'The greenest island of my imagination' (Byron on Venice)

Le Vignole is an isolated island dotted with farmsteads and vineyards and literally, wildly different to its neighbour, Venice. Its vineyards gave the island its name. The Isola di Sant'Erasmo (St. Erasmus) is the largest island in the Venetian lagoon, but it's only sparsely populated. It comes as a surprise, after days of exclusively floating past water transport to see vehicles including agricultural tractors near the shore and a small car park full of scooters near the vaporetti stop. The mind leaps to questions of logistics, ‘how did those get there?’ The island is particularly renowned for it’s artichokes, carciofi and is known as Venice’s market garden.
We had hoped to take a temporary mooring at Le Vignole (free short-stop moorings being clearly marked on the navigation maps) to ride the vaporetti to Murano to restock the kitchen cupboards, but meet with an irate workman with his boat demanding our space, his manic shrugging of shoulders and tutting and clucking and our lack of a shared language made an argument redundant, we gave way. He indicated a mooring under a low bridge but to get to it we had to circumnavigate the island. The mooring turned out to be nonexistent, a ploy to remove us, no doubt, but the trip around the island most pleasant. That still left us provision less, so we decided to head for Certosa. In recent times the island was used for the manufacture of gunpowder and its disused buildings are being slowly but lovingly restored.
Out of adversity one can find perfection and the mooring we found at Certosa turned out to be a little haven, a safe harbour from any miffed locals gesticulating storm. It's virtues include unhindered views of Venice (from our mooring), the helpful and willing staff of Vento di Venezia, the surrounding parkland full of monumental artworks and an amazing pontoon out into the lagoon holding a ‘request only’ vaporetti stop. The marina has a free water-taxi service after 9pm, an exciting high-speed zoom across dark and churning frenetic waterways (real men are expected to balance and stand in the wind and spray, love it). By the way, have I mentioned the Venetian men yet;-)Huge poster outside the marina offices of Vento di Venezia showing the island, its parkland and the extraordinary pontoon (left) leading to the request vaporetti stop. We have the first mooring at the mouth of the inlet overlooking Venice, fantastic.
Views of Venice from the mooring on Certosa.
On the way 'home' from provision shopping on Murano.
A long exposure of the night lights of Venice from the boat after a water-taxi has rippled by.
Monumental art work, part of the Venice Biennale, on Certosa. The coloured lozenge shapes are glass and the interiors of the posts light up and shine through the glass at night.

Tranquil Torcello

(Moonlight over Torcello)

The out-lying islands of the Lagoon have been a revelation; many are now deserted and returned to nature, only just keeping their heads above water. Most had another incarnation during their history, from defensive strong posts, disease isolation hospitals, penal complexes to market gardens.
Torcello is a little gem of 20 inhabitants* and some disturbingly, early-rising cockerels. In the 10th century it had a population of at least 10,000 people and was much more powerful than Venice but now it is fields with a path leading across the island from the vaporetti stop past the Ponte del Diavolo, or Devils Bridge to the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta full of glorious Byzantine mosaics. What few moorings are available are located in the shadow of the Cathedral bell tower and completely deserted after the last vaporetti leaves taking any sightseers with it. In the early morning one has the island to oneself to explore in eerie stillness, a rare treat and difficult to find elsewhere in Venice. By the side of the mooring is a beautifully laid out little vineyard, full of ancient statutes, the grapes appear to be a sweet (not tested but oh, so tempting) white variety, maybe used to make Vino Santo, a few bottles of which have found their way into my luggage for reminiscing over winter evenings. Torcello has a few smart restaurants along the island’s path, which only open for lunch to serve day-trippers and so we had to make our own supper onboard which was no hardship having stocked up with a few local delicacies such as Radicchio Treviso and Rossa Verona, good both cooked and raw in salad and a selection of antipasti tasty treats like olives, sun dried tomatoes and baby artichokes. We also found the local wines sold from vast steel vats by the litre amazingly good quality especially as they cost only a one and half euros; we’re not going to starve or, for that matter, stay sober for long.

*I read it was about 60 but will happily give way to wikipedia’s collective knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcello

Our morning mooring neighbour
Beautiful des-res on a tiny island opposite the Torcello mooring (with it's own heli-pad, definitely how the other half live!)
Vineyard next to mooring
View of Burano from the top of the campanile of Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta
The view on being rudely awoken by over zealous cockerels.

To be continued, tomorrow, Sant'Erasmo and Vignole as we inch ourselves ever closer to Venice.

