Herbariums, Unexpected Friendships and Busted Guts

Cassata Infornato

 Busting a Gut!

My gut is busted. I set out with the intention of telling you all about the herbarium project I'm working on, the plant press we designed and built (with the help of a blacksmith from Veneto) and our first wild plant victims, but I can't go down that road yet. I am trying to live more presently and at the present moment, my stomach is stretched to its outer limits. Lunch, which is always a marathon was again delicious - Left overs from lasts nights rare and unexpected encounter with a forgiving Ragusana (to be continued). The culprit, I'll be honest, is gluttony. The pastry being crafted in this great Italian kitchen by both Fabrizia and her protege, Cheeky Chef, Linda, are too provocative!Too tasty! Desserts are normally outliers for me. I seldom eat anything sugary, unless it's dark chocolate. I have strength, you know will power! But these two gorgeous chefs have seduced me to the dark side of pastry! I can't say no! 

The Audrey Hepburn of desserts busting my gut this evening is none other then the Cassata Infornato. Say it slowly...listen to how it rolls of your lips. The Cassata Infornato, is a classically beautiful, elegant, lemon sponge cake filled with satiny Ricotta creme and candied citron - spanked, ahem... with powdered sugar. It's very naughty! 

Umberto - Food Paparazzo

And like any femme fatale, the dessert came with its very own food paparazzo - Umberto Agnello, a talented photographer hired by Fabrizia to capture recipes for a new cookbook coming out in October. Which is one of the main reasons why so many desserts were flying out of the oven this weekend.

Heeding the warnings would have been too easy, knowing full well that situations like this always come with that nagging feeling, the little cricket on the shoulder that says "Don't be enchanted! There's lactose in that creme my dear boy...LACTOSE!" and a reply from that other inner voice saying "Ah Jiminy, lighten up...what the hell do you know, anyway, you ended up in the belly of a whale?!" Well Jiminy, here I am reeling from the pleasure and pain of it all. Ensnared by an irresistable charm. They say you can't know one without knowing the other. It's true. What is life if not a journey across the entire spectrum? No regrets. It was worth every nibble! The sad reality is knowing that this won't be the last debutant to cross my path. Will I have the strength to resist next time? Probably not.

The Herbarium

Ahem...so herbariums! Who's excited?! Plant geeks out there say whaaaat! Ok, calm down. Part of my job here other then being the official kitchen taster is developing a wild edible plant herbarium. The estate is literally bustling with native, wild herbs and other plants. For those non-plant geeks, a herbarium, or "herbar" if you want to sound cool, is pretty simple, really. It's a collection of preserved plant specimens. We find em, dry em and mount em! Using a very sophisticated handmade plant-press, the plants are placed between two sheets of newspaper, layered on top of one another and sandwiched between two heavy pieces of wood. Two logs and a large Sicilian garden stone are recommended for added weight. Not really...but damn, look at that symmetry ay!?

Plant Press

For the last week or so I've been out milling around the garden hunting for edible wild plants like Sinapis arvensis, Raphanus Raphanistrum and Calendula officianalis to test in our horticultural apparatus. Wild Calendula loves nutrient rich clay soils, which the surrounding vineyard feasts on. They're everywhere.

Wild Calendula!

One doesn't have to look far from the front door to find a patch of Calendula, but I like to hike to the top of the vineyard for my specimens because that's where the wild irises and orchids grow and if you're lucky, wild fennel!

In March, everyone on the estate embarks on a crusade to find and harvest wild fennel from the hills. Salvatore, one of the sage ground-keepers at Case Vecchie is infamous for loading the back of his Vespa with bundle upon bundle of wild fennel during the harvest season. Fabrizia makes a gorgeous fennel dish called polpettinie di finnochietto which is a small eliptical shaped, fennel patty with red onion and pecorino. Food grenades for the soul. Boom.

Ragusana

A few years ago, Fabrizia posted a thoughtful video to Youtube demonstrating a recipe passed down by her mother for Scaccia Ragusana, a traditional pizza from the Sicilian province of Ragusa. The short video was met with comment after insult after comment about how blasphemous her recipe was. Unaware of the mistake, the dish Fabrizia had made, was not, according to locals from Ragusa, a real Scaccia Ragusana. One brave soul, Giovanna Scaccia (Not her real last name) chimed in with a forgiving voice among many angry naysayers and offered to teach Fabrizia how to make a true, unadulterated Scaccia Ragusana. After some planning, Giovanna finally made it out to Case Vecchie yesterday afternoon for a lesson! How incredible!? After such negativity and harassment, it was an absolute pleasure to have someone in the kitchen, a complete stranger no less, with a love of food and culture share her wisdom. That's what food is all about, sharing! She even brought her own rolling pin, which if you look closely, is actually the leg of a table. Legend. 

Giovanna Scaccia demonstrates while Fabrizia takes note

The evening was a huge success and a fantastic example of how people, food and new unexpected friendships can come together over hearth and home, even in the face of begrudged critics. Well played ladies. Well played.

A revised Youtube video is in the works to quell those distance grumblings...