Scuffle

This morning, we said a last goodbye to the Senior Four-footed. After two weeks' respite, his cortizone pills stopped working properly on Thursday, and by yesterday his lymph nodes were so swollen that he was having trouble swallowing food and his breathing was noisy and rasping. We'd always known that he would indicate when it was time to go, and he did...in the afternoon, he sloped off into the garden to find somewhere quiet and private where he could lie, in amongst the bamboo, and be on his own. Clearly, it was time. And so we called the vet, who came to the house this morning and put him to sleep. He'd had a good, long life...he didn't suffer...he was ready to go...it was as good a leaving as one could have hoped for...but it hurts horribly, all the same, and we're both feeling slightly stunned.

Scuffle has been part of everything, for so long. It seems like three lifetimes ago that he first arrived. At that time, we hadn't yet packed up and moved on from Greece...I still had not one but two globetrotting work existences ahead of me...Pisa wasn't even a glimmer on the horizon in anybody's future planning...and Scuffle has been there as part of the landscape during all those life-changes. Either there directly, or there to come home to...lovable, soft, cuddly, caring, concerned (when appropriate), generous, insistent, opinionated ...and present.

Early on, he perfected his 'I want' stance, when he would present himself, chin planted firmly on the knee of whoever, in order to gain attention, and then fix them with an intense and meaningful gaze which said, beyond any doubt, 'I want...' More often than not, 'I want' was a request for the inside of his ears to be scratched - either that, or the intense pleasure of the ear scratch that he generally got drove everything else from his thoughts - or, if it was close to five p.m, then 'I want ' was a reminder that it was four-footeds' dinner time. Bosun rather relied on Scuffle's inner clock, in that regard, and on occasion Bosun could be seen fixing Scuffle with a beady eye that strongly suggested it was time Scuffle did his 'I want' thing and got the show on the road. Not always so trivial though, and one of his more anguished 'I wants' was in the period after Bosun had suddenly died, and Scuffle grieved, and didn't understand why his mate was no longer around - one evening, as we sat at dinner, he came and did an 'I want' to the Technical Dept (his boss)...and it was perfectly clear that he was saying 'I want you to make everything right again'. There was no way we could explain to him that we were at least trying to...but when, about a  month afterwards, the new puppy arrived  Scuffle was delirious with excitement  ("Oh...My...God! I have always wanted one of these!" was the approximate translation of his thumping tail and excited eyes, as he nuzzled and investigated the wriggling and slightly confused new arrival)... and then, a day or so later, there was a new, slightly worried,  'I want' , again addressed to his boss, and this time it was 'I want confirmation that I'm still the Most Important Dog'. Which of course, he got. Because, of course, he was (we just kept it quiet from the junior four-footed, who anyway had his own opinion on the matter).

Memories of Scuffle: falling in the swimming pool in Florida, within two minutes of arriving there as a small puppy, and thereafter giving the swimming-pool-demons a careful and very-wide berth; ram-raiding picnics in Kensington Gardens on summer evenings (he and Bosun worked a very effective pincer-movement...and by the time I realised what they were doing, it was generally too late for anything other than discretion to be the better part of valour, and so I pretended they were nothing to do with me - there's no point in trying to argue with a dog's primal instinct in relation to cold roast chicken, laid out invitingly at ground-level); early morning romps amongst the bedclothes, after four-footeds had had their morning milk, and the two-footeds were indulging in morning tea, and the Today programme; being expelled (along with Bosun - it was an equal-opportunity disgrace event) from dog-walking group in Battersea for being generally badly-behaved; falling in the Arno, one wet and muddy January afternoon, and his boss - wearing white trousers I recall - having to haul him out, before we all trudged soggily and silently home; rolling ecstatically over and over in the scent of the freshly-mown lawn; insisting on saying 'Buongiorno' to every dog and every person he encountered in the Piazza in the course of his morning constitutional; trying to steal the junior four-footed's dinner, on a daily basis, without anybody noticing; glancing up with one of those and-perhaps-some-for-me? looks, every time he noticed cheese being taken out of the fridge;  and the memory that was especially and exclusively his...those times when he saw the 'come here' sign that he'd learned at puppy training classes all those years ago...hands clasped together over one's head, which he could recognise from 150 yards away, and always had him racing delightedly forwards, tail wagging, ears flapping, eyes gleaming, because he knew that was his own, personal call-sign, and that you wanted him, especially and exclusively. In some ways, it encapsulated all of the answers to all of the 'I wants' there ever had been or ever could be.

