The Arno...

...is worryingly high. It seems as though it's been raining forever - although, in fact, it can only have been since Christmas Day, as I distinctly remember wheeling the terracotta pots from the garden up to Santa Caterina on the afternoon of the 25th, through eerily deserted (and dry) streets.

We went to take a look yesterday at the river level, and - despite the fact that it was a good three metres higher than normal - there seemed little cause for concern, as there was still another three metres to go before it would reach danger point. And still it rained. I went to check again, this morning, having been to the butcher for some fegatini, and saw that two of those three metres have now also gone, and the river bank was dotted with people peering anxiously over at the muddy torrent below. I imagine the more elderly amongst them have clear memories of the floods of '66, when the Solferino bridge was swept away, and this entire quartiera was apparently waist-deep in water. On the news, they've announced that the Serchio has burst its banks at Nodica, about four miles away, and that they've opened the relief canal towards Livorno, which ought to drain off a lot of the flood waters in the Arno. Whether it's enough, remains to be seen - the powers-that-be are announcing a disaster averted - but frankly it seems a little premature of them. The river level here always rises for several days after there's been rain upstream...and there's still more rain forecast (even though today we actually have sun for the first time in ages!)

Time for another cappuccino, and a slice of fruit cake...while we still can!

Tonight's Dinner:

Walnut & Roquefort Sformato.

Chicken Involtini, in cabbage leaves.

Panettone Bread & Butter Pudding.

Christmas Week...

One present a day from under the tree keeps Christmas more or less under control...as well as stretching the whole thing out in a fairly agreeable way. For some reason, while the puppy is fascinated by the whole process, the senior four-footed appears to be deeply antipathetic towards Christmas presents this year - he dutifully comes along to be there for the daily exchange of gifts, but manages to communicate very effectively that he really wishes that we wouldn't do it...looking resolutely the other way, and heaving deep sighs of disapproval throughout.

We've eaten too much - although I'm not quite sure why, since we haven't been entertaining - and already there are murmurs about going on a diet and going on the wagon, once we get beyond Twelfth Night. There's probably much to be said for both! Respectable inroads have been made into the Wolfert oeuvre: rabbit stuffed with salami & fennel; quail, with sage & white grapes; chicken, with orange & cardamom; ricotta ice-cream, with fresh pears; apple croustade. Then there have been a few experiments of my own , such as duck & orange ravioli ...and an emergency batch of lattice-topped mince pies in exchange for a yule log that Massimo dropped round (where the implication was that it had been fata in casa, but we rather concluded otherwise, having tasted it). And we spent Sunday afternoon producing a batch of banana and walnut chocolates as a dinner party offering for that evening, where we'd been invited over the river to Via Mazzini.

No gardening, since the past week has been nothing but rain. Every so often we take the four-footeds to Santa Caterina, for them to run around and get soaked, while we check indoors on the Brazilians' progress. Which is slow. And regular effort is needed to prevent them from wandering off mid-task in order to go and start a completely different job in another part of the house, and thus spread builder-chaos over as broad an area as possible.So far (cautiously) so good...

Against the background of the rain, I've read Colm Toibin's 'Brooklyn' ( and savoured every last page)...as well as traipsed the length of Italy in James Holland's 'Italy's Sorrow', which covers the Italian campaign of 1944 in all its awfulness.

Tonight's Dinner:

Ricotta & Garlic Tart.

Beef, roast in Oil & Dijon Mustard; Potato Gratin.

Orange & Lemon Sorbet with chilled Basil Cream.

Recipe: Chicken and Artichoke 'Pie'

This pastry-less 'pie' is excellent as a way of using up leftover bird (chicken, in this instance, but just as easily duck, or guinea fowl, or turkey) - which I often find lurking in the fridge, as a two-person household tends only ever to get through half a beast in the course of one dinner. The 'pie' is best eaten once it has cooled for half an hour or so after coming out of the oven, or even cold, on the following day - while it's still hot, the thing will collapse into a heap if you try to slice it, whilst the process of cooling down allows the collagen to firm, and neat slices then become possible. The flavours are better too, once they've been left to mature for a while.

For simplicity's sake, you can make this in a pie dish, covering the top with foil for the first phase of cooking, which you then remove in order to allow the top to brown. For a more finished presentation, as shown above, I use two identical pyrex casserole lids, removing the top one half way through, and then replacing it and inverting the whole thing at the end of cooking - thus achieving a perfectly smooth surface - and then browning the newly-exposed top under the grill for several minutes.

For one 8"diameter 'Pie'.

Ingredients: the meat from two previously cooked chicken legs, cut into 1 cm dice; half a medium-sized aubergine; a cup of artichoke hearts (frozen is fine); 3 oz Butter; 1 tsp dried Thyme; 2 minced Garlic cloves; grated rind from 1 Lemon; 6 medium Potatoes; Salt & Pepper.

