Back to Italy (5) - Simplified Quiche Lorraine with vegetables and brie (Botticelli Gifts & the Round table)

Sometimes, the mental associations play unexpected links, which are actually difficult to understand. For some reasons when I think to a quiche Lorraine I immediately project the image of the Arthurian knights:

I would warmly suggest to read Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval

Circular preparations (such as pizzas, cakes and pies) are somewhat addressing that corner of my intellect that stores all the memories related to sharing food: the perfect shape of a pizza, for instance, grants equal slices: the regular number of the portions mirrors the equilibrium of the circle.

This picture comes form another interesting blog, Ciao Italia,
helpful for those who wish to learn some Italian:
http://italiaitaliano.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/ecco-la-ricetta-della-pizza-margherita.html

Sharing food then is more than a simple act of allowing other people to benefit of what is yours. Sharing food (or making a food-gift) is something deeper: there is feeding in it of course, but especially taking care. As when you water a plant you do not ask for a reward, you merely feel to do it, because it gives you pleasure, the reward is melt inside the action. You do not make food then to entertain or to be complimented for: these two aspects clearly enflame the ego, but only are a surface of the whole problem. On this point, unfortunately, I am often misunderstood. A real gift should never expect reciprocity: it should be a gesture of kindness that you feel spontaneously driven out of your heart, unconditionally and totally.

Sandro Botticelli: another association with the quiche Lorraine
is the Louvre,  perhaps for the sound,
and in the Louvre there is this Botticelli’s fresco:
Venus and the Graces offer a gift to a maiden,about 1486.

According to my personal etiquette: who often shows up to parties with empty hands (or just with too symbolic items) spoils the inner idea of donation (unless he has a very good excuse!) The gift is an offer of our time, which is irreplaceable, a time that won’t ever come back again. Who doesn't free his time for others is possibly a person too retreated in himself/herself: therefore he/she sees others as functional tools. On the contrary, the use of Time - our precious source - is an honour: it is a mean somehow to substitute us with something tangible and eatable. This "something" brings inside the body calories, as a tender embrace does. In the moment in which the entity is offered, the action of offering retires, as a sunset that leaves the memory of its splendour.

Scott Peck was an eminent psychiatrist who died in 2005,
the link he draws between time and life, possibly derives
from Heidegger. His major book, written in 1978, is called
The Road less Travelled:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Less-Travelled-Arrow-New-Age/dp/0099727404/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351291416&sr=8-1

So, let’s finally come to the simplified quiche. This recipe melts together a French tradition and that of the Italian torta salata. I sincerely prefer the pastry of the quiche, but I feel the filling tends to be too heavy, because of the abundance of cream. At the barbecue, this quiche became the perfect appetizer, to control the rising appetite. As often happens, the famished and voracious friends groped the quiche to the last breadcrumb, a ransack that is also a compliment. Nonetheless, I was left with a rescued tiny bit, which gave me at least the pleasure a final personal opinion: Antony, for instance, behaved like a mountain lion aware of its strength, as Homer would phrase it. The quiche was, especially for me, an excuse to prepare something smart for Michelle, who’s often looked down during these carnivorous events. Isabel & John (who brought an amazing seed bread) and Kathy (who's also a refined chef) showed a great interest in the preparation and this post is meant to pass them the legacy of the recipe.

Ingredients: half a red organic pepper, 3 Scottish potatoes, 1/2 Italian courgette and 1/2 French Camembert.	Slice or chop your ingredients, add salt, pepper, and extra-virgin olive oil, toss.
Dust some rosemary and dice the Camembert on top. Pour on top a drop of whole organic milk (10-20 ml).	Bake in the oven until brown at about 200 °C, gassmark 8.

One triple word: appetizing, rich, and piebald.

