True to form, I’m late! But not too late I hope, to wish you all a very Happy New Year, Buon anno and - raise your shot of vodka - szczęśliwego nowego roku. Lets hope it’s a good one, or a tasty one at the very least. Talking of tasty, I’d like to tell you about a recipe, an assembly really, of which I am extremely fond and slightly obsessed at the moment.

It’s a variation on the classic Roman pasta dish Spaghetti aglio, olio and peperoncino (spaghetti with garlic, oil and chili) with the addition of three loyal kitchen companions, ingredients whose absence on my kitchen shelves makes me as twitchy as a smoker on a long haul flight: anchovies, capers and parsley.

As with Spaghetti Agio, olio and peperoncino, while your spaghetti is rolling around in a pan of well- salted, fast-boiling water, you cook the garlic and chill in olive oil. The oil should be warm enough to tame the garlic’s aggressive bite – tempering it into something a little milder and sweeter, but not so hot as to burn it and make it bitter. Next you add 6 (or in my case 7 or 8) anchovy fillets to the pan and – still over a moderate flame – you nudge and push the fillets around the pan until they dissolve, disintegrate and melt into the oil creating a curious brown sauce studded with garlic and flecked with fiery red flakes. Next you add some capers to the pan, stir for another minute or so before you add the drained pasta, a splash of pasta cooking water and finish things off with a fistful of chopped parsley. You toss everything together energetically, serve and eat.

There is nothing subtle about this dish, at least not the way I make it. It’s a deliciously bold and punchy affair! Which is hardly surprising considering the players: Anchovy, the most intensely fishy fish, strong and bold, garlic with its pungent sweetness, the heat of the chill, the quirky nip of capers, the grassy nature of parsley. Oily, salty, fishy, briny, hot and grassy! My god, it’s the pasta equivalent of a fumble with a rather attractive and robust fisherman on a grassy sand dune. But please don’t let my crude comparisons, the recipes simplicity or its late night supper speed deter you, this is a tasty plateful that knocks the socks off any number of over-worked, over-sauced, over-overed pastas.

You can of course use the finest, costliest jar of plump, pink anchovies you can lay your hands on, or the vastly superior salt packed ones (even though I feel the soaking required for these rather defeats the object and swift beauty of this supper). You can also use a little, flat, oval tin of workaday anchovies, the kind you find at most supermarkets, the kind I squash on hot buttered toast for a late night snack, fillets as loud, crude and salty as a Billingsgate fishwife.

The same goes for the capers, you can use the superior salt packed ones which need soaking and rinsing. I prefer the tiny ones preserved in brine for this recipe, they add a cheeky, briney bitterness that perks things up no end.

I wasn’t going to give you a list of precise ingredients, measurements and instructions today! Firstly because it’s all so simple, but secondly because a recipe with ingredients like these, ingredients with such strong personalities and flavors has to be a very personal thing. I for example like an excessive amount of anchovy, have no fear of garlic breath and like a caper in every forkful. I am however cautious with the chill. You might skip the capers altogether, play down the anchovy, up the chill and decide not to inflict overly garlicky post dinner kisses on your date. Then I realised the post would look lopsided without a written recipe, that my word count would be down and that I like the companionship of a recipe in the kitchen, even one I know I will follow very liberally.

So here it is. Please feel free to adapt and adjust accordingly.

Spaghetti with garlic, oil, chili, anchovies, capers and parsley

Serves 2

• 2 – 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 – 3 cloves garlic, peeled and cut into slivers (or left whole and gently squashed if you want to remove them before eating)
• 2 -8 anchovy fillets in olive oil
• 1 or 2 dried red chilis, or a good pinch of red pepper flakes
• 1 – 2 tablespoons capers
• a handful of flat leaved parsley roughly chopped
• 250g good-quality spaghetti

• Bring a pot of  well-salted water to a fast boil. Cook the pasta until al dente.
• In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a medium-sized heavy based frying pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and chili and cook for a couple of minutes or until the garlic is fragrant and soft.
• Add the anchovy fillets and gently nudge and mash them into the olive oil until they melt. Continue cooking until the garlic is quite soft and just beginning to turn golden, but not brown. Add the capers and stir.
• Drain the pasta (reserving the cooking waiter) and add to the pan and toss to coat in the sauce. Add  the parsley and a little pasta cooking water and continue stirring to create a sauce with the olive oil.
•  Serve immediately.

.

I’ll say it again, Happy Happy New Year to you all. I’m not going to reveal all 47 resolutions, but I will tell you they include the words wine, more, sleep, chou farci, more, blog, good, more, write, camping, Palermo, more, fudge, fine, bacon, weekly, less, pickles, mother and more.

1. (noun) ciambella [tʃam'bɛl:a]

dolce a forma circolare con buco al centro

This can’t go on for much longer. I mean it’s fine once in a while, once a week even, but not every single morning. I really must take myself in hand and return to a more fibrous start, ideally a worthy cereal with superberries, fruit and yogurt with seeds, pebbles and oily fish, brown toast at the very least.

I’m thoroughly enjoying it while it lasts though, my two, sometimes three stumpy slices of cake, ciambella that is, and small bucket of milky coffee for breakfast. This cakey state of affairs has been going on for just over three weeks now, ever since my friend Ruth (who along with her Calabrian husband Ezio is one of my cooking/olive oil pressing/tomato preserving/ jam making/chicken and child rearing/wood chopping heroes) shared her recipe with me and I discovered the joys of ciambella or pot cake. Now you may be either disappointed or relieved to know I’m not about to share a recipe for a pot cake in the puff the magic dragon sense with you, the pot refers to a yogurt pot, a 125g pot of whole plain yogurt to be precise.

The pot of yogurt serves two purposes, The first, unsurprisingly, is the yogurt itself which is the first ingredient. The second is the empty pot which provides a nifty measure with which to scoop up the rest of the ingredients. Having tipped the yogurt into a large bowl, you add two pots of flour, one of ground almonds, another of sugar, 3/4 of a pot of extra virgin olive oil and two teaspoons of baking powder. To this you add three eggs and whatever embellishment takes your fancy – I will come to these a bit later. You give the mixture a very energetic stir or whizz with the immersion blender and then tip the thick batter into a well buttered and floured ring tin. You bake your ciambella at 180° for about 30 minutes. I estimate preparation time to be about 4 minutes and dirty dish and implement count 4 if you include the yogurt pot.

As much as I like minimal washing up and even though I’m the first to be extremely slap happy with measurements, I was rather skeptical when Ruth told me about this recipe!  I’ve always been suspicious of cups (pots) and sticks when it comes to baking, they just seem too vague and wildly imprecise, especially in my hands. Also I have such a nice reliable scale. This ciambella however has dented those fears, I’ve made it – to my slight embarrassment – 8 times in the last few weeks and it has turned out brilliantly each time.

This ciambella is rather like a simple pound, Madeira or what some people call everyday cake. It’s pleasingly unfussy, firm yet light and thanks to the yogurt and almonds, really moist. The olive oil gives the ciambella a distinct brightness and a subtle fruity flavor, it also seems to help it keep better. Now I should add my ciambelle have been slightly different every time, even when I’ve stuck to the most basic recipe with no variations! But they’ve been unfailingly good and these differences, these ciambella idiosyncrasies, seem appropriate for something made this pleasingly hung-ho way.

Making this ciambella reminds me of when, at 8 years old, I learned how to make Corn flake crispies (melt arbitrary quantities of butter, golden syrup, sugar and cocoa powder in pan, mix with corn flakes, divide mixture between cake cases, chill, consume entire batch with best friend at bottom of garden and then feel very peculiar). They were one of the first things I was allowed to make all on my own and consequently – giddy with kitchen freedom and the promise of a large quantity of refined sugar – I made corn flake crispies at every available opportunity. The discovery of this recipe has had a similar effect, dizzy with the prospect of cake, minimal mess and virtually no washing up, I keep disappearing into the kitchen and making another one. A spare 4 minutes? Infant sleeping? Ad break during a film! Unexpected guests! Low blood sugar! A sniff of yogurt and I’m off.

