We’ve just been tidying up our herb garden and, among other tasks, cutting back and tidying up the sage, which we use often in our cooking.

A very simple, but delicious, dish is ravioli con burro e salvia. We usually buy our fresh home-made ravioli, filled with ricotta and spinach, from the local delicatessen, which cooks in a couple of minutes, and then coated melted butter, in which sage leaves from the garden have been quickly fried. Sprinkle on top a spoonful or two of parmesan and away you go…

Sage is also wonderful in chicken involtini, stuffed, rolled chicken breasts. Here’s Lois’ recipe:
Cover a slice of uncooked chicken breast with cling film and whack it with a rolling pin until no more than a couple of millimetres thick, then divide the slice in two, longitudinally, to make up two individual involtini.
Along the length of each one lay a slice of prosciutto crudo, a slice of fontina cheese, spread a thin layer of cooked spinach, and leaf of sage.
Roll up tightly from the short end, rolling in a fresh sage leaf as you go along, and secure your roll with a cocktail stick.
Poach (lid on, in a small pan) for 15 minutes in a small quantity of vegetable brodo enlivened with a dash of white wine.
Remove the cocktail sticks and serve with thin slices of grilled zucchini and sauté potatoes.

We serve involtini one evening during our creative courses and you can try your hand at making it during our unique cookery course, L’Arte di Mangiar Bene, the Art of Eating Well. This lies at the heart of the Italian lifestyle — and that’s just what you’ll enjoy on The Watermill’s first-ever cookery week.You’ll learn the secrets of healthy eating from Lois and The Watermill team, among them an Italian grandmother (Mirella, to the right), an organic farmer and our gardener’s wife Marida. You’ll choose freshest local ingredients (we’ll pick many of them ourselves each day) and prepare them deliciously for the table. We’ll visit markets, vegetable gardens, olive groves and vineyards. The Italians are the healthiest people in Europe and
this is due not just the quality of the food, but to la bella vita italiana, the relaxed lifestyle which means taking time to talk to friends and to enjoy their company, not least in convivial meals around the dining table. You’ll be savouring all that, too. 

Over the years Lois Breckon and The Watermill team have built a reputation for the  quality of their food and we’re keen to share our secrets with you, from antipasti to dolci – and dozens of mouth-watering, freshly prepared, health-promoting dishes in between.

19-26 August – L’arte di mangiar bene 

with Lois Breckon, Ingrid Fabbian and The Watermill team

To learn more about this delicious cookery course, please click here

There’s an old English saying “Where Rosemary flourishes, the Woman rules” and it was believed that rosemary would not grow well in a garden unless the mistress was the master. Well, thanks to Watermill gardener Flavio Terenzoni (and presumably his wife Marida and my wife Lois), rosemary flourishes in the Walled Garden of the Watermill. (Flavio and I are not commenting!)

Sage, basil, mint, thyme, chives and other herbs also grow well here and we use them daily in our cooking. We’ll also be picking fresh aromatic herbs and using them during our unique L’arte di mangiar bene cookery course at the mill this Summer (details below).

In the Tuscan kitchen we tend to use rosemary to flavour meat and potato dishes, but Lois and Ingrid Fabbian, who will be running the course along with some fabulous local Italian cooks, including Marida, Mirella and Angelina_, will also be showing you how to bake a moist and delicious apple and rosemary cake.

Here’s the recipe, to whet your appetite:

Ingredients
190g plain white flour
1/3 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/3 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
85g unsalted butter, room temperature
85g dark brown sugar, plus extra for dusting
2 eggs
1½ tbsp olive oil
240g peeled and cored Bramley cooking apples, very finely diced+ (optional) 
one extra apple just sliced into thin slices either with a mandolin or carefully 
with a sharp knife.
½ tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
More sprigs of rosemary & a couple of pinches of brown sugar for topping 
& a handful of oats (optional too)
One 23cm round cake tin OR 10 individual cake tins,well greased with olive oil

Method
Preheat the oven to 180˚C fan assisted.
Whisk together the flour, spices and baking powder to ensure they are evenly 
mixed. Set aside.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy – approximately 
4 minutes. 
Beat in the eggs, then add the oil and beat to incorporate. 
Mix in the diced apple and chopped rosemary, then fold in the dry 
ingredients.
Transfer into the prepared cake tin/s, lay the slices of apple on top,sprinkle 
with oats 
If using and brown sugar & press the extra rosemary into the top.
Bake for around 15 mins for mini cakes and 25-30 minutes for a larger cake – or until 
firm in the centre and a cocktail stick inserted comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely, or serve warm.

