Snow + Oranges = Marmalade.

It’s been stay-at-home cold. I made two different types of marmalade: straight up seville orange with fruit from Riverford and ‘good morning breakfast’ with a mixture of pink grapefruit, blood and seville oranges from this book by Diana Henry. ‘Good morning breakfast’ has come out more like a marmalade sauce than actual marmalade, although perhaps that’s what is meant by’softly set’?

***

Aside from the snow, it has been a busy few weeks. I’m counting this as #3 of my 52 projects. Numbers 1 & 2 have been completed, but I’ve had no time to record the evidence yet. Perhaps a January round-up when I’ve finished #4.

We ate at a nice Italian restaurant yesterday. I had the house antipasto with two Sicilian specialities; Spaghetti alla Norma [although if any Sicilians were here, they’d probably complain that spaghetti isn’t the right type of pasta and perhaps also get into a debate re. the correct type of ricotta to put on the top] and a glass of Nero D’Avola [on which at least most of them seemed to agree].

I even sampled the closest thing to a real pizza I’ve eaten since coming back - just when I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to eat them at all anymore after too many expensive disappointments from allegedly gourmet [=overpriced] pizzerias.

Anyway, it set me to thinking about the food of Sicily - how what was once everyday routine is now a rare treat - but before I could get too gloomy I remembered these bad boys: The Bacon Special, and his big brother the Greedy Breakfast. These are UK-exclusives, unavailable anywhere else on the globe. Yet thanks to our collective open-mindedness and interest in other food cultures, there is an immense variety of choices. You can’t put a price on that.

World, meet the sandwich pie. King of the sandwiches.

One round loaf of bread with the top sliced off, hollowed out and filled with as much meat and cheese as will fit inside. Chilled overnight and then sliced into wedges. I think it’s a good start to my summer sandwich challenge.

On Sausages

The brothers Pomello, longtime butchers in Corleone, in conversation with food writer Matthew Ford, on their sausages:

‘The sausages of Corleone -‘

‘Our sausauges - ‘

‘We only put pork and seasonings in them -‘

‘Salt, black pepper, red pepper -‘

‘Just a little red pepper -‘

‘And semi di finocchietta, wild fennel seeds -‘

‘They come from the wild fennel around here -‘

‘Ir’s the finocchietta that is the special ingredient -‘

‘It’s different from the finochietta anywhere else -‘

‘And we use the whole pig -‘

‘Five parts - ‘

‘Shoulder, belly, leg, cheek and back fat -‘

‘That’s what makes it special.’


The brothers Pomello on the sausages of Marineo, a town 20km away:

‘What about the salsiccia di Marineo?’

‘What about it?’

‘Is it any good?’

‘Boh’ [accompanied with a dismissive shrug, this is Sicilian for ‘how should I know that?’]

‘How is it different from the salsiccia di Corleone?’

‘It’s completely different’

‘Not the same at all’


Interest piqued, Matthew Fort drives to Marineo and seeks out a butcher. Locals recommend Franco Muratori, who wears a cap embroidered with Il Re della Salsiccia:

“…He himself, the King of Sausages, made his with five parts of the pig, shoulder, belly, leg, cheek and back fat… And he seasoned only with salt, pepper and fennel seeds and tied the finished sausage into links with lengths of raffia. In other words,but for the absence of a small amount of chilli, and the raffia links, his sausages were identical to those of Corleone.

No, not idential, he said. Absolutely not. They were quite different.”


This extract from a book I am reading sums up so many conversations. Don’t eat granita in Palermo - they don’t know how to make it there. Never have an arancino south of Messina. The cannoli in Catania aren’t as good as the ones here. I’ve probably mis-remembered all these pieces of advice, but I couldn’t sum it up any better than Mr. Fort’s sausage story anyway. It’s good to know I’m not alone…

Projects

I caught a horrible cold, more than likely from one of my students with their foreign germs.

As is well documented, the best cure for this type of lurgy is chicken soup, made with a real chicken and the vegetables in evidence on the retro soup  bowl, rather than from a can…

After a weekend of suffering and a Monday on which I would definitely have phoned in sick were my job any other job, I am feeling better today. I made some celebratory biscuits, adapted from this book. They turned out a little like homemade hobnobs.

I am also trying to finish one of my many unfinished crochet projects. I started this one early this year. The colours were inspired by the amazing wild flowers all around Sicily in the spring.

Progress has been slow… I hope I’ll have a finished project to post soon.

If I get it finished within the acceptable time frame for baby gifts, this will be for my new little nephew, who arrived today.  Flower-inspired blanket is not the obvious choice for a boy I know, but he was still genderless at that point in time.

Congratulations to my little sister and welcome little Malachi!

Summer holidays

English people are never happy with the weather. When it rains, they wish it would stop. When it doesn’t rain, it’s usually a matter of minutes before some water authority announces a drought. When it’s cold, people complain. When it’s hot, they complain even more.

In some sort of desparate bargaining with the gods of Colombian weather, I promised solemnly never to whine about English weather again, and frankly the rest of the nation would do well to follow suit.  This last week has been beautiful, and for once I have had some time off to enjoy it.

There are too many unfinished projects in my life, and this morning I sat in my garden and set about getting this one finished. Once upon a time, these granny squares were going to be a blanket. There are enough for two or three of these cushions.

Inspired by the raspberries, both on the canes and in abundance in the fridge, I adapted my marscapone brownie recipe to be a raspberry marscapone brownie recipe. A triumph, if I say so myself.

Sadly this barely made a dent in the raspberries, and I was forced the following day to make some experimental raspberry elderflower cupcakes with courgettes from this amazing book.

Cupcakes by Harry Eastwood, improvised raspberry pink icing by me.

And last but by no means least, a welcome home banana cake.

The least fancy-looking, but perhaps the most delicious.