Recipe: Pollo Tonnato

A poor man's version of vitello tonnato, I'm not sure which came first. Certainly, Artusi included pollo tonnato when he was writing in the 1890's, and it wouldn't surprise me if the better-known version using veal wasn't a later gentrification of an essentially peasant dish. Excellent for a summer lunch, or supper - we had it last Saturday, when some of the Belforte crowd arrived for lunch in the garden, and there were sufficient leftovers again for supper on Sunday. Obviously, the chicken needs to be cooked the previous day, to give it enough time to cool down properly; apart from that, the process is very straightforward, and takes very little time actually in the kitchen.

I served braised lettuce as the vegetable to go with the chicken, and used the reduced poaching liquid (and vegetables) from the chicken to go with the lettuces once they'd been blanched and halved and were ready to go into the oven. It worked excellently, saved much time, and meant there was absolutely no waste. Alternatively, you could strain the liquid and use it for another meal in a risotto or a soup in place of stock.

For six.

Ingredients: 1 large chicken (or 2 small ones, as I used last week - currently, there don't seem to be any chickens of decent size available here) - preferable if you remove the wishbone at this stage, as it makes carving that much easier later on; 2 carrots, peeled; 1 onion, peeled; 2 sticks celery; 1 small (approx 8 oz) tin of tomato; 10 fl oz white wine; 5 peppercorns; 2 tsp salt; a handful of parsley; 2 egg yolks; approx 10 fl oz olive oil; 4 tbs lemon juice; 4 oz canned tuna; 3 anchovy fillets; 2 tbs capers.

Method:

1. In 2 tbs of the oil, heated in a large casserole, sauté the finely diced onion, carrots and celery, until they have completely collapsed (about ten minutes over medium heat). Add the tomato, parsley and wine, and bring to the boil. Add the chicken(s) to the casserole, add seasoning, and cover with water. Bring the liquid to the boil, and then simmer, partially covered for an hour.

2. Remove the chicken from the poaching liquid, and allow to cool completely (overnight, and in the fridge is best). Boil the poaching liquid down until you have about a litre left, and use it as suggested above.

4. With the remaining olive oil and the egg yolks make a mayonnaise, and add to it 1 tbs of the lemon juice.

5. Process the tuna, anchovies, and half of the capers, along with the remaining lemon juice; fold this mixture into the mayonnaise, along with the remaining capers. Check and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

6. Cut the chicken into serving pieces (breasts sliced, and legs cut into thighs and drumsticks), and put half of them in the base of a serving dish; cover with half the tuna mixture, and then repeat. Refrigerate until serving...preferably for at least a couple of hours, to allow the flavours to do their thing.

Serve.

Summer's here...

The senior four-footed takes refuge in the shade of the yew tree as I finish weeding the southern beds - hemerocallis, lupins, delphiniums, roses - and the junior four-footed repeatedly presents me with pine cones to throw for him to chase (and risks severe displeasure as he tests the boundaries of exactly what "Off!" means in relation to newly-weeded flowerbeds...)

On the fruit trees, pears, plums and apricots already begin to bulk, and the cherry harvest looks set to be on in an industrial scale. The sweet orange tree is heavy with buds, and the bitter orange and lemon trees are following at a respectable rate. Lilacs and azaleas are full of blossom, the first roses are opening in the sudden heat, and the later-blooming rhododendrons will soon be a blanket of flowers. Not all joy though, as every single peach tree has succumbed to peach-leaf-curl, and although a good dose of fungicide ought to sort out the problem, it probably means not much of a crop this year.

We now have two fully-functioning wells, just in time to fill the new lily pond for the transportation of all of the water lilies and water hawthorn from their previous home. At the moment, the new pond looks a little jerry-built, but once we've raised the sides slightly and put in place the coping stones (which ought to mean the pond-liner will no longer be visible) then it should start to look as though it's been there for decades.

I celebrated the functioning of the wells, last Wednesday, by laboriously carting buckets of water all around the garden - which of course meant that we awoke on Thursday morning to the sound of rain, which continued unbroken right through until nightfall. A good reason to pile into the car and head off to Pescia - which the Technical Department has wanted to do for ages, in order to sort out the support system for the pergola we'll put between the barn and the house. Even better, though, was the discovery in the centre of Pescia of Ristorante Mason which proved yet again the inverse rule between the interior decoration and the quality of the food on the table. The dining room showed all the aesthetic sense of a seventies drag queen (with aspirations to milanese chic...swirls of coloured satin draped around the place, and a colour scheme that would probably be called by the cognoscenti a mixture of 'mustard' and 'tranny red'), and the food was absolutely excellent! Desserts were slightly sub-optimal...but then that served us right for being so greedy as to order them...

Of course, within five minutes of getting home, the TD had decided we could do a better job with the pergola by stringing support wires between the buildings, and so no need to have gone to Pescia in the first place.

Tonight's dinner:

Parsley Ravioli.

Fiorentina, with Rocket and Parmesan.

Panettone and Raspberry Bread & Butter pudding.

