Recipe: Plum & Walnut Lattice Tart

I promised the Brancolis I would post this, having served it to them at dinner a couple of weeks ago...and now, I need to get on and do it before I completely forget what went into the thing The recipe was the result of a bowl of garden plums sitting on the worktop in the kitchen, and the need to do something with them before they got up and left of their own accord...and walnuts and plums are always a good combination, where the bitterness of the nuts matches the sweetness of the plums (which can sometimes seem a little one-note-ish).
The quantities are given in volume measures, rather than by weight, as I made the recipe up as I went along.


For one 12" tart.

Ingredients: Shortcrust pastry, made with 300g '00' flour, 250g butter, 50 ml water, & a pinch of salt; 4-5 cups of small, ripe plums (the ones I used were about the size of large cherry tomatoes - larger fruit would work, too, but would need to be cut into eighths rather than quarters); half a cup of demerara sugar; one generous tablespoon of cinnamon; 20 walnuts, shelled and cut into large pieces; rind of one lemon and one orange; one cup of ground almonds (or, in the absence of almonds, you can substitute flour - the point of this ingredient is to absorb the juice that the fruit will release during cooking, which risks making the pastry soggy); one egg white; caster sugar (for sprinkling).

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

2. Use slightly more than half the pastry to line a greased, false-bottomed tin. Blind bake until it begins to brown, then set aside while you make the filling.

3. Stone and quarter the plums, and then combine with all the other ingredients, apart from the ground almonds, egg white and caster sugar.

4. Spread the almonds evenly over the baked pastry shell, then fill the shell with the plum and walnut mixture.

5. Roll out the remaining pastry and either cut it into strips to make a lattice top for the tart, or else use a lattice template (which I always do - much quicker and more straightforward). Brush the top of the tart with beaten egg white, and bake for about half an hour, until the pastry is a rich golden brown. Immediately on taking the tart from the oven, sprinkle the top with a couple of spoonfuls of caster sugar.

Best served warm or cold, not hot.

The Apricot Harvest ...

...is in! Each one practically the size of a tennis ball, I was expecting them to be watery and tasteless - but, in fact, they have a wonderful flavour, almost more like peaches than apricots. I've probably never eaten apricots straight from the tree before now ( I don't remember....perhaps once, many years ago, which might explain why I always expect them to be delicious, and they generally disappoint). The ones which are available commercially tend to be picked while still hard, I suspect, so that they won't bruise in transport, and so have no flavour whatsoever, even though they look so inviting.

I was so surprised by their peach-like quality thatI researched peach-apricot hybrids. Jane Grigson says of 'Peach Apricots' that she understands them to be the acme of the apricot family...but, then again, pêches apricots in fact appears to be the term the french use for a standard yellow peach... so I'm unclear what exactly she was talking about. There are all sorts of peach-apricot hybrids in production, but the pictures I've seen all show them to have a smooth skin, more like a nectarine, whilst ours have a definitely fuzzy exterior.

We have two apricot trees in the old orchard, which, when we arrived last year, were oozing large quantities of a gelatinous substance from wounds at the base of their trunks. "Oh, those have had it," we were confidently informed by an authoritative source. "You'll have to get rid of them". Fortunately, Signor Tempestini took a more relaxed view: "E gommosa..." he said, and handed over some blue powder that had to be mixed with water and painted onto the affected areas. Two coats and several months later, and all was well.

Delicious on their own, they sit in a bowl on the kitchen counter, and those which escape the depredations of passing locusts in the course of the day have so far been used in bavarois, strudel, sorbet, and tarts. I had researched how to oven-dry the ones which wouldn't get used immediately, so as not to lose them - but I realise now that there's little danger of that happening.

Tonight's dinner:

Almond-coated goats cheese, baked and served on a bed of purple figs, basil and baked red peppers.

Fiorentina, with rocket and parmesan.

Pear Soufflés

Busy doing nothing...

Christian - who was staying with us for a couple of days last week - remarked of some friends of his who live in Galicia that 'they do more work in not-working than anybody I can think of'. It's a concept I can relate to (occasionally).

