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

Slow Food are holding Slow Fish Week in Genova from 4th to 7th May and to celebrate this and draw attention to it we are having our own Slow Fish Week. It will be a great fish menu at Caffe Caldesi and special fish cookery lessons at La Cucina Caldesi.

As a member of Slow Food I was sent details about the show in Genova, I would love to have gone but don’t have the time right now. Instead Jo Hynes, Manager of the cookery school, Gregorio Piazza, Head Chef and I have researched ‘good’ fish to create the menu.

It is not as straight forward as I originally thought, you can’t just say I won’t eat cod anymore, but instead you have to be aware where it is from and how it was caught. Some cod is fine to eat.

The other hugely important factor is that we should all be eating different types of fish and like choosing wine, instead of always going for Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio we should be trying lesser known wines and fish. This would stop us overfishing one type such as cod. We have now been experimenting with pollack (delicious and a perfect substitute for cod) and guernard (ugly but tastes great and who ever said fish had to be pretty).

In Italy so many recipes I find use cuttlefish. They are similar to squid and baby cuttlefish make a wonderful stew. If people think its squid they will order it in their droves but as soon as you write cuttlefish on the menu they think of grannie’s budgie!

It’ll be an interesting week as I wait for the customer reaction. To be ethically sound, its going to cost us and then in turn the customer so we will see who puts their money where they mouth is! Some of the first catch arrive today so I am keen to see if I can taste a difference in the wild fish rather than the farmed varieties.

For further information look at www.slowfood.com and next time you are buying fish ask the fishmonger for something other than the usual culprits.

By chance we happened to spend a night in Venice recently either side of a skiing holiday in the Dolomites. There was no available flight to an airport near the ski resort so this seemed to be the best alternative. What could go wrong apart from travelling with two small excited boys, two enormous and heavy suitcases and no direct train? Carnevale, that was the unexpected surprise.

I knew vaguely that Carnevale time was around the time of our visit and had hoped to see a few costumes. Our first night there, before the skiing week, was great. It was Giancarlo’s birthday and we decided to be tourists and treat ourselves to a gondola ride, something neither of us had done before. It was beautiful and quite different to float through the canals and duck under bridges in perfect tranquility. There was no noisy motor and the gondolier directed us away from the hustle and bustle into quiet waters. The only disturbance was our children and I joining in with the gondolier to sing Tanti Aguri for his birthday! How perfectly naff and delicious, what birthdays should be made of!

We took the children into St Mark’s Square supposedly to have a hot chocolate, see the architecture and enjoy the costumed parade which was beautiful. However boys being boys they were more obsessed with the wretched pigeons and trying to get them to sit on their heads! The parade was quite moving and at the end of the day so many tourists had left. It seemed quite sobering and moving as Venetians in old costumes marched along the street to the sound of drums. Some of the dresses were elaborate and beautiful, others very simple and illustrating the poverty as well as the wealth of the region.

We also watched some Commedia dell’Arte which was like going back in time and performed in traditional dress and without the use of microphones.

Food of Carnevale- mmm. I dont have a particularly sweet tooth but the sugary beauty of the cakes and buns in the tiny patisserie shops is enough to tempt anyone. I think my record was three doughnuts filled with a Marsala cream - Fritelle di Zabaione, a packet icing sugar covered fried pastry - Chiacchere, a vanilla pudding - Budino, two pieces of ricotta cheesecake and half an apple fritter; all in the name of research of course.

We managed to find a good restaurant for supper too, a bit bright on the lighting but otherwise great, it was Da Forno near our hotel Zan Zulian which I also recommend, near St Mark’s Square. Here we had fried calamari, baby squid and the soft whipped Baccala with potato, Baccala Mantecato.

We said goodbye to Venice and headed off for the snowy mountains in Trentino for a week. Great hotel, restaurants and plenty of snow. But that’s for another entry.

The last night of the holiday found us in Venice again before flying home. This was really not great, Carnevale was in full swing and unless you are young, don’t have children and are prepared don a costume and join the joyous masses in the streets, don’t go. It was hell, we pushed our way through slow moving crowds to go to the children’s games which was quite sweet but involved endless Italian-style queuing. Then had to eat near our hotel in Santa Croce at a restaurant where the food was good but they (and we) suffered the stench of drains with two children who kept holding their noses and complaining. Fun, fun, fun!

However the next day, the crowds had dispersed and the city’s regal beauty had returned. I would go to Venice again tomorrow and I found tears running down my cheeks the as we left this sparkling, watery gem of a place. I love Venice and one noisy night of the year won’t spoil it for me.