Sapori e Saperi Adventures

RICE, GORGONZOLA & FROGS

2011-09-23T16:38:00.000+02:00

Rice grows in water. Frogs live in water. It’s only a short hop to frog risotto. My beekeeper friend Francesca and I were travelling with Massimo, a rice farmer and our guide for the day, to L’Angolo Perduto, a restaurant that lived up to its name of ‘lost corner’, sitting as it does in an isolated spot surrounded by rice fields and narrow canals on the far bank of the Ticino River from Milan.

What could the fishermen dotted along the canal possibly be catching? ‘Frogs!’, Massimo almost shouted, knowing we would be shocked. He explained the art of frog-fishing with a pole and line. First you catch a very small frog (I’m still wondering whether you first have to catch a fly as bait for the tiddlies) and you leave it on the hook as bait for a larger frog. I never knew frogs were cannibals. When the large frog bites, you hit it on the head with the end of your pole and pop it in a sack. When your sack is full, you walk over to the restaurant to sell your morning’s catch. We had to forego the frog risotto since we hadn’t ordered it in the morning, but the restaurant owner insisted that we try a platter of deep-fried frogs, which were crispy and delicious. In that great divide between everything that tastes like chicken and the rest that tastes like beef, frogs taste like chicken. The texture of the meat is like chicken too, not a hint of slime.

When you see that the body of a ‘large’ frog is only 3 cm long, you realise how long it must take to fill a sack and why frogs are expensive. They’re getting rarer now too. When rice was cultivated by hand, which Massimo dimly remembers when he was a child in the ‘60s, the fields were flooded from March to August and the frog population was prodigious. Now they dry the fields for a period in June to get machinery onto them to spray with herbicides (even in the case of ‘organic’ rice), which disrupts the life cycle of the frog.

The gorgonzola? Some people have a nose for antiques or handbags. My nose is devoted solely to artisan food producers. While searching for a good agriturismo for my Cheese, Grains & Wine tour next September, I noticed one with a restaurant specialising in local produce, including gorgonzola. A quick search for gorgonzola showed that my rice farm was right in the middle of gorgonzola DOP territory. Everyone we met told us it was much easier to fish for frogs than find someone who still produces gorgonzola using artisan methods, but Massiimo directed us to a small dairy in Cassolnovo. The cheesemaker was selling beautiful artisan gorgonzola made by a friend of his nearby.

I’ve got her name and phone number and can’t wait for my next trip to frogland. I’m going to order that risotto before I set out.

Panini Girl on the Farm

2011-05-30T20:00:00.000+02:00

‘Going to the farm and having lunch there was so very special. We all enjoyed everything about the day. It is surely one we will remember forever!’

So wrote Janie Trayer about the day tour she and her group of five women took with me. Panini Girl (Janie Trayer’s blogging name) and I share a love of Italy. Hers is in her blood, having inherited it from Italian grandparents, whereas I dug mine up as an archaeologist only a few decades ago. We both came to Italy recently to find a life we had heard about or knew in the past. We didn’t feel like tourists, but we discovered people and places we wanted to share with others and we’ve both ended up leading tours to Italy.

Because of her Italian background Janie found a different Italy from mine. She contacted me because she wanted to include one day out of her urban-based tour connecting with rural people and food. She asked me to take her group to a cheesemaker in the Garfagnana, since she hadn’t been able to find one by searching the internet. Most of the farmers, artisan food producers and craftspeople I take people to meet are invisible electronically. The telephone landline at Cerasa, the farm we visited, functions only intermittently; they have an unreliable email address and no website. None of the family speaks English. Yet the Cavani family are the most important component in a government initiative to preserve the traditional Garfagnina Bianca breed of sheep.

We approached the farm, situated in a clearing high up on the wooded slopes of the Appennine mountains, on a single-track road. It was only paved last summer and is still strewn with rocks loosened by the herds of goats that wander sure-footedly on the scree above the road. The going was slow, but Marzio Paganelli’s expert driving got us to the farmyard safely, and as we stepped out amid tail-wagging puppies and parti-coloured hens, we were greeted by Mario, Gemma and their daughter Ombretta. Gemma had already added rennet to the warm sheep’s milk, so we hurried into the little dairy at one end of the house to watch her cut the curd into tiny pieces with a stick.

While the curd was settling to the bottom of the pot, we went down to the cellar where previous weeks’ cheeses were maturing, along with Mario’s pancetta and salamis. Outside on the slope above the house we marvelled at the enormous chestnut trees that are also under the care of the Cavanis. Each tree is identified by a name plaque that also gives its date of birth, several going back to the 17^th century.

Back in the dairy Gemma plunged her arms into the pot of whey and gathered the curds at the bottom into a huge mass which she lifted to the surface, cut into three pieces and put into plastic perforated moulds to allow the whey to drain out of the cheeses. She handed samples of the warm unsalted curd around for all to taste. Then she relit the burner under the pot of whey in order to make ricotta, which means ‘recooked’. When it gets nearly to boiling point, the albumin proteins (same ones that are in egg whites) denature into white strands which are skimmed off and put into plastic baskets with sloping sides. It was too hot to taste immediately, but we had it for dessert with homemade blueberry jam. Heavenly!

The large dining room doubles as an exhibition space and shop for Ombretta’s hand-dyed woollen garments and rugs, woven or knitted from the wool of their sheep. She’s experimenting with making dyes from local plants and had achieved a warm brown from chestnut shells. Having chosen some irresistible pieces, we all sat down to Gemma’s homemade pasta and ragù, stuffed chicken thighs, pecorino cheese (of course) and that incomparable ricotta.

We could have sat in the sun on the terrace all afternoon, but Ercolano Regoli was expecting us at his water mill in the valley. Having bought some of the formenton otto file maize that we watched coming off the grindstone, we headed back toward Lucca, stopping in Barga and then at the Devil’s Bridge.

Despite the long day Panini Girl still had the energy to blog at the end of it. You can read what she wrote about the day on the farm and find out about her autumn tour at: http://paninigirl.wordpress.com/.

Confessions of a Novice Wine Taster

2011-05-08T16:22:00.000+02:00

Since you seem to have to make a humiliating public confession to get noticed these days, I confess I’m a wine ignoramus. For someone who leads food and wine tours in Italy, I’m like a bird without its wings. It’s not that I can’t taste the difference between wines, but I can never remember which flavours and aromas go with which grapes or which wines are produced in which regions, let alone the characteristics of individual vineyards. Asked whether a particular wine smells and tastes more like black currants or ripe plums, I really can’t say. Does it have a hint of spice? I’m not sure.

Hoping it’s not to late to learn, I went yesterday to the 10^th annual Anteprima Vini della Costa Toscana (Preview of Wines of the Tuscan Coast) in Lucca. This year 103 winemakers presented one wine each from the 2010 harvest. I took my friend Sam Gallacher, who had been president of the Peterhouse Wine Society at Cambridge, and together we launched bravely in at the south with Morellino di Scansano from the province of Grosseto and worked our way northward through the Bolgheris of Livorno (Sassacaia and Ornellaia conspicuous by their absence) to Lucca and Massa without a stop except to exchange views: bitter, thin, no nose, fruity, no character, full-bodied, strawberries, sour, meaty, burnt toast. Burnt toast? Must be a different kind of bread from the one I burn every morning. The sight of Pisa looming ahead was too much for us. We needed a break.

On the principle that a change is as good as a rest we headed to the enormous hall where the same vineyards were presenting their ready-to-drink vintages to the public. I made a beeline to Fattoria La Torre (Montecarlo) to taste their 2006 Esse made of 100% Syrah grapes. Next to the 2010 on the anteprima list I’d written ‘juicy blackberries’ (although I still wasn’t sure I didn’t mean black currants). What a disappointment to find the more mature vintage didn’t taste anything like the young one. To cheer myself up I tried their Saltair, a blend of Viognier and Vermentino, which I was relieved to find tasted just as good as I remembered, but I was too exhausted to think what it resembled other than ‘wine I like’.

After a quick collapse in some stylish garden furniture that a hopeful manufacturer was showing to make your private wine tastings on the patio more enjoyable, we faced up to Pisa. It was nearly closing time and the male sommeliers who were supposed pour the wines we wanted to taste had sloped off, leaving a cheerful and still energetic female sommelier from Pisa to help us. After a curious wine called Merla della Miniera (Blackbird of the Mine) made of 100% Canaiolo Nero grapes that seemed a bit like rotting meat to me and a biodynamic wine called Duemani (Two Hands) that tasted dusty, I decided my palette was hallucinating and gave up.

