Oktoberfest.....

........is not to be recommended as a spectator sport! Having arrived in Munich last Sunday for a few days' work, I can vouch for this fact, as my first evening coincided with the Beer-swillers' last blast, and the centre of town was densely populated with international revellers distinctly the worse for wear. On the whole, it was the foreigners who seemed most on the point of physical collapse, whilst the effect of the beer intake on the lederhosen-clad locals (and what a daft costume is that!) was to make them even more carefully ramrod straight, if a little steely-eyed in their determination not to fall over.....

Bavarian food takes no prisoners, and by the time I was back at the airport, on Wednesday, I'd consumed enough slabs of cooked-to-death fleisch and servings of sauerkraut, and kartoffeln served up in myriad formats to last me a lifetime. On Monday evening I was part of a very jolly group - some new friends, and some of ancient long-standing - whose choice for dinner was an italian restaurant nestling in the shadows of the Frauenkirche, where we sat outside and were served prawn salad incongruously garnished with raspberries (excellent raspberries, I hasten to add, despite their surprising context) and I played safe and followed it with tagliatelle con salsiccie, all washed down with a perfectly serviceable pugliese red. It was a splendid evening, all told - but I have to confess that I thought rather longingly of the boconcini of tuna, wrapped in lardo di colonnato and then fried which I'd had for lunch at Cammillo in Florence the previous Friday.....

Tuesday was an 'oh, what the Hell!......In for a penny.....' event, when I met Sonia for dinner, and she took me to the most bavarian of all choices in town, a place called Beim Sedlmayer, where the menu-planning definitely has in mind the approach of a long, hard winter, and the recurring theme of the place is foot-tall glasses brimming with frothy weiss bier. And frequently re-filled. In memory of a shared cooking occasion in Greece nearly three decades ago, we had a couple of semmelsknoedel which were awe-inspiring in their density and sheer weight. No surprise that I ended up choosing to go by foot all the way back to the hotel afterwards, in an effort to walk some of it off.....!

There were some lighter moments, though. The advent of mushroom season was evident on every restaurant menu, and I'd be amazed if there's a chanterelle now left standing within several hundred miles of Munich, given the number of dishes that appear to major on it. Pfefferlinge is the name in German, which is rather charming. And remarkable not least for the fact that the english name for chanterelle appears to be ......chanterelle. Walking back amongst the darkened stalls of the market, it was clear that in daytime there are whole businesses devoted exclusively to trade in pfefferlinge, which to me suggests a rather softer side to the bavarians than the image portrayed by the lederhosen and bristly titfers.........

London now for the next fortnight.

Tonight's Dinner:

Tart shells, with sautéed funghi and fegatini, in a cream and sherry and ginger sauce.

Roast Beef; Celeriac and Carrots roast in duck fat; Yorkshire Pudding.

Baked Apples, stuffed with amaretti biscuits soaked in hazelnut liqueur.

Recipe: Prune Ice Cream

This is another one of those recipes which is so simple it almost doesn't merit writing down; I was a little sceptical when I first tried it, as it is based only on cream, rather than on a custard, and with the lightweight cream we get in Italy I had my doubts that the finished product would be dense enough to be satisfying. Not a bit of it! It was as rich and unctuous and delicious as you could hope for....

For four.

Ingredients: two cups of soft, stoned Prunes; Marsala(or Cream Sherry, in the absence of Marsala), sufficient to cover the Prunes in a bowl; two tablespoons of Sugar; 8 fl oz Cream.

Method:

1. Macerate the Prunes in the alcohol for three or four hours, then liquidize the whole lot briefly in a blender.

2. Put the liquidised Prunes and the Sugar into the ice cream machine, add the Cream, and churn until ready - normally about twenty minutes, depending upon your machine.

3. Freeze until needed. This ice cream doesn't go very hard in the freezer, so there's probably no need to take it out of the freezer before you actually need to serve it.

A Most Useless Fruit......

....is the Persimmon! It ought to be otherwise, the very name suggesting something exotic and spicy, with a Shakespearian vision of the fruit piled high on a Venetian wharf, and freshly delivered by the bushel from the mysterious Orient.....

