Then I walked around Bologna for a while. There was a big art festival in Bologna this weekend, so there were some street performers in the Piazza Maggiore and lots of people all around. Picked up a piece of mushroom pizza since the croustini and arugula were not particularly filling.
Later on I found a great food market in Piazza VIII Augosto. It was all local producers of meats, cheeses, some vegetables, breads, spices, etc... and, of course, I LOVED it! A lot of the stalls seemed to be empty, probably since it's mid-winter and snowed a lot that day, but there were still a dozen or so there. I picked up some ricotta, some chili pepper flakes and some speck (basically a smoked prosciutto). And the best part - everyone was offering tons of free samples, so I snacked on great cheeses, mini-croustini with these delicious assorted dips, slices of salami, pieces of cream-filled pastries. Doesn't get any better than that.
It's amazing what I continually stumble upon in this city. This market being one example. Another is that today as I was walking home, I came upon this tiny Osteria. I had never seen it, but I looked over the menu which seemed to have some really delicious offerings, and decided that I would have to go try it soon. Later, I was looking through a pamphlet for Slow Food Bologna (www.slowfoodbologna.it, Slow Food is an international organization dedicated to supporting locally-grown food and food culture) and found that this Osteria worked with Slow Food to do locally-grown dinners. I can't wait to try it!
Ok, for dinner I had two types of frizelle (which are these little toasted bread rounds they sell, basically for making croustini-like things). One had some of the ricotta that I bought at the market with olive oil, salt, pepper and some of the pepper flakes. The other had a mixture of chickpeas, arugula, red onion, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper flakes topped with a fried egg. So good and very filling!
