And so, it begins...

the summer watering. In fact, we've been relatively fortunate in not having much hotter weather before now, since this has meant much more opportunity to ease into the watering-dominated mindset that will be the rule between now and the inevitable rain in September.

With twelve separate battery-operated watering sysems around the place, all of them due to operate at different times during the day, and all of them prone to battery failure, split tubes, punk connections, defunct timers, or blocked filters...not to mention the more serious problems, like stripped casings, or the fuse going caput for the pump in the well-house ...it keeps us on our toes. It is almost inevitable that just at the moment when one is sitting back, secure in the knowledge that the garden is happily being hydrated all by itself, the eye is drawn to a hydrangea suddenly alarmingly on its last legs, and all due to the over enthusiastic activity of a hedgehog, possibly, or else a dog having tripped over a tube in pursuit of an interesting smell in the undergrowth. Dogs aren't the best at reporting back that they've just disconnected the water supply to the lower pasture, and are prone to wander home instead in search of dinner, oblivious to the chaos they've left in their wake.

And it isn't just getting the thing back working properly as it was doing this time last year, but remembering to include coverage of all the additions to the garden since the system was last needed, back at the start of last autumn. It seems slightly incredible, but I realise now that over a hundred new plants have been introduced since October, all of which need to be plumbed in...hydrangeas (28), dwarf bamboo (36), large bamboo (5) roses (9), camellias (5), azaleas (4), bergenias (6), calycanthus (2), abelias (6), catalpas (3)...plus a couple of dozen things which have been relocated or divided or whatever, but which in their new positions risk being left high and and very definitely dry. Technical Dept is working his way through the list, but every so often there's an Emergency Ward 10 moment, when somebody realises a plant has been overlooked and is gasping, and immediate attention is needed in the form of yet more black tube, and an appropriate dripper or mister or spray.

Fortunately, the water supply is seemingly endless (which is, of course tempting fate, merely to say it). We've always thought the supply from the larger of our two wells is astonishingly generous, and we began by thinking the well must both be enormously deep, and that it refills, once used, very quickly; then we thought that there must be a very large underground cistern of some kind, which holds vast quantities, or that the well linked with a fold in the aquifer. Whatever the explanation, it has obviously always been like that, as old maps of Pisa from several hundred years ago actually pinpoint the well within the city plan. Now, however, we think we've got the real explanation: a relatively recent topographical survey has revealed that in Roman times, in addition to the Arno (Arnus) running through what is now the centre of town, there was also a second river called the Auser, which appears to have been connected in some way to the Serchio, Lucca's rather unlovely river.

The Auser snaked around, and bifurcated and had secondary channels all over the place, one of which appears to have run along what is now the north  boundary of our garden, before going along what is now the north wall of the church, and then looped up to the football stadium (as is) and down again, to bifurcate once more, and run north and south of the Campo dei Miracoli. In fact, it just brushes against the site of the Leaning Tower, and is probably the reason for the lean. Because, although it hasn't been visible for many centuries, it appears still to be there, but underground. Hence the reason for the tilt, as the river washes through the foundations of the Leaning Tower, and for our seemingly endless supply of water, as we drain off hundreds of gallons of water on a daily basis, with no apparent loss of level (well, not before the water table drops, by the end of the summer, at any rate). Which is all to the good for both Galileo and me.

Tonight's dinner:

Fettucine with Walnut Pesto.

Veal in a curry-infused cream sauce; basmati  rice.

Coffee-meringue vacherins, with creme chantilly and blackberries macerated in orgeat.

Scallops with Leeks

From Roger Vergé. Not only is this quick, easy and delicious, but it has the advantage of providing an excellent sauce - and I mean really excellent! - which can subsequently be used to lift other dishes that might otherwise be a little pedestrian. The first time of making it, I used the sauce afterwards for two other dinners: firstly with pigeon (boned and roast, and served on a bed of braised cabbage), and later on with ravioli, with a duck stuffing. Somehow, away from its original use the sauce loses any suggestion of fishiness, and becomes just anonymously good, but completely beguiling, whatever it accompanies. There's almost an argument for making  the recipe, just to have the extra sauce around for later.

For two.

Ingredients: 6 scallops, coral on or off, as you prefer; approximately 1 cup of dry white wine; 2 oz butter; 1 medium sized leek; quarter cup of cream; salt.

Method:

1. Melt half the butter in a shallow pan, add to it the finely sliced leek, cover with water (just - you don't want it to swim), salt lightly, and cook gently for about twenty minutes, until the leek is properly soft.

2. Towards the end of the leek cooking time, melt the remaining butter in a small pan, and to this add the scallops, each sliced horizintally in half. Add the wine, and cook for a minute oir two, just until the scallops are firm.