This week: Monday was the latest (and last before the autumn) round of heavy-duty planting, with new poplars, silver birch, sorba, cypresses, arelias, pieris japonica, and black bamboo; Tuesday, Brancolis came for dinner, which was splendid and late; Wednesday, we flogged down to Torre Mozza outside Piombino for lunch, as something to do while Christian was here which wasn't either cooking or gardening; Thursday, we collected the tiles for the new kitchen in Via Fucini, and sorted out the details for the new french windows for the first floor terrace at Santa Caterina; Friday was weeding, and watering, and mowing, and hacking-and-slashing in general in the endless process of trying to wrestle the garden into submission. (In fact, the garden is behaving well at the moment, with many things in bloom: roses, delphiniums, hemerocallis, agapanthus, water lilies, verbenas, and some late deutsias...)

We now have high summer. Blissfully hot, day after day, and already town is subsiding into summer somnolence, listless and exhausted in the heat of midday, and returning to life in the relative cool of the evenings for passagiato and al fresco living. Gardening is limited to early and late - avoiding the midday sun - with evenings spent watering the fruit trees, as the sun goes down and shadows lengthen across the north lawn.

The nespola harvest is over, and for the first time I've actually found a use for the things - in the past, I've generally found them slightly sour, if they had any discernible flavour at all; one of the nespola trees we've inherited, though, produces fruit of a remarkable sweetness and succulence, and I picked bushels of the things during the short fruiting season. Excellent, baked in a tart over a frangipane base. One of the plum trees is also already finished - the one that produces quite small fruit, with red and yellow skins (perfect when combined with walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon) - and the other one, with much larger fruit, is heavy with plums that should probably be picked next week. Ditto, the apricot and greengage trees, and after that quinces, and then industrial quantities of apples and pears. Despite their unfortunate leaf-curl earlier in the year, the peach trees are delivering quite well, and even the white peach, which we transplanted from the garden in Via Fucini at quite the wrong time of year, produced a solitary (but perfect) offering, which we solemnly shared between us a few days ago. The fruit from that tree is quite simply the most delicious imaginable...

The midday bells are ringing out from San Francesco, which has roused the four-footeds from their normal (for now) state of general drowsiness.

Onward and upward...

Tonight's Dinner:

Tagliatelle, with a sauce of Celery & Tomato.

Pork Loin, roast in Pancetta; Fagiolini with Parmesan.

Pear & Cinnamon lattice tart.

Recipe: Sicilian Swordfish Pie

Slightly adapted from a recipe of Alan Davidson - for who's writing I have a lot of time - this rather surprising dish is excellent. Surprising, because of the unusual structure, where effectively two pies are baked one on top of the other, not unlike a pair of steamer baskets. In fact, the middle layer of pastry simply disappears in the finished pie...and, on reflection, the structure isn't a million miles away from a version of good old lasagne.
The flavours included in the stuffing suggest this is a very, very old dish - shades of Apicius, if not even earlier. Definitely, this would be credible as part of an ancient roman buffet, or else being carried in hefty slices as food to eat whilst working the fields or organising the odd legion or gladiatorial display.
I've simplified the pastry which Davidson uses, and I've taken out the step where he egg-and-flours the slices of courgette before frying them - the latter step is important in reducing the water content in the courgette, but the former merely wastes time, IMHO, as the crisp coating that results from frying in egg and flour completely disappears once the courgette has been incorporated with the other stuffing ingredients.
This pie is delicious served either hot - as we had it several weeks ago when Pietro came down from Montemarcello for dinner, one evening - or cold, for lunch on the day afterwards.

For eight.

Ingredients: Shortcrust pastry, made with 250g butter, 280g '00' flour, a pinch of salt, and approximately 50 ml of water; 500g swordfish; 2 medium onions, finely diced; 2 tbs tomato paste; 2 celery stalks, finely diced; 100g greenolives, chopped; 2 tbs capers; 5 medium courgettes; olive oil; 1 egg yolk.