Method:

1. Cut the aubergine and artichokes into approx 1 cm dice. Melt half the butter in a heavy frying pan , and soften the diced vegetables in Butter for five minutes, until they just begin to colour. Season lightly, and combine in a mixing bowl with the diced Chicken.

2. Stir into this mixture the Thyme, Garlic, and Lemon rind.

3. Heat the oven to 220 degrees C.

4. Peel the potatoes and slice thinly on a mandolin. Melt the remaining Butter in the frying pan, and toss the Potato slices in Butter, then cover with a lid and leave to cook gently for a few minutes - this is really just to make them soft and malleable, so they shouldn't begin to colour at this stage. Season the slices with Salt & Pepper.

5. In a greased pan (or the greased, upturned lid of a pyrex casserole) use two-thirds of the Potato slices to make a complete layer in the base, and then line the sides - use the longer narrower slices for this, and leave the top of the slices sticking up, as you'll want to bend these over the 'pie' filling once it's in place in order to start to form the top of the 'pie'.

6. Over the Potato base, pile the chicken-artichoke-aubergine mixture, then bend the side slices of Potato over the filling, and use the remaining slices to cover the top of the 'pie'.

7. Either cover the 'pie' with aluminium foil, greased on the underside, or else place a second greased pyrex lid over the top. Bake in the oven for twenty five minutes, and then remove the foil or lid and bake until thoroughly browned for a further twenty minutes or so. Remove form the oven If you've used a Pyrex lid, then at this stage put it back in place and invert the 'pie', so that you have a perfect surface which should then be placed under a hot grill for a minute or so in order to brown.

Leave to cool either partially or completely before serving.

Paula Wolfert

...is the choice for this year's Christmas menus. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say that I've just re-discovered her, since her 'Cooking of South West France' has never gone long unused...but I've just got hold of second-hand copies of her 'Mediterranean Cooking' and 'World of Food', both of which are excellent. The former is like coming across an old friend, since I'd forgotten that we had a copy of the book in Greece about twenty five years ago, but it got 'stored' in a steamer trunk during the move from one house to another, at one point, and never again saw the light of day. For all I know, it's still in Alex Koundouris' outhouse, in Syros...along with some pictures (of which I was quite fond, I remember) and a large blue glass platter that had come from Christina Karamanlis. Ah, well...

Wolfert is an extremely good resource. Not herself an instinctive creator of new dishes, she is - or certainly was, at any rate - excellent at hunting out good things from other people. In her writing, she comes across as perhaps slightly humourless, but for all that is pretty thorough in her approach. I suppose my only criticism of the recipes would be her tendency to take them verbatim from her source and not subject them to a common-sense filter - for instance, she will happily have you go through the laborious process of making pats of thyme butter, only for them to be added subsequently to something else in a hot pan; which of course means it was a complete waste of time to have combined the butter and herbs into pats in the first place, since they can just be added separately to the pan and will have exactly the same result. Oh, and there was another recipe where she talked about stirring some ingredients together with a wooden spoon until thoroughly amalgamated 'always stirring in the same direction'. Hmmm. Perhaps not. That sort of instruction IMHO falls into the category of whistling while you stir in order to ward off the evil spirits.

Bearing in mind the one caveat always to subject them to a 'does-this-make-sense' filter, the recipes in general are first class. Already, in the past few days, we've had an excellent tourte of guinea fowl and artichokes, an apple clafouti in blackened cabbage leaves, fettucine with anchovies and toasted breadcrumbs, Wolfert's version of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, and risotto with dry sherry and parmesan. And Christmas is yet young!

Tonight's Dinner:

Sformatino of Roquefort & Walnuts

Duck, Boned and roast with Bitter Orange under the skin; Courgettes, sautéed with Thyme.

Christmas Pudding; Brandy Butter.

We have snow!

Yes, I know. Everybody has snow, it seems....Paris is covered, London has ground to a halt (just for a change) and most of Europe appears to be blanketed. The last time we saw it in Pisa was five years ago, though, so I think I can be forgiven the headline exclamation mark. The dogs were mildly interested... but not enough for them to brave the cold for long in favour of returning to a warm kitchen filled with the aroma of coffee and freshly-baked shortbread.

According to Tempo Italia, the weather is set to remain arctic for the next 24 hours, and then we return to normal - by Tuesday, temperatures are set to be in the mid teens once more, and heading yet further upwards in time for Christmas. For the moment, though, it seems appropriate to close the shutters against winter darkness and hunker down inside, beside the fire, in the company of a glass of prosecco and a plate of paprika-roast almonds...

Tonight's Dinner:

Papardelle, with Burro Rosso.

Pork Chops; Celery & Pancetta, braised in Guinea-fowl stock.

Pear & Chocolate Clafouti.

