We've moved in...

...in part, anyway. The cooking and eating part. The hob made its journey to Santa Caterina, and is now installed (slightly imperfectly - the bit that connects it to the gas pipe disagrees with the configuration of the walls, and so the hob sits forward of the counter by several inches; somebody's going to have to do something with a sledgehammer.) Ovens work; sinks work; dishwashers work...its all a bit held together with tape and string at the moment, but it does all function. Partly on an inspection visit, and partly to escape the not inconsiderable demands on their digestive systems that Easter festivities with their contadino neighbours would make, the Brancolis came for lunch yesterday - smoked salmon tiède; boned chicken with rosemary & thyme, potatoes roast with fennel seeds; tarte normande, with marsala... which we ate by candlelight in the pranzo, surrounded by plasterboard and the smell of damp terracotta. Slightly unorthodox lighting, I know, but we haven't yet sorted out that room, and it was too cold to eat outdoors.

As I was prepping lunch, I had a CD playing of Charlie Gillett's latest selection of World Music - always uplifting stuff on a dull and rainy day - and it was only as something middle-eastern, with overtones of the muezzin, started to play rather insistently, that I wondered whether I was intruding on the Easter service on the other side of the wall. On the basis that the Catholic church has enough on its plate right now, without Don Luigi (a weatherbeaten, but otherwise hale and hearty 92 year old) having to battle the forces of Islam at his own altar, I replaced Charlie's choice with some gregorian chant instead. Better to be safe.

It couldn't have been more British. After lunch, we'd just managed a brief circuit of the garden before the heavens opened, and the four of us ended up sitting on the terrace, as the rain beat down and we watched it disconsolately. All that was missing was egg & cress sandwiches and a sea-front bus shelter, for it to be the archetypical British bank holiday Sunday. In a perfect world, we'd have moved indoors to sit in comfort by the fire, except that none of that sort of furniture has been moved in yet, and the fireplace is still an empty hole in the wall (without a properly functioning flue, as yet). Since the rain showed no sign of letting up (and in fact continued until long after nightfall), the Brancolis disappeared back up their hill, and we got on with chores - Technical Dept assembled some more drawers and cupboard fronts for the kitchen, and I finished oiling the terracotta floor in the Salone.

Currently, and very impractically, we're now living in three different places. We sleep (and do laundry) on the first floor in the old house; cooking and eating now takes place in the new house; and until the phone lines have been installed there as well (booked for Tuesday, but since it's Telecom Italia, don't hold your breath), then ground floor in the old house is where the phone and internet activity happens. The fact that the brazilians have now dismantled the staircase makes life that much more complicated, as getting from the first to the ground floor now means using the garden staircase, and jumping across the lily pond to get to the kitchen door. The stair treads are now piled in the hall, awaiting removal to Santa Caterina, where they'll be used as coping stones on the walls of the new lily pond (and in fact the walls are already in place, awaiting their arrival).

Ah.....the sun's coming out!

Tonight's dinner:

Fried artichokes.

Spezzatino, with creamed tomatoes.

Budino di Toscana.

It's started...

The move. The pantry has now been (almost) emptied, and racks of china and pots and pans now fill the office, waiting to be moved up to Santa Caterina. The glass shelves in the kitchen have been emptied and removed, and will be installed in the new scullery, I hope, today. It's all rather complicated, as the Brazilians are still working on the new house, but since we've agreed to complete on the sale of the ground floor of this one by April 15th - by which time the staircase has to have been removed and all traces of it 'repristinato' - then we're working to a tight deadline. I can't start to move furniture into the new house until the tiles have been completed on the Santa Caterina Staircase - which means not before Wednesday - but at the same time want to have emptied the rear part of the ground floor of this house before then, as the Brazilians will be moving in to start to remove the staircase on Thursday. But they, in turn, have to have completed the walls for the new Lily pond up at Santa Caterina before then, as the stair treads from here are going to be recycled as coping stones for the new pond, and it makes sense to be able to install them immediately they stop being stair treads.
Either it's all very organised, or else it's a complete bugger's muddle. I can't quite decide which.


Tonight's dinner:
Caprese Salad
Luganega Sausages with Borlotti
Budino di Ricotta

Kitchen Design...

