What to do with too many courgettes

It's the time of year again where we're struggling with a glut of courgettes. Here's my method of preserving most for at least a couple of weeks:

Roast Courgette sott'olio

1. Slice courgettes diagonally to about 5mm slices.
2. Heat a griddle pan to very hot and add just a drop of vegetable or sunflower oil (olive oil tends to burn at high temperatures and you might end up with courgette flambée). Throw in a single layer of courgette slices, sprinkle with salt, pepper, rosemary and chopped garlic. Grill a few minutes on both sides until done and clear juices run when you press a wooden spatula on top.
3. Place the slices into a bowl with white wine vinegar. While doing the next batch, turn the slices in the vinegar ensuring both sides are covered, then place in a sealable plastic container.
4. Repeat until you have used up all the courgettes. Cover with good quality olive oil and store in the fridge until needed. Not sure how long it lasts like this, but not very long in our household. If put into sealable jars and sterilised in a water bath, it maybe possible to store it for the winter, but haven't tried that yet.
   
5. Makes an excellent antipasto or mixed with some pasta as a primo.
6. You can also treat aubergines and peppers in the same way and make a mixed roast antipasto. Oh and, whilst it does use up quite a bit of expensive olive oil, you can of course re-use the left-over oil afterwards having acquired a nice rosemary and garlic flavour.
   

An urgent Appeal

Actually two appeals. Firstly, so far I have always refused offers of empty jars, thinking I've got so many clattering up our cantina already, I'll never run out. However, it has happened, we've run out of preserving jars. The litres and litres of tomato sauce I do on an almost daily basis are ok, I just bottle them in old beer bottles, no shortage of those. But the berry season has started. We already have a backlog of blackberries and elderberries in the freezer, because I don't have any jars to put them into, and the peaches and the second batch of figs are getting ripe and will want using.

So, PLEEEEEEEEASE, PLEASE, anyone reading this living anywhere near us, save us your empty jam jars and all and we will come and collect them!

On that subject, with the last of the jars I tried making a new preserve I have not tried before. I had read a recipe for an elderberry jelly on the internet, but I don't like adding artificial pectins and I can never be bothered with dripping jellies through muslin and all that hassle, so I came up with my own recipe for elderberriy jam:

1.5 kg elderberries (weight after de-stalking)
5 crab apples
1/2 untreated lemon
1 kg sugar

1. After collecting the elderberries, freeze them. That makes de-stalking them an easier and less messy job. Once frozen, de-stalk them by running a fork through the bunches. Chop the half lemon, skin and all and core and chop the apples.
2. Combine those ingredients and cook in a large pan over a low heat until the apples are soft.
3. Add the warmed sugar and boil rapidly until setting point is reached.
4. Now pass the whole mixture a couple of times through a tomato mill or press through a sieve.
5. Re-heat and bottle in hot jars.

Now to come to our second appeal. My regular readers will remember our cat saga. In November last year, just as the weather started turning unpleasant, a cat turned up on our doorstep, a red tom. Because of his canning resemblance with the cartoon cat, we called him Garfield. He seemed a nice, well behaved cat and we started buying food for him.

Shortly afterwards, he started bringing his girlfriend. She initially just came for meals, but did not stay the night. She was black and white with a black dot on her nose, so we called her Dot.

Now we were getting a bit worried, because she very much looked like a producing female. And right enough, a few days later she brought her kitten with her.

As she must have been born in the neighbourhood, that meant she was born under the shadow of the church of San Michele Arcangelo, who is also depicted on the stone relief on the wall opposite our bedroom window. So we called her Michaela, or Mickey for short.

Now, that we had two intact females in the house, we had to kick Garfield back out again. He has died in the meantime. He had evidently been attacked by a dog. Anyway, cut a long story short, we've had our two girls neutered, and they are still with us. However words has evidently gone around in the cat world that we are a bit of a soft touch for cats.

So a few weeks ago another regular visitor arrived, a very sad skinny looking female. We called her Tigger, because she is a grey tiger type. A couple of days ago she introduced us to her kittens, Rooney (originally Ears, because she is more ears than cat, but re-named after Susan noticed the floppy ears of Wayne Rooney at last night's match of England vs Holland) and NoSi (can never make up its mind, "shall I come, or not. No... si...").

So between them the five cats are eating us out of house and home. So any cat lovers out there, the PONZANO SUPERIORE CAT SANCTUARY welcomes any donations of cat food!

