Progress on the project...

 ...has been slow over the past few month, for obvious reasons, but in practice we're now very close to being able to move in (and continue the work in-situ, rather than at the end of a commute).

The Lower Stairs: the railings have now been painted, and the doors stained (walnut - it looks quite handsome), while - mirabile dictu! - the upper door, which leads to the outside, now actually closes and seals. 

A view of the Salone: pictures, mirrors, hangings are still all to come. When I can get my head round how best to transport them.

More Salone: the famous stove-from-Torino. Which is not yet plumbed in, but we have at least  worked out with Sandro how it's to be done. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Yet more Salone: a rather dull picture, but justified by the fact that I'd finally managed to get that bloody curtain pole properly installed!

The Master Bedroom: the uneven-ness of the 

 floor means that the bed-frame is treachorous, if left to its own devices, and instead has to be held in place by that relatively discreet chain, which is attached to the roof beam....

In the woodstore-to-be, looking out to the entrance`courtyard, with the security gate for the archway waiting to be installed.

A corner of the kitchen, looking through into the Pranzo...

...and its almost-mirror-image, from the other side of the arch.

The four-footed, waiting to meet and greet at the entrance to the Pranzo from the stairs.

And more kitchen, with a Derby & Derby hearthside chair arrangement.

A view into the office (with the inevitable hand-drill and pot of paint in the foreground).

We're almost there!

Recipe: Lemon Bundt

 

I finally got round to researching Bundt recipes, recently, and was surprised (and, in a way, quietly impressed) to find that, as an idea, they are nothing more than a commercial construct. Even more so than the famous Ploughman's Lunch, which at least had something edible as its baseline. The concept of 'Bundt' it turns out was created by a company in the US, sometime in the fifties I think, as a way of promoting a series of interestingly shaped baking pans..and nothing more. Distantly, the idea was related to the traditional Guglhopf, or rather it was from the idea of the shape of the Guglhopf that the Bundt was derived, but it's at that point  that any connection with tradition of any kind definitively finishes. The word 'Bund' was apparently adopted as a nod to the idea of a 'group' or a 'party', and the 't' was added to the end of the word for no more complicated a reason than that it allowed the manufacturer to patent their product. So, out of the window go all those half-formed ideas of old cobbled streets and the charm of medieval towns somewhere in central Europe...to be replaced instead with the uncharming reality of a modern industrial complex somewhere in ...Pittsburgh, I think it is. 

And, along with all of that comes the recognition that Bundt cakes have no base theme in the sense of a recipe, and variations that flow from it. A Bundt cake is a cake which is made using a Bundt pan, and therefore any version of a sponge format which will reliably hold the shape of the pan once unmoulded will happily fit the bill. This particular recipe produces a dense, but not heavy cake, with good texture and  flavour. 

Ingredients:  4 medium eggs, separated; 160g butter; 250g sugar; zest and juice of 1 lemon; 500g ricotta; generous pinch of salt;1 tsp baking powder; 200g semola flour (or semolina); icing sugar (to decorate).

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 170 degrees C; grease your bundt mould.

2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

3. In a separate bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice and zest; add to this the ricotta and salt, and mix in well.

4. In a third bowl, combine semola flour and baking powder, and then fold this into the lemon mixture, making sure everything is thoroughly amalgamated. 

5. Fold into the mixture the beaten egg white, and then pour this into the greased mould, levelling the top afterwards. Bake for 50 minutes (usual test - if a skewer inserted comes out clean, the cake is done).

Leave the baked cake to stand for ten minutes, outside the oven, before you un-mould it, and, finally, sift icing sugar over the top, to accentuate the lines of the pattern.

The Pomiane Notebook

 

This is shameless self-promotion! I realised recently that many of the earlier recipes which I posted on here are probably merely gathering dust in some outer circle of the internet, since there's no reason that  anybody would access them these days unless they already knew they were there, and knew to go directly to them.

And so: a book. As illustrated above, in fact. A collection of some of the best of...

In truth, there was a secondary motive in compiling the thing, which was as a distraction from the TD's recent and rather grim health crisis: he's now in hospital with a broken back, and  recovering from emergency heart surgery (just over a week ago), while they try and isolate the underlying infection which has caused all of this. Anyway, late at night, and in between hospital visits, it's been cathartic just to edit a few more recipes, and to work on the draft for the book. It's now gone live, and can be found here

Lemon Meringue Pie

 

Not something I make frequently enough that I don't need to remind myself of the recipe, my go-to resource for Lemon Meringue Pie has for years been Michel Roux (the elder). Which has always slightly surprised me, since LMP isn't something you'd exactly think of as 'French' - but, then, perhaps it's a reflection of the fact that his wife was australian. 