I’d spit out more wine in three hours than I’d drunk in a year and a half. I’d discovered a new sweet red called Aleatico from Fattoria di Fubbiano (Colline Lucchesi), which I could imagine myself serving in place of vin santo, most of which I find too raisiny. I’d confirmed my previous tentative liking for the wines of the vineyards of Sardi-Giustiniani and Fabbrica di San Martino (both Colline Lucchesi). But could I now describe what the Sangiovese grape smells or tastes like? Not really. Oh, and I was concentrating so much on tasting that I forgot to take any photos.

All suggestions for a programme of improvement will be seriously considered (but no time for a sommelier course).

Salami

2011-03-13T21:19:00.000+01:00

How many salamis are hanging here? There's no prize for guessing, because I haven’t a clue. I was too tired to count. Ismaele Turli, the butcher, guessed they contained about 100 kg (220 lb) of pork. I wouldn’t be surprised. It seemed as if we’d never finish filling pig’s intestines: I’d put another length tied at one end on the stuffer and then grasp the crank and turn it clockwise while Ismaele gyrated the sack slightly as it filled, saying ‘Boh’ when I was to stop and hold the open end of the sack as he tied it three times very tightly so as not to allow in any air. Another length of intestine, more turns of the crank, another ‘Boh’ and another closing of the end.

After about 15, the routine changed. I used a small tool that looked like a green plastic doorknob with needles stuck into one side to prick the salami all over, after which I massaged it vigorously to compact the meat and press the air out and shoved it over to Ismaele to tie tightly like a corset producing an hourglass shape and further expelling air, as it no doubt did to the women who used to wear them. Then they were ready for hanging from the broomstick to drip and dry. They’ll remain there from 7 to 10 days until Ismaele’s experience tells him the skins feel dry enough to be sure they have begun to dry right into the centre of the salami at which point he’ll move them to his maturing cellar under his restaurant.

I went to visit Ismaele at his farm in Pieve Fosciana to see whether he’d be a suitable addition to the salumi (cured pork) course I organize for pig rearers, butchers and chefs. During the courses I’d watched Italian butchers making salami, but I hadn’t done it myself, and I only helped this time because Ismaele had had the crazy idea to turn two whole pigs into salami in honour of my visit. His assistant Donatella had to return to her young children after lunch, leaving me to fill her shoes. As the regiment of salamis grew, Ismaele and I passed the time talking about the value of old breeds of pig, the flavour of the meat that comes through in the salami if you don’t use preservatives (which aren’t necessary), how people have forgotten what real food tastes like in these days of chemical additives and much else. We agreed we could offer a sausage-making session and lunch in his restaurant for amateurs who want to produce a good Italian sausage at a fraction of the price you pay at the deli. For the professionals, he offered to allow them to make their own salami at his place. That clinched his place on the course, because I was realizing that I hadn’t truly understood the process despite the number of times I’d watched it and written down the percentages of salt and spices and the temperature and humidity for drying. It’s good to be reminded of what I want my guests to experience on my adventures.

Healthy Eating

2010-09-26T11:31:00.000+02:00

I just found this piece on the website of the LLandinabo Farm Shop. My first thought: thank goodness some food scientists are finally doing research that sheds light on why those Palaeolithic meat-eaters didn't all die of terrible diseases leaving the earth with no human beings on it. But the enduring thought is that we'll never know what's healthy and what's not. A colleague said to me yesterday: 'My grandmother lived to be 96 and she didn't have a healthy lifestyle. I'll probably live to 115 because I exercise and eat healthy food'. Hmmm... I'd say that living to 96 is evidence that her grandmother's lifestyle was healthy enough for her, and we don't really know whether everyone needs lots of exercise and whether what we believe to be a healthy diet really is. In other words...

Lardo

A Fat Lot We Know...

On most of the stock we deal with, there is more fat on the meat than would be found in the supermarket and most High Street butchers. Again, when all fat was considered bad, this mitigated against these old British breeds and helped cause their decline. However, recent scientific discoveries in America and now at Bristol University have shown that the fat on animals that have been grazed extensively (which ours have) is high in Omega 3 fatty acids, the same health enhancing factor found in oily fish. The difference at the moment however is that the farming of rare breeds is actually more sustainable than the fishing in the seas around Europe.

Fat is also important in cooking good food. The fat itself bastes the meat while it cooks and imparts succulence and flavour. Without it, meat is often tough and tasteless. By all means, cut off the excess fat after the cooking is complete, if you prefer, but you don’t need to feel guilty about enjoying the fat on our meat.

Progress

2010-04-17T23:38:00.000+02:00

All winter I’ve been banned from taking clients to visit one of my favourite cheesemakers because they were rebuilding the dairy. When you arrived at the old dairy you entered a shabby sitting room with an old table in the centre, along one wall a lumpy sofa, usually occupied by one of the farm cats, and along another an old chestnut-wood sideboard. It was dingy, but welcoming. The walls were decorated with black-and-white photographs of the family, showing grandfather and his sons posed outside the barn, and a poster listing the cheeses they used to produce. Since granddad died, they’d narrowed the range to fresh pecorino and ricotta made from the milk of their 400 handsome black Massese sheep. The cheesemaking took place behind in a space no larger than a corridor. Four large gas burners sat on the floor on the right and a narrow stainless steel draining-shelf with an upturned rim was fixed to the white tiled wall on the left. Giuliana and her daughter-in-law Maria Rosa took turns making the pecorino in a large aluminium pot, warming the milk on a burner, cutting the curd with a wooden stick and bending almost double to gather up the chopped-up curd into a lump after it had sunk to the bottom of the pot. Although there was barely enough room to turn around, each pecorino-sized lump was put into a plastic mould on the stainless steel shelf behind to allow the whey to drain and run into a plastic bucket on the floor at the far end of the shelf. Then they’d make ricotta by reheating the whey in battered copper cauldrons on the same burners on the ground. It was back-breaking work, and I spent the winter imagining the new large, more convenient dairy with the burners at a more comfortable height and more space to move about in.

Today I went to see it. The front wall of the sitting room had been knocked down and replaced by a shop window. From the yard, I could see inside a chill counter filled with cheeses, and shelves affixed to the side walls stacked with honey, grappa and some kitsch stuffed animals. The photos had gone. A window had been inserted into the back wall of this new shop through which I glimpsed the enlarged dairy full of gleaming elephantine stainless-steel vats. Maria Rosa was standing at one on some portable steps, since the vat is too tall for her to operate from the ground. She beckoned me in and, as I entered, I realised she was peering intently at a thermometer immersed in the milk that filled the vat. I commented that I’d never seen her or Giuliana use a thermometer before. She explained that with this new container that heated the milk by circulating hot water in its double walls, she had lost her sense of the temperature.

While we waited for the milk to coagulate, she listed the benefits of the new system. Before they only had the capacity to make half their milk into cheese; they sold the other half which brought in less income than cheese. Besides that, now they have a larger temperature-controlled storeroom, and instead of selling all the pecorino fresh, they’ve started maturing some of it, which also adds value. Since they’re making more cheeses, they can branch out and reach new markets by flavouring the pecorino with walnuts, tomato, pepper, herbs and hay. I asked her whether she liked, for instance, the pecorino aged in hay. ‘No’, she admitted frankly. ‘It’s too dry’. But then added quickly, ‘Lots of people like it because they eat it with honey and jam’. During this conversation, Maria Rosa tested the curd four times to check whether it was ready to be cut. Previously the women had a sixth sense about when it was ready and only once had to test it a second time. When she finally decided it was ready, she pressed a button and a vertical frame strung with wires started to rotate inside the vat and cut the coagulated curd into small pieces. When she judged they were small enough, she hauled the free end of a large-diameter plastic hosepipe over to a two-metre square stainless steel box-table on legs and casters, which took up most of the centre of the room. She now pressed a red button on the vat and the cut curd and whey was pumped from the vat through the hosepipe into moulds in a frame in the box-table. She needed my help to redirect the awkward, heavy hosepipe to different areas. When all the curd was in the box, it had to be redistributed among the moulds which required wheeling the table away from the wall. Again it was too heavy for her to do on her own, as was the frame holding the moulds, which had to be lifted out after the moulds were full. Usually her daughter was around to help. I remembered when even old Giuliana could lift all the human-sized equipment by herself. Now Maria Rosa looked awkward as she worked, compared to the ease and grace she had displayed when working in the old cramped dairy. I observed that the new system seemed to distance her from the cheese so her senses were no longer in control, and she agreed. But she insisted that the flavour of the cheese is the same. When she gave me a taste, I didn’t tell her that it had a bitter taste that hadn’t been there before. And best of all, she assured me, Giuliana is glad not to have to make cheese any more.

