Sometimes things just arrive at the right time.

Sile’s brother Colm bought some tomato plants from the Amish stall in Waterford market in June and presented six of them to us.
Once they entered Sile’s tender and green fingered care they thrived.

When we came back from our holidays at the end of August they were giving us about 8 pounds of ripe tomatoes every week

and they kept this up until there wasn’t enough sun to ripen them anymore (about a fortnight ago.)
This has been ever thus, at the end of the season, being left with vines with some green tomatoes left for the begging.

Our forefathers, being a thrifty lot, would never have left these for the slugs so there are, in older cookbooks, plenty of recipes for using up the green tomatoes.
I have tried several of these and have been adapting the best of them, Margaret Costa’s “Mrs. Postgate’s Green Tomato Chutney” over the years.
Margaret Costa’s Four Seasons Cookbook is still a great food bible of mine but tastes have changed since 1970 when it was first published.
In the original chutney recipe she, courageously for the time, includes 1oz.(sic) of garlic in a recipe which includes about 8 lbs. of fruit.
Even then she feels constrained to add a bracketed note; “Ignore the certain protests of the family that you are using too much garlic” !
My how we have changed, and grown to love the “stinking rose”.

This brings me back to my green tomato surplus.

Searching out the recipe in Margaret Costa’s book I discovered that it also contains large quantities of both cooking and eating apples.
For some reason I always feel that making chutneys should include a minimum of purchasing, as they were always a method of using up the last of Autumn’s free harvest.

Just at the right moment my friend Donal Moore called and offered us some of the bounty of his father, Joe Moore’s, orchards in Bagenalstown.
On Sunday we collected a present of a box of red Fiesta eating apples

and some green Bramley cookers.

Thank you Joe Moore.

My first cooking effort of these apples was my much loved French Apple Tart the recipe for which went out on WLR last week.
My second was a further development of Green Tomato Chutney.

By now the recipe has changed so much that I think it needs a new title.

Its origins I thoroughly respect as I imagine that it came from Raymond Postgate’s wife.
Raymond Postgate was a legendry English connoisseur who founded the marvellous (and still extant) “Good Food Guide” in the 1950’s.
Margaret Costa , as well as being the food editor of the Sunday Times was married to the chef/proprietor of Lacey’s in London (where this writer once very briefly worked) which was for a long time listed in the same guide. It is therefore very likely that they knew each other.

But back to the present.
In gratitude for Joe Moore’s present of apples I have decided to name this version of Green Tomato Chutney after him.

Joe Moore’s Chutney

Ingredients:

1 kg (2 ½ lbs) Cooking Apples
1 kg (2 ½ lbs) Onions
1 Bulb of Garlic(12 cloves) or 2 Bulbs if small
110g (4 oz )Ginger Root
1 kg (2 lbs) Brown Sugar
1 litre (2 pints)White Wine (or malt) Vinegar

1 kg (2 ½ lbs) Eating Apples
2 kg. (4 ½ lbs) Green Tomatoes

½ kg (1 lb.) raisins
60g (2 oz )Mustard Seed
60g (2 oz )Chopped Chillis
2 Tablespoons Salt

Method:

Peel, core,and chop the cooking Apples.
Peel and roughly chop the onions
Peel the garlic and chop roughly
Peel and chop finely the root ginger

Put all these ingredients into a food processor and whizz until they are a coarse mush.
Put these into a large pot and bring up to a gentle simmer.

Peel,core and dice the eating apples
Dice the Green tomatoes

Add these and all the other ingredients to the pot.
Bring back to a simmer and cook gently for about 3 hours.

Chutney toiling and troubling.

Once the mixture starts to thicken you must watch the pot carefully to make sure it doesn’t stick.

The traditional test is to draw a spoon through and it should leave a clear path.

Once it is cooked cover and pot as you would a jam.

……………………..The Finished Product………………………….

“Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder”

I just recently came across this quotation of Ogden Nash’s
The 1890’s French advertising poster seems to illustrate it beautifully.

I was never a great one for breakfasts.
The staple breakfast food at home in Cork when I was growing up was porridge, one of the very few foods which I cordially dislike.
I have strong memories of my Mother pleading with me to “Eat something before you go out for God’s sake” as I ran down the stairs for the bus. I would, with difficulty, swallow a glass of milk but for her sake rather than mine, or Gods.

