’s a gruesome job to get it to look like the thin white fish I’m used to, but it’s worth it.
Finally, it’s my turn to order.
“DIGA!” (tell me) the fish man shouts, pointing at me.
“Vongole?” I say.
“EH?!” The fish man shouts at me, because my voice is ALWAYS too soft. I end up having to shout my order.
“VONGOLE!” I shout.
“GRANDE o PICCOLO!?” (large or small) the fish man yells. The clams are sold in various size bundles, held together by a black net.
“PICCOLO!” I shout. Then I order the shrimp.
“QUALE!?” (which kind) the fish man demands. I hate this part. There are about six different things that LOOK like shrimp, but may in fact be something else. I point and keep my fingers crossed. Then I order the calamari.
“QUANTI!?” (how many) the fish man yells.
I stand on tiptoe to see how big they are. This week they’re huge.
“DUE!” (two) I shout.
“ALTRO?!” (something else) the fish man yells.
“No, va bene” (no it’s good) I say with a shy smile.
Whew. It’s over. I pay for the fish which is, surprisingly, always MORE than I expected. The fish man hands me my bags, but as I reach for them I feel my stomach brush up against the slimy wet fish at the edge of the crushed ice. I’ll need to wash this shirt.

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The recipes…
- Grilled calamari tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper, served on a bed of fresh, nutty arugula.
- Creamy risotto, with fresh clams and shrimp, using a fish stock made from the shrimp peels.
- Spaghetti alla vongole with fresh clams, lemon, parsley, red pepper flakes.
- Seafood pasta salad, with fresh corkscrew pasta, basil puree, red pepper, red onion, olives, baby peas, shrimp and calamari

NEXT UP: Who knows…?