December...

so far, is being a month of the elements. It began at three a.m. on the 1st, when I was woken by the sound of rain drumming on the roof overhead, and (sighing) I pushed the bedcovers back in order to go and do the usual. Which, when the rain sounds like that, means having to go downstairs in order firstly to lift the rug in the Tinello, and then to see that there are rolled towels along the bottom of the french windows in the Pranzo. Whichever idiot it was who was in charge of works when they last renovated this house was clever enough to direct all of the drainage from the rooftops of the house, the Teatro Lux next door, and the whole of the southern aspect of the church (probably a couple of acres of rooftop, all-told) into one solitary drain, leading from our courtyard; and if that wasn't enough, they then concreted the entire courtyard, thus making it into an impermeable basin. The combined effect is that when - as happens perhaps half a dozen times a year - we get the sort of intense downpour which reminds us that Pisa is in fact only a couple of miles inland, and so prone to marine squalls, then the volume of water is too much for the drain to deal with, and so... it doesn't. Instead, it backs up, the courtyard fills with water with impressive speed (normally, once it has started to back-up, then within ten minutes the entire place is under about a foot of water, and rising), and water starts to come up through the Tinello floor. I'm never quite sure why the latter happens, but it isn't a big deal; generally, a couple of minutes with a mop and bucket is enough to deal with it, and once the floor is dry once more then the rug goes back into place.

On these occasions, almost invariably worst case is that the water level rises in the courtyard sufficiently to lap the sills of the french windows - a foot above ground, and so not too vulnerable - before the squall passes, and the water disappears again almost as quickly as it appeared in the first place. On one occasion, it started to soak in, through the towels, and all looked a bit worrying, before the rain receded, and the water-level dropped once more - and once, when we were away, in London, water had clearly swept in, throughout the ground floor, and rather dramatically caused a low-lying transformer behind one of the kitchen cupboards to blow, leaving the house without power for a couple of days. Luckily, on that occasion, Olga had come in and dealt with all of the clean-up operation before we returned, and we could subsequently only guess at the impressive nature of the event from finding leaves and other debris from the courtyard in obscure parts of the ground floor over the following weeks. That, and the mangled remains of the exploded transformer, of course.

I expected this time to be no different from others. The rain drummed down, I dealt with the rug and the towels...while the storm got markedly worse, with almost constant crashes of thunder and lightning, and the harsher intermittent sound of hailstones bouncing up from the ground outside and ricocheting against the windows. If anything, the rain got more intense, and the water level was already up to the sills. TD was present by then, and between us we gathered every towel in the house, to increase the defence blockade as best we could. At which point, the water started to flow in under the left-hand french window in the Pranzo, and although I tried to hold towels in place against it, the force was too strong, and in seconds water was flowing in and cascading down onto the Pranzo floor like a miniature version of Niagara. Gallons and gallons per minute. Rapidly, we decided to abandon the Pranzo, and made a dam of towels across the bottom of the doorway into the kitchen, to contain the water in the Pranzo (if possible). TD then realised that water was also cascading from the courtyard into the Pantry, and so he rushed off to do the same across the doorway from the Pantry into the Scullery - even the four-footed's bed had been called into action by that point, and was sacrificed to the greater good as part of the dam structure. He didn't mind at all, as he was finding the whole event quite exciting, until he got shouted at for getting underfoot as I was lifting the dining chairs out of the water to put them on top of the table, after which he retreated to a far corner of the kitchen, to watch events from a distance, in cautious silence.

 And so, the storm passed on, the rain stopped, the thunder and lightning faded into the distance...and the Pranzo was two inches and more under a sheet of water, which reflected the lights from the display cabinets rather prettily, I thought, with reflections of the glass and porcelain inside them, and reflected light shimmered up across the ceiling beams as I waded through the water and started to bale. TD was dealing in the distance with the flood at that end of the house - the Cantina was at least six inches underwater, he reported later - and he got the technological benefit of using the karcher to suck water up by the gallon before depositing it down the sink in the lavanderia, while I baled out the lake in the Pranzo by the age-old expedient of mopping it up with towels and a bucket. Eighteen towel-loads wrung out equalled one bucket-full, to be emptied into the kitchen sink, and then another eighteen, and then another eighteen, and then another eighteen, and then....you get the idea. I think it was after about the fifteenth or eighteenth bucket that I actually began to see little islands of tile appearing here and there above the surface of the water; and then the little islands became an archipelago; and then, it was a floor with puddles on it, rather than vice versa.....and eventually, I was able to remove the towels from the doorway, and (sort of) declare victory.

