A Mass of Odds and Ends

This is a recipe that Sam found and loves to prepare. He takes over the kitchen, and between shouting endless queries to me “where’s the vegetable stock” and “Can’t find the lemon zester” casually informs Jasper that once he has finished the war torn cooking zone will be his to repair. Irritating though it is, the end product rewards us all.

• two shallots
• two sticks celery
• 60gr butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 350gr arborio rice
• 1,25 - 2 litres vegetable stock
• juice of half a lemon
• zest of whole lemon
• 5 fresh sage leaves
• leaves from small sprig of fresh rosemary
• 4 Tbsp cream
• 4 Tbsp grated parmesan
• salt and pepper to taste

Bring the stock to a gentle simmer, and in another pot soften the finely chopped shallot and celery in 30gr of the butter and the oil. Add the rice and stir until it is well coated and partly translucent. Add a ladleful of the stock and stir over a low flame until it is absorbed, then continue adding a ladle at a time for about five minutes. Then add the rest of the stock and cover over the lowest flame possible, leaving it whilst you zest the lemon and chop the herbs, and add to the rice, stirring again. Put the lid back on and mix the lemon juice with the parmesan, cream, salt and pepper. Check to see if the rice is al dente, once it is mix in the creamy lemony mixture and the remaining butter, leave it for two minutes or so, then serve.

Until that watery sunshine gets a little stronger and we all emerge from sitting squashed in front of the wood burning fire chocolate is on our minds. The Italian type, made with cocoa, rich and satisfying, a meal in itself. With or without chilli peppers.

Quantities for one cup

• pour milk into cup
• one heaped dessertspoon of cocoa
• one flat dessertspoon of sugar
• one third dessertspoon of flour
• optional chilli pepper

Mix the dry ingredients in a pan until they are well amalgamated, breaking down the lumps of cocoa.

Add a little of the milk and mix into a thick smooth paste. This will take a while.

Gradually add the rest of the milk stirring vigorously, put it on the stove and heat gradually, stirring. When it is almost boiling and thick enough take off heat.

The chilli peppers are optional. Sam has perfected the use of these - he adds two per person at the heating stage, stirring and slightly crushing them. When the chocolate is ready he takes them out. Sometimes he doesn’t, which results in people running full tilt for the kitchen sink and water. They add a piquant bite to the chocolate.

Quantities: these are personal, if you like your hot chocolate very thick and mousse like then this recipe is good, if you prefer it thinner reduce the quantity of flour. Some people prefer more sugar, a little less cocoa. It may take a while and a few cups to find the right balance.

I made a blackboard earlier this autumn specifically for shopping lists, but it’s been turned into a request board. “Make Christmas Pudding” went up in early October (plan ahead Mum, otherwise it won’t get done. It didn’t.) “Mince Pies” has been there for a while now. But when my friend Barbara, exiled to London from Macerata, makes a request for our mincepie recipe she gets quite a different answer.

Mincemeat (for Barbara)

• 225g chopped dried apricots
• finely grated zest of one orange
• 45ml orange juice
• 900g mixed dried fruit (equal quantities of currants, sultanas and seedless raisins)
• 60ml orange marmalade (unavailable here, so we use apricot jam)
• 450g demarara sugar
• 7.5ml ground mixed spice
• 1.25ml ground nutmeg
• 300ml brandy

Mix well and leave in bowl in a cool place for two days, stirring occasionally. Pot in sterilised jars and allow to mature for at least two weeks before using.

Pastry

• 100g plain white flour
• pinch of salt
• 75g butter, chilled and diced
• 5ml sugar
• 1 egg, beaten

Put flour and salt on table, make well, add butter, egg yolks and sugar, use fingertips to rub butter into flour until well blended. Cover and put in fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

This is when things get messy. We cover the kitchen table with flour, roll out the pastry then try different sized glasses as cutters, putting the disks of pastry into patty pans, filling with mince meat and then pressing a slightly smaller disk on top. Brushing milk or beaten egg makes the tops a lovely golden brown. Sealing the edges is best done with a fork.