• 125g pot of whole-milk plain yoghurt
• 2 pots of plain flour (ideally italian 00)
• 1 pot ground almonds
• 1 very generous pot sugar (I prefer coarse brown sugar)
• 3/4 pot extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 3 medium eggs
• 75g coarsely chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips/zest of a whole unwaxed lemon or orange plus 50ml juice/ a mashed banana/a grated apple, handful of sultanas and grating of nutmeg/ 50g coarsely chopped hazelnuts and 50g chopped chocolate.

Set the oven to 180°/ 350F and butter and flour a 26cm ring tin

Tip the yogurt into a large bowl.

Using the yogurt pot as a scoop, add 2 pots of flour, 1 pot of ground almonds, 1 pot of brown sugar and 3/4  pot of olive oil and the baking powder to the bowl and stir.

Break three eggs into the bowl and stir the ingredients very energetically until you have a smooth batter.

Add the additions and stir again.

Pour the batter into the ring tin and bake in the middle of the oven  for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Let the cake cool for 20 minutes or so before turning out onto a cake rack.

As much as I like long Italian summers and as much as I relish preparing summer food, I feel – and look – decidedly more at home in autumn: probably my favorite time of year to cook.

Testaccio market is a dependable way to stir my cooking spirits, but never more so than in late October/early November when the now undeniably down-at-heel but resolutely good and spirited market is bosky and damp with autumn and it’s stalls are overflowing with good things. Here, amongst the boisterous Roman chaos, the chestnuts shine like polished mahogany and young pale walnuts, like the wrinkled faces of weather worn old farmers, beg to be cracked open. On most stalls sits a dusty orange pumpkin, the size of squashed basketball, beside it a knife with which the fruttivendolo will cut you a slice of bright orange flesh to make your pumpkin risotto. There are mushrooms, if you’re lucky boletus edulis, better known as porcini - which means little pigs – with their rust colored caps and fat bulbous stems which are indeed like fat piglets or the chubby legs of my seven week old son. You’ll find fragrant quince, their golden skin hiding modestly behind a strange downy coat, freckled pears waiting to be poached in red wine, apples to be eaten just so or baked with butter and brown sugar, and the first of the winter citrus: lemons, oranges and clementines. Stalls are a patchwork of dark green, orange and splashed with red: heaps of spinach tumble into piles of winter cabbage, cavolo nero and leafy Sicilian broccoli, bunches of carrots with their feathery headdresses nuzzle up to curiously lumpy and undeniably phallic squash and heads of deep red raddicio.

First I bought quinces, which I’ve already told you about. Next mushrooms, not porcini but wrinkled morels, some of which I fryed with an artery clogging quantity of butter and garlic and piled on toast. The rest of my autumnal toadstools went into a risotto, not my best risotto it has to be said, but that’s what comes of cooking one-handed while trying to burp a wriggling baby. Then I bought chestnuts and walnuts, a kilo of both to be, in turn, roasted and cracked, a bag of clementines and a butternut squash for soup.

Usually by this time of year I am well up to soup speed and producing at least two large panfuls a week. I have been known to topple into soup frenzy sometime in mid November, sautéing, simmering and pureeing everything that enters the kitchen, overdosing on liquid lunches, swearing I will never eat a particular soup again and then forcing the surplus into my tiny freezer, meaning the door won’t shut and the ice melts. But not this year. A long, hot summer that spilled over into autumn, the arrival of my porcini legged son and my generally shoddy kitchen presence has meant soup progress has been sluggish. The experiments with this soup and a serious quantity of pasta ceci however, have redressed the balance and my kitchen can reclaim – part-time at least- the title ‘Soup kitchen’ once again.

At first this was simply a butternut squash soup. Then one day while foraging – it’s all the rage you know – I happened upon a few cooked cannelloni beans lurking in the fridge. I added them to the orange soup, half while it was simmering and the rest after pureeing so as to leave some beans whole. I have continued to add them ever since. The dense, fine-grained and silky flesh of butternut squash makes really good soup: thick and  velvety, savory and sweet. Add some white beans and it’s even more substantial and hearty. A soporific orange soup studded with soft, nutty beans. Delicious, but could send you and your tastebuds to sleep if it weren’t for the parmesan rind (which I will come too later) and a grating of nutmeg. The parmesan gives the soup a salty savory kick and the nutmeg – my favorite spices, the pirate of a spice world, like the sweet and spicy, dusty and dirty bark of a tropical tree, it’s apparently hallucinogenic to boot – livens things up.

This recipe is more or less the template I use for every vegetable soup I make. It’s a well trodden soup path and one I’m sure you’re familiar with. You sauté the kitchen holy trinity in a mixture of butter and a little olive oil. Once the vegetables are soft, you add the diced squash – a compact, sweet squash is crucial here, a spongy, insipid specimen will produce a spongy insipid soup. Next a glug of wine or cooking sherry for the pan and another for the cook, a parmesan rind and a litre of water. You could of course use stock, but if you have good vegetables that taste proper and vitally as they should, water will do. You let the soup bubble and burp away s for 25 minutes -adding some beans at half time -until the squash is extremely tender. Once the soup is ready, you puree half of it until smooth and creamy and then return it to the pan. To finish, you season the soup with salt and a grating of nutmeg.

Back to the rind.

Left over parmesan rinds, with the inch of cheeses still clinging to them, are magic. Well not magic exactly, but just brilliant for soup. If you add a rind or two (depending on how meticulously you have cut away the cheese from the rind) to the pan, they add a deeply savory, salty, smoky depth to the soup. I keep a bag of rinds in the freezer and then throw one – still frozen as the hot soup will soon see to de-frosting duties – into what ever soup is bubbling away on the stove. Once the parmesan rind has done its duty, it’s the cooks duty to gnaw the now soft inch of cheese from the rind.

Good bread, a green salad, a bunch of grapes and a glass of wine and you have a really nice autumn lunch.

Butternut squash and white bean soup

serves 4

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 30g butter
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 1 large carrot
• a stalk of celery
• salt
• a medium-sized butternut squash – which should yield about 800g flesh
• 100ml dry white wine or 2 tbsp of cooking sherry (optional)
• 1 litre water
• parmesan rind
• 300g cooked cannellini beans
• nutmeg

Peel and small dice the onion, carrot and celery. Warm the oil and butter in a large, heavy based soup pan (which ideally has a lid) and then add the vegetables to it, turning them so they are coated with fat. Sprinkle a little salt over the vegetables and  reduce the heat so the vegetables half fry/half braise until soft – stirring every so often – which should take about 10 minutes.

While the vegetables are cooking, peel, deseed and rough chop the butternut squash. Add the squash to the pan and stir for a couple of minutes so each piece is coated with fat. Add the wine or sherry (optional) and allow it to sizzle for a minute or two. Add add the water and the parmesan rind, bring the soup to the boil and then reduce to a simmer, with the lid slightly ajar, for 25 minutes or until the squash is very tender and starting to collapse. After 15 minutes add half the beans.

When the soup is cooked, remove the parmesan rind and then puree, blend or pass half of it through a mouli and then return it to the pan along with the rest of the beans. Season to taste with salt and a grating of nutmeg.

Luca was born in time for lunch on the 14th of September. He is, as my sister Rosie would say, a bonny boy. I am feeling deeply unqualified for this truly wondrous but frankly bewildering job. Luca however, seems to have faith in me and so we have agreed to muddle – and I mean muddle in the nicest possible way – along together. Have no fear, even though I’m sure Luca will come up from time to time, I’ve no intention of dishing out a blow-by-blow account of this muddle. I do intend to talk about quinces.

I am slightly obsessive about quinces. This is partly because they are so illusive, their short season coupled with their fall from favor can make them hard to find. But my obsession is mostly because I adore both their heavy, properly sensual scent: a heady cocktail of apple, pear, rose, musky honey and a dash of something exotic, sultry and tropical and their particular but superb flavor and texture when cooked.

Quinces are ancient fruit, part of the rose family and cousins of apples and pears. They are rather odd-looking, bulbous and lumpy but somehow curiously beautiful. They could be the love child – conceived during a night of passion at the back of a fruit crate  - of a knobby, yellow pear and a underripe cooking apple. They are the pome fruit equivalent of the tall, gawky boy with a massive nose and aptitude for physics who turns out to be by far the most interesting and delicious male in your year. Quinces are covered in strange downy brown coat and their hard, astringent flesh when raw gives little clue as to the potential delights in store when they cooked with sugar or honey. They are not easy fruit, they need a bit of attention and keen hand to deal the devilishly hard flesh. They need - like me on a Monday morning – sweetening-up and then patient cooking; a simmer, bake or slow bubble, to bring out the best in them and transform them into something delicious, be it jam, marmalade, thick paste, relish or clear jelly.

