Tag Archive for: Italy

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Bella Bologna is pasta and mortadella centrale… yet a whole lot more

It was the unlikeliest bonding in cinema history. Danny de Vito and Arnold Schwarzenegger teaming up as Twins in the 1988 movie. It ought to have been boloney, but retains an easily digestible charm. Unlike the US sausage of that name that is a pallid, industrial copy of true Bologna sausage – the sacred Mortadella.

Bologna, of course, is Mortadella Centrale, Italy’s food capital. Inside the trattoria, Drogheria della Rosa, it appears I am  in the realm of Hollywood legends, too. Read the clippings. Drogheria devotee Arnie’s tip-off led to dinner visits from Danny and later Francis Ford Coppola.

But this converted pharmacy is no obvious celeb haunt. Indeed founder Emanuele Addone (above) takes centre stage. His “You’ll enjoy this  Montepulciano d’Abruzzo with your osso buco and vitello tonnato” is an offer we can’t refuse. Still, this is a benign Godfather. The whole experience radiates warmth. Under Emanuele’s twinkly but watchful eye service for our dinner is super-efficient. It all belies the cluttered, offbeat setting, featuring shelves of the original apothecary’s bottles.

It’s the pasta rolling show
I confront a local vegan

The menu feels a step away from the rigid Cucina Bolognese template that dominates around the Piazza Maggiore and deep into the heart of the city’s gastronomic quarter, the Quadrilatero. 

Not that you’re likely to be disappointed by the pasta on offer in most places. It’s a spectator sport to see the sheets being rolled out in pasta shop windows. Just don’t expect spaghetti with your bolognese ragu. They are strict about pairings; it has to be fresh tagliatelle, which holds the sauce better. 

Lasagne at Trattoria da Me
Tortellini at the Drogheria

Even more seriously, there is specific legislation about the dimensions of each pasta type and we discovered tradition demands (mostly ignored) that the Emilia Romagne classic lasagne be only served on Sunday.

At the Drogheria my pasta course  was the archetypal Tortellini in Brodo, where hand-rolled tiny pasta parcels are simmered and served in a clear chicken and beef broth. The best fillings combine pork loin, prosciutto, mortadella, and Parmesan. 

Make your mind up about the legend behind its creation. After a battle the gods Jupiter and Venus retired to a country inn between Bologna and Modena (where balsamic vinegar comes from). The innkeeper spied on the goddess of love through a keyhole. All he could see was her navel. In his infatuation, he sculpted a pasta replica.

Bring your own food to Osteria Sole
A classic piadina

Confession, I prefer the larger Tortelloni encasing perhaps spinach or pumpkin. The Montepulciano, by the way, was an inspired accompaniment at just 25 euros.

Earlier in the day, whisked in by the monorail from the airport, we had undergone everyone’ds Bologna wine initiation – a visit to the Osteria del Sole in the Quadrilatero. The selling point of this 15th century tavern haven on the Vicolo del Ranocchi is good affordable vino to wash down food you can bring in without charge. It certainly hides its light sotto un moggio (under a bushel); twice we had walked past. Saturday lunchtime, so it was heaving.

To share we took the Emila Romagna region’s favourite flatbread, piadina, packed with prosciutto di parma, the soft cheese squacquerone and arugula (rocket), and sank tumblers of local Lambrusco and Pignoletto, each lightly frizzante.

Sunny abundance of the Erbe
But cuttlefish cast their shadow

Around the corner you’ll find the Mercato di Mezzo (the Middle Market), which dates back to the Middle Ages and was transformed into the city’s first covered market after Italian Unification. These days it operates as an eating-in exhibition space.

I much preferred the less touristy Mercato delle Erbe along the Via Ugo Bassi, which lives up to the greenery in its name. Altro is its own collection of eateries, the pick of which is Banco 32, a vibrant seafood bar attached to that rare Bologna animal (sic) a fishmonger. 

Banco 32 – great spot for fish
Sicilian-inspired gilthead fish rolls

Still Bologna’s best known food stores are in the Quadrilatero and charcuterie and cheese rule the roost. Swanky Tamburini, with its own cafe, is the most high profile, but Salumeria Simoni is certainly the mortadella mecca, even hosting its own food tours to explain the superiority of mortadella tradizione.

Ham array at Tamburini
Cheese feast in the Mercato delle Erbe

Yes, even the Italians can pass off sub-standard, Spamlike versions. At its best it lives up to the 16th century version documented by Bartolomeo Scappi, personal chef to Pope Pius V, and writer of groundbreaking cookbook Opera. His mortadella method involved finely chopping lean pork and fat with two knives rather than grinding, and seasoning subtly with spices to create a delicate, cooked sausage, wrapped in caul. Pale pink, it should be laced with bright gleaming spots of fat.

No wonder one of the nicknames for Bologna is La Grassa (The Fat). The others are La Rossa, for both its communist leanings and terracotta red rooftops, and La Dotta or The Learned because the city’s university is the oldest in the Western world.

Porticoes are ubiquitous
The Piazza San Stefano

The need to house the students led to the expansion of residential space and so the construction of the 40km of porticoes in the city centre alone. It rained on and off during or stay, so were were more than grateful for these distinctive covered walkways.

The are particularly attractive around the angular Piazzo Santo Stefano, home to my number one must-see in Bologna – the labyrinthine complex of medieval churches, cloisters and crypts named after that saint. It originally consisted of seven churches. Four remain and they are the very definition of ‘hallowed spot”. It’s such a contrast contrast to the monumental Cattedrale di San Pietro and Basicilica di San Petronio. In Pilate’s Courtyard, see if you can spot in its alcove the 16th century ‘Crowing Rooster of St Peter’.

You have to earn the right to …
… reach the Santuario

Once you’ve got the taste for porticoes, it’s worth making the pilgrimage to the 18th century Santuario della Madonna di San Luca, a pink Baroque basilica on a hill top 10km south west of the city. It is a fair walk out before you test your calves ascending the world’s longest portico – 3.8km uphill all the way under 660 Unesco-protected arches. If you’re not up to it, there is a little tourist train. You’ll be met by a grand view across the city to the distant Apennines. 

Our reward for our own strenuous  efforts was a late Sunday lunch back in town at the Trattoria da Me. Michelin-mentioned, with a new generation in the kitchen, its food is decidedly more contemporary, but it still honours lasagne as a Sabbath special. So that was our starter and its light layers and textures were a revelation.

