Katie Caldesi's Diary of Italian Living, Food & Culture.

To answer many questions regarding our school in Tuscany, we really hope to return  again this year.  However we will be moving to a new location for July and/or October.  As soon as we have any further details we will let everyone know. 

I really hope it works out, our year wouldn’t be the same without our mad dashes to the market in the early morning sun, barbecueing massive Fiorentina steaks outside and cooking all that fish on a Friday.  The children would forget how to catch lizards and how to ask for their favourite ice cream in Italian.  So for all those reasons we have to work something out!  Having just had our reunion dinner for those that attended last year’s course, it would be a shame not to do it again.

 Courses in Bray

However, courses nearer home!  We are going to start teaching at Caldesi in Campagna in Bray.  The dates so far are Mondays March 3rd and 31st, April 21st.  The courses will start at 10am, cost £100 a person and be taught either by Giancarlo and Katie or Gregorio and Katie.  We will make a three course lunch based on the cooking from Caldesi in Campagna and then sit down to eat it together with Italian wines.  Hope you can join us, for futher details and to book please call our cooking school office on 0207 487 0756.

Well, the post-Christmas period is typically a time of ‘calm after the storm’, not for me this year! On a personal note, I have finally upped sticks from London and moved into my new house in the country. I’m very happy with it now, but it’s been one hell of a journey to get here! So life on the blog has been a bit quiet recently.

 

Business-wise, Giancarlo and I have been here, there and everywhere tending to our various businesses and collaborations that we are involved with. This week we are honoured to be at the great British establishment Fortnum and Masons where we are demonstrating Italian recipes from our cookbook in the cookery section upstairs. Not only that the recipes are also featuring on the menu at their ‘Gallery’ restaurant. We really are chuffed as it is the first time that they have done a collaboration like this. The staff have been a delight to work with and made the journey out to Bray to train with our staff at ‘Caldesi in Campagna’. Speaking of which this, our latest ‘baby in Bray’, is going from strength to strength and two weeks ago we received a rave review from the formidable Jay Rayner from the Observer Magazine, so all that hard work is paying off.  My other ongoing project for this year is my cookery book that is coming out next year and as this will feature over 400 recipes I have a lot of work on my hands, speaking of which I better get testing…..

Ah, the beautiful countryside.  No matter what the weather is like somehow beauty prevails, as I splash my way through the country lanes driving the children to school I thank my lucky stars that I live here.  The odd deer or red kite is so much better than that angry London traffic. 

The restaurant is going well, despite initial hiccups of our smoky fires, lack of suitable electricity and no front door!  Our new front door arrives any day, the inner door is now in place and that just leaves Len the Flue to come and sort out our smoking chimneys.

The children and I have made a “presepe” - a nativity scene as they do in Italy.  We went to Naples to buy the pieces and had great fun constructing the stable, sand for the three kings, a water feature that Charlie Dimmock would be proud of and a home for the pizza man (well we had bought it in Naples!).  Now it is taking pride of place in our bar and amusing the customers.

More notes from Naples to follow but we are moving house on Wednesday so things are a little hectic here.

Just come back from Florence where we visited a castle that dates back to the 12th century. The sun was shining brightly on the vines but the wind whistled around us freezing me to the bones. Luckily Tuscan food is perfect for this weather and we were soon warmed by bowls of ribollita - thick vegetable and bread soup full of cavolo nero (black kale). We also had venison in red wine and a semifreddo packed with chestnuts.

This castle is a potential new venue for our cookery school, it is beautiful and has so much to offer in terms of location, atmosphere and not least cooking facilities. We are keeping our fingers crossed it all works out for next year.

At the Viva Italia show at Olympia I promised to put the recipe forPear, Pinenut and Raisin cake on my blog so here it is.

Torta Contadina or Franca’s Pear Cake
Franca is a very good friend of ours and a great cook. She makes pasta everyday for the Buca Sant Antonio restaurant in Lucca. Then she goes home to cook for her large family. Her pear cake is quick, easy and always delicious. She changes the flavour frequently according to the seasons using fruits such as apricots, pears, plums, apples or leaving out the fruit and adding chocolate pieces and walnuts instead. My favourite combination is pear and strawberry.

Serves 8 - 10

200 g flour
3 whole eggs
200 g sugar
Seeds scraped from a vanilla pod
15 g of baking powder
100 g butter, at room temperature
125 ml milk
Grated zest of 1 lemon
80 g raisins (optional)
50 g pinenuts (optional)
2 pears, peeled and cut into eights
50g of chocolate drops (optional)

First prepare a 25.5cm (10) cake tin with parchment paper by making a cartouche a circle cut to fit the tin. I think it is prettier to tear the circle out so that you have rough edges and have it protruding above the edge of the tin.

Using a whisk mix the flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, lemon rind and baking powder. Stir in the milk and mix until smooth. Add the pinenuts and raisins at this point if you are using them. Stir well to combine. Next tear the butter into smaller pieces with your fingers and whisk them in.

Pour the mix into the prepared tin and scatter or arrange (depending on whether you are going for the rustic or neat look!) the fruit over the cake. Push the fruit in a little.

Cook for 20-30 minutes at 180oC or until a toothpick comes out clean from the centre of the cake.

Tip: This recipe is much better done by hand rather than an electric mixer. There should be small lumps of butter left in the mix which will melt leaving holes that keep the cake light yet moist and buttery.

