The First Peach of the Year....

Delicious and sweet! Small, admittedly, but the flesh was juicy and the flavour intense. I wouldn't have thought to pick it, but as an unfortunate windfall, found beneath the tree yesterday morning, it was duly sacrificed and was found to be perfect...

In a garden which has such a vibrant bird population as this one, the chance of getting a decent peach crop is next to nil, as the fruit - for the most part - is delicately pecked while still on the branch. I can't say I begrudge the birds their plunder, since the birdsong is such a pleasure, and it was never the idea that we wanted to be self-sufficient in Peaches anyway, given the abundance that's readily available in the market all of three minutes' walk away. In any event, the fruit looks wonderful on the tree, and the smell of peaches in that part of the garden is pretty heady.

To Osteria Violino for dinner last night, in Via Tinta, just across the river. Giovanni and Lara recommended it ages ago, and Sarah took us there for the first evening of her weekend here. Quiet - in fact, we were the only people there - but the food was good: swordfish carpaccio, and a delicious leek sformatino, followed by a squid-ink pasta that was as delicious as it was alarming, colouring everybody's lips and teeth a dense goth-new-romantic black that looked rather worryingly indelible as it was transferred delicately onto napkins. Definitely not a dish for a romantic date! All washed down by a very good bottle of Falanghina - which seems to be this year's 'wine of the moment' .....A langorous stroll home across the Ponte di Mezzo, and through the crowd in Piazza Garibaldi who were half-concentrating on the antics of a live band performing under the arcade of the Casino, and then home, to sit in the candle-lit loggia, drinking grappa and contemplating the campanile of San Francesco illuminated against the night sky. A summer night in Tuscany....

And the passing of an era. A phone call earlier this week to our aged Falegname, Bruno, elicited the throaty response from his wife that he was 'under the ground'....and thinking that she meant he was in the cellar, the question how long he was likely to be down there got the unambiguous reply: "permanently. We buried him!" He was eighty seven, and had lived in Cascina, a few miles down the road from Pisa, for his entire life. He learnt his craft before the last war, presumably from somebody who had trained in carpentry in the last years of the nineteenth century, and had laboriously over the years churned out for us beautiful doors, and shutters, and french windows, and an enormous refectory table...all crafted with a skill that nobody knows any more. Poor hearing meant that his interminable stories were always told at full volume, and his grasp on modern life certainly stopped short of the appearance of the euro - to the end of his days he could think only in terms of lire, and always appeared suspicious and confused when confronted with payment in the new currency. Never enough noughts on the end for his comfort. A true character - he will be missed...

Tonight's Dinner:

Pasta with Lemon & Hazelnut Sauce

Fiorentina, with Arugula and Parmesan

Chocolate & Apricot Tarts

Summer Pudding...

Summer Pudding gets ticks in all the right boxes. It's an oxymoronic combination of a luxurious overabundance of delicious things, but where none of them individually is actually very luxurious. And it does seem to be something which has retained its place in the seasonal calendar - I still associate it with a summer glut of soft fruit, and it hasn't yet suffered from season-slip and started to appear on menus year-round, as with so many other dishes (mostly to the detriment of their quality, along the way). It is phenomenally easy to make, presents well, and is gloriously self-indulgent to eat......

Surprisingly - and maybe because it is so easy to make - it doesn't get much coverage from many of the greats. Mrs Beeton is quite vague on the subject, and merely refers to the need for ...'a pound of stewed soft fruit...' for the filling , without suggesting what the fruit might be, or even specifying how much liquid should be used in constructing the pudding. Very important, that last point, as you don't want the end result to be either too dry or too wet. Frances Bissell, while not bothering with a 'red' summer pudding, gives a recipe for a white one - gooseberries and white currants, rather than raspberries and redcurrants - which sounds interesting, but definitely for earlier in the summer than now. There are also two schools of thought about the shape of the finished pudding - either domed or flat; arguably, a flat version allows the pudding to be weighted evenly, and it also looks less as though it's pretending to be a zucotta!

