If God....

...had meant us to spend time whitewashing vaulted ceilings, he would have designed us differently! With much longer arms, for example, and most probably with a sort of umbrella attachment to the head. Even despite the design deficiencies, this morning I still decided to go ahead and paint the Tinello ( the name we rather dubiously apply to the snug) which spent the winter accumulating fumes from endless open fires, and as a result the walls of the room were filthy. I'd been meaning to do it for months, but while the Brazilians were still creating chaos and mayhem on the first floor, I somehow couldn't bring myself to add to the general level of mess.

And so.......after three hours of increasingly bad-tempered wrestling with various rollers and brushes and paint pots and ladders and plastic sheeting and newspaper and paint-spills, it was sufficiently done for me to call it a day.......while the technical department regarded the trail of disaster in my wake with a jaundiced eye, and (verbally) said nothing. The most irritating part about it was the tendency for the old layers of paint to flake off under pressure of the roller, exposing large gaps of frescoed wall-surface beneath. Which is par for the course in these parts, as any wall that's more than sixty years old will have spent much of its previous existence covered completely in many different generations of frescoed decoration; I don't think we have a wall in the entire house which doesn't have remnants of fresco on it somewhere. And as everybody in this town knows, the first thing you do when you come across something like that is to slap some paint over it as fast as you can - otherwise, before you know it, the Belli Arte have slapped a preservation order on the place, and your life thereafter ceases to be your own!

As a form of catharsis, I now intend to spend an hour or so making Rabbit in tecia, following a classic venetian recipe which uses rosemary and a mirepoix of the standard aromatics. After a 24 hour rest, it should be in fine form for tomorrow night's supper, and I should have recovered from my Michaelangel-esque travails of this morning. I've also just been sent a strudel recipe which has a filling of hazelnut mousse and seedless grapes. Sounds interesting. Watch this space....

Tonight's Menu:

Asparagus 'Oscuro' - a slightly purple variety, that I've only ever seen here; more strongly flavoured than the more normal green type.

Maurizio's Salsiccie Lunghe, with Aubergine sauteed with Garlic and Parsley.

Chocolate Souffles.

Recipe: Sauteed Fennel & Radicchio

The combination of these two vegetables is excellent, where the bitterness of the Radicchio splendidly offsets the sweet aniseed flavour of the Fennel.

For Four.

Ingredients: 1 oz Butter; 1 tablespoon Olive Oil; 1 large Fennel; 1 large Radicchio de Treviso (the long variety rather than the round one - these have a milder and less astringent flavour); 1 small Onion; Salt & Pepper; half a cup of dry White Wine.

Method:

1. Heat Olive Oil and Butter in a saute pan, then add Onion, finely diced, and heat until softened and golden.

2. Remove the 'fingers' and a thin slice from the base of the Fennel, and cut the Fennel itself into approximately 1 cm dice; trim the base of the Radicchio and slice it once lengthwise, and then cut it across into 1 cm slices. Add Fennel and Radicchio to the pan and stir thoroughly. Cook gently, covered, for about ten minutes, until the vegetables have thoroughly collapsed.

3. Add the Wine, stir, bring to the boil over high heat and boil to reduce the liquid slightly, then reduce the heat. Simmer, still covered for another ten minutes.

4. Raise the heat and cook, uncovered, to reduce any remaining liquid. Add seasoning to taste, and serve.

A must-have......

....for any kitchen is an efficient cherry pitter. The bit of kit, I mean, rather than the poor unfortunate (normally) who has to wield it. And more than just any old cherry pitter, it should be a Westmark cherry pitter, for the simple reason that they are amazing. Using mine yesterday evening, I was struck by how every cherry was pitted perfectly every time, completely effortlessly, and with none of that fumbling with every second or third fruit to try and see whether the stone actually had come out because I couldn't be quite certain, by the end of which my hands are usually stained deeply with cherry juice, and half of the cherries are in shreds as a result! I am painfully familiar with this process, as the pitter I have in London is not a Westmark, but something nameless and of inferior quality.

Westmark are German - somehow, not surprisingly. They have a website (www.westmark.de), from which you can ascertain more about the science of pitting cherries (and plums, and olives....) than you would ever have thought possible. I'm not terribly interested in that, I have to confess - but I am interested in the fact that I could perfectly pit all the cherries I needed for clafoutis for two (and to have blended the batter) in the time it took to bring a a pot of Claudia's Papardelle to the boil, which was definitely under five minutes!

I bought my Westmark pitter as an impulse purchase at David Mellor in Sloane Square - always a silly thing to do, as I remembered once I reached the cash desk - but I see that now you can get them for quite reasonable prices in all sorts of places. Amazon in Germany are offering them for only four and a half euros a go........

