Senior Four-footed - Bulletin...

In response to the numerous e-mails and phone calls wanting to know how the senior FF is getting on, I thought I'd  better post a bulletin, much as they do (or did...I expect it would all be done digitally, these days) on the railings at Buckingham Palace. 

He is greatly improved, and, thankfully, seems unlikely to be muttering 'Bugger Bognor' any time soon. (For anybody unclear on the reference, I suggest you google it...)

He's looking a little thin, and puffs and pants for many minutes from the effort of climbing the stairs, each time he does it - but apart from that is cheerful, and clearly on the mend. The pill regime is rather daunting: pills to coagulate his blood, others to suppress any infections, cortizone to do whatever cortizone does, and then another course of pills to address any possible side-effects from the cortizone...and then there's yet another course of pills, the purpose of which escapes me right now, but he has to have them twice a day. Currently, he takes five and a quarter pills of various colours in the morning, a further one and a quarter at midday, and just after dinner has another four and a quarter, to round off the day. 
I suspect the battery of treatments reflects the fact that the vets haven't managed specifically to identify the problem (the latest prognosis was a vague reference to an 'auto-immune' reaction...which seemed shorthand for 'we haven't a clue, frankly...') but since the pills aren't likely to do him any harm, then we're happy to go through the process. Technical Dept and I are still fairly convinced that it was rat poison, and that the coagulant pills and the antibiotics would actually do the trick on their own...

Tonight's Dinner:

Tagliatelle with salmon and orange

Pork Chops in cream and mustard sauce; green beans with tomato

Lemon cream

Recipe: Risotto of Celeriac and Tarragon

Not a classic combination, but delicious for all that. Intriguing, too - as the combined flavours are complementary but elusive; the Technical Dept couldn't idenify a single ingredient that had gone into the dish when I served it up to him several days ago (but he was enthusiastic for a second serving, anyway).

The secret is to dice the celeriac very finely, to start with, and then sweat it slowly so that the fibres break down, and the texture of the vegetable is indistinguishable within the finished risotto. For this initial stage, I used some leftover butter from a boned and stuffed chicken which we'd had several days beforehand, and which had the advantage of lots and lots of flavour; duck or goose fat would be good, too - but, failing that, just sweating the celeriac in plain butter should do the trick. 


For two.

Ingredients: half a small Celeriac, diced very finely (you want to have about one and a half cups, once the Celeriac has been peeled and diced); 2-3 tbs butter (or duck or goose fat, if you have it); two-thirds of a cup of rice (Carnaroli, by preference - these days, I use Baldo, but I doubt it's generally available, and Carnaroli is the next best thing); one glass of dry White Wine; approx one and a half pints of 'white' stock (chicken, duck, or veal); 2 tbs of chopped Tarragon; half a tsp of White Truffle Oil; Seasoning.


1. In a large sauté pan, over low heat, melt the Butter and in it sweat the diced Celeriac until thoroughly softened, stirring from time to time. This should take around 35 minutes. Try to avoid letting the Celeriac colour as it cooks.

2. Heat the Stock in a saucepan.

3. Once the Celeriac is properly softened, add to it the Rice. Raise the heat under the pan, and stir everything together for about a minute; add the Wine, adjust the heat so that the liquid is just bubbling, and continue in classic risotto style, adding the heated Stock by ladlefuls as the liquid in the pan is absorbed by the Rice.

4. Start testing for doneness after about twenty minutes, and continue the cooking process until the rice has lost its 'bite'. 

5. Off the heat, stir in the chopped Tarragon and the Truffle Oil; add seasoning to taste, and serve. 

It's been a bumpy ride...

...but we hope things are now looking up. Having congratulated ourselves on surviving a close shave, we enjoyed the senior FF bouncing around, all weekend, and generally being a joy. And then, on Monday, he seemed to get very listless, and we decided not to wait until his appointment on Tuesday to have his red-blood-cell count checked, and instead took him back to the clinic immediately. The test showed his count was down again, and we ended up leaving him there overnight once more...and came home to a very glum evening, with all sorts of things not being said. 


