Pisa, this week...

Hot. Very. I would say 'unbearably', since the temperatures are comparable with the heatwave we had this time last year, which sent us scuttling for refuge in London...but somehow the verdant lawns and generally flourishing  look of the garden seems to make the heat more acceptable. Which must be another benefit of the hundreds of gallons of water we're chucking around the place on a daily basis. The Technical Dept has been increasing the coverage of the irrigation system, little by little, and I think the only things in the entire garden now not automatically watered are the fruit cage, the camellias directly behind the church, and the disparate collection of shrubs which are down in the area of the white grape arbour (eucomus; wygelia; two lilacs; beauté vendomoise; a cunninghamia; and a chimonensis). Occasionally, one or other of us goes to check the level of the well, but it seems to be bearing this increased amount of use quite happily, and appears to refill at the same rate that the water is pumped out. Long may it continue! The garden here now has the sort of emerald sheen that would bring a twinkle to the eye of any self-respecting kerrygold cow, while the rest of Tuscany, as far as I can see, is burnt to a frazzle. The last time we had any rain to speak of was almost three months ago...

The worst of the fruit glut is over - and I confess that towards the end I just left the plums and greengages for the birds.Now we're harvesting almonds, hazelnuts, and apples; the figs are just starting to ripen, and the later- fruiting pears and peaches are coming on well. The fruit cage has settled down to a manageable quantity of strawberries and raspberries, which means I can generally find enough of either one of them a couple of times a week to make ice cream or sorbet or a tart for dessert, but no longer feel over-faced by the volume.

At the start of the week, when I went along to the fruit cage to pick strawberries for that evening's supper, I found an owl trapped in the netting; presumably it had been there since the night before and had managed to get itself thoroughly entangled in the process of trying to break free. By the time I found it, it was probably exhasted, and traumatised, and certainly didn't struggle when I cut it free and took it to the (relative) cool and gloom of the workshop, where I carefully cut away all the remaining bits of netting from its talons. No broken bones, which was a relief, and the bird just seemed in need of rest and recuperation. 

When I went to check on it, after a couple of hours, I found it had pushed its way into a pile of bits of polystyrene (part of the TD's filing system of 'bits of stuff that might one day be useful for something'...) which was perhaps more reminiscent of home than was the fruit box I'd given it as a bed; another couple of hours later, and I found it perched on top of the polystyrene, and watching me unblinkingly as I collected some things I needed for the garden. I left the door open for it, and when I went back to check, early in the evening, it had gone. Job done. From its size, perhaps eight inches or so top-to-toe, I'd assumed it was a juvenile, but apparently there is a species of owl indigenous to Italy, called Athene Noctua, which would be miniature in comparison to the sort of owls we have in the UK, so perhaps it was one of those. From the pictures on the web, it certainly looks to be the same thing. Very pretty. TD thinks there may be a nest in the well-house, which I think we'd consider to be a Good Thing.

Tonight's Dinner:

Risotto of fresh peas and chives.

Cold poached Pork, with piccante sauce; Fennel Salad.

Grandmarnier Cheesecake (Charles passed through a couple of days ago,  on his way back north from Pisciotta, and dropped off some Mozzarella and Ricotta enroute; the ricotta will go into the cheesecake...light, creamy and delicious!)

Savoury Clafouti

I first came across these in Allan Bay's 'Cuochi si Diventa 2'. Daft, not to have realised that the clafouti theme can be applied to rather more than just apples, pears and cherries - which I've been doing for years, on the back of Anne Willan and Bruno Loubet. I suppose the concept is a cross between a pastryless quiche, a kind of frittata, and a sponge pudding. Anyway, they are light, quick, extremely versatile, and highly recommended. In his book, Bay gives recipes for both a savoury and a sweet clafouti 'base' and then lists combinations of ingredients that can be used in combination with either one or the other. Made in individual egg dishes, these are dinner-party presentable, and if you can get them from oven to table before they deflate, then they give good theatre, too.

The following is the recipe for the savoury clafouti base. Recently, I've then been pouring this into a couple of individual egg dishes, which have first had a layer put into them of diced cooked ham and diced gorgonzola; others of his combinations are herring and onion, bacon and leek, tomato and mushroom, artichoke heart and capers....in fact, pretty much anything you like.

Savoury base for two individual clafoutis.

Ingredients: 1 Egg; 100 ml Milk; 50 ml Cream; 20g Flour; 20g Parmesan; a generous pinch of Salt; Peppr, to taste.

1. Roughy chop the Parmesan, and pulverize it in the liquidizer.

2. Add to the liquidizer jar all the rest of the ingredients and liquidize to a smooth, thick batter.

3. Pour this carefully over a layer of your chosen flavouring ingredients in the base of two greased individual egg-dishes, and bake for twenty minutes or so in an oven pre-heated to 220 degrees C. Take them out when they are risen, browned, and clearly done. Rush to table before they deflate.

