Adam Balic

For dessert tonight we are going to have this selection of dolce. I love the fact that good pastries are avalible so easily in Tuscany.

I have no idea what the grassy stuff is called. It is actually fleshy, a little like salicornia and raw it tastes like green beans. You see cardoons growing everywhere in Tuscany, but rarely on restaurant menus. It is cooked in the form of fritters or is a eggy souffle type recipe. Also stewed or braised as well.

Veg. for tonights dinner. Cardoon, some grass stuff I have never seen before and a fractal cauliflower. Fractal veg. are cool.

Lunch today was very simple, odds and ends with Tuscan bread. This is the unsalted type which many people are critical of. I find it hard going after a week or so, but it is very good with salty ingredients, like I have here.

Artusi was from Emilia-Romagna and therefore foreign. It is well known in Tuscany that foreigners have odd ideas. The recipe is Marcella Hazan, I say we let them slug it out.

Illegal in Italy according to the Italian Trade Commission (it is illegal to make wine from the grapes of the American native vines that are used as rootstocks for the European vines).

Yesterday I bought some wild boar from Mercato Centrale in Florence. Although it is possible to get wild boar in the UK, this is farmed and in my opinion tastes milder (if sweeter) then regular pork. In Tuscany they hunt wild boar in the autumn (from experience I can tell you not to go walking in the Chianti woods during hunting season). The flavour of the meat is quite varible, depending on age, sex and condition on the individual animal, and the specific cut of meat. I have marinated the meat overnight in red wine, vinegar, shallots, carrots, celery tops, bay leaves and spice. This will be turned into a sauce for pasta later. This is the meat before marinating, as you can see it is darker then pork or wild boar from the UK. Bay leaves are traditionally used with cooking wild boar and these were supplied by the butcher.

Last night my friends Bill and Richard made dinner, which was: Pasta with chicken livers and hearts. The hearts were especially good. Followed by Braised Lamb, beans and beet greens. The lamb was especially good, full of sweet flavour, but in no way fatty.

Fragolini del bosco. I love those sweet, fresh little strawberries! That picture is another reminder of what the usual produce is like there, and not here. ← Yes they are lovely. This is what I think they are very good for. Much, much better then the revolting sweet sparkling wine made from the fragolino grape. This grape is actually a native american species Vitis labrusca, in theory it is illegal to make wine from this grape, but you still see it everywhere.

Divina - I have also seen the used to describe small birds wraped in caul or dough and roasted. If you think about it is the same word as the French paquet .

My pleasure. I have been brief in my replies as I am on holidays, but it is good that other people can enjoy some of the things that bring me pleasure in Italy.

I also still think that there is a connection, as the faggot stands out alone in English cooking, there not being very many examples of similar caul wrapped sausages. Definately worth more investigation.

Another trip to Florence to visit Mercarto Centrale. Delayed due to snow, so only had a very short amount of time for shopping, no market photgraphs I'm afraid. This is the lamb we will have for dinner. Lamb isn't that common a meat in Tuscany (although locally common in some cases). It is a good illustration why it is not possible to re-create some dishes well outwith the region of origin. "lamb" in this case means very young, milk fed. The lamb we have in the UK would for the most part be considered 'mutton'. I also got some wild strawberries to go in prosecco later For lunch we went to Trattoria La Casalinga near St. Spirito. Good honest local food, can be full of tourists (like me) during the high season, but still manages to produce good workmans food. I had Tripe. My friend had tortellini with rabbit sauce. All very nice.

Bit of a tourist day yesterday. Badly engineered towers that sort of thing. Saw one of these down at the local river, I assume it is edible, so does anybody have a recipe? We had a few fresh cheeses to use up. I have never really liked buffalo mozzarella, prefering the sweet milkyness of the cows milk version. But I now get it, this buffalo Moz. is like cheese crack, milky, tangy and delish. I know why I haven't eaten its like before, as it has a very short shelf life. The other cheese we had (which looks a little sad), as a burrata, a similar stretch cure skin, wrapped about very rich milky curds. This comes wrapped in a fleshy green leaf, the state of the leaf tells you about the cheese apparently. But I have noticed that this cheese comes wrapped in the much more robust aspidistra leaf, when sold in the UK, so I guess this is cute marketing really. We were knackered, so dinner was simply, multi-starched and used up the extra veg. Pumpkin and radicchio risotto Sausage, pepper, swiss chard and tomato pasta For breakfast we had blood orange juice, coffee and a slice of this easter bread.

Mostly some young local reds, but also 1996 Canvalle vignavevecchia and 1999 Villa il Poggiolo, Cianchi Baldazzi Carmignano. Both good, the former especially good with the veal. Still very young though. We are having trouble with the car that we have access too (can't find the keys), so I don't think that we wil be able to go to carmignano this time, but I think that I have found a bottle of vin santo that is made around were you lived. When I get it I will post details.

