"00" Flour is amazing stuff!

I waxed lyrical about it several weeks ago, when I was rediscovering the joys of hand-rolled pasta...but since then it has also turned out to produce surprisingly effective short-crust pastry, as well. 'Surprisingly', because the point about "00" is that it has a higher gluten content than normal, and so you'd expect pastry made with "00" to turn out tougher and to be generally less of A Good Thing than otherwise. Not a bit of it....Recently, when making a lattice-topped blueberry pie (for which my more usual choice of phyllo was inappropriate) I got caught short on bog-standard plain flour, and had to dip into the "00" which until then was reserved for making pasta. The result was a short-crust par excellence - light as air, but with none of that irritating tendency to fall apart that short-crust has when at the very 'shorter' end of the scale. Not entirely trusting the result, I tried it again a week later, with exactly the same result.

"00" is more expensive than the standard alternatives....but not astronomically so; in Italy, we're talking 97 centesimi a kilo, as opposed to 62 or so....and I think the equivalent quantity is available in Waitrose for around £1.40. It's definitely worth the extra - just as carnaroli is worth paying more for than arborio when making risotto - the difference in result hugely out-weighs the extra pennies at the till.

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This week, autumn has hit Tuscany with a vengeance. Apart from one day, when the clouds parted and thin sunshine made a half-hearted effort to dry the garden, it's been endless sturm und drang ever since we arrived a week ago....Thunderstorms night after night, and sheets of rain coming down with monsoon-like ferocity. I assume it is just local to Pisa, though, as the Arno seems no higher than usual - generally, when there are several days of rain on the trot between here and Florence, the river level in Pisa rises quite dramatically, and people begin to think of the famous floods in '66, when most of the bridges were swept away, and our entire quartiere was a metre or more under water... As it is, we wake every morning to the sound of water pouring relentlessly from the gutters, and a daily task is to sweep away a fresh inflow of leaves that have yet again carpeted the floor of the loggia overnight.

In the rare interludes between rain, the garden is taking on its autumn hues, when the pomegranate tree gradually turns a vibrant, acidic yellow, and the Caci becomes a rich burnt orange. I no longer have to fight to restore order to the chaos of creeper and climbing roses which densely coat the pergolas - I now have a three or four month break from that particular task - and instead am gradually putting the garden in its winter format. The Cymbidiums - budding nicely - and Cyclamen, and Gladiolus Tristis have all come out from their summer hiding places, and I managed to plant 100 white crocus bulbs on Sunday afternoon, before the heavens opened yet again...

Menus are changing along with the season, as the declining temperature and blazing fires turn the mind to the trencherman's hearty fare of roasts and pies and the sort of sticks-to-tiny-ribs food that keeps the cold well and truly out. Last night was cauliflower in anchovy sauce, followed by guinea-fowl pot-roast with celery and Marsala... Winter certainly isn't all bad!

Tonight's Dinner:

Lentil Soup

Fiorentina, with Endive Salad

Prune & Armagnac Tart

Recipe: Bitter Orange Souffle

An excellent dish! Light and delicious, simple to make, with wow-factor at the first mouthful and an aftertaste that lingers ...

Easy enough for any old midweek supper, and impressive enough to qualify for even the most formal dinner party, the soufflé base can be made several hours in advance (and covered with clingfilm while it sits, to prevent a skin from forming) leaving just the beating of the egg whites and folding-in processes to be performed mid-dinner.

For two.

Ingredients: 30g Butter; 20g Plain Flour; grated zest and juice of 2 Bitter Oranges, or of 1 sweet Orange and half a Lemon; 60g Sugar (or equivalent volume Splenda); 100 ml Milk; 1.5 tablespoons of Grand Marnier; 2 Eggs, separated.

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

2. Make the Soufflé base: melt the Butter in a double boiler or zimmertopf; stir in Flour and citrus zest; add the Milk and cook over low heat for a minute or so until the mixture has thickened; away from the heat, beat in the citrus juice, Sugar (or Splenda), Grand Marnier, and finally the Egg Yolks.

3. Whisk the Egg Whites to form soft peaks, then fold the Whites into the Soufflé Base. Divide between two individual ramekins which have been greased or sprayed with Trennwax. Set in a roasting pan, pour boiling water half way up the sides of the ramekins, and cook 10-12 minutes in the pre-heated oven.

4. Sieve a light layer of icing sugar over the top of the soufflés before serving.

The highspot of this week...

