A Tuscan View - from Umbria

Flora and fauna

I must admit to being a little worn down by the building process at the moment, even though I know we're nearing the end of it.

I feel like my wheelbarrow. I used to be slightly embarassed of its green, shiny newness amongst all the battle-hardened others. It's now had two new wheels, needs rewelding, has been repaired countless times with wire and steel rods, and it still doesn't work very well. (It's actually a better analogy than I was expecting, now I write it down.)

Self portrait

Another sign that the building work has become so all consuming was when my youngest daughter gazed up at the sky on a cloudless night and said, "Look daddy, the moon looks just like concrete" - and, to be fair, it did.

So I’ve decided to do two things; firstly look the other way, and start to appreciate the changing landscape whenever I take the dog for a walk (while we pretend to look for truffles), and secondly get back to painting. It's a good thing too, as I'm running a Botanical Illustration course next Spring.

Last year I was able to visit a group of experts in this field and, to my surprise, some of the most interesting work seemed to focus on plants in the process of turning from green to brown as they dried and decayed. There was something mesmeric about watching these painters so focused and concentrated on their subjects, sometimes working through magnifying glasses, and often using lamps fitted with special daylight bulbs to allow them to continue working through into the night. I knew immediately that this was an area I would be foolish to ignore, especially living here, literally tripping over so much flora and fauna.

Some botanical illustrators work in a true, scientific way, documenting and recording the exactitude of the species and giving notes and measurements on the page very precisely. Others, like this particular group, have also developed this type of illustration into a true art form and the images are stunning, plants so real you can almost touch and smell them. You can see their work at www.amicusbotanicus.com

During my Art degree we never spent much time on this area of study but, as I’ve become older, I’ve started to appreciate more the subtlety of this exacting discipline and, living here, you've got no choice. You have to love nature.

Anyway, here’s my early offering of the season, it’s called ‘Parthenocissus quinquefolia’ (or Virginia Creeper to you and me).

The stupidest thing I did today;

This is perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve done all year and I can hardly bring myself to write it down, so all I’ll say is that it involves seeing a poor abandoned kitten one morning outside a bar …

Wine heaven

There comes a time when the wine finally runs out.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the one who drank it all, but it does mean that you have to get some more.

Around here the best (and most economical) way to buy wine, from ordinary table wine to the posh stuff, is to buy it from a ‘cantina’ (cellar or winery). You can buy it by the bottle, and in many cases you can also buy it ‘sfuso’ or loose.  A visit to one of these places is a treat in itself, especially if it’s one near the wine heaven, Montepulciano.

There is something rarified about this noble little town, high on it’s ridge, midway between Florence and Rome. Flurries of classical music escaping from the Accademia della Musica echo through the alleyways and the air is diffused with the aroma of fermentation as thousands of barrels ‘cook’ gently in the vast cellars below the streets. 

I grew up around wine.  My dad was a wine importer and it was both his business and his pleasure.  Most of our family holidays were based around the wine regions that interested him, be they France, Spain or Italy. It was normal for us, as children, to play ‘catch’ amongst the vines or hide-and-seek down in the musty cellars.  I remember my sister and I giggling and lunging at each other from behind the barrels as my mum and dad talked earnestly with wine producers, sniffing and slurping, dad taking notes and swapping cards, loading the samples and freebies into the back of the car.  Later, as surly teenagers, we were allowed to join in those exquisite tastings, a privilege that was always guaranteed to lighten the mood.

 
The smell and atmosphere of a wine cellar, whether full of ageing oak or shiny stainless steel is intrinsically woven through my memories of my father.  As with so many things, I wish I had listened more intently and asked more questions.  My knowledge of wine is now, sadly, missing my ‘personal expert’ but my enthusiasm, which I inherited from him, remains undimmed.

One of the things my dad was best at was sniffing out a good affordable wine. He wasn’t a wine snob, he loved it all.  During the 60’s and 70’s it was buyers like my father who expanded the English palate for wine by importing drinkable, but inexpensive, table wines from France, Spain and Italy and gradually pushed the ubiquitous sweet German white wines to the back of the supermarket shelves.   He liked to buy wine from small, creative, independent producers who grew wines with ‘personalities’ imparted by a combination of climate, soil and grape variety.   “Wine”, he liked to say, “is alive”.  One of the only things we can consume after 200 years, still changing and evolving, waiting for the pull of the cork.  In one sense it’s just a drink, and yet it is capable of engaging our senses and imagination, it’s depths and complexities can communicate something intense and beautiful.