By this morning, he'd had x-rays (nothing untoward showed up) and tests for parasites (again, all ok), and they said he'd have to wait until early evening to have an ultrasound....so we went and fetched him home for the day, as there was no point in him sitting needlessly in a cage all day, feeling miserable, if we could have him at home and lavish TLC on him instead. 
In fact, when we went to spring him from gaol, he seemed grumpy and opinionated about being there, rather than miserable - which seemed a positive sign rather than otherwise. So, he spent the day sprawled on the Office floor, having the occasional quiet conversation with one or other of us, and then we went back again for his next set of tests early this evening. Having lost our last three four-footeds to various kinds of cancer, I think we were both quietly resigned to it being bad news. 


And it wasn't!!


He got a clean bill of health. Nothing showed up anything that confirmed our worst fears....and so, he's back on the anti-rat-poison treatment, had a shot of cortizone, and came straight home again.  He and the junior FF spent much of the evening wrestling together (junior FF hasn't known what to do with himself without his mate, when he's been in the clinic, as they haven't been apart for a day since Junior FF was ten weeks old), and now they are happily crashed out nearby....and all is well with the world.


There are many more pills to be taken and blood tests to be endured before we're entirely out of the woods...but the prognosis is now encouraging.


I think I need a drink!

Dog Days...

But in the canine-crisis sense, rather than the languid mid-summer bucolic one. We noticed last week that the senior four-footed was looking off-colour (but put it down to his age, rather than anything else) and after a couple of days of not eating, which for him is unheard of, we whisked him off to the vet on Friday morning...just to be sure that it wasn't anything serious. Not a moment too soon, it transpired, as a blood test showed that he was dangerously anaemic, and an emergency blood transfusion was organised within minutes of getting to the surgery. Fortunately, we'd taken the junior four-footed with us for the trip, and before he knew it, he'd been scooped up onto an operating table, and was giving half a litre of life-saving blood, to be immediately pumped into his partner-in-crime. Had we left it a couple of hours later,  according to the vet, then it would very likely have been too late...


It can only have been rat poison, which works by causing internal bleeding, and eventually causes the system to collapse entirely. Where he'd picked it up is entirely a mystery, though - not in the garden here, for sure, and generally when they're out the four-footeds are kept firmly on a lead. The senior FF does have a habit of nipping through to the church field next door whenever he can, though, for a general scavenge and forage, and that seems the likeliest place where he would have picked it up. Both Don Guido and Loredana say that nobody has been putting any poison down there, though...and so the matter remains officially a mystery.


Senior FF was allowed to come home yesterday morning, although his blood count is still pretty low, and he has to go back on Tuesday for another blood test. He positively rattles with pills at the  moment (he's on a course of coagulents for the next month, and antibiotics as well, for a week or so), and so it's lucky that he actually quite likes taking medication - it makes him feel important, I think, and makes the junior FF quite jealous that he isn't getting any of whatever it is.


Bit of a close call...


Tonight's Dinner


Will be at Pergoletta  in the Via dei Belli Torri. Sarah is here for the weekend (arrived in the middle of Emergency Ward 10!) and she's treating us.

Mid-winter...

...but, in fact, anything but bleak. Blissful sunshine, and days on-end of perfect gardening weather. I'm a little concerned that some plants will be foolishly persuaded that the cold weather is over for good, and throw caution to the winds as they come into flower - it happens ever year around this time, and since we risk frosts right through until the beginning of March, invariably some plant or other ends up being frost-burnt and looking sorry for itself at the real start of spring. I can understand why they do it, though - today felt glorious, as I hacked the tangled branches of the Cachi trees into shape, and it was difficult to think it wasn't going to be like this in general from now on...


The camellia japonicas ( camellias japonica ?) behind the church are starting to flower (at the right time for them, thankfully), with luxuriantly creamy blooms - they're a range of varieties, and flower in series, so we should have some camellia action in some part of the garden from now right through until the end of March; some of the later flowering bushes are a beautifully pure white, which is positively ethereal.


I was surprised that the dwarf purple irises along the sides of the causeway have suddenly poked their heads above ground - I wasn't expecting them for another few weeks, at least. Delicately patterned, they look like oriental silks; there are bulbs of  a lighter-coloured variety planted with them as well, but they seem to be a bit more reserved, and are perhaps waiting for more sustained warmer weather before they come out.


