Slow Food on The Amalfi Coast - Minori

 

There are no tentacles in my bikini bottom!

You got to hand it to the BBC. They sure know how to make an excellent series.

When Italian Reflections alerted me about the upcoming series Two Greedy Italians - Poor Man’s Food in the Amalfi coast on BBC television, I was terribly disappointed to be in the wrong area to watch. But then my enterprising daughter found it on You Tube and I have reproduced the clips here (For entertainment purposes only. All rights go to the BBC). Unfortunately the links are not always available.

A cocky North-South duo, Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo,visit the small town of Minori, Gennaro’s birth place, just past Amalfi and talk food ‘con gusto’ in a thick Italian accent . The sound tracks of Fellini,‘Il Postino’ and ‘La Vita e` Bella’ lend a romantic touch to the dramatic back drop of coastal villas and shimmering seas, while they wax lyrical about the dolce vita in the poor past. Their friendly tongue in cheek banter accompanies what can only be seen as authentic Italian cooking seeped so deeply in tradition that you could mop your bread in it. Makes you want to jump on a plane and head straight for the Coast.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEX1_7THgfg&list=PLAUDZlFZH83vQ_rBvO7ODNIe5vQviadWI&ab_channel=FlamingHedgehog

Il Simpatico Gennaro, a name so common in Campania that it must be the equivalent of ‘Tom’ in English, prepares a rich Ragu`alla Napoletana, finds room in his Speedos for a squid or two, prepares an impromptu meal of Linguine with prawns and mussels on the boat just off the cliffs of Amalfi (my favourite) and threatens to cook a lizard for Antonio.

The majestic Antonio Carluccio, a guest on the Coast although he was born in Vietri, samples the fresh homemade pecorino and cacciotella cheeses at a shepherd's mountain dwelling and prepares a ricotta tart with candied cedro lemon. A instant food fight ensues on the streets of Naples as they try to outdo each other and make the best fried pizza.

As I watched the charming series chuckling to myself over the comments in Neapolitan dialect as well as the theatrical English, I wondered what did they have, that I didn’t:

• A traditional Italian family background where recipes are passed on in the family through the ages? Check!
• A wooden board and plastic bowl exactly like the one used to make the twirly pasta and orecchietti? Check!
• A jaunty little sports car to hug the corners of the Coast? Well no, but I love my red Fiat 500! And they didn’t show the traffic they would have encountered!
• A lemon tree pergola to choose a lemon from? Take your pick!
  

 

• An alfresco dining  room with a view? Check!

• Fresh fruit just picked from the tree? Check!

 

 

‘Arrangiarsi’ to eat? Si`! Caught a lizard? Yes. They often slip prisoner into our bathtub. It’s either pick them up or flush them down. But eaten it? Never!

• Tasted a sea urchin straight from the sea? Done (with a dash of said lemon from tree).
• Held an octopus in my bikini?  No, what’s the word I’m looking for – too prudish or squeamish? But it doesn’t mean they didn’t want to be there.

• Had uva fragolina (strawberry flavoured grapes)? Yes, but from our garden. Sneaky illicit tasting in someone else’s orchard would sweeten the moment.

• But what I don’t have, or particularly want, is the great wobbly bellies that they are so proud to show.

       They are not great cooks and even better eaters for nothing!

 

Their Two Greedy Italians cook book is available on Amazon. I would love it I’m sure!

 

Positano gardens.

The winter season is rolling into town, though  it’s not  the rain that announces it but rather the buzz of work beginning on houses, and hotels in the area. With the elections coming up in a couple of months, it may be that a blind eye is turned to ‘construction without authorization’  this year and many seem to be taking advantage of it.
Most of the people who worked in the tourist industry during summer go back to their regular jobs involving manual labour. It’s nigh impossible getting any of these skilled workers to do reparations during summer, so I imagine there must be a backlog of work now.
In the abandoned terraced gardens in Fornillo, lemon and orange trees are being pruned of dead growth and the creepers tangled in the fruit  trees  are ripped off and used to feed large bonfires.  The owner and a helper work for days, cutting and carrying piles of  sticks and cut growth on their shoulders.  They wind down along the maze of ancient tracks from garden to garden, piling the  bonfire stack high.