I entertained the idea of making some cotognata (quince paste or cheese) when I spied a crate of particularly bulbous but fantastically scented fruit at the market. This domestic fantasy persisted all the way home. Encouraged by the heady scent curling provocatively out of my shopping bag, I daydreamed of slices of amber quince cheese with chunks of hard, piquant goats cheese all the way along via Branca, round the corner into via Marmorata, into the courtyard and up the stairs. I only came to my senses when I entered my kitchen and remembered that I’m hard pressed to make a cup of tea at present, never mind execute lengthy fruit preservation. As I put the quinces in a bowl I resigned myself to the fact this was probably their final resting place! At least they would make the kitchen smell glorious I told myself.

As is so often the case, once I accepted the fact I wouldn’t find the time to cook my quinces and promised myself not to feel guilty about my fruity air freshener, I found time to cook them. Not quince paste I hasten to add, that will have to wait until next year, but something nearly as delicious: poached quinces with lemon.

Quinces poach beautifully. Peel, slice and sweeten them with sugar or honey, then leave them for a long gentle simmer over a low heat and they transform. They become tender and succulent (while resolutely holding their shape and pleasing grainy texture) and taste like buttery poached apples, fragrant grainy pears, sweet honeyed wine and something sharp and rather tropical.

I’ve actually written about quinces before, poached quinces no less, but this recipe is a little different, simpler and (particularly if you can find really good, unwaxed lemons) just as delicious. You simmer wedges of quince gently with long strips of lemon zest in a light syrup of water, sugar and lemon juice. The lemon lends a sharp defining edge which both accentuates and balances the honeyed sweetness of the quince. Whats more, the strips of lemon, having made their, sharp, citrus contribution, cook into tender almost candied softness and can be eaten with the quince.

The recipe is ridiculously simple, you could argue it is not really a recipe at all, more a suggestion. The amount of sugar you add really depends on you and how sweet-a-tooth you have. I’d say I’m pretty middle-of-the-road when it comes to sugar, not a fan of either sickly sweet or too bracing, my quantities reflect this. You should adjust accordingly.

I like this poached quince with a dollop of creme fraiche and a little almond biscuits, it’s a pretty perfect pudding. What am I saying, pretty perfect pudding, the heady combination of tender fruit, slightly sour cream and soft, milky, nutty almond biscuits is pretty perfect at anytime. I imagine a little pile of poached quince would also be nice with a slice of plain or almond cake.- you could pour a little of the syrup over the cake! I also like poached quince for breakfast with yogurt and muesli.

Poached quince with lemon

• 1.5 kg (roughly 6) ripe quines
• 150g fine sugar
• 1 large unwaxed lemon
• 500ml water – you may need to add a little more

• Cover the quinces with warm water, and rub them in the water to remove the fuzzy down from their skin. Rinse, drain, and dry.
• Using sharp knife carefully pare away the lemon peel in long strips from the lemon (trying to avoid too much bitter white pith). Put the lemon strips, 500ml of cold water, the sugar and the juice from the lemon into a large heavy based pan
• Carefully peel the quinces with a vegetable peeler. Using a very sharp knife (carefully, they are devilishly hard), cut each quince in quarters, carve out the core, and cut into slim wedges. As soon as you have cut a wedge drop it into the lemon water in the pan to stop it discoloring.
• Over a modest heat, bring the pan to a gentle boil and then reduce to a simmer for about an hour or until the quince is very tender but still holding its shape and liquid has reduced to a thick syrup.

Before I talk about Almond and lemon cake, I need to tell you something. Actually that’s not true, I don’t need to tell you anything, I could just continue with the blog and not mention this detail, but considering the nature of both blog and detail, it would probably make things very lopsided and odd. Let me rephrase that, I’d like to tell you something.

I am, if all goes well, having a baby, very soon. Actually I thought the time had come this afternoon, and saw me, the most ill prepared mother- to-be in Europe, frantically consulting my 1972, soft focus, smock-heavy edition of the pregnancy bible Avremo un bambino. Once propped up on the sofa, book open at what I think was the relevant paragraph (it is, as the title suggests, an Italian book which means I don’t fully understand everything, not a bad thing when reading about potentially unpredictable and possibly painful experiences) I realized my cramps were more likely the result of the two oversized slices of aforementioned cake I’d washed down, inadvisably, with both iced lemonade and warm earl grey tea than any impending arrival. The official date is the 7th of september, but as my elderly neighbour keeps shouting from her kitchen window across the courtyard into my kitchen window, the baby will come when the baby is ready.

I am probably sounding very flippant. I don’t feel it. Well not usually. Despite this complicated goulash of a situation. Despite the fact the past nine months have been accompanied by painful sadness about the end of my relationship with the other stomach of Racheleats:Vincenzo, the man I thought I’d have children with, the man I thought I’d be with forever. Despite the fact a new relationship – and I say this with great affection – started at a time when I really should have been alone, I am very happy to be having a baby.

There, said it, and I haven’t forgotten that catching up and outbursts of (possibly too much) information should always be accompanied by good suggestions for lunch, dinner or in today’s case: cake.

Thoughts of this cake have been quietly bubbling away for some time now, for years if I think about it. Well, not this cake exactly, it’s more abstract than that. For years I’ve had it in mind that I’d like, at some point, no rush, to find a good recipe for a dense, moist but not gooey, fragrant but not fussy almond and lemon cake. My quest started nonchalantly with a piece of lemon scented almond cake from Lisboa the Portuguese cafe on Goldhawk Road. It gathered speed in 2001 when I worked at the Pelican organic pub in Ladbroke Grove and the formidable but fantastic chef Karen baked a deceptively plain-looking but glorious golden round, her take on an everyday cake and the various almond and lemon cakes she had eaten in Spain.

I was already well aware of what good dancing partners almond and lemon make. I’m the daughter of a Lancastrian, so I learned young that the neglected cousin of the Bakewell tart, the Lancaster lemon tart – which forgets jam in favor of a thick smear of lemon curd cooked under the almond and egg mixture – is by far the nicer of the two relatives. I’d experienced the joys of lemon syllabub and crisp almond biscuits. I’d gobbled up Maids of honor, those seductive little puff pastry tarts filled with cheese-cake-like almond and lemon cream.

But Karen’s cake was something else, a slice of lemon and almond alchemy, simple – something Florence White writing in 1932 in Good Things in England might have called a ‘cut-and-come-again-cake you never tire of’ - but aromatic and fragrant at the same time, a cake that reminds you almonds and lemons might well be English kitchen staples, but they originate from warmer more exotic climes. It was dense but not heavy, fragrant but not fussy. Karen was in an even more fearsome mood than usual when I walked into the kitchen (still brushing incriminating crumbs from my apron). I didn’t even manage a compliment, never mind a request for the recipe.

The search continued quietly, a recipe ripped from a newspaper, a note to myself to find a spanish recipe for torta de almendros di santiago because this – according to a friend – was the cake I was looking for, an attempt at torta de almendros di santiago and the discovery it wasn’t. Then I discovered Nigella Lawson’s clementine cake, which is in turn inspired by Claudia Roden’s Sephardic orange and almond cake, a recipe which spread faster than juicy gossip a few years ago. It’s the one made by simmering whole oranges or clementines until they are soft as my upper arms and then blending them – zest, skin, pith, fruit – into a thick orange pulp which you mix with eggs, almonds, sugar and a teaspoon of baking powder. Small kitchen epiphany, I’d replace the oranges with lemons, I’d found my cake.

I hadn’t. It was an interesting experiment, but on this occasion whole lemons are rather like sour-faced librarians, however long you simmer them, however much you flatter and try to sweeten them up with sugar, however hard you try, they refuse be won over, it’s the pith you see, it’s all just too pithy and the overall effect is decidedly mouth drying. My search continued, very lazily. Then about 2 weeks ago, an idea that had been baking for years was given a mighty shove by an uncompromising craving and next thing I know I’m cranking up the oven on one of the hottest days of the year to make myself an almond and lemon cake. Frantic book consultation, some risky mixing and matching of several recipes, a dash of improvisation and fifteen minutes of overheating in my new kitchen and I had not only a bun but a cake in the oven.

