Never Too Appropriate to Eat Pasta in Florence

Sometimes when traveling with others you can get that feeling that internally sounds something like this; every day has been an occasion of exploring through someone else’s eyes. And in times like these I like to think that an amble on your lonesome through an ancient city is necessary. This ancient city that is not only wonderful because it is old and tells its history as you walk through it, but because the new has had to learn to live amongst the old as well.

I heard these guys say, as I strolled passed them yesterday looking up at the tops of the buildings, “I’ve seen that girl three times now.” And that is how long I wandered for, pottering along allies that tour guides didn’t walk down, staring up at roofs that were reaching out to each other from across the cobbles and stopping to look at images that seemed out of place against the stone and concrete and marble.

My walking took me to the end of the day which draw to a close over a glass of wine at a recommended Trattoria called La Taverna, only a petit walk from our hotel.

Here you will be genuinely surprised by the bread as it is very good. They also bring a selection of two olive oils to the table; extra virgin and chili. It is because of this understanding that I get along with the Italians; of course we want to dress our own salad. And it was the best looking salad I have ever seen in Italy. Fluffed up in this platter of magic was ripped radicchio, fresh pieces of tomato, shredded mozzarella, salted capers, anchovies and kalamata olives, with a healthy amount of extra virgin olive oil and salt added by yours truly.

Following this brilliant amalgamation was another knock out. It hadn’t crossed my mind before to cook pasta in stock, not water, then at the last minute to stir through sautéed aubergine and tomato with fresh tuna. A little glug of chili olive oil, sprinkle of pepper, and this very quickly became the best meal I have eaten on this trip.

In Italy you must pay to be seated in a café or restaurant. That is why you see people standing outside or beside the cashier with a beer and often even holding a fork and a plate of dessert.

La Taverna

Via Cimabue, 1r

055.234.25.55

Apparently Italy's Food Capital...

It’s what they say about it, this place of towers and seven churches all in a row, that this is the city embodying the title; Italy’s food capital. And so of course it required a visit. However, august pilfers the evidence for this confident claim. Because here in this hot summer month, corrugated iron doors hide these restaurants, cafes and markets as all the pure breed-Bolognians desert the city for a more noble summer spent by the seaside. And we, stomachs half empty, step out off our Ryanair flight, exclusive of everything between take off and landing, and into a food starved and culinary desolate concrete maze of solace and quiet after a hectic holiday in Morocco.

We managed to catch a glimpse to what this town looked like in January and February and so on. It’s their thing here; like the baguette walk and nibble is to France, the hanging dried meat on the bone is to Italy, from the ceilings and walls and staircases, anything with height. And we’re ok with this, you would be too as long as you could gladly endure the intoxicating smell of proschuitto in every deli.

We asked for a restaurant, one that was open, that they would recommend, and they sent us to Ristorante Cesarina. Why? On looking back we’re not entirely sure, except that they kick it old school there, with male servers in penguin suits who bring your meals out on a table-clothe-lined trolley and add the final touches in front of you.

Mother ordered risotto ai funghi porcini (porcini mushroom risotto).

And myself; tortellini di saggina e ricotta (tortellini stuffed with ricotta in a burnt butter sage sauce).

It wasn’t everything you would want it to be. However, when you ask for just one glass of wine they certainly do you justice by filling your already over sized bulbous bowl right to the top.

Bologna’s medieval canal

In Italy’s capital of food it is only appropriate to create your own gastronomic tour, even with the very little ‘open’ opportunities considering the season. Walking shoes were tied and maps pulled out and we found more hanging meat…

and more cheese than you could throw a stick at (that was for you Jo), including this incredibly large but appropriate bowl of mozzarella.

And in between the in-and-outs of delis and cheese chops, and after last night’s heavy pasta meal, we sat down to a picnic under the arches of Piazza San Stefano, the most beautiful piazza in Bologna, with a couple of our finds from our gastronomic adventure. Goats cheese, ewes cheese and cows cheese, avocado, cherry tomatoes and Italian bread that was almost worth justifying, as it is difficult to find quality Italian bread.

All was followed by a Mai Thai and an antipasti platter of mini brushetta and sticks of halloumi, cherry tomatoes and cured ham whilst sitting outside seven churches all in a row.

