The day Joni Starr and Bill Bock tied the knot they got a bit more commitment than they were expecting. Little did they know that they were about to become instant Adoptive parents to a not-so-little olive tree in Nudo’s Il Taccolito grove.  As good parents do, they decided to visit their arbor of joy upon taking their honeymoon in Italy. Here is Joni’s account of their visit.

“My husband and I received an adopted olive tree for a wedding gift last June and we were thrilled to learn we could visit it on our honeymoon one year later. We drove to Le Marche to the Il Taccolito agriturismo in San Severino where we met our lovey tree! Alfio led us up the hill to the grove to introduce us to our tree and take some photos with it. He then showed us their farm animals (including cows Margarita and Phillipe!) and introduced us to his mother and father, Rita and Massimo, who were so very proud of their work and welcomed us with open arms. Rita made a fabulous Italian lunch for us and since the family speaks very little English and we speak very little Italian, they had invited some of their son’s friends who speak English over to have lunch with us. Before we left, Rita gave us a gift which was a book about the olives grown in their region. It was such a wonderful experience! Thanks to Rita, Massimo and Alfio for the wonderful hospitality! Thanks, also to Marco and Assunta for arranging our visit.”

- Joni Starr and Bill Bock (Minneapolis, USA).

If you would like to visit your Adoptive olive tree, please contact Assunta at adopt@nudo-italia.com to arrange your day.

Pineapple chunks and raisins caramelized in Nudo orange oil and rum, served with vanilla ice cream

In this refreshing and unusual dessert, olive oil is used to caramelize the pineapples, infusing them with a subtly grassy flavour and giving them a beautiful gloss butter can’t match. The pineapple chunks fray away effortlessly in the mouth, their warmth and sweet acidity contrasting deliciously with the cool and soft ice cream. The sticky, rum flavoured raisins keep your throat warm between bites, making this a perfect antidote to the last Winter cold. If you can use a fruit flavoured oil such as Nudo’s flagrant orange oil, this will add a lovely citrus taste to this already delightful combination.

Chop off the leafy and bottom parts of the pineapple. Peel the pineapple, making sure to cut off the columns of dark brown “eyes”. Remove any remaining ones with a small pointy knife. Slice the pineapple, core the slices and cut them into even segments.

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Toss the pineapple chunks into the hot oil and sprinkle with the sugar. Cook on medium-low heat stirring regularly to ensure even browning for 15-20 minutes or until the pineapple is soft and caramelised. Halfway through, add the raisins.

Add the rum and cook for 3-5 more minutes or until all the rum has evaporated.

Serve immediately with a scoop of top quality vanilla ice cream.

Tips:

You can also try this recipe with pre-cut chunks of pineapple, although fresh is best.

When shopping, choose a pineapple that has firm, gold to brown skin (not too green) with green, loose leaves (not brown or wilted). A ripe pineapple will have a strong, fresh pineapple smell.

Tasty Diaries is a free weekly newsletter written by Anne-Laure, a real foodie who lives in London with her beautiful Anglo-French family. Hailed by the Times as “… charming and inspiring… a weekly missive of kitchen tips and colourful, seasonal recipes…”, it simply arrives in your inbox every Thursday with exciting, simple and nutritious recipe ideas for the week to come.

Anne-Laure’s food philosophy is that home cooking is always best, but it has to fit around today’s families hectic lifestyle. This is why she features “workweek recipes” that are always quick and straightforward to make. Her inspiration comes from traditional and modern French family cooking, books, old magazines and other blogs. Anne-Laure also regularly invites Michelin starred chefs to create weekend menus for Tasty Diaries, which she cooks herself to show that it can be done by a ‘normal’ person and then makes it accessible to everyone.

These days we look out in anticipation for what Anne-Laure has come up with for the week, and soon we know you will too. Check out this week’s newsletter and subscribe by clicking here.

