Rome Food to Try II

The first list of food to try was getting too long so I decided to start a new one.  Please add the Dolci, Fernando.  Here's a link: I 15 dolci migliori di Roma.

La Vignarola cleaning chicory

La Misticanza
I'm browsing through David Downie's Cooking the Roman Way, reading the side columns talking about the food, and he has one on "Mysterious Misticanza, Rome's Favorite Salad".  It is a salad of raw mixed wild greens and herbs, which you can get from the vignarola or cicoriare, the chicory specialists, and it contains things like acetosa, erba brusca, barba di frate, erba stella, burragine, bucalossi, caccialepri, cariota, cicorietta, erba noce, piedigallo, grespino, indiviola, lattughella, ojosa, piede-di-papavero, pimpinella, porcacchia, radicette, raponzoli, riccetta, rughetta...  So this is definitely something we'll have to pick up at the markets, although it was originally something the little old ladies picked by the roadside in spring.  It does come packaged in the supermercati but I imagine it has been toned down a bit so that now it tastes like "spring mix".  Maybe I should try growing it with the Italian Misticanza seeds from Renee's Garden, except that the Italian chicory I once grew was horribly bitter.

La Vignarola
David Downie has a recipe for this in a New York Times article: La Vignarola: Roman-Style Spring Vegetable Stew.   When I was in Spain on the Camino, I kept trying their Menestra, a similar spring vegetable stew, but it was always well stewed.  Will Vignarola be the same overcooked mush?  This recipe from the Rome Digest sounds like it wouldn't be but it probably depends on the cook and must then be made to order, not sit around all day.  It contains artichokes, fava beans, peas and lettuce.  I think Penny might like it.  No innards except for the guanciale and that isn't exactly an "innard".  Unfortunately we aren't going to be there in the spring...

Pizza bianca

Pizza Bianca
No, this isn't the cheese pizza without the tomato sauce, it is the pizza flatbread alone, or maybe brushed with olive oil.  Downie says the best is at Roscioli's l'Antico Forno between the Campo dei Fiori and the Jewish Ghetto.  Others say it's at the nearby  Forno Campo De' Fiori.  We could try both and still have room for others mentioned in Serious Eats: "Chasing Pizza Bianca in Rome".

Porchetta

Porchetta
According to Spotted by Locals, porchetta "is a whole pig, stuffed with its own meat, fat, herbs and spices, and then roasted to perfection."  That sounds good to me and probably awfully good to Fernando.  Porchetta is highly recommended by Anthony Bourdain who uses his normal starred vocabulary to describe it.  Porchetta is from the nearby town of Ariccia but SbL says the best place in Rome to get it is in Pignetto at I Porchettoni, where they also have horse jerky and mule's testicles (?).  It looked like it might be hard to get to but it only takes about 1/2 hour on the bus.  The Rome Digest tells you how to get there and says there's another location in San Lorenzo by the university, which only takes 20 minutes by bus.  I thought Fernando might like to visit the university but it looks like it is a walled city.

Or we can take a half hour train trip to Marino Laziale just outside Rome to visit Il Nocino Bernabei where Katie Parla says they do porchetta right (she even has a video to show us how they do it).  Elizabeth Minchilli also says the best porchetta is at Bernabei's and recommends going there because it's only half an hour away...