When I had arrived, Giuliana was taking down the laundry. I’d greeted her and asked how things were going. She’d replied, ‘In somma’, which usually means ‘Could be better’.

Fat Tuesday

2010-02-14T10:21:00.000+01:00

Martedì Grasso or Mardi Gras means ‘Fat Tuesday’, and both sound to me much more fun than Shrove Tuesday. ‘Shrove’ is the past tense of ‘shrive’ which comes from an Old English word meaning to impose as a penance. In England we eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. When made well and sprinkled with lemon juice and powdered sugar, I wouldn’t call them a penance, but they are meagre fare compared to the feasts of the last day of Carnevale or Carnival in Italy and most other Catholic countries. Meagre comes from a Middle English word meaning lean and was used in cookbooks at least until the mid-19th century to describe meatless recipes suitable for Fridays and Lent. Carnevale comes from ‘carne (le)vare’ and referred to the banquet on the evening before Ash Wednesday at which the diners stuffed themselves with meat while saying farewell to it. Obviously it has to be close at hand to hear the ‘arrivederci’. Parting is such sweet sorrow that the good-byes now begin as early as Epiphany (6 January) and are repeated regularly in public revelry, huge processions of fantastical floats, fancy-dress parties and banquets until the final bash this Tuesday 16 February.

I know Carnevale has arrived in Casabasciana when I go to the village shop on a Saturday morning near the end of January and see on the counter a box of chiacchiere (photo above) and am assaulted by an instant attack of the munchies. They’re one species out of a whole genus of fried dough strips flavoured with a little alcohol and sprinkled with powdered sugar which flake lightly between your teeth. They could be said to be the Italian equivalent of English pancakes, a delicious sweet titbit, but rather than saving them parsimoniously for ‘Fat Tuesday’, the Italians spread them lavishly throughout Carnival. Even while crunching my way through these heavenly pastries, my mind carries me forward to a fortnight later when Eugenia’s homemade chiacchiere (photo left) will appear in the shop — even lighter, crisper, less sweet, more melt-in-the mouth. She rattled off the recipe to me, but I’ve forgotten the quantities. Help is to hand in this delightful Gherkins & Tomatoes blog.

Masks and floats

2010-02-13T13:50:00.000+01:00

No words are adequate to describe the atmosphere of Carnival celebrations at Viareggio — crowded, boisterous, convivial, noisy, hilarious… Photos say more. Better still: go! There are two more days of festivities left: Sunday 14 February and Tuesday 16 February. The procession of floats begins at 15:00. Travel by train or bus or, if by car, make sure you arrive by 11:00 in order to get a parking place. Stalls selling masks, wigs and food open early and you’ll have time to examine the ingenious floats parked on the passegiata along the sea front before they lumber into motion. If you can’t get there, here’s a photographic taster: Carnevale celebrations

Souprize

2010-01-28T23:33:00.001+01:00

During a necessarily brief Twitter conversation with Alex Roe of @newsfromitaly and Blog from Italy about the Slow Food Compitese e Orti Lucchesi soup tournament, he asks me what one wins. I know every contestant gets an apron and a certificate, but what does the winner get? I look at the announcements, the menus, the Elegy to Zuppa and the rules of the competition. Nowhere is a prize mentioned. I email Marco Del Pistoia, the leader of Slow Food Compitese. No reply. I telephone. Hesitation. ‘Ma’, I can imagine the shrug of his shoulders, ‘we haven’t decided yet. Maybe a hand-painted ceramic soup tureen filled with local produce.’ So whatever the official prize turns out to be, the contestants are really competing for the love of soup.

If you haven't had enough soup yet, try my soup story at Sapori e Saperi Newsletter vol. 2 no. 4 where you'll find out the basics for making a zuppa yourself.

Soup put to the test

2010-01-28T12:54:00.000+01:00

So did the soups live up to all the hype? As usual, some did and some didn’t. It was obvious that each cook had put loving attention into the making of the zuppa. They had been made with care and all contained the correct basic ingredients. It was the ‘element of surprise’ that I sometimes found too surprising: the domineering aroma and flavour of nepitella (Calamintha nepeta) in sample 2 (it was a blind tasting) and the overpowering sensation of stringy celery in sample 4. Cavolo nero is delicious but had taken over the whole bowl in one sample, and another screamed carrots. The individual flavours should be in balance and harmony; the subtle flavour of cinnamon in one was just right. I like a few whole beans in my zuppa, but only a couple of cooks seemed to agree with me.

In the first round I attended, we tasted five soups, and the winner came next to bottom in my ranking. My friend Kathleen Dunne and I were the only foreigners, while the rest of the jury were Italian and mostly in their 20s and 30s, many of them employees at Effecorta, a newish grocery in Marlia that shortens the supply line by buying directly from local farmers. But at the second round, my favourite of the six was also the winner in the eyes of the locals. The dinner was held in the church hall at Aquilea, and here I was the only foreigner. More of the crowd were older than at the previous judging, and it was a woman in her late 50s who had made the winning soup. Maybe one’s palate changes? Or perhaps the young are more daring and out for obvious excitement, whereas us oldies desire the warm comfort of the known? (Photos of the Marlia round are at: Disfida della Zuppa)

Elegy to Zuppa

2010-01-25T00:06:00.000+01:00

According to my Italian dictionary ‘zuppa’ means: pasta, rice or vegetables cooked in broth (of meat, fish, legumes or vegetables), served with small pieces of bread, toasted or fried in oil or butter. This is only the beginning according to the ‘Elegy on Zuppa alla Frantoiana’, which we found at each of our places at the Disfida della Zuppa (Soup Tournament) at Ristorante Diavoletti in Camigliano on Friday night. Since it covers both sides of an A5 page in tiny type, I’ll try to convey its essence.

‘The Zuppa alla Frantoiana is a dish that, for the Lucchesia [area around Lucca] and in particular the plain of Lucca, represents a synthesis of territory, characteristic local produce, memories, culture and social gatherings.’ That’s a lot to pack into a bowl of soup. Yet every one of those elements was present at the Soup Tournament. A group of about 60 people — old, young, families, singles — from a radius of maybe 10 km had gathered to eat and judge a dish, made from ingredients also from a radius of about 10 km by a friend or parent or child. In judging each cook’s soup, this volunteer jury was comparing it with Zuppa alla Frantoiana as made by their mothers and grandmothers and friends and local restaurants, and inevitably recalled the many occasions on which they had eaten it. Even I, only five years in the Lucchesia, was remembering the first time I ate it at the Sagra della Zuppa (Soup Festival) at Aquilea, its annual appearance at my own village’s Ferragosto dinner and its apotheosis as created by Emma at Da Pinzo in Ponte a Moriano, not to mention my own efforts which often provide a satisfying winter supper.

The Elegy lists the essential ingredients:

Beans: the other vegetables are cooked in the pureed beans. The main bean is the Rosso di Lucca, but other locally grown beans can used in addition, such as the Scritto di Lucca or the Malato (‘sick’) or, occasionally, the Cannellino of San Ginese and Sant’Alessio. Since all these beans are at risk of disappearing from cultivation, it’s a good thing someone is still making soup from them. Obviously, the beans you choose affect the delicacy or robustness of the flavour of the soup.
Cavolo Nero Riccio di Lucca (known in dialect as ‘braschetta’), a blue-black winter cabbage with a very distinctive flavour.
Extra-virgin olive oil of Lucca with its soft and delicate notes (oil from olives picked toward the end of November or December, since oil from early harvested olives is bitter and peppery).
Stale naturally leavened bread.
Element of surprise: the enormous variety of other vegetables, a good part of which are wild plants from the countryside.

‘The Zuppa is a “dynamic” dish in that it has a high level of “diversity” depending not only on the hand of the cook, but also the family tradition, the village and the season in which the soup is made, determining which wild plants are available.’

Besides it’s traditional value, it has other notable qualities:

characteristic aroma and flavour;
requires time and patience to obtain a memorable result;
important dish in ‘cucina povera’ (peasant cooking) for utilising leftovers and whatever is available in the kitchen, vegetable plot and hedgerows;
perfectly balanced nutritionally: carbohydrate from the bread, protein from the beans, fiber and minerals from the vegetables, noble vegetable oil from the extra-virgin olive oil.