Paula Jones, a blogger on Italian food being featured in our series on Nudo’s international foodie friends, is one of our favourite discoveries of the past few months.  Not only is she a much-loved blogger at Bellalimento.com, but she is also quite the foodiepreneur (yes, food entrepreneur) turning her passion into a profitable online media business and recently launching a second blog at PaulaDoesPasta.com.

I was born in Georgia, but had the honor of being raised around the States & Europe. One of my many homes was in Italy. Where I fell in love. Yes deeply, madly, passionately, head over heels in love with Italy from the moment my plane landed! I loved and continue to LOVE everything about Italy! It’s culture, its people, its architecture, and especially its food.

I am not a professional chef. I am just a cook. Someone who is passionate about food, especially Italian food. My recipes are all authentic and come from the many years that I lived in Italy & from my trips back to visit.

Bell’alimento is Italian for ‘beautiful food’. My food philosophy is simply “beautiful food doesn’t have to be complicated”. Italian food is about simple, quality ingredients that are combined with love and are meant to be shared with family & friends! Punto! (period) I share my passion for Italian food and my recipes on my foodblog at www.bellalimento.com

Read her guest post recipe for DolceVitaDiaries.co.uk by clicking here.

Spaghetti Aglio Olio e Peperoncino is simply Spaghetti with garlic, oil & chili pepper. I know you might have thought peperoncino sounds like pepperoni but IT’S NOT, it is indeed a spicy hot red chili pepper!

What you’ll need:
1 lb box of Spaghetti
1 small red chili pepper – seeded & minced
4 med-large cloves of fresh garlic – minced
6 tbsp of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
salt

What to do:
Into a large pasta pan, add enough water to boil pasta. Season generously with salt. When boiling add your spaghetti & cook until al dente. WHILE the spaghetti is cooking, into a saute pan (large enough to accommodate the pasta once it has cooked) add your olive oil, garlic & pepper. Cook over low-med heat until garlic starts to turn golden (do not allow to burn) When pasta is ready, drain WELL & transfer pasta into pan with oil. Toss together and allow to heat through for approx 1-2 mins. Serve immediately.

Buon Appetito!

Read more about Paula Jones and her great recipes at Bell’Alimento.

Diana Bauman, the first blogger to be featured in our series on Nudo’s international foodie friends, is an organic vegetable grower, chicken rearer, local produce supporter, homemaker, mother, graphic/web designer and a world class blogger. So many things in one and still doing her bit to save the planet every day.  But not just doing – really living her philosophy.  Her very popular blog, A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa, recently featured a delicious recipe using Nudo oils.  So we asked her to share her food philosophy with us. Here’s what Diana had to say:

Growing up as the daughter of immigrants to the USA, I was raised eating traditional foods and grew up in an environment where meals were created from scratch using whole ingredients.

Unfortunately, the industrialization of our food system in the United States has compromised the health and well being of its citizens by means of processed foods and meats and dairy containing hormones and antibiotics. My philosophy is simple: eat food in its natural form as God made it.

I am an advocate of supporting local family farmers who have a passion for raising pastured animals without the use of growth hormones or rampant use of antibiotics and thus shop at our local farmers markets.  Also, I grow my own vegetables organically at home and raise my own backyard chickens.

From what I grow and buy at the farmers markets, I can preserve and freeze fresh local ingredients to use during our extremely cold winter months.  It’s a step that I’ve taken to self sustainability.

Why do all of this? Our health is dependent upon it and above all else, the health of our children. Because of this, I strive to cook the way that my grandparents did in hopes that my children will learn the important skill of cooking using REAL FOOD to nourish themselves and their children to come.

One of our favourite presents-you-can-cook is panforte (literally ‘strong bread’) – a fruity, nutty, chewy, sweet little number from Tuscany. It’s been around some 800 years and used to be used as currency to pay the monks of the local monastery when they demanded tax on the seventh of February each year. Rumours that this novel ‘cake payment’ method is to be brought back as an alternative to million pound bonuses to city bankers are sadly completely false.

