November Garden

We have had weeks and weeks of (almost) unbroken Indian Summer - which goes some way to make up for the dreariness of the non-summer which preceded it.

The last gasp of greenery, before it all drops...

 The four-footed, on a mission...

Grey Cat, looking winsome, as she tries to ignore the fact that to have reached this spot on the office balcony, she can only have walked right through the deeply-for-cats-off-limits house!

The last al-fresco lunches...in fact, the last time we ate outside was just before the end of the month. The barn will now be mothballed until Spring for dining, but we can sit beside the wood-stove instead, at the far end of the barn, and convince the locals that we are indeed mad, to be outside at all at this time of year.

Parthenocissus, framing the view of the agrumi lawn.
 

Last roses - although, in fact, they will probably linger on with infrequent blooms right through until Christmas. This one is Alec's Red - an amazingly fragrant bloom, like concentrated turkish delight. 

And the vivaio, in the old well-house, with the trays of plants at various stages of preparation for transplanting - here: tiarella convoluta, sweet woodruff, and munstead lavenders...

acanthus seeds, bearded iris (I'm not sure what kind, collected from a rather fine germanica we inherited in the wasteland of the garden when we arrived), crinums, dietes bicolore, and a disparate collection of libertia and surprise lilies.
 

And even a hint of mists, if not of mellow fruitfulness.

Today, of course, we have rain, and a house full of Polish builders, who are - with admittedly impressive housekeeping skills along the way, from which a variety of Brazilian and Italian workmen of our acquaintance could learn much! -  making a complicated hole through an old and very thick wall, to allow a stovepipe to travel from the kitchen on the ground floor and emerge in the dressing room on the first floor, from where it will be childsplay (famous last words) for it to emerge through the roof, and we will thereafter have a fully-functioning wood stove in the kitchen, at long last, with dancing flames, and the whole home-and-hearth thing all ready for the onset of winter. Against a background of drilling and vaccuuming, the four-footed is looking distinctly thoughtful and sticking close, at my feet as I sit here and type.

Dinner this evening, at ths rate, is anybody's guess - it rather depends on the state of the kitchen as the day progresses! Sandwiches, maybe....

Galmiche's Lemon & Lime Tart

It seems inevitable. Whenever I trumpet a technique as being 'the best way of making...', you can be certain that at some future point I will discover one I think is better. I know I've posted at least two different methods for puff pastry, several years apart, and I'm conscious that I no longer follow the method I described on here for making farmhouse bread (the rising times are shorter, but I now let the flour and most of the water stand for half an hour before first mixing in the yeast - it makes it rise better; the additional step is apparently called 'autolysis'. It works.). In his 'Pedant in the Kitchen', I remember Julian Barnes getting quite aerated on one occasion about the fact that when he rang Jane Grigson ( a  mucker of his wife, so he had the phone number to-hand) to check the detail on one of her recipes he was trying to follow, not only could she not see what his problem was in understanding what she had written, but she further frustrated him by saying airily at the end of the conversation that anyway she 'didn't do it that way any more'. Which I think completely threw him, as the concept of there being more than one way to achieve the desired result was not something he wanted to hear, as he struggled with beating meringue and adding flavouring, or whatever it was, and all he wanted to know was what was 'the right way'. Choice was an undesirable additional that he could do without!
But, the fact is, that all cooks change their minds regularly about their preferred ways of doing things ....sometimes, I suspect, from boredom, and sometimes because they really have found a better way.

Anyway. Lemon Tart. For years, I've been doing it the way I posted on here in 2009 - five years ago! A light lemon-flavoured custard of cream and eggs, set gently inside a pre-cooked shortcrust pastry shell. It is very good....I wouldn't knock it. But this one - recently discovered from Daniel Galmiche's deceptively straightforward Brassierie Cookbook - is better! The appreciative noises around the table at the first mouthful will attest to that. The flavour is intense and edgy, and show-stopping.

For one nine-inch tart (halve the quantities for a 7 inch tart):

Ingredients: shortcrust pastry, made with 10 oz plain flour, 8 oz butter, half tsp salt, and 50 ml water; 1.25 cups sugar; 1 cup lemon juice; zest of 2 limes; 7 eggs; 1 cup cream.

1. Roll the pastry to line the tart form, and leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour; heat the oven to 180 degrees C, and bake blind ten minutes with the weights inside and another five without - the pastry should be fully cooked, and biscuity. Reduce the overn temperature to 100 degrees C.

2. Add the sugar to the lemon juice in a small pan, bring to the boil over high heat, then reduce to a low simmer for ten minutes - the quantity should reduce a little over this time. Then, add the grated lime zest and leave to cool, off the heat.

3. Beat the eggs with the cream, and add this to the cool lemon/ugar/lime mixture. Allow to sit for an hour, for the flavours to blend together.