The remnants of the Morning Glory which has blanketed the olive trees all summer, crackles in the flames.  The smoke billows up to the house.  These steep gardens which were once so productive with vegetables and fruit have not been tended for years as manual labour is more costly, and the owner/gardeners are  disappearing with the generations.  Wild fennel and weeds now cover the embankments.  The new owners are too busy with their summer jobs to keep an eye on the place and even the lemons are often left unpicked.


It’ll soon be time to cover the fruit trees with their heavy netting to protect them from the wild winds that pick up in winter. The meshing lets the sun in, whilst tempering the force of gales.
In  April, when the nets are lifted, the trees' leaves will be flattened like hat hair, that is, until the wind ruffles body into them.  And then they’ll blossom once again.

Technorati Tags: Amalfi Gardens,Garden,Positano

Ladro di Limoni – When Life gives you Lemons, or rather, doesn’t…

My mind may have waffled by age, but the few remaining neurons tell me that we left a lot of lemons behind on the trees in our garden this summer.

It just isn’t possible to consume the quantity they produce, all at one time.   Hundreds found themselves in  granita (seeing that I bought an ice-cream maker at a 70 percent discount).  Others in lemon curds, and lemon tarts non stop.   A large jug of lemonade took up too much permanent space in the small fridge.  Ice lemon tea, lemon marmalade, lemon chicken, grilled fish with lemon…need I continue?

I even bring lemons back with me to Luxembourg. I haven’t bought lemons in years. After having the whopping Sfumata D’Amalfi lemons at your disposal, it’s hard to call the shop bought ones, real citrus.

  

Lemon Pergola

My husband headed back to Positano a week ago and I reminded him that we were low on lemons in Luxembourg. I was sure that he’d bring back as much as his luggage would allow him to. I spoke to him on the phone the next day.

“There are no yellow lemons left” he said.

“ What do you mean? None at all?”, I asked incredulously.

“Not One ! Only green ones”, he insisted.

“Have they all fallen off ?”, I said  facing the fact that strong wind may have contributed to their demise.

“There’s nothing on the ground either!”

They couldn’t have been stolen I thought, because this garden with four lemon pergolas is a completely walled-in garden. No way passers-by would dream of coming in.

Gate to garden.

 

When the gardener dropped by to prune the grapevines yesterday, my husband asked him if he knew what had happened to them.

'”They’ve been stolen”,  he said.  “ Most likely to be next door’s seasonal gardener.  With a  ladder let down from the garden above, they would have taken all of five minutes to snip off the fruit and disappear again”.

Sfusato Amalfitano

Great.   Someone is going to make wonderful limoncello.

         Dear Lemon Thief,

• May all the lemons be dry.
• May they be lacking in flavour.
• May they have trees complete with roots and leaves in each segment.
• May they have scores of pips.
• May the Limoncello you make, give you a terrible hangover.
• May we catch you next time!

Meanwhile, I’ll have to buy the scrawny things in the shops…

Technorati Tags: Positano,lemon pergolas,Sfumato D'Amalfi,Amalfi Coast gardens

Whiskers on Kittens

Where have all the cats of Fornillo gone?

In our area of Positano, the alleys between villas were a haven for the whiskered felines. Huddled together behind corners, cats and their litters would scatter briefly as someone came down stairs or dodge feet by clinging to the wall’s side in the alley behind Pensione Maria Luisa . There would always be a pair of eyes watching nervously from the top of the walled garden and a handful of fluffy kittens in nestled in the fragrant clump of night-scented Bella di Notte (Clavillia). Tiny ears would be visible in drain pipes under steps and the more courageous or semi -domesticated would follow me all the way home hoping for a tidbit or lick from a tuna can. Usually there was no hope of patting them back.

These were cats born and bred in our gardens. Mouse hunters extraordinares, their mothers would wait patiently in the dark night on our terrace for the rodents to wander past so that a lesson in catching a meal could take place. The scrawny ‘skin and bones’ look to a cat would alert me to a litter badly in need of nourishment and I’d entice the kittens up from the abandoned gardens dangling strings of spaghetti before them. Kittens were sometimes so tiny that their heads would fit right inside yogurt pots and in their hunger, they would forget their fear of humans, to lick my fingers, after I’d hand fed them. Their purring was my reward.

