Fig Pecorino Risotto

How many things have I taken for granted in my life? Things that were just there, without shouting their presence, but whose absence I would have immediately noticed. Things that now are not here, and I miss, or simply, I see from a different perspective.

Take parents, for example. I lived with them for 19 years, and even after I left, I was seeing them regularly, every two weeks. It took a good dose of miles and one-hour time difference to make me feel distant, and achy for more of their presence in my life. Take, as a second example, walking to class, or to work. Seeing it in retrospective, it was such a luxury! If I knew what was awaiting me in terms of commute, I would have savoured every step from my little apartment in Bra to the office, or from my room in Padova to the various class locations – all easily reachable by bike.

Take free food. I grew up spoilt with a bounty of home-grown food, from vegetables of all sorts depending on the season, to truly free-range eggs and poultry, to fruits in the summer and fall months. I am thinking of those gifted fruits now, more than anything else. Starting with strawberries in late May, then cherries in June, and plums, grapes and tiny green, soft, jammy figs later on in the summer. The bounty decreasing a bit afterwords, giving us some pomegranates and nespole in the fall, with persimmons closing the dances in December. All free, all there for us to pick.

Figs. Those figs are so stuck in my memory. There were two fig trees in grandma's garden, one by the barn hosting the farming tools, and one in the middle of the hens' patch. I would climb those trees with a latter, a little plastic bowl in one hand. I knew what to do since an early age, not quite sure if someone taught me or if it was somehow ingrained in my genes. I would test the fruits carefully, pressing them to feel the ripeness, and gently detach only the soft ones. I would descend the latter only when the bowl was full, and most of the time, there were many more left on the branches.

Another fig tree was located on my usual bike path. It was planted in someones yard, but it was so big that many of its branches leaned onto 'no one's land'. I knew it was there, and I knew there would be figs to pick, so I was always biking there prepared, with a little plastic bag and a bowl inside my basket. The figs were of a different variety from grandma's. Hers were small, with a thin green skin that was almost impossible to remove, and an almost melting heart of pulp and tiny seeds. Those others, instead, were purple-green, bigger in size, and with a thicker outer skin.

I used to eat so many in the evening, after dinner, like they were the sweetest treat – the last with the skin still on, tired of the laborious peeling and eager to pop just one more into my mouth. If there were any left, I would make a cake, something uncomplicated. On occasions, I even made jam, although it has rarely been my first choice when it comes to fruit.

Here in London, figs are a luxury. Local figs are a dream. The few trees I eyed in the neighborhood host fruits that never arrive to the stage of maturity, hit by the cold, premature fall when still young and hard. The little green ones travel very badly, I heard, and arrive all smashed up in a messy blob of sticky flesh. We have better chances with the purple ones, as they are a bit sturdier. However, imported figs can be really bad, and the OK ones cost a fortune. A fortune. £20/kg on average if you want some good ones from France, or a bit less for those from the Middle East. Seen from someone who used to have free figs at her mercy, this sort of prices seem just out of this world. Yet, I suffer in (almost) silence, and, unable to resist, last week I bought a spare amount. I am addicted to that sweetness, that pulpy flesh hiding a sexy explosion of crunchy, tiny seeds. I miss the feeling – a lot.

Italian Table Talk #16: Merenda and Cookies

Whenever I say I grew up in a tiny village in the Venetian countryside, people start to make assumptions, and I don't blame them. It must sound like the best place to land on this planet. Although it has its charming traits and its good sides, there are quite a few myths to debunk about my childhood.

For starters, there were no kids – only four of us in my class in primary school. Four. Which means a) any team game was automatically a bummer and lasted very shortly; and b) I had to do the maths and the grammar at the blackboard every single day. And what is worse, I had no one to exchange or share my food with. On the break between classes (intervallo), when kids were allowed to eat a snack and run around, I would eat whatever my mum had put in the little zipper pocket of my Topo Gigio backpack without a chance to trade it with someone else. Statistically speaking, four people were simply not enough. Not that anybody would have wanted to trade their food with mine anyway, and the reason for this takes me to the second myth.