Here are three variants for the pastry:

I	II	III
200 gr spelt plain flour 100 gr unsalted organic butter 70 ml of ice cold water a pinch of Maldon salt	200 gr plain white flour 90 gr unsalted organic butter 1 small organic egg 10 ml of organic whole milk a pinch of salt	225 gr of white flour 100 gr unsalted organic butter 40 ml of whole organic milk a pinch of smoked Maldon salt

I am in debt with Pasta, amore e...fantasia! for the proportions of the first of these variations, although in the original recipe the flour wasn’t spelt flour: 

http://stobenecomesto.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/pasta-amore-e-fantasia.html?spref=fb

Back to Italy (4) – Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Why not to start from a video, I casually came across? Nothing special really, light pop I daresay, but I loved the video-clip idea of these group - the Deep blue something. They are catered in the Fifth Avenue by spruced up waiters, who arrange the table and bring the meal in a fancy style. It is hilarious how these four breezy musicians ridicule the snooty demeanour of the waiters, who in the end partake at this joke: the song is jovial and bitter at the same time, about a couple falling apart, divided by different lives. Breakfast at Tiffany’s seems to be the only true shared memory, which remains.

Deep blue something, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Breakfast at Tiffany’s has become the epitome of irresistible Grace, even if the film, in the end, is narrating the story of an escort. The first time I saw it, I did not even catch this level of reading. I never read the book and I blame myself for this fault, apologizing with Truman Capote’s spirit himself. The film is a masterpiece and contributed to shape the conscience of an epoch, inspiring the style of womanhood until nowadays. Do we have to suspend for this reason our opinion? Not at all! The film, in fact, is about the conciliation of impossible states of mind and the Deep blue something apparently got this message as well.

Audrey Hepburn in a sort of homage to the White rim concept,
developed in this blog

The opening of Breakfast at Tiffany’s: it takes a minute to watch and a century to be forgotten

Short documentary on the film made 40 years after:

Yet, strictly speaking of food, I found really intriguing the opening scene: Mrs Holly Golightly steps off from a cab and admires the Tiffany’s shop window, biting a pastry and drinking a take away coffee: this was HER BREAKFAST, solitary, alone, quick. The whole film may be concluded after these two initial minutes. In 1961 - when the film came out - Europe probably regarded the scene as something terribly American, distant visually and conceptually: nowadays, if you think of Starbuck’s and McDonald’s - busy people carrying steaming caloric stuff - everything appears under a different light, or better a different go-lightly…an easier way of living, consuming life, increasing the time rushing, clustering up walking, phoning and eating with extreme nonchalance. Is this what we really aim for?

Where our rushy life-style brought us

Subsequently, I found really sad the imagine of a ravishing posh lady in her early thirties - wearing pearls and a perfectly tailored evening dress, at the first beams of the day, in an almost desert urban landscape – sipping an industrial beverage. Junk food and fast food shouldn’t be demonised, this is obvious, a blind attitude toward them instead is: eating badly damages the body and affects every-day life, makes people mentally slower, dependant on excessive calories, less open to something new, and more exposed to diseases such as diabetes. I wish to develop this topic in another post though, so for the moment I’ll just say these people – relating too much on chains convenience - also lose the pleasure of appreciating high cuisine and natural ingredients. The piteous state of their bodies then prevents them to enjoy other piquant aspects of social life. If you know what I mean! Clearly Audrey Hepburn didn’t indulge on an irresponsible alimentary regime. So, I wish to take a cue from Audrey’s style in order to emphasise the moment of sudden revelation I had in front of an experience: some irreplaceable éclairs.

Silent dance of harmonic tastes

This patisserie called Caramella [Candy] di Gino Fabbri is possibly my favourite. It won an award in 2010 as the best patisserie in Italy, and its standard is still worthy its fame. The only inconvenience is that it attracts too many people, so the best thing to do is to behave somehow like a dandy: fixing a breakfast-trip around 11 am is just brilliant and then everything appears reasonable. You have to drive a bit in the countryside that encloses Bologna.

http://www.ginofabbri.com/LE_COLLEZIONI.html

This place sells chocolate and jams, whose quality is superb, although my attention and my interest are always called out by this fantastic éclairs: a roman army of pastries that make your mouth an annex of the Heavens. It is just a pity (and a nonsense) to go there alone, it is a cafe meant to be shared-and-shared-alike with friends, only the best ones, of course. I went there with Moraine - the pocket lady - cause her size his only balanced by her likeability. Her hair are curly as those of a Greek maiden and her generosity is that of an ancient goddess: she treated me for breakfast (a generosity I won’t forget easily!) and the warm waft of September - under white gazebos of linen – made our conversation even more enjoyable. 

