Celery Salad

 After a period in which the word 'salad' could be associated with any collection of dispirited green leaves, occasionally enlivened by the amusing addition of strange bedfellows such as peanuts or diced pineapple, the dish is once again coming into its own. Helped in part by the ready availability of interesting oils and vinegars to give added depth: caprese salad, with the complicated sweetness of balsamic vinegar , for example, or a classic bean and tuna salad, but with the addition of sherry vinegar rather than a bog standard white wine variety.

This celery salad I found in a collection of recipes by Carluccio. It is surprising, in that it reminds me of no other salad treatment that I know, and there's something about the dish which feels ancient. Carluccio talked about being served this salad as a child, in Calabria, just after the War, and neither the period nor the location suggests dilettante self-indulgence. Rather, one gets the feeling that this is a dish which has been being consumed by peasants over the ages, all the way back to Roman times. Having tried it once, it firmly entered my repertoire.

In cooking both the celery and the onion, it is important to remember that the vegetables are merely being softened, and not cooked to a mush; they want to go beyond being al dente, but still to have some structure to them. I served the salad here on a bed of rocket leaves, which had been dressed in walnut oil and bergamot juice - but that was just because I had all of that to-hand, and those are entirely optional elements. The real hit in the dish comes from the sweet edginess of the vinegar which has penetrated into the softened flesh of the diced onion.

For two servings.

Ingredients: half a head of celery; one medium white onion; 1 tbs olive oil; 1 tbs white wine vinegar; salad leaves, lightly dressed (optional). Chopped parsley.

Method:

1. Finely dice the celery, and blanch it for two minutes in a large pan of boiling, salted water. Drain into a colander, and leave to cool.

2. Heat the oil in a small  pan, and in it gently cook the finely diced onion. Do not let it colour, or to become crisp. Once the onion is soft, turn off the heat, lightly salt the onion and stir in the vinegar, which the onion will absorb as it cools. 

3. Taste the cooled celery and add salt, if needed - it probably won't. Divide it between two salad plates, on the bed of dressed salad leaves, and scatter the onion, still warm, over the top of the celery. Sprinkle some chopped parsley on top of that, and serve.

Hazelnut souffle

 

Five minutes' prep; eleven minutes in the oven, et voila! How to simplify life, in ten easy stages...

For two souffles.

Ingredients: 11g plain flour; 28g sugar + 1 additional tbs sugar; 2.5 fl oz milk (yes, I know I'm mixing imperial measures and metric - it's my age....I'm allowed to); 2 egg yolks; 1 tbs hazelnut paste (I use the excellent stuff that comes from Fabbri); 3 egg whites; a pinch of salt.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Grease two ramekins.

2. In the top part of a double boiler put the flour, milk and 28g sugar. Over heat, mix everything together and cook until it thickens (about five minutes or so). When this has happened, turn off the heat and quickly stir in the egg yolks and hazelnut paste.

3. In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites, throwing in the pinch of salt as you start. As the egg whites begin to stiffen, gradually add the additional spoonful of sugar. 

4. When the egg whites are stiff, mix one third of them into the souffle base mixture, to lighten it, and then fold all of the mixture back into the remaining beaten egg white. 

5. Divide the mixture between the two prepared ramekins and bake for eleven minutes. 

More Garden...

 While the sun still shines...

The tulip bed - in the only part of the garden which is cold and shady
enough that the tulips don't bolt

Tulip Bagni di Lucca

Quince blossom

Choisya - finally deciding to bloom properly, after years of merely thinking about it!

Bitter Cherry

Unreachable Cherry

Sweet Cherry

The first Arum Lily of the year

Dinner Tonight:

Celery Salad

Spit-roast chicken, stuffed with Marsala & Lemon; fagiolini

Bergamot souffles

Courgette Fritters, with Tsatsiki

 I first came across a (rather basic) recipe for this some years ago in a collection by Lyndsey Bareham, and I was happy to adopt it as another way of dealing with this somewhat uninspiring but entirely reliable vegetable. This version, however, is adapted from the book of Turkish recipes  by Ozlem Warren which I found under the tree last Christmas, and which I cannot recommend too highly. 

For two servings(about ten fritters).

Ingredients: 2 medium courgettes; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 1 garlic clove; small handful of parsley; 1 tbs chopped dill; salt; pepper; 2 medium eggs; 2 tbs flour; 1 dried red chili, crumbled; 100g feta cheese, finely diced.

For the tsatsiki: 1 cup  greek yoghurt; 1/2 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely diced; 1 clove garlic, minced; 1 tbs fresh mint, minced; salt, to taste.

Method:

1. Using the grater disc on the food processor, grate the courgettes, add salt, and leave in a colander for 15 minutes to leach out their liquid.

2. Meanwhile, in a bowl combine the onion, garlic, chili and fresh herbs.

3. After 15 minutes, wrap the grated courgette in a cloth and twist to squeeze out all of the liquid. Add the courgette to the bowl, and mix to combine with the other ingredients.

3. Mix in the eggs, feta and flour. Make sure everything is properly amalgamated, and season to taste.

4. Heat a large flat pan, and add to it about 2 mm of oil. Once the oil is hot, add the mixture to the pan in a number of spoonfuls - for this, I also use a 2 " diameter metal ring, to get some kind of conformity to the shape of the fritters; the mixture should spread only slightly as it cooks. Cook over medium-high heat, and use a palette knife to turn them once they are cooked on one side (after about three minutes) briefly cook on the second side and then remove from the pan to a dish to keep warm in a low oven while the remainder of the fritters are being made. I find this amount of mixture cooks in two batches, but it depends on the size of the pan you're using).

