Dr. Johnson...

...might not approve, but we're leaving London for Italy again tomorrow, and frankly it's not a moment too soon for me! The weather has been abysmal over the past few weeks...more like October than August...but it hasn't prevented London from descending into mid-summer doldrums that might be appropriate if we were all flaked out with heat-exhaustion, but which in fact merely renders the place....dare I say it....dull!

In true silly-season fashion, there's nothing on at the cinema appropriate for anybody with a mental age over seven, and much the same could be said for current exhibitions: the choice at the RA is either The Summer Exhibition or a second ranking pre-Raphaelite (no, thanks), and the five and a half minutes we devoted to Jeff Koons' show at The Serpentine was probably two and a half minutes more than it actually merited.

At least in Pisa - where temperatures are scorching right now, and the town will be gloriously empty and silent as the grave, with the locals all having taken to the coast or the hills - days can be spent basking and reading and dozing, with appropriate regular re-fuelling with Kir and chilled prosecco, and sun-filled early mornings and lazy afternoon siestas, and candlelight on the terrace during the long, hot, cicada-filled nights.


We appear to have a contract for the property at Santa Caterina (I'm being cautious, as although proxy signings have taken place, and there seems no reason to think that the whole thing isn't a done deal, we still haven't actually had the formal sitting-round-the-table signing session...and until that Fat Lady sings....she hasn't!). But, in any event, we can go and collect the keys when we arrive on Wednesday, and so can spend the next couple of weeks walking the course and indulging in some serious garden planning. And probably we'll have a few days up at Brancoli, as well, to do our own bit of taking to the hills and enjoying mountain breezes, if there are any.

And then, two days after we come back, the mini-four-footed will be joining us...after which, I'm not sure life will ever be dull again!



Tonight's dinner:

Chicken Salad (using leftover chicken from a fricasée with porcini).

Grilled Duck Breast, with garlic, bay and thyme.

Strawberries and Jersey Cream (ok....there are some things in London that I'll miss!)

Recipe: Lemon Sole Fillets in Marsala Sauce

An excellent recipe! Lemon sole is a fish not famous for its flavour - particularly once the head and bones have been removed - and as a result finds itself at the cheaper end of the fishmonger's counter. With this particular treatment, however, the flavour and texture are dramatically improved, and the rich and unctuous sauce that accompanies the fillets would make you believe the whole thing had been cooked on the bone, and the end result is completely delicious!

Simplicity itself to cook, this dish takes five minutes from a standing start, and can easily be made with no prior preparation once the first course has already been cleared.

For two.

Ingredients: 2 Lemon Sole fillets; quarter cup of plain Flour, seasoned with Salt & Pepper; 40g Butter; 3 tbs freshly grated Parmesan; quarter cup of Fish Stock; quarter cup of Marsala (or medium Sherry).

Method:

1. Coat the fillets on both sides with the seasoned Flour.

2. Melt the Butter over medium/high heat in a large heavy frying pan, and fry the fillets a couple of minutes on each side, until they are slightly browned and crisp.

3. Sprinkle 1 tbs of Parmesan on each fillet. Then add the Fish Stock and Marsala (or Sherry) to the pan. Cover the whole thing with a lid, reduce the heat to low and let it cook for two or three minutes. When the lid is removed, the liquid should have reduced almost to nothing.

4. Plate the fillets on heated plates, sprinkle over them the remaining Parmesan, and spoon the sauce over and around them from the pan.

5. Serve with a green vegetable, like mange-touts or beans.

Recipe: Celeriac & Asparagus Terrine

Couldn't be simpler to make, and the flavour and texture of this dish are superb! Excellent as a cold starter, and certainly good enough to present at a dinner party - with the added advantage that it's made entirely in advance.

For 1 terrine, sufficient for eight slices:

Ingredients: 450g Celeriac; 100g Butter; 500 ml Cream; 4 Eggs; Seasoning; 5 Asparagus spears (sprue, ideally, or spears as slender as you can find).

Method:

1. Peel and finely dice the Celeriac, and sauté gently in melted Butter for ten minutes or so, until properly soft. Add Cream and cook for a further minute or so, until the Cream has thickened slightly. Allow to cool.

