FEASTS & FANCIES @ CHOCOLATE NOTES

Of Writers and Rice

I push open the door of Chocolate Notes and do a double take.  Two well-known, award-winning writers – one of whom I’ve met before – are sitting at one of the large corner tables.  After a moment of confusion (what are they doing in Norwich?) I remember that there’s currently some literary mini-festival at the University of East Anglia.  They’re holding court, wedged in by their agents (whom I also know) and surrounded by a few people I recognise as academics from the UEA.

I let the glass door swing shut behind me and catch the eye of the writer who recognises me, so I head towards the group. His stern expression softens.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to seeing him smile outside his black-and-white publicity photographs, in which he invariably strikes a moody, sultry, tormented genius pose with the trademark designer stubble that now looks more white than grey.  

He stands up and we shake hands.  I exchange nods, smiles and circumstantial words with the academics and the agents.

He introduces me to the other author who, I can’t help thinking, looks like an ageing, well-fed tomcat, with his ample girth pushing against the commercial-white shirt and the lapels of his black jacket, his slow, languid gestures and the sleepy, bespectacled eyes that seem to notice everything around him.  Eyes that linger briefly, assessingly, on me, the corners of his full lips stretching in an effortlessly charming smile.  You can tell that he always smiles at women, that he likes women, at least for a while, perhaps as long as a cat enjoys toying with a shrew.

A few people shift to make room for me but I decline the seat with a wave.  I don’t wish to impose on their gathering, I say firmly enough so they don’t insist.  I can’t write about this scene or draw cartoons of the characters if I am sitting among them.

I shake hands again with the first writer and congratulate him on his recent novel.   Then I find a table a little further away, where I can scribble and scrawl unnoticed, and drop my rucksack on the chair.

Jan is behind the counter, feeding a CD into the stereo.  The wistful, passionate chords of strings and a piano ripple across the café.  I look at Jan – by now I no longer need to utter my question out loud.

“Gabriel Fauré,” he says, “Piano quartet in C minor.”

“Do you know those two writers at the large table?” I ask.

“No… but they look familiar.”

I give him their names.

“I thought they looked important.”

“They would agree with you.”

Jan laughs and the writer I know suddenly looks up, aware of being observed.  His sudden tension is palpable, like an animal on alert, his penetrating eyes, once like shiny obsidian, now a milkier grey, suddenly harden and a shadow of frustration falls over them  A falcon who knows he can no longer see all the way beyond the horizon.  

I feel a pang of certainty in my stomach: he thinks Jan and I are making fun of him and that makes him angry.  Angry and frightened.  His younger self could have slashed us with his talon, but now he can no longer balance on one leg.  He fears he might fall.

I feel a shade of guilt, smile broadly and step towards him again. “I was telling Jan how much I loved your Liquid Silence,” I say.

His eyes soften a little.  “Ah, that’s very kind of you,” he replies.  Reassured, he turns his aquiline profile back to his retinue.

I return to the counter.  

“What was that about?” Jan asks.

“Smoothing feathers,” I say, keeping my back to the group.  

“Are you stopping for lunch?”

“Yes.  What’s the special today?”

He points at the blackboard.  “All-Purpose rice.  What topping would you like with it?”

“I trust you,” I reply, returning to my table.  While waiting for my food to be brought to me, I watch – as discreetly as I can – the literary mini-court at the large corner table again.  A forty-something academic tosses her long, pre-Raphaelite red hair and cocks her head as she speaks.  The tomcat raises his eyebrows and smiles, his eyes widening behind his lenses.  Next to him, his agent, a tall, lean woman in her sixties with extra-long legs and blonde highlights in her bob, nods slowly while darting glances around the group, protecting her investment.  The other writer is making a point – a very comprehensive one – peppered, from what I can hear from a distance, with quotations from Classical authors and ancient Greek philosophers. He occasionally lifts a hand from his lap to massage his stubble, as though to underline his message.  His eyes are tired, his once suntanned skin a little sallow, but in the eyes of his audience, he is still the falcon that never misses his aim.  Next to him, his agent, a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit, listens with an expression of quiet benevolence.  He knows his prey can no longer fly away from him.

I am cruel, I know.  But this is all too good a tableau.  I take my sketching pad and my 2B mechanical pencil out of my rucksack.

✑    

ALL-PURPOSE RICE

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

Composition:

❧ Basmati rice

❧ Peas (fresh or frozen)

❧ 1 carrot, peeled and washed

❧ 1 small onion

❧ 2 celery stalks (washed) 

❧ Vegetable stock (see recipe)

❧ Salt and black pepper

❧ Extra-virgin olive oil

❧ Fresh flat-leaf parsley

❧ A dash of white wine (optional)

Chop the onion, carrot and celery as finely as possible and cook in olive oil on gentle heat until soft and golden. Don’t rush, just stand there, stirring slowly, letting the flavours get acquainted and, once they’ve vanquished their natural shyness, commune.  Add the parsley, chopped coarsely, haphazardly.  Include the stalks – they’re flavoursome, too.

Throw in the rice (thoroughly washed), turn up the heat: it’s time for some action.  Stir briskly and coax the rice into absorbing some of the flavours of the vegetables.  Add a splash of white wine if you wish.  After about 5 minutes, start adding the vegetable stock a little at a time, still stirring.  Once all the ingredients are in the pan, add salt and bring to the boil.  Cook the rice the way you normally would.  Depending on whether you are using fresh or frozen peas, add them to the rice just a few minutes before the liquid has completely evaporated.  Start stirring again, to make sure the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.  Cook until the peas are ready.

Serve with prawns, tuna fish or anything else you like – or enjoy it as it is.