The Elegy ends with a plea. Increasingly we find banal versions of this traditional dish on the menus of bars that serve food reheated in the microwave and on the shelves of supermarkets packaged in simulated plastic terracotta for the microwave. We mustn’t forget the proverb: ‘There is no future without memory’. Let’s keep the original identity of the Zuppa at the heart of present-day and future creativity.

Soup tournament STOP PRESS

2010-01-20T10:54:00.000+01:00

Correction to my previous post: There are six rounds, not five, to determine the finalists. The play-off will be on 27 February at the Frantoio Sociale del Compitese, Pieve di Compito. To be absolutely clear, the remaining rounds take place at 20:00 as follows: 22 January at Effecorta, Marlia; 23 January at Aquilea (sold out), 30 January at Sala ex Collegio Cavanis, Porcari; 5 February at Ristorante La Pecora Nera, Lucca; 6 February at Sala Parrocchiale, Santa Maria del Giudice. Each round is a full dinner, not just soup. Only €20 per person (€17 if you’re a member of Slow Food). Go to Disfida della Zuppa 2010 Lucchesia e Compitese for booking information. Don’t miss the chance to help choose the champion soup maker!

Soup tournament

2010-01-18T21:40:00.000+01:00

As soon as Marco del Pistoia, leader of Slow Food Compitese e Orti Lucchesi, told me they were organising a soup tournament, I asked him to put me on the mailing list and ever more excited emails keep arriving about the pilgrims already being on the road. The contestants are volunteers each believing his or her soup recipe to be the best in the region, or more probably in the world; the juries are self-selected gourmets and gluttons from the public. There will be five rounds to determine the finalists who will compete on 6 February for the ‘World Championship’ at the Sagra della Zuppa (Soup Festival) at Santa Maria del Giudice, not far from Lucca. The soup will be variations on zuppa alla frantoiana, a thick vegetable soup based on a brodo di fagioli (bean broth) and drizzled with new-season olive oil. Some people maintain the tradition of including wild greens; those suitable for soup are only in season from January to March. It takes at least a day to prepare, or two days if you count the 12 hours needed for soaking the beans and the time spent scouring the fields and hedgerows for the wild herbs. It would be a great course for Sapori e Saperi Adventurers. I’ve signed up for the jury on Friday and Saturday evenings and am already wondering, what is the equivalent of a tiebreaker in a soup tournament — who can throw their soup pot through the kitchen window first? If they’re not all deep dark family secrets, I’ll come back with some recipes.

In case you’re near Lucca and are in the mood for some good warming soup, the full programme is at: Disfida della Zuppa 2010 (it takes forever to load, Slow Web?). If you need a translation, send me an email at info@sapori-e-saperi.com

New Year's Eve, Casabasciana

2010-01-03T13:40:00.000+01:00

Too late again this year to help with the tortelli (meat-filled pasta pillows) for the New Year’s Eve village dinner. The other women have finished them by 9.15 am. New Year’s resolution: get up earlier next 31 December (hope I remember). The mark of a feast is double the number of dishes in each course. Dalida and Anna Rosa are the masterminds of village dinners and they have no trouble coming up with more than enough dishes between them. Here’s the menu that we struggle to get to the end of, but dare not omit a single one for fear we will miss the best:

Antipasti: crostini with mascherpone and walnuts, crostini with smoked Scottish salmon and lemon, Belgian endive leaves loaded with Russian salad, salami toscana, stewed lentils

Primi: crema di zucca (cream of squash soup), risotto with leeks and gamberetti (shrimp) and tortelli al ragù

Secondo: Spezzatino di maiale with olives and chestnuts (pork stew)

Torta laced with something alcoholic (see above)

Lentils symbolise money, and you must eat them on New Year’s Eve to ensure a prosperous year ahead. It must be true: on New Year’s Day a rainbow pointed to a pot of gold just below the village car park. Anna Rosa apologises that there is only one main course, but after seconds and even thirds of the tortelli, no one notices the lack. For me the risotto and spezzatino come tops, but the soup is delicately piccante and the tortelli achieve the usual high standards of Casabasciana.

A television has been rigged up in the village hall and ten seconds before midnight we join the television crowd counting down until the corks of the spumante bottles pop and we greet each other with heartfelt ‘Auguri!’ and a kiss to each cheek.

Brodo & polpette

2009-12-26T21:07:00.000+01:00

23 December. I want to make a risotto ai porcini (wild mushroom risotto) over Christmas for which I need some good beef stock, brodo in Italian. I go up to the bottega, the village shop which is also a butcher shop, and tell Eugenia that I want to make brodo. She asks for how many, ‘just you?’ No, maybe three people and I want to put some in the freezer. She tells me I need some muscolo (shin of beef) and some costine di posteriore di pancia (well, bottom end of the breast of beef). If she had a chicken leg, that would be good too, but she doesn’t have one today. Altogether she gives me 800 g of beef plus three small pieces of beef marrow bone. I’ve made beef stock hundreds of times, but I ask her anyway what else she puts in. ‘Odori, un piccolo pomodoro fresco e sale’. Odori is a useful word to know. According to the dictionary, they are aromatic herbs used to season food, but that’s not how the word is used here. Here it invariably means the vegetables that form the basis of most soups, stocks and sauces: onion, carrot and celery, sometimes parsley too. Cinzia, who has the fruit and vegetable stall at the Fornoli market, always makes a present to her customers of a carrot, a stick of celery and a bunch of parsley. For my quantity of brodo, Eugenia suggests one medium onion, two small carrots, and a stick of celery. She turns her nose up at parsley. From the two tomatoes I pick out, she selects the smaller.

Back home, I peel the onion and carrots, wash the celery and tomato, fling them along with the meat into a soup pot, cover them with ample cold water and bring it to a very, very gentle simmer — just the occasional bubble. Just as it’s starting to simmer, I skim off the scum (coagulated protein from the meat) several times until it stops rising to the surface. Then I add a little salt and a few peppercorns. I put on the lid propped open with a wooden spoon laid at a tangent across the edge of the pot (a trick I learned from Stefano, who is one of the cooking teachers I use for my clients), but be careful it isn’t anywhere near the flame or it will catch fire (sorry, health and safety). After 3 hours or so, the meat is so soft you can eat it with a spoon and the brodo is a clear amber colour. I strain off the broth, tasting it and the two different cuts of beef. The flavour of the shin is a little more forceful; the breast is softer and fattier which lends its own distinctive taste. Yummy! Such good pure pastel flavours that I’m tempted to drink the broth and eat all the meat right then and there standing at the kitchen counter. But when I was in the shop, I also asked Eugenia what she does with the boiled beef.

Daniela, a customer in the shop, offered her views. She makes it into a salad with raw diced winter vegetables and mayonnaise. Eugenia concurs. But I don’t feel like a cold salad when it’s cold outside. What else would they suggest? Polpette (meatballs). Eugenia’s husband Renato can’t bear to stay out of this discussion any longer. He has an apt saying for every situation. In this case: ‘Just surely as psalms are followed by Gloria patri, all leftovers turn into polpette’. Eugenia describes hers. She grinds or chops the meat along with a slice of mortadella, adds some leftover mashed potato or day old bread soaked in water and squeezed out, a couple of small handfuls of grated parmigiano (or one each of parmigiano and pecorino), two eggs, salt and pepper — actually, she realises as she’s speaking, it’s the same as the filling for tortelli (meat-filled pasta pillows) without the Swiss chard. She uses the mixture to make balls about the size of walnuts and flattens them a little, dips them in flour or dry bread crumbs and fries them in vegetable oil. I also add a little finely chopped garlic and some fresh thyme. I use dry bread crumbs because I love the crunchy exterior. Almost forgot to take the photo before they were all gone. Gloria Eugenia!

On the way to Pisa airport

2009-12-17T19:16:00.000+01:00

I try to take the train to Pisa airport from Bagni di Lucca, a 20-minute drive from my village of Casabasciana. But a train journey that takes 1 hour and 15 minutes at 8.12 in the morning, takes 3 hours at noon because there’s a two-hour layover at Lucca. So this morning I drove to the airport along the Serchio River valley. Bamboo has colonised much neglected land around Lucca, especially in stream and river valleys. This appears to be generally a good thing, since strong, tall bamboo canes are needed to support tomato plants, of which there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, including the canestrini, a knobbly variety found only in Lucca province. At first I found a good, accessible stand of bamboo along the road to Bagni di Lucca in the Lima valley. But now that more and more strangers are invading the area (including me), the old-timers are erecting fences, and last summer the track to the bamboo was blocked by a chain. I found another really good stand on the Serchio flood plain along the road to Lucca. This morning as I passed, bulldozers were busy clearing the whole stretch. It looked naked in the bright sunlight.