Much of the winter garden chores have now been done - most of the transplanting is complete (roses, agapanthus, a few small trees) although I still have to move some of the raspberry canes, as well as a flaming-red chaenomeles, which needs a cooler position than it's had so far. Other than that, I have to finish pruning the fruit trees, sort out the grape vines, and get the fruit cage sorted out for this coming year before I can consider we're in good shape. The weather looks good for the remainder of the week, so perhaps I might get it all done by the weekend...before sod's law says the weather will close in and I find myself sitting beside the fire again curled up with a book for the whole of February!

Tonight's Dinner"


Onion Tarts.


Fiorentina, with Parmesan and Arugula.


Lemon Creams.

Recipe: Slow-Poached Rabbit, stuffed with Orange & Walnuts

This might sound complicated - it isn't. And I can readily state that this is the most delicious thing I've eaten so far this year. 
With only a very few changes, the recipe is from an Australian food-writer called Christine Manfield (a friend of Christian's...he sent a copy of her latest tome for Christmas - an extremely weighty volume rather worryingly bound within day-glo velour covers, which gave long pause for thought once the outer wrapping had been removed).

The secret to painless slow-poaching is to use a deep-fat fryer as a water bath, where the accuracy of the temperature control means you can wander off and leave the poaching to take place entirely unsupervised; otherwise, it's a matter of hovering nervously for the entire cooking process, and endlessly checking thermometers and adjusting heat up or down, to ensure you have the correct constant temperature. It isn't my idea, I hasten to add - I first came across it in one of Jane Grigson's books, where she advised a deep-fat-fryer as the best means of poaching fruit in syrup. It works.

If you want an example of boning a rabbit, then follow the link through from my previous rabbit recipe, here.

For six.

Ingredients: a mature Rabbit, boned (with the liver still in place, preferably, to be included in the stuffing); 2 tbs Olive Oil; 1 small Onion, finely diced; 3 cloves Garlic, minced; 30g Pancetta, cut into julienne strips; 1 tsp ground Coriander seed; half tsp ground Cumin; 3 tsp Salt;1 tsp ground Black Pepper; 125g coarsely minced Pork meat + 125 coarsely minced Pork fat; 1 tbs chopped Parsley; 50g small black Olives, pitted and roughly chopped; 40g chopped Walnuts; zest of an Orange, finely chopped.

Method:

1. Lay the boned Rabbit out flat; butterfly the breasts open, and lay next to them the thigh and leg meat, to make as evenly covered  as possible a layer of meat. Sprinkle with 2 tsp Salt.

2. Sauté  Onion and Garlic in Oil, until they start to colour, then add the Pancetta, and continue cooling until the strips have become crisp. Stir in the Coriander and Cumin, add Salt and Pepper, and leave to cool.

3. Combine the cooled mixture with the minced Pork and fat, Rabbit liver (minced), Parsley, Walnuts, Olives and Orange zest. Heap this mixture along the longest end of the Rabbit 'rectangle' closest to you, and then roll the rabbit lengthwise, to enclose the stuffing tightly.

4. Wrap the rolled Rabbit in two layers of clingfilm, expel all of the air from within the package, and then twist the ends tightly to make a 'sausage'. The clingfilm should be tight enough that it holds the Rabbit in its sausage shape, and must be a good seal, to prevent any water from getting inside.

5. Fill a deep-fat-fryer with water to maximum depth (allowing for the displacement which will take place when the rabbit is submerged) and set the temperature to 75 degrees C. Once the water is at temperature, submerge the wrapped Rabbit, and leave to cook for 2 hours (turning every 30 minutes or so to ensure even cooking). Once cooked, remove the Rabbit from the water, and leave inside its wrapping for 30 minutes before unwrapping and slicing it to serve.

6. For a sauce to go with this, the rabbit bones can be used to make a light stock, which is then heavily reduced along with some white wine or vermouth to 'spooning' thickness , with seasoning adjusted just before use. (If your Rabbit arrived ready-boned, then use any light stock you have to-hand, instead of Rabbit Stock - chicken, veal, duck...they're all fine for this)

Found...

In  an otherwise empty shopping trolley in Waitrose, a discarded shopping list. On a lined sheet that had been torn from a small spiral-bound notebook, in uncertain handwriting,  the necessities of life were set out:

Vodka

Sausages

Breed (sic)

Baked Beans

Vodka

Is this a sign of the times?