Having done a fairly thorough trawl of the different methods which are out there, my preferred version is as follows:

For a Pudding 20 cm in diameter (enough for eight portions):

Ingredients: 8 oz red (or black) currants; 12 oz pitted Cherries; 8 oz Raspberries; 1/4 pint Water; 5 oz Sugar; 15 (or so) medium slices of White Bread, crusts removed*.

* The best kind of bread for this, I find, is a Swiss Bread called Zopf, which is made with a butter-enriched dough and is midway between bread and brioche. Brioche proper is structurally too weak to use in summer pudding, as it has a tendency to fall to pieces when soaked in the fruit juices.

Method:

1. Butter (or Trennwax) a 20 cm cake tin.

2. Combine the Fruit, Water, and Sugar in a small pan; bring to a simmer, and stir, simmering, until the Sugar has completely dissolved. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Separate the Fruit from the syrup.

3. Cut the Bread into triangles and rectangles, in order to be able to line the base and the sides of the cake tin, making as perfect a fit as you can manage. Brush the Bread lining with a little syrup once the base and sides are completely covered.

4. Spoon half of the Fruit on top of the Bread, and carefully pour onto it a third of the reserved syrup. Use half of the remaining Bread to make a layer over the fruit, and cover this in turn with the rest of the fruit, and pour another third of the syrup over the top. Finish the construction with a final layer of Bread, and the last of the syrup.

5. Place the cake tin in a dish with a rim - necessary to catch all the liquid which will inevitably ooze out - cover with clinngfilm, and then place a weighted* plate on top, of about the same diamater as the top of the pudding. Leave like his for an hour or so, then remove the weights, and refrigerate overnight.

6. Invert and unmould to serve, accompanied by delicious thick cream

* For wieghts, I generally use my blind-baking weights, poured into a shallow plastic container.

Scaloppine...

One of the joys of Italian cooking: thin slices of veal, pork, turkey or calf's liver which cook in a second and can be prepared in myriad ways. A dish of spaghetti dressed only with oil and garlic as first course, an escalope with a Marsala & cream sauce, a fresh peach to dip in the last of the red wine: perhaps a salad if you are feeling like pushing the boat out. A minimalist dinner which anyone can cook in minutes, leaving plenty of time for a good bottle, a good coffee and a chat. Bliss. The good Dr Pomiane would have approved mightily....

There are, however, two absolutely critical steps. The first is to find a butcher who can cut straight. The scallop should be no more than 1/4" thick, preferably a bit less. Maurizio does this by hand in one smooth and effortless slice; his son resorts to the electric slicer - admittedly, with equally good results. In the UK, I watch with anguish as the butcher struggles first with the meat and then with the knife, delivering something 1/2" thick at one end and which tapers to a sliver at the other. Cutting meat appropriately and efficiently thin is a knack, and you need bags of practice - which English butchers don't get because customers don't ask, or if they do, they don't make the mistake a second time.

Failure in step #1 ensures failure at step #2: the meat should be barely cooked. In a hot frying pan with a little oil and/or butter ( I prefer both), just lay the slice in, first on one side then on the other until each surface is just cooked. The time is so short, you practically need a stop watch. The meat shouldn't brown, or stiffen but remain soft and flexible. If it stiffens or curls, it is over-cooked.

Finally, remove the meat to a hot plate and leave in a warm +/-60C oven while you make the sauce.

If the meat hasn't been cut thin and evenly, you can't cook it like this - the result will be one end cooked, stiff, tough and curling and the other raw and flabby.

But surely, I hear you say, what about a meat mallet? - batuto carne in this neck of the woods. Contrary to widely held belief - i.e that you can make good the badly cut piece of meat by hammeriing it into shape - thumping the bejabbers out of a slice of meat does not do it one bit of good: all you do is crush it, guaranteeing that it will be dried out when cooked. The Italians only resort to the batuto carne for involtini - small parcels of stuffing, rolled in paper-thin slices of meat and then stewed or sautéed. In that dish the meat cooks through completely for 20-30 minutes - it has to, or the stuffing would be raw - so it doesn't matter that the meat's texture has been broken down somewhat; the juices will run out and only improve the sauce.
But back to step #1: if the meat isn't cut evenly it won't cook evenly, the solution to the problem is simply to change butcher, not a frenzied attack on the blameless meat with a hammer!