It's almost time to move into the new kitchen, up at Santa Caterina - a process I'm slightly dreading, but the result of which should be well worth the pain. A slight delay in the past few days, as we discovered that the new fridge which had bounced all the way across Europe in the company of the welsh slate was in fact five millimetres wider than advertised, which has meant demolishing and rebuilding one of the support walls for the counter tops, in order to fit everything in. Things could have been worse, I suppose; last time we did this, with the current kitchen, the stonemason blithely sliced ten centimetres off one of the slabs for the work surface, and we had to order a whole new piece all the way from Wales...
This is the fourth kitchen we've designed over the years, and from each one lessons have been learned and incorporated into the next version. Some very straightforward things, for example:

• the advantages of having a deeper work surface than normal - generally, kitchens are designed with counters 60 cm deep, to match the depth of most under-counter appliances; in fact, if you have counters at 80 cm (or more) depth, it gives an enormous amount more space both to work on and to push things to one side which aren't immediately needed;
  
• Make sure the work surface is at exactly the right height for your physique - for me, this is a couple of centimentres higher than in most kitchens; in my catering kitchen I had standard height work surfaces, and occasionally suffered from the most appalling back ache as a result
  
• Don't put sinks in the corner of the room, as this makes them physically quite difficult to use;
  
• Analyse exactly how you cook, so that the various storage units are in the optimal place for you, and you don't spend your life traipsing around the kitchen needlessly going backwards and forwards to get things - for me this means having a drawer under the hob with wooden spoons and spatulas, a chopping board on the work surface to the right, and immediately below that a drawer with knives, above a small fridge with things like milk and butter that I'm most likely to want to put straight into pans on the hob, and to the right again are stored all of the spices and seasonings I regularly use;
• Again, think through how you work in practice, so that there are spaces available for putting hot cooking vessels when removed from either oven or hob; ditto spaces for plates, when serving;
  
• Don't store pans in cupboards, where they're impossible to get at, but store them instead either suspended from hooks on the wall, or else on open shelves;
• Incorporate appropriate storage space for all of things that generally, and needlessly, clutter work surfaces and get in the way - for instance, in the Italian kitchen, the food processor (along with all of the other electrical appliances) lives in a pull-out cupboard which has a socket within it, and so can be effectively used in situ; in the London kitchen, which is very small, the food processor is housed in a cantilevered cupboard and can be pulled down when needed, and then pushed up again out of the way afterwards (but this involves a system of counter-balance weights and wires which was one of the Technical Department's most successful brainwaves, and which I wouldn't advise you to do at home unless you have a degree in mechanical engineering!)
  
• If you have the space, have a second dishwasher - if you only have one, sod's law says that it will always be full of unwashed things at just the wrong time!

Tonight's Dinner:

Papardelle with a sauce of Ragu and Rabbit Livers.

Bream, with braised Celery.

Apple Soufflé.

One to read...

I thought this article was splendid - much to agree with.



Tonight's dinner:

Snails, dripping with garlic butter; freshly-baked bread rolls

Grilled Duck Breast, with Bay and Thyme; Lentils cooked with aromatici and tomatoes, in Duck Stock

Lemon Soufflé Glacé

Making Pasta - a revolutionary tip...

I've discovered a new trick in making pasta (instructions for which can be found here) which infinitely improves the quality of the finished product. The result of a malfunctioning food-processor, when making pasta dough several weeks ago, I had to remove the mixture from the bowl of the machine before the process was finished and then knead it by hand for several minutes until it appeared to have achieved the desired texture. I was slightly nervous when it subsequently came to rolling it out, half expecting it to be full of holes and next to useless. Far from it. The process of rolling was problem-free, and the texture of the cooked pasta afterwards was positively silky. Not just slightly better, but a whole step-function upwards in improvement...as pointed out by enthusiastic consumers.
I tried it again on subsequent occasions, to see if it had been a fluke. And, it isn't. After the dough has done its thing in the food processor, the trick is then to knead it for perhaps 20 - 30 seconds on the work surface, before storing and subsequently rolling out as normal. Such a small addition to the process, but the result in the quality of the pasta is phenomenal. (One note of caution, though - this works when using flour made from durum wheat, as is the case with italian flour in general; flour from the US, though, is different and might not react in the same way - it may even be that the process of kneading the dough with american flour actually makes the finished product tougher than otherwise)

Try it...

Tonight's dinner:

Taglioline with veal & lemon sauce

Pork chops braised with sage & white wine; Fennel gratin

Andalusian Tarts

Spring Flowers..