For me, impulsive baking usually ends in disaster or soggy disappointment! But not this time, I’d stumbled (or waddled) onto my cake, the lemon and almond round I’d been looking for, dense and moist but not heavy, fragrant and just a bit exotic but not fussy, the ‘cut and come again cake one you never tire of’‘. Well, the ‘never tire of’ remains to be seen, but I’ve consumed the greater part of three cakes now and I’m showing no signs of exhaustion. I already knew that one way to guarantee a moist crumb to your cake is to  add ground almonds – the oil in the nuts lends dampness to cakes and, even better, means they get even moister after a day or two – this cake is a lovely example of this. It’s a fitting recipe for a great couple: his milky, nutty kindness soothing (but not smothering) her zesty sharpness.

It’s all pretty straightforward, butter and sugar, eggs, ground almonds, a flick of flour, the zest and juice of a lemon and some orange flower water if you fancy (I do) a list of ingredients sure to invite thoughts like ‘That’s it? What on earth was all her fuss and searching about‘. I thought the very same thing. It really is worth wrapping the cake up for a day or two before eating, the flavors deepen and the cake gets even more wonderfully damp and aromatic. Don’t worry if you can’t wait though, it is still damn delicious.

Almond and lemon cake

• 200g soft unsalted butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 50g plain flour, ideally Italian 00
• 200g ground almonds
• zest and juice of one medium-sized unwaxed lemon
• 2 tbsp orange flower water (optional)

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Add the beaten egg a little at a time to the butter and sugar, with each addition sprinkle on some of the flour, keep beating continuously.

Once all the eggs and flour are incorporated, gently fold in the ground almonds, then the lemon zest, juice and orange flower water if you are adding it.

Pour the mixture into the lined cake tin and bake for 50 – 55 minutes. After about 35 minutes you may well find you have to cover the cake loosely with foil, otherwise it may burn.

The cake is ready when it is firm and a skewer, or better still a strand of raw spaghetti inserted in the center come out clean. Let the cake stand for 15 minutes before turning it onto a wire rack. Once the cake is completely cool, wrap it is greaseproof paper and then foil and leave it for a day or two.

Let us all eat cake.

After my three-month hiatus: an overcooked goulash of endings, beginnings and strange middles over seasoned with excuses, sabotage and a big glug of procrastination, I think I owe it to you, and myself for that matter, to get on with it. Please excuse me if I’m a little rusty.

At least I haven’t had to procrastinate over which recipe to share with you. Watermelon, ice cream and insalata caprese season combined with the fact I’ve been even more habitual than usual in the kitchen, seeking reassurance from the goulash with faithful recipes and my fallback: bread and cheese, has meant I’ve barely made anything I haven’t already written about! Except the pesto that is, or more precisely pesto alla trapanese.

The word pesto comes from the Italian verb pestare, which means to pound or grind, and is used to describe a thick raw sauce made by pounding a mass of aromatic herbs in a pestle and mortar with salt, garlic and perhaps nuts and cheese. Pesto can be stirred into pasta, spooned over soup or fish, or spread liberally over bread, pastry or pizza. The most famous pesto – excuse me if I avoid the words invented, original, authentic or perfect, I find they can cause problems - is pesto alla genovese, a glorious green amalgam of genovese basil, pine nuts, parmesan or pecorino sardo, ligurian olive oil and salt. I’m extremely fond of pesto alla genovese and I’ve written it about before.

Pesto alla trapaneze, which I’d heard of but never made until I opened this beautiful book, is a sauce made by pounding almonds, garlic and basil in a mortar and then adding olive oil, maybe cheese, salt and finely peeled, deseeded and chopped tomato. I suppose you could crudely translate it as Pesto Trapani style  (Trapani being a city on the west coast of Sicily that I’d very much like to visit) but why would you when it sounds so much nicer in Italian. It sounds better still in Sicilian, pasta cull’agghia. Apparently the genovese sailors who steered their ships in Trapani’s sickle-shaped port on the way to the orient brought the tradition of pesto to Sicilian shores, the local sailors then adopted and adapted the recipe using local ingredients, namely almonds instead of pine nuts and tomatoes

Considering tomatoes affinity with basil, cheese and garlic, and knowing what a good and handsome couple the soft sweet and sour flesh of tomatoes and pesto alla genovese make – neatly illustrated by another of my fallbacks, toast spread with pesto and topped with two half moons of grilled tomato – it’s hardly surprising pesto alla trapanese, which is essentially pesto alla genovese made with almonds and the addition of tomato, is quite delicious. You’ll discover how well almonds work in pesto, lending their milky, almost grassy nature and hint of bitterness to proceedings. You’ll see the way they pound into a soft nutty cream with the garlic, which provides a perfect base for the fragrant, spicy, most irritatingly likable of herbs: basil and its loyal comrades olive oil, tomatoes and cheese.

Ah yes, the cheese. The first recipe I found, and the one I follow pretty faithfully doesn’t include cheese. The absence of cheese means you can really taste the almonds and appreciate the way they temper and compliment the volatile garlic (much in the same way as in the Spanish ajo blanco, the excellent almond and garlic soup). Omitting the cheese also allows the spicy warmth of the basil to come through. Having said that, I also really like pesto alla trapanese made with cheese (I used a mixture of parmesan and pecorino), it’s a bolder, saltier sauce, richer and rounder. The nice thing is, you can choose! I suggest experimenting, the recipe is worth it. You could of course simply offer a bowl of freshly grated cheese at the table and people can add it if they wish.

I make pesto in a pestle and mortar. It’s not about being a purist or extremely authentic, it’s because I enjoy the pounding and grinding, in much the same way that I like whisking egg whites till my arms hurt, kneading bread dough with slightly demented enthusiasm and smashing ice cubes for cocktails with a rolling-pin while laughing hysterically and thinking of the woman who works behind the cheese counter – one of these is not true! Having boasted about my elbow grease I should probably note that there are many kitchen tasks I happily delegate to a clever tool or machine, just not pesto.  You can of course make pesto alla trapanese in a food processor. The method is pretty much the same for both man and machine.

First you pound or pulse the almonds and garlic into a fine flour. Then you add the washed and dried basil leaves. If you’re using a pestle and mortar, you want to work the leaves into the flour by grinding the ingredients firmly against the side of the mortar with the pestle, you want the basil to break up, dissolve almost, in much the same way as when you rub a tender leaf between your fingertips. Once the basil is incorporated, you stir in the cheese if you are adding it, and then add the olive oil in a thin steam while beating with small wooden spoon.

Pesto made in a pestle and mortar will always have a much coarser texture than pesto made with a machine, think rough as opposed to fine sandpaper, five o’ clock shadow as opposed to super clean shaved. I know what I prefer. If you are working in a food processor, add the olive oil at the same time as the basil and pulse until you have a creamy consistency. Turn off the machine and stir the cheese into the mixture by hand. Now you turn your attention to the tomatoes.

While your spaghetti in rolling around in plenty of well salted boiling water, you peel, deseed and roughly chop the tomatoes. It may seem like a bit of a bother to peel the tomatoes, well it can to me anyway, but I assure you it really isn’t and it’s an important step in this recipe! Skip it and you’ll end up with tough little red chunks and a rather watery sauce. Just before you drain the pasta you mix the tomatoes and the pesto together in a large serving bowl. When the spaghetti is ready - al dente as the Italian say, which means’ to the tooth’ and describes the point when the pasta is cooked and tender but still with a slight chewy bite – drain and then stir it into the pesto alla trapanese, adding a little of the pasta cooking water you have set aside if you feel the mixture needs loosening slightly, then you serve

The warmth of the pasta brings everything together,  heightening the nature of each ingredient and uniting them further into a harmonious tumble. A very good lunch, so much nicer than my goulash.