Not so.

The mysterious Orient bit is largely true, since the variety most often found these days was introduced to the West from Japan, but that wasn't until the 1800's, when it was transported by the redoubtable Commander Perry - who seems to have got about a bit. There was a native american version kicking around before that, apparently, from which the word 'Persimmon' is derived - a bastardisation of its name amongst the Algonquin Indians - and this is the name it has in Britain and the US. Elsewhere, it seems to have retained its japanese name of Kaki - and this is the name by which it is roundly cursed as the bane of my life every year at this season.

We have a Kaki tree in the garden - inherited, and of some age - which has now been trimmed and pruned and trained to become a very handsome thing. The only problem is the fruit. Vast quantities of the stuff. Tasteless and without purpose in the kitchen, it grows fat and threatening in the course of September, and then begins to rain down upon whatever is below. ....

Normally, we try and remove all of the unripe fruit in August, when it's still small and manageable - last year, there were thirteen bin-liners full of hard, green, plum-sized examples - but, for some reason, this year that particular task got overlooked. We now have a glut! Hundreds and hundreds of the things, dangling there, just waiting to plummet and burst on the paving stones below, to leave disastrous-looking globs of day-glo orange jelly everywhere, like the leavings of some invading alien force from Quatermass! I take my life in my hands if I walk under the tree after dark, en route to collecting a lemon or some bay leaves, and every time expect a gelatinous explosion on my head as I do so......and the first and messy task every morning is to clear away the detritus from the night before, before the sugar inside the fruit turns the paving stones irremediably to black...

Elizabeth Schneider gives a few (rather unconvincing) recipes for Kaki in her Uncommon Fruit- although clearly it's for a different variety, since her's have a pointed end, which mine don't - and I read once in Harold Magee that if you wrap them in clingfilm and bake them in a very low oven for twelve hours or so you can render them decently edible (but why would you go to all that trouble?). Giuliano Bugialli has recipes for both a Persimmon Cake and a Persimmon Cream in his Tuscan book, but again it reads like an awful lot of work for a rather ho-hum result. (OK, I admit it - I'm biased against the damned things!I've trodden too many times in too much orange mush for it to be otherwise.....!)

No. What's needed is a spray that will take the blossom out when it first appears in spring, and thus stop the whole process before it's started. I've tentatively enquired in the past about the existence of such a thing.......but I've found that the idea of destroying a crop at birth isn't designed to bring a smile to the face of any horticulturalist. Reminiscent of the time I was asking a succession of wideboy shop assistants in Tottenham Court Road if they had such a thing as a mobile-phone-jammer (the Technical Department had suffered in too many restaurants and on too many trains, and wanted one for Christmas). Not surprisingly, I suppose, I didn't have any great luck there, either....

Tonight's Dinner:

Tarts of Clams and Mussels

Baked Sea Bass in Anchovy Sauce, with Fagiolini

- all washed down with a rather interesting 1999 Radikon

Ricotta and Praline Cream, with fresh Raspberries

If you CAN have too much of a good thing....

....then this weekend hasn't been much proof of the fact! Two glorious concerts in a row. On Friday evening, Lieder by Brahms and Greig, performed faultlessly in the Duomo by Bernarda Fink, accompanied by Christian Koch. It was so good that there were moments when I could feel shivers running down my spine. Made even better by the fact that expectations had not been high, since the performance had been transferred from the Camposanto (it's our version of that depressing one-liner: 'and in the Church Hall, in the event of inclement weather....' ) and generally speaking the acoustics in the Duomo are quite wrong for that sort of thing. La Fink held it together marvellously, though......and the end result was sublime.