Feasts & Fancies: New Year’s Eve @ Chocolate Notes

The weather is true to this time of year in Norwich: undecided between rain and tentative sunshine, and temperature with mood swings.  A gust of warmth and coffee greets me as I open the glass door to Chocolate Notes.  And an unusually loud wave of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Pastorale de Noël.  

“Are you on your own?” I ask Fiamma, while removing my duck down coat, hat and scarf, and throwing them on a chair near the counter.

“Chrystelle’s in Paris with her family and Jan was supposed to be around, but as it’s been quiet in the past few days, I told him he might as well stay in Antwerp with his parents until after New Year.  Especially with all the Eurostar cancellations because of the flooding.”

It’s true that there are only a couple of tables occupied.  I wonder if Fiamma has turned the music up to fill the space.

“You and Howard going out on the town tonight?” she asks, her tone suggesting she already knows the answer.  

“No, no.  A quiet evening in.  We’ll be watching the fireworks from our windows.  What about you?”

“Piers is here for a few days.  For once, we’re in the same place at the same time.”

“So no going out either…”

“Absolutely not.  I’m a musician: I’ve been to many, too many New Year’s Eve parties…” She glances at her watch.  “As soon as I close here… I’m going straight home and not stepping out till I absolutely have to.”  Her large hazel eyes suddenly open wide with girlish excitement.  “Piers is cooking – and he’s brought a box of fireworks!” 

Piers is Fiamma’s other half and a conductor.  I haven’t met him yet.  

“Perhaps we’ll see them from our window!”

I’ve always enjoyed New Year’s Eve parties more in my imagination that in practice.  I’ve left a few either straight after midnight or even before midnight.  If I’m not having fun, I don’t stay.  Just like I can walk out halfway through a film or during the interval of a show if I’m not enjoying it.  There’s a part of me that still dreams of a New Year’s Eve party in some glamorous Venetian palazzo, black tie, evening dress, small live orchestra, dancing, crystal champagne saucers, golden fireworks mirrored in the black waters of the lagoon.  That kind of thing.  Or in the company of just a few very close friends in house in the countryside – as long as it’s a warm house (so probably not in England) – with an open fire, Baroque music in the background, gentle conversation, comfortable armchairs.  That kind of thing.  

In recent years, Howard and I have seen the New Year in quietly at home, with a nice meal, a bottle of good wine, and, as always, unparalleled excellent conversation.  And cake. 

Oh, I forgot to make cake yesterday. 

“What would you like?” Fiamma asks.

“A hazelnut hot chocolate, please.  And… I’ve just realised, I forgot to make a cake for Howard and me for tonight.”

“Would you like one from here?”

“Oooh… That sounds promising.”

Fiamma pops into the kitchen at the back and returns with something in a brown paper bag.

“Heavens, that’s what I call efficiency.  What is it?”

“Our signature Christmastide cake: beetroot and apple.  You have to have a red cake at this time of year.”

It certainly sounds original.  I reach into my rucksack for my purse.

“It’s on the house,” Fiamma says.  

“No, I can’t accept that –”

“Sure you can.  Besides, I’ll be closing soon and unless we suddenly have a coach party, I’ll have this as a leftover, and it’ll go stale. So do me a favour.”

She hands me the package, matter-of-fact, and smiles.  “Happy New Year to you and Howard.”

“And to you and Piers.  Thank you so much.”

   

BEETROOT AND APPLE TEA LOAF

Because for Christmastide, a red cake is the thing.

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

You will need:

❧ 2 eggs

❧ buckwheat flour (as much as needed)

❧ 1 small peeled, washed and grated beetroot

❧ Sultanas (as many as you like, since they will be the only sweetening ingredient)

❧ 1 peeled and finely sliced russet (or red) apple 

❧ Milk (enough to make the cake mixture of the right consistency)

❧ Salted butter, melted

❧ Rapeseed oil 

Mix it all, make a wish for the New Year, bake and enjoy.

A happy, healthy, wealthy, creative, peaceful and beautiful 2024 to you all!

FEASTS & FANCIES @ CHOCOLATE NOTES: EARLY WINTER TEA LOAF

I have always felt comfortable writing in cafés.  I have never been able to focus on any kind of work in libraries, not even when I was a student.  I find something distracting about the silence, perhaps because libraries aren’t really silent, and my ears are constantly teased by one soft sound or another.  Somebody turning the pages of a book, the tip of their pen scratching their notepad, a yawn, a cough, or – strange as you may think it, the sound and rhythm of other people’s breathing nearby.  I know you may laugh, but when I hear someone near me breathing, my own breath involuntarily falls in step with theirs and, as it’s not my own natural rhythm, I become so aware of it that I can’t stop listening to myself.  

Paradoxically, I find it much easier to ignore the much louder ambient noise in a coffee shop and can scribble away for hours, absorbed in a world of my own.  Of course, not all coffee shops.  The armchairs must be either soft and comfortable or else the tables and chairs the right height for my 5’3” frame.  I don’t like the music to be too loud, but the general chatter doesn’t bother me in the least.  Having said that, I carefully avoid sitting in proximity of young women.  Or even older women, actually.  

My female friends can shoot me if they like, but I find the shrillness of many women’s voices, when engaged in conversation, like having my eardrums scratched with a cheese grater.  Spreading your joy to the other customers is wonderful, but for some reason women tend to do it through sound rather than energy.  And the more excited they are, the higher their pitch.  Just think of how many octaves they suddenly soar when addressing a baby.  And watch how some babies respond to this, try and catch that Oh, God… Am I really going to grow up into that? expression in their eyes a second before they grin back.  I sometimes wonder if babies understand much more than adults realise, but play along not to hurt their feelings.  

Dogs, trained for thousands of years to be professional pleasers, seem to enjoy this affectionate shrillness.  Try it on a cat, and you’ll soon feel smaller than a pin.