This all changed in 1992 when, after about 26 years of puffing, a brain haemorrhage persuaded me to give up cigarettes.
Up to then my first waking action had been to light a cigarette.
(When as a student I used to live with my sister and family in Dublin my young nephew David used to wake me by pushing a cigarette into my mouth,
he understood my priorities)

Post cigarettes (I have never smoked one since then) I suddenly found myself with hunger in the morning for the first time ever. (I also found myself gaining weight for the first time ever but that is another story)
And so began breakfasts.

As I used to start in the kitchen at about 10.00 am when we had the restaurant and Sile left to teach at 8.30 am I have had wonderful leisurely breakfasts for the last several years. I have also been fortunate both in this house in Griffith Place and in Mary Street to have a good newsagent within easy walking distance. This provides one with the third essential of the perfect breakfast ; newspapers. Given that I now have the first two in control (leisure and the papers) that brings me to the third essential if the perfect breakfast; what to eat.

What started me writing this piece today was having a moment when I bustled around the kitchen, making sure that everything was laid out and ready for my sacred breakfast, when I stood back, looked at myself and laughed out loud.
I realised that I had become that sort of fussy, anal, curmudgeonly and selfish old man that is caricatured endlessly. And what is worse, I was enjoying it.

Here is what has to be on the table before I can sit down and enjoy it.

A table mat
A napkin (coffee, with a moustache, is impossible without it)
A china mug
A knife and fork
A black pepper grinder and a cellar of Maldon Salt (for the poached egg)
Two slices of toast (preferably of my own sundried tomato bread)
Milk (fat free) for the coffee
One percolator full of Espresso Coffee (wrapped in a cosy so the second cup will be warm)
One lightly poached egg (free range, teaspoon of vinegar in the water to keep the white together) sitting on one of the slices of toast
One jar of Bonne Maman Apricot Jam (for the second slice)
2 newspapers (Irish Times and the English Independent-when I can get it)
My reading glasses (obviously)
A biro (for crossword and/or sudoku)

Pathetic isn’t it ?
No wonder I laughed.
I hasten to add that this does not happen every day.
Just enough times in the week to remain a treat.
If this is what getting old is all about I reckon I can live with it.

I am still cycling with Jacques Brel every morning and still with the same CD Infiniment (not that it really makes much difference which CD of Brel one gets, they all seem to be different mixes of the same songs with just an infuriating addition or two of a song new to me, with just three CDs I now have three versions of some songs!)

There are a few lines of great beauty which he has written which I feel I must share.
I will add a (rough) translation.

From L’Amour est Mort
His lament for a relationship where love has died

Le piano n’est plus qu’un meuble
La cuisine pleure quelques sandwiches

Now the piano is just furniture
And only sandwiches come from the kitchen

And

Elle a oublie qu’elle chantait
Il a oublie qu’elle chantait

She has forgotten that she used to sing
He has forgotten that she used to sing

From Le Plat Pays
His love song to his native Belgium

Avec des cathedrales pour uniques montagnes
Et de noires clochers comme mats de cocagne
Ou les diables en pierre decrochent les nouages
Avec le fil des jours pour unique voyage
Et des chemins de pluie pour unique bonsoir
Avec le vent d’ouest ecoutez- le vouloir
Le plat pays qui est le mien

Where cathedrals are the only mountains
And their black spires are like phantom masts
Where the stone devils break through the fogs
But the passing days are all that pass
And the rivers of rain bring down the night
And then the west wind steals in like a thief
In the flatlands which are my own.

From Les Vieux
His gentle evocation of old age

Les vieux ne revent plus, leurs livres s’ensommeillent, leur pianos sont fermes
Le petit chat est mort, le muscat du Dimanche ne les fait plus chanter

Old people no longer dream, their books send them to sleep, their pianos are now closed
Their little cat is dead and Sundays glass of wine no longer makes them sing.

And finally from Les Marquises
Another love song to a place, this time to the Marquesas Islands where he lived for some time, and is buried.

Et s’il n’y a pas d’hiver
Cela n’est pas l’ete

And where there is no winter
Neither is there summer

What lovely lines.
I warn you there will be more.