When you get to Lucca, you have to know you follow the green autostrada signs to ‘Firenze’ and ‘Genova’. There is not a single indication anywhere around Lucca that there is an airport only half an hour away at Pisa. I put this down to ancient animosity between the two cities. When getting on the autostrada you follow signs to Livorno which lead you, almost accidentally, to the airport on the way. To get to the centre of Pisa, you take the airport off-ramp, drive through the airport and out again, following signs saying ‘PIsa’ followed by a bull’s-eye denoting the city centre. Woe betide anyone who exits at Pisa Nord, thinking they’ll be at the airport or the Leaning Tower. Think again! I wonder whether those who program GPS systems have got this one right. I won’t even attempt to tell you how to find your way back to Lucca.

At the airport there’s a long-stay car park, but low rates only kick in after the first 7 or 8 days, during which you pay the same rate as the short-stay car park; last time I looked it was €15 per day. Much better is Park to Fly, on the wrong side of the tracks from the airport. You follow signs to ‘Chericoni’, who were the previous owners. It only costs €8 a day, even for just one day, with a free shuttle service to and from the airport. On a warm, sunny day like today, now that baggage surcharges have disencumbered us of large suitcases, it’s a nice 10-minute walk. Book on line at www.parktofly.it.

Today I go straight through security to the departure lounge, remembering to remove Renato’s sausages from my bag and put them in a separate plastic tray. Last time they set the x-ray machine off, being the culinary equivalent of hand cream. The lounge is nearly empty. Everyone must be out doing their Christmas shopping. British Airways announces boarding for their flight to Heathrow, departing before my EasyJet flight to Gatwick. One couple walks up to show their boarding passes. A few minutes later a single young man rushes up. Shortly after him a woman with a child and baby in a push chair arrive at the desk. Increasingly frequent calls in Italian and English announce the imminent departure of the BA flight. Another couple saunters up. Then a group of four immaculately dressed Italian businessmen, including one sporting shades, who could be a pop singer or actor, plus one stylish young woman. Now an announcement naming three missing passengers. Someone comes back from the plane having found one of the missing persons. In the end I count 17 adults, 1 child and a baby. If you want to avoid the crush of Ryanair and EasyJet, fly BA — if they’re not on strike already.

Saltocchio: not Hannibal’s elephant

2009-12-16T17:36:00.000+01:00

I go with Marco on the way home from the mill. It turns out he’s from Saltocchio, the village on the way to Lucca that Alberto, who is not from Saltocchio, told me took its name from from a battle there in which one of Hannibal’s elephants had lost its eye (‘saltare’ means jump and ‘occhio’ means eye). Marco’s legend is completely different. There used to be a small lake in the shape of an eye in front of the church and a boatman ferried worshippers across to its door, hence ‘jumping over the eye’. In a couple of hundred years will people wonder why a particular spot on the South Bank of London is called ‘London Eye’?

At the mulino

2009-12-15T23:27:00.000+01:00

The mulino is a building from the past that is becoming part of the future of the Garfagnana. Chestnut flour used to be so important in the local diet that there were seven water mills in the tiny valley below our village and many hundreds more throughout the Garfagnana. Today there is barely a trace of them left. However, with diagnoses of coeliac disease and wheat allergies on the increase, chestnut flour, completely free of gluten, is enjoying a comeback, and that from the Garfagnana has attained the exalted status of DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) from the EU. This may not seem very momentous, but it has raised the prestige and price of a homely commodity, making it more attractive and worthwhile to produce. To meet increased demand, the early 17^th-century mill at Fabbriche di Vallico, was recently restored to its former glory, and several others have also been refurbished. All the water mills I’ve seen in this area north of Lucca are driven by a horizontal wheel, mounted in a beautiful arched stone chamber directly below the grindstone. At the outer ends of the wheel spokes are shallow metal cups, which used to be made of chestnut wood. Water shoots out of a narrow channel at the back of the chamber, striking the cups and turning the wheel which in turn drives the huge circular grindstone. The lower stone is fixed, while the upper stone spins and can be raised or lowered to change how fine or coarse the flour will be. The type of stone from which the grindstone is made and how it’s dressed also determines the texture of the flour.

We drive along the beautiful Turrite River valley to Fabbriche, where Domenico reverses the car up to the door of the mill. We enter onto the welcoming warm upper floor of the mill. The miller keeps two wood-fired stoves burning to maintain a low humidity and prevent the chestnuts from re-hydrating and squashing into a paste when they’re ground. By now Marco has arrived too, and he and Domenico carry in the sacks on their shoulders and pile them onto a large set of scales with weights that the miller slides along the balance arms. Each sack weighs about 40 kg (88 lb). The miller charges in kind for his services by taking a small percentage of the flour to sell directly from the mill. Since the mill grinds only chestnuts to avoid gluten contamination from wheat and other cereals, it’s only open from the end of November when the chestnuts are ready for milling until all of this year’s crop is ground. Now that I’m writing this, I wonder whether he’ll finish by Christmas, but I know that if you go in spring or summer, it’s shut up tight. Even though four grindstones work from morning to night every day except Sunday, there’s a big backlog of chestnuts waiting to be ground. I feel proud of our white hemp sacks with their blue embroidered initials which are much handsomer than everyone else’s utilitarian plastic sacks.

I can’t wait to go downstairs where the flour is being ground, but before descending the steep, narrow wooden steps, the miller shows me the chestnut-wood boxes, one per grindstone, which are actually chutes into which he pours the chestnuts, and through which they descend into the hoppers that feed the chestnuts unbelievably slowly, only one or two at a time, into the hole in the centre of the upper grindstone. Downstairs each pair of grindstones is housed in its own wooden (chestnut, of course) cupboard, with doors to keep the flour from flying out and coating every surface of the mill.

The miller goes to the stones at the far end which he had been setting up with a new batch of chestnuts when we arrived. He pulls a lever to start the flow of water, which we can’t see from here, starts the hopper vibrating, turns a sort of steering wheel to adjust the height of the upper stone and reaches over to feel the fineness of the flour as it sprays out from between the two stones. It’s not right. He turns the wheel a little more and feels the flour again. After a couple more tests, he’s satisfied that it’s exactly right and closes the doors to the cupboard. I notice a sign on the wall next to the cupboard on which ‘biologico’ (organic) is written. I shout over the roar of the four whirling stones: ‘Why is only this one organic? Aren’t all chestnuts organic?’ Both Domenico and the miller rub their thumbs and forefingers together in the Italian sign for money. The miller explains: ‘This one is for producers who have paid for the organic certification so that they can sell their flour at a higher price, but yes, I’m right that all chestnuts are organic. No one sprays or fertilises chestnut trees.’ He leads us to a plastic sack of flour from the certified chestnuts and tells us to take a pinch and taste it. Not bad. Then he takes us to a sack of flour ground from uncertified chestnuts from Coreglia. We sample it. The sweet chestnut-y flavour explodes in my mouth. The implication is that people who go through the bureaucracy and cost of getting organic certification are more interested in money than in the flavour of the flour. They won’t have lavished enough care on the drying, cleaning and sorting processes as we at Casabasciana did. I think to myself that there are probably some who care passionately about the flavour and some who don’t in both camps. You have to taste the flour before buying and when you find one you like, stick to that producer.

The jury is still out on our own flour. When I left for England a week later, it wasn’t yet back from the mill. As soon as I return next week, I’m going straight to Ebe’s to try it.

To the mulino

2009-12-14T18:17:00.000+01:00

By now the chestnuts of Casabasciana had had two months of care lavished upon them. What with collecting them, drying them, shelling them and sorting and cleaning them, they should have been feeling properly mollycoddled. Now was the big moment, the first dry sunny day for a week, when they were to be taken to the mulino, the water mill, to be ground into flour. There were 12 sacks of chestnuts ready for the first trip, so we have to go in two cars. Marco goes ahead to stop for petrol on the way, and I accompany Domenico in his Suzuki 4x4. The journey is as interesting as the destination. He describes something of his life when he was a boy growing up at Castelluccio in the ‘50s and talks about the evolution of the landscape and movements of people in those days. When he was 10, he went to school every morning in Casabasciana, a 45-minute walk along a woodland path, and returned home again at lunch time. Children didn’t play in those days. In the afternoon he went out on the mountain with the sheep. They had 15, as did most families, and his mother Olga made pecorino cheese and ricotta from their milk. What with chickens, rabbits and a pig, chestnuts, wheat and vegetables, plus a couple of horses for transporting goods, they were virtually self-sufficient. I ask whether they felt life was hard. He replies, ‘We didn’t know anything else. We were happier than people are now. Now everyone needs a car, a television, all those things that require money. It was simpler then.’