Of preserving

Well just to finish off July here another post. It seemed a long month this time, a lot happening. It really has become too hot to do any serious work on the land and cycling over has become a torture. No matter how early you start, you can't escape the heat. Cycling over to Arcola takes nearly an hour and watering all 18 terraces takes 2. The only way to this sensibly by the way is, by Susan sitting back in the shade operating the tap, whilst I strip to my underpants and hold the hose over my head every now and then.

By the time we've finished that and picked the day's harvest (which puts an extra 10kg onto the back of my bike to lug up our hill again), it's at best late-morning or even lunchtime, and the sun beats down mercilessly. No time to rest though, as we have to do something with all our harvest, before it all goes off. So the afternoons are spent over a hot oven preserving everything: tomato sauce, gherkins in vinegar, green beans in brine, tomato chutney, courgettes under oil, etc. So we're being kept busy enough.

On the side I try and organise this new wine tasting business and post on this blog. So enough for today, it's time for some festas this weekend and some relaxation. I'll tell you all about that in August.

Here a continuation of a series I have started some 2 years ago of amusingly shaped vegetables:

Part 2: the Tomato

Part 3 the cucumber.

This massive thing had escaped my attention by hiding under some leaves, so it got rather bigger than it should have been. Now, before you even thinks about it, I'll censor any rude jokes concerning cucumbers and my wife!

on the Giro d’Italia and the heatwave

I know I haven’t posted for a while, we’ve been pretty busy with various things, so this’ll be quite a long entry today I think.

First of all, there’ll be a break in the riveting and popular series “Our Terraces” today to make room for some current sport coverage. Yesterday we had a rest day as the Giro d’Italia came to town. Yes I do like watching a bit of sport. As a kid growing up in Bremen, I used to watch home matches of Werder Bremen at the Weserstadion. I still like football, but prices to go to stadiums aren’t what they used to be and I’m getting rather disgusted with the play-acting, feigning injuries, complaining, winging and whining and plain cheating in the modern game. I also used to watch speedway, but other motor sports, like Formula 1 in particular, these days seems to be decided behind desks and in courtrooms, not to mention horrendous entry prices for a couple of hours of watching noisy cars going around in circles.

I watch other sports, mainly on TV, but there is no other sport I can think of, which you can watch for free and get THIS CLOSE to the top athletes:

This is Lance Armstrong, the undisputed superstar of world cycling. This photo was not taken with a fancy zoom lens, I just shoved the camera right into his face and was evidently even closer to the man then the TV cameras on the other side of the road.

Yesterday’s stage was a 60 km individual time trial through the Cinque Terre and was dubbed “the killer stage”. Rider’s were racing through this hilly coastal stretch against the clock rather than against each other. I have been to cycle races before. I saw the Tour de France a few years back as they skirted Germany, but we had positioned ourselves on a steep downhill stretch and the peloton was past within a fraction of a second. The only lasting memories were the smell of burning rubber as the 180 odd cyclists hit the bend at over 70 km an hour and the accompanying motorbike, which nearly ploughed into a nearby chip van. We saw the Giro the last time they passed as well, twice in fact, but both time on flat bits with the group being compact and passed in seconds.

But in a time trial you can watch each rider coming passed you one by one for 3 ½ hours. The stage was from Sestri Levante to Riomaggiore involving 2 steep uphill sections (one of them I have cycled myself before). We decided to position ourselves above our old haunt of Levanto, just over half way into the race. It was a great way of spending the day. We had a picnic with us, a couple of beers and shared into the banter with other fans. I even dusted up my old “proper” camera, I found I still had some film for it and it does have a decent telelens on it. However the photos from that camera won’t obviously be ready for a few days, hope they still develop real films.

Here’s another shot in the meantime of a Russian rider called Andriy Grivko:

We had originally planned to cycle towards the race, which would have involved similar tough climbs to the professionals, but decided against it, as we are in the middle of a heat wave, which leads me smoothly onto the next subject. Last Friday, the 15th, it made a half hearted attempt at some rain, the only time this month. Saturday summer arrived with a vengeance. Daytime temperatures are the highest ever recorded for Italy for May with the mercury climbing well into the 30’s. Our daily cycle rides to the land and work on the land itself has all slowed down a bit and both of us have caught quite a bit of colour already.

This also means that crops are ahead of their season. Broad beans, alas are now finished. I managed to conserve a few in brine, but to build up a proper store of them I really do need to plant 2 terraces of them. Peas are ready and we are eating masses of lettuce. Strawberries are abundant and sweet cherries have already been and gone. They had a very small crop this year and birds ate most of the rest. Sour cherries are coming on as well though and they are as plentiful as ever. The first tomatoes are in flower as are the first courgettes and we water practically daily.