Although I am capable of writing pages and pages in a café, I do enjoy people watching and eavesdropping.  The body language of strangers, particularly when you can’t hear their conversation, can be engrossing.  Even a brief interaction can be a story in itself.  Often, when you do watch the exchange with the soundtrack, you notice that what the voice expresses is at odds with the body language.  Then, there are those who hold extensive, deeply private conversations on their mobile phones, with topics that range from their health to their sex life, to how much they’ve offered for a new property.

I couldn’t ever translate in a coffee shop.  Although increasingly literary translators are considered writers and co-authors of the books they convey into another language, in my own personal experience the two skills are very different.  Translating is like dancing the tango, or the quickstep, or the Viennese waltz.  The author leads (or should) and I, the translator, follow them.  I do know my steps, but I rely on the author to steer me in the right direction and keep me safe from collision with other couples because, well, I am dancing backwards, and there’s always the fear that if my heel catches on another dancer’s foot and our dance routine goes pear shaped, it will all be my fault.  Therefore, even when I trust the author with my eyes shut, it’s always better if the room isn’t crowded – just in case.  Writing, on the other hand, is like a solo dance number.  There is no trust-related stress issue, no steps to follow, no partner to second-guess.  I am responsible for myself alone, so can focus exclusively on what I want to do, and the feeling of freedom somehow reduces any fear of interference from others. 

Needless to say, in Norwich, my favourite café for writing is Chocolate Notes.  Since it doubles up as a classical music CD shop, there is always wonderful music streaming through excellent quality loudspeakers, and you can always request a favourite piece.  Fiamma, the viola player owner is friendly and caring towards her customers.  Her staff are lovely.  Flemish-Belgian Jan, who is doing a Ph.D. in Art History at the University of East Anglia, provides first-rate conversation and a no-prisoners-taken sense of humour.  Chrystelle, the latest addition to Chocolate Notes, a petite Parisian with a short blonde bob and a strand of fuchsia hair that flops down from her side parting, shy at first, is slowly coming out of her shell.  Their wide range of hot chocolates is a unique treat and now they also provide food, so if I get hungry, I can order lunch.

I don’t have a sweet tooth but today, the day is icily still and grey, and a cloak of fog is blurring the horizon.  The dark clouds are threatening rain.  As I scribble away, Chrystelle, who is discovering the tradition of English choral singing, starts playing a CD of King’s College Choir performing Arnold Bax and Gerald Finzi. The moonbeam-like sound of the trademark King’s trebles sweeps up to the van vaulting of the chapel with unparalleled acoustics,  in a heart-stoppingly sublime Mater Ora Filium by Bax.

I screw the chrome cap back on my Faber-Castell.  It’s time for a mini-break from writing.  Chrystelle looks up.  “Can I have an Earl Grey, please?” I say.  “And I’ll try a slice of your Early Winter Tea Loaf.”   

✑    

EARLY WINTER TEA LOAF

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

Composition:

❧ 3 eggs

❧ 250 g chestnut flour

❧ 3-4 teaspoons natural raw cocoa powder

❧ ⅓ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

❧ Seeds from 8 or 9 cardamom pods 

❧ 3-4 generous tablespoons clear honey

❧ A small handful pumpkin seeds

❧ 3-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil + a little for greasing the loaf tin

❧ Milk 

Beat the eggs with the honey, then add the sifted chestnut flour, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda, as well as the cardamom seeds, while whisking/stirring.  

Add enough milk to obtain a creamy consistency, and the pumpkin seeds (shelled, naturally).  Stir/whisk again, then pour mixture into a greased loaf tin.

Bake at 170-180ºC until you can pierce the cake with a skewer and it slides out clean.  To avoid the top of the cake overbaking, you may like to cover the tin with some greaseproof paper.

Serve with coffee, or black or herbal tea.

A Niçard Scrapbook: The Blue, Blue Sea.

It was one thing I was determined to do in Nice, even more than to see the Dufy collection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts.  For weeks, I pictured myself slipping off my sandals and standing in the sea up to my ankles.

✑

I grew up near the sea: in Rome, in Athens and, of course, in Nice.  Summers went hand-in-hand with frequent days at the beach spent swimming, sleeping in the sun or under a wide parasol, and strolling by the water’s edge, picking up shells or unusual stones.  At night, I would fall asleep with the sound of the waves swashing back and forth in my head, and, more often than not, sea water in my ears, which would then be drained with the help of a warm hair dryer the following day.

For all that, I never used to care much for the sea.  I found it too noisy, overwhelming, exhausting.  Too big.  Instead, I have always been drawn to rivers.  Calmer, less in your face, more soothing.

As a small child in Rome, I was terrified of deep water.  I was sent to swimming school for a month.  The instructor grabbed the other children one by one and tossed them in at the deep end, commanding them to move their limbs.  I watched in chilling horror, imagining myself drowning.  I pushed my way to the back of the line all morning and, somehow, the instructor didn’t notice me.  I managed to stay below the radar for the duration of the course.  On the final day, all the parents were invited to cheer their offspring’s acquatic prowess.  To my mother’s disappointment and embarrassment, while my peers dived, raced down the lanes and made cartwheels in the water, I just clung to the corner at the shallow end of the pool. 

When I was nine and we moved to Athens, it was my grandmother who finally taught me to swim, using her customary softly, softly, catchee monkey pedagogy.  

“Don’t be scared, solnyshko, I’m holding you,” she would say, propping me up with the palm of her hand under my stomach as I lay flat on the water.

I started to paddle, then swim, safe in the knowledge that she was supporting me.  Until the day I realised she was standing a few feet away from me.  I panicked.  “What are you frightened of?” she said calmly.  “I haven’t had my hand under you for a few days now.  You see? You can swim.”