4. Carefully, pour the cream mixture into the tart shell, and bake for approx 45 minutes at 100 degrees C.  Allow to cool before serving. (One additonal option is to sprinkle the surface with icing sugar and brown it briefly with a flame thrower, in order to give the tart a crisp surface; allow to cool once more before serving, if you do this.)

Excellent with vanilla ice cream!

Pain de Campagne

is how this is described in Robuchon's 'Cuisine Actuelle', a book I have owned for several decades (I think I bought my copy when it had just been published for the first time), but which for some reason I've only recently started to dip into with any serious intent. The Technical Dept disputes the 'Pain de Campagne' moniker, as he says true P de C would not use rye flour, and down in Belforte - where they did their years before the mast, living as true french peasants, and so ought to know their stuff - they also thought it was not exactly the real deal - although good - and thought instead it was more like something they recalled as 'Grandmère's ' loaf. The book was fronted by somebody called Patricia Wells - an american foodie, who's gushy outpourings not infrequently lead her into factual errors in the course of her translation - and so it could be that the error in naming lies with her, and not with Mr R himself. 

When it comes down to it, though, it doesn't terribly matter, as the recipe produces an excellent loaf, which will remain fresh for far longer than you will ever need it to, since the more-ishness of this bread means it doesn't sit around for long at all!

The recipe calls, in part, for 'unbleached plain flour', which can mean anything or nothing, and choice of flour will depend on what you prefer from the choices you have readily available. The first few times I made this, I used 'Gran Tenero 00' as the 'unbleached plain' element, and the result was pretty good - but more recently I've taken to using Manitoba instead, which has a higher gluten content, with the result that the bread rises more fully during baking.

Oh, and for those who do not knead by hand (guilty, as charged - life's far too short), one tip attached as a footnote to this recipe which I have found to be revolutionary, is that when kneading only a small amount (for one loaf, say) then it is much better to use the paddle attachment than to use the dough hook (counter-intuitive, I know), as this results in a dough which has been more thoroughly kneaded and will therefore have a much firmer texture. Simple, but worthy of note. 

For one large loaf:

Ingredients: 425g 'unbleached plain flour'; 225g rye flour; 15g fresh yeast; 16 fl oz tepid water; 1 tsp sugar; 1 tbs salt; 1 tbs clear honey.

Method:

1. Crumble the yeast into half the water, add the sugar to this, and leave to stand for 15 minutes.

2. Add the yeast-liquid to the mixing bowl, add half of each of the two flours, and mix briefly for two or three minutes. Cover the bowl with a dampl cloth, and leave to prove for half an hour.

3. In the remaining 8 fl oz of water, thoroughly dissolve the salt, and add this to the mixture in the bowl. With the paddle at low speed, gradually add the remaining plain and rye flour, and then slightly increase the speed to knead the dough thoroughly.

4. Knead for five minutes, then add to the mixture the spoonful of honey, and knead for a further five minutes. The dough should be relatively firm by this stage. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead by hand for a minute or so - I'm not sure whether this is because the warmth from your hands has some alchemical effect, or whether it is only by working it in this way that you can be certain the dough is firm enough; certainly, if it is too sloppy to be able to knead properly by hand, then you must add more flour until the dough is firm enough to be able to work by hand. Return the dough to the bowl, cover again with the damp cloth, and leave in a warm place for 40 minutes. ( I always leave it in the oven, with the door closed, and a roasting pan filled with biling water in the bottom of the oven).

5. Take the risen dough form the bowl, and one more knead it on a floured surface for a minute or so, before forming it into a ball, and puttting it onto a greased baking tray.  Flour the surface of the dough generously, and loosely place the damp cloth back over it. Leave in the warm place to rise again for an hour.

6. Forty minutes into the rising time, pre-heat the baking oven to 250 degrees C. Twenty minutes later, after an hour's rising, remove the damp cloth and make a few slashes in top of the risen dough, to allow it to rise properly when baking.

7. Bake for twenty minutes at 250, then twenty minutes further at 190 degrees. Keep an eye on it towards the end, to ensure it doesn't get too dark on top - if it seems in danger of doing so, and you want to take it out of the oven several minutes short of the specified time, it is properly fine to do so.

Finally, summer...

While the UK appears to have been sweltering, in Tuscany we've had the worst weather for July in living memory. Rain, followed by more rain, and then.....rain. In July. When, normally, there would be weeks on-end of cloudless days, and every morning would start with yet another clear blue sky.....and, by now, I would be getting more than a litle thoughtful about whether the water supply would keep going until the arrival of rain in September.