Ah the joys of our international restaurant community. Most of the time I don’t work with people who�have English as their first language. I have learnt to speak Italian, a little French, use plenty of gesticulations and somehow get through a normal working day but just occasionally something amuses me and I thought I would share it with you.

One of our young Italian waiters was serving a journalist and her husband the other day. The kitchen was nervous, he was nervous and we really wanted everything to go perfectly. The lady in question was served a salad of crab, avocado and it’s appropriate dressing. After a little while she�called the waiter back and said there was something in her salad. He panicked thinking it was something bad but couldn’t understand her so went off to find poor stressed Gregorio the Head Chef. Gregorio quickly donned a new neckscarf, changed his apron and went out to face his critic.

He immediately apologised for something being in her salad, was it a piece of shell, (we have had a shell in crab incident before - it happens, we cook and shell them ourselves). Gregorio sweated as she explained that yes there was something in her salad, a green herb with long leaves and she wanted to know what it was! He told her it was tarragon and she was delighted to know the recipe. Gregorio hastily went back into the kitchen and repromanded the waiter for worrying him unnecessarily!

I do remember when we had our first restaurant and I gave simple English lessons to the staff. I had to teach them once to say the special of the day - a warm salad of wild mushrooms and pancetta - they had real trouble in not saying - a worm salad.

Another fantastic mistake was a young waiter who insisted on describing the special of the day as - seabass on sauteed baby squirrels - the elderly ladies in question became quite upset as he insisted how good these baby squirrels tasted as they were in season now. Eventually the head waiter was called over as one of the women was becoming a little faint. He had to explain that the waiter meant baby spinach! I love that story, its one of those that I remember when I am sitting on a train on my own and it makes me smile when you know you can’t smile because you are on your own and then you want to smile even more.

We are at the show Viva Italia today at Olympia. It is really good this year with loads of interesting foodie and some fashion stands as well as the travel and property areas. Unfortunately marketing went out pretty late so it is not too busy. Anyway come if you can and say hello to us at the Caldesi Cookery School and Caldesi restaurant on the gallery level.

The party for the press is over, the two parties held for the residents of Bray is over and now we must deliver the goods at our new restaurant everyday. Everyone of our neighbours has been very welcoming and I don’t feel so much like the new kid on the block anymore. I have many acquaintances and now dare I say a couple of friends in Bray too. People have been so kind in this quintessentially English village.

This restaurant has had many owners in the past, I feel I know them all as the residents tell me how they long each business lasted and why they think they failed. We can only learn from them and hope that we stay here longer. Giancarlo and I, and our children, love being here. It is an absolute joy to wake up to the birds, the trees and fields and friendly faces, we have to make it work. Giancarlo would say “forget the trees and grass, what about the amount of money we have invested, of course it has got to work!”.

Time to wake up the sleeping boys, drive them to school, get the train to London and spend the day at our cookery school, then home again to the log fire, Gregorio’s cooking and a big glass of Tuscan wine, not a bad life. Let it last.

We have now officially opened our restaurant and have had our launch to the press. The sun shone last Saturday and despite my nerves they all seemed very happy, so we will await the reviews.

The garden at the back of the restaurant is now finished, complete with fountain, a huge array of terracotta pots that we brought back from Italy and herbs everywhere. The wood burning oven despite annoying our neighbour has worked perfectly and was much needed on the day of the launch as our gas oven inside broke down so everything was cooked outside.

The jazz band were great, it was Sam’s band. Sam and Jackie were knocked out of the show The Restaurant in week two. We met them and decided his jazz was better than his restaurant running and we invited them to play.

Off to London now to the businesses there, Marylebone is still a great place to be but I am more than content to come back to peaceful Bray in the evenings.

I cannot believe the moment has arrived when almost everything seems to be in place.  The till arrives today and I can make that final tick on my list of missing items.  That glorious moment that obsesses us list-makers, that goal to which we all aspire. 

To celebrate the end of the list we have invited 14 tables of press.  What will they be like, will they like our restaurant, our food, the candles in the loo and me - what if they hate my hair!  I hate my hair.  Not that I am paranoid but its a strange feeling to have created something you love and then invite a load of strangers in to criticize it (I really wish this blog did spellcheck - could it be critisize!). 

Right, children to school, ice pack on Giancarlo’s foot (strange swelling occurring at such a vital moment - was not on my list),  flowers to buy and then we are ready. 

Fingers crossed for tomorrow! 

We finally received our signs yesterday so we are open now to those intrepid customers who feel like being some of the first.  As yet no till has arrived, sadly that doesn’t mean your food is free but that you get a beautiful hand written bill by the lovely Jess or Salvatore. 

Apart from the till and the pictures that are still waiting to be hung I think we are almost there and actually it looks jolly nice even if I say so myself.  Gregorio’s food is lovely as my rapidly dissapearing waistline will tell you. 

Kirsty from Schemes Interior Design company and I had a great time choosing all the lovely fabrics, papers and chairs and the whole look is modern rustic.  At least that is what we keep telling ourselves.  Modern rustic.  You will have to tell me what you think.  I could go on tweaking with objects etc forever but I have to stop.  And I never need an excuse to go shopping for more ornaments, glassware etc to decorate the restaurant. 

Now all we need is you, we have the space, the log fires, the music and the food and wine.  But for atmosphere you need people, so give us a few days (Giancarlo and I and the children are off to Abergavenny food festival this weekend) and come and try us out.