And then, last night, we had the Concerto Italiano performing Montiverdi Vespers - except not the 1610 version, as some of us had been confidently expecting, but a rather more obscure version - the effect of which, it was generally agreed, was absolutely mesmerising. The Laudate Dominum was particularly beautiful, as it rang back and forth across the nave, in a ghostly, ethereal echo of itself.
The Brancolis brought down a charabanc-load of house guests for the occasion, a collection of poor unfortunates who had been 'persuaded' to 'volunteer' their services (and I use the words advisedly) for the good of the Brancoli vendemmia........although, in practice, the weather has been such that by the time they'd all arrived in Brancoli, the grapes had already had to be collected in - probably to the great relief of all! Before last night's concert, we dined on Rabbit & Lemon Terrine (made in August, and gently maturing in the fridge ever since), followed by involtini of Leek & Parmesan, with Braised Lettuce, and then Pear & Chocolate Tarts with Chocolate Ice Cream . The high-spot of dinner, though was the glorious Sicilian dessert wine - a 2005 Ben Ryé - generously provided by the guests, which not only tasted like bottled sunshine, but had the additional merit of coming from Donnafugata, the estate in Santa Margherita di Belice where much of The Leopard was set, and even where Zefirelli filmed it......

And possibly the best thing about it, is the fact that we drank less than half of it last night - and since it's already open, we have no choice but to finish it off tonight.

What was it again about 'too much of a good thing?'........

Tonight's Dinner (Dario is coming, to ponder, over a glass or two, his future career as a globe-trotting paleo-pathologist....):

Cozze e Vongole Stufate..

Spit-roast Chicken, with Leek & Fennel

Tartes aux Pommes

Recipe: Mustard Sauce with Prunes.

OK - it isn't a title destined to set the pulses racing. In fact, reactions to 'Mustard' and 'Prunes' are more likely to range from disinterest to revulsion than to raise any flicker of interest.....However, read on! This is a flavour and texture hit, purely and simply. It goes wonderfully with sautéed rabbit, or with slices of pork tenderloin......it would work with a strongly flavoured chicken, and is good with duck. The mustard sauce has a rich and silky texture, which coats luxuriously, while the prunes become little flavour-bombs which explode in the mouth......

For four.

Ingredients: 20 stoneless soft prunes; Marsala* (sufficient to cover the prunes in a small bowl); 2 tablespoons Olive Oil; 1 small Onion; 1 clove of Garlic; 1 medium Carrot; 1 stick of Celery; 1 teaspoon of ground Ginger; 1/4 of a pint of Vermouth; 1/4 of a pint of Chicken Stock; 1/4 of a pint of Cream; two tablespoons of Dijon Mustard.

*In London, I use Cream Sherry instead - I won't pay London prices for Marsala, and Cream Sherry is an effective substitute.

Method:

1. Macerate the Prunes in the Marsala for at least three hours.

2. Sauté the chopped Onion and minced Garlic in the Oil over medium heat until softened; add the diced Carrot and diced Celery, along with the Ginger and Vermouth. Continue to cook until the Vermouth has reduced in volume by a half.

3. Add the Chicken Stock, and cook until this too has reduced by a half.

4. Add the Cream, and cook, stirring, until it has noticeably thickened. Allow to cool slightly, and then sieve into a second pan. To the sieved sauce add the Mustard and stir well to incorporate.

You can set the sauce aside at this point, to be reheated just before serving - it will actually be OK in the fridge in an appropriate container for several days.

5. Just before serving, re-heat gently, and add the macerated prunes, taken out of their macerating liquid. Check and adjust the seasoning before you serve.

There was a Time....

.....when going to the V&A for a late-night opening was like attending a rather grand and decadent party. Drinks were served in the main hall by uniformed staff, with music - generally jazz - provided by The Teatime Trio; that exuberant waterfall of coloured glass that cascades down from the domed ceiling gave the impression of balloons and streamers, and all-in-all the combination of party chatter, majestic surroundings and High Art was pretty heady. Alas, no longer. The dread hand of economics - or, more probably, the even dreader hand of Health & Safety - has put paid to all that, and the party atmosphere has given way to bag-searching security guards and and queues for the ticket desk. You can still get a drink, but to do so you have to brave the cheerless depths of the basement cafeteria - which isn't much of an argument to any but the most confirmed alcoholic......

