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When I lived in Milano, we inhabited a very tiny studio apartment with a shared exterior walkway, basically a connected balcony. They were quite a common architecture - Una Casa di Ringhiera - literally "Guard Rail House." All the apartments in the building were accessed through an common outdoor walkway, which ran the length of the building on each floor, serviced by a common stairwell.

The walkways faced an inner open courtyard. It was a hyper-connected space with a curious sense of a mini community - you knew all your neighbours, even the ones you didn't. Public and private were porous. The building had an exterior street-side facade, usually with retail on the ground level, and an interiority made up of connected elements – a lot like our own individual selves with our appearance of a uniformity and interconnected multiverse inside – we are no different than a Casa di Ringhiera. Just like our own internal lives, some of the Casas squabble endlessly, some remain largely at peace – most are mixed bags of muddles.

On the ground floor, there was an apartment with a bakery on the street. Baking started early in the morning and we could tell what was going in and out of the oven all day. Biscotti, ciabatta, piadine, torte, brioche, chiacchiere, zeppole, sfogliatelli... and of course Foccacia - with so many different toppings – on certain days of the week we would catch the wafting allure of the much-coveted potato and leek focaccia - my all-time fave. A quick trip out to the balcony and down the stairs was all it took to scratch that itch ;-)

Potato and Leek Focaccia

by Yossy Arefi, NY Times.

Just for you - here's a recipe for the most curious alchemy of potato and leek Foccacia (I know – the NYT recipe paywall is particularly annoying – and yet thanks to their gift links I can share this with you... click the image to access the recipe in your browser :-)

Yum! As always, thanks for reading – and indulging!