3. Drain the leeks of their cooking liquid (but retain the liquid), and divide between two heated plates. Put the cooked scallpos on top, and then combine the cooking liquids from the two pans, add the cream, and boil down rapidly, to reduce. As soon as the sauce starts to thicken, check the seasoning and adjust as necessary, then spoon some of the sauce over the scallops, and serve immediately.

With luck, you will have a decent amount of sauce left over, to be used subsequently practically on whatever savoury dish you feel like.

Puff Pastry - the acme!

Years ago, I blogged the method I used at that time to make Puff Pastry.

Well, now I have a better - much better !- one. From the ever-reliable late Gaston Le Notre's technically splendid volume on pastries and desserts, this version produces pastry which puffs stratospherically every time, with a lightness and a buttery richness which is completely incomparable. There are a few tricks to getting it right:

1. Work very quickly, when rolling and folding the pastry. The longer you take, the longer the warmth from your hands is causing the butter inside the pastry to start to melt, which causes holes, which leads to disaster.

2. Use plenty of flour when rolling. And I mean plenty. This means that if any butter does start to poke through, the sprinkled flour reduces the risk of the whole process descending into a chaotic sticky mess.

3. When rolling the pastry before folding it, roll almost to each end of the strip, but never completely over the end - I'm not entirely sure why this works (TD has explained it to me, but...) but  by not closing off the ends of the rolled pastry, it seems ultimately to allow the pastry to puff much more majestically.

4. Make a large amount of pastry in one go, rather than faff around with making a smaller quantity. The quantities given here might seem improbably generous, but you can either put some into the freezer for a later date (something I generally avoid, as the freezer for me represents a gaping pit into which things have a tendency to disappear, only to emerge once more several aeons later as intriguing packages from another age - I now try to work on the basis that if something isn't going to come out of the freezer again and actually be consumed within a week or so, then it shouldn't go in at all), or else plan your menus to use the pastry up over three or four days. The last time I made a batch f pastry this size, within the course of a week, it was used for Sea Bass & Fennel en croute (main course), carrot tourte (starter), Feuillete of Leek and Chicken Livers (starter), Tarte of Sun-dried tomatoes and Chevre (starter), Apple croustade( dessert), and Tarte Tatin (Dessert). 

Ok. The process:

Ingredients: 500g flour; 75g butter; 1 cup water; 2 tsp salt; 500g chilled butter.

Method:

1. Process everything apart from the chilled butter into one homogenous lump. Wrap in clingfilm, and leave in the fridge for two hours.

2. Take the chilled butter and between two sheets of clingfilm, press it roughly into a square approximately 7" x 7". (I do this manually, by pressing down with my hands; some people talk of needing to use a rolling pin or a heavy weight to do it, which I don't find necessary. You might want to cut the butter into bits and reassamble them, to facilitate manipulating the butter more readily into the right size and shape that you want to up with).

3. Take the base pastry from the fridge, and on heavily floured surface, roll it out into a square about 14" x 14 " - you need to be able to put the square of butter onto the square of pastry, and to fold the pastry such that the butter is completely enclosed.

4. As stated, put the square of butter onto the centre of the square of pastry, and fold the pastry over the butter entirely to encase it. Immediately turn the pastry package over, so the join is underneath, sprinkle it  generously with flour, and roll it into a strip about 24" long x 6". Fold the strip legal-letter-style into three, then turn it over, with the join underneath; sprinkle with flour and roll again into 24" x 6"; and then repeat this a third time, before wrapping the folded pastry in clingfilm, and placing in the fridge for an hour. (Hint: when rolling the folded pastry into a strip, I find it helps to start by pressing down half a dozen times or so with the rolling pin  to flatten the pastry, before then quickly rolling the flattened pastry into the requisite strip. Doing this reduces the amount that the pastry is worked, and is therefore a good thing.)

5. After an hour,   take the pastry from the fridge, and repeat three times the rolling and folding process, remembering to flour generously at every stage. Then, back into the fridge for a further hour, before repeating a further three rolls and turns. The pastry can then be used - although, should you be so minded, a further hour's rest and three more rolls and folds can't possibly hurt.

After that, the world is your oyster!