And cold, too. In any normal year, the dining room is mothballed from mid June for the next three months, while we dine either in the barn or else in the courtyard. Well, this year, it has been un-mothballed on quite a few occasions, and we've supped indoors, to the sound of the rain cascading down torrentially outside the windows. When I was having my hair cut, the other day, Monica reported grumpily that her friend had just spent a week in Ireland, where they had day after day of temperatures in the thirties, and sun the whole time (mind you, conversation with Monica is generally of the downbeat if-your time-has-come-then-there's nothing -you-can-do-about-it sort of cheeeriness, so no change there), while we here in Pisa were suffering a summer the like of which she'd never known before!

You might think the italians would be blasé by now about sunny weather, but in fact they seem to need it, like  Dracula needs sundown. Default mode for any italian is to spend the day at the beach if they possibly can - which may go some way towards explaining the current state of the italian economy. Bad weather in summer sends them into a frenzy of despondency.
So, now, even though we're already into August, they can start to cheer up. The sun is out, the forecast is good, everything is green and lush and growing like crazy, the wells are full to overflowing, and all just in time for the annual shut-down.

Tonight's Dinner:

Savoury Clafouti.

Salmon, in chive sauce, on potato and thyme galettes.

Chocolate petits pots à la crème, with lemon madeleines

Crème Brulée Pomme Verte

There's a lot to be said for a well-made Crème Brulée...including the fact that they aren't that easy to find. There seem to be many ideas of what constitutes a good one - how thick or how light, with or without the addition of soft fruit or other things to be discovered under the Crème, and whether the crust should be light and delicate, or dark and practically impenetrable - and even more different methods of making the thing. I've tried versions from Pierre Hermé, Loubet, Leith, Galmiche, Marco-Pierre...and probably many others that I can't even particularly remember. Almost all use bains maries; some pre-cook the crème as a custard, and others go straight from the egg mixture to the oven; temperatures and timings vary wildly, and so do the end results.
This version was discovered somewhere on the internet by the Technical Dept - I suspect it might have been on the Vedrenne website, in fact - and passed on to me. Technically, I don't think it can be bettered, and it has become my standard.

I first discovered Vedrenne Pomme Verte sirop a decade or so ago, when I was in search of Vedrenne sirops at a reasonable price, and tracked down the UK importer - a genial chap, based somewhere in Oxfordshire. He was quite happy to supply me, as long as I bought a minimum of a case of a dozen litre bottles at one time; and since the case could be mixed, I happily chose at random from a whole list of flavours I'd never previously heard of, to supplement the Framboise, Cassis, and Pêche de Vigne flavours that were what I was really after. And amongst them was Pomme Verte. A novelty, smelling intriguingly of almonds, I was initially at a loss about how I could use it - as with all sirops, the flavour disappears if cooked too robustly. In practice, it is good if added to other things, to give them a kick...a spoonful added to apple sorbet as it churns, for example, or added to the custard for a tarte normande, or a flavoured filling to go inside a crêpe. And, for something like crème brulée, it is perfect.

Oh, it is excellent also in a large,chilled gin and tonic....in fact, I'm almost tempted to say that that is its best use of all!

If you leave out the sirop in this recipe, then the recipe works either as the base for a differently-flavoured Crème Brulée, and if you don't bother with the burnt topping, then the recipe is effectively the same as for a petit pot à la crème.

For two individual servings.
Ingredients: 125 ml cream; 125 ml milk; 3 egg yolks; 15g sugar (for the base); 2 tbs Pomme Verte sirop; caster sugar, for the topping.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 90 degrees C.

2. Put the cream and milk into a simmertopf, and leave over a gentle heat for a few minutes, to heat through.

3. Beat the egg yolks and 15g sugar, until pale yellow.

4. Add the heated milk/cream to the egg mixture, along with the Pomme Verte, and whisk to incorporate.

5. Divide this mixture between two ramekins, and place in the pre-heated oven, on  baking tray (no bain marie!) for 40 minutes. At the end of this time, they should be quite firm - if they aren't, they should firm up whilst cooling after they've been taken out of the oven.

6. Once they have coled down - after twenty minutes or so - place in the fridge to chill for at least two hours.

7. Thirty minutes or so before serving, sprinkle the tops with a covering of caster sugar, and use a blowtorch to caramelise the sugar to a dark brown. Place the ramekins back in the fridge after this, until you want to serve them.

For perfection, serve with puff pastry sugar twists.

Garden Update

As usual, Tempo Italia has got the forecast wrong almost every day this week. Thursday - a dry day, according to TI - saw thunderstorms and downpours; today, is apparently cloudy, with a maximum of about 25 degrees (the photographs were taken about twenty minutes ago, and show a somewhat different story,  with a  temperature way up in the thirties...too hot to be doing anything other than a little light pruning,in the shade, and definitely not the serious hoeing I had in mind).