Names

2009-12-04T14:05:00.001+01:00

Franca gets to the community hall at 7.30 every morning to sort chestnuts. When I arrive around 9.00 there are already four family members around the table. Now that I’ve discovered the therapeutic value of talking, I decide to find out more about them. There’s Olga who is 85 or 86. I think of her as Domenico’s mother, rather than the other way round, because she lives in her son’s house, opposite mine, with him and his wife Ebe. Olga walks with a stick, which seems totally unnecessary to me. I met her once coming along the woodland path from Casteluccio, the farmstead where she raised her family, which is a brisk 45-minute walk from our village. Her stamina at the chestnut table is unbeatable, and her speed and accuracy of sorting puts the rest of us to shame. I reckon she could do all 24 sacks of them as quickly by herself and she just tolerates us to make us feel needed. I ask her whether anyone is living at Casteluccio now. No, no longer, but they used to cultivate all the land there. She doesn’t sound sad or nostalgic. Times change, and it wouldn’t be practical to live there now. Then I ask about a couple of houses farther out, one of which has recently been restored. Do I mean Lupinaia? Well, I don’t know. I didn’t know every house had a name. Someone asks whether I discovered Sovignano. The house with the beautiful Roman arches? Some English people bought it a few years ago, but never restored it. They think they bought it on the internet and when they arrived and saw the state it’s in, abandoned in the midst of the chestnut wood, they lost heart. The others now start throwing names into the ring and try to describe to me where they are — houses, churches, water mills, streams. The conversation becomes animated. Names are repeated, rolled around in the mouth to recapture the flavour of them. Each place is like a family member with its own personality. The landscape is a patchwork of names. Nowhere is omitted, nowhere is nameless wilderness.

Getting under the skin

2009-12-02T23:51:00.000+01:00

The sweet chestnut has three layers of protection, which makes for much hard work for those who want to turn the fruit into flour. There’s the green spiny outer covering. When the chestnut is ripe at the end of September or early October, it drops from the tree and this outer case splits open revealing the middle shell, the shiny dark brown one we see on fresh chestnuts in shops and, at this time of year, roasting on street corners of some cities. Inside the leathery dark brown shell is the final protective layer, a thin reddish brown skin. Inside this hides the cream-coloured nut.

It’s the remnants of the shell and this pesky inner skin that is occupying all our time now. When we collected the chestnuts, the prickly outer case was left on the woodland floor where it rots very slowly — beware sitting on the ground in a chestnut wood! After being dried for at least 40 days and nights in a metato (a special chestnut-drying hut), most, but not all, of the dark brown shell and inner skin was removed in a machine resembling a giant cheese grater. Chestnut flour is naturally sweet, and the goal is to produce the sweetest flour possible. You shouldn’t have to add sugar to a chestnut cake, but the shell and skin are bitter, as are chestnuts that accidentally got burnt in the drying process. All the chestnuts and pieces of chestnuts have to be sorted and cleaned by hand to remove them.

We gather in the old school that now functions as a community hall. In the centre of the room is a large shallow wooden box with a screen bottom resting on trestles. Members of Franca and Peppe’s family are bent over around the sieve, pushing the chestnuts from one end of the sieve to the other. Each person quickly removes some of the bad pieces, scrapes off remnants of inner skin with a serrated kitchen knife and pushes them on the the next person who does the same until they reach the other end, where Franca and Olga remove the last of the offending bits and shove the good ones out the end into a plastic bucket, which Franca empties periodically into antique hemp sacks embroidered with family initials. I love the way they happily mix old and new — the utilitarian plastic buckets next to the beautiful hemp sacks, also perfect for their purpose.

This is the most boring work imaginable. The others are talking, but I don’t understand when they race along in the local accent. Everyone’s back aches. We stand, we sit. I stand on one leg and then the other, try a tai chi stance. Glance at my watch. Still two hours till lunch. Then someone asks me a question. I ask them to repeat it and understand the second time round. I reply and we have a short conversation. When we stop talking, I realise my back doesn’t ache. I listen more intently and join in. I begin to realise, that’s the remedy. And now it’s lunch time.

Formentini

2009-11-29T10:51:00.000+01:00

When I went to dinner with some friends, I took them some formentini biscuits I had baked and gave a few to the other couple who was there too. After a delicious dinner followed by an elaborate meringue pudding, I departed feeling extremely well fed and as if I might not be able to eat for a week. A few days later I received a surprising email from the other couple telling me they had loved the cookies, had eaten them all before they arrived home (only a 10-minute drive away!) and asking for the recipe. Here it is.

Formentini (Polenta cookies)
The name comes from the word formenton which means maize or corn in the Garfagnana dialect. The recipe is from a wonderful little book of traditional recipes of the Lucca region, Cucina di Lucchesia e Versilia, by Emiliana Lucchesi.

Quantity: masses (I make half a recipe)

600 g plain white flour                     400 g polenta flour
400 g sugar                                      225 g butter, gently melted
2 eggs                                             1 packet baking powder (16 g)
juice and grated rind of 1 orange      milk

Sieve together the two types of flour and the baking powder and pour them onto a pastry board (spianatoia) in a mound. Make a hole in the centre and add the other ingredients. Knead everything well with your hands, adding enough milk to obtain a soft compact dough. Roll out with a rolling pin to a sheet about 3 mm thick. Before making the last pass with the rolling pin, sprinkle the dough with a little sugar and roll it into the surface of the dough. Cut into diamonds or rectangles (about 4 cm on a side), place on a buttered and floured baking sheet and place in a 220˚C oven for 10–15 minutes. They are done when they are just beginning to brown around the edges. Remove from the baking sheet immediately and leave to cool on a wire rack.

The Dragon's Den

2009-11-19T16:25:00.000+01:00

Oxidation isn’t usually a hot topic of conversation. When my 1968 MGB GT was rusting away, I discussed it at length with the vintage car body shop, and I submerge peeled potatoes in water to prevent them going brown, but dinner parties don’t usually include riveting exchanges about the interaction between oxygen molecules and the substances they contact. In the olive grove, however, oxidation is the dragon that would ravish the extra-virgin oil, filing it with free radicals and a rancid flavour. Everyone talks about it.

Picking olives and pressing the oil has been a popular activity for many of my clients this autumn, and for our hosts Augusto Orsi and his son Claudio of ‘Alle Camelie’ avoiding the evils of oxidation is what determines the way they pick and press the olives. Their estate abuts the olive terraces of some neighbours who conduct the olive harvest in the old way. Augusto points to nets spread on the ground under the trees to catch the olives that drop during the weeks before they begin their harvest. He shudders slightly as he explains, ‘The moment an olive is detached from its branch, it begins to oxidise. It needs to get from the tree to the bottle really fast. We put our nets down under a few trees, pick the olives, move the nets along to the next trees, pick the olives, etc. Hard work, but the flavour of the oil makes it worthwhile.’ When his neighbours do begin to pick their olives, they beat them off the trees with bamboo poles thus bruising the olives and sometimes breaking the skin, allowing the fruit to oxidise even more quickly. Augusto, Claudio and their four farm labourers pull each olive off by hand. We help pick from the ground, but the other harvesters are often at the top of a ladder propped against the tree or standing on one of the thick branches to reach the olives at the top. Augusto would probably say, ‘Time consuming, but the flavour of the oil makes it worthwhile’.

The harvested olives should be pressed as soon as they are picked. Some estates invest in a small, though expensive, olive press and press olives on the day they’re picked. Augusto takes his to a co-operative modern frantoio every other day, but is thinking about buying his own. Pressing the olives at a traditional frantoio is tantamount to delivering the maiden to the dragon’s den, where the huge picturesque grindstone rolls round and round crushing the olives in a huge open basin (above left) — 45 minutes of exposure to oxygen. Then the paste is smeared onto woven mats, stacked on a spindle and pressed to squeeze out the oil. Old dry, oxidised paste sticks in the crevices of the mats and oil runs out around the edges exposed to the air. In a modern continuous-method frantoio, the grinding takes only a few minutes in a closed container (above right), and the paste is pumped into a closed vat where it is heated very gently to release the oil which runs into a stainless steel container with a well-fitting lid. Take a deep breath filled with oxygen, and taste the oil from ‘Alle Camelie’. The magnificent flavour certainly justifies the care they take to avoid oxidation.