...was lunch on Wednesday, in glorious sunshine, on a wooden platform built out over the edge of the Danube. Looking across the water towards the slopes beneath the craggy fortifications of Kalemegdan Castle, hundreds of water birds wheeled and dived and bobbed gently on the waves. Through the gaps in the planks, the water was visible flowing just two feet beneath our feet - gently slapping against the platform supports as it did - and all that was visible otherwise were the densely wooded banks of the river and the wide expanse of intensely blue sky. We feasted on calamari salad, followed by simply grilled 'Sander', the local fish, which is generally translated as pike-perch, and in texture is like an oilier version of bream. Accompanied by a rocket salad, and washed down with a bottle of chilled local white wine, it couldn't have been more perfect. I abstained from the aperitif of Rakija that was offered at the start- to be knocked back, in traditional style, from something that looks like an Edwardian lady's scent bottle - as I had an appointment straight afterwards with some bad-tempered Serbs, for which I thought I would would need my wits about me (they didn't like a decision they thought had been my responsibity, and were intent on 'persuading' me to change my mind - it had been, and they didn't. But in the course of the meeting, I began to understand how the Bosnians must have felt in the not-so-distant past....)

Other than that, the week had an increasingly surreal quality as it wore on.....starting from a presentation in Athens on Tuesday concerning development opportunities in Montenegro, given by a welsh-sounding serb who sported a hairstyle that wouldn't have shamed a Bee-Gee.....and ending up in a cold and damp Moscow at three o'clock on Friday morning, wending my way from a nine-hour stint at a party in the Zafferano Restaurant. Notwithstanding the sweetness of Russian champagne and the inexplicable pinkness of the Pinot Grigio on tap, I can state unequivocally that Russians certainly know how to party!

In between times, there was the occasional oasis of calm - most memorably when I went in search of an Athenian taverna I used to frequent in the seventies near the Evvangelismos Hospital, and found that it had been transformed in the meantime into an elegant and distinctly upmarket eatery. I sat in dappled sunshine for nearly half an hour under the elegant canopy of pleached limes that now shades the terrace, and indulged in Proustian recollections of afternoons whiled away in that very place consuming endless plates of fried cheese and bottles of Boutari. Times have certainly changed, and the price of the single glass I drank contemplatively on this occasion would have probably paid for an entire lunch for four back in those days!

Or there was dinner taken on Tuesday evening at Madera Restaurant in Belgrade - definitely more bizarre than serene. The food looked - and probably tasted - like an offering from one of the more adventurous issues of Good Housekeeping circa 1968; at the table next to me were two ladies who had clearly escaped from a Fellini casting (one, stylishly sporting a silver fox fur tippet, and the other with an exposed embonpoint that was of positively architectural proportions) and all this against the background of a piano and cello duet, who produced a superb rendition of, amongst other things, 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' . The cellist, I thought, was particularly good.

And now, two days in London, before disappearing off to the peace of Italy for an entire fortnight - which will be truly blissful! Yesterday morning, to the Queen's gallery, for the Breughel to Rubens exhibition. Most of the early portraits - Quinten Massys and Joos Van Cleve particularly - were spectacularly splendid...
On the whole, I think having the pictures might just about make it worth being monarch - although the rest of the job-package isn't particularly persuasive. Which is fortunate, really, when you think about it...

Tonight's Dinner:

Poached Eggs, on a bed of Spinach & Sprue.

Pork Tenderloin, roast with Star Anise, and served with Turnip Gratin.

Lemon Tarts.

Recipe: Ravioli with Parsley Stuffing

My favourite new pasta dish - and one for which I don't in the least understand its obscurity. I've yet to come across parsley-stuffed ravioli on a restaurant menu anywhere in Italy, and yet the flavour is great and the preparation couldn't be simpler. Maybe it's another of those things where its simplicity has meant that people have come to disregard it, and along the way they stopped noticing how good it actually is...

So much about cooking is efficient time-management. About ten days ago, the Brancolis came to dinner, in advance of us all going to the final concert in this year's Anima Mundi Cycle, in the Duomo (Arvo Part's Cantus for Benjamin Britten, and Renaud Capucon playing Brahms' Violin Concerto - both of which were truly excellent...). The fact that we lingered longer than intended over pre-dinner fizzy wine, and that the concert was going to start at 9.00 come-what-may, conspired to mean suddenly we were pressed for time....and from the moment of starting to roll the pasta dough to the point when bowls of steaming ravioli were placed on the table took exactly 30 minutes. Doubtless, some weather-beaten Nonna would have been able to do it in half the time....but I thought it wasn't a bad effort for a mere novice.

For Four*.

Ingredients: Pasta dough, made with 3 medium eggs and 2 cups of '00' flour, plus a generous pinch of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil(optional: you can also ad a sachet of squid ink if you want black pasta, and a slightly fishy taste to your ravioli) ; 250g ricotta; 1 cup loosely-packed fresh parsley; 1 piece of hard parmesan, about 1.5" cube, cut into small pieces; 1 egg; large pinch of Nutmeg; salt & pepper to taste.

