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.

It was one of those freezing cold winter day’s last Sunday and we decided to go to beach in Eastbourne where I grew up. There was bright sun, blue sky but a fierce cold wind. My father always says that weather like that blows the cobwebs out of your head, it certainly did. My boys and I loved it and played in the sand and threw stones into the sea. Giancarlo forgot his scarf, wore a open-necked velvet designer jacket and generally behaved like an Italian! After two minutes he complained about catching a cold (even when I reminded him that was a virus and had to be transmitted from someone else with a cold and there was no one around). He then said he could get pneumonia and retired to the warmth of the car.

When we were reunited we couldn’t resist a family trip to the fish shop on the beach. They sell a wonderful array of local and not so local fish and seafood. The boys love to see the lobsters, still blue and wandering around their tank. They have no quarms about eating them and on our last visit we horrified my parents by bringing back live crabs to cook, all at the request of Giorgio. This time we went for ready cooked crab claws, smoked eel, roast smoked salmon, smoked herring (smoked in the smokehouse above the shop) and some marinated anchovies. Back at the house we made a selection of antipasti and some pasta with smoked eel. Here are the recipes:-

Tajarin (Pasta from Alba) with smoked eel

Makes enough for six small portions

2 smoked eel fillets, chopped into bite-size slices ours came frozen but defrosted quickly out of the fridge.

1 red onion

Extra-virgin olive oil

Sea salt and fresh black pepper

Enough pasta for six

Fresh torn parsley to finish
1 284ml pot double cream, you may not need all this

Put some salted water onto boil for the pasta. We used some Tajarin thin egg pasta that I had leftover but any thin pasta would work such as spaghetti or linguine.

Chop the onion finely and fry in the olive oil in a frying pan until softened and the sweetness has developed. Meanwhite cook the pasta.

Add the eel to the pan with some salt and pepper and toss well until the eel is cooked. Next add the cream, enough to make a sauce for six, cook gently over the heat for a couple of minutes until the pasta is ready. Adjust the seasoning to taste and add the parsley. Next add the drained pasta to the saucepan, toss together well to make sure the pasta is coated in the sauce and eat straight away in warmed bowls.

Salted or Marinated Anchovies with Red Onion and Parsley
I small red onion
A couple of sprigs of parsley, roughly torn

Thoroughly, wash the salt off the fish under a tap and open them up, remove the spines, In the case of marinated anchovies, simply wash them under a tap to remove a little of the sharp vinegar taste (you may not need to do this, we didn’t on Sunday).
Dry them on kitchen paper on both sides and spread the fish out onto a serving platter.
Chop the red onion very finely and sprinkle over the fish.
Scatter over the parsley and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil. Serve with crusty bread for mopping up the juices.

Two nights ago we taught 75 people how to make pasta and dessert on board a Mississippi paddle steamer whilst going down the Thames. It was a challenge and our third attempt at a cooking lesson on board ship. It took a lot of organisation to get everything ready to cook a whole meal in a kitchen without so much as a wooden spoon. Six of us went from La Cucina Caldesi to Butler’s Wharf where we unpacked our car and carried everything on board. This wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been for the driving rain and wind and the fact that the car was a five minute walk to the boat.

Once on board we settled in and awaited our guests. It was pretty choppy on board and the swell made the bubbling pots of ragu and stock slide about on the gas rings. Our chef Gregorio swore (luckily in Italian) on several occasions and vowed never to cook on a boat again! Two of the staff felt sea-sick and the fumes from the engine blew into the kitchen area. All in all it was tough and I began to think I had done the wrong thing accepting the challenge. We then had one hour rather than the previously arranged two hours to teach the guests who were in a hurry to disembark and get back to their hotels.

The large party divided into six teams and we made fresh pasta, pesto, lasagna, chocolate torte, roasted fruits and Sicilian almond biscuits. It was great, such fun and great bonding for the company that had organised it. The guests then retreated to the upper deck to watch the view.

We then laid up for dinner and everyone ate well. Gregorio managed to keep all the pots on the gas, work the ovens and find the plates. Calls for more lasagna and tagliatelle meant the guests had cooked themselves a good supper. They got off at Embankment and we got to stand on deck for the journey back to Butlers Wharf enjoying a well deserved glass of wine.

London by night is beautiful and we had all forgotten that. To see the illuminated Houses of Parliament, the wheel, the South Bank from the river side was magical. We finally relaxed before the unloading began from boat to car. On the way home everyone opted to do the next boat trip, it was really good fun despite the hard work and we are looking forward to our fourth cooking lesson on the Thames on 2nd February.