Spaghetti con pesto alla Trapanese

Adapted from a recipe in La cucina Siciliana by Maria Teresa di Marco e Marie Cecile Ferrè

Serves 4

• 50g skinned almonds
• 2 or 3 cloves garlic
• 35 tender basil leaves
• 50g parmesan or pecorino (or a mix of both) – this is optional
• 100ml extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• 3 medium-sized tomatoes
• 450g spaghetti (or di mafadine or orrichiette)

If everything had gone according to plan I wouldn’t be here. I’d be unpacking boxes in my freshly painted new flat, borrowing cups of milk from my new neighbours and generally looking practical but fetching in a pair of paint speckled dungarees and a nifty red and white polka dot headscarf. I’d be warming the soup I’d prudently prepared earlier, tearing the bread and chiseling lumps of cheese from my rustic hunk of parmesan for one of the informal, impromptu but delicious first-days-in-the-flat-picnic-lunches.

Or maybe I’d be slightly hysterical, sobbing red-faced and exhausted into a cardboard box, overwhelmed by the lack of furniture or any kind of storage. Or simply spread eagle on my new living room floor in a grubby track suit contemplating the strange crack across the ceiling that bears an uncanny resemblence to the Eiffel Tower, the bizarre marks on the wall and the prospect of a week of bleach, scrubbing and insubstantial snacks. I am however doing none of the above, as things have not gone according to plan. I do have the keys to my new flat though, a provisional move-in day next week (this will change of course) and a very nice recipe for Risotto di piselli.

I didn’t start out making risotto. As I flicked the first peas from their pods, Risi e bisi, rice and peas – a minestra densa – a thick dense soup made in the style of a risotto was the plan. It was perfect I thought, as I over enthusiastically flicked the contents of a pod of peas scuttling across the kitchen, with one large green orb taking refuge in Vincenzo’s walking boot: a good lunch and at the same time an opportunity to test the Risi e bisi recipe for Mona. What’s more it would also be a good moment to tell you about the soup book project I am working on at the American Academy with the chef Mona Talbott and share one of her recipes – a new take on Risi e bisi - with you. Things didn’t go according to plan.

It all began well. I podded the peas and set them aside. Then I pulled away the stringy top and tail from the usually discarded pea pods, put them in a stock pot with some aromatics, covered the whole lot with cold water and brought the pan to a lively boil for 10 minutes in order to make a pea pod broth. The pea pod broth I have learned to make with Mona, the pea pod broth that makes all the difference to the Venetian classic Risi e bisi. While the green tinted panful bubbled away enthusiastically, seeming at once both soothing healthful elixir and mysterious witches brew, I sat at the table with my Campari Soda – my aperitivo of choice at present  - a bowl of big, fat green olives and flicked open the lap top to consult Mona’s recipe.

I’m not sure what was more disturbing, the noise – a grinding computer moan – the deranged flicker across the screen or the odd lava lamp effect in the left hand corner. I felt simultaneous waves of panic, disbelief and self-pity as yet another crisis threatened to gate-crash my week. A diatribe of heavy English cursing and Italian blasphemies bubbled up my throat and into my mouth, my eye twitched involuntarily. I felt the signs of imminent meltdown. But then, thanks in large part to my pink drink and Hugh Masekela’s ‘Boys are doing it’ curling through the speakers, I came to my senses and did the only sensible thing: I had a large slug of Campari Soda and closed the laptop.

I could have gone into next room and fired up Vincenzo’s monster mac, but considering that too is on its last legs and suspiciously slow, and bearing in mind the way things are going this week, it seemed like tempting fate. As I strained the fragrant, green tinted pea pod broth I wondered if I could remember all of Mona’s recipe. I thought very hard ‘Some olive oil, 30 ml, no 60 ml, no 30 ml and some butter! No that was the spring minestone! 1.5 litres, wait, no 2, no 1.5 litres of pea pod…..‘ before coming to my senses again and remembering the whole point of recipe testing is exactly that, testing, following the precise quantities. Recipe testing is, after all, more etching than sketching and certainly not the time for impressionist guess-work. The pea pod broth stared at me, my stomach grumbled rudely, my eye twitched. I needed some kitchen reassurance, a well-practiced recipe, I’d use the pea pod broth to make a risotto. After I’d refreshed my Campari that is.

I make a risotto of one sort or another most weeks. In winter it’s usually porcini mushroom risotto so the flavoursome liquid the mushrooms produce when soaking provides the broth, or I make a plain risotto, in which case chicken broth is order of the day. In autumn I make far too many pumpkin risottos and usually end up using Bouillon granules. If I have some pretty gutsy chicken broth I’ll make a fennel risotto. In summer I muddle together lots of tomato risotto-esque lunches and I use (gasp) water. Spring is the time for asparagus or pea risotto and that means vegetable broth I’ve taken the time to make, or bouillon granules that I haven’t. Until now that is! Now I’ve discovered pea pod broth.

Pea pod broth is a little revelation, by boiling the empty pea pods along with a handful of the peas themselves (you can also add an onion, carrot, stick of celery and some parsley stems if you so wish) you produce a light, fragrant, gently flavoured broth with a simple grassy sweetness. You can pass the pods and liquid through a food mill to make a very intense broth – this is what Mona uses for her Risi e Bisi – but for risotto I prefer simply straining the broth, pressing the vegetables firmly against the fine sieve to extract as much flavour as possible. Once you’ve made your broth and it’s simmering gently in a small pan on the stove you can begin making your risotto.

You know the routine. You gently soften a finely chopped small onion in some butter and olive oil. Then you add the rice - carnaroli, arborio or vialone nero – and nudge that around the pan, letting it absorb all the oil and butter and start to toast. Next you add the wine or vermouth, woosh, the energetic sizzle as the alcohol evaporates away and the wine is sucked up by the thirsty rice like a 5-year-old inhaling a carton of ribena through a straw after winning the sack race on sports day in August.

Now, with your timer ticking to remind you this will take about 16 – 20 minutes, you start one of the very nicest stove rituals, adding the pea pod broth a ladleful at a time, stirring, nudging, moving the rice, allowing the liquid to be absorbed before adding the next ladleful. After about 8 minutes you pause to add the peas, before resuming the steady addition of the broth. After 16 minutes you start tasting, the rice should be tender and creamy but still al dente (to the tooth) at the center, with pleasing firmness. You are trying to find (the often illusive) moment of divine creaminess and bite.  Once the rice is cooked, the liquid absorbed and the risotto has a very soft, wavy texture (remember it will continue absorbing liquid so it should be quite loose at this point) you beat in the grated cheese, mint and more butter, maybe a pinch of salt, which brings everything together into a soft, undulating, creamy tumble. It is this final step, the mantecatura,  the beating in of the cold butter and cheese, which helps give the risotto it’s unique consistency.

Advice, if I may be so bold. Use good risotto rice, I like carnaroli. Try and find small, tender, freshly picked peas with firm, bright pods. I know it’s impossible to know what hides inside every pod (there are always a few floury cannonballs infiltrating the rabble) but sliding open a few pods at the market will give you a general idea. Once you reach 16 minutes start tasting, you are trying to identify the moment the rice is tender but still firm at the center of each grain, this will differ from brand to brand, variety to variety. Be generous with the broth, using some extra if necessary, and turn off the flame when the risotto is still very loose, soft and undulating because it will stiffen quickly as you take it to the table.

I need to listen to my own advice and be a little more generous with the broth! The above lunch was delicious but could have been a little looser, a little more laid back, a little more undulating on the plate, a little more roll than rock. But this is by the by, after two more pans of pea pod broth and two more attempts I am ready to preach. Pea risotto made with pea pod broth is quite simply excellent. The subtle, fragrant broth is the perfect backdrop for the tender, creamy, short grain rice studded with tiny green peas: sweet and savory, as bright and simple as sunshine with their unmistakable simple grassy sweetness, the sharp, sour parmesan and the flick of earthy, moody, fragrant mint.

A cucumber and tomato salad, dressed with olive oil and salt, was a pretty perfect table companion for the risotto,  The cucumber in particular: cool, calm and collected, it’s crisp texture, refreshing cleanness and alkaline tang was a perfect foil for the soft creamy risotto, sweet peas and tangy cheese.

Advice – When things don’t go according to plan, have a nice lunch.