The cool Trattoria da Me
Even cooler – Forno Brisa

En route from Santuario, we had stopped off for an IPA at another beacon of new wave Bologna. Self-styled ‘independent and rebel bakery’ Forno Brisa, has five outlets, offering their own sourdough, cutting edge coffee and a very un-Bolognalike vibe. Ditto Il Punto, the city’s best birra artigianali pub. Excellent craft pours in a heavy rock ambience, five minutes walk from the Trattoria da Me. You have to venture further out to sample the wood-aged wild ales and sours at the Ca’ del Brado taproom.

Ragu and Draft operate at street level
Worship cocktais at Le Stanze

We were staying on the fringe of the beautiful Piazza Aldrovandi, just beyond the night-time hubbub of this cluster of al fresco bars and street food. Buzziest spot, another crack in the bulwark of trad Bologna, the Ragū & Draft kiosk, combining the city’s signature meat sauce in buns or on tagliatelle with draught cocktails. Walk north from here up the Via Giuseppe Petroni and in 10 minutes you’ll experience a very different cocktail setting. At aperitivo hour where better to sip your negroni than  Le Stanze, inside the vaulted former chapel of the Palazzo Bentivoglio? Pull up a bar stool against a backdrop of faded 17th frescoes.

Unmissable Cinema Modernissimo
A homage to movie greats

In complete contrast is the bar of the art house Cinema Modernissmo. Originally  it was an underground theatre of a medieval palace that was demolished in the early 20th century. The cinema it became finally closed in 2007, but with the backing of Martin Scorsese reopened three years ago and it is a glorious city centre bolthole. After exploring a free exhibition on the great French director Agnes Varda we each sipped a sbagliatio. One plus of viewing a film (a portion of which are in English with Italian subtitles) are the food boxes, which could include tortellini – naturally.

The two towers
Neptune in the Piazza Maggiore main square

Step outside onto the Via Rizzoli and turn your head right. Ahead of you lie the Asinelli and Garisenda towers, currently closed to the public, but enduring symbols of this city full of surprises. 

La Grassa, La Rossa, La Dotta, Las Sorpresa.

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My Italian Food Trail: Peposo (don’t stint on the peppercorns)

Scuse, my Peposo is inautentico. It’s the chopped San Marzanos that are the culprits in this. Tomatoes hadn’t made their arrival from the New World when this famous Florentine beef stew first sprang to prominence  in the 15th century, promoted by Renaissance man incarnate Filippo Brunelleschi. This and the tiled dome of the city’s Cathedral are his lasting legacies.

In a week’s cooking schedule that began with the daring spice fusion of two Gurdeep Loyal dishes this Peposo was earmarked as a bowlful of Italian authenticity. And, yes, as I was preparing it UNESCO designated the whole of Italian cuisine as an intangible cultural heritage. 

Such recognition is never likely to address the tangle of Asian Second Generation food strands found across Leicester-born Gurdeep’s two cookbooks. I reviewed the latest, last summer, but it was from his debut, Mother Tongue, that I yoked together Curry Leaf, Lemongrass and Aleppo Pepper Chicken and Sambhar Sweet Potato Hasselbacks with Red Leicester. Neither was what you would call a shy, retiring dish.

Still there seemed to be some distant affinity with the work-in-progress Peposo. The Tuscans are reticent about spicing, just as they eschew salt in their bread, and beloved pasta dish Cacio e Pepe is rather subtle with the the Pepe. Not so Peperoso. Some recipes recommend insane amounts of black peppercorns giving  a real kick to a dish of markedly few ingredients – olive oil, red wine, garlic, salt and stewing beef. Note, no onions or herbs.

Nothing but shin beef will do – discuss

A purchase of two kilos of Belted Galloway shin beef on the bone from Littlewoods of Heaton Chapel was a kind of cart before the horse inspiration. The roasted bones had contributed molten bone marrow – a freezer staple for lubricating home-made burgers in the future – and helped make  a goodly quantity of beef stock, too. The chopped up beef was perfect for the long stewing required for the Peposo. 

It’s a stove-top, pan-off operation where the Chianti (a whole bottle for 800g of meat) evaporates and enriches it. Even richer with the two cans of quality tomatoes, which I stand by.

Two stalwart UK champions of Italian food, Jacob Kenedy (Bocca di Lupo) and the late, great Russell Norman (1965-2023) go big on tomatoes in their versions. I went with Russell’s because his Brutto: A (Simple) Florentine Cookbook (Ebury Press, £32) proved an invaluable companion during last year’s travel-writing expedition to to the city. In particular it introduced me to the challenging street food tripe, Lampredotto for Confidentials. And yes I am now a fan of that braised tripe from the cow’s fourth stomach, doused in salsa verde, on a bun.

You won’t find it on the menu of Norman’s Trattoria Brutto in London’s Smithfield, but Peposo’s usually an option. In the preamble to his recipe (included later) he describes it as “a dish of extremely deep flavours and comforting textures. But it’s not a preparation that can be rushed. You need at least four hours, preferably more, and – as with many Tuscan recipes – it is improved by leaving it overnight. I’d love to be able to say you can use an alternative cut if you can’t get hold of beef shin, but it really must be shin. And you must leave the fat on – do not be tempted to trim. Your butcher will always be able to provide shin, even if your supermarket can’t.

“Additionally, the wine element needs to be appropriately regional. Chianti or even a standard Sangiovese, will provide much better results than a cheap New World Merlot from a petrol station.’

I used Lidl’s standard Chianti Riserva, Corte Alle Mura. Fort £1.50 more they have a  Christmas special on, from the same 2019 vintage, Medici Riccardi for a couple of quid more.

Russell’s version is actually rather modest with its pepper input. As it melted together over the long stew I ground extra peppercorns (Kampot, of course) into it. The result was a tasty marvel, which I first served with Judion beans in a tomato and sage sauce, the next day with a creamy celeriac and apple mash. Accompanying it then, a Fontodi Chianti Riserva (a ste up from Lidl). Each time we scooped up the rich juices with slices of Todmorden-baked baguette Tuscan-style. In Florence they have a saying for it: ‘fare la scarpetta’, which translates as “to do the little shoe”

The spectacular Duomo
Vintage time in Prunetta

Brunelleschi and a Duomo built on peppery beef stew

The acknowledged birthplace of Peposo is in Impruneta on the Arno, 15 miles south of the centre of Florence, where the Chianti vineyards really start. At the end of September ‘Peposo Day’ is an important part of the town’s flamboyant Grape Festival with local cooks battling it out to produce the best version.