Method:

1. Process all of the pasta dough ingredients together for thirty seconds,to give you a homogenous lump, that is not sticky to the touch.Let this rest in the fridge for half an hour

2.Place the parsley and pieces of parmesan in the food processor bowl and process for ten seconds or so, until decently broken down, and then add all the remaining ingredients and process further to make a thick paste. Check and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

3. Once rested, divide the pasta dough into quarters, and quickly roll each quarter ten times at the broadest setting on your pasta machine, turning and folding the strips as you go. Then, cut each quarter in half; cover the remaining pieces of pasta to stop them drying out, and take each of the eight pieces of dough through the six-stage rolling process, reducing the thickness between the rollers with each stage.

4. Once each strip of pasta has finished its sixth roll, lay it on a floured cloth and place a row of teaspoons of filling (five or six, depending upon the exact length of the pasta strip) along the centre of the strip. Fold the strip over on itself, and use a pasta wheel seal the length of the folded strip and to cut between the spoonfuls of filling, to create square ravioli about and inch and a half square.

5. Repeat with the remaining pasta and filing (I generally find I run out of filling while I still have some pasta dough left - enough for a fettucine starter the following day). Cook for about three minutes in a large pan of boiling, salted water.

6. To serve: melt a couple of ounces of butter in a small saucepan, and add to this a half cup of double cream. Heat through for about a minute, to thicken slightly, as the pasta cooks, and then use gently to coat the ravioli once they've been drained.

Home & Hearth...

...is a very welcome concept after a couple of weeks of practically non-stop travelling. Airports and planes, and poor (if not non-existent) internet connections...and hotel breakfasts (I don't normally have breakfast, but somehow business trips exist on an alternative plane, and all usual reference points count for nothing...) and early morning alarm calls....and endless, endless, endless hours of CNN reports on the global financial meltdown! I watched Lehmann Bros go bust in Mumbai, George W's bailout plan be given the bum's rush in Athens, and Fortis go belly-up in Munich! I'm hugely relieved to be back now in a blissfully TV-free environment, and able to ignore the whole damned thing....

I have to say that in all of that peripatation, there was little of note to report on the culinary front. There was one memorable Coffee Parfait in The Grande Bretagne in Athens, served with the merest drizzle of an exquisite Hazelnut Sauce ....which was (apparently) simple, and unarguably sublime....and a soup in The Lenbach restaurant in Munich which was worthy of serious analysis - Lobster and Saffron bisque, I think, in which floated delicious chunks of red mullet and artichoke heart. Beyond that, though, airline food never rises above the pitifully poor, and the culinary offerings of neither Greece nor Germany are ever likely to set the gastronomic pulses racing....

In fact, it was a complete delight to get back to my own kitchen, roll up my sleeves and get life back on a sensible footing . As ever, October in Tuscany is quite wonderful....the days still and clear, which start with bright morning sunshine, and a light mist rising over the garden; by midday, the heat is quite intense, and as the evening draws in, the chill in the air suddenly prompts sweaters and closed windows and the uncorking of bottles of hearty super-tuscans. This is the season when the wall-mounted barbecue in the kitchen comes into its own, and all of the atavistic home-and-hearth impulses rise to the surface. Yesterday, for the first time since April, I dusted off the barbecue - which can't be used in summer months as it throws out far too much heat for comfort - and watched with atavistic pleasure as one of Padre Pio's chickens rotated gracefully before the flames, and was roast to a satisfyingly succulent crispness. (Not the real Padre Pio, but our Pisan poulterer, who used to be an avid follower of the beatified cleric)

The garden behaves so well at this time of year: late roses on the south pergola, the surface of the lily pond a mass of white water-hyacinth flowers , and the house pergola a fantastic combination of jasmine blossom (jasminum angulare) against the bulls-blood red of the autumnal hue of the creeper. Yesterday, I threw caution and workload to the winds and sat under the Caci tree in the midday sunshine, with a glass of chilled vernacchio di San G, and the fifth of this year's Booker shortlist - Amitav Ghosh's 'Sea of Poppies'. Good book, but absolutely lousy shortlist.....despite which, half an hour of midday sunshine in the middle of the garden was still spectacular.

Tonight's Dinner:

Seppie, con Piselli e Pomodoro

Pepper, Parmesan and Veal 'Hamburger'; Borlotti Beans alla trippa

Crepes Suzettes

Recipe: Chocolate Zabaglione

I have a cold. I think a lot of people do at the moment - there's something going round. It's the sort of flu-type, slightly achey affair that doesn't exactly lay you out, but is quite debilitating and makes life in general noticeably more challenging than it would be otherwise. Hence, Chocolate Zabaglione...Dessert last night was intended to be Amaretto Soufflés, but when it came to the crunch I decided I just didn't have the energy,and took refuge instead in one of my standard fall-backs, Zabaglione. No prep, practically instant, and the sort of sophisticated comfort food that is perfect when you're feeling under the weather.