But we think that with a puff of icing sugar and all wrapped up pretty, this is a gift that will look and taste like at least a million dollars.

Ingredients

Blanched hazelnuts – 90g/3oz

Blanched almonds – 90g/3oz

Candied peel (lemon, orange and lime) – 200g/7oz

Plain flour – 60g/2oz

Cocoa powder – 25g/1oz

Ground cinnamon, clove and nutmeg – a big pinch of each

Caster sugar – 150g/5.3oz

Clear honey – 125g/5.3oz

Preheat oven to 150°C/300ºF.  Butter and line an 8-inch flan ring tray with parchment paper or bake-o-glide. In a large bowl, combine the nuts, candied peel, the sifted flour, cocoa and spices. Mix it good and proper. Put the sugar and honey in a saucepan, turn on to a medium heat, stirring as the sugar melts. When it starts to boil (about 8-10 mins) take it off the heat. Working quickly, pour the syrup over your nut mixture, and mix it thoroughly. The panforte will stiffen quickly, so immediately spoon the mixture into your baking tray and spread it out evenly. Bake for 30 minutes then turn it onto a wire rack, peel off the paper, take it out and let it completely cool. Wrap and store at room temperature.

This, Sandro our estate agent explained, goes back to the time when the church was a big landowner in Le Marche. The farmers’ wives would make this pasta to grease the palms, or rather fill the bellies, of the local clergymen. But the farmers would go wild with jealousy (eating your wife’s pasta is tantamount to bedding her, Sandro told us) and so wish for the pasta to choke the gluttonous priests to death. Anyway, we’ve had fun making our own strozzapreti at home. It’s just a shame we have no priest friends to invite round for dinner.

Make the pasta according to the instructions for lemon ravioli [see previous recipe]. Lay the thin dough on a floury board and cut into long strips about 3cm wide.Take two wooden barbecue skewers and roll a length of dough around first one skewer then the next. You should end up with an ‘S’ shape, with a skewer in each hole of the ‘S’. Take the skewers out and cut the dough into 2.5 inch pieces. Give each one a further little twist to make sure that the priest really gets it, and place on a well-floured tray.

Once you’ve made enough for 4 people, throw the pasta shapes into salted, boiling water. When they are cooked they will rise to the surface. Scoop them out and mix them into whatever sauce you have come up with. Our favourite so far has been an asparagus, fresh pea, mint and cream sauce.

(You can get your hard back or Kindle copy of The Dolce Vita Diaries now from Amazon.com)

He advised calling out someone from Enel, the electricity people. We did. Someone came. He wasn’t so young, which was good. He looked at the same boxes and his eyebrows went squiffy but it was before lunch so not the grappa. He said ‘Beh’, which means ‘Well …’ He said ‘Beh’ again. Which still meant ‘Well …’ but slightly more emphatically. I gave him a look and a bit of noise which started life as ‘dunque’ (which means ‘so …’) but then got embarrassed – too big a word for too small a thing, so it ended up more as a ‘duh’ coupled with a puzzled expression. The international language of communication told him that I wanted answers. But instead of answers, he started reciting a poem! The village was old. The line was long. The hill was steep. The hill went down. The hill came up. We were at the end of it. The electricity leached out along the way. Oh hang on, not a poem. This was our life. There was nothing he could do. They themselves wanted to upgrade the line because every winter it breaks (oh great) but they can’t because lots of the people whose land the lines go through won’t let them in. Really? At the very least a novel excuse. Was there nothing else we could do? ‘Get a generator,’ he said.

This, it seemed, was to be our electricity fate.”

You can get your copy of The Dolce Vita Diaries from Amazon.  Or find out more about Nudo here.

But then they started to come. Sometimes unannounced, on our doorstep, bing! as if teleported from another world, here were real life customers. ‘Hello’ they would say ‘we’ve come to see our tree.’ Isn’t that marvellous? I love the be-botheredness of people sometimes. The common cliché is that in our age of convenience and comfort, people have become physically lazy, unmotivated, apathetic – why venture out of your comfort zone when the world can so readily be brought to you. Twaddle! I say.