Scuffle

20.xi.1999 - 29.ix.2012

Gnocchi alla Romana

I've been reading Michael Ruhlman's book on 'Ratios' as the basis for understanding the relationships which underpin a whole range of cooking techniques - essentially, the ratios between flour, liquid and fat which every cook needs to remember in order to produce batters, pastries, biscuits, bread, etc. The subject is valid, as anybody will know who has enough experience in the kitchen to have moved beyond the oh-god-which page-was-it-again stage of going back to consult the recipe every three minutes. In fact, though, what the book should really be called IMHO is 'Mnemonics' rather than 'Ratios', firstly, because that's really what the author is talking about, and secondly...well, because his preferred ratios don't agree with mine. His ratio for bread, for instance is five parts flour to three parts liquid, whilst mine is three parts flour to two parts liquid (and to be fair to the man, I did try his method, and then did mine as a direct comparison....and mine was better); his ratio for pastry is three parts flour to two parts fat to 1 part water....where mine is five parts flour to four parts fat, and as little water as you can get away with. I suppose what all this is really saying is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer, and that every cook, through trial and error, will find for themselves the techniques (and ingredients) which work best for them, and if you can then make out of your preferred approach some handy numerical mnemonic, then all the better (Ruhlman quotes as a ratio of flour to fat to liquid for making biscuits 'the area code for dialling Chicago'...which is apparently 312; not a particularly useful reference, though, if you live in Chipping Camden, Limoges, or Ulan Bator...)

Having said all of which, Mr Ruhlman does include in his book a recipe for Gnocchi alla Romana, which is entirely reliable, and completely delicious, and which I've reproduced below. I'm not entirely sure what ratio he had in mind when he included this particular recipe, but it has lots of '2's and '4's in it...so it must be some kind of binary system he has in mind.  The gnocchi can be served with any sauce you like (pretty much any sauce you would serve with pasta will work) , but I think it goes particularly well with this sauce of fresh tomato, garlic and basil.

For two starter servings.

Ingredients: 2 cups Milk; 2 oz Butter (plus another oz for the sauce); 2 teaspoons Salt; 4 oz Semolina (aka Semola, in Italy); half a dozen grinds of pepper; quarter teaspoon of Nutmeg; half a cup of grated Parmesan (plus some extra, for topping the gnocchi); 2 Egg Yolks; 2 large Tomatoes; 1 clove Garlic; half a dozen large Basil leaves.

Method:

1. Put the Milk, Butter, and Salt in a saucepan and place over medium heat until the Butter has completely melted.

2. Add the Semolina to the pan, and, still over medium heat, stir it vigorously until the Semolina has absorbed all of the liquid and can be seen to come cleanly away from the side of the pan as you stir. (For anybody familiar with making Choux Pastry, this process will be immediately recognisable). 

3. Off the heat, beat in the Pepper and Nutmeg, and then the Parmesan and the Egg yolks, one by one.

4. Once the mixture is cool enough to handle, spread it in a layer about a third of an inch thick on a greased baking tray, or on a silpat or silicone mat placed on top of a baking tray. Refrigerate until twenty minutes or so before serving.

5. Heat the oven to 220 degrees C, fifteen minutes before dinner.

6. In a small pan, melt the extra oz of Butter, and lightly sauté the minced Garlic; chop  the tomatoes, and add these to the pan. Cook over medium heat for ten minutes or so,  until the tomatoes have collapsed into their cooking liquid.

7. Using a pastry cutter approx one and a half inches in diameter, cut out the gnocchi from the layer of cooked Semolina, and place these back on the baking tray; sprinkle grated Parmesan over the top, and place in the pre-heated oven for the five minutes or so it takes to heat them through.

8. Add Salt as desired to the Tomato sauce, along with the Basil, finely chopped. Serve in pasta bowls, with half of the sauce underneath the gnocchi, and the remainder on top.

Senior Four-Footed: Bulletin

Having been on a heavy regime of pain killers for the past week, the Senior FF has now stopped taking those, and has started taking cortizone, instead. It makes him a lot more alert, and the tail-wag test of how well he's feeling is registering pretty high at the moment - the swellings under his chin even seem to have gone down somewhat, which I think makes him feel better. Walking is getting more difficult, though, and this morning's trip to the piazza will probably have to have been his last; the back legs gave out under him a couple of times, and we had to sit and let them recover for a time before he then decided he could get up and carry on home - where, on arrival, he enthusiastically wolfed down his usual breakfast of biscuit, milk and denta styx, before presenting himself for an ear scratch.
We're talking 'last days' though...and so it's good that the weather is mild and warm, and just as he likes it. Perfect for lying on the gravel between the house and the barn, and generally contemplating the World.