Put a sprig of rosemary on top, too – and, gentlemen, have a good sniff: A man who is indifferent to the fragrance of rosemary is unable to give true love to a woman and those who smell rosemary frequently will retain their youth.

L’arte di mangiar bene, the art of eating well, lies at the heart of the Italian lifestyle — and that’s just what you’ll enjoy on The Watermill’s first-ever cookery week. You’ll learn the secrets of healthy eating from Lois and The Watermill team, among them an Italian grandmother (Mirella, to the right), an organic farmer and our gardener’s wife Marida. You’ll choose freshest local ingredients (we’ll pick many of them ourselves each day) and prepare them deliciously for the table.

We’ll visit markets, vegetable gardens, olive groves and vineyards. The Italians are the healthiest people in Europe and this is due not just the quality of the food, but to la bella vita italiana, the relaxed lifestyle which means taking time to talk to friends and to enjoy their company, not least in convivial meals around the dining table. You’ll be savouring all that, too.

Over the years Lois Breckon and The Watermill team have built a reputation for the quality of their food and we’re keen to share our secrets with you, from antipasti to dolci – and dozens of mouth-watering, freshly prepared, health-promoting dishes in between.

19-26 August – L’arte di mangiar bene 

with Lois Breckon, Ingrid Fabbian and The Watermill team

To learn more about this delicious cookery course, please click here

A colourful corner of the walled garden

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Spaghetti al ragu

In case you missed it in the Watermill February newsletter*, here’s another interesting snippet from L’arte di mangiar bene, the Art of Eating Well, the famous Italian cookbook by Pellegrino Artusi, published more than a century ago. It’s one of the inspirations for our exciting, enticing and appetising cookery course, which will run from Saturday 19 August to Saturday 26 August 2017.

The cookbook, as well as containing many classic Italian recipes, is full of amusing asides and anecdotes, which we have been sharing with readers of the Watermill bog from time to time. For instance, do you know your salsa from your sugo? Please click here to learn more.

And here’s Pellegrino musing on making sure your pasta is not overcooked: “Pasta must not be overcooked, but let us meditate a little on this.  If the pasta is al dente, it will be more pleasant to the taste and more easily digested.  This may seem paradoxical, but so it is, for when pasta is overcooked, and not sufficiently chewed, it goes down in a lump, weighs heavily on the stomach and becomes an indigestible mass.  Whereas, when it can only be chewed, the mastication produces saliva, which contains an enzyme called ptyalin, and this enzyme helps to break down the starch, turning it into sugar and dextrin.

“Saliva has a very important physiological function not only because it helps to soften and break down food, but also because it facilitates swallowing.  Furthermore, its alkaline nature promotes the secretion of gastric juices in the stomach while the food is being swallowed…”

Tagliatelle ai funghi porcini, a Watermill speciality

Pellegrino adds: “It is said that Neapolitans, great consumers of pasta, always drink a glass of water with it to aid digestion.  I do not know if in this case the water acts as a solvent, or if it is helpful because it is easier on the stomach than the glass of wine or similar substance which it replaces.”

That maybe so ,ut here at the Watermill we are sticking to a glass (or two) of the fine red wine made by our friends in Chianti. We promise to serve our pasta al dente to add to your enjoyment and aid your digestion, as well as sharing the secrets of healthy Italian eating with the freshest local ingredients (we’ll pick many of them ourselves) prepared deliciously for the table.

Panazanella al mulino, another Watermill speciality

We’ll visit markets, vegetable gardens, olive groves and vineyards. Over the years, Lois and The Watermill team have built a reputation for the quality of their food and we’re keen to share our secrets with you, from antipasti to dolci – and dozens of mouth-watering, freshly prepared, health-promoting dishes in between.

The Italians are the healthiest people in Europe and this is due not just the quality of the food, but to la bella vita italiana, the relaxed lifestyle which means taking time to talk to friends and to enjoy their company, not least in convivial meals around the dining table. You’ll be savouring all that, too.

19-26 August – L’arte di mangiar bene 

with Lois Breckon, Ingrid Fabbian and The Watermill team

To learn more about this delicious cookery course, please click here

Dinner at the watermill..Great tastes, good company.

Browsing through that quintessential Italian cookery book La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, the inspiration for the Watermill’s first-ever cooking course, L’Arte di mangiar bene, I was struck by the difficulties there can be in translation.