On the second day of our Parma Culinary Tour we headed off at first light to Bologna to the Felsineo factory to see their production of Mortadella.

Now this was a very large factory with several hundred employees and a large export market in America, where Mortadella is known as Balony( after the adjacent city of Bologna.)
The Mortadella was made in the traditional way,
some even in the traditional casing and stringing

But the great majority of it was vac-packed in smaller sausages.

They afterwards fed us a lunch of Mortadella (and much wine)
Again showing how impressive Italian hospitality could be.
But at the end of the day the stuff tasted just too much like
our own “Luncheon Meat” to be really exciting.

Our next visit couldn’t have been more different.

We went to the outskirts of Modena to meet young Mariangela Montanari in
“La Ca del Non” (literally Granddad’s Place) and see her production of Balsamic Vinegar.

Mariangela is, according to her mother, obsessed with Vinegar.
The first lesson we had to learn was that this product, Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, had absolutely nothing to do with that product –“made from fermented grapes, caramel and sugar” she spat- which goes by the name of Balsamic vinegar in our supermarkets.

True Balsamic Vinegar is made from the unfermented must of grapes

In their case from their own Trebbiano vine, growing outside.

which is reduced by long cooking, naturally
acidified by using a vinegar “mother”

Mariangela shows us a vinegar mother
(a liver like jellied lump) in one of
her acidification churns.

Before the advent of Stainless Steel
most of the acidification used to take
place in wonderful green glass bottles.

And then nothing added except time.
It is then very slowly aged in successions of
smaller barrels all made of different aromatic
woods until the first “young” product is passed
by the consortium after 12 years.

The various casks aging gently in the attic of Ca del Non.

Then it is entitled to be known as Balsamic Vinegar Tradizionale di Modena.
It can be kept in barrels for longer periods of time where it continues to mature and change with age.

But the proof of the pudding was certainly in the tasting.
We were given little plastic teaspoons and permitted to taste just three drops of various vintages of the vinegars.

They were marvellous.
Great mouth filling taste explosions of sweetness acidity and subtle woodiness.

I think we all bought at least one bottle to take away.
These purchases are more surprising than you think
(specially from a bunch of hard nosed Irish restaurateurs)
as the bottles were 100ml (about 3 fluid ounces)and cost
anything from €47 to €120.
I intend to have some of mine left for my hundredth birthday party.

The rest of that day was spent in Massimos
I have already told you about the magic visit there.

But our third and last day in Italy still had some treats in store for us.

Our last day was another early riser and involved us all in the only truly uncivilized aspect of Italy we noticed on this holiday.
The otherwise perfectly acceptable breakfast in our hotel was spoiled by having coffee and tea available only from a machine, inevitably with a queue of about 10 people in front of it.
On that particular morning a Japanese Lady decided to get the coffee for her entire table just before me.
Anyone who knows me well will understand how close she came to death by coming between me and my first cup of coffee.

Our only trip before lunch and our flight home was to a Parmesan cheese maker.

The huge cheese making facility that was La Speranza contained just a small (4 worker) family business.

The making of Parmigianno Reggiano is an extremely simple process and , like the manufacture of the hams and the vinegars most of the complexities of flavour and texture are provided by nature and old father time.

First the morning milk is stored overnight in large stainless containers, in the morning the cream is skimmed off to make butter, then the previous evenings full milk is mixed with this skimmed milk and some of the whey from the previous day’s cheese making and some rennet.
This mixture is then heated in large copper vats, the curd broken with knives and left to settle. After one hour the now solid curd is drained off in a muslin cloth and each of these lumps of solid curd is then cut in two to produce the large traditional blocks of Parmesan.
Most of the whey then goes on to feed the pigs that in their own turn provide us with Parma Ham.
Neat isn’t it?

Curds and Whey “cook” and seperate

The ball of solid curd is lifted out to drain

The cheeses drain in stainless moulds prior to brining

The cheeses are soaked in brine (salt being their only additive other than time)

and then aged for at least one year before
being tested by yet another consortium and
then being entitled to call themselves
Parmigiano Reggiano.

Sile among the Aging Parmesans

Another little thing they told us explains something I have long wondered about.
If a cheese is reckoned to be off and failed by the consortium it is then sold on the a factory who grate it and and sell this as grated Parmesan.