Onion Tart - Paola's version.

Onions would definitely have to be one of my Desert Island Eight foods - whenever there's been a freshly-cut half onion left in the fridge, the smell when I open the door sets the pulses racing (well, mine, anyway)... and I have been known to bite into raw onion, on occasion (to the detriment of anybody nearby, as the Technical Dept has been swift to point out)! I've believed for years that really there are only two versions of onion tart (alsatian, with cream and eggs, and pissaladiere nicoise, where the onions are caramelised down to nothing, along with seasoning and thyme, before having anchovy and olives added for the final cooking)....and then, last Monday evening, for a first course at dinner, Paola produced this version, rich in indian spices. You can make it either in a pre-cooked phyllo shell, as she did, although I imagine it would be pretty good as well in a light, buttery shortcrust shell.

Apparently, and I bow to Paola's greater knowledge here (she and Paolo have eaten their way across various parts of India over the years), much of the secret to a dish like this is in cooking the spices almost dry to start with, before adding the bulkier ingredients which they are intended to flavour.

Filling for one large or four individual tarts:

Ingredients: 1 tbs Olive Oil; 2 cloves Garlic, finely chopped; 1 medium Onion plus 500g Onion, sliced ; 1 tsp Salt; 1 tsp each of Chana Masala, Garam Masala, and Biriany Masala (if you can get it; if not then leave it out and carry on anyway);  200ml CReam; 2 Eggs; pastry of your choice.

Method:

 1. In a  pan over medium heat, sauté in the Oil the medium Onion (finely sliced), Salt and Masalas. Cook for 10 minutes.

 2. Add 500 gr Onions and continue cooking, stirring from time to time,  for about half an hour.

 3. Pour into a bowl and add Cream and Eggs. Check seasoning and add more Salt if necessary.  Pour the mixture into your prepared pastry shell or shells, and bake for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to190° C.

Delicious!

Evening watering...

Bliss!

Like synchronised swimming...

And almost as much water involved!

Tonight's Dinner:

Clafouti of Prosciutto and Gorgonzola Piccante

Pork Chops in Marsala Sauce, Ratatouille

Tarts of Frutta di bosco, with Fiori di Sicilia Cream

Too much of a good thing.

Plums. 

Again. 

I whinged about them last year, I know...and somebody helpfully suggested making jam. So I did. My grandmother's preserving pan has seen sterling use this year, what with marmalade, strawberry jam, apricot jam, nespole jam (loquat, in English; Jane Grigson is quite understandably lukewarm about this fruit, but it's another one which the italians love...cf. cachi), and ...plum jam. In fact, the plum jam has been the least of it, so far....since the apricot harvest has also been phenomenal, and indeed yesterday I made yet another five kilos of apricot jam - which is quite delicious, and for the first time I can understand why it was that apricot jam played such a prominent role in french patisserie...not to mention stalwarts of other cuisines such as sachertorte, of course.

The apricot jam will find many good uses, in the course of the year. The industrial quantities of plum jam, I'm less sure about; not least since we have foresworn bread (unless there are houseguests, when toast makes a miraculous reappearance at breakfast...) and cakes only appear on highdays and holidays. At this rate, our plum jam mountain will reach EU proportions; maybe Brussels could think of a way of using it as a means of addressing the eurozone crisis?

The weather continues glorious...apart from an unexpected flurry of raindrops in the middle of dinner the other night, we've seen no rain for about six weeks now; which I would be sighing about, were it not for the almost-completed installation of the  watering system. The pop-up sprinklers in the lawn work magnificantly, and create jets d'eau to rival Versailles! I've just about got to the stage where I no longer stand and watch them, mesmerised by the action, and rejoicing in the result; the senior four-footed is entirely sanguine about their arrival, and the junior four-footed goes and sticks his head in them as they go round, and generally gets soaked - which at least removes the need to dump him in the bath from time to time, and remove from him the bits of garden with which he manages to festoon himself every time he's out there.

Mornings dawn bright and sunny, with clear skies, and the promise of much heat. If I manage to, I get an hour or so of gardening done before 9.30.....and on the mornings when I am up and gardening at 7.30, it is a wonderful time of day, with the early sun, and everything still fresh. Poleaxed by the heat, we sleep in the afternoon, and dinner tends not to be until about 10.00, by which time the evening air is like cool spring water. It's a toss-up whether I take my laptop to the barn, and work out there during the day - but have to bring the computer  back in if I want to print something out - or else sit in air-conditioned cool in the office, and merely glimpse the sunshine through the closed french windows.