One day probably about four years ago now, Tony and Jean arrived on our doorstep. They weren’t unannounced, they had been planning this trip for quite some time, as Tony’s thorough and charming e-mail correspondence testified. They had Cheshire cat grins and within seconds so did we – you know how some people have an enthusiasm more contagious than swine flu?  Well that’s them.  We were soon getting down to some serious coffee drinking as they grilled us about all things Nudo.  I say they grilled us but actually these two already knew their onions.  They had not only read but clearly digested and assimiliated any piece of olive related information we had ever sent them; in fact Tony even quoted things back to us from our information booklet so there was no room for bluffing.  Pretty soon, he would be correcting us in achieving the perfect form of the polyconic vase.

We had a lovely time with them and still stay in touch today. Their boundless enthusiasm – for Nudo but more importantly for life – has bustled us out of many a disillusioned moment. If you’re reading this T + J, thank you!

Do you have a story about Nudo or an experience in Italy you would like to share with us? Send your story and some photos to stories@nudo-italia.com – we’d love to hear from you.

“Part memoir, part recipe book, even part business plan, ‘The Dolce Vita Diaries’ is seriously engrossing, with a huge personality.”

- Zoe Perrett, Foodtripper.com

“The book is written in a charming, breezy style and was a quite enjoyable read. There’s a good balance between the travails and the joys and there are some nice portraits of people they’ve met along the way.”

- Kelly Rossiter, Treehugger.com

“When you have had a bad day at the office or are staring out at buildings all around, pick up this book. Read and imagine…. you never know where it might lead!”

- Penny Ritson, FreshTies.com

Ingredients for 2
Dried spaghetti – 200g
Nudo sundried cherry tomatoes – 150g
Olive oil – 2 tablespoons
Basil – several torn leaves
Parmesan – grated
Salt – to taste

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package. Drain and put back in the pot you just used (not much washing up either, see). Mix in the tomatoes with some torn basil leaves and serve with a grating of parmesan cheese. You can use ‘normal’ sundried tomatoes as well, but I like the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes.

Eat piping hot with a hearty red wine, thinking of Sophia Loren who advised: “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.”

I digress. Our neighbours – and there’s only one lot that matters because only one is even within sight of us and then only from the roof – are like a king and queen. Queen Guida and King Daniele. And when I say a king and queen, I mean a king and queen from fairytales or from Sweden, not our rum old British lot. They are elegant, unostentatiously glamorous, witty, sardonic, erudite, modern but learned about the past, lovers and practitioners of art, admirers of creativity and ideas and Daniele makes a very very fine espresso. That’s about where he draws the line cooking wise, but who wouldn’t if your fellow kitchen dweller was Guida. This is a woman who can turn a molehill into a mountain. A woman who could sew a sow’s ear into a velvet purse. A woman who would never mix her metaphors.

I think it all starts with her name. She was meant to be a boy. The boy was meant to be called Guido, a common Italian name, strangely really, since it also means ‘I drive’ (we have another, man friend called Guido and when we’re off on trips with him we always have a little joke amongst ourselves about who is going to drive. Oh, how the days fly by). Anyway Guida wasn’t a boy she was a girl. So she couldn’t be called Guido because that’s a boy’s name. But her parents weren’t venturing far and settled on the non-existent name of Guida. And that was it, from there she was a girl apart, a girl with a boyish name, freed to be a new kind of character, someone who can have a weakness for shoes and know how to reheel them with fresh leather. Someone who can grind wheat to flour and make her heavenly biscuits. Someone who lives near enough for a spontaneous cup of tea visit. Lucky old us.

When I was showing him and his daughter Maria around the grove Guido got very excited by all the wild chicory growing there. I’d never really noticed it before, and I can’t say I was convinced that it would be edible, let alone tasty. Anyway, playing the accommodating host I helped him and Maria collect a decent bucketful of the stuff and we carted it back to the house with a rumbling tummy ready for lunch.