✑

I hadn’t stepped into the sea since circa 2000.  I was spending the weekend at a friend’s house in Sussex and she took me to the beach.  I walked into the water up to my shins and it unnerved me not to see my toes.  The water was murky and very, very cold.  Something coarse slithered around my legs, I shrieked and ran back to the beach, brown algae clinging to my calves.  I didn’t try the English sea again.

Howard and I sometimes go walking along the much-admired Norfolk coast.  I come home with my pockets filled with shells, hagstones or flint with quartz inclusions.  Of the little coast I have seen that is accessible to non-drivers, the three-banded Hunstanton cliffs have filled me with awe.  There is something powerfully elemental and forbidding about them. 

Other than that, I’m afraid I don’t like it much.  I guess the Norfolk coast does have its charm… if you appreciate bleakness.  People can be touchy when I say that.  There is always someone who stands up in its defence and even provides photographic evidence of blue waters.  All I know is that whenever I’ve been to the Norfolk coast, the briny has always been a grey or a grey-brown.

✑

“Look! Look!” I said to Howard, showing him his first glimpse of the Baie des Anges through the window of our train as it followed the coastline.  “Look! It’s blue! Blue! Can you understand now why the Norfolk coast leaves me cold?”

During our six days in Nice, in early October, my eyes drank the blue of its sea greedily.  The more I stared at it, the more I craved it.  I hadn’t seen such a blue sea for decades and only now did I realise how much I had missed it.  Or perhaps I hadn’t really missed it.  Perhaps I hadn’t needed it all these years and needed it now.  People change.

Few people know that the anges of the Baie des Anges don’t actually refer to heavenly angels, but to the angelsharks that used to populate the bay.  But when I was growing up in Nice, from the age of nine to fifteen, I liked to believe, like so many, that angels were drawn to this bay because it was so blue, even bluer than the sky above it.  The Côte d’Azur, where I swam every summer for six years.

“I’m doing it this morning,” I informed Howard, a couple of days after we arrived in Nice.

I had forgotten how challenging it is to walk on a shingle beach, especially as you reach the foreshore.  I smiled, remembering the time it would take me to arrange all the shingles under my beach towel, when I was a girl, so they would lie flat, only finally to lie down and feel one rogue stone standing up, poking me under the shoulder blade.

Summoning all my Qi Gong training, I stood balancing on one leg, then the other, while slipping the leather strap from my heels and removing the sandals.  I had also forgotten how uncomfortable it is to walk barefoot on the shingle beach and at the same time there was no denying that it felt like deep-tissue massage to the soles.  I stood for a few moments watching the waves rush to the shore, frothing, then pulling back.  Like breathing out and breathing in.  Between me and the horizon, this expanse of blue, deep blue, shimmering blue.  The kind of blue you want to feast your eyes on, breathe into every corner of your imagination, cleanse your heart with, and store for ever in a corner of your soul.  Swathes of blue apatite and aquamarine, with flecks of silver glistening in the sunlight.  A warm blue, I suddenly realised, is possible.

I took another couple of steps and the pebbles gave under my weight slowly and I landed on the cool, wet shingles.  The water, the warm water, rushed to embrace my feet, the foam burbling around my ankles.  Another couple of steps.  The wave retreated, sucking up the shingles from under my soles, with a sound like rain, defying my sense of balance, teasing me.  I was standing in the sea up to my shins looking at my toes, their every detail crystal clear in the limpid water.  The next wave, more daring, flung itself at me, engulfing me and my skirt up to my knees.  I laughed.  I didn’t care who saw me or heard me.  So I would walk back across town with half my skirt soaked in sea water.  So what? I was having more fun, feeling more exhilarated than I had in a long time.  And the feeling of freedom, the feeling of freedom was inebriating.

I have stored that blue in a corner of my soul.  In these weeks of constant rain, greyness and morning fog, back in Norwich, I often need to summon it from my memory.  I can see it, my eyes closed.  That blue, deep blue, swathes of apatite, aquamarine and shimmering silver.  A blue like no other blue.

Scribe Doll 

FEASTS & FANCIES: HALLOWE’EN @ CHOCOLATE NOTES

At Chocolate Notes, there are no polystyrene cobwebs on the glass front door, no hairy spiders climbing the walls, no plastic bats swinging from the ceiling and no pumpkins with macabre grimaces.  Unlike in many other shops and cafés, the faces of the staff at Chocolate Notes are not painted with scars or trickles of blood.  I comment on it. “Why would we want to look ugly or scary?” Fiamma replies.  “Haven’t we got enough ugliness and fear in the world as it is, at the moment?”

I am about to remark that, with her Titian-red hair coming down in curls over the shoulders of her forest-green dress, Fiamma reminds me of a witch, but I bite my tongue, just in case.  That is actually how I always imagined witches when I was a little girl: with deep red hair and a dark green dress.

On the other hand, there are strings of maple leaf fairy lights hanging on the counter and over the CD racks.  There is a bowl with red, gold and sienna autumn leaves and glossy conkers on every table in the café.  

I can’t place the music coming out of the loudspeakers.  I know it’s by Paganini, but… I decide to ask. “Paganini’s Le Streghe [The Witches’ Dance], opus 8,” she says.

I try  to stifle a giggle but it’s too late.  Fiamma sees the expression on my face, gives me a wink and we both grin.

Fiamma has a point.  If you think of it, why this glorification of fear and horror? Do we really need a boost of adrenaline in these times?

There is a nod to the day, however, with a Squash and Rice Bake on the lunch menu.  