1. Make the shortcrust pastry:

• Freeze the butter in the freezer until it is rock hard. This is imperative.
• Grate the butter straight from the freezer using the grater disc on the food processor; add the remaining dry ingredients to the processor bowl and process using the blade until it has resolved itself into large flakes.
• Add water in very small increments through the top opening, whilst the processor is running. Be very careful not to add too much.
• As soon as enough water has been added, the mixture will form itself into one large solid lump and will adhere to the blade as it goes round. Stop the processor at this point.
• Remove the pastry from the bowl and perform the fraisage - using just the heel of your palm, push the mixture six inches or so across the work surface in half a dozen or so bite-sized pieces, then gather them back together into a ball and wrap in cling film. Only do the fraisage once - the success of good pastry lies in limiting contact with your hands to a bare minimum, as otherwise the heat from your hands will cause the butter to melt within the pastry, and it will lose its shape as it cooks.
• Preferably leave the pastry to rest in the fridge for several hours before rolling it out for use - again, this allows it to relax, and reduces the risk of it sliding out of shape or shrinking as it cooks.
  

2. Gently cook the chopped onion in oil until it begins slightly to colour, then add to it the tomato paste (diluted in a quarter cup of water), celery, olives and capers. Cut the swordfish into small cubes, add this to the pan, and cook, stirring over medium heat until it is well amalgamated and noticeably thickened - about twenty minutes. Check and adjust seasoning.

3. Slice the courgettes into thin strips, then these into approx 2" lengths; sprinkle with a little salt, and then fry them briefly in hot oil, until slightly coloured, and then drain them on kitchen paper.

4. Grease an 8" spring-form pan. Divide the pastry into three pieces. Roll out one of the pieces, and use it to line the base of the pan, with pastry coming halfway up the sides. Into this, put half of the swordfish mixture, topped with a layer of half of the pieces of fried courgette. Roll out the second piece of pastry, and repeat the process exactly (so you have your two pies with stuffing sitting on top of each other), and finally roll out the last piece of pastry and use it to make a lid, pressing it firmly into place all round the edge.

5. Brush the top of the pie with beaten egg yolk and bake for fifty minutes at 150 degrees C.

Serve either hot, at room temperature, or else cold. Delicious, whichever.

To London...

Theoretically for three and half days, but Easyjet 'went technical' on Tuesday afternoon and we ended up leaving Pisa a day later than planned.
Bitter experience meant that as soon as the airport staff were announcing a delay of around eight hours, we knew exactly what that would mean in practice (i.e that the crew would be 'out of time' before the plane was fixed, and that nobody would be flying off that day, for sure). So, before pandemonium broke out, and even as they were still making their announcement, we hoofed it, back through passport control, down the stairs and out - the wrong way - through security, across to the taxi rank...and probably were already half way home even before they'd begun to field the onslaught from irritated passengers. One phone call later, and we'd transferred to the following afternoon's flight...which was definitely preferable to the 6.20 departure in the morning that practically everybody else seemed to be subjected to. I noticed only one person on our flight the next day who had been on our first, aborted flight, so assume that the rest of them must have dutifully boarded the early morning alternative, bleary-eyed and in fighting mood; since this is the busiest week of the year in Pisa, with both the Luminara and the Palio taking place, then I should think hotel space was limited, and our hapless fellow passengers ended up being bussed out to somewhere like the Holiday Inn in Migliarino...a prospect not to be entertained lightly!

So, London timetable was a bit crammed - although, in fact it didn't terribly matter, since there was nothing much on offer anyway. Nothing whatsoever to see at the cinema - presumably because they were expecting everybody to be watching 'the football', and so didn't bother - and only The Summer Exhibition on at the RA, which I'm generally happy to miss. Charles Spencer's review of it in The Telegraph was wonderfully damning, and merely confirmed me in my suspicion that it would be just as dreary this year as it always is.