The mallows are in bloom - and will flower now through  until the end of the summer - and the hemerocallis are showing their colours in staggered glory. The roses are getting into their stride for their second flowering of the year (apart from the climbers, some of which will favour us with the occasional flower, from time to time, but they won't repeat their earlier magnificence again until next year).

Tulbargias and agapanthus are also coming on strongly, and as the arborescens and quercifoglia hydrangeas start to show signs of fading, the macrophyllas are still doing well, and buds on the paniculatas are gathering strength.

And, as ever, we have an eu-sized fruit glut. The red plum tree is almost done, having furnished fruit for jam (around ten kilos), tarts, sorbet, consumed with yoghurt, and given to friends; the yellow plum tree is groaning beneath the industrial quantities of large, succulent fruit (which we haven't even started to pick, yet); we've just picked the nectarines, which will keep us going for quite some time; fortunately, the remaining peach tree is a late-fruiter, so we have a bit of a breather before that has to be dealt with, but in the meantime the fig trees (both purple and green) will be ready....as will the pear trees, and the apples soon after that. The quinces are a whole other issue - but one where I can happily leave the fruit on the trees until well into the autumn. And then, of course, there are the almond trees and the hazelnuts...which are wondeful in theory, but where dealing with the shells is a whole different kind of challenge.

Oh, well. There are plenty worse problems to have than that. And for now, I think an undemanding wielding of the seccateurs on the roses around the upper terrace, and then a refreshing glass of white wine before siesta beckons...

Tonight's dinner:

Prosciutto and Melon.

Rabbit in white wine and celery; fennel in cream and pernod.

Tarte Bordaloue.

Courgette Tourte

This is a hybrid, from Roux (from their Carrot Tourte, which has apparently been on the menu at Gavroche since the dawn of time), Grigson (who gives a recipe for courgette tart which works on the basis that enough other things are added to give the thing a semblance of flavour, given that in Grigson's opinion, courgettes are a junior relation of the vegetable marrow and therefore essentially worthless), and Wolfert (for the idea of courgettes sliced thinly, and then sautéed gently in butter and thyme).  The structure is really that of a pithiviers with a steam hole in the top. Overall, the result is light, delicious, and generally likely to get the tastebuds working overtime.

For Four, as a starter.

Ingredients: Puff pastry, sufficient to make 8 x 10 cm discs, when rolled to a 2mm thickness (if using commercial pastry, I imagine this equates to less than a normal 'packet'; if using homemade, then pastry made with 250g flour and 250g chilled butter will give you more than enough for this recipe, with enough left over for something else); 60g butter; 1 clove garlic, minced; 2 medium-large courgettes; half a medium onion; quarter cup cream; 2 tbs grated parmesan; 1 tsp dried thyme; 2 tbs olive oil; 1 sprig rosemary; 3 tbs cream; half a cup of dry white wine; salt and pepper.

Method:

1. Finely dice the onion and one of the courgettes. Melt a third of the butter in a small pan. Sauté  the diced onion and garlic for several minutes, until softened, and then add three quarters of the diced courgette. Cook this mixture until thoroughly collapsed, add the cream and continue to cook until the cream has visibly thickened;  remove from heat, stir in the parmesan, taste and season accordingly.

2. Finely slice two thirds of the remaining courgette, and finely dice the remainder (to be added to the unused dice from step 1). Melt another third of the butter in a large frying pan, with the oil,  and sauté the slices at high temperature, just to colour; turn them half way through. When cooked, sprinkle lightly with salt and with the dried thyme.

3. Roll out the pastry to 2mm thickness, and cut out 8 circles of 10 cm diameter. In the centre of four of them, cut out a circle approx 2.5 cm in diameter (I don't have a cutter this small, and so use the large end of a piping nozzle as a guide instead). Egg wash, made from 1 beaten egg and a little water.

4. On each of the four intact circles of pastry, make a layer of sautéed courgette slices, leaving a rim of uncovered pastry of approx 1 cm all round. The point of this step is to make a membrane that will stop the courgette filling leaching into the pastry as it cooks and making it soggy, so there should be no obvious gaps in this layer. Divide the courgette-parmesan mixture in four, and place a heaped tablespoonful on each pastry base. Lay a second layer of courgette slices over the top of the mixture. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with water, and then place the lids over each tourte, and ease down to meet the exposed lower rim. Press together to seal.

5. Place the tourtes on a baking tray. Brush the surface of each one with egg wash, and leave in the fridge for at least twenty minutes.

6. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C, and bake for fifteen or twenty minutes, until puffed and brown.

7. Meanwhile, sauté the remaining diced courgette in the remaining oil and butter, until softened, then add the white wine, and simmer for ten minutes or so. Blend this mixture, then add rosemary, finely chopped, and cream. Check seasoning, and simmer until slightly thickened.

8. Once the Tourtes are baked, spoon some sauce onto each of four plates, place Tourtes on top, and serve.