✿

I recently read in The Guardian that trick-or-treating may have originated over a thousand years ago, when folks would go from house to house, offering to pray for the souls in Purgatory in exchange for a little something.  At least, they were willing to provide something in exchange for the food or donation.  There’s something slightly entitled about demanding sweets – or else the threat of a trick (though I did use to find it adorable, in London, when titches dressed as witches and ghouls rang my doorbell – apples and clementines were accepted with surprising enthusiasm!).  It’s true that children enjoy it, but what are we teaching them? That they can obtain something by threat? How would it be, if children knocked on doors and said, “A treat for a good spell?”

I know, I know, I’m being a spoilsport.  I’ll stop now.

Only, while dressing as beasties and vampires and carving eerie grins into pumpkins, spare a compassionate thought for the thousands of women – and some men, and innocent pets – tortured and executed throughout the centuries for so-called witchcraft.  Women who fell on the wrong side of Society perhaps because they were alone, unprotected by men, or because they used healing methods looked on with suspicion by conventional apothecaries and physicians, or because they were too ugly or too beautiful.  They may have lived their lives slightly differently to other women, stepped to a different music because they may have heard the beat of a different drum.  They might have brazenly cultivated and exploited their talents instead of retreating behind so-called respectability and shrinking in much-commended female modesty.  They might have simply been innocents, nature daughters who lacked the craft of social survival, or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  

Spare these women a thought today.  One of them may have been your ancestor.

SQUASH AND RICE BAKE

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

For some years now, I have carved squashes instead of pumpkins.  Pumpkins, at least in the UK, I find watery and bland.  Squashes, on the other hand, have a lovely, sweet flavour.  If I am going to spend an hour scooping out the flesh and cutting out patterns, then I might as well enjoy the culinary result.

Feeds 3-4 people

Composition:

❧ 1 butternut or red squash

❧ 200 g white basmati rice

❧ 250 g grated Parmesan

❧ 2 small or 1 large onion

❧ 2-3 cloves garlic

❧ small handful of fresh sage leaves

❧ 2 tbsp pine nuts

❧ a pinch of cayenne pepper

❧ 250 ml single or oat cream

❧ salt

❧ pepper

❧ extra-virgin olive oil

❧ water

❧ a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds to garnish (optional)

Very carefully, taking care not to injure your fingers, cut the squash into thick slices, then peel and remove seeds and the stringy part (if you have time and inclination, the seeds can be washed and dried). Dice each slice. Pour the olive oil into a deep frying pan or wok, heat, add the chopped onions and garlic and fry until golden.

Add the diced squash and a little water to facilitate the stewing.  Cover and cook, stirring regularly, until the squash is very soft.  At some point while the squash is stewing, add the pine nuts, salt, pepper and chopped sage leaves. If you like, sprinkle a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper.

Boil the rice in salted water until almost – but not quite – soft.

Once the squash mixture is soft, pulp with a potato masher, add the cream, half the grated Parmesan, and the cooked rice, stirring thoroughly.

Spoon the mixture into a greased oven dish, sprinkle the remaining Parmesan on top and bake in a pre-heated oven at about 200 – 220ºC, until the cheese has formed an appetising brown crust.

Serve with, if you wish, a sprinkling of toasted pumpkin seeds.

FEASTS & FANCIES: BAROQUE PORRIDGE at CHOCOLATE NOTES

My body and mind are having some difficulty adjusting to Norwich after a few days in the  south-east of France.  My muscles stiffen against the North Sea wind blowing ruthlessly across the Fens and Broads, my skin feels uncomfortably cold from the insidious humidity and my eyes – my eyes want to shut away the bleakness, the stark greyness, and focus on the deep, velvet-blue of the sea, still impressed on my retina, the warm, welcoming sea in which I stood up to my ankles only last week.  I fear that the shapeshifting East Anglian sky and its many shades of now opaque, now luminescent, now lead grey, is jealous of my wavering allegiance to its beauty.  Your ancestors were reared among the rugged crags of North Cornwall, lashed by the frothy Atlantic waves.  Snap out of it! You’re half Celtic, for crying out loud! it seems to say.  

It drives the message home by letting loose a gale and ripping open the clouds, unleashing a downpour of Arthurian proportions.

“Aye, that I am,” I reply, “but my wet nurse was the gentle Mediterranean.” Then I close the curtains and post a photo of the Baie des Anges, the Bay of Angels, and its blue, blue sea with swathes of apatite and aquamarine trimmed with shimmering foam, and post it on social media.

The teeming rain pummels the roof and thrashes the French window panes all night, forcing its way through the door frames.  By morning, there are small puddles to wipe from the inside doorstep.  I’ve always wondered why so many English houses aren’t built to be English-weather-proof.  Perhaps because that would go against the English principle of character-building.

Stuff all that North European severity.  I need warmth – physical and emotional.  I need colour.  I need some self-indulgent baroque.  And breakfast.  It’s after eight, so I head to Chocolate Notes.

I squeal with pleasure as soon as I push open the heavy glass door.  The air in the café is effervescent with Handel’s notes.  The “now playing” gilded frame stand by the till has a CD of Sandrine Piau singing Handel arias wedged in it.  Handel Enchantresses.  Piau’s melismas are warm and rich, with something amber-like in their tone. 

“I want,” I say, pointing at the CD with what I hope is a playfully cheeky rather than a presumptuous grin.  

“We have another copy, still sealed,” Fiamma replies with a broad smile.  I’ll put it aside for you.”

“I’m also hungry for food,” I say, examining the menu board.  “I really need something warming, as warming as this music.”

Fiamma turns to peruse the swirls of chalk on the blackboard behind her.  “How about our new porridge?”

I make a face.  “I’ve never liked porridge, I’m afraid.  My husband, on the other hand, has it every morning, religiously, and actually misses it when we’re away from home.”

“Why don’t you like it?”

“It’s just mush.  And it makes me think of cold mornings… and moral austerity.”