A Slow Boat to Venice

In the past we have arrived in Venice through Marco Polo Airport or it’s railway station, this time the experience was fundamentally different. Although every new visit adds something to our conception and interpretation of this endlessly fascinating city, arriving by boat, slowly over a matter of days, will have a long-lasting effect on how I will forever perceive it’s nature. We came from the Fiume Sile into the Lagoon, entering through the lock at Portegrandi, leaving behind the meandering reed-sided waterway to be exchanged for the brackish water channels sided by a low-lying, floating world of almost-terra firma islands. Passing fishing stations with their suspended nets still dangling the occasionally missed and now sun dried, silver sardine, we wind our way into the outlying channels of the Lagoon. From now on we navigate by bricola, the three posted pine pilings, that act as sign posts and channel markers through out the lagoon, all are numbered and marked on nautical charts, and some have lights to make the channel boundaries visible at night. Our pace is wonderfully slow and mesmerizing, the sun beats down, the wind is with us and with only the occasional campanile on some outlying island for reference, we glide imperceptibly closer to Torcello.A speeding camera warning on a bricola

Nearing our mooring

Bob-bobbing moored up on Torcello
To be continued........

The Plum of Life - Sweeter the Older it Grows

It’s been a strange week. Swine flu is sweeping London, sadly with more fatalities than expected, which puts in mind questions of life and death, making the most of what one has, maybe even daring to think of precious times one can lose. It’s also been a week for looking back, I fear I might be the last person on earth to discover Friends Reunited and in doing so, and at last being reunited, I feel some things never change, for instance, I seem to still be bucking authority, will I never grow up, and do I really want to?
Tonight we consoled ourselves with fine wine and dining, fiddling as Paris burns perhaps (coincidently, Dan ‘s combo is called Nero, I must suggest this as an upcoming album title!).

This recipe uses everything fresh and seasonal from the garden.

Duck Legs with Drunken Plums
Tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
4 large duck legs
2 ounces of speck /pancetta
2 tablespoons of minced herbs : rosemary, sage, thyme and winter savory if available.
2 teaspoons of herb salt (homemade mix of celery seed, lovage seed and fennel seed ground in a little salt is good)
12 new shallots
2 small new leeks
12 large juicy plums
1 bay leaf
2 cups of Prosecco or dry wine wine
1 shot of Brandy or Grappa
1 cup of chicken stock

Marinade the skinned and de-tendoned (is that a word?) legs in a mix of oil, vinegar, herbs and herb salt for a day. Fry speck, shallots, and leeks carefully not to brown too much, followed by the drained and dried legs. Remove and keep warm. Deglaze with the strained marinade, brandy and wine. Add chicken stock and return duck and vegetables to the pot adding plums. Cook in very slow oven for two to three hours. Enjoy (while you still can!) with Barolo or a nice Barbera D'Asti and a side of podded baby broad beans. Wishing you all good health in these infectious times.

Above plum 'Early Rivers' photo taken two or three weeks ago. Early Rivers (Rivers' Early Prolific) is a small, deep purple skinned plum with a golden-yellow coloured flesh. It has a very rich flavour, and can be used for both eating and cooking, making an excellent flavoured jam. The plum can be a little sharp early in the season, but as it becomes very ripe it becomes very sweet.
Raised in Sawbridgeworth, first introduced in 1830

Home Made Liqueurs, Sgroppino and Bas-Armagnac

Oh joy, all the liqueurs we made in the summer and autumn are maturing around now. I always make sloe gin if there are sloes to be picked, usually around the end October but this year yielded a poor harvest and what few there were disappeared quickly. So I had to raid my sister’s freezer for some 2007 berries. However, freezing seems to help in this case and the finished drink is indistinguishable from previous vintages. By the way, if you are put off by the idea of using a needle to prick each and every berry before adding the sugar and gin, forget it, use the prickly side of a cheese grater to run over the berries on a baking tray, works a treat and saves hours of time. In fact, it’s the only use I ever found for that side of the grater! I thought I’d try plum gin as well, as usual one of our plum trees, an Early Rivers type, produced more plums than we could eat, jam, pickle, bottle, cook and give away. The drink produced is less strong as the plums are juicer, which dilutes the alcohol, but the advantage is you can place a plum in the bottom of the glass to eat.
Also, I like to make limoncello, as I use it as an ingredient in Sgroppino (dialect in Venice for a lemon sherbet digestif) along with prosecco, vodka, lemon ice cream. Like sorbet it cleans the palette, but this concoction sends you to the stratosphere. I make my limoncello by using the rind only (no pith) of 10 large, unwaxed, organic lemons, placing them in a bowl with 50cl of pure grain vodka and putting the whole, covered with cling film, in full sun for 7-10 days, not easy to forecast in the UK, to bleach out the aromatic lemon oils. Then add sugar to taste and bottle.
We inherited four blackcurrant bushes when we took over our plot at the allotment, so maybe we could try cassis this year or morello cherries in armagnac, which we made once in more prosperous times. Nick and I have been dreaming and plotting about revisiting La Bastide d’ Armagnac and calling into see the delightful and educational M. le Baron, Philippe de Bouglon at the Chateau du Prada, who makes dam fine Bas-Armagnac in the most glorious surroundings. He is most generous with his time and will take you though the many vintages, while tasting using a glass vial he keeps attached to a ribbon around his neck to dip in the huge oak barrels. You can see the baron’s pad at
http://leprada.com/bienvenue.htm and le Baron himself at http://www.vinoteca.ru/en/about/ChateauxDuPrada/a man, I think you’d agree, who looks as if he enjoys his own products.