2. Cook the Asparagus spears in boiling salted water until just done (but still very much on the al dente side).

3. Liquidize the Celeriac/Cream mixture along with the Eggs; season to taste.

4. In a greased (or Trennwaxed) loaf tin or terrine mould, pour a quarter of the Celeriac mixture, then place two of the Asparagus spears on top; add another quarter of the mixture, and a single Asparagus spear; another quarter of mixture and the remaining two Asparagus spears, and finally finish off with the remaining Celeriac mixture.

5. Place the loaf tin or terrine mould in a bain marie and cook for twenty minutes in a 180 degree C oven, then remove from the oven and allow the terrine to cool down.

6. To serve, run a knife round the edge of the terrine and unmould onto a board or platter. Slice carefully with a very sharp knife. and accompany with a salad of endive or fennel.

To The Royal Institution...

...with Jennie, for a lecture on the Antikythera mechanism. Fascinating. Bizarre. Evidence of technological sophistication in Greece in the first century B.C on a level that would normally be associated with Western Europe, one and a half millenia later. The implications are vast, since it suggests a serious re-think about how technologically advanced society actually was in ancient Greece, and that preconceptions hitherto about relatively primitive living conditions at the time could be fundamentally wrong.

As I've discovered I have been in my disdain until now for microwave ovens as anything other than a means of re-heating cold coffee. They do have other uses. Like making Hollandaise in no time at all, for example - as explained in the '70's by Madame Benoit (who had actually been a pupil of Doctor Pomiane himself, in her salad days). And her method works! A third of a cup of butter microwaved for a minute, then two egg yolks, a little salt and a squeeze of lemon juice whisked in, the whole thing microwaved again for 25 seconds, re-whisked....and voila! And all made from scratch during the time the asparagus is already plated and waiting to be served...

Tonight's dinner:

Egg-white Cheese Soufflé (yes, the egg-white mountain is with us once again).

Pork cutlets with mustard butter; lentils with lemon and coriander.

Apples baked with amaretti and hazelnut syrup.

Recipe: Plum and Walnut Tarts

Finally, I've come up with a version of this recipe which works as I want it to!

Initially, the idea of walnut cakes with a fruit topping came from Roger Vergé - either apple or prune were his fruits of choice in the original recipe, but since I happened to have fresh plums to hand, the substitution was a no-brainer. Try as I might, and with whatever tweaks I thought might make a difference, I couldn't get Vergé's recipe to produce anything other than a flat and rather leathery result, rather than the light and delicious version that I had in mind. In the end, I gave up entirely on the proportions of his ingredients, and instead followed a standard Bakewell Tart method, but with walnuts in place of almonds. Success! A light cake base, with a beguiling flavour which lingers deliciously. Obviously, the fruit you use can vary widely - pear, apricot, peach, apple ...all would work equally as well.

For two.

Ingredients: 75g Butter, at room temperature; 75g Sugar (or equivalent volume Splenda); 75g Walnut pieces; 1 Egg; 2 sheets of Phyllo pastry, each 12" x 6"; 15g melted Butter; 1 tbs slivered Almonds; 17g Flour; four small plums, each stoned and cut into eight segments.

Method:

1. Brush Phyllo with melted Butter; cut each sheet into two squares and make two double layer tart shells in greased individual tart rings, sprinkling the slivered Almonds between the two Phyllo layers in each shell. (For full method see here.) Bake for five minutes or so in a 200 degree C oven. Remove from the oven, and reduce the temperature to 180 degrees C.

2. Cream the remaining Butter in a bowl with the Sugar (or Splenda); process the Walnuts to a fine powder and fold these into the mixture, then stir in the beaten Egg and fold in the Flour.

3. Divide the mixture between the two Phyllo shells, then arrange the Plum segments over the top. Bake twenty minutes in the 180 degree oven, then sprinkle with icing sugar and bake a further ten minutes. Allow to cool down, and serve while still warm.

Dieticians, IMHO...

...belong in the eighth circle of Dante's Inferno. Along with 'Health & Safety' operatives, and those people who work in so-called 'security' at the airport. It's the circle reserved for The Fraudulent. Which probably requires little further explanation...but in essence, these are all groups of people who pretend a function which is effectively specious.