5. For the tsatsiki, mix together all of the ingredients in a small bowl, and put to one side until ready to serve.

6. Divide the warm fritters between two serving bowls, and add a dollop of tsatski to each serving.

Easter Monday

 Blissful weather - for now, at any rate. Arctic blasts down from the alps are forecast for the rest of this week, and after that, days on-end of rain. Which might be a good thing, as I've already had to be watering the borders on a daily basis..

Camellia Roseball

Straight lines in Nature - very satisfying!

Camellia Kellingtonia

The box hedging, doing its stuff

Loropetalum, in full bloom, poking out from the shrubbery

A tulip - nameless, since I can't now remember what I planted

.

The S.E Pergola, getting things in perspective

Bearded Iris, limbering up...

Another loropetalum, with attendant four-footed

Quince, showing off its shape

The West Pergola, catching the rays

Four-footed, flaked out, after an afternoon's heavy-duty weeding

Tonight's dinner:

Courgette fritters, with Tzatsiki

Roast Pork, with Salmoriglio sauce; roast salsify

Lemon and Amaretto parfait

Pears in phyllo jackets, stuffed with figs & orange

 

Meltingly soft pears, inside a light, crisp phyllo jacket, on a buttery biscuit base..  and inside them, a dense filling of orange-flavoured figs. It can be prepared in advance to the final baking stage. Serve with a scoop of mascarpone.

On the plate, the pears need to offer no resistance to fork or spoon, which means that they either need to be very ripe when you start, or, if not, that they should  be poached in a bland syrup for ten minutes or so, before being cored and stuffed, in order to render them appropriately soft.

For two.

Ingredients: two ripe pears; syrup, to poach the pears (optional)two or three dried figs (assess the quantity in relation to the size of the pears, and the likely quantity of stuffing that will be needed); 1 orange; 1 sheet phyllo; 20g butter; small quantity pastry (either puff or shortcrust, whatever you happpen to have - you need enough to cut out the equivalent of two digestive biscuits...off-cuts from a  tart shell from another recipe are probably best; mascarpone, to serve.

Method:

1. Dice the figs finely, and put in a small pan along with the juice and grated zest of the orange. Reduce over a low heat until the juice has all been absorbed.

2. Peel the pears. At this point, use a toothpick to test whether or not the pears need to be poached, or if they are soft enough to use as they are. If poaching, then leave them for sufficient time afterwards to be cool enough to handle.

3. From the base, use a small sharp knife to cut out the core of the pears, and into the cavity stuff the mixture of diced figs. Cut a thin slice from he base of each pear, to ensure that they will stand upright without support.

4. Grease two individual flan tins, and prepare each with a foil strip, which you can use subsequently to remove the pears from the tins, once cooked, whilst keeping them upright.

5. Roll out the pastry, and cut two circles to fit inside the flan tins.

6. Melt the butter and use it to brush the sheet of phyllo, which you should then cut into thin strips about an inch wide. Carefully wind the strips of phyllo around the pears, completely to enrobe them - you should have enough phyllo to make three layers of phyllo on each pear.  Once wrapped, stand each pear on a pastry circle in a flan tin.

7. Bake for half an hour at 180 degrees C. Allow to cool somewhat before serving. These can be served either warm or cold.

The Garden in November...

 In no particular order...

Peering past the grapefruit tree, heavy with ripening fruit, onto the agrumi terrace. That cyclamen will now sit there and happily flower right through Christmas and New Year, and possibly even through the whole of January.

Nerine Isabel (I think...it's so long since I planted the bulbs that I've rather forgotten which is which)

Nerine Stephanie (probably.....see above...although equally, it could be Alba, except that I'm fairly certain those were planted in the crinum bed, and in fact the Alba bulbs have done nothing)

Hydrangea Q. Quercifolia  - one of the many Quercifolias around the garden, but the only one so far properly to have got into full autumn garb

Parthenocissus Quinquefolia, climbing over the trunk of the late-departed red plum, which turned up its toes last winter, and is due for a successor to be planted (elsewhere in the garden, though)

Pink and white ground-cover roses (tappezanti); in fact, they're called Pink Fairy and White Fairy. There should be a special circle of Hell reserved for people who give plants names like that....

The Technical Dept has christened these The Spice Girls...delivered recently by an antique-dealer from Piedmont, they're waiting to grace the new garden (when we get possession, next year, all-being-well), which will be  an extension to the existing garden, and is destined to be a labyrinth of walkways and gardens-within-gardens and vistas (half-viewed and full-on). Until then, they stand sentinel outside the sitting room window, and worry the four-footed.

Very late flowering hibiscus - they did nothing much, earlier in the year, and then began to flower energetically as soon as summer was over...still dripping with buds, as yet unopened

One of our two mature Cacci; it's perhaps a measure of how long we've now lived in Italy, that I begin to see the point of Cacci, and can by now even eat them with pleasure. These trees produce particularly excellent fruit.

One of the particularly excellent fruit...once cut open, the flesh is slightly gelatinous, and is eaten with a spoon.

Uve Fragola. The vine is out of control, and gets everywhere, with bunches of fruit appearing, like these, in the most unexpected of places. This outbreak is in the middle of a section of climbing roses. I grab handfuls of them and consume them as I do my rounds of the garden...

Tonight's Dinner:

Coddled Eggs, with Ham & Mushroom

Chicken, braised with garlic, sherry-vinegar, and dry Marsala; puree of Fennel and Cream

Vanilla Bavarois, with fresh Raspberries