Why Impruneta? It’s all down to the terracotta industry that has been there since the  Middle Ages. Its furnaces baked the burnt-red roof tiles used in the construction of Florence’s Doumo. The workers exploited the front of the kilns to slow cook in orci (olive oil/grain jars)  poorer cuts of meat with pepper and wine for their daily repast. 

On his Impruneta visits the Duomo’s architect, Filippo Brunelleschi, became a  fan of this Peposo with its peppery kick and twigged how this slow food could become fast food for his work team high up in the scaffolding. 

It would save valuable minutes if they ate on the job rather than clambering down and back up each lunchtime, so he ordered the Peoposo to be transported by wagon to Florence in terracotta casseroles, then hauled up to scaffold canteens. Not sure if the abundant red wine also winched up was a good heath and safety idea…

A hands-on Russell Norman
Brunelleschi by his contemporary Masaccio

Peposo the Brutto way

Ingredients

100g lard (or butter if you’re afraid of lard)

800g beef shin, cut into small chunks

Flaky sea salt

1 bottle of Chianti or Sangiovese

2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced

2 tbsp black peppercorns

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

Black pepper

Sourdough bread, for serving

Method

Melt half the lard in a very large frying pan and sear the meat on all sides until nicely browned. Add a few pinches of salt during this process. You may need to fry in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan. If there is a dark residue at the bottom of the frying pan, deglaze with a splash of red wine. When all the shin is brown, transfer to a very large saucepan in which you have melted the remaining lard. Add the sliced garlic and the peppercorns, and stir for one minute. Now add the chopped tomatoes and the rest of the wine. Bring to the boil briefly, then reduce to a very low simmer.

For the next four hours, keep half an eye on your Peposo to make sure it’s not drying out too quickly. If it is, cover it, but the full bottle of wine should have been sufficient to keep it stew-like. After four hours, check the seasoning and adjust if necessary. The beef shin will have disintegrated somewhat and become stringy and soft. You can encourage this further with some hearty wooden-spoon action. If it hasn’t, leave it longer. Or you could let it cool and leave it covered overnight. Then give it another 30 minutes on a medium heat the next day.

Serve with hunks of sourdough or unsalted Tuscan bread.

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Puy lentils? Pedigree legumes. But look instead to Abruzzo’s hand-picked marvels

Under the radar? That’s definitely Abruzzo. It’s the poor touristic relation of Toscana, Umbria, Piemonte and yet this predominantly rural Italian region has so much to offer. Three National Parks, one Regional Park and several natural reserves are home to an unprecedented 75 per cent of Europe’s flora and fauna species. The slow food on offer, washed down with the local soft Montepulciano reds, is reason enough to visit the scores of  ancient hilltop villages.

Take lentils. The medieval town of Santo Stefano di Sessanio holds a festival every September in their honour, the Sagra delle Lenticchie, and is campaigning to win them DOP (Denominazione d’ Origine Protetta) status alongside such iconic foodstuffs as Parmesan, Balsamic vinegar of Modena, San Marzano tomatoes and the like.

I source my Abruzzo lentils (via the wonderful Ham and Cheese Company in Bermondsey) from the Casino di Caprafico 100km south east which accesses the same scrubby terrain that somehow brings out the iron-rich best in these tiny legumes. Easily the equal of France’s acclaimed Puy lentils. The same deeply traditional operation also yields my go-to new season olive oil. The head honcho is Giacomo Santoleri. Let Ham and Cheese Co tell his story:

“Giacomo Santoleri was an engineer before turning to agriculture 20 years ago. His Caprafico farm is on the eastern slopes of the Maiella National Park, close to the town of Guardiagrele and there he has chosen to grow a range of heritage grains to mill for bread and pasta. Pasta from his barley and emmer (farro) is a long way from the uniform white mono flavour of pasta made from high yielding wheat varieties and it is also much healthier; emmer is known to be good for the heart and immune system. It is high in antioxidants, fibre and protein. Like many heritage grains the plants are strong and sturdy and can be grown without the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides.”

Giacomo Santoleri sorts his lentils
The Maiella National Park

And the Caprafico lentils?

“Giacomo grows ancient grains and pulses on the Caprafico plain in Abruzzo. These lentils are sown at the end of March on poor, chalky soil and they thrive in the harsh mountain temperatures of the Maiella National Park. Surviving these adverse conditions gives the lentils lots of flavour

“The lentils ripen at different times depending on their altitude but the majority are harvested during August. Harvesting takes place by hand because the lentils grow so close to the ground that mechanised harvesting can destroy up to 40 per cent of the harvest. Inside the cloth bag are 500gs of the most beautiful, speckled lentils. Cook them with a carrot, an onion and a stick of celery then stir them – still firm – into some softened dice of the same vegetables. Top them with a sausage or poached egg.”

Abruzzo’s finest artisan lentils
A perfect pairing with cotechino

The form the perfect base for toothsome New Year’s Day treat, Cotechino, sausagey subject of one of my Italian Food Trail pieces, but with my latest lentil batch I have wilfully ditched seasonality.

Just as summer is almost convincing Yorkshire it is Abruzzo I’ve assembled in my garden the ingredients for a decidedly autumnal Lentil and Chestnut Soup, loosely adapted from a Rachel Roddy recipe. It was an excuse to use up two vacuum packs of hulled chestnuts that had lain too long in the store cupboard. Plus I had an excess of chicken broth in the freezer and a surfeit of herbs from the garden.

Lentil and Chestnut Soup

Ingredients

4 tbsp good olive oil

1 onion,

1 carrot

1 stick celery,

100ml Noilly Prat

3 tomatoes, skinned and diced

Ready cooked chestnuts, broken up

2 litres of chicken broth/water

Parsley, chervil, dill, marjoram or other mixed fresh herbs.

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper, to taste

Method

In a large pan heat olive oil over a low flame, add chestnuts, stir for a minute then add vermouth and let it bubble for a couple of minutes.

Rinse the lentils and add to a separate pan with chopped veg, herbs and stock water mixture. Simmer for an hour or so over a low heat until the lentils are tender Unlike red lentils they keep their shape). Remove bayleaf. Take out half the mix and blend roughly before returning to the lentil pan along with the chestnuts and a splash of good extra virgin olive oil. Caprafico would be perfect.