Moroccan Bucket List

“How lovely to be in a city without a local drunk yelling malicious remarks wrapped up in a French accent,” has been a thought that is playing itself around my head since I’ve been here. The only time one can even see the word beer here is when it is written into the phrase; Non-alcoholic Beer, found only on the menus of high class restaurants, aka, Elite Cafe. It is in these occasions that one chooses a Pineapple, Citron and Mint Cocktail, sans l’alcool, bien sur.

There has been a Moroccan Food Bucket List that may have been created a few months ago. And there has been a pen that has taken rather fervently to that fine piece of well-researched paper. It started with Lamb Tagine and was closely followed by Fresh Dates, which we crossed off without lingering. And then my pen made three new lines this evening. So what I am saying is that it was always going to be a pretty outrageous night. And so we sat here and regarded for close to three hours:

Over looking donkeys pulling tourists; dark men with whitened stubble lying in carts; evening food markets selling Moroccan salads of minced tomato and red onion; a casual young man with a lead that tied to a monkey in a green singlet; women walking in black robes holding syringes filled with henna; and we sat there listening, not so pleasantly, to the music played by men on silk carpets charming their slothful snakes.

After dinner, my pen drew through Tagine with Prunes and Almonds.

And dangling nicely underneath that was Lamb Kefta.

I’ve still to decipher the triumph or defeat in this last line ruled; Sweet Moroccan Patisseries. However I know it’s not fair, I live in Paris.

The triumph lies in the comparison of this outrageous evening with last night’s meal; which was down from this terrace, right out amongst the well walked on stone tablets, under those white lights, passed the wee monkey on his lead, at the beckoning of the boys biding for your choice of dinner and nicely packed in to the rows of tables at the evening food markets.

If you come here, to this place of world-renown tagines and where everything has been well paid for when it comes to attention to detail, do not choose what we chose to devour at these hectic markets of restaurants on carts.

However, from the bottom of my heart I would recommend to you the meat or chicken skewers, as they were the matters of order envy towards the people pushed up beside us.

Why You Would Go To Morocco

You step out off the plane, but there’s a handle there, positioned ever so appropriately on your left, which is the second thing you notice by grabbing it as the thick oppressive smog belts across your face. Stumbling slightly, you walk down the stairs leading to the airport grounds, all the while joining in on the chorus of, “C'est très chaud,” created by the Parisian passengers. These woman outside the airport walk passed exposing only their beautiful long noses; men in the Souks promise you a special price whilst telling you that you look like a queen; donkeys and monkeys and snakes slowly slur about the main square, Place Jemaa El Fna, and all you can think in this well-practiced-mess, is how could anyone ever live in Marrakech? This city of heat and high temperatures and hot food and…. tagines.

“TouBakal,” he said is traditional and cheap and so we went there and sat down at tables wrapped in plastic, actually incredibly well done crispy bread, and as much cold bottled water as our tummies could contain. A new place of adventure cannot be embraced ignorantly, especially not when you are going to that place to explore their cuisine. And there are some foods you need to know about so you can search for them. Chicken Pstilla; shredded chicken mixed with sweet and almond and cinnamon and wrapped in filo pastry dusted with icing sugar; I think I like thee.

Jemaa El Fna is a place of repetition. In all due respect, Marrakech may maintain a notion of I’ve always done, so I’ll always do. But when you stand on heat radioactive concrete and face the at least twenty stalls all decorated with the exact same pattern of oranges and grapefruits and all selling these thirst quenching juices for 4dh, you do wonder if the lack of entrepreneurial fortitude here is really working out for them.

But then there is the stoppable, the shockable, the worth waking up before six to catch the plane for Lamb Tagine… of… my goodness how did someone think of this magnificent combination of spices and meat and just enough liquid and vegetables and cinnamon, and then came up with the idea of placing it all in this pot shaped like a tepee? And you realize then, in that moment of flavour manifestation, that perhaps tradition is savoured just as it should be here, amongst the prayer cries that frequent the Medina each day; or the Souks that look like themselves all over again when you turn the corner; and even the twenty uniform orange juice stalls all convincing you that your money would be spent best on their 35° oranges.