Fiamma laughs.  “I think you’ll find our new porridge anything but austere.  It’s so extravagant it’s positively baroque!”

I also burst into healing laughter.  “Baroque porridge? Now that I’ve got to try.” 

BAROQUE PORRIDGE

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

Just to prove that you can make porridge without milk!

Composition:

❧ Scottish jumbo whole rolled oats

❧ Hazelnuts

❧ Walnuts

❧ Almonds

❧ Brazil nuts

❧ Cranberries (preferably home-dried, without adding sugar)

❧ Goji berries

❧ Dried mulberries 

❧ Sultanas

❧ Pumpkin seeds

❧ Sunflower seeds

❧ Hazelnut or peanut butter, or coconut oil

❧ Water

❧ 100% (unsweetened) cocoa powder (optional)

Throw all the ingredients into a saucepan, add as much water as required for your preferred consistency, bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes (depending on how soft you like it), stirring constantly. 

I like to soak the nuts either overnight in cold water – on the rare occasions when I know what I will want for breakfast (and if I will want breakfast) the night before – or for 20 minutes or so in a cup of freshly-boiled water.

FEASTS & FANCIES: Equinox at Chocolate Notes

There’s a wind blowing and I can feel its chilly breath on my bare toes as it weasels its way through the gaps in our French windows despite the thick draught excluders.  You’re never very far from meteorological elements in an English house.  

This wind curbs my hopeful rowan saplings and buffets the other infant trees on our balcony: the cypresses, the olive tree, the hazelnut and all nine baby oaks grown from last autumn’s acorns.  It ruffles the manes of the tall pines in the distance and lifts the seagulls that surf on its gusts.  Every wind is different and I know this is no ordinary wind.  It’s friendly, but it says, Don’t push me, don’t underestimate me.

It toys with the clouds, chases them, fluffs them up, shoos them off the sun’s face, scatters them, then makes them huddle together again, merging them before separating, sculpting them.

I step out on the balcony and it tousles my hair and pats my face, teasing me, but I know there is a serious message behind its jocular tone.  I throw my head back, close my eyes and open my arms.  If the neighbours don’t like it, they can look at something else.  

Every wind has its own personality and I am always sorry English winds have no names.  They’re just northerly, southerly, westerly, easterly, etc.  Breezes, gales or storms.  Italian and French winds are called scirocco, ponentino, tramontane, mistral, to name but a few.  For want of anything more poetic, let’s call this the autumn equinox wind.  It’s no ordinary wind.  It’s purposeful, encouraging, urging.  It’s time to collect all the pieces of yourself you scattered over the summer, it seems to say.  It’s time to put yourself back together.  Today, when night and day are identical in length, balance your yin and your yang.  Get ready to embrace the darkness that will start growing from tomorrow: like the rich, dark soil, prepare to sow in it all the colours of your imagination.

I’ve always loved this time of year, when autumn, after its shy first steps in early August, comes into its glorious own and tells you that it’s time to start planning, preparing, building.  And, first and foremost, dreaming.  Autumn always feels more like a new start for me than spring.

I stand with my arms open for a few seconds longer, then take a deep breath, let it fill every cell in my body and feel myself becoming whole again. 

Chocolate Notes have just reopened after six weeks of building work to install a larger kitchen.  They will be now serving some more food.  I decide to stop work for the day, in honour of the equinox.  Back from her concert tour, Fiamma is behind the counter, writing the day’s menu in coloured chalk on the glossy blackboard.  Her handwriting is full of swirls.  Jan is wiping the gleaming new counter top.  Pandolfi‘s violin sonatas give fizz to the atmosphere.  

“My favourite!” I say.  “Why does no one ever play Pandolfi live?”

“Because he’s extremely difficult to play and not many people know him,” Fiamma replies, still writing on the board.

“Bah,” I protest, reading the menu.  “Baked eggs with prosciutto and herbs…”

“It’s just the weather for it,” Jan says.  “There’s a chilly wind out there.”

BAKED EGGS WITH PROSCIUTTO AND HERBS

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

For this you need an deep-ish earthenware or oven-proof dish, like a large ramekin.

Ingredients (per person):

❧ Two fresh eggs

❧ 1-2 slices Parma ham

❧ Extra-virgin olive oil (or, better, olive oil flavoured with truffles)

❧ Black olives

❧ A small handful of fresh, washed herbs (parsley, tarragon, mint, chives, basil, oregano, thyme or whatever you fancy)

❧ A few spears of asparagus

❧ Carefully washed alfalfa sprouts (optional)

❧Salt and black pepper. 

Oil the bottom of your ramekin,  line it with the Parma ham and break two eggs on top, taking care not to tear the yokes (not a tragedy if you do).  

Add a few olives, a tiny bit of salt (the Parma ham is salty already!) and some black pepper.

Sprinkle with the herbs, finely chopped and drizzle with more oil.

Bake in a moderately hot oven until the egg whites are firm and the yokes are still quite soft (or well done, if you prefer).

Serve with steamed asparagus spears and alfalfa sprouts – or any other accompaniment you prefer.

The Sorrows and Joys of Translating Italian Dialects

When you translate Italian literature you will, more often than not, come across expressions in one of many dialects or vernaculars. It’s the difficulty and – even more – the joy of being a It>En translator. Here is an article I have written on the subject, kindly published by New Italian Books (also available in Italian and French translation!):

The Sorrows and Joys of Translating Italian Dialects

FEASTS & FANCIES: Back to Basic Tomato Sauce

When I am run down emotionally I find preparing food very healing.  I choose the word preparing deliberately. Healthy and healing cooking involves preparation. Preparing the ingredients, the utensils, the table. Preparing the dish as a whole. Preparing yourself first and foremost, your state of mind.