The Kitchen has definitely taken second place to the Garden over the past few days, as this week we are first on the agenda in the 'James Bolton Garden Tours' spring visit to Tuscany - hence much effort has been devoted to slashing, and hacking-back and pruning and weeding, and generally making things presentable. Which explains even more focus than usual on labour-saving efficiency in the kitchen. A combination of lack of time and an aching back!

Today we celebrate - if that's the right word - Pisa's annual Marathon. They started from Pontadera at 8.30 this morning, and by 9.45 the first runners were pattering past our front door, through an otherwise completely, eerily deserted street (Italians do not do Sunday mornings......not for anything). By the time the first few hundred had gone by, several hours later, there were a few more people around - although the response from the passers by was more one of wary bemusement than of awed respect. Today was undoubtedly the hottest day of the year, so far, and clearly the general feeling was that these people were in need of some kind of help. Mind you, Pisani are pretty good at sophisticatedly disinterested apathy about these sorts of things. We have a boat-based Palio every June, with the requisite banner-tossing and medieval costumes, and as far as I can see nobody over the age of fifteen takes the slightest notice of it, but all take the opportunity of a day off to head out to the beach instead. Not sure I blame them.

Tonight's Menu:

Almonds roast with Oil and Paprika, as an amuse-gueule

Ravioli of Mucco and Tartufo.

Baked Sea Bass, with sauteed Radicchio and Fennel.

Iced Gingerbread and White Chocolate Parfait, with poached Prunes.

Recipe: Tartes aux Moules

This is my version of a Pomiane classic, from the man himself. I always make it as a starter a day or two after we've had Moules Marinieres, using leftover cooked mussels and the ladleful or so of marinieres cooking liquid that is always left.

For Two.

Ingredients: Approximately twenty cooked Mussels in their cooking liquid*; 2 sheets Phyllo Pastry, approx. 12" x 6"; 1 oz Butter; 1 Egg; 1 tablespoon plain Flour; 2 tablespoons Cream; 1 tablespoon chopped Parsley.

* If you don't have them leftover from an earlier recipe, then cook them as follows: combine 1 wineglass of vermouth, 1 large minced garlic clove, 2 oz Butter, two or three sprigs of Parsley and a generous grinding of pepper. Heat these ingredients first for three or four minutes, to melt the butter and boil off the alcohol, then add the mussels and cook over high heat, with the lid on the pan, for eleven minutes; the Mussels are cooked when the shells are open, the mussels have turned a deep orange, and the strong cooking odour has dissipated.)

Method.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degree C. Shell the Mussels.

2. Melt the butter, and use it to brush the sheets of Phyllo Pastry. Cut each sheet into two, and use these to make a double layer tart shell in each of two greased false-bottomed individual flan tins. Using baking weights, blind bake the shells for five minutes with the weights in, and then remove the weights and continue cooking until the shell bases are nicely browned. Remove from the oven.

3. Beat the Egg in a bowl; add the ladleful of cooking liquid from the Mussels, and the Cream; whisk energetically, and then add the Flour and incorporate this thoroughly.

4. Divide the Mussels between the tart shells, arranging them evenly within the shells. Carefully pour the Cream mixture into each tart shell, filling them as high as you can, and almost covering the Mussels.

5. Return the filled tart shells to the oven. After about five minutes, the cream will show signs of solidifying, and in another five minutes it will begin to rise. Total cooking time is about fifteen minutes, by which time the tarts will have puffed dramatically, and the tops should be nicely browned. Avoid the temptation to take them out too early, before the browning process has happened.

Serve warm, sprinkled with chopped Parsley.

Asparagus.........

....is well and truly here! One of the few seasonal products - strawberries being another - where the arrival of the real thing is actually worth celebrating, and one can stop being fooled by the pretty-but-tasteless fakes that we get offered all winter, and which all-but fool us into forgetting what the wonderful taste of these things really is.
I don't know why, but in the UK we don't seem to shout about the arrival of seasonal asparagus in the way that they do in other countries. In years gone by, when I had to attend the Basle annual jewellery fair (which, by the way, is a whole story in itself!), I remember it generally coincided with the arrival of the first of the asparagus crop, and the enthusiasm on the part of the locals to sample that year's Spargel was easily as great as used to be the case in London for the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau (which I confess I always thought a slightly silly thing to do, anyway). And again, in another business incarnation, we were in Munich doing business with the owner of a Chocolate School, and the conclusion of negotiations involved him insisting that we all go off and sample the arrival of the new asparagus, which we duly did at four in the afternoon - only to meet friends for dinner that same evening, who insisted equally on going off to do exactly the same thing only four hours later. I don't think I minded, but it probably confirmed the image I already had of Munich as a centre of eccentricity and decadence.