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Arrivederci Panzanella – Wet Nellie must be the best way ever to use up stale bread

What have Panzanella, Pancotto, Ribollita and Bolton Brewis all got in common? And why are they trumped by the ultimate Wet Nellie – described by Parkers Arms chef Stosie Madi as part of the DNA of the UK’s No.1 gastropub? The answer is stale bread.

Frugality made delish by using your loaf, not binning it. Well, maybe not in the case of the Brewis. which I first encountered when celebrating the 25th anniversary of Rhubarb and Black Pudding, Matthew Fort’s year in the life of Paul, Heathcote’s Longridge restaurant. Like the eponymous black pudding, tripe or Eccles cakes, Brewis might, in Fort’s words, be proof of ‘Lancashire remaining true to its own regionality’, but it’s a desperate culinary remedy in its most basic form – hot water pored over hard bread scraps to make a mush come soup, seasoned with salt and pepper or whatever is to hand. 

The French for gruel is brouet. So it’s not just a Lancashire thing. It crops up in that 1869 tale of Devon derring do, Lorna Doone. The author, RD Blackmore says of one numpty character “She can’t stir a pot of brewis.” Cross the Atlantic to Newfoundland and you’ll find a ‘deluxe version’ – Fish and Brewis with Scruncheons, combining hard tack and salt cod.

Classic panzanella
Italian hill village

All of which is not a far remove from Italy’s Cucina Povera, which lifts making do on the poverty line to a different level, celebrating the rustic virtues of enhancing plain wheaten staples with herbs, foraged weeds, unmentionable meat parts and the like. The perception is the peasants of the Mezzogiorno and the Abruzzo liveD their lives in one long Dolmio ad. Our tables never recovered from the Industrial Revolution.

As it happens, I’m about to spend a few days among the Tuscan vineyards, where the diet may well be on the rich side. Yet, I’ll be looking out for Panzanella, a Tuscan and Umbrian chopped salad of soaked stale bread, onions and tomatoes, liberally doused with Extra Virgin or Pancotto, which has a variant in Campania utilising escarole or chicory with garlic and chilli. Tastier than either of these is Ribollita, a blend of Cavolo nero, red wine vinegar, cannellini beans, parmesan rind and carrot that strays into hearty territory. Closer to German Brotsuppe.

Guilt over leftovers is universal or should be and crumby ingenuity stretches beyond bread soup. Witness the aforementioned Wet Nellie, whose appeal extends from Liverpool into deepest Lancashire and finds its true haven at The Parkers Arms in The Trough of Bowland. Don’t dare to write it off as just a simple niece of Bread and Butter Pudding. in the hands of Stosie Madi and its true champion, business partner Kathy Smith, it’s a thing of beauty. Check out this video of its making.

Stosie and Kathy with their No.1 award
Newton-in-Bowland (not Tuscany)

So what makes up a Wet Nellie, perennial Parkers dessert fave? Let Stosie explain: “ We keep all left ofter sourdough, pastry, cakes etc using an electric mixer we make chunky crumbs. We then add our spice mix, ur own candied citrus mix, our own citrus syrup. Mix in lots of good candied cherries, dried currants and raisins. Now allow 48 hours before checking taste and texture. Add more syrup if dry; more crumbs if too wet. Fill cooked shortcrust tart cases and bake until golden. Serve with marmalade ice cream or maybe duck egg custard. It’s on the menu because it is a historic Lancs pudding.”

Beats Bewlis any day.

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My Italian food trail – Sicily’s ricotta salata the key to Pasta alla Norma

Opera has alway been entwined with food, especially Italian. We’re not talking tour riders of the stars with Pavarotti apparently demanding a 24 hour kitchen be set up next to his room with fridges packed with pasta, tomatoes and roast chickens, enough to feed 20. It was a phobia from an impoverished childhood – the big man ate comparatively moderately.

No it’s the way great names have become attached to certain dishes – Tournedos Rossini, Spaghetti Caruso, Peach Melba, Salsa Verdi. OK, I employed artistic licence on that last one. And then there is a truly terrific dish called after an actual opera. It is also one of the simplest to prepare, provided you’ve sourced the exact ingredients.

Pasta alla Norma has become the unofficial signature dish of Sicily. Invented in Catania on the east coast about the time Vincenzo Bellini’s romantic opera Norma premiered, it is said that the pasta was created as a homage. Legend has it that Nino Martoglio, an Italian writer and poet, was so delighted when presented with this dish that he compared its splendour with that of the opera.

Alternatively, according to Ben Tish in his evocative cookbook, Sicilia (Bloomsbury, £26) – one of my Cookbooks of 2021 – “another story tells of a talented home cook who served her creation to a group of gourmands and was duly christened at the table via the classic Sicilian compliment of Chista e na vera Norma (‘this is a real Norma’). Whatever the truth, the dish became an instant classic and its fame spread around the world.”

At my last London review meal before the lockdowns I ate this iconic dish of rigatoni, aubergine, tomato, basil and ricotta salata, appropriately enough, at Norma, the restaurant Ben created in Fitzrovia for the Stafford Group, showcasing the dishes in his book, many with Moorish influences. He has recently moved on. I finally published my account of that memorable meal in June 2021.

Since when I’ve looked out for Pasta alla Norma on menus in my native north. Among the indies specifically offering the island’s cuisine you won’t find it at Sicilian NQ in Manchester or A Tavola Gastronomia Siciliana in New Mills, though Trinacria in York do serve it. Less surprisingly the more generic Rosso in Manchester or the PIccolino chain do not list it. Rivals San Carlo do, but substitute pecorino for the ricotta salata. A cardinal sin in Catania, even though these crumbly, grateable sharp cheeses have much in common.

Indeed, my home quest to replicate the perfect Norma has been hampered by the absence of ricotta salata in my life. Until recently.

So what makes the salata version separate from that mild soft whey cheese found in tubs across the land. For a start, it packs a pungent, salty punch. Hence the name. It is  is only made over winter and spring when pastures are lush and herb-filled and the cooler air is perfect for ageing. 

I located an authentic version from Bermondsey-based Italian Artisan food importers Ham and Cheese after being alerted by the folk behind new Hebden Bridge bar, Coin, who serve a range of their charcuterie.

The ricotta salata I bought online is made by the Agostino family, who sell it normally from their butchers shop in Mirto, on Sicily’s north coast, west of Messina. We must have driven past on a road trip from Etna to Cefalu (main picture) the other year.