Holy Water

Intrigued recently by a reference in Madame Prunier's classic tome on Fish cookery to a 'Crêpe Prunier' which contained, amongst other things, a healthy slug of something called Liqueur Trappistine, I've been idly looking into the history of monastic tipples. I'd never heard of Trappistine before. An early volume of Larousse 'Dictionnaire Universelle' stated that it was another name for Benedictine, and is made by the Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Fecamp, in Normandy...although, this factoid was shortly thereafter brusquely consigned to the dustbin in an 1892 article in The New York Times, where the confusion of Benedictine with any kind of Trappistine hooch was shown to be nonsense - as, indeed,  was the idea of  Benedictine monks hoiking up their cassocks to produce industrial quantities of any kind of rather sickly liqueur. To the extent that a liqueur trappistine exists commercially at all, it originates with the trappist monks at the convent of Notre Dame de Tamié, in Savoy...and is first cousin to other, probably equally questionable, gut-rots such as Chartreuse, and the intriguing Cordelière, made by the canons of La Mothe, in Lorraine, and which was of such impressive strength that it was apparently successful in seeing off the plague which ravaged central France between 1630 and 1637.
What was more definitively consigned to the dustbin by the New York Times journalist, in January 1892, however, was the whole load of blarney associated with the benedictines being hard at work churning out their famous tipple by the barrel load. Investigation of a report from several weeks earlier of a disastrous conflagration at the Abbeye de Fecamp, complete with cowled monks battling the flames in a attempt to save their precious production, revealed that there was no Abbeye, there were no monks, and that the whole Benedictine 'story' was a fairytale dreamed up by an imaginative local boy with an eye to the main chance.

What, in this day and age, would be explained as merely a creative approach to marketing. The conflagration had been at his factory, which was of industrial proportions, and certainly had more substance to it than his claim to be following an ancient recipe he had 'found' in an old book, preserved from the monks' library which had existed before the revolution. It even identified by name its medieval inventor, and came up with an apocryphal visit to Fecamp by Francois I, who (inevitably) gave to the drink an unqualified seal of royal approval.
Mind you, the association with Benedictine of all sorts of creative nonsense doesn't appear to have ended back in 1892. A trawl online about the stuff uncovered the claims that apparently it is the favourite tipple of the supporters of Burnley FC, and that the Burnley Miners Club is the single largest consumer of Benedictine anywhere in the world. I say 'apparently' since these claims seem curiously reminiscent of the gem which appeared in Norman Mailer's Wikipedia entry shortly after his death stating that he had been a lifelong supporter of Bristol Rovers, and which was unthinkingly repeated in the obituaries of Mailer published thereafter by certain particularly witless journalists. When it comes to that particular fact, or a mouthful of benedictine, I'm unclear which of the two would be the harder to swallow.

Tonight's dinner:

Courgette Soufflé

Duck Breast, with red-wine sauce; potato galettes.

Tarte Tatin of Apple and Rosemary.

Wine Tart from the Vaudois

This is my version of something which comes from Fredy Girardet - and both the recipe and the author are a splendid new discovery for me. These past few months, I've been aggressively re-visiting the work of 'starred' french (and french-ish, extending into Belgium and Switzerland, and even into the UK, with the Roux brothers) chefs from the eighties, which were IMHO a culinary high-point. Girardet is amongst the previous unknowns (to me) from that period, and his 'Cuisine Spontanée', of which I tracked down a copy in January, has seen much use in my kitchen over the past few weeks.
These days, it's rare that I come across a new recipe which I can't immediately place as some kind of variation on a familiar theme - roasting, braising, boning, baking...the number of techniques available for use is limited, and within them, the changes are generally rung in the form of relatively subtle new combinations of flavours and textures. And, after a while, everything can be pretty much seen to be a first or second cousin of something I know from before - which might sound boring, but in fact is anything but...think of them rather as old friends that one's happy to rediscover!  This recipe, however, I can relate to nothing I've previously come across. The pastry case is not blind-baked...a detail which I found almost sacriligious, and which I mistakenly chose to ignore the first time I tried the recipe...cooking is brief and at a fierce temperature...the filling contains no eggs, and rather than being 'set', is effectively 'melted' inside the pastry shell, and then firms properly only as it cools down after cooking.
On a practical level, as long as you have the pastry ready in the fridge, then this is another of those dishes that finds a home in the 'Oh, God - it's that time already, and I haven't even started anything for dinner yet' category. Pre-heat the oven, roll the pastry, mix the filling...all of which might take five minutes, and then let it bake for a quarter of an hour and you're done. If you're really running late, then this is best made as individual tarts, which don't have to cool down completely before being served; if you make a large tart, and then try to slice it before it has properly cooled, then the filling will flow as you cut into the pastry shell, and the result on the plate is less than picture perfect. It all tastes the same, though...

For two individual tarts (for one 8" tart, multiply the filling ingredients by 150%):
Ingredients:
Pastry (made with 10 oz flour, 8 oz butter, a pinch of salt and 50 ml cold water - this is enough to make many tart shells, both large and small, but these are the proportions I use to make a standard batch of pâte brisée, which goes into the fridge and generally gets used up over a week. In his version for this recipe, Girardet uses a pastry made with baking powder...don't. I've tried it and the result is sub-standard.); 120g sugar; 10g flour; 1 generous tsp ground cinnamon; 100 ml white wine; 10g butter.