Green or black

2009-10-27T20:28:00.000+01:00

I’m sitting round Franca’s kitchen table, already populated by her husband Peppe, their married son Marco, and Carlo, a builder and work colleague of Peppe’s. Carlo, always jolly and looking well-fed, observes with a sly smile that you can buy ‘extra-virgin olive oil’ in the supermarket for €1,80 a litre. He pauses for dramatic effect, and Franca, taking the bait, says she pays €8; she looks uncertain about admitting she may have been cheated. Carlo immediately supports her. ‘Of course it’s not extra-virgin. How could anyone produce extra-virgin olive oil at that price? You can’t believe it just because it’s written on a label. The cheap stuff is made from the remains of the first cold pressing by adding chemicals and heating it up to extract more oil. It doesn’t have any aroma or flavour at all.’ Franca looks relieved; she buys hers from a woman who comes to the village every year with her new olive oil. She doesn’t even ask to taste it anymore, because after so many years she trusts the woman to supply oil she knows she likes. But if you want to taste oil, Carlo’s recommendation is that you toast a piece of bread and drizzle it with oil while it’s still warm, thus releasing the aroma and flavour of the oil. Franca and I favour pouring a little puddle in our palms and leaving it to warm before slurping it up while also sucking in some air. At olive oil tastings I’ve been given oil in a little plastic cup to warm in one hand with my other covering the cup to keep in the perfumes that are released by the warmth of your hand. Before smelling, you position your nose close to the cup and when you remove your hand, you’re hit by the pungent odour of crushed olive — or not, if it’s a poor oil. Besides the synthetic oil, Carlo’s bad category includes oil that burns your tongue, which in his opinion includes Lucca oil. One of his favourites is a mellow oil from Montecatini. Here I disagree. I love the early oil pressed from olives harvested in October on the Lucca plain, peppery on the tongue and a little bitter at the back of the throat. Carlo insists, ‘The olives have to be completely ripe, black. Then the oil is sweet and mellow. The best is from Genova.’ I’ve tasted Ligurian oil and agree its delicate flavour is well suited to the fish that forms a large part of the diet in that coastal region just to the north of us. Even the Genovese basil is more delicately flavoured than our Tuscan variety, and no self-respecting LIgurian would make pesto from our hard-hitting leaves. We finally agree it’s all a matter of individual taste — ‘a ciascuno il suo’. Walking home, I reflect that my sophisticated oil-producing friends stereotype old farmers, who harvest their olives from late November onwards when they’re fully ripe, as ignorant or greedy. They’re only simple peasants who wrongly believe they’ll get more oil from riper olives and care nothing about the flavour. It never occurs to modish followers of fashion that their traditional neighbours may have just as well-developed palates, and after analysing the old and the new flavours, decide that what they’re used to is best. What do you think?

New Olive Oil

2009-10-22T23:42:00.003+02:00

Super-highways rarely belong to the country they’re in. While racing along with cars and lorries overtaking on all sides, you could be anywhere, except for the blurred glimpses of houses or fields beyond the crash barriers. The village of Molina di Quosa tumbles like a stream down a mountain valley and spreads out on that ribbon of land squashed between the Serchio River and the hills of the Monti Pisani overlooked by the autostrada and the railway that link Lucca to Pisa. And that’s all I knew about it despite my many trips between the two cities. Now a couple of friends and I were heading there at a sedate pace on a small twisting country road for a festival based around new olive oil and chestnuts, vintage cars and Vespa scooters, with a wild mushroom exhibition thrown in for good measure. It must be a winning combination since before we even reach the village, parked cars line the verges and coming into the village itself we nose up to a queue of stationary cars held up by a policewoman to let the crowds cross the road. We abandon the car in a field that has been requisitioned as the festival car park and walk back along the main road, passing several large elegant villas skulking behind high walls and heavy iron gates. I must read that history of Pisa, in Italian, that I bought at Pisa airport in one of my fits of wanting to know everything about everything between the sea and the Garfagnana. It might explain why anyone with money and status would have wanted to live on the Serchio River bank kilometres from anywhere. The original main street of the village runs perpendicular to the road we drove in on, up the side valley. We turn up it between shops and houses on one side and, on the other, stalls selling craft jewellery, kitsch wooden carvings and honey. After a porchetta stall (we make a mental note to return for lunch), we come to the first roasting chestnuts and the first olive oil stall...

The signora tells me that her olive groves are at Montemagno, but she takes the olives to the frantoio (press) at Vicopisano which is an excellent modern press. The olives were picked yesterday and pressed and bottled early that morning in time for the festival. The owner of the olive press arrives just in time to verify both the quality of his frantoio and the timing of her pressing. She offers me a slice of bread doused with oil — these oil anteprima are the times I’ve ever seen oil poured over bread in Italy, but I notice a stack of small plastic cups and ask to taste the oil in one of them. She agrees this is the best way to taste the oil, but ‘many of us’, she circles her hand to encompass the anonymous bystanders, ‘are ignorant’. She pours a small puddle of thick green oil into the cup. I hold the cup in one palm to warm it while keeping the other hand firmly clamped over the top. After a minute or so, I put the cup to my nose and raise my hand enough to sniff up the pungent aroma. Then I slurp up some of the oil with lots of air and taste the strong heady flavour, bitter at the edges and peppery at the back of the throat. The most interesting producer for me is a young man who is offering comparative tastings of his last year’s oil and this year’s, also just pressed that morning. But these first few bottles contain oil only from the bitter leccino variety of olives, since they’re the ones at the top of his slopes and ripen earlier than the sweeter frantoio and moraiolo lower down. Last year’s bottles contain a blend of all three varieties, and have a decidedly gentler flavour, partly due to the blend and partly a result of ageing in the bottle. His azienda is organic and he’s joining forces with some other producers, including a norcino (pork butcher) to present taste workshops. He invites me to visit.

Next instalment: roast suckling pig panini and what non-foodies get out of village festivals.

The richness in Tuscan villages

2009-10-13T11:28:00.000+02:00

This morning in my letter box in Casabasciana I found an envelope from a friend in England which contained a piece from the Financial Times of 19 September. In his column ‘The Slow Lane’ Harry Eyres writes about his return to Sommocolonia after a gap of 30 years. He captures the spirit of small villages in this rural mountain area perfectly when he realises: ‘that people make places...The poor architecture glowed with an inextinguishable human warmth’. There are some architectural gems which he may have missed, but he’s right about the people. People who come on my gastronomic tours to the Garfagnana are always touched by the warm welcome they receive from the small, artisan producers I take them to visit. Thank you, Harry, for expressing it so poetically.

At the butcher 2

2009-10-11T17:07:00.000+02:00

It was a rabbit. Renato cut it into pieces for cooking in umido (stewed) and showed me the little wedge of white tissue he removed from behind each knee. He smelled it. No scent, but when cooked it would give the rabbit the ‘dirty’ flavour people didn’t like. Next I turned to Eugenia, Renato’s wife and a good butcher in her own right, to check the recipe. The usual garlic, rosemary, white wine and tomatoes? That’s it, then add porcini, already sliced and sautéed with garlic and nepitella, at the end of the cooking to season it. She wanted me to understand that people don’t usually add porcini to rabbit these days, but they used to so it’s OK to do it. Every recipe needs authenticating by the past. (Photo L to R: Renato, Eugenia, me)

At the butcher 1

2009-10-09T23:03:00.000+02:00

I go up to the village shop, which sells meat as well as almost everything else you could possibly want, to order a guinea fowl for lunch tomorrow. I explain to Renato, the butcher, that I really want a rabbit, but I'm not sure whether the one American and two Brits who are coming to lunch like rabbit. Many people, especially the British, don’t. ‘I've heard they think of them as pets, like cats’. ‘Perhaps it’s partly that, but’, I counter, ‘many people say they find the flavour “dirty”’. Renato understands perfectly. He explains that a rabbit has tiny glands, particularly behind the knee, but other places as well, which cause that ‘dirty’ taste. I can be absolutely sure when I buy my rabbits from him they won’t have that flavour, because he removes every little gland himself. With that reassurance I tell him that if he can't get a guinea fowl, I’ll take a rabbit. I’m almost hoping he can't get the guinea fowl after all.

Know your producer

2009-10-05T18:51:00.000+02:00

I’m planning the menu for dinner with a couple of friends tonight. When I went into the village shop this morning, there was a wooden crate showcasing several fresh porcini, collected by the daughter-in-law of the shop owners. Opportunistically I decide to make an insalata di porcini, by slicing the small young ones very thinly, dressing them with extra-virgin olive oil, that I bought directly from the olive estate, and lemon juice and sprinkling them with nepitella (Calaminta nepitella, which grows wild in mule track in my village and all over Tuscany — use parsley if you can’t get some nepitella to grow in your garden). The rice harvest in the Piedmont is happening now, and I still have some rice from last year. It must be used...