Earlier in the spring, when all the wild herbs were starting to perfume the air, I thought how great it would be to capture all these aromas and maybe making some liqueurs from them. I didn’t know how though and decided to find some recipes, quickly forgetting about my resolution again. Last week we were in La Spezia and I found a recipe book on a book stall along the seafront: “500 recipes for jams, preserves and liqueurs”. It’s fantastic! It not only has some great recipes for all the traditional liqueurs, but it has suggestions for making drinks out of base materials you would normally throw away: an Amaretto from apple pips, liqueurs from cherry, peach and apricot stones or the skin of melons, cherry leaves as well as a variety of wild and cultivated herbs and spices.

Most of the are really easy to make too, although they take a while before they are ready. I already have 2 brews on the go: Granny’s Digestive (I can’t help thinking that grannies in Italy have more fun, mine used to such a sweet after dinner) based on lemon balm and a Wild Cherry Ratafia with sour cherries and cherry leaves spiced with cloves and cinnamon. Looking forward to the results.

On Saturday also we had the inaugural session of the “Luni Wino” Wine Appreciation Club at our house. About a dozen of us tasted our way though some Italian wines and I believe a good time was had by all. It sort of was the launch of my new little venture, although it mostly was a social event.

I was going to have a wee rant about pests after I went on a bit on weeds recently, but Susan is already in bed and I better finish here for today. So there’s something to look forward to as well as the next installment of the cut-out-and-collect series “Our Terraces”.

Jam session under the stars

Last night we organised a big jam session on the little piazza outside our house. Our English friends Pam and John, who have a holiday home in Calice al Cornoviglio, have had musical visitors from France. So after much to-ing and fro-ing we managed to get them together with our musical neighbours for a session under the stars. I took it upon myself to cater for over a dozen people, which was no mean feat, considering we had a budget of about €1.33 or thereabouts. I attempted to make the local snack ‘farinata’, which is basically just a mixture of chickpea flour, water and olive oil, which is baked in the oven on a flat baking tray. It was only a limited success, as I discovered that our oven does not stand on an even surface and as the batter is pretty runny it turned out thick one end and thin on the other. Well, since the foreign visitors did not know what it was supposed to look like I just about got away with it.

Next I made my own variation of the local mes-ciüa soup, which was invented by the dock workers of La Spezia. They gathered up any bits of grain or dried pulses which had escaped from sacks while ships were being loaded and unloaded. Now the main ingredients are chickpeas, dried beans and pearl grain. I added a bit of celery and some herbs to embellish it all. Next I made a large pot of spaghetti with a roast tomato sauce. Next an ‘anything-I-could-find-in-the-garden-quiche’, which included aubergines, courgettes, green beans, cherry tomatoes, green peppers, basil and pancetta (didn’t find that in the garden). And finally I served some blackberry tartlets made from wild blackberries.

Luckily the visitors brought plenty of wine so this turned into a lovely festa. Soon we were joined by quite a few of our fellow villagers who were attracted by the sounds of the accordion, pipes, fiddle and hurdy-gurdy (or vielle as Sheila the player of that instrument preferred it to be called). Soon there was even dancing going on. We were celebrating until about 1 o’clock in the morning. I hope we didn’t keep the priest, who lives next to the piazza, too much from his beauty sleep. He obviously didn’t feel inclined to join in.

On this frugal living I just came across a great ‘Independent’ article, here’s the link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-thrifty-foodie-how-to-eat-better-but-pay-less-836638.html. I have recently invested in the book mentioned in there: ‘Food for Free’ by Richard Mabey. It’s got descriptions of over 100 edible plants, berries, mushrooms, seaweed and shellfish, fully illustrated and with recipes. And in it’s newest addistion it comes pocket-sized, so I carry it with me at all times now. We have just tried out the Pontack Sauce recipe on Thursday. It’s made from Elderberries, red wine or vinegar and various spices and is to be used as a condiment, which goes particularly well with liver. Apparently it gets better with age (somewhere I’ve read it should be kept at least 7 years, but we had a try after about 7 minutes), which is just as well as I made over 2 litres of it. It has an interesting sweet and sour flavour with lovely dark fruity notes and an all staining deep red colour. Also on Thursday I’ve made fig jam with the second crop of figs. It was odd this year, the same fig tree produced one crop in late June, then nothing until now, then a second crop just as big as the first.

A final word about the weather, although the weather forecast keeps forecasting rain 'within the next few days', this hasn't happened yet, not even threatened to. The thermometer seems stuck at around 29 during the day and 19 at night.