Our gardens in our house in Positano were the throughway for the cats. They’d take the deep stairwell down the hill on the side of the house, and after a jolly jaunt across the terrace take our private stairs into our lower garden and then into the terraced lemon groves below.

These were wary cats that wasted no opportunity. Terrace doors left open were an invitation to come inside.

And if you turned your back a moment, they would. And quite likely pee in the dogs basket as this one did.

But I miss the cats. These were free spirited beings belonging to no one but themselves. They are now few and far between. There is not one cat in the alleyway and I rejoiced when I saw a mother with her two kittens this summer in our garden as its become such rare a sight.

It seems that someone at Positano is poisoning the cats in the Fornillo area. A hand written notice posted on the wall at the Fornillo Grotta area earlier this year asked the person responsible to refrain from doing it but the cats have all but gone.

And when the cats are away, the mice will play.

Technorati Tags: Cats,Positano,gardens,Fornillo

Saponissimo

A scooter buzzed past the restaurant balcony window at Positano. There were two people on board, the person sitting at the back had long auburn hair streaming out from beneath her helmet. I didn’t think twice about it as we were celebrating my second eldest’s nineteenth birthday and we were concentrated on perusing the menu and filling our stomachs. Or rather, my voracious son’s were. The rest of us were sipping the Prosecco and nibbling on the foccacia, compliments of the house due to her birthday.

My friend unexpectedly appeared in the doorway of the pizzeria. Glowing with the breeze blown hair, her vivacity turned the heads of everyone at the tables. First thing she said was ‘Oh, you’ve gone straight’, referring to my daughter’s normally naturally curly hair. She then presented me with a package containing her handmade soaps in my favourite scents.

Her bubbly personality in keeping with her craft, radiates energy. She’d accompanied us into the mountains a few days back and when I mentioned that I wanted to try her soaps she’d abandoned all, just before her dinner party ( at a time where I’d have been panicking), to package and personally deliver them to me before I left town.

The scents in her soaps are redolent of the wafts of citrus blossom carried through the garden on sea breezes. Their texture's a creamy milk, crafted using the natural ingredients available on the Amalfi Coast. Rich Goats milk features heavily and she goes to great lengths to collect it high in the Lattari mountains at Santa Maria del Castello. The soaps and bath products reflect the chamomile, mimosa (wattle), rosemary, mint, figs, and citrus fruit which revel in the climate and real honey from Positano bees.

They are luxurious products but their affordable price belies the quality of the ingredients. They are a real pleasure to use and to receive.

When we got home from the restaurant in the balmy April night and were greeted by a cloud of fireflies dancing amongst the citrus groves, I was very happy that I could bring a part of the coast back with me; through the memories, the lemons and her soaps.

Click on Saponissimo for Europe or on the banner for Etsy US and try the range yourselves.

Rhapsody in Blue

I'm just back from two weeks in paradise. I baulk when I see my brown face in the mirror having become so used to my pale winter skin. I've absorbed the sunshine in the shade.



My garden was singing the blues for me when I arrived in Positano.
It was all so pretty, so fresh, so calm and quiet apart from the sea and the birdsong that I was moved to tears.

The Dutch irises and the bearded irises flowered simultaneously and their light scent mingled with that of the orange and lemon blossom everywhere.

Bees were all a buzz over the wisteria. We spent the warm days walking along the beach, the mountains or simply playing Scrabble and Rummikub with the kids under the pergola. Occasionally we had to retrieve a tile from the gardens below, flipped there by my over-enthusiastic youngest. All our meals were in the open as the weather was positively balmy. It was always fresh seasonal food and I added sage to any thing I could, given the size of the plant.

In the evenings, the gardens surrounding the house came alight with the twinkle of fireflies. It was the magical first time my youngest had ever seen them.


A perfect break.

La Pastiera

You know that you're in Positano, if you go there for your Easter holidays and get given at least three Pastiere, one of which is from your Taxi driver.