Fitting in around the chores, we managed a dinner party on one evening (Lamb, Apricot & Coriander koftas; Papardelle with Burro Rosso; Pork loin in Mustard, with Marsala Carrots; Cherry & Almond Tarts) and headed off to the Horace Walpole exhibition at the V&A for their late night opening on the following one. Agreeably empty - due to 'the football' - it was an 'eclectic' lot of stuff. HW clearly collected rather indiscriminately, and, moving from exhibit to exhibit I was increasingly reminded of Harold Acton and all that tat (with optimistic, but not very credible attributions) in La Pietra. I suppose Harold would have been gratified by the comparison, if nothing else.

And then, the horror of the airport for the return journey. Total and apocalyptic chaos. Thousands of people milling around in increasing levels of stress, as flight closures approached, queues got no shorter, and the airport staff appeared to have surrendered the will to live some time before. By the skin of our teeth, we got the flight - leaving only an hour later than advertised - and even managed to re-connect with our baggage on arrival...which, in the circumstances, seemed a minor miracle.

No more airports for another month!

Tonight's dinner:

Mackerel Rillettes on Tomato Salad, with Lemon Vinaigrette.

Lamb Shoulder, stuffed with Garlic & Anchovy; Baked Fennel.

Pear Tart, with Orange & Cinnamon.

One year on...

It was a year ago this weekend that we first set eyes on the house at Santa Caterina. And already more than three months since we first started sleeping here - I hesitate to say 'since we moved in', as 'moving in' is an ongoing process, and will remain so until the old house in Via Fucini has been sold and the remaining furniture moves from there to here. At the moment, living here is like up-market camping...quite a few of the rooms echoingly empty of all but a few sticks of furniture, windows generally curtainless, and pairs of old doors leaning next to the doorways they're intended to grace (but for which we have yet to find supports which are the right size for their antique hinges).

Having said which, it's wonderful. The topography of the courtyard between the house and the church inexplicably produces a constant gentle breeze which flows from the direction of the Priest's house, and in through the windows of the dining room, on the ground floor, and of the bedroom above. Each morning we wake to the view, two rooms away, through the dressing room window, of terracotta tiles, and then of sunlight on the intensely white facade of the church...blue sky visible beyond.
For the most part, the house and garden are swathed in silence, apart from birdsong...and the few outside noises which do intrude from time to time will soon be covered by the sound of trickling water from the fountains we'll be connecting in the courtyard and on the terrace, and by the sound of water from the larghetto beyond the barn. While we're in London this week, Giancarlo will be working on the ground floor terrace (concealing dusty concrete behind a covering of terracotta) and will then start working on the terrace to be constructed beside the larghetto. The whole project will be work-in-progress for some time to come...but I hope we'll have broken the back of it in time for August, when everybody downs tools, the World stops for two or three weeks, and Pisa, blissfully, becomes a ghost town.

And the other anniversary is the junior four-footed. A year old. I hadn't realised that it had been on the same day that he was born and that we first saw this house. An auspicious date.
He celebrated by running in and out of the sprinkler on the north lawn, and then racing around on the flowerbeds and getting generally caked in mud. In seventh heaven!

Dinner tonight:

Papardelle with Chicken Liver Sauce.

Ossobucci, with Peas & Pancetta.

Tart of Nespole and Almonds.

Lemon Vinaigrette

A recipe from Bruno Loubet. Excellent on tomato salads of all kinds (with spring onion and smoked fish, for example, or on a traditional caprese, with basil and mozzarella). Perfect for summer. The quantities given here make a pint of vinaigrette; you can halve them in order not to have too much of the stuff at one time, but I find it keeps well in a bottle in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks - you just have to remember to give the bottle a good shake before use each time.

Ingredients: 3 pinches of sugar; salt & pepper; 100 ml water; 100 ml fresh lemon juice; 300 ml olive oil; 100 ml vegetable oil.

Method:

1. Combine the water and lemon juice and dissolve in this mixture the sugar plus three pinches of salt.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients, plus three pinches of pepper. Shake well and pour into a bottle and refrigerate until needed.