Their version is made from full-fat, raw cow’s milk, sometimes with the addition of goat’s or sheep’s milk, and is curdled with lamb or kid rennet before being put in to moulds. After a couple of days it spends 48 hours in a brine bath and is then aged for three months. It was a wonderful component of the Tish recipe for Pasta alla Norma. My one deviation from the norm (sic)? I added salted capers. Because they go so well in that other Sicilian aubergine, classic, caponata. Below, it tasted as good as it looked…

Ingredients: 2 firm aubergines, trimmed and cut into 2cm dice; 150ml extra virgin olive oil; ½ onion, finely chopped; 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped; a good handful of basil leaves

800g quality canned chopped tomatoes or passata; 400g dried rigatoni; 200g ricotta salata cheese, grated; sea salt

Method: Put the diced aubergines in a colander in the sink and sprinkle with salt. Leave to drain for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to its highest temperature, around 250°C/230°C fan/Gas Mark 10.

Rinse the aubergine in cold water and pat dry with a kitchen towel, then toss in a bowl with half the oil. Spread out on a baking tray, place in the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes or until caramelised, turning occasionally to make sure the pieces don’t dry out.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a medium saucepan over a medium heat and add the onion and garlic. Sauté for a couple of minutes, then add half the basil and the tomatoes. Bring to a simmer. Turn down the heat and cook gently for 23–30 minutes or until thickened (the exact time will depend on your canned tomato brand).

When the sauce is almost ready, cook the pasta in plenty of boiling salted water according to the packet instructions to al dente. Add the aubergine to the sauce. Drain the pasta (reserving a little of the cooking water) and toss in the sauce. If the sauce seems too thick, add some cooking water to loosen.

Divide among the plates and sprinkle with the ricotta and remaining basil leaves, roughly torn over the top. It’s best to allow this to cool slightly before eating.

Serves four

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Hebden’s shining Coin and the stairway to fennel salami heaven

The best gifts come in pairs. In the run-up to Christmas the most perfect grazing bolthole has sprung up down the road, from which a portal has opened to a cornucopia of Italian artisan wonders. Living the edible dream as just bottled, grassy new season olive oil from the Abruzzo, Sicilian capers packing a volcanic punch and a whole Tuscan finocchiona (fennel salami) from Cinta senese pigs arrived in the post the other day. All the way from some enlightened middle men in Bermondsey.

Buon appetito then. But first back to that handily placed bolthole. It’s in Hebden Bridge in a former bank building and it’s called Coin. What’s behind the bar’s name? I suggest to co-owners Oliver Lawson and Chloe Greenwood it might be a reference to the ‘The Cragg Vale Coiners’. Up the hill in Heptonstall Shane Meadows is currently filming The Gallows Pole – a BBC adaptation of Ben Myers’ novel about real life 18th century counterfeiters in the Calder Valley. 

Already there’s a craft beer bar in nearby Mytholmroyd named Barbary’s after the alehouse the gang frequented. Or maybe Coin as the French for corner to match the site whose lofty windows look out on two streets? And, of course, in its previous incarnation as Lloyds Bank plenty of small change passed across the counter.

Oliver, poker-faced, agrees it might be any or all of those. He’s more forthcoming about the origins of the charcuterie board we’ve ordered along with a £10 trio of Lindisfarne oysters  and schooners of Garage IPA from Barcelona. 

The imports he’s most proud of are the finely sliced finocchiona, mortadella, coppa and prosciutto di San Daniele that circle a wedge of the bar’s home-made pâté de campagne on our platter. Having worked for the likes of Mana in Manchester and (along with Chloe) the Moorcock at Norland he has a fair handle on quality ingredients and that’s even more important when kitchen facilities are limited.

It’s a similar scenario at Flawd at New Islington Marina, Manchester. As part of their small plate offering Flawd source their cured meats from Curing Rebels in Brighton. It would have been easy for Coin to rely on local stars  Porcus in the hills above Todmorden, but ‘Slow Food Movement’ explorations in Italy left them smitten with the quality they found. 

“We wanted to do something different to anything else in the area,” Oliver tells us as he adds a house pickle accompaniment to the table. “The charcuterie prices are pretty much the same that we would pay for their British equivalent.”

The 100g meat plate is £13.95, a plate of five cheeses (two French, one Swiss, a Cheddar and Todmorden’s very own Devil’s Rock Blue) a tenner, while simple small plates range from £5.50 to £9.50. Our meal eventually costs me an extra £90 on top. Why? Because I was so enamoured of the charcuterie we were served that back home I placed my own order with the UK suppliers and friends of Oliver and Chloe, The Ham and Cheese Company. Formed on a Borough Market stall 15 years ago, they now work out of wholesale maturing rooms in a Victorian railway arch in Bermondsey. All they sell is from a network of small, ultra-sustainable, independent producers from across Italy (plus there’s a small Basque presence also).

The operation has a huge fan base among top London chefs specialising in Italian cuisine – Theo Randall, Joe Trivelli of the River Cafe and Murano’s Angela Hartnett, who says: “What I love about Elliott and Alison is their ability to source the most incredible salumi straight from the producer. The best I have tasted – plus my mother (with Italian roots) agrees!”

What really sold Ham and Cheese Co to me was a blog by Alison on the website entitled The Ethical Abbatoir. Its mission statement is immediate: “The first thing we ask a potential new producer is the number of pigs they slaughter a week. We know that this will often tell us more about the producer, their philosophy, and the quality of their product, than any other question.” This blog piece features their San Daniele provider, Prolongo, a family business that is so wedded to tradition (natural drying and ageing, salting, massaging and larding) that they only produce 7,000 hams a year).

It’s harder to work this way in the UK because the tradition of small-scale animal slaughter that these Italian producers sustain has all but disappeared. 

Not feeling able to run to a 2.3kg whole rare breed Mora Romagnoli mortadella from Aldo Zivieri, I had settled on a more modest finocchiona from Carlo Pieri, who has a small shop in the Tuscan village of Sant Angelo Scalo near Montalcino. He works just four pigs a week and uses a local abattoir he invested in to save it. His octogenarian mum picks all the wild fennel seeds and fennel pollen that season Carlo’s salumi. Check out my paean to fennel pollen.

As it turns out I end up accepting a substitute. Elliott tries to ring me, then texts the news that the next delivery from Tuscany is a week away; I can wait or try, at the same price, a new producer’s fennel salami, 50g smaller but normally more expensive, made from Cinta Senese, the queen of Italian pigs (above), so I’m actually getting a better deal. 