Proving what an accomplished cook he is Guido made one of the most delicious pasta dishes I’ve ever eaten.  His trick was to half cook the pasta in water and then finish it off mixed in with the chicory and chilli and anchovies so that it soaks up the flavour and gives a nice starchy gooey consistency to the sauce.

Ingredients for 4 people

Spaghetti – 400g (or any pasta you fancy)

Wild chicory – 500g (plain chicory is available in most supermarkets)

Chilli – one dried one, chopped

Anchovies in olive oil – 3 fillets (optional)

Garlic – 2 cloves Olive oil – 5 tablespoons

Parmesan – 75g grated

Black olives (optional)

Wash the chicory well, cut it up roughly and put it to boil in plenty of salted water. Boil for 15 minutes or until the thicker bits are soft. Drain.  Boil a pan of water for the spaghetti. In a big pan or wok heat the oil on a low flame and add the garlic roughly cut into quarters, the anchovies and the chilli pepper. After a few minutes add the chicory and cook slowly for another 10 minutes. Add the spaghetti to the water and cook for about 5 minutes until ‘half’ cooked. Then spoon out the semi-cooked spaghetti into the chicory mixture (keeping the spaghetti water) and mix well.

Add the spaghetti water to the pasta/chicory one ladle-full at a time (like cooking risotto) and keep on stirring. When the spaghetti is nearly cooked add the grated parmesan, leaving a bit to sprinkle at the end, and mix well. This method gives you quite a creamy sauce, so that’s what you should be aiming for. Check for salt and serve. If you use short pasta instead of spaghetti it’s a bit easier because as Guido say ‘non si fa casino’, ‘you don’t make such a mess’.

Our first encounter with him was on an innocent mission to buy some sausages. It was in the days when we thought it was essential to befriend all the culinary artisans in our local area, to try to shop and interact in the Italian way rather than the supermarket way. The first thing to say about this approach is that it immediately thrusts you into the arms of your host community, the second is that you realise just what a lot of specialism there is out there and how many people who have a deep appreciation of food, the third is that it takes an awfully, awfully long time. And you must cast aside any notion as conservative and focused as ‘coming in to buy x’. I went in to buy sausages and came out, a full 75 minutes later, with a piece of animal in the shape of a medieval shield.

The first thing that happens to you when you enter Pepe’s small but packed butcher’s shop is that you are asked to go back out and come in again. Having taken his first impression of you (the 2 second rule) he must then find some appropriate music. He puts on a cassette into his 80s-not-in-a-retro-sense ‘boombox’. This being Le Marche and Rossini heartland, the music choice is usually, well, Rossini, almost certainly of an operatic bent. Music blaring,  you are then free to re-enter with suitable pomp, to the sight of Pepe miming the words and dancing around like some Frank Bough – Bruce Forsyth hybrid, fuelled by Italian speed.

The next thing is the guided tour of the meat counter, every bit as earnest as a curator in the National Gallery. But he’s not parading his wares, most things here aren’t even for sale (the very thought!) they are his carnal artworks. His bovine breast dinosaur, his porcine gristle dormouse, an abstract offal work which talks to ‘the origins of life’. You’re not kidding.

Then the tasting. People are so boring, laments Pepe, they put a piece of salami on a bit of bread and gulp it down like an animal. The thing is to revere the food, to elevate it, to treat it (help) like a beautiful woman. As he is talking, he is slicing a piece of ciauscolo, a deliciously soft local cured meat speciality that is half way between salami and pate, into the shape of a heart. He changes the music (Verdi now, no regionalist he), pours out two glasses of vino cotto (another local speciality, a sweetly toxic sort of sherry-ultra) and positions the salami heart, sliced up the middle a bit, betwixt the two glasses. It’s a bit like a rejected cover shot for ‘It’s my wedding’ magazine.