Anyway. Having decided on this for dessert this evening, I then discovered that I've already packed the relevant volume, and that the recipe is right now out of reach and probably at the bottom of a box somewhere deep in the recesses of the house in Pieve. Necessity, and the Mother of Invention, prompted a search elsewhere, and I discovered an alternative version, which is quite different from the Roux recipe, but which is very straightforward, and the result was excellent.

For One 8" pie.

Ingredients: 8" shortcrust pastry shell; 3 eggs, separated, plus 2 whole eggs; grated zest of 3 lemons, and the juice of 4 lemons; 400g sweetened condensed milk; 150 ml cream; 90g sugar.

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C, and blind bake the pastry shell - 10 minutes with the baking beans inside, and 10 minutes more after the beans have been removed

2. Meanwhile, beat the 3 egg yolks together with the 2 whole eggs; use a little of this beaten egg to brush the base of the pastry shell at the end of the 20 minute blind-baking, and return to the oven for a couple of minutes, to set the egg layer.

3. To the remaining beaten eggs, add the lemon zest and juice, the condensed milk and the cream. Mix thoroughly, and then pour into the blind-baked pastry shell (almost certainly, you'll have more mixture than the shell can hold, so pour any leftover mixture into a ramekin and put it in the oven alongside the filled shell as the latter cooks).

4. Bake the filled tart shell for about thirty minutes, until the filling is no longer liquid.

5. While the base is cooking, beat the egg whites until stiff, and gradually add the sugar as the whites stiffen. 

6. Once`the base of the pie is cooked, remove the pie from the oven, and turn the temperature up to 200 degrees C. You can just slather the meringue on top of the lemon base, but I prefer to pipe it onto the surface, in a layer of rosettes - either way, once the egg meringue has been added to the pie, return it to the oven for about ten minutes, until the meringue has decently coloured.

Let the pie stand for about an hour before serving it (or leave it for much longer, and serve it properly cold).

As the evenings draw in…

 There’s much to be said for some indoor heating: 

The fireplace, newly installed in the library -
having travelled from a village on Lake Como

And the woodstove, now doing its stuff
in the master bedroom (and at least this one only
had to come from Pietrasanta!)

Sandro - having manhandled all of the various stoves and fireplaces into their new positions, and performed miracles in constructing new (and perfectly functioning!) chimneys for each and every one has now declared: Enough Stoves!!

He may have a point.

Tonight's dinner:

Garlic Shrimp

Hamburgers, with Poulette sauce

Dutch Apple Turnovers

A Good Read...

 

The Booker was announced this week, from a shortlist which was by far the richest I've read through, ever since I first started to read the longlist twenty and more years ago. Chapeau to Edmund de Waal, who as chair of the panel must have had a lot to do with the choice of the novels which ended up on the list.

'Orbital', by Samantha Harvey, was a worthy winner - mesmerisingly beautiful as it is - but in fact it hadn't been my first choice. Best of the bunch for me was 'Held', by Anne Michaels, which is staggeringly good...poetry in prose....with glorious phrases and ideas peppering the text throughout; closely following behind, if not joint equal IMHO was 'Stone Yard Devotional', by Charlotte Wood, which is head and shoulders better than the (admittedly good) other things of hers which I've read: this is a book which immediately calls to be re-read as soon as the final paragraph has been finished, to re-think all of those elements which have been casually half-buried in the text along the way. 

'Creation Lake', by Rachel Kushner, is impressive, and fun, and 'SafeKeep' is an excellent first appearance by a writer (Yael Van der Woden) who promises well for the future. I didn't like the sixth in the list, 'James' by Percival Everett, which was clearly the woke option, and only there for the purposes of public balance; in comparison with these others, I found it slight (from a writer whose work I find in general competent, but never great)...others might find more in it than I did, but for me it quckly turned into something I just wanted to finish and get out of the way.

I've also this week been reading 'Cat's Paw - A story of Friendship' by Will Collins. Not a writer I've come across previously, but I've enjoyed it. It's not necessarily a warm-and-cuddly read, but the pace and development worked for me and the references struck a deep chord.

Tonight's Dinner:

Peas and Feta

Chicken Jalfrezi

Almond Cake and Orange Mascarpone

Flamiche

For the recipe, go to http://www.pomiane.com/2007/01/recipe-flamiche-la-pomiane.html

Tonight's dinner:

Flamiche(s)

Pork loin, pot roast in red wine vinegar, with bay leaves; brussels sprouts and celery, in butter and parmesan

Pears poached in red wine, lemon and cinnamon, with mascarpone