"Can it be Chocolate?" the Technical Department asked, when I mentioned the change of plan. I'm not sure where that came from - not having heard of such a thing previously - and neither was he, really...a vague memory of having read something, somewhere perhaps. I dismissed the idea of melting block chocolate and adding it to the Zabaglione mixture, as I'm sure that would have a disastrous effect on the final texture, making it heavy and glue-like, rather than light and unctuous. No...the way to do it is with a small amount of bitter chocolate powder, and replacing a little of the usual alcohol (Marsala or Sherry, depending upon which country I'm in) with some Creme de Cacao instead.

The result was dreamily excellent! Precisely what the doctor ordered....

For Two.

Ingredients: 2 oz Sugar (this is one time when you can't use Splenda instead - the texture is quite wrong); 4 Egg Yolks; 7 tablespoons of Marsala or Cream Sherry + one tablespoon of Creme de Cacao (or eight tablespoons of Sherry or Marsala, if Creme de Cacao isn't available); 1 generous teaspoon of dark Chocolate powder (I used Green + Blacks)

Method:

1. Combine all of the ingredients either in a zimmertopf or in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk everyting together using a hand whisk (not an electric beater), and keep whisking evenly as you maintain a medium heat under the pan.

2. As the Egg Yolk cooks, you will see the mixture become thicker and emulsify into a satisfyingly dense texture. This takes perhaps five minutes.
The challenge with Zabaglione is knowing exactly when it's done - if you stop too soon, then the mixture will separate out once you've poured it into serving glasses, and if you let it go too far, then the result is a first cousin to scrambled egg. It should be ready to serve once it is the same unctuous thickness all the way through, so if in doubt you should reach to the bottom of the mixture with the whisk and beat once or twice energetically to see that there is no un-enmulsified mixture left at the bottom of the bowl.

3. Serve, poured into large wine glasses.

Recipe: Apple and Peach Tarts

A variation on classic French Apple Tart, this was an 'invention' from several weeks ago, when I discovered at the back of the crisper drawer a single peach which had somehow escaped notice and was very clearly at the 'use it or lose it' stage of its existence. Apple tarts were on the menu for supper that night, and - Scottish blood to the fore - I merely added the peeled and diced fresh peach to the chopped apple that was being cooked down to make the purée base for the tarts....and the result was quite splendid! The peach flavour doesn't shout at you, but, as with so many great combinations of unexpected ingredients, it adds an extra dimension to the finished dish which makes it richer and more delicious, and lifts it to a significantly higher level than the penny-plain version.

For two individual tarts.

Ingredients: 2 sheets of Phyllo Pastry, each 12" x 6"; 3 oz Butter; 2 tablespoons of flaked Almonds; 2 Apples; 2 peaches; grated rind of a Lemon (or a few drops of Lemon Oil); quarter of a cup of Sugar (or equal volume Splenda); half a teaspoon of ground Nutmeg; a generous tablespoon of Brandy.

Method:

1. Melt 1 oz of the Butter; use this to brush the sheets of Pastry, and cut each sheet into two squares. Grease (or Trennwax) two individual false-bottomed tart tins, and line each with a square of pastry, tucking the edges in all around. Divide the flaked almonds between the two tart bases and sprinkle them evenly, then use the remaining squares of pastry to make a second layer within each tart tin, and again tuck them evenly in around the edges. Fill the pastry shells with weights and bake blind for five minutes in a pre-heated 200 degree C oven, then remove the weights and bake for a furter three minutes or so, until the pastry is well browned. Remove from the oven while you prepare the filling.

2. Peel and core one and a half of the apples; dice the flesh and put into a saucepan, along with the diced flesh of the peeled and stoned peaches. Cover and cook over a low heat for twenty minutes or so, stirring from time to time.

3. Once the fruit has collapsed, remove the lid from the pan, turn the heat up, and add all of the remaining ingredients, apart from the reserved half apple. Cook, stirring all the time, for about ten minutes, until a thickish purée has been achieved. Divide this between the two pastry shells. Peel and core the remaining apple, and cut in two; very finely slice the two apple quarters, such that the slices retain the shape of the un-cut apple quarter, and then fan these out, and lay each quarter on top of one of the tarts.

4. Bake in the ot oven for another twenty minutes or so, until the edges of the apple slices begin to brown.

5. Allow to cool from the oven, and serve either still warm or else completely cold, along with a generous spoonful of whipped cream, or a scoop of ice cream.