‘Um, sono vegetariano’ says Jason as Pepe pushes the glasses in our direction.

‘It doesn’t matter’ says Pepe, still pushing, as if to say he won’t hold that against Jason (as long of course as he still eats).

‘I’ll eat your half of the heart shall I?’ I say, ever the peacemaker and shove the heart in my mouth before manwar breaks the love scene.

Jason sips the vino cotto, from the ungreasey side of the glass.

We buy the nearest thing (the meaty shield affair) and hotfoot it to the supermarket.

*For those of you who may follow the  ‘Feast with Heston Blumenthal’ series – Giuseppe helped Heston in one of the episodes to prepare some culinary art.

I’m so proud of our lemon oil that I risk boring people silly going on about how great it is. But it really is better than any other lemon olive oil. Period. (I learned to say that in America.) We make the oil by crushing whole lemons together with the olives in the press. ‘Yeah, and…?’ you might ask, but most other lemon oils are made by an infusion, that is adding a flavour of lemon to the olive oil when it’s already made. So they taste of essence of lemon, which is about as lemony as grape flavoured bubblegum is grapey. ‘Well ok, but what do you use it for?’ We have yet to find anything that isn’t improved by it (even cakes) but it’s a must for a lazy salad dressing (lemon oil and a bit of salt is all you need), with roast and grilled chicken, and, mmm, with fish. Like this one.

Ingredients for 4

Trout – four whole fish (250-300g each)

Lemon olive oil – 2 tablespoons

Flat-leaf parsley – a bunch

Garlic – two cloves, chopped Salt and pepper to taste Preheat the oven to 190°C/Gas mark 5. Wash and gut the fish. Chop up the parsley. Place each fish on a piece of aluminium foil. Stuff some parsley in each one with some chopped garlic and lemon oil. Then sprinkle an equal amount of the parsley / garlic / lemon oil combo over the top. Add a goodly dose of salt and pepper.

Wrap up each one carefully in the foil, making sure that there is air inside and the foil isn’t touching the fish at the top. Place on a baking tray and pop in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Goes nicely with a fava bean salad, or new potatoes. Or both.

Marco’s eyes lit up as he introduced me to Nonna Cadi’s chocolate salami. When he was little his grandmother was always worrying about him, Marco told me, because she thought he was about to fall over and hurt himself – ‘Cadi, cadi!’, ‘You’re going to fall!’, she would shout. He was a bit like that on the football pitch to be honest.

Here is the recipe he gave me.

Ingredients for 4 people
Digestive biscuits – 200g broken up
Whole egg – 1
Egg white – 1 whipped
Sugar – 100g
Cocoa powder – 50g
Butter – 180g
Liquor like Amaretto or Gran Marnier- to preference

First beat the whole egg, then mix in the sugar and the melted butter. Now add the broken up biscuits and finally fold in the whipped egg white.

Carefully lay the mixture out onto a large piece of aluminium foil. Roll it up into a salami shape and put it in the freezer.  When you want to eat it, remove from freezer and served sliced.

They’re proper continental European ones: wooden, bespoke, heavy with intent. When they’re closed you really cannot tell if it is day or night. Jason likes this. I do not. I like daylight when it’s day. So most nights I try and connive a way of keeping at least one shutter open. At about 6am the sun or some approximation of it, starts to appear and there is often the most beautiful stupendous awe-inspiring sunrise which isn’t even off put by the fog. In fact sometimes fog will enhance it, providing a blanket for all that hot colour to soak into. When the morning arrives like this I think that the world can’t be all bad even if we have no-one to help us harvest and no internet connection and we’re missing our friends. I whisper to J ‘Have you seen the beautiful sunrise, it’s just amazing today?’ and, eyes still tight shut, he grunts a false affirmative. I wallow in the rays for a few minutes then get up and close the shutters for a bit more sleep.

Such is the compromise of relationships.