Frangipane Tart and Curried Egg Salad by the Seine

When someone who hasn’t been to Paris in over TWO DECADES comes to stay with you, you really have to give thought to what each day will contain. There’s this place here in Paris called Shakespeare and Company. It is a bookshop that has been around for over 100 hundred years. It is opposite the Notre Dame and therefore if you stand on the pavement outside the bookshop (a.k.a Shakespeare & Co.), you can see Our Lady through leaves and people riding bicycles across the Seine.




This is a favourite shop in Paris. Books are stacked on every wall. They start sitting on the floor and reach right up to the tips of the ceiling. The tiles in the shop are cracked and don’t match. The staircase becomes an awkward place of maneuvering passed people, apologizing for touching them and at the same time trying to remain quiet, as it is a bookshop after all. The only thing that seems to make noise, a part from the flipping of pages and frequent exclaimations in English from tourists passing by, “Oh my gosh would you look at this!” is the piano which is available for anyone to play. I took Mother here, to this place that compelled me to this city, to a reading from a new book complied with prose pieces by mainly English speakers living in Paris.





Earlier on in the day I had stumbled (as we do through other people’s blogs) on a particular salad that consisted of every thing good, especially when all combined. Egg, nuts of some kind, apple for sweetness, herbs and a much loved experience of mine; curry. This inspired salad amalgamation, plus a few additions drawn from my own taste buds; the recent knowledge I had received about a French ice cream pallor on Île de la Cité, an island in Paris; plus the prose reading that evening at Shakespeare & Co., called for the much loved, and always to be embraced, occurrence of picnicking beside the Seine.




Even earlier on that day, I had experienced that all consuming desire to bake a Frangipane Tart with fresh strawberries. This isn’t uncommon and considering it hadn’t happened yet in Paris, I thought it only appropriate to meet this desire in full capacity by going all out and using real French Butter.





I didn’t have a lemon lying around, which is very strange for my home, so instead a used a large pink grapefruit flatmate had left here after her move to London. The result was something to be responded to with only repetition.






And so I got everything together; cutlery, bowls and plates with flowers on them and I packed my bag and took Mother to the best reading I had been to in Paris. After the nine prose writers and taken us through their exerts, Mother followed me over Pont Neuf, passed Our Lady, and into a small park at the end of Saint Louis, the other Island in Paris, for a picnic by the Seine.





Frangipane Tart with Strawberries and Grapefruit

1 sheet of sweet short crust pastry
250g softened butter
1cup caster sugar
250g almond meal
4 eggs
3 Tbsp flour
zest of one grapefruit
7 strawberries pureed/ 4 Tbsp of a berry jam

Pre heat oven till 200° You always do this when working with pastry.
Butter and paper proof your tart tray. Roll out your pastry and line your tart tray with the pastry, carefully leaving the edges in the state you would want them to look like once baked.
Refrigerate for half an hour (very important to chill the butter in the pastry again before cooking. Otherwise you will cause the butter to melt in the pastry before the flour is cooked and your pastry will be soft).
Place in the oven for five or so minutes until your pastry shell is par-baked.
Puree strawberries (or use jam) and spread a layer on the bottom of the pastry.




Then you want to beat your softened butter with your sugar until it is white, nice and fluffy. Add everything else, except the berries, and mix well.
Pour the mixture over your jam and level the frangipane with your spatula. Top with fresh berries, not pressing them in too far as they will sink on their own.





Place in the oven and bake for half an hour (perhaps more) until the tart is golden and firm to the touch. If the frangipane is browning too quickly, wrap foil around the tart while it cooks.
Leave to cool on a wire rack.





Curried Egg and Sweetened Raisin Salad
Adapted from 100 Cookbooks Recipe

2 tsp of good curry powder
¼ cup natural yoghurt
¼ sp salt
4 eggs
¼ cup raisins
½ and apple, diced
¼ red onion, diced
half a bunch of chives, chopped
¼ cup hazelnuts, roughly chopped

Place your eggs in boiling water for ten minutes. Once cooked, remove and run under cold water while you peal them. Roughly chop and add to a bowl.
Meanwhile, place your curry powder, salt and yogurt in a small bowl and mix well. Set aside.
Add everything to the big bowl and mix well in ensure the curry mixture has coated everything in the salad.
You can eat this as is, or if you want it to seem a little fresher, place a big spoonful on top of a bed of different coloured lettuce leaves and enjoy.