Tonight's Dinner:

Sage & Lemon Risotto.

Bream, grilled and then served with a concassé of tomato, dill, rosemary, and onion.

Summer Pudding.

And a week in Paris...

Or, at least, half a one.

Say what you will, the French do have an effortlessly stylish way of doing things - and I was struck on Monday morning, as I peered through the steamed-up windows of the RoissyBus (goes from Charles de Gaulle directly to the Opera) by the elegance of the flowerbeds that are casually dotted through the grounds of the airport. I don't think I've ever before been struck by the charm of an airport, in any form, anywhere in the World.......but here, there were roundabouts crammed with pure white roses, and verges and embankments dripping with massed ranks of sultrily dark crimson blooms, lazily dropping petals onto the ground under the onslaught of the rain. They looked lush, and abundant, and wonderful. Had somebody had the same idea at Gatwick, they would doubtless have been in some deeply naff day-glo pink, and probably hedged in by uptight little borders of primulas.

And the same skill was brought to bear in the buffet lunches that were provided as part of my two days of Conference. Large, slab-like sandwiches, that were so inelegant in scale (and with the crusts left resolutely in place) that it can only have been done very deliberately, and with fillings of tomato and chicken that were so delicious when you bit into them that it was like discovering the idea of the perfect sandwich - all washed down with a glass (or so) of a more than serviceable white Burgundy, that required quite a degree of self control not to go for a third glass and to focus instead on the afternoon ahead. And all served with an air of quiet efficiency that clearly suggested a knowledge that this un-theatrical display was the acme of professional perfection. With which I saw no reason to argue.

The rain was not incessant - and in fact, in between the showers, there were brief and deceptive bursts of sunshine, which suddenly bathed the honey-coloured walls of The Louvre or the Palais Royal in intense sunlight for all of several minutes at a time. But not dependable enough to risk an outside table... and pre-prandial consumption of Kir each evening was spent safely under cover, as the evening sunshine inevitably gave way to yet another downpour. Certainly, it wasn't worth risking an outside table for dinner in the gardens of the Palais Royal - which, on a fine summer's evening in June, as the shadows lengthen and the fountains gently play, is sheer bliss.

And so, instead, on a whim, I decided to go and dine at Le Trumilou on the Quai de l'Hotel de Ville. As I walked there, I worked out that it must have been twenty eight years since I'd last eaten in the place, and it was associated in my mind with Saturday lunches in mid-winter, when it was always bustling and noisy, and agreeably warm and welcoming, nestled amongst all the cages of animals and the forests of plants for sale along that stretch of the Quai. In those days Le Trumilou was colloquially known as 'Chez Ruby', after the diminutive, dumpy and elderly chatelaine who presided from behind the cash register and ruled the place with a rod of iron. We generally had with us the four-footed of the day, who would curl up beneath the table and contentedly crunch on whatever bowl of bones and offcuts Madame had sent in his direction, and he always got at least as good service as the paying customers! In fact, whenever we were in that part of town, said four-footed used to accelerate in the direction of Le Trumilou as soon as he realised exactly where we were...
Chez Ruby was always slightly quirky and charming and larger than life.....and the walls were filled to capacity with paintings - the most awful daubs imaginable, for the most part. I remember that it was from there that the restaurant inverse-ratio rule had originated, i.e. that the better the art on the walls, the worse the food on the plate was likely to be. And vice versa. It generally holds good, as a rule of thumb.

And so....I arrived and was seated; and for some time I admit to wallowing in nostalgia. I ordered a terrine de Campagne - delicious! - and a half of Cotes du Rhone; and it was only as I moved on to a perfectly aceptable entrecote that I began to notice the discrepancies between then and now. Ruby, of course, was no longer around - which should have been no surprise, since she was already a white-haired septegenarian all that time ago. But the pictures, in all their glorious awfulness, had also gone - replaced with artisanal artefacts, and scenes of rustic simplicity. And, as my ear became attuned, I realised that the clientele had disappeared, too - I'm not sure that there was a single indigenous parisian in the entire place: next to me, two dutch men were dining, and behind them a slightly braying foursome from the home counties; at the table in the window were a bunch of 'ok, yah' kids from London, and to my right a elderly american and his wife. These latter, at least, seemed quite focused on what they were eating and drinking and appeared to be discussing it at some length (hey - if you dine in a restaurant on your own, it's permissible to eavesdrop...I think there's even a papal dispensation to that effect..).