And so it proved. A perfect blend of creamy fat and sweetly cured flesh, the one from the Rosati family’s Azienda Agricola Fontanelle was remarkably even better than the Pieri we first tasted at Coin. We paired it with buffalo mozzarella and doused them in that ‘green’ olive oil I mentioned.

A final word, especially relevant as no shows proliferate across hospitality, by all means do as I did, and work your way through the producer pen pictures on the Ham and Cheese website, revealing a glorious food culture. Maybe even place an order. But do support a small indie like Coin, launching at the most difficult of times. 

I’m going back as soon as I can to road-test the rest of the menu and a whole raft of natural wines. As usual I’ll be making my own Negronis this Christmas, yet I also intend to try one of Oliver and Chloe’s. Before tackling another charcuterie platter, naturally.

Coin, Albert Street, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8AH. 01422 847707.

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Idyllic Ischia – how I chose creative hotbeds over hot springs

Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet novels were set in a gritty, poverty-stricken Fifties Naples still recovering from the War. I came later than most to the best-selling saga of Elena and Lila, then devoured its 550,000 words with all the gusto I had brought to road-testing the pizzas of that chaotic, hypnotic city. 

Seventy years ago, as now, an idyllic escape route was offered by the hour ferry ride across the Gulf to Ischia. It was on a moonlit beach there that Elena lost her virginity in The Story of a New Name. My solo visit to this 17-square mile island out in the Bay of Naples was less life-changing but quite unforgettable.

Ischia teems with other ghosts – cinematic, musical and literary. This volcanic outcrop of hot springs and mud treatments may lack the sheer chocolate box glamour of rival Capri, but what an exotic, sometimes louche, backdrop it has been to the lives of numerous creative mavericks.

Capri boasts homespun Gracie Fields; Ischia WH Auden, William Walton, Luchino Visconti and their luminous guests. OK, much of this celebrity action was back in the Fifties and Sixties, when it was not the developed tourist destination it is today. The same is true of so many Mediterranean boltholes, yet against the odds Ischia retains a special dolce vita allure.

It helps that it has acted as location for at least 30 movies. It also hosts two annual film festivals. I gasped when I first reached Ischia Ponte, the picturesque extension of the island’s capital, Ischia Porte, and gazed upon the iconic citadel, Castello Aragonese, rearing 300ft above the sea across its causeway. Instantly recognisable from film noir The Talented Mr Ripley, where Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow play out their sardonic, sun-kissed endgame.

Off-screen movie melodrama came to Ischia four decades before when Richard Burton and Liz Taylor conducted their very open and controversial public affair on the island during the filming of Cleopatra in 1962. At the Bar Mara Caffe Internazionale in Forio town there’s no recognition they were once visitors alongside a starry cast that included Charlie Chaplin, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner, Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis.

The regular presence at Maria’s Cafe of great English poet Auden is marked by a framed photo with then owner Maria Senese, while other visitors have terrace tables named after them. I sipped a wheat beer with my legs under ‘Truman Capote’. Auden lived nearby in the summer with boyfriend Chester Kallman, forming a gay enclave that sometimes scandalised residents of this workaday port.

There is no trace left of the house they rented, so I pursued my quest for Ischia’s bohemian past by walking north along the coast back to my hilltop hotel base, San Montano Resort & Spa via two surviving monuments to artistic giants. It was a stiff climb up to the pine-clad Zaro promontory in the north east of the island that is home both to film director Luchino Visconti’s Moorish-style villa, La Colombaia (The Dovecot), and Oldham-born composer Sir William Walton’s world famous garden, La Mortella (The Myrtles).

La Colombaia, set deep in forested grounds, was rescued from a decade of neglect and relaunched as a museum and international school of film and theatre 20 years ago. In these difficult times the whole complex is closed, possibly for good. The ghosts remain. Here the rampantly bisexual director held open house. If walls could tell tales. When Aristotle Onassis ditched Mara Callas for Jackie Kennedy, here Visconti comforted Callas, who he had directed in La Traviata at La Scala. All three were his friends and frequent house guests.

A couple of miles away is a place with an altogether less turbulent past. The gardens of La Mortella were 50 years in the making. In 1958 Lady Susana Walton started transforming a quarry on the property her husband Sir William had bought, opening it to the public in 1991. Today, run by a private foundation, it is a spectacular sub-tropical and mediterranean garden featuring a working concert amphitheatre, a museum devoted to the composer (best known for Facade and Belshazzar’s Feast) and his pyramid-shaped tomb overlooking the sea. I liked the risque murals in the quasi pagan ‘Temple of the Sun’ and the world’s largest water lily, the gender-bending victoria amazonica, that flowers in the morning as a white petalled female and later in the day reopens as deep crimson petals and male organs. 

If you visit one attraction in Ischia, make it La Mortella, but note it is shut to the public from until April 2 2022. During the winter month the garden can be visited via a guided tour each Thursday. You must book in advance.

I was lucky it was an hour’s walk away from marvellous San Montano,which itself boasts a spectacular outlook in all directions. Down to its private beach 100m below or along the coast towards Ischia Porte. Perfect for sunrises and sunsets. My room with its own balcony shared these sublime vistas.

It is such a haven much of the clientele seemed happy to while away the afternoons around the fabulous pool complex or make full use of the light-filled Ocean Blue Spa with its hand-made Vietri tiles before dining in formal but relaxed style al fresco on the terrace. Dishes featuring plenty of fish, buffalo mozzarella, olive oil, salad and herbs offered a deft take on traditional local cuisine. The local produce is magnificent.

A dinner excursion down to Lacco Amena town was exciting, too. Here at the island’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, the Ristorante Indaco locally-born chef Pasquale Palamaro offers challenging tasting menus. It is situated in the L’Albergo della Regina Isabella, the only hotel on the island with its own beach – and a sense of a glorious celeb past. 

Both hotels have fabulous wine lists showcasing Campania on the mainland and Ischia’s own specific grape heritage. Key local producer is the acclaimed D’Ambra winery, which has championed varieties native to the island such as Biancolella, Forastera, and Rilla white varieties, and Piedirosso and Guarnaccia for reds.

I tasted the range in the company of Andrea d’Ambra, who is assisted in th winemaking these days by his daughters Marina and Sara, then went on a vertiginous car ride up  to the Frassitelli vineyard that is their pride and joy, four hectares clinging to a mountainside 600m up en route for Monte Epomeo, the slumbering volcano that dominates the island. Great walking all around, aided by a colour-coded footpath network.