I choose a package of riso venere, a black whole-grain rice, that was given to me by the co-operative that distributes the farro grown by my friend Paolo Magazzini. I know they only represent small, artisan producers of very high quality. The specially aromatic rice combines well with seafood, so I plan a seafood risotto. I visit the mercatino (outdoor market) in Fornoli to buy some calmaretti (small squid), gamberi (large prawns) and scampi (Dublin Bay prawns) from the fishmonger who comes once a week from Viareggio on the coast with the fresh catch. I don’t have to tell him what I want. I tell him I’m making risotto al mare for three, and he tells me what I need, accompanied by an oral recipe — he is passionate about fish, knows exactly where each fish on his stall comes from, when they’re in season and has very fixed ideas about how they should be cooked. Garlic, parsley and white wine for the risotto. I tentatively suggest a little onion. He looks horrified. You only use onion with frozen fish to disguise the fact that it was frozen. It will kill the flavour of fresh fish. The contorno (vegetable) will be bietola (Swiss chard) from my orto (allotment, veg patch), steamed and sautéed with garlic. Yesterday my friends from Zato gave me some green figs and new walnuts from their own trees. They’ll be good for dessert. Ticking off the ingredients for my meal, only the lemon comes from someone I don’t know. All the rest I can trust implicitly to be fresh, wholesome and to taste exactly as it should.

Wine, whiskey and knowledge

2009-10-03T20:00:00.000+02:00

Franca and Peppe have promised to take me porcini hunting as soon as the funghi ‘nascono’ (literally: are born) after the rains. Looking out my window onto the the main street in the village (steep and cobbled, no cars), I see Anna Rosa and Ebe carrying baskets full of plump multicoloured funghi. It’s time to visit Franca and Peppe to beg a place on their next foray into the chestnut woods. It’s 6.15 pm when I ring the doorbell, apprehensive that I might be interrupting dinner preparations, but Franca welcomes me with a beaming smile and makes space at the kitchen table — already crowded with her husband Peppe, their married son Marco, and Carlo, a builder friend and work colleague of Peppe’s. Having assured me that they’ll let me know about future porcini hunts (and the chestnut harvest, except that the chestnuts have only just started to drop, so it won’t be this week). Franca extracts a bottle of limoncello from the cupboard... Carlo turns it down (which I would have thought impolite) and out comes a bottle of single malt whiskey instead, which I happily accept as well, complimenting them on their well-stocked liquor cabinet. I wish I’d had time to ask how they’d got it, but Carlo is already saying that what he really likes is a good grappa, like the one he has from Friuli, north of Venice, with the scent of the grapes still in it. If this is a hint, it doesn’t send Franca back to the cupboard, and Carlo shifts to the wine of Friuli, which he also admires. Chianti is good too, he says, a real Chianti of course, not the ones that just say ‘Chianti’ on the label. Had we heard about the tanker they filled with water and sugar in Sicily? By the time it reached Milan, it had fermented. All the wine ‘manufacturers’ had to do was to add some red colouring and bottle it. They make a hefty profit, he claims, selling it at just €1,50 a litre. But if you know what goes into producing a good wine, you’ll know not to trust such a cheap bottle. Your neighbours’ wine is in a totally different category; you have firsthand evidence of it. Carlo thinks this year should be an excellent vintage here in Casabasciana. He tasted Giuliano’s grapes as he was passing last week with the newly harvested bunches. They were good and sweet after the hot, dry summer, but it remained to be seen whether the alcohol content would be 13% like last year’s or drop down to the 12% of 2007. I hope I’m invited to taste it, even though it will probably taste rough to me. The important thing that applies equally to fine wines and little local wines is that knowledge of the producer is what counts. It’s what keeps you from being made a fool of, and guarantees you get a genuine product.

Elephant approaches Lucca

2009-09-29T13:25:00.000+02:00

Passing through Saltocchio on the train from Pisa Airport to Bagni di Lucca reminds me of the obscure piece of information revealed to me by the carpenter repairing the windows of my hosue. ‘Saltare’ means ‘to jump’ and ‘occhio’ means ‘eye. The name of the parish supposedly derives from the accident that befell one of Hannibal’s elephants, which lost an eye in a battle at that very place along the Serchio river.

Milk & shoelaces

2009-09-27T19:21:00.000+02:00

On the way back from a cooking lesson I’d arranged for clients, I’m crawling along at a Slow Food snail’s pace (no doubt infuriating the rush-hour drivers behind me) when I spy the little wooden hut I’m searching for. The hut — a kind of mini-barn — shelters a machine that dispenses unpasteurised milk almost straight from the cow and is part of an Italian rural development programme to shorten the supply chain and put consumers’ money directly into the pockets of farmers. A crowd of customers is gathered round, each hugging one or more empty glass bottles. It looks like happy hour at a bar, but as I get closer, I realise they are waiting for the young farmer to clean and refill the ‘mechanical cow’. The landscape being more industrial than pastoral in this part of the Capannori, I ask the farmer how far away his farm is. He pulls me a few steps to one side and points through a gap in the buildings to his cow shed, about half a kilometre from us. Not many food miles required to fill the machine. Sensing a captive audience, he signals me over to his milk truck and opens the side door to reveal a secret cargo...

Lying on the back seat is a large bunch of stringa. His own produce he proudly explains, harvested that afternoon for a customer who will be arriving any moment, so he regrets he can’t sell me any. ‘Stringa’ means ‘shoelace’ and refers to a small diameter green bean, grown only in the Lucca plain and nearby Versilia, that reaches 70–80 cm in length — more a bootlace, really. I explain that I organize gastronomic tours to visit small producers and ask whether I could bring some guests by to see his farm. He suggests I telephone next time I’m passing and he’ll show me around. He returns to his work, now filling the bottle dispenser with new glass bottles, for new customers or those who have forgotten theirs at home. By now the crowd has dispersed and I fill my own bottle. The milk costs 1 euro a litre and, for small consumers, you can buy it in units of 100ml, rather than having to buy a whole litre at once. It tastes intensely of milk, unlike of the white liquid one buys at the supermarket, which costs €1,40. I say arrivederci, but he’s loath to lose a sympathetic ear. He looks indecisive, then makes up his mind, goes to the truck and steals a large handful of stringa from the bunch on the seat. ‘Here’, he says, ‘You know how to cook them, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, stew them with onions, garlic and tomato.’ ‘They’re delicious with rabbit, but only with my grandmother’s.’ He reminisces, ‘When I was a boy, I refused to eat rabbit if my mother bought it from the butcher. It didn’t have any flavour compared to my nonna’s. But she’s gone now, and I don’t have time to keep chickens and rabbits’, he continues wistfully. I promise to return soon, and bear my booty home to stew my stringa.

High Pastures

2009-09-14T19:39:00.000+02:00

Last Thursday Cristina, who owns the restaurant the Antico Uliveto in Pozzi di Seravezza, and I walked up to the high pastures of the Alpi Apuane in northern Tuscany to visit a couple who are among the very few who still take their flock of sheep up to the mountain tops in summer. They live in a house powered only by a single solar panel and cook over an open fire in the large kitchen fireplace. Our lunch was composed almost entirely of their own produce. It included a porcupine...

...that had been eating their squashes and melons and which Siria, the wife, had made into a delicious stew with their own tomatoes and a few olives brought up from the valley. When we arrived she was just beginning to fry some of the potatoes they grow, and soon had a huge pot of water hanging from a hook over the fire. As soon as it boiled, she added handfuls of maize flour (she apologized for it's being last year's — they've harvested this year's maize but haven't been down to have it ground) and we took turns stirring until it thickened into a soft polenta. It didn't matter at all about it's being a year old; it was Maranino maize and tasted like the corn it came from, unlike the tasteless polenta flour you can buy in a supermarket, or even most Italian delicatessens. We washed it all down with a very drinkable red wine made by the husband Pacifico. The meal ended with Siria's pecorino cheese and sweet juicy plums from their orchard. After a cup of coffee and walnut liqueur, also made by them, Pacifico took us to see La Fannia, a beech tree at the top of the ridge that is said to be over 500 years old, and an abandoned silver mine, now the refuge of some red-bellied salamanders. We walked down as the sun set over the sea at Forte dei Marmi lighting up Monte Forato behind us. A day with Siria and Pacifico will definitely be on offer to gastronomic tour guests next summer.