I could not step past Easter without mentioning this traditional Neapolitan tart which graces the table of any self-respecting family from the Campania region. Not being from here myself, locals take it upon themselves, with their ever-present generosity, to bake a tart for my family. Presuming that I can't cook Italian style and sometimes forgetting my Calabrian heritage, Pastiera after Pastiera from well-meaning relatives and friends is tasted and eaten, often only by my husband and myself.


Lots of Positanesi will declare the Easter Pastiera their favourite dessert. But they are also sticklers for purity and perfection. Last Easter, I offered a slice of a homemade Pastiera to my daughter's boyfriend from Positano.
The tart had been decorated with a glace cherry in between each lattice, and he remarked 'Ma no ! Ma questa non e` la vera Pastiera. La Pastiera non tiene le ciliegine sopra' (This isn't the real Pastiera. The true Pastiera doesn't have the glazed cherries on top.) He then promptly brought me one from his mother.

The typical ingredients of cooked wheat grains and orange blossom essence give the tart it's particular taste. Candied fruit or candied Cedro lemon are added according to individual preferences, some going as far as making a modified Pastiera for different fussy members of their family adding more or less fruit or orange blossom essence in the mix. To tell you the truth, it is a tart that I've never attempted, as I have more than enough coming in from elsewhere but the very best I have ever had, has to be the one from our taxi driver Giulia.

Sorrento Rainbow Car Service is the friendliest private car service we've ever had. No flight ever comes in too late for them, no trip is ever too short. They'll even pick up bulky shopping that we've had to leave in Sorrento and drop it off in Positano when they go past. We ask them favours and they never hesitate in replying 'yes, of course! '. Seventeen years now, and they've picked us up and dropped us off, stopping on the wayside for carsick children, taking corners slowly for our comfort. They make leaving Positano more bearable- that's how good they are.

So good, that they've become friends of the family. Guilia in fact, makes the Pastiera for her clients in industrial quantities, so that when I asked her for the recipe she gave it to me in doses of kilos. I've copied the recipe for you as it's the tart which is milder in taste and only has the candied Cedro lemon in it. These specialty ingredients will be available from an Italian Delicatessen during this time of the year.

Giulia's Pastiera

Crust:
500gms of flour
250gms of softened butter cut into pieces
225gms of sugar
3 eggs
A tiny pinch of salt
Some grated orange and lemon peel


Knead together then place in fridge for an hour.


Filling:

500ml of cream made with 3 eggs, 3 spoons of sugar, 3 spoons of flour and 1/2 a liter of milk
500gms of ricotta blended with 500gms of sugar
6 eggs
500gms of cooked wheat grains (available in jars) mixed with a little butter, 250mls of milk, grated peel from one lemon. Cook in a saucepan stirring till creamy.

Mix all these together with two-three ampoules of orange blossom water, 200gms finely chopped candied Cedro lemon, 2 sachets of vanilla, and grated lemon and orange peel.

Roll out biscuit crust and place filling inside. Decorate in lattice with remaining pastry.

Bake 180/200 degrees C. for a little more than an hour. Cool to eat and refrigerate the rest. Can be prepared several days ahead.








Speaking of friends, a lovely lady Anne of Oxfordshire sent me a Friends Award sometime ago. I have been reluctant to pass it on as it's so difficult to limit myself to only a few of you. Lots of you tune in here from the States or even from Australia looking for news about Positano and I am really happy to hear from you in the comments to know what you like or don't. Of course there are the expats in Italy from my blogroll who drop by too to share their experience. Thank you everyone!


I'll pass the award on, but cheat a little and give it to two bloggers who have been here from the beginning (less than a year ago.) Casalba and Lucy from On my way to work .



For the rest of you, that is for those who have been to Positano and those who dream of going, you can take a virtual drive through the main road in town on Google Map Street View. If you ever go in 'Person' make sure you turn off and take stairs and alley ways, and don't miss the best part of the real town.

What's flowering in my garden in Positano.

A single peach blossom.
Uva Fragola -strawberry flavoured grape vine.

There is nothing like the rebirth of Nature for inspiration. What's flowering in my garden at Positano will have to do till I get my head around my capricious computer problems.