Risotto di Piselli – Pea risotto

Serves 4

• 1 kg / 2 llb peas in their pods
• small white onion, peeled and cut in two
• parsley stalks
• stick celery
• small carrot
• 30 ml / 1 tbsp olive oil
• 60 g / 2 ½ oz butter
• 1 small mild yellow onion finely chopped
• 400g / 14 oz risotto rice
• 125 ml / 4 fl oz dry white wine or Vermouth
• 1.5 litres / 6 cups pea pod broth (plus a little extra) or other broth
• 60 g / 2 ½ oz freshly grated parmesan
• tbsp finely chopped fresh mint

• Pod the peas, setting the peas aside and keeping the empty pods. Cut off and discard tough ends from pods; pull off and discard strings.
• Rinse the pods and then put them into a large stock pot along with the carrot, celery, parsley stems and onion. Cover with 2 litres of cold water, bring the pot to the boil. Continue boiling for 10 minutes Pull the pot from the heat and alow the broth to sit for another 10 minutes. Strain the pea pod broth, pressing the soft pods against the side of the sieve to extract as much flavour as possible and set it aside.
• When you are ready to make your risotto heat the pea pod broth.
• Melt half the butter with the oil in a large heavy based saute pan. Saute the onion gently over a medium flame until transparent and lightly gold in colour.
• Add the rice and stir it thoughrally but gently to absorb the butter and oil. Pour in the wine and boil for 1 minute to allow the alcohol to evaporate, stirring constantly.
• Turn down the heat to medium heat and begin to add the pea pod broth a ladleful at a time allowing the liquid to be absorbed into the rice before adding more. After 8 minutes add the peas, stir. continue adding the pea pod broth until it has all been used up and absorbed by the rice. This takes about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat. Allow risotto to rest for 1 minute.
• Add the remainder of the butter, grated parmesan and and mint and beat gently.
• Serve.

It’s taken me several days to finish this post and since writing the first paragraphs progress has been made and F day and is looking a little like Tuesday. We will see. You may, or may not, be relieved to know the Eiffel tower crack had been investigated and filled and the flat is freshly painted.

It’s all feeling rather long-winded around here so I won’t go into details about the soup making project with Mona today. I will just say, that in the midst of all this change and endings, starting a new chapter and working with a chef like Mona, watching her make soup, writing recipes together and being part of the Rome Sustainable Food Project and it’s new book is just what I need . I think posting about risi e bisi now will seem a little like pea and rice deja vu so I plan (oh dear, we know what can happen to those) to write about a two of her other soups over the next couple of weeks.

I inhaled all your good wishes like the risotto rice soaking up the vermouth, like the 5-year-old inhaling a carton of ribena through a straw after winning the sack race on sports day in August, thank you, I will take them with me on Tuesday, or Wednesday. Now where I did put that Campari?

I first ate fave e pecorino – young broad beans still in their pods so you can peel them yourself and chunks of the salty, robust ewes milk cheese Pecorino Romano – at the trattoria Augustarello in Testaccio. It was May 2005 and I’d been in Italy for nearly two months. Following my impulsive, slightly demented, not-very-grand tour of Southern Italy, I’d paused for breath, admitted my travels might be easier with more than twenty words of comedy Italian and enrolled myself at a language school here in Rome. The school had found me a gloomy, fusty, extremely odd apartment near piazza Bologna which although detrimental for both my spirits and my sinuses, was bearable because I knew I was moving to Testaccio.

Actually I knew I wanted to move to Testaccio, having spent the day exploring this unexpectedly alluring and although fashionable, resolutely authentic quarter of Rome with my friend and curious architect Joanna. During her visit, Joanna was as eager for us to visit Testaccio’s abandoned slaughterhouse, its austere yet beautiful futurist post office, the slightly grimy but busy and dynamic iron and glass food market and the courtyards and stairwells of its public housing as she was the fountains, domes and palaces of the eternal City. This is where I want to live I decided – as Joanna urged me to enter yet another (clearly private) courtyard to take pictures of another ingenious stairwell – I just had to find a flat.

I’d go to school each morning, then most lunchtimes, head spinning with verb conjugations and the knowledge I was the bottom of the class again, I’d take the metro from piazza Bologna to Pyramide, walk up via Marmorata, turn left into via Galvani and then right into via mastro Giorgio and the heart of Testaccio. Before any serious flat hunting could be embarked upon lunch was required. It was during these slightly lonely but good days, in search of lunch, that I discovered many of the shops, stalls, bars, osteria, trattoria that I still go to everyday.

The tomato stall at the back of the market for sweet, spicy, thick-skinned pachino tomatoes which I’d wash under the drinking fountain and then eat with bread and mozzarella in the park. Vincenzo and Rita’s stall for strawberries and peas in their pods. Panifico Passi for hot pizza bianca and Foccacia. Volpetti for a piece of cheese and a slice of torta salata, Volpetti Più for a seat, a bowl of pasta e fagioli and a plate of cicoria with olive oil and lemon. The bar Linari for two cornetti and a cappuccino – I’m a great believer in breakfast for lunch every now and then. The bar Giolitti for an ice-cream and a tub of zabaione – I also believe in double pudding for lunch. Il Bucatino for spaghetti con le vongole, Da Felice for Cacio e pepe and Augustarello for my favourite lunches and lessons in Roman kitchen.

I probably leaned more Italian at Augustarello that at school, and what I learned was certainly more useful. It was here, in this simple, archetypal Testaccio trattoria, at one of the 10 or so tables that I also learned and really tasted distinct, deliciously robust, gutsy Roman cooking; carciofi alla Romana, bucatini all’amatriciana, gricia, cacio e pepe. It was at Augustarello I encountered the bold, offal based cooking from the slaughterhouse days: animelle (sweetbreads), coda alla vacinara, pajata. It was at Augustarello that a tumble of long spindly fave fresco were brought to the table along with a hunk of Pecorino Romano, a stubby little cheese knife, a glass of Malvasia and I made my acquaintance with the simple, unadulterated joy that is fave e pecorino.

I consider myself quite devoted to antipasti and this is one of my favourites, both for its ritual and its unique taste. The ritual: running your finger down the side of the fave and feeling the velvety lining of the pod, popping out the first fave, easing away it’s tough outer jacket to reveal the tender, brilliant green bean, chiseling away a little hunk of pecorino. The taste of the two together: the tender, bittersweet, soft waxy bean contrasted with the salty, grainy cheese.

Talking of antipasti, all these words are a long rambling antipasti – I’m also a believer in long rambling antipasti – tasty morsels in preparation for il primo, todays recipe, a particularly good one, the one Vincenzo and I ate yesterday, Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce and mussels.

I’ve had it in mind to make spaghetti with a tomato and mussel sauce for some time now, ever since eating a really excellent plateful at La Torricella late last summer. I’ve daydreamed of that bowl of al-dente spaghetti coated with a soft, sweet, fresh tomato sauce and studded with tender mussels, with a sea-salty kick of shellfish liquor and heat of peperoncino, the grassy flecks of parsley and oregano. It has only taken me 8 months. Actually in Rachel terms 8 months is relatively snappy.  My procrastination however, has not been such a bad thing, I don’t think this sauce would be as deliciously soft and sweet made with the tinned tomatoes that sustain us through the winter. Now’s the time, late April, early May as the first truly deep-red tomatoes with their tangle of vines appear at the market. ‘Le cozze sono buone in Aprile, il migliore’ – ‘the mussels are good in April, the best‘ promises my fishmonger smoothing down his unruly handlebar moustache. He always makes such promises. On this occasion he’s right though, inside each curved inky blue-black shell we find a curious orange creature, plump, juicy and tender.

If like me, you have mussel anxiety – I speak of shell-fish not triceps although I have anxiety about them too, although not enough to actually do anything about their decline – I have some advice. It’s good advice, from my friend Saverio: occasional fisherman, fish market pro and excellent cook.  Advice #1  – Having established a good relationship with your reputable fish monger, establish the best time of year and day of the week to buy mussels. Go early in the morning to buy them and eat them that same day. #2 – Throw away any that have a broken shell, or remain closed even after being tapped sharply with the handle of a knife. #3 – Be fearless when cleaning, soak them in plenty of cold water for an hour, then go on, pull away that funny beard, scrub away any sand or barnacles. #4 – Cook the mussels in a single layer in large, flat-bottomed pan with a tight-fitting lid. #5 – Enlist the help of an assistant to pull the mussels from the shells.

