Restaurant Gauthier, in London...

...was included recently in the Wall Street Journal's list of the top ten places to eat in Europe. It's in Romilly Street in Soho, in the building which was Lindsay House for such a long time (somewhere I recall as falling significantly short of its PR positioning, frankly...the food was definitely 'OK', rather than anything special). Anyway....Gauthier. Technical Department and I were discussing the WSJ listing in the car the other evening, as we drove up to Brancoli, for dinner and to return their lawnmower which we'd borrowed when ours broke, back in August. TD, who had read the WSJ article ( I hadn't) was of the opinion that the Gauthier menu included far too much mackerel for his liking, and that the overall tone of the place seemed to be as a place of worship rather than somewhere just to go and have dinner. (We grew out of the food-as-a-form-of-worship thing many decades ago, and these days, great food should be good enough to cause a short pause in good conversation, but should then act merely as an adjunct to it, and not take over.)

So, it was with interest that we heard that the Brancolis had dined at Gauthier a couple of weeks ago, and had been served rather more protein than advertised in the menu. In the form of two dead beetles (one each....clearly, it was an equal opportunity slip-up) in the base of their wine glasses. They were working their way through the tasting menu, item four (or so) of which was some kind of venison, accompanied by a southern rhône. And a couple of beetles. Both very dead. The sommelier and waiters gathered round and gazed in silence at the offending corpses, leaking redly onto the tablecloth, before efficiently removing them, and then carrying on as though nothing had happened. To the extent that they made no mention of the incident even as they presented the eye-wateringly large bill at the end of the evening. The Brancolis were probably more stunned by the lack of reaction than they had been by the event itself. ..so much so, that they were out in the street before they'd thought to raise the matter (although, equally, since it was a celebration dinner, neither was keen to cause a scene). No apology was forthcoming, no offer of recompense (money off? a bottle of something? an invitation to come back as guests on another occasion?....forget it!). Incredible.

The only explanation we could come up with for the bizarre lack of reaction was that the business model for a restaurant like Gauthier must be that dining there is expected to be a one-off event, and that they don't think their clientele will become regulars (and so they don't need to bother). Which is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, if you think about it. I know of at least two diners who won't ever be going back! But then, I can also think of two others who won't now consider it even for the one-off option...so, possibly the business model is flawed. Pause for thought, Monsieur Gauthier.

Tonight's Dinner

Ravioli, stuffed with bietole and ricotta.

Sautéed Chicken Breast, in a Rosemary & Lemon Sauce; Courgettes, with Thyme.

Bakewell and Black Plum Tarts.

Recipe: Pasta with Rosemary Sauce

This is one of the best last-minute dishes I've ever found. Perfect for those occasions when prep time has disappeared, and dinner needs to be conjured out of airy nothing in about ten minutes flat! Best of all with fresh pasta (I generally serve it with fettucine...which takes around ten minutes to roll out and cut, with about fifteen minutes elapsed time between the two processes), this sauce is still pretty good even with the stuff out of a box or packet.

The recipe comes from Marcella Hazan, and is to be found lurking amongst the also-ran pasta sauce recipes in Volume 2 of Classic Italian Cooking -I'd owned the book for years before I got round to trying it. Many recipe writers today (and I suspect Hazan herself would be amongst them, these days) would disdain powdered stock as an ingredient; in fact, it is quite brilliant here, and works wonderfully well with the astringence of the rosemary.

The sauce is so quick and simple, you need only start it at the same time as you put the pasta-cooking water onto heat (for fresh pasta) or after you've put boxed pasta into the pan, and you still have a few minutes before it's done.

For four.

Ingredients: 4 oz Butter; about 6 sprigs of Rosemary, each one 4" or so long; half a teaspoon of powdered chicken Stock, or half a stock cube, crumbled between your fingers.

Method:

1. Melt the Butter in a small pan, over low heat; the butter wants just to melt, and certainly not to colour or start to bubble.

2. Strip the Rosemary needles from their stems, and chop very finely. Add this to the melted Butter, along with the powdered Stock.

3. Stir everything together, until the powdered Stock has dissolved into the Butter. At this point, turn off the heat, and stir into the cooked pasta as soon as it has been drained. No further seasoning should be necessary, and parmesan shouldn't be served with this dish, as it would only fight with the delicious flavours already there.

