Omelets are so wonderful on last-minute nights and we finally learned how to make a glorious one from watching a Jacque Pepin video. His omelet is so tender, light, and well-formed. Mine had been more like the sole of a ballet slipper. I learned to hit the pan, jiggle, and scramble with gusto. Watch him and rejoice:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/dining/jacques-pepin-demonstrates-cooking-techniques.html?_r=1

At the last instant, I fill the omelet with chopped cherry tomatoes, olives, and parmigiano.

We love to make pici, the favorite pasta of Cortona. When our cookbook comes out, you can learn how easy it is. We use fava beans when they’re in season, but pici is happy to marry asparagus instead. Both the asparagus and the pici are al dente, so the textures are compatible.  Good olive oil–you know I’m fanatic about that–and some parmigiano–you’re done. This is a tasty pasta, perfect for any night:

Often on quick nights, we throw together Fiorella’s Red Pepper Tart. She’s our neighbor in Cortona and one of the world’s best cooks. Almost everything she serves comes from the garden or woods. She did admit that for this instant tart, she uses a ready-made pie crust. I’ve used those a few times in Italy and they’re good. If you know of an American brand, let me know. I tried one and it was vile and had palm oil in it.  Anyway, the red pepper tart, with an arugula salad, seems right for Sunday night–or to cut in slivers for an antipasto platter.

In Italy, Sunday is THE night for pizza. Most people have enjoyed an elaborate Sunday pranzo, so at night it is popular to go out for pizza. Here in NC, we make pizza and foccacia in the oven. It does not look or taste like the pizza we pull out of our outdoor forno in Tuscany but it’s still good.

We use these cross sections from chestnut logs a lot. This is rustic pizza just out from its inferno. In contrast, is the more well-behaved version from our U.S. oven:

Writing all this gives me pangs for Tuscany.  Winter from our mountain house looks like this:

Those two extinct volcanoes on the horizon often seem to float above the fog. That’s Cortona on the hill closer in. The lavender walk is in summer full of butterflies. If we were there now, friends coming over, supper would look likely be roast chicken and guinea hen, roasted vegetables and potatoes, green beans.

But here we are in mild North Carolina, spending the weekend on garden chores, planting a few bare root roses, admiring yellow crocuses, converting a sad perennial bed to lawn, doubtless pulling a muscle while hoisting big pots. We’ve already discussed Sunday supper because we have a bunch of quail to slow roast with juniper berries, vin santo, and pancetta. Here’s what it looks like.

Incredibly easy, this quail covey tastes intensely savory. We serve it on a bed of cheese grits, the first cousin to polenta. Most things I’m describing will be in the cookbook. We have one early copy. Ed said, “I can’t wait till its all stained with tomatoes and fingerprints, and crumbs drop out of the middle.”

Buona Domenica. Happy Sunday.

]]> http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2012/01/28/sunday-night/feed/ 41 http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2012/01/23/trees-in-winter/ http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2012/01/23/trees-in-winter/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:07:36 +0000 Frances Mayes http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/?p=1137 This weekend we found a big fluffy cedar down in the driveway. It was only about twelve years old so shouldn’t have fallen. No wind. No apparent disease.  Just gave up the ghost.  (What DOES that really mean??)  Meanwhile, we’re taking down lots of truly dead trees along our lane, ripping out ivy, and securing the fenceposts. Nothing makes a property look so derelict as broken fences!  Winter is the best time to get these chores done. I was just thinking that when I saw Jeff Minnich’s blog on tree work. He’s a landscape designer in the D.C area who often comments on this blog . Take a look at his charming and informative blog: http://www.minnichgardendesign.com/blog/?p=351.

I hate it when stickers that won’t come off are on my books!  Mars the careful cover. Here’s Italy. No sticker.

Where To Go When: Italy and Where To Go When: The Americas are both published by DK. They’re organized by month, with suggestions for that time of year.  The information is concise and useful, there are great photographs, and the editors have found many surprising or unknown places to lure us. This is a spread on Puglia.

And Panama, a February suggestion, looks good to me.

The Americas book really lures me. There are so many places I have not seen south of the border.  A trip to Central America and Peru remains one of my top travel memories. I’ve never been to Brazil or Argentina, or so many other places.

These books are magnetic!