By the time it was fully light, the house was damp, but no longer flooded, tea had been made, and TD retreated to bed once more, mug of tea in hand, while four-footed and I  regarded each other somewhat balefully, and decided to get on with the day.

So, that was element number one: Water.

Element number two would have to be Earth. The storm gave way to a week or ten days of gloriously sunny weather, perfect for gardening, and the start of the chores I'd lined up for winter. I extended the beds at the top of the North Lawn, to allow for division and replanting of bearded irises, as well as a whole lot of Munstead Lavenders to go in, and I put four new hydrangeas under the edge of the pergola (Kokonoe Tama, Anthony Bullivant, Merveille Sanguine, and Paniculata Sundae Fraise); at the other end of the garden, I put in a couple of hundred flagged iris bulbs (Hildegard - a pale blue, to mix in with the Purple Sensation already there from last year), and added an Indigofera Gerardiana and a Loropetalum to the shrubbery, and replanted a whole lot of bergenias which looked in need of a less sunny spot before next summer;   then, I cleared out the area under the Camellia grove at the end of the agrumi lawn, added a couple more camellias (blush pinks, but nameless) to take the grove down to the edge of the lavender path, and transplanted about fifty ajuga plants from the lower shrubbery, and mixed them in with about forty tiarellas, which I hope will spread to become dense underplanting beneath the Camellias as they mature. Finally, before the weather broke, I planted ten new bamboo plants (phyllostachys bissettii) along the southern perimeter of the garden, which should become a dense screen within a year or two, and shield us from the increased noise and activity that seems inevitable now that the Seminary has handed the pavilion over the the Scouts for their future use.

Loads of earth was involved....wet and rich and dark...and most of it seemingly attached to the four-footed's paws. (I don't understand why it is that the cats, who also come and watch as I work, remain as clean and unsullied at the end as they were at the outset). Four-footed loves gardening, and always joins in enthusiastically, before managing to carry much of the garden back indoors with him again, about his person. Which he knows he does, and by the time I catch up with him, I invariably  find he has already put himself in the bath and is patiently waiting for the water to be turned on and for his paws and tummy to be washed and dried. Actually, he isn't merely 'waiting', since he loves the process almost more than anything else, and the expression on his face as he sits in the bath is a mixture of anticipation and accusation, as though daring me to say that he doesn't on this occasion actually need a bath.

So, plenty of Earth, as element number two.

Element number three: Fire.

The Poles turned up, two days ago, and with minimal fuss and chaos, installed the stovepipe for the wood stove in the kitchen, which has stood there for the past two years merely as a decorative object, while we summoned up the courage to initiate a process of making holes through walls and roofs in order to render the thing operational. As the choices seemed to be either GianCarlo or the Brazilians, our hesitation was entirely understandable. In either case, the process would have resulted in the whole house being  shrouded in dust and clogged with rubble, with who knows what irreperable damage to life and property along the way. Enter Kristoff and his team, and the work was carried out with so little disturbance you'd barely know they'd been there (under the careful and meticulous guidance of the TD, I must add...Kristoff initially appeared to have some ideas of his own about how it should be done, and was firmly but politely put right back on track by the TD - and kept there - with results as indicated). In drilling up through a 40 cm wall, to emerge on the other side of the wall and one floor up, and then to make a hole through the roof exactly the size to accommodate the stovepipe, the Poles made less mess than the four-footed manages on any standard gardening afternoon. And they didn't even jump in the bath and look accusing straight afterwards!

And so, for the past two evenings, the kitchen has been truly home-and-hearth-like, with flames dancing exactly as ordered, and all well with the World.

So by my reckoning, the only element still lacking for the month is Wind - and doubtless Christmas will take care of that! (Later note - it did, but not in the way expected...we had a gale on the day after Boxing Day, and the Christmas tree, out in the barn, blew over rather dramatically in the middle of a tremendous downpour...uprighted subsequently, it resembled a slightly drunken actress, unsteady onher pins, for the remainder of the Christmas period).

Tonight's dinner (post flight - we're about to leave for the airport):

Bouchées à la Reine

Roast Beef, etc

Apples baked in Cream, Brown Sugar and Cinnamon

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.