Reductio ad perfection....

Delicious sauces are ridiculously simple to make. I know James Peterson writes at fascinating length on the subject, and I love the images he conjures up of egg-yolks and oils working together to make complicatedly-structured emulsions, for example .......but, away from the pages of his deathless prose, the actual practice in the kitchen is quick and easy and capable of completely transforming what might otherwise be a rather dull offering on the plate.

My approach to sauces is very straightforward: some 'cooking residue' (which can be either stock, or the bits left in the bottom of the roasting pan or the sauté pan - anything which has captured the flavour of whatever it was that was previously being cooked), some alcohol of choice (whatever you have to hand - I generally have port and vermouth ready to use in the kitchen in London, and marsala and house white in Italy, although you can also use a slug of whatever you're quaffing as Cook's Perk in the kitchen - and often , but not always, a slug of cream. That's the beauty of the process - the sauce can be adapted to whatever you happen to have available and might feel like including. Herbs? If you have them, why not? Cream? Yes, but not necessarily...

And the secret to success - if indeed it even merits being glorified as a 'secret' - is reducing and reducing and reducing the combined liquid until it is a dense, coating consistency in the bottom of the pan. It will cling perfectly to whatever it is that you're serving, and the flavours within it will be complicated and rich and delicious!

An example: last night we were having duck breasts for dinner. Before sitting down to the first course, I'd combined in a small saucepan a cup of beef stock, along with half a cup of port and a generous slug of cream, stirred together and left simmering gently on the stove. Having cleared the first course, I grilled the duck breasts (approx four minutes per side) and then moved them into an oven pre-heated to 220 degrees C; all the while the sauce was bubbling away, not quite boiling but simmering quite energetically, and required stirring perhaps once every couple of minutes. Five minutes or so in the oven, and the breasts were ready to come out and sit under foil for a couple of minutes so that the juices would go back into the meat and not flood out when it was carved; meanwhile, I raised the heat under the sauce and boiled it down stirring constantly, until a wooden spoon drawn through it on the base of the pan left a clear line, and the sauce was almost glutinous in texture. A quick check for seasoning and adjustment as needed* and then the breasts were carved and plated, and the sauce spooned over each serving - a spoonful of richly dense sauce per serving is quite sufficient.

Simple, and fantastic.....

*only ever add seasoning at the end when you're going to reduce a sauce in this way; if you put it in at the beginning, then as the liquid reduces, the seasoning becomes much stronger and more concentrated than you had in mind. It is also at this stage that you should add any chopped fresh herbs that you might want to use to add an extra flavour element to your sauce.

Tonight's Dinner:

Tagliatelle (fatta in casa) with a sauce of Tomato, Rosemary & Pancetta.

Salmon Fillet, in Walnut Cream sauce, on julienned Celery.

Fig & Quince Tarts.

Tiramisu

A lot of nonsense seems to have been written about this particular dish, and its exact provenance. Some will have you believe it can be traced back to Siena and a dinner in honour of Cosimo III, whilst others claim it is in fact a Zuppa Inglese (it isn't - they are completely different things) and thus shares the history of that dessert. Most credible to my way of thinking is the idea that in fact Tiramisu, as we know it, is a fairly recent invention and dates from Treviso sometime in the seventies.

When I was cooking professionally, I invariably used Carluccio's version, which includes kahlua and omits any whisking of either egg whites or cream. The result is unctuous and dense, and is well suited to an environment where food often needs to be physically quite robust. Looking further afield, Valentina Harris, La Hazan, and Alvaro Maccioni all include beaten egg-white, which lightens the end result, and Claudia Roden is quite disappointing, with her rather uninspired two-layer-only version. In trawling through the archive, I came across a venetian recipe, which included crystallised fruit within the cream layer (doesn't do much for me - crystallised fruit of any kind, I tend to avoid). And then I found the Pradelli version, quite different from all the others, as in fact he makes a zabaglione base, into which he then incorporates the beaten cream and mascarpone and egg-white. The end result is much lighter than the others, but without losing the dense quality that is fundamental to the quality of the dish. I recommend it...