]]> http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2012/01/19/where-to-go-when/feed/ 15 http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2012/01/16/getting-organized-for-2012/ http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2012/01/16/getting-organized-for-2012/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:58:22 +0000 Frances Mayes http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/?p=1119 In the current issue of Martha Stewart Living, I read the article on Martha’s workroom. My first reaction was, “This is obsessive.” My second was that I would love to have such an orderly space for projects.  On a smaller scale, I saw @ElbieSwan on Twitter. She’d reorganized her pantry so nicely. I have two. One just a tiny slab, the other more spacious. This morning I tackled them. Here’s what they looked like at the outset.

Here’s the smaller one, supposed to be my pasta pantry. Note ragbag of aprons and Graves teapot that long since stopped its Gare du Nord whistle.

Am I obsessive, or is this really a satisfying little project.  Behold: I have a Jamaican painting in the pantry. Bet not even Martha has that!

Now in the pasta pantry, I have room for the pasta pot and for the bottled water that was on the floor of the other pantry.

In reorganizing, I was noticing how beautiful the contents of the pantry are!

A chic Parisian woman who once interviewed me for Maison looked at Bramasole’s bookshelves and said, “There’s a good mess and a bad mess.”  Walking around the house after this project, I thought maybe a few spots filled with my treasures have moved over into the latter category. My next project:

But not today. Onward to dinner–a big risotto with odor and shrimp.

When you log into Facebook–and you must have an account to do so–two categories come up.  Pages and People.

Under Pages, there are several Frances Mayes entries which other people have started.  One is a “fan” page.

Under People, there’s my own Facebook account.

Please let me know if this solves the problem.  Thanks.

This is a trove of a book and a must-read for all lovers of the greatest city.

On Twitter, I’ll recommend a lot of books. Please “follow” me there and on Facebook, where we will have the chance to see photos and to share news.  All this is new. I’m still learning. For Willie, my grandson, like so many his age, the digital age came free with his DNA. Fortunately, he likes notebooks and ink pens as well.

My sudden move into the world is occasioned by the cookbook’s imminent release (13 March). I am getting ready to tour, be on best behavior, and be ready to have dinner out of the minibar if a flight is late, late.  I am going to be updating the blog: adding lots of Steven Rothfeld’s amazing photographs from the book, adding some recipes, an interview with The Recipe Club, and, of course, posting my tour. I hope Ed will be with me for much of it. It will be fun if I meet readers of this blog. Clarkson Potter (publisher) and Steven Barclay Agency are hard at work right now juggling dates and places. A few dates are already pinned to the calendar:

14 March: Wilmington, Delaware, Smart Women Lecture

21 March: Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta History Center

27 March: New Brunswick, New Jersey, Smart Women Lecture

28 March: Des Moines, Iowa, Smart Women Lecture

More on all that later. Hope everyone’s new year has commenced with a flourish.

With six acres of camellia and azalea swaths, a butterfly garden and many large perennial beds, plus a three-room walled rose garden, the upkeep of the property, to put it mildly, remains a challenge. Or, you might think of it as a calling. The cover photo was taken in the rose garden.

I love the 1770 barn and the nine outbuildings, even the funky forties greenhouse–don’t touch that wire!–where Willie and I now have an ongoing project. He grows gourds in summer. They’re like kudzu–just take over whatever space they can.  All fall they dry out in the greenhouse.  Around Thanksgiving we begin to drill round holes in some of them and to scrape them out. The insides, packed with seeds, are SO primitive.  The gourd has a mighty evolutionary drive!

We clean them with steel wool, spray with sealer, run wire through the top, drill a little drainage hole in the bottom–and there’s the birdhouse. They’re hanging in trees everywhere and they also are Willie’s Christmas presents to friends.  Bluebirds like them, especially, and many are home to little yellow finches. These are still drying:

This is such a satisfying project!  As the gourds dry, I love the mottled surfaces, and the cheery shapes seem like little creatures!

Back to the Organic Gardening article!   Lovingly written by my friend Kim Sunée, there is a recipe for easy strawberry semifreddo from our soon-to-be-released The Tuscan Sun Cookbook, and other recipes are included on line at organic gardening.com/tuscanrecipes

When Kim wrote Trail of Crumbs, her editor asked me for a blurb. I read the manuscript and we have been friends ever since.  She came to Tuscany twice to help Steven Rothfeld and me with the food prep and styling when we were photographing for the cookbook.  In North Carolina, we had a very fun day with photographer Peter Frank Edwards styling the food, trying to photograph the semifreddo before it melted, and picking bouquets.