225g pastry makes 12 6cm diameter mince pies. Bake at 190°C for 20-25mins.

Official Mince Pie Day will be the first day of the holidays, thus preventing large teenagers from following me around nagging for more (they get through one batch of twenty four in about a day and half). To them it seems clear that I’m sitting at my desk because I have nothing better to do, and they find my response that I’m “busy” ungrateful, considering the effort they’ve gone to, coming all the way downstairs to remind me to make more banana chocolate bread or apple crumble.

The photograph of tractors was taken at the Abbey this morning. They’re attending a convention, much like the monks I photographed here a while ago.

This is how the back garden looked this evening before sunset, but it is entirely different now, filled with leering pumpkin heads, candles in paper bags and teenagers dressed in black. As most of them dress in black anyway the addition of cloaks, pointy hats and matching pointy shoes are a useful hint that they’re celebrating Halloween.

This pumpkin and several others gave their all for my pies. I studied several recipes and ended up making one of my own, approved by my six testers, which cuts all corners possible whilst bearing in mind that pumpkin in tins, like mustard, lapsang souchong tea and oats is impossible to find in our local supermarkets.

Quantities for 35 hungry teenagers who will also be eating toffee apples. Produces three BIG pies.

• 600gr white flour
• 290gr butter
• 3 TBs sugar

Rub flour and sugar into butter till it forms breadcrumbs, then stir enough icy cold water to make it bind. Roll out and then line three big spring form tins (23cm) and refrigerate for an hour.

• 2,5kg raw pumpkin, baked in oven at 180°C for an hour, mashed with cinnamon to taste (I used 3TBs)
• 500gr ricotta cheese
• 300gr sugar
• 6 eggs

Beat the cheese sugar and eggs then add the pumpkin. Pour into the chilled pie cases and bake for about forty minutes at 180°C.

Whilst I was searching on the internet for pie recipes Aldo, covered in bits of grass and wielding a sythe in one hand and a strimmer in the other, asked me to look up solutions to controlling the jungle around us. I thought it would be tactless to point out that I’m already at stage four of the four stage solution. Stage one went well, finding a strong man, after which I moved onto stage two, convincing him to share my life (grass, weeds, teenagers and all), then came the unexpected stage three, diagnosis of a slipped disc (that just cannot cope with strimmers and weeding) and now I’m perfecting stage four, which involves a cup of tea or glass of wine (depending on the time of day) taken whilst enjoying the view of the beautifully tended grounds.

Projects ab0und at home at the moment. Aldo has developed a sudden passion for vinegar, with a couple of bottles of red wine brewing up a “mother”, the magic ingredient that changes wine into vinegar, and Jasper is limbering up in preparation for trampling our grapes in the first stage of the process of making balsamic vinegar.

The tomato harvest is slowing down but we have made enough passata to last until Christmas. Tomato passata is literally squashed raw tomato, used as a base for most pasta sauces. It is best made with a small tomato crusher, which separates the skins and the seeds, leaving the pulp. No cooking is needed, we bottle the pulp in jars with secure lids, then put them into a largeg pan of water, making sure the lid is covered with water, and boil for forty minutes to preserve.

Fig Jam

• 1,5kg figs
• 750gr sugar (best to use jam sugar with added pectin)

Wash the figs and remove stems, then chop into small pieces. Leaving the skin in is a personal choice, we find we like it as it becomes very flavourful. Put the figs into a large stainless steel pot with the sugar, and cook on a low simmer for about an hour. Test to see if it is ready to take off the heat by putting a teaspoonful onto a plate into the fridge for five minutes. When you tilt the plate if the surface of the jam wrinkles up the jam is ready. 

Now the challenge is to find someone to eat all this jam…

It’s nearly that time of year again, when birds and guests head home, and ordinary life starts up with a jolt. I’ve been asked to be tactful and stop using sentences which combine the words END and SUMMER, as both boys insist that there is yet more stretching ahead. But the sun is rising later, the birds are gathering and work looms. In the meantime we have suffered a terrible tragedy in the henhouse, losing five of our pretty chickens and eight Christmas capons. I’m trying to feel philosophical and imagine all those happy baby foxes, whilst Aldo has chosen the darker side and is planning revenge.  And we are steadily working our way through bushels of tomatoes, so I will post a selection of tomato bottling recipes in the next few days, choosing the easy photographer option and thereby avoiding too much of the work.