I am reading an excellent English translation*, but I can see the problem we have from almost the beginning. Recipe 4, for example, is for Sugo di Carne, which translates as ‘meat sauce’, but the translators make the point: “The meat sauce described here is not what we have come to understand by that name, i.e. the ‘ragù’ or ‘Bolognese’ sauce often served with pasta. It is, in fact, more like a ‘dark broth’ and is often used as a base or flavouring for many other dishes.”

In fact, the cookbook’s author, the immortal Pellegrino Artusi, makes the point in his typically humorous introduction to the recipe: “In Romagna, which is a stone’s throw from Tuscany, they do not much care for dictionaries, and so they call meat sauce ‘brown stock’, perhaps because of its brown colour.”

Soon Pellegrino moves on to sugo di pomodoro, which can be translated as ‘tomato sauce’, but which should not be confused with salsa di pomodoro, a more complex concoction, but which also is translated as ‘tomato sauce’.

Pellegrino insists: “Sugo must be simple and therefore composed of cooked, puréed tomatoes. At the most you can add a few chunks of celery or some parsley or basil leaves, when you think these flavours will suit your needs.”

As for salsa di pomodoro, first you must prepare a battuto, a flavour-base of  chopped ingredients, using a quarter of an onion, clove of garlic, a finger-length stalk of celery, a few basil leaves and “a sufficient amount of parsley.” Season with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, mash in seven or eight tomatoes and put everything in a saucepan on the stove, stirring continuously. “Once you see the sauce thickening to the consistency of runny cream, pass it through a sieve and it is ready to use.”

Tomatoes fresh from the Watermill garden

Pellegrino being Pellegrino, this essential recipe is accompanied by a humorous anecdote: “There once was a priest in Romagna who stuck is nose into everything and busy-bodied his way into families, trying to interfere in every domestic matter. Still, he was an honest fellow, and since more good than ill came of his zeal, people let him carry on in his usual style. But popular wit dubbed him Don Pomodoro (Father Tomato) since tomatoes are also ubiquitous. And therefore, it is very helpful to know how to make a good tomato sauce.”  You’ll certainly do that on the Watermill’s L’Arte di mangiar bene cookery course — and much else besides – and we’ll pick our tomatoes and basil fresh from the garden. Click the link below to savour more.

19-26 August – L’arte di mangiar bene 

with Lois Breckon, Ingrid Fabbian and The Watermill team

To learn more about this delicious cookery course, please click here

The name of the Watermill’s first-ever cooking course, L’arte di mangiar bene, the art of eating well, was inspired by the famous Italian cookbook La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, written by a rich retired 19th Century businessman and landowner Pellegrino Artusi. It was composed in his house in the Piazza Massimo d’Azeglio, very close to the apartment in Florence where the Breckon family live when they are not at the mill.

Artusi was 71 when he finished the cookbook in 1891. He failed to find a publisher, so he published it himself. After a slowish start the cookbook really caught the public’s imagination and sales soared. It is now a perennial Italian bestseller and has been translated into a number of languages. The recipes are classic and timeless and we’ll be sharing some with you on later blogs and in our cookery course at the Watermill next Summer (details below).

Like many of his class in those times, Artusi welcomed progress and embraced science — and his book can be  regarded as truly scientific ( the first part of the title), since the recipes were the result of observation and experiment. He lived alone in his house in the Piazza d’Azeglio, with a butler from his home town of Forlimpopoli and a Tuscan cook, who undoubtedly made the dishes while his master watched and tasted. (I’m sure the butler did, too.)

The book also had profound cultural significance: it was written in Italian rather than any local dialect and was the first to bring together recipes from all the various regions, so it helped to make the citizens of the Kingdom of Italy (created in 1861) feel part of a united nation. And it was not written for professional chefs, as was customary at the time, but for middle-class housewives and those servants who helped them cook family meals.

But above all the tone is friendly and reassuring, full of straightforward practical advice – and humorous comments.  I particularly like his note on apple strudel: “Do not be alarmed if this dessert looks like some ugly creature such as a giant leech or a shapeless snake after you cook it, you will like the way it tastes.”

We’ll have more from Pelegrino Artusi in coming blogs and we’ll also be celebrating his inspiration in our L’Arte di mangiar bene cookery course at The Watermill, where you’ll not only learn the secrets of healthy Italian eating but also savour la bella vita italiana.

19-26 August – L’arte di mangiar bene 

with Lois Breckon, Ingrid Fabbian and The Watermill team

To learn more about this delicious cookery course, please click here