My mum is the least stereotypical mum you can possibly imagine – in fact, you can't imagine her, but let me help you, as I think you'll like her. She has never fit in and never done anything that the other mums of the village were doing, or not enough for the young version of myself to record any similarities. It was sometimes upsetting, but in retrospect, I am so grateful for her 'uniqueness'  – it taught me a good deal of life lessons on the way. My mum has always worked  at home, but don't call her a housewife, she would rather say she 'manages a family business'. This meant I was always assured a good, home-cooked meal upon returning from school, at 12.30pm. The deal was she would wait for me at home rather than coming to pick me up at school. I never understood why I had to be the only one without a mum or grandma there to pick me up, why I was the one having to walk or bike. Now, whenever I go back to my parents house, I walk that little trail: 300 meters total. And I laugh at my past sorrow: it is so safe and quiet you can walk in the middle of the road. I have always had my mother's trust (almost, except when I was between 13 and 16), and that was just one of her ways of telling me. But back to the meal: I would return to a lovely lunch, usually consisting of two courses (primo and secondo). On Monday and Tuesday, it would be just the two of us sitting at the table, as I had to return to school for afternoon activities. The rest of the week, I would come home and find her still stirring and flipping, and lunch was ready when my dad would come home from school, too – he is a teacher.

My mum is a fine cook, but back then, she gave in a bit to the sirens of modernity – who didn't? Not everything that appeared on our table was homemade, and we were perfectly fine with that: a little frozen chicken schnitzel here, a little store-bought pasta sauce there, and she could find a second for herself, too. I thought the food was fantastic, and anyway, the no-homemade things were well concealed under a good dose of vegetables, and some really tasty pasta, soups or risotto, all made from scratch. She wouldn't make anything very unhealthy, and that was her rule for packaged food, too. It wasn't everyday, either – she wouldn't allow it.


You might have guessed by now that she was in charge of the grocery shopping. Because she has never been a baker, and for never I mean never, all the sweet things in our house were outsourced. The baking-phobia was surely enhanced by the fact that our oven has never worked properly, and that cakes would never rise. It was only good for cookies or crostate. It could have been fixed, I suppose, but as many things in our house, it never was – we just replaced the whole kitchen when it got too old. In the end, it didn't matter much. Baking has never been her passion: too messy, too long. She preferred to use that time to read, and buy crackers, cookies and little cakes instead. Looking at the whole picture now, I can't say I would blame her.

Merenda, the afternoon snack as it is called in Italian, has often taken the shape of a baked good of some sort for me, usually sweet, and rarely homemade. A beloved ritual I would consume at around 4.30pm, it was possibly my favourite 'meal' of the day, second only to breakfast, and rightly so: it was the only time I was allowed something remotely sweet. My mum never bought candy or chocolate; the omnipresent Nutella was a very, very rare presence in our cupboard. What she would fill the shelves with, instead, were relatively wholesome cookies and not-too-heavy mini cakes, usually those containing even the smallest idea of vegetables or fruits in it. The to-go ones were, generally, some little cakes shaped like a dome and made with almond meal, carrots and orange, or wholegrain cookies with fruits and nuts. Not exactly the choice a kid would make – where is the chocolate? But I didn't have any choice. She was the boss, and she never took me grocery shopping until I was 15, to avoid discussions. It was ether that, or fruit. Or worse, yogurt. Now you know why no one wanted to trade their chocolaty snack with mine. Again, in retrospect, I am quite pleased no one did.

In time, I learnt to love those wholegrain cookies. They were actually really crunchy, and I liked that they had little bits of nuts in it, and some chewy bits of raisins – that's because my mum would buy the 'fruit & fibre' flavour. They were, to me, a good snack, which I liked munching on in front of my afternoon TV allowance, usually Japanese cartoons, before getting back to do my homework, or going to the pool or to ballet class.



Needless to say, I was very glad when together with Emiko, Giulia and Jasmine, we chose merenda as the topic for this month's Italian Table Talk. It was the perfect excuse to bring back all these fond memories. Also, it was the perfect excuse to try to reproduce those cookies, and to have them in the afternoon, with a glass of juice (no tea or milk for me back then, although I quite like them with milk now). Sitting on the sofa, staring at a white wall with a smile, seeing images of myself, back there and then.

Before you head to the recipe, let me introduce the rest of the afternoon feast: Giulia will share a slice of her beautiful zuppa inglese; Emiko, a wholesome savoury snack, pane al pomodoro; and Jasmine, a decadent, creamy zabaione.

Chocolate Krantz Cake

We have been lucky this year, they say. Two full months and more of really good weather. It has been indeed a marvelous season. Perhaps exactly for this reason, or maybe because I spent most of it working or having a good time, it literally slipped from my hands. 

