Having missed out at the restaurant in Colorno we decided to go a little off-route to visit out favourite restaurant in Italy. Ai Ciuvin is another restaurant that offers places for motorhomes only here they provide toilets, showers and electricity, all at no charge! Ai Ciuvin is close to the small village of Castiglione Tinella, south of Asti and it is here that we met the Italians who gave us the AgriPleinAir booklet. In their opinion, the Asti wine area is prettier than Tuscany and every time that I go there I get to like it more.
When we arrived at Ai Ciuvin we found the gates locked and no motorhomes parked up. There was no response to the bell and we came to the conclusion that they were probably on holiday. Hopefully they were not also in mourning. We continued on over those lovely steep hills covered in vines and topped with medieval towns and villages. I am determined to spend more time investigating the area next time that we come to Italy.
We took a cross-country route to get to Pinerolo and the Chisone Valley south-west of Turin. We intend to cross over the pass at Sestriere and on to France tomorrow but time was getting on and we decided to camp whilst still in Italy. We chose a small (8 motorhome) camperstop in Fenestrelle half-way up the valley. This turned out to be an inspired choice as we joined four other motorhomes just north of the village at the camperstop that had wonderful views up and down the valley and over the village dominated by a massive fortress, the largest alpine fortress in Europe covering 1,300,000 square metres. Snow was still visible in amongst the clouds that swirled around the mountains on all sides.
It was a lovely, calm and warm evening and we walked down into the village and found a restaurant to have our long-awaited Italian meal. We had the option of pizza or a set menu and we opted for the €18 menu that included two antipasta dishes, a pasta, a main course and ¼ litre of wine. For antipasta we had grilled goats cheese, anchovies with pesto and a seafood salad. We both chose a wild mushroom risotto for the second course, Jane had roast veal with french beans and I had duck in an orange sauce with artichokes. It was all very good as was the wine but the most memorable part of the evening was my talk with the chef.
I have built a wood-fired pizza in my garden, which I use to cook all of our bread. I have also cooked some pizzas in it but I need more knowledge and experience. This was an ideal opportunity to watch an expert at work! Small balls of dough were transformed into pizza shapes in less than a minute – it takes me about five minutes! Then came the tomato sauce spooned onto the dough and spread with a simple swirl of the ladle so that it evenly covered the whole of the pizza. Toppings were added, the peel dipped into a pile of flour before being slid under the pizza and used to place it into the oven a short distance away from the fire. A small round peel was used to turn the pizza to ensure that it was cooked evenly and then it was taken out with the standard peel just a couple of minutes later.
I discovered that the pizza chef spoke good English and had a long chat with him – he had an interesting story to tell. He was a young Iranian who had completed a degree in Mathematics and was hoping to take a masters degree in statistics. He lived in Jordan and was the son of a Jordanian father and a Romanian mother and has married a lovely Romanian woman who was our waitress in the restaurant. In order to raise money to do his doctorate he knew that he needed to find a job that would provide the necessary money. He chose to be a pizza chef and said that he stole the knowledge from an Italian pizza chef. He worked in an Italian pizza restaurant doing the menial tasks, spending nearly a year spreading the tomato sauce on the pizza dough! Now he is an expert in all the areas of pizza making lovely looking pizzas quickly and efficiently. I admired the sacrifices that he and his wife were making to complete his education and it puts into perspective the discussions that are going on in Britain about university tuition fees.
Photos: Vineyard and Palazzo in Asti; The aire at Fenestrelle.
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