And then the sun came out...

It was a lousy week. Easyjet managed to smash the Della Robbia cast that we had optimistically given over to them to transport from London to Pisa (not 'broken', but well and truly 'smashed'...); the lawnmower broke down again, about an hour of use after it had last come back from the workshop; the car got a flat battery twice; the van bringing new sofas from Florence got within 200 yards of the house, and then encountered roadworks and simply turned round and took the sofas all the way back to Florence once more ; the TD's laptop died on him; and we had day after day of rain, which gave rise to significant canine cabin-fever...

And then...the sun came out. The garden looked glorious, rich in autumn colours, the citrus trees are groaning under a phenomenal crop of lemons and oranges, and we found it was still warm enough to lunch outdoors for three days in a row. I planted bulbs, and jasmines, and cleared all the weeds out from the azaleas around the water garden. We went to Lucca for the day - perfect sunshine and an intense blue sky - and admired the beautiful stained glass in the Duomo, before sitting outside Trattoria Gigi in Piazza del Carmine for a leisurely lunch of pasta and a carafe of house wine.

All things considered, life isn't bad!



Tonight's Dinner:

Funghi trifolati (the amantea man was selling enormous porcini the other day, and we loaded up with them)

Salsiccie, with Gratin Dauphinois

Chocolate Tart.

Les, the Fish...

...in the Farmers' Market in Bute Street on Saturday mornings is one of the highlights of any weekend in London. I'm not normally a great fan of Farmers Markets - they always seem like a good idea, but in London, at any rate, they tend to be over-priced, the range of things on offer is fairly limited, and although the quality ought to be wonderful, it isn't always noticeably better than the alternative. The attraction seems to be a specious back-to-nature urge that drives people away from the plastic-wrapped environment of the supermarkets, and towards things that still have earth clinging to them (which comes with a price tag, but frankly, not a lot else).

Les, however, is different - as you can tell right from the other end of Bute Street. It isn't a particularly busy market, and most stalls are lucky if they've got even a couple of people pondering their wares. Which is why the queue that always snakes away from Les's stall, reaching practically to the end of the street, is all the more noticeable.

He operates a mailing list, which goes out electronically every Friday evening, as soon as the catch is in and he knows what he'll have for sale on Saturday morning. And, presumably at some ungodly hour in the middle of night, he sets out from deepest Dorset and makes the journey all the way to SW7, in time to open, around nine-ish. His produce is wonderful! It couldn't be fresher - there's no argument to muck around with complicated cooking methods, since the flavour of the fish cooked simply is incomparable - and the prices are actually better than I can generally find in Pisa.

Pretty typically, we joined the queue on Saturday morning, and indulged. As a result, on Saturday evening, we had cockles, cooked á la marinière (but with a dash of pernod added to the cooking liquid - delicious!) followed by fillets of baked Sea Bass, coated in the velvet softness of a buerre blanc*. Last night's starter was a cold lobster each, with saffron mayonnaise, and this evening, we'll finish this week's Les-largesse with sole meunière and new potatoes. And that's it until we're back again next month...

If you want to get onto Les's mailing list, then he can be reached at christchurchfish@live.co.uk.


*For Buerre Blanc: 1 finely minced shallot, half tbs wine vinegar, 1 tbs lemon juice, 2 tbs vermouth, 1 tbs water - boil together to reduce to about 1 tbs liquid in total; strain into a simmertopf, or double boiler, then heat gently, gradually whisking into the liquid 3-4 oz chilled butter in half oz dice, until the consistency is appropriately thickened and velvety. Takes 7-10 minutes in total. Leave in the double boiler until needed, giving it one final whisk just before serving.


Tonight's Dinner:

Parsley crêpes, wrapped round asparagus spears, with hollandaise sauce.

Sole meunière, with new potatoes.

Steamed Orange pudding, with orange cream.

Sated!

We spent the morning at the Opificio della Pietre Dure in Firenze, with our noses (literally) pressed up against Giotto's Croce from the Church of the Ognissanti, which has just emerged from a painstakingly detailed nine-year restoration project. Available for viewing, by prior arrangement, for one week only before it will be hoisted back up into position, we took the opportunity to study it from the distance of about two centimetres (if we wished)...and did so for several hours. Stunning!