The almond blossom is well-advanced, with the plum, apricot and cherry trees following close behind. A week of blue skies and shirtsleeve gardening weather...even spending time weeding, which isn't normally a task I face with any enthusiasm. Several hundred lampicione bulbs have been planted in the wooded area behind the church, and although our sortie in search of escallonia plants yesterday was unsuccessful, we returned from it (inevitably, I suppose) with a car filled with a couple of rather fine Lonicera shrubs, and a Chaenomeles...I didn't know they came in white, and this one is perfect for the bed beside the workshop, which it now shares with a couple of white (gumbo) azaleas, a white wisteria and a prostrate cypress bush. Otherwise, the warm weather has produced carpets of flowers throughout the garden - gentians in the open areas, and masses of deep-coloured violets under the pine trees.

To Lucca at the weekend, for dinner with the Brancolis. They have a constrained timetable at the moment, as their house-cat was shot in the face recently (the joys of country living), and they're currently on a rather complicated timetable, providing multiple daily medications while keeping fingers crossed that the feline four-footed recovers as much as possible. We ate at Da Leo, a regular haunt from years ago, but which has rather fallen off the radar more recently; sadly, Gigi, the wonderful trattoria near the vegetable market has been ruined by a rave review in the New York Times (!) and these days the market workers have been elbowed aside by throngs of american tourists. Sic gloria transit.
Still, restaurant news isn't all bad, as I see that Bruno Loubet has returned from down under, and is now to be found at a new bistrot in Clerkenwell. I'm not sure when next we're due to be in London, but it's one for the diary as soon as we are.

The famous welsh slate for the kitchen work surfaces in the new house is due to arrive either today or tomorrow - certainly, it is already in Florence, and just needs to travel the length of the Fi-Pi-Li to get here - and after that, I suppose we can start the process of moving in. Fortunately, we don't have to rush, and can take several weeks doing so; small things first, and working our way up in size until we concede defeat and call in some proper removers for things like beds and wardrobes. Stress-free it won't be, is something one can say with absolute confidence...

Tonight's dinner (almost a picnic, as we're going into the new house to seal terracotta floors after the brazilians have finished for the day, and will trail back for dinner only late in the evening):

Caprese Salad

Fiorentina, with Rocket & Parmesan

Apple Soufflés

Recipe: Pan di Spagna (Genoise)

Doubtless I'll get shot down by the purists who differentiate between Pan di Spagna and Genoise, on the basis that the former incorporates the yolks and the whites of the eggs separately, whilst the latter incorporates them in one go. There are some other differences in method also - but, since the end result is effectively identical, whether you're following a recipe for Pan di Spagna or one for Genoise, then I have no qualms about listing this recipe equally under the latter heading. I've followed various different Genoise recipes, over the years - generally either Le Notre's version, or that from Alain DuCaisse - but this recipe for Pan di Spagna , which comes from Harry's Bar in Venice is by far the best: straightforward, quick and entirely reliable.

The history of the cake seems a little confused. Apparently the brainchild of an Italian cook called Cabona in the mid 1700s, the italian name refers to the fact that he was in Spain when he first came up with the idea - but his provenance from Genoa suggests that the same cake might also have been called Genoise by the rest of Europe for much the same reason.

The Harry's Bar version is used to great effect between layers of Creme Patissière in soft- fruit tarts, as a double layer enveloping a purée of either apple (or pear) in the Harry's Bar version of apple pie, and as the central element for both their meringue and chocolate cakes. It is also excellent as the base layer, soaked in appropriate alcohol, for any sweet soufflé. In almost all its uses, the cake needs to be sliced into thin layers before use - for which you need either a steady hand and a sharp knife, or else a wire cake slicer (Westmark sells one; I've always understood these things to be called a 'harp', but the Westmark one which I have goes under the name of 'lyre').

For 1 x 23 cm diameter cake.

Ingredients: 4 Eggs, separated; 150g Sugar (or Splenda); 140g Flour, sifted; 1 tsp Vanilla essence.

Method.

1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Beat the yolks with the Sugar until the mixture is pale yellow; add the Vanilla essence, and mix in.

3. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then stir a third of this into the yolk/sugar mixture, and fold in the remaning two-thirds of the beaten whites.

4. In three lots, gently fold the sifted Flour into the egg mixture, then pour the mixture into a greased spring-form pan.

5. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 25 minutes; allow to rest for a minute or two still in its tin, then remove from the tin and allow it to cool completely.