While your assistant is plucking mussels from shells and you can get on with the business of making a very simple, fresh tomato sauce. You skin the tomatoes by plunging them first into boiling water for a minute, then cold water for a few seconds, before draining them. The skins should then peel away easily. You rough chop the tomatoes. Then you sizzle some chopped garlic, chili and oregano in a little olive oil, add a glug of wine, let this bubble away before adding the tomatoes and letting things reduce and thicken for 15 minutes or so. Then you add the mussels and their intense salty liquor to the sauce.

Now all’s that left is to cook some pasta, spaghetti or linguine, in a big pan of well-salted, fast boiling water until it’s al-dente, then mix the drained pasta with the sauce and a handful of roughly chopped parsley. You serve, drizzling a little more of your best extra virgin olive oil over each bowl, you grab a fork and a corner of bread and eat.

I’ve been out-of-sorts on the kitchen lately, the imminent move and separation, so making something really good and tasty – because this is really good and extremely tasty – was especially nice. A reassuring nod from my kitchen, an affirmation from  my lunch, a humm of approval from Vincenzo.  There are countless recipes for spaghetti with tomato and mussel sauce, but this one, from The River Cafe Cookbook is, like most things from the River Cafe kitchen and the hands of Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers, truly excellent.

As we ate I muttered earnest things like ‘Mussels are lovely and not expensive‘ or ‘I don’t know why I ever worried about cleaning or cooking mussels‘ and Vincenzo nodded. We decided Spaghetti with fresh tomato and mussel sauce tastes of springtime, of warmth, of the mediterranean and the salty lick of the sea, that its a delicious whole much greater than the sum of its parts. We decided to make it again next week, our last week together in this flat.

Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce and mussels

Adapted from the River Cafe Cookbook Two by Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers

serves 4

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1.5 – 2 kg mussels in shell, cleaned (discard any that remain open)
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1 small red chilli, crumbled
• 1 tbsp chopped oregano
• 150 ml dry white wine
• 1 kg ripe tomatoes
• sea salt and black pepper
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 400g dried spaghetti

Heat half the olive oil in a large, wide saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. Add the mussels in one layer – this will probably mean 2 or 3 batches – cover and cook briefly over a high heat until they all open. Discard any mussels that remain closed. Drain, keeping the liquid. When the mussels are cool, remove from the shells and chop. In a small pan reduce the mussel liquid by half, strain through a fine sieve and add to the mussels.

In another pan, heat the rest of the olive oil and add the garlic, chilli and oregano. Cook for a couple of minutes, until the garlic begins to turn gently golden then add the wine and reduce for a minute. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, for 15 minutes, until reduced. Add the mussels, juice, salt – be cautious, the mussel juice will be salty - pepper and parsley. Keep sauce warm.

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of well-salted fast boiling water until al-dente. Drain. Add mussel sauce and stir.

Divide between 4 warm serving plates drizzling a little more of your best extra virgin olive oil over the top. Eat.

If all goes well, I will get the keys to my new flat on the 2nd of May. I will then pull other mussels as I heave my large, confusing muddle of belongs across Testaccio and up two flights of stairs. It’s a nice flat, on via Marmorata with windows opening onto via Antonio Cecchi. It’s filled with light. Me, I’m filled with excitement and terror, great sadness and hope at the thought of moving. As always, thank you very much for the companionship here.

Rather like fresh pea and asparagus season, my stay back here at via Mastro Giorgio 81 will be brief. In both cases: green spring vegetables and Rachel, brevity is best. Best for the vegetables because in a world where production and marketing of food has gone mad, at a time when we’re bamboozled by infinite year-round choice, seasonal food is sanity, a joy to be anticipated, relished and then missed. Until next year that is. Seasonal peas in their pods and asparagus are so nice because they’re just that, seasonal. Brevity is best for me because however important it was to come back; to sort through things, talk, divide and try to forge a new kind of relationship with Vincenzo, however reassuring it feels to be back here in a house I love, I must, we both must, move on.

I don’t intend to move on very far though, in a physical sense that is. I’ve decided to look for a new place here in Testaccio, the quarter of Rome I know and love, the wedge-of parmesan-shaped rione XX tucked between the Tevere river, Aventine hill and the southern most section of the Aurelian wall, the quarter I wandered into over 6 years ago with about 20 words of Italian, one telephone number and no fixed plans. Actually Vincenzo and I have decided together that I’ll stay here in Testaccio, agreeing that it’s big enough for the both of us. We’ve discussed the possibility of a John Wayne sized showdown at some point, possibly in the market, weapons: a selection of underripe and overripe fruit and veg, but have concluded this risk is worthwhile. Vincenzo is stupendous.

So let’s get down to business. I have, hardly surprisingly, been extremely happy and over excited – irritatingly so was one observation -  to be back living next to Testaccio market. After a very emotional reunion with my fruttivendoli Vincenzo and Rita, catching-up of the vegetable kind was embarked upon. I settled back into the kitchen with the always reliable courgette/zucchini carbonara and large pan of spring minestrone, before turning my attention to the new arrivals; peas and the first, plump asparagus.

The first kilo of peas was eaten just so on the way back from the market and while cooking the carbonara – straight from the paper bag, peas flicked from pods into my big mouth. Later the same day I went to supper with my friends Cinzia and Ettore and their kids, my favourite students, Antonio and Lucia. Cinzia served a big plate of fresh peas alongside some olives and cheese as an easy communal starter. It was a happy crashing of hands and podding of peas as Cinzia prepared the lamb. I’ll be borrowing this idea. The first bunch of asparagus was steamed until tender and eaten with olive oil, Roscioli bread and pecorino.

The second kilo of peas and second bunch of fat asparagus were destined for pasta, a spring affair, my interpretation of a lunch made for me early last week: farfalle con piselli e asparagi.

It’s all extremely simple. You pod your peas and steam the asparagus until tender but still firm, You could boil the asparagus I suppose, but I always wonder what you lose into the rolling water. You gently saute the podded peas and steamed, sliced asparagus in olive oil before adding a little white wine or water, a good pinch of salt and letting the peas and asparagus bubble away half covered, until tender and just starting to collapse.

Super-al-dente vegetable fans should look away now, for this particular recipe – or idea really – the peas and asparagus are cooked until very soft and just starting to fall apart – you give them a hand by pressing them gently against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon. Gasp and wince from Super-al-dente vegetable fans. Let me reassure you, you’re not trying to murder the vegetables, nor over-cook them into a murky brown mush (I am a traumatized victim of English school dining rooms in the 70′s remember, I know how bad it can be) you’re just breaking things up a bit, creating a slight creaminess and softness which will coat the pasta and bring things together.

You can add little more olive oil to the peas and asparagus along with a handful of finely chopped parsley or some ripped basil if you like. You should taste and check for salt. You will have a deliciously sweet, tender, oily, green muddle of peas and asparagus . I would happily eat a plate of this just so with a hunk of bread and lump of pecorino Romano.

You cook some Farfalle pasta – the butterfly / bow ties work beautifully here – and add it to the peas and asparagus along with a spoonful of the cloudy pasta cooking water to loosen things up. You could also add a big blob of ricotta at this point – I have plans to do this tomorrow so will update here accordingly. Serve topped with a little heap of freshly grated parmesan or pecorino and a grind of black pepper.

It’s nice to be back at my table with my favourite napkin, the one I borrowed from a restaurant in Trastevere (after a terrible meal I hasten to add! Not that a terrible meal justifies my criminal impulses.) This is my idea of a pretty perfect early spring lunch, well one of them at least, I have many. It’s delicate, fresh, simple. The gentle braising brings out the sweetness and softens the edges of three ingredients that although beautiful together might make for a rather fragmented dish if cooked too quickly, cooking them in this way ensures they come together into a satisfying, nourishing, rounded whole, A very good way to enjoy produce (and a kitchen) that won’t be around for long.

I am looking forward to experimenting around this idea; wild garlic, spring onions, a little finely chopped prosciutto, that big blob of ricotta…

Farfalle con asparagi e piselli

serves 4

• 1kg fresh peas in pods (which will yield about 300g when podded)
• bunch of asparagus
• 60ml/2 floz olive oil
• 1ooml dry white wine
• salt
• some finely chopped parsely or a few ripped basil leaves
• another 30ml olive oil
• 450g farfalle pasta
• freshly grated parmesan/ pecorino

Pod your peas. Cut away the tough woody end of the asparagus – how much you trim will depend on the thickness and variety of asparagus.