Recipe: Cheese Scones

An enduring memory from ages past. The cheese scones in the UL - large and light and delicious...and never quite enough butter provided on the side of the plate to last until the final mouthful. The height of indulgence would have been to have had a second one - although I'm not sure that I ever did, undergraduate finances being what they were. Consumed in winter in the noisy, fuggy atmosphere of the tea-room, or in summer, stretched out on the lawn in the south courtyard. Not quite a Proustian madeleine...but not far off.

I've been playing with recipes, and this is the closest I've come. These scones take almost no time from start to finish - five minutes to make and roll out the dough, and fifteen minutes in a pre-heated oven. Best eaten still warm, broken in half and buttered generously. Since the elderly relative has come to live with us, a little-something has become the order of the day, at lunchtime (although I suspect that most of the ER's lunch ends up inside the four-footed, who negotiates shamelessly to that end). Once a week, therefore, I bake bread - one for the bread bin and one for the freezer - and on the occasions when I've forgotten and we've run out of bread, then this scone recipe is my immediate refuge.

For approximately six scones.

Ingredients: 30g parmesan; 1 tbs fresh chives (optional - but recommended); 225g flour; 3 tsp baking powder; half tsp salt; half tsp bicarb. of soda; 30g butter; 150 ml milk. Beaten egg, or cream, to glaze.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Cut the Parmesan into 1 cm (approx) dice, and then process these into fine crumbs in the food processor, along with the (optional) chives

3. Add the Flour, Baking Powder, Bicarb, and Salt to the processor bowl, and process briefly, just to mix everything together.

4. Cut the chilled Butter into dice, add to the contents of the processor bowl, and process for about thirty seconds, until it looks like sand.

5. Add the Milk and process again for twenty seconds or so, until the mixture has gathered itself into one lump.

6. On a floured surface, roll out to a thickness of just over 1 cm, then use a 2" circular cutter to cut out the scones, which should be placed on a greased baking sheet. Gather up the trimmings and roll out and cut again, until all the mixture has been used up. Brush with egg or cream, to glaze the tops, before placing them in the oven.

7. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about fifteen minutes, until the scones have risen and the tops are a deep golden brown.

8. Let rest on a wire tray for a couple of minutes, and then, as soon as they're cool enough to handle, dig in!

Christmas has begun!

Or, at least, it has in Pisa. Tuesday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and this is the point at which the descent into Christmas truly begins. The rush is on, every year, for Christmas trees in the days immediately beforehand - no question of waiting lackadaisically until the 22nd to put the tree up...it has to be up in time for the 8th - and the town is in full festive dress in time for the passagiato which takes place through the main streets on the evening of December 7th. Lights raining gently down from on high for the length of Borgo Stretto and Via San Francesco, and the balustrades of the Ponte de Mezzo heavily swagged with pine garlands, all the way to the enormous (and decidedly lopsided) Christmas Tree which appears every year in the little piazza beside the Loggia dei Banchi. I hadn't particularly planned to join in on Monday evening, but since we needed some light bulbs from the shop in Via Santa Maria and it seemed a good idea to give the dogs an airing, we emerged from the house to find the streets thronged with people, and the outdoor cafés absolutely packed! The atmosphere was festive, and the four-footeds thought it was great...

I love the italian attitude to the religious holidays with which their calendar is peppered. Throughout the year, with no warning whatsoever, the whole country grinds to a halt in celebration of some obscure religious event at some point in the past, and the population opportunistically heads for the beach or stays in bed (depending on the time of year), whilst the same dwindling throng of increasingly elderly ladies actually kneels in church in order to mark the day of religious observance. In practice, Italy is no more nor less devout than the UK (which means in practice, pretty negligibly), but somehow the Italians have retained the structures of an organised belief system, whilst in fact they milk the opportunities of the holiday schedule for all they're worth! And unlike the UK, where public holidays are generally tidied away to a Monday or a Friday, the saints' days stick 'religiously' to specific dates, and if that happens to be Tuesday, or Thursday, then so be it...that is indeed the day that God has decreed for sunbathing!

In London, on the other hand (where we currently are for a few days, while the four-footeds hunker down in Calci, and doubtless watch endless Italian daytime TV in the company of Arianna, and a box of mini Bonio...) you'd be hard pressed to know that Christmas is imminent. Certainly, it would be easy to blink and miss such sparse decorations as there are around the place. I guess this is a result of Broon's deeply iffy handling of the economy, and it all seems a fair - if unfortunate - reflection of the dour and cheerless personality of the man himself.

Tonight's Dinner:

Canapés of Chicken Liver rolled, with Sage & Juniper, inside Bacon and grilled until crisp.

Oeufs Comtoises.

Guinea Fowl with Garlic & Lemon; Celery with Pancetta, braised in Chicken Stock.

Chocolate Tart with Orange-flavoured Crème Anglaise.