One challenge of the land is the number of volunteer trees all of whom want to choke out the others. For Christmas, Ed gave me two orange tools that grasp and uproot saplings.  The tools are made by The Weed Wrench Company, www.weedwrench.com .  They were recommended to us by Nancy Goodwin, whose lovingly curated garden, Montrose, is the major one in our area. She thinned a woods for a magical garden full of cyclamen, primroses, ferns, snowdrops, peonies–a secret poem of a garden. Nancy has all measures of these simple and amazing tools.

Their secret? Jaws and leverage. You fit the trunk into the maw and as you pull back, it closes and the leverage lifts the offending tree out of the ground.

The instructions say over and over “don’t fall backwards.”  We are clearing some of the woods of underbrush so that the meadows and woods become seamless rather than the meadow abutting a stop-view wall of weeds, vines, and volunteer pines. Good winter work–a corrective for all the feasting of the holidays! On New Year’s Day, I spotted two daffodils in bloom! The garden is just waiting to burst forth again.

Happy 2012! May we all foster our inner selves–read and feast and travel and act boldly and rest and pursue private dreams.

In a Christmas letter, I’d talk about the many feasts we’ve prepared, finishing the cookbook, leisurely visits in Italy with friends, and about Ed’s show with Alberto in Cortona.  Lots more on the gardens I tend.  I’d have to mention that we were robbed this year–what an assault.  And, most sadly, our family has just lost our dear Bill Jackson, my sister’s husband.  He was a sterling man–a veterinarian whose specialty in animal ophthamology took him all over the world. He was a big sportsman, a kind friend, and a happy man. At the end of his obituary, my sister wrote that instead of flowers, please remember him by performing a random act of kindness.  This was appropriate for someone who so often did that.

Driving back from the funeral twelve hours south of here, Ed and I listened to The Great Gatsby all the way home.  We stopped overnight in one of my old haunts, Fernandina Beach, Florida. I spent endless time there as a child and the town, now quite gentrified, is as familiar to me as my hometown. It has kept its Old Florida feel and the beach is as sublime as ever. I started to look at real estate windows but Ed steered me on down the street.  Once, when I was about twelve, I was alone on the beach and I saw two Navy planes collide over the water and crash. I ran in to tell everyone and no one believed me. “You were imagining it,” my mother insisted and continued to insist until the evening news came up on the hotel bar. In Fernandina, I used to write messages and shove them into bottles. My father indulged me by taking them to the fishing boats and asking the men to throw them in the water way out at sea. If you find this, write to me. . . If you travel near Jacksonville, Florida, take a detour to Fernandina! Instead of a white Christmas, I’m dreaming of a week there at the lovely Elizabeth Pointe Inn. It was full this time so we stayed at a motel on the harbor instead. A whole week there, a slow winter week to walk, write, and read.

But for now, we’re at home in unseasonably warm North Carolina.  Friends from NY came for two days and we cooked  Tuscan ribs and polenta, and drank some big wines. Willie and I made wreathes out of scuppernong vines, greens, red berries and herbs from the garden. They look kind of pitiful compared to my neighbors giant wreathes but we like them. We made birdhouses from gourds Willie grew and gave them to friends. As Christmas morning approaches, it’s a little sad that Willie, nine, no longer believes that Santa is plummeting down the chimney and spreading gifts around the living room.  (The only constant is change.) At year’s end, you remember many good times and try to sweep the bad aside. Best not to think of our elected representatives who have betrayed us all with their heavy partisan nonsense. Very unpatriotic. Better to think on summer tomatoes, falling stars, a special gift found for a friend, a dream of a vacation to come, a good book by the bed, a folio of recipes to try, a child to awe, a little time to dream.  Always, I am missing the warmth of Tuscan evenings with friends there. Meanwhile, much to savor and learn here.

I hope everyone who reads here has lovely holidays.  Invigorating–leading you forward. I hope that no one feels like those deflated vinyl Santas I see lying on lawns in my neighborhood!!  The sled, the reindeer, the big Santa, who always seems to give out first and lie on the lawn! After all the gifts and the feasts, the New Year is coming. Time to make lists. Time for renewal. There, I’ve almost written a Christmas letter after all.

When my daughter, her husband, and our much-adored grandson arrived in Italy for the olive harvest, we started off with three days in an apartment near the Pantheon. (No photo / address included–it probably had been furnished in an afternoon at some unspeakable discount store. Great location, clean, but not recommended!) But to be near the Pantheon! That grand center of the western world, fabled dome from ancient times, stop-in-your-tracks Pantheon. I always remember being there on a February day when a slushy rain fell through that amazing oculus at the top of the dome. Our friend Alberto prostrated himself and let the snowy water fall on his face. He (architect) was drinking in the whole mother legend of western architecture. If the Holy Ghost ever makes an appearance, surely it will be through this aperture.