Like most people, I tend to cook incidentally, in other words because of the necessity to eat.  Cooking becomes a means to an end and, as a result, is often sacrificed to the end result, like an inevitable chore. I have to juggle cooking with my all-consuming job, cleaning, tidying up, administration, a small amount of socialising, being married, washing, sleeping, etc. Recently, however, rushing with food preparation had been making me grumpy and dissatisfied. Rushing any act feels like not giving it the due respect or consideration and, therefore, failing to engage with it fully. 

Mindfulness is a word much branded about. You have mindful washing up, mindful dog walking, mindful gardening and mindfulness for its own sake. It’s a word that has always grated on me and I’ve only just understood why.

I don’t mind

Never mind 

Mind your own business

Mind the gap

Mind you do that

Mind how you go

I associate the word mind with dismissiveness or else warnings, caution, wariness, threats.  I once had a colleague who exercised mindfulness so mindfully that she would glance at the clock and say, “I am mindful of the time.”   I wanted to scream.

I prefer the word engage. When you engage with another person, you look into their eyes when you talk, you press your whole palm against theirs when you shake hands with them. You form a bond. This bond is essential even when you are disagreeing with someone. Engaging with someone means acknowledging them, committing to them for that moment, whether it is to like them or fight with them. When you engage with food and its preparation you infuse it with a part of yourself and allow it to seep into you.

I like the idea of committed cooking, of a cuisine engagée.

The Slow Food movement in Northern Italy has a point: to engage with food fully, you need to slow down just as much as it takes. 

As a child I was a naturally very slow eater. Apart from being unable to cope with very hot food in my mouth – which meant that by the time the temperature was sufficiently comfortable for my tongue everyone else was halfway through their meal – I chewed very slowly so was still eating when the others were getting bored, glaring at me, raring to leave the table. After the right amount of ridiculing and telling off, I acquired speed and, as a teenager and an adult, was able to hold my own in the fast lane by swallowing.  At least I stopped driving everyone else crazy.

Now that I’m taking a few weeks off work, cooking has become something not just nourishing but nurturing. A form of self-pampering with results my husband also relishes. Cooking for myself, when I have time, is a delight, but sharing the food I cook with someone who enjoys it is double the joy.

Earlier, I mentioned preparing oneself for cooking. I like to finish whatever I was doing beforehand so that I can concentrate fully. After nearly half a century of excelling at multitasking, I’ve decided that I hate it. Multitasking is not like juggling, where you actually focus on one activity: keeping balls in the air. Multitasking feels like tearing myself to shreds and tossing the pieces around the room haphazardly.

There’s nothing like a mini-ritual to give an activity a sense of occasion. My ritual, before cooking, is to wash my hands – not for reasons of hygiene so much as a way of washing away other concerns and distractions. Then I like to rub my palms together: warm hands feel luckier and more creative.

Given the choice, I prefer cooking from scratch. The same way as I prefer walking or taking a train somewhere rather than flying. It gives me a sense of continuity and progression.  It makes it easier to follow the process of cause and effect. Cooking from scratch is a little like going around the room, picking up the scattered pieces and putting myself back together.

Sometimes, I feel like getting back to basics, to something elementary and elemental. One of my favourite things to make in the kitchen is tomato sauce for pasta. Generally, I throw it together with passata from a bottle and thicken it with tomato purée from a metal tube and add whatever dried herbs I happen to have on the shelf.  But, a couple of times over the summer, I treat us to sugo al pomodoro made with real, fresh tomatoes from the market.  It’s very easy to make but it takes a long time and that’s what I love about it. I just sit at the kitchen table with a book, the week’s New Yorker or my notepad and fountain pen, daydreaming and waiting for the sauce to thicken, listening to it simmering gently for an hour, or two if the tomatoes are watery.  It’s a gentle, bubbling sound, regular and soothing, almost like the song of cicadas on an August afternoon in Rome.  And the slightly sharp fragrance of tomato laced with the earthy bitterness of extra-virgin olive oil, the warm brightness of fresh basil leaves, all brought into harmony under the rule of crushed garlic, is the smell of a cosy home, and a generous table.  It’s better even than the cosy aroma of fresh coffee.

Truly Basic Tomato Sauce for Pasta

This is truly a recipe where less is more, as long as you have good, flavoursome ingredients.  They are (for a generous helping for two people):

❧ 1 kg fresh tomatoes (I buy large cherry tomatoes from our local market: the skins are so delicate that you don’t need to remove them).

❧ 4 small/medium cloves garlic

❧ 1 small bunch fresh basil

❧ Extra-virgin olive oil

❧ Salt & pepper

❧ 1 pinch cayenne pepper or crushed chillies (optional)

❧ Good-quality black or green olives (optional)

Wash the tomatoes.  If the skins are thick, soak the tomatoes in boiling water until it cools, then peel off the skins.  Chop the tomatoes into small pieces.

Peel and crush the garlic cloves and add them to a generous amount of pre-heated olive oil in a large-ish saucepan (that way, when the sauce starts to simmer, most of the red droplets will be confined to the pan instead of bouncing out and dotting your entire cooker top – one hopes!)  When the garlic has turned golden, remove the pan from the heat and let it cool for a couple of minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes, bring to the boil, turn down the heat and let the sauce simmer until the tomatoes have turned to mush.

Meanwhile, wash the basil, dab it with kitchen paper to absorb excess water and either cut or tear up the leaves before adding them to the simmering tomatoes.

Let the sauce simmer for an hour or two or however long it takes for it to become as thick as you would like it to be on your pasta.  Make sure you give it a stir regularly and be careful it doesn’t burn at the bottom.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

I like to make this sauce one or two days before I need it and keep it in the fridge because I find that this time makes the flavour deeper and richer.