I'm not sure what "prok roast" is, is it like veal roast at all? I love these zucchini, the ones in the UK are watery and flavourless by comparison. These are crisp and full of flavour. I may have to grow some this year. The artichokes were stuffed with sausage meat that has been mixed with breadcrumbs, egg, lemon peel and sage. Another idea would to use mortadella instead of sasage and to make a lighter stuffing. Anyway, they are then put on a bed of onions, carrots, celery etc, wine, olive oil and stock is added to half way, they are then braised for about an hour, basting every ten minutes or so.

I have never seen this type of onion before, I thought they were just young red onions, but the flavour is much more robust, more like a grey shallot. Next to the blood orange, is another blood orange (but it is in a wrapper). Damn I thought this was in focus . Menu was set about half an hour before pre-work. A combination of ingredients and can I be arsed are the main factors.

As you can see the artichokes have now met their fate, being stuffed, braised and served as entree. Main was pot roasted veal with vin santo, chickpeas from the forno and young zucchini sauted with panchetta. Dessert was more gelati. Yum.

What are those little sausages in the middle above the cabbages, Adam? They look heavenly. ← These are from Colonnata (or in the style of ), where the famous lardo is made. Have yet to make them.

I recently got some from my local Italian vendor and I want to know about the grades, and most of all, the best way to prepare it. Do they grade it by thickness? Have you tasted it yet? Kind regards. ← I'm afraid that salt cod is not something I know very much about. I can select a good piece and can prepare it, but the variety of different grades in this picture leave me slightly bewildered. We have noticed that the amount of salt cod on sale is massive compared to the summer (which makes sense) and we also see preserved herring for sale, which we have never seen before in Florence. Today I saw a piece of salt cod that was two inches thick in the pre-salt stage, it would have been a monster fish.

Thought I may have solved a minor culinary mystery yesterday. In England there is a 'sausage' called a "faggot" which is chopped seasoned liver wrapped in caul. The name is thought to derive from faggot=bundle. But, 'faggot' is very similar to the italian "fegato" (liver) and I have had a private theory that the english Faggot sausage is a transliteration of the Italian for liver. You know the scenerio, Traveling Italian sausage maker in medieval England is asked what that item is and he says "Fegato", locals remember it as "faggot". Anyway, yesterday I came across this item, called a "fegattinini" (little liver). Sadly it turns out that faggot=fagotto in Italian. It is one of these tricksy Indo-European words that is common to many languages, so no room for English transliteration really. Tasted nice though. As we intend on having a boozey dinner tonight, last nights dinner was simple. Roast chicken, sauted rape and roast potatoes. If you ask for a roasting chicken at the butchers here they will automatically spatchcock it for you. The potatoes are done in the local forno style (roasted in a hugh amount of new season olive oil). Rape are turnip tops. Due to the influence of French cuisine, people tend to associate tuscany and Florence in particular with spinach, but this is onely partly true. Various greens are for sauteing etc are availble, the most common being spinach, swiss chard and turnip tops. These can be bought pre-cooked from local stores and supermarkets. Rape in the uncooked form As it is monday, it is Prato's market day. This is in a local carpark and covers several acres. Unfortunately, due to snow there where less stalls then usual. But what is here is quite good. And finally for some supplies.

Bah, it cold and wet out side so todays lunch is leftovers and cold-cuts.

For dinner last night we had some saltimbocci (rolls of veal, ham, cheese and sage leaves). The sauce is simply deglazed pan juices with vin santo and a touch of butter. Cheap vin santo (no the fortified stuff) makes an excllent cooking wine for veal. We also had some sweet yellow pepper and tuscan sausage pasta. My wife* and I discussed that one of the pleasures of being in Tuscany was using the ingredients, this pasta is very simple (onions, tomato, peppers and sausage), but we would be unable to create it in Edinburgh as we could simply not get the quality of peppers required. Many people complain that Italian restuarants are not good enough, I can't comment on this, but if you go to Tuscany and do not cook for your selves, you are missing out on one of the greatest food experiences availible. * my wife wants me to point out that we do not normally eat this much food in a day!

Yes, well this is not something that I get to do often either, so when I can I indulge my interest in food markets. It has become quite cold, about 3-10.C.

But the main reason for going to this market was to have lunch in 'Trattoria da Rocca', which is within the market itself, so you can watch the butchers at work from your booth. For lunch we had: Minestrone. Half cooked beef with olive oil. Stuffed peppers. All this with bread, a bottle of cheerful wine and two glasses of grappa was €19.50 for two people. Not bad at all when it has one of the best views in Florence.