When we wake up for the second time, the first word we often hear is ‘Milk’ and the first word we usually utter is ‘Coffee’. On an ‘Approdo morning’, we leave our Weetabix in the cupboard and head off for an Italian breakfast. Approdo is our local cafe, just round the corner from Rosie’s nursery. Nine times out of ten Patrizia is making the cappuccino and ten times out of ten her cappuccino is perfect. The milk has been spritzed into a thick, tiny-bubbled confection sitting demurely on the intoxicating slick of espresso beneath. We drink this and eat a warm croissant thing – I say that slightly disparagingly because where the Italians have clearly conquered the coffee, the French are still streets ahead in the patisserie marathon. Rosie has ‘warmer milk’ with a cobweb of Patrizia-etched liquid cocoa and a slice of ‘torta’ which is a kind of apricot flan of which she typically manages about two mouthfuls. Life is sweet.

We drop Rosie at Titti, the nursery and head home. We both often feel, though neither of us would dare say it, that the best, simplest, happiest part of our day is already over.

More clothes are usually called for when we get back home. Our office is a converted shed stuck on the side of the house and perhaps we didn’t convert it quite enough. It is freezing. There is something psychologically bad about ‘going to work’ looking like hell, but there is no way round it – it is almost impossible to be smart and warm and warmth wins.

Habit dictates that we sit down in front of our computers and check e-mails. Or rather check for e-mails. This process often involves a call to Alice, our internet provider, to Telecom Italia, the BT equivalent or to the TIM centre in Piediripa who provide us with the funny little card that goes into the computer to make everything work. It is quite an affront to the soul to have to lose one’s temper as an anonymous foreigner to facilitate a service that, once actualised, will voicelessly convey that you have received no e-mails. But what can one do?

Some time around now, one or other of us will usually say ‘Coffee?’

The reason outdoor work becomes so hugely appealing in this context is that you can really, actually, vividly, get something done. Make progress. Move forward. Get closer to a point where things will be so good that we are as envious of our own lives as others already, foolishly, declare themselves to be. And it really warms you up too.

So after coffee number two (and that’s the limit – there’s enough neurosis in our lives) we often head down to the grove, saws and radio in hand. We often don’t speak at all for a few hours as we hack at brambles, tug at bindweed and roll piles of bonfire fodder into position. The radio playlist circulates reassuringly frequently so that by the time we are hearing a tune for the third time we reckon it’s time for lunch. With a nod to one another, we’ll head back up to the house.

Ingredients for 4 people
Penne pasta – 400g
Kalamata olives – 80g stoned and roughly chopped
Mascarpone – 200g
Orange oil – 3 tablespoons
Water from pasta – 150ml
Black pepper – freshly ground
Parmesan – 50g freshly grated

Cook the penne in boiling, salted water. While the pasta is cooking chop the olives and mix with the mascarpone. Add 150ml of the water the pasta is cooking in to the mascarpone. Also add the orange oil and black pepper and mix into a smooth paste.

When the pasta is ‘al dente’ drain and mix with the paste. Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan over the top.

The first thing to say about learning a new language is don’t believe anyone, any advert or any product that tells you that you can learn a language in a few week. Or in ten tapes. Or in a course of sessions in your sleep. All this is untrue. In a few weeks, if you are committed, you can learn enough to get by with holiday basics and a stab at a conversation other than with and about someone servicing you. But if you want to really understand a language and speak it, you are in it forever. I still consider myself a student of English. So cast out the myth of the miracle and get used to the disappointment.

On the plus side, when you start learning a new language (or indeed anything new) you enjoy the halo effect of an obvious mathematical truth. If you start from zero, anything you achieve is an infinite improvement. Going from no nouns to ten, or no verbs to one are momentous achievements, the first chords in your new guitar. You feel you are making huge strides and great leaps. You feel invincible. And you are. Enjoy this phase. Adding the 81st verb to the 80 you will soon know won’t have the same thrill.

