Saturday lunch
and Sunday lunch
I spent a nice chunk of last weekend reading and cooking from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food.
On Saturday we had Baked fish (sea bass) with potatoes and red onion. Then on Sunday Grape Harvesters Soup ( which is a simple onion soup really served over bread) followed by warm slices of potatoes [...]
Minestrone.
In Italian to denote largeness you add -one/-ona/-oni to the end of the word. Libro (book) for example becomes librone (big book), casa (house) becomes casona ( big house) and minestra* (a soup) becomes minestrone (big soup.)
Before I swear off writing about soup for a while – I do know there has been rather alot [...]
Otherwise known as eggs baked in very creamy mashed potato with very buttery spinach.
If this recipe were an object it could be one of the four blankets draped or more often flung on, over and about our sofa throughout the colder months. We have no heating you see, blankets therefore play very important roles [...]
nearly…
The last few days have been all about nearly……the ravioli, the ragu, the soup, the cake….. nearly ready to be posted about……nearly…….but not quite.
Not the fruit and nuts of course they are perfect already.
Vincenzo broke his elbow and banged his head mightily when he was catapulted off his bike. He has been in hospital [...]
My copy of David Tanis’s ‘A platter of figs’ falls open in the most familiar way at page 171………there is even a faint, careless, circular coffee cup stain. Two clues which suggest I have made it dozens of times…….I haven’t….. I have just looked at page 171 rather alot.
Having said that…. it is a little [...]
Are very nice indeed.
Red, ripe, sweetly fruity but nicely acidic small plum tomatoes, cut in two, sprinkled with salt, doused in extra virgin olive oil and roasted slowly, slowly….until they are withered and wrinkled, curly at the edges and sticky with intense tomato goodness.
See… I knew withered and wrinkled could be beautiful, when I get [...]
I can count my true cake repertoire on one hand.
I have flirted and made others with varying degrees of success but trudge willingly back to these five – in the same way I reach for the threadbare, beloved items in my wardrobe I can’t bear to part with because they are so faithfully comfy – [...]
I think I predicted that this would be the summer I ate granita.
It has been…..
Hot afternoons here interrupted and tempered at about 4 30 by a glass of a slightly slushy grainy mass of flavoured sweetened water frozen and crushed to make something between a drink and a water ice. It was just what we [...]
I am now only 23 hours away from a big, fat, delicious month of holiday. I can smell it already and it smells of campari and lemon granita, of caponata and Sicilian beaches, of almonds and pasta con le sarde, of beach worthy books and afternoon naps after long lunches in cool darkened rooms with [...]
3 nice things
all together
are even nicer.
We made these last Sunday as part of the antipasti for a the happy, abundant and joy-full lunch in the garden, I think the companionship around the table made them taste even nicer.
I have written about my peculiar relationship with peppers before and nothing has changed really. I still loathe [...]
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