Then, I noticed that these two were constantly referring to a guide book that was well thumbed and much book-marked, and appeared to form the basis of their itinerary in Paris - and to my horror, I realised that it was a 'food guide' produced by that girl who writes the 'Chocolate & Zuccini' blog, which features recipes for things like coconut-flavoured baked custard, and other examples from the more ghastly end of the Nursery canon. Worse, it appeared - from excerpts they were reading out in between mouthfuls - that Le Trumilou itself was also featured in this guide - and as the realisation dawned, I sighed deeply and signalled for the bill. The food was good - if not great - the place was fine, the bill was low - but it was no longer Chez Ruby, in any sense. Whatsoever. Ah, well...

Tonight's Dinner:

Salad of Chicken Livers tiède.

Lamb Shanks, double roast. Buttered Cabbage.

Amaretto Soufflés.

This week in Pisa...

The weather is grim. Either unpleasantly hot and airless, with thunderstorms threatening, or else - almost without warning - dropping back to sweater-wearing temperatures, and the rain coming down like chairlegs. Apparently, Tempo Italia forecasts a summer of more of the same - so one just has to hope that Tempo Italia is about as reliable in this as it normally is in everything else..Fortunately, the Technical Department has finished his Trellis project in the Loggia, so at least the place is now free of DIY paraphernalia, and is comfortably available for use - if only to be able to sit in, in order to watch the rain!

The garden takes no notice of the lousy weather, and puts on growth at a rate of knots. Keeping the pergolas trimmed at this time of year is like painting the Forth Bridge, and I know that when we return after a fortnight's break the place will have reverted to jungle once more, and I'll have to start the hacking-and-slashing process all over again. The Bergamot has settled in well, and has put on a spurt of new growth - even a small display of blossom (which smells amazing) and the promise of fruit later in the year. I confess, I'm not quite sure what a Bergamot is, and have no idea what the fruit will be like - they don't normally grow round here, and are generally found no further north than Calabria. Research reveals that the Bergamot plant is a cross between a Seville Orange and a 'Pear Lemon' (no, I hadn't, either...), and that it is used in making scent and in Earl Grey Tea - although I imagine the bit used in making scent comes from the blossom, rather than from the fruit. More research needed, clearly. Watch this space for bergamot-based recipes , later in the year...

Town is limbering up for June, which is when pretty much all of the annual festivities here get crammed within one month: the Luminara; the Giocco di Ponte; and the Palio. The streets are closed to traffic along the Lungarno for most of the month, and all sorts of 'special events' are organised, like a tour of private gardens within the Centro Storico (which is show-stoppingly unimpressive) and the annual opening - for one day only - of the archaelogical site where several years ago they found the remains of the ancient harbour, and the remnants of all the Roman and Greek boats that had ever sunk there, over time (which is definitely worth taking a look at)...

Food News? Several things to report......In addition to discovering the proper way to treat Strawberries with Balsamic, I also came across a recipe for Hasselback Potatoes with a poultice of Lemon and Garlic and Sage. Good in itself, it also suggests all sorts of other ways of treating the dish, with different fillings that can gently melt and cook deliciously between the slices of roasting potato - wonderfully fatty pancetta, for example, would be splendid.....Until now, I hadn't thought of doing the recipe any way other than bog-standard, as copied from Alastair Little many years ago, but in practice there are all sorts of variations that can be played on that basic theme. To be explored...

Tonight's Dinner:

Risotto of Basil (made with Rabbit Stock).

Swordfish, sautéed with Onion and Garlic.

Cherry Clafoutis.

A discovery....

A real one. Strawberries in Balsamic Vinegar.

"Oh", I can hear you yawn...."that old chestnut!" And you'd be right, if you meant the way I've been doing it for years (and, let's be honest, so have you) - i.e. Strawberries, doused in a slug of said vinegar, all whisked around for thirty seconds and presented with a flourish that encompasses how modern and clever and 'nouvelle' and sophisticated we all are, when the reality is that after the first time of having done it - all those years ago - when it was surprising, and really quite good, and had an edge to it, we've actually been doing it for years and years essentially from sheer laziness. God! Is it that time already? And nothing organised for dinner......I know! Strawberries with Balsamic ....Perfect!