Fig & Raspberry Tart

Opportunistic eating. The figs are now just ripening (which I don't entirely understand, as they were harvesting them already several weeks ago up in Belforte, and we must surely be warmer down here in the plain, and therefore you'd think we'd be ahead in terms of fruit-ripening... ), and the raspberry canes continue to crop generously. Dessert planning is done on an adhoc basis at this time of year, and tends to be a process of deciding what needs to be picked and eaten immediately. Hence this tart. Prepared entirely in advance, it works well for entertaining. If raspberries aren't available, follow the recipe and merely omit them; the end result is a different thing, but equally as good in its own way.

For two individual tarts.

Ingredients: 2 pre-baked phyllo shells, made with a sheet of phyllo, 15g butter, and a sprinkling of slivered almonds between the layers of pastry; 4 medium-sized, ripe green figs; 2 tablespoons grandmarnier; 2 generous tbs apricot jam; half a cup of fresh raspberries; icing sugar, to dust the finished tarts before serving.

Method:

1. Cut the tips from the figs, and discard. Cut the fruit into half-centimetre dice, and put into a small bowl along with the grandmarnier to macerate for an hour or so.

2. After maceration, drain the grandmarnier into a small saucepan; add the apricot jam, and heat gently, until the solid fruit in the jam is entirely liberated. Carefully remove the solid apricot from the liquid in the pan and use this to make a layer in the base of the two pastry shells. (In the last batches of jam I made, I didn't chop the fruit at all, and so the process of heating the jam leaves large chunks of apricot in the bottom of the pan....if your jam doesn't have fruit in it, then you'll have to use it purely as a glaze, and omit the stage of putting the solid fruit into the base of the pastry shells).

3. Pile the diced figs into the pastry shells, and carefully arrange the fresh raspberries over the the top. 

4. Heat the remaining jam and grandmarnier until it visibly thickens, stirring all the time, and then spoon this carefully over the tarts. Allow to cool completely, and dust with icing sugar just before serving.

Pisa, this week...

Hot. Very. I would say 'unbearably', since the temperatures are comparable with the heatwave we had this time last year, which sent us scuttling for refuge in London...but somehow the verdant lawns and generally flourishing  look of the garden seems to make the heat more acceptable. Which must be another benefit of the hundreds of gallons of water we're chucking around the place on a daily basis. The Technical Dept has been increasing the coverage of the irrigation system, little by little, and I think the only things in the entire garden now not automatically watered are the fruit cage, the camellias directly behind the church, and the disparate collection of shrubs which are down in the area of the white grape arbour (eucomus; wygelia; two lilacs; beauté vendomoise; a cunninghamia; and a chimonensis). Occasionally, one or other of us goes to check the level of the well, but it seems to be bearing this increased amount of use quite happily, and appears to refill at the same rate that the water is pumped out. Long may it continue! The garden here now has the sort of emerald sheen that would bring a twinkle to the eye of any self-respecting kerrygold cow, while the rest of Tuscany, as far as I can see, is burnt to a frazzle. The last time we had any rain to speak of was almost three months ago...

The worst of the fruit glut is over - and I confess that towards the end I just left the plums and greengages for the birds.Now we're harvesting almonds, hazelnuts, and apples; the figs are just starting to ripen, and the later- fruiting pears and peaches are coming on well. The fruit cage has settled down to a manageable quantity of strawberries and raspberries, which means I can generally find enough of either one of them a couple of times a week to make ice cream or sorbet or a tart for dessert, but no longer feel over-faced by the volume.

At the start of the week, when I went along to the fruit cage to pick strawberries for that evening's supper, I found an owl trapped in the netting; presumably it had been there since the night before and had managed to get itself thoroughly entangled in the process of trying to break free. By the time I found it, it was probably exhasted, and traumatised, and certainly didn't struggle when I cut it free and took it to the (relative) cool and gloom of the workshop, where I carefully cut away all the remaining bits of netting from its talons. No broken bones, which was a relief, and the bird just seemed in need of rest and recuperation. 