Moraine has basically the same hair of this
gorgeous model

Each pastry has a shortbread case, a vessel of taste: each of them varies according to the filling and you cannot stop…crème Chantilly, chocolate crème, ricotta with pistachios, raspberry jam and mascarpone dusted in cocoa powder, rice cake, cream puffs. And the coffee is, ça va sans dire, Illy.

The wise and attentive selection

of ingredients, makes this place

worthier than a jewellery boutique,

being the prices almost the same

Back to Italy (3) – Mickey Mouse’s courgettes

Relentless is the adjective that better fits the amusement I usually go through in Bologna. Bologna, somehow, is a nest for me: my friends on the whole – save some wonderful exceptions - live there. So when I return from the UK my hope is that of saying “hello” to all the good ones. The social networks - as Facebook, Google+, Twitter - do what they can, but aren’t able to substitute entirely the pleasure of seeing someone in person. I miss my people: this is for sure. The only problem is that I have to wedge - with a perfect schedule - the different dates with the well-deserved spells in my girlfriend’s company. Moreover, I noticed how female friends are deeply inclined toward coffee and I actually cannot drink more than two espresso per day! A sort of pleasant nightmare!!!

Indulging in coffee makes people shake

We friends actually all follow each other’s life from a distance: the bonds of comradeship are so fastened that we don’t receive only accounts or flat-mirrored experiences, but we are attentive and receptive of what’s on! So I was doubly exultant to notice how easy it was to pick up old conversations, jokes and memories and merge them with new happenings, secrets and proponents. The waving of friendship is still rooted and tightly connected: social networks then keep their true nature of means of communication, without becoming empty avatars.

A big bit of nonsensical talk is always welcome

I already mentioned the barbecue, which gave me the chance to see many friends at the same time. In this post I wish to attach my remembering on a surprise. Katie came to visit me from the eternal city, Rome, and she brought her usual high spirits. Considering she is half Italian and half American, I opted for a menu that was honouring (and mocking) her double inheritance. I think she took the best legacy from both the continents: in her person the Colombus’ dream - of curiosity and discovery - and the Italian attitude - of keeping and restoring - are perfectly melted:

Cristoforo Colombo (Genoa 1451 - Valladolid 1506)

This is an interesting article on the nowadays
reception of this modern myth:

http://theamericanscholar.org/what-columbus-day-really-means/

Let’s gloss over the conversations we had on our recent holidays and on remote respective futures. Because she was travelling toward the Alps and she requested me a light lunch, I had a cooking epiphany related to the Disney most famous mouse: 

First, I made a typical Italian appetizer, then we went on with a sort of main course based on courgettes and ricotta cheese, and obviously we couldn't skip the dessert. How we could? The appetizer was abundant and varied. Its aim is to open the stomach and titillate the appetite.

Parmigiano nuggets (up right), Taggiasche olive [from Liguria] (up left),
home made bread with salted butter and sun-dried tomato (down left),
Strolghino of Parma [salami] (down right)

Here is a clearer super-macro shot: colours, tastes, products
contribute with their extravagance and peculiarity
to embellish the table. And, of course, there are stories behind
them...

The main course was hilarious (and meant to be cute), pleasing for the eye, and required five simple moves: 1. Cut a courgette into three pieces. 2. Core within the vegetable flesh three little holes from top to bottom. 3. Then, fill the cavity with some ricotta, worked together with grated Parmigiano, home grown chives, a sprinckle of black pepper, and some salt. 4. Carve some toast bread with a coffee cup and put this disk under the courgette log: this will absorb the moist in excess. 5. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil.

The tool to core out cores...	The Mickey Mouse shape
Mouse and freshly scissored chives	The filled courgette and how to obtain the round disk with an old delicate English coffee cup

Put into a ventilated oven until they become brown (200°C-ish)

The final result, particularly tasty!

Finally the dessert came out almost by chance: I decided to combine mixed ricotta – obtained from cow and sheep milk – and a superlative fig preserve, prepared by my girlfriend’s mother. 

I found some in Tesco the other day in the reduced to clear,
4 for 85p, not too bad! I had them with Parma ham,
yet this is another story...