For four generous servings.

Ingredients: 4 Eggs; half a cup of Sugar; 1 liqueur glass of Marsala; 1 liqueur glass of Rum; 100 ml Cream; 250 g Mascarpone; 2 teacups of Espresso; 25 or so Sponge Fingers; good quality Chocolate powder, for final garnish.

Method:

1. In a double boiler or zimmertopf, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture is pale yellow and forms a ribbon behind the whisk. Over medium heat, continue stirring for four to five minutes, adding first the Marsala and then the Rum. At the end of this time, the mixture should be thoroughly homogenised and the velvety density of a custard. Remove from heat.

2. Whisk the Cream until thick, and then beat into this the Mascarpone. When thoroughly incorporated, fold in the zabaglione mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff, and then carefully fold these also into the zabaglione-mascarpone mixture. Set aside while you make the biscuit base for the Tiramisu.

3. Take a shallow rectangular dish about 4" x 6" and line the base with Sponge Fingers which have been briefly dipped in Espresso (NB: the biscuits should be moistened only - if they are too soggy, the texture of the finished dish will be sub-optimal, and the excess coffee will leech out and be discovered as a puddle at the bottom of the dish, which is undesirable). To cover the base of the dish should use up half of the Biscuits you have available.

4. Cover the layer of moistened biscuits with half of the zabaglione-mascarpone mixture; cover this in turn with the remainder of the biscuits, moistened, and then the rest of the zabaglione-mascarpone mixture on top.

Refrigerate for at least twenty four hours before serving, and just before you serve it, sprinkle the surface with Chocolate Powder.

Falanghina...

I thought I'd do some research. We first discovered Falanghina a couple of years ago - more rounded on the palate than the white wines from further north like Frascati or Pinot Grigio, but still with an agreeable degree of crispness. Only patchily available until recently - although that is as much a reflection of the re-stocking eccentricities of enotecas and italian supermarkets as anything else - now, you can barely move for falling over the stuff! Which is no bad thing...

And the research was well worth the effort, since it appears that Falanghina is no more nor less than the famous Falernium wine so beloved of the Romans, two thousand years ago. Apparently, there was a particularly good vintage in 121 BC, which went down in the annals and was spoken of with awe for decades - if not centuries - to follow. I'd like to think I recognised the name from all those years of wading through Cicero and Tacitus, but I suspect it's more likely the influence of Robert Harris's imperial pot-boilers...

The Falanghina grape derives etymologically from the latin 'Phalernimum' - i.e from Falerno - and there's some idea that it was used at that time to make a sweet wine, although I haven't found any supporting evidence for that particular assertion. The idea of ancient wines being naturally sweet always seems unlikely to me, given some experience of the sort of wines produced in primitive communities in Greece, where the process is presumably unchanged from several millenia ago. The end result tends to be thin and harsh, with every inducement to add things like honey and herbs in order to make the stuff drinkable at all...

Anyway, it seems that Falernium continued to be popular in its various guises right through until the early twentieth century, when it was suddenly practically wiped out when Phylloxera hit the vineyards of Campania, and it disappeared off the map for a good fifty years or so. Painstakingly reintroduced over the past quarter century, it seems now to have clawed its way back to a position of some eminence. At the scrubbing-alcohol end of the scale, for five euros a bottle it makes very good house wine....and if you want to push the boat out and indulge in a more sophisticated version, for a few euros more, then the choices are absolutely excellent! Highly recommended...

Meanwhile, we're having the hottest summer here that we've had for five years...the Technical Department is sweating it out at the top of a scaffolding tower as he restores the ceiling painting in the Loggia, and every so often it's necessary to resort to standing shoulder deep in the lily pond, quaffing ice cold glasses of Kir (made not with Cassis - we've run out - but with a local version made with Myrtle Berries; slightly medicinal in flavour, but not entirely unpleasant for all that...)