Frassitelli, the flagship white produced here from Biancolella, also hits the heights. Peachy on the nose, it is piercingly fruity, with a hint of salt, on the palate. Visconti helped design distinctive labels for D’Ambra when they were finding their feet in markets beyond the island.

 Visible from the vineyards on the southern coast is Sant’Angelo, loveliest spot on the island. All whitewashed cubes and pricey boutiques and fish restaurants, it lies on an isthmus in the lee of a volcanic hump (they are everywhere – Lacco Amena has a tufa outcrop called Il Fungo because it resembles a mushroom. 

Here most of all on this lush, less developed side Ischia lives up to its sobriquet of the Emerald Isle. No cars or buses are allowed in Sant’Angelo, so it is a tranquil spot to people watch on the beach or grab a beer and a pizza.

I covered so much of the island on foot there was no time left to take to the hot springs. Those in the know recommend Negombo, which is next door to San Montano’s private beach. This ‘thermal garden’ covers 22 hectares with a variety of mineral baths, jacuzzi and Turkish bath. You buy a day pass. Probably a great place to relax and gather your strength before being ferried back from vibrant, villagey Ponte Ischia (below) to the urban maelstrom that is Naples.

Getting there

I flew into Naples and then travelled to Ischia by Alilauro hydrofoil on the 9th at 2.35pm (alt 3.30). Get there 45 minutes before and tell them you have luggage. Alilauro ticket office is at Molo Beverello (Napoli’s Port).

A version of this article first appeared on Manchester Confidential.

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The Spärrows – a culinary migration that hits those Alpine heights

Priest Stranglers and Little Sparrows are not quite the odd bedfellows they sound. Both find common ground in the North Italian city of Trento (above), glorious gateway to the Dolomites. The Trentino has always been wrangled over by Italy and Austria; reaching its blood-stained apogee during the Great War. Witness the trenches and obsolete weaponry that still litter the mountain ridges. 

A benevolent legacy, though, is the intermingling of Germanic and Italian Alpine cuisines. That’s why you’ll find Strangolapreti (stranglers) and Spätzle (sparrows) sharing equal billing on the menus. The former, also known Strozzapreti, are usually a twisty pasta made up of just flour water and salt – but no eggs. Legend has it these were taken by the Church as tithes, leaving the peasants to fulminate against ‘priest-chokers’ or ‘priest-stranglers’ in anti-clerical hotbeds such as Emilia Romagna. Or maybe it’s just a reference to how you shape them by hand.

Up in Trento my Strangolapreti turned out to be a delicious local variant – spinach gnocchi. In truth, they weren’t a far remove from the Spätzle, noodles which do benefit from the presence of eggs. In the Swabian-German dialect the name translates as ‘little sparrows’, which they resemble in flight when shaped by a spoon in the traditional way.

From its South West German birthplace the dish has flown across all the Alpine regions, establishing itself everywhere and, most handily, is now nesting in a restaurant in Manchester, paying its own homage – The Spärrows.

Up on Red Bank chef/co-owner Franco Concli stays true to his own Trentino roots by making the Spätzle the traditional way, hand scraping them off the floury board and dropping them into simmering water. They are available both as savoury and, very apres ski, as a sweet, with cinammon, brown sugar and butter.

I like both the Spätzle and Gnocchi served simply with butter and sage (£7 for 110g), but on a recent visit chose the £9 version with guanciale (cured pork cheek), which was fabulously soothing. So too was a special of beetroot-tinctured agnoletti filled with ricotta and lemon. 

Russian style pelmeni dumplings with beef/pork garlic breadcrumbs (£8.50) were less satisfying. I should have gone for the Polish pierogi, little dumplings filled with melted cottage cheese and potato with soured cream and sauerkraut, a favourite from The Spärrows’ early days in a small archway near Manchester’s Victoria Station.

Since then the drinks list has gone from strength to strength under the stewardship of co-owner, Polish-born Kasia Hitchcock. It is as focused as the cool but cosy fit-out of a much larger arch space. A sake and spirits expert, she has been very canny with a wine list that majors in the very Alpine territory occupied by most of the food. Reds such as Lagrein, Teroldego and a Pinot Nero, are all there, from the Trentino/Alto Adige with their better known country cousin, Zweigelt from Austria. Its producer Sepp Moser also supplies the well-priced house white, a moreish Gruner Veltliner (the thinking person’s Sauvignon Blanc).

It all takes me back to Trento. I was in town for the annual Mostra dei Vini, the spring festival celebrating the wines of the Trentino region. After dark I mingled with the winemakers and was astonished at the variety of styles and local grape varieties used. Among the reds I liked the chunky Marzeminos, the more ethereal Pinot Neros and the flagship Teroldegos, with Muller-Thurgau outstanding among the whites. The delicate Nosiola, grown in a small corner of Trentino only, fared better as the base for the dessert wine Vino Santo (not Vin Santo, that’s Tuscan).

The jolly fest was held in the stunning Castello del Buonconsiglio. The original 13th century Castelvecchio (“old castle”) is in contrast to all the Renaissance add-ons in different styles erected to the glory of various Prince-Bishops who ruled here in the name of the Holy Roman Empire. Cardinal Bernardio Clesio, the greatest of these, was responsible for its vast artistic treasure house, the Palazzo Magno. I liked the earlier Gothic-Venetian loggia.

The castle also houses a grim reminder of the bloody Italian campaign during the Great War – the dungeon that housed patriot martyr Cesare Battisti before he was hanged  in the castle grounds. This was Austrian territory then and they regarded him as a traitor for fighting on the Italian side. A Battisti mausoleum tops a hill outside Trento. As I write this piece on our own Remembrance Day I’ve opened a bottle of Teroldego to salute the fallen on a front that most Britons have never heard of.

The Spärrows, 16 Red Bank (Green Quarter), Manchester, M4 4HF. 0161 302 6267. Word of warning: access is via a plain door with minimal signage.

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My Italian Food Trail: Tiramisù, the aphrodisiac?

Darkness at noon, torrential rain battering the skylight of my attic office. Can’t get out of my head how many private jets flew in the world leaders to that climate change summit in Glasgow and how ironic that doomsday weather has crippled the rail line up from London.