Asparagus is one of the foods that is best left entirely to its own devices, and mucked around with as little as possible. I don't even bother shaving the ends off before cooking it - which probably consigns me to cooking hell - but instead leave people to sort out the point at which they don't want to go any further, and leave the ends at the side of their plate. I don't use one of those complicated vertical asparagus steamers, but merely cook the asparagus in plenty of boiling salted water (generally in my largest saute pan, with the lid on) testing it for done-ness at the first hint of cooked asparagus assailing my nostrils. As a method, it works. Then, melted butter if I'm feeling lazy, and Hollandaise if I'm not. Other than that, Asparagus makes sense in a risotto, but I can't see the point of roasting it, or of using it in any of the other ways that people have devised over the years, seemingly in need of a way further to justify its existence. To my way of thinking, it is well-justified without any further effort.

And for those who need any further explanation, I can only refer them to 'Love in the Time of Cholera', in which the central character cites asparagus as his favourite food for reasons that will strike a chord in the minds of all asparagus lovers everywhere. That moment several hours later, when one wrinkles one's nose and says in recognition 'Ah, yes.....I did have asparagus for supper, I'd entirely forgotten...!'

Tonight's Dinner:

Boudin Blanc, lightly sauteed, with a Cream and Truffle sauce

Onglet, grilled, served with Mushrooms and Shallots.

Raspberry Pies.

Recipe: Raspberry Bread & Butter Pudding

For Six.

Ingredients: 1 Brioche, approximately 6" in diameter; 4 oz of Butter; half a pint of Milk; half a pint of Cream; 1 teaspoon of Vanilla Essence; 2 Eggs; 8 oz of fresh Raspberries; 3 dessert spoons of sugar.

Method:

1. Butter an 8" souffle dish. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C.

2. Put the Milk, Cream and Vanilla in a zimmertopf or double boiler, and heat together over a gentle heat while you slice the Brioche.

3. Slice the Brioche thinly enough to make enough slices for three complete layers in the souffle dish. Butter one side of all of the slices. Then make one layer of Brioche in the dish, placing the pieces butter-side up.

4. Scatter half of the Raspberries over the Brioche layer, then sprinkle with a dessert spoon of Sugar.

5. Make a second layer of Brioche over the Raspberries, and over that scatter the remaining Raspberries and another spoonful of Sugar.

6. Beat the Eggs in a bowl, and then pour the milk/cream mixture onto the eggs, beating gently to incorporate them. Slowly pour this custard into the souffle dish, allowing the Brioche slices to absorb it as you do so.

7. Once the Custard has all been poured in, make a final layer of Brioche slices, and sprinkle the final spoonful of Sugar over the top. Allow to sit for about 20 minutes, then bake for 45 minutes in the pre-heated oven. A skewer inserted into the centre will show if the pudding is done if it comes out clean. Allow the pudding to cool slightly before serving.

You can also make this in individual ramekins (if so, choose the deep ones if you have them), in which case bake for about 15 minutes at 180 degrees C.

In this household there is a difference of opinion about the best way to consume this pudding. The Technical Department prefers it hot, when the top is still good and crisp. I, on the other hand, think it is wonderful served cold (chilled, even) the next day, when the creamy brioche has taken on a velvety texture, and the flavour of the vanilla and the raspberries is sensational!

Your choice.

Creeping Pedantry......

Julian Barnes must be catching! I found myself critically analysing Rowley Leigh's recipe in this past weekend's FT for Squab with Peas and Mint, and harrumphing quite damningly about the fact that the recipe fell to pieces in the middle. It got to the point where the birds went into the 250 degree oven, and then before you knew it the temperature was reduced to 200, and they were cooked to brown for a further ten minutes, without there having been a first period of cooking for the further period to succeed. If you follow me.......

And then he talked vaguely about what to do with the vegetables in the roasting dish, without focusing on the fact that he'd already got two different lots of vegetables in two different roasting dishes, and it was entirely unclear which one he was talking about. Oh, it was all capable of being untangled and I pretty much sorted out what was actually supposed to happen, but by the time I'd done that, the gastric juices had dissipated, and decided I couldn't really be bothered with it. I could practically hear JB throwing saucepans against the wall in frustration.......!

In my list of larder staples, I realise I forgot Duck fat. I always have a pot of Duck Fat on the go, and dismember a Gressingham or Aylesbury every couple of months, in order to keep supplies up. The bones get used for stock, the breasts for grilled Magrets, and the rest is confited, while the fat is trimmed and rendered, normally providing a couple of pints of first-class usable stuff (plus a bowl of wonderfully crisp pieces of Duck 'crackling' - which last for all of about two minutes in this household!) . Much to recommend it.

Tonight's Dinner............is in Moreton Terrace, and so as yet unknown. With luck it will be the Moreton Terrace version of Cow Pie, which is stunning!