Not a good period for cooking: too hot during the day to want to spend time in the kitchen, and too many things to do in the garden once the sun starts to descend, and it becomes possible to hack and slash and weed. The only recent discoveries were two excellent sorbet recipes: strawberry sorbet, made with 300g of fresh strawberry purée, churned with 220ml sugar syrup (made by bringing a litre of water to the boil with a kilo of sugar, then keep it cold in the fridge and use as needed over the following weeks) and the juice of half a lemon...when made with fresh purée, the flavour is an absolute revelation, but I tried it the other day with some purée which had been frozen for a couple of weeks and the result was disappointing - it tasted like generic 'red fruit', and had lost all of the edginess of wonderful strawberry flavour; and Apricot sorbet, which requires 500g of halved and pitted apricots to be poached for ten minutes in 400ml of sugar syrup, then allowed to cool, liquidized and churned...the result is the creamiest, smoothest sorbet imaginable!

Tonight's dinner (post airport, as the TD is flying back from London this evening)

Risotto of limoncino and parmesan.

Italian sausage, grilled, with braised courgettes and onions

Vanilla ice cream, with balsamic strawberries.

In this neck of the woods...

they call this weather 'African heat', and you can understand why, as everybody gently wilts by mid-morning, and the idea is unthinkable of doing anything in the garden before the evening shadows start to lengthen, at around six o'clock. Even the junior four-footed inclines to the idea that the cool of the kitchen floor is a better option than trailing around outside, in these temperatures.

TD is in the middle of installing our mega-effective (I hope) garden-wide watering system....or, rather, is in the middle of starting to install etc...We gave up on hoping that Tatiana's husband was going to come and do it (the attractions of the beach are too much to withstand, I imagine, now that summer is here)  and since we don't want to get overtaken by the sort of heatwave we had last summer, when some of the garden got a bit touch-and-go, it seemed better just to bite the bullet and get on with it. Half of the woodland garden was linked up yesterday - and I must go and do an audit of which bits of the setup are working and which need attention. Well, when it's a bit cooler, I will, anyway...  

The fruit harvest continues apace. White peaches are now being picked, and the plums, and whilst there's a lull in the strawberry yield, the raspberries have started, as have the gooseberries...apples are looking good, blackberries ditto, and we risk being overwhelmed by the onset of the pear harvest. Peach sorbet (200g of puréed peach flesh, churned along with 150 ml of sugar syrup, and the juice of half a lemon) was excellent, a couple of evenings ago, and we even managed a macedoine of strawberries, peaches, and raspberries in chilled prosecco, with chopped mint leaves and grated lemon zest, where everything (apart from the prosecco, sadly) had been home-grown. It does my scottish blood good to think of the economics of it all!

Tonight's Dinner:

Fettucine, with a sauce of leeks, pancetta, and cream.

Baked salmon fillet, on a bed of braised celery, with tarragon beurre blanc.

White peach tarts.

Summer's Here....

We dined outside, in the Courtyard, last night for the first time this year! The strawberry glut is upon us....already, strawberry jam, strawberry sorbet, strawberries with balsamic, strawberry tarts, strawberry mousse...and we've invited all of rabbit's friends and relations to come and pick, as well, in order to stop the crop from entirely overwhelming us. The oldest of the new apricot trees fruited spectacularly well, a couple of weeks ago, and the jam that came from that is positively ambrosial! Our white peach tree - the one that Sarah got for us from Wisley, about eight years ago, and which she was sceptical about, when I proposed to transplant it from Fucini - is heavy with fruit, and will be ready to be harvested shortly. The fruit from that is so platonically perfect that there's no point in doing anything with it apart from to eat it exactly as it comes. Summer is definitely upon us...

And, after slightly more than two years of 'elements of refurbishment', Santa Caterina is back in action. The bells, which have an old fashioned, rather flattened and sonorous tone, rang out again last weekend, after a long silence. I image they must date from around 1560, after the big fire at the church (as the result of which, this house was built on a part of the church building which hadn't been restored - when we were installing the kitchen, under the plaster, we found walls which had been blackened in that fire). The junior four-footed, who was busy minding his own business in the garden when the bells went into action, was suddenly assaulted by the sound, looked entirely astonished, couldn't work out where the noise was coming from, and put back his head and howled. Fortunately - unlike San Francesco, which is far enough away for it not to be an issue - Santa Caterina does not ring on the hour every hour, but only on more specific and rarified occasions!

The University Choir is limbering up for a grand 'Welcome Back!' concert inside Santa Caterina, this coming Wednesday, and has been belting out rehearsals every evening this past week of Mozart's Te Deum and associated  liturgical pieces. With the french windows open from the dining room, we've been sitting through dinner, night after night, with the music washing over us, in true heavenly-choir style. I think they sound rather good; the Technical Dept, on the other hand,  thinks the thickness of the church walls probably enhances their performance immeasurably.

Tonight's dinner:

Salmon, Celery and Basil 'coupes' with spicy Gazpacho.

Pintade au Chou

Strawberry Ice Cream (!)