When I went to check on it, after a couple of hours, I found it had pushed its way into a pile of bits of polystyrene (part of the TD's filing system of 'bits of stuff that might one day be useful for something'...) which was perhaps more reminiscent of home than was the fruit box I'd given it as a bed; another couple of hours later, and I found it perched on top of the polystyrene, and watching me unblinkingly as I collected some things I needed for the garden. I left the door open for it, and when I went back to check, early in the evening, it had gone. Job done. From its size, perhaps eight inches or so top-to-toe, I'd assumed it was a juvenile, but apparently there is a species of owl indigenous to Italy, called Athene Noctua, which would be miniature in comparison to the sort of owls we have in the UK, so perhaps it was one of those. From the pictures on the web, it certainly looks to be the same thing. Very pretty. TD thinks there may be a nest in the well-house, which I think we'd consider to be a Good Thing.

Tonight's Dinner:

Risotto of fresh peas and chives.

Cold poached Pork, with piccante sauce; Fennel Salad.

Grandmarnier Cheesecake (Charles passed through a couple of days ago,  on his way back north from Pisciotta, and dropped off some Mozzarella and Ricotta enroute; the ricotta will go into the cheesecake...light, creamy and delicious!)

Savoury Clafouti

I first came across these in Allan Bay's 'Cuochi si Diventa 2'. Daft, not to have realised that the clafouti theme can be applied to rather more than just apples, pears and cherries - which I've been doing for years, on the back of Anne Willan and Bruno Loubet. I suppose the concept is a cross between a pastryless quiche, a kind of frittata, and a sponge pudding. Anyway, they are light, quick, extremely versatile, and highly recommended. In his book, Bay gives recipes for both a savoury and a sweet clafouti 'base' and then lists combinations of ingredients that can be used in combination with either one or the other. Made in individual egg dishes, these are dinner-party presentable, and if you can get them from oven to table before they deflate, then they give good theatre, too.

The following is the recipe for the savoury clafouti base. Recently, I've then been pouring this into a couple of individual egg dishes, which have first had a layer put into them of diced cooked ham and diced gorgonzola; others of his combinations are herring and onion, bacon and leek, tomato and mushroom, artichoke heart and capers....in fact, pretty much anything you like.

Savoury base for two individual clafoutis.

Ingredients: 1 Egg; 100 ml Milk; 50 ml Cream; 20g Flour; 20g Parmesan; a generous pinch of Salt; Peppr, to taste.

1. Roughy chop the Parmesan, and pulverize it in the liquidizer.

2. Add to the liquidizer jar all the rest of the ingredients and liquidize to a smooth, thick batter.

3. Pour this carefully over a layer of your chosen flavouring ingredients in the base of two greased individual egg-dishes, and bake for twenty minutes or so in an oven pre-heated to 220 degrees C. Take them out when they are risen, browned, and clearly done. Rush to table before they deflate.

Onion Tart - Paola's version.

Onions would definitely have to be one of my Desert Island Eight foods - whenever there's been a freshly-cut half onion left in the fridge, the smell when I open the door sets the pulses racing (well, mine, anyway)... and I have been known to bite into raw onion, on occasion (to the detriment of anybody nearby, as the Technical Dept has been swift to point out)! I've believed for years that really there are only two versions of onion tart (alsatian, with cream and eggs, and pissaladiere nicoise, where the onions are caramelised down to nothing, along with seasoning and thyme, before having anchovy and olives added for the final cooking)....and then, last Monday evening, for a first course at dinner, Paola produced this version, rich in indian spices. You can make it either in a pre-cooked phyllo shell, as she did, although I imagine it would be pretty good as well in a light, buttery shortcrust shell.

Apparently, and I bow to Paola's greater knowledge here (she and Paolo have eaten their way across various parts of India over the years), much of the secret to a dish like this is in cooking the spices almost dry to start with, before adding the bulkier ingredients which they are intended to flavour.

Filling for one large or four individual tarts:

Ingredients: 1 tbs Olive Oil; 2 cloves Garlic, finely chopped; 1 medium Onion plus 500g Onion, sliced ; 1 tsp Salt; 1 tsp each of Chana Masala, Garam Masala, and Biriany Masala (if you can get it; if not then leave it out and carry on anyway);  200ml CReam; 2 Eggs; pastry of your choice.

Method:

 1. In a  pan over medium heat, sauté in the Oil the medium Onion (finely sliced), Salt and Masalas. Cook for 10 minutes.

 2. Add 500 gr Onions and continue cooking, stirring from time to time,  for about half an hour.

 3. Pour into a bowl and add Cream and Eggs. Check seasoning and add more Salt if necessary.  Pour the mixture into your prepared pastry shell or shells, and bake for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to190° C.

Delicious!