Notice the bare earth -Many thanks to our gardener.

Sage - Rampant and huge if not pruned heavily each winter. It easily smothers any herbs sitting beside it.

La Zagara- or orange blossom

Our Wisteria just promising blooms in the wake of the season.

To allay any confusion, these were photos that I took at this time last year when Easter came much sooner, and we had over a week of torrential rain.

Stregata.

'Do you think someone could put their hands in our mail box and pull out letters ?', my other half queried.

'Why would they want to do that?' I replied.

'Apparently the witch has other tricks up her sleeve now.'

Which witch? Fornillo, a historical part of Positano has it's own residential eccentric who lives a mostly nocturnal life. Her meandering barefoot, rain or shine around the stairs, roads and gardens of the area are well known to all. Not only does she save on shoes but she is nimble -footed and light-fingered to boot.

For many years she has taken over a narrow patch of terraced land which is not her own but public property and cultivates her orto (kitchen garden) under the menacing jutting boulders. She raises chickens and has at least two roosters who crow from four in the afternoon to five in the morning. From the way sound travels in the conch of the mountain, the noise seems to come from right outside our bedroom window. With time, we have grown used to it, so that its no more disturbing than the sound of the sea.

In summer, her impossibly green lettuces line the dangerously crumbling public path that leads across the Fornillo cliff face and her herbs and pumpkins spread vertically in pockets of compost ever downwards towards the villas below, reachable only by her makeshift steps.

That she is an creative and accomplished gardener there is no doubt. But it would be undermining her talents to stop here.


For this Strega (witch), as we have nicknamed her, dips her hands into other people's gardens as well. Vegetables awaiting the table of their owner's disappear overnight. Melanzane (eggplant), zucchini, tomatoes, just ripe for the picking are magically transferred elsewhere to the dismay of the rightful harvester.

It seems that she bears a long held grudge against us too.
Long ago, she asked my other half if she could cultivate our outside garden. My other half, having heard about her canniness had not given his permission, using the excuse that it is 'the wife's garden'. Obviously this didn't sit well with her, because our gardener began telling us of vegetables that he'd planted that had gone missing, apricots that he suspected were picked in his absence, and oranges and lemons which were taken.

'Eat the things in the outside garden first', he began telling us. 'They won't be there on your return.'

Many years ago, when we still enjoyed daily door to door rubbish collecting, I had woken very early in the morning to go to the bathroom parallel to the public stairs. In the very dim morning light, I just made out the shape of a shadow through the frosted window, climbing over our garden gate. I mentioned it to my other half on going back to bed thinking it was probably the rubbish collectors who had dropped something. My other half peered over the balcony railings to look at the stairwell. Then a moving shadow caught his eye in 'my' garden.

I suddenly heard a stream of Neapolitan cursing from him.

'What's up? ' I asked.

'She's crouching underneath the zucchini plants', he whispered back.

'Go down and tell her to get out', I said.

'No. She'd be likely to whack me !' he replied.

To make a long story short, after a good half hour of shouting ('Mariola' - Neapolitan for thief) at her immobile figure ducked under the immense zucchini leaves from the safety of our balcony, at the break of dawn she very quickly managed to scramble lightly up a neighbour's wall and take cover in their garden. I must mention here that she was close to sixty at the time!

On other occasions I had planted heirloom Mortgage Lifter tomatoes and was very proud of their size. I lovingly laid fresh compost at their feet and had thought that the pick of the crop would be perfect in the morning. Of course it was no longer there but the bare footprint was perfectly outlined on the compost next to it.

I've given up on growing vegetables out there, but it's still hit and miss with the fruit trees.

Her prowess is famous all over Positano.
One man related the tale of how he was unloading a van full of five-litre tins of olive oil for one of the shops. He had placed them on the roadside in order to move the van out of the way. Then he realised that the woman had picked up a tin, placed it on her shoulder and was calmly walking up the steep stairs to her house.

Another recently, while doing (unofficial) work to their house at 1 am at night, wondered why she had stopped and was just watching them .
Eventually he asked 'What are you doing here?'
'I want a lift up to Montepertuso' she said. She had a metal casing from one of the drain covers at her feet. It had been too heavy for her to carry. She now in her mid-seventies.