This explains the foul smell of that particular product!

We all managed to both eat and buy great chunks of Parmigiano
in La Speranza before heading off on the last visit of the journey.

This was to Gualtiero Marchesi’s own restaurant in Ebrusco.

He had done a special menu for us Irish Euro-Toques
I will quote it here in full:

Salad of Raw Seabass and Spinach with Mustardseed Sauce

Risotto with Red Beetroot juice,
Franciacorta wine and Parmesan Sauce

Fillet of Veal Orloff with a Potato Pie

Strawberries with Yoghurt Icecream

Hot Vanilla cake with Vanilla Sauce.

It was just as good as it sounds.

We were obviously given a special room with a huge mural of chefs on one wall.
As soon as the meal started the mural disappeared into the ceiling leaving the spotless and smooth running kitchen exposed behind a sheet of glass.

Highly theatrical!

We all of course accepted this as if in the manner born.

And afterwards spent some time strolling through
Marchesi’s modern sculptures in his gardens.

Where even the rabbits came to offer themselves to his kitchen.

And then that was it.
Back to the bus, back to the airport and home.

A wonderful trip
Well done (again) to Ruth and Abigail for the organisation.

Last word
When we got home our sunflower had come completely out.

Life goes on!

The dinner in Massimo’s was without probably the highlight of our trip to the Parma region, however we did manage to fit in some more wonderful culinary experiences in an amazingly full three day tour.

We landed in Milan Airport on Monday morning and then it was straight on to the bus which was to be our home for the next days.

Our first stop was in Gaultiero Marchesi’s Alma, his international school of Italian Cuisine in Colorno.

As he was one of our founder members and is president for Italy this building also houses the Euro-Toques office.
Marchesi is a bit of a culinary god in Italy so this was no ordinary third level tech.
If you have ever wondered what happened to Napoleon’s Hapsburg wife, Marie Louise, when he was packed off to exile in St. Helena (which I, as a long time fan of his often have) wonder no more.
She was given this palace as a sop and, as they have only just uncovered, made out the gardens like Versailles as homage to her Aunt; Marie Antoinette.

As I said, not your usual tech!
They gave the full tour of this state of the art culinary university, bustling with an international mix of young chefs all pristine in their whites

And then fed us an elegant and delicious lunch. (With wine)
This was to be our first taste of the wonders of Italian hospitality.

Then back on the bus to the hills over Parma.
On the way we passed the 15th Century Castle of Torre Chiara.

Interesting to see how the Italians seem to make their Castles both impregnible and comfortable.
(Impossible walls to scale but a wonderful veranda to loll about on)

Next stop was to be a visit to a Parma Ham producer.

The Italians wax quite lyrical about the sweetness of their Parma Ham.
As we were to discover it does have a lovely delicate sweetness and flavour. They put this down to the sweet dry air in the hills over Parma where the hams are dried. We were assured that the only preservative used was salt and air.

The curing store which we were visiting was a vast cavernous building with three storeys full of about 6000 hams hanging in various stages of ripeness.

Its very size is best appreciated by the fact that all 28 of us were able to squash into the lift!

We were given the tour by a member of the Parma Ham Consortium. Their job was to maintain standards and each ham has to go through rigorous tests before it is stamped with the prestigious Five Star Crown that declares it to be a veritable Prosciutto di Parma.

As these retail for about €150 each one wonders why the Irish pig industry has never thought of doing something similar.

After these various trips we finally got to check into our hotel in Parma and were given a couple of hours to stroll through this most inviting city before dinner.
The shops were just closing as we made this trip but one thing is clearly evident.
Boy do these people have style, and they seem to have dodged that Irish High Street blight of uniformitywhich has happened as the multi nationals colonise our streets.
The city was full of small specialised boutiques, I noticed several selling only men’s underwear ! The sense of style was reflected in their shop windows.
When is the last time you have stood outside a wool shop admiring their wares?