For more information and pictures, have a look at

http://www.opificio.arti.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/304/giotto-croce-dipinta-della-chiesa-di-ognissanti

or better

http://www.opificio.arti.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/544/galleria-fotografica

...they do say there's an english text coming soon to the Opificio site, but given the nine years it's taken them to work on the Giotto, I think we should take 'soon' as a pretty relative term.

The place itself is pretty amazing. Arranged rather nonchalently, a couple of yards away from the Giotto, was an enormous and very beautiful Fra Angelico Madonna (normally to be found in San Marco), which had also just been restored. Nearby were panels with life-sized figures of various attendant saints, as well as several of the pradella panels, which were arguably the most beautiful of all. Vibrant, delicate...and oh so eminently pocketable (if it weren't for the CCTV signs dotted around the place!) I wasn't convinced that these smaller panels were also Fra Angelico (much of the detail looked much more like Perugino), but there was nobody much to ask....and in any event, whoever had painted them, they were unquestionably very, very fine.

And then, inevitably, lunch. Somewhere called Trattoria La Biritullera, way up in the north of the city (not far from the Opificio) and well away from the tourist area - a bit like the Florentine equivalent of St.John's Wood. Heavily Sardinian-influenced, the food was excellent: gnudi verde in butter and sage, and a light tomato sauce, and then a spendid dish of squid, accompanied by fresh tuna, lightly-grilled inside a wafer-thin wrapping of aubergine. Two bottles to windward (the first had insufficient personality for the Belforte palate, and so a second, with more going for it, was requested) and we emerged into afternoon sunshine (after the lightest dessert of delicate pastry, filled with apples and fig jam).

Fortunately, the walk was largely downhill back towards the centre of town, and the cafés of Piazza Santa Maria Novella...where our previously-intended visit to the Bronzino exhibition at the Strozzi bit the dust. The combination of warm October sunshine, a decent espresso, and the opportunity to wander gently round SMN for half an hour or so was all too much, and the Bronzinos were consigned to another day. They're there and available until sometime in January, so there's no particular need to rush. Instead, the luxury of looking at a second Giotto Croce (how's that for a vertical tasting?) followed by heated discussion about the relative merits of the Ghirlandaio and Lippi frescos in the Tornabuoni and Strozzi chapels respectively (personally, I favour Ghirlandaio) took up the rest of the afternoon, before dozing gently through the return train journey back to Pisa.

Days don't get much better than that...

Tonight's Dinner:

Rabbit & Lemon Terrine.

Nodini di Vitello, in Sage & Wine Sauce; Celeriac roast in Duck fat.

Pears, baked in Marsala & Brown Sugar.

Recipe: Rabbit pot-roast with Parma Ham & Fresh Herbs

Apparently a piedmontese recipe, this is the most delicious method I have found for cooking rabbit. Bar none. It's one of those dishes where the first mouthful is followed by an appreciative silence around the table, as conversation falls away and people devote their full attention to the seductive flavours put before them. In the course of cooking, the ham dissolves to nothing inside the pot-roast rabbit, leaving just a rich and concentrated flavour, that mingles wonderfully with the finely-chopped fresh herbs, while the cooking juices in the pan provide a sauce which is gloriously unctuous.
The only thing to be wary of in this dish is the tendency for the sliced rabbit to fall apart when served, if the process of boning the rabbit has been a little haphazard. If your boning technique isn't first rate, or you're concerned that you won't get perfect slices, then the best thing to do is to let the rabbit cool down once cooked, and only slice it once it is almost cold, when the meat will hold together once more; the old catering trick is then to serve the cool slices on very hot plates, with a spoonful of very hot sauce over the top, both of which re-heat the meat pretty instantaneously.
I have to say, when I served this the other day, and I'd had only half a rabbit to work with, my finished slices fell to pieces pitifully, but the Technical Department said the flavour was so good that the presentation was entirely irrelevant!

For four.

Ingredients: 1 Rabbit, boned (if you can get this done professionally, then it is probably a good idea); 2 teaspoons each of fresh herbs: rosemary, sage, and thyme; 4 slices of Parma Ham (San Daniele is best of course, but any good parma ham will be fine); 3 carrots, peeled; 3 celery sticks; 2 oz Butter; 2 tbs Oil; 1 cup White Wine; 1 cup Chicken stock; Salt & Pepper.