We were there on Friday for the exhibition of Lee Miller's photography, which went some way, at least, to returning some of the sense of decadence that the authorities have done their best to purge. Rattling around Paris and New York in the late Twenties and Thirties, Miller moved with the international surrealist crowd of the time (on cup-of-sugar borrowing terms with Dali and Picasso, for instance, and was more than best buddies with Man Ray for quite some time). The early photography includes some real gems, and Miller herself was show-stoppingly stunning. Strangely, though, the most surreal element of the exhibition wasn't anything that the surrealistes d'orées had come up with, but was instead the bizarre effect achieved by the editorial team at Vogue when in 1945 they placed Miller's pictures of the horrors of the concentration camps between pages discussing this season's fashions and what colour you should be painting your toe-nails for summer! What were they thinking of.....?

Despite their failings in the party department, the V&A has definitely come on in leaps and bounds since the era when they were renowned for their level of incompetence - a period when Private Eye reviewed in its pages a spoof publication by the then curator, Roy Strong, entitled Things which have recently fallen over and got broken at the V&A. At the time, it caused a wry and knowing smile in quite a few quarters. Roy Strong, I remember from I dinner I once cooked in Dr Johnson's House in Gough Square, which was the launch of some new publishing venture and was attended by the glitterati of the literary world - we set up our kitchen in Dr Johnson's Library, and at one point Beryl Bainbridge wandered in and expressed heartfelt disgust that we were allowed to roast half sheep on the premises, whereas if she wanted a cigarette (which, clearly, she did) she had to go and stand in the square outside!

Mind you, she would have felt divinely vindicated had she known that we fused the power supply ten minutes later, and mid-dinner had to move all of our ovens right down to the basement, where there was a different power circuit. Dinner was served in the attic, four floors (73 steps!) up from the basement kitchen. By the following morning, my aching muscles were telling me I'd just completed a high pressure pentathlon. I only hope Beryl Bainbridge enjoyed her cigarette!

Tonight's dinner:

Flamiche.

Bistecchie di Maiale; Aubergines with Anchovy & Garlic.

Budino of fragole grapes, with Cream.

Recipe: Scallops with Almonds, in a Parsley Sauce

It was the Technical Department's birthday this week, and Scallops were specifically requested as a first course for dinner. And not the same-old-same-old with leeks and Pernod please (nothing wrong with it, you understand, but......it's been done). Some research later, and the following recipe was unearthed from the pages of Michel Guérard - a name that's effectively disappeared during the past thirty years, but which is long overdue for re-discovery: his method for gratin dauphinoise, quite apart from anything else, is both unusual and terrific!

At first reading, this particular Scallop recipe sounds as though the shellfish will be swamped by the other ingredients - not so, though, and the end result is subtle, well-balanced and delicious. As with pretty much all Scallop dishes, it can be done from scratch to serving in under ten minutes!

For Two.

Ingredients: 10 large Scallops (coral removed); 3 oz Butter; 20g slivered Almonds; 1 clove of Garlic; 1 large fistful of Parsley; 2 tablespoons of Cream; 1 tablespoon of Olive Oil; Salt & Pepper.

Method:

1. Blanch the Garlic and Parsley in boiling water for two minutes. Drain, and chop finely (if doing the recipe for a larger number, and the quantity justifies it, you can do this in a processor; when just doing it for two, though, it's easier just to chop finely by hand).

2. Put the chopped mixture in a double boiler or zimmertopf, and add the Cream and Olive Oil over a low heat. Stir throughly.

3. Heat half the butter in a frying pan. When melted, add the slivered Almonds, raise the heat, and cook, stirring, until they become golden brown. Add the Scallops, and cook for 30 seconds or so on each side. Spoon the Scallops onto heated serving plates, then add the remaining Butter to the pan and stir rapidly as it melts; spoon the melted Butter and cooking residue from the pan over the Scallops.

4. Season the Parsley Sauce, stir once more, then spoon over the Scallops. (If you want to be a purist, you can sieve the sauce at this stage to get an entirely smooth consistency - it's a matter of personal preference. I don't bother)

Serve