You could not have lain on the floor in October–you would have been trampled.  In all my years of being in Italy, I NEVER have seen as many tourists as there were in Rome this fall.  Many, many are eastern European. They are on the move. They have money, freedom to travel, and they are having a fine time! I loathed the crowds and we were on a tourist mission–to show Willie the Forum, the Colosseum, the ruins where Caesar was killed, some favorite churches and, of course some of our favorite places to dine on Roman artichokes, lusty pastas, and wild field greens. No matter how many times I have seen Rome, I’m always astonished.

I was curious to see how a nine-year old would react.  We gave him a camera and what he saw was obviously not what we normally saw. And he loved the ancient sites. Lapped up the stories of the paintings, as well as much gelato.  If you have a child in your life, hie thee to Rome!  It was such a joy.  We were out all day. At night he organized his photos and wrote extensively about what he’d seen.  We didn’t mind at all that he missed ten days of school. Here are a few of his photos. He took other standard ones but I liked his perspective:

This is the classic, utterly simple cacao e pepe, pepper and cheese pasta that Romans adore.

For a child who lives in a small town, the street life especially fascinated.

Even the multiple locks were interesting, and the pavement on the streets.

Roof gardens, gelato cones, details in churches, the fascinating obelisks–dozens of memories to take home and, I hope, always to bring him back to Rome for the nourishment of his spirit.

One joy of friends and family coming to Italy to visit is that we get to share the places we love and to see them from new viewpoints. With them I especially love coming upon the secret corners of beauty that are everywhere in Roma.

On this packed visit, these are some special stops I’d like to pass on, along with the suggestion: go in winter!

Venchi, one the the tip-top chocolate makers in Italy has opened a gelato shop at via della Croce, 25, near the Spanish Steps.  Mamma mia! Many gelato places announce themselves as artigianale, artisan made, and they do make the gelato in house, but often with industrially produced mixes.  Not so Venchi.  Everything is fresh and the flavors are natural and deep. Of course there are chocolates to take away.

The Galleria Doria Pamphilj is one of my favorite museums.  http://www.doriapamphilj.it/ukhome.asp The immense palazzo at Via del Corso, 305, houses the galleries and also is still lived in. In addition to the art, you get a sense of how the old aristocracy lived (and lives still).  The collection is large but not staggeringly vast. Caravaggio’s La Maddelena is there, as well as his Rest on the Flight into Egypt. I love the Filippo Lippi Annunciation. In the Bar Doria on the ground level, you think you could spot Henry James taking notes at a table and enjoying a delectable pastry. It’s an old-world place, quiet and civilized. An ornamental marble font looks like the world’s ultimate bathtub.

Roman trattorie are one of the great pleasures of life. On this trip we dined happily at La Gensola in Trastevere (piazza della Gensola, 15), Ditirambo (piazza della Cancelleria, 75) near Campo de Fiori, Gusto (piazza Augusto Imperatore, 9–the wine bar trattoria around behind the more crowded front part), Da Fortunato (via del Pantheon, 55) near the Pantheon, and Ristorante Matricianella (via del Leone, 4)  near the sublime piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina. The fall artichokes were in and Romans, of course, cook the best artichokes on earth. We ordered fried ones to start every meal and often proceeded to the deep-fried whole ones.  One of my favorite dishes at Matricianella is a plate of tiny veal meat balls sautéed with artichoke hearts and cherry tomatoes. Their  bucatini all’ amatriciana is called the 5 Ps–pasta, pomodoro, pecorino, pancetta, peperoncini (red peppers) and is devoured all over Rome. When Ed and I travel alone, we usually pause at a bar for a panino for lunch then move on, but with the family we had both pranzo and cena out, along with too many stops at Venchi and at early evening wine bars. Fortunately, we were walking all day.