This. Is. Different.

This takes the concept to a different level. And although it takes a few more minutes, it really is only a few more minutes...and the end-result is stratospherically better. I made it a few days ago, to serve along with home-made French Vanilla Ice Cream, and it was SO good!

I'm not writing this out as a recipe, because the pitifully few steps don't merit it.

For 12 oz of strawberries, take 2 fl oz of red wine, and combine in a small pan with 1 tablespoon of runny honey and 2 tablespoons of Balsamic Vinegar (decent quality, preferably, rather then the scrubbing alcohol variety). Halve the strawberries; bring the liquid to a fast simmer, and cook the fruit briefly in it - for about one minute (you just want to break the membranes down slightly); with a slotted spoon, remove the fruit to a small bowl, then boil the liquid down to a syrup (takes maybe two or three minutes); pour syrup over fruit, stir, leave to cool, and then chill prior to use. Wonderful! Delicious! Try it!

Tonight's Dinner:

Poached Eggs on a bed of Ratatouille

Bistecchie di Maiale; Leeks, braised in Pork Fat

Individual Paris-Brests, with Wild Strawberries

Recipe: Farfalle with Lemon & Hazelnut sauce.

First cousin to the wonderful recipe for Risotto with Lemon & Sage, this is one of those dishes where the first mouthful is greeted with an exclamation of surprise, quickly followed by an exclamation of pleasure. The flavours here are as unexpected as they are delicious, and the overall effect is light and unctuous - perfect to be included in any summer menu.

I once heard Matthew Parris wax lyrical in decrying the silliness of all the different shapes of pasta, when in fact - in his opinion - all they are is different methods of presenting exactly the same ingredients in myriad forms. Well, articulate though he was on the subject, his argument was wrong, and this combination of sauce and pasta type is a prime example of the fact. Different pasta shapes work well with the varying textures of different sauces - and the shape of Farfalle is perfect for this sauce, where the creamy lemon coats the exposed flanks of the pasta shape, while the crunch of the hazelnuts is contained within the ends of the individual pieces of pasta, and thus spread evenly throughout the dish.

For four.

Ingredients: 14 oz Farfalle; 2 oz Butter; 4 medium cloves of Garlic, peeled and minced; 2 medium Lemons; 3 oz Hazelnuts ; 4 tablespoons each of fresh Basil and fresh Parsley; 4 tablespoons of Cream; seasoning; grated Parmesan, to serve.

Method:

1. Toast the Hazulnuts under the grill for several minutes, taking care not to let them burn. Once toasted, let them cool slighty, then rub them with a dry cloth to remove the skins. Process them briefly in a food processor, but don't go too far -you want them to be roughly chopped, not reduced to a powder! (You can use pre-processed toasted and chopped nuts instead, if you'd rather, but I don't the result is quite as good as doing this stage yourself).

2. Put water to boil for the Pasta, adding the appropriate amount of Salt, and a slug of Oil (to prevent the pasta shapes from sticking together as they cook). Follow the packet instructions for the time needed to cook the Pasta - normally about ten minutes - and carry on with the sauce as the Pasta is cooking.

3. Melt the Butter in a small pan; add the minced Garlic to this, and - having stirred it, and cooked the Garlic in the Butter for a minute - add the chopped Hazelnuts and sauté the mixture over a medium-high heat for a further minute. Add to this the grated rind from the Lemons and then set the mixture aside.

4. Once the Pasta is cooked, drain it into a colander, leaving perhaps a couple of tablespoons of cooking water in the bottom of the pan. Add the Lemon-Garlic-Hazelnut mixture to this water and stir quickly.

5. Return the cooked Pasta to the pan and stir to coat it with the Nut mixture, then add the juice from the 2 Lemons (you should have four tablespoons), the chopped fresh herbs, and the Cream. Stir, to coat the Pasta thoroughly in the sauce; check the seasoning and adjust if necessary, then serve, topped with freshly grated Parmesan.