This photograph isn’t a very appropriate illustration to accompany the recipe of one of the creamiest and most delicious of Italian puddings, but unfortunately the tiramisu prepared for me by my stepdaughter Chiara was eaten for breakfast this morning by Sam (so sorry Mum, I just kept having another bit…) so I decided to put people in the summer mood to accompany the recipe. 

I learnt this more than twenty years ago in Tuscany on a painting holiday, the quantities were for ten people. But ten controlled people who like small quantities of pudding, and as you can see in our family it is well worth doing quantities for ten to keep four or six going. Tiramisu means “Pick me up” so there are obvious medicinal reasons to eat a lot of it.

• six eggs
• ,5kg marscapone cheese
• 6 dessertspoons sugar
• ladies finger biscuits (or langues de chat)
• couple of cups of espresso (add whiskey to taste if you like)

Beat the yolks with the sugar, beat the whites separately. Fold the marscapone into the yolks, then fold all together.  Pour the coffee mix onto a plate and place each biscuits there for a moment before layering them with the marscapone mix - the idea being to turn the biscuit over, wet side up, so that the coffee mix soaks down into it.  Aim to have three layers of biscuits alternating with the marscapone mix. Cover with sieved cocoa and refrigerate for a couple of hours before eating. Keep away from teenagers.

It’s officially party time - three out of our four children have birthdays in this period, and the fourth has a summer party which, he informs us, is now an established part of the summer. Their favourite party food is pizza, but until we build a pizza oven they will accept grilled or barbequed meat, Le Marche style. It is different to the braaivleis I remember from my childhood, where high flames were doused with a slug of beer. Aldo has a fire in the fireplace, rakes the coals onto a bed of ash, and then cooks gently over the glowing coals, here you can see one of the griddles on the flames, which both cleans it and heats it before putting on the meat. His speciality is tomatoes; cut in half and liberally salted with coarse salt, they are cooked until the skins are burnt, then we pour a little olive oil over before scooping the hot aromatic tomato out of its skin. He doesn’t believe in marinating, just adds a squeeze of fresh lemon and a  dousing of oil with some salt before eating.  Another of my favourites is bruschetta, bread cut thickly and lightly toasted over the coals, eaten with salt and olive oil, and also delicious with the grilled tomatoes on top.

The air in town is heavy with the scent of lime blossom but along the country roads I can smell rocket growing in the fields, which made me think of this recipe for tagliatelle with rocket and speck. Aldo tells me that speck is completely different from bacon, I used to think they were the same thing, so I can only hope that you can find something called speck wherever you are! Quantities for four people:

• 250gr speck cut into tiny tiny squares
• 200gr fresh rucola(rocket) washed and dried (very important this) then finely chopped
• half a fresh onion cut into fine slices
• 3Tbs olive oil
• half a glass of white wine

Soften the onion in the wine and oil, then add the speck. Put the tagliatelle on to cook, stirring the speck and onion occasionally, then drain the tagliatelle and retain a spoonful of the cooking water, add the speck and onion mix together with the rocket. Serve with shavings of parmesan.

My mother made this for us when we were children and my children often ask for it. Some people like it so hot that it melts the ice cream instantly, others like it eaten out of the fridge in cold rich spoonfuls ladled over their ice cream. I advise teaching the children to make it themselves once they are old enough to be trusted around boiling water, and then sending them off to do it after the first course has been eaten - it takes about two minutes to assemble the ingredients and two to cook it and it keeps them busy whilst the table is being prepared for the pudding course.

• half a cup of cocoa
• three quarters cup of sugar
• three quarters cup of boiling water

Blend and bring back to the boil, stir whilst boiling for one minute. Add a teaspoon of vanilla essence. Serve hot or cold.