Bring to the boil and simmer gently for a few minutes before serving with spaghetti, grated parmigiano reggiano and, if desired, olives and a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper or chillies.

Enjoy.

Sinatra and Bennett – soundtracks to a childhood

I was very sad to hear of Tony Bennett’s passing, a couple of weeks ago. The last of the great crooners, I thought. Crosby, Como, Bennett and, of course, Sinatra.

I was in Venice when I heard an American tourist in the street say that Frank Sinatra had just died.  The news sounded incongruous, there, in a narrow calle lined with shops displaying papier mâché masks and little animals made of Murano glass.  My earliest musical memory is linked to Frank Sinatra.  It was almost past my bedtime and I was wearing my pink pyjamas and matching dressing gown – I must have been about four years old.  My mother never dressed me in pink, so I imagine the set must have been one of my auntie Fern’s purchases from a store on Fifth Avenue, New York.

There was some commotion in the living room and I shuffled there in my slippers, dragging on a string a small, pink, plastic elephant on wheels.  Funny, the things you remember.

In the living room, two delivery men were opening a large cardboard box, taking out sponge stuffing and putting together what was to become one of my mother’s and my most treasured possessions, the friend that would make it possible for my childhood to have a soundtrack: a Phillips record player, with a sapphire stylus and an F-shaped bracket that allowed ten records to drop on the turntable one after the other.

That evening, my mother tested the new record player with a 45-rpm Reprise recording of Strangers in the Night (in later years, she would play the overture to Carousel to check the quality of stereo sound).  

A few months later I watched Princess Grace of Monaco in a dress that looked white on our black-and-white TV, introducing (with an Italian voice-over) Frank Sinatra at a Royal Festival Hall benefit concert.   

My next musical memory took shape about a year later, courtesy of Tony Bennett – although I didn’t know it at the time.  I left my heart in San Francisco.  That was the only line my zio Peppino ever sang, a northern-Italian accent giving his English a touch of gravel.  Zio Peppino.  I wonder if small children still address close family friends as “uncle” or “aunt”.  He was the husband of one of my mother’s close friends – well, as close as her fierce, at times bullying independence would allow.  The marriage was on the rocks, and Peppino came to spend a few weeks on our living room sofa-bed.  Naturally, unaware of all that grown-up angst, for me those weeks were a treat.  For a few weeks I could play at having a dad.

Peppino was a musician in the Italian national television orchestra.  In the morning, after turning his bed back into a sofa, he would open a hard black case, take out the pieces of his flute, put them together and play.  Sometimes, he would practise his saxophone instead.  I usually took this as an invitation to join in with my toy guitar or xylophone, strumming or bashing for a few seconds before my grandmother would rush in from the kitchen.  “Katia, naughty girl! You’re disturbing zio Peppino – he’s working!”

“I’m not disturbing him –”

“It’s all right, signora, let the child stay –”

“No, no – Katia, come into the kitchen with me.”

After his practice, he would take me and Snoopy, our family dog, for a walk in the large expanse of green at the bottom of our street.  There, he would unclip the lead from Snoopy’s collar, let go of my hand and let us run through the tall grass.  Once, I nearly stepped on a viper and shrieked.  He calmly lifted me and put me back down a few steps past the snake.  There was no shouting, no warnings, no chiding.  

One day, he let himself into our hall wheeling a small bicycle with stabilisers – my first bicycle.  “He never gave me anything so expensive,” his soon-to-be ex-wife apparently commented.  Peppino taught me to ride the bicycle.

I left my heart in San Francisco.  Every day, a couple of times a day.  Just that line.  I thought San Francisco must be a church somewhere in Italy.  “I love San Pietro!” I always protested, a proud daughter of the Roman she-wolf.   Maybe he never sang anything beyond that line because I never gave him the chance.

Even after Peppino moved into a flat of his own, in the neighbourhood, he continued to drop by regularly, pick up dog and child, and take us for our walks.

The growing thickening darkness that was slowly enveloping parts of Europe and that would eventually be referred to as the Years of Lead also cast its shadow over Italy.  Rome, like other Italian cities, became the scene of terrorist attacks and of child abductions for ransom.  I heard my mother telling my grandmother about a case widely reported on the news: the body of a teenage girl had been found.  She had been raped and murdered.  Her uncle was eventually arrested and convicted.  “You’d think you could trust your own brother!” my mother said angrily.  “But you can’t trust anyone.  You just never know.”

Zio Peppino suddenly stopped visiting.  I asked after him.  I cried.  I started singing I left my heart in San Francisco.  Decades later, my mother said, “I’m sorry, darling, but I couldn’t take the risk.  One can never be too careful and with all that was happening…”

It was also decades later that, on the radio, I heard that line again.  I left my heart in San Francisco.  I froze. 

High on a hill, it calls to me

To where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars

I felt my heart bursting.  I rushed to HMV in Piccadilly Circus and bought a double CD of songs by Tony Bennett.

*

In 2001 when I visited New York for the first time, my auntie Fern (my favourite adopted aunt) introduced me to a lifelong friend of hers, an actor, Larry Keith.  A highly intelligent man with sparkling, thought-provoking conversation.  The first American actor to have played Professor Higgins on Broadway.  

He invited me to lunch at the Players and I sat opposite a framed black-and-white photograph of a young Tony Bennett.  To my right, at the adjacent table, sat two elderly men.  I glanced at the one sitting next to me, my attention caught by the fact that he had his napkin tucked under his chin as he ate his soup.  Then I stole another glance at him as discreetly as I could because something about him looked familiar.  He reminded me of… it was an older version of the portrait on the wall opposite me.  I was sitting next to Tony Bennett.  Oh, how I wish I could tell him, I thought.  How I wish I could tell him about what that song of his meant to me.

Scribe Doll