These empty hands I have, I am trying to fill with something which feels like a project. I try to line up thoughts, ideas and bits of inspiration that only idle time outdoor could give me, and finally sit down to build something new. More than January and the actual start of the year, it is fall the perfect time to give myself a purpose; September the month which marks a new beginning.

As the days become considerably shorter, and the mist and the wind and the rain awake me from my midsummer dream, I retire back in the cozy warmth of a home heated by an oven. Weekends are no longer occasions for spending time outside – being it playing tourists at home, or lounging in the park, going to a festival or crossing town to enjoy some street food at one of the many amazing markets. Rather, free days are consumed inside, giving time to long-neglected activities which required more attention than the summer version of myself could possibly give. One of these is baking – the other, writing.

There was one recipe that kept whirling in my head – it was just never the right time, until now. It was once again a recipe from Jerusalem, which looked so obscenely tempting I could hardly look away from those pages. A luxurious, decadent goodness called Chocolate Krantz Cake, one of the kind I only saw in the photos of the best bakeries in the world. I just couldn't get it out of my head.

Last week, forced indoor by the adverse weather, we embarked in the adventure of making it. Truth to be told, we have never made a sweet yeast bread of this complexity before, if any – besides brioche. This adventure then felt like a project, a two-day long one, punctuated by waiting and hopes. On the way, we discovered we were worrying for no reason: it all came together easily, gifting us with a cheerful couple of hours of rolling, laughing, making a mess on the table, licking chocolate spoons; with a house filled with the sugary, chocolaty scent of the cake baking in the oven; and a lovely afternoon of tea making, reading and cake nibbling.

Sardines with Chilli and Lime

I really admire you.

You who manage to fit all the little pieces of this puzzle that we call life in slots of 24 hours, you deserve my respect.

You who work a full time job, commutes, and still try to keep your social life in balance by finding the energies to say yes to colleagues and friends every now and then – and truly enjoy their company. Who have a family – a partner and even one, two, three kids; who manage to see them every day for a decent amount of hours, spending quality time with them and fulfilling their (and your) needs. Who also find the time and energies to go grocery shopping for good food, to the butcher and independent roaster, to the good bakery and the trusted fishmonger, to the farmers' market – then go home and prepare a lovely meal, ready to be served at the right time. You are awesome.

You who among all of this, find spare time to take care of yourself, do some physical exercise, some yoga, or even just trim your nails or do your hair. Who still have space in your life for some very needed "me time". Who have hobbies, and passions, and time to cultivate them, build them, get better at them; who have  mental capacities and focus to dedicate to learning something new, improving your skills, or simply, to do what you love and do it better every day. Who have the power to change your life, if you only wanted to. You are a wonder.

I want to hang out with you. I want you to show me the way. I want you to teach me to measure my energies, to be productive, to use me little pile of free time wisely. To be efficient and keep up with what I love. To meet deadlines and set goals. I want you to teach me how to avoid this feeling of exhaustion, followed by laziness. Show me the way.

I see you every day, you know. On the tube, on the way home, looking like you cope – standing, reading a book, holding on to the pole with one hand, keeping a gym bag in between your legs, a purse on your shoulder, a bag full of groceries somewhere next to you, pushing it back into place with one foot every now and then so that it doesn't spill its content on the whole carriage floor. You seem tired but I see contentment in your  eyes as they rush along the lines of your book. Then I see myself, with a book on my knees, unopened, blank eyes staring at the empty space, listening to lyrics I am not paying attention to. Mind overwhelmed with information, stimuli, ideas, thoughts, and frustration. Blaming myself for not being able to be like you – efficient, calm – for not utilising my time at most and at best, for lacking that energy, that rationality.

I want to be you. I want your answers. I want to be you to be able to accomplish all that I want in my life. Comparison is the thief of joy, they say – and I feel it. Is it all appearance, fake, a surface built to make us feel sorry for ourselves, for envying other people, for wanting their lives? The era of continuous information, the life in the metropolis has made the wound deeper, and yet I am both the victim and the executioner. I can't help but look. I am like Orpheus. Everything around me is so full of life that I live with the constant feeling of missing out. I can't catch up and I can't cope. It is truly tiring.

You see, I want to know how you do it because I believe I can make it, too – go to bed feeling I have achieved something. My desires are modest, my goals are humble. Are you happy? I am. I just can never stop dreaming for change and for higher, better things.