Steam / boil asparagus over/ in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender, 2 to 6 minutes, depending on thickness of asparagus. Using a slotted spoon remove the asparagus from the pan and cut into 2″ pieces.

Bring a large pan of well salted water to a fast boil in preparation for the pasta.

Warm the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Add the peas and a pinch of salt, stir and cook for a minute or two. Add the asparagus pieces, stir, add the wine and allow the vegetables to bubble away. half covered, for 12 minutes. Stir every now and then and gently press the veg against the sides of the pan with a wooden spoon so they break up gently. Pull the vegetables from the heat and add another glug of olive oil, the finely chopped parsley or basil and stir. Taste for salt and add more if necessary.

I have been really touched and sustained by your kind comments and messages over the last couple of months. I wish I could steal green and white checked napkins for each and every one of you to say thank you. But I won’t, as I fear that might result in a large fine, expulsion from Italy or prison.

I joke because otherwise I’d go mad. I really just want to say thank you.

One of my current edible preoccupations is with small oblong rolls of buttery mashed potato, dipped in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden brown texture like sun and consumed while extremely hot and crunchy. But before I ramble on – you know how I like to ramble on -  about potato croquettes, maybe it’s time we caught up, or started at least.

Don’t panic! I’m not about to come over all dramatic and toe curlingly revelatory – that post will hit your desktop sometime in mid March and will be accompanied by a free pocket pack of kleenex ultrasoft tissues and a miniature bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin. Today I just want to let you know where I’m at, fill you in so to speak, explain my erratic presence here, the unfamiliar pictures and kitchen and reassure you that Rachel is – despite the tumbleweed around here – eating.

Since November last year, when Vincenzo and I separated, I’ve been staying on the other side of the Tevere River in a quarter called Trastevere with my friend Betta. It’s been a very strange, sad and difficult time, but I’ve had a pretty perfect place to take refuge in. Betta’s rather unusual but beautiful flat is on the first floor of an eighteenth century building opposite Villa Farnesina on the ancient and precariously cobbled Via della Lungara. As I type this, I’m watching someone – looking rather shifty it must be said – having a sneaky cigarette behind an orange tree in Villa garden. Beyond the garden, peeping above the row of impressive terraced houses on the other side of the river is the cuppola of the church on Via del Monserrato. If I were to stand on tip toes and lean right out of the front window – we’re talking extreme, quite dangerous leaning here – I think I could just about see the cuppola of San Pietro.  I do hope this sounds like an advert for my friends flat because it is. Not actually the flat itself, but the magnificent room, I mean suite, next- door which Betta runs as a bed and breakfast. Cue jaunty jingle, appropriate link, end of ad.

Despite my sporadic presence on these pages, I have been cooking. It’s been strange and unfamiliar, without the stupendous Vincenzo, shopping at a new market, cooking in a new kitchen with unfamiliar surfaces, knives, pans, without my table. But I have been cooking. You know about the carbonara and amatriciana, there have also been gallons of soup, slightly obsessive quantities of roast chicken and – quite uncharacteristically – several batches of biscuits (all thanks to this terrific book by the exceptional and wonderful Mona Talbott and Mirella Misenti from the American Academy ) There have also been potato croquettes.

I’d never really considered the croquette before coming to Italy. I’d eaten them, primarily in St Georges school dining room between 1984 – 1989, providence – a Findus catering sized pack, fried two hours before consumption, floppy, sporting a soggy and suspiciously orange coat which concealed a gluey, unctuous filling that inevitably resulted in mild heartburn. Similar digestive challenges were presented by the potato croquettes I insisted on buying from dodgy fish and chip establishments in London after nights at the pub. It wasn’t all croquette horror though, I vaguely recall some rather good ones in France, Lyon I think, during the infamous exchange with Carolyn when I was 14. Unfortunately, the trauma of that particular trip rendered that particular food memory, along with several others: apricot tart, Toulouse sausage, partridge cooked with cabbage and croissant au beurre from Au Levain du Marais (I know, it’s a tragedy,) redundant.

I discovered the true potential of the potato croquettes in a pizzeria in Naples when one was hurled – think low flying and extremely well judged frisbee – onto my table along with a deep-fried zucchini flower: antipasti while I waited for my pizza to emerge from the oven. I knew straight away it wasn’t your average croquette, but even so, I still wasn’t particularly excited by the prospect of a cylinder of deep-fried mashed potato however golden it looked. Then I tasted.  Hot, crisp, crunch. The shell shattered giving way to an extremely soft, light, well seasoned, parmesan spiked, parsley flecked cushion of mash. I ordered another one immediately.

The croquette high was followed by various lows as I ordered and encountered much croquette disappointment – it seems many of the pizzeria in Rome, even some of the best, aren’t much more discerning than St Georges school dining room. Then, just as I was about to give up all hope I went to La Gatta mangiona in Monteverde and there it was, the second, a modest little roll, reassuringly wonky (those extremely neat ones are deeply suspicious) golden brown texture like sun. Hot, crisp, crunch on the outside, then inside a soft cushion of mash with a sliver of mozzarella hiding in the center.

A few days later, still humming and clucking about my croquette high (and pizza high for that matter, la saporita at la Gatta – buffalo mozzarella, capers and anchovies – is divine) and in possession of some left- over mash I decided to make my own wonky little croquettes.  Simple to start, no parmesan, parsley or mozzarella, just the well- seasoned buttery mash shaped into dumpy little cylinders, rolled in beaten egg, coated in breadcrumbs and then fried in a couple of inches of oil until crisp.

As with most of my kitchen firsts I thought I might need a couple of attempts to make a decent croquette, but on this occasion it was a case of croquette bingo. I have subsequently made less successful batches – not enough oil, premature shaping when the mash was not cool enough, adding milk to the mash made it too soft to shape, even when cool. Now in possession of modest croquette experience, in the knowledge of both croquette success and croquette failure, may I offer you the following advice. You want to make a nice firm mash: floury potatoes mashed with butter and seasoned generously. Allow the mash to cool for at least 30 minutes.  Make sure you coat the rolls carefully and generously with beaten egg and then with breadcrumbs. Fry them two or three at a time in a good two inches of oil and most important of all, if you want the crisp crunch – croquette from the French croquer means “to crunch” after all -  having scooped them out of the oil, give them a them a brief drain on some kitchen towel and then eat as soon as possible.

I repeat, no faffing around now, gather guests around the stove and eat as soon as possible . Ideally with a cold beer and deep-fried zucchini flowers.

Please note my croquettes are wonky because, as everybody knows, very neat croquettes – like very neat people and houses – are very, very suspicious indeed.

Potato croquettes

• 450g /1lb  potatoes
• 45g butter
• salt
• whole nutmeg
• 1 large egg
• cup of fine breadcrumbs
• vegetable or olive oil for frying (I use olive oil)

Peel and quarter the potatoes and then cover them with salted cold water in a large pot, bring to the boil and then simmer until tender which should take about 15 minutes. Drain the potatoes.

While they are still warm, mash the potatoes (or pass them through a potato ricer) with the butter and then season with salt and a good grating of nutmeg. Allow the mash to cool for at least 30 minutes.

Using your hands, scoop out a small ball of mash and shape it into an oblong croquette. Repeat this until you have 12 croquettes. Lightly beat remaining egg in a shallow bowl and put bread crumbs in another shallow bowl. Dip a croquette into egg, letting excess drip off, then roll it in the bread crumbs until well coated.  Sit the prepared croquettes on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet.

Heat 2 inches of oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Fry croquettes in batches, turning occasionally, until golden brown this will take 4 to 5 minutes per batch. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Serve immediately.

yield: approx 12 croquettes

Having mastered the basics you can now begin your variations on a potato croquette theme – hiding a sliver of mozzarella at the center of the roll, enriching the mash with grated parmesan or pecorino, lifting it with finely chopped parsley or mint, making a mash of parsnip and potato, adding some salt cod…..

Thank you so much for all your kind and supportive messages, E mails and advice over the last few weeks. A particular thank you to Vincenzo who despite everything, has kept telling me, keeps telling me, to pull my finger out and get back into the rhythm of cooking, writing, reading, to get back here. It’s good to be back.