Below the picture, you can find the original recipe to avoid pectin and other non-natural additives that only speed up the jellification process, but they deprive the final product of its organic nature. Here is the iceberg of Ricotta with fig jam:

For a home made fig preserve:
1200 gr of figs (1000 gr after peeling);
450 gr brown or caster sugar;
1 lemon zest;
1 lemon juice.
LET the chopped figs MARINATE in a bowl
with the zest and the lemon
for 1/2 hour;
THEN put them in a pot with the sugar
and let it cook for about 50 min
at a middle-low flame.
PUT the preserve
into sterilized jars, cap them
and flip upside-down the jars
to create the void.

Back to Italy (2) – Barbecue sausages and cicadas

What obsesses Italian people is the quality of our own food. We apparently eat to fulfil the belly yearns as every other human being, but - more importantly – we wish to warm up the soul. We use food as a social magnet and food becomes always the occasion to gather together, to interlace new friendships, to celebrate, to emphasise, to magnify the importance of a conversation: even a coffee turns into an event, especially if the chosen café combines excellent coffee with superb croissants:

"Cornetto" and croissant are severely different

(picture taken by Barbara Bazzoni®)

Dulcis in fundo, an incredible patisserie

with pretty harsh service:

http://www.pasticceriadulcisinfundobologna.it/

Worthy visiting though: via Murri 39, Bologna, Italy

A very nice happening I was invited to was a barbecue in a joyful location on the Apennines, where we lighted on some chestnut wood and we had the most amazing food: from the grill to the dish. Simon, the friend who organized the escapade, belongs to that exclusive circle of companions I know since kindergarten: he is still very loyal to his true Self. 

If you light it on with Lavender scrubs

a pleasant scent substitues

the chemicals of newspaper 

or other easy tricks.

Besides, the affection for this place is deeply rooted into my heart, cause I used to go there when I was a child and it is absolutely incredible how - after more that twenty years - the same people like to meet up again with the enthusiasm of a new experience. An eternal return of the same, as Friederich Nietzsche would have phrased it:

David Boyd Etching, edition 60, titled "The Eternal Return"

This cot – which now has been transformed into proper cottage - is unique and simple, not even worthy of a picture that will spoil imagination. The whole atmosphere is indescribable: there are woody hills all around and modern vanes, in a distance, that integrate beautifully with the landscape. A little garden hosting garlic, spring onions (although it was September) and tomatoes is often ransacked by wild creatures: unicorns, moles and boars. An abandoned heap of bricks that once was a timbers’ house - my friend’s ancestors – gives a romantic effect and now hosts dark colonies of friendly scorpions.

The wind mills on the horizon

A postcard in the postcard

The enclave of Castel del Rio (River Castel) is nearby Imola, the town where the Brazilian F1 pilot Ayrton Senna fatefully faded out in 1994 (and another pilot, Roland Ratzenberger died the day before, but he was less famous, and a few people remember him, I dwell in this number!) I still keep in mind our primary school teacher asking us to write a composition whether or not it was licit (and wise) to risk human lives for a sport, showing no mercy and compassion to the unfortunate use of courage. It is difficult for me, even nowadays, to express an opinion. The loss was great and both the pilots left a huge void, such as when Hector dies in the Iliad. We, as children, were deprived of a living superhero, and we confronted with a new reality: invulnerability wasn’t an issue anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrton_Senna

Despite this gloomy memory, for which I apologise, the barbecue went on pretty well: the half-mountain air opens the stomach and the smell of grilling meat attracts wolves from all the woody lands…kidding. There are wolves there, but apparently they come out only during the night, hunting hogs and red deer. An Italian barbecue is slightly different from an American one: if you suggest providing some hamburger, for instance, it is very likely that you will be answered with a cluster of reproaches: especially because ketchup, brown sauce, mustard are seen as an unhealthy dressings. I disagree on mustard, but I shall keep this consideration for a different post!

The Marsican wolf

The typical Italian boar

We had sausages and hand made kebabs (obtained putting into a line on a wooden recyclable spit it different kinds of meats, interrupted by vegetables), we had a vegetarian quiche, roasted aubergines, home made bread by Isabel and John and at least three desserts (two cakes and some éclairs):

Several sorts of meat

Pork sausage

After the never-ending supper, when we all were almost light and energetic as a Michelin boy, we went out for separate walks into the woodland with the person we loved the most: some of us collected wild fruits that grow almost spontaneously and I was lucky enough to spot a boletus luridus (literally filthy boletus), of the same praiseworthy porcini family [I may be utterly wrong]. It does turn blue when you cut into its perfumed flesh:

Plums, four-leaf clover, mulberries, and bited wild apple.