Method:

1. Take one of the carrots and one of the sticks of celery and blanch them for a couple of minutes in boiling, salted water. Drain and refresh under cold water.

2. Lay the boned rabbit out flat, neck-end towards you, and season it with salt & pepper. Finely chop the herbs, and spread these evenly over the rabbit, and then cover completely with slices of Ham. Arrange the blanched carrot and celery along the end of the rabbit nearest to you, trimming and slicing as appropriate so that there is an even strip of both carrot and celery all the way along (the idea being that once the rabbit has been rolled and roast, when it is sliced, each slice will have at its centre a piece of cooked carrot and a piece of cooked celery). Roll the rabbit up, and tie tightly.

4. In a heavy casserole, melt the Butter with the Oil, and then brown the tied Rabbit on all sides.

5. Remove the Rabbit from the casserole, and sauté the remaining Carrot and Celery, cut into 1 cm dice, for five minutes or so until they start to colour. Return the Rabbit to the pan, season it generously, raise the heat and pour over the Wine over the Rabbit. Reduce the wine by about half, and then add the Stock. Once the liquid has returned to the boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, cover the pan and leave to cook for an hour and a quarter.

Leave for about ten minutes before slicing, and serve with the vegetables and cooking juices from the casserole.

Postscript: Somebody has very helpfully sent me this fascinating link to a how-to video for de-boning rabbit. Positively mesmerising.

Autumn Days

Glorious days of golden sunshine, still warm enough to sit on the terrace for morning coffee, and to work in shirt-sleeves in the garden...but definitely cold enough at night that all the doors and windows are closed after sundown, and the four-footeds find the floor tiles too cold for them to sleep on in comfort. Which has led to some confused incidents when both of them have decided to jump onto the bed in the middle of the night at the same time, and then become noisily territorial as they both tell the other one to eff off, at two in the morning. Now sorted, as the older one has his own bed to sleep on, and the younger one has nobody to fight with.

The Booker Prize is announced today. My vote goes clearly to Emma Donoghue for 'Room' - excellent writing. I was dismayed to see that the favourite is Tom McCarthy's 'C', which I confess I struggled to finish. Derivative, clumsy, self-consciously 'clever', inconsistent, and in places just silly...I found myself sighing from time to time as I pushed myself to plough on with the thing. I do hope it doesn't win, although this year's shortlist was so thin in general that I don't trust the judges' judgement at all - not least since they didn't include such gems as the offerings by Helen Dunmore and David Mitchell, both of which I would recommend highly.

This week's major discovery has been Baldo rice - I'd never heard of it before, but the Tecchnical Department came across it recently, and ordered a year's supply online. I think it comes from somewhere in the Po Valley and fortunately, given how much of it is now on the pantry shelves, is superb. Light, with loads of starch, and a character that means that the grains remain quite distinct even once cooked. I've now tried it twice, once in a risotto with limoncino leaves, and then again a couple of days ago in risotto with some chanterelles which we found at the amantea man's shop in San Francesco. Both times, delicious - the second time, even more so, as the risotto was made with a sofritto using fat from the partridges we were given in London a couple of weeks ago (and which the TD plucked and drew, before we put them in our luggage to bring back to Pisa), as well as stock from a spit-roast guinea fowl, which we had on the evening we got back.

Otherwise, a good apricot and cinnamon cake, decorated with crystallised limoncino leaves (yes, a theme emerges - but prompted mostly by my need to give the limoncino bush a haircut, rather than culinary necessity), and a fairly delicious walnut baklava, which I'd never tried to make during all the years actually living in Greece. Pretty delicious, and in fact indistinguishable from that made by the baker who's oven used to back onto the house we lived in back in the seventies.

I think it must be instinctive - as the evenings draw in, the home-and-hearth impulse kicks in, and baking comes to the fore!
Tonight's dinner:

Asparagus & Gruyère bundles in Parma Ham, roast and then served with a Balsamic dressing.

Roast rabbit, boned and stuffed with Celery; braised Broccoli stalks.

Plum Tarts.