Boy, I'm getting old!

Today the Scirocco wind is blowing cloud and rain into our direction again, so I have a bit of time for a longer entry. After Tuesday’s digging got interrupted by a shower, we cycled over to Arcola again on Wednesday, this time to glorious sunshine all day. I dug over a whole terrace, which had mostly leeks on it until last week.

Thursday I couldn’t face another day of cycling over and digging (most of it is now done anyway, except a couple of lower terraces) so Susan suggested: “why don’t we go on a ‘gentle’ cycle ride somewhere today?”. The sun was out and there was only a gentle westerly breeze. So I thought why not, I need to write up some more walks and need to start going a bit further afield for them. I had recently read about a small wetland nature reserve along the coast from here (we can see it from our bedroom window) and what could be nicer than a gentle ride along the seafront on a sunny day. Boy I’m starting to get old though! It’s either that, or due to our poverty my calorific input is not great enough to compensate for the output. I must get it into my head that just because I can see something out of my window it does not mean that it is necessarily close; I can see the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Island of Elba, for Pete’s sake! So it turned out a 75odd km return ride. In my youth that was just a warm-up for me, but now I almost didn’t make it up our hill on the way back and I’m still feeling drained today. Susan on the other hand is showing some astonishing stamina, especially considering she was never much of a cyclist before and she’s older than me!

The walk through the Lago di Porta Nature Reserve was very pleasant though. It’s a 4 km round walk with informative signs around what was once a lake, but was drained in the mid-16th Century, because of Malaria being prevalent in those days. It is now a wetland area offering a home to numerous species of birds and amphibians. We spotted a marsh hawk, various ducks and a few frogs as well as some carp and tench in the water. It’s a beautiful little oasis wedged in between the busy Via Aurelia and the A12 Genoa – Livorno motorway near the town of Montignoso, which is dominated by a castle on top of a conic hill.

Incidentally, I learned something new yesterday. I always knew that the coastline of Northern Tuscany is known as the Versilia, what I didn’t know was that it is named after this little river above, which runs into the Med near Forte dei Marmi.

To do something about increasing our calorie intake I’ve decided to bake a cake today. However I was lacking some of the main ingredients you normally associate with cake, i.e. butter and eggs, and our current finances only adding up to about 17 cents, so I had to improvise a bit. Here’s how I did it:

Let’s-see-what-we-can-find-in-the-kitchen cake

Ingredients:
150g sugar
1 vanilla pod
50ml hazelnut oil
50ml olive oil
50g chopped almonds
100g polenta
300g wholemeal flour
1 packet baking powder
A little water
100g plum & apple jam (or any other jam you fancy)
A few sliced almonds
Method
1. Preheat oven to 175°C.
2. In a bowl beat the sugar together with the insides of the vanilla pod and the oils. Add the chopped almonds and mix well, next the polenta and finally the flour and baking powder. Work to a fine crumb, then add a little water and knead to a soft, pliable dough.
3. With a rolling pin roll ¾ of the dough directly onto a baking tin covered with baking paper. Spread the jam evenly over the top.
4. Roll out the last quarter of the dough thinly onto a floured work surface. Cut into 2 cm wide strips and lay on top of the jam to form a grid.
5. Sprinkle with the sliced almonds and bake for about ½ hour.
By the way, don’t throw the empty vanilla pod away. Place it in a small jar and fill up with sugar to make your own vanilla flavoured sugar for next time your baking.

Here’s another recipe I invented a couple of days ago, which was nice:

Chicken Breast on a Bed of Wild Herbs with Roast Potato and Fennel
Ingredients for 2:
Olive oil
1 skinless chicken breast
A selection of wild herbs, i.e. lemon balm, marjoram, wild onion (alternatively cultivated varieties of the first 2 and chives for wild onions)
1 large fennel bulb with the herbage still attached
5 medium potatoes, cubed
A handful of black olives
Salt & pepper
Semi-fermented gorse wine (alternatively Asti Spumante)
Method
Pre-heat oven to 175°C and grease an oven-proof dish with some of the oil.
In the centre of the dish pile up the lemon balm, the marjoram and part of the fennel herb all left whole. Lay the chicken breast on top.
Around the chicken arrange the potatoes, the sliced fennel bulb and the olives. Season all liberally with salt and pepper.
Drizzle some more oil over it and a glass of the still sweet wine. Sprinkle the chopped wild onion over the chicken.
Put in the oven for about 40 minutes until potatoes are soft inside and the chicken cooked through.