Her weathered face and stealthy gait still sends alarm bells ringing in my head when our paths cross unexpectedly in the alley behind our home, and I know now to avoid going in the early morning lest I should encounter her with her bulging plastic bags of vegetables.

Nor do I take the scenic walk along the cliff face under her garden in the times of the day in which I am likely to see her.

She'd probably mistake me for a thief...

This post is dedicated to Paul Anater who wrote of Positano:
"I saw more quirks and curiosities in that ancient little town than I thought were possible".


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Itchy (green) Fingers

My fingers are itching to get out into the garden, tidy up and look for signs of spring.

In Luxembourg, we are still in sub-zero temperatures, with ground frost and snow. The only thing that seems to be growing is the city of mole hills spreading it's way across the lawn and into the garden beds. I can probably say goodbye to the tulip bulbs I planted.

In Positano, it's quite a different scenario.

The continuous rain this year hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of the roses which continue to bloom, nor that of the native white jonquils fragrant and invasive, sitting prettily under the orange trees and flowering in drifts along the cliff-side gardens down to the beach.

I am rarely in Positano at the right time for gardening, being chained to the school calender for trips. We are obliged to take on a gardener for seasonal jobs, rather than let the place run to seed.

But there is a thing about gardeners in Italy and myself. We don't quite see eye to eye about what is acceptable and what is not.

I revel in nature and the surprises it presents in different places. Italians like to control it or fashion it into tidy rows, with weed free straight lines and pruning everything to an inch of its life.

Several years ago, we were looking for someone to tend the garden in Positano in our absence. We had a few waiters-cum-gardeners-cum-painters-cum-handymen visit, after I had tidied the garden to what seemed to us to be a pleasing standard.

As I showed them around and waited for the compliments, all I heard was 'ahi' or 'ehi ' and an intake of breath.

You see my (unrealistic) dreams of a tropical paradise in the heart of Positano, with jungle vines vying for space with dilapidated dry stone walls, or a sort of mediterranean adaptation of an English Cottage Garden, has to contend with the Italian conception of 'bello'.

Or in other words this :

Our present gardener who prunes the grape vines and plants a few vegetables in our absence insisted that my husband take a photo of the fruit garden so he could show me his work.

Nada, Niente , nothing there. All cleaned up, dug under and clear of growth. And he was very proud of it to. What you can't see is the peas, broad beans and a few head of lettuce that he put in for our consumption in April. But otherwise this is it.

Our gardener Michele, from days long past, used to say that 'if you couldn't eat it, you shouldn't be growing it'. His only exception to this rule was a Calla lily or Dama in Camicia in the corner of the fruit garden.

I have convinced our present gardener that the ornamental plants are just as important to me as the vegetable part, but it seems that sometimes, I am talking to an (ivy clad) brick wall.

Our huge rose bushes were pruned literally to death and their replacements will take a long time to reach the height of the 30 year old giants.

I have to repeat each year that want the bougainvillea to trail down the wall so that he doesn't chop it back too drastically, and to let jasmine scramble naturally in the sun rather than tie it back.

I know Plumbago is rampant, but letting it sucker in the stone wall gives us privacy from the neighbours.

I don't mind that the blood red hibiscus in the corner looks old and forlorn because I planted it there the year I arrived in Positano. In it's hey days, it made its way into many a guide book's photos, the scarlet taken against the blue of the sea.

I'd like plants, please. Verdant and with flowers, scent and colour. Low maintenance, low watering and able to get along without my help for months on end.

I know, many of you will be thinking that a plastic plant will probably do the trick.

I am so unreasonable. I only have to go to Positano unexpectedly to see what a great clean up this gardener does to prepare for our stay.

A good dedicated gardener is now a rarity in these parts. That is, one that actually admires and tends ornamentals as well as the edibles. In the past, people in Positano would come and beg for work. Now it's considered too strenuous for most people who prefer to have a comfy hotel job, to the point that the neighbours come and beg the gardener to look after their houses too.

I'm tempted to take the ball and chain off my legs and tie it on his.