Dinner that night was in “Il Cortile “ Restaurant, munificently hosted by the Consortiums for Parma Ham and Parmesan Cheese.
I thought we had pulled the short straw when I realised that Sile and I were going to sit next to Marchesi himself at this but he turned out to be fully capable of being charming and Sile and he were able to talk away in French. The proprietress of the restaurant was in a state of abject terror at the prospect of him dining in “Il Cortile” and we got the very best of service, even getting seconds of the wonderfully sweet Parma ham.
(This should always be eaten with the fingers said Marchesi, so we did, and always will when ever we are lucky enough to get our hands on some!)
We were also introduced that night to the delights of Parmigiano Reggiano, certainly Gods own cheese, especially when accompanied by drops of aged Balsamic Vinegar.

These people certainly know how to eat !

I’m just back from a marvellous trip which Sile and I and 26 other Irish chefs made to Italy.

I had met Massimo Spigaroli before, as a representative of Italy at meetings of Euro- Toques International in Brussels and lately in Spain.
I had assumed that, like the rest of us, Massimo was a chef in some smart upmarket restaurant in his home town.
When we planned our trip this autumn to Italy it was Massimo who did a lot of the work on the Italian side, organising our trips to producers of Parma Ham, Mortadella, Parmesan Cheeses and Balsamic Vinegar, helping us to book our meals in Parma and even lunch in the restaurant of one of our founder members, the much starred Gualtiero Marchesi (all of whom I will be writing about later).
There was also to be a trip to Massimo’s own restaurant (Al Cavalina Bianca) where he hoped to talk to us about his speciality, Culatello, and introduce us to his black pigs.
One of our company, Brid Torrades (co-inventor of the famous Scallops Torrades!)
had been in Massimo’s previously and strongly indicated that we were in for a pleasant surprise.

We were.

We got to Massimo’s restaurant, which was a beautiful but simple Italian Albergo beside the River Po, later than the 6.00 we were due so he rushed us off to a spotless cellar to show us how he made a Culatello “We must hurry or it will be too dark to see my pigs” (It was immediately obvious how important these animals were in Massimo’s life).
The Culatello, turned out to be a type of “Immagliature”(meaning tied with string.)
In this particular type the best parts of a leg of one of Massimo’s black pigs,

boned and seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and Fortana wine,

were tied in string, encased in a pigs bladder, then again skilfully tied with string
is left to hang and cure in certain particular conditions (of which more later) for a year or more before being sliced paper thin and eaten. Massimo referred to it as the “Truffle” of the Po Valley.

Even while Massimo’s fingers were flying skilfully over the pork, tying and knotting, he was apologising that tonight his restaurant was closed so he was so sorry that he couldn’t feed us there, instead we would have to eat in his own home, and that this was not finished yet, so we would have to crawl through the scaffolding to get in, and that they had no cookers there so they would have to roast in the bread ovens by the fire;
“Just simple food” he said, “a la casalinga”.(home cooking)

With the Culatello successfully wrapped we were back in the bus and off to see the farm where some of the black pigs were inside, but then off again, (and by now it was dark) to see the lads in the fields.
Having trudged through several hundred yards of stony muddy track

we eventually found them, well we vaguely saw them and heard them as they snuffled up to greet Massimo. Big beautiful shiny black pigs noisily stripping the ears of an acre of sweet corn.

The pigs by day from Massimo’s site

“No need for the bus now” says the hardy Massimo, “its just Due Passe” (literally two steps read ½ mile) “to the house”.
As we got up to the house, a huge flock of geese honked around us

and we began to realise from the size alone (it was still encased in scaffolding and polythene) that this wasn’t a simple farm building.

In other words for Casa read Castle.

Massimo brought us through the scaffolding into the cellar where he had thousands of Culatelli hanging.

There was a strong smell of , shall we say, penicillin in the cellar and Massimo explained that, unlike Parma Ham which dried in the sweet dry mountain air, the Culatello needed the foggy air which coming in from the Po which flowed just outside.
Consequently they had large windows open to the river. The old stones of the (13th century) cellar had always been a factor in the “Cure” and they had discovered that they were naturally rich in Saltpetre which provided the Nitrates which kept the ham pink.

He then led us out of the rather smelly cellar into the kitchens and one of the most impressive “Coups de Theatre” I have ever experienced.

The kitchen was entirely lit with candles.

Huge rustic candelabra and equally huge wagon wheel chandeliers all glowing with hundreds of candles and giving the whole room a wonderful golden glow.
In one of the corners Mama and another two old ladies were busy rolling and making Pasta

and turning these into Ravioli and little Tortellini al Brodo for our supper.