Hedgerow Tonic

There is a tradition in Italy, of picking hedgerow herbs and preparing them as a spring salad, a form of pick-me-up after the austerity of the winter diet. An ancient knowledge passed through the women of the family, this mix of plants is in part a feast for the taste buds, a source of vitamins lacking in the foods available in the preceding colder periods, but also, because they are rich in minerals, a medical tonic.
This must have happened in Britain up until the Middle Ages or even later, when this island like Italy in the early 20th century was rurally impoverished and food for free was a larder to be plundered. Against the herbs and greens picked are dandelions, chicory, lovage, borage, sorrel, burdock, burnet, as well as wild varieties of the garden herbs, chervil, thyme, mint, watercress, oregano, rocket etc. More are known by local names both in English and Italian. For instance in Kent, Sorrel was known as Tom Thumb’s Thousand Fingers and of course, dandelion was Piss-A-Bed.
Some are hot, some bitter and others acidic, but appear to be used together in the same medicine-chest salad. I prefer to take my dose in a mixed soup, (Italians, unlike most of my family, seem to have a highly developed taste for raw bitter greens and salad leaves) which I will write about in spring with photographs and recipes.
Wild garlic was also picked and I still use it, cut and eaten when the leaf is young or cooked if larger. My sister has a little wood in her garden full of ‘ransoms’, which have never been subjected to herbicides or other chemicals, important when foraging. As I sit here tonight, with the temperature plunging below -6c, I find myself in need of some of that tonic and plan borage fritters, wild garlic tarts, lovage soup and sorrel or rocket pestos. Oh, roll on Spring.
Above is a snap of my borage plot in flower in June, just in time to add to the Pimms.

Italian Night

Tonight, after all the British food indulgence of this seasons fayre, a trip into the sunny realms of the Italian hills seems appropriate. Of course, indulgence aside, the proceedings could not start without an aperitif, tonight a version of an Aviator from Simon Difford's Cocktails No.7, my current favourite, not Italian although it does remind me of the Gin and It (Italian) that my father was so fond of in the ‘60’s. Simple and suitably strong it takes 1 part gin, 1 part dry vermouth, I part cinzano rosso, 1 part Red Dubonnet and an unwaxed lemon zest twist.
Fortified, we set forth onto the primo, my minestrone (no recipe, just anything at hand, but tonight our Cavolo Nero was added as there is so much in kitchen garden right now). For secondi, a rice bombe (although Nick has just pointed out, oh so kindly, mine should be called a rice brick). It's a sort of baked risotto, started with a soffritto made from tiny cubes of leek, carrot, beans, courgette, fennel, peas and herbs and as if that wasn’t enough to feed an army, a huge pizza was thrown together as well. Below is a photograph of the tomatoes and mozzarella draining dry on kitchen paper so that the dough base bakes crispy, my only tip on making good pizza!
It was a nice trip, everything but the suntan and the scenery.

Dolce di Pane

Just thought I’d pop in a quick post about an unusual Italian Bread Pudding Cake called Dolce di Pane I made this Yuletide. The original recipe came from The Modern Cook, or the True Method of Cooking Well 1849 by Pietro Santi Puppo and reproduced in The Heritage of Italian Cooking by Lorenza de Medici. Here is my slightly tweaked version (just can’t follow any recipe without adding or subtracting a twist, I guess it's my control-freakism!)

1lb crustless fresh Italian white bread
2 cups milk
drop of Cointreau (optional)
3oz vanilla sugar
4 egg yolks
grated rind (zest only) one lemon
pinch cinnamon
4 oz mixed glacé fruits (I used one each from a gift box of pear, fig, ginger, orange, apricot, cherry and angelica)
1 tablespoon of butter for double greasing and lining non-stick load tin(s)

Tear the bread to pieces and soak in milk for an hour, then squeeze out (very little, if any, actually comes out, depending on loaf type). At this point I add the Cointreau. Combine with egg yolks, sugar and lemon zest. Add cinnamon and diced glacé fruits and mix. Fill double lined and greased tins and bake 180 degrees C for an hour or maybe a tad less depending on tin sizes (I like two small). Or cook in Aga in top oven under a cold shelf.

This makes a nice change to the rich butter desserts at this time of year and is good with a cuppa mid afternoon or even breakfast. Above is a photograph of my attempt. Below is my collection of French Sarreguemines ware similar to the breakfast plates shown in the recipe illustration.