My antidote to all this gloom? Make a Tiramisù, obviously. In honour of Ado Campeol, whose Treviso restaurant, in North East Italy, was the birthplace of this modern Italian ‘classic’. If Neil Young is the ‘Godfather of Grunge’, Ado, who has died at the age of 93, is the ‘Godfather of Claggy Chill Cabinet Desserts in Restaurants With Checkered Plastic Tablecloths’.

Retro flashbacks. It doesn’t have to be like this, as I rally my tiramisù resources. Rum? Check. Marsala? Check. Eggs and sugar? Check. Dark (but not too dark) chocolate? Check. But just a small amount, augmented by cocoa powder. No espresso machine, but I’ll concoct a wired-up batch of dark roast Monsoon Malabar. OK, it will require a trip out, dodging the toppling trees, to garner a couple of tubs of mascarpone and some boudoir finger biscuits (or their equivalent. I’m tempted to factor in too, some Amaretti that have been a store cupboard fixture for too long, but would that be sacrilege?

Not really. Even a dish less of a parvenu than tiramisù, which dates back to those checkered seventies, is not set in stone (check out various versions below). It’s why every nonna across Italy treasures her own special ragu recipe. 

How many of those ragus, mind, have claims to aphrodisiac effects? This promotable urban myth stems from the word tiramisù, literally translated as “lift me up”, from the Treviso dialect’s “tireme su”. There’s a quite wonderful ‘heavy breathing’ Australian article, tracing the dish back to Treviso’s historic warren of brothels.

“For centuries, up until 1958 when brothels were shut by the government, the cake was served to reinvigorate exhausted clients inside so-called “casinos” (closed whorehouses) non-stop: Before, during and after heavy and multiple sex sessions to keep them going and the money flowing.”

The Campeols are sticking by their more edifying version of tiramisù’s origin. Aldo’s son Carlo, who now runs the Campeol family restaurant, has recalled: “When my mother Alba was breastfeeding me a few years earlier, she had turned to mascarpone mixed with sugar and biscuits soaked in coffee to keep her energy up, which is traditional in Treviso. Then, with her chef, she turned those elements into a pudding.”

According to that chef, Roberto Linguanotto, it was all down to an inspired accident while making vanilla ice cream. He dropped some mascarpone cheese into a bowl of eggs and sugar and, wowed by the pleasant taste, he told Alba. The pair then perfected the dessert by adding ladyfinger sponges soaked in coffee, and sprinkling it with cocoa.

The dish was never patented, pressure to win EU certification to validate (or ossify) the original recipe has been in vain and rival claimants have occasionally surfaced. That’s alway the case with these Eureka! moments in popular cuisine. Take universally revered ‘Indian speciality’ Chicken Tikka Masala. Tikkipedia (sorry Wikipedia) dates its creation back to the start of the Seventies and Glasgow’s Shish Mahal restaurant, where proprietor Ali Ahmed Aslam improvised a sauce made from yogurt, cream and spices after a customer complained his Tikka was too dry. Apocryphal? Definitive?” Who knows?

Similarly, in my travel memories of Berlin I name checked Kadir Nurman as the creator of the donner kebab (again in those fertile early seventies), but other Turkish immigrants to Germany have also staked their claim, apparently), while the invention of Berlin fast food rival Currywurst is attributed to one Herta Heuwer way back in 1949. She was a dab hand with ketchup and curry powder sourced from British squaddie stationed there.

But back to my tiramisù, which has been chilling nicely while I have meandered through this maze of modern culinary classics. Alcohol wasn’t originally included in this family friendly recipe; now it inevitably features. My version, which I’m sampling contentedly, does. Laced with rum and marsala (oh and there was an inch of brandy to use up), it turned our really well. Now the sun has even come out. Saluti! 

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My Italian food trail: Fennel pollen

Finnochio’s, a San Francisco night club, famed for its drag queens, just failed to make it past the Millennium, having traded for decades on the Italian slang word for homosexual, rent boy even. Why the generic name for fennel took on queer connotations I have no idea; I’m just happy to pay upfront for the culinary satisfaction Finnochio always brings – in all of its forms.

In particular I’m hooked on fennel pollen. It’s a speciality of Tuscany, but it is taken to the next level in Calabria, Italy’s deep south, where they call it “the spice of angels”. It soars way above earthbound fennel seeds.

Calabria, source of the finest wild fennel pollen, dubbed ‘spice of the angels‘

Hand harvested, like the equally labour intensive saffron, and dried in the sun, it comes at a premium (around £16 for 15g). Understandably, each flower head will only yield about a ¼ teaspoon of creamy yellowy pollen at the most. Yet it offers a defining taste of the Mediterranean summer with a little going a long way. A pinch will provide an explosion of liquorice, anise and citrus, which used sparingly, can add an extra dimension to both sweet and savoury dishes. 

Combine it with Himalayan pink salt to create a rub for pork, use it to energise an orange and olive oil cake or simply finish off a pasta dish with a dash. I add it to stocks and soups obsessively.

You could, of course, harvest your own but wild fennel is not at its most intense in my Yorkshire hinterland. And bear in mind, ye who balk at picking wild mushrooms, fennel and poisonous hemlock (remember Socrates) are both in the same carrot family, sharing distinctive umbrella-shaped flower clusters; those of fennel are yellow, hemlock white.

If you’re still keen peruse these instructions by Californian master forager Hank Shaw, one of my go-to gurus in all things wild.

As an alternative, two reliable online sources of authentic fennel pollen are Spice Mountain and Sous Chef.

Fennel pollen and Florence fennel bulb are related but offer different culinary properties

So how does the pollen relate to fennel bulb?

A perennial home favourite of mine has been a fennel risotto with vodka (recipe here) from the River Cafe cookbooks, enhanced of late by the addition of my beloved pollen. It uses those white bulbs we know as Florence fennel, dubbed ‘pregnant celery’ by the writer Maggie Stuckey and adapted to be used as a vegetable, particularly good with fish.

Both wild and domesticated fennel are he same plant, Foeniculum vulgare, the feral stuff only differing because it rarely sets a bulb. Fennel is tough, appropriately enough for giving its name in Greece to Marathon (the place with much fennel). It is herbaceous, meaning it “dies” every year and regrows from the root in spring.

All that rebirth stuff chimes with the mythological (and health promoting) status of finocchio. It was inside a stalk of dried fennel that Prometheus, defying Zeus hid a charcoal lump from the chariot of the sun to bring the gift fire to humankind.

My little pot of fennel pollen is my own gift of pagan sunshine that keeps my kitchen civilised throughout the dreary winter.

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