Method:
1. Heat the oven to 250 degrees C.
2. Roll out the pastry, to line two individual false-bottomed flan rings, which have already been greased, and placed on a baking tray.
3. Mix together the sugar, flour, cinnamon and wine. Carefully pour this mixture into the two pastry cases.
4. Finely dice the butter and scatter it over the surface of the two tarts.
5. Place the baking tray at the bottom of the pre-heated oven, and leave to bake for about fifteen minutes; keep an eye on the tarts as they cook, to ensure the pastry doesn't go too far.
6. Once the pastry has turned a deep brown and the filling has bubbled inside the pastry shells, remove them from the oven, and set aside to cool down for at least half an hour, before serving.

Spring...

has largely passed us by.

And we've headed instead straight into summer.

After a winter that was so short and mild that it was hardly noticeable...not a single frost...

which is mildly unnerving in terms of likely levels of pest-life, later in the year...

but, it has definitely had its upside, in terms of general quality of life during the normally deeply dreary weeks of January and February.

We've had three times the usual level of rainfall for this time of year (but then, who hasn't?), and have wells currently full to the brim...which should stand us in good stead at least until the middle of summer.

Camellias are currently in bloom - although showing signs that they will soon finish, for this year - and the azaleas are now just starting to flower.

The tulips and narcissi, which are heavy with still unopened buds, risk being overtaken by events, given the temperature in the garden yesterday, when I was cutting the grass, and felt that being in shirtsleeves was already 'overdressed'.

And, soon, it will be time to start to plant out the seedlings -several hundred of them - which have been doing their stuff over the past few months in the propagation unit we contrived in the old wellhouse, at the far end of the garden.

Tonight's Dinner:

Bouchées a la Reine

Boned lamb shoulder, stuffed with garlic & anchovy

Turkish Lemon Pudding

Chocolate Soufflé Crêpes with Orange Sauce

The recipe - or rather, the version I've always used, as I think it can be found in quite a number of books, these days -  comes from Michel Roux, with the sauce imported from a Fredy Girardet recipe where he uses it to coat a construction of vanilla ice cream encased in a warm crêpe, which is then passed under the salamander. I remember being deeply nervous the first time I made this souffle crêpe recipe, with the misplaced fear that the whole thing was extremely fragile and delicate and that it therefore  risked falling to pieces when being transferred from baking tray to serving plate. In fact, it's perfectly robust, and requires no more complicated treatment than to be scooped up with a fish slice and plated, quite unceremoniously, on a decently warmed plate, before the sauce is poured next to it.

The first three steps of the recipe can be done in advance, but thereafter you need to do the remaining steps just before serving - the oven stage is quick, and it might take only around five to six minutes from starting to assemble the crêpes and souffle mixture to actually serving the completed dessert.

To serve six

Ingredients:
For the crêpes:  20g cocoa powder; half tbs icing sugar; 10g flour; 2 medium eggs; 1.5 fl oz cream; 2 fl oz milk. Icing sugar, for shaking over the finished dessert.
For the souffle mixture: Crème Patissière made with 1 egg yolk, 20g sugar, 7g flour, and 80 ml milk;  35g cocoa powder; 4 egg whites; 60g sugar.
For the sauce: grated zest and juice of one orange; juice of one lemon; 140g sugar.

Method:
1. For the crêpes, liquidize all ingredients together; using the standard technique, use this mixture to make six crepes, and set to one side. Once cool, use a sharp knife and a cake ring (or any other appropriate sized circular form) to cut from the centre of each crêpe a perfect circle of about 6" diameter. Leave these on a plate covered with clingfilm until needed.
2. If the creme patissière is cold, reheat it gently in a double boiler, and stir in the cocoa powder.
3.  Put the sauce ingredients in a small saucepan, and simmer for five minutes or so, until thickened and slightly reduced.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

4. Whisk the egg whites until half-risen, then add the sugar by spoonfuls as you continue whisking until the egg white makes soft peaks. Stir a third of the beaten whites into the crème patissière, and then fold in the remainder. 
5. On each of 2 greased baking trays set out three of the crêpes. To the right of the centre of each one place a generous spoonful or two of souffle mixture - approx 3/4 cup of mixture per crêpe - and fold the 'empty' half over the mixture, to make a semi-circle.  When all six are ready, place them in the pre-heated oven.
6. Re-heat the sauce.
7. Watch through the oven door as the souffle mixture cooks and rises, and fills the crêpes as it does so. It should take about five minutes in total to cook - you'll have to judge by eye when they look done.
8. Take the trays from the oven, shake icing sugar over the top, and quickly transfer the crêpes to warmed plates to serve, with a generous spoonful of sauce poured alongside each one.