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

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.