On another side was a giant table groaning under a mountain of tarts, cakes and puddings.

Across the floor was the bread oven in which were sizzling the shoulders of pork and the roast potatoes for our “simple” supper.
Massimo of course knew exactly what he was doing.
He was standing in one corner, his arm around Mama, his face wreathed in smiles as he saw the entranced and incredulous Irish stagger from one delight to another.

He then told us that he had been planning this moment since last Spring when Ruth, our secretary general, and I had said that we were planning to come to Italy in September.
He said that this was the first he had invited people into his house which was in fact the local castle which he and his family had bought recently and were busy renovating and turning into a Relais style hotel.

The rooms where we were to dine were even more impressive than the kitchen.
Here they had cleverly vaulted the high ceilings with wooden beams and in the Cartouches between had painted Trompe l’Oeiles of Roman Gods and Goddesses at play. (We were, after all in Italy.)

Everywhere was lit only by banks of candles, the dining tables lit by more wheels ascending upwards to the painted ceilings.
Massimo then directed us to a room between the dining areas; “to have a little Aperetivo and some Antipasti”

There the fully formally clad but extremely friendly waiters were serving delicious sparkling white wines, the bottles resting in ice in huge silver urns, and another band of waiters were busy slicing salami, and various hot and cold cured meats, and fresh Parmigiano for us.
One , extremely level headed catering manager for a large chain of Irish restaurants said to me “I have died and gone to heaven haven’t I?”

It was one hundred percent, carefully staged magic. I will never forget those moments.

It didn’t of course stop there.
After we had had our fill of Aperitivo we were ushered into the dining rooms.
Then Massimo made a triumphant procession with the Culatelli,

which then were sliced and served by the waiters.
First we were served a 10 month version of the cured meat which was much darker and more strongly flavoured than the Parma ham we had eaten the night before.
It was thoroughly delicious.
The next sampling, a twenty two month old ham was intensely porcine and had that interesting fungal whiff one gets from wild mushrooms.
Also delicious but a bit of an acquired taste for some of the Irish.
After this Mama, who was everything one could possibly want an Italian Mama to be,came to talk to us.
Did we have enough of everything ? Don’t forget to leave some space for the desserts, they were her speciality. When someone groaned that they were full already she said there were just two “piccolo” courses before the meat.

During all these courses we were drinking their own Fortana wine.
This sparkling red was not strictly speaking a wine at all, the charming wine waiter told us, as it had only 6 degrees of alcohol.
Therefore they poured it into tumblers rather than wine glasses.
I considered that carte blanche to drink loads, the waiters were more than happy to help.

We ate next an unctuous plateful of ravioli stuffed with Ricotta and an interesting green picked from the ditches around the castle called “Erbetto Medico”.
(I think this was a type of Swiss Chard)
Then we had the little Tortelini in Brodo, tiny rounds of pasta stuffed with parmesan and served in broth, and at that stage even the bottomless pit known as the Dwyer stomach was incapable of fitting in another crumb.
(Bear in mind that we now have only finished the starters)
I did not do justice to the roast pork or, and (for this fault I am truly sorry Mama!)
only managed to taste a delicate lime and lemon “Sorbetto” from her groaning board.
And then it was over.
It was up to me to make the speech of thank you to Massimo.

Massimo, Mama, Brid Torrades, Ruth (translating) and the inadequate speechifier

I was shamefully inadequate, but, as you can see, we had brought him a bottle of Redbreast Whiskey.
Mama went one better and insisted on giving each of us a goodie bag with a bottle of Fontana and a Strolghino salami made from Culatello meat as we left.

Massimo is certainly one of the most impressive (and pleasant) people I have met in the industry.He is such an inspiration to the students in Alma College that one of them told us that if they get depressed they only have to stand near him to get re-inspired!

An evening not just to remember but to treasure.

As we passed up through France on the way home we noticed that all the sunflowers were finished, blackening and keen to deliver their oil.
Back at home our sunflower which we had stuck in the ground (a refugee from Sile’s class) had grown to heroic proportions but not flowered.
Lo and behold on the 16th of September it has decided to do just that.

Well Tournesol, better late than never!