On the fourth day, we hauled everything to the train–our son-in-law travels with a bicycle–and traveled north to Cortona for the olive harvest. Because of the hail storm in early summer, we had a small crop this year but the oil is still superb.  I’ve written about the harvest in all my books so you probably already know that for us it is the best time of year. (For more info look at www.thetuscansun.com)  And even better this year, since we got to share the feasting and celebrating with our family. This is how the olive oil first appears from the press:

That color! I would like a winter coat that color. When the oil is this fresh, it’s loaded with ultra-healthy properties and anti-inflammatory powers. Besides, it tastes sublime. Pour some on a plate, dip in grilled bread on both sides–soak the bread–sprinkle a little salt. There–that’s the essence of good Tuscan food. The taste is green, and brings to mind the lines from a Lorca poem,  ”Green, green how I want you green / Green wind. Green branches.”

]]> http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2011/12/05/out-about-in-rome-ii/feed/ 40 http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2011/11/02/fall-backward/ http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/2011/11/02/fall-backward/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:17:02 +0000 Frances Mayes http://www.francesmayesbooks.com/?p=1047 The hour changed here, one week earlier than in the U.S. I don’t know why that one hour always seems dramatic; I’m more bothered by it than by the six-hour time change when I fly to Italy. I suppose it is the early dark, the sudden creation of long winter nights.  When I hear “fall backward,” I simultaneously think of falling into a big pile of autumn leaves, and of the time when I can again “spring forward.” Yesterday was, to my mind, the end of fall, end of the tourist season, and the beginning of the delicious time when Italy returns to calm, big feasts, and anticipation of holiday gatherings with friends. What a joy to wake up to the changing hillside:

1 November is All Saints, a national holiday; today is All Souls, which was once a holiday too but has been demoted. This is the time of year when Italians travel to their home ground to place flowers on the graves of family members. There’s a huge business in chrysanthemums, flower of the dead. (Never take a pot as a gift!) We spent the day in other pursuits. The chestnut woods around our mountain house are in full glory so we took a basket and went out to gather. Around here, people look especially for the sweet marrone.  Of the many trees, few are of this type that produce the choicest nut. Of course the regular ones roast beautifully, too. Encased in spiny little garages, chestnuts are well protected until they fall and break open:

The burs (one -r) hold one to four nuts, though I’ve read that some types hold up to seven. The marrone are single. America used to have four billion (I read this online–can it possibly be true?) chestnut trees, until a blight in the early 1900’s destroyed most of them. What a tragedy.  They are enchanting trees.

Walking down the road, we don’t even talk. We just absorb the golden smells, the loamy ground covered with the charming little hedgehog chestnut casings, and the great gift of silence.

We were lucky enough to be invited to our neighbors, the Italiani, for the holiday feast, served at one p.m. and ending around four. The are our neighbors on the mountain, Ivan, his parents Domenica and Giovanni, and the grandmother Annetta. They are just amazingly self-sufficient people with a huge vegetable garden, chickens, geese, rabbits and all the mountains around providing wild berries, game, mushrooms, chestnuts, asparagus, crab apples, and field greens. Ed’s sister Anne and her husband Paul also were invited to this amazing pranzo. They cooked the porchetta in their bread oven. The skin crackled and the meat, fall-apart tender, was so flavorful with the garlic and herb stuffing.

The two bruschette are black cabbage and cannellini beans, doused with new oil from our grove. That’s it in the bottle but it’s rich green really.  The dish in back holds baked fennel. Ivan likes to serve meat on big cross sections of chestnut logs. After the bruschette, Domenica served her homemade pappardelle with lepre (wild hare) sauce. While the pasta cooked, Annetta heated her preferred iron on the wood-fired stove.

Domenica’s pasta was lighter than air, the sauce rich and meaty. Giovanni carved the pork and we all succumbed at least twice to big servings. We barely could reach for the fennel and salad. Then came a delicate panna cotta with Ivan’s blackberry sauce, followed by that classic Tuscan dessert from the “poor kitchen,” cucina povera tradition: castagnaccio. A taste of that and you are way back in country tradition when there was no sugar, not much of anything, so a dessert was concocted from somewhat sweet chestnut flour, a few raisins, some rosemary, and what nuts were on hand. It’s usually a flat, strange cake that I always thought you had to have been fed while under three to like.  But Ivan has revised my thoughts! Look at this beauty and the proud maker.

All saints be praised!  All souls, too. With the time change, dusk was beginning as we drove home. A low fog covered the valley far below and the orb of sun seemed to wobble toward the horizon. Or maybe we were wobbling. Giovanni’s homemade new wine was delicious. And the espresso sent us flying out the door.  We were not hungry for dinner but around ten, Ed make an omelet with eggs Domenica gave us and we had a small glass of Giovanni’s vino, raising a toast to the family.