The ‘cantina’ that we visited was Ercolani located just outside the walls of Montepulciano. We tried some wonderfully plush vintages of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano before opting for the youngest (and cheapest) one which we bought ‘sfuso’ in large 5 litre demijohns.  We also tried their deliciously sticky Vin Santo and some mind-bending Grappa, but that’s another story.

 
The best thing I drank today;
see above...

Someone else's life

The hills around here are full of ruinous houses, sometimes complete hamlets have been left to rot, organic beauties, slowly changing with decay.  Remote and isolated, choked with brambles they stand at the end of rutted tracks, their vacant windows gaping.  They may be wrecked and wretched but to me each one seems like an opportunity.
 

To celebrate my birthday earlier this week, marito took me out for lunch not, as you might expect, to some ‘fancypants’ expensive restaurant but on a picnic jaunt high up in the Umbrian hills.  The sky was clear, hard enamel blue and the sun low and hot, a runaway Summer’s day.

One of my favourite things to do is drive the rough white roads, with no particular destination in mind, looking for things.   Maybe another Madonna or an unexpected view but, as we drive, I am always aware that just over the hill or around the corner might be the thing that thrills me most, an abandoned house.

Usually, my curiosity is restricted to a brief glimpse and a craning neck but it was my day and I got to choose the picnic spot.  This time I was going in.

Crouching amongst ragged grasses was a small stone house.  I felt the baked dryness of the door and the old wood split and broke away as I forced it open to reveal a single square room.

Weeds billowed in through broken shutters and hazy dust clouds hung suspended in slants of sunlight.  Rubble covered a floor of crude terracotta tiles that were laid directly to the earth, in the centre was an up turned wormy table blanched to the colour of ash and along one wall a row of empty bottles.

Old sacks, parts of a broken iron bed, some kind of sieve and a long handled spade were all that remained of someone else’s life.  In the heady silence of the afternoon I felt it would be easy to inhabit that room. To clear away the rubble, right the table and mend the bed, to spend an evening drinking rough red wine with the ghosts, as bats swooped in and out of the open rafters and cold moonlight crept into the corners.

I would sleep in the old iron bed and wake to put my feet on the parched floor, warmed through by heat rising from the earth, worn and rough like calloused skin.

Luckily marito is not so romantic.  ‘What do you think’? I asked, as he blundered in with the dog.  I won’t repeat his answer in its entirety but the phrase ‘totally insane’ featured prominently.

Best thing I ate today:

Calming, comforting carbonara; basically a pasta sauce made with eggs, cream and parmesan.  Soothing and somewhat soporific, it’s a delicious supper dish now that there’s a faint chill in the evening air. You can make endless variations on this theme by adding handfuls of this or that.  Just make sure that you don’t overwhelm the creamy sauce.  Some of my favourite additions are: small chunks of crispy pancetta, or crumbled Italian salsiccie and a few green peas, or maybe a scant handful of pre-cooked purple sprouting broccoli.  Here it is in a simple form with just the added heat of peperoncino.

Kinda carbonara con peperoncino

Pasta – Penne is good, approx 300gm
4 large organic egg yolks
2 large handfuls of freshly grated parmesan cheese
Olive oil
100ml thick cream
2 small peperoncini, chopped
2 gloves of garlic chopped
Sea salt and ground black pepper
1 small handful of finely chopped flatleaf parsley

Cook the pasta until 'al dente' and, while its cooking, make the sauce.  Put the egg yolks and cream into a bowl and mix together with half the parmesan.  Season with salt and pepper.

Then in a heavy based frying pan gently sauté the garlic and peperoncino for about 5 minutes and take care not to colour the garlic.  As soon as the pasta is done drain it and put it back into the, still hot, pasta pan, then mix in the garlic and peperoncino followed by the sauce.  Toss it all together until the sauce is glossy and silky looking, you may need to heat the pan up a little bit more but be careful not to scramble the eggs.  Add the rest of the parmesan and the parsley and give it another stir.  Heap it into a bowl and serve.

In Italy they sell a lovely mix of peperoncino, garlic and herbs called, 'Erbe piccante per spaghetti' in little packets at the supermarket. They don't cost much and last for months...

Where to get it;

You've probably already got it all in the fridge, waiting.