The MUSHROOM (boletus luridus)

Yet in the end, what flabbergasted me was a cicada moult, I came across during late afternoon. When the Sun started sinking beyond the distant foliages, the light hit this vacant skin. I had the distinct feeling that the moult summarised not just that enjoyable day, but the entire bunch of emotions called out to surface by the location: we - with all our scattered impressions and sensibilities - were like that cicada envelope in the dying sun. Our feelings were similar to the golden light, which gave consistency to an empty case:

Poetry in the sun

Back to Italy (1) – postcard and champagne cork

THE BLOG IS BACK

(had it stopped, by chance?!)

Short preliminary remarks:

Talking about well-crafted food does not actually imply to eat better: it becomes a sort of endless bla-bla about art and talent, but then single individuals may keep eating unhealthily (especially here in the land of deep-fried-everything). This is clearly a shame, because what we eat is part of an everyday philosophy: what we eat makes us happier, more reactive, heavier, more inconsiderate. So, to better analyze this argument, I decided to suspend my blogging activity for two months. Staying away from the blog allowed me to understand how to improve it. There are two images that best represented these two months of stasis. I appreciate very much the distance and the proximity between these two works: they give the measure of how the modernity complexity evolved from a post-classical conception of human faculties to a metaphysical dimension - closer to a basement full of objects:

Auguste Rodin, The thinker 1881, bronze sculpture, 189 x 98 x 140, Musée Rodin, Paris: how I hope I look like!

Giorgio de Chirico, The thinker, 1973, oil on canvas, Fondazione Giorgio & Isa de Chirico, Rome: how I actually look like!

I wish to make my message clearer, slenderer and more engaging, sharing my passion for food without being too assertive. Moreover, I had to write hard for the thesis! What a nightmare, what should I have done? Of course, I went back to Italy, to drink at the sources of high cuisine, to observe with a new foreigner’s perspective my native country:

This recipe-guy was a phenomenal, 

his recipe book as well: 

it is a magnificent dive 

into late XIX century cuisine,

but i feel many recipes need to be

simplified and de-fatted,

save during Christmas.

What I came out with surprised me: although I am personally very attentive to what I eat and how to choose ingredients, I was a victim of turning food into a mere show too – "food pornography", as Chelsea, a wonderful Canadian friend, labelled it. Was I close to surrender? Nope. Food, in my view, needs beauty to be appreciated. Its effect, even in pictures, should be closer to a surprise, such as this flowery cascade:

Bologna city gate (around XI century), 

belonging to the second line of city walls:

NOW from a defense device to flowery excuse. 

My girlfriend Michelle made me gently notice that I was pleasing myself too much with this culinary hobby, perhaps showing off a bit when sharing images of food without an explanation: on a hopefully joke tone, she said I appear as an "exhibitionist". This lighted on a second thought: we live in a world made of images and these images shape our reality, also because they are powerful and immediate means of communication. Images aren’t wrong themselves, their improper use tends to be: nonetheless, what is not immortalized gradually vanishes, as holidays without postcards. What an inner quarrel!? My desire is to create a pattern to remember why some things have been important for me:

Postcard of the Rocky Mountains and Laurent-Perrier cork

This postcard came from the rocky deserts of America: Katie, a dear friend of mine, made a trip along Cormac McCarthy’s outposts and she came back with this lovely panorama, but she forgot my home address. Never read McCarthy’s novels? Blame your teachers. You should definitely start: they are perfect even if you do not feel a cowboy! Btw, it was lovely to receive the card from her bare hands, as from a courier in old Wild West villages. I found interesting the juxtaposition of such a desolate Mars-like landscape with one of the most delicate of the European beverages.

It is also an excellent combined gift!

The cork, instead, belonged to an excellent Champagne bottle that the irreplaceable Zinga gave me last December, as a graduation present. I managed to drink it with him - performing toasts over and over agains - , because I like sharing alimentary gifts with the people that presented them to me: 

http://www.laurentperrierus.com/

Zinga brought me again mushroom-hunting and... but wait this is another story-post...