Recipe: Duck Breast with Lentils

A re-working of a Paula Wolfert recipe from about forty years ago, the original version used an entire jointed duck, the pieces of which were braised in liquid over a couple of hours - at some times with the associated lentils, and at others on their own. The duck in question must have been of a serious age, as the ducklings generally available these days won't stand up to such treatment (or if they do stand up to it, they certainly don't benefit from it, and the end result is tough as old boots...and certainly won't repay the effort of all that time hovering over the stove).

This version, instead, combines Wolfert's delicious lentil treatment with a sliced duck breast, which has been lightly grilled, in a dressing of garlic, thyme and bay. The quantities given here for the lentils are probably much more than needed for one dinner - but the leftovers keep and re-heat well...and are excellent either as the base for a poached egg, as a starter, or else as the accompaniment to something like roast pork.

I've included all the 'duck stuff' in this recipe, on the assumption that you'll have taken the duck breast from a bird which you've boned and cut up, and therefore will have to-hand duck fat and duck stock; if not, then substitute a mixture of butter and oil for the duck fat, and use any decent stock in place of duck stock.

For two:

Ingredients: 1 or 2 Duck Breasts (depending upon the size of the bird and the appetite of the diners); 1 tbs Olive Oil; 1 large Garlic clove, minced; half a tsp dried Thyme; 1 large dried Bay leaf, crumbled; salt & pepper, to taste.
250g Lentils (soaked overnight, if using that sort; personally, I never use the pre-soaked ones these days) ; half a medium Onion; 1 small stick of Celery; 1 medium Carrot, peeled; 2 tbs Duck fat; 1 cup White Wine; 2 cups Water; 2 tbs Tomato paste.

Method:
1. Smear the Duck Breast(s) evenly with Oil, Garlic, Thyme, Bay leaf and seasonings. Put to one side, while you cook the Lentils.
2. Melt the Duck fat in a pan, and in it sauté the finely diced vegetables for ten minutes or so, stirring frequently, until they have obviously collapsed.
3. Add the Wine and Water, along with the Tomato Concentrate, and stir well to mix everything together. Add the Lentils; stir again, then bring the mixture to the boil, and then cook at a high simmer until done, which should take 35-40 minutes. When cooked, check and adjust the seasoning. Set aside and keep warm until you're ready to serve.
4. Under a hot grill - at a distance of about three inches - cook the breast(s), about six minutes with the fat-side up, and a further four minutes after you've turned them over. Leave them to rest afterwards for two minutes, to allow the flesh to firm up.
5. Slice the breast(s) finely, and serve along with the Lentils on heated plates.

Finished!

Effectively. Or, at least the move from the Ground Floor of the old house, completion on the sale of which happened on Thursday. The 'completion' meeting seemed to me very long and somewhat fraught, involving strained tempers on a number of fronts (the buyers got restrainedly shirty with their agent, as did we with ours, and the Notary was a bit surprised when the Technical Department starting re-drafting chunks of the contract of sale, even as we all sat there). I didn't follow a lot of it, as I was succumbing to a lousy head-cold, and just wished we could sign the bloody thing and then all go home.

In the ten days beforehand, we moved everything - and I mean everything - ourselves to Santa Caterina. The idea had always been that the more difficult pieces would be left to professional removers, but as we shifted more and more stuff, the amount left seemed a sillier and sillier proposition...and so we ended up doing the whole lot. Anything which wouldn't fit in the car (even with the back door left open, and driving very slowly the length of Martyrs' Square) went onto a hand trolley that we filched from the Brazilians...including the occasional portrait, a very large fridge, and some enormous mirrors, the process of moving which left me a nervous wreck (I have a phobia about moving large fragile things - just like having a fear of heights is about worrying that you'll throw yourself off, so I know as soon as I come anywhere near large sheets of glass or mirror, or even a heavy pile of expensive porcelain, that the stuff is doomed...)

Menu planning went largely to pot during the removal period, and even where I did think of a menu for a particular dinner, in practice necessity often became the mother of invention as I realised at the eleventh hour that some vital ingredient was still in the kitchen in the old house - so, the dried fruit in Budino Toscano gave way to dried strawberries (and it became a ricotta and strawberry cheesecake instead), and I had to devise a completely new version of pissaladiere nicoise in the absence of both anchovies and olives, and so got creative with dried thyme and emmental as a replacement.

The weather is now beautiful. Although Spring has only just formally got underway, we now have the clear skies and sunshine of full summer. All of the citrus trees are throwing out industrial quantities of new leaf (and flowerbuds, in the case of the sweet orange), the lilacs are heavily in bloom, and the azaleas are just starting to flower. Unfortunately, the weeds are flourishing just as well as the flowers....which now consigns me to an afternoon clearing out the strawberry and raspberry beds, before we erect the fruit cage, later in the week...

Tonight's dinner:

Caprese Salad

Fillet of Salmon in Lardon Sauce, on a bed of braised Endive.

Home-made vanilla ice cream, with coffee powder & Scotch

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.