I'm not alone in my thinking, either. If you look online for references to Dr Jean Munro, for example - the dietician who supplied all 'the science' in Raymond Blanc's 'Blanc Vite' - the breadth of negative criticism is quite breathtaking. And I heard another one recently, who's comments displayed a level of witlessness which was really quite depressing, given that she too gloried in the title of 'Doctor'. This one was called Judith Bryans; she's on the payroll of The Dairy Council, and was speaking on Radio 4 about the quality of British cream. Cheerily, she wittered that the average weekly consumption of cream within the UK is less than 30 ml per head of population. Quite apart from anything else, given that 30 ml represents less than two tablespoonsful, this is a pretty depressing image. But in practice, and more importantly, it's an entirely silly figure to quote - completely irrelevant and worthless. It has the same validity as though one were to divide the total consumption of cigarettes in the UK by the UK population, which, since so many people these days are non-smokers, would almost certainly produce a wonderfully healthy average. Which of course is a total nonsense for those people who are on sixty a day, with incipient lung cancer.

And in case anybody might think from that last riff that I'm anti-cream, then nothing could be further from the truth. British cream is wonderful stuff. Incomparable. Fantastic. Nowhere else in the World have I found cream to compare...not in the States, nor in France, and certainly not in Italy. In this household - please note, Dr Judith Bryans - average weekly consumption per head is around a litre (mousses, sauces, posset, parfaits...) and no sign of any ill effects whatsoever. No, what I'm railing against is the sheer lack of intelligence in play in the sort of comments which are produced by these people, and to which an entirely spurious validity is given by the fact that they have 'Doctor' in front of their name. To be taken with such an enormous pinch of salt that they are rendered in practice and on any level whatsoever unpalatable!

Tonight's Dinner:

Ratatouille with Poached Egg.

Grilled Rump Steak, with Anchovy Sauce; Green Beans.

Amaretto Soufflés.

Recipe: Duck Legs braised in Red Wine

There's more to Duck Legs than merely confit - which I love, but from time to time a change is welcome, and as an alternative this dish is excellent. Adapted from a recipe by Paula Wolfert - a food writer worthy of great respect, but who seems to have dropped from view these days - this is a dish which will have nostrils twitching as it cooks, and is every bit as delicious on the plate as those aromas promise in advance.

Since it seems almost impossible to find boiling fowl these days - in London, at least - then this is effectively a contemporary version of Coq au Vin, where the duck meat is sufficiently robust that it doesn't fall to pieces in the course of cooking - which is what inevitably happens when following a traditional Coq au Vin recipe, but having to use a roasting chicken instead.

For two.

Ingredients: 2 Duck Legs; 125g Lardons; 2 tbs Duck Fat; 2 cloves Garlic, minced; Salt & Pepper; 1 tsp dried Thyme; 1 medium Onion; 1 tbs Red Wine Vinegar; 1 tbs Dijon Mustard; 3 fl oz Red Wine (Merlot or something similarly four square); 5 fl oz Duck Stock; 2 medium Carrots.

Method:

1. Heat the Duck Fat in a small frying pan; sauté Lardons for five minutes or so, until slightly crisp, then transfer them, using a slotted spoon, to a casserole that can be used both on the hob and subsequently in the oven.

2. In the same frying pan, brown the Duck Legs in the fat, about four minutes on each side, until well-coloured all over. Transfer these also to the casserole, and sprinkle them with Garlic and Thyme; season generously.

3. Thinly slice the Onion, and cook in the frying pan for several minutes until it has visibly wilted, then add to the Duck Legs and Lardons.

4. Deglaze the frying pan with the Vinegar, then stir in Mustard, add the Red wine and boil down to reduce by half. Add this to the casserole, along with the Duck Stock.

5. Place the casserole over a low flame, bring to the boil and then reduce heat to simmer for about five minutes. Meanwhile peel and quarter Carrots, and add these to the casserole at the end of the simmering period. Put the lid on the casserole, then transfer the whole thing to the oven, pre-heated to 150 degrees C. Cook for one and a half hours.

6. Remove the Duck Legs from the casserole and keep warm; try and retrieve the Lardons, as well, and put these with the Duck Legs. Strain the other ingredients, pressing down in the sieve to extract all the good flavours, then discard the Onion and Carrots and use a fat strainer to remove the fat from the liquid. Reduce the remaining sauce for several minutes over medium heat until it is a good coating consistency.

7. Serve, with a spoonful of sauce over each Duck Leg.