In terms of how to do it, we found a mixture of ways was the best approach. Lessons are pretty indispensable  as even the best books will leave questions unanswered and its good to converse. Getting into the habit of talking out loud even when all you can say is ‘my name is Cathy, i like pizza’ is a good idea. We are all embarrassed about sounding like idiots and we all just need to get over it. And also to remember that people are generally kind and encouraging.  If you are in London and someone with a strong French accent asks you for directions you don’t think ‘what an idiot’. Well if you do you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Watching films in the language you’re learning is a good idea. I used to watch a whole film then watch it again with the subtitles on to see how much i’d understood the gist even when the words had passed me by. There’s a lot about learning a language which isn’t about vocabulary lists. Watching TV is sometimes helpful but don’t be put off Italy by what’s on TV. News is quite good for two reasons – there tend to be pictures to help you with the words and there is a teensy bit lower prevalence of bikinis. There are also some great books you can get hold of with tapes/dvds attached; i’m sure there are digitial equivalents too now. You listen to a story then have the words there to help you. The better ones will then ask you comprehension questions which you can attack neat, having only just listened, or with the help of the written word when you’re setting out. But ‘getting your ear in’ and listening to as many voices as you can early on will really help you as in the real world no-one speaks as generously as your teacher. There are loads of free language exchanges that you can organise through social networks and sites like craigslist and gumtree. Its a simple arrangement – you want to learn Italian, they want to learn English so you meet up and do an hour of each. Its worth spending a bit of time finding someone you actually like and have something in common with as it turns to make the chat flow more freely.

I am rubbish at languages. In English classes at school  I was never taught the difference between nouns, verbs and all that (or maybe I was smoking a menthol cigarette behind the sports hall when that was being dished out). So I had to learn it all as an adult when I learnt Italian. Having struggled and eventually succeeded in learning Italian I now like nothing more than to show off by ordering ‘brew-sketta’ in an Italian restaurant in England. The only down-side is that I am invariably served a slice of soggy baguette with watery tomato on top. If you’re going to do a tomato bruschetta finding some really tasty tomatoes is the key (those from the Isle of Wright are the best I’ve found in Britain).

Tomato, basil and garlic bruschetta
Ingredients for 4
Tomatoes – 700g of ripe ones
Basil – a tablespoon, torn into small pieces
Nudo plain extra virgin olive oil – 50ml
Salt and pepper – to taste
Ciabatta

Cut the tomatoes into chunks cutting out the ‘bum’ bit where the stalks are attached. Cut or tear the basil into shreds. Add the tomatoes to the basil in bowl, after you’ve let any excess water/juice drip away. Add a good pinch of salt.
Cut your ciabatta (or similar bread) into slices and toast or chargrill. Rub the toasted bread with a piece of garlic and drizzle a ‘z’ of extra virgin olive oil just before scooping on a nice spoonful of the tomato mix.

Once you’ve mastered the basics, you will probably go bruschetta-experimentastic. So here’s another one to help you on your next steps.

Aubergine bruschetta
Ingredients for 4
Aubergine- ½ kg (2 smallish ones)
Garlic – 1 bulb
Sage – a small bunch
Mint – fresh or dried, 2 big pinches
Nudo olive oil with real lemons – 50ml
Nudo plain extra virgin olive oil – 50ml
Ciabatta

Start by cutting the garlic into very small pieces. Mix it with the sage (cut up the sage leaves if they are big, otherwise pluck off the small leaves and throw in), mint and olive oils. If you don’t have any of Nudo’s delicious lemon oil, use the juice of 1 lemon.

Put a skillet or a heavy based pan onto a moderate flame. Cut the aubergine into 1/2cm think slices and cook on the skillet. As they are cooked throw them into the marinade. Once all the aubergine is cooked make sure they are well covered by the marinade and leave for half an hour.

Cut your ciabatta (or similar bread) into slices and toast or chargrill. Rub the toasted bread with a piece of garlic and drizzle a ‘z’ of extra virgin olive oil just before scooping over a generous spoonful of aubergine.

Buon Appetito!