Of Cycling, walking and driving

We have found a sort of 3-day rhythm which enables us to save fuel without completely exhausting ourselves. Day one we cycle to either Arcola (1 hour) or Villa (2 hours) to do some light work, mostly watering, light weeding and harvesting whatever is ready. Day two we walk to Arcola (2 hours one way), doing some light work again. Day three we take the car to either Arcola or Villa, carrying the heavier equipment with us and doing some of the bigger jobs such as strimming or ploughing. That way the car stands idle for 2 days out of 3 and we don’t use quite so much fuel.

Today was a cycling day and we cycled to Villa. It’s about 20 km each way. First rapidly down our hill than an 8km stretch a long a busy and dangerous road. There is a traffic free alternative, which we worked out for Babette and Paul for their guide to the Via Francigena, however it’s much tougher over the mountains and the road is very rough. Susan doesn’t have a mountain bike and she does not feel very secure on rough roads. Talking about the Guide to the Via Francigena, it is now published and very good too. It gives a detailed description on how to travel along this pilgrim’s route by foot, bike or horse all the way from Canterbury to Rome (via Ponzano Superiore) on the footsteps of Sigeric the Serious, Archbishop of Canterbury, who first documented this path back in the late 10th Century. Anyone interested can purchase the book on http://www.pilgimagepublications.com/. It comes in 2 parts, Canterbury to Great St. Bernard Pass and Great St. Bernard to Rome. Anyway, I digress, finally there is an approximately 9 km bit which goes steadily, but relatively gently uphill on quiet, shady roads. On the way we pass the village of Tresana, pictured above, with it’s picture book castle.

We watered the young vines there today as well as finishing off the door to my new winery. The bat had moved in again, so I had to wake it up and evict it again. We also harvested some new potatoes, which we just had with some butter and fresh mint. Is there anything more delicious? In Arcola lots of things are now ripening, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers, melons, plums and pears. We’ve produced some pears in cognac from my new ‘Liguria in Arbanella’ recipe book. Looking forward to trying this in a few weeks. Yesterdays driving day involved clearing up under the pear trees with the strimmer, as the pears were starting to fall off the tree and disappearing in the undergrowth

Boy, it's hot

Well we had almost forgotten what it’s like, but summer does seem to have finally arrived, so much so that it’s has simply become too hot to do any meaningful work. Yesterday, on mid-summer solstice we set out to our plot full of good intentions. We bought a few tomato plants to replant the ones drowned by the rains and a few cabbage plants. We just about managed to plant these and stake the tomatoes and Susan built a support for the melons that had spontaneously sowed themselves out, although I’m coming to the conclusion that they may be cucumbers. This again is strange, because the ones I deliberately sowed out got drowned as well. Well I’m not complaining, let them grow where they’re happy is what I say. Anyway, after this bit of very light work we were drenched in sweat and it was only 10 o’clock in the morning! Things could only get worse. My outside thermometer is on 40˚C and there is still a lot of humidity in the air. This evening, as the sun dips behind the hill (our land is east facing), we shall resume our watering routine and then go off to La Spezia where there is to be a Sardinian sagra accompanied by folk music. Until then we’ll just vegetate.

In the meantime I have found a new, really useful book, ‘Liguria in arbanella’. Written in Italian, this gives traditional Ligurian recipes for preserving your harvest. Amongst the usual suspects of jams, vegetables under oil or vinegar, salted or dried vegetables etc, there are some really unusual ones that I can’t wait to try out. Amongst the jams and marmalades there is for instance an orange marmalade with chocolate bits and cognac, a chestnut and white bean jam, a dandelion jam and apple and rose petal jam. The fruit under alcohol section features chestnuts under whisky and the section on vegetable preserves includes garlic in honey, aubergine with mint or spicy under oil, spicy olives and garlic, chillies stuffed with anchovy and capers and sweet and sour tomatoes. At the end of the book there are also a few of the classic Ligurian recipes such as Pesto Genovese and Nut Sauce. All in all a great book and I shall look forward to seeing my larder brimming over with homemade delicacies. We started with doing cherries under spirit, ciliegie sotto spirito, the other day, which involves pure alcohol (95%) being poured over cherries, sugar and a few cloves. We’re shaking the mixture daily now and after a month or so it will be ready to be bottled.

Finally, to my great disappointment Holland were knocked out of Euro 2008 last night by no other than Russia who are managed by Dutchman Guus Hiddink. I hope he will now not be allowed back into the country, he should be banished to Siberia! Well, well, life goes on, I suppose I’m going to have to start shouting for Italy now… Me and our next-door neighbour Piero were having shouted conversations throughout the match last night through our open windows. Oh, and the orange T-shirts will finally be retired to cleaning duties.