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

Yesterday we went on our weekly trip from the cookery school here in Torrita di Siena to the market at Sinalunga. It a medium sized bustling little square packed with market stalls selling everything from wierd shaped tomatoes to imported Chinese toys. Fascinating however, to walk around and the guests and I always manage to pick up clothing bargains as well as a range of odd shaped tomaotes, beans in different sizes and locally grown fruits.

At the moment, there are sweet-smelling peaches in abundance, little hard but tasty pears, frierelli (probably not spelt right) sweet green peppers and Coche della Monica, the local variety of plum supposed to be so smooth and luscious they are like Nun’s thighs. Apricots too are everywhere, it seems the more ugly the tastier. I have been making apricot jam, then making Crostata di Albicocche (Jam Tart) out of the jam and topping it with fresh apricots.

However, the thing I need help with is fennel. The Italians talk about male and female plants producing thin weedy tough bulbs or heavier chunky bulbs. The larger type being sweeter and the thinner better for cooking. In the market you see the Tuscans picking out only the fatter ones. From my reading on the web, I see that male and female fennel doesn’t actually exist, merely different gene strands making a different shaped plant but I can only find one reference to this, any other ideas anyone??

Today we are off to our friends’ Livia and Nello’s house near Gracciano in Tuscany. They are 80% self-sufficient and it’s amazing to see how they live. They still live in the way that people have done for years around here. Today we are making peach jam. We’ll be baking it in the wood burning oven and then storing it in jars for winter (if we can wait that long)! I always wonder what people will make out of it, it is not “roses round the door” touristy although it has its pretty parts. We’ll be working in the garage in the shade as it is too hot outside already and its only 10.30am.

Our guests this week are from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Holland, USA and England so we are a real eclectic bunch but its fun to see all the nationalities gathered together with a joint passion for food and learning.

More later

Katie

Today we said goodbye to our first week’s guests from our cookery school in Tuscany. We establised good relationships with them and will certainly miss them. You get very close to people in a short space of time when you are all cooking, eating and living together. Our children have loved showing all ten of them their collection of weird and wonderful insects that they have collected over the last ten days here. Flavio has two amazing (dead but still amazing!) stag beetles and the top half of a rhino beetle!

We have certainly eaten loads of delicious food and consumed a fair amount of Tuscan wine too. Now we are waiting for the last four guests to show up, two from Greece and two from USA. We already have the English and two Dutch.

The Greeks have just arrived so I must show them around. Tonight we are having roast pork with rosemary and Amaretti semifreddo and this afternoon I have to collect more flowers for the table.

At last arrived in Tuscany at the end of last week after long but good journey here. Drove through hailstones the size of golf balls and had to stop, so scary, like the car was being pelted with stones. Stayed in the lovely Hotel Majestic in Lago Maggiore, what a beautiful place, it took my breath away looking over the little private beach and the lake. Our children, Giorgio and Flavio collected clams from the lake. We had to throw them back but if we had had a stove Giancarlo would have whipped up Spaghetti Vongole.

We put a tomato, basil and garlic salsa on top of ours, it goes so well and means I cant stop eating it.

Today we had the fifth day of our cookery course with some really nice guests. We have ten people and we took them to our friends house Livia and Nello to learn to make apricot jam the local way. They bake it rather than spend hours over a hot stove stirring it.

One of our guests wanted to see how to skin a rabbit so we watched Nello kill one and skin it. It brought tears to our eyes but we reckoned if we were going to eat it we should be prepared to partake it all parts of getting it to the table. I must admit however gruesome it is we are looking forward to rabbit ragu with rosemary and local white wine on homemade tagliatelle tonight. And I used to be vegetarian. I think I would eat less if I had to do that each time I felt like meat.

Well the cool glass of Prosecco calls and the sun is setting over the Tuscan hills so I must go and serve supper. The guests have arrived downstairs looking smart and smelling sweet. Instead my fingers smell of onions and I still have my pinny on.

Until tommorow

Katie

You will need a plastic tray, if you dont have them you can buy them easily at pound shops - that way you don’t care what happens to them!Some sticks, moss, pine cones, stones, shells etc

A couple of little dishes

Plasticine

Food colouring, not essential

Optional plastic miniature animals

First go on a hunting/gathering trip to the park or garden. Collect anything small that looks interesting from the list above and preferably get quite a bit of moss.

When home make a miniature garden on your tray using the sticks as bridges and trees supported by a blob of plasticine stuck onto the tray.

Fill the dishes, cover with silver foil if they are patterned, and fill with water. This is even better if you splash a few drops of food colouring in the water so you can have blue and green pools. The moss can then be arranged around the edge of the pools and animals can be placed on the moss having a drink at the pool.

Pine cones stood up on a little plasticine make a great wooded area. If you find any empty snail shells bring them back to life by making the snail out of plasticine and sticking the shell on top.

Walnut shells also make great parts of an animal.

My children do an enchanted garden about once a week now and spend ages putting them together. I love the look of the trays and seeing what they come up with to make out of what they have collected.

Our most recent attempt contains nativity figures to follow the Christmas theme. Giancarlo says when he was young he used to help the local priest in the church make their Presepio - the Nativity brought to life through moss, waterfalls, donkeys and little figures. I have seen some of these in churches at Christmas time and couldn’t believe how intricate and beautiful they are. It must be wonderful to see when you are a child.

Good luck with the trays, do have a go - the results are worth it.