Tonight's Dinner:

Crespelle stuffed with Bechamel, Spinach & Ragu.

Capponi (a beautiful red fish, one of the Gurnard family) cooked in sephardic fashion.

Passion Fruit Tarts.

Meltdown in Serbia...

Belgrade, again. I’ve nothing against the place, but twice in three months comes close to drawing the short straw….And what bemuses me is the fact that I keep coming across British people who are here on holiday…..out of choice. Bizarre!

The heat is extreme. Much hotter than Italy when I flew out on Sunday, and that was fairly sweltering…This time, though, I’m staying in a splendid ‘Design’ hotel in the Old City, where my room is more like a labyrinthine air-conditioned cave than a hotel room, with myriad arrow-slit windows dotted around the walls, and soothing coloured lights strobing gently on the ceiling of the sleeping ‘cave’ at the centre of the space …..the whole thing is uber Cool in every sense of the word and is a welcome retreat from the heat of the streets outside. The decorative theme for the hotel is Presidents Past and Present, and in addition to the huge 3-D copy of Mount Rushmore which dominates the bar, each room is themed for some political leader from recent history….I’m told the selection is eclectic in the extreme, so includes both Churchill and Hitler, as well as Mao, and Mahatma Ghandi. I didn’t recognise the oil painting which hangs over my bed, and had to ask. I was rather hoping it would be somebody meaty like Ceaucescu…..but in the end it turns out to be Eisenhower (or, as Radomir on reception managed to pronounce it ‘Icing-Whore’).

After my last visit, I rather feel I’ve ‘done’ Serbian cuisine ….not awful, but too much like second-grade Greek food to be an argument. Generally rather slablike in look and feel – slabs of meat, slabs of cheese, slabs of bread – and unlikely to inspire a repeat experience. All the Serbians, when asked, tend to glaze over whenever Serbian food is mentioned, and start talking enthusiastically about Italian or Chinese restaurants instead. I can understand why.

Last night – on recommendation - I found myself in a fish restaurant called ‘Octopus’, which nestles almost under the arches of the Bratsvo Bridge, half way down a deserted street, and fronted by a row of neglected buildings that were clearly long-derelict. To get there I had to pick my way across tramlines, and under the drips from rattling and inefficient air-conditioning outlets, all of which reminded me of night-time Piraeus from thirty years ago. Like a scene from ‘On the Waterfront’, the illuminated lanterns outside the restaurant struck an incongruous note in this dockside wasteland. Once through the heavy wooden door, though, it was oil paintings and uniformed waiters, with a white haired old man playing background music on a grand piano, and the place was all soft conversation and quiet opulence.

Octopus Terrine – which described itself as a carpaccio, but wasn’t – was followed by a Tuna Steak in Sesame Seeds, and what advertised itself as a ‘Serbian Salad’, and turned out to be a Greek Salad, minus the feta, and with a lot of very hot onion in its place. The Octopus was good, the Tuna was pretty much as you would expect – although served rather surprisingly on what looked like a deep-fried slab of Hovis – and the local wine had a kick that definitely left me with a thick head when I woke up this morning. Dense and smooth, it was not at all bad…I pondered the dessert menu for just long enough to decipher the Cyrillic figures for ‘Tiramisu’ and ‘Woodland Fruits’ – and then decided that I’d had enough of a good thing: the pedal on the piano was thumping insistently in my right ear, and amidst the excessive trills and ornamentation introduced by the octogenarian pianist, it was possible – just – to decipher ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ followed, inevitably, by ‘My Way’. Time to hit the road….

This evening, the Conference programme promises a river cruise and dinner, accompanied by the delights of Jovan Maljokovic and his Orchestra..

Somehow I think I’ll be playing hookey..

Tonight’s Dinner:

Who knows….

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.