Potato & Onion Pie

Talking about recipes the other day, here’s one I came up with tonight. I thought I’ll write it down before I forget how I did it myself.

Potato & Onion Flan

Ingredients:
For the pastry:
250g wholemeal flour
½ tsp salt
1 sachet dried yeast
½ tsp sugar
100 ml water
50g butter
For the topping:
3 large potatoes
100g stoned olives
100g ricotta cheese
1 sprig of rosemary
3 large onions, sliced into rings
Some mild cheese grated, Gruyere would do well
Pepper
Some extra olive oil

for the pastry combine the flour with the salt. Form a mould in the middle, add the sugar, yeast and water into the centre and stir to a thick consistency. Cover with some of the flour from the outside and a tea towel and leave to rise at a warm place for some 15-30 minutes.
add the butter cut into small pieces and knead the whole thing into a soft dough. Add more water or flour if necessary. Cover again and leave for at least 1 hour.
In the meantime boil the potatoes until cooked, then set aside. Combine the olives, ricotta cheese and rosemary in a food processor and puree to an even consistency. If necessary add a drizzle of olive oil.
Lightly grease a deep baking tray. Roll out the pastry thinly to the size of the baking tray. Prick all over with a fork. Leave for another ¼ hour in a warm place while heating up the oven to 250˚C. Spread the olive paste evenly over the pastry, scatter the onion rings over it, then the sliced boiled potatoes. Grate black pepper over it and another drizzle of olive oil and finally top with the grated cheese. Bake in the hot oven for some 15 minutes and serve with the wild salad from yesterdays post.

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.

my new tomato press and other tales

After quite a hot spell, (even Susan dared the freezing waters of the river in Villa, although, after an unexpected encounter with some Dutch tourists the other day, she decided to keep her kit on…) today the weather finally broke with a brisk wind and a brief, but strong shower today. So no need to water the land today and I have a bit of time to write a new entry and to conserve some of our excess harvest.

We have been keeping very busy, despite the heat. Due to our general cash shortage, we have been cycling a lot too and leaving the car at home. We’re getting rather fit these days, I think I’ll enter Susan into next year’s women’s Giro d’Italia! Anyway, apart from the tedious and perennial job of weeding and chopping down bamboo, we have ploughed over another couple of terraces in Arcola. One of them we sowed with cavolo nero (Tuscan “black cabbage”), fennel, and various lettuces. Our daily harvests are sometimes too heavy to carry home on our bikes, especially climbing up the mountain back to our village in the afternoon heat. Here is a list of some of things we’re are currently picking, and no doubt I’ll forget something: tomatoes (big beefy ones, salad and cherry toms), aubergines, peppers, courgettes, melons, lettuces, picked the last pears, some late plums, rocket, cabbages, sweet corn, potatoes, celery. Since we started fighting back the jungle that was our plot 3 years ago this is the first time, that we really are producing more than we can eat, so we are busy preserving things.
My latest acquisition is the tomato press pictured above. It’s a great little gadget. All you do is roughly chop your tomatoes (I had about 3 kg spare today) and cook them for a few minutes in a saucepan. Then you throw them into your tomato press, turn the handle and on one side the skins and most of the pips exit and the other side produces perfectly smooth tomato sauce, which you then bottle with a sprig of basil and simmer for 15 minutes in a pan of water. Apparently it does 50 kg an hour and does not only do tomatoes but any fruit really. So because it was so much fun I did the same thing (save the sprig of basil) with the last of the pears. No need to peel and core them, just chop roughly and the result: a sort of baby food consistency pear sauce. Not exactly sure what I’m going to do with it. Maybe give it to someone visiting with a baby…? or serve it with some venison or wild boar (beg some of the hunters when the season starts…).

Our social life, despite limited funds, has not suffered. James and Alison, who normally bring us rain, are over from Northampton at the moment. We had them around for dinner the other day centred around the produce of our land. A 5 course dinner for 4 cost us a grand total of about €5, which isn’t bad going I thought.
Last night there was a concert in the inner court of our house. It was classical this time, chamber music to be precise. The internationally acclaimed Hyperion Ensemble played works from Vivaldi. The ensemble consisted of 6 musicians, a violin, a cello, an oboe, a flute, a bassoon, and a harpsichord. It was probably the highest quality concert we have seen so far at our house and the atmosphere in the inner court enhanced the virtuosity of the music. Only thing was the wind was starting to pick up and the musicians had to chase after their notes occasionally. To find out more about them check them out on http://www.ensemblehyperion.com/. It was only afterwards that we realized that they charged €10 entry for non-residents of the house.